The Johnson Blog

David was all laughs tonight before going to bed.  Here are a couple shots of the tickl-er and tickl-ee

As they say.. “and fun was had by all”.

A couple times now in the past several months I’ve needed to install or upgrade VMWare Server 2 running on Windows 2003 and ran into a problem that takes a little while to re-discover the solution for.  This is for future reference and to help others that may hit this in the future.

The problem is that after installing or upgrading VMWare Server 2, my host machine will no longer be able to be reached across the network.  It can communicate (ping, etc) out, but not the other way around.  Hosted virtual machines also have full connectivity, and they can receive communications from the networks.  It’s very strange, but the solution has been to Disable Routing and Remote Access, reboot, and re-enabled it.

Once that’s done, everything is normal.  Fun Stuff.

This afternoon, David layed on our floor with a pencil and pad of paper and “drew” for over an hour.  Just quietly flipping pages and drawing all over them.  He even insisted on taking his tools to dinner with us where he continued to scratch his thoughts down.  All-in-all, he spent about 2 hours at it.

It’s so fun to watch him problem-solve and learn things.  As he was scribbling he couldn’t keep his pencil as still as he wanted, so he steadied it with his other hand as he slowly and deliberatly moved the pencil to where HE wanted.  Then talk to himself and start on the next page.

More photos available.

Today is Ana’s 30th birthday!  The day didn’t go quite as smooth as she wanted for her birthday (leaving work later than desired, having to get a raincheck for dinner out thanks to David’s head-first, running swan dive off of a couch, etc.) but it’s looking up! 

Here’s Mom and son after having enjoyed the birthday cake (made by your’s truly). 

The cake wasn’t a looker, but tasted pretty good.  And I think you’d be hard pressed to find another one with “11110″ in candles…

Friday night Ana and I were able to make it to our first Cardinals game of the year.  The weather was fantastic, the food was delicious, and the Cards handily defeated the Royals.  What a great way to spend a Friday night.

I of course took my camera and grabbed a few frames.  This is my first multiple exposure blend, courtesy of Photomatix, and I think it does a good job of capturing the great weather we had.  Click to enlarge.

The past couple weekends have been full of yardwork for the Johnsons. Last weekend we purchased and planted a tree out front, and this weekend we’re getting the garden all ready to go for the year. I had a cubic yard of dirt delivered yesterday to top off what went missing from last year (where does it go??). This morning I ran over to Sunbelt Rentals for a tiller and got the dirt all ready for Ana to get things planted. She’s working away on that as I type.

Kudos to Sunbelt Rentals, I was able to submit a reservation online for the tiller while I was still in bed this morning.  Much better than talking to someone on the phone!

Our grass has greened up nicely - due in large part to the first aeration we’ve had done to it (thanks www.trylawns.com), followed by round 1 of Scott’s fertilizer.  And to top it off, Ana’s Azaleas are starting to bloom.

Our neighborhood gets VERY windy, so I followed the advice of a neighbor and tied the tree down.  Rest safe, Springfield, my tree won’t be wandering out of the yard anytime soon.

Given the final arrival of spring (or did we just skip to early summer?), we decided to take a day trip to the St. Louis Zoo.  So after eating breakfast, we loaded up the van and headed south.  Upon arrival, we were greeted by quite a bit of traffic in Forrest Park and lots of zoo-goers.  Not too surprising for such a nice day, but it still felt like parking at the Arch would have been closer.

David got to get up close and personal with a few of the animals, starting off with a few monkeys.  Good thing that glass was there - that monkey would have been missing a handful of hair if not.

After that encounter, he was on the lookout for animals!

We had lots of fun, and look forward to going back.  In fact, we purchased a family membership - so we WILL be going back.   More photos available.