When I was in elementary school, I wanted to be a weather man. I never became a weatherman, but thanks to the Weather Underground, I have taken one step closer to reporting on the weather.
Posted webcam on WeatherUnderground.com
Wow, 5+ inches of snow
We have an honest to goodness snow storm going on in Nashville. Actually, we are closer to Columbia. Russ is enjoying his first real snow. It’s the most snow I’ve seen since living in Colorado.
Receive 404 Error When Implementing Custom httpHandler with .NET
Recently, I was working on a web application that provides the ability to download data to a CSV file. It is a .NET 3.5 web application.
To generate the CSV file, I created a custom httpHandler for the extension *.csv. The goal was to allow any request for a *.csv file to generate the desired output by querying a DB.
Everything worked great on my laptop but did not work when I deployed to the web server (IIS 6.0).
What gives?
The problem was that on IIS, I needed to add the *.csv extension to the MIME type map. I pointed the executable to the ASP.NET dll and viola, it worked.
The Kennel and Gun Range
This Christmas, we decided to travel down to Houston. It was a last minute decision as I did not want to travel. I wanted to stay home and have a nice, quite, and low key Christmas.
We decided on Sunday.
There is only one problem, how were we going to find a kennel for our dogs while we were gone? After all, it was only 5 days before Christmas by the time we decided to go.
We tried 6 different kernels in and around Nashville.
No luck.
I got the bright idea instead of looking in the Nashville area, look in the Spring Hill/Columbia area (small towns outside Nashville).
Viola, I was in luck. I found a kennel about 5 minutes from our home. I quickly made reservations for 12/24 through 12/29.
Flash back to last night (12/23)…4:00pm (the kennel closed at 5:00). I was getting the dogs stuff ready and about to load them into the car when it hit me…the kennel is next to a shooting range. You may think no big deal, but you see, we can’t even watch movies with our home theater system turned on because Ester, our greyhound, is deathly afraid of loud noises. Thunderstorms and 4th of July’s are especially her favorites. To the point where we have a prescription of Valium for her.
There was no way in hell I was going to make her, nor Russ for that matter, stay at a kennel next to a shooting range. It would literally scare her to death.
When we thought we were going to have to call the whole trip off, Charlotte called her son in Houston and asked about kernels he uses for his dogs. He called one that was full and then called a second that he uses and had space.
I quickly called (mind you, this is on Wednesday, 2 days before Christmas at 4:00pm) and made arrangements.
The next problem, they were only open until 3:00pm on Christmas Eve! This meant that we had to get from Nashville to Houston by 3:00pm the next day. Remember, at this point it was 4:00pm.
The drive is about 13 hours.
We did the logical thing, we packed up the car, put the dogs in the back of our SUV and took off. At this point it’s 8:00pm. Normally, we do the 13 hour drive in a straight shot, but driving through the night was out of the question.
We compromised and booked a room at La Quinta in Hattiesburg Mississippi (just about half way to Houston). It is 6 hour drive to Hattiesburg and then another 7 hours from there to Houston.
We arrived in Hattiesburg at 1:30am (yes, I was speeding).
In order to make it to the kennel in Houston by 3:00pm, with a 7 hour drive meant that we had to leave the hotel no later than 8:00am. But, to give ourselves plenty of padding, I set the alarm for 5:00am.
5:00am the alarm promptly went off…I hit the snooze button…and then hit it again…and again…and again…finally, I turned off the alarm and went back to sleep.
Luckily, something woke me up…at 6:00am. I quickly load up the car and get on the road by 7:30am. It takes 1.5 hours to load the car b/c we put all our luggage on the roof of the car and it takes some time.
On the road again.
More speeding.
Ah ha…thanks to all the speeding, we pull up to the kennel at 2:15pm (remember, I said it was a 7 hour drive from Hattiesburg to Houston). We made it with 45 minutes to spare.
And to my chagrin, the kennel we are using is the same kennel the GPA (Greyhound Pets of America) in Houston shares! Yes, Ester, our Greyhound, who we adopted from GPA Houston is now nicely tucked away in the same kennel where she stayed before we adopter her.
I didn’t catch on that it was the same kennel until we were turning on to the street where it was located. Go figure.
