We've joined a fitness club

Yesterday, in an attempt for Joy and I to get in better shape, we joined the new LA Fitness club down the street from our house. It's only been open a little over a week. It has racquetball, swimming pool, weights, cardio equipment, a basketball court, classes, a hot tub, saunas, you name it. We plan to go there at least three times a week, so that we can get trimmer and healthier; since Joy won't be getting off work until about 5 in the afternoon, I may stop on my way home to exercise sometimes. Joy's first day at her new job was tiring for her, so we went and swam a couple of laps and soaked in the hot tub last evening.

On Wednesday, our youngest son, John began his freshman year at Portland Adventist Academy. We just hope that he really applies himself.

James and I have multimedia duty tomorrow at PVC.

Another hot stretch in Portland

For the last week (until this morning, actually), it has been pretty hot for Portland. Thursday through Saturday all got to 103 degrees Fahrenheit here. Yesterday it was about 90. Finally, today is much cooler, only in the 70s. On Saturday we went over to the coast to beat the heat. It was foggy and drizzly right at the beach, but that felt good after the hot temperatures here. The worst part was the traffic. It seemed like everyone from the valley had gone over the coast range to join us in escaping the heat!

Joy just got the news about a new job that she is going to be starting this Thursday. Her previous job at PAES ended due to insufficient children in her classroom. At Mt. Tabor, she'll be getting more hours plus benefits, a double blessing. Also, her primary job will be watching babies, her favorite age group.

We've been paying attention to Michael Phelps record run of gold medals at the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, China. Pretty awesome. I can't even imagine eating 12000 calories a day! He doesn't look like he has an ounce of fat on his body. Maybe I need to start swimming.

Yesterday, I had a Dr. Who marathon with my friend John. I record several episodes on my DVR and then we watch them together a couple of times a year. The last few shows were some of the best that I've ever watched.

August already

Wow, it's already August 7. Time is sure flying.

John, our youngest son, is down in California, visiting with his cousin Justin. While he's there, they will go to Six Flags Discovery Kingdom. He'll get to ride some real roller coasters! He'll fly back by himself on Southwest Airlines, another new experience for him.

This weekend, we're planning to go the Oregon Zoo and enjoy seeing the animals.

We're all sore...

We had another busy weekend. On Saturday, we got together with Joy's family. Joy's Uncle Rod, who she hadn't seen since she was a little girl, was there visiting from Montana. Her sister Julie was up from California, and with her sisters from Vernonia and Vancouver, along with their kids, it was a full, loud, and lively meeting. Saturday evening, we went up to Vancouver so that I could work on Janie's computer. I installed a router and got everything working, while we watched My Mom's New Boyfriend.

Yesterday, we finished emptying our storage unit. That's why we're sore! We're still unpacking and organizing the boxes, but it is nice to see the light at the end of the tunnel. Hopefully, we won't need to move again for a long time!

A nice, but busy weekend

On Saturday, we went to Camp Meeting at the Gladstone Park Conference Center. It was a nice day, warm, but not hot. We ate lunch with our good friends Les & Keri and their children and grand children. We listened to inspirational music and good talks by Robert Quintana, the pastor of the Frederick, Maryland SDA Church. After the evening meeting, True!mprov had a performance that had everyone laughing hard.

Yesterday, we emptied most of our storage unit. We did enough that we should be completely out in a single U-Haul truck load next Sunday.

Another Friday

It's been a short work week, after our mini-vacation last week. We're still unpacking boxes from our storage unit.

Tomorrow, we're going to the 2008 Oregon Camp Meeting at Gladstone to be with our friends and enjoy music and fellowship.

We're in the process of getting a kitten for the family.

A great mini-vacation

On Friday, Joy and I drove up to Anacortes, Washington to celebrate our first anniversary. After checking into our motel, the Cap Sante Inn, we went down to see Deception Pass. It was very picturesque, with the blue water and sky contrasting with the green of the trees and grass.

