9 November 2008 - I failed the hundredpushups.com workout on Week 3 Day 3. I knew just looking at the schedule that I would. I have restarted the program on Week 3 Day 1, but in Column 2 (an easier set of workouts) instead of Column 3. I haven't decided if I'm going to try Week 3 again in Column 3 at the end... or just keep going with Column 2. My log is up to date.
I am very happy with the results of the election. It feels so good to finally get our country back on track. Always proud to be an American and proud of what America stands for... now also can be proud of the current administration. I hope the next 4 years prove me right.
Most things here in Oregon also went well. We had 81%+ turnout of registered voters. All statewide measures I voted on went my way, except for Measure 65, the "open primary" measure. I was really hoping to get a true runoff voting system in place, but it scared too many people because it was different. Even many of my highly educated coworkers voted against it, so it was not a slam dunk.
Even more locally, it seems that there was a split on spending money. People voted for money for the zoo, agreed to increase the one-time tax on land developers for road infrastructure improvements, continued an extra tax for the fire department and gave money for local parks and greenspaces to be improved/maintained. But the Washington County fairgrounds were not granted money to build a better facility... and Portland Community College did not get the money they wanted to improve the school. I'm OK with that (though I voted for all of them).
no-shave-november.com is coming along nicely. There are about 8-10 people doing it at work. We're looking pretty burly. I've been taking daily pictures of my beard growth so that I can do a time-lapse photo at the end of the month. Because my beard is light in color, no one is really taking notice of it compared to other guys who have really dark hair on light skin. But that's OK... I have a "sleeper" beard. At the end of the month, I predict I'll have a full beard and a lot of the other guys are going to have a patchy mess. We shall see. Note: some of the women have put up "stubble free zone" signs on their cubes. :-)
It's been a year and a half since I posted pictures. Today I give you Rose Festival pictures from June 2007. More to come shortly...
28 October 2008 - Do people know voting doesn't have to be this hard? I'm reading about all these early voting complications in some areas... people standing in line for 6 hours... it's completely unnecessary. Have someone in your state ask Oregon for help implementing vote by mail. I put a stamp on an envelope and drop it in the mail. Wouldn't you like to do the same?
27 October 2008 - We went to Fir Point Farms over the weekend. Fun as usual. Got pumpkins, apple cider donuts, hot dogs and sausage. We rode the tractor pulled hay ride for the first time this year. It was cute. It was nearly 70F and sunny though. Definitely a change of pace from prior years. We were all hot and I got a bit too much sun.
Also voted today. In Oregon it's as simple as sending a letter. Love it. We voted for Senator Obama to become President of the United States. No big surprise there. Oregon also has several measures. Below is the list and my votes. I also opted for $175 in new yearly property taxes for an expo center, Portland Community College, the zoo and local parks and recreation areas. Also re-extended property taxes for fire department benefit (amounting to $51 per year).
| Measure 54 - AMENDS CONSTITUTION: STANDARDIZES VOTING ELIGIBILITY FOR SCHOOL BOARD ELECTIONS WITH OTHER STATE AND LOCAL ELECTIONS. | |
|
YES |
Currently requires you to be 21 and literate, which violates the US Constitution. Merely housecleaning. |
| Measure 55 - AMENDS CONSTITUTION: CHANGES OPERATIVE DATE OF REDISTRICTING PLANS; ALLOWS AFFECTED LEGISLATORS TO FINISH TERM IN ORIGINAL DISTRICT | |
|
YES |
Another housecleaning exercise. After census every 10 years, districts get remapped, sometimes causing people to get repopulated under representatives they didn't elect (and sometimes drastically). This just syncs up timing. |
| Measure 56 - AMENDS CONSTITUTION: PROVIDES THAT MAY AND NOVEMBER PROPERTY TAX ELECTIONS ARE DECIDED BY MAJORITY OF VOTERS VOTING | |
|
YES |
Eliminates the double majority vote requirement. This is long overdue. If you're not going to vote, you shouldn't hold the rest of us back from making changes. Voting in Oregon is so easy, there's no excuse not to. |
| Measure 57 - INCREASES SENTENCES FOR DRUG TRAFFICKING, THEFT AGAINST ELDERLY AND SPECIFIED REPEAT PROPERTY AND IDENTITY THEFT CRIMES; REQUIRES ADDICTION TREATMENT FOR CERTAIN OFFENDERS. | |
|
NO |
Measure 57 and 61 are in battle against each other. If they both pass, the one with the most votes will be enacted. Both are primarily concerned with "mandatory minimum" sentences for non-violent crimes. I'm generally not in favor of mandatory minimums, preferring to leave it to a judge's discretion on a case-by-case basis. |
| Measure 58 - PROHIBITS TEACHING PUBLIC SCHOOL STUDENT IN LANGUAGE OTHER THAN ENGLISH FOR MORE THAN TWO YEARS | |
|
NO |
Seems to me that decisions like this shouldn't be legislated, but rather left to the teachers and school administrators. Plus, you can't legislate a kid to learn faster. But in general, I support the idea that everyone getting an education in the US (presumably to make a life here) should be working towards English proficiency. But I don't feel the need to set their pace by law. |
| Measure 59 - CREATES AN UNLIMITED DEDUCTION FOR FEDERAL INCOME TAXES ON INDIVIDUAL TAXPAYERS' OREGON INCOME-TAX RETURNS | |
|
NO |
I don't like the idea of double taxation. But ultimately this is tax revenue that a) primarily benefits education and b) primarily comes from wealthier Oregonians. I don't want to cut education funding right now. If this passes, it would save me an average of $150 in OR taxes per year (based on my last 7 returns). I'm OK continuing to pay that tax. |
| Measure 60 - TEACHER "CLASSROOM PERFORMANCE," NOT SENIORITY, DETERMINES PAY RAISES; "MOST QUALIFIED" TEACHERS RETAINED, REGARDLESS OF SENIORITY | |
|
NO |
This measure doesn't define its terms, how it will measure them, who will do the measuring, etc. Furthermore, teachers are currently evaluated based on many criteria, including performance, qualifications and seniority. I don't know why you'd hamstring your evaluation to just one criteria. Best left to the school administrators to decide who stays, who goes, who gets raises, who doesn't. Don't need to legislate it. |
| Measure 61 - CREATES MANDATORY MINIMUM PRISON SENTENCES FOR CERTAIN THEFT, IDENTITY THEFT, FORGERY, DRUG AND BURGLARY CRIMES | |
|
NO |
See Measure 57. |
| Measure 62 - AMENDS CONSTITUTION: ALLOCATES 15% OF LOTTERY PROCEEDS TO PUBLIC SAFETY FUND FOR CRIME PREVENTION, INVESTIGATION, PROSECUTION | |
|
NO |
Reallocate this money away from schools and education towards District Attorneys and a CSI-like crime lab? Nope. Not the call I'd make. |
| Measure 63 - EXEMPTS SPECIFIED PROPERTY OWNERS FROM BUILDING PERMIT REQUIREMENTS FOR IMPROVEMENTS VALUED AT/UNDER $35,000 | |
|
NO |
This one was tough. I immediately like the idea of you not having to get government's permission to do work on your own home. And the measure still requires you to meet certain code restrictions and actually get electrical work evaluated by a professional. But the $35K limit seems a tad high to me. I wouldn't mind buying a house if someone laid down their own flooring, but if they build an additional room on the house, I'd like to know it went through some vetting. At the same time, I'm not sure how useful the permit process really is. Does it really provide a safety check? In the end, the tasks of tracking all non-permit improvements you do, disclosing them at sale time, and potentially dealing with banks/insurers not wanting you to do non-permit work seemed like more hassle than it was worth, especially given the loss in permit revenue. |
| Measure 64 - PENALIZES PERSON, ENTITY FOR USING FUNDS COLLECTED WITH "PUBLIC RESOURCE" (DEFINED) FOR "POLITICAL PURPOSE" (DEFINED) | |
|
ABSTAIN |
Not worth explaining in detail. If a public service employee is getting paid, that's their money at that point, and I don't mind the government handling voluntarily shunting some of it off to a charity or union on the employee's behalf. But I don't really care either way, so I didn't weigh in. |
| Measure 65 - CHANGES GENERAL ELECTION NOMINATION PROCESSES FOR MAJOR/MINOR PARTY, INDEPENDENT CANDIDATES FOR MOST PARTISAN OFFICES | |
|
YES |
I love this one. Finally a more advanced voting system put in place: a runoff vote. Not the best, but better than what we had. All candidates go into a SINGLE primary open to all voters. Could be 5 Republicans, 7 Democrats, a couple of Libertarians and all the rest. Top two vote getters get on the general election ballot. Should increase comfort level of voting who you really prefer at first... then picking the best of who remains in the general. Can result in strangeness... like having two Democrats in the general and no one else, but that is unlikely to happen anytime soon. But we might get to see what everyone's really thinking on some alternative candidates. In the end, we also don't have "wasted" votes on candidates who have no chance of winning. (You can abstain if you like neither.) Ultimately I'd prefer Instant Runoff (IRV) or Preferential voting, but this is a step in the right direction and I want to take it. |
26 October 2008 - My washing machine isn't dispensing from the bleach chamber. Somehow that led to me flushing my hot water tank. Home maintenance is funny like that.
I went online to figure out if the bleach problem was common. It's common enough that you can find several postings on it. I had a sense about this washing machine a few months after I bought it, so I paid for the super extended warranty, which I normally never do. So, I'm not too worried about it, but I did want to check it out. In the process of that research, I started reading about "water hammer," which I quickly identified as something that was happening to my pipes when the washing machine would run. It's unrelated to the bleach, but the links were right next to each other. One way to potentially fix water hammer is to drain your house's plumbing of all water so the air chambers can fill back up. It's unclear if I even have air chambers, but it was the easiest/cheapest thing to try. When reading about how to handle that, the advice was the use the opportunity to flush your hot water heater, which has never been done in the 10 years we've owned the house. A led to B led to C. It seems to always work that way.
I finished Week 2 of the hundred push-ups program. I will be doing the exhaustion test later today to see what column to work with when I start Week 3. So far I think I'm seeing mild progress, but I'll know for sure when I do the test tonight and compare it to my initial exhaustion test.
19 October 2008 - Really bummed about the Red Sox loss. I guess it was a fun ride though... that 7-0 comeback was incredible. Would be better remembered with a win tonight, but you can't have everything. At least now my kids know what it's like to be a Sox fan.
I spent some time Saturday and Sunday trying to fix a laptop for a friend. It had been overwhelmed by viruses and trojans and was crashing immediately after login. I tried booting it to safe mode, but it hung on mup.sys. There's an easy fix for that involving using the repair option from an install CD, but the CD drive did not work! Best I could do for them was take out the 2.5" hard disk, put it in an enclosure and recover their data. I burned a couple CDs with their most precious data (family pictures) and gave them the whole drive back in the enclosure in case they ever wanted to get to something else (like music, movies or software). It's a real shame, since the laptop was most likely perfectly fine, needing only a wipe/reinstall, but without a working CD drive, there's not much I could do. If it were a desktop, I could've put in one of the many CD drives laying around my computer room. Oh well.
I stopped doing the 100 pushups thing. No reason to stop... just wasn't convenient. I will try to pick it back up tomorrow (Monday) and just re-do Week 2 Day 1. We'll see...
General Colin Powell endorsed Senator Barack Obama. Independents and moderate Republicans take note!
6 October 2008 - If you were reading my tweets, you might have noticed that I'm doing the 100 pushups thing. I did my initial test last week and clocked in at 20 straight pushups before fatigue. That put me at a starting point of Rank 3. Today was Week 1 Day 1 and I just completed the trial: 10 pushups, then 12, then 7, then 7, then maxed out at 14 (shooting for 9+) with rests in between. It went pretty well! I worry that I won't scale up with the regimen though. We'll see... you can watch my log on the tracking site.
29 September 2008 - If Senator John McCain is elected, there is a significant chance that his Vice President will have to step in. Governor Sarah Palin is his choice for VP. This is her exchange with Katie Couric...
Katie Couric: Why isn't it better, Gov. Palin, to spend $700 billion helping middle-class families who are struggling with health care, housing, gas and groceries; allow them to spend more and put more money into the economy instead of helping these big financial institutions that played a role in creating this mess?
Sarah Palin: That's why I say I, like every American I'm speaking with, we're ill about this position that we have been put in where it is the taxpayers looking to bail out. But ultimately, what the bailout does is help those who are concerned about the health-care reform that is needed to help shore up our economy, helping the -- it's got to be all about job creation, too, shoring up our economy and putting it back on the right track. So health-care reform and reducing taxes and reining in spending has got to accompany tax reductions and tax relief for Americans. And trade, we've got to see trade as opportunity, not as a competitive, scary thing. But one in five jobs being created in the trade sector today, we've got to look at that as more opportunity. All those things under the umbrella of job creation. This bailout is a part of that.
Seriously? This election is an absolute no-brainer. When I saw the SNL skit, I thought it must be an over the top caricature of the interview, but it was nearly verbatim!
28 September 2008 - I've made a small change to the front page of the site. It's all CSS happy now. What a pain in the butt to get it there though. I'll do the news archive page later, but the rest of the site probably will never get the treatment. It's far too hard.
I've grown to like Twitter, so I expect the feed to be a permanent part of the site. Given that it's 2008, I made the assumption that I could go wider and I placed it on the right side. My tweets also update my facebook status. That's three birds with one stone... my site, facebook and Twitter itself.
As much as I find facebook to be user unfriendly, I end up using it more than MySpace, because it remembers my credentials and saves me from typing. Also, it seems to have the momentum of the internet behind it.
Oh, my site is now mobile friendly too! It drops the header, footer and tweets and just renders the main content. Try it out!
4 June 2008 - Alright, don't think I'm weird for posting about a sushi restaurant so much, but I really like this place and I'm always blown away by their presentation. And that's saying something coming from me. I'm usually all about efficiency and "just get the food in my stomach quick" type of mentality, but something about this place is very soothing, comfortable and I find myself appreciating all their effort and style as much as the great food. Speaking of the food being great... I should say that my favorites are the Yum Yum, Ninja, Rainbow and Bethany items.
The staff is also wonderful... very friendly... very inviting. I really enjoy eating there. Oh... and "HI!" to the Tomo Sushi people who might be reading this right now. ;-)
I stopped in for dinner during my walk home today. So pretty!
30 May 2008 - The boys wanted to take their mother to their new favorite sushi place. We tried plenty of items that we hadn't had before. The Tomo Special was a favorite. Just have to share this incredible presentation again...
28 May 2008 - As many of you know, I'm taking the bus and walking more. Why? I'm kinda revolting against my car (read: gas). And obviously I need more exercise. But I'm finding it also gives me time to read and it gives me a mental break between work and home. It's surprisingly effective... and I think it has mellowed me a bit.
You also might have read in my Tweets that the boys and I tried and liked Tomo Sushi. Well, today when I was walking home from work, I stopped in there by myself and sat at their bar. Not only was the food just as fantastic as the first time I went, but I was surprised at the end by a beautiful dessert. Check it out!
24 April 2008 - You might notice something unusual above this space. They are called "tweets" and they come from a site called Twitter. They let you blog minutiae about your life on their site directly, via IM or text. Additionally, they let you put feeds to this information into MySpace, Facebook or directly into sites more under your control (like above).
I'm not thrilled about the placement on my site right now, because it seems to blur into the more substantive (ha!) material I write here. But for now, I'm just going to leave it as-is while I try it out and see if it's worthwhile. I don't seem to blog much anymore and maybe this will be a lighter weight way of posting at least something once in a while.
7 April 2008 - Almost exactly four months have passed since my last update. And I return to impart some very, very important information.
I have determined, through direct experimentation, that Tide HE with Febreeze does not rinse well out of clothing. Tide Free HE is the clothes washing liquid of choice.
I found myself using the Febreeze-laden Tide HE to do a few loads of laundry and the clothes kept coming out soapy. Not obviously so, but a quick squeeze of the damp clothing (especially towels) caused soap to gush out. After repeated proofs of this effect, I switched to Tide Free HE and have had no soap gushing events to speak of since.
That's right... I post after 4 months of dormancy with this. It'll have to do. :-)
9 December 2007 - It's been a while since my last update. Main reason: not much positive to blog about. In the biography of DJ (which will never be written), 2007 will go down as one of the worst years ever. And if it doesn't, then I really don't want to think about the years ahead of me... they would have to be devastating (and I suppose they could be).
But, it's time to get back on the horse and at least update the site for the sake of it. I don't want to feel like blogging a year from now and then be de-motivated, because the site's so stale.
The kids got their first trimester progress report (aka "report card"). As usual, they both did awesome. I'm very proud of them. They also have a piano recital coming up next week. Their piano playing skills blow me away. I'm so glad they've stuck with it.
Anyway, let me get some pictures out of the way. I won't feel right blogging about mundane stuff until I catch up on these...
- Snow (January, 2007)
- Webridge Party (January, 2007)
- Tom's Going Away Day (January, 2007)
- Don's Going Away Day (February, 2007)
- Webridge Party (March, 2007)
- Webridge Outing (March, 2007)
- Dan's Visit (May, 2007)
- Piano Recital (June, 2007)
19 August 2007 - I finished building this Dania bureau/armoire last night. And for the first time in 2007, I put my clothes away in a drawer. That really struck me. It's a simple and poetic reminder of how much I've lost.
A recent conversation at work had a similar effect. I don't recall how it came about, but I made the statement that I don't own any groceries (with the exception of Coke Zero). It's been several years since I was in a grocery store to truly "shop for groceries." All of the food I consume is gotten from work, dining out or friends. Since I carefully track all of my spending, I can back up this statement with data. Year-to-date for 2007, I have spent ~$5100 on "dining out" and $380 on "groceries." 93% vs. 7%. A total of 17 grocery store transactions for the whole year so far. And since there are so few, I can look at each one and tell you that they are almost all wine club, personal alcohol or Coke Zero related. I actually remember buying "regular" groceries once this year, but it was all frozen food to nuke up, nothing more, and I think most people would not classify that as grocery shopping.
Oh, and I will never buy Dania furniture again. It is way too expensive and very crappy. I've built plenty of put-it-together-yourself furniture over the years and I've never experienced such poor build quality. And this is across two pieces (I also built a nightstand), so it wasn't just bad luck. Both pieces are wobbly, because the only thing holding them true is the paperboard backer. A cross brace is sorely needed, even for the little nightstand.
1 August 2007 - We had a new person start in the engineering group today... a QA engineer. That's really great, to have new blood, especially in my group. We'll have more coming soon, but we have to find them first.
I don't really have anything else to share. Everything is work related and therefore boring and without context (for you). Things are really tough still. Trying to work through it. Not succeeding...
21 July 2007 - I don't think people realize how thinly stretched I am at work. And it's not just me, the whole engineering department is being asked to do way more than we realistically have capacity for. We're trying to get version 5.5.3 out the door at the same time we plan for version 5.6 and versions 1.3/1.4 of another smaller product we have. The engineering team is also partially responsible for doing the advanced planning and building of new market solutions on top of the base product (like grants management, clinical trials / participant tracking, etc.) We also have support, communications, training, documentation, staffing and mentoring roles to play.
The problem is that the team is very small. And that leads to a general slowness in our ability to get to all of these things. What I'm finding is that slowness is misinterpreted as incompetence by people outside the engineering team. For example, I haven't solicited input from the professional services group for version 5.6. It's not that I've forgotten or don't plan to. It's that we're simply not there yet. Also, customers are complaining that we don't communicate enough of what we're doing. Well, frankly, we're doing very little. And what we are doing is forward-thinking, R&D style work. Some of it isn't going to pan out. And what I've learned is that you have to be careful when telling customers about "up in the air / still being worked" type stuff. They tend to overreact and say things like, "why didn't you consult us?!" and "you can't do that!" when really, nothing's been decided yet... and maybe we will talk to them... eventually. (They also seem to have trouble remembering that we need to make strategic decisions for our own company too... and sometimes it's not in their best interests.)
I plan to have a frank discussion with my boss, but I did mention a few things to the VP of Ops & Acquisitions yesterday. If they want to get more out of me, then one thing they can do is not bother me with mundane day-to-day crap. If I say my group needs 3 laptops and 2 desktops, then just make it happen. I don't need to spend my time justifying and discussing. Either say no or make it happen. The same goes for so many things at work. Timecards and BS paperwork. You want to see me "find efficiencies" and "multi-task better" and "delegate more?" Fine... then get my shit done when I ask for it and when I say "no" to requests, you need to learn to deal with it.
It's funny, because I finally did say that I was through searching through resumes, doing phone screens and dealing with trying to hire into the group. I'm not good at it, it's not an efficient use of my time, and given our needs and overall company size, we should be able to get someone in here dedicated to do that. Well, that task did (somewhat) get shifted to someone else, but it's beneath him as well (the VP mentioned above). WTF happened to having a recruiter? Anyway, we need to get some additional software engineers in as soon as possible. Just don't get me started on how painful it is to integrate new people. I knew there was a spin-up cost... but I have now become aware, first hand, at how high that cost is to the rest of the group.
There's a big part of me that wants to go back to being an "individual contributor." There's more personal satisfaction in it for me... and definitely more praise and ability to succeed in the eyes of others. I don't think VP of Engineering is very rewarding... it's a good thing I didn't officially take the title, right? Right?! Aw, crap. What have I done?
17 July 2007 - I was trying to check my email from the new house when I realized my servers seemed to be down. We recently had a power outage, so I thought maybe it happened again. I hopped in my car at 11:30pm and drove to the old house to see what was up. Turned out the router needed a reboot (which hasn't happened ever since moving to FiOS and getting a more robust router). Took me a while to figure out what was going on... and at great discomfort too, what with sitting on the floor while trying to jury-rig some computer equipment back together. I may need to reconsider my belief that I could leave the servers at the old house; they are just too far away from daddy. I wonder if I can do a straight swap of a consumer FiOS in one house and business FiOS in the other. I can deal with it if they need me to change IPs, though that would be a hassle.
In other computer woe related news... my laptop battery finally died. It's $130 from Dell to get a new one... and it seems I can possibly get it for cheaper (say, $80), but I'm wondering if I should just get a new laptop. I probably wouldn't have done much thinking in the past about it, but money's tighter these days. I also need a new server and a new game machine. It's pretty frustrating to go from never worrying about money to thinking about it all the time.
I was already at the old house once today to care for the cats and mow the lawn. Now I'm back again (and while it's not a long trip, it's long enough to suck) and I'm wondering if I should just crash here for the night (it's nearing 1am). But if I wake up here, I have nothing to shower/dress/etc with. This is the life, baby!
*grumble*
12 July 2007 - The big red ball popped. Here's the email I wrote to my coworkers...
I regret to inform all of you that the big red ball is no more. I inflated it a few days ago to play with the kids; it was fun. Instead of deflating it, I left it alone and stored it in the garage where my car would normally be. There it sat for several days... until last night.
Amy informed me this morning via text message that, with the recent hot weather, the garage reached unusually high temperatures and...
the big red ball asploded
For those of you who never met the big red ball, share in our grief knowing that it was loved. For the rest of us, let us reminisce of the fond memories we have of time spent with big red ball. Big red ball… you were so bouncy and red. We miss you.
Some pictures of big red ball in happier days:
http://www.djbreslin.com/dj/redballproject2005.htmThe fateful text message:
/cry
Amy bought fireworks this year and we lit them off in front of the house with the boys on the 4th. It was fun!
You might recall that my furnace broke back in March. It was really hot on the 4th and when I went to turn on the A/C, it didn't work. I checked a whole bunch of things, but in the end (and after a few days of heat) I realized I had just forgotten to flip the breaker in the garage after the furnace repair. It's a good thing too... it's been over 100ºF here the last couple days.
The family is in Boston for a vacation. I hope they have fun while they're there. I miss the boys already...
28 June 2007 - The boys and I were hanging out today playing a board game after we got back from dinner at IHOP. When we were done, we were just laying on the floor staring at the ceiling. I said, "What does your tongue taste like?" There was a moment of silence, some smacking sounds and then Jarod said "cow." I asked what we should do next and Jarod suggested continuing to suck on our tongues to determine what they really taste like. Bizarre evening.
I moved into the new house a week ago. It's still a little crazy, but I'm settling in. It still feels like a hotel to me, but I'll get used to it over time... I hope. Most of the house is very nice, but I'm finding that the bathrooms are not functionally well designed.
I've just about had it at work. We are so understaffed that it should be criminal. It wouldn't be so bad if being mediocre at everything was OK, but no one lowers their expectations, especially customers (and understandably so). And no one seems to appreciate how much of the product team's time they consume. I wish I wasn't a captive to my paycheck.
Also, this summer is turning out to be more than I can handle. Our "family" is no longer functional or successful. And it basically just sucks for me. Some weeks the kids have camp... and I pay for it... and then Amy can work during the day. But, I don't think it's right to have them jammed into camps every week of the summer. So, some other weeks they don't have camp.... so Amy stays with them during the day and works nights. But then I have to leave work early every day to come home to care for them. And then I can't get much work done at night to make up for it. I'm losing 25% of my work day, at least... so I'm paying for it in that regard as well. My work is suffering tremendously, exactly when I need to be at my prime.
The only reprieve I'll get is when Amy & the kids go to Boston to have a vacation... on frequent flier miles that I paid for... while I get to stay back and take care of their house/yard/cats... and try to catch up on work.
Fuck this.
15 June 2007 - I just returned from another trip to our CCC conference, this time hosted by Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN. I can now add Minnesota to my list of states visited! I mentioned a little bit about CCC in a previous blog entry and I had some pictures to post from the last trip, which was to Washington DC. No pictures this time around.
I enjoyed talking face to face with our customers. I think I provided them with some useful information via some formal presentations and some informal talks. And I know I learned a great deal from them.
Here is my updated map...
6 June 2007 - It's nearly unprecedented, but it worked! Jericho is back! CBS announced today that they purchased 7 additional episodes for a mid-season start to season 2! Here's what the president of CBS said today:
June 6, 2007
To the Fans of Jericho:
Wow!
Over the past few weeks you have put forth an impressive and probably unprecedented display of passion in support of a prime time television series. You got our attention; your emails and collective voice have been heard.
As a result, CBS has ordered seven episodes of "Jericho" for mid-season next year. In success, there is the potential for more. But, for there to be more "Jericho," we will need more viewers.
A loyal and passionate community has clearly formed around the show. But that community needs to grow. It needs to grow on the CBS Television Network, as well as on the many digital platforms where we make the show available.
We will count on you to rally around the show, to recruit new viewers with the same grass-roots energy, intensity and volume you have displayed in recent weeks.
