jim brickman concert

last night we went to a jim brickman concert at the spokane opera house.

i had a good time.
my sister in law came with us and managed to take a few photos with the flah ON after it was explicilty indicated that no flash photo's were allowed per house rules. this was an accident - but it still met with some giggles.

i saw some church members there - and the place was FAR from sold out. it was MAYBE 1/4th full. so our seats got upgrated to orchistra pit and we were about 15 rows back in the center. very nice.

church webpage

for over a year now i've been slated for doing our churches web page.
about 8 months ago I presented to the board my vision (which costs about 15$ per year for the domain name) and told them i would build them anything they wanted under the following conditions:
1. they identify their audience(s) and put mechanisms in place to determine our effictivents of reaching them with the webpage medium.
2. they identify what our content should be
3. they identify and maintain a flow of information extenal of the devloper and commit to keeping the content fresh.
4. the developement is to be documented and cross trained so it does not die if the deveoper (me) is not availble or moves on (like countless chuch webpages in the past)

well, we've almost gotten 1 and 2, and 3 is pretty slim since our secretary is leaving, and 4 is up to me. so i've started as of FRIDAY!

i'm working with another guy doing minimulistic (yet awesome) graphics and page design, and i've comitted to doing a web wysiwyg editor with possibly a dataase backend for a content management system (although version 1 will probably be a straight, flat, html file system with image upload capability by administrators - in adition to the full ftp access put in place.)

There are nice free asp cms systems, but they are all too heavy for what i want, so i'm writing my own stripped down one in the inturest of my minimulistic approach: public sees html files, no scripting anywhere,so anyone can maintain the webpage, just read html file, edit html file, write html file with an asp wrapper for secuirty.

i've reviewed richtextbox.com and it's VERY powerful, yet the price is WAY beyond the budget.
SO that brings me to the coolest tool i've found recently. fckEditor - opensource strikes again. check it out. very cool stuff.

news from the wasteland

we're going public and it's not bulletproof yet.
oh well, sometimes cleaning up messes is faster then being ready.
the moving goal posts of this project (feature creap x 10) have wore me out so i'm to the point where i really don't care anymore. i have faith in what i've built for 16 months, so if it's going to fail (or break in an area) its because they've amended the business process for the 101st time and i'm not quite on top of it. i guess that is what they get for changing their mind and not truly knowing how their business functions.

insane business rule #200 that cannot be done on paper (my rule of thumb for appropriate) - IT's for all applicants (even inside a group of up to 40) needing to have a medical revision date within the last 6 months and to choose at least 1 allergy even if that allergy is 'no known allergies' - try enforcing THAT with your fax machine and short intructions!

so, here's some code from this morning to keep everyone happy:

Dim aMembers() As String = viewstate("Group") 'pull from viewstate
For x = 0 To (GroupMemberCount() - 1) 'each member
ViewState("GrpMemSel") = (x + 1).ToString 'set active member to one that failed 'the group counter starts at 1 and our array starts at 0
If aMembers((x * 50) + 2) <> "" Then 'group member _First_Name exists
If Strings.IsDate(aMembers((x * 50) + 15).ToString) = "False" Then 'check medicaldate
Errors.Add(New Validation("txtGMedicalDate", "Date must be in MM/DD/YYYY"))
Else
If CDec(DateDiff(DateInterval.Day, CDate(aMembers((x * 50) + 15).ToString), Now())) < 180 And CDec(DateDiff(DateInterval.Day, CDate(aMembers((x * 50) + 15).ToString), Now())) >= 0 Then
'if it's not the same then save
If aMembers((x * 50) + 15) <> Strings.IsDate(aMembers((x * 50) + 15).ToString) Then
aMembers((x * 50) + 15) = Strings.IsDate(aMembers((x * 50) + 15).ToString)
viewstate("Group") = aMembers 'save
End If 'date checks out.
Else
Errors.Add(New Validation("txtGMedicalDate", "Your Medical Record Update Date must be within the past six months.")) ' & CDec(DateDiff(DateInterval.Day, CDate(txtGMedicalDate.Text), Now()) / 365.25)))
End If 'old enough based on context
End If 'valid medical date

If Strings.IsTrue(aMembers((x * 50) + 31)) = False _
And Strings.IsTrue(aMembers((x * 50) + 32)) = False _
And Strings.IsTrue(aMembers((x * 50) + 33)) = False _
And Strings.IsTrue(aMembers((x * 50) + 34)) = False _
And Strings.IsTrue(aMembers((x * 50) + 35)) = False _
And Strings.IsTrue(aMembers((x * 50) + 36)) = False Then 'check allergies
Errors.Add(New Validation("lblGAllergies", "A minimum of 'No Known Allergies' must be selected."))
viewstate("Group") = aMembers 'save
End If 'valid allergies

If Errors.Count > 0 Then 'redraw controls and crash out of loop if they fail.
Call GroupMemberLoad() 'draw them to the screen
Call DrawGroupList() 'draw the group
Exit Select 'bail out.
End If 'errors and we saved and left
End If 'if fname exists
Next 'group member
End If 'no erros so check our members for validation.

