|
|
|
|
|
If you have problems viewing the videos, you
may be missing the appropriate codec - click here to get the latest Microsoft DirectX video driver. |
|
2007-01-15
My friend Paul and I went to the North American International Auto Show today. Lots of cars to see and according to the offical NAIAS site, there are over 700 cars from nearly 100 exhibitors viewed by over 700,000 people.
2007-01-01
Seren is now 13 months old and since most December pics and videos are from our Florida Christmas trip, this preview index page is pretty empty as this, 1.9 minute video clip (75MB), is all I have for December that is not related to our Florida Christmas trip.
2006-12-28
Tampa Airport had a really nice indoor playground and so I helped Seren slide down and then helped her climb up. So then she mentally connected those two actions into a new learned activity - she has learned how to slide without help (47 second video clip, 33MB).
2006-12-27
We saw lots of birds and some other animals (1.7 minute video clip, 69MB) in Sarasota, at the small theme park called Jungle Gardens.
2006-12-25
Seren had her second Christmas at her grandparent's (June and Arthur) house in Florida. 3 minute video clip, 126MB.
2006-12-23
We took a short trip to the Venice jetty - (59 second video clip, 42MB) to look around and I also collected several clips into one video from our stay (1.8 minute video clip, 78MB).
2006-12-22
We had a very busy day, starting with breakfast, then Santa (53 second video clip, 36MB) , and finally, the beach.
Seren really enjoyed the beach until she got it from a big wave (1.7 minute video clip, 70MB).
2006-12-21
We went to Vanessa's parents in Venice, Florida for a week long trip over Christmas. Since the weather was good, we went to the club house pool to play around in the water (1.5 minute video clip, 66MB).
2006-07-29
Finally, after turning 8 months old, Seren is now actively crawling! So one of the first places she crawls to, is our eating table next to the kitchen.
We now also have to watch out for her trying to get the dog's water and food bowls. Also, the kitchen cabinets and outlets are now baby safe.
2006-07-27
Off to the waterpark!
I took a day off from work and so we took everyone to the Red Oaks waterpark in Madison Heights, MI
Seren did not like the wave pool at all, even though she likes normal swimming pools.
2006-07-26
Today, Elizabeth got her ears pierced at claire's in Novi, MI.
2006-07-25
Vanessa and Fran took Elizabeth and Carlene horseback riding at Maybury Riding Stable in Maybury State Park, located in Northville, MI.
2006-07-24
Elizabeth, a friend of the family, came to Michigan to spend some time with relatives and us.
Here, Elizabeth has met up again with the neighborhood girls, Carlene and Lisa, that she got to know last year when she visited us.
Elizabeth is also helping out around the house, since Vanessa is spending a lot of time on activities for Elizabeth and her friends in our neighborhood.
2006-07-21
Vanessa had hand surgery for carpal tunnel syndrome and so her parents, June and Arthur, came to help out with the baby.
Here are some more pics of Seren at 7 months, just before she turns 8 months on July 23.
2006-07-09
Finally I had the free time, the weather, and the recent car wash to allow some good pictures to be taken of the brand new, never used until I got it, one year old, 2005 Crossfire convertible, that I am leasing for the good six months of the year (April 2006 - October 2006).
2006-07-08
When taking breaks from the house projects, my parents played with the baby.
2006-07-06
My parents, Wendell and Sandy, stayed with us for a week after the baptism working on house projects like staining the fence and routing one of the gutter downspouts into the lawn instead of floating the mulch away, over the sidewalk.
2006-07-02
Seren, now 7 months old, was baptized today at our church, First United Methodist Church of Northville. My parents, Wendell and Sandy, came in from Las Vegas and some of our local friends, Mary and Gil, were also able to make it to the service.
2006-06-19
I fixed Vanessa's ten year old Image treadmill (from Icon Health and Fitness) by replacing the motor control board with the large heat sink (repair part cost $220).
Vanessa bought this huge, just refurbished, treadmill from Ebay for ~$450 about 2.5 years ago, and it worked great when used for the first six months, then sat unused until now, and suddenly it didn't work.
2006-06-02
Seren had her first zoo trip today when we went to the Detroit Zoo today. Look close at some of the Prairie Dog photos and you will see Seren and me acting like Prairie Dogs by popping our heads up out of the hill. We also saw a wolverine and 3 bear cats in addition to the standard lions, tigers, rhinos, etc. I did shoot 9 very short videos with the digital camera - including some noisy lions demanding their dinner at the end of the day!
