So when Dennis and I got married almost 3 years ago, I cross stitched this piece. Well, when my mom came to visit, she was so generous to get it matted and framed for Mother's Day/my birthday! I think it came out great! Here are some pictures:

At least now the date will be hung about the fireplace in the room with the gaming systems so Dennis doesn't need to be reminded of our anniversary of when we got married and the day (August 12) of our first date! Both exactly 4 years apart so this year is our 3/7 anniversary!

Stumble This! Posted by Jen at 07:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Earlier today we all went to Costco. When we returned from Costco I was busy unloading the car when Connor suddenly decided to start kicking the living poop out of the car.
As a result I ended up taking his shoes off and putting them up on the roof while I scolded him about kicking the car. I then proceeded to promptly forget I had put his shoes up there and continued about my unloading.

A few hours later I got into Jen's car and headed off to pickup a Cozy Coupe car that I wanted to buy off craigslist. I get there and back in about an hour and a half and life is good. Then about two hours later we start to go outside and Jen asks me where his shoes are.

I have no idea.

Those darn shoes cost more than 40 bucks (stride rite) so as I'm looking at her it dawns on me where I last had them. "you did not drive off with them on top of the car did you?!" she asks as my jaw drops lower and lower toward the ground. Sure as heck I took off to go pick up that toy without noticing them at all. So I head out side hoping that they fell off on our street or at least nearby.

This is where they were. Even after 60mph + speeds.

As Jen said..."you just used up all your luck for the year".

Stumble This! Posted by Dennis Judd at 07:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

It all started a few months ago when we got a new upright freezer for our basement and I decided to keep the box. I'm sorry to say that sometime last week at an unknown time the box was squished without mercy by a suspect weighing about 35lbs with brownish hair and about three feet tall.

Eventually, even though he was hanging on, we had to pull the plug on ol' boxy. Later that night after the kids were asleep I took him out back and recycled him.

However the next morning Amelia found something new to play with.....Jen's Xbox controller:

Kids sure do move on quickly don't they....

Stumble This! Posted by Dennis Judd at 01:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Maybe she'll just bring sarah connor coffee?

Stumble This! Posted by Dennis Judd at 12:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

For years I've been using realvnc as a solution for remote computer support. I've had a lot of good luck with it and when setup properly it can be a life saver.

The only problem though has always been NAT routers. I've done a lot of port forwarding over the years and let me tell you what a pain in the ass it can be to walk a non technical person through adding a port forward to a router you've never touched before.

As a result I've known for years that I need to get around to figuring out how to configure a system that would allow somebody to generate a call out to a dedicated server. That's where UltraVNC and it's ability to execute a "single click" enters.

Now basically somebody has to do is download a single file (dennisremote.exe) and run it. That's it....no messing with 50 bazillion routers, or getting people to drop to dos to give me their IP...it just connects to my VNC viewer (assuming I'm running it of course).

It's pretty cool. Sure there are some bugs to still be ironed out with Vista and UAC, but the time it saves alone in setup is worth it. Plus the exe is only like 213kb.

Stumble This! Posted by Dennis Judd at 04:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Just some pictures we took tonight of the kids being....well...kid like...

And here's a pic we took a while ago of the ball pit tipped up on its end. We like to call it baby jail. :)
\

Stumble This! Posted by Jen at 07:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

So I've been working alot with shell scripting, and needed to define a random variable in a script so I could prepend some file names with a unique identifier to prevent other executions of the script from overwritting files.

Well shell scripting is really just glorified qbasic in the programming world, but I think I ran across an interesting problem and wanted to share my solution.

ps=`ps -ef | sum | cut -c4-5`
date=`date +%H%M%S`
ps2=`echo "$ps" + 1 | bc`
rndm=`echo "$date" / "$ps2" | bc`

So there you go....the variable $rndm is now random. Originally I was going to use `expr` but after running several test I ran into quite a few bugs with floating decimal points and the fact that `ps -ef` can in fact return a zero which leads to dividing by zero.....and we all know how that turns out...

Stumble This! Posted by Dennis Judd at 04:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I sit professionally for a living. I'll be the first person to tell you that...and while computers have been slowly rendering my blind over the course of my life it seems they are also doing their best at paralyzing me. Right around the time of my statistics final (and a pretty hellish month at work involving travel during afore mentioned final) my back started seizing up on me.

I think when it got to the point where I was popping asprin like tic tac's is when I decided it was time to go see a professional. So in my quest to restore my ability to look to my left without screaming I've been visiting a chiropractor for the last week.

Honestly I'm still at the "oh dear god it hurts" stage of the treatments, but I think they're starting to help me in the right direction. The xrays of my neck apparently show that my vertebrae are aligned as straight as a pencil and my muscles are tight enough to pretty much pop.

So I'm getting stretched and electrocuted...but one of the other things coming out of this is replacing our mattress. Since we're looking for something more back friendly we ordered a select comfort king mattress, which uses an air bladder system. The idea there being no metal to eventually fatigue and start to sag. At the very least I'm going for a "not waking up in screaming pain" feeling from it.

