Big Screen Monitor

Here is what my sister's blog on a 50 inch big screen computer monitor. Last year I was seriously considering putting my big screen T.V. on my corporate tax return as a piece of business equipment because of the fact that I can use it as a computer monitor. Me being a computer professional, it seems reasonable that a computer monitor would be a business expense, right? I have other computer monitors listed as corporate equipment. In the end, I figured the 50 inch T.V. was just too much of a stretch, although I know a few people who have claimed similar type things. I was never actually seriously considering claiming the T.V. but it certainly would have made it a better financial decision to buy.

At the moment, I am letting my kids watch some of the online videos at http://www.thomasandfriends.com/usa/videos.asp on the big screen. I also use the big screen to watch Netflix online "watch now" movies sometimes. In fact the kids and I were just watching a "Walking with Dinosaurs" video from Netflix this morning before Mommy got up.

But for the most part, I do not use the big computer monitor.

Probably the fact that I use the 50 inch T.V. as a computer monitor at all is just one more indication of my computer geek status.

But, Tera, your blog does look real cool on a huge screen T.V.

Here is a video the kids and I were watching on the big screen too:



Isn't the little boy cute?

Shooting

My current client is located at 19th Blake in LoDo, Denver Colorado. This morning as I was coming in, the whole block in front of the building was taped off because of an overnight shooting. A guy pulled a gun on a cop and another cop shot the guy. Apparently, the injuries are non-life threatening.

I did not realize any of this went down last night until I got to work.

Since the front of the building was blocked off, I was not sure I would be able to get into the building this morning (why does everything always happen to me?), but one of the employees must have recognized me and let me in the garage door, which as a contractor I don't have access to. It is certainly an eerie feeling up here on the 5th floor at CHFA. It is early, but I have only seen 3 other guys up here so far, and they are all contractors. I wonder if employees got voice mail messages to warn them about the situation.

The internet news stories do not say much, but from what I can gather, two guys drove up to a parked police car outside one of the bars down here. One of the guys pulled a gun and another cop who was watching shot him.

So, this guy in the hospital is an idiot. His friend is an idiot. I do not know if these two thought it would be funny to pull a gun on the police or if they thought they wanted to kill one or both, but I have no sympathy for either of the idiots who tried to attack the police officers. I hope "they" lock them away and throw away the key.

Can you imagine being the cops in the car? I cannot imagine being a cop at all. Obviously we don't know what would have happened, but guns kill and if their friend had not been alert, one or both of the cops easily could have been shot and killed. Thank God that did not happen. The suddenness of the situation is downright scary. One minute you are sitting in the car monitoring a club at the end of the night, and the next second there is a gun in your face. And, now, every time a car drives up to either of these guys, I am sure they are thinking that a life-threatening situation could occur. It probably only makes matters worse that most of the time when a car drives up by your car, nothing is going to happen. How do you go back to work after such a close call? Forget how emotionally jumpy and scared you would have to be all the time, I can only imagine how my wife would react. I would probably not be a very good cop. My wife would be a worse cop's wife, especially if something like this happened to me.

This is part of the reason that whenever I get a call from the Fraternal Order of Denver police asking me for money, I always give it to them.

And, I just sling-boxed onto my t.v. The story barely took up 30 seconds on the news (if that). The online stories are very sparse as well. I imagine (thank God I only have to imagine) that had I been in the situation where I could have been killed I would be annoyed that it was not a bigger news story. Unfortunately, I guess, this is a common enough occurrence in this country that it just is not big news for a police officer to be almost shot. I am sure there probably is not much more information to share, but still... shouldn't it be a bigger deal?


Here are some of the news stories:
http://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/17738127/detail.html

DENVER -- A Denver police officer shot and wounded a man outside a LoDo nightclub early Friday morning.

The police officer said he saw the man point a gun at another police officer, prompting him to fire at the man, who was in a car.

The incident happened just after 2 a.m., near 19th and Blake streets.

The man was taken to the hospital with non-life-threatening injuries. He and another man in the same car were arrested.

http://www.9news.com/news/article.aspx?storyid=102004&catid=339

http://www.myfoxcolorado.com/myfox/pages/News/Detail?contentId=7665985&version=1&locale=EN-US&layoutCode=TSTY&pageId=3.2.1


.....................................
Later....

I looked out the window at about 9 AM and saw cars driving past the front of the building, so apparently they lifted the blockade soon after the initial posting.

