Corridor 9

Hi All!
Just wanted to say that we made it here safetly.
Details to come when we get home!

I think the title says it all.

I love you Kristie.

I used my last day of freedom as wisely as I could. Being as how I am stuck at work for my last day of freedom, I’ve decided that I may need to stock up on lost sleep that will result from my marriage tomorrow. I plan on sleeping like a baby as long as I can in order to properly and adequately use my last peaceful day.

UPDATE” I’ve also added a weather box to the bottom of the sidebar. I’m not sure if it will stay there, I may setup a vote to keep it or trash it.

Lets all take a little time to thank God for the mercy we have been given, the grace we have been shown, and the peace we need in todays day and age.

Thank you Jesus for your sacrifice!

Frankly, I’m getting real upset with some of the people in America who keep trying to take God out of everything. We have atheists who don’t even believe in God getting so upset about the Pledge of Allegiance having the phrase “one nation under God”, others who want to take “In God we trust” off our money, and a constant battle raging over the separation of church and state in an effort to keep Christ our of our schools. Don’t people realize that this country was founded in an attempt to spread Christianity. I’m tired of people trying to take Jesus out of everything, especially Christmas. It’s time to stand up and fight.

Have a look at this article about Target stores banning the phrase “Merry Christmas” in favor of “Happy Holidays”. They aren’t the only ones either! K-Mart, Sears, Costco, Wal-Mart, and Kohl’s are among some of the others who are starting this practice.

It’s time we took a stand! Please sign the petition included in the above article. If our job as Christians is to spread the gospel and teachings of Jesus, shouldn’t we take 30 seconds out to sign a petition saying we want to give Christmas back to CHRIST!

I have convinced Kristie to post a copy of her wish list here simply cause I can’t remember anything she wants. This will allow me to pick and choose what I’m going to get her, without her knowing, and without me having to ask what she wants all the time.

Kristie’s wish list is constantly updating, so check back often.

Well… its 3:20 in the morning and I’m still not done. I think I’m going to head to bed and let this continue through the night. So far I’ve succeeded in upgrading the Apache (webserver), MySQL (database) , and PHP ( hypertext preprocessor). This is the core of Corridor9 and it seems to be working fairly well. I’ve got a bit more to do in the morning including; creating a backup of the entire system, rebooting to make sure mother can recover in the event of a power failure, and reconfiguring the config files from packages that complete tonight.

I’m hoping not to go down tomorrow, but hope is all I can do seeing as how I wasn’t planning on being offline for 12+ hours today.

UPDATE: Still working on this at 2:30 in the afternoon. Is going well.. am in the final phase of backing the sustem up.

I think I’ve finally fixed my upgrade problems. I’ve been wanting to complete this upgrade for months to close a security flaw, but unfortunately I haven’t been able to figure out the exact configuration until today. I think I may have finally found it though. I completed the primary upgrade this morning around 10 am, and am in the middle of the secondary upgrade as we speak. All seems to be going well thus far, and I can only hope this round goes as easily as it should.

Some questions have been posed on the naming conventions I use for my computers. Back when computers were first being networked, it was much easier to give the specific computers a “name” rather than a numerical identifier. Some of the first names came from popular “geek” tv culture and include Lary, Moe, & Curly; Tom, Dick & Harry; and pupular names from such movies as Star Wars and Star Trek. I’ve chosen to use characters from my favorite Movie quadrilogy. I used to have Mother, Father, Bishop, Ripley, and Newt. Unfortunately, due to some of the computers dying, and others being parted out or sold off completely, I am down to Mother and Father now.

Now you know…

I’ve put off a major upgrade to mother for a few months now due to a problem with the Apache web server program that I need to deal with. Apparently the configuration of the Apache program has changed greatly and an upgrade completely breaks the web server. My goal is to upgrade this package over the next few days, hopefully creating a more stable server. Unfortunately, this means that Corricor9 will be down for at least a few hours. A worst case scenerio includes Corridor9 being down for 2-3 days with a complete reinstall of the base OS being necesary. HOPEFULLY this won’t be the case, but its something that must be planned for. I’ll start working on this project Monday morning, so don’t be surprised if you can’t read your favorite blog for a few hours or even days.

Peace.

