Tropizm Family Website

We are only a couple weeks away from the house being finished.  I added a new picture folder called House_2 which I will add new pictures to.  I will be putting all the new stuff in there.  I posted some pictures of the kitchen cabinets which went in last week.  I also added a couple a couple shots of the granite.  It’s not installed yet, but will be by the end of today. 

Another picture gallery I added is one for pictures which won’t necessarily fit into another category, or I only have one or two pictures to put in there.  The ones I added was one from Pastor’s School in February.  It is our friends from Atlanta who have a church who help the homeless in the ghetto of Atlanta.  Check them out at www.atlantaic.organd you can see all the great things God is doing through them in Atlanta.  The other picture is of Dad and his brother and sisters from Grandma Angie’s funeral.  There is also a group picture of most everyone who was there.  The last set is of Ratatootie, Erin’s pet rat we had for a few days after Spot died.  She would carry him around in her shoe.  He was a good little guy.

That’s all for now, check back in a couple weeks and you will see pictures of the house finished.

God is good.

Tropizm

It’s been a few weeks since my last post, so I am going to cram 6 weeks of stuff into a single post. 

First, the house is coming along great.  As of today, the stucco is on the outside, waiting for the final coat.  Inside the house, we have drywall up and finished.  My dad has been over there pretty much everyday since last monday painting the inside walls.  We also have all of the doors up including the garage doors, the only exception is one that we are waiting to have delivered.  

So right now, once the painting is finished, cabinets and counters will go in.  Afterwards, the floor can go in, and then the lights and stuff.  The outside is basically waiting for the final coat of stucco, but we are waiting for the stucco company to get the color right.  Once they are finished the roof tiles go on thats it.  So (cross your fingers) we can be finished in 4-6 weeks.  The only real hold up right now is getting power to the house.  Hopefully they will be finished before that time.

On a personal level, my snake died a couple weeks ago.  Though, most people wont understand it, he was a really cool pet.  Also, he was 17 years old.  So that is a long time for any pet.  And to put it into perspective, I bought him when I was in the Army.  Erin took it pretty bad too.  Spot (his name) stayed in her room, as that was the only place we could keep his cage.  So after he was gone, Erin was sad that her friend wasnt there anymore.  On the lighter side, I tried to feed him when I noticed he was dying.  So we gained a pet in the form of a rat.  Erin loved the little guy, and called him Ratatouille, after the movie.  Only she called him Ratatootie.  Ratatootie has since found a new home in the form of Pet Co.  The were kind enough to take him back after I explained the story.

OK, I guess this wasnt as long as I first feared.  It also shows me that as busy as we always are, not much really happens.  Weird.

Ayways, God Bless, have fun and take care.

Tropizm

Last week I started a new job.  It is a little further drive, and the commute time is a little longer, but it is worth it.  I will be doing more network type stuff than I did before. 

Though I have only been here a week, I feel real comfortable.  My immediate supervisor is a real good friend that I have known for years.  He told me about the position and (basically) is responsible for getting me the job.  I had to sell myself, but I know that the process would not have been as easy without his help. 

A bonus about being here, and one of the reasons I’m so comfortable, I know two other guys that work here.  Plus, the guys I deal with everyday have been real cool. 

A minus of the new job is that since I don’t work for the old company anymore, I have to pay for my website now.  It’s not that bad, but at least for now, I will keep it just like it is.  Since the house is a few weeks away from being finished, I will simply pay for the site to keep from having to make any major changes to it.  Maybe later I will make some changes to it (hopefully invisible to my millions of web viewers) but that wont happen for a while.

Gotta run, God Bless all of you.

Tropizm

For those of you who don’t know, I won a Nintendo Wii for Christmas.

I wanted a Wii more than any other video game console out right now because I figured Erin would be able to play it easier than a regular console.  This is because you don’t have to have great finger dexterity to play.  You simply move the controller around to do whatever you want to do.  If you are playing baseball, you swing it like a bat to hit the ball.  Erin really enjoys it, and she kicks major butt on the boxing game. 

