Vacations, computers, and pictures... oh my!

So, on Saturday I had to work 8:15am to 4:30pm, which wasn't too bad I suppose. I had two new employees start that day, which happens to be the busiest day I've seen at that pool (but still 400 people shy of the busiest day I've ever seen). At about 2:30 I got another two new employees who were finished with their WSI class. The day went well over all, we had a couple of issues with some people, but nothing too extreme. (My assistant manager did kick someone out of the facility for using bad language toward her when she asked him to leave an area of the pool that was not open that day.) Then I got a phone call from my husband Charles saying to pack a bag when I got home. Hmmmm, what could it be? We stayed the weekend (what was left of it after working all day Saturday, that is) at Castaic Lake. We tried to go down to the lake, but the beach side was super crowded (there was a two-block line of cars waiting to get into the parking lot, so we decided against it), and on the boat side they told us they weren't renting jet skis this year, go figure. Anyhow, we drove around, took a couple of pictures, and went back to the hotel to watch movies and eat pizza. I know it doesn't sound that exciting, but it's kind of nice being able to do little things like that. Charles said we could have pizza and movies at home, but then I reminded him that if we were at home, we'd have house cleaning, the computers, and various other stuff/projects distracting us. =) We came home on Monday in the late morning, the drive was actually not too bad. The line to get off the freeway at Magic Mountain Parkway was about 2 miles long at a guess, glad we didn't go there! There's a couple of things we would have liked to do, like Magic Mountain, the Channel Islands, etc, but we've decided to do those things another time, when it's not all crowded! Then yesterday, for some reason, we bought a new computer. =P I've been wanting a laptop for a while actually, so that I can have a computer in my outdoor office at work for the summer. There's only one computer for the management staff to go around, and there'll be three schedules that have to be made/printed each week. The other girls may not know how bad that is, but I do from when David and I had to schedule computer time around each other at EMAC. We now have a Best Buy credit card that we put the computer on, not because we didn't have the money to buy it (we came close to buying it outright because it was taking so much time for the financing people to get back to the sales people) but because that way we'd still have money in the bank for an emergency. That and the fact that our car payment and my one measly credit card are going to be slow to build our credit rating. Charles already put Debian onto the computer, it automagically has sound, picks up USB drives, and picks up our card reader. Not working yet are the built-in card reader or the ethernet card. Strange, though, because the ethernet card worked during setup. Oh well, Charles will fix it later. =) Today, I'm doing more scanning work. I have somewhat of a plan for the sticky-paper albums now- I've done some work online, as well as talked to the person at the local scrapbooking store. I'm still not quite brave enough to start taking the pictures out, though, even though I've been told to do so ASAP to protect the pictures. It's still scary! I'm going to scan the pages before I start to make sure the layout and order of my scrapbooks follows the albums as closely as possible. So, that was my holiday weekend. Cool, huh? =)

Children

Me: Wait, c'mere... *motioning to corner where height checking tape is* Child: *walks to corner and stands in front of measuring tape* Me: No, sorry, you're this much *showing child with finger and thumb* too short to ride the slide, you're going to have to grow some more first Child: Okay, can I go on it once? Me: *sounding confused* But you're too short... Go figure.

Photo Scanning Project

I started the long task of scanning mom's photo albums today. I've gotten through an envelope of photos, one larger album, and two smaller ones. I'm only doing loose photos or photo pocket albums today, I still haven't got a game plan for the others (the ones with the clear cover sheet and sticky stuff). So far (and I'm still in progress, note) I have 182 items, totaling 213.3 MB. (On a side note, I copied and pasted that from the properties box, which apparently had the word "totaling" mis-spelled.) The pictures are numbered sequentially by their position in the albums (which I'm returning them to properly as before), in directories for each album, with sub-directories for dates I've found on the backs of the photos. Having fun with it, just wish the keyboard and mouse weren't acting up. I've been on the floor all day doing this because the range on our wireless kb and mouse has decreased, and I've had to restart the program or the computer several times because the mouse stops clicking all together (yet it still moves). Even the adaptive mousekeys won't click, which is odd. I've put a couple of my favorites so far on Yahoo. Still working on how best to display/distribute the pictures when I'm done, but until then, check out what I've got so far.