The pictures of the seals are from the recently new exhibit "Arctic Ring of Life" that has the unusual underwater glass tunnel that resulted in these photos of the seals above us!
2006-05-29
I went with friend Paul to see my co-worker's (John Dorset's) car club Classic Legends of Brighton, MI put on a big sized car show (for a small family club) that filled the Brighton High School parking lot with a couple hundred cars.
2006-05-28
We saw a different kind of DSO Symphony today - the program was not very accessible to the average person. However, Thomas Wilkins did a great job in his introductory talk on the selection and give some background and relevance to it.
Music Program:Neeme Järvi, Conductor
- Concerto for Orchestra - Béla Bartóck
2006-05-23
Smile! Seren is 6 months old today. She is now starting to be able to hold her bottle to feed herself.
2006-05-21
Went to my fifth DSO Symphony. The special guest musicians were the Canadian Brass and they played fun Pop, Jazz, and Classical pieces.
Music Program:Thomas Wilkins, Conductor
- "Buckaroo Holiday" from Rodeo - Aaron Copland
- American Western Folk songs - Rayburn Wright
- Selections from Lohengrin - Wagner
- "Beale Street Blues" - W.C. Handy
- Gershwin Melody - Gershwin
- Classical Duke - Luther Henderson
- "St. Louis Blues" - Christopher Dedrick
2006-05-13
Baby feet from Seren!
Baby faces from Seren!
2006-04-23
We saw a different kind of DSO Symphony today - it was actually part of the pops season, as there were "CIRQUE: POPULAIRE" acrobatic performers every other music selection.
Music Program - I have only listed my favorite 3 of the 11 short selections:Robert Moody, Conductor
- "Flight of the Bumblebee" from The Tale of Tsar Saltan - Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov
- "Bacchanale" from Samson and Delilah - Camille Saint-Saëns
- Third Suite from Gayane No. 5 "Sabre Dance" - Aram Khachaturian
Also, Seren is 5 months old today.
2006-04-22
Spent half of Saturday at Penguicon 4.0 in Northville, MI. This is the annual Detroit area Linux and Sci-Fi conference. As usual, my co-worker Mike Foster was also there.
I attended one of Frank Hayes' (one of Computerworld's Senior News Columnist) Linux/Open Source discussions and ended up buying one of his CD's: Never Set the Cat on Fire after also attending his Filk concert. I also saw the Slashdot guys (Cmdr Taco - Rob Malda) there as usual. Finally, I saw Chris DiBona's (Google's Open Source Program Director) Science/Tech presentation (it included the Goggle "Earth" version of the planet Mars using NASA images - Goggle Mars ).
2006-04-21
I just upgraded to BrightHouse Networks' newest high speed internet service 10 / 1 Mbps. That's 10,000 Kbps download, 1,000 Kbps upload - equivalent to 178x dial-up for download and 28x dial-up for upload!
Zoom!
Zoom!!
Zoom!!!
It seems that most speed test sites (see my speed test links) have trouble testing above 6 Mbps download:http://speedtest.mi.charter.com TCP/Web100 Network Diagnostic Tool v5.2.1e DO NOT USE YOUR CONNECTION WHILE TEST IS RUNNING click START to begin Preparing Speedtest . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Done running 10s outbound test (upload) . . . . . 973.46Kb/s running 10s inbound test (download) . . . . . . 