Last Christmas Post of 2007

Check it out.... Cole & Lexi

http://www.elfyourself.com/?id=1606367223

Favorite Book Review

So who out there has an ipod? (mom I know you don't know what an ipod is.... it's an .mp3 payer that you listen to music on)...

Well.... Bill & I have realized that there is something better than music to listen to on the ipod..... audio books. Since there is nothing on TV ever we have been listening to audio books as we go to sleep and let me tell you it is great... I also love to listen to them when I am doing household chores... makes the time go much faster.

So here is my reccomendation for you if you still need to get yourself a Christmas present... http://www.audible.com/ and check out all of the audio books that are available. They will go on any type of .mp3 player as long as it has enough storage capacity.

I also wanted to reccomend to you readers out there - 2 of my alltime favorite books by Ken Follett...

If you don't want to take my word for it - ask Oprah - Pillars is her Oprah's book club pick of the month... http://www2.oprah.com/obc_classic/featbook/pote/obc_featbook_pote_main.jhtml

If anyone has read any great books lately that they couldn't put down - send me an email... I am looking for something that can top these 2 and I know it will be hard!

The Pillars of the Earth

&

World Without End

It's About Time....

I almost forgot to tell all of you about the BIG NEWS of the Christmas season.... Trevor & Cindi are engaged..... I haven't heard the details yet but in the words of my Grandpa... It's about time!!

Here's a great picture I took of the ring :-)

Merry Christmas to all

Christmas day...

Bill & I went to my parents house for Christmas with my family... we had a great time and as always ate way too much food.....

Santa found his way to 052 (Fulton) and brought some presents for Cole & Lexi... obviously they were good this year as you will see from the pictures of their presents...

Cole with his NEW Air Hockey Table!

Lexi with her NEW Pink John Deere Tractor and Wagon

The big hit of the evening was a deer hunting game that Cole got which hooks up to the TV and there is a shotgun that you use to "shoot" the deer. At one point a bear "attacked" Cole and he was a little scared and threw the gun to Bill who finished off the bear right before he ate Cole...

Everyone had to try their hand at the shooting game and there was plenty of free advice from everyoen... it was a complete riot.

Christmas Eve Bruch & Presents

Christmas Eve morning Bill & I were up early baking, cooking and shopping in preparation for Christmas with Lyz, Jarrod, Rilley, Lilly, Kevin & Angela.... the food was great, wish I would have taken a picture of the yummy hashbrown quiche - if you want the recipe send me an email and I will share it... GREAT!

After all the food, we realized Santa had found our house a day early and Rilley and Lilly got some toys and presents to play with....

Somehow Angela guessed that one of her presents was Belvadier Vodka before she even opened it... OK Vodka maybe but BELVADIER???? How she guessed that we do not know... but we are a little worried.

Lyz and Jarrod got Bill a much needed boot warmer and me a beautiful sweater. Kevin & Angela got us accessories for our Wii so there is no way we can back out now... Wii bowling league here we come!

Christmas was cancelled... but was it?

This Sunday was the Peck Family Christmas in Hastings.. however just as I was getting out the bowl to mix up some yummy Cheesy Potatoes and Artichoke Dip...... the phone rings and I find out that Christmas has been cancelled due to all the snow....

Well... we couldn't just cancel Christmas - it seemed wrong so Bill & I braved the elements, (finished up Christmas shopping while we were out) and bought a ham and some other fixin's so we could throw together a last minute Peck Christmas with Lyz & Rilley & Lilly & Angela & Kevin - Unfortunatly Jarrod had to plow snow - but we sent him home some treats for when he gets home...

The food was great Rilley LOVED the ham... he wanted to eat all of Aunt Angela's in fact I am not sure she even got any food... hmm.....

Trinity and Rilley are now best friends for life. We finished up a great night by watching the new movie Superbad and laughing at Rilley playing with Trinity and falling down every few minutes (that kid falls all the time)....