Hmmm

You notice all my posts lately have been either new pictures or genealogy stuff? I was thinking about that today... I think I'm starting to try to appreciate the things in life like genealogy and cross stitching... I hadn't cross stitched in years and years, I still have to post pictures of my latest project. It can be a photo diary thingie, I guess, if I got that technologically advanced. (First I'd have to make my computer auto-magicate reading our card reader.) Anyhow, latest blitz of genealogy stuff turned out more on living relatives. I think that in thinking about my strategy/priorities/etc, I want to map the living relatives first. That's of higher priority to me than going back further in time. I filled in many birthdates and marriage dates from the photo albums I got at mom's house. Currently, my database: Individuals ---------------------------- Number of individuals: 160 Males: 79 Females: 81 Individuals with incomplete names: 15 Individuals missing birth dates: 99 Disconnected individuals: 3 Family Information ---------------------------- Number of families: 47 Unique surnames: 30 Media Objects ---------------------------- Individuals with media objects: 0 Total number of media object references: 0 Number of unique media objects: 0 Total size of media objects: 0 bytes I took out the media stuff just because I'm currently working on organizing photos, and hopefully soon will be working on scanning photos from mom's photo albums. Lots of really awesome stuff in there that I'd love to get on dvd for my relatives. Also, I'd really like to take the old photos in some of mom's albums (mainly the ones in the range of 25-35 years old) and put them in scrapbooks. She has them on those pages that were kind of sticky and the clear sheet sticks to the sticky sheet... it works, but it's not good for your pictures, and many years later if you take the pictures out to scan them you'll never be able to put them back in because they're not sticky anymore. So, I don't know how mom will feel about it yet, but that's something that's on my to-do list. Granted, it's nearer to the bottom of that list than the top, but I think that's the best way to start most great projects, especially crafty type projects. That way, with this project in the back of my mind, I'll be on the lookout for stuff. For example, I'd need to get a good 5-10 matching scrapbooks with a variable number of pages (can take refills one at a time, in other words), and a variety of other assorted scrap booking needs. Clear photo corners, that's also on my "watch for it cheap" list. Last time I bought some, I got them on eBay, but you can't go there the week you're planning to actually do your project and expect to find exactly what you need. I'm going to attempt to take an entire week off work. It'll be a challenge for me. =P This coming week, I'm off Saturday, but "work" teaching a class on Sunday. Then I'm off Monday and Tuesday. Not bad, but I wanted the whole week. Maybe next week, that's when one of the other girls is back from a vacation, then I can convince them they don't need me... but not too convincing, because I'll want hours when I come back! Oh, guess what, we finally got our membership pass printer working! W00t! My boss had me calling the tech support at the company that set everything up, but I called our IT department instead (well, sent them a help desk ticket thingie) and they came out and just re-installed the printer and it works. Then I thought we needed SQL access to the trainer database (the one where you can pretend to sell membership passes without screwing up the money at the end of the day), but it turns out we already had access, just the permissions within the program were different on the trainer than the live database. So tomorrow I get to play with it. Yay!

Teaching again

I taught on Sunday with my friend Jenny in Loma Linda. I loved it, I really think I'd be happier as a contract instructor sometimes. The kids are pretty good, I haven't learned many names because since Jenny already interviewed half of these people (she's the new Aquatics Manager there) we didn't do a lot of get to know each other time. That's okay though, I would have forgotten anyway. I'm so bad with names. =P I've been feeling kind of over-worked, I know Charles tells me that I am. I go to the doctor on Thursday, I had my blood taken yesterday so that he could tell me on Thursday if the dose of thyroid medication he gave me is going to be right. Then he'll give me the maximum number of refills. I do feel slightly less fatigued now than before I started on the medication, but I think it might be more of an improvement if I was working 25 hours like I'm supposed to, rather than 40. But, money is good I suppose. =P Next fiscal year, I have an hour cap of 1,000 hours in the year... well, I had that this year too, but I didn't start until October so I have plenty more to burn before the end of June. So getting my money now so I can actually average 20 per week next year is probably a good idea. Mari and I were figuring out that if she and I work 40 hours all summer, we can average like 15 hours the rest of the year. Molly, who doesn't work in the summer but works during the school year can average about 22 hours per week. How they're going to run the place like that, I'm not sure. More assistant managers and/or senior guards are going to go from "helpful" to necessary. More updates later, I think. I know I have more to say, but I forget to come on here to say it!

Another genealogy breakthrough

I was looking through things at my mom's house, primarily looking for photo albums to scan while she was away, and found my old baby book. It's only partially filled out (I think they abandoned the idea when I was about a month old) but it had information on my great-grandparents that I didn't know. Every genealogy site will tell you that the first step in this process is to interview living relatives, but my family is the type that needs to understand what you're doing before you ask them questions. That's why I haven't asked outright for this information... I need to compile what I can without them and then come to them to fill in the gaps, as opposed to the other way around... What I found out: Paternal grandmother's full name (she's the one who died when my dad was young, so we know more about his step-mom than his birth mom) Names and birth states for all four maternal great-grandparents Birth state for my grandfather (which I knew was his state of residency for much of his life, but I didn't know for certain if it was his birthplace) Haven't gotten a chance to run this by the internet yet (like it's an old friend I talk to, heehee), I came straight here after my genealogy program. I only took home one photo album so far, the one that's mostly about me! The next time I get to go down to mom's neck of the woods, I will trade it for many other smaller ones. I was a very adequately photographed child, being the youngest and fifteen years further into photo technology than when sisters were born. =) There are a whole lot of those, though, so I'll probably only post the best ones online, or rotate which are online. That'll keep me busy for a while! Oh, by the way, we got new cell phones yesterday. We both now have silver Razors, I love mine so far. =D Current projects: Internet digging of new genealogical leads Cross stitching (finally!) something for Cyndi's baby Cleaning up my cell phone address list- I had stored my contacts in the phone, not on the SIM of my old phone. So I had to move them to SIM to copy them over to new phone. In doing so, I lost things like speed dial settings and phone number types. So now I have like "Jenny1, Jenny2, Jenny3" instead of work/home/cell tags on each one.