The Price Family Home Companion

Hurricane Tracking

Chantell admitted that she never fully understood why the evening news listed coordinates of tropical storms and hurricanes until last year when I tracked a couple that threatened our area... now she says she knows it's for "those kind of people."

It's a good thing that *those kind of people* are not the kind of people that take offense at such a statement.

Incidentally, this that kind of person finds comfort in knowing that Tropical Storm Bill is 258.5 nautical miles from our house.

Dumb Forms

As sort-of a follow on the "Great Features" article, I'm now irked by "Stupid Forms." The latest is a benefit enrollment form at my company.

First, it allots about 1/8 inch (height) for Employee Home (Mailing) Address:

Meanwhile a whopping 1.5 inches (length) is cordoned off for the State field... roughly the same length allowable for Full Name of Eligible Dependent.

Great Features

** WARNING - GEEK POST ** I just love the treasure trove of features in software now-a-days.

I'm especially fond of Microsoft Visual Studio .NET's precious gem Go to Definition.

Often, a developer will want to use this feature to jump to the line of code where a particular variable is defined. Occasionally, VS takes it upon itself, instead, to *Go to Page Fault* and procedes to crash my machine.

Nice.

Also, PGP has a great feature they should call Make my machine crawl. Instead, it's dubbed Outlook Integration.

I don't see what is so difficult about producing flawless code. I do it every day... :P

New Personal Spam Record

The servers at the office have been hard at work collecting spam for me. I received a (personal) record 315 spam e-mails this weekend alone. Yep, only 8 legitimate messages.

Luckily, I'm using IHateSpam, which seems to work pretty well (it promptly quarantined all the junk). Still it's gotten so much out of hand, that I don't even bother to see if any legitimate mail got zapped by accident.

I read an article a while back that suggests going to a micro-payment system for e-mail that sounds pretty interesting.

The concept is pretty simple:

• Charge the sender a penny for every e-mail sent.
• Give the receiver a 3/4 penny credit for every (1 penny) e-mail received.
• No spammer could afford to send *19 million* messages.
• Any message sent via *free* e-mail would be suspect.

It sounds easy enough, but suspiciously like a tax (although far too cheap to be a tax). I could easily see politicians trying to pass this one in the interests of *infrastructure integrity* or some such nonsense.

I suppose, I'd better stop before this post spins of into yet another subject.

Sad Dad

Chantell and Salem left for Albuquerque this morning so it's just me and the computer for a week.

Luckily, I took a couple of really cute pictures of Salem last night before she left. The close up has to be one of my favorites of all time. She's a cutie and I miss her very much.

Also, in case you missed it, there's a few photos from Father's Day dinner at GGMa/Pa's.

Father's Day Weekend Kick-off

Chantell and Salem kicked-off Father's Day weekend with a bang.

First, they took me out to eat at Churrascos which was very cool! I had the signature dish, **The Churrasco:** *a charcoal-grilled center-cut beef tenderloin steak, "butterflied" in a jelly-roll fashion and basted with chimichurri sauce, a traditional South American sauce made of olive oil, fresh garlic, parsley and spices.*

Chantell had a chicken dish, **Encamisado:** *Plantain-crusted chicken breast with a peppery red bean sauce.*

Both were very good, but, as always, hers was better.

The three of us then shared a chocolate **Tres Leches.** It was divine. Salem loved it so much she cried when the waiter took the empty plate away.

Next they took me to Zany Brainy so that I could "pick out a toy" from Salem. Somehow, I got away with picking two. So, I got a "catchy" Oball and a Kick-Dis. There was another thing that I thought about getting, but I'll be giving them as gifts to a few of you, so I won't yet reveal this little wonder.

Salem loves the ball and it's fun to watch her play with it. She hasn't yet seen the hover-disk yet as I just finished charging it up so we'll have to see her reaction to it. I just took it for a spin, and it's, again, very cool!