Riley & Trinity looking for presents under the tree

Trinity's Westie Cut

Before Picture

For those of you who did not know - Bill & I got another dog about 1 year ago. Her name is Trinity and she is a West Highland White Terrier. Well, last night we decided to get her a "Westie" Hair Cut. Here are the results...

The picture really doesn't do it justice because she wouldn't hold still for us to take her picture... but she is really cute and looks like a totally different dog....

Professor Peck's Security Blog - Part 1

I can't remember if I told everyone - but I was recently hired by Davenport University to teach Information Security classes. I know I know you are all saying - but you are not a teacher. Correct! However, it turns out that at the college level you can teach classes if you have a Masters Degree in that field. Therefore, I can only teach Information Assurance classes.

My first class starts in January and it is called Information Warfare. Yes you did read that correctly.... I know a little bit daunting - but I am excited. So my plan is to start a security blog. I am going to make it on a different page than the regular blog one of these days, but for now.... here is my security blog.... part 1.

********************************************************************

I HATE the fact that Internet Explorer and Firefox ask you if you want to save your password... because by default everyone is going to say YES... the problem is you really don't know what you are saying yes to. The prompt should say - hey dummy do you want to save your password in a file that anyone can access and read? The problem is - it doesn't say that... it says hey I can help you out and make things easier for you if you just click this button which is selected by default and if you accidently click enter or ok then that works too.

Ok enough of the rant.... here are the straight facts.

Internet Explorer prompts you to save passwords when you go to a website that requires credentials. The problem is those passwords are easily discovered …. A better option is to use a program called KeePass (or similar) to keep your passwords safe. It has an auto complete option and it stores the passwords in an encrypted file that cannot be broken into without knowledge of the password you use to protect it. I have been using keepass for over a year now and it works great – give it a try I think you will like it….

If you are interested, you can read more about the IE & Firefox password issue here….

http://www.labnol.org/software/browsers/view-stored-password-firefox-internet-explorer/1906/

Oh – and 1 more tip – if you are really paranoid – make your password longer than 15 characters… this makes it extremely difficult to crack no matter what the complexity.

Scrapbook Festival

Quite a few month's ago - Kim & I decided it would be a great idea to make our wedding scrapbooks. I had put this project off for quite some time as I was not too excited of scrapbooking pictures with Lisa in them :-) but anyway - we got started and it went well... then Kim started school, I was busy with work and other fun stuff and we negelected to work on them.... so - we resolved to have a Scrapbookapalloza and finish them in 1 weekend......

The results looked something like this...

Just one table of our tools....

We also talked our friend Jess into coming over to make a scrapbook of her niece as a Christmas present for her sister. She hadn't done much scrapbooking in the past and was highly amused at all of our tools and misc items - as well as our serious scrappin attitudes....

I think that Jess is hiding from the picture - obviously that didn't work out - but here is a sample of all of our junk. It looks pretty organized at this point... unfortunatly it didn't stay that way.

We stayed up until around 4:30 a.m. on Friday night when we decided we couldn't cut or scrap another page!

The next day we got up bright and early and went to Kim's favorite store - Walmart to pick up some pictures and some more scrapbooking materials.... then we started in for another day of fun.... we stayed up till around 12:30 a.m. when we finally claimed victory and finished our scrapbooking projects. Kim & I still need to do a little journaling - but Jess totally finished hers and we were able to throw away about 3 garbage bags full of leftover wedding stuff that I was keeping for the sole purpose of adding them to the scrapbook.....

Wheewww it was a long weekned but very productive and my dining room now is back to normal.

The Great Chili Cookoff

So @ work this year we had the 2nd annual chili cook off. Last year it was over at the Medical Division and Bill & I made a chicken chili at the last minute the night before - and we won the golden ladle award for the best chili.

So of course our competitive spirit forced us to give it a try again this year.... we made another chicken chili - but it had way too much chicken in it - it was still good though and it won the Chili's Close Cousin award.

