During the evening my attention was drawn to the activity of the fire fighters. I was first told that they would be done with what they had to do in about an hour. Well, as it turned out they weren't done until many hours later due to the additional fires. Later, and perhaps while the fire fighters were still doing their work, a caravan of trucks drove up which really caught my eye. I first thought that someone further down the street was throwing one huge party to draw in so many vehicles all at once. It did become apparent some hours later that there was no party and that these folks were searching for the boy. This was also the first I'd heard about a boy being missing, and the time was now around 3 am. Danny and I both briefly spoke with the searchers as they'd wondered if the kid could be hiding in our garage or in my car underneath a down throw that I keep in it. I explained to them that our garage was always locked with a deadbolt and that I never left my car unlocked. It was highly unlikely that the boy was hiding in either place.

Not long after that a huge helicopter came in from the east and began the aerial search for the boy over the many open fields of sagebrush that we have here. The coyotes were howling too so there was really a lot of noise.

About 4 am our neighbor two houses to the north was on the phone with us as he'd been woken up by the chopper. That was when I found out that it was the shed that had burned (I'd previously thought it was the master bedroom of the house and I didn't find out until this morning that more had been burned when I took a look at the online version of the Nevada Appeal). Anyway, this was all happening in the middle of my day so I wasn't kept awake by the noise, and I can tell you it was really, really noisy with the chopper flying around and around and low to the ground until daybreak.

At the time of this writing, all appears to have finally settled down around here. The dozens of trucks and cars have left for the most part, although there may be one or two out of my line of sight. Rich likely has a load of paperwork to do if he had proper insurance on his stuff that was damaged and/or destroyed. Personally, I won't miss the noisy Mustang but that's just me not liking anything noisy. I've got a backyard now filled with footprints from the hiking boots that the searchers wear and wonder how long before the winds we get here will simply erase them into oblivion.

Why the boy did what he did is really anyone's guess. I have a few opinions without even having known the kid, but they're best left unsaid.

Danny is good. He's off to work right now so he can't get in my hair while I work on one of my projects.

I'm good too. Still keeping weird hours but that's all part of working the graveyard shift. Yes, work is going good too. Loads of printing nightly still. I think we went through 2-1/2 cases of copy paper last night plus all the other forms that we print. On the average we manage to keep three laser printers constantly busy for a solid 3-4 hours each night, a continuous form laser printer busy for 5-6 hours and a band printer busy for one hour. You could say that we do a lot of printer baby-sitting since we're constantly feeding them paper and forms. We do a whole lot more than that, but the printers are squeaky wheels and they get their attention.

More later, got to go check on a neighbors kitty cat now while it's still light outside.

Dan is on the left and Dave is on the right in this photo taken just before Dan took Dave to the airport in Reno to head back to his mom's place in Phoenix for the last few days of his leave. The photo was taken on June 25, 2007.

As for other parts of my life I'm just jammed for time to do all the things that I should and want to do. I've been sleeping all day and working all night with little time left between sleeping and work for much of anything. Most of my computer activity has been spent with my recipe site (Shoebox Recipes) and getting it back into shape. It's not getting the traffic that it used to get and I keep finding more improvements to make to it. Word of advice: don't ever take a static html site into a CMS and then out again back to static html as you'll take a nosedive in the search engines (better to just start from ground zero with a new domain and a new subject).

Work is going well and I think I've finally gotten totally adjusted to graveyard. Sleeping during daylight has never been a problem for me - I can sleep through just about anything be it noise, light or even sirens from firetrucks out in front of the house as I once did when I was a kid when there was a fire across the street from my parents house in southern California. About all that wakes me is Mother Nature or my body saying it has had enough sleep.

Yes, it might be a while until I can post to this again. Until then, take good care of yourselves and love those around you like there is no tomorrow.

I am sick and tired of receiving calls about some kid's truancy on my cell phone. If I answer the call, it is only a recording. If I don't answer then they leave a voice mail. The trouble is that one cannot return the call to the phone number they call from. They're wasting my precious time and I can't be bothered to find their number in the phone book to let them know that they need to change their ways. This isn't something that anyone should ever simply leave a voice mail about - missing one's education is far too serious in today's world.