On Saturday morning, we boarded the Washington State Ferries MV Chelan, taking us from Anacortes through the beautiful San Juan Islands to Syndey, British Columbia. We took a shuttle to Butchart Gardens. We spent several hours wondering through the grounds, taking hundreds of pictures of the flowers, trees, and scenery. We took a double decker bus back to Sydney and did some shopping for an hour before going back to the ferry terminal. We took the evening ferry back to Anacortes stopping at Friday Harbor along the way. As we travelled, Mt. Baker glowed with the evening sun.

Sunday, we went up to North Cascades National Park, a two hour drive. Awesome mountains, forests, lakes, rivers and gorges surrounded us. For dinner, we went to the Swinomish Northern Lights Casino.

Yesterday, we drove back home, going up to Mount St. Helens National Volcanic Monument along the way. We were tired, but happy when we got home.

A Long Weekend Off

It was nice to have a three day weekend off. Friday, we went to Sellwood Park with a bunch of friends from our church. After getting home, John lit off fireworks in celebration of July 4. On Saturday we had a potluck lunch with the same group of friends. The weather was on the cool side, but still very enjoyable.

Yesterday, we moved several van loads of boxes from our storage unit into our house. We plan to move most of our boxes that way and then we should have a pretty simple move of the big items; probably a single truck load.

This is a short work week again--Yeah! Joy and I are going up to Anacortes and Victoria to celebrate our 1st anniversary July 11 - July 14.

Last day of June

It is hard to believe that 2008 is half way over already! Time seems to be flying.

It was a very hot weekend for Portland. On Saturday, it got to 100 degrees here, which is much higher than our normal summer temperatures of the 80s. The forecast is for it to be more moderate through the next week. On Saturday evening, we watched The Other Boleyn Girl with our friends Les & Keri. It was an interesting, but not very historically accurate movie. Last night we watched Fools Gold, a cute movie.

Joy and I attended a credit repair seminar over the weekend by Jim Longacre, the creator of the recreditpair Credit Education Software. We're going to use the methods that we learned to improve our credit rating and hopefully be able to get a newer vehicle to replace our old Ford van and its 14 mpg.

This is a short work week, since Friday is July 4th.

A nice weekend in Oregon.

James and I had Multimedia Duty Sabbath morning at PVC. There was a strawberry shortcake feed between 1st and 2nd services--Yummy! For the afternoon, we joined some friends from church in a picnic at Sellwood Park. It was comfortable under the trees, eating, visiting, and watching some baseball being played.

Yesterday, we did more unpacking, getting the kitchen, the office, and the living room into better shape. In the evening, we watched a couple of DVD movies on our new 42" Toshiba LCD TV; even without Blu-ray, the quality of picture is dramatically better. Jumper was exciting, but required a total suspension of disbelief, at least for me; of course, many movies have that effect to me. The Bucket List was a good, wholesome film that made me value life and relationships. Of the two, The Bucket List is the only one that I'd consider buying.

Finished with the move

We're all moved out of our apartment into our house. There are still lots of boxes to unpack, but it is nice to have the extra space to live in.

Yesterday morning, I watched Tiger Woods win the 2008 US Open playoff. Both players did well, but I've been a Tiger Woods fan since his first Master's victory, back in 1997.

Today, I participated in the Firefox 3 Download Day, trying to set a record for the most downloads in a 24 hour period. I've been using Firefox as my primary browser for years. The extra speed from version 3 is appreciated.

Father's Day Weekend

It's going to a busy, and not too fun, Father's Day. We're moving on Sunday into a rental house. It will be nice to have lots more room, but moving is on my top 10 worst list.

The last weekend has been busy with graduations. On Thursday, John graduated from 8th grade at PAES on Sunday, Vainiaku graduated from 12th grade at PAA. Now, John is a freshman at PAA, while Selita is a senior there.

Gas prices keep shooting up. At one of the stations that I drive past on the way to work, a gallon of gas went up 5 cents in the nine hours that I was at work. I know that I'm driving a lot less now than I had in the past!

June is starting

It's going to a busy week. Thursday is both Joy's birthday and John's graduation day from Portland Adventist Elementary School. After John graduates, his 8th grade class is having two parties, lasting all night long! Because of all of this activity, we'll probably celebrate Joy's birthday on Friday.