At this time, I cannot tell you the specific date or time period that "Jericho" will return to our schedule. However, in the interim, we are working on several initiatives to help introduce the show to new audiences. This includes re-broadcasting "Jericho" on CBS this summer, streaming episodes and clips from these episodes across the CBS Audience Network (online), releasing the first season DVD on September 25 and continuing the story of Jericho in the digital world until the new episodes return. We will let you know specifics when we have them so you can pass them on.
On behalf of everyone at CBS, thank you for expressing your support of "Jericho" in such an extraordinary manner. Your protest was creative, sustained and very thoughtful and respectful in tone. You made a difference.
Sincerely,
Nina Tassler
President, CBS EntertainmentP.S. Please stop sending us nuts :)
Nearly all of the cast and some crew posted thank you messages to the CBS message board when this started. A compiled list of links is here. A couple have come back to say thanks now that the show has renewed... Lennie James (aka Robert Hawkins) and Michael Gaston (aka Gray Anderson).
Additionally, three of the actors posted a video on YouTube to say thanks for all the hard work. I think this was made before the official announcement, but I think it's clear they knew some progress was being made.
If you haven't seen Jericho yet, you can watch it all for free at CBS.com. I highly recommend it, but I guess you knew that already...
5 June 2007 - One of the best new shows of the last season was Jericho. Along with Heroes, it was the only new show to attract and retain my interest. As the season went on, former favorites like Desperate Housewives and Grey's Anatomy slipped off my radar. Even Lost made me question if it was worth spending any more time with. But Jericho was solid. Every episode was great TV and I actually made sure I was always current with Jericho... while letting Heroes slip for 3 weeks!
All that came to a screeching halt when CBS announced it would not be renewing Jericho for next season. This was an absolute shocker to me. The ratings on Jericho were very good from the start and it seemed to be a hit for CBS. It took a bit of a dive after a long 8 week (?) mid-season hiatus, something which most TV studios are learning to avoid these days. By the end of the season it was still doing well, but underperforming expectations. In my view, it was more the fault of CBS than a knock on the show.
As you might expect, the show's fans didn't take kindly to the cancellation. A grassroots campaign began to form to let CBS know that a second season was warranted. We made our voices heard via email, phone calls, faxes, snail mail, full page ads in newspapers, petitions, etc. But the most creative form of the protest came about when someone on the CBS message board had the idea of sending nuts to CBS. (The Jericho season finale made direct reference to the incident during the Battle of the Bastogne when General McAuliffe responded to a German call for surrender with only one word: "NUTS!")
An online nut retailer named nutsonline.com was suggested and eventually a partnership was formed. So far, Jericho fans have sent nearly 20 tons of nuts to CBS in NY and LA. Additionally, over $14,000 in aid has been raised for Greensburg, Kansas which was recently wiped out by tornados. (The fictional town of Jericho is located in Kansas.)
I myself sent my fair share of nuts, emails and letters... and of course signed the petition. Sometimes these things feel like empty gestures. But this time? Well, there's no official word yet, but I believe a rare thing has occurred. I think CBS has reversed course and they are bringing Jericho back in the middle of next season. We're all hoping it's true. Just wanted to share the good news. :-)
There are articles on Variety, Mercury News and EW.com mentioning the rumors of its return. I believe it all started with a rumor posted by Ausiello on TVGuide.com, but it seems to have gained credibility now that there are quotes from Jericho writer/producer Carol Barbee suggesting this is real.
This just in... looks like AP just generated an article on this. That means it'll show up all over the place soon enough. Yay! (Yup, it's on forbes.com now...)
27 May 2007 - More pictures... and this concludes 2006. I still need to clean up the kids' pages and probably move some of their pictures out to the family section so they can do whatever they want with theirs. I'm sure I won't get that done anytime soon.
- Halloween (2006)
- Washington DC trip (November 2006)
- Thanksgiving (2006)
- DJ's Birthday (2006)
- Webridge Christmas (December 2006)
- Christmas (2006)
Yesterday I fought off an invasion of ants. They came in thru the area around the front door and were attracted by some cat food particles. I fear the entire underside of the house has a colony of thousands of ants, because I see them come up through a few areas outside every summer. I'm probably going to have to call a professional at some point, but for now I'm somewhat certain these ants are not much to worry about.
This weekend is going to be full of work for me, rather than relaxation. Besides having a ton of work-work to do, I have to get going on some household chores, like finally patching the ceiling and starting on some outdoor trim painting... and the typical stuff like yard work and laundry. A friend is also having a housewarming party today and I'd like to stop in for a short while. Time to get going...
10 May 2007 - Just clearing out some of the backlog of picture posts. This catches me up to October of 2006. That's way ahead of schedule. ;-)
- Jarod's 9th Birthday (June 2006)
- Summer Party (July 2006)
- Camping (July 2006)
- Red Sox (July 2006)
- Mancia Summer Party (August 2006)
- Patrick's 8th Birthday (August 2006)
- Camping (August 2006)
- Adventure Park (September 2006)
- Amy's Massage School Graduation (September 2006)
5 May 2007 - The first Friday in May is always No Pants Day. Yesterday was no exception. Lots of participation and good photos this year. Check them out.
Also, I saw Spider-Man 3 yesterday. I put my pants on for that, but it didn't help. It sucked. Hard. Too much going on, bad guys that didn't make sense, the pacing was horrible... just, uck. The Bruce Campbell cameo was great though.
17 Apr 2007 - A couple weeks ago I found myself playing with word clouds at work. I've always been interested in alternative forms of data display that have the potential of being more meaningful to humans than what we work with today. I was clouding our log files and concatenated support case descriptions to see what "popped up" as frequent issues/bugs/error messages. It was kinda neat.
Then I clouded my own website...
actually again ago already always am amy away bad before birthday book boston boys check christmas come couple credit days dec done email everyone family finally friend friends fun game getting great having him his home house jarod jul jun kids let love may measure money movie movies never next nice night nov oh ok oregon party past patrick people pictures play post read real reason red said say school second seems seen sep server site sox state thought trip try until vote wanted wasn watch week weekend why won work year years yes yet
It's a pretty strange feeling to see the last 10 years of your life summed up by a small script so succinctly. (You can hover over each word for exact counts.) Try clouding things yourself...
The shootings that just occurred at Virginia Tech have got the "video games caused this" people coming out of the woodwork. It's tragic, yes, but video games have little to do with this... and that would be true even if the killer said, "I learned this all from video games!"
Data is a funny thing... and nuts like Dr. Phil and Jack Thompson tend to spin it and manipulate it to suit their needs. Fortunately, gamers are a smart bunch and we can overlay two data sets just as well as they can...
(taken from a discussion thread on FARK.com)
15 Apr 2007 - OK, here's a random annoyance: the common usage of the term homeopathy. I hear it all the time when I think the user intends to say something like "naturopathic" or "home remedy." I think there's plenty of validity in treating illnesses or conditions in a simpler, more "natural" way than full blown modern medicine. But homeopathy has nothing to do with that, and instead is ridiculous pseudo-science / mysticism. It concerns me that repeated, improper usage of the term might lend it some credence. Just another battle for we self-proclaimed intellectuals to fight, I guess. (I was reminded of this peeve when I saw a company market their product as homeopathic, when it was not.)
Another oddball item... the kids recently pulled out a toy we've had sitting in the garage for years... a water/air rocket launcher. Right around their bed time, I got bored and decided to play with it. Amy became interested. So, as any good parents would do, we put the kids to sleep, took their toy, filled it with water, and went outside and launched it. Once. I think it reached low-earth-orbit. We ran over to the other street and couldn't find the rocket. Hopefully we can find it with the help of some daylight. If not, and if I was the kids, I'd be pissed at me. Amy pulled the trigger though, and I'm not afraid to point that out to them.
It was very, very cool though. ;-)
No longer in production, since 2000.
Can't buy my way out of this one...
31 Mar 2007 - I usually come here to share the good things in my life. (Of course, I do post the occasional gripe.) The silence of this blog is a direct reflection of the number of things I have worth sharing. I try to remind myself that we are all occasionally tested and there are those who have it much worse than me. But I am quickly coming to the conclusion that, irrespective of the absolute value of my misery, it is too much for me to bear. Emotionally and psychologically, I am spent. What does it mean when you realize that drunkenness and unconsciousness are the only two states of being when it doesn't hurt to be alive?
I don't think I've experienced such a long string of unfortunate events in my entire life. Though I would be lying if I said this was the greatest stressor on me right now, it is easily true that the worst thing that has happened recently is the death of Amy's cousin Joanne. It has hit Amy quite hard and I feel terrible by proxy. I wish there was something I could do to fix it, but all I can offer is a shoulder. Her cousin was a caring, intelligent, beautiful and fun girl. It is a great loss.
What has been keeping me awake at night, heart beating and mind racing, is work. My boss (VP of Engineering) left a few months ago. His job has in large part fallen into my lap, though every member of the R&D team has taken on more responsibility. I personally haven't written a line of code since well before he left. The things I am doing now are well outside my normal routine and don't sit well with my personality. I am not a manager... and I know this now more than ever before. I have written emails at 2, 3 and 4am for weeks straight, because of my trouble sleeping. One of my coworkers finally asked if I was OK (because he noticed) and I honestly had to say, "No, I'm really not."
I'm also watching my family and my future crumble before me. It's no longer a secret that Amy & I are getting divorced. Frankly, I think it was the wrong decision, but I do understand it. It's just very hard to see something I worked on for 10 years be undone. I think the financial part of it is the real killer. That was my domain, my responsibility. I planned for scenario A... made choices that were under the assumption that scenario A would play out. Now plan B is in the works and I can't undo some of the financial decisions I've made, even though I'd now like to. Everything I did for my family, everything I thought I could provide, is now in jeopardy. And at the same time the long term decisions are being screwed up, I'm saddled with tons of new expenses, higher taxes, even more financial planning that I need to do, etc. We're going to be OK, but not as OK as we were before. In fact, we were just about to be "living the life," you know? Hell, I wanted to partially retire soon!
Our master bedroom shower stall developed a leak which Amy noticed when our downstairs dining room ceiling cracked / caved in. I finally got around to cutting a hole in the ceiling and repairing the plumbing last week. I still have a very large hole to patch. I guess I need to learn how to rock some drywall soon.
Our furnace died last weekend. I figured out on my own that the control board died (it has a diagnostic LED), but I was nervous enough to call a pro. $90 later he doesn't tell me anything I don't already know, except that the part will cost $400-$500!!! The same part I already found online for <$100. I told him thanks but no thanks and ordered the part myself. I just got it installed and working with some help from the all knowing internet. Just yet another hassle in my life.
There are some good things happening, but I'll be honest... they come with their own set of stresses. I'm finding it very difficult to "move on" with my life at my age and with my relationship history. Also, having another house built and paid for is, well, stressful and expensive. Who'd've guessed that, right?
Here is what I wish for...
I wish I had the time to enjoy the good things in my life. I do have good things, but I can't enjoy them, because I'm stressed out about everything else or I feel like the demands on my time far outstrip the available time.
I wish not to become bitter. I would like not to resent every single person in my life, because they represent a drain of some sort. I want to get back to looking at my friends and family as people I want to enjoy and connect with. It's not good when I dread every time the phone rings, or I get email, or someone walks into my cubicle, or when I have to take care of the kids. I'm always worried about what new demand is going to be placed on me and how I can retain the time I do have for the demands that already exist. I mean, it's a sad state of affairs when I have to comfort others that, if I die, they will be taken care of. I'm tired of feeling like a bank, handyman and chauffeur... and it's all the feeling I've had for a very long time.
I wish I could see a way out of this... a way to fix things. I'm looking for the light at the end of the tunnel, and I'd like it not to be the proverbial oncoming train.
There is something nice to share though... the kids got their report cards and we had our parent/teacher conferences. They are doing great, the teachers love them and they are probably the best kids I could ever hope for. I am ever grateful for them, because I know I probably couldn't be a decent dad to kids who were even a little "off"... and mine are perfect. Lucky me, lucky them. :-)
11 Feb 2007 - I am still alive.
I have been quiet for reasons the vast majority of you are aware of. Changes are occurring. I will share them over time as I see fit.
The boys are sick. Really sick. Actually, they're just now pulling out of it, but Amy and I had to play doctor for a few days. I'm still somewhat sick myself, but fortunately I was already well enough by the time the kids came down with it. Something's going around. Lots of people had it.
Here's some news that makes me smile: I finally virtualized my servers. This has been a desire of mine since early 2006 and I've been trying in earnest for months now. A stroke of good luck came my way yesterday and it just worked (where it hadn't many, many times before). I don't know what it was and I don't care. I still have work to do, but it's all stuff I can make progress on. No more random crashes and unknown errors. A weight has been lifted...
31 Dec 2006 - Yesterday was our big donation day. The kids were really aggressive this year and chose to give away a lot more than I expected. I think they are hypnotized enough by Nintendo to disregard nearly everything else, though there was no way the Legos were going anywhere. We packed the minivan completely fully of used toys, games and clothes and brought it down to Goodwill. They took every last bit of it, which I was extremely thankful for. I spend a lot of time making sure the items are useful, have all their parts and come with original instructions and boxes if we still have them. I don't just dump a pile o' crap on Goodwill. I doubt they could sort it all correctly unless they had a troop of kids on the payroll. But when I spend two days of vacation to put it all together, someone better take it and appreciate it, you know? :-) We also stopped by the library and donated a few boxes of books and videos. The final count was about $1200 worth of stuff, by my estimation.
My last bit of donating didn't go so well. I like the idea behind FreeGeek and I gave them some computer equipment and cash last year. I didn't have as much equipment this year (one full computer, a WAP, 4 port router, 8 port switch and misc. cables), but I did want to give them some more money. They just had a robbery and I wanted to help. And now that Click has been bought by ITW, my charitable dollars are worth 4X what they were before. (ITW matches 3:1 up to $2000 per year for a total of $8K to a worthy organization.) But when I arrived to give them all this stuff I saw that they were closed. It frustrated me, because I didn't see anything on the website (though I see it now). And even more frustrating was that there were people there, but one guy said he didn't have the "authority" to take even just the money donation. Seemed like the typical bizarre geek behavior rather than a real reason he couldn't take it. It's not a short drive either... all the way across town. Oh well...
I was hoping to have something up on the official site at the same time I got to it on my own site, but it just didn't work out. So, here are pictures from my ten year reunion at RPI in June.
Tomorrow is the first day of 2007. Happy New Year.
10 Dec 2006 - In April of 2006 I trekked to Vermont to participate in the wedding of Scott Gancarz and Susan Ovitt. Scott is a pal of mine from college and it was a pleasure to be in his wedding. Vacations usually seem like work, but even though this was a blazingly short trip (3 1/2 days?) and I was "on duty" during the wedding, I had one of the best times of my life. I wrote about it back in May.
9 Dec 2006 - Took me a while to sort through all the photos, but here's the post for our trip to Boston in March of this year. We went a little early for a special event, but it worked out well, because we got to celebrate a couple other things that happen around that time of year.
Only 9 months behind the curve... the best I've been in a long time. And the next few posts should be easy to knock out...
My passport expired in September. Already sent in for the renewal. Hopefully this one will be put to better use than just one trip in 10 years...
3 Dec 2006 - My youngest brother Peter was in the news the other day for donating his long hair to Locks of Love. They have a video of the broadcast available on their site. Check it out... and way to go Peter!
29 Nov 2006 - A friend commented that I haven't updated in a while. She's right... but at least I haven't fallen behind any further than my typical 1 year lag. I've posted pictures of Christmas 2005 and of Lisa's visit to us in Portland in January, 2006.
I had a chance to play with the Nintendo Wii this past weekend. My coworker invited me and the boys over to check it out. It was great! The controller mechanism is exactly as much fun as you'd expect. I look forward to playing all the games and seeing how they utilize the novelty. There is a slight concern that the magic might wear off eventually, but I think if they keep a steady stream of interesting games it won't matter.
We have pseudo-adopted yet another cat. We call it "Stinky." It seems to be a completely outdoor cat and it was always very afraid of coming up to anyone. But a few feedings at our front door in what used to be Bob's house have gotten it quite comfortable with us. If it were warmer weather I'd take it to the vet and have it checked and groomed... but for now, it probably needs its thick, matted fur to survive the freezing temps we've gotten the last couple days. We actually had a light dusting of snow this morning...
Thanksgiving was good. Amy cooked a great meal, as usual. I just ate the last of the turkey for dinner tonight... cold turkey sandwich, yum. We also set up our Christmas tree.
Most of you know I was in DC a couple weeks ago for the Click Commerce Compliance Consortium (CCC). All of our current medical research customers get together and trade stories and look to us for product direction and guidance. I had to get up in front of 80+ people and give a talk on some boring stuff. While out at a bar with some customers the prior night, I got challenged to work some unusual words into my presentation... like crouton, viagra, oodles and linoleum. If I wasn't nervous enough already, that put me over the edge. It was all video taped, so when I get the podcast, I'll post it up for you to mock me (if I legally can).
Pictures from that trip, Thanksgiving and everything else in 2006 are on the way. It's 3:45am, so it's off to bed for me...
9 Nov 2006 - I don't always like what he writes, but this little bit by Lou Dobbs seemed right on.
8 Nov 2006 - What a fantastic election! The only thing I really wanted to get out of it was to have a clear message sent to the Republican party. I watched all night as they tried to spin it with "The American people aren't pleased with our progress in Iraq" or "Recent scandals took their toll." No. It's much simpler than that. The entire Republican party was punished for the treachery of the current administration.
On a visceral level, I'd love to see them impeach President Bush, but it would only serve to be counterproductive. The Democrats need to appeal to a wider audience and really shine... show the American people and the world that we aren't stupid and insane. I have no strong faith that they will (hey, I'm no Democrat either!), but they now have an opportunity to get started.
In other news, nearly all the Oregon measures went exactly as I voted. The humorous exceptions were 46 and 47. Those measures were related... 46 would allow it to be legal to even have 47. So the only logically valid vote combinations (ignoring abstaining) were "no no", "yes yes" and "yes no". I voted "yes no"... meaning that I wanted it to be legal to have campaign finance reform laws (46)... but I didn't like the particular one they proposed (47). I don't know if it's stupidity or a great sense of humor, but 46 failed and 47 passed. That's right, the majority of people voted "no yes", the only logically invalid vote. So, 47 passed, but it's still illegal, so... it failed. Way to look sharp, voters! ;-)
One thing I'm always impressed with is the high voter turn-out in Oregon, largely attributed to (in my opinion) our Vote-by-Mail system. With every passing election, the rest of the country becomes more interested in the system as they see our elections go off without a hitch, compared to their constant problems with polling stations and malfunctioning voting machines. The current turn-out is at 62.66%. You can see it for yourself (updated every 5 minutes, though I don't know how much more it will change).
Anyway, hope your vote went well.
6 Nov 2006 - See that green banner up above? That's right, it's time once again for gamers across the globe to unite in a common goal to bring some happiness into the lives of sick kids who are stuck in the hospital.
They couldn't make it any easier if they tried. Go to the Child's Play website and click on the hospital closest to you. It will bring you to an Amazon.com wishlist that shows all the items they could use, how many they want and how many they've gotten. Click, buy, send to the hospital's address, done.
Last year I sat down with my two boys and had them each pick out a book and a game. If you want to teach your kids charity, what better way to do it? They know how much they love these items and you can explain that it's going directly into the hands of kids just like them who could use a little cheering up.
If you'd prefer to send cash, you can PayPal it to them or mail it to their address, which is displayed on the main page.
This is my favorite charity, because I know 100% of everything donated goes directly to the stated cause. How many other charities can say that? Check for yourself. (Note: Child's Play isn't evaluated by that site yet as they haven't been around for the minimum of 4 years that they require. I'm hoping to get them evaluated after this year.)
Do something special and donate to Child's Play today. Even if it's only a single item, it does make a difference.
29 Oct 2006 - I just dropped our ballots in the mailbox. If you read all that stuff below, you know I'd already decided on the measures. But I still had human candidates to consider. That part is always frustrating to me. There's very little concrete to go on. Furthermore, I find that I don't mesh well with Democrats or Republicans; I'm very nearly 50/50 in my beliefs.
One thing that is clear to me though, is that I want to send a message to the Republican party to let them know the vast majority of what they have done is offensive to me. Therefore I was inclined to vote straight Democrat. But I at least wanted to read up on the Republican candidate for Governor... to do the proper thing, you know? That's what's so frustrating... I pretty much like the guy! He said all the things I wanted to hear in terms of taxes, spending reforms and the economy. However, he opposes gay-marriage (or anything similar sounding) and his position on illegal immigration is too strict. The gay marriage thing alone is a bit of a deal breaker for me... and with my bias against Republicans? I just couldn't find myself voting for him.
Until President Bush's administration is out of office, I think I'll remain strongly anti-Republican. I look forward to a time when more traditional Republicans are the leaders of the party. At least then I'll have a real choice.
22 Oct 2006 - I'm about to do something potentially catastrophic to my staging server. If things go bad, it might be a while until I can post again. (Technically not true... I could just post directly to the production server... but if things go bad, I'll have other stuff to worry about.) I'm going to flip a byte on the hard disk to tell the OS it's not a dynamic disk, but rather a regular disk. The theory is that it "just works." We shall see. The reason is that I have to do that before I can run the physical->virtual migration. Dynamic disks simply aren't allowed. Finally, the whole point is to prove that it works so that I can do it to my production server. Its instability has been increasing over time. (I suspect the memory.)
So here is a monster post to tide you over... and it's all boring stuff. :-)
Patrick's at the library researching Ben Franklin for his "wax museum" class project. Jarod's at a play-date with one of his friends. The house is quiet.
Amy & I are slightly sick. Sore throats. Just uncomfortable. We watched "V for Vendetta" last night. Pretty good, but the Wachowski / Hugo Weaving / Matrix similarities were distracting.
IE7 was released recently. I use Firefox, Opera, Netscape and Safari at work for testing purposes. But IE6 was always my primary browser. I felt no need to go elsewhere. Firefox's tabbed browsing never seemed useful enough for me to switch... and Opera's was particularly frustrating. I saw no other compelling reasons/features to warrant change. Version 7 introduces tabbed browsing to IE, so I am trying to get used to it as it is clearly not going away. I suppose I don't have to use it... but I'm trying. In IE6, I had pop-up blocking on "high" which meant just about every pop-up was blocked. I got used to using SHIFT-click and CTRL-click in my browsing... SHIFT-click to open in a new window... CTRL-click to override pop-up blocking. But now CTRL-click means to open in a tab. It seems to do a decent job of knowing if the link is supposed to be a pop-up (and so it pops it up) versus a regular page (at which time it puts it in a tab). But I have found that I can no longer answer the CNN survey on their main page by CTRL-clicking their submit button. It worked fine in IE6 to override my extreme pop-up blocking. I can't add CNN to my trusted sites, because they do advertising pop-ups. I guess I'm stuck... but hey, it's just a stupid poll, right? The only other thing that bugs me is tab placement and automatic selection. Occasionally, if I have say 5 tabs open, CTRL-clicking on the first tab will open a new tab in position 6. Other times it will be in position 2 (or, more generically, immediately after the tab I'm currently on). It seems to have something to do with whether the new tab is of the same domain. I'm OK with that, if it's true. I also find, however, that my browsing habits frequently lead me to close a tab and though I want to go back to the prior tab, it advances me to the next tab. I see why they made that choice, but for my browsing style it works against me. Meh.
In other news, we are rapidly approaching another vote and Oregon has a good number of Measures on the ballot. I frequently turn to some of my friends and coworkers for their points-of-view, logic, reasoning and knowledge. We have had many great discussions over the last week on these measures. Here's where I stand... I welcome any comments, opinions, information or questions!
| Measure 39 - PROHIBITS PUBLIC BODY FROM CONDEMNING PRIVATE REAL PROPERTY IF INTENDS TO CONVEY TO PRIVATE PARTY | |
|
YES |
Over the last few years we have witnessed a few
cases of the government using eminent domain to take land away from
private citizens just to hand it over to other private interests...
like developers wanting to build a mall, or even more offensively,
condos/apartments/etc. Though SCOTUS has declared these acts
to be legal at the federal level, I would like to see them
considered illegal. This measure does that for Oregon.
Many other states have already done the same. Update: I wanted to add a note here to indicate that I'm aware of another change this measure will bring about that doesn't sit well with me. If the private property owners feel the state isn't offering enough, they can bring it to trial and have the court decide. Currently, if the court decides the value is higher than the highest offer made by the state, the state is on the hook for the property owner's legal fees. If the state low-balls the owner, then they have to pay for their lack of good faith. However, this measure will change it such that the court compares its valuation to the first offer made by the state, not necessarily the highest. This reduces the state's ability to try to make an aggressive first offer, because private owners will almost certainly always bring it to court. Heck, they might even if the first offer is reasonable, as they have very little to lose. They can pump the state for more money, and if the state offers them more, then that would indicate it's likely that the court would decide a value higher than the first offer. Off to court we go. I don't like that wording change, but it's the price I have to pay to get the other thing, which I feel is more important. |
| Measure 40 - REQUIRES OREGON SUPREME COURT JUDGES AND COURT OF APPEALS JUDGES TO BE ELECTED BY DISTRICT | |
|
NO |
Currently these judges are elected by the whole state. This would require the state be split into districts and one judge would have to be elected from each district. It requires them to reside there and have done so for 1 year. To me, this is just too much cost and inefficiency applied to a job that theoretically shouldn't be affected by politics, beliefs, etc. They are just supposed to interpret existing laws. The legislature is and of course should be elected by district, because they represent their constituents - they make the law. The judicial system shouldn't be burdened in that same way. I have no idea how this would be implemented in the real world anyway... they all have to work in Salem... would they all commute there every day? |
| Measure 41 - ALLOWS INCOME TAX DEDUCTION EQUAL TO FEDERAL EXEMPTIONS DEDUCTION TO SUBSTITUTE FOR STATE EXEMPTION CREDIT | |
|
NO |
This boils down to a tax cut. (Explaining the
tax law and/or math isn't interesting. No one debates the
effect.) At the most basic level, I prefer taxes to be as low
as possible while being high enough to fund all the things we want.
Obviously everyone differs on what they want to be funded.
