Okay... so day 1

So it took me a bit to log in to Blogger and get everything setup, but I actually tried earlier, but it looks like Blogger was adding Google account log in stuff or something, since it was down. But it is up now!

So, things I need to work on today, and this week.
I need to finish the sharing project at work. This project has been going on for months, and really isn't that hard, I just need to get my butt in gear and finish it off. I need to finish off the Add New/Edit page, finish off the search page, and that is about it. I will post tomorrow how I am doing on this one. I also need to setup a time to travel around the county to each of our substations. I am working on SCADA and my first project is to map out how the substations are currently connected so we can develop a plan on upgrading the network. This will be a week long (possibly even 2 weeks) so it will be slow going for a bit. Lastly I need to work on getting the SCADA screens for the gensite finished. I suppose the first step on this is figuring out HOW to even generate the screens off of the SQL server there. Need to do some research on that as well.

I need to uninstall PHP5 from the church webserver and install PHP4. I want to get this done today and test it out, it is what I plan on doing for lunch. I also will be doing my fantasy football draft tonight, so that will take up some time today. Lastly I need to do lawn care tonight and tomorrow night, I need to water and fertilize tonight and then mow tommorrow, since we are having our BBQ on Wednesday.

That looks like a pretty good list of things to do, so we will see how I do, but at least I have it up there.

Also, on the TicTacToe thing. I have always been interested in artificial intelligence programming and the like and when I was in hischool I wrote a tictactoe program that had different difficulty levels. On the hardest level, the computer never lost. But this was all done by me programming in the "perfect" move for each situation for the computer. What I want to do with this new project is write a web app interface for tictactoe that would allow people to visit the page, and play games against the computer. The computer will have no preset moves or even concepts of how the game works, but through playing the game it will "learn" the rules and how to progress towards playing the perfect game. This actually solves 2 goals I have at once. 1) I really want to get back into programming for fun, and playing on the computer for fun. In the last few years I felt like I have lost some of my "geek" factor and I want to recapture that. 2) I really want to learn web 2.0 concepts like DOM, AJAX and the like, and this is a perfect opportunity to write a cool, interactive program that is pretty much PERFECT for web 2.0 type interfaces. The sad thing is I probably won't be able to get to this project until like the end of September, first I need to get the Youth server up, and then after that get the small group database for church up. Oh well.

Back to work I go.

Good morning

Wow, what a great morning!

First of all, and most importantly the Twins won last night in a thrilling, 11 inning game over the evil White Sox, so that of course is great.

Also I just found this great little app for my Macbook, it is called QuickTunes and it puts up a little notification window when songs change (some people might not like this) but most importantly, it provides quick access to iTunes controls off of the top menu bar, including the basics like play,forward, rewind, etc as well as extra's like rating, play other by this artist, play other on this cd, and play other in this genre.

It is pretty much provides everything I have wanted in a while in a menubar iTunes controller, and it works greats, and best of all it's free.

So if you have a Mac, and listen to iTunes frequently, I HIGHLY recommend it.

Note to self for later today/tomorrow(and the rest of you to try and decipher): TicTacToe-AI

Just for the record...

First read the preceding post before reading this.

I just got back from putting Maddie back to sleep :)

I was a really easy night, took me less than 5 minutes, but still... I feel somewhat vindicated. Hey, if I am going to share my failures on my blog, I am sure as heck going to post the few times I am right as well.

Late Saturday night

Well it is late Saturday night (bet you couldn't guess that from the title!) and I am sitting in bed, sorta waiting for Maddie. Here is the deal, for some reason Maddie as of late has decided that right around whenever we go to bed (and honestly, the time doesn't matter, it is 10:00 some days, 11:00 others and even 12:00 like tonight) but whatever the time it is that Shalisa and I both actually crawl into bed, that is the time for her to wake up. It is actually pretty impressive, I have no idea how she is doing it, I am just convinced she is either EXTREMELY intelligent and torturing us, or perhaps she has some paranormal abilities.

Anyway, I am lying in bed waiting for Shalisa to finish up in the bathroom so that once Shalisa climbs into bed, I can then go up and put Maddie back to sleep. And as I type this, the baby monitor just clicked, indicating that she is stirring, I haven't heard any crying yet, but Shalisa is still putzing around. This is actually pretty scary/impressive, as I am typing this the exact events that I have laid out are actually happening. Scary.

Well while I have a few more minutes before Shalisa reaches the bed/Maddie wakes up I guess I will write about what I originally got on to write about.