6.85Mb/s Your speed is 124.67 times faster than 56Kb dialup Your PC is connected to a Cable/DSL modem click START to re-testThis might be due to many hops away from me - like 17+ hops:C:\>tracert speedtest.mi.charter.com Tracing route to speedtest.mi.charter.com [24.247.24.50] over a maximum of 30 hops: 1 <10 ms <10 ms <10 ms cpe-24-210-96-120.twmi.res.rr.com [24.210.96.120] 2 16 ms 15 ms <10 ms 10.68.64.1 3 15 ms <10 ms 16 ms gig3-1.lvnami1-rtr1.twmi.rr.com [24.169.224.33] 4 16 ms <10 ms 16 ms pos0-2.lvnami1-rtr2.twmi.rr.com [24.169.225.78] 5 16 ms 15 ms 16 ms son1-0-0.mtgmoh1-rtr0.columbus.rr.com [65.25.128.153] 6 16 ms 31 ms 15 ms pop1-cin-P3-0.atdn.net [66.185.133.9] 7 16 ms 15 ms 16 ms bb1-cin-P0-0.atdn.net [66.185.133.0] 8 47 ms 203 ms 203 ms bb1-chi-P3-0.atdn.net [66.185.153.50] 9 32 ms 15 ms 32 ms pop2-chi-P0-0.atdn.net [66.185.148.65] 10 32 ms 15 ms 31 ms ATT.atdn.net [66.185.132.98] 11 32 ms 31 ms 31 ms tbr2-p014001.cgcil.ip.att.net [12.123.6.70] 12 32 ms 31 ms 47 ms tbr2-cl18.dtrmi.ip.att.net [12.122.10.133] 13 31 ms 31 ms 31 ms gar3-p390.dtrmi.ip.att.net [12.123.139.58] 14 47 ms 31 ms 31 ms 12.118.112.22 15 31 ms 47 ms 31 ms 24-247-60-61.static.aldl.mi.charter.com [24.247.60.61] 16 47 ms 46 ms 32 ms 66-227-153-161.static.bycy.mi.charter.com [66.227.153.161] 17 * * * Request timed out.But my cable company, BrightHouse Networks , has a speed test server much closer - just 5 hops away (makes sense that they would be the closest):C:\>tracert michigan.mybrighthouse.com Tracing route to michigan.mybrighthouse.com [24.169.224.98] over a maximum of 30 hops: 1 31 ms <10 ms <10 ms cpe-24-210-96-120.twmi.res.rr.com [24.210.96.120] 2 15 ms <10 ms 16 ms 10.68.64.1 3 15 ms <10 ms 16 ms gig3-1.lvnami1-rtr1.twmi.rr.com [24.169.224.33] 4 16 ms 15 ms <10 ms gig5-0.fmhlmi1-rtr1.twmi.rr.com [24.169.224.130] 5 15 ms 16 ms 15 ms speedtest.twmi.rr.com [24.169.224.98] Trace complete.Since my cable company seems to be providing the most accurate (generous?) speed tests for me now that I am over 6 Mbps download speed - I was wondering if they rigged their test server to give artificially high speed results.
From large downloads of software from third party sites, I have seen that my download speed does indeed get up to the 10/1 Mbps service level I am paying for.
Thanks, BrightHouse, for the fastest Consumer Internet speeds available to my area!
2006-04-20
Some of Vanessa's friends have been over to spend time with Seren over the last couple of weeks.
2006-04-18
April has been a busy month for out of town family coming in to visit.
2006-04-16
Seren has been all set for Easter for the last 2 months.
Today, Vanessa held an Easter egg hunt at our house for our friends and neighbors.
2006-04-10
Look at me and my new sunglasses for the long daily doggy walk!
And who is that in the mirror under the red doggy? Look closely!
2006-03-23
Seren is 4 months old today. Here are 5+ pics of her in her "Bumbo" baby seat.
Seren is getting quite talkative with her gurgles, noises, and other baby talk!
2006-03-18
Lots of interaction between Seren and Kevin has resulted in a wet baby drool spots on Kevin's shirt.
Seren has more new toys.
2006-03-05
Went to my third DSO Symphony. Sir Roger Norrington gave casual footnotes before and between selections to explain the background of the pieces.
Music Program:Sir Roger Norrington, Conductor
- Symphony No. 104, "London" - Haydn
- Symphony No. 5 - Beethoven
2006-03-04
Vanessa took Seren down to Florida for 1.5 weeks for a warm weather getaway and to visit with her parents. For the first time, Seren tried out the pool and a baby bouncer. Here (RIGHT) is a 38 second video clip (9.5 MB) of her in the bouncer.
2006-02-26
Seren is now three months old and has some new toys. She is also showing happy faces quite a bit now and her daytime behavior is back up to normal happiness levels.
2006-02-19
Today was our first day as new members of the First United Methodist Church of Northville. Even though Seren was not happy for the picture at church, she was happy going to church.
2006-02-18
It's playtime with baby!
2006-02-09
For Vanessa's birthday, we went out to dinner at Nikola's in Southfield for some BBQ ribs. This was the first time Seren cried while we were eating out - we have been eating out about every other week!
Earlier in the week, Vanessa got a gift of a baby outfit for her stuffed cow.
