The Edge of Empty

IMG_1141 , a photo by Michelle on the Edge on Flickr. Just over a year ago, a young ferret, a busy mom, and a laundry basket all landed on these steps at the same time. It was a very chaotic scene that involved blood, anguish, and an emergency trip to the exotic pets veterinarian. It was feared that A E would not be making the return trip home. In fact, it was several days before he made that trip. Now we all are very careful on the stairs (and everywhere else too) because we have learned that ferrets are mighty fast little critters.

DSCF0253 , a photo by Michelle on the Edge on Flickr. A E Ferret and his best buddy Buzzy Bee are in their favorite sleeping nest--the middle drawer of our dresser in Hubster's cycling clothes.

Our family is a family of Chick-fil-A fans.  When youngest was about 4, he told me he wanted to have lunch at the "place with cursive writing".  There have been days that some members of the family have eaten 3 meals at Chick fil A.  On a trip to the grandparents, the boys and I even detoured to one of the original Dwarf House  locations in the suburbs  of Atlanta. Each summer,  we look forward to  Cow Appreciation Day .  The boys went this summer without me to egg them on. Of course, we love the food, but we also love that the company joins in and becomes part of the community. Once again, several northern Virginia Chick fil A locations are partnering with Freedom Alliance to send care boxes to troops .  The boxes can be dropped off throughout the month of February.

The Hubster placed his gym towel bag on the bed one morning.  When he came back to get it later, there was a ferret inside waiting to go. DSCF0258 , a photo by Michelle on the Edge on Flickr.

In the world of false alarm reduction, one of the most common tools used is the printed word.  This can be in many forms, whether it is a brochure, an invoice, or an informational letter.  We send out hundreds of letters on a daily basis. Fortunately, CryWolf ® automates much of this for us. Occasionally, we want to accent certain parts of a letter by changing the font size, the print color, or even adding bullet points. Before I discovered that this was possible within CryWolf®, I was creating the letters in Microsoft Word® and then copying it into CryWolf®.  The discovery of these features within the program itself made creating and editing letters that much easier. If you weren't aware that this was possible, let me show you how easy it is to accomplish. To access these features, go to the maintenance section. Once in Maintenance, choose “Add/Edit” Letters from the Forms menu. Choose the letter that you wish to edit from the pulldown ...

A E Ferret wanted to join in on the sewing when I was working on the Hubster's curtains .  Here,  he is supervising my work. IMG_1897 , a photo by Michelle on the Edge on Flickr.

 Last week, we discussed making a duplicate of an alarm system registration.  Another option found by right clicking the tabs in an account is the ability to reorder the keyholder/emergency contacts.  To get there, right click on any of the tabs and scroll down to the "Reorder Accounts" option. This opens a "Reorder Persons" window that lists the keyholders for the account and shows their current priority order. To change the order, simply click in the "new" column and assign the new order numerically.  When finished, click OK and the changes will be made when you click the Update button. If you have any creative uses for these options, please share in the comments so that others can benefit from your knowledge.

Recently, the Hubster's division was moved across the base.  This was a great opportunity to change things up in his office.  Even better, with the move he gained a window.  While we were decorating his office, we came up with the idea of creating a curtain from some of his dive shirts.  For Navy divers, dive shirts are a big deal.  Starting with the shirt from dive school, divers collect shirts from their duty stations and trade shirts with other divers.  Most of the time, the shirt itself is navy blue with gold (yellow) lettering.  Occasionally, shirts will feature full color illustrations.  Just because all of the shirts were blue does not mean that they matched though. One of the shirts was 19 years old so it was quite faded while one was relatively new.  Matching all of those shades of blue and gold proved to be quite challenging.  Fortunately, we found a Moda fabric called Marble Star in yellow that worked beautifully to tie all ...

As winter break came to an end, A E did a quality control inspection on the snacks his boy was taking back to school.

If you work in a busy alarm unit, you spend a lot of time working in the alarm site accounts.  If you right click on the tabs in an alarm user’s account, a popup menu appears with lots of fun options. One of these options is the ability to create a copy of an account.  This is useful to create a new account without retyping all of the data.   This is particularly useful if only one or two items have changed.   We have been using this recently to create accounts for landlords when they get a new tenant.  If you haven't tried this feature yet, give it a whirl.  If you use the feature for any other use, share in the comments so others can try it out.

