Unruly Behavior

It's been a while since I posted. I've had a lot of things going on at home and work. At work, I got un-promoted. Mind you, not demoted, but un-promoted. Called into the office and told that my promotion never happened, that it was an administrative error. No, really, that is what happened to me about 3 weeks ago. So, I've been pretty demotivated at work. I don't trust my employer any longer, and I'm not happy there. Don't know what will happen, but I'm exploring many options for this situation.



In early October we took a trip to New York City with my parents and my oldest kiddo. We had a great time. We went to the Empire State Building, Ripley's Believe It Or Not, the 21 Club, took a River Cruise, and more stuff than I can remember. Everyone had a great time.




While in New York, we drove down to New Jersey and meet up with a bunch of the gang from Clan Easy Frag at Six Flags Great America. While there I rode the world's tallest, fastest roller coaster, Kinda Ka. Four times. I also rode their new El Toro coaster a couple of times. If you hit a Six Flags on vacation any time soon, the "Flash Pass" is absolutely worth the money.



In late October I got suspended from XBOX Live! for a day, due to my online motto of "My Rectom Hertz". No kidding, it had been that for over 18 months. More horrible Microsoft Customer Service. No way to appeal, no warning that I had crossed a boundry 18 months earlier.



Two weeks ago tomorrow I had to put my odest dog down. It was really sad. She was nearly 14 years old and her health started deteoriating very rapidly one weekend. I took her to the vet one last time, she had a kidney infection, a bacterial infection and horrible arthritas. While it was the right thing to do, putting her down was one of the hardest things I have ever done. I held her head as she passed, I wouldn't dream of letting her go through that alone, or with strangers only. They made a paw print at the vet, and I had her creamated. Got her ashes about three days later. I'm going to spread them under one of the tress in the yard in the spring. She was the first pet I picked out as an adult, and I'll miss her, but she is not suffering any longer.

So, that's the quick version of what I've been up to for the past two months, or at least the hilights. Here come the holidays, can't wait to see what pandemonium they bring to my world.

Labels: bad support, boss, family, funeral, kids, NYC, roller coaster, travel, vacation, wife

My father in law was nice enough to take our oldest to Austin this weekend to see a bunch of family that was in from out of state. Reports are that they are having a really teriffic time. So, with only the twins left in the house, my wife and I decided to have ourselves a steak night.



Got some incredible Angus Certified Sirloins. Got some Spicy Montreol Steak Seasoning. Couple of big potatoes in the oven and grilled up some zuchinni and squash. It was incredibly good!



Now I'm catching up on things around the house, we get a lot more done when it is just us and the twins.

Labels: beer, dining, family, steak

,Ok, I've been so busy the last two weeks that I haven't posted a thing.

I only worked 58 hours last week, and that kept me from most of my internet fun. I did go to San Antonio and setup a new bank branch and completely overhaul anothr brach. Today I'm at the office, I'm moving from one cube to another, I seem to get moved every month. It will be nice when we get our new office/data center built out this summer. Right now we are getting to be like sardines in this office.

I'm also working on my Exchange migration today. Got my tape drive library moved here and installed it in the Exchange server. For some reason Backup Exec is much happier if it runs on your Exchange server. So that is where it will be running, I'm even putting in version 11d, which looks like it kicks ass on the Exchagne backup portion.

Had a birthday a week ago Friday. Made it to 39. More folks loosing money in the Dren Death Pool. Guess all the ones that bet on didn't make it to 40 are starting to really sweat now. Work had a Snickers ice cream cake for me the week after my birthday. MMMM.... Diabetic delight!

Kids are getting bigger, our oldest is really starting to play and have fun with his brohter and sister. The twins are getting more and more animated and the little boy is just so very happy all the time. People keep commenting that they have never seen such a happy baby. And my daughter is just the sweetest thing.

The wife's last day on the job was Wednesday, she is now a stay at home mommy. She seems to like the change.

I think I have some cool pics on the camera to post soon, just have to get around to downloading them.

I might also be going to Atlanta this week, and on a private plane, so I can get some good arial photos without a stewardess yelling at me, that would be cool.

Labels: birthday, exchange, family, georgia on my mind, microsoft

Ok, unless something or someone really pisses me off in the next six hours, this will be the last post of 2006. And what a wild year it has been. I have a different job, and three times as many children as I had at the start of the year.

Both of those things have ketp me from posting as much as I would like, but I think things will settle down in 2007 and I'll get back to posting more regularly.

