Time to throttle back a while

Wow! Thanksgiving has come and gone already! There's that whoooshing sound again. Time to slow down a bit and soak in the heart warmth of the season and reflect on the inexplicable wonder of the Christmas story. Isn't it something how the closing in of winter, the nostalgia and memories of Christmas's past, and the hope of Emmanuel blend to pull us out of our ruts, even for a moment.

It doesn't have a Christian message, per se, but for me, the movie The Polar Express captures much of the magic of this time. Seen it 3 times in the past week, and it holds it's charm. Maybe we can catch it in Imax at MOG again this year. Are ya up for that, Erin?

There's a light at the end of the tunnel of The East Point Project. I don't think it's an oncoming train, but can't be entirely sure just yet. I/we have this problem, in that we tend to go overboard with renovations, and one thing leads to another, so the project has consumed more money and much more time than we dreamed. But we've learned a lot, on several levels. Our Uncle Tom had a tender expression: "I'd like to unscrew the top of your head and ?%#$ you some brains". Well, this ain't about brains, it's about experience. And we've got a bunch.

Gotta rush along, now. Hmm. Here's to a peaceful Christmas season for you and yours. Make the time to take the time. Later.

Phone, home

Okay, lots has been going on with the investment property, not to mention another adventure with a different brand of cement board, and being done with the major area's of work, if we don't update (read "replace") all the windows to increase the value and sellability of the house.

My beef at this moment is with LG cell phones. Last Friday evening we're finished with a meeting with a potential business builder. It's now into the dinner hour, so I call our favorite Italian restaurant with Diane's LG camera phone to make a reservation. Well, the call doesn't go through. I look at the display, and it's lit but it's kinda... frozen. Hit end, nothing. Try to scroll through the directory, nothing. Try other functions, nada. Press and hold end, it won't shut off! Close the flip top, the freakin display doesn't even turn off! I've been around enough computers to know this means the phone's crashed.

Well, that happens once in a great while. The only thing you can really do is pull the battery, wait a couple of secs, then replace it. Did that. Powered back up, it says 'reading SIM', then displays the default background. Uh oh. Check the directory. Nothing freaking there! About 200 contacts painstakingly entered: gone! Check the SIM: empty! Crud! Pure crud!

Next day I decide that maybe I could transfer the directory from my LG 1300 to Diane's if I just unload it to the SIM. Now, I had maybe a 100 numbers in there, carefully grouped by contact name. The LG phones let you assign several numbers (cell, home, work, etc) to the same contact for easy access. So I have this pretty directory that I wanna transfer to Diane's phone. Names: Copy All: Phone to SIM: Replace. So it copies my pretty directory to the SIM. BUT NOT BEFORE SPLITTING EVERY SINGLE FREAKING CONTACT IN THE PHONE INTO SEPARATE CONTACTS FOR EACH NUMBER!!! As a programmer, I can confidently say that this is absolutely unacceptable, crappy behavior for software. Argghh! I expect stupidity like that from Microsoft.

LG: get a clue! Don't write software that screws up something as personallized as people's phone directories!

Cingular: get with the program, and give customers a way to back up their directories to your servers so they can be recovered.

Good grief. Oh, and I spent 4 hours in the ER Saturday making sure the pain and severe shortness of breath that hit me like a ton of bricks that morning wasn't my heart checking out. It wasn't. The pulmonary blood clot test came back positive, so a CAT scan was run to rule that out. It was ruled out. Turns out to be a back problem, with some ribs outta place, too. My Chiro will be putting me back together tomorrow.

I'm sooo ready to stop working 7 days a week, and get into a relaxed Holiday state of mind/body. Hope you're there already. Take care y'all!