The chili cook off was great fun - I think we had at least 30 chili's and of course tons of side dishes.... trying to taste all of the chili's to vote was the hard part. Luckily Instruments retained the Golden Crock pot award - we are the champions for 2 years so we better look out next year because Medical is already talking up their chances for taking our crock pot :-)

I also brought in a bear chili - kind of as a joke and surprisingly lots of people tried it and many people really liked it. I heard a few comments like (I don't know who brought in that bear chili but it is the best one!) So I guess Bill will have to go shoot another Bear next year so we can try to retain our crown...

Thanksgiving 2 & Lyz B-Day

Lilly & Rilley in their Christmas Clothes

So - on December 1st we celebrated Thanksgiving and Lyz' B-Day with Lyz & Jarrod & Rilley & Lilly & Kevin & Angela. We had a blast and once again ate until we could not move. The 2 different pies and cheesecake were a little over the top.... so was the artichoke dip and yummy bread that we filled up on before we actually ate :-)

If you have never grilled your turkey, I reccomend trying it. That is the way we do it - because we don't have room in the oven for everything. Wrap it in aluminum foil and grill it for about 6 -8 hours. IT is delicious... lucky for us we had lots of leftovers because we also made a Bear Roast that was a hit....

Thanksgiving

Hey all,

Hope you are enjoying the holiday season, I know it has been a busy one at the Peck house. I am just getting around to posting about Thanksgiving :-) On Thxgiving Day we visited my parents house and ate until we were too full to move, then Bill & I took Cole hunting in the Chicken Coop Shack.

For those of you who don't know, the Chicken Coop Shack is a actual chicken coop that Cindi and I built for Trevor's Chickens, however- the chickens refused to live in it and therefore died. And thus the chicken coop was renovated into a great hunting shack - complete with some very fancy swiveling office chairs (I will post some pics next time I go there so you can all be envious)

So - No Deer on Thxgiving - but Cole had fun imagining that there were 30 point bucks everywhere he looked.

Opening Day of Deer Season

Well... another opening day has come and gone.... we had fun but didn't really get a lot of deer. Trevor got a nice 8 pt. *I will post a picture later*

Other than that - we all surrounded the remaining 20 acres of corn while they picked and waited for the deer to come out. My dad got a nice Doe and we knew that there was a huge buck in there so everyone was excited and we were all cheering the combine to hurry up... but alas as the last 6 rows were picked - it turned out the deer had tricked us and snuck out when my dad was shooting the doe. So Mr. Big Moe gets to live another day.

The best news is all the corn has been picked and farming is almost done for the year!! Yeah!

St. Louis

I am visiting St. Louis this week to set up a company that we recently purchased. I have to say that I like St. Louis much more than I like New Jersey - but so far the visit to St. Louis has not been totally successful.

The server that holds most of the data does not want to turn on (THIS IS BAD!!) so we are having fun with that while trying to convert all of their other stuff and get them up and running... what a mess....

Anyway - I will be back in Kalamazoo at the end of the week and am looking forward to taking a break from my travelling for a bit.

Hope all is well with all of you.... see you soon.

Detroit Marathon - The Results are IN....

It was a cold morning on October 21st as we stood in a line longer than the one for the new rollercoaster at Cedar Point... what were we waiting for you ask - to use the porta potty of course it was the morning before the race..... the bad news is Kim didn't quite make it to the front of the line before the 7:15 start.... Bad planning on our part.

Of course we also stayed up all night celebrating Jess' birthday on the Murder Mystery Train ride that we went on - it was a great time... but we were all a little sleepy the next morning fo the race...

Anyway - the day warmed up quickly for those running the full and half marathons and the first leg of the relay... but for us Relayers who had to wait - it was a little chilly.

The race was amazing - there were 16,108 runners and it was a great day...

Here are the results....

Marathoners

Ann Maltby - 3:43:27

Gualberto Claros - 4:23:26

Phil Amsterburg - 4:31:41

Phil got the award for best tie-dyed shirt!

1/2 Marathoners

Jenny Maltby - 2:08:59

Cindi Hunter - 1:54:27

Relay Teams

Maltby Marathoners 5:36:41

Maltby's - This one didn't have a time in the resulsts but they beat the Maltby Marathoners by quite a few minutes....

