Augie Bytes

You know that crunching sound you get when you crack all your knuckles at the same time? Kind of like stepping on a bunch of twigs. Snap, Crackle, Pop…

Yeah, that’s the sound I heard right before shouting quite loudly after Corbin did a backwards “hop” right in to my bare foot. I was just sitting their minding my own business, well that’s not entirely true. I was actually laughing while watching Corbin do what he calls the “booty dance”. I have no idea where he got it from but he sticks his butt out behind him and then hops backwards like a rabbit in reverse.

The problem was that I was too busy laughing to see that he was coming right at me and wasn’t paying attention himself. I wasn’t even sure which toe(s) were hurt at first because there was a general numbness to my entire foot. But after a few minutes, it became pretty clear…

I thought it was broke at first, but after a few days I was able to walk pretty normal on it. Now that it’s been about a week, the color is “almost” back to normal. In fact just about an hour ago, it was so much better I forgot about its current status and kicked a football to Shalen across the back yard. It uh, kind of hurts again…

While their name would portray trees and old barns as a favorite place to bash their long beaks into in a jackhammer-like motion, our local woodpeckers seem to be converts to the new school of metal…

After weeks of trying to get a good shot of one of these crazy birds, I finally snapped this one a few days ago perched up at the top of our TV antennae. It was rattling away at the antennae and making quite a racket while doing so. I don’t know a thing about woodpeckers, so I don’t know if this is actually common. If you have some insight on the subject, let us know! Why would they DO this?

Wow… It never ceases to amaze me how much your own problems can suddenly seem so small. I am currently unemployed and the job market in this area stinks. Sheila and I continue to discuss how we can cut back, and what our options will be if I can’t find anything suitable in this area. The stress level is up…

Suddenly, I find out today that my brother Jim and his wife Cammi lost their house and EVERYTHING within while they were away at work yesterday. A fire gutted their home. Gone… House… Clothes… Pictures… Personal Items…

I know that at some point, both he and I will look back at this point in time and think about how much those around us helped out, smile a little inside, and think about how glad we are to be wherever we are at that point. But right now it stinks.

Jim has hands down gone through more (a LOT more) drama in life than I have, and I really feel terrible about his situation right now. I’m sure he’ll hear all the normal things over the coming weeks such as “at least no one was hurt” or “it could have been worse, the garage could have gone up too and you would have lost your Harley.” But none of that will lessen the sting right now. I know they are going to be hurting for a while…

Jim and Cammi, you are loved by many. We are all thinking of you. Jim, I pray for you more than you know and I will continue to. Keep your chins up.

With love…

It’s time… I might as well post about it…

On Tuesday of this past week I found out that I was no longer gainfully employed. This is the second time in 18 months, but this time’s a little different. 18 months ago, the company that I had worked at for the previous 10 1/2 years was closing its doors. I was simply a casualty of war. As much as it hurt, there wasn’t much reason to take it personally. Last week was the first time that I’ve been dismissed from a company that is going to move on without me.

Now to clarify, I don’t blame them for making the decision. I don’t. The business model coupled with the drying up of client based work (and income) made the company take a good hard look at what was essential and what could be outsourced. When you take those factors in connection to my salary, there was a big red arrow pointing at me. I of course didn’t want to see it coming, so I didn’t. I tend to think on the optimistic side no matter what and I’m not going to stop now…

I will find work. Soon. In the meantime, maybe I’ll post here a little more often. Too bad it’s not spring. I’d ask dad to go fishing…

As I was hunting through my hard drive for an image I needed for work, I came by one that I haven’t seen in a LONG time. It’s Shane and I hiking in “garb” we brought along with us on a trip after I graduated High School. This has always been one of my favorite images of the two of us and you can click for a larger view…

We were the best of friends through our late teens and twenties (my mom called us two peas in a pod), but somewhere along the course of us working together, worshiping together, and playing together, our lives took separate paths. I don’t think we talked to each other more than a dozen times during the last year we lived in the same town, and it’s sad that it happened the way it did.