However, most everyone would agree that they want the spending of
their tax dollars to be as efficient as possible. We are told
that the money being referred to in this measure is spent 90% on
schools, public safety, low-income health care, etc. I want
those things funded adequately. I'm not convinced, however,
that the spending is anywhere near as efficient as it could/should
be. Not by a long shot. Unfortunately, I don't have the
"spreadsheets" to know any of this for sure. The part of this that makes me want to vote for it is that it is a fairly efficient way of getting a tax cut to the lower/middle class tax payer, especially families, while being almost meaningless for the upper class (in terms of percentage decrease in tax compared to income). Frankly, it would help me a reasonable amount. I was trying to think how this would play with the Oregon "kicker" law. But one doesn't really affect the other. Oregon makes a 2 year budget on the odd years. They have to forecast how much tax revenue they will get, then make a budget to stay within that forecasted amount. If, at the end of those two years, they took in more money than they predicted (and by definition, more than they spent) by 2 percent, they must refund the difference. That's the "kicker." Since this will reduce the taxes paid, they will simply be reducing their predictions, so it doesn't really change anything. (I wonder what happens when they don't take in as much as predicted... Do they take out loans to meet the budget?) If we assume the budget is always ~100% of the forecast... and this is going to reduce the actual tax (and therefore the forecast), then the budget will be reduced... and therefore spending will be reduced. Do I think they will spend more efficiently to make up for the reduced funds? No. I think they are lazy, incompetent and/or corrupt (you choose which mixture and to what degree) and so the things I care about (schools, libraries, fire, police) will likely get hurt. |
| Measure 42 - PROHIBITS INSURANCE COMPANIES FROM USING CREDIT SCORE OR "CREDIT WORTHINESS" IN CALCULATED RATES OR PREMIUMS | |
|
NO abstain? |
This has been the most intellectually entertaining
measure in my circle of friends. The knee-jerk, first-glance
opinion most people have with this is: "What does credit score have
to do with how well I drive?! Prohibit using it!" But
that turns out to be a shortsighted approach. (And also note
that this isn't limited to driving... it's homeowners, companies,
etc... all kinds of insurance.) It turns out this ultimately comes down to a simple question: Do we feel credit score should be put in the same category as race, religion, national origin, gender, etc.? But before we answer that, let me explain how we get there... I would contend that an insurance company's #1 goal is to make money and that they are exceedingly good at it. They have a mountain of data to analyze and it is in their best interest to be extremely good at predicting the financial impact to them of each customer. They want to know if you are going to be likely or unlikely to file a claim. (Note that I didn't say "have an accident.") If you are likely, then you will cost them more, so they charge you more. If you are unlikely, then they want you as a customer and would like to extend a competitive rate to woo you. Now, if we assume that they are very good at what they do (all those bean counters in a back room with calculators)... and if we also assume that they do use credit score in their equations... isn't it reasonable to conclude that credit score must be a valuable tool for them? If credit score wasn't a good predictor, they wouldn't use it, would they? If they used credit score in their equations, but there was no correlation to "likelihood to file a claim," then they would be charging too little for claim-happy people and too much for the customers they actually want. That would be bad for them. So, from all that, I'm forced to conclude that if they choose to use credit score, it's for a reason... and the reason is that it does correlate and is a useful tool for them. You can debate that all you want, but I'm pretty sure the data actually backs up my logical reasoning. For example: They took the information of 170,000 policy holders that filed claims within a three year period and pulled their credit reports. They found that consumers with certain credit characteristics filed more claims and more expensive claims.[1] Note that the article is actually making a case against using credit score, but the data is what it is. So there we have it... for the sake of argument, let's assume that credit score does correlate/predict your likelihood of filing a claim. We will remove that as an angle of attack here... please just assume it to be true. The cited article above actually makes a good case for why it might be false... and self-fulfilling! But let's just assume it, even if it grinds your gears. ;-) At this point, everyone turns to their anecdotes. "Family member X had great credit until their daughter got sick and they were forced to go bankrupt paying for her medical care." "The man walked out on the mother-of-three and left her with all the bills." The idea in all these anecdotes is that some people have bad credit through no reasonable fault of their own. Why are we punishing them? It is unfortunate... but I suspect those people are in the minority. I believe it is fair to say that most people with good credit deserve it, most people with bad credit deserve it... and it is the minority who are not deserving of the credit they have (one way or the other). That's not a deal killer... I'm just saying it. Some then suggest, "why don't they just base it on past performance?" If you're a claim-filer, you'll pay more. Well... that's true. But they also need to predict, not just react. Your past history likely affects your insurance rates far more than any predictive measure already, but they still need both. A co-worker pointed out that the insurance companies already have a lot to go on... he noted that he pays quite a bit more to insure his 17 year old son for driving. He's a teenager (increase!) and he's male (increase more!) Is that fair? Why? Oh, you actually believe that age and gender correlate to likelihood-to-file? So that makes it OK to use those factors? What about the teenaged boy who never gets in an accident? Through no fault of his own, he is paying more for insurance than the 40 year old woman. I would contend that the insurance company doesn't really look for a causal argument... but rather relies on their tons of data to find correlations, with no value-judgment whatsoever. Why would you allow them age, but not credit score? Because you believe there's a causal link? The same co-worker then pointed out that they get a small break, because he has good grades. Woah ho! That sounds an awful lot like credit score. But that one's OK, because it's in our favor. That sounds a bit inconsistent... And there we have it... we are, most likely, making an inconsistent argument if we say that credit score probably is a good indicator, but we don't want them to use it. There is no logic in that, so the only way it can hold up is if we simply declare that credit score is off limits. For example, it may correlate very well that Protestants and blacks are heavy claim-filers... and that Christians and Koreans are low claim-filers. But we as a society have strictly said those factors are off-limits. We're not claiming them to be bad predictors... we are outright disallowing it, regardless of their statistical validity. So what I ask of you is, if you want to prohibit the use of credit score, please consider it in this context. I believe I have reasonably shown why you can't take the easy way out (though I understand there are some assumptions in my logic). Personally, I'm on the fence on whether I think credit score ranks up there with the other "big ones." The reason I'm leaning towards "NO" is that I believe if we remove this tool (credit score) from their toolbox, they will simply find another similar data point that will give them the predictive factor they need. I'm not sure that, to me, credit score is equivalent enough to race/religion to fight this fight. It might be correct for me to abstain from this one, since I don't have a strong personal conviction. On the other hand, if there's a large Oregon consensus that it should be prohibited, then my NO vote won't matter. But if it's a 50/50 split, I would like it to go in the NO direction, because I believe this should pass only if it's overwhelmingly agreed to. |
| Measure 43 - REQUIRES 48-HOUR NOTICE TO UNEMANCIPATED MINOR'S PARENT BEFORE PROVIDING ABORTION; AUTHORIZES LAWSUITS; PHYSICIAN DISCIPLINE | |
|
NO |
Currently, Oregon law requires parental notification
for 14 and under. Obviously, for 18+ there is no question...
you're an adult. But to my surprise, while 15-17 doesn't
require notification, the doctor a girl goes to can
voluntarily contact the parents without getting consent
from the girl. That shocked me. So, the way it is now, parents will most likely be informed... either by the girl herself or by her doctor. Any parents not informed are likely not informed for a reason. If this law passes, then a barrier will be put up for the girl and the doctor. Where once there was choice and judgment, there is now less choice. She can go to court to circumvent the forced notification, but I suggest that would be a lot to ask in an already trying time. Doctors will be at risk legally for something I don't think is their responsibility. Furthermore, the girl will likely have a considerable amount of adult interaction. Even if she doesn't go to her parents, there will be other adults she can turn to and some that she will be forced to interact with (obviously, the doctor). Finally, if a girl is old enough to decide to have sex, she is old enough to decide to have an abortion or to have the child. She should understand that those are two potential outcomes and be able to live with her decision. The parent can't fail at the sex education part and expect to jump in later. My belief is that the parent should communicate early, make contraceptive available and have a strong overall relationship with their child. If you've done things right, you probably won't get into this situation... and if you do, your child will likely come to you. But don't expect the government to do the parenting for you. (Note: I generally think parents have too much legal control for too long, so this is consistent with my personal beliefs.) |
| Measure 44 - ALLOWS ANY OREGON RESIDENT WITHOUT PRESCRIPTION DRUG COVERAGE TO PARTICIPATE IN OREGON PRESCRIPTION DRUG PROGRAM | |
|
YES |
The estimated cost is zero. I can't understand why though. Also, there are no dissenting opinions. So, I guess it's YES. |
| Measure 45 - LIMITS STATE LEGISLATORS: SIX YEARS AS REPRESENTATIVE, EIGHT YEARS AS SENATOR, FOURTEEN YEARS IN LEGISLATURE | |
|
NO |
I don't like the idea of career politicians. I
like the idea of how it used to be... when you would serve your
community for a short while and return to your original vocation.
Also, I think we'd have less corruption if politicians couldn't be
"invested in" for the long haul. But the reality is the world is more complicated and sometimes it takes a great deal of experience to get things done. As much as I don't want the alternative, I also don't want a bunch of n00bs running the state. If the cutoffs were a bit higher, I would vote for this. But as they are, I just feel they're a bit too low. Damn. |
| Measure 46 - ALLOWS LAWS REGULATING ELECTION CONTRIBUTIONS, EXPENDITURES ADOPTED BY INITIATIVE OR 3/4 OF BOTH LEGISLATIVE HOUSES | |
|
YES |
The Oregon constitution currently bans laws that
impose limits on political campaign contributions. This merely
makes it legal to have those laws and details how those laws have to
come into being. It seems like a no-brainer to me to make it
possible to have such laws. I don't see this as affecting free speech as others suggest. |
| Measure 47 - REVISES CAMPAIGN FINANCE LAWS: LIMITS OR PROHIBITS CONTRIBUTIONS AND EXPENDITURES; ADDS DISCLOSURE, NEW REPORTING REQUIREMENTS | |
|
NO |
And there you have it... the reason Measure 46 is
there... is to allow Measure 47. :-) You might think
that since I'm voting YES on 46 that I'd vote that way on 47.
After reading all the limits and reporting requirements detailed in
47, I've decided that this particular implementation of campaign
finance reform is too restrictive. The dollar amounts are
shockingly low and it seems to force the average citizen to jump
through too many hoops to make any serious contributions. Hopefully 46 will pass and we can take another stab at it... |
| Measure 48 - LIMITS BIENNIAL PERCENTAGE INCREASE IN STATE SPENDING TO PERCENTAGE INCREASE IN STATE POPULATION, PLUS INFLATION | |
|
NO |
At first glance this seems like a decent idea.
We already know that Oregon must forecast the expected tax revenue
and create a budget that fits. But nothing stops them from
creating a budget that uses every penny of the forecast.
(Actually, there is an existing upper bound rule, but it's never
been reached.) This would force them to create a budget that is only population+inflation bigger than the last budget. Assuming the population of Oregon grows, the budget would grow in lock-step with the population... and inflation is thrown in for good measure. Sounds good, right? Well, it does. But... you could make a case that the types of things government budgets spend money on don't scale with population and inflation. I'm not sure if it's true, but it seems likely to me. Roads, fire, police, healthcare... those all sound like costs that would scale faster than population. Also, what if we decided all the sudden that all state colleges should be free? Even if we all collectively decided to implement a tax to collect that money, thereby increasing the forecasted tax revenue, thereby increasing what the budget could be... the budget would be restricted to a population/inflation increase over the last budget, disregarding the extra funds taken in. There is a safety valve... 2/3 vote of each house of legislature, plus a majority vote by the people... but that seems prohibitive to me. I'm voting NO on this, because while it sounds good in theory it seems too restrictive in practice. |
11 Oct 2006 - I haven't had much to say lately, so I haven't posted. Funny how that works. I'm posting now mostly just for the sake of it.
We have a decent number of "new" people at work now. Some of them are truly new, like less than 3 months on the job... but others are only new in this weird sense that they haven't been there for eternity. One, two even three years on the job is still "new" in this sense. During wine club last week, us "old" people got to talking about some videos we made on the 1 year anniversary of the re-founding of Webridge. The intent was to thank the upper management for guiding us through the dot com bust and subsequent layoffs while still managing to keep the company alive. I dug up the old CD (made on March 11, 2003) and put it on the web. You can see it here. The footage was taken randomly by different people over the course of a week or so. I then labored for 2 very long nights splicing it all together, adding music and sound effects, and bringing it together into some form of sanity. You may not get most of it, but I'm OK with that.
I read a story this morning on the death of cursive writing. I've been saying it for years... both that the death is imminent and welcome. Cursive as a way of common writing has always annoyed me; I find it hard to read. It's more of an art, like calligraphy, and in that form maybe it should remain... for the odd non-email letter here and there. But don't waste my kids' time teaching it in school. (And they almost entirely don't... it's more extracurricular at this point.) I'd be much happier if they taught them to type (and they do!) The only cursive writing I've ever liked is my mother's... and it's actually a form of stylized printing, not true cursive. Begone cursive capital Q! Away with lower case z! I declare you ridiculous!
26 Sep 2006 - Amy & I watched Heroes last night. It's off to a slow start, but I think that's a good thing... give it some time to build up the characters. There seems to be a touch of conspiracy thrown in too. As though perhaps the Heroes' abilities are part of some Intelligent Design. (Tee hee.) One touch I really liked was the Japanese Space/Time Bender Super Hiro guy. It was nice to see at least one of the Heroes not be all angsty... or, as they say these days, "dark and twisty."
I won't be able to watch the CW's Runaway, because it comes on opposite Heroes, but it looks like a solid show. (I caught the encore of the series opener tonight.) Donnie Wahlberg plays a man falsely accused of murder and on the run with his family. The woman who played the wife of Jack Bauer in season one of 24 also plays the wife here.
Big news, by the way... Amy got a job!!! She starts tomorrow. I'm very excited for her and proud too. She did a fantastic job in school and has moved more quickly than every other student she graduated with to take her national exam, state exam, get licensed and insured... and now to actually land a job. This is the biggest change to our family since the kids started going to school. And it's a welcome one. I have my eye on a nice little HD LCD... ;-)
21 Sep 2006 - I watched the series premiere of Six Degrees (6°) tonight. Based on written descriptions, I was really psyched up for it. But when I saw the lead-in previews for it while watching Grey's Anatomy (glad that's back on!), I just knew it was going to suck. Amy & I sat through it and pretty much agreed it was a waste of time, right up until the very end when it seemed to grab us both for just a moment. Just wasn't enough though... to the curb!
Everyone on the net already knows about White & Nerdy. (But you know, just in case you don't, I used the power of HTML to put a link there.) The lyrics and the video are rich with humor. If you pause it in certain places, you can unfold the layers. The man's a genius.
I attended Back-to-School night today as well. Got to meet Jarod's new teacher... she seemed really nice. Briefly spoke to Patrick's teacher. He looped with her so we are already familiar. (Looping is when they spend 2 years with a single teacher.) Should be a good school year. They're getting so old now... soon they'll be done with elementary and on to middle school where they start to have class specific teachers.
Funny anecdote: as I sat in Jarod's chair and surveyed the other parents, I realized that I still think of them as adults... parents... older people. And in truth, I actually was probably the youngest one in the room (except for the teacher, oddly enough). But then I checked out every other dad's hairline. ZOMG! They all had hair... and I look 40. But I'm still fighting the good fight. When I get to the point where I have to use a cane, I'll think about giving up my "Got Wang?" and "Fruit Fucker" t-shirts.
Now if you'll excuse me, I have a date with a roll of bubble wrap. Pop pop...
20 Sep 2006 - A new show called "Jericho" premiered today. I'm a big fan of post apocalyptic / survival themes (which is why I liked so many of Costner's movies that others didn't) and this show certainly fits that genre. The inaugural episode was good... no complaints. I look forward to seeing how it progresses.
I tend to get on the treadmill while I watch my shows, but the TV available to me is a tiny, standard def, 17" TV hooked up to the longest cable run in the house (so I get a lot of ghosting on certain channels). I've been thinking of picking up a small (24"?), wide screen, high def LCD panel and hooking it up to an over-the-air antenna to watch my shows in HDTV that is likely much better than the HD I get over cable. I'm 5 miles from the HD broadcast antennas and they are all within 2° of each other from my location, though I'd likely use a multidirectional antenna anyway. Assuming that works out (it should), I don't think I'd keep cable around if it weren't for the kids. I'd miss the occasional Alton Brown show on FoodTV and I'd lose HD ESPN, but otherwise I think it'd be OK. And the monthly savings... damn it's enticing.
I'm playing Knights of the Old Republic 2 (KotOR 2) right now. It's nearly 2 years old, but I never got around to playing it when it came out, as much as I absolutely loved KotOR 1. It's good, but not quite as good as the first. But it pulls me back in much more than Oblivion. Man, Oblivion is just painful to play. Next up after KotOR 2 is Prey. I can't wait to fire it up. (Yes, yes... I'm slow.)
Oh, and I just learned that you can use the hammer-on / pull-off technique in Guitar Hero. I've gotta practice that soon...
17 Sep 2006 - It's been a while. Sorry, been busy. I picked up Guitar Hero on Friday of last week and played it like a rock star over at Andy's house. Mark, Jeff and Dena were there too. Lots of fun. That night, I related a story about how I named a Nintendog "Blumpkin" and my kids were yelling into the DS "Here Blumpkin!, Sit Blumpkin!" So, we coined a new word that night: "Strumkin". It's just like a Blumpkin except you're playing Guitar Hero instead of, well... go look it up. I brought GH into work on Monday and people had a pretty good time with it.
We also had customers in for training last week. We pushed wine night up to Wednesday and had a pretty good time playing GH and karaoke with them. We let them know that the last class was out with us `till late, so on Thursday (their last day of class... flying out the next morning), a couple of the women came out with us and hung until... 3AM. We went to Henry's (yes, credit card stealing Henry's), then a sex shop called Spartacus (we got told to quiet down in there), then to a strip club and finally back to work where they chilled (and nodded off) until we finally took them back to the hotel. There's always a handful of really cool ones in every class. ;-)
Things at work are weird. We're getting bought again... by some random Fortune 200 company called Illinois Tool Works that just runs around buying smaller companies. They used to be purely hardware... "ITW designs and produces an array of highly engineered fasteners". But apparently they're trying to branch out into software now. They also own the company that makes Space Bags.
Right before this was announced, I was writing an email in my mind's eye to the local managers letting them know I thought they were doing a good job lately, after what seemed like months of a really negative environment. New people were being hired, new hardware was being brought in to rectify the employee-bought hardware, and we hadn't been bothered in a while with talk of outsourcing, finding efficiencies, rising to challenges and all that other bullshit. Of course, it was only short lived and it's back in full force again.
Ugh... I wrote like six paragraphs here, but I don't think this is the place for it. I just needed to vent. But tell me this... why does management ask for your opinions on our current problems and the solutions and then say you have "attitude" when you give them the straight answer that everyone else agrees on, but no one wants to say to their face? They don't like the answer, that's why...
On to better news... I've been waiting for Amy to post about it and I think she has... but she is fully licensed and insured to work as an LMT in the state of Oregon! Today is her graduation ceremony at East West College (though she's been done for a while). And she's already been interviewing and scouting out different types of work (even teaching). She won't tell you this (or maybe she did), but she graduated with a 4.0! The stuff she had to learn was intense, but it's no surprise to me that she nailed it. I'm very proud of her.
31 Aug 2006 - OK, going all out of order here so that I can post pictures of PAX 2006! I had a great time with Mark, Kevin and Phil in Bellevue, WA. We played games, met lots of new people, had some good beer... just a generally fun time. This is the one event I truly look forward to every year. It's pretty much the only big thing I do just for me.
18 Aug 2006 - Great fun and lots of audience participation. If you know, go!
I've had it with these motherfuckin' snakes on this
mutherfuckin' plane!
15 Aug 2006 - We just got back from our quick one-night camping trip to Hoodview campground on Timothy Lake. It seems my server detected my absence, became moody and promptly crashed. Sorry for the downtime. So far only one person seems to have noticed... ;-)
Bringing the end of 2005 posts nearer, I present you with a paltry selection of images from our 2k5 "Thanksgiving."
13 Aug 2006 - I'm on a roll! I'm rapidly bringing my 2005 picture posts to a close. Check out the Halloween pictures. Thanksgiving and Christmas are on the way next... and that'll be it for 2k5. I haven't looked at our picture archive for 2006, but I imagine all the normal events will be there...
12 Aug 2006 - Today is Patrick's 8th birthday! He chose a LaserTag party this year. Gotta go pick up his cake and head on over. Should be fun!
11 Aug 2006 - Ready to be grossed out? Last night was trash night. I opened the lid to the big 32 gal. trash can to put in the last mini-bag of trash and out came... maggots! They were all attached to the top of the lid so they went flying onto the garage floor. And guess what I was wearing... shorts. Not a haz mat suit, not full body armor, not even pants and socks... any of which I'd highly recommend when dealing with a situation like this. Yup, maggots were all over my bare feet.
This has happened to me only once before... and at least the other time it was reasonable. When we first moved into the house in 1998 we generated too much trash (and you can put out only so much in OR at one time), so we were backed up. One bag sat around for too long and there were a small number of maggots in it by the time I got around to it. No excuse like that this time. I don't really know why they were there... nothing abnormal went on that I know of. The trash was sealed, as it always is. These guys were beefy and huge, too. I couldn't have done better if I was trying to grow prize winning maggots. I spent slightly less than an hour cleaning up. It was very unpleasant.
Alright, I think I've shared enough on that. I hope you weren't eating. How about some more pictures then? These are from mid October, 2005. We went to a Fall Festival / Halloween type thing at a farm. It was cold and windy, but a lot of fun.
8 Aug 2006 - Well, it was bound to happen sometime. I have finally been a victim of fraud/theft. I got a call from the Visa fraud department the other day concerning some suspicious charges they were seeing on the Visa logo'ed ATM/debit card my bank issued me. I logged into my bank site and immediately saw that the last three purchases were done in Mexico. The fraud dept. dude read off transactions that they had already blocked that I couldn't see online... and they were all in San Diego or Mexico. He locked my card out and said I should then contact my bank directly. My bank said I could sign some affidavit documents detailing which charges weren't mine and they would reverse them. So, that's all underway.
Here's the thing. The person(s) responsible picked the wrong card to steal. Here are the facts... I (almost) never use that card for credit card style or debit style purchases. I only use it at the ATM to get cash. Every single one of the fraudulent charges has posted as a credit card style purchase (sometimes using the CVV code on the back, like in an over-the-phone or online order, which has to be seen by human eyes). My PIN hasn't been compromised. (The bank and Visa confirmed this.) So, I am certain it wasn't an ATM skimmer scam. The card has (almost) never been out of my possession. How did they get it?
Well, I said "almost" earlier, because I used the card as a credit card for the first time ever just two weeks ago, at... Henry's Tavern. When the waitress took it to run it, it was the first time it's ever been out of my hands. This was the only opportunity for something like this to happen. I feel 99% confident that either the waitress or someone else on the staff there skimmed my card (or at least wrote down the numbers). The only other option is that they delivered my card to another table by accident and another customer did it. I'm already in contact with the management at Henry's. I tend to be vindictive; we'll see if I get the opportunity.
On a lighter note, I've posted a small number of pictures from the Fall 2005 Little League season that both Patrick and Jarod participated in. It was a given Patrick would do it, but I was really proud of Jarod for giving it a try. Of course, Patrick returned for Spring 2006, but those pictures will come later...
6 Aug 2006 - Here are the 2005 PAX pictures. There aren't many, but I posted what I had. I'm really psyched to go again this year. In fact I just bought a Nintendo DS Lite to ease the pain of not having a BYOC spot... yay!
26 Jul 2006 - Patrick's 8th birthday is rapidly approaching. This year, he's chosen to do laser tag for his birthday. That should be a lot of fun. Last year, he had his birthday at Oregon Gymnastic Academy, just like Jarod did. In fact, this was something like the fifth birthday we've had at OGA. Crazy! At least this year is a little different.
Next up, I'll have pictures of my 2005 trek to the Penny Arcade Expo. 2006 will be the third year PAX has been run and I originally wasn't planning on going, but I signed up at the last second. It's just about exactly one month away. Looking forward to it!
25 Jul 2006 - AT&T responded to my email and said they'd reverse the charges and ensure the service was fully canceled. I got hold of someone at Verizon who had a clue (after 2 transfers) and she made absolutely sure both the phone line and DSL were fully canceled and that my current bill would be recalculated and resent. Of course, I had to tell her that I refused to be transferred away from her and that all dealings with other Verizon people had to happen on a 3-way phone call. I had to pin someone down and force them to be my advocate. Very annoying. But hopefully this mess is behind us.
The kids & I finished our Star Wars marathon, ending with Episode III tonight. It's the only PG-13 movie of the bunch, but they told me it didn't feel very PG-13. :-) I've seen all the movies several times over, but I was once again struck at how great the story truly is in Episodes I-III. The complexity, subtlety, depth and emotion was very hard to convey to my kids. From talking to friends, I got the impression that most adult viewers missed it as well. I think parts of Episode I and the actor behind Anakin in II and III incalculably damaged the movies' in the eyes of many viewers. Oh well... at least the indoctrination of my kids into the Star Wars mythos is complete. As I write this, one of them is whistling the theme at the dinner table. :-)
24 Jul 2006 - We traveled up to Seattle to see the Red Sox. They ended up losing 9-8, but the game was very exciting. It even included an inside-the-park homerun. Weird!
Today we went to see Monster House. It's an animated movie for kids about a haunted house. I have a college friend who works on animated movies and she made sure she went to see it. We all loved it. Good job Clara! (Her name's in the credits too!)
I wanted to take a moment and thank Amazon.com for their great customer service. I pre-ordered a computer game. As part of the package, I was supposed to get a pewter figurine free of charge. When the game came, there was no figurine! I returned to the website and saw that I needed to add it to my shopping cart separately when I bought the game. (It's an otherwise separately purchasable item.) I wrote to Amazon, explained I missed it and hoped for the best. I figured they'd have me pay shipping at least. Nope. Before I heard back, I got an order confirmation email saying it was on its way, no charge. I later got an email from a customer service rep. asking if this was satisfactory. Impressive!
On the other hand, I've got companies like AT&T and Verizon that are pissing me off. I recently got fiber installed to my house. More speed, less money. The installation and performance have been phenomenal! But... canceling my phone, DSL, long distance, etc. has been a nightmare. It was hard enough to find the right people to get it done. And even though I did successfully cancel, I still got bills for service I no longer had. So, now I have to call again and straighten it all out. What a pain in the ass! This is in contrast to the small ISP (DSL-Only.net) I used on my DSL line. I called them up, they canceled my account, and told me they wouldn't charge me for the few days I still had the service into my next billing cycle. They were awesome; I'm going to miss them. I used to get Christmas cards from them too. :-)
Companies need to straighten up on the customer service front, especially when it comes to what should be trivial tasks. I find that services handled by computers are far more reliable. Any time I have to talk to a human to get something done, there's a damn good chance it's going to go poorly.