Yesterday was quite a productive day. I finished cleaning up the old house for the most part, and only have a few more items to move out to the new house. I’ll need to get a trailer though as a good portion of the stuff is from a storage shed, and I don’t really want to transport that kind of stuff in my jeep.

Kristie & I went to Wal-Mart yesterday and pretty well stocked up on food and household items. It was the first time we went together and bought a good majority of food for the house. It’s starting to feel more like a home now, and will definitely be better in a week after we finally get married.

I’m doing better as far as my sickness is concerned. I spent a good portion of the day today in bed hoping to sleep off most of the symptoms. I’m not feeling the aches and pains I was yesterday, but my head is still stopped up and I can feel the pressure behind my eyes. I’m hoping this passes after a few more days. I would hate to get married sounding like I do now.

How about a little something to make you think?

A couple of months ago, during one of Pastor Mike’s services, he mentioned that when Satan tries to get you down he’ll first hit your finances, then he’ll go after your health. A few days ago you’ll remember I posted about the transmission in the Bonneville going out. Well, it turns out the transmission is going to need to be replaced. Kristie and I both have problems worrying about things that we can’t fix so we talked and prayed to God that he take our worries away and fix the problems as he saw fit. I told her about what pastor mike said and told her to we better be ready to get sick cause we’re not going to let something so petty as our little financial problems ruffle us in this matter. Its amazing how calm and at peace we’ve both been even though we are down to one car, and finances are real tight due to the wedding and Christmas season coming up. I’m sure if Gods hand wasn’t in this situation we’d both have given ourselves ulcers already.

Sure enough though, Pastor Mike was right. I woke up last night around 1:00 am with that familiar feeling of drainage in the back of my sinuses, and a throat that was throbbing with pain. I tried to get back to sleep but awoke a few hours later realizing that I was in this for the long haul. I got up at about 3:30 am and decided I’d better go to Wal-Mart to get some cold medicine. I guess its strange, but I can only thank God that I’m sick. If I’m following Gods will, and thus upsetting Satan, I must be doing exactly what God wants me to.

All praises be to God.

MadisonvilleTornado/img_4537.jpgMadisonvilleTornado/img_4536.jpgMadisonvilleTornado/img_4557.jpg
Things are finally settling down in Madisonville today as life resumes after last Tuesday’s twister roared through the area. After taking a good portion of yesterday to survey the area, we can all realize exactly how blessed we are. Thankfully the twister hit at just the right time of day and in just the right area of town to so that the destructive force was limited to property instead of human lives. There was significant damage to properties, but fortunately there were significantly less injuries reported than if the twister had hit just one-half mile north. Thank God for the mercy he has shown in this time of turmoil. Cleanup will resume today as residents of the affected areas try to salvage what personal belongings they can in an attempt to restore their lives back to normal.

Madisonville, Earlington, and Grapevine were among the hardest hit areas in western Kentucky during the tornado yesterday around 4 pm. I was on shift at Madisonville Fire Department at the time and witnessed the destruction and devastation caused by this tornado first hand. Around 3:45 pm, most of us were watching the meteorologists on News 14 and News 25 closely as we there were reports of possible touchdowns off to the south-west of the Madisonville area. We were advised that the storm center was heading straight for us and to seek shelter. Seeing as how we knew this was going to be bad, we went downstairs and got suited up in our turnout gear prior to the first alarm.

As we were standing downstairs in the engine bay the fire station began to shake for a brief period of time, and we were able to witness the tornado passing us on the south side approximately 2 miles away. You could just barely hear the thunderous roar and see debris flying through the air.

Our first alarm was for a 10-46 (accident with injuries) on South Main Street about 100 yards south of the entrance to the country club. The call came in as a tornado vs. car, and upon arriving it was clear that the tornado had won. The vehicle, which appeared to be a Ford Taurus, was severely damaged with one occupant still inside. The roof had been crushed in to the point there was only 4-6 inches of space where the windows would normally have been. We were able to extricate the patient from the vehicle after removing the roof, and he was transported code 3 to Regional Medical Center.