So tonight I am clearing out my folder of photos and videos that I use for prestaging blog posts. What follows is completely random photos from 2006 and one video of my pets.

Enjoy, and be safe tonight. I'll be staying home watching something odd like, A Scanner Darkly, eating freshly made pinto beans and tamales, some beer, then splitting a bottle of champagne with my lovely wife.



This is a photo from a tech visit to a bank in Huntsville, TX. I love the phrase, "The subprocess is probably dead." Yeah, thanks Microsoft for your deep insight into your software crashing. Had to completely replace the Domain Controller for this bank, but was able to salvage Active Directory for them. My boss, who I no longer work for told me what a bad job I did because they purchased new servers from a company that had them in stock instead of my company, which was too cheap to have any stock. I have not missed working for that weasel at all.



Ok, in September I posted a photo of a closed gas station that had a sign in the window saying they had computer problems. Here is that same gas station a month later. I'm not sure what kind of computer problems they were having, but I've never even once required a backhoe to fix a computer problem.



I took this photo of the brand new cranes at the Port Of Houston one day, my wife works there, but only till the end of January, she is going to be a stay at home mommy to all three of our kids starting in February.



This is the Universal Remote Control that I did not get for Christmas. I wanted it so bad. Just don't know why they would waste a button on BOOBS -.

Puzzling.



Ok, this is my most current pet peeve. Various DVDs have started coming with the little tabs you see circled in red. They are a freaking pain in the ass. I own a lot of DVDs. I never had a problem with the cases not staying securely shut, which is the only reason I could think of for adding security, locking tabs. I think I've busted about half of them off of the cases for convienence sake.



Finally, one day while I was playing with my dog, the cat came up from behind and started playing with the dog. The video is a little dark, but pretty entertaining.

Best wishes to you and yours for 2007!

Labels: family, new years

We took the little guy to Sea World today with my 'rents. There was virtually no line for the Steel Eel rollercoaster, so we rode it twice in quick secession, first in the rear seat, then in the front seat. My dad caught some video of the second ride on his digital camera, so I thought I would post it here.



This is a great steel out and back coaster. Lots of air time, a 150' drop. Hard to beat that for a good time.

Labels: family, san antonio, seaworld, travel

With twins that are nearly three months old, to say that things around here have gotten crazy would be about as much of an understatement as I could possibly make.

On Wednesday night I put a warm beer in the freezer, with the intention of drinking it after the only cold one left in the fridge. Got up Thursday morning, and the wife is in the kitchen, says, "You forgot a beer in the freezer last night."

So here is my frozen beer, a little colder than even I like.

I haven't been posting as much as I would like, I've been busy both at work and outside of work. Doing as many projects at work that would give me good experience with Microsoft Exchange and Blackberrys. Wanted to pad the resume a little.

Which leads to my big announcement of the day, I'm changing jobs. I'm going into banking! It seems that one of my old banks got bought by Wells Fargo, the owner in turn started a new bank, buying four smaller banks. Two of the banks he bought were my old banks. As a result, when they started looking for someone to come in and work full time on their IT systems, my name came up for the job.

It is really great to have people come to me and say, "We're so happy with your work from the past, we want you full time now for our business." At the same time, I'm a bit intimidated by the task at hand. They have been merging banks, domains and other things for weeks, and there is bound to be a lot of cleanup, fixing and redoing things to get everything ship-shape and running smoothly.

I'm really excited about the challenge. I'm sure I'll be posting more when things settle down.

Labels: beer, blackberry, exchange, family, work

Ok, it was three years ago today that I started Unruly Behavior.

Inspired by guys like Jake and Wil Wheaton, I started my own blog.

So, what has changed in three years ago?

Number of children at launch of UB - Zero
Number of children at third birthday - three

Number of near death experiences at launch - Zero
Number of near death experiences since - one

Car at launch - Ford Contour SVT
Car at thrid - Ford Escape XLT

Number of jobs heald during past three years - two

When I started I was normal, now I'm diabetic.

Oh, and I now run several stores, including the Unruly Store and the Carlos You Suck store.

I've added three more blogs, my XBOX Live! Gaming Blog, Clan Easy Frag, and it's little brother, PGR Car Pics and finally my eBay Grifter ID Project website that I used to expose an eBay theif.

The posts here have been too numerous to list, and I'm having great fun. Hope you folks continue to enjoy.

Unruly Behavior: Yeah, what he said.

