Adam started Kindergarten today, and Alysha made her debut in first grade. Since I don't have a digital camera yet the film will need developing for those interested. Adam got to go to Mrs. Collins' class, same as his sister...and he's reported that he loved it. He also told me that he didn't get into trouble once, an amazing feat for him (he could wear out the most energetic of parents and there's only one of me). Dumb daddy forgot to send Alysha's lunch - hey, I've never had to send a school lunch before but things change. Thanks to her teacher, Mrs. Davis, she was able to procure a lunch in the cafeteria and I think the memory of pizza allowed her to forgive me much more efficiently than my bumbling, blushing apology. All in all...a success.

In the course of trying to fix up what FrontPage munged up on the website, it appears that some of the formatting is skewered. Bear with me while I fix it, but as I am working on major plumbing changes it may take a bit of time. If it's really bugging you feel free to tell me about it but also be kind enough to tell me what page you're honked off about. Since Maria and Dave's PC is ailing and I am trying to play the healer, it could take even longer. Sometimes, technology sucks. And you really needed me to tell you that, didn't you?

In other news, I finished the Dark Elf Trilogy, an excellent series from R. A. Salvatore. I recommend it to anyone who is into fantasy. Tolkien the author isn't, but he's damned good in his own right and I loved the books. So much did I enjoy it that the IceWind Dale trilogy and the Legacy of the Drow Collection are on their way from Amazon. Harry Potter who?

Oh yeah...the webcam is still down for now. Oh shucks I hear you say (thank gawd is more like it probably). As a consolation prize, have a look at the Chronicles of George instead. I dug up this gem out of guilt (and if you believe that I have a bridge to sell you).

I just read that George Dumya Bush is proposing a reduction in damaging forest fires by increasing logging. Damn, are you stupid, or what, George? Why don't we just prevent the spate of fatal car wrecks on the highways by allowing the banks to repossess any car that has an unpaid loan? Ludicrous. Think about who this benefits. Not you, not me, and certainly not the environment. It benefits industry. Nothing more. What an idiotic solution. While we're at it, let's prevent computer viruses by shutting off the Internet. No, wait, we can't do that, after all any CORPORATION that sells something online would lose, not a tasty alternative for Dumya's best buddies.

Oh well, in other news...still migrating to iPowerWeb's servers. Initially I hope there aren't too many broken links but it's bound to happen here and there because I am moving from a Windows server to a Linux/Apache setup - for those of you who don't know and wonder why that matters, Unix operating systems (of which Linux is one) see Filename and filename as two distinct, separate entities, and Windows just doesn't care. Joey, if you still want to go through the site by hand and fix all the code, let me know - but I need it before 2005, and it just may take you that long to get there.

A final note, school starts next Monday, the 26th of August. Adam is pretty charged about going to Kindergarten, and Alysha thinks that first grade is the cat's meow. I think, frankly, that it's gonna mean life will be nuts for me!! Adam will be on half days, Alysha on full - and I need to squeeze that work thingie in there somewhere. God bless Grandma and Grandpa Broge for helping out until they head to Arizona in the winter. Now we need to figure out what we're going to wear on day one, which Grandma and Grandpa will sadly miss due to a medical visit. Enough rambling on for now, there's a lot of plumbing work to be done to bring a bigger, badder, and better Broge.com to you. Cheers!

The ball is rolling....the clock is ticking...so read this update while you can. Today is the official day of Change. Broge.com is departing the services of Innerhost and moving to a new hosting service, iPowerWeb. That means a lot of things, really - it allows yours truly to bring forth a new version of this website that will be more interactive. Live newsfeeds. The ability to comment on posts to this section and forthcoming additions. Photo galleries that I have forever been promising. Message boards, if there's ever a need or interest (doubtful today but maybe not tomorrow). Really, it means a lot of new possibilities that will slowly be implemented over time. It also means that Kate gets a break on the bills, since the new host, with all of their features and support options, will cost roughly one third what we currently dish out. Joey, didn't I tell you I was working on the Next Big Thing? Start brushing up on your PHP skillz.

The final straw came when I contact Innerhost and asked if they supported PHP and MySQL and I got a "we're tech support, you need to send an email to the DB Admin." Excuse me? Tech support? That was more like the helpless desk. I wonder if Dolbey & Co. owns that useless department. Tech support should know what those two things are even if you don't! And the icing, 'you need to send an email....' - so he can't find someone that knows the answer, one of those DB Admins? Give us a break, buddy.

