Luke’s Notebook

Well, today a bunch of us big guys spent a lot of time — at least what we could afford, breaking away from depo work, video work, etc. — out in the driveway, working on the new drainage system. After testing them, we installed all three of the corrugated pipes in the ditch, we installed the three drains, and we shoveled in dirt and rock, packing everything in tightly.

Now as it stands, everything is finished except for we left about four or six inches of the ditch open, because we are going to try to get a truckload of rock dumped sometime soon. Once we get that on our driveway, we should be good to go.

Incidentally, it’s raining outside as I type. I came home from the YMCA a few minutes ago, and the rain was coming down pretty heavily. Tonight may well be the first test of our new drainage system. We should know in a few hours, as we’ll see whether or not water starts puddling up in our driveway.

As I mentioned, I went to the Y this evening. I met up with Paul and our pal Steve. I did a little bit of everything today — bench pressing, to some calf work, to a couple of tricep exercises, to 20 minutes on an elliptical machine. It was a good workout.

I just realized that it’s spring! I’m used to spring rolling in on the 21st, but I suppose it just couldn’t wait this year. :winky: That’s all right; I love spring. As soon as it warms up a good 20 or 30 degrees (it’s 43 at the moment), the spring rains will be very welcome — so long as they don’t fall on a Monday, Tuesday, or Thursday, which is when we’ll be playing softball, starting April 10th.

How about that? FamTeam is back. For those of you unaware, the site had been down since Saturday morning, and it just finally came back up nearly 24 hours after the server crashed.

For a little bit, it appeared as though our MySQL database may have become corrupted, which would not have been a good thing seeing as all of the message board information, all of the FamTeam blogs, and a lot of other information is stored in the database.

Amazingly, the database returned this morning, and the site seems to be back to its pre-crash state. Thank God! Just another example of how our amazing God cares for us, His children, and how He provides in very practical ways. So it is great to have FamTeam back, and I wasted little time in backing up some very important table from the database.

Anyway, Saturday had a very different flavor than most recent days. In the morning, Jude and I went out to our driveway, where we were working on a little project. See, our neighbors from across the street are on a hill, and whenever we get a big rainfall, dirt, water, and rocks from their driveway wash down into ours, resulting in our driveway flooding.

So Dad came up with the idea of creating a better drainage system in the front of the driveway. What we’re doing is digging a ditch along the front of the driveway, and we plan to install three drains, each connected to a four-inch plastic tube that will drain into our swale. The idea here is so that the drains will catch the bulk of the water before it even gets a chance to really reach our driveway.

We worked for a couple of hours with a pickaxe and a few shovels, and later on in the day we were joined by Dad and John. Towards the end of the day, we finally had a successful test run, where we laid down a pipe, poured water into the start of it, and we watched it drain out of the end and into the swale. Tomorrow, we’ll probably install the three drains, lay the pipes, and fill in the driveway. As it stands now, it looks like we’re fashioning a moat or something. It doesn’t make our place look too inviting.

In the evening, Mom and most of the chubs (James on down) went over to a family party, and that left Dad and the five oldest at home. We decided to hang around at home, and we watched some college basketball together while eating popcorn and ice cream.

Later on in the evening, we decided to play some old video games. We brought up the Sega Genesis and the Nintendo 64, and we played classics such as General Chaos and Mario Kart 64. The older guys don’t really get a chance to play much anymore, so it was kind of fun to sit in the living room and play these games.

It’s well into Sunday now. I’m going to see what I can do over the next several hours before it’s time to take off for volleyball.

I went to three YMCAs today. In the morning, Paul, Jude, and I went to the Columbia Y, where we played basketball and did some working out in the exercise room. In the evening, we went over to the east Belleville YMCA to meet up with Josh Agne, a former neighbor of ours. We hadn’t seen him since his family moved away some eight years ago, but we used to hang out a lot, playing everything from street hockey and football, to basketball, to baseball.

Anyway, we were going to shoot some hoops at the east Belleville YMCA, but the basketball gym was shut down because they had family night going on. We decided to head on over to the downtown Y to play basketball, and we finally managed to get in a couple of games. So that was pretty neat. I don’t think I had ever visited three YMCAs before in one day.

Hey, does anybody want to play volleyball? I need to find three subs for a game on Sunday. Who feels like travelling?

Today, I did some more work with the Cardinal Country show, tweaking the website some more and also videotaping another segment for the show. It was a beautiful day, so even though I had to spend most of it indoors, I had one of the windows up here open so I was able to enjoy the nice weather.

A couple of exciting things — one, I stopped by Office Depot today and bought a 128-megabyte USB flash drive. It was a great deal — $15.06 with a $10 mail-in rebate. I had been thinking about buying one for a little while, and I saw that they had this nice sale going on, so I figured it’d be smart to pick one up. It should be handy.