Lunch

I was sort of atempting to keep up with http://bluefield5.blogspot.com , but I gave up. She blogs just about every day and I do not have the energy to keep up. It is not a competiton, right?

Today is Columbus day. CHFA gets it off. I guess this is because it is a bank holiday. Tyler's school does not get it off. I think it is becoming non-politically correct to celebrate. It seems odd that CHFA gets it off. I know it is not a Denver parking meter holiday. I had to pay a parking ticket a few years ago because I figured it was.

SheppyTect does not really get it off either. But it is sort of nice to work on some of my neglected SheppyTect stuff (minor stuff like payroll).

And I have an important Auction Automations meeting today. It is a lunch meeting at Starbucks downtown (one of the 50 on the 16th street mall). I sort of doubt there will actually be any lunch eaten. I do not even know if there are decent lunch items at this Starbucks.

So, I am currently on my way downtown of the light rail, blogging away on my phone. It i a nice, sunny day, but a bit chilly. Tracy tried and failed to convince Tyler to wear pants today. She might have convinced him to bring pants in his backpack but I do not know.

Connor has a dentist appointment today. I asked him if Dr. Nick was going to look at his teeth. Connor said "I don't now". Goofball.

Speaking of Connor, he is really doing well in his big boy underwear. He is much better than his big brother was at the same age. He is actually more reliable at telling us he has to go potty than Tyler is even now. I am pleasantly surprised about Connor's success. We probably kept him in pullups too long because of our hard time with Tyler.

Well, the train is pulling up to my stop. I'll probably blog more on my way home.

........................

In case you are wondering, our Starbucks has wrapped sandwiches. I had tuna salad. It was ok.

Interesting things are going on in my Auction world. We are almost to a point where I can blog about it, but not yet.

The temperature on the train is too high. Why do they keep it so hot? During cold weather, most people have on warm clothes and they heat the train excessively. It is uncomfortable.

Well.. I do not feel I have anything else to say.

Poison Rationality

You know Panic at the Disco song: "I chime in with a haven't you people have heard of closing the [expletive deleted] door. No it's much better to face these kind of things with a sense of Poison Rationality."

I like the term "Poison Rationality".

To me, Poison Rationality is anything that makes no sense to me, but apparently makes lots of sense to someone else out there. For instance, the fact that drug companies spend so much money putting out commercials for prescription drugs makes no sense to me, but obviously it makes enough sense to someone to spend millions of dollars doing it.

Poison Rationality.

The fact that news outlets spend so much time "reporting" on problems celebrities, or family members of celebrities are having with drugs or un-married pregnancies or whatever is another example of Poison Rationality. I just don't care, but I see this sort of thing running something ALL THE TIME on news channels that are on when I am working out. To be fair, I do not usually tune in enough to know what is being said, but I am able to tell from graphics and text on the screen that they are spending hours talking about "famous" people and their problems. It makes no sense to me that this is news. But, apparently Fox News (as the biggest example I have seen) thinks this is something they need to spend hours and hours talking about.

Poison Rationality.

The most recent thing that strikes me as Poison Rationality is the presidential "debates". I do not understand why they are called debates. I don't understand why they have a moderator. Both candidates talk about whatever the heck they want to talk about. I did not watch very much last night because I was frustrated, but while I was watching, neither candidate answered any of the questions that were actually asked. They might as well have started off each answer with "I'm going to ignore that question, but here is what I would really like to talk about for the next few minutes." I suppose that would have just been redundant and wasted time because anyone who was watching for more than a couple of minutes could tell that none of the answers had anything to do with the questions.

Poison Rationality.

Another thing that has been bothering me is that how 90% of the campaign adds don't actually advertise the person who the add is "for". Most of the adds tell us how terrible the "other guy" is. If you are basing your decision on T.V. or radio adds, you have no idea what your guy thinks about anything or what his positive qualities for the job might be. All you really know is what the other guy sucks at. And, of course, it makes no sense to me, but it is pretty common knowledge that these sorts of adds are effective. Again, if they were not effective, there would not be so many negative campaign adds on T.V.

Poison Rationality.