19 Jul 2006 - It's been a while... sorry. Been busy. Went camping. Lots of stuff.
Regarding President Bush's veto of allowing federal funding for stem cell research on embryos left over from in-vitro fertilization procedures that would otherwise be thrown away anyway, I thought this chunk of text from Patti Davis was particularly correct:
The veto comes as no surprise; that battle line was drawn years ago. But it's hard to believe that the 70 percent of Americans who support stem-cell research really care what President Bush does. I'm not suggesting they won't notice, or be bothered - even annoyed. I'm certainly not suggesting that federal funding couldn't move research along at a faster pace. But caring is an emotion of a deeper kind. When we truly care about another's opinion, it's because we value that person and hold in some esteem their judgments and pronouncements. It also might mean we believe that individual can influence the tide of the future with their opinions.
This is a president who has no currency left with the majority of Americans who, polls have shown, do not trust him. We won't totally shrug off his intransigence, but we won't waste too much time mulling over his reasons either. Why? Because we don't care.
I'll have some more pictures up soon. Patrick's 7th birthday. His 8th is coming up quick!
5 Jul 2006 - The cut-over is complete. I'm now running only on my fiber connection. I let it run in tandem long enough for responsible, well-behaved networks to receive the new IP. If you're seeing this, then you're seeing it served up over fiber. It should seem very fast! ;-)
If you don't believe me, try downloading something large-ish from my site. Like here... this is a 1.54MB WMV of the Star Wars Kid. Right click... download. Check the speed.
Yes, I'm showing off...
3 Jul 2006 - Three things... Amy posted pictures of our big BBQ party. Check 'em out (bottom of the page). (I'm eating some left over potato salad right now!)
I got my fiber installed. Getting the DSL and fiber networks to work together so that one server can satisfy both external IPs is hard. (At least it is for me.) I "need" them to run simultaneously for a while as the DNS changes propagate across the Internet. The network is in its final state for now, but it's still flaky. Everything will be solid again once I cancel the DSL. Solid... and fast. 15up / 2down Mbps!
Happy Birthday you-know-who!
25 Jun 2006 - Two things real quick. First, how much does a starling (bird) weigh? How much do a lot of them weigh? Watch this video... it's amazing. Second, after you watch the video, read this thread and bask in its pun-itude.
24 Jun 2006 - You may have noticed (yeah, right!) that I updated the contact info page with links to my various other existences on the net. Yes, one of them is MySpace. I finally broke down and created an account. There was a reason, but it escapes me at the moment. I mention it now because I have noticed a ridiculous trend. People tend to add friends for the sake of adding friends. WTF? Why is that useful? Even worse, I get friend requests not only from strangers, but from some kind of weird cut/paste non-real people. Check out hot chick #1 and hot chick #2. Other than the pictures and location, everything else is identical. There must be some kind of revenue model I can't understand associated with doing this. The saddest part is watching all the idiot dudes posting comments after they get the friend request. I'd love to post a comment on each page linking to the other, but I'd have to add them as friends to do that.
I hear the forecast in Boston calls for thunderstorms for the next 10 days. I've already gloated in an email to a select few, but just for the benefit of everyone not in Portland...
;-)
20 Jun 2006 - A year or so ago when I asked my aunt Jan why she missed my last few posts, I was told very politely that I didn't post often enough to keep her coming back to my site regularly, so it was a crapshoot if she saw a given post. That really pushed me to post more regularly and I think I have lately. I've already got 5 posts in June, had 10 in May, 6 in April, 3 in March, 4 in February. Prior to that was still pretty scarce... 0 in Jan, 2 in Dec., etc. I'm happy with my pace now.
To keep it going, here are some notes and pictures from a camping trip we took in August 2005. Next up will be Patrick's 7th birthday... and I expect it will be prior to his 8th. ;-)
19 Jun 2006 - Today's highlight was taking Jarod and Patrick to the bank to open their very first savings accounts. It was getting a little ridiculous having so much cash lying around (though it was handy), so we took it all in and deposited it. They'll start earning a whopping 0.50% ASAP! ;-)
I have a picture-heavy post ready for you today. This is from our trip back to Boston in 2005. My primary intent for going back was my friend Luis' wedding. Of course, Amy & the kids hung out with all kinds of family and friends during their long 3 week stay.
15 Jun 2006 - Turns out Patrick's team lost the second time around as well. It was something like 9-3. I guess luck wasn't enough. :-) That put them in second place overall for the season. At the end of the game, someone from the league handed out second place medallions to Patrick and his teammates as we clapped for each player. Then the first place team went up and got theirs. I was really hoping that with two chances they could eek out at least one win, but that other team was really good. Last year they ended in 5th place, so this was quite an improvement! And Patrick just loves it, so that's what's important.
I'm pretty frustrated at work right now. The differences in the way IE, Firefox, Opera, Safari 1 and Safari 2 handle caching in combination with the history list are infuriating. As usual, IE does exactly what I want. Firefox needed some coaxing. But Opera and the Safaris are untenable. In Opera's defense, they are following the RFC to the letter, but we are in agreement at work that the RFC is questionable in this particular area. Orthogonally, it's very frustrating how Apple bundles its browser so tightly to the OS. We have to fully support Safari 1 and 2, because you can't upgrade to Safari 2 on an older OS; they go together in lockstep. Yes, IE is bundled with Windows, but at least you can upgrade the browser while staying on the same OS. Perhaps I'm complaining for no good reason anyway, as Safari 2 seems to have regressed in many ways.
There was a brief moment of purity in browsers when the whole world consolidated on a single platform: IE. Netscape Navigator was essentially gone and the whole Mozilla world hadn't yet been created. (I'm referring to the "new" Mozilla world.) The only problem back then was that the Mac IE was kinda crappy, but you knew it would get better with time and be consistent. Instead, we now have 6 different browsers all with fairly significant market share. This is progress?
In other news, the kids' last day of school is today! They get out a bit early and then they're done for the summer. They have a week long summer camp the following week, as Amy still has one more week of her school left. After that we have a few events already lined up for the summer, including two camping trips, an overnight in Seattle with a Red Sox game, a trip to the coast (probably Seaside) and free movies every week. Speaking of movies, I need to see Nacho Libre. "Chancho! When you are a man, sometimes you wear stretchy pants... in your room. It's for fun."
12 Jun 2006 - My 10 year college reunion went really well! It was great to see familiar friends and people I haven't seen since college. An unexpected highlight was listening to RPI grads (one from my year) who worked on the Mars landers. They even talked about their upcoming mission. I'll have more reunion details later. I want to share... so it'll be an incentive to get more of the backlog of pictures done.
Jarod's birthday passed while I was away in NY. I brought my laptop with me and set up a webcam chat session so I could wish him a happy birthday as close to in-person as possible. It worked out really well. His birthday party is coming up this weekend.
And that brings me to my next catch-up picture post. Jarod's 8th birthday from 2005! Still just about a year behind...
Oh, one last thing. Patrick had a playoff game today. If they won it, they would've won it all. But they lost 11-9, so they have to play the same team again tomorrow. They both now have postseason records of 2-1, so tomorrow's game will remove all doubt. The opponents are a tough team, but Patrick's team has a bit of luck on their side. :-) As the saying goes, "I'd rather be lucky than good."
8 Jun 2006 - I had a bit of a computer scare over the past weekend. Amy's hard drive died a couple months ago. No biggie for us - all our data is on a server - just a minor inconvenience. I finally got around to ordering a replacement and it came in on Friday. I rebuilt her computer over the weekend. On Sunday night, after installing the last of her apps, I tried to hook up Outlook to her Exchange mailbox. I set it to cached mode, as I always do, and waited for Outlook to finish caching to her local box. It ran for a few minutes and then mysteriously lost its connection to the server. It took me a long time to figure out what was happening (loose cable?, dead switch?, unlucky install to her new machine?), but it turned out to be that there were some corrupted emails in her Exchange mailbox. Any time they were accessed, it rebooted the server. I don't know in what way they were corrupt. I also have no explanation for why accessing them would just reboot the server. No blue screen, no nothing... just a reboot. Finding the two offending emails took a long time and I went through about 10-20 reboots. The reboots are painful, because I run a mirrored volume, so every time it reboots without warning it resynchs the mirror. That takes 4-6 hours and the server is less responsive during that time. It didn't matter how the emails were accessed either. I repro'ed it in three ways: 1) presumably when Outlook's caching pass hit them, 2) when Outlook was set not to cache and I manually accessed them, and 3) even via Outlook Web Access. I had to go through every email in her mailbox, but it wasn't quite as painful as it sounds. I moved messages to a local PST file a chunk at a time... first 1997, then 1998 (they were small years), then I started going month by month in the later years. When the server magically rebooted while moving the Deleted Items from May, 2003, I knew there was a bad one in that bunch. Then I did them one at a time until it rebooted again. Then I deleted the offending email. The same procedure in her Sent Items produced a bad email in Feb, 2002. I moved out everything prior to 1/1/2005 and hoped that none of the messages after that were corrupt. Then I let Outlook try to resynch again and it was successful. It was hard to examine the corrupt emails in any significant way as doing so would reboot the server. But one commonality I noticed was that they both had attachments.
The bottom line is that nothing like that should reboot my server. I could understand if the Outlook client choked, but this was just unacceptable. Not sure what I can do about it though. Everything seems OK now.
I still want to virtualize my two servers, but that will have to wait. I toyed with the idea during this latest fiasco, but I was again stymied by the problem I have yet to share with you. Another time, perhaps.
Patrick's Little League team did really well at the beginning of their season. Then they faltered. In the end, I think the had a .500 record (plus 1 tie game). The playoffs have started and they've won both of their two games so far!!! And they've both been amazing games. In the first, they were down 1-5 at the end of the 5th inning, which is the normal last inning for them. But apparently during playoffs they must play 6 innings. So they did... and at the end of the 6th they scored 5 runs, winning the game 6-5! What an amazing come-from-behind win!
They had their second playoff game yesterday. It was tied 2-2 going into the 6th. I believe there were two outs... maybe just one. Regardless, someone got on base and the next batter hit one long and drove him in from first to win the game. There was a little drama at the end when the guy who hit in the winning run continued running to home plate and checked the opposing catcher. If the game wasn't over, it would've been completely legitimate... but it was over. The ump gave him a quick talk and let him know the hit shouldn't have happened. He was just excited though. :-) It was funny to hear the crowd go dead silent and then return to cheering once the lesson was conveyed.
One thing's certain: the end of this season is showing that the parents are getting serious. I hope it doesn't escalate. I'd hate to see a fight break out in front of the kids. But if it does, I'm gonna tackle somebody. :-) OK, maybe I am looking forward to it. Tee hee...
Jarod's birthday is tomorrow. Nine years old! I think that makes me infinity years old. :-( We measured his height this morning and marked it on the door. He and I also went out together Tuesday night. We picked up some items at the grocery store, had dinner at a restaurant of his choice (Newport Bay) and then returned home to bake cupcakes together. (Patrick & Amy were at a baseball practice.) It was really nice to spend some time with him, especially since I'll be away on his actual birthday tomorrow. We have his kid party planned for the next weekend at a rock climbing gym. Should be fun!
The reason I'm away is my 10 year college reunion. I'm taking a red eye to Albany, NY and I'll hang there for the weekend with my college friends. Should be fun! It was fun 5 years ago...
I promise to post some more pictures when I get back. I've fallen behind to the 1 year mark again, because the pictures that are queued up for publishing are from Jarod's 8th birthday...
31 May 2006 - Sender ID is intended to manage a specific type of spam issue. It is very easy for spammers to send email as though it looks like it comes from any domain, like intel.com, paypal.com or djbreslin.com. This is bad, because it can aid in phishing and/or make a bad name for a domain that doesn't deserve it. This kind of domain spoofing has happened to me in the past and is happening to me again right now. I can tell, because for all the spam emails that bounce, a non-delivery receipt is returned to the sender (which is usually some gobbledegook@djbreslin.com). I also get a lot of challenge/response replies from individuals' spam blockers. I even got an irate email from a person who said they were going to sue me. See? It can be a problem...
Fortunately, a spammer can't change the fact that the mail header records exactly what IP address the email originated from. So, the idea behind Sender ID is that an email can be verified by comparing the domain it says it's from to the IP address it actually came from. If the email says it came from djbreslin.com, but didn't come from 63.105.23.211, then the recipient knows it is not authentic.
The implementation comes in two parts. First, you have to tell the world what IP goes with emails generated from your domain. That requires a TEXT record in the name server(s) that represent your domain. Second, people who receive email have to perform the verification check.
All of this works... in theory. In practice, it is not completely useful. My first issue is the free DNS service I use does not allow me to create TEXT records. So, I can't let the world know my info. The second issue is that it is a rare mailer who actually goes to the trouble to create their Sender ID TEXT record. (Or, maybe they have obstacles similar to me.) Even though I've enabled my mail server to perform the Sender ID verification check, the vast majority of the mail I get essentially says "I didn't find any info one way or the other." I do get some that pass and some that fail (meaning that the domain owner of where the email said it came from made the effort to create the record), but they are few and far between. It is slightly beneficial in that my mail server can gather yet another piece of information to apply to the heuristic that determines if an email is spam or not.
And even if I do get my free DNS provider to allow me to create the needed record, it is only of any use if the servers receiving email that purports to be from my domain actually check the record. (I donated $30 to EveryDNS.net and sent them a support case on the subject. No reply yet after 1.5 weeks.)
The bottom line: Sender ID will only be wildly successful if everyone hops on the bandwagon. And since Microsoft is leading this charge, there is a lot of resistance. Such is life on the internet...
In the next few days, I'll pound out my Virtual Server gripe. The wound is still too raw at the moment...
29 May 2006 - We took the kids to see Over the Hedge today. I took the opportunity to watch the end credits to X-Men 3. It's short and sweet, but it leaves open the possibility of a meaningful 4th installment (if they handle it correctly).
Over the Hedge was good! The kids enjoyed it. I thought it started kinda slow, but the second half was really quite fun. It wasn't even necessarily that funny... just a decent story, told well.
We stopped by Trader Joe's on the way home in hopes of picking up some buffalo steaks. I was expecting a meat counter, but they didn't have one. The best we could muster was frozen ground buffalo patties. We picked up some other stuff (burgers, hot dogs, buns, chips, etc.) and made a BBQ out of it. The buffalo wasn't that much different than regular beef. I could detect the "sweetness" so often used to describe it, but it was subtle.
To end the day, I blew up the big red ball and took it out on the street for the neighborhood kids to play with. Boy do I get my exercise when I do that! I have to run in front of the ball and ensure it doesn't go flying into any cars, bushes, houses, sharp objects or random pedestrians. I call them "civilians." ;-)
27 May 2006 - I saw X-Men 3 with Amy yesterday. It wasn't horrible, but the general vibe out there is correct: It's not on the same level as the first two. The first two movies were just about perfect. This one was extremely shallow. There was no connection to any of the characters as the movie progressed. There was one fantastic scene with Charles and Erik from an earlier time, but that was about it. And there were way too many cheesy, ham-handed one-liners. Remember in the first one where Wolverine responded to Cyclops, "You're a dick." when he was trying to prove it was really him and not Mystique? Every other line in the third movie is like that. Too much, in my opinion.
We didn't stay for the end credits to finish, but apparently you should... if you care.
In other news, I bought 300 shares of Intel at $17.85 on Wednesday. AMD's at the height of their recent valuation, Intel is at the bottom of theirs. Intel has been getting trounced by AMD from a product quality point-of-view for quite a while (2 years?). But the next batch of tech coming out from Intel is incredible and AMD has very little to respond with. Oh, and I was bored and wanted to buy something. That's probably the most important reason.
I have some Sender ID and Virtual Server gripes to share soon, but not right now... tired of typing...
22 May 2006 - I met my buddy Mark at Chili's on Saturday for a couple beers and some food. We grabbed one of the boxes of Trivial Pursuit cards they have at the bar and started rattling off questions to each other. So much of it is insane trivia... and there are always a handful of blindingly obvious ones. But nothing tickled us more than seeing this one:
Suffice it to say, my answer was not what they were looking for...
We also came across another question that struck us funny: "Which US state has the largest Indian population?" Mark & I both immediately thought of India Indians... and then realized there was no way that's what this question was asking. Answer? Oklahoma. Yup... was written for a different time.
On Sunday, we all went out to a baseball field to practice Patrick's hitting. He's been in a slump lately. I get the impression he's over-thinking it... he needs to get the muscle memory down again. Even so, he's an asset to his team with his fielding ability and presence of mind. He made a nice double play a couple games back and did a good job at second base in their most recent game. Anyway, the first 30-40 pitches were practice for me... it's freakin' hard to pitch! Jarod took a few swings too. I tagged him on the foot with a wild pitch and it came up and caught him in the knee. Massive bruise. He got the bruising gene from his mom. I took one straight to the shin... no bruise.
I wanted to take the kids to see Over the Hedge, but we showed up late to a packed theater and decided to put it off until later. We grabbed dinner instead, then came home and they played outside. We rounded out the night with some homework... and then just as they were getting into bed, we had a thunder and lightning storm! We never get those in Portland, so it was a rare treat. I grew up with the truly fantastic storms you see in Boston, but I think this might be just the second or third time the kids have experienced it here. Jarod suggested it was just someone rolling a garbage bin along the sidewalk. But there was no confusion when a really big flash/crack/bang hit and declared itself slightly larger than the rumble of a plastic bin.
Before I go, let me share a major gripe. Until recently, I was not a registered voter. I never bothered, because I have fairly deep beliefs that it is a waste of time. I never believed that voting mattered... to me it just always seemed like a waste of time. I'm not sure I believe any differently now, to be honest. The other reason I never wanted to register is that I think the voting system used in the US is flawed to the core. I'm not going to get into voting mathematics, but it's enough to say that the system we use is pretty much the worst one possible.
But that's all in the past. Today, I am registered. (I specifically wanted to vote against President Bush in the 2004 election.) And here's the thing... if you're registered to vote in elections that have double-majority rules, you better damn well send in your ballot, dipheads! The greatest travesty I witness is not those who choose not to register. I respect that. It's those who do register and then can't find the time to send in their ballots! (Especially in a mail-in state like Oregon!!!) In case it's not clear, a double-majority requires that something get >50% of the vote (obvious), but also that >50% of registered voters actually vote! This is a standard voting practice and it isn't great, but it's reasonable. It prevents the few from deciding for the many.
There was a measure on the ballot to increase taxes to pay for badly needed school expansion in our district. It got 60.47% of the vote! It "passed!" Oh, but wait... only 36.7% of registered voters turned in their ballots. Sorry, you lose. And those other 9 measures that were on the ballot? Yup, even though every single one of them "passed," they actually didn't. What a waste of tax payer money. I don't care if you don't register an opinion, but not turning in your ballot is not equivalent to abstaining! Turn in an empty ballot for all I care. Just turn it in!
I came up with a solution to this problem. There are 4 elections per year in Oregon. I propose that if you miss 3 consecutive elections, you are automatically unregistered. No more of this "I just vote when the Presidency or Governorship comes up" bullshit.
And that, my friends, is yet another reason why "I hate people."
20 May 2006 - My manager at work took us out to see The DaVinci Code today. The critics have been slamming it and I can't figure out why. I really liked it! But they have a built-in audience in me. First, I usually like anything that stirs things up... challenges the status quo. Even if I don't agree with the intent, I like volatility. Second, I enjoy cloak and dagger, secret organization type stuff. Third, historical mysteries intrigue me. It is said that the history is written by the victor, and so I wonder how much of our history is true. Last, the particular content of this movie, which I sum up as being "Jesus was a dude," seems very natural to me. I understand all the arguments about how this is fiction and so much of it is fantasy. But a lot of it is based in fact as well. And though the specific conclusions might be wrong, it has always seemed far more logical to me to believe that, at best, Jesus was a man who did good things and got recognition for it.
The funny thing is, when the church tries so vehemently to disprove the content of the book, they essentially demonstrate its basic truth. They are concerned that this text might influence others to believe things which are not true. They point out how many of the "facts" in the book are based on untruths, written down here and there... fake documents... real documents with bad data... wrong interpretations. Well, isn't that all The DaVinci Code is saying about some earlier "facts?" If this book is concerning to the church in a day and age where we are more connected and educated than ever before, imagine what some manipulation of truth could have achieved 1,500 to 2,000 years ago...
But back to the movie... yeah, it was good. There were moments that were a little flat. I've heard rumor of some "big revelation" part towards the end that generated unintended laughter from the audience. I don't know which part they're talking about; didn't happen in my theater. In fact, it got a unanimous "thumbs up" from the 9 of us that went. But then, we're a largely pagan group. ;-)
17 May 2006 - For a person who believes they won't live past 60, life seems extremely short. It's a shame to let things get in the way of making it enjoyable...
11 May 2006 - The Yankees finally won one against the Sox. Frustrating to watch that. I guess they had to rebound from the ass kickin' the Sox served them with yesterday, but given how close the race is, I'd just rather they lost.
You've already seen the No Pants Day pictures, but my Flickr account finally got approved, so I thought I'd throw a link out to there as well. I tagged my images with "nopantsday", "webridge" and "clickcommerce". If you go to the main page of Flickr and search on "nopantsday", you should see my images amongst the others.
There is a single other image besides my own that shows up if you search on "webridge". It's an error from one of our developer applications called Site Designer used by Xerox, one of our (former? not sure...) customers. Apparently the error message wasn't detailed enough for the user, so it is now scorned on Flickr. :-)
I added my Flickr URLs to my contact page too. I don't really intend to use it much. All these MySpace, Flickr, Xanga, MSN Spaces, BlogSpot, etc. sites seem really goofy when you have your own domain. You know?
Patrick had a baseball game today. They lost their second game of the season. They've been doing real well lately, but they got crushed in this one. Ah well. Jarod made a coffee bean flower with a package of coffee in the center for his teacher for Teacher Appreciation Week. Apparently he likes coffee.
Amy finally updated her site and put up some pictures of the recent Boston trip. Apparently I'm her IT guy, so... sorry that her hard disk failed! I'm sure that was the only thing preventing her from updating her site... not laziness at all.
That's about it. Oh, my college reunion is rapidly approaching. I haven't made arrangements yet; still waiting to hear back from a friend I'd like to see that would cause me to fly/drive differently than if I was just going straight to RPI. Eventually I'll just have to book some stuff... too chicken to wait `till the last minute.
6 May 2006 - Patrick had another baseball game today. Jarod and I showed up for about an hour of it. It was great! They won again, this time 15-6, I think. Patrick made a good play at second. He's pretty good in the outfield.
Trying to catch up still... here are pictures from the end of Patrick's Spring `05 T-ball season.
5 May 2006 - Today was No Pants Day and Cinco de Mayo! Planetary alignments pale in comparison. Things at work have been a bit weird lately, so I figured it was time for some fun. I was able to convince a few people to leave their pants at home. And I picked up some Corona and limes on the way to work. I claim no responsibility for what ensued from there, but you can be sure we violated at least 27 rules of the company handbook. Yeah! Take that! ;-)
2 May 2006 - Before I get into anything else... how about that Sox game? Freakin' sweet or what? I was really sad when Johnny left the Red Sox for the Yankees. I respect his decision, but at the same time, I won't deny the Nation its right to razz him. It was pretty cool to see him get just a touch shaken by the "Johnnnnnnny... Johnnnnnnny..." chants from the crowd. Even better to see Big Papi knock one out of the park right over his head... even with all that wind driving otherwise well-hit balls down into the gloves of outfielders. Way to go Sox! Now on to bigger news...
I got back into Portland Sunday afternoon around 2pm after having had the honor of participating in the wedding of Scott and Sue Gancarz. Scott is one of my best college friends. We met freshman year and remained friends throughout our time at RPI. He invited me to be a groomsman in his wedding. It was such a pleasure to be part of it all.
My plane landed in Burlington, VT on Thursday night. I hopped into my rental car, checked into my hotel and made my way to Scott's apartment (with some difficulty, I might add... two damn North Streets on the map... one in Burlington and one in Winooski). He shared some of his homebrew beers with me (3 out of 4 were great!) and I shared some of the Oregon beers I usually drink. (I lugged them all the way there in my backpack.) This was my first real chance to meet Sue too. I had seen her at Luis' wedding 8 months ago, but we didn't get a chance to talk much then. She's wonderful! It was a lot of fun getting to know her. I hope to be able to hang out with them more as the years go by... Scott's easy-going and a lot of fun... and Sue just makes it twice as good!
Though I didn't leave their place until 1:30am that night, it was still an early 8am rise on Friday to meet for breakfast with the rest of the gang. I got to meet Scott's brother Brett and also see a couple of his neighborhood friends that I had met before while in Vegas. We checked out Lake Champlain and went mini-golfing. I got sunburned. And right before the wedding too. Stupid me. After a tuxedo fitting, we ended up at the rehearsal, which went well, and then the rehearsal dinner. I was beat by the end of the day and crashed around 9:30pm.
Sleeping in `till 11:30am was the most glorious thing to happen to me in quite some time. It's amazing how a typical 1am-6am sleep schedule can make you long for the simple things. ;-) Hell... it's past 2am as I write this. Ugh. Scott eventually called me for lunch and he and I went into downtown Burlington and ate at the Vermont Pub & Brewery. That place was pretty cool with an eclectic menu and some really great local beers (though they were out of the two I wanted to try most). We pretty much got ready for the wedding straight away from there. I had his tux in my room so we both suited up and got up to the banquet hall on the roof as fast as we could to start the picture taking. We looked pretty damn good. A tux makes anyone look good though, right? ;-)
Guests started arriving in earnest 30 mins prior to the main event, so the beautiful bride eventually ducked out of sight and us guys in monkey suits tried to look comfortable. The whole ceremony was beautiful, simple and elegant. I was impressed with the whole operation! As best man, Brett gave a great speech. The DJ was great while spinning the tunes, but he also helped coordinate and kept everyone chill and on track. Oh, and we got to steal the shoes of the bride and groom for alcohol! (It's a Polish tradition.) I even got up and danced! Well, I got up and made movement on the dance floor. Whether or not it was dancing... that's a designation best left to more qualified observers.
One of the nice things was that I got to see a lot of old friends. My other buddies from college showed up and I sat at the same table as them. (The bride & groom had a sweetheart table... no head table. Another nice touch.) Eric & Lisa were there... so was Jeff... Luis & Amanda... and Steve & Danielle were there too!
Besides seeing all my old friends, I also had the opportunity to meet someone new. One of the catering staff had a personality that just drew you in... she was having fun through the whole night and was really engaging. Made a lasting impression... so Emma, if you're out there, you were awesome!
After the event was over and I was done helping the bride back to her room, Scott & I went back to my room and dismantled our elaborate garments. Then we all met in the best man's room and performed our duty to polish off the keg from the bachelor party. We tapped that thing out quick! I had to knock off early at about 2am. After about 1 hour of cleaning and packing, I took a quick nap from 3am to 4am and then got up, showered, and trekked back out to the airport. I hopped my 6am flight and made it back to Portland Sunday afternoon. Yup, I think that covers it. Had a great time!
