Friday, March 14, 2008

Catching Up

OK, it has been some time since I have written anything. This is an attempt to catch everyone up on what has happened as far as I can recall. Mind you, these are only events that stand out enough in my memory to even have the ability to recall them.
February was an interesting month. Emma took a trip to Las Vegas for a scrap book convention while I took the week off and watched all of the kids. Half way through Emma's excursion, she got a call that he mother was not doing well and may die at any time. At home, it was business as usual. Taya and Levi had school and I played with the Olivia and Julia. We played dollies, went to the park, and watched a show. The day Emma got home, the forces that be figured I needed more to do. I was very busy for the next two weeks until Emma got a call from her family telling her that she needed to fly up that night (Thursday Feb 14, 2008). So we put her, Olivia, and Julia on a plane and sent her to Seattle to spend the last day of he mother life with her. Fortunately for me, work suddenly got really slow. I was able to catch up on my school work (University of Phoenix Online BSIT Program). I have about 3 classes left for finish me degree program.
I just finished WEB420 Web Programing II class which covered web page design using JavaScript. I learned quite a lot and made some fun programs. The fist thing they had us do was to make a web page that ask you a series of questions that are then plugged into the three bears story. Levi tried it out for me and had a lot of fun.
Then next assignment was to create a form the verified each field before submitting. The third assignment was to create a slide show. The last was to create a slide show that gave a description of each image. The last two were a little difficult because I was not used to programming arrays. I learned a lot from the class and it will help me a lot on my DGCourseMaps site.
I spend several weeks in January trying to figure out how to get Google maps working on my website. I when Disc Golfing with Emma at the beginning of January and we could not find a decent map of the course that we wanted to play on. We ended up getting lost and missing a lot of the holes. Determined to not let that happen to anyone else, I spent my time trying to learn how to customize Google Maps to allow me to plot the GPS coordinates to all the Disc Golf courses in Austin. So far I have about 3 sites mapped, but I was able to come up with a solution for mapping them and posting it to my DGCourseMaps site. The site location is http://DGCourseMaps.com. It still needs a lot of work and Google will not allow you to print off maps with the current API so I have had to take screen shots so people can print off the maps. It has been very educational and it helped me to prepare for the WEB420 class. I will be able to use what I learned in the class to tune up my page and get it running more smoothly.
We are having another baby this year. We do not yet know the gender, but will probably find out this time so that we can start giving away the clothes that we do not need. The baby is due around the End of July and the first of August. We should have a more exact date after we do the ultrasound on Monday.
I was planning on going to Alaska around that time, but with the death of her mother and the new baby, I will have to take off a lot of time this year from work. Emma still wants me to go to Alaska, so I am trying to find a good time to do that. We are thinking around the second or third weeks of July would be best. Ed wants to go and I think Shaun would like to go as well. Dad and Russ would like to go as well, but I do not think Russ has enough time off at work and I know Dad is getting back from China around the beginning of July and is tired of traveling. Dave McCubbins grew up in Alaska and is in my Ward (Lake Travis Ward, Austin, TX). We went a few years back and brought back about 250 pounds of fish fillets. It was a great trip and I have been trying to go back ever since. So, we will see what happens as the time draws closer.
Well that is the extent of my memory and will try to update this more often. For now, Chow.