I just officially "passed" on a business opportunity. My buddy Derry Roth, who really came up with the idea for Auction Automations has another business he is trying to get going, and offered to bring me on board to help with the software development. We never really talked about details, but basically the idea would be I would trade development hours for an ownership stake in the company. The Poison Rationality here is that I think this opportunity has the potential of being extremely lucrative. I never thought Auction Automations would be the kind of thing that would be able to make much money. I still have my doubts about Auction Automations. I don't absolutely know about this other opportunity, but it sure seems like a great idea that has lots of interest. And, it is geared toward selling useful software and services to customers who can afford to and would want to pay well. So, basically, I said yes to the opportunity I did not believe in and no to the one I think will work out great financially. If he would have come to me with this opportunity first, I would be working on this, and not Auction Automations.

The way things work out in my life, I am sure it will turn out that I made the right decision, but at the moment, it sure does not seem logical.

Poison Rationality.

Ok... the song's words are a little bit different. "Poison Rationality" is actually Poise and Rationality but the actual words do not match what I am trying to blog about here. Plus, whenever the song, I hear Poison Rationality.

Viagra

It seems odd to me that there are so many commercials about drugs for erectile dysfunction out there. It is downright distressing that there are so many that air at what seem like inappropriate times. Specially, there are tons of Viagra commercials during Sunday NFL football and all the baseball playoff games. The very nature of the product means that the commercial will be charged with sexual innuendo that is probably not appropriate for young children.

I let the kids watch football and baseball when I am watching before their bedtimes. Usually, I am DVRing the game, so it is real easy to fast-forward past the commercials, but often enough, I am caught up with live action and cannot fast forward. As far as I can tell, the kids do not share my discomfort and are not paying close enough attention to even be confused. It is probably not that big a deal for them to be subjected to these commercials.

It is possible that I should not allow my children to watch sports on T.V. Practically speaking, if that is the case, though, it means I have to watch all my sports after the kids are in bed or while they are gone. Or, it means I have to watch sports in my room (on the non-HD Tv ... I will not do that ... usually, I would rather not watch at all). I guess not watching while the kids are around is certainly an option. Sports and National Geographic shows are pretty much all I watch when the kids are up. Any other programs I watch are when the kids are either in bed or completely away.

But, one thing that I do not understand is: why do we need Viagra commercials at all? As far as I know, you cannot just go out and buy Viagra. can you? Don't you have to have go to a doctor and have it prescribed? Aren't the doctors already aware of what Viagra (or other erectile dysfunction drugs) does already? For that matter, why are any prescription drugs advertised on TV? I just cannot imagine buying more of a given specific prescription drug because I see it advertised on T.V. Obviously, I am missing something, because if it was not extremely effective to advertise, drug companies would not being doing it so much. They probably would not be doing it all, and certainly not in the middle of the afternoon or early evening when my kids and I are watching football or baseball.

Batman

Batman has been wandering around our house lately.

He is much shorter in real life than he appears in the movies. What is sort of weird is that I very rarely see Batman, Tyler, and Connor in the same location. I am sure it is only a coincidence, but it does make me wonder if perhaps Batman does not like kids, and can only handle being around one at a time. I know sometimes I would much rather be around only one of my children at a time.

My Cross

I am a Christian. That is, I believe in Jesus as Christ. I believe that God became man and through his grace I will live forever.

I go to church just about every Sunday. My family says grace at supper time and my little boys say their prayers before they go to sleep. We talk about God in my house, and my wife and I read the bible to our boys. I give a considerable percentage of my earnings to the church and other charities which I believe serve God in various ways. I often listen to a Christian Rock station here in the Denver area, and I participate in some of the activities that my Church sponsors. My wife teaches Sunday School and Childrens' Church on a regular basis. I try to live a moral life. I try to treat others as I would have them treat me.

But, being a Christian is more than just believing. Jesus calls us all to be his disciples. At the end of each Gospel, Jesus charges us to follow him and take up his ministry.

Matthew ends with Jesus saying, "Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you" (Matthew 28:19 - 20)

Mark ends with Jesus saying, "Go into all the world and preach the gospel to the whole creation. He who believes and is baptized will be saved; but he who does not believe will be condemned." (Mark 16: 18 - 20)

Luke ends with Jesus saying, "Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins should be preached in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things. (Luke 21: 46-49)

John ends with Jesus telling his disciples "Feed my lambs." ... "Tend my sheep." ... "Feed my sheep" ... "Follow me!" (John 21: 15 - 24)

When Jesus said these things, he was not just talking to his 11 disciples, but every Christian. He was talking to me too.