Congrats Sue & Scott!!!
24 Apr 2006 - The first Friday of every May is "No Pants Day." 2005 was the first year I'd heard of it. I promoted it in the office and got a few participants to go along with it. This year, 2 of the 4 guys who participated are gone, so I don't know how well it's going to work this year. Anyway, here are the pictures from last year... for the ladies.
23 Apr 2006 - We've started in on the kids' science projects for this year. So what does that mean? Yup, pictures from last year.
22 Apr 2006 - Just a random geek moment here. I recently applied SP2 to my Exchange 2003 server. SP2 includes Intelligent Message Filter (IMF) v2. I had already been running IMF v1 and it worked well at first, but over time it seemed to let more and more spam through. But I have to say, IMF v2 is brilliant. There has been a massive reduction in the amount of spam that gets through to my mail server. Furthermore, they now offer heuristic updates to IMF via Microsoft Update, so it gets improved over time and I don't have to do anything to make that happen.
For those that aren't familiar with IMF, basically it just analyzes an email and assigns a "spam confidence level" (SCL) to it - 0 is likely not spam... 9 is likely spam. Then you can choose for some behaviors to happen based on the SCL number. For example, you can outright reject emails with SCLs of 9... a user never sees them... they never go into your server. And you can say for anything else 6 and above, it automatically moves into a user's built-in Junk E-Mail folder. Of course, the ultimate worry is that you might reject a real email, because it was accidentally ID'ed as spam... a false positive. So, what SCL ratings are reasonable?
I never delete real email... ever. So I have a lot of historical data that I can analyze. I've received 5,765 real emails since I brought up my Exchange server on 1 Jan 2004. I installed IMF v1 on 13 Jun 2004, so the bulk of those emails have SCL ratings assigned to them. In that time, 7 real emails have been given an SCL rating of 6 (that's 0.1%). And 101 real emails have been tagged with a rating of 5 (which is 1.8%). Not one single real email has ever been tagged with a rating of 7, 8 or 9. So, I now automatically reject anything 7 or higher. And anything 5 or higher (meaning 5 or 6) gets sent directly to a user's Junk E-Mail folder.
The results? Astounding thusfar. It seems that most actual spam is getting tagged 7 or higher and never being seen. And I don't remember the last time I had to fish out a real email from my Junk E-Mail folder. It seems IMF v2 is even more accurate about assigned SCLs.
Now all I have to do is enabled Sender ID so spammers can't spoof my domain. This is a real problem that fortunately hasn't resulted in anything catastrophic for me yet. I have gone through two waves of spammers spoofing me. The first one was over a year ago now... I would get tons and tons of non-delivery receipts (NDRs) suggesting someone at my domain was spamming. Of course, they are always "replied to" the email address that sent them, and it's always something like uvdzs@<mydomain>.com. I have a sink that forwards all email to non-existant mailboxes to me, so I get to see all these wonderful NDRs. Back in that first wave, I actually had a guy write to me and say he was going to track me down and kill me (or sue me, not sure which he said) if I sent him another spam mail. Eek! It happened again this past week or two. It's par for the course whenever you register a domain. The potential catastrophe is that someone adds your mail server to a blacklist and then you stop being able to send/receive legitimate mail. Fortunately, that hasn't happened yet, but I'm always worried it will. Sender ID should fix that.
15 Apr 2006 - Patrick has a baseball game scheduled today, but it got rained out. Such is frequently the case when you play Spring baseball in Portland. But it reminded me that I had some old pictures of Patrick's first foray into baseball. He signed up in Spring of last year for T-ball (due to age limits) and enjoyed it thoroughly. He missed the Summer '05 season, because of a visit to Boston. In the Fall of '05, Jarod joined Patrick and they played on the same baseball team together. It was a mixture of coach-pitch and player-pitch. This year, Patrick is back at it alone and doing well. They've only played one game so far (due to rainouts) and they tied with the other team at 8 runs. It was quite exhilarating!
11 Apr 2006 - It never fails. Just when I think I'm doing well and catching up on the website postings, I get a reminder of just how far behind I am. I looked through the sets of photos I want to publish and saw that the oldest were from February... of 2005. Yup, I'm over the 1 year mark again.
These pictures are from the day we got the kids' new bikes. Grandma sent money for Christmas for that purpose and when the weather got good we took care of it!
4 Apr 2006 - We're all safe and sound back in Portland. Amy and the kids spent their Spring Break in Boston and I went out for a long weekend at the end of their stay. I had a pretty good time and I think they did too.
I left Portland on Thursday, getting on a 6am flight. It was nice to touch down in Boston with daylight still left, but getting up at 3:45am was challenging. In fact, I almost missed my flight. The primary reason for the visit was my mom's 5 year wedding anniversary. We met some family members at Solea and waited for her husband Eddie to bring her by for the big surprise. She was pretty stunned when she saw us all there and even more so when she realized we were in from Oregon. Jarod and Patrick ran up and gave her some hugs. Eddie, Mike and Mike's girlfriend Kathy did a great job putting it all together. And it was nice to see my aunts and various other people while we were there.
On Saturday we drove to my father's house in Canton for a brunch. They happened to also be getting a new puppy that day, so it was a neat day to be there. My brother Peter really seems like having the pup. My father? Not so sure... ;-) Later on we went bowling... candlepin bowling! I haven't done that since I was living in Somerville. It was very nostalgic, but I couldn't believe how hard it was! The kids got a kick out of it.
We drove to my mother's house on Sunday. Amy and the kids had to stay "secret" from her even though they were there for a few days prior to the party, so we wanted to get in a full visit with just her before we left. Eddie and I hid Easter eggs around the outside of the house and the kids searched for them and filled their baskets. We ate some fruit & bagels, later ordered some pizza, and also went through some boxes of old "stuff" of mine, like pictures and school stuff from kindergarten all the way up to high school. I brought home a significant chunk of it.
Later on that day we went downtown with Amy's family to see the Big Apple Circus at City Hall Plaza. The circus was awesome! I had some reservations about going, because I refuse to take my kids to a circus a la Ringling Bros., but this circus is much more like Cirque du Soleil. They do use animals, but confine their use to dogs and horses. All the animals looked great and I saw them use subtle positive reinforcement consistently. Also, the animals were used sparingly. The kids really enjoyed it and frankly so did I. It was great fun. Amy's parents were there, as were Amy's brothers and her cousins Lisa and Andy, for a total of 10 of us. Afterwards, we made our way to a restaurant in Chinatown and ate dinner while the kids watched a Pokemon movie they had running.
We got back Monday night and we're already back to work and school. Thanks to everyone who made it such a wonderful time. Special thanks to Amy's parents for hosting us yet again as we make the annual trek to Boston.
17 Mar 2006 - The kids are both sick. Fever, cough, congestion. Not fun, I suspect. Amy had quizzes on Thursday and the kids didn't have a scheduled day of school, so I ended up at home on a "vacation" day... but with two sick kids.
Having already watched the 3rd movie last weekend, we went ahead and watched the fourth one early. I wouldn't call it a monumental disappointment, but it certainly wasn't nearly as good as book 4 suggested it might be. Watching Prisoner of Azkaban, I immediately noticed that Dumbledore was different, now played by Gambon instead of Harris. His part was small, but what I did see displeased me. Gambon did not carry himself correctly. The Goblet of Fire movie confirmed it 100%... he cowered more times than I care to count, yelled at people left and right and even physically grabbed Harry in a mixture of anger, concern and frustration at his lack of knowledge. What the hell? They have destroyed a great character!
I've also just finished reading book 6, Half Blood Prince... yes, in hardcover. I just couldn't wait until July. Something very interesting has happened... the character of Dumbledore in book 6 is very much like his counterpart in movie 4. I wonder if Rowling has intentionally shifted her portrayal to match the performance likely to be turned in my Gambon. I'll have to check some dates to see how the writing of the books overlaps the making of the movies.
Of course, Half Blood Prince wasn't that bad. Not nearly as irritating as Order of the Phoenix. And I wonder, had I not seen the movies, would I be surprised or frustrated by the change in Dumbledore's temperament in book 6? Not sure...
I am going to the kids' parent/teacher conferences today, instead of Amy. This will be my first time; I'm looking forward to it.
Happy St. Patrick's Day!
9 Mar 2006 - Well, I wrapped up book 5 Tuesday night. The last few chapters were a lot better than most of the rest of the book. I'm looking forward to book 6, but it's still not out on paperback. Apparently that doesn't happen until 25 July 2006, which is almost exactly 1 year after the hardcover release. Odd. I guess I've never noticed the length of the paperback delay. I'm also psyched up to watch movie 3 with the kids!
6 Mar 2006 - One of my friends said that books 1-4 were good, but 5 & 6 got annoying. I completely see what he meant, at least about book 5 anyway. I'm about mid-way through it. It's an interesting situation... I see what Rowling is trying to do... give some complexity to the characters by making them respond with some negativity here and there. But it's almost over-the-top to the point of tiring. Then again, these are 15 year old kids. Still, I'm enjoying it.
The kids & I watched the second movie over the weekend. They're looking forward to watching the 3rd next weekend as neither has actually seen that one. The 4th is on its way from Amazon. The third and fourth movies should be fantastic to watch, if the books are any indication.
I had the pleasure of visiting Patrick's classroom on Thursday. Their monthly project for February was to write about a "family tale," develop it into a speech and then give that speech. We don't really have a family tale to speak of... the closest we could think of was how Amy & I moved to Oregon from Boston. I watched a few of his classmates give their speeches and most did OK, but performed as you might expect a second grader to do: they were nervous, too quiet or too fast. But I gotta tell ya, and I'm not just bragging here, Patrick knocked it out of the park. He was clear, audible, not nervous and even had some of the other visiting parents laughing at the humor in his story. His teacher gave him perfect marks for everything, including his character voice of me. :-) I was so proud I bugged a few of my coworkers with the story.
Later that evening we attended the school's art festival. There was artwork hung up around the entire school. After school art programs were presenting themselves. And the kids got to perform any musical instruments they had. The piano was in the cafeteria and all the other instruments were in the library. Patrick played The Ants Go Marching very well. And Jarod's been practicing a particular favorite of mine: The Star Wars Theme. It was a very cool change of pace compared to the other pieces being played that night.
Speaking of Jarod... they had the reading portion of some kind of state test called TESA on the first of March. Jarod just got his score back the other day and it had him mid-way through the 5th grade score range. He's in 3rd grade. Nice!
24 Feb 2006 - I finished up the 4th Potter book (Goblet of Fire) tonight. I thought this one was very good too. It felt a bit more scattered then the others... and the kids seem to act too young for their age... but otherwise it was fine. I'm curious to see how the actors handle this material in the movies. I still read them as 11-12 year olds, even though in this book they are 14. Jarod's about mid-way through book 5, so I guess he & I will be fighting over it the next few weeks. Perhaps I'll pick up a second copy.
The boys & I also watched the first movie today. They had already seen it, but I had fallen asleep on it during my two prior attempts at watching it. The movie was very faithful to the book. They left out the Norbert chapter, which was fine. But they cut short the journey through the trials protecting the stone, leaving out the potions room that Hermione helped Harry pass. I thought that was a mistake.
I'm going to put in a pre-order for the 4th movie, which will be released on March 7th...
18 Feb 2006 - Wow. I just finished the 3rd Harry Potter book. Jarod was dead on... it is the best of the first three. There was a moment just beyond the middle of the book where I thought it was dragging a bit. But the ending was just fantastic. Loved it!
I had a good Friday too. At 4pm, we started drinking beer at work. There's been left over beer from prior parties, so we have additional parties to draw down the inventory. ;-) Then we headed to Old Chicago for the typical Friday beer meet-up... this time with a special guest visitor: Kamil. It had been years since any of us had seen him, so it was a nice surprise. Also, the new employee at Click joined us. She's pretty cool and hung out with us right `till the end, suffering all our old war stories along the way. It's nice to have some new blood in the office.
14 Feb 2006 - I finished the 2nd Harry Potter book last night. No complaints... it was fun. I think the first was better, but that is so often the case when your main character is discovering things as you are. Jarod tells me his favorite (so far) is the third book, so I'm looking forward to it. I also should correct my previous post... he's on the 5th book right now.
Oh, Happy Valentine's Day. Meh. This is always my least favorite holiday period. We're just coming out of a "my birthday -> Christmas -> New Year -> Chinese New Year -> Amy's birthday" sweep... then we get a short breather... and then we have our wedding anniversary (10th), the anniversary of our wedding banquet (13th) and Valentine's Day. Amy & I haven't really celebrated this stuff too much lately. In fact, she's out tonight with her friend [Valen]Tina, whose birthday is Valentine's Day. Anyway, in case you're curious, we've been married for 9 years. But the anniversary we tend to give more weight to is that of our "first date." That happened a hefty 16 years ago.
9 Feb 2006 - Recap: My car is/was fine, Christmas was great, New Years was uneventful as always, Amy's cousin Lisa came out to visit and Chinese New Year was fun. Oh, and the Child's Play charity drive for 2005 netted $605,000 in cash, games and other fun stuff for sick kids in hospitals. That just about covers everything.
I had my yearly review at Click (Webridge) on Tuesday. It went a lot better than I had expected. My concern was that "attitude" was going to be a major (downward) factor in it. But it wasn't... and the "attitude" section was removed from the official review template anyway. ;-) But, I still took the time to tell my boss in very blunt and straight terms how unbelievably unhappy I am at work. The reality is that just about every single one of us is in the same position. At this point, it has become more emotional than rational. It's hard to see something you loved and cherished turn into something loathsome. It can make you very bitter.
On Wednesday, I had a first-time experience: jury duty. Amy had gone a year or two ago and correctly warned me that I needed to bring reading material. I do not read books. I read more than most people, but just not books. I prefer my material to be current non-fiction. But I didn't want to bring a bunch of magazines with me, so I tried to think of something I wouldn't mind reading. (The last thing I read was The DaVinci Code, which I enjoyed greatly.) After struggling for a while to come up with something, I made a mad 10:30pm dash to Barnes & Noble to buy the Harry Potter books. I got the paper back box set of years 1-5. The kids are into it and Jarod is in the middle of book 4 right now. I slammed through book 1 that day and thought it was great. I despise pretentious writing styles so a kid-level book was a perfect fit. I'm about half way through book 2 right now. It's genuinely good stuff.
Regarding the jury duty... I got as far as sitting in a jury both with 11 other persons, took an oath to tell the truth, answered questions for the two lawyers (along with the 27 other total potential jurors in the courtroom), and then was excused during the challenge phase where the lawyers themselves can pick and choose who they want. I have no idea why they didn't want me. I thought for sure I was going to be stuck on the case. It would've sucked too... it was a criminal DUII with some other charges thrown in. They were guessing it was going to go into Friday. I don't know who gave me the boot or why, but I was thankful for it. Though Amy will tell you I spent the rest of the day desperately wondering why...
18 Dec 2005 - I did finally get those Christmas lights up. I went out with the boys and bought 3 strands of green and a strand of white. After we put them up on the tree, we decided it really just didn't look good enough with so few lights. So, I went ahead and took the time to repair the lights I had. I think I got 3 strands of green out of the 6 that were available. That was good enough for me and I set up the rest of the strands late one night `till around 1am or so. The boys helped me set up the electrical cords the next day. It's all working great now.
Cards and presents have been streaming in already. I got lots of birthday cards, calls and cash. We even got some early Christmas stuff. Many thanks to everyone for all of it. Christmas cards and presents from us are already in the mail due to the awesome abilities of Amy.
I took the day off of work on my birthday. The kids still had school, so Amy & I drove out to a winery to pick up some ice wine I really like. When I noticed he had an open bottle, I decided I'd take a taste. Now, what's pretty much the only thing you have to do when you go wine tasting? Taste stuff. Take a sip. Pretty simple, right? Well, with Amy & winery dude staring at me as I taste the wine... I CHOKE! It's not a little choke either. I breathed in the wine instead of air. Straight into my lungs. I was coughing and hacking for the next 5 minutes. As we got back to our neighborhood, we stopped at Thai Orchid for lunch. The meal was great. (I have rediscovered a fondness for Thai.) Towards the end of the meal, as I was taking my last little bites... I inhaled a pepper flake. You might be asking yourself, "What happened next?" Well, I started to choke... hacking my way through paying the bill and telling Amy that I wanted to get the hell out of there. When we got home, I decided to take a nap. The kids got home from school and they baked a cake for me! It was absolutely delicious and I was able to eat my entire slice without incident. I could tell I was maturing. 30? Nuh uh, not any more. Thirty ONE baby! ;-)
We had a Webridge (Click?) holiday party on Friday. I helped set up a karaoke event, we had Mad Science put on a show and the catering was done by Reedville. Everyone had a great time.
Last night was extremely windy. We lost power from Midnight `till 2am. Websites and email were down. Sorry to those of you I host. A UPS wouldn't have sustained us for a 2 hour outage anyway, but it might have saved me from a mirrored drive repair cycle. Still, no worse for wear... data seems OK.
As you might have read on Amy's journal, it snowed today. (Actually, it's still snowing right now.) I didn't want a repeat of last year's debacle of inch-thick frozen ice on the driveway, so before it got bad, I decided to go out and buy some rock salt. I first drove to the nearest place I could think of... Walgreen's... no go. Then I ventured a bit further to Fred Meyer. Out of stock. I called Home Depot from the Fred Meyer parking lot and they didn't even know what department it would be in. So, I headed home. But for the 15-20 mins I was in Fred Meyer, things got much worse outside. The temperature had dropped about 5 degrees and crossed the freezing mark. I couldn't get the hell out of Fred Meyer! My car wouldn't get up over the little hills that are apparently at every single exit point from their parking lot. Eventually, some kind people helped push me up over the littlest hill and I made my way on home. I got sorta stuck a few more times, but was able to get out of it with a little creative driving. I couldn't quite understand why I was having significantly more trouble than most other cars, though I did notice quite a few have to get out and "chain up" to continue. I though long and hard about pulling over into one of the major shop parking areas, but I just couldn't bear walking all the way home (and calling Amy was out of the question). I decided that I almost always get out of sticky situations "somehow," so I pressed on with blind faith, knowing that the roads ahead of me would be progressively more perilous. When I got within a 1/4 mile of home, someone beeped at me and let me know my right rear wheel wasn't spinning. OMG! I pulled over, took a peek, saw nothing wrong and decided I only had such a short trip more to go, I'd just go for it. But at the same time, I now had an explanation for the new squeak / groan sound I had been hearing since I left Fred Meyer. As I turned into my neighborhood, I saw some guys on the sidewalk and yelled out to them to ask if my wheel was spinning. I didn't hear an answer fast enough before I got too far away. But, as fate would have it, I was right back next to them in short order... as I slid back down the last significant hill before my house. As I got out, they said it was spinning fine until the moment I asked them about it. Go figure. One of them mentioned how this used to happen to him in college when his E-brake would freeze up. Then it dawned on me... I put my E-brake on in the Fred Meyer parking lot! It all made sense now. The source of (some of) my troubles driving, the squeak and the fact that the car's computer kept telling me something was wrong. I eventually just gave up and jogged home. I was still in time for dinner, so I ate... then I headed back out with tire chains bought for the minivan. They fit the Acura and I dragged its sorry ass back home.
So, for trying to buy some rock salt, I may end up with a significant repair bill on the car. Stupid rock salt. ;-)
1 Dec 2005 - No real update on the Christmas lights yet. I've been really busy at work the past few days. Trying to tie up the latest service pack for our product. We will likely just end up buying all new lights. All but one of the 6 strands are dead. I tried replacing the fuses, swapping out bulbs, etc. No effect. Very confusing... especially to have them all go at once? Weird.
Speaking of Christmas lights, these videos are going `round the net. I think they're cool enough to host myself: lights.wmv and jingle.wmv.
Also, check out One Red Paperclip and see how a guy traded a paper clip for a snowmobile. Cool story... can't wait to see how far he can take it.
Finally, here are our family Christmas pictures from 2004. Amy's sitting here laughing at my website posts... talk about current events and... here are pictures from a year ago. Yeah, I suck. But I'm also done with 2004, so take that!
27 Nov 2005 - We had a great Thanksgiving meal. Amy and the boys did all the cooking and it came out fantastic. I think the boys single handedly made the sides! They are quite the chefs.
During the long vacation, I also took the opportunity to post some old photos. I've nearly finished off 2004. Amazing, huh? (Yes, amazingly slow...)
I also reorganized my little section a bit. I realized there was no systematic way to get to some of the pictures that weren't family related other than to read through the entire news archive. Now all my adventures are organized under my name.
My computer chair has slowly been deteriorating over the past couple years. (This is a fully adjustable, $300-level office style chair.) Specifically, the bolts securing the back of the chair to the metal post had come undone. It was hanging on by a single, very loose bolt. I decided I'd try to fix it, give it to Amy (who weighs half of what I do and will stress my fix-up job less) and I'd get a new one.
Oh what fun that was. I started in on fixing the old one by using my cordless drill to make new holes through the thick metal post. The batteries died, so I threw them back in the charger and headed to Office Depot. I bought a new $200 chair, brought it home and found out it kinda sucked. It was a floor model (last one they had) and the seat pan was loose. I only noticed it when I got home, because I tried to scooch under my desk while it was on the thick carpet, and the seat revealed it's looseness immediately.
Before I took off to return the brand new chair, I drilled on the old chair `till the batteries died again. How tedious. At Office Depot, I returned the new chair and bought a $280 chair instead. (It was the runner up during my original selection process.) I brought it home, built it (this one came in a box) and then got back to the old chair. I finally get enough holes in the metal post to put in some screws to secure the back. Done! I present the chair to Amy, it gets lightly tested and all seems good.
Then, as I sit in the new chair, my back starts killing me!!! I try to reconfigure it to find the right position, but I just can't. Frustration sets in. Finally, I decide to take back my old chair and give Amy the new chair, since it seems to suit her well enough. (She even liked the color.) The second I sit in my old chair... shazam!!!... the back tears off the post again.
To wrap this story up (yeah, 5 paragraphs devoted to "the chair incident"), I gave up on the cordless drill, bought a corded drill, drilled several new holes, picked out thicker, longer screws and got to work. It's fair sturdier and seems to be holding up for me just like it did in the old days. Final tally: +1 chair, +1 drill, -2 drill bits. Success!
I will save the next post to relay my current in-progress headache: outdoor Christmas lights...
13 Nov 2005 - I've already sent out an email to this effect, but it doesn't hurt to mention it again. If you want to do something nice or are looking for a charity that clicks with you, check out Child's Play. Child's Play was started a couple years ago by the guys at Penny Arcade. They wanted to give gamers a chance to do something nice, in part to show that we aren't a bunch of societal degenerates. It's pretty straightforward... pick a hospital, go to their Amazon.com wish list and buy stuff. Everything you donate will go to sick kids who are stuck in the hospital. They can play games, watch movies, read books, etc. It's up to you... you pick the item. You can also donate cash. Gabe & Tycho are top-notch guys and this is just another example of their coolness.
I wanted to say thanks to my dad, who donated to the cause immediately after he got my email. Way to go Dad! This year, I'm going to involve my kids and have them pick out a couple items to donate as well.
In other news... I tried to clean our rugs last night. Amy's been having trouble breathing for the past couple days. She's allergic to cats and now that we have two in the house, whenever the kids run around too much they kick up enough dander to affect her. We have one of those Hoover SteamVacs that we bought eons ago and I tried to use it to clean the downstairs rugs. The problem I find with these vacuums is that the bristles don't seem to do a good enough job scrubbing the carpet. First off, they spin, which tends to matte down the carpet. Second, with the carpet thickness we have, the bristles end up slowing down to a crawl if they move at all, so there's really no scrubbing of any kind going on. They certainly work to a certain degree, as the water is dirty when it's done, but I can't help thinking it could be better. Enter the Rug Doctor. After reading a bit and watching some videos, I decided to try the Rug Doctor machine. I went to my local grocery store and rented one for $25 (plus I bought some cleaning solution). Instead of bristles that rotate, this machines has a single line of bristles that sweeps back and forth. It raises and separates the carpet fibers thoroughly. The machine is heavier and harder to work with, but not so much that it negates the far superior cleaning job it provides. Our carpets look a great deal better now. I highly recommend Rug Doctor.
So, TV really sucks so far this year. I'm rapidly losing interesting in Desperate Housewives and Charmed. That 70's Show isn't as good without Eric around. Even Lost is less appealing than the first season, but I think that might be the format. I watched the entire first season back-to-back without commercials (thanks to the power of the intertron). On TV, with commercials and 1 week (sometimes 3!) between episodes, it becomes more frustrating. But... Smallville still kicks ass... love that show. I've pretty much stopped watching all other shows, though I try to record The Family Guy when I can. That's always funny. The show on before it... The War at Home... that's pretty funny too, if you like Rapaport.
That's it for now... I'm feeling kinda sick and not sure if I want to go into work tomorrow. We'll see...
6 Nov 2005 - I can't quite figure out what's wrong with people. We all make mistakes... frequently in the heat of the moment, or when we don't have all the info and even occasionally when there's really no good excuse for it. It's that last one that has me disturbed. When you have all the time in the world to think something through and the outcomes are completely clear even to a moron, why do we still make so many mistakes?
Example #1: Amy's been trying to get me some Nike Free shoes for my birthday. I really like the ones she has which she got a few months ago. She brought home two pairs of their latest design and I gotta tell you, the designers at Nike are morons. Did they have anyone, anyone at all, try on these shoes before they mass produced them? I could go on and on about the flaws, but suffice it to say that within 30 seconds of having them on my feet, I could point out some very clear, non-debatable flaws. Those flaws aren't there in Amy's shoes, so someone tinkered with it and made it worse. Good going. And it sucks that much more, because I like the basic concept and really wanted to get into a pair of these. It's been said before (and not by me), but every company should pass all their products by me first. Dumbasses.
Example #2: I went outside today and saw a typical sight: a marketing flyer stuck to my garage. When I walked up to it, I became infuriated. This shmuck tacked his flyer to the trim around my garage. I just repainted that trim over the summer and now there's a fucking hole in it. He couldn't use painter's or masking tape... he couldn't have tucked it into the handle of the garage door... he couldn't have put it in a plastic bag with a little rock. What a dick. If you ever come across "Long's Handyman Service," I hope you'll pass.
Example #3: I dropped Jarod off at a birthday party today at a friend's house. Amy went to go pick him up at the designated time, only to find out that they ended up going to a movie. Neither Amy nor I had any idea that they'd be leaving the house. So, for a stretch of nearly 4 hours, I would not have been able to find my kid if I needed to. I called the parent and let them know I was pretty upset about this, but it was partially mitigated by the fact that she was under the impression we did know. It's hard to be extremely upset when it was a communication problem... and she agreed that if she were in my position, she would be upset as well. I have to take some responsibility for this too. In the future, I will have to explicitly ask for this type of information. But I don't think it's too much to expect that a detail like that would be communicated without fail. I just won't make an assumption like that in the future I guess.
