Well, “Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets” was pretty good! It wasn’t quite as amazing as I had hoped, but it was a good movie and was pretty true to the book.

Sterling has indeed grown to about twice her size when last I saw her. She has been, for the most part, a very good dog over the holiday and the family seems to have fallen in love with her.

As it turns out she has a bladder infection – and despite this she has been very good.

I’ll try and get some photos online either here or at DOUGMEADE.com

I plan to post another blog today or tomorrow – I need to catch you all up. Until then – hope you had a Happy Thanksgiving.

Well I finished “Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets” the other day. It was really good! For all of you who haven’t read these book…you should!

Also.. The new book in Anne Rice’s The Vampire Chronicles series is in stores now! I’m really excited about this too! It’s called “Blackwood Farms” and is about a 22 year old fledgling vampire. It should be really good!

I’m planning on seeing the Harry Potter movie over Thanksgiving. Then I guess I have to choose which book, Harry Potter (#3) or the new Vampire book I’m going to read next.

In any event, this should prove to be an interesting Thanksgiving. Sterling will be tagging along to Mom and Dad’s! I’m eager to see her again. She’s apparently growing “at an alarming rate”. Speaking of Sterling… Doug, you have to put some new photos online!!

Mom, Dad, and Ted have never met Sterling yet. But I think they will fall in love with her.

So last night I thought to myself: ’self…we’ve talked it over and we’re in agreement…we should read some before we go to bed – get this Harry Potter business out of the way’.

Well…the thing is… me and reading before bed don’t really go over too well. See I get all wrapped up in the book. The last thing it does is make me sleepy. I’m lucky if I can be bothered to stop reading…let alone sleep.

So, here I am…what is it now? 8am. I just read half of a book on Flash and about half of “Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets” (which btw is getting really good!).

Now my mind is racing with the latest ooohs and aaaahs from “Harry Potter”. I’m wide awake desperate to just finish the last few chapters and find out what happens…but sick to death of reading.

So I ask you, world, how do you all do it? How do you read yourselves to sleep?! I mean…unless I’m reading a text book on “Common Grammatical Errors in Ancient Sanskrit”…reading just tends to get my mind engaged and keeps me up.

What is it you all are reading that is so boring…and more importantly…why are you reading it!?

8:00am…perhaps I’ll go get breakfast again…I’m not hungry (and I’ve even had my fill of breakfast burritos over the past week)…but what else does one do at 8am? I mean…well you know…when one…doesnt…work.

Oh, and Mr. Downey Jr. … I’m with you.

So, I searched and search and searched for HOURS the other night for a server side script or any functions/libraries/manuals that would allow me to build a spell checker for HTML forms. (As many of you know spelling is not my strong point.)

In addition to all the new stuff you all see on davidmeade.com, I have also built a pretty sophisticated “admin” site where I can manage/update the public side of davidmeade.com. Part of that of course is where I add new blogs. And I wanted very much to build a spell checker into that admin site so that I could spell check my blogs and news articles directly from my forms before I post them to the site.

As it turns out spell checking web forms isn’t all that easy.

I guess I should have listened to Mom…she told me my reliance on spell checkers was a bad thing.

I have actually made some progress in getting my web hosting company to install/configure the required programming libraries. And perhaps in the future I will be able to build a web form spell checker.

Until then, I offer to all of you the solution I have found: HotLingo. It’s a simple program that acts as a plugin to your browser and lets you right-click->spell check any web form you are working on.

I am so seriously messed up.

So last night I was at Kimberly’s place with a bunch of other people (Thanks Kimberly for hosting us … it was a blast). After hangin’ out at Kimberly’s swank apartment we went to a bar across the street. The crowd eventually thinned to Pat, Kimberly and I (no real surprise here) and we went to another bar…it sucked so we called it a night…

However, being on the 3<SUP>rd</SUP> shift schedule that I’m on, I wasn’t ready to quit… so I went out and found Aimee who was still out with other friends. I finally got home at about 2:30 and went to bed (having had quite a lot to drink) at 3:30.

And (here’s where it gets messed up) I woke up at 6:30. I mean seriously woke up. Not just woke up and then drifted off again… I woke up ready to run a marathon. I couldn’t for the life of me get back to sleep. WIDE AWAKE! sigh

Now beside the fact that 3 hours is never sufficient … you’d think that the copious amounts of alcohol would have kept me out for a little bit longer. But no.. I’m up. And now, without question, at about noon I’m gonna crash. Which means… I’ll probably end up sleeping from noon to 7pm – and then be up till 7am….sigh.

