Frank Hunt

Viking Christmas trees & Other adventures

Mon, 07 Dec 2009 23:35:37 GMT

Saturday night we went over to visit blue_micha & julytooth’s new place.
Furniture was being arranged and put up with the help of perrin_o_ravnos.

You can see blue_micha is using her heat vision while julytooth is using her powers to remain steady to keep the house level.

Sunday morning we went off to my wife’s cousin’s house to go over the arrangements for my MIL’s memorial Thursday.

It is a nice place, even with the cat.

Then, it was off to practice. Only one left after this at Hoops. I’d be sad about that, but my sad quota is full right now.

Our friend Bill, who does Viking research and reenactment, had a Christmas tree giving away party yesterday. He grows his own trees and it is where we got our tree last year.

I am amazed that all of the trees are the same age. Some are double my height and some are only up to my knee. But, he planted them all at the same time when they were the same size. It really shows what a small change in soil and sunlight can do to a tree.

It was strange because at one point I was the only one without a PHd out getting the trees.

We didn’t take a tree because of our Christmas plans. It felt sad to leave the trees behind. I could almost feel them pouting about not being picked. Especially when Bill said he would cull the herd before next year.

I didn’t feel well yesterday and was worried I was coming down with something. But, today I feel better. Hopefully it was just an allergy overload from the house of ick, moving dust and the cat Sunday morning.

Who says you can’t control the weather?

Sun, 06 Dec 2009 14:17:56 GMT

So, how can you tell my wife’s uncle arrived from Florida?

At least it looks nice.
And, think of how disappointed he’d be if this didn’t happen.
He moved 1000 miles towards the equator to get away from the snow.
Last week it was warm enough out there to walk around in shorts.
If he had been up here then, he might have thought that whole move was for nothing.

The oracle award of the year goes to saeble

Sat, 05 Dec 2009 23:53:15 GMT

Last night we met for morgan_lafaye’s birthday.

Honestly, I lost count of who showed up, but I’m pretty sure it was more than a dozen.

It was a good dinner and a nice time.

She seemed to get some “interesting” presents.

And, for once, they cooked her steak as rare as she likes it.

My food was also very good, but it always is there.

This morning we tried to get flowers for my mother in law’s impending memorial. My wife wanted to go to Skaff’s which has a very good reputation.
We drove over to where their store was first thing in the morning.

But, although the sign was still in front, their store wasn’t there.

It turns out Mr. Skaff retired and closed his store, even though it is still listed on the internet as open, and people answer the phone. However, when questioned, it turns out it is a different shop in Grafton two towns over that just used to work with Mr. Skaff.
So, we drove over there and made all of the arrangements. They seem good and are very close to where my MIL and (now) wife lived when I first met my (now) wife. So, that doesn’t seem totally inappropriate.

After that, it was off to the house of ick to check on the cats and get the car.

saeble suggested a couple of weeks ago when I was having car problems that we buy a used Subaru. Well, now we’ve got my mother in law’s old one. So, that shows remarkable foresight on his part. It even has less miles then he suggest...

On the way home I stopped at the comic books store. They’re having a special “Green Lantern” story line this month where there are all sorts of other color lanterns too. So, Mortimer got the other rings as he is the house lantern.

I’ve been going through a lot of old photos for picture so my MIL. But, I found these from 9 years ago.

Happy morgan_lafaye!

Fri, 04 Dec 2009 05:05:30 GMT

Happy, Happy, Happy
morgan_lafaye, morgan_lafaye, morgan_lafaye
Happy, Happy, Happy
morgan_lafaye, morgan_lafaye, morgan_lafaye

Oooo, a big one too!

