Been a long week?

Although it can’t seem like it’s already Friday, it is. Much has transpired over the course of the week, as I’ll outline below. With now only five and a half days before Christmas, ‘crunch time’ is on…although I’m done with mine.

Will there ever be One-Act Rehearsal?

Well, after my postponing of our first One-Act meeting post-auditions, I thought Wednesday after school would be fine. That actually wasn’t such a terrible thing, but after remaining in St. Cloud a little longer than expected (to nobody’s fault, really — see the St. Cloud story), I had to again push back the time of the meeting until 5pm.

Although it got a little crazy that day, I did make it there around 4:30 and was able to get everyone together at 5pm to go over their break homework and all the gory details of what I’d be expecting of them upon their return on January 5. The meeting lasted a little longer than expected, but much was accomplished and hopefully will turn out in the end.

I just hope that our first-day effort (and reschedule) isn’t an omen of things to come for the remainder of the production…

Much St. Cloud Happiness!

We finally made our holiday shopping trip to St. Cloud on Tuesday of this week. Fortunately, while we did have snow and wind on Monday and early Tuesday morning, the drive was actually quite pleasant and really not too bad. Also fortunately, we were able to skip the freezing drizzle and sleet which was encountered further south of our driving range which made the roads icy. That’s also a Very Good Thing.

Anyway, we made our way to see Brian and Michelle for the first time since their departure to California (over six months ago now). I hadn’t seen Brian since they’d left, but had seen Michelle (as she and Minda came down a few days this fall). The plan was to spend the night at their abode in St. Joseph and have Good Times just chillin’ and drinking. Always a fun time.

We actually had to run first to Minda’s house so Beth could get some assistance on a final paper she was writing…and since I had to work until 2pm on Tuesday, that put us in St. Cloud ultimately around 6:15 or so. We met up with Michelle at Applebees and proceeded to have a nice meal and discussion.

Anyway, after this time of food, we made a quick trip to a liquor store for ‘refreshments’ later and then split up (so Beth and I could do each others’ respective last-minute shopping). Of course, by the time we actually started this endeavor, it was nearly 8:30…and getting later. Since Brian had to work until 10, we decided to meet at the mall at his place of employment (a salon) around 9:30 and then hang around there until 10-ish… So, I made my way to Best Buy to pick up my pre-paid and waiting main present for Beth (a ViewSonic 17″ flat-panel montior (the exact same model I’ve got for my computer)) and to also look around at other monitors and goodies. Most interestingly I found were digital camcorders (something I really don’t have much use for, but probably could find for). I also saw a nice 19″ ViewSonic CRT monitor for a very reasonable price (given the brand, size, and quality) which caught my eye. But that’s for another project which I won’t mention at this time.

So, after leaving Best Buy, I made my way across the street to the mall where I basically just window shopped and killed time. I talked briefly with Brian around 9:15 and told him I’d be back…and kept perusing. During the next 15 minutes or so I received a call from Beth saying that they were at the salon and waiting, so I made my way back there, only to see them heading in a different direction. I then found out that they were picking up something for me and I couldn’t follow them, so I went to the salon to chill out.

Beth and Michelle returned shortly thereafter and we stood around until about 10, then left. We all tag-teamed back to Brian and Michelle’s place, where Paul (B. — who had been at the salon this entire time) was to meet us as well. Some pizza was ordered and a drinking game soon commenced. Needless to say, by the time it was all over, everyone was feeling quite good, and it goes to be said that Good Times were had.

The next morning I’d intended upon leaving a little earlier than we ultimately did, but it worked out just fine this way too. Beth got a haircut from Brian back at the salon, and we left to do the last of our shopping after that. Since by this time I’d bought about an hour and a half more time (rescheduling the One-Act meeting), we got to hit a store or two that we wouldn’t have been able to otherwise, and left the St. Cloud area just after 1pm.

We got back home to Morris around 2:45 or so, unloaded, and I then got in the pickup to drive to the One-Act meeting. By the time I got out of town, it was about 3:10, which comfortably puts me in Renville around 4:35 or so. At that time I held the meeting and drove back to Morris, arriving home around 8:30 that evening.

While they got to be a little long (those two days), it was ultimately a fun time and was very good to hang around with the Vato’s.

Christmas Time!

Beth and I decided (for simplicity’s sake) that it was best to do our ‘family’ Christmas opening on Wednesday (the night I got home from One-Act stuff)…since it was the only night until we depart for our Christmas travels when neither of us had to work. At that time, we exchanged gifts and had George check out the stuff he got too.

Beth was thrilled with the monitor. Admittedly, it frees up about 25% of her desk space, so it’s an all-around good purchase. I was the lucky recipient of a DVD 4-pack of [Jim Henson’s] Muppet Movies — which I’ve wanted for a long time. I also managed to get the “Drill Doctor” (a drill bit sharpener). Anything that plugs into the wall is good for me. And it’s actually a very useful tool for taking care of the commonly used bits…without always having to buy new.

George was given his little pack of mice (which he loves), a new ‘fishing pole’ toy (interaction with Mom and Dad), and a new food/water bowl set. Hopefully the latter will help to some degree with the ‘Food Hockey’ issue we sometimes have with him. Of course, that cat food just doesn’t taste as good unless it’s rolled around on the floor a little bit first.

Work & Stuff

The remainder of the week has been filled with employment issues and getting the apartment straightened out before we’re gone. We’re not gone for any length of time (because we’ve got to take care of George during the week), but it’s always nicer to come home to a clean place (at least I think so).

I’ve managed to add some cool new stuff to my invoicing system on my database, and hope to have the remainder of those changes implemented by early next week. It allows me to do some things and present some more material in a structured and coherent way.

The SPAM problem…

…continues. While it’s been drastically reduced (for instance, during our about 24-hour period of being gone earlier this week, I only received about 165 emails, about 130 of which were unwanted), it’s still not gone, and so when at Best Buy I decided to pick up Norton AntiSpam 2004 (of which I’d heard favorable reviews). I finally installed it yesterday and have had poor (at best) results with it.

The reason (I believe): I’m using Netscape 7.1 mail as my client. While the program claims to work with any standard POP-enabled mail client, it’s ‘fully-integrated’ into Outlook (and Express) as well as Eudora. Both programs I’ve despised for a long time. I never have liked Outlook for several reasons, and Eudora’s UI (amongst other technical reasons) has always lacked something to me… With that said, ‘fully integrated’ only means that there are buttons to help train the engine to determine what you think is SPAM, etc.

I don’t need that. I need something to flag potential messages so I can set my filters to deal with it as appropriate. This is what NAS is supposed to do. It hasn’t. Yet.

I left it go overnight and didn’t see any flagged messages (it changes the subject line slightly). I fidgeted with some personal SPAM rules this morning, still no luck. I check the Knowledge Base and support, no mention of any problem like this. I finally check the NAS statistics page.

I FOUND THE PROBLEM!

As it turns out, the program isn’t scanning all of my incoming mail. In fact, it’s only scanning perhaps (e.g. up to) 1 in 5 incoming messages. Of those it scans, it marks every one clean, regardless of my personal rules or the built-in rules. This is truly bizarre behavior, so I uninstalled/reinstalled the program this afternoon and have still encountered the same behavior.

In the meantime, I’ve sent a message to the technical support people. I don’t have the slightest clue what the problem may be, but I know that if it’s not figured out, it’s going back. I didn’t pay $40 for something that I can just as easily accomplish with some trivial filters (to get the effect I’ve gotten so far — which is nothing). So we’ll see what happens from here.

Until next time…

This post was upgraded to the MZ Online Blog on 8/25/07