Throughout the Bible, Jesus makes it clear that following Him is not an easy or safe proposition. Matthew, Mark, and Luke all tell us that Jesus said, "If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me." (Luke 9:23) Taking up the cross clearly makes the prospect of following Christ a sacrifice. Just as Christ's cross involved the ultimate sacrifice, Jesus is telling us that we are expected to be able to give up anything and everything to follow him.

I don't feel I have a cross. I do not have a cause where I know I am happy doing God's work through selfless sacrifice.

When I think of disciples, I think of evangelizers. These people are so "geeked up" (where did I come up with that term?) on the good news that they cannot help but preach and spread the word of God. These people go to Haiti or feed the homeless in their home town and they feel comfortable talking about God. They share the good news. They do not care if people look at them funny or physically threaten to harm them. They just share the good news because they HAVE to do it.

I do not feel comfortable talking about God with strangers. My friends all know I am a Christan and they know they are always welcome to come to church with me, but I do not feel all that comfortable talking about God with those of my friends who are not regular church goers. I do not feel 100% completely comfortable talking about God with people that I know are Christians. You certainly will not see me preaching on top of a mountain top or baptising the masses in a river.

To be fair, I do not feel comfortable talking to anyone about anything. I am the biggest introvert that I have ever met.

My side business (Auction Automations) may be the closest thing I have to a cross. We help various charities raise money through silent auctions, and we certainly are not doing it at a huge profit. It might be considered a cross, but I am not passionate about it. Truth be told, I complain about the long extra hours of work with very little pay almost all the time. And, we are trying to position ourselves so that we can partner with people in such a way that we make money at this, so our hope is that the hard work will pay off financially eventually. Just because we are bad at assessing our own worth and therefore give all these charities a very reasonable (reasonable for them) price for what we do does not mean we are attempting to do God's work.

Of course, sometimes God uses you even though you do not realize it.

You might look at my blood donation as a cross. As many times as I am able I give blood. I make the sacrifice happily. In fact I do not consider it a sacrifice. It may be a cross, but it is such a small one, I hesitate to even bring it up.

My church is starting a "Capital Campaign". If you are a member of a church, you probably know what that is. Basically, it is the church rallying the members to give more for a specific purpose. It is supposed to be above and beyond your "regular" contribution. The last one our church did was to finance a nice new (expensive) education wing on the church. This one is to attempt to paid down the mortgage on the church so that we can free up finances for God's "real" work. The plan is to raise 4 million dollars over three years. I am not sure how realistic it is. The pastors seem to think in our area with our wealth and God's ability to do anything, it should be no problem. 4 million dollars sounds like a lot to me, but what do I know?

And my original reaction is: "I am already giving what you guys said I should be giving. Now, I am supposed to give more?" Frankly, that is a stupid reaction, but it is probably the typical human reaction. And, I will give more. What do I care? I have too much money, why not give it to pay down a mortgage on my church. I literally will not miss whatever I give to the church.

But, the capital campaign is not just about money. The other part is that it is supposed to give you an opportunity (don't you always have the opportunity) to focus on and pray about what you can give of yourself (your time and your talents) to help out the church.

For me, money is easy. Identifying talents and committing to share those talents is something that I dread.

And to make matters worse, Pastor Chad wants to come talk about it with Tracy and me. As I mentioned before, I don't feel comfortable talking about anything. I do not want to talk with Chad Johnson (no relation to Ocho Cinco) about this whole thing. I want to just write a check every once and awhile and be done with it. This is horrible, but part of the reason I was attracted to this church was its size and the fact that I thought that I would probably be able to hide among the masses and not be bothered all that much with "serving". Yes, I know that is horrible. Yes, I am bad person. But, yes, for the most part it worked. I come to church most Sundays, give a large amount of money to the church, serve as an usher once in a great while, attend a few adult education classes while my kids are in Sunday School (our church calls it AHA ... Abiding Hope Adventures), and pretty much go unnoticed when it comes to doing any real work.

And back to the whole not having a cross... this is an opportunity to rectify the situation. I know I should change; need to change, and so God is sending Pastor Chad to help me do it. I guess. Part of my problem is that I have no idea how to identity what I should be doing. This is a probably I not only have with the church, but my "professional" life. I do not know what I should be doing spiritually or professionally, and I don't know HOW TO FIGURE IT OUT. So, maybe Chad has some ideas.

Of course, maybe Chad is just going to talk about money. Money is easy.

A follower

I have a "follower".

Someone is actually interested in my blog. I am so excited.

It is my sister and probably just put herself in as a follower as a pity move, but still, I'll take it.