There, I feel better now. More pictures when I'm less pissed off...
26 Oct 2005 - Ever have one of those days where it seems like everything is getting harder instead of easier? I've had a cell phone since 1994 or so. First one was from Cellular One in Boston. I've switched carriers and plans a few times since then, every time with little hassle. But now, supposedly, these phones are super fancy and can do all kinds of neat stuff. Neat stuff that I want! But it's nearly impossible to find a phone that does everything I want. And if I get a phone that does, I have to buy some stupid "data plan" on top of the phone plan. WTF? I don't want the data plan (at least not prepaid every month). And if I don't get the unlimited data plan, I don't get the phone rebate. Oh, but there's this other phone over here that can sync to Outlook too and without a data plan! OK, great... but why didn't the damn website mention that? How can I be expected to do research if the information is not available? Whatever...
And work seems to be getting steadily worse too. Any change that happens hinders my ability to do my job just a bit more. Timesheets, support case tracking, source control, code language, poor project management, vague deliverables, no way to track to goals, etc. I've got to constantly remind myself to mentally check out while I'm there, lest I go insane and start killing people.
On to better things... You might remember that I mentioned we went to an archery range late last year. Here are the pics from it.
13 Oct 2005 - Every time I think I'm making progress, another holiday creeps up and reminds me how far behind I really am. Here are the Halloween pictures from 2004.
2 Oct 2005 - Today (actually, this whole weekend) was bittersweet for sports fans in Boston. The good news is that the Sox are in the playoffs. The not-so-great news is that they're in via the wild card. They'd been in first place for the longest time... only in the last two weeks did that position come into question. I guess I shouldn't complain though... it could be worse. And really, this past week has been some of the most riveting end-of-season play ever.
The Patriots lost at home. I'll be paying more attention to them when the baseball season is over, but I knew enough to catch the game today. That sucked. :-\
I quit playing World of Warcraft. A series of events led up to that decision, but the broadest reason is that it simply wasn't fun enough anymore. It was a pleasurable way to spend my time, but I notice I don't miss it that much. I might pick it back up again when they release more content aimed at my play style. In the meantime, I've gotten back into Half-Life 2. I never finished it, because I got stuck in one spot and didn't have a reasonable quick save to go back to. (And WoW kinda took over too. :-) But as soon as I started it back up, I cleared the area. I tried for a week before with no luck, and now... just boom... I'm through.
OK, so... on to some pictures. These are pretty old... from September of 2004. Mike came to Oregon for a visit and we went to what's now called Adventure Park. We had a pretty good time...
18 Sep 2005 - The kids' little league baseball season is in full swing. They have had 4 games so far. They won their first two, lost their third (it was a very exciting game though!) and weren't at their fourth. (The fourth game was scheduled two days prior due to league mismanagement and we couldn't make it.) Both boys have gotten hits, made outs and are having a blast. Patrick has been hit by two pitches! He's been a real trooper.
The 15 Sep 2005 entry on Amy's journal is a pretty fun read. If you don't usually visit it, it's worth it.
Turns out I write checks for only one thing these days: garbage service. They are still in the stone age. While I was messing around in Money 2006, I noticed MSN Billpay. I checked it out and it costs at least $3/month so it's not worth it for just the one bill. But I got distracted and eventually found myself ordering my credit report. I hadn't done it in a long time and I was very pleasantly surprised by how cool that integrated site is. Experian, Equifax and TransUnion all had pretty much the same thing to say. Equifax is the company that generates the FICO score, so I ordered that too. (TransUnion has its own credit score, but I figured one was enough.) With scores ranging from 300 to 850, I was thrilled to come in at 795. Then I went and ordered Amy's... the chick gets an 800. Not better in any meaningful way, but just enough for her to gloat. Yes, that's what we upper middle class white people do for fun... compare FICOs. (Oh, wait... Amy's not white.)
Not much else to say. Been busy lately with work and all the kid stuff. In fact, I'm tired right now...
3 Sep 2005 - Here is another satellite shot that conveys the magnitude.
The asshatery continues... and it comes from the politicians as much as the criminals. What those people need is a Rudy Giuliani.
I have donated. Have you? Penny Arcade is raffling off some artwork and donating the proceeds to charity. The bidding is already very high.
2 Sep 2005 - I went to PAX last weekend and it was great fun, but that will have to wait for a moment.
Given all the warning they had, I didn't think hurricane Katrina would be a big deal. Especially since it was a small hurricane when it first caused trouble in Florida. But after it gained some strength from the Gulf of Mexico, it utterly destroyed everything in its path, most notably New Orleans. In case you can't visualize, here you go:
That's a before and after. The lake to the north has spilled into the literal bowl that is New Orleans..
As much as I feel for the majority down there, there are those that are pissing me off. Stop being asshats. Seriously.
I am reminded of a quote... "The mass of our social difficulties arise from the fact that in the Western world we have engineered a rights-based society rather than a responsibility-based one."
13 Aug 2005 - I'm looking over my last two posts... first, the paint job went really well. It looks great and the new house numbers stand out really well. Second, the product feature I was complaining about got removed! It's funny though... I explained how it affected all these areas and I was denied. A couple days later, this other guy I work with mentions how it breaks his stuff too and the decision to have it ripped out gets made immediately. I heard it said that my boss "didn't have all the information" before, but that's utter bullshit. Whatever...
Amy & the kids made it back from Boston just fine in late July. They had a great time there and they enjoyed seeing everyone. Thanks to all of you who made their stay enjoyable.
We had Patrick's birthday party at OGA today. Once again, it went really well. It's a little tight at 1hr 30mins, but we pulled it off. Yesterday we went out to dinner at the restaurant of his choice and we got him a couple of gifts from the family, including a baseball xbox game which I look forward to playing with him. :-)
Last weekend was our camping trip. That was a great time, except for when we got "stuck" out in the middle of Timothy Lake in our little raft. I had to do a lot of rowing to get back in.
As usual, pictures of those events will be forthcoming. But for now, here are some pics from a Red Sox game we went to last year.
20 Jul 2005 - As one of my college buddies pointed out, Boston is not 15 years old. I'm an idiot. The way we remember it is "middle of college," but somehow that came out to be 1990 (which is "middle of high school") instead of 1994. What's funny is that, with a simple click here, I could've done some research and avoided this. Shame on me.
OK, I'm off to finish the paint job...
19 Jul 2005 - I never got that second coat of trim paint on today. We had an impromptu WoW session at work that consumed the remaining daylight hours after 5pm. I also spoke too soon about Sera. She went to sleep last night at the foot of my bed, stayed there as I got ready for work this morning, and now that I'm home, she's still there. I suspect she got up for food and water, but she's pretty out of it. Not nearly as bad as last time, but there's definitely a reaction. That's about it. Had an annoying day at work. My recommendation regarding our product is not being heeded. This one stupid little feature that a customer paid to get put in is having an effect on the entire security system... and the developer who put it in, did so haphazardly, so it is bug ridden. I recommended ripping it out and giving the paying customer a one-off customization, but it was denied. Retarded. No one ever consults me about these things before they happen. Jesus. And they wonder why I'm apathetic...
18 Jul 2005 - I got a second coat of primer on last night just before it got dark. Sweet.
I had to take both cats into the vet today for FVRCPC shots. There came a point where they asked how old Boston was and I had to answer 15. Holy crap she's old! They considered not bothering with the vaccination, because she sure as hell isn't getting any of those diseases now... not with all those years of anti-disease goodness flowing through her. Sera was greatly affected by the shots last year (she got both rabies and FVRCPC). She was essentially knocked out for two days. This year she's doing OK. So, either the two at once was too much for her or she had a reaction to the rabies shot. Either way, no problems now.
The aeration guys came. I was expecting to see more plugs, but I guess they dried out very quickly in the 95 degree weather today. My god it was hot. But despite the heat, I got the first coat of paint on the garage trim. One more coat tomorrow and I'm done!
17 Jul 2005 - My plan today was to paint. Just like last summer, I plan to do only some trim. Last year we did the 3 front facing windows that actually have trim (the rest do not). This year, the plan is to do the roof trim, gutters, garage door trim and maybe front door trim. That task is much bigger. I'm going to wait for Amy's return for the house trim and gutters, but I thought I'd tackle the garage door trim myself while she was gone.
I headed out to Sherwin-Williams to pick up some more primer. Easy enough, though it took forever just to pay for stuff in that store. Everyone has some kind of question that they could get the answers to online if they just applied some effort. Anyway, then I headed back to Ace Hardware to get another bulb (trying a lower wattage this time) as well as some other miscellaneous supplies for the painting job. I even got new numbers to put up on the house, as the brass ones were really hard to see at night and they were tarnished.
Turns out that check out girl was there again, so I asked her how her TPS reports were coming. We chatted for just a few seconds before she stopped packing my bag and said, "Maybe I should've used a bigger bag" as she fought to get every last item in. OK, now it's just getting weird. I made a comment below on the density of her bag packing from my previous visit... ???
So, I just finished putting on the first coat of primer. I had to put SPF 50 sunblock on to do it; it's amazingly sunny here. Here's the forecast...
I haven't yet decided if I'm going to put on two coats of primer. I can't recall what we did last year. Two coats of the trim paint, for sure. I'll probably go for two coats of primer too, because there was a bit of staining and mildew on the wood. I got off as much as I could, but I don't want it coming back through just because I was lazy with the primer. I have to think of logistics though: I'm getting my lawn aerated tomorrow and it may kick up some dust... and the lawn sprinkler might hit the garage door opening if I'm not careful. Ah, the joys of home ownership. :-|
I talked to Jarod & Patrick today. It's hard to catch them on the phone with the 3 hour time difference and their busy schedules. I miss them a bunch, but they'll be home soon enough... just a little over a week to go. Sounds like they're having fun.
16 Jul 2005 - Sonofabitch! The bulb in my lamp blew out. After all that hassle, it just goes and blows again. Lamp = suck.
Thought these were quite funny and worth sharing. Done by Prangstgrup. You'll need Quicktime to watch them...
13 Jul 2005 - Today was a manic day. Amy gave me a call from Boston to let me know she and the kids were in a car accident. She started the conversation perfectly: "We were in a car accident and everyone is OK." After the conversation was done, my cube neighbor asked if a friend was in an accident and I said, "no, it was Amy and the kids." He said, "But you were so calm!!!" My reply: "Because Amy said the right thing." :-) But let's not praise her too much... she did get in a car accident. (But I think I have her beat on the accident count, so I can't rib her too much.)
I also drove to Ace Hardware again, this time properly anticipating the early closing time. This store pleased me. It looks like a tiny place from the outside, but it is outright cavernous! I wandered the aisles simply to see how deep they went. And with everyone else at Home Depot, it was nearly vacant. It was spooky.
Despite the great size, it had an usually high density to it. They had items there that I had never seen before, like fluorescent bulbs in candelabra format. And ultimately, I got what I went for... a halogen bulb to fit my desk lamp. Brilliant!
Now, here's the best part: As I got up to the front of the line at a check out with an attractive girl behind the counter, some catastrophic problem was occurring with the check out dude next to me. Somehow, he couldn't charge properly for some screen door repair. Turns out, he was choosing "rescreen" instead of just "screen," which was a significant process change, apparently. (To think that both of those options exist boggles the mind.) As the manager asked, "didn't you guys get the memo?" my check out girl responded, "no, but I know we're supposed to use the new cover sheet on the TPS reports!" I just about died. She turned to me and asked, "Did you get that?!" I told her that of course I got that. But the stranger thing was, I had just used the TPS report reference earlier in the day. And as she bagged up my items into a brown paper bag with an eerily familiar density, I saw her gaze down at my shirt, no doubt reading one of many oddball geeky humor phrases I sport from time to time. Only later, as I got into my car, did I realize I was wearing my "kung foo" shirt.
So, to this girl I have to ask, "Do you ever watch kung fu?"
11 Jul 2005 - I drove to Ace Hardware today. I arrived at 7:23pm. It closed at 7:00pm. I lose again.
Mark and I were talking about hiking to Opal Pool and slacklining over the water. Have I mentioned slacklining before? If not, here are some pictures from us slacking last year.
10 Jul 2005 - Today was a particularly frustrating day. I set out to buy a handful of oddball items and came up empty handed. On the recommendation of some site I read, I decided to look for an under-the-bed plastic container to use as a litter box. I always buy the biggest kitty litter box available at the pet store, but they tend to start making them deeper instead of bigger. Boston doesn't need to dig down to China to bury her turds... she just needs a box that can accommodate her size. This has been amplified by the fact that, every single day since I've been back from Boston, I wake up to find cat crap in the exact same spot on the carpet. I don't know who's doing it, but it's either acting out, because the family is away or because the litter box is too small/unclean. I dunno... but I can only fix one of them... and a bigger box would help with that. The box would have to have a flat bottom for ease of scooping. The size is negotiable, within limits.
Similarly, I wanted to get a new mini trash can to replace the one we have for the cat debris. The one we have is cracked and dirty... and it's just better in my mind to replace it. All it would need to have is a lid. Nothing fancy, just a lid that I can lift off with my hands.
Finally, I need a replacement bulb for my desk lamp. My old lamp that I had for years finally died and I got a new one from Target. The bulb blew within a month. I had already purchased a replacement bulb only to bring it home and find out it was ever so slightly the wrong size (and that was with the old bulb in-hand for comparison).
Well, I hit Fred Meyer, Bed Bath & Beyond and Target... and got jack shit. The pseudo litter boxes either had wheels or non-flat bottoms. The trash cans were either open topped (and all curvey, so no lid could ever fit) or they had the little foot lever on them, which simply won't work for my application. And I was about to give in and just buy a new lamp at Fred Meyer when I noticed that the bulbs in the display lamps were the ones I wanted... but you couldn't find them to buy separately! I exclaimed profusely to a worker dude and he expressed similar frustration... and suggested I try Ace Hardware... which used to be right next to my house, but is now closed and the closest one is a bajillion miles away. Sweet.
Tomorrow, I make the trek to Storables and Ace Hardware. Wish me luck.
On a more positive note, I was able to acquire bread, eggs and diet Dr. Pepper with ease.
10 Jul 2005 - The 2005 Penny Arcade Expo is rapidly approaching and, of course, I have already acquired my tickets. I don't yet know that I'm not an Omeganaut, so hopes are still unshattered. If you're a gamer, you should go. PAX 2004 was a pretty good time... but 2005 will rock even harder. We're signed up for a tourney and we have BYOComputer slots reserved, so there won't be any downtime like before.
Yesterday was my first day truly alone since Amy & the kids left for Boston. My god, it was boring. I did get to sleep in, so that was refreshing. I also cleaned a couple rooms... working towards my goal of a clean house with some upgrades by the time the fam gets back. It's the rare occasion that I'm "on my own" these days. It really brings back memories of college, which is pretty much the only time I've been solo. But it tends to depress a bit, because, where are the ladies?
7 Jul 2005 - I hope everyone had a good Fourth of July. I certainly did. As most of you are aware, I was back in Boston for the long weekend. Amy & the kids flew out on Wednesday and I followed shortly thereafter on Thursday. It was a jam-packed "vacation," as always.
Since my flight left in the middle of the day, I decided to use public transportation to get to the airport instead of driving and leaving my car in long-term parking. That usually costs me $50 - $75, so I thought it'd be worth the hassle. It was reasonable... and at $1.70, certainly a lot cheaper. I got in fairly late in Boston and Amy came and picked me up at the T stop near her house to save me a bus trip. I was thankful for that.
Friday was a day just for me. I met up with two of my college buddies from college, Eric and Scott. We walked around downtown a bit... Faneuil Hall, the freedom trail and a good number of its historic sites... and then we landed back at Scott's house, where we met up with Jeff, another college friend who couldn't get out of work that day. We then proceeded to play mini-golf at two different courses... one was very plain, but well groomed... the other was more seedy, but had some interesting holes. And lots and lots of hot, young girls. We concluded the evening by having dinner and watching the Sox get clobbered.
Saturday was the main reason I was back in Boston. Yet another college friend, Lou... ahem, excuse me... Luis... was having a wedding. Amy and I dropped the kids off at my father's place, where there had assembled a decent gathering of Breslins. We then zipped up to the church on the Boston College campus. We got there at exactly the start time and had to race by the wedding procession and grab some quick seats. (Because of this, we ended up on the bride's side... oops!) The ceremony was nice, but a little heavy on the religious stuff. Would've been nice to focus a bit more on the bride and groom, but hey, it's not my wedding! There was a significant time gap between wedding and reception, so we raced back to hang with the kids for a bit. The reception was at Kowloon's and that was quite nice. Despite Lou's reassurance to the gang that there would be "no weird food, like at DJ's wedding," the first platter that came out was the cold meat plate, with jellyfish prominently displayed. The dishes got better as the night went on. We had a great time, danced a little (yeah, Amy got me to dance... or rock in place, as I like to describe it), chatted with old friends and new acquaintances and so on and so forth. Lou looked very happy and Amanda, the bride, was beautiful. Big congrats to them both!
Sunday gave me time to see my mother's side of the family at her new house in Stoneham. We had a nice BBQ and played ball with the kids in the backyard. I got to meet my brother's new girlfriend, Kathy. She was smart, funny, nice and beautiful. I don't have a clue what she's doing with Mike.
Monday was the Fourth. We drove up to a family friend's farm in New Hampshire. This was a somewhat interesting experience. There were about 60-70 Chinese people there... and me. (There were actually a few other white people, but not many... like maybe 5 others.) They had horses, goats, chickens a pig, etc. Typical farm stuff. They also had a pool, but I wasn't quite aware of that before hand, so I was stuck on the sidelines in jeans and a black t-shirt, roasting away. I got to put sunscreen on Amy's cousin's back, so that was a nice diversion. ;-) Eventually, the call of the diving board and the wincing pain of watching all these noobs belly flop into the pool forced me to take drastic action - I got a pair of scissors and cut my jeans. Fortunately, Amy had removed the one or two unsightly hairs on my back before leaving, so I was somewhat presentable. But I swear, not counting the head, I had more hair on my body than all the other people there... combined... times two. I proceeded to show them how fat white guys do front flips, back flips and other sweet dives. (Amy caught one of these on video, so I'm sure I'll be proven wrong about the "sweetness" of said dives.) We rounded out the day with an impromptu baseball game that was quite fun. Ooooooh... and I got to eat some Dunkin Donuts. Oh how I wish they existed in Portland. :-s
I spent all of Tuesday flying back to Portland. My buddy Mark, who was already kind enough to take care of my cats while I was gone, picked me up at the MAX station and saved me a bus ride home.
The only real drawback to the whole vacation was its short length. I wasn't able to see everyone I wanted to, like Amy's cool-as-hell cousin Anna. And I burned a good number of vacation days without coming out of it feeling at all rested. But, that's how these things tend to go. I wish I had some pictures to share, but Amy still has the camera... and if I recall, there were very few photos taken anyway.
15 Jun 2005 - Jarod is now 8 years old!!! As always, he got to pick a dinner place and chose Outback Steakhouse. We made cupcakes on his actual birthday. And then we had a kid party for him on the weekend. He had a great time.
You'd probably think I'd post pictures of that. But instead, I'm posting pictures of Patrick's birthday from August of last year. Because I'm behind. That's just the way it is.
5 Jun
2005 - My
college buddy Scott had a link to
this game on his site.
First time through I had a little trouble with the bagel. After a
few tries, I posted the high score! (Click the high scores in the
bottom left to see it.) I rock, baby!
Edit: It seems it doesn't really track high
scores. It just somehow remembers mine, without the use of cookies
or cached information. Guess I'll have to park my vanity for
now...
2 Jun 2005 - We went up to see two Red Sox games in Seattle last year. This is the first one. My dad also happened to be in Seattle at the same time, so he ditched work and came to the game with us!
Don't forget that it's Doughnut Day tomorrow and Krispy Kreme is celebrating by giving away freebies.
And get this... I'm sick... AGAIN. That's 3x this year already. That's extremely unusual for me. And I'm quite annoyed by it. I've got no sick time left, dammit!
24 May 2005 - I refuse to let it get to be more than 1 year difference between events occurring and events being posted. I give you our camping pictures from July of 2004... with plenty of time to spare. ;-)
I saw Revenge of the Sith last week, as did most of you, I assume. It is a huge improvement over Episodes I and II. In fact, it may even be better than one of the originals, but that's debatable.
Amy and I began on Wednesday night by watching Ep I. Then we watched Ep II on Thursday night. Both of those were stronger upon review, by the way. I personally don't think people pay enough attention to the overall plot in them. But you'll get no argument from me that the acting was sub par. On Friday we were able to drop the kids off for a sleepover, so we went out for drinks and dinner... then more drinks... then Episode III. Aside from a few rough spots (dialog and acting again), it was great.
On Saturday night, we began watching Episode IV, but we were interrupted. From the little we watched though, it was jarring how different the feel of the movie was compared to Eps I-III. It's not just the age... I think it's because we know them inside and out and we can't let go of how we think of them, despite having more context to apply to them. You should try watching them in order... it's strange.
16 Apr 2005 - So, you recall I posted about my big red ball a few days ago. Turns out there's this thing call the Red Ball Project. And it happened to be in Portland this week. Of course, there was only one possible outcome. ;-)
Update: I made those videos a little easier to download.
10 Apr 2005 - These were easy enough to crop and post, so I did. It's a business get together from July, 2004. We were having a little party to say goodbye to Mark Anastas.
8 Apr 2005 - Amy did the coolest thing and won tickets to a sneak preview of Fever Pitch. We dropped the kids off at a friend's house last night and drove over to the theater outside of Lloyd Center Mall and waited in the huge line for about 45 minutes.
Oddly, there seemed to be very few Red Sox fans there! When the radio personalities got up in front of the theater and started jazzing the audience, they were asking who's from Boston and who's a fan... I screamed, of course, but the rest of the room was fairly quiet.
I found that interesting, because Amy and I were fairly certain we'd like the movie just because it ties in the Sox. But if I looked at it objectively, I might not have seen it if it were another team. But these people were there anyway.
The movie turns out to be pretty good. It's not fantastic, but it was fun to watch. Both main characters are very likable and the story doesn't seem over-contrived to create tension. The laughs are good, but they could've used a few more. The big thing for me though? Watching the end of the 2004 Sox season unfold on the big screen. It was gut wrenching, tear jerking and awe inspiring all at the same time.
Enjoy the movie Boston! You've earned it...
6 Apr 2005 - OK, this was a huge undertaking to get published, but here are the pictures from last year's visit to Boston. There are so many, that the page will load like a pig. But, that's just the way it goes. It took forever to pull those all together. Hopefully the next few posts will be a little easier to handle.
Gotta get my taxes done soon. I spent a large amount of time developing examples and explanations for my current and former coworkers who are in the same mess as me... specifically having to deal with the incredibly complex tax implications created by the sale of Webridge to Click. It's actually not all that bad when you finally understand it all, but I was getting concerned after hearing so many people make blatantly wrong statements about how to handle it. Hopefully I did everyone a favor.
Oh, and I bought a ball over the internet. If you have suggestions on what to do with it, let me know...
9 Mar 2005 - More pictures from last year... from June, in fact. We did some Portland Rose Festival activities last year. Fun stuff... I guess.
Sometimes people at work can really piss me off. I went out of my way to help someone get something done for a project they are royally fucking up. They could've done this for themselves, because I already did it once and gave them step-by-step instructions. But this person had the audacity to ask in a snarky manner if he should indicate the criticality of his requests in the future. Why? Because I didn't do his little task fast enough. He somehow expected me to do the task on a server and a site that I had no knowledge of. And when he did finally provide the knowledge, it was in the form sticky note stuck to my desk which I happened not to be at until 1pm today. That's right... I was busy running around the office doing the work I'm actually responsible for. What a dick.
On an unrelated topic, we have an employee that once lived in Portland who now lives in Pennsylvania and works remotely. He's in town this week and we all went out to Old Chicago to have some beers with him. He's a nice guy and we miss him around the office, so it's always nice to have him back for his yearly visit.
Taxes... gotta do taxes... never done them this late, but this year is unusual. I owned part of Webridge and it was purchased by Click Commerce. The tax implications of the particular way this was done are not something anyone should have to understand.
21 Feb 2005 - Ugh... I'm sick... again. Second time this winter. The first one was a cough that lasted for 3 weeks or so. This one started last night as a mild cough, but while I was at work today my body started to ache so badly, it clearly must be something more. I essentially called in sick as I left work. Tomorrow we'll see if that's an accurate prediction.
I have new pictures to share from Jarod's 7th birthday. I still have a ton of stuff to go... and I hope to keep up the pace and publish something every day.
Random thought of the day... if guys like to touch girls, why has evolution made them so fragile?
20 Feb 2005 - Well, well, well... where has everyone been? Certainly not visiting my website, because if they did... they'd be BORED to death!
It's quite poignant to look back at the previous update in which I mention this little thing called World of Warcraft. That is, without a doubt, the primary reason this site has gone as dark as a lump of coal on Christmas. I would like to introduce you to Vilith, Galileo and Gnarli.
Vilith is my first character. I got that name when Neverwinter Nights generated it for me. I liked it enough to keep it. He is a human mage. When Vilith got to a point where he needed friends to complete the majority of tasks, I created Galileo. Galileo is a night elf priest. (I take great pride in the naming of my priest character. If you know me, and know history, you'll understand.) Even though Gnarli is a gnome rogue, he hasn't seen much action yet. I created him specifically to play with a friend of mine. Said friend is the ideal Blizzard customer. He has purchased the game, starting paying Blizzard the monthly fee, but puts absolutely no load on their servers. His level 2 warlock rots away in cyberspace.
Anyway, I'm back... my head's above water (when I'm not looking for stranglekelp) and I have some content to share, but as you might imagine, it's all backlog. Here are Easter pictures from 2004. (I refuse to get behind by a full year!)
26 Nov 2004 - Thanksgiving was fantastic, as usual. Amy made a killer meal where everything turned out perfect. It was one of the most relaxing days ever. I took a huge nap after we ate and just chilled out for the rest of the day.
We actually went out shopping today. Ooooooo... Black Friday... scary! But, the mall seemed to be its usual self. Crowded, but not obscenely so. While Amy had chocolate thoughts and the kids had BeyBlade on the brain, I went with the intent to pick up World of Warcraft. My first foray into MMORPGs was not successful. City of Heroes just didn't do it for me. And with my built in loathing for a monthly fee, it was toast after the first included month. I've been playing WoW with a 10 day free trial coupon that I got from Mark and I'm thoroughly enjoying it. Sure, there's more variety in WoW than CoH, but there's got to be something more to it than that... because I like it much, much more. When the 9th day of my ten day trial comes around, I'll put in my purchased license key and start in on my included month. We'll have to see if I feel the same after ~40 days when that monthly fee starts looming.