Anyways, I won the Wii from 98 KUPD.  You can listen live at www.98kupd.com if you like.  It is a rock station that I have listened to since I was a youngster.  The morning show is called “Holmberg’s Morning Sickness” and every Friday morning they play a game called “Guadalupe Squares”.  Its a silly game that is played like the Hollywood Squares TV show.  I was fortunate enough to get through on the phone, and play with guest comedian Pablo Francisco.  Needless to say, I won the game and won the Wii. 

If you are wondering why it has taken so long to write about this, it is because I wanted to post a copy of the game so you could listen if you like.  Well, they never added my game to their podcast.  Dick Toledo is the morning producer and he graciously emailed me a copy and said if I gave them full credit, I can post it here.

If you would like to listen to the MP3 of me willing a Wii, click here.  It is somewhat racy, but not vulgar.  Thank you to the Morning Sickness show for a really great gift.  My daughter and I love it.

Tropizm

This past weekend Glendale was host to Super Bowl 42.  I admit, it was pretty cool to have it here again.  Its fun to watch all the locals go nuts over “super” stars, the parties, and anything that mentions the Super Bowl.

Me being me, I could care less about all the hype of who is AT the game, I care about who is IN the game.  I don’t get to watch too many games during the regular season from beginning to end.  Usually I get to watch the 4th quarter of one game and the first 1 or 2 quarters of another game.  But the Super Bowl is different.  I like to watch some of the pre-game, and all of the game.

This year I paid more attention to game than usual.  Not only because of the quest for the “perfect” 19-0 record, but because it was here.  Since neither team was one I liked, and you can’t go into a Super Bowl and not cheer for one side or another, I choose the NY Giants as the team to root for.

The three reasons for my pick were simple.  I don’t like the Patriots, as they come off as a bunch of jerks.  There is no reason to “go for it” on 4th and 1 when you are up 20+ points.  Just plain unsportsmanlike, in my opinion.  Not to mention, Boston won the World Series a couple months ago, and one championship a year is plenty.  Being from Phoenix, and having one championship in my lifetime, I can call them greedy. 

Second, I work with a guy from the Boston area.  See my first reason, and you will understand why this is my second reason.

Third, one of my best friends is from NY, though he now lives in Ohio.  And with the Buckeyes losing so much the last couple years, and my dislike of the Patriots, I had to root for the Giants.

Needless to say, I am glad the Giants won the game.  Plus, it was one of the best football games I have seen in a long time, and probably the best Super Bowl I can remember.

But now that the Giants have won, and the Pats are not as “perfect” as they hoped, I have reverted back to my dislike for both teams.  Thanks NY, but I will now boo you.  Boo.

And if you wondered, my team is the Cardinals.  Hey, someone has to like em!

Tropizm

Realized today its been a while since I posted anything.  So here goes.

First, I hope everyone had a good Christmas, great New Years, and are having a good 2008 so far.

We had a pretty good New Years.  We opened the year with a vacation.  Real relaxing, a week in Sedona.  Did alot of checking out the area, and even went to play in the snow.  I have some pictures of the vacation posted.  There are pictures of the place we stayed at, some of us playing in the snow, and pictures of “Out of Africa” wildlife park.  Its basically a zoo where they rescue “African” animals and let you see them.  There was a show called Tiger Splash where they get the tigers to chase them and then they jump in the water.  After the show, Erin and I fed a tiger.  Real cool.

We also went to Montezuma’s Castle.  I won a Wii video game console off the radio and there is a picture of Erin playing Wii Boxing.  Lots-O-Fun.

The house is coming along.   The inside walls are finished, two of the bathrooms have their tubs/showers in.  We have A/C and electrical is starting today.  We are almost done with the BIG stuff, then will come the tedious detail stuff that will take a while to do.  I will post new pictures after I get a few more to post.

Anyhoo, thats it for now.

Tropizm

Last weekend Faith and I took some of our friends to the house and started writing scriptures all over the place.  We wanted to make sure His Word was built into the house and is the foundation of everything that goes into it.  We picked some out and our friends picked some out and at least one verse went into each room, and even the garage and storage room.

 If you would like to read them, I added an album specifically for the verses.