On Sunday, Vainiaku will be graduating from Portland Adventist Academy. Knowing that I have a daughter going to college in the fall makes me feel old!

In between all of these items, we're also packing, getting ready to move into a rental house. It will only be about a mile from our apartment, so that part won't be too bad. It will be nice to have twice as much space to live in, along with a garage, so we won't have to keep our rented storage unit.

Obama for President

On Sunday, I went down by the Willamette River in Portland to hear Barack Obama speak. He is a very charismatic speaker, getting the crowd of 75,000 very fired up. I hope that he'll be the Democratic nominee and the next President of the United States.

It was a very sunny day, and I got a little burned, but it was worth it. I got to shake hands with Steve Novick; I voted for him for the Oregon US Senate race, based upon reading his interview at slashdot.org.

A busy couple of weeks

Between softball games, birthdays, etc., it's been a while since I've posted here.

Vainiaku and Selita have been playing PAA softball. They've won about half of their games. Their last games of the season--and V's last games as a high school student will be this afternoon at home against Corbett.

This last weekend, we had a surprise 40th birthday party for my sister-in-law, Tammy.

I'm in the process of setting up a used Compaq EVO D510 2GHZ computer that I got from ebay for only $41. I've installed the Ubuntu Hardy Heron on it. It will be used as a web server/proxy server/etc.

I've also added a new Linksys WRT54G-TM router with Tomato firmware as my primary router, with my older WRT54G connected to it using WDS to increase wifi coverage.

We found out this weekend that we have to move out of our apartment at the end of May. We'd planned to move this summer anyhow, but the timing is inconvenient, what with 8th grade and high school graduations, birthdays, etc. Oh, well, these things happen.

A very nice weekend

On Friday, I setup a used LinkSys WRT54g router using Tomato Firmware. This gives my router much functionality that isn't included in the stock LinkSys firmware, including SNMP and remote syslog, so that I can more readily monitor what is going across the wire. I got the router for only $30 at Stuff, which has pretty good used equipment.

It was a very nice weekend in Portland; it was actually hot out! On Saturday, we went to the Oregon Zoo. It was crowded, but we have an annual membership, so we got in easily, not having to wait in a very long line to pay for admission. The warm weather seemed to make even the animals lethargic.

Yesterday was our son John's 15th birthday. We ate out at Red Robin, and gave John an 8gb iPod nano for his present.

April has started

TGIF!

We've had very nice weather for most of this week. It has been clear and cold in the morning, but sunny and in the 60s during the afternoon. Today is cloudy and rainy, but I guess we'll survive.

The PAA girls had a softball game last evening that they won by 11 runs. Go Cougars!

I've been busy at work learning about Nagios, Big Brother, and Hobbit, all suites that can be used to monitor system performance, uptime, etc.

March is at its end.

It was a nice weekend. On Saturday evening, we went up to Vancouver to work on Joy's sister's computer. She had a printer that she'd gotten for free that needed hooked up. They have Qwest DSL, but the HP driver package was almost 350 mb and with their slow DSL, it would have taken about 4 hours to download, so I actually drove back home, downloaded it via our cable modem and back to Vancouver in about 1 hour.

Yesterday, Joy made homemade cinnamon rolls--Yummy! :-)

Today, it's back to work Monday.

More songs to listen to.

I just upgraded my Dell Axim PDA to have an 8 gb CompactFlash memory card, double the size of my earlier 4 gb version. Now I can have all of my songs from my notebook always with me and I still have lots of free space to grow into. [Fry's had a very good price on the card!] My old card is going to be put in Joy's PDA.

It was a nice, relaxing Easter weekend. March is rapidly coming to an end.

Another week is finished--March is half over

Time is still flying pretty fast. March is to the mid point. Next thing you know it'll be summer again!

Last evening, we went to Pleasant Valley Church to get pictures taken by Olan Mills for the church directory. Joy had us wear suits and ties; oh well, it only happens occasionally. I'm glad that I don't have to wear a tie to work. I don't think I could stand that.