« August 18, 2004 | Main | September 02, 2004 »

Saturday, August 28, 2004

Welcome, Sammy

One of my Dad's former colleagues is from Mexico, and the two have stayed in touch over the years and become pretty good friends. Rick was fortunate to get to spend about two weeks with Guillermo's family a couple of years ago, and now Samantha (Sammy), Guillermo's 18-year-old daughter, is spending her senior year of high school here with my folks in the US.

Sammy's first couple of weeks here turned out to be pretty hectic. Besides celebrating her 18th birthday away from home, she's had to contend with a return visit from my friends Tony and Beverly, registering for school, traveling up to Virginia and back at least once, a visit from Mom's (maternal) Uncle Woody for her (paternal) Uncle Earl's memorial service, and Dad being gone and/or on the road most of the time for his new job.

We're trying to show her a good time, though. She hung out with a pile of Rick's friends at his birthday party last week, she went out Salsa dancing last night with Joy and Joy's former high school classmate Shanika, and even at this moment she's probably just now arriving in Washington, D.C. with my folks for the Virginia Tech game [pdf]. The biggest challenge with that trip may be encountering still more of my extended family. :-)

Here are some pictures from her birthday party back on the 15th:

Sammy's Birthday Sammy's Birthday Sammy's Birthday

There are more pictures if you click the "Continue reading..." link below.

Sammy's Birthday Sammy's Birthday Sammy's Birthday Sammy's Birthday Sammy's Birthday Sammy's Birthday Sammy's Birthday Sammy's Birthday Sammy's Birthday Sammy's Birthday Sammy's Birthday Sammy's Birthday Sammy's Birthday Sammy's Birthday Sammy's Birthday Sammy's Birthday Sammy's Birthday Sammy's Birthday Sammy's Birthday Sammy's Birthday Sammy's Birthday

Posted 08/28/2004 15:26 by Fritz | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Major Catchup

Whew!

I've had some problems getting my camera to talk to my PC, but Dad has a reader for my memory card. Time to catch up. I have now posted (and back-dated the entries for) pictures from Mike's Birthday, Johnathan's Birthday, Christmas 2003, the poodles playing on my Radford U. chair, the snow we had back in February, the band Spring trip Rick and I went on in April, Ed's first concert in May, and Joy's and Emma's birthdays.

Snowstorm

Posted 08/28/2004 14:46 by Fritz | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Images

I think I've found something that will make my life a lot easier once I really figure out how to use it. ImageMagick has some pretty nifty command line features for resizing images, etc. My favorite viewer, Irfanview is supposed to be able to do most of this stuff, but for whatever reason it was not working on my PC. Open source to the rescue once again.

Time to catch up on some pictures.

Posted 08/28/2004 13:04 by Fritz | Comments (0) | TrackBack

The Cobbler's Kid

I've been meaning to fix up this site—change the color scheme, make it a little sharper, update the links, etc.—but I just haven't been able to motivate myself to do so. I just updated the links page a little bit, and I think I know what's holding me back: The code is simply awful—too much HTML, not enough use of CSS, PHP, etc. There is nothing to "maintain"; it just all has to be redone. Someday.

On the bright side, I've evidently learned a lot over the last couple of years. I'm still not the code monkey I'd like to be, but the stuff I'm doing today is considerably less embarassing. And just wait'll I get that database app going. I will have finally entered the 20th Century with a little bit of OOP.

Posted 08/28/2004 10:26 by Fritz | Comments (0) | TrackBack