In other news, I got out to see Goldmember this weekend with Dad - great laughs for Austin Powers fans. Lots of good old fashioned crude slapstick and fun. Here's hoping that they don't make a fourth but that ending scares the shit out of me. Monday brought Maria's birthday and an afternoon/evening with her and her children. Lauren is now saying "hi" and "bye" and it sounds like the prettiest harp in Heaven. Happy birthday, Maria, belatedly and stuff. And I promise I will try to look into the printing problem that you're having!!

The webcam is stilll down for the time being if you didn't notice. :D I may get it fixed soon while I am working on the Next Big Thing, which is a revamp of the plumbing of this site. Should be mostly transparent to anyone who visits but I'm hoping to reap the benefits of better code - that means slightly faster page load times and so forth. Boring stuff for the non-technical. This will also make it easier for me to update things. I'm also looking at a few different angles for content management - there are a million solutions out there, and I don't know if I will design my own or attempt to plug in one of the many solutions I've looked at on the web. If you have any specific thoughts in this regard I would love to hear about them. This weekend I plan to live up to my geek reputation and get a lot of these things done, since my children will be with the Egg Donor. I intend fully for a lazy weekend because dammit, I deserve it!

Back in business in my personal technology sector (see below) seventy USD poorer for it. Temporarily, I hope - the dead router should be covered. Adam had Kindergarten open house Tuesday night, getting to meet his teacher. Funny thing is, he's met her already; Alysha too had Mrs. Collins. Adam couldn't be luckier. There's a debate as to whether Mrs. Collins will let me be a room Dad again this year. You see, she spent a lot of time telling me to be quiet and sit down. Short blurb today, but at least I'm trying to be consistent.

posted by Mark  8/14/2002 02:46:00 AM  

Today was Ryan's birthday party!! Hard to believe my nephew is now seven years old. We hit a place called Laser Web which turned out to be really, really cool. We all strapped on special vests (OK, the kids did and the adults wished they did) and entered an arena that was lit only with blacklights. The kids didn't get the tactical side of it but the adults helped out (what that means is that we borrowed the phaser guns once in a while and shot someone). Two teams of 15 used their phasers to zap opponents and score points. I'll be going back, and I bet I'm back at some point without kids too. It was that much fun!! We headed back to the Wiedwald's for more play and I ended up upgrading the Wiedwald computer while I was at it.

Speaking of computers, what is it with me, power outages, and failed computer equipment? While we were attending Ryan's birthday party, a six second power outage (my system's log showed that the UPS kicked in for that long) apparently took out our LinkSys router. Unbelievable. First a motherboard, and then this thing. That means no Internet for Markie until I get another one tomorrow....really not that big of a deal, since I'm going to bed here shortly and then to work in the morning. What galls me is that this thing was on a protected power line and nothing else but the router bit it. I like Linksys though, so I don't have any plans to change brands, unless the next one acts like a fruit loop too. So much for getting those pictures online for everyone. That will have to wait a day or so...hope you can wait. Soon I will have some old pictures from Mom's side of the family up for the looking, some dating back to the early 1900's - family I know little of but plan to learn about. See you soon.

The day of many updates. All four of you who've perused this site may have noticed that there were some dead links - notably those pictures. They all seem to be working now, and there's much much more too. Several Laffs have been added, some nice inspirational things that require a tissue or two.... and the tips. The all important computer tips. Finally, Windows 9x users have something to look at, but if it is a tad too technical please let me know.

I've also made it a little easier for you to look at what I use at home - my computer, I mean. The intent behind posting that is twofold: I wanted to provide it for the curious, and I also wanted to have something available for people who are shopping for a new PC, or maybe just a component. I am frequently asked my opinion on various computer topics (go figure) and now I can point you to that URL and you can see for yourself. Is this all interesting news? I don't know, but I can tell you that this website has been a labor of love, and I hope you get something out of it. We now return you to your regular programming. :)

Life's been busy, y'all. RUSH!!! Had to get that out of my system - I saw Rush in concert at Riverbend, Sunday, August 5, with some good friends (Jer, Scott R., Steve R., Scott M., and Randy - good to see you again after all these years). It's late so I must keep this short, but there are some new things added, yet again. I'm trying to get it there everyone....the site is growing. Growing larger, and harder to manage. Nearly all the empty spaces have at least something there to look at now, and I finally got Joey to update the webcam image he had up there for an eternity. I screwed up my webcam so it will be a few days before I can get around to figuring that one out. In the meantime, the tips section got a minor fix, and the family pages got a lot. Peruse, enjoy, and I'll be back soon with some hopefully interesting news.