Honeymoon pictures

As you may have known, I moved hosting late last year. I had everything backed up but not everything got restored. I finally got the Honeymoon pictures imported into our little gallery. Click here to go check them out. It will open a new window.

Getting closer

It is getting closer to the due date for that youngin of mine to come out. Of course he will come out when he is ready so it may happen sooner. He is of course due on or around April 27th. I am really looking forward to raising a child. I know it is not all fun and games, but I know it will be a blast overall.

It’s a boy

Earlier this week we went for the latest batch of ultrasounds and the nurse that was doing it said that our child is a boy. Looks like I may need to purchase some cigars soon for the big day. Also, Merry Christmas. You know, this should be a good Christmas…

http://pictures.smock.com/
Go here for the newest ultrasounds.

Chipset issues

I had the chipset fan on my motherboard go out a few weeks ago which started to cause rebooting issues every few days on my main desktop. I found a replacement the day before Thanksgiving. It is a huge heatsink without a fan which seems to be doing the job. I think that the job was done to Windows before I got a chance to fix the problem. Before, the reboots were so sudden Windows could not do a BSOD and now Windows seemed to be doing BSOD’s on me. After debugging the dump file it looked like it was the network driver(I hope). So far things seem to be stable after updating all the chipset drivers and network drivers. While I was at it I went ahead and updated my video drivers. I will be hoping that things are stable this coming week. If not then I may have to reinstall Windows. If that does not fix it then I think my MB may be crap and I will have to rip hardware from my secondary workstation. That is something I really do not want to do. Anyway, later…

It’s that time of year

Well, Thanksgiving came and went with only my stomach aching along the way. Christmas will be along in no time and it may be a little slim this year, presents wise, but that is fine. As long as I have my family and friends I am good to go. Not much else is happening. Work is work and keeping me busy as usual which is good. We have our tree up with not much of any thanks to me as I had to work the day after Thanksgiving. My wife and the in-laws went and picked up a tree. I was fine with that as I am not that much into trees when it comes to this time of year.

Baby update

Well, I know our kiddo is not too far along yet but the ultrasound pictures are showing our child as developing well. I am hoping to have all of the pictures uploaded to pictures.smock.com soon and plan to try and keep it updated with new pictures as it gets closer to ‘go time’. I know kids can be rough but we have wanted this child since even before we got married so we are thrilled. I know I am handling the pregnancy better than Nicki, which is obvious as she is carrying the ‘heater’. I do not think that it would be as bad for her if she did not feel nauseous sometimes. Overall I get a bit nervous sometimes because it is a slightly high risk pregnancy. The odds are getting better all the time but I am a bit pragmatic if not a slight pessimist about most things. I am putting my faith in God on this one and hope what he deems best is in alignment with what we are hoping for. Well, that is it for now.

Our Little Hurricane

Well, that is sort of what the kiddo looks like so far on the ultrasounds, at least according to my Father. Every day I tend to think about the fact that my wife is pregnant and how happy we will be to corrup…err, raise a kid.

Great news everyone

It seems that our attempts at conception did not go unrewarded thankfully. We have been trying for a while and I am glad it finally happened. I really do not care if our kid is a boy or girl. I cannot wait until I can corrup…err, teach our child in the ways of being a Smock. No easy feat I assure you as being a Smock is wrought with many trials and tribulations. Only after years and years of work can that name, which everyone loves, be earned. Man, did it just get deep in here from typing that or what?!? Anywho, I will, as usual, update my blog often. Yeah right. I will just say this, I will make more of an attempt now that I have something to talk about.

Cars

On Saturday 06/10/2006 I saw the movie Cars with some of the family. I thought it was a good movie. It was of course a movie for kids but it was fun to watch even as an adult that acts like a kid sometimes.

Windows Vista Beta 2

I got a copy of the newest beta of Microsoft’s most recent offering of Windows. The install is beyond simple from what I have seen so far. I am installing it on my Dell Latitude C640. All the specs are fine for it except for the video card so I will find out how bad the new GUI runs on it. I may post a few more items with it as the topic with my thoughts and comments soon.