Counting to infinity

Fri, 04 Dec 2009 00:16:37 GMT

My CAD system at the new job has been very buggy. It crashes on average 3.4 times a day. This has confused the IT people and our CAD specialist as it is a new, very high end, computer with the newest software and operating system.
We’ve tried adjusting all sorts of settings, but nothing has made it better.
A few other folks in the company got new computers and theirs started doing the same thing.
A CAD trouble shooter from our reseller came in today to try and fix it.
“We’ll show you the other folks with problems, then take you to see Frank,” the CAD specialist said.
“Why?” the trouble shooter asked?
“You’ll see,” he said.
All morning I heard her going from cube to cube asking people what problems they were having. I heard all sorts of variations on the same thing.
“It crashes a lot.” “I lost lots of work.” “It seems buggy.”
Then, she was brought over to my cube.
“Here’s the list of every crash I’ve had in the last 6 weeks,” I said, calling up the spreadsheet. “You can see by these charts that it is most frequent in assemblies while opening, closing or saving parts. You can see by this other chart that it is most likely to happen between 9 and 9:30 in the morning. The attached charts show network traffic is at maximum then. The second most likely crash time is between 1 and 1:30 when people get back from lunch and the network traffic hits a second peak.
“I suspect what happens is these new 64 bit machines try to access the files on the network, get blocked due to a full network and times out much faster then the old 32 bit machines did.”
“Yeah, OK,” she said and sat down at my machine.
She could get my machine to crash doing just what I had said was the most likely to crash it.
Then, she turned on the CAD system data recorder to catch it doing it and it wouldn’t.
“I can’t understand why recording the system would keep it from crashing,” she said.
“It adds an additional process to the machine that is fairly intensive,” I said. “So, it is going to take it longer to count to infinity and get mad the file isn’t ready yet. It might be just slow enough that now the file is ready when it needs it.”
“That shouldn’t be what’s happening,” she said. She turned off the data recorder and it crashed again.
So, she took the data with her. Hopefully there is an answer other than record the data all the time.
We’ll see

Things I liked about my mother in law

Thu, 03 Dec 2009 00:28:43 GMT

Things I liked about Jean

1) She loved my wife.
2) She took the time to tell my wife that she was proud of her.
3) She loved her “little” brother.
4) To the day she died, she lived where she wanted, how she wanted and with whom she wanted.
5) She died still looking forward to things life was going to bring her.
6) She had a good sense of humor.
7) She had a strong sense of honor.
8) She liked taking care of people.
9) She would fight with everything she had to protect those she loved.
10) She would charge to people’s defense.
11) She liked exploring places with lots of “nooks and crannies”.
12) She was an excellent baker and cook.
13) She enjoyed a good party.
14) She liked music.
15) She liked Christmas decorations.
16) She was good with numbers & money.
17) Even though she ate little, she enjoyed a good meal.
18) When she decided to do something, she did it. Ex: quit smoking cold turkey.
19) She liked living in the woods.
20) She could out-drive ambulances in Boston traffic.
21) She remembered old traditions.
22) She treasured the things that were important to her.
23) She could remember an amazing amount of details about people.
24) She could drink guys three times her weight under the table.
25) She stood by my side when I really didn’t expect her to.
26) When all else failed, she would pray for people.

Daffy Duck

Thu, 03 Dec 2009 00:26:06 GMT

I got an email with the subject “job interview request” today.
When I opened it up it was from Aflac. The supplemental insurance people with the duck in their ads. It says in there “I know your past experience may not have been focused on sales or insurance and you may not have considered a career in insurance sales, but some of our most successful associates had résumés just like yours.”
It is true. I never did think of putting my mechanical engineering degree and experience into selling insurance. I’m not at all sure that was an oversight.
I think I’ll skip their job fair. But, if any of you other folks who read this want to consider selling insurance, I can send you the info…

Disturbing dream

Thu, 03 Dec 2009 00:24:00 GMT

I dreamed that I was a serial killer on the run from the law. I had gone down to Westport where my aunt has the cottage, and killed her for a place to hide. But, I didn’t hide at her cottage, I hid at some sort of lodge with an indoor basketball court nearby.
To stay out of sight from the police, I climbed up the wall to where a very large flat screen TV was bolted to a ledge. I got in behind the TV so they wouldn’t see me.
I heard someone coming in and crunched down even more.
An arrow thunked into the wooden ledge frame near me.
“That’s for aunt Ginny!” my brother shouted.
I looked over the TV and he was standing below me loading another arrow.
“This is for (the other people) you killed!” he said shooting it. It hit the wall next to me and stuck in.
I pulled it out and jumped down to him. As he tried to reload I walked up to him and stabbed him with the arrow.
Dream ends