In other gaming news, other than the audio problem I mentioned earlier, Half-Life 2 is a lot of fun! I also picked up the premium modules for Neverwinter Nights. I've played KingMaker and that was definitely a good $8 spent. I assume Shadowguard and/or Witch's Wake will be good enough to justify their combined $5 cost.
Amy made a nice aesthetic enhancement to Bob's house. See for yourself:
And last, but not least, you can check out pictures from when Dan came to visit us in Portland back in March. He had some business here... and then more in Seattle. So, we drove on up to Seattle and hung out with Grampa some more. It was fun!
22 Nov 2004 - Let me introduce you to Bob.
Bob is the next door neighbors' cat. His name is Thai Thai or Ty Ty or whatever, but I call him Bob. About 1.5 years ago, they adopted him from a farm that couldn't keep him or something like that. He's very friendly and comes to visit us often. We got into the habit of letting him in the house to play with Sera. Bob is neutered and, unfortunately, also declawed. (That was done prior to our neighbors acquiring him.) So the problem is that they let him out... a lot. Declawed cats are not supposed to be outdoor cats. Furthermore, they let him out for long stretches at a time... I swear sometimes they're gone for days. Last winter, I thought it was going to become an issue and was thinking of building him a little house, but they took him in before it got too cold and we didn't see much of him all winter. Fast forward to this winter. OK, it's not winter yet, but it's getting very cold outside already. A couple nights ago, he was out at 11pm and so, after checking as best I could to see if the neighbors were home/awake (without actually ringing their bell), I decided to let him in for the night. It worked out fine until 6:50am when he chased Boston and all hell broke loose. (Boston doesn't stand for that shit.) So... I built him a house. This is Bob's house (ignore the hash marks... that's the window screen):
Bob's house has these wonderful features:
- plywood and particle board construction
- 2.4 square feet of floor space
- insulated floor, walls and roof (cotton batting)
- in-floor heating element (heating pad)
- deluxe king sized bed in the master bedroom (cat bed)
- feeding station in the kitchen (plastic bowl, sometimes with food, sometimes not)
- in-home weather station (thermometer)
- regal entry way (some felt hanging over the hole)
- retractable roof (yup, it's actually hinged at the top so I can get in there)
- high quality exterior latex primer and paint job with 35 year guarantee (true!)
Amy and the kids helped me build and paint it. Bob is actually in the house in the picture above. I lured him in with food. He's still a bit unsure of it, but I think he'll come to like it. I got tired of finding him curled up in a ball on one of my lawn chairs in the little cat bed with no other protection from the elements. I found him slightly wet the other night when I let him in. I hope this helps him out. The neighbors aren't bad, they're just not cat people.
Oh, and way to go Patriots! The Chiefs game was another fun one to watch. The Patriots' game stats are never tremendously better than the opposing team's, but somehow the Pats generate points from whatever they do. The next game should be interesting... as we play the Ravens, who are the only team to beat the Steelers, who are in turn the only team to beat the Pats. The Ravens are doing well, so a win there would feel good.
20 Nov 2004 - While talking over beer last night, I realized I have been to Florida before. I went to Miami for 3 days to meet with the University of Miami for work. Granted, I saw only a small portion of Florida, but it was enough to qualify. If not, I'll certainly be taking care of it in a couple weeks. ;-) New map, now featuring wang!
18 Nov 2004 - Let's see... what's going on... OK, so, have you seen the Old Navy commercial where the woman is shopping for apples in a grocery store? That is funny as hell and I laugh every time that girl chimes in with "the holidays will hit you... LIKE A BRICK!!!" with that smug grin on her face. Love it.
I've been playing Half-Life 2 for the past few days. I'm kinda pissed off that it's not running well on my rig. I'm having the audio stuttering problem that so many are apparently encountering. On the positive side, I was very resistant to Steam at first, but I decided to use it and I absolutely love it. It worked perfectly and I downloaded my game overnight without any trouble. Interesting tidbit: Half-Life and Half-Life 2 are the only games I've never paid for. (Got the first one as a copy from a friend... bad bad, I know... and I had a coupon for this one I got nearly 2 years ago with an ATi video card.)
My cousin-in-law Anna has some cute pictures of her new kitty up on her blog. If you like cats, you'll think Skylar is cute. (Pics are hosted by yours truly.)
The guys at Penny Arcade are doing Child's Play again this year. This is a wonderful charity that really shows how strong the gaming community is. Sadly, I didn't donate to it last year, because I found out about it too late. In 2003, they raised $250,000 from gamers... and that was their first try. This year they're aiming for $400 grand. I know I'll do my part. What I'm really bummed about though, is that I'm going to miss the cool fundraiser auction dinner they're going to have on December 9th. I wouldn't mind driving the 3 hours up and back to do that... but there's no way in hell I'm going to make the trek from Florida!
"Florida?" you ask? That's right! I'm going to be in Orlando, Florida from December 7th to the 14th. I convinced my buddy Mark to come with me to ride some coasters and otherwise hit some parks. I've already done Magic Mountain in LA, so I wanted something different. We're going to Universal Studios, Universal's Islands of Adventure, SeaWorld and Busch Gardens. (Busch Gardens is in Tampa Bay, about 2 hours away.) I've never been to Florida before, so I guess I'll be able to add a state to my map below. The WANG OF JESUSLAND no less!
Speaking of www.sorryeverybody.com, someone totally stole my idea! I wanted to post a picture of myself in a specific t-shirt (which is in the mail on its way to me), but someone else thought of it first. I guess I'll just have to wear one of my other offensive t-shirts I have coming to my door soon. You can preview my new fall line here:
- well... that's the last time I vote
- mace just makes me hornier
- I'm part of the problem
- weapon of ass desctruction
- I'm huge in Japan
I also particularly like these, but I either haven't had a chance to buy it or I haven't gotten up the balls yet to wear it, which is really saying something, considering I own (and wear) this one (the text is in really small print way down on the shirt).
- I saw mommy kissing Mrs. Claus
- I only support gay marriage if both chicks are hot
- I support single moms (always wanted to wear this one to a strip club)
- I fucked the Olsen twins before they were famous
- I support a woman's right to choose
OK, that's enough debauchery for one night. Oh, but before I go, Oregon's voter turnout is now up to 85.08%. Nice!
13 Nov 2004 - Two sites have come to my attention over the last few days. First, there's a great bitch session from someone who feels the same way I do... that maybe we should have two countries. Head on over to www.fuckthesouth.com and read it. I particularly liked the part regarding morals and marriage.
The other site is www.sorryeverybody.com. At first, it just seems kinda cute. But then two things happen... you get far enough along reading these apologies to the world and you come across people from other countries sending it pictures of forgiveness! It's really touching. And then, you notice that when you visited it first, it had 200 pages of pictures... then the next day it had 266... and now it has 318. That's 3,180 apologies or acceptances of apologies... and most of the pictures have more than one person in them. When my picture gets up there, I'll update you all and let you know what page it's on. Now, keep in mind, I don't feel like I need to apologize to the rest of the world as much as I need to apologize for the half of this country who are idiots. Unfortunately, I've been looking at some data and it makes me think that maybe things aren't so clear. But I'll get back to that.
There's a really good site that allows you to dive deep into the voter data for Oregon. What I'm most impressed with is the voter turnout. The best estimate I can get for Oregon's population is 3,559,596. Of those persons, 2,145,821 are registered to vote. That's not bad (~60%) considering I have no idea how many of those are even eligible to register. And of those who are registered, 1,819,394 voted! That's a turnout of 84.75%. The county I live in, Washington, had an 85.01% turnout. The highest turnout for a given county was Wallowa at 91.45%. Now granted, that county went for Bush with 69% of the vote, but that was only worth 3,122 votes total. Oregon also has Multnomah county, which is primarily the city of Portland, and the voter turnout there was 83.7% with 72% going to Kerry for a total of 254,927 votes. The overall vote was still quite close, but Oregon clearly did its part for the country. ;-)
Now here's the data that scares me. And keep in mind that the only things that mattered to me in this election were the Presidency and Measure 36 (ban gay marriage). In Multnomah county, the county that voted 72% for Kerry, only 60% voted against the ban. It seems to me this gay marriage stuff crosses party lines. And the only explanation is religion. Democrats are also religious. It seems rational thought is being trumped by religion once again. I refer you to the first link I posted if you're having trouble.
7 Nov 2004 - I was reading FARK and came across something kinda neat. You know how those RVs will sometimes have a pic of the US and they highlight where they've been? Well, there's a website called world66 where you can generate that map for yourself. Here's what I came up with:
As you can see, when I moved from Boston to Portland, I made the harrowing trek across Jesusland. Ah, you're not familiar with Jesusland? Here ya go:
You can also make a world map and a Europe map at world66, but I've only ever been to Japan, so it seemed rather pointless.
7 Nov 2004 - I still haven't gotten over the crushing political defeats of this past week. I went to Old Chicago on Friday night (as always) and had what were probably my last commiserative conversations on the subject. The wait staff at OC generally share similar beliefs as I do. We were all bitching about religion and mean-spirited humans. Fortunately, I got to do some of that complaining with people I am very fond of.
Just prior to OC on Friday, I got to do something I've never done before! The boys, Amy & I went to an archery range and arched! Or archeried! Or archirized! Eh, we shot arrows. It was a lot of fun for me. Amy was dead on. The boys had a little trouble getting it down field. The bows were taller than they were and thusly a little unwieldy.
Anyway, here's another picture post to help me catch up on this year. These come from Amy's parents' visit with us in February. Enjoy!
3 Nov 2004 - I guess I was wrong. Very wrong. Although Kerry has not yet conceded, it seems clear that Bush will win the presidency again.
On top of that, the gay marriage ban (Measure 36) has passed in Oregon.
There's only one way to say it: I'm ashamed of this country.
31 Oct 2004 - I believe it's happening. I'm hopeful it is. I heard on the news last night that 51% of registered Oregonians have already voted. They also said 84% of the registered voters in Washington have already voted. (Oregon and Washington are lucky enough to use a complete vote-by-mail process. However, you can turn it in by hand up until 8pm on election day. In fact, as of right now, you have to turn it in by hand, as the mail will not get there in time. Postmarks DO NOT COUNT.)
Washington's number is just unbelievable. In the 2000 election, Washington had a turn out of only 56.9%. And the highest turn out of any state was Minnesota's 68.8%. Washington's 84% just blows that away!!! Oregon has a way to go to match its 2000 year 60.5% turn out, but I think it'll happen. (Click here to see the 2000 information.)
I believe this bodes well for John Kerry. We have record new voter registration and record voter turn out... I can't imagine that happens when there's general satisfaction with the current administration.
30 Oct 2004 - Jarod had a great soccer game today. Although his team lost, he made an awesome kick into the goal that really uplifted his team. He was quite happy about it too... all smiles. Jarod has one more game to go this season.
Patrick has his last game later today. As always, they play 3 short 30 minute games against 3 different teams. And then it's off to have pizza! This year we're going to Old Chicago.
I'm looking forward to Halloween tomorrow. Since it's on the weekend, I'll have more time to set up my scary stuff. I'm heading over to the Halloween store at 10am when it first opens to see what they have left. It'll all be 50% off at that point and since I want to buy some of the more expensive items this year, that'll be well worth it. Looking forward to scaring the kiddies!
Speaking of being scared... Mark & I went to see The Grudge last night. That was pretty damn scary. The theater was filled with younger people... 13 - 25 year olds... boyfriend/girlfriend pairs, etc. Every scary moment was met with screams, yells, pleas for it to stop. Quite entertaining. The movie itself was only so-so. Scary, yes... but at times almost unfortunately funny when characters would fall into "scary movie patterns." Overall worth it... especially if you see it in a theater with friends and lightweights. ;-)
27 Oct 2004 - It seems like a dream, but they've done it. The Red Sox have won the World Series. They did it in grand fashion, with a 0-3 comeback to beat the Yankees in the ALCS and a complete sweep of the Cardinals to take the ultimate crown. Unbelievable. It must be crazy in Boston right now and I wish I was there to experience it, but here in Oregon, there are still *tons* of Bostonians rooting for the Sox. I had a complete stranger walk up to me and congratulate me... she was from Quincy. Then I had a new friend of mine who lived all over Massachusetts early in life come running into Old Chicago yelling and screaming. She scared the living shit out of me, but it was awesome! Lots of crazy people, lots of happiness... just incredible.
WAY TO GO RED SOX!!!
26 Oct 2004 - The Red Sox have now won the first 3 games of the 7 game World Series. This is unbelievable. Of course, in the back of my mind, I realize that the Red Sox have done something no other baseball team has ever done... they've come back from an 0-3 deficit in a 7 game series. And if you really want to take this curse crap to extremes, the Cardinals could do the same. That would be a piece of irony unmatched by anything I've ever seen. Ah, to be a Red Sox fan... eternally doubtful. ;-)
But I have faith. I am going to Old Chicago tomorrow to watch game 4 and hopefully see the Sox win their first World Series since the Bronze Age. It will be glorious.
In other news, I feel a little overrun lately. I've got so many things going on at work... I'm on support rotation this week, I'm trying to help Honeywell get their extranet migrations going, I have code due to be checked in for the next build of our product, and then there are all the other little things that go on that aren't worth mentioning, but somehow suck away 25% of your available time. On top of that, I have to make an eye appointment, my fridge is running kinda funny, the window in the master bedroom is leaking and my property taxes just came due. They actually went down, from $3,000 to $2,800, so that's nice. But hey, it's still a chunk of change that has to disappear.
I have a small number of vacation days left for this year... something like 5 or 6. I was really hoping to take a serious vacation before the year ended, like to India or Ireland or just wherever. I could never make it pan out for one reason or another. Ah well... there's always next year!
23 Oct 2004 - I'm looking forward to the Red Sox game today. I plan on watching it from Old Chicago with my friend Mark. The boys also have soccer games nearly back to back today, so I'll be a little busy.
The election is almost here. What... about 10 days left? A lot of people have already voted, myself included. I voted last Saturday... Oregon is 100% vote-by-mail. All you other ass-backwards states should try it. Check out how the rest of the country votes by going to CNN and clicking on the "Map: Early voting states" link on the right hand side. I'm hopeful that John Kerry is going to win. I think a lot of the polls aren't reaching what I call the "X factor voters" like me. One can only hope.
Just for fun, I thought I'd explain my votes. First, the candidates. Obviously I voted for Kerry/Edwards. I don't even need to go into that. I actually somewhat agree with Bush (or more accurately, the Republicans) on some fiscal matters... but that is greatly outweighed by all the other stuff that I utterly despise. I'll say it again, why won't John McCain run once more?
For the rest of the candidates, I voted straight Democrat. Really, there was only one race that was worth considering: David Wu vs. Goli Ameri for Congress. I actually like a lot about Ameri, but figured it would just be better to have a Democrat in Congress if I was electing a Democratic President. Plus, I have nothing against Wu... and he bungee jumps from the same bridge I do, so... ;-)
Everything else was a measure. I like these much more. You can analyze them and they won't turn and do something they said they wouldn't do or fail you or whatever... you know, like people do. Here's the rundown:
| Measure 31 - AMENDS CONSTITUTION: AUTHORIZES LAW PERMITTING POSTPONEMENT OF ELECTION FOR PARTICULAR PUBLIC OFFICE WHEN NOMINEE FOR OFFICE DIES | |
|
YES |
This was a no brainer. There's no reason not to have a law like this. |
| Measure 32 - AMENDS CONSTITUTION: DELETES REFERENCE TO MOBILE HOMES FROM PROVISION DEALING WITH TAXES AND FEES ON MOTOR VEHICLES | |
|
YES |
Another no brainer. For whatever reason, a lot of homes are covered under the DMV and thusly their taxes only go to fixing up the roads and such. It was really just an archaic clause that had to be fixed. |
| Measure 33 - AMENDS MEDICAL MARIJUANA ACT: REQUIRES MARIJUANA DISPENSARIES FOR SUPPLYING PATIENTS/CAREGIVERS; RAISES PATIENTS' POSSESSION LIMIT | |
|
YES |
This one was a little hard to decide, but not too much. Oregon already allows medical marijuana use. But as I understand it, you can't buy it or sell it. You have to grow your own. For the most part, this just sets up dispensaries so that people who are allowed to use it can get it more easily. The way I see it, the medical marijuana act was just a half measure and this fixes it. It's going to cost money, but it's a relatively small amount. |
| Measure 34 - REQUIRES BALANCING TIMBER PRODUCTION, RESOURCE CONSERVATION/PRESERVATION IN MANAGING STATE FORESTS; SPECIFICALLY ADDRESSES TWO FORESTS | |
|
NO |
Another tough one with some subtleties. Currently, our forests are tightly managed with an eye towards all uses: conservation, clean water, recreation and timber production. As much as I hate to see large swathes of trees cut, I know it has to be done. This measure proposes to force a 50 / 50 split between timber production and pretty much everything else. At first glance, it sounds good, but they've already put a lot of effort into the current plan. They'd have to rework all that. Also, why pack all the timber production into half the space? I think spreading it out is better. Finally, all this rework would cost a lot of money, and I think they're doing a fine job as it is. |
| Measure 35 - AMENDS CONSTITUTION: LIMITS NONECONOMIC DAMAGES (DEFINED) RECOVERABLE FOR PATIENT INJURIES CAUSED BY HEALTHCARE PROVIDER'S NEGLIGENCE OR RECKLESSNESS | |
|
NO |
This was a really tough one. On the surface, I like it. It sets a $500K limit for awards in court cases for things like "pain and suffering" or whatever. But the real reason I like this is that I hate frivolous lawsuits. And I don't think this is going to stop those. Instead, this will only immediately benefit the insurance companies. The logic is that it will reduce insurance premiums and thusly the cost of healthcare, but that chain of events is unlikely to happen. I prefer something along the lines of what Kerry said in the second debate: 3 frivolous lawsuits and you're out. |
| Measure 36 - AMENDS CONSTITUTION: ONLY MARRIAGE BETWEEN ONE MAN AND ONE WOMAN IS VALID OR LEGALLY RECOGNIZED AS MARRIAGE | |
|
NO |
That's just mean. |
| Measure 37 - GOVERNMENTS MUST PAY OWNERS, OR FORGO ENFORCEMENT, WHEN CERTAIN LAND USE RESTRICTIONS REDUCE PROPERTY VALUE | |
|
NO |
Another tough one. The premise: If I buy land now and am told I can split it up and sell it later for people to build homes on... and then 50 years later zoning laws prevent it, the state should reimburse me for my loss or let me do it. This is likely a real problem for a small number of people and it sucks. But zoning laws are useful and are done for the greater good. And since this measure is unfunded, the answer is never going to be to pay someone, but rather to let them do what they want with the land. It seems like a loophole that makes all that careful planning go to waste. |
| Measure 38 - ABOLISHES SAIF; STATE MUST REINSURE, SATISFY SAIF'S OBLIGATIONS; DEDICATES PROCEEDS, POTENTIAL SURPLUS TO PUBLIC PURPOSES | |
|
n/a |
I didn't vote on this one. I didn't feel I could come to a logical conclusion on it. I can't even explain it to you. :-( |
20 Oct 2004 - There are no words...
19 Oct 2004 - Win or lose in game 7, this is clearly destiny...
18 Oct 2004 - OH HELL YES!!!
17 Oct 2004 - WHAT A GREAT DAY FOR BOSTON!!! Red Sox win in game 4 against the Yankees!!! Whoooooo hoo! What an incredible game. My hands are shaking, my heart is pumping... it feels SO GOOD! And the Patriots win their 20th game in a row. Unbelievable! Keep the faith!
15 Oct 2004 - Man, I didn't have a good day today. I wasn't able to get the work done that I had hoped. I seemed to be totally distracted all day. And then the weirdest thing happened. I was in a team meeting and we were discussing a new direction our group is going to be taking. Several of us discussed the pros and cons and asked questions to understand what it all meant. Later, my boss came by and asked me not to be so negative. I am actually one of the few who thinks it's a good idea, I just want to get it right, so I try to discuss it fully, rather than blindly cheer rah rah rah for it. It threw me off for the rest of the day and it's getting worse by the minute. I tend to dwell on things like that. Sometimes I swear the only way I can live life is to completely pull back from everyone. Every time I actually throw myself out there, something like this happens.
On a happier note, I am finally posting pictures from Amy's birthday. Recall that her cousins surprised her by showing up in Portland without Amy having a clue that it was happening. It was really wonderful. I posted a blurb about it here on 2/2/2004. Anyway, here are the pictures.
14 Oct 2004 - Another tough game to watch last night. Once again they come really close to coming back, only to fail. This is really disappointing. Here's hoping for a sweep at Fenway over the next three days.
I watched most of the debate last night. Obviously I'm voting for John Kerry, but last night was a little frustrating. I think Senator Kerry is the better debater and I realize there's very little time to answer questions, but I get tired of hearing, "I have a plan for..." What the hell is your plan? You can't just say "Look how bad President Bush has screwed it up. Don't worry, I have a plan." And for the first time in all three debates, I found myself in agreement with President Bush... on domestic issues, oddly enough. He had the balls to say that Social Security is screwed up and detailed ways to fix it. He was clear that today's younger Americans are going to have to get stiffed. He advocated partial privatization. I completely agree with all those statements. I want Social Security ended and incentives to save on your own put in its place. We should honor the agreement to anyone over some arbitrary age, say 40, who have paid in so much. Everyone else should be partially backed off based on age.
I also agreed with him completely on some healthcare issues. The flu shot is a no brainer. We always run out, there's always a shortage... and most people don't even need the damn things. I've never gotten one. And I respect that he said straight up that people like me should not get one... and he himself is not getting one. Instead of answering that direct question, Senator Kerry turned it into a healthcare crisis in America caused by President Bush.
The other healthcare issue I agreed with was healthcare spending accounts (HSAs). Those are the most brilliant thing ever. I use non-dental, non-eye healthcare infrequently. I want a catastrophic policy that will cover me when I sever a limb, have a heart attack or take a bullet to the gut. Otherwise, I'd rather pay with my own money when I feel it is justified. And I want that money to *stay* my money... none of this 125 plan bullshit where you lose it at the end of the year. And they'll let that money be invested pre-tax, tax-deferred and tax-free on withdrawal for medical purposes. This is just pure brilliance.
If it wasn't for President Bush's complete mishandling of foreign policy, his religious crap and his IQ, I'd probably vote for him. But those problems need to be remedied and the cure is Senator Kerry (for now).
12 Oct 2004 - Well, that Red Sox / Yankees game was an emotional roller coaster. Sonofabitch that was hard to watch. It's almost not worth mentioning, because a loss is a loss... but if Schilling was on his game, we would've won that. Mussina was pitching incredibly well and Rivera closed nicely... and we still got 7 runs. I hope that hints that some wins are in our future.
OK, you've seen all the pictures I have worth showing for 2003. Now I have to eat away at my 2004 backlog. And it's deep. I have 21 separate events worthy of posting and with the holiday season coming up, it's only going to get worse even faster. So, here's a gallery of shots from the very first snow of 2004.
I think I'm going to try to get more regular in my posting, even if it's only a blurb. I may also start to shift more towards my every day kinda stuff, rather than these big family events. Not sure yet... not sure how I'm going to work that into this site. It could get ugly, and I have mostly family members reading, so... it may be time to don your asbestos underwear. We shall see...
3 Oct 2004 - I was only 5 years old when Mount St. Helens blew the first time. I remember reading about it when I got older. I'm pretty excited to see it blow again, even if it's going to be much smaller. No one should get hurt, because the people who take care of things like this are on the ball. Portland is 50 miles away, so I'm hoping for an aerial view. The place I go bungee jumping is only about 15 miles from there! Here's the link for the VolcanoCam.
30 Sep 2004 - So far, the (non-scientific) CNN and MSNBC polls agree with me...
30 Sep 2004 - The presidential debate just ended. Overall, I'd say I learned hardly anything new, so it wasn't interesting from that perspective. I'm voting for John Kerry, so I feel he won simply on the nature of his answers. But if I were to assume I agreed with both candidates, I'd say they were just about even. (Each one said what he needed to say to make the people who've already made up their minds that much happier.) However, I would give a slight nod to Kerry, because Bush showed a bit of his "goofiness" (a generous term) during the debate.
Please vote... and please vote for John Kerry.
12 Sep 2004 - Ugh.
- 4 tickets to a Red Sox game in Seattle: $161.82
- money for gas: $22.85
- parking fee: $15
- a cheeseburger, fries, chocolate shake and beer in the park: $18.75
- driving 6+ hours to watch a short 2 hour, 22 minute game in which the Red Sox not only lose, but get shut out by one of the worst teams in baseball while at the same time the Yankees win their game for the day?
$218.42 dammit, and not a penny less
11 Sep 2004 - Talk about spur of the moment. I just bought tickets a few seconds ago to go see the Red Sox in Seattle tomorrow! Let's hope we get another Red Sox win and a Yankees loss.
21 Aug 2004 - The Olympics are no longer relevant. I am completely uninterested in them and almost always have been. I read a brief story of Paul Hamm's gold win and decided to watch that one. And sure enough, it was exciting, because of the huge come from behind win.
BUT, now I read about this scoring issue. The judges gave one of the Koreans a start value of 9.9 instead of 10. Had the correct start value been given, the Korean who won bronze would've won gold. And now they won't change it!
Why? They say it's just like football. You just have to live with a bad call by the ref. But that's just it. It's not at all like football (or any other similar sport). The gymnasts may as well be competing in a vacuum, because their performances don't affect each other. So, when the day is done, if the math is wrong, you have to redo the math. It's a disgrace that they are letting the medals stand.
The only exception to that rule would be if the gymnasts actually adjust their routines according to their current standings. "Oh look, I'm already ahead, I can try a simpler exercise and do it perfectly rather than try for this difficult thing to make up lost ground." One could say that Hamm's final performance was just that... extreme to make up points.
But, I'm *sure* that if the Korean was properly scored from the beginning, Hamm's score probably would've been just enough higher to give him the gold anyway. I have NO faith in subjective judging techniques. What they need to do is bring in a true outside observer who doesn't care who wins to create a level playing field that is made better through logic and math... or these sports will forever live in obscurity. Eh, who cares...
11 Aug 2004 - Here are some old pictures from Christmas of last year. Thanks again to everyone who made it so much fun for the kids!