The crazy thing about it though is that it's coming to us via UPS. In like six boxes...but still a bed delivered via UPS is kind of a crazy thing. The other wacky thing is that ordering it online was cheaper than going into a store and buying it there. We had both thought that if we went into the store they'd be willing to wheel and deal, but they pretty much just gave us the same deal the online website did...which is stupid because it was cheaper via the website. I mean com'n....knock off the setup fee or something and you'll get my business but why would I pay more to buy it from the store? It's like the business is cutting itself off at the ankles unless they're franchises in which case they're kinda screwed.

Anyways the whole point of this is that I find is mildly surreal that a king size mattress is coming via UPS. Maybe it's just me.

Stumble This! Posted by Dennis Judd at 04:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I've been busy working on learning how to shell script, and only just finished my statistics class a few weeks ago.

I've been meaning to update but to be honest I've been sidetracked with a pretty painful back injury that I'm getting treatments for. Unfortunately it seems that trying to undo 15+ years of concentrated stress is a very painful process.

Anyways for the two people who visit this site, I'll probably update soon. I promise.

Stumble This! Posted by Dennis Judd at 05:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I hope you enjoy The Website is Down Episode 2: Excel Hell!! In which Chip takes us on a wild ride into the life of a master salesman. How many sales can he make in a single video? One? Maybe?

Stumble This! Posted by Dennis Judd at 03:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

When some lowlife tried to scam Andy the other day through his friend's hijacked Gmail account, Andy tried to get him to use PayPal, and he came up with a great reason why. "It's the fastest way to send money," Andy told the scammer. "Once I deposit the funds, you can print it out of any color printer and it's real money!" Another reader was so amused by it that she decided to use it on her own Facebook scammer earlier today.

Stumble This! Posted by Dennis Judd at 09:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Stumble This! Posted by Dennis Judd at 05:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Jen took this video of Connor and Amelia playing after dinner and we just had to make sure we got it up right away. I know we are probably horrible parents but it's just so damn funny. Plus it's really hard to get them to play together right now so any time they aren't crying or bleeding is considered a good time in our book.

Jen also took some pictures at dinner last night, we're not quite sure how Amelia and Connor managed to get puffs on their faces. It's a mystery that just may never be solved.

Life has been busier than I can handle lately. I had to go to Texas for work a few weeks ago and next week is my Statistics final so the updates on this site have been few and far between. I think I need to upgrade to a newer version of moveabletype so I get gain access to easier ways of updating. I still wish I could get my facebook account to self publish on this site with status updates, but when I tried that before the rss feed expired after a few weeks.

Oh well that's a goal for later on, I just don't have the time to worry about updating the interweb with what I ate for lunch how how big of a poop my cat took.

Stumble This! Posted by Dennis Judd at 08:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I think about a month back, we decided to use our tax return to purchase an upright freezer to "upgrade" from our chest type freezer. Not only were we filling the chest freezer up (damn you Costco) but it was also proving to be a nightmare to find anything in it that wasn't directly on top or within eye sight.

Of course that's not really important....the main point here is that when the new freezer was delivered (yay ABT and free delivery in chicago land) I asked the guys to leave behind the box it came in.

I might now know jack about babies but I know that it is required to have at least one giant cardboard box fort in your life. So today's post is dedicated to the evolution of Fort Judd, or as it is now called "The Ball Pit of Judd". I was going to originally call it the "Pit of stinky diapers used for time outs" but Jen vetoed that idea pretty quickly.

Here it is early on....

And here it is after some structural modifications to prevent the sagging...

Yes, Amelia has backed me into it while I was trying to eat lunch one day

And here it is in it's current configuration. I added plastic reinforcements to the top and sides and taped up the front to made a ledge to hold the balls in...

At this rate I think the darn box is going to be around longer than some of our furniture. Maybe there's an idea here....disposible cardboard furniture...to bad IKEA has already filled that market. :) (I kid...I kid)

Stumble This! Posted by Dennis Judd at 04:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

So about two weeks ago today Jen woke up some pretty bad stomache pains. She sucked it up during the day but as night approached the pain got worse and worse. The pain got so bad that after the kids went to bed she actually drover herself to the ER.

The result of all that was she had gallstones and was going to need surgery to remove her gallbladder. With the kids, school and work going on you can imagine the chaos this threw us into. Jen ended up going to the doctor on Monday and having the surgery on Tuesday. Meanwhile Jen's sister Heather flew in from CA on short notice and I picked her up from the airport on Tuesday morning and drove directly to the hospital (kids in tow....thankfully I had forgotten we have a portable DVD player for the car so that helped). Heather stayed with Jen during the surgery while I took the kids home for lunch/nap and Jen was home by 5pm that night.

Turns out the removal of a gallbladder is now handled laprascopically which means it's considered day surgery and your in and out in one day (if everything goes well). She really couldn't move very well for the first day, and of course having 4 hold poked in you and an organ removed can make you sore for awhile. So really since then to now we've just been all about getting by and trying to let her recover. Fortunately for me I could take the first week off work, and having her sister here has let me keep up on school work (although she leaves tomorrow).

That's pretty much the jist of it....lots going on and really the focus is on taking care of Jen and the family because honestly if anything happens to her these kids are screwed. :)

Stumble This! Posted by Dennis Judd at 09:18 AM | Permalink