I am thinking that Monday morning, I am going to change the start page of my work computer to my blog. This is step 1 of my master plan. Then each day I am going to try and make a blog post, it will contain pretty much some random stream of consciousness thought, similar to this post or whatever else I feel like blogging about. But the IMPORTANT part of all this is, I am going to also post what I need to work on, both in terms of work and personal life, for all to read. I figure you can't get much more accountable than potentially the entire world. This will serve 2 purposes. 1) It will help me keep track of what exactly I need to be working on (shocking I know to most of you, but my short term memory isn't the greatest) and 2) This will provide me some accountability for how I spend my time (or at least how I spend my time in regards to what my priorities/obligations are).

Honestly this idea scares me a bit, because I know that some days I am much less productive than others, but I have been thinking about how God sees all that we do, there is nothing that we can hide from him and he is the ultimate judge. My goal in life should be to live my life to please him, and in doing so I will also please those around me (at least most of the time :p). So since I can't hide from God, and my ultimate goal is to please him then if I am living by his commandments offering my life up as an open book should be no problem... right? Obviously I am going to sin, sin, and sin again, I have no delusions there. But I know often I think to myself that what I do in private, that no one knows about, goes unnoticed but the simple fact of the matter is that that just isn't true, God knows all and sees all. Lets just be thankful that we all have the opportunity to accept Christ's merciful covering over our sins.

So anyway, that is my master plan. If for some reason you don't see a blog post sometime Monday morning, and you happen to bump into me, remind me!

Well Shalisa is getting ready to get into bed now, I told her of my theory on Maddie, but she has assured me that no, tonight Maddie is going to sleep all through the night. I am at least proud of my wife, she sometimes has a problem being optimistic... and I think with the track record here this is pretty blind optimism... but we will see.

Good Night

Well it's been a while...

It sure has been a while since I made a post over here, but in my myspace blog I said I wanted to start blogging again and pointed people over here, so I suppose if I am going to do that I need to actually have some blog posts for people to read!

So this past weekend we went down to grandma and grandpa Smith's down in Oregon and had a pretty fun time. We were going to go to the zoo on Saturday, and it would have been Maddie's first trip to the zoo but unfortunately we ran out of time since we had to be back in Silverton by 3:30 for a birthday party. We ended up going to the Rose Garden's and the Japanese Garden's and had a lot of fun there. We got quite a few great pictures of Maddie among the flowers which I am sure will be posted on Maddie's website in the next few days by Shalisa. We also had a nice picnic in the park and had a good time.

We also went to the aforementioned birthday party which was held at the Silverton Public Pool and Maddie continued her "water experiences." I am really big on trying to get Maddie acclimated to water, as I love it so much and I want my children to enjoy it as well (instead of being afraid of it like so many kids that I grew up with). Maddie had her first "dunking" which was actually quite scary for me, putting your 6 month old child's head underwater is a pretty scary experience, but we were with a swim teacher there and she said that babies actually do really well with it, their natural instinct is to hold their breath, and if they do sputter when they come back up it is more from the water flowing over their face once they are out of the water than from being in the water. Sure enough Maddie did just great, I could only stand to do it once, but at least she has now put her head completely underwater! She also had a GREAT time just swimming around in the water, I think she is really beginning to enjoy it much more than the first few times we took her in the lake, which I think will have some great long term benefits when it comes time to take her to swim lessons as well.

So enough about this past weekend.

Lately I have had a hard time motivating myself for just about anything, I am not sure why but I really seem to be in this blase mood lately. Hopefully this week I can finish the Youth Church's website, this has been a real thorn in my side, since I have Justin wanting to know when it will be completed, but what needs to be done is pretty much out of my hands for the time being, hopefully once I get the DNS records all straightened out we can get their new site up and running. I also committed myself to working on a small group database for the church, I decided I really want to work more on learning Web 2.0 stuff (for you technical people, DOM, Java and AJAX) and I think this project is a good place to get some practice in. Brian Dickman is such a great friend (and a great resource as well :P) and he said he would be willing to help me, but I know he and Sara are headed off to Las Vegas come Wednesday for a wedding so I might have to push the project back until next week, but as long as I can get it done before September starts, it shouldn't be a big deal.

Also at work I need to finish the Sharing database, granted this needed to be done a while ago but this same blase attitude has been affecting my work life as well. Not sure why either, as lately I have been rewarded with a nice raise at work, so I don't know why I am not more motivated to get things done at work, this attitude has pretty much penetrated my entire life at the moment and I don't know what to do to get out of this funk.

Anyway, I suppose I should head home for lunch, I wouldn't mind some prayer that God would help me with an attitude change (which I am sure will come) and thanks for reading.