Every now and then, someone we both knew asks, “Oh man, what’s ol’ Shemp up to these days?” and I quietly reply that I don’t know. I always get the exact same look, the one that you’d expect to see on the face of someone who just found out that a close family member died. I add that I haven’t heard from him in over 8 years. But you know what? He hasn’t heard from me either…

After being really pumped at the beginning of the season, I’m completely deflated after this past weekend. The season started for me to be the first season in which I was actually rooting for 2 teams. I’ve been a life-long Packers fan and will continue to be regardless of the direction they take in the coming years. I also became a huge Brett Favre fan over the years he played, so I was really rooting for him and the Jets as well. The Pack seemed to be pretty sturdy at the beginning of the season even without Brett, but after the defeat by Dallas they just fell apart. They were still a good team, but they seemed to lose the swagger after that loss and didn’t have the confidence to finish games. The Jets didn’t start out great but started looking great in the middle of the season. Their wins over the Titans and the Pats made them look like serious contenders, but after that it was like a completely different coaching staff was calling the games. They didn’t do anything right. They didn’t run, they didn’t rush the passer, they didn’t stop the run…

The end of the regular season brought it’s misery with the Jets just missing out and the Pack being set for watching from home for weeks now. But I still had some teams I was at least interested in watching. I think the fact that the Dolphins were actually acting like men playing a GAME and having fun with it was exciting. Since the Jets weren’t going, I figured I’d root for Miami. There was also the Colts, who I’m no huge fan of, but my wife really likes them so we were kind of pulling for them too. Especially if it could mean watching Peyton beating down his stuck-up little brother…

So yeah, the first week of the playoffs has come and gone. Fish got killed, Colts forgot to show up against an inferior team, and here’s what we have…

Baltimore Ravens at Tennessee Titans
Yawn… I can’t think of a game better suited to put me to sleep…

Arizona Cardinals at Carolina Panthers
This will likely be good game and I’ll root for the Cardinals. I like Fitzgerald and I’d like to see James get one more crack at it after the Colts did him SO wrong a few years back…

Philadelphia Eagles at New York Giants
Hmmm…. Two teams I can’t stand at all. Hope they beat the living snot out of each other…

San Diego Chargers at Pittsburgh Steelers
Did I say I couldn’t stand the last two? Well I HATE the bolts and their cocky QB Phillip Rivers, so I guess I’m pulling for the Steelers in this one.

So as little interest as I have in any of these, that’s where I stand on those games. I’ll likely skip the games this coming weekend and read a good book. We’ll see what we end up with whether I actually watch the SuperBowl…

I think all the galleries are updated correctly now and the gallery pages are back. The audio files now work as well.

I’m still working on getting all the old comments back in place and then I think the site repairs will all be done. Whew…

Just love all this work. Stupid hacks…

Well, the site is mostly back to normal now. I still have some image gallery issues I’m working through because they are numbered differently than they were the last time due to me not re-creating the Invader Zim galleries. In some ways, I’m kind of glad that this happened because it forced me to update my WordPress sites to the latest software. As Cory had commented a few posts before, this is a pretty nice new version (2.7) and now that they’ve got the auto update feature in place, I should be able to keep up without fretting that I’m going to break the site every time they release an update.

As stated in the last two posts, this blog was horribly behind the curve with software updates and I got hacked. Hidden porn links galore… barf…

I’ve upgraded to the latest and greatest version of WordPress now and hopefully the new “auto-updates” feature will keep me in line this time.

So while I was able to save some of the old posts via an export file, many of them I’m having to re-create by hand from an old snap-shot back-up I have of the site. Pages and Galleries are being re-created too, so it’s going to be a bit “broken for a little while.

The Invader Zim Gallery will be last, and I’m thinking of dropping it completely. It was a huge project to build, but the original version I built can still be found at the old badbadrubberpiggy.com website.

Got the look and feel back.  Still have to recreate a TON of posts from 2008 and decide whether or not to recreate all the image galleries…

This stinks…