2006-02-05
HERE! YOUR TURN TO TAKE HER!
Seren is sleeping much better at night and usually wakes up once for a feeding. However, she is making up for her better night time behavior by being worse during the day. She has become very demanding: Hold me or I'll cry until you do!!! As you can see, it's been getting to us.
2006-02-04
I finished editing a very short (LEFT) 4 second video clip (0.8 MB) of Seren sneezing from when she was still in the hospital and just 3 days old.
Here is the longer version (RIGHT), a 4 scene, 66 second video clip (11 MB), from the same original video footage.
2006-01-16
Here I did some house wiring to add another phone/TV/ethernet outlet to the living room for the desk, computer, and fax. This also shows the way I cut over the entire house phone wiring from the outside phone company to VOIP inside next to the cable modem: house wired to phone company and then house wired to VOIP.
2006-01-14
Everybody holds the baby during Denise's Birthday party dinner.
Seren gets some early cooking instructions from Jen!
2006-01-09
All finished decorating baby Seren's room.
2006-01-06
New portraits for the new year!
2005-12-25
Time for the Christmas pictures! Seren has a close encounter with Reisa.
2005-12-24
My sister and parents came up for Christmas and helped with the baby chores too.
2005-12-15
Vanessa's parents really helped out a lot between Thanksgiving and Christmas - taking care of house chores and baby chores!
As you can see, with 3 adults to take turns caring for Seren, it wasn't work all the time!
2005-11-30
Everybody comes over to see and hold the baby!
2005-11-23
It's a baby girl! Seren Lilly Snyder (55 pics and 4 short video clips spread across 2 preview pages) was born at 11:52 PM today!
Seren weighs 7 pounds, 8 ounces, and is 21.25 inches long.
Seren is a Welsh name and means star.
2005-09-18
Went to my second DSO Symphony. This was the season opener event with Itzhak Perlman (Biographies: Wikipedia, Kennedy Center ) as the conductor and the violin soloist.
Music Program:Itzhak Perlman, Conductor
- Violin Concerto in E - Bach
- Méditation from Thaïs - Massenet
- Overture to La forza del destino - Verdi
- Symphony No. 9, "From the New World" - Dvorák
2005-09-10
Annual Snyder picnic - BBQ - open house with Kevin's co-workers.
Note to self: The weekend after Labor Day worked out great this year, just like last year.
Today it got up around 82°F. We had 25 people total - this was a much easier and more fun than last year with about 60 people.
2005-08-21
Recovering from yesterday's 16 hour return drive home from a 1 week vacation on Lake Vermilion (2 hours from Vermilion to Duluth, MN and 14 more hours to Detroit, MI).
We did some water skiing and cabin projects like stove replacement, adding sand to freshen up the beach, and tree removal.
I am half way up the tree and not having a good time due to the height needed for control rope attachment to take the tree down in the right spot to avoid hitting the nearby power lines!
2005-07-28
Today I took Kevin and Vanessa to the Melting Pot which is a fondue restaurant in Troy, MI. Here is a 25 second video clip (5.9 MB) showing our chocolate fondue dessert with our dippings on the side.
-Elizabeth E.
2005-07-23
Calling all insomniacs! I have a need for testing and finding dead or broken links on my web site - there are over 96,000 links that need to be checked.
Or maybe I should just find some free tool to do the checking ...
2005-07-15
Today we had an ultrasound (20 weeks) and found out the baby is a girl!
Here is a 5.5 minute video clip (40 MB, no audio - about 4 hours via dialup, or about 3 minutes via broadband) of the baby - head, spine, bones, abdomen, beating heart, arms, legs, fingers, toes, gender, and a bit of the baby moving about.
2005-07-09
Once upon a time, there was a SPC Schwarz stationed with the Army in the Balkans. SPC Schwarz was either very clever or very bored; but probably both, since he managed to attempt or be warned about 213 things he wasn't allowed to do. Read all 213 Things Skippy Is No Longer Allowed To Do In The U.S. Army.Some of my favorites (click the link above to read the original source, all 213 things)
-Kevin2. My proper military title is "Specialist Schwarz" not "Princess Anastasia".
23. Must never ask anyone who outranks me if they've been smoking crack.
24. Must not tell any officer that I am smarter than they are, especially if it's true.
31. Not allowed to let sock puppets take responsibility for any of my actions.
32. Not allowed to let sock puppets take command of my post.
33. Not allowed to chew gum at formation, unless I brought enough for everybody.
34. (Next day) Not allowed to chew gum at formation even if I *did* bring enough for everybody.