New Jersey

Just a little tip I learned this week that I thought I would share with all of you....

NEVER NEVER NEVER visit New Jersey...

I had to go to good old NJ to hook up a company that Stryker bought - let me just tell you I have driven in Chicago and Detroit and I would take either of those at rush hour over NJ any day

The driving is crazy here - there are like 6 lanes and people drive with their windows down so they can scream at eachother... nothing like driving in Fulton where we leave the windows down so we can chat about the crops and the weather

Nothing against the friendly people of New Jersey... but I really hope to never visit again (or if I do I hope to be able to afford a driver :-)

The Countdown Begins

Well,

I will have to say that the countdown begins... T - 4 days until the big marathon.... I am actually only running a little over 5 miles which I am happy about because I have not been training for any more than that. But Kim's husband Phil and Kim's sister Ann are running the ENTIRE 26.2 miles and I say good luck to them (I also secretly think they have lost their minds) but anyway - here is a picture of a banner that Phil's soccer team made him for the run... I think it is cool so I thought I would share it with you. Good luck to all the runners of the Detroit Marathon on Sunday!

Breast Cancer Walk

Saturday was the Making Strides Against Breast Cancer walk....

The weather was not as bad as predicted and it did not snow (unlike last year)

We all had a good time and over 2500 people showed up to support the cause.

I would have to say Tula was the hit of the walk as people were stopping and taking pictures and petting her the entire time! Who can blame them :-)

Making Strides Against Breast Cancer

Hey all,

It is October - which means it is time for the annual Making Strides Against Breast Cancer. Kim & I are team captains at Stryker and WE NEED YOU! We need walkers for the walk which is this Friday the 13th in downtown Kalamazoo (I think it starts at 8:00 a.m.)

So please come out and walk with us - it will be fun! Also if you wish to donate to the cause - I can help you with that.

In addition to donantions - we are also having a Pampered Chef Party where 15% of the party goes to the MSABC cause. If you wish to purchase anything just go to this link and purchase the items - they will be shipped to me @ Stryker and I will deliver them to you.

http://www.pamperedchef.biz/masnari?page=host-search-results&showId=1271046

In addition we are also selling Pampered Chef “Help Whip Cancer” kits that include a knife, measuring cup and spatula – these are great as a gift or for yourself and they only cost $20.00 (the best part is $10.00 from each one goes straight to our MSABC fund).

Let me know if you are interested.

Running & Other Fun

Hey all,

I know I haven't posted in awhile - have been really busy working with Bill & doing other fun stuff.

Opening season of bow hunting has come and gone and it has been way too hot to do much hunting - Bill & I went a few times - but nothing much was happening. Probably will get better now that it is cooling off.

On October 21st Kim, Jess & I (and some of Kim's family) are running a marathon as a relay race... it will be fun... this weekend Kim & I convinced Jess to go running with us in Fulton - I don't think she was very happy with us - but I think she might talk to us again after the marathon :-)

My favorite niece and nephew are doing great - Cole is in 1st grade and loves it - he even rides the bus home sometimes and he has Linda Crotser (my old bus driver) as his driver!!! Lexi is learning more and more words and loves the kittens at my parents house - she likes to chase them and catch them - then she throws them down and chases them some more - she calls them kee-kee.

Hope all is well with you and your families - talk to you soon

Lyz & Jarrod

NEWS FLASH!





Lyz and Jarrod decided to tie the knot at the spur of the moment! Congratulations to them. Here are some photos of Lyz, Jarrod, Rilley - Greg and Cathy Peck and Bill & I when we took them out to dinner to celebrate.




http://picasaweb.google.com/PeckontheWebGallery/Celebrate2007?authkey=ak6wdDPwbwg

Back in Business

Well,

Haven't posted in awhile - my laptop that I use every day for work decided to have a fit on me one day - it took forever for me to rebuild it and get all my tools back on - I finally have it totally back to new - so here I am adding photo's and blogging once again. A lot has been happening since I was here last - we had Erica's bridal shower - I still need to post the photos. Then we had Lyz and Jarrod get married ... CONGRATULATIONS TO THEM! Rilley had his first birthday - still need pictures of that to post - and of course Bill went on his first ever bear hunt in Canada (more about that later). Never a dull moment at the Peck house that is for sure.

