Daley Ponderings

I don't know if it is only relevant to Allegheny County or if it is more universal, but a friend asked me to write a parcel id (parcel/block/lot) parser to help him out in his real estate searches.  It was kind of a fun project (3 hours) and it was neat to see how well it worked out in... (More)

As some of you know, we have been looking for a house for the last couple of months, and we think we have found one!  I asked a couple guys from church to come look at it today, and give their thoughts, and they generally approved.  Someday, I'll probably make the kitchen nicer (ie.... (More)

Shortly after I posted the first analysis of my time , I realized that my hours per day calculation were kind of off, since I was counting 7 day weeks, and I basically never work on Sundays.  As I am redoing the calculations, I see that I must have been doing something strange to try get... (More)

Can I condense three weeks of activities into one post?  We'll see how it turns out.  One thing we discovered at Christmastime is that Noah loves cocktail sauce.  He just dipped his finger in and licked it off, licked the bowl clean and wanted more! We had Christmas at... (More)

Just when I thought I was a geek, the bar is raised... I forgot to post this a while ago: Tim Hawkins and the "homeschool family".  Prairie Home Sausage is kind of funny - and has a picture of a really neat merry-go-round.   Lastly, being... (More)

I felt like going for a walk today, so Jonathan and I headed out, and I let Jonathan decide where we would go at each turn .  We talked some about compass directions, and where the sun was, and sometimes he had an idea which way home was (and then would immediately turn so as to avoid... (More)

This is what the HP technical support person said to me when I called about our printer.  Our faithful HP LaserJet 6L, which was manufactured 10.5 years ago, and given to us 6(7?) years ago.  It printed Mom's boarding pass just fine, and then one day later, all three indicator lights... (More)

Jonathan loves to create meals and side dishes.  On 10/2, he made a vegetable salad that we have recreated several times.  Carrots, cucumbers, tomatoes, radishes, onions, with one lemon's worth of juice as a dressing.  Simple and delicious. 10/12 - I was in the basement... (More)

Everyone always says how user-friendly Windows is, and as I sit here waiting for my Windows computer to endlessly update itself, I am struck by how much harder it is to update my Windows laptop than all of my Linux (Debian) servers put together. On Debian: Type "aptitude",... (More)

I have been having lots of fun (that's the bad kind of fun, not the good kind) configuring Asterisk for my new IT job.  It has been a pretty big pain getting it to work correctly with a couple different VOIP providers as well as the landlines. I had a good day today, figuring both how... (More)

Last weekend, we went to Keystone State Park with the Tomans.  We got a group campsite so we could put both tents together.  It was right on the lake and separate enough from other sites for privacy. I hadn't done much with our camping supplies since two years ago, and some of... (More)

I started a new IT job recently, and the majority of the people there have Macs, so I have been bringing one home in order to learn more about them.  They have come a long way in 20 years, when I used to play on a Macintosh SE (with three floppy drives, a nice bonus so you didn't have... (More)

This is the weekend for strawberry festivals and several local farms have pick-your-own fields.  Last year, when I was about 39 weeks pregnant, Mom, Dad, Jon, Jonathan and I picked 14 lbs of strawberries at Trax Farms . Jon is on a business trip, but I wanted to get at least some fresh,... (More)

Noah can now unscrew and screw on lids.    He is also turning out to be an adventurous climber.  He wanted something on top of the changing table and he succeeded in getting both feet on the top of the bottom drawer.  But then he was stuck.  He also likes to step... (More)

Just before 7:00 this morning, I thought I heard some sounds, so looked out the window to see a pickup truck but no backhoe.  The backhoe arrived just after 7 and Jonathan watched out the window while I got ready for the day.  Daddy said we could go out to look before breakfast since... (More)