Many Friday Evening Updates

I just heard from Janice, with her report from the funeral today. Her uncle John, being a WWII veteran of the U. S. Navy, was given a military burial with honors, gun salute and representation from all branches of the service. John's daughter Cynthia was presented with the tri-fold on behalf of our grateful nation. Janice walked up to the Navy representative, after, and while he stood at attention, she grabbed his hand and told him how much it meant to the family and how much of an honor it was for this.

His still-at-attention reply: "No ma'am ... it is my and our honor" as he allowed her to shake his hand (a break from protocol, but understandable).

I'm still a bit choked up on that one. What can I say.

I had a pretty good day at work, today, even with staying up late last night to watch the Cards dismantle the Tigers and being extremely tired from the Ossipee trip. I'm hoping for revenge for '68 tonight. It would be excellent for the Cards to wrap things up with a win in their new stadium ... what a way to cap its inaugural year!

I'm also hoping the Salukis take a win in tomorrow's first-round playoff game at home against the McLeansboro Foxes. Hopefully the McLeansboro team has ugly cheerleaders so none of the Salukis get distracted. (ok ... a bad pun-ish sort of tiny little joke there)

I really sort of hate this time of year. If the Cardinals are in the World Series, then that means I watch baseball and most of those games finish up late. I always watch Sunday Night Football and I always watch Monday Night Football, being the L***** Football League fantasy football "Commissioner". It makes for a sports-induced sleep deprivation that is sometimes hard to deal with.

However ... it was an interesting day, actually, as well as it being productive. One of our customers, Siemens VDO, has a new shipping compliance requirement that presented a few small challenges, and I think as a result, I've discovered where a lot of the Nazi war criminals may have escaped to - Mexico! (just kidding - I know Siemens and VDO both originated in Germany). I've been trading emails with that company's shipping label compliance officer, a certain Elizabeth Zitselsberger, and that hardly seems to be a Central American name. Anyway, there have been a number of other German names on some of these emails ... so, it sort of makes one wonder. LOL

However, I wish I could have recorded the conversation I had with "Guillermo", who has been performing the testing on this particular label's PDF-417 barcode. Not to get "geeky" but think of one barcode that contains not only the part number being shipped, but every other piece of information regarding the shipment of that part ... like 20 pieces of data in this case ... that is a PDF-417 barcode. Anyway, "Guillermo" had two or three very minor issues with my first sample label I sent (because their documentation was in Germexican), but he added "Gheee ... jhurs have bean eesy to check! Jhu mus have a lot of esperiens weeth doing dees 2D barcodeenks! Mos' of dee time, we mus take weeks weeth our suppliers." I didn't ask what side of the new fence he would end up on, but I appreciated the compliment.

Tomorrow, I have two implementations of new requirements to place into our Production system. That will mean taking a few minutes out of my busy "honey-do" day to do some L***** work. I'll be "the good soldier" and knock it out as soon as possible.

I only have a few things on the "honey-do" list to take care of here tomorrow ... it seems to be heading for a bit of a crappy day tomorrow, so I'm going to concentrate on some indoor chores. I'll put another coat of paint on the downstairs door, since I can keep the new storm door closed. Next, I'm going to try to find my sander, and rough up the steps going down into the basement for the next chore of putting down a coat of a sealer called B-I-N. Hopefully that will seal any sort of odor left over from the prior owners' dogs. We took care of accepting the bid from Home Depot for the carpet order and installation order on Wednesday night before Janice left, so we're just waiting on when they call to arrange the actual installation date. Hopefully this will be before Thanksgiving.

Quick question for you all ... where did you buy your smoker online? I think Marion found his online, and am just wondering if anyone remembered where this might have been found.

GO CARDS! GO SALUKIS!