Well… maybe I’ll go get breakfast….

So SAAB financial called me today. They do this every now and then.

It seems there is a David Meade here in Chicago – other than me – who has a SAAB…and has a lease agreement with SAAB Financial.

Having lost track of this David Meade they occasionally call me so that they can discuss his lease agreement with me.

It seems that there is apparently not only some other David Meade in Chicago with a SAAB whom SAAB financial can’t find…but I’m the only David Meade in Chicago that directory assistance knows about.

So I told them that I don’t have a SAAB…assured them I have no interest in getting one…and went back to Wednesday night TV.

I’m thinking, however, that the next time they call…and they will…eventually… I’m just gonna play with them a little bit.

Maybe I’ll tell them that I have Multiple Personality Disorder – and by some coincidence all of mine are named David Meade – and that I’m pretty sure one of us has a SAAB but there’s no way to be sure really.

Maybe I’ll tell them “Oh…right…hang on…I just have to find the right Social Security Card – can you hang on?”

Or…maybe I’ll just get a SAAB and not pay for it…it’s apparently pretty easy to duck these people.

In the meantime, if you’re a David Meade and you lease a SAAB – you should call SAAB Financial.

Well I had a really good time this evening. (Sat. evening)

Some ol’ buddies from my days at Purdue happened to come up to Chicago. (Mike, Phil, Derrick, and Bog!) These guys were all in Club with me.

As we were leaving The Cheesecake Factory thru the lobby of the Hancock building, as tends to happen when PVGC Alumni get together, we started to sing a bit. It was really cool to be able to – out of no where – pull a decent sound w/ 4 part harmony after years of not singing together. After a good round of applause we headed off to Celtic Crossing where we sang a few more song to the delight of the others in the bar (this of course after singing an…interesting…arrangement of Happy Birthday to a chick on the street who told us it was her birthday).

Anyway – It was at Celtic Crossing where we met…her….

This woman who had heard us singing asked us to sing a song that we didn’t know… and she was insulted that we didn’t know it. (Never mind that the last time it was popular was 1952.) She went on and on and on about how the song had the words “something to remember”. (as if this were particularly valuable and warranted repeating it over and over and over and over and over again).

This woman…who had been drinking and was suffering from a self described “head injury” was fairly…aggressive…saying that we did in fact know the song and must sing it to her at once.

Only after singing a song to a group of folks who were morning the loss of a friend did we get any relief from her. (We sang “All the things you are” in memoriam to their friend.)

Later, we decided that the song this crazy woman was talking about was “Moments to Remember” and that we did in fact know at least part of it.

It was at about this time that Bog joined us. Bog (aka Alan Bogovich) was the accompanist while we were in Club and is a wonderful human being…you all must meet him sometime…tell him David sent you.

Finally, after the band came on we had a few more drinks and left. While walking to the car we told Bog that he had missed us singing “The Creation” (which is about my favorite song ever) and that were actually doing really well! (its a difficult song with like 6-7 voice parts…we had something like 3.5)

To prove to Bog that we had done well we offered to try it again and ran into the lobby of a handy condo building. The security guard was ready to give us grief but we asked if we could sing something really quick. It took her by surprise, but she allowed it. By the end she was jumping up and down and applauding….sigh….I miss that. She was very insistent that “ya’ll should be out making money with that somewhere”. haha

We sang a song or two to her and thanked her and went on our way.

So Mike, Phil, Derrick, Bog…. thanks for a fun time and another “moment to remember”. Lets do it again soon…I’ll brush up on the old songs

Well the republicans took control of the house and the senate this week.

The next couple of years should be very interesting…if not frustrating.

On the bright side: Jed Bartlet was reelected…so the Democrats still have “The West Wing”.

I don’t know about all of you…but as of this week, I prefer the fictional world of politics. Go Jed! What’s sad is..I might actually vote for Martin Sheen if he ran for President just cause I like Jed Barlet so much.

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I went to see a movie with my older brother and one of his friends this weekend. The movie was “The Evil Dead”. Believe it or not, I had never seen this movie before.

The movie isn’t actually all that great but it is alot of fun to watch just because it’s and old horror flick which tries just a little too hard to be gory.

We watched this movie at The Music Box Theatre in Chicago. It was one of their midnight movies. The theater is actually really cool! If you haven’t ever been…you should go.

The sequal(s) to “The Evil Dead” are showing there soon. (let me know if any of you are interested in going.)