Manuals....

Seriously - there should be a law that when someone writes a manual - like for software or something - they have to speak English (if they are writing the English version)

Today I have 2 giant manuals to read about 2 totally different things - but I would swear that they were written by the same person who does not have English as their first language...

It reminds me of the Wizard of Oz when the scarecrow tells Dorothy to go "this way" and points in both directions - that is what the manuals do - there is one diagram that basically just points in every direction and just says - "do this" which is like saying we have no idea what we are talking about but if we put in a bunch of nice graphics with arrows - it will at least look good!

Not that I would want to write manuals for a living but come on... why?

Well - here's to hoping that you aren't sitting at work right now trying to read a manual that makes no sense! :-)

Finally.... Rain

Well,
It finally rained - I don't know how much Fulton got but in Schoolcraft we had over 2". I heard that Three Rivers got 5" not sure if that is true. I wonder if the rain will kill the Spider Mites? My dad has spider mites on his beans - they are gross little spider like bugs that kill th beans. Here's a picture of them and a description from the Internet.

Spider mites are common plant pests. Symptoms of injury include flecking, discoloration (bronzing) and scorching of leaves. Injury can lead to leaf loss and even plant death.
Natural enemies include small lady beetles, predatory mites, minute pirate bugs, big-eyed bugs and predatory thrips. One reason that spider mites become a problem is insecticides that kill their natural predators. Irrigation and moisture management can be important cultural controls for spider mites.

So hopefully the rain killed them or washed them away or something.... because otherwise we might have to call the press (about 10 years ago my dad was on the news talking about the Spider Mites - they were bad that year).

Looks like we will be able to move trees again - Bill is happy - have to do it quick though - he is going bear hunting at the end of the month.

Obelisk's

One thing I have been wanting to show you is the latest Obelisk that Bill & I made - we have made a few of these - they are yard decorations... anyway there is a store in Mattewan that sells pond supplies and equipment (think fish ponds for your yard) they wanted Bill to put some there to sell so we made one and took it over there... Here is a picture of it.

It looks wet because it wasn't totally dry when we took the picture. The cool thing though is Bill had a great idea and we are going to make more of them - but they will be even bettter (can't tell you what we are going to do yet - it is top secret) but once one is done then I will post a picture and show you.

Gramps Birthday

Friday night - we went over to Aunt Maude's house (Sandy) to celebrate my Grandpa's 86th birthday. I hope when I am 86 I can still do all the things he does - he still farms with my dad (long 8 - 10 hour days sometimes) and he still goes to Florida in the winter...

So - the amazing thing about this birthday party was looking around at all the kids we now have in our family. I remember for the longest time when we got together with my dad's side of the family - Trevor and I were the only kids - then for quite some time there were no kids....

Now look at all the kids - it was hilarious - they were all over the place playing with the basket of tractors and mowers and trucks. Even Lexi would go over to the basket and grab a toy and then 2 minutes later she would drop that one and grab a different one.

Little Sophie is the newest member of the family and her and Lexi hit it off (except when Lexi stole her toy - she is used to playing a little rough with Cole I guess)

Bill is still trying to get Lexi to say "Bill" although so far she is ignoring him - she can say plenty of words - I think she knows how much Bill wants her to say it - so she refuses... but when Cindi told lexi to go hug "papa" she ran over to my dad.... he is so proud of his grandaughter.

The picture of Lexi with the cake is from Bill trying to bribe her to say "Bill" with yummy yummy cake and frosting.

oh no NOT that BUTTON

Well,

I would love to tell you that things are going great at Stryker - which for the most part I guess they are... but I am learning that when you work in a job where you have lots of responsibility over the equipment that keeps the business running - you also have a lot of visibility when you make a mistake. (also known as don't make mistakes)

I remember when I decided to play soccer, Mr. Poveda used to say that the offense could make mistakes, the midfielders could make mistakes, the defense really shouldn't make mistakes and the goalie (Traci) was not allowed any mistakes.