This evening, I watched some sports. The NCAA tournament began today, and I saw pieces of a lot of games. I watched a good portion of the Air Force/Illinois matchup, a game Illinois eventually won. I also watched USA lose to Mexico in the second round of the World Baseball Classic. The Stars and Stripes are now eliminated. Kind of an early exit for them!

Also, I watched some of the Sharks/Blues game tonight, where the Blues ultimately lost 5-2. However, they are without regular goalie Curtis Sanford, who is out for the rest of the year with an injury. Backup Patrick Lalime hasn’t had much playing time, and I just don’t think he’s as good as Sanford — at least he hasn’t been playing that way this season.

Tomorrow morning, a few of us are hoping to go to the YMCA. It should be fun!

I’m very tired. The past several nights I’ve been kind of short on sleep, and I think it’s finally catching up with me. So with that, I’m going to make this short.

This afternoon, Paul, Jude, and I met up at the downtown Belleville YMCA in order to play basketball. I also managed to run a good six or seven laps on the track. I’m trying to get ready for the upcoming softball season.

I also played volleyball once again as a sub. This time, we lost the first two games but ended up winning the third one. Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like I’ll be able to fill in for this team anymore due to conflicting times. I really like to play volleyball whenever I get the chance. Maybe some other opportunities will pop up.

Now, to sleep.

Okay, now just a real quick recap of this day. That is, if I can make it quick, because I’ve got so much to share.

Well, early in the morning, Paul and I left for South St. Louis County, where we visited a facilitiy that specializes in treating back pain. They are sponsoring a portion of Cardinal Country, and we went there to chat with some of the doctors, to talk with patients, get testimonials — things like that.

Later on in the day, the two of us went over to Belleville to film yet another segment. I think that might be it for this week’s episode of Cardinal Country. We might officially be in post-production now.

Another thing that happened today was a bunch of us gathered around my computer here in the attic, and we finally came up with a final logo for the new show. I had been messing around in Adobe Illustrator for quite some time, playing with different ideas, and we finally found one we liked, one that would fit the show well, and we eventually decided on the winning design!

Once the logo was completed, I figured I would strike while the iron was hot and start to design business cards for Cardinal Country. After many different proofs and running it by a bunch of the other guys, I finally came up with a version that we were all very happy with. So we should be able to use that to get a bunch of business cards printed up soon, and then we can hand them out to anyone and everyone in order to promote the show.

I want to give an update — a huge praise report — on my computer. Well, as you all were well aware of, I was having some serious issues yesterday with my computer, particularly as it related to network and Internet activities. Well, the problems continued into today, and I was completely stumped. I tried Safe Mode, I tried using a different browser, I tried restoring TCP/IP settings, I tried to undo the registry changes I made.

Nothing worked. Well, finally I got the idea to try using my onboard network adapter, which had been disabled for the past couple of weeks since it stopped working. I had been using a USB network adapter since then, and it had been working fine.

So I enable the built-in network adapter, and after a few seconds I see the little icon in the system tray indicating that I was connected and that there was network activity. That’s pretty great in and of itself, as I was being forced to use the USB adapter recently. But wait, it gets much better. As soon as I started trying to access the network or the Internet, things worked beautifully! Everything was snappy, websites would come right up, and there were absolutely no problems. Yes, God is awesome.

Strangely, Illustrator seems to be working better as well. I still have a mild problem with it freezing briefly when I copy and paste objects. What really had me puzzled was I thought somehow the Internet problem was connected with the Illustrator problem, which just made no sense to me. I can live with Illustrator the way things are now. I could even reinstall the program, but I think I’ll just let things be for now.

I’m just thrilled to have the Internet problem resolved. As a bonus, I now have another available USB 2.0 port. My motherboard only has two of those, so they are very valuable to me. I think I’ll either break down and buy a USB 2.0 hub or buy a new motherboard. I’d like to do the latter, but that costs more dollars than the former. We’ll see.

One last thing to mention in this “brief” entry. Today, I received Passion’s “One Day Live” CD. I ordered it online last week, and it came in the mail today. I really like it. It’s my fourth Passion CD, and I have just fallen in love with every one so far. Their style of worship is just something that I really, really like.

We’ve heard the story of the Gospel so many times, how this man named Jesus was crucified so that we could go to heaven and have our sins forgiven. Let’s just slow down enough to really think about this. I just stumbled across this in Isaiah:

Isaiah 53:5-6

But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the LORD hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.

What really grabs me is I know that I can rephrase that and have it read, “But he was wounded for Luke’s transgressions, he was bruised for Luke’s iniquities…” Plug your name in there. I don’t know about you, but I’m just kind of speechless after realizing that. Not only was innocent blood shed for me, it was God’s own son that He willfully gave as a sacrifice for me, so that I might have a second chance.