Or maybe it is because I follow her blog, and she felt obligated to follow mine in return. Still, I'll take it.

http://bluefield5.blogspot.com/



Now that I have a follower, of course I added the Follower Gadget (see the right hand panel at the bottom). It may be lame to show all your followers when there is only one. I can live with that. Of course, if YOU add yourself in, I'll have two.

By the way, yesterday, the Sox lost, the Brewers lost, and the Cubs lost. I am not happy about that.

Dum Diddly

You got it you got it.

The freeking cubs lost at home tonight. I thought they looked worse than the 7 to 2 score indicates.

I have lost about 10 pounds since August 4. Half of it was over Sheppy Quest. Don't worry, I am sure I will find it again. Maybe what I should do is have one Sheppy Quest a month. If I can lose 5 pounds a month for a year, I should be at my ideal weight. I can probably even do it in 10 months. It depends on which chart you look at.

The picture at the top of this blog entry is from me heading home west tonight. Kids, do not try this at home. Taking pictures with a cell phone while driving should only be attempted by trained professionals on a controlled track. Anyway, I think it turned out pretty good. It will be interesting to see what it looks like on a regular sized screen.

This time of year is bad driving to and from work when you have to go east in the morning and west in the evening. I think the picture exaggerates how bad it is, but not much. This is the only city I have ever heard the concept of a "sun glare delay" on traffic reports. I guess part of that would be the gloomy places I have lived. It is so sunny here in Denver most of the time. That was not the case in the mid west. They probably have a similar phenomenon in Florida or California.

My sister in an email referred to her kids as the cutest. They are not. Mine are cuter. Hers are the third fourth and fifth cutest. I guess I cannot blame her too much. At least she does not have ugly kids like most of Tracy's side of the family. Oops... Did I say that out loud?

I have too much money. Does anyone out there want to take some off my hands?

I want to drive the Zamboni. I want to drive the Zam bone e.

I'm not crazy. I'm just a little unwell.

I have been thinking about shaving my head. Sometimes I practically do it (or have some random woman do it for me), but never had the courage to go all the way bald. If the Cubs or Sox (the white ones) win the world series, I will get my head shaved (ha).

The B.E.Peas will keep you rockin' on da dance.

Dum dum diddley dum dum diddley dum dum diddley diddley.

I cannot believe it is already October.

Cubs Sox

The Sox won last night to keep alive the possibility of an all- Chicago World Series. I am not a huge Cubs or Sox fan, but I think that would be cool.

I am also not a very big baseball fan. Generally speaking I cannot watch a ball game on TV from start to finish, but in October, I do find myself watching full games if a team I am interested in is playing. Last year was great as the Rockies made it to the World Series. This year I will probably watch until the Cubs and Sox are out of it. I sort of suspect they will both be out early, but you never know.

Go Cubs go.

Go Sox go.

Day Out with Thomas

Last weekend, we went to see Thomas the Tank engine at the Colorado Railway Museum in Golden Colorado. You can see pictures at: http://kids.ericshepard.com/thomas2008.htm

Day out with Thomas is a wonderful event for kids. Based on the kids I saw there 3 and 4 seem to be the main ages that are most represented in the Thomas fan club. Tyler at 6 is still a fan, but seems to be close to out-growing the need to visit the little blue train. I think it is somewhat likely that next year he may not want to go.



One thing I noticed this time as well as last time is that I do not think I have been anyplace with more children throwing tantrums of one sort or another. It seems that at any point in time you could look around and find at least 3 kids crying within ear-shot. Even one of our angles had a little melt-down this year in the "Imagination Tent" when we wanted to move on to something else. When you bring together hundreds of kids most of whom are between the ages of 2 and 6. It is probably inevitable that there will be whining and crying. And overall, I am sure fun is had by all. Once we calmed Connor down, he was fine for the rest of the day.

One thing that was somewhat frustration was that Tyler and Connor seemed more interested in the things that are always at the museum than they were in most of the stuff that is just there for Thomas. There is a big black engine that Connor likes to call "the Polar Express". We had a hard time getting the boys to move on from the Polar Express. Of course explaining to a 3 year old that it is time to move on because we have to let someone else onto the train



The video is taken at the Denver Garden Railway Society Exhibit... another thing that is always there and that the kids wanted to spend considerable time around. It is pretty cool and the number of trains running on Day out with Thomas was more than usual I think. At the very end of the video, you can see the actual Thomas running around the museum's tracks.

