Wedding Dress Fitting & Mandy's 1st Shower
Pre-Wedding Waterski. It was cold and rainy. Special thanks to Jason and Terry.
Decorating Reception Hall, Rehearsal Dinner, & Rehearsal photos taken by Mandy's dad.
Wedding photos. A special thanks goes out to Mark McCarthy.
Wedding & Reception photos. A special thanks goes out to Shawn Wallenfelsz.
Don't forgot Pete's Wedding & Reception photos.
Chrissy's Wedding Preparation & Wedding photos.
Checkout Michael's Rehearsal & Wedding photos for a child's prospective.
Chris Hick's Wedding & Reception photos are now available.
Post-wedding and Opening Gifts
If you have any digital photos from the wedding or reception be sure to e-mail them to me! Thanks!
The professional photos are coming soon!
I have always used *.phtml file extensions for my php web applications. Today, my web hosting provider decided to no longer grant Apache execute permissions for web files ending in phtml. Consequently, all my websites were down while I investigated and determined this was the issue. To correct this problem I renamed all my *.phtml files to *.php following the steps below.
Backup everything.
Find extent of problem:
find -name *.php
Change *.phtml files to become *.php files within the current directory
for f in *.phtml; do mv ./"$f" "${f%phtml}php"; done
*I didn't trust my ability to do this globally.
Fix links in files
for arg in `find www/ -name "*.php"`; do perl -pi -e 's/phtml/php/g' $arg; done;
for arg in `find www/ -name "*.php3"`; do perl -pi -e 's/phtml/php/g' $arg; done;
*I have some legacy *.php3 files. I probably should clean this up.
Change *.phtml references in db to *.php
I think I only needed to update meta_page table
Please let me know if you notice anything that is still broken.
Pre-Wedding Waterski. It was cold and rainy. Special thanks to Jason and Terry.
Wedding photos. A special thanks goes out to Mark McCarthy.
Wedding & Reception photos. A special thanks goes out to Shawn Wallenfelsz.
Don't forgot Pete's Wedding & Reception photos.
If you have any digital photos from the wedding or reception be sure to e-mail them to me! Thanks!
We made a couple stops along the way to our cabin. We stopped at Boone Tavern, Colonel Sander’s Café, and Cumberland Falls. Boone Tavern wasn’t the place I thought it was. Cumberland Falls was nice, but I was hoping instead for the lookout at the top of 76 Falls (on Lake Cumberland). Colonel Sander’s Café was a great stop and we especially enjoyed the fried chicken since we seldom have it.
On Monday we arrived at our cabin which featured a terrific view. For dinner we ate at the Alamo and enjoyed a couple of steaks. Tuesday we went hiking in the Great Smokey Mountains on a strenuous path called Chimney Top which climbed 1700’. An exhausted Mandy whined a 20 oz. Aquafina out of some friendly hikers. The girl’s boyfriend accused her of just trying to lighten her backpack. Later, we drove along a beautiful river to Cade’s Cove and toured the 11 mile loop. We had Mexican food at No Way Jose’s in Gatlinburg for dinner.
Wednesday we went to Dollywood. Mandy faced her fears of roller coaster and rode everything in the park, including the Tennessee Tornado which featured three loops. For dinner we stopped at Carino’s and enjoyed their tasty Italian food. Thursday we drove over to Asheville, North Carolina to the Biltmore Estate. The Biltmore House is the largest house in America and exceeded my expectations. The Biltmore Estate tour ended at the winery with seven samples and some free snack tasting. I liked their Sauvignon Blanc which was dry and crisp. We enjoyed a 50’s carhop experience at A&W for dinner; their root beer truly makes the best float.
Friday was clear and sunny with minimal wind, a perfect day for a helicopter ride. We did the Gatlinburg / Mountain tour in Scenic Helicopter’s R44 (which is the copter Philip Greenspun is upgrading too). The view was terrific and Mandy enjoyed her first helicopter ride. We flew over Sevierville, Pigeon Forge, Gatlinburg, Splash County, Dollywood, and the edge of the Great Smokey Mountains National Park.
In the afternoon we stopped at Starbucks, hoping to utilize their high speed internet connection. They gave Mandy and I a choice of free breakfast snacks. I chose the 710 calorie apple fritter which rivaled the size of the donuts used in my eating challenge. Then we did some shopping at the Tangier Outlet Mall to work off some calories. For dinner we were in for a real treat at the Dixie Stampede. The show was awesome and reminded me a little of the Houston rodeo, but it was even better! The Dixie Stampede features a four course dinner that you eat with your hands. Our northern waiter gave me a small chicken wing instead of the usual whole chicken. After serving everyone else, he came back and gave me the rest of my chicken and another chicken for being a good sport. I used the doggie bag for the second chicken which made a great lunch the next day. It was my lucky day.