This dream REALLY upset me. I woke up with my heart pounding and it took a while to calm down and go back to sleep.
I’m really not sure what the cause of the dream is either.
I did speak with my aunt Ginny the other day, but she offered us money if we needed it for my mother in law’s funeral. I was very surprised but appreciative of the offer, even if we turned it down. I certainly don’t want anything to happen to her, much less from me.
My brother had shouted another name where I put (the other people) above. I don’t remember it, but even at the time it wasn’t anything I recognized.
And, I don’t want to kill my brother.
We aren’t close by any means. But, that’s a far cry from wanting anything to happen to him.
I don’t have many dreams with violence like that in them and they really bother me when I do.
Wish I knew what brought it on so I could avoid that…

Other things

Sun, 29 Nov 2009 20:46:14 GMT

My mother in law’s death has hit my wife quite hard and she’s still feeling very sad and alone.

This is to be expected. She is her mother’s only child. She and her mother were quite close and her loss is a big chunk out of my wife’s life.

But, more did go on this weekend, and I want to remember that as well. And, doubly so since this was Thanksgiving and even in the middle of a loss like this, there are things for which I’m very thankful.

Thursday was Thanksgiving. Although only 5 folks would be sharing the bird, I still bought a 22 pound turkey.

This is something of mine. I think having a big bird for the holiday is a part of it.
zosh and yebo were hosting the day for us, so we packed up the turkey and brought it over to their house.

I guess the turkey was good.

OK, that’s not a quite fair photo. We took the meat off of the bird before we served it.

julytooth joined us with additional components of the meal and we all had a very nice dinner.

It was a very nice meal.

After a bit of a break (you’ll notice it got dark outside) we had pie!

Yesterday to help cheer up my wife, blue_micha, julytooth, perrin_o_ravnos, yebo

And,
zosh

Went out to dinner with us and helped cheer my wife up.

Although the other events of this weekend are still quite sad, being with some of her friends did get a smile from my wife.

I was very happy to see that and it made me feel much better.
My thanks to all of our friends on this weekend. I am very thankful you’re there. For the folks who came over last night as well as people like morgan_lafaye who went out to take care of sword practice today, other folks who’ve called or stopped by and everyone who posted condolences.

My thanks to you all this Thanksgiving weekend. I am very thankful to have such friends, especially in sad times like this.

My mother in law

Sun, 29 Nov 2009 04:44:37 GMT

Had she not died yesterday, my mother in law would have turned 70 today.
We didn’t get to take her out as expected, but I still thought I’d remember her birthday.

(The cake is actually from her 60th birthday party, but it is one I know she liked.)

Today I know she was with her daughter and brother, even if they could not be with her.

Having talked with both today, I know how much both of them missed her and wished for just a short time more together.

I know she will be missed by them, Brad her significant other, as well as the many cats and plants she took care of.

Jean and I saw eye to eye on very little. But, we did agree on our love for her daughter.

Tonight we did go out to dinner with some friends who were very kind to stop by and cheer us up. So, even if she didn’t attend in person, there was still a party on her birthday.

So, happy birthday to my mother in law. My thanks to her for what she’s given me.

Sad news

Fri, 27 Nov 2009 20:28:19 GMT

My mother in law died this afternoon.
My wife could use the support of her friends.

Pie quiz

Thu, 26 Nov 2009 03:35:04 GMT

My wife makes very good pies. Pies that have won awards for being very good pies.
tonight she made two pies. One is for tomorrow, but one is for me! This makes me very happy as I am very fond of her pies.
But, I have to choose which one.
Pie #1?

Or, pie #2?

One looks more pretty, but the other one looks like it would taste better.

Decisions, decisions. Which pie should I eat?