We are now safely tucked away in our Hotel after 24 hours of fury.
Thank goodness. So much for that quite and restful Christmas.
How to get your ass kicked at monopoly
I’m the one with all the mortgaged property. I had to mortgage
everything to pay $1,275 in rent on one of Charlottes properties with
a hotel. It was game over after that.
Hi, I’m Russ
We had to board the dogs this weekend and they got a great picture of Russ. He doesn’t seem to mind being boarded.
At predators game
4 minutes left in 2nd period and still no score. Have awesome seats,
wish you were here.
Did you know…
Did you know that when you purchase a music video from the iTunes store, you can burn it to a CD and listen to it on a CD player. That is, you can make music CDs from the music videos purchased on iTunes. My wife and I were browsing some of our favorite artists and noticed they had some music videos. We purchased one and as an experiment, I created a music CD with it and went and played the song in our car. I find that cool. If you didn’t already know you could do that, now you do. If you did know, I wish I would have spoken to you sooner.
Vonage Sucks – I was not happy with the quality of the service
Ok, to be fair, I did not have good luck with their service. Often, calls made to us never found their way to our phone. In other instances, we would dial a number and end up speaking to someone we didn’t know, I.e. we were connected to a phone number other than the one we dialed. Finally, we would here other conversations on our calls, which I have to presume they could here us.
I never called their technical support because I was experimenting with Internet phone calling. For me, after trying Comcast and Vonage, I think the industry needs to mature some and it's not for me.
When I called to disconnect, the agent put me on hold to look up any final charges and the unpaid balance of our contract. That is pay for any of the future months that I hadn't been billed yet. Luckily for me, because I bought the Vonage box at a retail store a d paid full price, I was not subject to a contract. Had I got the service through one of their promotions, I would have been in a contract and paid the remaining months. All I had to pay was the $39.99 disconnect fee. I didn't care for this much either and i went and looked at the terms and conditions and in plain site It stated the $39.99 disconnect if I choose to disconnect the service. This falls into the category of buyer be aware.
I was offered to connect to the top tier service group and give me a couple of months free, but I had already made up my mind and wanted out.
Now that I've gone back to a hard line with AT&T, I am paying double the cost for the same service, including unlimited nation wide calls. But, I haven't missed a call yet, phone calls are going where they are suppose to, no static on the line, and finally no third parries joining our conversations.
Buyer be aware, like cell phone companies, if you are getting their service and receiving one of their boxes for free, they are signing you up for the contract and you could pay a hefty price if you choose to disconnect one day. As the saying goes, you don't get anything for free (or something like that).
So long Gracie…you will be missed
Our beloved girl, Gracie, has gone home this past Tuesday. Her heart grew too big and finally gave way while she went outside to lay in the sun one last time.
I wish I could pet her one last time. I wish I could take her on one last walk. Had I known that Tuesday was her last day, I would have done both of these things. I’m going to miss her.
Some of you may remember Ben, our first greyhound who succumbed to bone cancer new years day in 2006. I posted about “Ben’s Rose” on my blog at that time which sprung up in our rose garden the day after he died. The rose came from the unlikeliest of a shrub, a misfit, a runt…but, it bloomed the most beautiful rose, it was unmistakable that the rose was Ben letting us know that he was free of pain.
Gracie, not to be out done, sent us a sign of her courageous spirit and her eye-catching beauty…it’s almost unbelievable. After she passed, on the way to the vet to prepare for her final arrangements, as I drove down the highway, I saw a huge bird. Vultures are not uncommon in Tennessee and at first, it appeared that I had seen one flying by the highway. But, for some reason I couldn’t take my eyes off it. As I looked for a half second longer, I realized that I was not looking at a vulture, rather I was looking at a Bald Eagle!
The white head and tail feathers were unmistakeable. She sent an eagle to me to remind me of her beauty, strength, courage, and triumphant spirit that stole our heart and that which made us love her so much.
Gracie, we will miss you. Say hello to Ben for us.
She was born on 01/11/1998 and went to her forever ever home
on 06/30/2009.
And because the life of a greyhound should never end on a sad note, here is a movie that best personifies her. Don’t let her tickle your funny bone…she’s guilty I tell you.
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