37. Our medic is called “Sgt Larwasa”, not “Dr. Feelgood”.
38. Our supply Sgt is “Sgt Watkins” not “Sugar Daddy”.
39. Not allowed to ask for the day off due to religious purposes, on the basis that the world is going to end, more than once.
44. I am not the atheist chaplain.
56. An order to “Make my Boots black and shiny” does not involve electrical tape.
68. I may not line my helmet with tin foil to “Block out the space mind control lasers”.
77. The MP checkpoint is not an Imperial Stormtrooper roadblock, so I should not tell them "You don't need to see my identification, these are not the droids you are looking for."
80. Not allowed to wear a dress to any army functions.
81. May not bring a drag queen to the battalion formal dance.
88. Must not refer to 1st Sgt as “Mom”.
89. Must not refer to the Commander as “Dad”.
91. I am not authorized to initiate Jihad.
102. Rodents are not entitled to burial with full military honors, even if they are "casualties of war".
187. Must not taunt officers in the throes of nicotine withdrawal, with cigarettes.
194. Shouldn't take incriminating photos of my chain of command.
195. Shouldn't use Photoshop ® to create incriminating photos of my chain of command.
201. Must not valiantly push officers onto hand grenades to save the squad.
2005-06-26
Vanessa worked a flight to Anchorage and Jen tagged along for a fun 3 day trip (Jen wasn't working the flight).
2005-06-19
Some short action videos of both Sidnee and Reisa chasing then treeing a squirrel and Sidnee doing her puppy calisthenics.
2 squirrel chase video clips (FAR LEFT and NEAR LEFT) 27 sec (8.1 MB), 36 sec (9.8 MB) and 1 puppy calisthenics video clip (FAR RIGHT) 14 sec (4.0 MB). You can see Reisa really going for it to climb up the tree to get the squirrel - jumping and also trying to use her teeth to try to assist in clawing her way up the tree.
2005-06-09
Annual Snyder picnic - BBQ - open house with Vanessa's co-workers.
Note to self: June, July, and August are very hot, in fact too hot for a backyard picnic - BBQ without lots of tree shade! We could do summer picnics at the old house in Redford because of the neighbor's big maple tree shading our backyard.
See? People mostly stayed inside because it was so hot (OK, it was almost a record high at 90°F today, about 10°F above normal), but from now on, we are going to have our picnics sooner than this or much later, like early September.
2005-06-04
I finally got around to taking some pictures of my 1991 Mustang LX 5.0 hatchback fun ride and recording the engine/exhaust sounds.
Here (ABOVE LEFT) is a 58 second mp3 audio clip (1.3 MB) of me starting it up and getting ready for a little drive (what a wonderful sounding idle through the Flowmaster mufflers!).
2005-05-30
2005-05-28
I'm cleaning up broken links, redesigning the site including the photo album, and adding a few hundred more pics into the album - completing the second phase of the photo album.
Remaining on the to do list, is the third and final phase, our Eastern European Honeymoon pics (about 400 pics). Longer weekends would be helpful!
2005-04-23
Went to my first DSO Symphony. The inside of Detroit's Orchestra Hall is very, very "old-world" ornate (pic#1, pic#2, virtual tour). Nice close seats without having to pay for premium box seats or dress circle seats. Finlandia is a favorite of mine and the Violin Soloist put on quite a show.
Music Program:Neeme Järvi, Conductor, Nikolaj Znaider, Violin Soloist
- Finlandia, Op. 26 - Jean Sibelius
- Violin Concerto No. 2 in G minor, Op. 63 - Sergei Prokofiev
- Symphony No. 5 in B minor - Eduard Tubin
2005-04-22
Spent most of my weekend at Penguicon 3.0 in Northville, MI. This is the annual Detroit area Linux and Sci-Fi conference.
Mike Foster was also here - he got a room and really spent the entire weekend here.
I am currently using Ubuntu for my desktop installs, ClarkConnect Home for my internet appliance server (it is an easy web config to setup a box serving web, ftp, email, firewall, VPN, etc.), DSL (Damn Small Linux) for headless compute nodes, and I occasionally browse DistroWatch to see what is gaining and losing popularity and research linux distros that I haven't tried yet.
