Yay for MLK Day!

Well, its Sunday evening and for some reason, it doesn't feel like it. We're back in the swing of BSF and 5 o'clock mornings and 6:30 starts. It was a tad cold this week, and I was accompanied by my old friend, Supprise Bowel. Yup, good old Supprise let me know 5 minutes into the meeting that what ever I ate the night before probably shouldn't be included in my daily diet. Actually, I was reminded another 30 minutes later. Lucky me.

We just really enjoy BSF so much, the Lord has really taught me so much about His nature and I am continually finding the old saying; the more you know, the more you realize you don't know.

For some reason, when we get home after Saturday meetings we are always so tired and had a much needed nap. Which then extended into the late afternoon. Anyway, I decided to make the most of the moment, and continued on my quest to conquer Super Mario Brothers 3 on the Wii. I am actually very bad and have not made it past the second world. Stupid game.

Sundays is Financial Peace University (FPU), a Christian based financial training course. We have learnt much in the last two weeks and we are happy in the knowledge that with some discipline and time, we are going to be financial independant and are already on the way.

And why the Iron Man picture? Well, I had a gift certificate and Best Buy was having a sale so $16 later I have my second blu-ray disc, and no blu-ray player. I figure that when I get a blu-ray player we'll just have a really big movie fest. And, already FPU is rubbing off on me, I didn't buy a second disc because I was $3 short and wasn't willing to use my card. So anyway, thats been our weekend so far. It's a long weekend so tomorrow we're off to the gym, I'm going to get started on selling some of our unused stuff on ebay. Hope you are all doing well.

His Space - Her Space

We may not have put our Christmas tree away, we may have procrastinated tidying up or entering data, but I can tell you one thing we have done! This weekend gone, Jenee had a vision. A vision for the future, and that vision was to create room in our humble apartment.

With the careful application of some furniture moving, shelf relocating and some elbow grease, we now have what could best be described as a space each. No more leaving stuff in each others way, sharing a table or fighting for room to put a sewing machine or scrapbooking, ladies and gentlemen, we have room

.

I can't tell you how pleased I was to wake up Sunday morning and walk past my area and see it just how I wanted it, and to see a shelf with Jenee's stuff, just how she likes it. Imagine what it will be like when we have a home to ourselves?...

Crazy Thing Are Afoot in Texas

Motivation is a funny thing. Sometimes you have it, sometimes you don't. Tonight I think I have run out. I came home early today because my IB (irritable bowl) was acting up. Jenee came with me with the ambition of finishing off her work project. I offered to help and 5 hours later we finished. I am glad I offered cause otherwise the poor thing would probably been working for 15 hours. Anyway, I am tired so I am not going write this big elaborate post about all the cool stuff we did in Texas over the Christmas break. Instead, I will mention it and let the slide show do the talking. Uncle John (my Dad's brother) came over to visit Tony and Caryl so it was great to see him. I did take the opportunity to pull a prank on him and hid his socks in the Christmas tree. We also had the Tooley's over to ride the horses at Linda and Joe's, so there are some photos in there. We learned how to play a card game called Golf, actually, two versions 4 and 9 card versions, we went to the King Tutankhamun exhibit and saw where his liver was stored (joy), I saw 2 Great Horned Owls, and we had an ice storm. Too much fun. Well, I hope you enjoy the slide show.

Camera-Less

For those of you who know "Evil Roy Slade"...

'I've got no weapons...'

If you have no idea what that quote means, you need to see the clip below (fast forward to 2:28)





Anyway, I am cameraless. Old faithful is off to the man with the screwdriver for some servicing... I don't know how I will cope with out my "mistress" as Jenee puts it.

A Very Merry Christmas

Well I hope that everyone had a great Christmas break, I know we did. It's always hard getting back into gear, especially after spending several weeks doing what ever you like.

