St Louis

I took a business trip to st. Louis this week. I arrived a day early and walked the Katey trail down by the Missouri river. It an old rail line converted in the 80's. Coming from Nebraska it was strange and wonderful to see so many trees.

Patrick Tennis

Patrick had a tennis match last weekend in Gering. It was nice weather. I took a few shots.

Phone

My Android phone just went dead in the middle of a call. I do not know why. I thought about opening it up and popping the battery out, but the case bent a lot when I tried and I was afraid I might break it. I brought it to the Verizon store and popping the battery is exactly what the guy did. I am eligible for an upgrade in December.

I watched a review of Amazon's Fire phone. The consensus is that it's a good for for 2010. Since this is 2014, not a lot of people are impressed. Apple released their AppleWatch (Iwatch?) this week. Again, not a whole lot to be impressed with.

Living in the area

A friend on Facebook challenged people to come up with positive things about living in Scottsbluff. I did a list of lack of negatives from other areas:
The air is clear year around , not brown or grey. I've lived in places where you could see the air at certain times of the year. 
I've enver sat at an intersection and had the light cycle red-green-yellow-red three or four times before I was able to make it through. 
The local radio's traffic reports are really short. 
Nobody cares how much public transporation officials make. 
The local news does not have a segment telling you how many murders occured that day. 
Hurricane season is an abstract concept.
National news had not camped out here because a locally born celeberity did something stupid.

Sunshine

Rachel's tennis partner showed up at Rachel graduation celebration with an interesting gift: a small black-haired kitten. Rachel named it Sunshine by the end of the day. It’s a very happy kitten and it loved to curl up on my keyboard or in the cubby of the desk. Unfortunately Patrick is allergic and we had to give it away. No one was very happy about it.

I can’t understand someone giving a live animal to someone else without checking first.  

I never learn. Since April is out of town, the DVR is still recording lots of shows. I've been deleting a lot of them to keep it from running out of space. Oprahs, mainly. However, one caught my attention. It feature Michael Moore in a 'debate' with insurance industry advocates. In my view, Oprah's debates are one-sided toward whichever side she favors.

One question from a German Canadian national made me think. Why are American afraid of government? I've been turning this one over in my head. We are inundated by programs going broke, pork barrel spending,

Replace laptop screens

I actually managed to replace two broken laptop screens with new ones. Thomas found his cracked last year. I didn't do much about it because it could be hooked to an external monitor. Rachel left hers on the floor and it slid under the couch. When she went to use it it was broken when someone sat on the couch and pressed down on it. Her laptop is a chromebook so there was no external monitor port. I did some googling and found the instructions for taking it apart. I tried it and it worked. A quick search on Amazon located a replacement. I also replaced the screen on the other one a few weeks later. I did not send that one 2nd day so FedEx for some reason sent it to USPS. That added an extra day. In the end though both are working.

Tennis Pictures

A gathering of pictures from girls tennis.

Videos from Rachel's Graduation

Rachel's High School Graduation

The ceremony took place at the football field. It was hot.

Rachel with Susan

Thomas, Rachel, Patrick

The Family

Laid off

This morning I was laid off. I am sort of in shock as I was not expecting it. THere may have been a clue when an upper manager wanted to talk to me who usually does not talk to me. It's also the first of the quarter. A coworker has also been training to take my place on an old project. 

This leaves the question of what to do now. I will need to find a new job obviously. The problem is where. Scottsbluff/Gering does not have much in the way of tech industry. Finding another job that will let me work remote will be hard.

Rachel at State Tennis

Rachel was selected to go to state tennis for Scottsbluff High School. We went too. It was a little cold in the morning but got hot fast. She did ok, getting out in the first round. One of her teammates played for almost an hour.

Rachel and Mikayla