homebrew lcd video projector update

i just got my electronic ballast, uv filter plastic, bulb and socket last nite.
it looks like is all i'm missing is some wires and wood (and mayabe some fuses) to make this a reality.
a trip to home depot should give me the first wave of stuff to slaughter in my endevour. I went slow, purchased things as I undeststood them, and still ended up paying premium as i wanted the better stuff. so far i've about $590 into it all with the shipping and stuff.

yeah, yeah, i culd have ebayed an old projector - but it's the thrill of doing it yourself that has me going. it's becoming quite exciting.

savetoby.com

http://www.savetoby.com/ Disturbing.
not so much the eating, but the amount that has come in.

the big stuff

it looks like when you calculate our tithe and daily cost, we're spending about 14k a year. see! i was right! we do live like we're on welfare. that accounts for all travel, food, purchases, gifts, rent, tithe, insurance, out of pocket medical, what have you.

so, where does the rest of the income go? taxes and savings.
at this rate, we'll be able to afford the 20% on a new house (i'm estimated a 160-180k house) by THE END OF THE SUMMER.
it's crazy: last year we leveled the 24k in student loans, got us a 'newer' car for 5k, a new dining room table for 500 smakers, an xbox and some new clothes for that person that lives in my house with me (not near as many as she'd lke i'm sure).

we've only been saving since about october last year for the new house and we're almost half way to 40k (whatever that is). my taxes never felt so good. it allowed to me to sit down and see that we are way ahead of the financial game and COULD live on welfare if we had to.

we ran the numbers last night and played like we worked at mcDonalds - we could afford our current lifestyle (just no savings or new house).

maybe i hsould have gotten in on google's ipo. that would have been nice.
i guess it's time to start looking on the house market. see what's out there.

the little things

so i have a set method for brushing my teeth: turn on water, get toothbrush, rinse toothbrush, apply a small amount of toothpaste, rinse toothebrush, brush teeth in up and down mothion starting at front teeth, then right, then left, then top of teeth (cutting surface) then back of teeth. rince toothbrush, bang toothbrush on sink to get water out, dry toothbrush on towel. replace toothbrush.

i get annoyed when the cap of the toothpaste is wet (from previous brusher) AND i've taken to drying my toothbrush and NOT letting it go all the way into the toothbrush holder becasue i've found WATER in there (from previous brusher) so i just kinda let me toothbrush hang out the top of the holer at an angle keeping it's handle out of the nasty sludge that COULD be at the bottom. i also started drying my toothbrush on my towel before replacing it so i could rule myself out as the 'water donater' person to the toothbrush holder.

now, this ritual meets with frequent ridicule usually around he banging of the toothbrush part, or the part where i complain about the wet toothpaste cap.
i had the other brusher do a little test with me last night. i instructed her to put her pants on two different ways: once without thinking about it, and the second time with putting the OTHER leg in first. she obliged and I watched her step on her pantleg on the second try. although the brushed it off and said it was ok, i said THAT IS WHAT IT IS LIKE when my ritual for brushing teeth gets changed. it just feels wrong, ok?
she said it was not a fair comparison. i thought it was.

i also told her (after the first pants putting on event) that her favorite leg was her right leg, and it figured. she said 'why'. i said it figured because my favored leg was my left and she was like keith. he favors his right too.

so this mornnig i find her askign me to open the curtains to let light into the plants. i say 'just like my mom, making me do lots of little things when it's faster to do them yourself then descrribe the need to another person'
so she's taken offence: she's like my brother AND my mom. i said she breathes air and has a reproductive organ, so that makes her like most people.

so we get in the car. we talk about friends and how she's more introvert and likes friends and i'm more extrovert and don't recgonoise my need for friends.
i begin rambling about her 'cognitive dissence' for friends and then told her i just made that up, as i don't know what that means.
she said cognitive means conscuios thought, and dissenece is not a word.
SO lets check it out and see if kevin is full of crap:

cognitive
1. Of, characterized by, involving, or relating to cognition: “Thinking in terms of dualisms is common in our cognitive culture” (Key Reporter).
2. Having a basis in or reducible to empirical factual knowledge.


dissonance
1. A harsh, disagreeable combination of sounds; discord.
2. Lack of agreement, consistency, or harmony; conflict: “In Vietnam, reality fell away and dissonance between claim and fact filled the void” (Michael Janeway).
3. Music. A combination of tones contextually considered to suggest unrelieved tension and require resolution.



I wonder if putting an adjactive before a noun is the proper order....

so, there you have it. the recap from the last 12 hours of my life which concludes i'm full of crap in some cases. at least i'm honest about it: we CAN fix what i achnowledge.

edit: on second thought, maybe the fact there is evidence for her having an internal conflict: liking friends but not stepping out to make friends DOES demonstrate i had close to the right words (even though dissoncenc is not a word - but the word like it makes sense...)

HAW have some of that. i can cram my slipperslope logic into off the cuff conversations and defend myself!