I also updated the latest pictures from this past weekend of the house.  Pretty much all of the framing is finished, just a few small things left.  The porch and the driveway have been fixed.  If you are unfamiliar with the issues, the concrete in the garage was wrong.  We made them not only fix the problem, but re-do the middle of the driveway to make it look right.  The porch was changed by the architect from the wood poles and beams to 12 inch stucco columns.  Kind of a noticeable change.  But we had it changed, and it set us back a couple weeks, but its all good.  If you look at the latest pictures in the House photo album you can see how it looks now.  Much gooder.

 Merry Christmas to everyone, God Bless you and your families.

Tropizm

My friend Jon showed me this video today.  I think its funny, smart, and truthful.  Jon got in trouble at work for sharing this with his co-workers.

I think its funny how no one is allowed to offend or discriminate any class or group of people in this country unless you are a Christian.  Look around, and you will see.  I am not allowed to say Merry Christmas because “someone” may be offended.  But if you think about it, all of the “holiday” sales, parties, days off, is because of Christmas.  The sales are not because stores want to be nice and drop the prices because Thanksgiving, Hanukkah, Christmas, New Years are close together.  They are having sales because people are buying gifts to give to others on Christmas.  If this were not true, then the question asked in the video would have an answer.

What are you getting your kids for Thanksgiving this year?

I rest my case. 

Tropizm 

Check out the controversial video here: http://www.citizenlink.org/Stoplight/A000005834.cfm?eafref=1&eafref=1

I hope everyone had a good Thanksgiving.  Faith’s sister, her boyfriend, and son came to visit AZ.

They stayed a week and we did the usual Thanksgiving things.  Eat and shop.  We did make a day trip to Sedona.  We are going to spend a week there next month, but David and Cindy wanted to go and see it.  It was a nice trip, though it was short.  We only spend a few hours up there.  Long enough to take some pictures, do some window shopping, and eat lunch.  It was real cold there too, for AZ at least.  It was 44F and windy.  Stop laughing, Jon.  It was cold.

We spent the whole weekend pretty much at Faiths parents house, as that was where they were staying.  The last night they were in town we went over for dinner, and Erin joined the after-dinner dice game some of them were playing.  She also put on a show of dancing, singing, and just hamming it up for all of us. 

You can check out some pictures in the Tropizm Photo Album if you like. 

Tropizm

The Yahoo photo album is officially gone.  I got an email from Yahoo stating so.  One surprise though, they transfered all of the albums and photos.  You won’t be able to view them yet, as they are set to private and I will have to set them to public.  I am not going to do this.

I selected Flickr after I was notified the Yahoo album was going away.  I did this because there were plugins I could use with wordpress (the management software I use for my site) that would make it easy for me to put pictures in posts and what not.  The plugin worked fine, and as you may have seen, I have several posts with pictures in them.  You could click a picture and it would take you to the Flickr page and blah, blah, blah.

 But the more I use Flickr, the more I don’t like it.  The Yahoo album was pretty straight forward.  You upload all of you pictures into an album.  You click on an album, and there are all of the pictures.  Click a picture and you get a big picture.  The only think I didn’t like about the Yahoo album was having to rename each picture.  But at least I could order them in such a way that you could start at the first one and scroll through them and you could get the “photo story” of whatever is going on.

With Flickr, I have several issues.  First, the “front page” shows the last few pictures I have uploaded, with the albums on the side.  I cannot change that.  After you click on an album, it is ordered by name.  I don’t like that.  There are a couple other things I don’t like about it, but mostly it is a real pain to manage.

I do like the fact that I could add comments and such, and it works well with my site.  So once again, I searched for an alternative.  The answer was a plugin that is for wordpress and doesnt use any outside albums.  Though it is limited and not nearly as powerful as Yahoo or Flickr, it is easier to use and I have control over most of it.  I could pretty much do anything I want with it if I code it in, so for now, I am leaving it as-is “right out of the box” if you will. 

As a “test” page, I uploaded the latest pictures of the progress of the house.  Click on the “Tropizm Photo Album” on the right to check em out.  At the bottom you will see the pictures I took yesterday.  I am leaving the Flickr link up, and I removed the Yahoo link all together, as it is no longer there.

Let me know what you think.  Yay, boo, or *shrug*.

 Tropizm