Should've gotten used to it because that's exactly what it is like at work. Last week on Friday I was celebrating a great week after I fixed a problem that had really been bothering us. Then a contractor called and needed an address for a piece of equipment he was going to add to our network.

Let me digress a little - the backbone of a network is a bunch of switches, (shown in the picture above) these switches are what all the computers, phones and equipment plug into to get connections to the network. The switches are very important as they contain the configuration for the network and tell the computers and other things how to get the information they need so the computers work. We probably have 40 or so of these switches in the 4 buildings I am responsible for.

Ok so back to the contractor - he needs an address... well, on the front of one of these switches there is a button - the button is labeled MODE

You can see the MODE button on the left hand side it is small and black... anyway the little words above the button are status lights - for example when you have multiple switches connected together you push that button and it tells you which switch is switch #1 switch #2 etc. So I asked the contractor to push the button and tell me which switch he was plugging his equipment into. As far as I knew at that point that is the only thing that button could do.

SO - he pressed the button, except he held it down instead of pushing and letting go and he deleted the entire configuration that was stored in the switch. Of course no one even our CISCO contractor knew that button was capable of that! SO.. needless to say, I spend the entire day Friday reconfiguring the switch while everyone in that entire building stood around because they could no longer work.... this was not my idea of fun and no one was impressed... I had to fill out a report explaining what happened... under root cause of the problem I put Traci asked the contractor to push a button. Everyone loved that - under resolution - NO MORE BUTTON PUSHING!

So anyway - live and learn - but my new resolve is to go back to the good old days of playing soccer goalie - no mistakes no mistakes - please don't kick the ball at me - no mistakes no mistakes...

Keepin Up With the Blogging

So,

I haven't actually been keeping up with the blogging - I know everyone is shocked!!! I am going to try to do better... I do have a few funny stories to tell all of you though!

A few weeks ago, Bill & I woke up to find out our big dog Neo was gone... now for those of you who haven't met Neo - his picture is on the front page but I am not sure it does him justice. He is all of 130 pounds and he is black and usually pretty furry which makes him a little intimidating to people who have not met him.

Well I went looking for him and it didn't take long before a farmer comes zooming buy on his 4-wheeler... so I flagged him down and asked him if he had noticed a big black dog roaming around.

He had - he was working on the detasseling crew that was working in the field by my house and Neo the wonderdog had been detasseling with the kids since 5:00 a.m. He followed them through the entire field - and even took a ride on the machines with them. When I finally found him he was so exhausted he was sleeping in the shade by the bus. Everyone loved him and I am hoping he gets his paycheck soon.

Lilly is Here

For all of you who haven't heard - Lillian Rose Briggs is here. She was born on July 2nd and weighed in at 7.6oz and 20". Here's a picture of her on her birthday a few hours after she was born. (I know its not a very good picture - waiting to get better ones from Lyz)

She is doing great and so is the rest of the family - however Lyz tells us that Lilly is teaching Rilley to scream... uh oh... I guess that is what little sisters are for.

Welcome to Peck on the Web

I hate blogs....

I know - not really the way you expect this to start.... but it is true. Maybe it is becuase at school we had discussion after discussion about the security woes of places like myspace. Or maybe because I just haven't ever really tried a blog....

Regardless... my friend Kim recently started a blog and I thought it was pretty cool - so I decided maybe this could be ok... because it just takes too long to go through the hundred + emails I have and even though I think I will email my friends and see what they are up to... the bottom line is most of my emails these days consist of about 1 line that states... things are good - too busy to talk ... more later.

So welcome to www.peckontheweb.com This will be Traci & Bill's online scrapbook... we will try to keep it up... I am sure Bill will be happy to post pictures of his hunting exploits (he is going bear hunting next month with our neighbor Joel)

I am just learning about this website building stuff (YES there are computer things I actually dont' know much about...) so you will see changes and things should get better.

For now... enjoy!

Traci