I sure am glad that I never bothered nor had the time to have kids...

Okay. Rant over.

Work is good. I've been at my current job 1 year now, and more than half of that time on the graveyard shift. I think I'll stick with this job for a long time to come.

My Danny is fine too. He is always the one around here who can never find anything and can lose something within five minutes of having it in his hands. I am constantly called on to find things that I've never laid my eyes on until he loses them. Fun huh?

We took a vacation a few weeks ago. It's been quite a few years since I've actually gone anywhere during my vacation time but this was a special occasion - his Mom had her 80th birthday! What a time we had celebrating! I can't remember when I've eaten out so many times in one week. It was all good, and despite the weight that I gained I survived all the fun.

Be good to yourselves. Not sure when the next time will be that I'll get to update this.

The Icy Owl has been rebuilt and it's back to using NetObjects Fusion. I've got a lot of ideas once again for the site, some that can keep me busy for a long time doing things that I enjoy. And by no longer using a CMS, I can once again enjoy the pleasure of adding to the site. There's nothing wrong with using a CMS if the volume of pages required needs a database to easily manage them, but it just doesn't have that special "something" that gives you that good feeling of a job well done.

I'll be back soon, real soon. Here's a parting shot of my Danny and a recent barbecue:

Pardon the mess. Please. This is absolutely the very first photograph taken with the D50. I took this picture as soon as the battery had a full charge. At the time, I really hadn't read much of the manual so it was really just a point and click affair.

When I took this photograph I had made my way through the manual once. I'm still not quite sure of what I'm doing, but I am having fun. Notice how the camera essentially removed the background all on its own in "close up" mode. Yeah, those are mine.

Now, just to prove that my Danny wouldn't break the camera, I tried taking a picture of him in "portrait" mode. Yes, he is rather a pink man - it's not the lighting, the camera or anything else having an effect.

Seriously, I had a hankering for a cheeseburger. I went through the usual dilemma of deciding where to go get one. After determining that I didn't want to go all that far, the nearest and previously acceptable joint was Jack in the Box. Bad choice.

I just had a hamburger. It was supposed to be a cheese burger, but they forgot the cheese. Even without the cheese the burger wasn't all that good. It simply was not a tasty burger. The fries were average, the soft drink excellent (Dr. Pepper).

Food aside, what was most irritating about going to Jack in the Box was the rudeness of the employees. While I waited for my food to be prepared, the 3 female employees chatted amongst themselves. Not one word was spoken in English and that is just plain rude! I really don't care what they do when they have no customers, but when even one customer is present they ought to be required to speak only in English or keep their mouths shut. I will be writing the corporate headquarters about this. How do I know that they weren't talking about me? How do I know that they weren't talking terrorist talk?

I won't be going back to Jack in the Box. It no longer exists in my realm.

I miss the folks at Walmart, but I'll be back over there to shop and at least to just go chit-chat with them on my weekends, which I plan to do - maybe late tonight. They have not been forgotten and I did gain a new skill while working there that I can fall back on if ever needed should we eventually decide to leave this area.

Life otherwise? My hours have definitely changed. This is now the start of my day instead of being the middle or end of the day. This schedule will last about 2 months while I'm being trained, then I will be on swing shift permanently which is my favorite shift. I like being awake several hours before heading into work and when those hours are entirely daylight hours it's even better. I just can't get much housework done in the night hours.

I now have the time to clean up after a lot of his little messes without them being recreated within a couple of hours. I can get the kitchen back to looking like a kitchen instead of a junk drawer that has exploded. He has this bad habit of leaving everything on the kitchen island no matter where it actually belongs. He actually opens his junk mail and leaves it lying around instead of immediately tossing it into the trash. He has enough address stickers to last him for the next century spread out on the diningroom table and those are going to get filed away neatly. I can now vacuum the carpet and mop the floors and have them stay clean until he returns. That's the best part - a few days without mud being tracked in or his drinks being spilled on the floor. Oh joy! Oh work!