So, it's been a great start to what is, I'm assured, only the beginning.

Stephen's Gettin' Hitched

My co-worker and good friend, Stephen Joyner, proposed to his girlfriend last night. The big day is November 8th, 2003.

Many of you know Stephen. He's a great guy and we couldn't be more happy for him!

Give Me My Two Dollars!

I got my haircut yesterday and decided to spring for the "extra" shampoo and scalp massage. Let me tell you. It was the best two dollars I've spent in my entire life!

In the dollars per ounce of pleasure category, this would have to rank up there with (in no particular order) back-scratchers, Q-tips, and hot Krispy Kreme donuts.

Going to the Beach

It was a gorgeous morning so we decided to head out for the beach. This would be Salem's first time... and it proved to be quite fun!

We've been in the Houston area for over two years, and we'd only been to Galveston once (and even then, not to the beach). Still, we wanted to go someplace a little bit different so, we headed out to "Surfside":http://www.surfside.org (besides being slightly closer, we heard it was less crowded).

Never having been there, we stumbled upon "Jetty Park":http://www.surfside.org/jetty_park.htm which looked decent and that's where we stayed (after concluding it had bathroom-like facilities). Later in the day we passed "Stahlman Park":http://www.surfside.org/stahlman.htm which appeared much nicer and even less crowded. But I digress.

Salem was very "cautious":http://thepricefam.dyndns.org:8080/Plone/Media/2003/06/photoalbum_photo_view?b_start=3 of the waves at first and didn't want to have anything to do with them. In fact, she left us standing in the water while she went "back":http://thepricefam.dyndns.org:8080/Plone/Media/2003/06/photoalbum_photo_view?b_start=5 to sit on our towel and "eat her goldfish":http://thepricefam.dyndns.org:8080/Plone/Media/2003/06/photoalbum_photo_view?b_start=6

We saw a "huge tanker":http://thepricefam.dyndns.org:8080/Plone/Media/2003/06/photoalbum_photo_view?b_start=4 leaving Freeport and a few airplanes (including an "Ultralite":http://thepricefam.dyndns.org:8080/Plone/Media/2003/06/photoalbum_photo_view?b_start=7 ) that skimmed the beach while we were there.

After her snack, Salem returned. She was no longer intimidated by even the fiercest of waves. She was fearless, plunging head-long into the oncoming surf. She also had this funny way of trying to "step into":http://thepricefam.dyndns.org:8080/Plone/Media/2003/06/photoalbum_photo_view?b_start=10 each wave. It was very cute.

We played in the waves some more, but before we left we decided to walk the "jetty":http://thepricefam.dyndns.org:8080/Plone/Media/2003/06/photoalbum_photo_view?b_start=15 , which ended up being a lot further than we originally thought.

We wanted to eat before returning home. We stopped in at the Red Snapper Inn which was a glorified hole-in-the wall. This little gem sported dismal service alongside surprisingly excellent (although pricey) seafood. Also, they rather snobbishly don't accept credit cards (there was an ATM in the "lobby," but it only choked up a single $20 bill before giving up the ghost).

I ordered the Red Snapper New Orleans. Chantell ordered the Red Snapper Vera Cruz. As is nearly always the case, Chantell's was better.

We took the scenic route home, opting to drive by Brazos Bend State Park. It was quite a nice little drive... and the route we'll take the next time we go to the beach.

We're all a little bit pink, a lot tired... but we had so much fun!

Stormy Weather

We haven't had any rainfall for nearly two months (since April 7). It looked like we might finally be in for some this evening, but alas it didn't happen.

Storms were fierce in parts of Sugar Land. In fact, I spotted several funnel clouds to the north of us when I got home from work (the news indicated that they were very close to the area of my office).

We didn't get a single drop of rain. Luckily we still have good chances for the remainder of the week (our yard needs it). Hopefully, though, there won't be any more of those spooky funnel clouds.