View Poll: Pie Quiz

Game night November

Sat, 21 Nov 2009 16:03:23 GMT

yebo and zosh were nice enough to host game night again at their house.
yebo showed us his new acoustic measurement devices.

I’m pretty sure that in his case was a sonic screwdriver.

He says that isn’t what it is, but I know one when I see it. I guess it is just as well he didn’t own up to it as I know that things tend to go bad for folks near Time Lords.

And, there were lots of folks around last night. cissa and her husband were able to join us as well as a fair number of other folks.
It meant we had enough people to play a full table of Pitt.

As is usual for game night there was plenty of other visiting and story telling going on.

After dinner we played several other games.

Despite all of the caffeine on hand, the night did eventually come to an end.

While sad it had to end, it was, as usual, a fun time.

The car started

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 22:50:59 GMT

My wife came to rescue me tonight and we tried the jumper cables one more time.
It started!
Go figure.
We took it to the garage and left it off there. Hopefully it is not an expensive fix. But, as my wife pointed out, the tow cost would have been 10 hours of diagnostic charges, so it's good it started.

P.S. Checked the battery voltage at lunch. 12.8 Volts. But, even with that, the little LCD clock in the dash wouldn't even show the time. So, I don't think it is the battery.

Ideas

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 01:37:03 GMT

Just as a follow up to my post about my idea the other day:

The company where I am now working pays me to come up with ideas for them. Of course they own them, that’s what they pay me for. I don’t begrudge it to them any more then I expect them to begrudge my paycheck.

I am in the wonderful position of being paid to think. Thoughts and ideas are the main product of my work. Other people take those and turn them into actual things. They, hopefully, make money off of it and we all get paid.

It’s a really cool thing. Granted, the longer I work at places the more and more I get bogged down in the non-thinking aspects. But, that’s just part of the way things work.

Right now, it’s lots of thought, little paperwork.
That’s great!

I guess the car listened

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 01:28:11 GMT

My car's battery let me know it needed charging today. So, I think it heard me say how much I liked the rental.
Charging it wouldn't be bad except I have to bring the battery in to do it.
So, my wife and I went out in the cold and dark after I got home from work and fished it out of the car. It's charging now. I'm going to wait until dawn to put it back in.
If only the electricals weren't possessed by evil... But at least they have a little flash dance to let me know when they're going to do. Then, I don't have to find myself with a dead car while off somewhere.

I had an idea

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 01:23:55 GMT

"There is an idea forming in my head..." is a line from the character Og in the movie Time Bandits. It’s only his second idea ever and it seems to confuse him. (Well, it was implanted by Evil... And, if the other one was the Pink Bungado, I guess he should be confused.)
I know how he feels.
I rarely have them myself.
But, today at work I had an idea.

To be clear, I’m not talking regular ideas. I’m talking about “no one has ever done it that way before” ideas.
Of course, I’m not sure no one has done this one as I’m new to the industry. Maybe everyone buy my company does it. But, either way, it was new to me.

I’ve had a few of them over the years. They generally work out, but never seem to make much of an impression on the folks I work for.
Last place I worked I came up with an idea for a new tooth shape for our things that hang off of our walls. That was pretty much everything we made other then the walls themselves. I thought they were really great. One of the folks who installed our furniture came up to me, shook my hand, and thanked me for making his life much easier. No one in management cared. I was always a bit confused by that.

When I worked at the telecom company, I came up with a new way to stiffen PC boards. It was implemented across our product line. I was told by management “we’re looking for new things to patent. This is just the sort of thing that would be great, except it is mechanical and we don’t want to patent mechanical things.” Again, I was confused.

As I said, I don’t know if this one is new and different to anyone but me. But, hopefully it will be and will actually work out.

Away down south in Dixie....

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 00:44:28 GMT

I always like the Mobile Faire. It is almost always our last big job of the year. And, it is almost always a fun time.

My wife decided to get new clothes for the trip. I’m usually the one in red, so this year she matched me.

This year is was at the stadium of the Mobile Bay Bears baseball team.

