Whoosh! Two Down and One to Go

My second child graduated from high school today. The first graduated two years ago. The next one will be in three years. So we're two down with one to go.
I'm not quite sure how this day came so fast. Wasn't it just yesterday she was a little baby girl being handed to me in the hospital and me exclaiming, "What am I going to do with a girl?" I've since found out. God has very much blessed my life with all my children. My son and my two daughters.

We are very proud of our young lady, she graduated with honors in the top 5% of her class. Not to be considered a small achievement, especially since she took honors classes and advanced placement (A.P.) classes for college credit... and speaking of college credit, college is looming on the horizon not too far away.

The emotions have gone every way today. I've been misty eyed and joyous. We had a house full of friends and relatives to celebrate this wonderful life accomplishment achieved by my oldest daughter. What a day it has been!

Right now I am tired and short on words, but I just wanted to get out a quick post about the events of the day since it has been a busy and emotional week.

I'll try to post again soon when I have had a bit more rest and I have regained my ability to think a little more clearly.

Computer Problems Flushed

*** typed with a bit of a British accent ***
Well in li't of me last posting, me decided that flushing was mayhaps the option o' least resistance...
Unfortunately, me disposition dont take to such thin's lightly and me had to go on the 'ard way.
*** end of badly done accent ***

Yes, I managed to slog on through and purely by the grace of God, and one unnecessarily purchased hard drive later we have two computers back up and running. The operating system on Chris' machine was really messed up so after Chris spent two days copying files manually from a command prompt to a backup drive we reformatted the hard drive and completely reloaded WindowsXP from scratch and what seemed like piece parted it back together. It is up and running and probably running better than when we first got it from the manufacturer because it doesn't have all the extra fat and fluff on it (reference recent Mac vs PC commercial).

I spent a good portion of today working on my parents computer. I have had it for at least three weeks trying to find the time to get to it. They have Norton System works installed on it. I don't recommend it for people that are not computer savvy. The Anti-Virus stuff works pretty well, but the utilities can get you in trouble. Norton GoBack decided it wanted to keep going back, and go back, and go back... The error message would come up and say "NortonGoBack has detected that your system is unstable, rebooting." I figured out that the system was unstable alright, because GoBack was installed on it.
After buying a new hard drive to load the operating system on (so as to try not to lose important data), and loading the operating system, I was finally able to get to a command window on the original drive and delete the offending application. Wa-La! Magic happened and everything was mostly happy in computer land once again.

I think my son has given up on PC and is ready for Mac. Can't say I blame him. My wife's mac laptop has given me the least problems of any of the five computers we have (six if counting my parents PC).
I'm thinking I'm about ready to scrap Windows for Linux. Nobody writes viruses to exploit Linux, mostly because, well you just pretty well can't. Since Macs run on a variant of Linux with the Mac OS built on top, they are pretty secure and the need for Symantec (aka Norton), or McAfee, or any other such anti-virus, anti-spyware, anti-malware stuff is mostly unneeded which is sounding REALLY appealing after this past week. And guess what: the Linux operating system is free! No upgrades that cost $100 - 200 every couple years.

Ok, I'm done with my Linux commercial for now, but I am expecting that after my daughter's high school graduation and all the relatives go home, I am going to be installing a new OS on my computer and testing it out. I'll post more about it after seeing how that goes.

So in honor of tigger... TTFN!

Overwhelmed by Computer Problems

Right now the computers in my house that are having difficulties is growing.

My youngest daughter has an old computer of mine. It is at the place where it just isn't all that happy with the new operating system and software that is installed on it. It is slow to boot and it throws tantrums and holds its breath until it passes out; usually when my daughter is working on a paper or trying to do something important for school. I've been putting off doing anything with it as long as I can.

A couple weeks ago my parents computer decided it was going to take a vacation. The Norton GoBack installed on it was in cahoots with Windows and now every time it boots up, the GoBack lights up and says it has detected something is unstable (I call it MS Windows) and it is going to reboot. It doesn't ask if it is okay, it just figures it knows best and helps you out. Flash-click-restarting --- screams coming from the user, "I didn't ask you to do that! Stop it!" I echoed those screams when I was trying to figure out how to fix it.

I shared the pain with an IT buddy of mine and had him just as perplexed as me. If you're wondering about tech support... it has been outsourced - to India. I'm still trying to get this one figured out.

My son Chris came home from college for the summer, set up his computer and turned it on... It was working fine whey he left Oklahoma, but somewhere along the way it developed altitude sickness on the trip home and starting coughing up its windows registry, one misplaced bit at a time going from bad to worse with each step suggested to try to fix and recover. Now it is in a really funky state. You can see and use the icons on the desktop, but there is no task bar to be found. It just went away. Attempts to recover have not met with any success. It foiled my attempt to load a linux operating system: just shook its sad little head and said, "No way, Jose!"

So I'm rethinking this whole technology thing.

The good news is I found this helpful picture that explains computer hardware in easy to understand terminology so even a programmer (like me) can understand. But if I fail to be able to figure it out, I'll just resort to the function key (See picture at right)!

