So, what’s up with Ticketmaster recently?

My oldest daughter loves the band, One Direction. They’re coming to Detroit so my wife was going to get 4 tickets to take her up to see them.

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So in my free time, what little there is, I’ve spent reworking armorylite to use the new Blizzard API.

I’ve decided to take the time to port the site over from top-down PHP to using a framework (my choice is always CakePHP).

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We brought our fifth and final child home this past week, Kelsie Jane.

Total count is four girls, one boy; that’s all on me but I’m fine with it – Kaden is all the boy I think I could handle anyway.

Welcome, Kelsie – you’re in for a wild ride in this family.

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Being a “switcher” (for the second time) meant I had to find a new version of the “ipconfig /flushdns” command that worked on my PC.

I was happy to find it’s just as easy on my Mac to flush DNS (if not a bit hidden).

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Adriana, you are finally two years old.

Hard to imagine it’s been two years already and at the same time, it has felt like you’ve been one (and tiny) for years and years.

Blow out your candles, little firecracker!

I can’t believe it, but we’re going to have another kid.

This one was a complete surprise – I’m not even sure when or how it happened (Sena assures me it is mine though so that’s mildly comforting).

When we were expecting Alise over 11 years ago, it was all a blur – that feeling hasn’t changed.

This will be our last, as I think we both will get snipped, twisted, tied and soldered after this one.

So, a pet project of mine this winter has been restoring the old Oh, Hello projects – Swanky, Scribble, Gbook.nu and Kick.nu – from a series of backup CDs I found.

So far, I’ve been able to extract out all of the backend scripts (yikes – how coding standards, two PHP versions and 10 years programming experience change things) and I’m working on rebuilding the MySQL data now.

The problem has been that:

a) These CDs are 10 years old.
b) There are 20 of these CDs
c) The backup tools I used were proprietary and the company is now out of business
d) The backup tools only work from DOS

So, I’m reaching out to some companies who do this sort of thing as a business. Hopefully they’ll be able to restore these CDs to a usable format that I can restore the data from.

Fingers crossed, I need to be able to make fun of the shit my wife used to post on her Scribble (and im sure the 100k+ users would also love to see their teen and tween ramblings ten years later).

Oh, early Internet, you were so sassy.

Well, we lost a member of our family this summer, our family dog, Tyler Too. Always a goofy, loving little beagle, you were such a comical character to all the kids.

Kaden helped me dig your grave beneath the tree in our backyard, it took hours to cut through that rocky, dry earth.

All the kids threw a handful of dirt on your grave and said something they remembered about your life.

You lived a long, healthy life and you will be extremely missed.

I’ve been working on finishing our basement. I’m not what I’d consider a true handyman, things like plumbing and structural integrity scare me, but I can get along fine enough with small fixes and expanding spaces.

Last fall I spent a good amount of time finishing my basement office / man cave and I thoroughly enjoyed it when I didn’t expect I would. There’s something about creating something with raw building supplies and power tools that makes me feel less like a shriveled, useless programming weakling.

Kaden and Adrie are shaping up to be quite the entertaining pair as they continue to define their relationship. It’s hard to believe how quickly they both are growing up and into their personalities.

I don’t deal well with death. I try to ignore it, like food between someones teeth that I’m talking to. The topic makes me uncomfortable, unsure how to discuss it, unsure how to describe it.

My uncle died this week. He was always a friendly person – quick to laugh, quicker to joke. My cousins huddled quickly here in Ohio to spend his last days by his side. As sad as the situation is, I hope I get that opportunity for closure with my family somewhere down the road.

As introverted as I think I am, i can always count on a funeral to sink me a bit deeper into that hole; I’m essentially the worst bereavement conversationalist ever.

Sena thinks I’m broken when it comes to grief management. I think I’m just really terrible at it. I feel bad for not knowing how to express my sadness at the whole situation, I just don’t want to offend you or the memory of yours. I’ll just hang out over here by the photo montage next to the guestbook.

Celebrate life, our shitty luck, our lucky shit.

Rest in peace, Gary.