What a day this has started out to be… First the sad news. A friend in the #New*Irc*Users channel on StarChat, "BB", passed away yesterday morning. The one thing I remember most about BB is that he always brought life to the channel. Sometimes too busy to chat, and sometimes chattering on and on, he always had a positive attitude toward the other people in the channel. We will miss his presence in our little virtual corner of the world… Goodbye, Tom. Here is a quote that describes Tom very well (I stole it off of Shrew's page).

SUCCESS: To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty; to find the best in others; to leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch, or a redeemed social condition; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived; this is to have succeeded.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Now the good news. As you read before, we found the perfect house. Well, the perfect house might have been perfect, but the person selling it was not quite as nice as the house, and after a few incidents occurred, we pulled out of buying that house. You wonder why I call this good news? Yesterday, we took a drive 12 miles from where we are now, to look at a new subdivision. During the drive out there, I know we were both thinking, "there is no way we are going to live this far out". We pulled into the subdivision, and yes, the houses were nice, but it wasn't enough to make us "want" to live that far away from where we are now. As we turned a corner looking at the lots, we saw the most beautiful view of a river, and immediately, I knew, this was a place we could call home. The developer had 4 or 5 models to choose from, so we picked out our lot (the one with the best view of the river), and decided which house we wanted on our lot. So, in just a few short months, our new home will be ready for us to move in. Click here for a panoramic view from the lot.

Well, now we've done it. For Valentine's Day, we drove all over central Georgia looking for our dream house. By the time we got home 6 hours later, we definitely knew of all the areas we did NOT want to live. This morning, we woke up and did our morning ritual of house hunting via the World Wide Web, and came across a little "fixer-upper" that wasn't sold yet. We called the real estate agent to ask if we could take a gander, and she had another "brick ranch" we might wanna take a look at. Our appointment was at 5:30pm, but we cheated and drove over to look at the outside of the houses a bit early. When we saw the brick ranch house, our hearts melted. We have found our dream house. Our earnest money is paid, and we meet with the mortgage broker tomorrow night. I will keep you posted! Have a great day! :)

First of all, let me apologize for my extended absence from updating my website in whole, and in particularly, the commentary page. Before we moved back here to Georgia, I had begun a programming project called "Secretary-IT". Around Christmas, as you read, I crashed my system in the excitement of adding the new CD burner and hard drive. During that crash I lost everything I had worked so hard on. So, a few weeks ago, I sat down and began re-writing the project. The fruits of my labor are now available on the new Green Gator Software pages, and I am quite proud of the way it turned out. It seems that losing everything and starting over turned out to be a very good thing. It just goes to show you, that no matter what happens, you can always rise from the fall, and things may just be better than they were before the fall. I hope you like the new format of the pages, and be sure to check out the new program! Have a good day! :)