Saturday, Mandy and I walked around Gatlinburg and went to George Barris’ car museum. We saw TV, movie, and celebrity cars. Fortunately, photos were allowed and I took plenty. My favorites were Eleanor from “Gone in Sixty Seconds”, a General Lee from “The Dukes of Hazard”, KITT from “Knight Rider”, DeLorean from “Back to the Future”, and the TransAm from “Smokey and the Bandit”…
Monty Comments of the Nature of Hillary’s Energy Plan:
Hillary Clinton is a smart politician. $50 billion of alternative energy research money paid for by big oil plus ethanol use throughout the US to become energy independent. Any expert who is not associated with farming interests will tell you ethanol from corn is not a very effective way to decrease importation of oil. Ethanol from sugar cane is better but still not as good an alternative as many other possibilities. The big farm lobby will be very happy and deliver a lot of votes for Hillary.
The $50 billion will appeal to the little guy as a way to get even with big oil, thus generating even more votes for Hillary. It will also be a big government boondoggle that produces very poor results. No energy independence will result from this and the net effect will be lots of votes for Hillary. The net effect for US voters will be a lot of hopes but no real results.
Wedding & Reception photos. A special thanks goes out to Pete for being so fast in posting his photos.
Mandy and I are thankful that so many of our family and friends could be part of our special day. It was truly a miracle that my mom could attend and we are especially thankful for all the prayers.
Corn is an ineffective source of ethanol (since you burn more hydrocarbons producing it than you get out of it), while sugarcane is a very effective source of ethanol (since you get much more energy out of it than you put into it). Brazil has vastly reduced their dependence on foreign oil by growing sugarcane and processing it into ethanol.
Brazil could even help the U.S. lower its dependence on foreign oil. However, the U.S. currently taxes imported ethanol at the rate of 54 cents / gallon and via a 2.5% ad valorem tariff. Do you think that the import tax should be removed on ethanol (which is an environmentally friendly solution produced by a reliable friend)? Many people make the point that huge quantities of environmentally unfriendly oil shipped from unstable suppliers is brought daily into the U.S. tax free.
The other side of the coin is the argument that our farmers and their industry should be protected via tariffs. Farmers have and continue to make America great. Lifting the tariffs would subsidize Brazil's farmers and be an insult to America's farmers. Those pro-tariff would also argue there is no guarantee that savings would be passed from big oil companies to those pumping up.
Refiners are now using ethanol in place of MTBF when blending gasoline for U.S. transportation consumption ensuring there will be plenty of demand for ethanol. Removing the tariff would reduce the price of an important piece of the blending equation (both in dollar and environmental impact terms). This would also help alleviate pain and suffering at the pump, since gasoline is the most efficiently and competively price item in the U.S. What other consumer product is consistently priced on the street for you so you can comparison shop from the comfort of your own car? Savings would be passed on due to cut throat competition.
There is a nice article entitled "Download this music ... please!" in the Findlay Courier today about my friend Josh's approach to the music business. Frankly, I wish more people would subscribe to his music business model and put the evil Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) out of business. As more artists adopt this type of model the RIAA will become less and less relevant.
Josh releases his next CD at Coffee Amici (328 South Main, Findlay, OH) this coming Saturday (5/6/6) at 8:00pm via a live performance. I am sure that he will rock the house!
[Updated entry per comment on how to link long term article in Findlay Courier.]
I had a difficult time casting my primary votes this morning. First, the poll workers weren't sure how to switch my declared party, but they eventually found the form. I didn't really understand how this form correlated with switching parties since it was rather cryptic, but I trusted the poll workers. However, I was worried my vote wouldn't count after they thought they had to perform another step, but couldn't recall what it was.
Once we succeeded in getting past the paper work it was time for the poll worker to setup the Diebold voting machine. They scanned my voting card (which was shaped like a credit card) using a handheld device that looked like a VPN dongle on steroids. They hit the create button and it did its magic. However, when the poll worker inserted the card into the voting machine an error message resulted. It basically said that the voting card had been cleared and to remove it. The poll worker tried again and the same message resulted. The poll worker tried a third time and it worked. Please note that I did not touch anything during this process.
I voted and started to print the paper tally. The printer inside my voting machine sounded like an ancient dot matrix printer times ten. I guess I should have brought ear plugs with me. OSHA wouldn't have stood for this noise level in a refinery without hearing protection. I printed the second page and it continued to rock the room. Afterward, the poll workers told me that I was the second person to vote using that particular voting machine and that they too had problems. They had three more machines next to it, and I thought about asking them why they didn't have me use another machine. However, I didn't have much time since my voter experience took so long, so I left feeling uneasy.
I was happy that I could see a valid paper trail was printed that reflected my votes. However, I worry about extra votes that could be added to make my vote mute. BTW, I am not the only person that thinks Diebold voting machines are insecure and unreliable pieces of junk.
The U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation has created a short animation of the Texas City refinery accident. This animation is an excellent example of how far forensic science has come.
Hopefully, knowledge gained from this accident will help the industry avoid similar future accidents. My thoughts and prayers go out to the 15 workers killed and 170 injured.