Today we arrived at Mom’s. Our stop, last night was only 336 miles from her home. I am so very happy to see Mom. It’s been 18 months since our last visit and this will be the first time we visiting over the Christmas holidays. Mom’s house looks great … she painted it this summer. It smells wonderful, as she has prepared for Christmas with lots of cooking and baking. One of my favorite is beet soup and home made noodles, which she served this evening. As usual it was wonderful. After catching up on the latest news we played our first card game of Hand & Foot. Sandy won. She pulled ahead as our all time winner with a win total of 13 games to my 11 and Mom’s 4.

In June of 2003, I purchased a little notebook to record our score as we play each game and record win stats. It’s fun to look back at our previous games. Mom only plays during our visits. We play a little more often with family back in Phoenix.

The Verizon card works well. I have noticed that it has a tendency to stall during downloads that take more then a couple of minutes. It doesn’t happen every time … it’s a little annoying as I can’t download some of my favorite podcasts. However, email works great. Overall the product works for me.

Once again, we got back on the road at 7:00 AM, after a nice breakfast at the Holiday Inn. The weather was great, clear skies all day. Traffic overall was light. However, there is a real bottleneck in Beaumont, TX. The geniuses who plan road maintenance have shutdown all but one lane of I-10 east bound. This resulted in a 5 mile backup, and one hour delay. Because of this bottleneck we were only able to average 78 mph today. We are only 340 miles from Mom’s, so tomorrow will be a short driving day.

We stopped for the night in Marianna, FL at a Best Western Motel. Once again we are on the first floor. However, there is no noise from the unit above us. Have good internet tonight; two bars on the Verizon card. I did not try the card while we were on the road as I did all the driving today.

We finished the audio book The Children of Men by P.D. James. It turned out to be another very good book.

We got back on the road this morning about 7:00 AM, after a nice breakfast at the Holiday Inn. The weather was a little overcast but no rain. There was not much traffic, so were able to average 78 mph. For lunch we stopped at Cooper’s Barbeque. What a wonderful place. The first things you see upon entering are huge piles of pork ribs and thick chops, sausage and beef briskets. Sandy had the beef brisket sandwich; I had a pork chop and a small piece of sausage. The food was fantastic … only wish I had room for more. This is one place we must stop on the way home.

We arrived at our second stop about 5:30 PM Phoenix time. This time we are on the second floor and it’s much quieter. No internet tonight. The Verizon card can’t find a signal. Last night the signal was great. Tonight nothing; the phone service is also minimal. The service should be good tomorrow as we will be in Florida where Verizon coverage blankets the state. If possible I will try using the card while Sandy is driving.

We finished Alen Aldan’s audio book today. A great book once stated you don’t want to stop. Our second audio book is the Children of Men by P.D. James. So far it’s a little difficult to follow as the reader speaks with a heavy British accent.

We are off to Florida for Christmas with Mom. This year we decided to drive. In preparation, I downloaded 40 + hours of audio books from Audible. In addition to seeing some of the country we will catch up on our reading … well listening. We started late this morning 11:00 AM to our first planned stop in Las Cruces, NM. It took almost 6 hours to get here; a Holiday Inn Express. Wonder what the Express stands for? We have a very comfortable room. Only issue is that we are on the first floor and can hear the people above as they walk about. Sounds like a herd of elephants. They did have fresh warm cookies and coffee ready when we arrived. From Phoenix, we started listening to Alan Aldas new book, Never Stuff Your Dog. It’s the story of his life. So far it’s very good. His life as a young boy was wild as his parents were in show business. Sandy kept busy knitting a baby blanket for her sister’s new, very cute grandson. Her goal is to have it complete by the time we get to Mom’s. From there she will mail it off …

Today we ran into more traffic then I expected. The trip from Phoenix to Tucson was really slow. So much traffic and too many trucks. At one point we came to a complete stop in the middle of nowhere. As we screech to a stop the fourth car behind us rear ended the vehicle ahead of it. Because of the high speed it was bad. We could not see if anyone was hurt but the front end the car was badly smashed. For the next 40 miles we moved at no more then 20-30 miles an hour. South of Tucson things opened up and we were off. Set the cruise control to 80 mph and down to road we went. We only had to slow when encountering truckers pass other trucks. We did see a few that rode the left lane, making traffic pass on their right. These folks need to find another line of work …

Our next scheduled stop is Columbus, TX … some 750 miles away. It’s going to be a long day on the road with plenty of book listening time.

After much thought and evaluation I purchased an HP Pavilion zd8000 laptop. I really like this system. It has a very bright 17” screen and a great keyboard. It’s big enough to have a full keyboard with a number pad. It’s also a rotund 9+ lb. I purchased the system at Sam’s Club, my preferred provider … because of their 6 month return policy. I really wanted a new 17” Apple powerbook. The problem is, as a .NET developer its tough to work on a powerbook … Virtual PC is so … V E R Y S L O W. I have big hopes for the upcoming Intel machines. In the interim I’ll just use the HP.