Overall, it was a fun day. The tickets were expensive and there were too many kids around, but Connor and Tyler both enjoyed themselves and Mommy and Daddy survived. We'll have to see whether or not we end up going next year or not.

BlueField

My sister has started a blog. http://bluefield5.blogspot.com . I am not sure why I am posting that fact. The majority of people who read my blog (my dad and my sister) already know.

As of right now, she has 5 posts over the past 5 days. She is already beating me for September even though I have had about 18 more days to post this month. And of course her posts are much more interesting than mine. I bet more people have read them.

Its not a competition you say? You are probably right.

I asked her how she picked BlueField as a blogspot sub-domain. She tells me that Blauwkamp means blue field. Pretty cool if you ask me. I guess the 5 is because there are 5 people in her family (and because bluefield was already taken).

Oh well... Blog away.

Sheppy Quest 2008

I just updated ericshepard.com with a page for this year's Sheppy Quest: http://colorado.ericshepard.com/sheppyquest2008.htm

Rhapsody

I have gotten a couple of recommendations to try Rhapsody-To-Go.

I have a Sansa View which is Rhapsody - compatible. So, I am trying it out for the free 30-day trial.

To be honest, so far I am not impressed.

One of the most impressive things to me (theoretically) is the ability to add a Rhapsody Channel to my portable device. A Rhapsody Channel is basically a set of songs of a similar style. For instance, you can pick a channel that is Punk Rock or whatever you like. You can even add your own songs, artists, etc to customize your own Channel. Rhapsody then only serves you songs that you are theoretically interested in. It works pretty well to my laptop, also I think Pandora does a better job of getting songs you might like. But, you cannot put Pandora "Stations" directly on an MP3 player.

But the process of adding a channel to my Sansa does not seem to be all that user friendly.

First of all, it is VERY slow.

Second of all, I have not gotten it to work, yet.

I am a computer professional, so it is not that I am an idiot, but I have gone through the process a couple time now (each try takes over 20 minutes, and if the process get interrupted, it starts all over again). So, I have yet to get the channel to work on my device. Part of my problem may be that I am doing this on a computer that has way too much stuff running on it.

And I am sure I went through the process, and Rhapsody still says "not on device". It does not tell me what went wrong. it appear that it did not really even try.

Another thing, the documentation on this part sucks. In the help I clicked on something for how to sync a channel to your device and what came up was how to delete a channel.

I guess it is possible that my device does not support channels, but Rhapsody added a little "Channel" section to my player, so it seems like it should work.

The reason I have so much time to do this is that I am scheduled to help deploy the application that I have been working on for the past several months to "production". My infrastructure person told me we were going to start at 10. As usual, he is running late. I do not really have much else to do. This has to get done and it is 11. I should not be surprised. This always happens. The infrastructure staff is way under-staffed.

LATER....

Well, I have gotten Channels to download songs to my MP3 player, but the technology is certainly not very robust AND it is SOOOOOO slow.

It takes almost 5 minutes for the Rhapsody client to connect to my portable device. It apparently has to find and catalog every single song before it can do anything. To me, 5 minutes is an unacceptable time period before I can do anything with the device.

Then, it takes over an hour to download a channel to the device.

And quite often, the client crashes. Even if it does not crash, the application "freezes" long enough that you think that the program is dead. Usually, it comes back from that state, so that appears to be an issue of not managing threads effectively.

There is no way to set up the client to only update a channel when you ask it to, it seems to want to randomly update one or more of the channels every time I connect my portable device.

One of the guys who just raved about the Rhapsody service told me "eventually it will get better". I am sure that is true. There will be improvements made to the software to better handle the data transfer. However, I do not think I want to pay $15 per month to wait for improvements.

I might actually be willing to live with the limitations if they just made a few minor improvements:

1. The client should handle asynchronous processes so that the client never seems dead for minutes at a time.


2. I should be able to only update channels when I ask for them to be updated. I should also be able to configure a channel to download less content than whatever the program decides should be downloaded.

One thing I am a bit "concerned" about is finding a quick and easy way to get rid of Rhapsody content once my subscription expires. The client does not seem to want to tell me what is Rhapsody content and what is stuff I put on there from my CD collection. So, once my subscription expires, I am afraid there will be enough content out there that I will have to manually get rid of. Since I am leaning towards not extending the service past the 30 day trial, I guess I will find out in a couple of weeks.

LATER....

