It’s that time again. Crunch time. Between work and church, my summer is already spent. I’ve got two mission trips in July and a major project due at the first of August. So, don’t be surprised at the pitiful lack of posts this month. See you in August.

Today, for the first time, I worked from home. To be honest, it was great.

I thought I’d be miserable working on my single 19″ CRT instead of my cushy twin 21″ flat panels at work, but it worked out fine. I thought go crazy working over a laggy VPN remote desktop, but (other than a few hitches in the morning) it worked out fine. More than anything, I thought I’d be battling the temptation to go sit on the couch with a bowl of ice cream, but I actually got some good work done and everything worked out fine.

I didn’t get any extra sleep, but I did have a much more leisurely morning. I did take a shower and dress, but I was able to work more comfortably than at the office (if that’s possible considering our lax dress code). I rode my bike down the block for lunch. I got the laundry caught up. And I redesigned two database tables, three SQL scripts, and rewrote a web service to handle new, more complex, XML requests. All this and I saved one gallon of gas.

I’d say the day was a roaring success. Go me!

The gas crunch is here and all the signs seem to indicate it’ll be here for a while.

What can I say? We’re spoiled here. Travel by car is as much a part of the American culture as TV and fast food. There can be no question that America can not function “as usual” without affordable fossil fuels. So what’s the answer?

Artificially lowering the cost of fuel is a pipe-dream. It would require massive government intervention and the free-market crowd (who has a *lot* of power in Washington) just wouldn’t stand for it. Aside from that, I’m not even sure the government would be able to do much in reality. The cost of regulation, the bureaucracy, the inevitable foul play, I just don’t think it would work. Think prohibition. There are some powers greater than the government.

So if you can’t “make” gas affordable, the only other option is to change our culture. That is to say, we need an alternative to driving our cars. (Yes, I know. It’s the tree huggers’ dream come true and I hate it, but it’s true.)

Mass transit is great when you’ve got 8 million people living on top of each other in a tiny area, a la New York City. But if you live in a more “rural” setting like Amarillo, or Colorado Springs, or even in the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex, that’s just not a viable option. Yes there are buses and trains in a few parts of DFW, but where I live (North Richland Hills) and where I work (Grapevine) there’s nothing.

Yes, I can and do ride my bike. But I’m one of the blessed few who has that option. I live eight miles from work. (Some of my coworkers drive 100 miles a day.) I’m healthy. (I know lots of people who couldn’t ride two miles, much less eight.) I don’t have to carry anything to or from work. (Imagine riding a bike with a laptop bag hanging from your arm.) I don’t have to wear business clothes. (Riding a bike in a suit? Or worse, a pant suit and heals?! Riiight.) There are any number of reasons why biking won’t work for most people. And even I don’t ride as often as I should because of heat or wind or being a wuss.

Another possible culture shift is in the hands of our employers. The five day, forty hour work week is something we all take for granted. But some employers (including mine) are willing to change. Many companies are offering employees the option of working ten hours a day for four days. You still get your forty hours of work, but you save 20% of your commuting costs. Alt-N has made this arrangement with our customer and technical support folks. The call center will still be open five days a week, but every day some folks will stay home. For parents, this not only saves on gas. It saves on daycare and gives them an extra day to be with their kids, especially during the summer.

Also more companies are willing to let their employees telecommute. Alt-N has offered this for years, but now more folks are being encouraged to stay home and work remotely. This is the option I’m considering. The only thing holding me back is that I’m spoiled at work with two 20 inch flat screen monitors and a fast PC. Working from home means working on my own machine with my single 19 inch CRT. At least until I can convince the bosses to set me up with a hot rod laptop docked to a couple of flat panels. *wink*

So, faithful readers, what changes have you made? What are you considering? What are the lines you will not cross? I’ve set up a poll to gather some basics, but tell us more! The comment section awaits.

I’m cramming to get a project finished before several other projects start whining for attention. That means I’m writing code faster than I should and making some pretty stupid mistakes. Which leads to comments like todays white board quip.

Your code no longer doesn’t not fail.

May 22, 1999.

It may not mean much to you, but to me it was a day that changed my life much for the better. After two years of her chasing me across Texas and Colorado, I finally realized that Tammy Wallar was the best gift God had ever given me and so I married her.

After that, life was definitely not “happily ever after.” In fact, Tammy and I have been to Hell and back enough times that we know the best places to stop for lunch along the way. It’s been a difficult road, but each time that we find ourselves on the other side of a challenge, still together, holding hands, bruised but not broken, we love each other that much more.

God has been good to us in ways that you wouldn’t believe if I told you. We know that with each challenge we face, He will amaze us with His love before it’s over.

Thanks, Tammy, for chasing me down and catching me and even more for sticking with me. I love you.

I’ve always loved photography. I remember the day, when I was about 14, that my dad allowed me to play around with his old Canon 35mm SLR. This was before the internet, so yes, children, I had to go to the library to learn about f-stops and depth of field, aperture and shutter speed. But I was immediately smitten. The first thing I did was long exposure, night photography. And it worked!!