After being cleared from the accident we were directed out toward Meadowlark Lane to do a house to house search for trapped victims and patients needing medical attention. Upon arrival we found that the tornado had damaged multiple houses, and had created a HAZMAT incident after destroying a gasoline holding facility. We performed a house to house search starting from Meadowlark and working our way around to Cathlyn Drive. Upon completing the search I was stationed at the intersection of Cathlyn and 70 as part of a security checkpoint to keep everyone but residents out of the neighborhood.

After about an hour, Incident Command directed my truck to respond back to the Country Club area to perform a ground search for victims that may have been scattered on the golf course by the twister. Along with 13 other people from various emergency agencies, we swept the entire 1/2 mile path created by the tornado from Main Street back to the north east side of Country Club Lane. The trees were scattered in such a way that just reaching some of the houses was a challenge. Imagine climbing through a 100 yard jungle gym made of downed trees, power lines, sections of fence, and debris from houses, and you may can imagine a fraction of the devastation caused.

To my knowledge there has only been 1 casualty, a handful of critically injured people, and around 30 people treated for minor injuries at RMC. This information may have already changed by the time this is posted, but this was the most recent information at the time.

Some of the pictures I shot this morning can be found in the Madisonville Tornado Gallery

UPDATE: The report of a casualty during this storm is apparently wrong.

Due to the tornado that directly struck Madisonville, C9 was down till this morning. I was able to restart it with minimal problems when I got home from the fire station, and hopefully there will not be any more power interruptions today. Keep checking back as I’ll be posting more information about the F3 tornado that hit Madisonville, and surrounding areas, during the day. Pictures will likely be posted tonight.

I have been working the past few days on some new modifications to C9 in an attempt to beautify the sight, and allow smoother navigation for visitors. I took a few hours to create a new header for the site that includes pictures from my last camping trip. Some of the pictures are a bit grainy leading me to believe I either need to up the resolution on my camera, or invest in a camera with more mega-pixels. I’ll probably have to wait on the later due to the cost of the camera I’d like to purchase.

I also added a “Upcoming Events” calendar to the sidebar. I’ll be posting a variety of events to this area including various church functions, camping trips, planned family outings, etc.

In addition, I have opened up the comments section to non-registered users. I implemented a spam catching plug-in that I am hoping works rather nicely. Please, if you have registered already, take the time to login. This will prevent your comments from being moderated if you have already posted comments, and thus immediately post your comment to the site.

I’d like to hear some suggestions on items that would make your viewing easier or more enjoyable. Feel free to leave a comment describing items you would like to see on the site.

No station 3 for me.

Unfortunately, my request to be transfered to station 3 was officially denied this morning. I guess I’ll be uptown for quite some time to come.

Kristie just reminded me of a trip we took a few weeks ago to Pilot Rock down near Hopkinsville, Ky. My goal was to get some wonderful pictures of the fall foliage, but unfortunately we were a week or 2 early. I did happen to get some good pictures though, and thought you all might want to take a look at them.

More pics can be found in the Pilot Rock in Fall gallery.

Well, it seems as if the transmission on the Bonneville may be going out. I had a mechanic friend of ours come over and take a look at it. He seems to think it may be a solenoid that isn’t kicking in correctly, but isn’t exactly sure what the problem is. He’s going to talk to one of his other mechanics that specializes in transmissions to see where we need to go from here. Hopefully the problem won’t result in a complete replacement of the tranny, but simply be an electrical problem that can be fixed for a few hundred dollars as opposed to a few thousand dollars. I’ll keep you posted.

I asked for a transfer a few days ago. I think it was the best option for me at this point. I am having a much harder time losing weight at the station uptown than I did when I was out at station two. In addition, I don’t like some of the personality traits I’ve developed in the last few years downtown. With all the constant bickering between what is essentially eight other brothers, I’ve started “snapping” at people a bit more often than I like. I’ve always been a bit of a smart-arse, but now it seems it’s coming out more and more at the wrong times. I’m hoping to go to station three, out by GE. I think the time away would do me some good, in more ways than one.

I think the Bonneville may be having transmission problems. This is extremely upsetting since I believe that the transmission has been flushed and the filter changed within the last year. Its my hopes that either this was done incorrectly, or that maybe it just needs to be power flushed. I’m going to take it to a local transmission shop and have them diagnose the problem. If there is something seriously wrong, I may be out a good deal of money. Lets just pray its something simple and cheap to fix.