The grass really was like working on gym mats. Never have dives, rolls, falls and drops been that kind to me. I’ve done all of them on cement, rock, grass, dirt and pretty much everything in between. But, that grass was something else.

Sadly, my brain is also something else. I saw this sign and was very disappointed to find out it wasn’t about a geology exhibit.

We don’t usually do our kids shows down south, but this year we were given extra bonus stage time. So, we did some that are easy and without too many props.

Even though David T had never seen them before, he caught on quickly for the puppets.

We had split the troupe into two teams for the sword fight shows, nobles and pirates.

You might notice a slight disparity in team size. But, the locals love pirates, so they get more people and always win in the end.

I don’t know if it was the stadium or what, but people visiting the faire seemed more involved then normal.

Maybe it was the beer. They don’t normally serve beer.

Although the falconers never get off the stage on time, they do put on a good show. And, this year was something when they released the birds at the top of the stadium and had the fly down over the crowd.

Saturday night we all went out to eat.

David T brought his parental figure of note. It was interesting to see them together as we hadn’t met her before.

She only resorted to violence against him once.

It was also his wife’s birthday and she was there as well. It was very nice of her to be a good sport about hanging around with us on her birthday weekend.

Both days had great weather and we all enjoyed it.

My wife had bought some replica cards from the 1500 and 1600’s with some instructions for historical games. They were a lot of fun and easy to play.

They were also easy to lose money on, so I’m glad we were playing with fake coins.

Tom and his new wife took time off from their honeymoon to be there.

It was very nice for us as Tom has more fights then anyone else, so is a big part of the show.

Of course, there is a lot of social time at these things as well. Both nights we all went out to eat together.

Some folks even took to dancing with the wait staff.

(Notice how I don’t mention capt_amos’ name...)

There was lots of talk of my taking this picture.

I assure you I was just looking for the plate holding the table up, not a lot of men’s legs...

When we got back to the hotel there was a truck with a strange bundle in the back. The woman getting out of it had a jacket that said “Texas juvenile corrections department” on it. That and the truck really made me go hmmm....

But, it all came to an end. I drove most of the way home in a car with two of the others and still got back in time to get 2 hours of sleep before work.

As a bonus, my vertical laser came in today. Glad i went into the office!

Tonight my wife had take out dinner from one of my favorite places waiting when I got home. That was very, very nice and I really liked it. But, now at the late hour of 7:45 PM, I’m thinking of going to sleep...

I like my car. Really, I do.

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 23:01:26 GMT

I like my car. Really, I do.
But…

My station wagon that has been as far as the moon is a good little car. Yes, it’s old, it eats oil and the electrical system is possessed by evil. But, I’ve had it since before we started Phoenix Swords and it has been to more shows then a lot of the members.
But…
The car we drove down was a new Toyota Camry that only had 450 miles on it when they turned it over to me. I brought it back with more than 3000.
That car was smooth. That car was fast. That car was nice.
Driving to work today in my station wagon, I felt its 240,000 miles.
Let’s hope it isn’t like computer mice and doesn’t get jealous…

And the burger woman said “Daaaaaamm!”

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 22:59:26 GMT

The trip back in the car was reasonably uneventful, which is just as well. We left fairly early, drove as long as we could, stopped for a little as we could and managed to avoid all of the rush hours on our route.
Normally we get back to this area about 7 or 8 in the morning. Today, I climbed into bed at 4:30 after dropping off the other two and getting most of my stuff out of the car.
But, that’s not to say we were totally without incident.

About 4 hours into the trip we stopped at a McDonalds. I really needed to go to the bathroom and headed straight there. When I walked in, the stall was closed, but the urinal was free and that’s what I needed.
As I stood there, I heard the stall door open behind me.
“Lord Almighty!” a woman’s voice shouted. “I’m still in here cleaning!”
“Sorry,” I said. “I’ll be out of your way as fast as I can.”
“I’m just going to wait in here until you’re done,” she said and closed the door again.
As I left I checked for a sign or something I might have missed. There wasn’t one. So, I’m not sure how I was supposed to know she’d be in the men’s room.
We drove on.