I have decided to let the subscription die. Depending on how much I miss the songs I've already downloaded, I may change my mind after it dies and try it again. Maybe they will give me some deal to come back.

It is gonna happen

I am actually doing it. Thursday night or Friday morning I will be heading up to Lost Creek Wilderness for my 4th SheppyQuest. I should probably leave right now because I am too obsessed with looking at maps and imagining my trip to get much done at work.

As far as work goes, this Friday and Monday are not the best to miss, but at this point I am committed to this weekend. It would have to be something pretty major preventing me from doing my Quest this year.

One thing I am unsure of is whether I should attempt the whole loop or just set up a base camp and day-hike Saturday and Sunday. My guess is that the full loop is a bit ambitious, but what is SheppyQuest without a challenge? It probably depends a bunch on how I feel Friday. Weather may be a factor as well.

I feel like I should have a goal as to what I want to mentally resolve this weekend. I have no idea. Well, I have ideas, but am not sure about them. I sort of would like to figure out a career path, but can I do that in the wilderness over a weekend. My faith could probably use strengthening. SheppyQuest is a good opportunity for introspection about that. Probably the thing I want to "fix" most about myself is to lose 20 to 50 pounds. A plan for that might be a good goal for the weekend.

But, maybe I should just see where the weekend takes me mentally.

I have a cold for about 4 weeks now. I am not 100 percent, ad I hope SheppyQuest does not aggravate my cough. Obviously, it would be ideal to be 100 percent healthy for my trip. Maybe I will be, but probably not. The cold does not feel bad enough for me to want to postpone. I might change my mind up in the cold high-country. I guess we will see.

Well, that is it for now. Next blog will probably be after SheppyQuest 2008. Aren't you excited?

View Larger Map

ducks

Well, we did not win the any of the duck races again this year. Damn those Tweedle Beetles.

It was a good weekend though. I thought it seemed like there were less people this year, but apparently there were a record number of ducks. There were around 11,000 in the main race. 10 of them were ours, and we did not place in the top 50. We did not win anything.

There is a restaurant in a widened out section of the blue river called the dredge. It has a deck over the water and on the deck you can buy little pellets to feed the trout swimming around the dredge. The kids thought this was really cool. It might have been their favorite activity all weekend. We fed the fish every morning and evening over the weekend. The fish were really hungry until the very last morning, and usually attacked the food we threw to them.

We got Connor a wrist band this year to play on all the inflatable things this year. He really liked the big obstical course. He and Tyler raced through it hundreds of times. Tyler always won but Connor was having such fun that he did not notice. Other than the bouncy castle, the obstical course is all that Connor did. But he did it more than enough to make the all-day bracelet a better deal than buying tickets for the stuff.

As always for our visits to Breckenridge, we got two bedroom condo and so Tracy and I slept in a separate room than the boys. It is so nice being to put them to bed hours before we go to bed. Tracy and I watched 3 netflix dvds this weekend in the condo.

So as always, fun was had by all at the Breckenridge duck races. I just wish we could win something some year.

Cheating Tweedle Beetles.

Sheppy Quest 2008?

Here is what I am thinking for Sheppy Quest 2008:

I am going to start on the same Goose Creek Trail from my last Sheppy Quest (see http://colorado.ericshepard.com/sheppyquest2005.htm)


But when Goose Creek crosses Hankins Pass Trail, I will take a left and head up almost to Hankins Pass and then cut across Lake Park Trail to McCurdy Park Trail which will take me back to the Goose Creek Trail.



The entire loop should be about 25 to 30 miles which I think would be the farthest I've ever actually backpacked on a Sheppy Quest. Looking at the profiles, it is certainly the toughest hike I will have done. Rather than doing just a weekend, I think I may do a Friday to Monday Sheppy Quest this time. Maybe I should plan on some more time. I am probably not in the kind of shape I ideally be in for a Sheppy Quest, but I cannot go three whole years without doing one. And of course, part of the appeal of the Sheppy Quest is pushing my body to physical exhaustion. Physical exhaustion should be easy as overweight as I am.

What is a SheppyQuest? Well, it is obviously named after a Vision Quest. Vision Quest is the Native American tradition where an older child goes out on a personal, spiritual quest alone in the wilderness. The child would tune into the spirit world for the purpose of discovering his (or her?) intended spiritual and life direction. Usually, a guardian animal would come to the child in a vision and at that point the life direction would become clear. My understanding is that the child would go out into the wilderness with basically nothing. No food. No water. I do not think they had a weapon for protection. Seems sort of dangerous.