Jenee and I arrived in Texas to discover that out of Linda, Joe, Jenee and myself, I was the only one not sick. Poor Jenee had a nasty upper respiratory deal, and Linda and Joe had some stomach bug that was going around, both with different symptoms. By the end of the trip, they cared and shared what they had so I had a little bout of everyone specialness. Thanks to large doses of vitamin C I managed to shake it all off quickly.

I think one of the things I enjoy the most is a different lifestyle. While in town, Jenee and I like to help look after the horses which includes feeding, sifting poop, riding, and changing blankets. Dad, you should watch out, I am getting pretty good cleaning out the stalls. You might need to get back here soon to stake your claim as Linda's stable boy.

Of course one of the biggest differences in Texas for those of us who live in Florida is the cold weather. It's actually cold, not just cooler than scorching. All I can say is whoever invented thermal underwear deserves a round of applause cause I don't know how I would survive with out it, and really it wasn't that cold compared to some places.

Christmas was really fun this year, as always. Jenee and I had made a deal with each other that we would only spend $30 on each other. That represents a considerable challenge. You have to really put some thought into it. I have mentioned elsewhere what I got Jenee, it was a Cricut if you have forgotten, and yes I know it was more than $30, but we agreed to both use our spending money to pay the difference. Jenee on the other hand was very creative and bought me a poster-print of my favorite photographer. She wrapped the poster inside a rifle case so when I opened it I thought she had finally let me get a gun, I was wrong. You can see a picture of the poster below.
I have to tell you that the picture you see here is no comparison with the real thing. Of course Jenee and I look forward to seeing what the family sends from Australia and low-and-behold, apparently my Dad had the same idea and sends me another Ken Duncan poster, as you can see below.Well, as you might guess, I didn't quite know what to do with myself. Two Ken Duncan's in one holiday is alot to take! Now all I need is a house to hang them in. We spent most of Christmas day with family and it was a delight to have nothing to do on boxing day because this year we stayed in Texas instead of waking up a 4 o'clock and driving to New Mexico.

To replace all that snow and ice, our good Lord offered to bring some of it to us to remind us what its like. An arctic front moved over Texas with freezing rain and all was a winter wonderland for a day. Trees, shrubs, fences, and cars were all coated in a thin layer of ice. I will have more pictures in a later post. Before all that happened though, we had a New Years bash out the back. Its fast becoming a New Year's tradition to burn the now dried out and highly flammable Christmas tree and oh how pretty it was.

Well, that's about it for this post. There are more on the way with a slideshow to boot!

Ice on a pine tree in Texas

First Day at Work - 2009

Well, its 4:41 and I am ready for the day to be done. Even though it's Wednesday, I have mondayitis. We'd have been back earlier but we got iced in while we were in Texas. Anyway, it seems that 2009 is going to be a very busy year already. In the next 4 months, I will hopefully be on no less than 4 proposals, 2 papers and maybe a patent...

But to start '09 off with a bang, guess what was on my desk to welcome me back to work!

This is the front cover of the book. Early last year I was asked to write a chapter to a book. I was told I had two weeks to get a completed draft together and I need to write on the topic of powder flow which I know something about. Thanks to Stephen and Milorad we put together a pretty decent chapter in the allotted time slot. After submission of the first draft there was a few more revisions, some imaging and some reprint permissions to be obtained but in the end it was all worth it.

Have a closer look at the table of contents, chapter 8 looks interesting! I think everyone should have a read of it. It's highly relavent to today's society and bears heavy application on everyday life. If you think I am joking, you'd be right, but the truth is it's actually a very important topic and with out thourough understanding in this area, many parts of the industrial revolution would have never happened...


If you would like a signed copy, you can buy it on amazon (click here) and I will sign it for you... :-p

Welcome...

...to blogging, ...to the jungle?, ...to Texas?