Living in Colorado I learned that a half-blind monkey with a $5 disposable can take incredible pictures there because everywhere you look is there’s something incredible to see. On a trip to Aspen, Tammy convinced me to shell out $400 for a Canon Rebel G 35mm. What a great investment. Keep in mind, this was before digital cameras, so I also spent piles of cash on film and development. I have literally hundreds of prints of streams, mountains, flowers, trees, and other things of beauty that don’t exist in Texas. (Oh, come on. It’s just a joke.)

When we bought our first digital, it was the death knell for the Rebel G. It’s been gathering dust in my closet for years. I’d see it on the shelf above my t-shirts and my heart would sag a little. But who’s going to pay to have film developed?! You have to wait a week to know if the picture even came out! Psh. Are you nuts?

When Canon came out with their first digital SLR, it cost around $2000. It was a dream to dream, but nothing more. I’ve waited for years for the cost to come down and, thanks to eBay, the market finally came to me. Last week I received my very own Rebel XTi. All my old Canon lenses and accessories work on it! And at 10.1 megapixels, it takes incredible pictures (See below).

Still, there’s a whole new set of things I have to learn with a dSLR. White balance, sharpness, and ISO settings are all new to this old 35mm boy. The best part is that this time, I can take thousands of experimental pictures for free and know instantly what works and what doesn’t. It’s a brave new world!!

P.S. If anyone’s interested, I have a really nice Canon Rebel G 35mm for sale. Seriously!

I sent an email to Master Sargent Louis Ritz, currently stationed in Iraq. He replaced my friend Adam when his tour was complete. I hope you all remember that Adam was the mastermind behind our chocolate drive for wounded warriors.

I contacted MSgt Ritz to get an update on the chocolate supply and to make sure that he passed my contact info on so we could have another drive next fall. This was his reply:

Everything is fine. Wounded warriors love the chocolate. Thanks for your everlasting support. Of course, I will pass along your name to my replacement. You’re like the Easter Bunny, Santa Claus and Willy Wonka all wrapped up into one.

I’d have to say that last line is less for me and more for all the folks who contributed. Thank you!!

I may have mentioned before that I have had “issues” with TiVo. I may have mentioned that TiVo’s customer support is based somewhere in the fourth level of hell and staffed by demons who usually speak English, but not always. I may have mentioned that I would really really really love to have a DVR to record my favorite shows but I’ve given up on that impossible dream after two, yes two, attempts at buying a TiVo, each of which made a root canal look like winning the lottery.

I may have mentioned before that I can get kind of carried away with weird analogies when I’m trying to tell a story and get side tracked on barely related topics.

So anyway, I’ve been using NetFlix as my poor-man’s TiVo for a while now. I’ve caught up with all the available Office DVD’s and most of Monk. Unfortunately that still leaves me about two years behind what is currently being aired. But I’m not bitter… much.

Well, today all that changed. I stumbled across a link to Hulu. At first I thought it was just another YouTube knock off. They had some great SNL clips, really impressive video quality and, oddly enough, the clips were from the show that aired just a few days ago. Then I saw a link at the top of the page. “Browse TV”. Hmm. What could that mean.

Hulu hosts TV shows, on demand, over the interweb, for freeee!! They have the most recent episode of The Office! All of seasons 3 and 4!! GLEEEE!!! There are commercials, but they are tiny web commercials and only one per break! I can deal with that!! Oh, this may change my life forever. It also may completely ruin my career and get me fired for watching TV during business hours.

I guess that last part could be looked upon as a “con” rather than a “pro”, huh?

[Edit: Ok. I lied. I misread the listings. They don’t actually have all of season 3 of The Office, but they do have all of season 4. They have “clips” from season 3. Not as cool, but still, enough to be excited about.]

There were well over a thousand pictures collected from the various digital cameras that joined our mission trip to New Orleans this year. A few times during the week, I gathered up everyone’s cameras and compiled short slide shows.

Once we got home, it was my job to take all the huge, uncompressed, unedited image files that we’d collected and serve them up so everyone could download their favorites. Fortunately, BlueHost offers some really cool image gallery applications for free. (Along with oodles of storage space and unlimited bandwidth!!) I installed Coppermine.

Once I got all 5 gigs uploaded, all I had to do whats point Coppermine to the directory containing the images and it auto-magically created scaled down thumbnail and preview images. Awesome!

You can see the gallery here.

While I’m no longer paying for WeightWatchers, I’m still employing what I learned. I’m not “on a diet” but rather I have “changed my diet.” Last week I broke the 230 (227.8) mark for the first time in seven years. Then I got cocky and this week I’m back on the wrong side of that mark by a quarter pound.

This weekend the weather in DFW was gorgeous and Tammy and I busted out the bicycles. We stuck to pavement, but still got a great “break-in” workout of 15 miles (followed by some sadistic weight lifting).

This leads me to this week’s white board quip on dieting.

I have a great diet. You’re allowed to eat anything you want, but you must eat it with naked fat people.
– Steven Wright