I… have spent the past several minutes trying to find a direction to go from here. What I’m coming up with is that, after realizing how great God’s love is, how amazing His mercy is, I think it’s pretty much impossible to not be overwhelmed with thankfulness. If you’re not feeling that, you might want to examine yourself. What does the Gospel to mean? Why do you think Jesus died? Who is your king?

Me, I’m pretty much overwhelmed. I know I seem to write things along this line from time to time, but the truth is I’m still amazed. That we have such a loving God, such a merciful God, such a good God — who cares for you and me, individually — it’s just incredible.

Oh, nice going, Luke. While fiddling with the Windows XP registry in attempt to tweak the network performance of my desktop computer, something went awry, and now my computer is acting very strange. For one, network/Internet activities are very… unreliable, I guess, is a good way to put it. A website might take two seconds to load, or it may not load at all. Additionally, since my nice little tweak there, Adobe Illustrator has been acting up, and freezes up when copying and pasting. So it’s really strange.

These problems aren’t terrible, and I’ve certainly faced much worse problems, but these are weird. I can’t seem to find a rhyme or reason behind what caused this. I mean, it’s likely that the registry edits I made caused this, but I guess I’m trying to figure out why that is.

The situation is actually much better than it was earlier. Initially, after I submitted those registry changes, Windows wouldn’t even load. Yes, I’m just that good. I would get a “STOP” error, which is like XP’s version of the oh-so-familiar Blue Screen Of Death in Windows 95/98. I reinstalled Windows XP (doing a repair, not a fresh install), and that enabled me to get back into Windows, but with the problems that I mentioned.

So… I just gave the command to run SFC (System File Checker), and I suppose there’s a chance it will find a corrupted file and replace it. If that doesn’t do the trick, I may be looking at yet another hard drive format and reinstallation of Windows. I hope not! Please keep this situation in your prayers, if you would. As I’m sure you know, it’s a pain to have to back up all of your data, format a drive, reinstall an operating system, and then reload everything back.

This morning, Dad, Paul, and I left for downtown St. Louis in order to record some segments for Cardinal Country. The two of them stood on the sidewalk in front of the entrance to the new Busch Stadium, and they chatted a while. It went really well! The stadium is looking great.

After church, we went to Cici’s for lunch. Mom and Dad joined the six oldest as we all drove over there. I love it when Mom and Dad are able to go out with us. We always have so much great stuff to talk about — from different things going on with the family, with different businesses, and just lots of laughing. We had a great time, as always.

It was a gorgeous day, so in the afternoon a bunch of us went out to the front yard and the street (seeing as the grass was still soggy from Saturday’s storms) and tossed the softball around. Our softball season begins four weeks from Monday, so we should be practicing pretty often in order to get primed and ready for the opener. Jude and I spent part of the practice just hurling the softball as far as we could. I like to do these long tosses whenever I can because they really help enable me to throw longer and harder. We were probably about 200 feet away from each other at some point, so we were really airing it out.

Later in the afternoon, a bunch of us — Mom and then Mark on down to Caleb (you do the math) — played a card game called “Blitz.” It was the first time I had ever played it. It was pretty fun! After that, I went to the back yard, where five-year-old Peter was jumping on the trampoline. I decided to join him and challenged him to a fight on the trampoline. Even though he weighs about one-fourth of what I do, he mysteriously won each and every time we battled.

Finally, I played volleyball over in Belleville. We were able to win all three games, so that was nice.

That concludes this very eventful, yet very fun, Sunday. I look forward to facing this new week, too. There are a lot of exciting things going on work-wise.

I must quickly update!

Yesterday consisted of mostly work on an EUO. In the evening, however, Paul and I drove to the Moscow Mills area — a good half-hour or so downtown St. Louis — where we covered a scrimmage that the RiverCity Rage and the Kansas City T-Bones were having. They’re both members of the National Indoor Football League, which, I understand, is similar to the Arena Football League.

We’re doing a segment on the RiverCity Rage for our “Cardinal Country” show, so we drove out there to the practice facility in order to get some footage of the scrimmage, and we also had a chance to interview one of the owners of the club. It was neat@

By the way, it had been sloppy and gloppy all day. We had quite a bit of rain, and it was raining pretty hard during our drive out to the practice. So as we were driving home, we got word from Dad that there were tornado warnings east of us, which is where we were going to be heading to get back home. So we decided to stop somewhere on the way home to grab a bite to eat. Our initial thought was Pizza Street, since we actually passed that on the way out, but they were closed when we got there. Oh, the tears that we shed. After that, we decided on Fazoli’s. But guess what? Closed. We finally found a White Castle and settled on that.

I have to run now because Dad, Paul, and I are going to head over to the new Busch Stadium in order to tape some more segments of Cardinal Country. It’s not raining at the moment, and I hope it holds off for a little while.