The first thing I did with the new laptop was upgrade the operating system to XP Professional. In spite of this change SQL 2005 Express would not install. It continues to hang at the point of “Searching for IIS …” My search of the internet and Microsoft’s site revealed no information, workaround, or fix. Am I the only one having this problem? My work around was to install Personnel SQL Server 2000. Installing Visual Studio 2005 was a breeze. Just don’t let the installer attempt to install SQL 2005 Express. If you do, it will just hang the system.

This weekend I purchased a new HP Pavilion zv6203cl PC laptop. It uses an AMD 64 Athlon 2Ghz CPU, with 80G HD, 1G RAM, running Microsoft XP Home. Great little machine. Beautiful screen. Problem is that it would not connect to a Linksys wireless router. It would connect a Apple Express wireless router. Go figure. The second problem was that Microsoft SQL Express would not install either as a stand-alone or with Visual Studio 2005. The was the straw that broke the proverbial camels back. So I returned the computer and purchased an HP Pavilion zd8000 with a Pentium4 3Ghz CPU, 100G HD, and 2G RAM, running Microsoft XP Home. Experienced the same problems. So back it went. I am really disappointed cause the zd8000 is a beautiful machine.

Saturday, I stopped by CompUSA, to look at a laptops. Found a nice Compaq running Microsoft XP Home. It has a AMD 64 Athlon 1.6 Ghz CPU, with 60G HD, 512M RAM. It was connected to the internet so I downloaded SQL Express and .NET 2.0 redistribution kit, installed both, and found everything work. Now why did it work on the Compaq and not the HP. Now that HP owns Compaq you would not expect much difference. Verified that CompUSA had six in stock … just wanted to think about it first. Not sure but may go back and purchase it tomorrow. My only reservation is their return policy. They will not return your money only in store credit. Not a good policy. The first two I purchase from Sam’s Club which has a 6 month return policy. My plan is to contact HP and see what they have to say about my problems.

Bulletproof Web Design, Dan Cederholm. I completed the seventh book on XHTML and CSS. Again, I have not been disappointed. This book was excellent. Tabbed some 25 items for implementation on my next project. I highly recommend this book. The last chapter is really great. Here the author combines everything presented in the previous chapters into one big example. Working this last one really drove home all the presented material.

I tried to read The Mac Xcode 2 Book, by Michael and Dennis Cohen, and Andy Ihnatko the series author. But could not do it. The series of books on XHML and CSS were really well writen. This one is just a drag. Will give it a shot later.

• 1 lb navy beans (soak overnight and discard water)
• 6 cups chicken broth
• 1 chicken bouillon cube
• 2 tsp garlic powder
• 4 tsp cumin
• 2 tsp oregano
• 1/4 tsp cayenne (however much you like)
• 2 (7 oz) cans of chopped chiles
• 2 med onions, chopped
• 4 whole chicken breasts, (cook separately), cubed
• 2 cups sour cream
• 3 cups jack cheese, shredded

Combine first 9 ingrediets. Bring to boil and simmer for 3 hours. Before serving, add last 3 ingredients (keep hot but do not boil)

Serve with garnishments: olives, tomatoes, green onions, avocado, etc…

Yields 6-8 servings.

We tried Sarah’s recipe today and it was wonderful. Soup and Chili are my favorite winter foods. This is really a simple recipe that exudes a wonder aroma throughout the house.

I took the test and found that I was;

Elrond – A stern yet benevolent organizer who often knows best, your wits are keenly fixed on aiding efforts you deem worthy. Now at this last we must take a hard road, a road unforseen. There lies our hope, if hope it be. To walk into peril to Mordor. Elrond is a character in the Middle-Earth universe. TheOneRing.net has a short biography.

Web Designer’s Reference, Dan Cederholm. I completed the sixth book on XHTML and CSS. Once again, I have not been disappointed. This book was excellent. Tabbed some 60 items I plan on implementing on my next project. What really found useful are the appendices on XHTML and CSS. I highly recommend this book. It is well written, easy to follow and contains some really great examples. In addition, it serves as a great reference.

I am now reading Bulletproof Web Design, which is another book by Dan Cederholm. For a change of pace, I am also reading The Mac Xcode 2 Book, by Michael and Dennis Cohen, and Andy Ihnatko the series author. This book was purchase some weeks ago and am finally getting around to reading and working through the exercises. I really want to code for the Mac. In my work world, I code in C# ASP.NET and XHTML/CSS. Love that environment. But as a long time Mac enthusiast, I really want to code with Cocoa. Have this vision of creating something ??? just everyone wants to use. Thats my dream…