2005-03-07
I just got hired into the Chrysler Group of DaimlerChrysler as an employee which included a promotion to management from staff after almost 5 years working there as a contractor.
I still am working in IT for machine monitoring of manufacturing and assembly production machinery for improved throughput and reduced down time.
2005-02-22
I just leased a new Dodge Grand Caravan with the new Stow'n'Go (view small flash demo video - 0.4 MB ) fold flat seating of the second and third row seats - very, very handy!
2004-12-27
After Christmas, while still in Venice, FL, we went north to Busch Gardens in Tampa. A highlight of the park was feeding the birds in the aviary.
Here (ABOVE RIGHT) is a 20 second video clip (6.3 MB) of Kevin feeding a tropical bird some sweet nectar from a little plastic cup with Nancy trying out her Christmas present, a new digital camera, in movie mode.
Kevin and Sandy were giving Nancy lots of unsolicited (?helpful?) filming advice! ;-)
2004-12-25
Spent the Christmas holidays with Vanessa's parents, June and Arthur Lowe, in Venice, FL.
My parents, Wendell and Sandy, with my sister, Nancy, rented a condo for a week nearby and joined us for several of the days at the Lowe's house.
2004-11-27
Wendell implemented the idea we had for Reisa to "ring a bell" when she wanted to be let in. Normally she jumps up and paws/scratches the bay window and siding - sometimes with muddy paws.
This doggy/doggie doorbell made from a normal doorbell (wireless), a hinge, and some wood has worked out very well and Reisa is pretty good about using it (~97% of the time). Here (ABOVE) is a 9 second video clip (2.7 MB) of Reisa in action, ringing to be let in.
2004-11-25
After the Snyder Thanksgiving Dinner in Livonia - Vanessa, Sandy, Wendell, Nancy, and Kevin
2004-11-02
Vanessa and I both did.
2004-10-08
Big push right now to complete my latest home page (this is home page #3) and first time I am paying for hosting, $10/month from HostItNow and plan includes 6 GB disk space, 60 GB monthly bandwidth, nearly unlimited extras (emails, subdomains, SQL DB's) on a linux box. Home page #2 was hosted for free (many annoying banner ads) on Tripod. Home page #1 was hosted by me on one of my PC's back when I had DSL (416K download, 416K upload) back in 2001.
2004-09-25
Finished the FTP uploading of the photo album first phase of 792 pictures (485 MB). Started the uploading a week ago and did 1-3 hours of FTP uploading every day for the week (modest 384K upload speed with cable modem and all those thousands of files). Uhhhg!
2004-09-19
Working on organizing about a third of my pics and building the first phase of my online photo album with the free JavaBean software application called JAlbum.
2004-09-15
downloads of Firefox 1.x so far! Firefox has been my preferred web browser since around version 0.8/0.9.
This counter is automatically updated on page load from an RSS feed and some coding over at firefoxtutor.com
2004-09-11
We held our annual summer picnic/open house. I stayed too busy at the grill and forgot to take some breaks for picture taking.
2004-09-05
I won the weekend use of the department pool vehicle - a new Dodge Magnum - so we drove it down to Clarksville, TN to help my sister, Nancy, finish unpacking into her new apartment over the Labor Day weekend. The Omni bookshelf (RIGHT).
2004-07-11
Just got back from our 3 week vacation in Asia - Vietnam, Thailand, and a pit stop in Vancouver on our return trip to visit Vanessa's parents June and Arthur Lowe who were renting an apartment there for 2 months to escape the Florida summer.
A co-worker friend, Dan Ho and his wife Michelle, invited us to join their vacation in Vietnam and Thailand. Since Vanessa is a flight attendant, we could cut the cost of the vacation by about 40% by nearly eliminating the cost of the airfare due to her employee discount.
2004-06-19
Finished landscaping around our new stamped concrete patio by Gary Watts.
2004-06-06
The Snyder brothers and their families all came to Bel Air, MD for Oma's memorial service held in Lancaster, PA.
2004-04-11
Picture time after Easter brunch.
2004-03-24
Sampled great beer (and weird beer!) at the annual Winterfest Beer Tasting event at Schoolcraft College. Over 80 beers to taste during the 2 hour time limited event on a weeknight. Sponsored by the Gourmet Culinary Arts Club at the college and also a local gourmet food store chain Merchant's Fine Wine.