I sort of doubt I will send Connor or Tyler on vision quests as they get older. For one thing, Mommy would never go for it.

My Sheppy Quest is quite a bit more tame. I bring food and water, and in fact have quite a big backpack full of camping stuff when I go. I have maps and a GPS unit and an overall plan of where I am going. I am able to give Tracy GPS coordinates of just about where I will be camping every night. I also do follow established trails so getting lost is almost impossible. Plus, I do always see some (but very few) people on my trips.

But, I do head off into the wilderness by myself. Last time, I saw a Bob Cat which I figured was my spirit guide, but he never revealed anything to me, so maybe it was just a bob cat. I think I do the Sheppy Quest more because it gives me a chance to back pack, which I love, but cannot do with a wife and kids yet. I do quietly contemplate life, think about all kinds of things in an attempt to bring some sort of self - clarity or understanding to my life. I would not say that I meditate. My thoughts are too random and scattered to call it meditation.

My wife begs me to bring someone along, and I have had offers of people who really want to come, but part of the Sheppy Quest is the alone time. My mother-in-law is convinced that going out camping by yourself is one of the most dangerous things you can ever do. I am convinced that where I go and the fact that my wife does know about where I am makes it much less dangerous than driving to work every day. So, obviously, it is not just about backpacking. If it were I would invite one or two guys to come along to satisfy my wife and her mommy.

This year, actually, my wife did not even bother bringing up the standing request that I not go all by myself. She did demand that I don't do anything dangerous. This probably means she finally accepts that fact that going off into the wilderness is not in itself a dangerous activity. Actually, she is just probably more tired of the argument than afraid that something will happen to me. I have enough life insurance that I am probably worth more dead than alive, but she hates it when I say that. Children need their fathers and all that crap.

So, there we are. I am currently "scheduled" for September 12 - September 15. Scheduled means I have permission from my wife and I do not have any auctions during that time. I am pretty excited. It has been too long since I've had anything to post at http://colorado.ericshepard.com

DNC

The Democratic National Convention is located in Denver this year.

Next week, downtown will be extremely busy.

Huge things are big for the economy of a city, but I have to wonder if anyone ever takes into account costs such as employees who either cannot get to work because of traffic concerns or decide just not to come to work.

Personally, I am planning on working from home and not dealing with the pain. Unfortunately, everyone at my client is planning on doing the same thing, and I am told the VPN probably will not be able to handle the traffic. As a highly paid consultant, if I cannot work, I probably just will not bill and do something else. CHFA has a great vacation and PTO package and I have a feeling a bunch of people there will end up being "sick". That will cost CHFA, but I guess officially it is time due their employees anyway.

But I imagine all across downtown there will be a staggering number of people who will not work that week because they cannot easily get to their offices.

The conventionteers are not so much of an issue apparently as the large number of protestors who will invade Denver. I have heard huge projections on how many there will be. Obviously, no on knows for sure, but I have heard guesses up over the hundred thousand mark. This on top of people who are actually here for the convention itself. Most of these protestors will have no place to sleep... All hotels are booked for hundreds of miles.

Anyway, it will all be a terrible mess.

Summer

School started for Tyler this week. It seems too early. School should start in the fall and there are still a couple of weeks of summer left.

Once again it seems like we wasted the summer. We only went camping twice. One of those was before summer started. I did not climb any 14ers. No SheppyQuest.

We may make one more family camping trip and it SheppyQuest is usually in September so I guess officially I could salvage the summer.

Plus we did have week of Trash 2008. We did get away for Tracy's birthday weekend. Tracy and I got away for a romantic weekend without the kids. So, considering my weird work situation, we did pretty well. I guess.

When I started working for myself, part of the appeal was the freedom. While I do have more freedom as my own employee, I take most of that up with my side business. I have the freedom to replace part of my high paying job with the more difficult hardly pay at all job. Does not seem that smart. Plus, now my client is the "boss". CHFA is an extremely easy-going boss which fits well with my side business, but it is a fact that working for yourself does not necesssarily mean you have more freedom. The customer calls generally calls the shots. I probably would not be able to do Auction Automations with just about ay other customer.

The truth of the matter, though, is that the summer went too quickly.

I am told that the mountains are expecting snow tonight.

Pictures

http://kids.ericshepard.com/guanella2008.htm