At sunset we stopped in North Carolina at a Wendy’s for dinner. Jose went in first. As I came into the place he was at the counter ordering food.
“Do you want that for here or to go,” the woman asked him.
“He’s getting it to go and will eat it in the car,” I said.
“Daaammm!” she said to me. “Why you got to be so mean to that boy?”
“We’ve got another 1000 miles to drive tonight and we’ve got to be at work at 7:30 in the morning.”
“Daaammm!” She said again. “Your food is to go!”

Edit: the woman in yellow is the "Daaammm" woman:

Best grass ever

Sun, 15 Nov 2009 12:12:00 GMT

Yesterday we got to perform on baseball stadium grass. Wow. I am now spoiled for any other surface.
When we got here Friday, the team owner was being very paranoid about damage to the grass and now I know why.
It’s light sword fighting on gym mats. Falls, rolls, drops are all easier then normal.
Josh took a fall in his fight and outright bounced like on a trampoline.
I know the future is back to pricker plants and such. So, I’ll enjoy it today.

Made it to Mobile

Sat, 14 Nov 2009 12:20:57 GMT

We made amazing time. It usually takes 22-24 hours depending on traffic, where we stop, who we have to drag out of the rest areas and stuff back in the car.
This year 19 hours.
Not that events didn’t try and slow us down.
15 minutes into the drive I said “Why is that guy ahead of me hitting his breaks and dodging into the center median?”
The armchair in the high speed lane answered that question.

Also, you find the strangest things for rest area food in the little shops open at 3 in the morning:

About an hour out of Mobile, the highway system took it’s last shot at us. Route 65 isn’t very crowded. But, two cars ahead of us decided to share a lane. One bounced off into the breakdown lane.
The other turned sideways while doing about 80 and rolled down the highway, making a left into the center.
The guy hopped out and started running around. We got through the broken glass and debris and pulled over. About 6 other cars did too. So many people were calling 911, that the line was busy and we couldn’t get through.
As others had a much better look at what happened, lots of folks had stopped to help, no one needed any immediate help, and we couldn’t even call 911, we decided to press on.

The rental car did a very good job. It only had 450 miles on it when we got it. It now has almost 2000. It is very smooth. There were several points I said “90 is just too fast for a red car with Yankee plates”. (Note to anyone in the law profession reading this, I am not saying we were going that fast. Just that 90 is too fast for a car from up north while down south. That’s some generic car, not me...)

Anyhow, folks were happy to get here:

This year it is in the baseball stadium. We’ve never been there before.

It is always good to see the folks we don’t see often, even if it is just to take a sword to them.

As the sun set over Mobile, I went off to sleep for 11 hours. I’m told other folks did other things.

As a bonus picture: give my nickname for my wife, I think this is very funny:

A very nice birthday

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 02:45:31 GMT

It was a very busy day at work where I was assigned a new, intensive, project. That was a pretty good birthday present itself.
When I got home, my wife had a nice bunch of balloons for me.

To get a nice picture of it it was anchored by blue_micha

Then, we headed off to Pampas for dinner.

zosh, yebo, julytooth and perrin_o_ravnos met us there as well.

I really like this restaurant because they cook meat on spits over a fire. Then, they bring the spit over to your table and carve off pieces for you.

They also have a good salad bar that some folks used for beet sculpture.

I ate a whole lot of meat. (Plus some beets and salad, but don’t tell anyone.)

Then, we came home and had cake. It was very nice.

Wedding sword fights

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 02:19:16 GMT

We didn’t get a picture of the sword arch at yesterday’s wedding, but I went through the video of the sword fights and took some frame grabs from the three sword fights.
I really like the ones where the frame is lit by the flash of cameras.
They’re in the order I grabbed the frames, not the order they happened.

Look at the bend in Tom’s sword in these photos.

I’d say he cheats, but it was his wedding and we’ve been doing this choreography for 6 years...

perrin_o_ravnos did the first sword fight with him, so had the most folks taking still pictures. He said it was blinding. I can’t imagine why...

I was very impressed with morgan_lafaye doing the fight in that costume.