Labels: birthday, family, other blogs, vehicle, work, xbox

I grew up in Friendswood, Texas. They have one of the oldest 4th of July parades in the nation. My wife and I took the wild man there last year, I took him by myself this year while she went and fed the twins. Here is a clip of the Friendswood High School Marching Mustang Band at the Parade. Enjoy. Happy Birthday USA!

Labels: birthday, family, parade

Yesterday was a surprising, eventful day. Got a call from the wife that she was having contractions and heading to the hospital about 4:30 PM. Then got another at 5:30 saying get your ass over here, they are going to do a cesarian as soon as the doctor can get here, they won't wait for you.

Got to the hospital about 6 PM. We had babies by 7 PM.

Our little girl was 4 Pounds 4 Ounces, our little boy 5 Pounds 13 Ounces. Both are very healthy and cried a lot. Momma is fine, and daddy is haggared after answering about 500 phone calls and trying to get photos and videos organized.

The picture above is their footprints on the paper scrubs I wore in the Operating Room.

Labels: family

Today was allright. I didn't have much to do for the day, so I mostly played it by ear.

Got up around 8AM. Made a pot of coffee and had a slice of apple pie. Wife was off for the day, so we didn't have to take the boy to school. She was going to her moms for the night, and taking the little dude with her.

10:00 AM - Had an appointment at the Doctor's office. Got re-ups for all my meds. Yeah! They took 4 vials of blood and a urine sample. The urine sample is new, not sure why they took it, but I'm always glad to pee in a cup for nearly complete strangers. It's fun.

Stopped at Home Depot on the way home and got four Crepe Mertyls and a Bradford Pear tree for the back yard. Going to plant them on Sunday.

Then finished up my closet project when I got home. Had an extra long cheese coney, onion rings and blue coconut slush for lunch from Sonic. Keeping up that healthy vacation eating.

About five I had had a shower and started playing XBOX with my friends from Clan Easy Frag. Played till about 1AM and I was falling asleep. Ate a bunch of food while I was playing, finishing off several bags of chips and some Tyson Chicken Nuggets. Washed it all down with a Six of Miller High Life.

Wanna see what I've been up to on my XBOX? It has it's own Blog site now:

Drens XBOX 360 Blog

Labels: beer, dining, family, health, other blogs, xbox

6:45 AM - Boy woke me up, guess he was tired of sleeping.

7:15 AM - Got up and out of bed, switched on the news to find out about the weather for the day. Scattered showers, 70% chance of rain. Decided to take the boy to school so I could get some work done around the house.

8:00 AM - Back from dropping the Wild Man at school, I spread some more mulch in the front, got the trash out ahead of the trash man, cleaned the kitchen. Then I packed up a travel bag for the boy. Took a shower, got dressed and went to get the boy.

10:00 AM - Showed up at daycare and picked up the boy. He was happy to see me, shouting, "Leave now!" Packed him up in the truck and we headed to Galveston.

11:15 AM - Got to the McDonalds (Affectionately referred to as EIEIO by the boy) on Seawall Blvd. The little guy had never seen the ocean before, and immediately pointed at the water and said, "I go in there..." Explained to him that he couldn't go in there right then and there, but maybe later, on down the beach. Went in and had lunch.

12:00 PM - Left McDonalds and headed towards Moody Gardens. Found a nice deserted spot off the seawall to get out and let the little man run on the beach. After initially being scared, he got right into playing in the water. After about 30 minutes, we headed on over to Moody Gardens.

12:45 PM - Got to the Moody Gardens ticket window and found out that kids under 3 are free. Little man is 2 and 1/2 years exactally today, so he got in free. We went to the Aquarium Pyramid. He really liked the seals and some of the fish. He was constantly fascinated.

2:30 PM - Left Moody Gardens and headed for the Bolivar Fairy. Stopped at Walgreens to get something to drink along the way. Bought a cool shirt for my wife there too.

3:00 PM - Boarded the fairy, took the little guy up to the observation deck to watch as we crossed Galveston Bay. He had a great time looking at all the boats and birds and the other fairy we passed in crossing.

3:45 PM - Had a fit when we had to get off the fairy. Took the long way home up the Bloivar Pennsula to High Island and Winnie. Litte guy napped most of the way home.

5:15 PM - Got home ahead of Momma. Started on snacks when she arrived. Gave her the present from Walgreens. She is 7 months pregnant with Twins, and has been lamenting that she would never wear a bikini this summer. The gift was one of those oversize shirts with the bikini girl on the front and back. She got a kick out of the thing.