In the midst of winter, I thought a bit of green would be welcome so I went back to the travel pictures and found this photo taken at a rest stop in Pennsylvania last fall.  The Hubster has always had a fascination with having a pet lay on his shoulders.  A E is not so accommodating of this wish.  However, when a small ferret is out in the big world with really big trucks zooming by, a familiar shoulder is not such a bad place to be.

Another Wednesday night and as I turn off my computer at work after another 12+ hour day, I realize that once again I don't have a CryWolf hint ready for Thursday morning.  For the last two weeks, I have managed to post something on Thursday night (so if you checked earlier in the day on Thursday, you might want to go back and check them out).  This week, I was determined to get to it earlier and be prepared but I just haven't been able to squeeze more into my days.  If you are here looking for this week's hint, I will try to have one up at some point tonight.

My grandmother was a quilter.  She taught me a lot and I spent many evenings stitching on quilts with her, but I have never created a quilt by myself.  I have thought about quilting many times, but I have never taken the plunge. When I came upon In Color Order's Half-Square Triangle Block of the Month  tonight, I must have been feeling very optimistic about the amount of free time that will be available to me this year.  What really excited me was that I would only need to learn to make half square triangles and then arrange them in different patterns. Even better, I would only need to create one quilt square per month.  This seems totally achievable.  So now, I am publicly committing to this project and have placed the button on the sidebar. I am getting started late so I am giving myself permission to make the blocks the month after they are introduced. If you want to join the LATE block of the month club, hop on over to In Color Order.   The Hubste...

As much as home ownership is the American dream, the past few years of underwater mortgages have shown that the dream may be somewhat flawed.  Not only that, once you put a down payment on a house and sign your mortgage agreement, the house begins to be one money sucking adventure after another. This year, for Christmas, our house gave us a broken heater.  Of course, the service plan that I bought last summer when the air conditioner went out really paid off (not!).  Because of the service plan, we would only have to wait 3 days for our "priority appointment". Together with the reduced price of $175 for the first 30 minutes, I just knew that I got a great deal. (Just in case you weren't catching it, that was sarcasm). Once the service person had made the evaluation, they would give us an estimate of the repair costs.  After a day of shivering, the Hubster started making comments about what he thought the problem might be.  Not to be outdone, I put my research sk...

I have shared A E's love of water bottles previously .  We decided to see what he would do with milk jug. He did have a tough time figuring out how to take it away, but he managed.  Eventually, he worked the lid off and was able to get a better tooth hold.  He struck out when he tried to drag it under the ottoman though.

CryWolf® has a lot of great features to make alarm administrators' jobs easier. One of the great features built in to CryWolf® allows jurisdictions to email reports easily to alarm companies.   If you don’t currently use this feature, here is how to start: From the Reports menu, scroll down to "Alarm Company Related" and then over and down to "PDF creation for eMailing to Alarm companies".   Then over to "Accounts by Alarm Company". In the "Accounts by Alarm Company" pop up, use the pull down menus to control the information that the report will include.   For my office, o ur weekly reports are meant to inform the alarm company of any new permit numbers that were issued that week, so we select the alarm company type   and the date that the account was created.   We  then choose the dates that we want the report to cover. CryWolf® also allows you to click the Email Reports box option to send the reports elec...

A E Ferret loves shoes.  He especially likes his boys boots because they are big enough to climb in and stinky enough for ferret enjoyment.  Our family has long since learned that any shoe left unattended will likely be missing the insole if it is removable.

My unit has been around for a number of years, so rarely do we create a new alarm company account as a result of receiving an unsolicited registration form.  These days, new alarm company accounts usually result from a citizen registering their alarm system and reporting an alarm company that is not in our database.  Of course, we aren’t going to let that alarm company do business in our county without being registered, so we create an account for the company and place it in pending status until they return all of the required forms.    Occasionally, I have been bothered by the fact that the status for a new alarm company account defaulted to "Registered" status and had to be manually changed to "Pending".  It made more sense to me that the default status should be "Pending". Tonight, I had a few minutes to investigate for a solution. While using  CryWolf®,   I have found solutions to be available if I take the time to look for them.  If you...

For such a little guy, he sure can make you feel guilty when it is time to go to work.  He seems to be saying "Won't you play ball with me, please?"

A E Ferret may not ride a bicycle, but he is a connoisseur of all things leather so these biking accessories were fun things to play in and around.