Well, I am sitting on the couch at the in-laws and it has been a crazy couple of days. First of all, welcome Jenee to the world of publishing. Hopefully we'll see some more posts from you and you will keep me a little more honest :-)

Now what about the jungle? Well, first of all, before you read any further I want you to know that all is well at the end of the story. It all started this week. I should know better but I perhaps niavely thought that this week would be slow at work and I would be able to take it easy. Wrong. Let me say it again. WRONG.

On Monday a large project for an industry member was dumped in my lap. I had about 15 sampes to perform mercury porosimetery on. Now, I haven't done mercury porosimetry for about 3 years and I forgot how it takes about 90 minutes per sample. So after a short 4 hour refresher, I started on my way. Two and a half days later I finished the samples. Two and a half days of standing in front of the machine, two and a half days of being bored, but having to pay close attention to what I am doing... so much for an eazy going week.

This was followed by something didn't quite exepect, in fact, I don't think any of us expected. On Thursday afternoon, I was sitting down to a short lunch when our building was rocked by a large rumble. Grabbing my safety glasses, I rushed down stairs to be met by another technician. We started to race through the building to try find the source of the noise. We found it, turned out that an acid waste bottle had exploded in the building because of poor sample labling. Fortunately no one was hurt, but that didn't stop the rest of the afternoon to be filled with firetrucks, fireman, ambulances, police officers and outside emerency washes. It was quite an ordeal.

Ironicaly, the following day was our lab clean-up day and we were all very cautious, not wanting another visit from the boy's with big red shinny trucks. I spent yet another day on my feet. Actually I spent all week on my feet come to think of it. That wasn't all of it though. I got an offer from someone to buy my old HP laptop computer. On the way to drop the computer off we got rear ended by a little blonde ditz who apparently was examing a microscopic scratch on her finger and forgot to leave her foot on the brake. To my amazement, there was no damage to the cars. Amazing...

To top Friday off, I forgot to run some other samples overnight, so I had to go back to work at 11pm Friday night. Put it down to excitment for the end of the year. I eventualy got to sleep, and actually rested up. We got up early and hit the road for Orlando where we were greated by the most fantasticly dense fog. Floridians don't believe in slowing down, not for hurricane grade rain, not for smoke and aparently not for fog. And it didnt stop us us, if you slow down on the highway, your dead. We did have a nice adventure on the way. About 10 minutes down the turn pike, past the last rest stop my brain got a message. The special message that means I have to find a bathroom really, really, really quickly. Well, I thought I would ask the lady at the toll booth and to my delight, she told me that there was a toll booth operators toilet, if only I could cut across several lanes of trafic. Its amazing what you can do when you need to. And then all was good with the world again.

Now we are in Texas, relaxing with the fam and ready for Christmas. I think after this week, I'm ready for a few less supprises.

Jenee's Correction

One more correction to this post. It was not organized to Nate's liking or understanding, therefore he would like to reorganize them and that is fine by me :) Isn't it amazing how differently we see things!

Correction on Jenee's picture / iTunes Libraries

In the below post I commented "on to Jenee's disastrous photo and iTunes libraries" and I need to make a correction. Her libraries are not disastrous, just, how should I say it... less organized than mine.

Yay for Obsessive Compulsive Organisation!

Well, it's taken about 2 and a half months but I have done it. I have culled 8561 images (20.1 GB worth of data) from my photo library. That's a lot of junk come to think of it. Of course I had to follow strict guidelines as given by the Mrs:

No deleting photos of people
No deleting photos of important events
and
Delete all of the boring photo's that don't have any people in them...

Of course, I ignored that last one, and kept my interesting, artistic photos that will one day be worth something, or not...\. So now I have 160 folders containing some 24,300 photos that are named accordingly, taking up a fraction over 50 GB. All I need now is a little more backup protection for the data, and I'll be feeling a lot better about all those memories sitting on my hard drive.

For the record, my iTunes and photo libraries are now impeccable. Hence, of course, Jenee now want's similar organization for her media libraries, soo...

...on to Jenee's disastrous photo and iTunes library...YAY!!!