Relaxed and watched some Tivo'ed cartoons till we got hungry. Ordered Chinese delivery. I think we've been ordering out too much, when the doorbell rang, the little man got up and yelled, "Pizza!", and ran to the door.

Played a little Call Of Duty 2 on the XBOX 360 with my friends, now it's a little after 10:30 and I'm about to crash. I'm wiped from this long day.

Labels: family, pizza, xbox

6:20 AM - Wife woke me up as she was leaving for work. Sucker! Came out to start getting ready and noticed it was storming pretty hard. Turned on the local news, and it was storming so badly they decided to forgo Good Morning America today. Decided to let the boy sleep till the really hard rain passed. Read my e-mail and played on the net while listening to the news anchors trying to make everyone think the end of the world was coming in these storms.

7:20 AM - Storms have slowed for now. Woke the boy and got him dressed. Then we went to the Donut Store. He choose his own donut, a pink frosted donut with sprinkles, and chocolate milk. I had sausage kolaches and coffee. Then on to school with Mr Man. We got there about 8AM, whic is an hour later than usual. All the little boys and girls were there, and I got lots of high fives from everyone. Love little kids.

8:30 AM - Played a little Hexic, still working on Kicking AJ Venom's ass on that game.

10:00 AM - Finished up the wiring in the closet. The lights worked on the first try, and I didn't manage to electrocute myself. Guess my wife will have to wait for another day to collect the life insurance money. Moved a bunch of stuff into the new storage space, including all but two of my old car stereo trophies.



1:30 PM - Discovered a huge quantity of traffic going to the eBay Grifters Identification Project, so checked all the stuff on that site to make sure I get some clicks on my ads there.

2:00 PM - Cleaned up and headed out to hang out with the Wednesday Night Group. (Most of them are over 70, so Wednesday Night now starts at 3:30 PM and runs till about 6:30 PM.)

3:30 PM - Metup with the old men, drank entirely too much, and we were too stupid to come in from the rain, but had a great time. Then stopped at DQ for a Blizard and Wal Mart for some diapers on the way home.







9:45 PM - Back home, updating blog, going to crash when I am done.

Labels: dining, family, other blogs, payback, xbox

By The Dren:

I'm on summer vacation this week folks. But I'm at that great age now, where I stay home and do stuff around the house. So here is my report, on what I did over my summer vacation. Just in case any little kids are reading my blog, it will help them in August when they have to write their papers in school this fall.

8:00 AM - Woke up. Great thing about getting up at 5:30 AM each day - when you are on vacation, sleeping till 8 is late. Ate some left over muffins and a Coke Zero.

9:00 AM - Started the yardwork for the week. Spread about 8 bags of much, redid the edges out front. Then it started raining about 10:20 - But my dad showed up then to help with a project in the house.

10:20 AM - Cut a hole in the wall between the master bedroom closet and the dead space under our stairs. Adding some storage space. Project went pretty well with dad's help. Even managed not to make any huges messes for the wife to complain about in the closet.

Noon - Dad headed home. Took a break, went to Sonic and got a hamburger, onion rings and orange slush. Health is my main concern here. Then came home and watched a Stargate Atlants from March on the Tivo while I ate, yeah, only a little behind on watching TV.

1:0o PM - Started the wiring in the closet and stairs. Been wanting to add an outlet halfway up the stairs since we moved in three years ago. Had to pull down some existing Romex and rewire most of the closet to get things ready, then figured out I didn't have any light fixtures for the new storage area.

3:45 PM - Took a shower and got ready to go pick up Mister Man and head to the Post Office and Home Depot.

4:15 PM - Stopped at the Post Office and sent of an XBOX memory module for some friends from Clan Easy Frag.

4:45 PM - Stopped by Mom and Dad's and got Mister Man. He was happy to see me.

5:15 PM - Took Mr Man to Home Depot and got a cover plate for the new setup in the closet, and some cheap incandescent light fixtures for the new storage area.

6:45 PM - Cooked a Red Baron Pizza for the family. Drank a couple of beers, ate the pizza.

8:25 PM - Put Mister Man to bed. Going to eat some Apple Pie and play Video Games till my eyeballs hurt.

Almost forgot, I got a book to read this week, I'll read a chapter before I hit the sheets tonight. There is a link to buy this incredible book, "If Chins Could Kill - Confessions Of A B-Movie Actor", it is the autobiography of Bruce Campbell, star of Evil Dead, Bubba Ho Tep, and frequent guest star on Xena and Hercules.

If Chins Could Kill by Bruce Campbell

Labels: beer, dining, entertainment, family, pizza, xbox