A few people I miss

I do not normally go much into topics of real personal value but I think I will for this post. I was looking at my Grandpa Smock’s tribute site because my father updated it by using a picture gallery software and I wanted to see how it was going. It did get me thinking of some of the people over the years I have lost that were close. Now remember this is by no means a comprehensive list because it is past 1:30 in the morning and I am a bit tired.

One of the first people I lost was my Grandmother on my Mother’s side. I never really got to know her because she died when I was two, but from what I was told she liked me a lot which makes me feel better.

Another was my Grandfather on my Mother’s side. He died when I was 15 if my memory serves me right. I do wish I could remember going to his funeral but because of a bump on the head that same year I kind of lost the memory of his funeral, among other things. He is where my Mother got her smart alec side and of course from both of them is where my brother, sister, and I got it. He was almost always joking and enjoyed getting a rise out of people. I do remember that about him.

Up next on this somewhat emotional ride is my Grandfather on my Father’s side. He died on October 24, 2004. The only reason I know the date is because of the site. As I grew all the way to become an adult with him around I remember him of course better. He was a man that was hard-headed, strict, and did not often make jokes. It was not until I got to my mid to late teen years when he started to soften up to where I noticed it. Every time I visited he made a point to see me, even if he just got into bed he would get back up to at least say hi. Sometimes toward the last few years of his life I would try to make it over there to do a crossword puzzle with him or stratch off a few lottery tickets. I never got over there as much as I would have liked to. As usual, you do not always think of such things until it is too late. I do miss him…

I know that I will always miss these and others as the years go by but am glad I have a wife and family to be with on those tough times.

X-Men 3: Spoiler free

Depending on how much you like to nitpick movies that are based on comics depends on how much you will like this one. If I take it as someone that has read a ton of the comics growing up and knows not only most of the histories of each of the characters, but most of the story lines that went along with them over the past 30+ years or so of publication; then I do not have much good things to say about it. If I go in not knowing much of anything about the X-Men but from what the previous two movies and some rambling about who has what powers then I would enjoy the movie. It had some parts that pissed me off because of knowing too much about the storylines. But then I remembered that the first two were pretty good even without following the storylines much at all and gave the third one some slack. I know my wife enjoyed it moreso than I did because she just knows most of what I tell her regarding the characters and their history. She did not grow up in the Marvel Universe. If I did not then I think I would have enjoyed the movie better.

Marvel’s Ghost Rider movie

While I am not expecting much the trailer so far looks pretty good. I am sure that they will take some liberties with the concept but that seems to be the way things are done for movies. Click here to check out the trailer.

Whoa

It has been a little while since I have done any posting to the blog. When I have not been busy I have been tired of doing too much with computers. I know that sounds scary if you know me, but I am doing better now. I updated some of the software running houstonjuggalos.com. It is a site that I am just the ‘code monkey’ for so don’t get any ideas. heh… I am enjoying things mostly. I am also slimming down my pile of computer junk slowly. I may have trouble not accepting old computer hardware but once I mess with it and make something useful I am finding it easier to get rid of it. The same can be said for hardware that does not work or is flaky. I am tired to dealing with that crap. Anyway, while I am typing this I am putting the finishing touches on my laptop image that I am creating. When I am done I will never have to reinstall Windows on my laptop again because I will have it set to just need a restore DVD put in the drive to get it back working in case I hose the OS.