End of School Year = Busy Week

Not much time to blog this week. Not even much time to read others blogs this week. Not much time to breathe this week.
Work has been all day meetings since Monday which is tiring all by itself. They are necessary and will help us produce a better product, but... I don't like all day meetings.
Every night this week has been filled with some activity for one or the other or both daughters.
Monday night: Teacher's Choice Awards and Senior Recognition. Youngest daughter was recognized by two teachers for being an excellent student. Oldest daughter is in the top 25 in her graduating class. [I'm very proud of them both.]
Tuesday night: Choir concert for both girls. Both sing beautifully. This is oldest's last H.S. choir concert.
Wednesday night (tonight): 3.75 and Educator Honoring Banquet. This recognizes the seniors that have maintained a 3.75 or higher GPA and those students get to recognize a teacher that has been special or influential. Oldest daughter did a fine job of speaking well while honoring a science teacher that she had all four years and noting the qualities that make him an outstanding teacher.
Thursday night: Band concert for youngest.
Friday night: Nothing planned that I know of or can remember... Phew! ... One more night to go... I think...

Our oldest oldest (Chris) has college finals this week. Oldest daughter has four A.P. tests this week. I'm sure youngest has more stuff going on, but I don't think I've seen her long enough to find out what.

Oh! And Mother's Day is Sunday... Can't forget that. My sister has been trying to get in touch with me for two days so we can solidify plans with family. Hopefully tomorrow I can connect with her. I think I'll send her an email. :P

I wish there was more I could add, but this is about all that I have left today. Bless you all and I'll try to catch up in a couple days.

Senior Prom Night!

My middle child, our oldest daughter (OD), had her senior prom the night before last. What an exciting experience for her. She had a couple girlfriends over and the "got ready." Actually I had two daughters going to prom last night. One of the girlfriends is our "adopted" daughter [so she is our middle daughter MD and explaining that is for a different post]. So in the picture on the right, MD is on the left in the light blue, OD is in the middle in pink and the young lady on the right is another of OD's girlfriends.

All three moms were on hand to help Prom preparations of this magnitude is definitely not a guy thing. This proud papa stayed out of the way and watched three already beautiful young ladies transform into princesses ready for Cinderella's ball. They were all stunningly beautiful! [Yes I am biased, but they were still exceedingly gorgeous!]

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Pictures and flashes and more pictures and more flashes. I think I took about 120 pictures.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Their dashingly dressed princes arrived here to pick them up to start their evening. Young man 1 (YM1) My OD's date had his act completely together; he had the corsage and tickets and looked very sharp. The next young man (YM2) arrived and doing well, but not quite as well as YM1, had the corsage, but... forgot the tickets and his student ID (required for entrance to the dance). MD's date, YM3 was running a few minutes late. He showed up looking great! But... he forgot... uh, the corsage, the tickets, and I'm not sure what else. Keep in mind OD, MD, and YM3 have known each other all their lives. YM3 comes in shows off his tux and MD comes down the stairs. YM3's jaw dropped and he stuttered and stammered at seeing MD. "Wow! You look great!" is what I think he managed to get out.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Pictures and flashes and more pictures and more flashes.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Then suddenly they are ready to head off for dinner and the dance and all the mom's and this papa were left watching them head off. It is a momentous occasion for them and for us.

Ah the joys of having our children grow: mixed emotions galore!
I am happy for them; and then again I am sad that the time seems to have passed so quickly. (It also means I'm getting older, even though I don't feel it.)
My daughter that I was just yesterday singing the Collin Ray song "I Think About You" to, has gone to her senior prom and is about ready to graduate high school.

Wow! It has happened so quickly!

I think about you, eight years old, big blue eyes and a heart of gold...

Thank You God!

I just visited the blog for Especially Heather who I wrote about a few days back.
The Lord moved mountains for her to be able to have surgery for a brain tumor within literally about two weeks.
I have to confess that having her come through well (better than might expected for a surgery that traumatic) brings me to tears of gratefulness before God.
The number of posts to encourage her is over 320 since yesterdays post. That is a lot of support for somebody that most, like myself, don't personally know.

Please join me in giving thanks and praise to God for His mercy to Heather and her family.

My Wife the Writer

Just some thoughts that came to me after reading my wife's blog today.

Oh, how I have tried to encourage my wife Kerry in her writing only to meet with the resistance of something like, "I can't do that yet, we haven't covered it in the writing class I'm working on."
She is already a very good and very capable writer. I try to gently remind her that the class is to help her develop the tools needed for "successful" writing, not for just writing.

I pray for her to be able to just be free to sit down and begin to pour out the multitude of treasures hidden within her heart and mind and put aside all the other stuff, including self-critique, until after she is done getting the thoughts down. I know it will come. She is a creature of habit and it is difficult for her to break those habits.
And my contribution to the matter... far too often has just been expressed frustration with her because I am more of a "just do it" personality. I attack things get the bulk of the thing done and then go back. When that applies to writing I may edit 46 times after I've finished, but if I don't get the thought out and down, swoosh, out of the brain it goes and it just may never come back again. Really!

Anyway for those of you that read this, I invite you to pray with me for Kerry and her writing so that she can know she is successful, not because of accomplishments, but because God has said that she is more than able through Christ who strengthens her (and us).