2004-02-03
New cedar fence for back yard has been completed by Nichols Fence of Redford, MI.
OK, so I took the pictures later - in the spring - do you know how cold it is in Detroit during January & February???
2003-12-28
The rest of our Christmas visit at my parents included a Snyder-Groff family reunion in Lancaster, PA and an annual Snyder family portrait.
2003-12-22
We drove to my parents in Bel Air, MD for a long Christmas visit and we took a 2 day excursion to visit many of the sites of Washington, DC.
2001-05-02
I just got a cable modem with RoadRunner as my ISP. I am finally back on broadband after the months ago demise of my DSL provider! My broadband stopped when NorthPoint Networks went bankrupt - during their slow demise, I got transferred from ISP to another: Phoenix Networks, MegaPath, and finally Travelocity! I started on broadband around the time I registered my first domain name on 1/6/2001. My DSL Experience of rhte first few months - Actually Decent! Needing speed, because I was no longer able to tolerate bloated web pages on a modem dialup, I needed to order broadband. With no cable modem service in my are yet, I ordered 200Kbps SDSL from PhoenixDSL last year with Northpoint as the carrier. I had wanted 416Kbps because 2Wire.com had estimated my distance from Ameritech's CO to be borderline or just outside of 786Kbps reach. But, they would not put 416Kbps into the 1 year contract I signed, they would only put 200Kbps because they were not sure they would be able to get me 416Kbps. Ok, so they were being conservative to keep from disappointing customers at install. One month after faxing the signed contract order, Ameritech came out and installed a new line from the pole to my house and replaced old phone junction box on my house's exterior. I felt lucky that Ameritech came out after only one month because Ameritech has been in the news a lot last year because of very poor phone service response times. They were having record high amounts of new phone line installations and repairs and not enough technicians to do the work in a timely manner even with tons of paid overtime. After the Ameritech Technician installed the new line, he checked its integrity back to their CO. Success for my new line! I have now passed the biggest milestone for DSL installation. So many people have made postings describing how many tries it has taken to get to this point. I am very pleased that Ameritech was able to make it right the first time and I only had to wait one month for the new line. Two weeks later my Copper Mountain DSL modem arrived via UPS and then ten days later Phoenix emailed to schedule an install date for five days later.
I made the appointment for 10/13/2000 at 10am - 12pm and what do you know? The Northpoint Technician shows up on time and we are able to synch up at the higher 416Kbps speed! Yes!!! We did try the 786Kbps to see how lucky I might get. Unforetunately, stability was an issue, so I was not really lucky - just lucky. So far the connection has very decent and about every other month there seems to be some problems with Phoenix's DNS servers on the weekend for about 8 hours, so during those times I was unable to surf.
Now comes the interesting part, Phoenix ran out of money, so MegaPath bought Phoenix. MegaPath was only interested in the higher profit business DSL customers of Phoenix. So us residential customers were cut off from phone tech support and only had email tech support. So how did they think I was going to email them with my DSL internet connection down? Modem dialup now that I am used to high speed? Those bastards! I'm glad I never needed tech support! So MegaPath's newly acquired residential customers know what we are worth to MegaPath and we only have to put up with this until MegaPath finds a buyer for us undesireables. I could always switch to a different DSL company, but since MegaPath now owns our contracts, I would have to pay the early cancellation penalty. After two months MegaPath agrees to sell us residential customers to Telocity. So maybe things will settle down? No way! Now my carrier, Northpoint, is out of money and looking for a buyer! The only good news in all of this is that my DSL service has not been interrupted or gone downhill! Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you - for I cannot stand modem dailup connectivity for the internet! Here it is - on 3/6/2001 - Northpoint announces structured sale (whole company or broken up parts up for bids?) and that several undisclosed bids have been received. Will my DSL connection stay up? Stay tuned ... Telocity cut my DSL over (from my Phoenix IP to Telocity IP) on 3/16/2001. Previously, they sent me an email saying to sign in to their web site and check my migration date and so when I did this their web stie said my date is: . Oh well, at least I was notified of impending outage for web surfing and hosting my web site. When I transistioned my PC from Phoenix IP and Copper Mountain modem to Telocity IP and their proprietary gateway, the conversion wasn't too bad (they only left out 1 step in their instructions for WinNT OS, which I happened to discover when I read the Unix/Linux OS steps).
| Animated graphics provided by Animation Factory. |