Been a little while

It seems that I have been too busy with life to drop a post or two. Well, I will update on a few things that I have done in the time of this lack of posting. One thing that I have done is get a smaller computer case instead of the server case I was using for years. It is a mini-tower with 3x 5 1/4″ drive bays, 1x visible 3 1/2″ bay and 5 3 1/2″ bays for hard drives and the lot. The thing actually holds my three internal hard drives, one DVD/CD burner and a CD burner without too much problems. Another thing is that it has a clear plastic cutout on the side of it and so I have a Green LED exhaust fan to light it up. Yes, I know I am a bit late to the party on this one but I found it fun. I did not want red or blue because those LED colors hurt my eyes. Green is a nice calm color for the future of my vision. I almost have my dedicated Multimedia PC ready to go so when I rip music/movies/etc., capture video and otherwise edit graphics I will have a dedicated workstation for such a feat. The thing has a bit more power than my current system. My processor is an Athlon XP 2100+ and the one in the aforementioned system is an Athlon XP 2500+ so it is a bit faster. The RAM is the same at 512Megs but it is faster than what is in my main system. The thing I need to get soon for my main system is a really good video card because mine is and has been showing it’s age for a while. What sucks is that since I am almost always broke I doubt I will be able to afford one for a long time to come. I know you are thinking, “hey, where the hell did he get all that hardware if he is broke?”, and I have an answer for you. I tend to accept any computer hardware someone is willing to give me. I am not too proud when it comes to that. 🙂 Anyway, I am going to get out of here for a short and will attempt to most more often for the 2 or 3 people that sometimes visit a month. 😛

Not much to say…or too much

This seems to be the first post of the new year. It took me a little while to get something typed. Well, I have been busy working hard and finding time for spending time with the wife. My IPod is still chugging along. I do not even have 10 gig used yet of the 30 available. I am using about 5.58 gig according to iTunes. That is with pictures, music, and a few video podcasts stored on it. In other news I am slowly making sense of my computer room and one day be clean it will. But yeah, work has been keeping most of my time and when that is not using my time something else seems to be. I will try to stop by with updates more often.

Not too bad a Christmas

We had a pretty decent Christmas. For the first time in a while I was able to afford to get just about everyone gifts. Nicki and I had a heck of a time getting everyone taken care of but it all came together. Everyone seemed to like their gifts. I got Nicki a Chocolate fountain, a smoothie machine, and a neat looking ring which cost more than I was looking for but she is worth it. She liked all three. Nicki got me a 30Gig Black Video IPod(5th generation) a movie and some clothes. I got some other stuff also but do not feel like getting into details right now. All in all, it was good. Also, when Nicki and I went to Midnight Mass out in Plantersville with my parents, my best friend came along for the ride as he came out to my parents to get a little bit of that wine my dad is so good at making. So, I got to welcome him to the old age of 27 when Mass started as his Birthday is on Dec. 25th. Anywho, gotta get going, I got work tomorrow so I need to attempt to get some sleep later on.

Waiting for Christmas

Normally I do not care when Christmas rolls around because of the commercialism of the holiday. I mean, I still do the Midnight Mass thing, being Roman Catholic and all, and remember what Christmas is really about. It is just that this time of year I see the greed and the rudeness that is on display and it is depressing. Not to mention the politicians and their politically correct manner of trying to destroy what Christmas is all about by removing that meaning and trying to remove the actual name of items normally associated with the holiday. I know I am rambling here and will try to make a point ASAP. Anyway, right now we are about done with the shopping and still have a bit of wrapping to do. I am just glad to have the family that I do have and am very thankful that most of them tolerate me to some degree, more or less. 🙂 Seriously, in case this is the last posting before Christmas I want to wish you all a wonderful Christmas. And last but not least, try not to drink too much since that is what New Year’s Eve is for. 😛

Web upgrades aplenty

Well, I finally got my Niece’s gallery upgraded to the newest version. She was using Gallery 1. She is now using Gallery 2. I also set up one of my nephews with a Gallery 2 set up of his own.
For my Niece, Jessica, it is http://seeker.theuncle.com/
For my Nephew, Charlie, it is http://chucknasty.theuncle.com/
It was interesting doing the import from Gallery 1 to 2 and it was actually really easy… Only a few differences exist that can be irritating but oh well. Got to go…

Job hunting and fence building

Well, I have found a job. It is with Wells Fargo. I think it will be an interesting job and looks like a fun challenge. On a side note, the fence is done and looks nice. I am glad I had help from my father or it would never have been finished or even much started. I will have more to post in the coming weeks I hope. Anyway, lates…