30 Jul 2004 - Although I'm fast approaching 30, here's a pic from the day I turned 29.
28 Jul 2004 - This one was a bitch to do, but here it is. Tons o' Vegas pics. Enjoy.
26 Jul 2004 - It's been a little nuts this past week. On Tuesday, we drove up to Seattle to watch the Red Sox whup the Mariners' butts. On Wednesday, I spent the whole day dealing with some crazy mess and basically had to take the day off of work. On Saturday, I completed my 7th and 8th bungee jumps. And then on Sunday, I worked to make up for the lost Wednesday. Ugh. I was able to fit in some drinking on Friday night and Saturday after the jump, so not all was lost. I'm up to 94 of 110 beers at Old Chicago. Nearly done with the tour!
I've been working on preparing some pictures of my Vegas trip from December. There were a lot of pics to go through, so it's taken some time. Soon... very soon. (And I know some of you are waiting for pics of more recent events... but you'll have to wait a bit longer.)
19 Jul 2004 - I went out of my way to save up some Thanksgiving picture from last year to post... and then I realized I've only ever posted 2 other Thanksgivings... and the pictures were always a little lame. But, I did the work, so here they are.
18 Jul 2004 - Just got back from a camping trip with the family. We went back to Little Crater Lake, just like last year. Once again, it was fun! We also got to see a different campground called Clear Lake. (I had to make an excursion to buy wood, since the host at Little Crater wasn't there.) We're definitely going to try that one next year and maybe even bring a canoe.
Amy's cousin Anna had this posted on her blog, so I thought I'd replicate. Just bored, I guess. 100 items... bold ones apply to me. Obviously, some of these have grey areas, but I'm just going with the easy black & white.
01. I have a cell phone
02. I'm obsessed with new things.
03. I'm the youngest child.
04. I am a shopoholic.
05. I love my gauged ears.
06. I love wearing a lot of black eyeliner.
07. I love Daquiris.
08. I love the weekends.
09. I can't live without lip gloss.
10. I can't live without music.
11. I lived in Tahoe.
12. I spend money I have.
13. I'll be in college for over 4 years.
14. I love designer handbags (Coach, Burberry, Louis Vuitton)
15. I get annoyed easily.
16. I eventually want kids.
17. I like the Backsreet Boys.
18. I have more than a couple horrible memories.
19. I'm addicted to Degrassi.
20. I am a person.
21. My first kiss was unexpected.
22. I start school on Jan 4th or 5th
23. I love taking pictures.
24. I hate girls who are fake.
25. I can be mean when I want to.
26. My dreams are bizarre.
27. I am bisexual.
28. I have way too many pairs of shoes.
29. I've seen "She's All That" at least 50 times.
30. I dress how I feel that day.
31. I love Charmed.
32. Sometimes I cry for almost no reason.
33. I hate when people are ridiculously late.
34. I procrastinate.
35. Winter is my least favorite season
36. I have too many clothes for my closet/dresser
37. I love to sleep.
38. I wish I were smarter.
39. I am the hottest guy
40. I have a lot of drama
41. No one knows the full story of my life.
42. I love my hair.
43. I sometimes fight with my parents.
44. I love the beach!!!
45. I have had the chicken pox.
46. I'm excited for the future.
47. I can't control my emotions.
48. I can't wait till New Year's.
49. I love the show 'Rich Girls'
50. I love my friends.
51. Christmas is my favorite holiday
52. I can be very insecure sometimes.
53. I have had a broken bone.
54. I hate ignorant people
55. I love my laptop.
56. I love guys that play the guitar.
57. I state the obvious.
58. I'm a happy person.
59. I love to dance.
60. I love to sing.
61. I hate cleaning my room.
62. I tend to get jealous very easily.
63. I like to play video games.
64. I love my friends. (Wasn't this already #50?)
65. I hate when I see animals/people getting hurt/abused.
66. I'm a vegetarian/vegan/don't eat beef.
67. I don't like to study for tests.
68. I love Play-Doh.
69. I am too forgiving.
70. I have a good sense of direction.
71. I like high school.
72. I have a talent of sweet talking my way out of things.
73. I don't drink enough to get drunk.
74. I love kisses on the forehead.
75. I love the color blue!
76. I don't sew.
77. I am not addicted to drugs.
78. I love the Olsen twins.
79. I'm gonna try out for the softball team.
80. I become stressed easily.
81. I hate liars.
82. I like comfy sweatpants.
83. Bam Margera is AWESOME!!!!!!
84. I love the smell of fresh laundry.
85. I love my family.
86. I don't mind getting shots.
87. I am a perfectionist when it comes to certain things.
88. I always wanted to learn to play the drums.
89. I hate the feeling of failure.
90. School is fun.
91. I would love to have my own fashion line.
92. I can be quite selfish.
93. I still act like a little kid.
94. Above all, I despise dishonesty.
95. I can stay on the computer forever
96. I love music.
97. I wish I was more motivated when it comes to school.
98. I love getting stuff in the mail.
99. I have problems letting go of people.
100. I hate the feeling of being alone.
13 Jul 2004 - My friend Mark introduced me to slacklining a couple weeks ago. You take some webbing and stretch it between two things (trees, posts, whatever) and essentially tightrope walk. I'm not very good at it yet, but I enjoy it. I better enjoy it, because Mark and I just sunk two 6x6 posts in my backyard to slackline with! I don't have any pictures of me doing it, but here are some of Mark and his friend Garrett. And I now know the meaning of the pain represented in this particular picture, as today I personally fell off the slackline "improperly." Holy crap that hurt.
26 Jun 2004 - Gripe for the day... weather forecasters in the Northwest are the worst I've ever experienced. I have counted on forecasts on at least 3 separate occasions in the last month and they have always been DEAD wrong. And I don't mean a week in advance or even three days. I mean the DAY BEFORE! Come on... how can they be so deficient?
Most of you know that Amy and the boys are in Boston right now. It's been 1.5 weeks already and I'm gettin' pretty lonely. Actually, I feel bad for the cats. Boston is used to it, but she misses them for sure. But Sera... lemme tell ya... she's freaked out. Poor cat keeps looking all over the house for them. Only a few more days to go...
Here are a bunch of pictures of our Halloween from 2003 last year. I've got Thanksgiving, my trip to Vegas, maybe some of my birthday... oh, and Christmas pics... then I can move on to 2004!!!
13 Jun 2004 - Not too much went on this weekend. I did have the pleasure of an early father's day though. (The kids will be in Boston for the real thing.) We went out to the Olive Garden for lunch today. Oh, and I also got some really neat cards and gifts made by the boys in school.
I'm watching the Red Sox game right now. Just wanted to say that Pokey Reese is incredible. It's been great having him at shortstop while Nomar was recovering. And today, back at 2nd base, he made the most amazing catch I have ever seen. He jumped so far into the air that it stunned the Dodgers, the entire stadium and the announcers. Pokey is one of my favorite players on the team by far. Go Sox!
I'll have another "picture post" up soon. It'll be Halloween related stuff. Yup, still got the backlog... ;-)
9 Jun 2004 - Today was Jarod's actual birthday. He decided he wanted to go to Chevy's for dinner (a TexMex restaurant). They sang the birthday song for him and he got a sombrero and free dessert! Happy 7th birthday, dude!
As for today's media related post, I have pics *and videos* of our trip to Action Park back in September of 2003. Now that I have essentially unlimited drive space, I can be liberal with the videos. Enjoy!
7 Jun 2004 - This past weekend was very relaxing! I took a several hour long nap on Sunday and then went to bed at 10:30pm! That's crazy for me. I usually go to bed around 1am and get up at 7am. But given the chance to sleep, boy do I...
More backlogged pictures... here are some from the kids' soccer jamboree at the end of the season last year. Both Jarod and Patrick were on the same kick n' chase team, so that was pretty cool. Enjoy the pics!
6 Jun 2004 - Jarod and Patrick are in their last week of school now. But here are some pictures from their first days of school in September of 2003.
5 Jun
2004 - What's this? An update from DJ? No, it couldn't
be! But oh yes, it is. ;-) I've been completely lame
about posting, because I ran out of disk space at Yahoo! So now,
this site is hosted entirely in my house. For the geeks, I'm
running Win2k3 Server with Active Directory. Having a true domain
is a lot of work, but the benefits are huge. I also take care of
all my own email now as well using Exchange Server. No more disk
limitations! What does that mean for you? A lot more
updates! Oh, and if you want to own your own domain, I'm happy to
help you do that and you can host it here for free. (You only have
to pay for the domain registration.) Obviously, this only applies
to family and friends...
We had Jarod's 7th birthday party today! It was a lot of fun and
I'll get pictures up right away, but I have to get out from under a
backlog of older stuff first.
To that end, here are pictures of our
third family camping trip,
taken in August of 2003!
2 Feb 2004 - Amy celebrated her 30th birthday on Wedneday, Jan. 28th. I tried to do something special for her, so I contacted her cousins, Anna and Lisa, in Boston and we arranged for them to fly out and surprise her. It worked perfectly. I thought she figured it out, but she was clueless until she saw their smiling faces. Stunned doesn't begin to describe her reaction. They stayed from Wednesday until Sunday. Lisa and Anna took time out of their busy schedules to make this a great birthday for Amy. I'm so grateful to them for that. I have to admit though... I got as much enjoyment out of it as Amy did. Having two beautiful, fun girls in the house in addition to Amy was... I think I'll go with: phenomenal. (And I finally met a beautiful girl who also happens to think my geeky t-shirts are funny.)
7 Jan 2004 - Just a little note... yesterday was the kids' very first snow day. It snowed a bit at night and when we woke up, school was canceled. We took them sledding at a local park... also a first! We spent only about an hour out there, because it was so cold! Turns out that today is also a snow day, though it might better be described as an ice day. Everything is covered in a sheet of ice. I checked it out last night and it's only gotten worse since then. Well, that's it. Just thought I'd mention it.
1 Jan 2004 - Happy New Year everyone!!! Amy & I just watched the ball drop in New York and saw the fireworks in Boston. Hope everyone on the east coast had fun! We've still got a few hours to go here in Portland, so wish us well. Love you all!
29 Dec 2003 - In August, I went on a short hike with my friend Mark. Check out some pictures of us, our exploits and the beautiful Oregon scenery.
27 Dec 2003 - I promised I'd keep it coming, so here it is. The most insanely belated thing of all... Patrick's birthday party pictures! When he gets older, I'm sure he'll resent me for taking 4.5 months to post his pictures and only 2 weeks to get Jarod's up. Sheesh, what an awful father... :-(
25 Dec 2003 - Given that today's Christmas, I bet you're expecting to see Christmas related stuff. Bah! It's been almost four months since I last posted, so I have a lot of catch up to do. It's taken me this long, because the computers in my house went through a major overhaul. Let's just say most small businesses don't have the infrastructure I now do. Soon enough, this site will actually be hosted inside my house, but I'm not there just yet. In any event, here are the pictures from our July, 2003 Boston trip! I actually had this ready to post in October, but technical difficulties got in the way.
3 Sep 2003 - OK, it feels ridiculous since both Patrick and Jarod just started school again, but here are some extremely belated pictures of Jarod's graduation from kindergarten this past June. Next up, our July trip to Boston, Patrick's birthday, a backpacking trip I took with a friend, the family's summer camping trip and the kids' first days of school!!! It'll take me forever, but dammit, I'm gonna get it done!
2 Sep 2003 - Once again, FrontPage has disappeared from my most recently used list of programs. And also as usual, it's not for lack of updates... it's purely because of laziness. Over the course of the next few days, I'm going to post up a bunch of updates and catch everyone up on what's been happening... probably as far back as June.
28 Jul 2003 - I just posted some new versions of the Star Wars Kid video to my site. Be patient with the downloads, it'll be worth it. There are over 30 variations of this, but I found these few to be the funniest.
- SWK_BennyHill.wmv
- SWK_Clone.wmv
- SWK_EpIII.wmv
- SWK_NutCracker.wmv
- SWK_original.wmv
- SWK_original_edit.wmv
- SWK_T3.avi
5 Jul 2003 - Amy drew this picture the day Sera arrived at our house. It's very nearly "to scale." ;-) There's an awful lot more smiling depicted than there is in real life though.
5 Jul 2003 - I hope everyone had a good 4th. We watched the Boston fireworks on TV and some people on our street lit off some impressive (and illegal in OR) fireworks as well. Earlier in the day, we had a small BBQ. The real reason for this post is to share a factoid with you: A small calculation reveals that I receive about 73 spam messages per day (over the period of 6 May 2003 to date). A similar calculation shows that since 24 March 1999, the rate at which I receive real emails is about 5 per day (actually 4.6)!!! All I have to say about that is, my penis is plenty big enough, thank you.
28 Jun 2003 - Two weeks ago, the kids went to a summer party at a friends house down the street. It was just an excuse to have some fun! Lost of pictures were taken and all that jazz, but I'm not posting all those. Just this one video file (2.96MB) that I find pretty funny. I spliced together a bunch of little videos so you can appreciate the payoff at the end. It's compressed with DivX 5.0.5, so you'll need to have that codec (the free one is fine). It'll take a little over 3 minutes to download coming over my home internet connection. Oh, and what the hell, here's another funny one of goofy cats (2.71MB)..
26 Jun 2003 - OK, this isn't the best picture, but I wanted to let you all know we have a new addition to the family. Her name is Serendipity, but we call her Sera (at least for these first few hours we have). More details later... right now I've got to get to sleep. And so does Sera... you can tell she was sleepy in that picture.
24 Jun 2003 - I was really slow to get these up, but here are the pictures of Jarod's 6th birthday. They're mostly of the kids playing at the party... I videotaped the cake part of it, so you won't see much of that. He had a great birthday. Thanks to everyone who came to the party and to all those back in Boston who called and sent gifts!!! I have more stuff to post over the next few days, so stay tuned.
8 Jun 2003 - As promised, here's the goods. You'll just have to look for yourself.
6 Jun 2003 - Just a quick blurb. Remember that glider flight that Amy took for mother's day? Well, I went back a couple weeks later and went up myself. It was quite fun! (I don't have any pictures though.) But something I will have pictures for is coming up this weekend. Check back Sunday and see what I mean.
5 Jun 2003 - Some cool news... Patrick graduated from preschool! He graduated on 20 May 2003. They had a nice little ceremony at the school and then everyone went to a pizza place with a play area to hang out. I'm very proud of Patrick and I know he can't wait to get into kindergarten at Jacob Wismer with his big brother Jarod.
17 May 2003 - I saw Reloaded again today. The kids went on a sleep over, so Amy and I got some dinner and watched The Matrix at home and then immediately went to the theater and watched Reloaded. I wanted to see it again, but only because I wanted to review some of the statements and actions. I still believe the movie is not fun to watch (most of the time). Poor choices in music, obvious sfx, monotonous dialogue, boring characters that we learn nothing about... these all make for a bad movie. But I find myself compelled to "read" the movie as though it were a text book. It's as if I want a 1 or 2 page document that details the conversations had between Neo and the Oracle, the Keymaker, the Merovingian, the Architect, Agent Smith and also has a description of some important visual moments, like the ending with the Sentinels. I have some guesses about what it all means, so if you've seen it and you want to trade thoughts, please drop me a line.
Best part of the movie... (SPOILER... highlight to read): When Neo is talking to the Architect and he correctly identifies the 1% anomaly in the Matrix as being caused by "choice," the very next scene is cut to Trinity in front of an elevator which "dings" to declare its arrival. Kinda like a game show where you get the answer right and you get the positive ding. I liked that.
16 May 2003 - The Matrix Reloaded was a big disappointment. At times it was painful to watch. There were a lot of ridiculous scenes and ridiculous dialogue. And when the special effects were bad, they were *really* bad... and distracting. There are three things that (may) save this movie: 1) it's the Matrix, 2) there were some nuggets of interesting information (layered into the unnecessarily complex speeches) and 3) Revolutions could clarify a lot of things that make me reevaluate Reloaded. Once again, I'm not going to bother rating it until I see the 3rd one. My advice: if you liked the first one, see this one, but don't feel the need to rush out on opening weekend or even in the first week. In fact, I hope it comes out on DVD before the November Revolutions release and then I would advise people to watch The Matrix and Reloaded at home and then go to the theater to see Revolutions.
14 May 2003 - As you know, Amy went gliding the day before Mother's Day. On the day of, we headed south a few miles and went wine tasting!
11 May 2003 - Yesterday, Amy got an early Mother's Day present. We took her out to a small airfield and she got to ride in (and fly!) a glider.
10 May 2003 - I saw X2 with Amy soon after it came out. If you're a fan of the first, this one won't disappoint.
19 Apr 2003 - OK, I have no idea why I'm so affected by this, but I am. The Old Man of the Mountain is gone. :-( I spent a lot of time in New Hampshire as a kid and young adult, camping, hiking, etc. I've seen it from the highway many times. And now, it's gone. That pretty much just sucks.
19 Apr 2003 - I was reminded recently that I have a website out here. I thought it might be useful to update it just so the mold didn't start to form around the page edges. The family went downtown today to the Spring Beer Fest at the Oregon Convention Center. Actually, we didn't go to the Beer Fest, because we found out kids aren't allowed in... but only as we got up to the entrance! So, we wandered about the other activities that were going on at the same time. Sort of a bust, but we had a good dinner on the way home. To get back in the swing of things, I'm going to review the last few movies I've seen in the theater. Not full page reviews... in fact, I think I'm going to stop that... instead, just putting them in their "correct" columns. But here's the quick rundown:
- The Ring: Not as scary as I'd hoped.
- Lord of the Rings II: Better than the first, but still waiting for the 3rd before I review.
- Catch Me if You Can: Sometimes slow, but good.
- Tears of the Sun: Starts great, but becomes ridiculous in the last 20 minutes.
- How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days: Seen it a million times before.
Shanghai Knights: The first one was consistently good... this one starts mediocre, but slowly gets better and better until it finishes with great fun.
I've also signed up for Netflix.com. I really love this service. I wish it was slightly cheaper, but the convenience and speed is phenomenal. I've rated a whole bunch of movies, but I can't find a way to share that with you guys. I'm going to write to them and tell them that part of the site should be linkable. (I think now it writes a cookie to my machine ID'ing me, so it's not really shareable.)
2 Mar 2003 - Just this past Thursday, we took the kids to see The Wiggles at the Rose Garden. To be honest, I thought it was going to be torturous for me, but it was quite enjoyable. They added some adult humor to the performance to keep it interesting and seeing my kids' faces was priceless. There are a few pictures from the event.
24 Feb 2003 - I know it's been forever since I last posted. Sorry about that. But I just wanted to point out that I totally nailed the Zora prediction after just the first episode. And to top it off, I also predicted the money thing. (In an email to someone else, I even called out the amount!) Pretty soon I'll have reviews of The Ring, LotR: The Two Towers and Catch Me If You Can. Old movies, yeah, but I gotta note them. I've also played quite a few computer games over the past few months and haven't weighed in on those yet either. Soon!
7 Jan 2003 - Christmas pics are here. Thanks to everyone for helping us make Christmas lots of fun for the boys. They loved everything and they send their thanks.
6 Jan 2003 - I have never watched a single minute of any reality TV show. I'm not passing judgment on those who do, I'm just saying it's not my idea of good TV. However, the premise behind Joe Millionaire had me *very* interested and after seeing the first episode tonight, I'm hooked. This is what reality TV should be like. Say it with me now: Zora is going to win. Oh, and I have this gut feeling that there's more to the surprise than we think. I believe the viewers are being kept in the dark too. And maybe even Evan as well. At the end, they're going to go through all the "I don't have any money" crap and the woman will choose to stay or go. She will choose to stay and somehow, he *will* have money. We shall see. By the way, I've updated my TV page to reflect what I watch (minus Joe Millionaire, which is a one time deal.) I stopped watching The Agency and Alias and The Practice is heading that way too. I don't think I'm watching anything new this season.
4 Jan 2003 - Government is usually stupid. More evidence just arrived in my mailbox today. I got my 2002 tax forms for the state of Oregon. Blazoned across the front page are all these warnings about how there will be an OR election on 28 Jan 2003 that will affect how we are taxed. So, rather than waiting, they published this booklet with *both* tax tables in it (for either election outcome) and tell you not to file until after the election results are known. So, we can't do anything with these documents until after the election anyway, but they decided to spend the money to print the pages needed for the extra tax table. Not to mention the mistakes that will ensue... because like government, people are usually stupid too.
27 Dec 2002 - OK, I lied. My Christmas pics aren't the very next post. But I saw this picture and it makes me laugh so hard every time I see it, I just had to share it. If I were going to hang Christmas lights, I can guarantee it would look something like one of these. Can you guess which? :-)
26 Dec 2002 - Coming up right after this posting will be the actual Christmas day pictures. But until I get those downloaded and cropped, you can check out the pics of us decorating our Christmas tree earlier this month.
25 Dec 2002 - Our Christmas was wonderful! The boys woke at 7am and excitedly opened all their presents. It's almost bed time as I write this, but they're still playing with their cool new stuff. Thanks again everyone! I don't have pictures from today, but I do have pictures from a stroll downtown we took a couple days after Thanksgiving. There is a Christmas theme though!
25 Dec 2002 - Amy & I finished our Christmas duties as parents just a couple hours ago. (It's about 2am my time, right now.) Before I went to bed, I wanted to get another positing out. Here are some pictures from our Thanksgiving day at home this year. I have one more posting after this (and before the big Christmas positing), but it'll have to wait until tomorrow. I'll give you a hint... there will be 12 pictures.
24 Dec 2002 - Merry Christmas Eve everyone! I just wanted to take a minute and say thanks to everyone who sent presents and cards to us. We really appreciate it. The boys are totally pumped for Christmas. I've got quite a few Thanksgiving/Christmas related postings on the way... and after tomorrow, there'll be one more. :-) But for now, here's Thanksgiving at Jarod's school.
21 Dec 2002 - I have such a backlog of things to get out, that some of it seems dated. But, I'm going to post it anyway. There are a few pictures that were taken during October and November that I thought were cute enough to put together and show. It's just the kids playing with their friends in and out of the house. And a few Oregon rainbows for good measure.
13 Dec 2002 - You may remember from the Halloween posting that my father was in town for a few days at that time. Here are some pictures of his visit.
2 Dec 2002 - Finally, after just over a month of patient waiting, you get to see our Halloween pictures.
17 Nov 2002 - I bet you're thinking to yourself, "Where are the Halloween pics?" Well, they're not here... yet. I've been lazy beyond belief at updating this site. Sorry. Anyway, now you get some old pics of our September camping trip. Halloween and other stuff coming soon.
28 Sep 2002 - Jarod joined a soccer team! He's already gone to many practices and played in 4 real games. I have pics from the first big events of the season. Check them out!
22 Sep 2002 - In early September, both Jarod and Patrick started their first days of school. Patrick has one more year of pre-school to go. This year, he's enrolled in 3 day/week class and on top of that, he's on his own now. Jarod has graduated to kindergarten and is now attending his new elementary school Jacob Wismer. Check out the pictures from their first days.
19 Sep 2002 - It's hard keeping up with all the things that go on. Now that the kids are older, I have no fears of this site starving for content. :-) Along those lines, here are the pictures from our second trip to LA this year. The main reason for the trip was my friend Clara's wedding, but we incorporated Disneyland and Knott's Berry Farm (as any respectable parent would do). Coming soon... Jarod's soccer and the boys' first days at school!
11 Sep 2002 - As promised, here are the pictures from my friends' visit and camping trip last month. Little Crater Lake campground was very nice, the hike was awesome and generally we had a great time. Eric got his second taste of Oregon and Jeff got his first!
7 Sep 2002 - Check out a few quick pictures of the boys in their swim class. Soon to come... pictures from a visit / camping trip with some RPI friends and the family's trip to the LA area.
Also, here's a "funny" story for you. Totally true, I kid you not. On Thursday, I was mowing my lawns that were slightly long from not seeing the blade in about a week. As I'm half way through my front lawn, I hear this blowtorch sound... like a can of air (for the computer) being used or something. I look down and there are FLAMES shooting out of the little electrical control box that the cord plugs into on my mower!!! It burned my hand and a bit of the hair got singed and curled up. (Clearly, I have hair to spare, so I'm OK.) I jumped back and watched it flame out... then smoke... and when it cleared, it was black and sooty (instead of Black & Decker). In case you're curious, this was model MM850. I went to Home Depot, but mowers aren't cheap! Cheapest electric was $180... next one up was $400. Damn! I called B&D and let them know what happened and then I called the nearest service dealer. Brought it on over on Friday and they said they'd try to get it fixed under warranty (which it isn't anymore). We'll see how this saga ends in about a week. In the meantime, how do I mow my lawns?!?! Perhaps I'll use the weed whacker.
6 Sep 2002 - Oh my. I was about to post about a whole bunch of other stuff that's happened recently, until I realized... I never posted Patrick's birthday pictures!!! Turns out I went through them the very next day, picked out the good ones, etc. But doing that gave me the false memory that I had finished the task. In any event, here are pictures of a 4 year old Patrick!
16 Aug 2002 - MIIB, XXX and Austin Powers 3: Goldmember reviews are finally up! One thumbs down, one up, one toss up. Find out which is which!
13 Aug 2002 - Three movie reviews and pictures of Patrick's birthday party are on the way. In the meantime, I finally grabbed some pictures of the roses and perennials I mentioned back on 4 Aug 2002. Oh, and we harvested our Lodi apple crop (3 full apples!) a few days ago. They have an interesting taste.
12 Aug 2002 - OK, before I get to the real reason for this post, let me first say that at 1 minute past Midnight, it is now officially Patrick's birthday! He turns 4 years old today. Yesterday we had a great birthday party for him at Papa's Pizza Parlor where they have a great play area for the kids. I'll post pictures and details of that event soon. Thanks to everyone who sent gifts. He loves everything!
Now, as many of you know, we are in prime time for viewing of the Perseid meteors. I went out tonight to check them out (just about 3 minutes ago) and I saw a few faint ones. Nothing like a couple years ago, but these are still good. But then I saw 2 dots zipping by one right after the other. Very fast... like when I saw the ISS the other day, but fainter, almost like stars. My first thought: "What are you?" :-) But here is the cool part... and where the web just shows how much it rocks... a couple clicks on NASA's website and I find out it is Iridium 15 and Cosmos 1536. They were the only satellites flying over the Northwest right then, so it had to be them. Very cool to see that.
4 Aug 2002 - We planted vegetable seeds in our garden today. Carrots, broccoli, kohlrabi, lettuce, etc. Should be a nice harvest if anything grows. I also planted a perennial garden and 16 rose bushes over the last few weeks. I'm making some charts of the land to catalog what is where. When I'm done with that, I'll post those as well as some actual pictures of the goods. Gotta hurry before Winter.
On another note, I finally found the time to put together the pictures from our trip to Boston for the 4th of July. We had a blast and did lots of great things. Amy & the kids were back for 3 weeks, but the 1 week I was there was jam packed with activities. Check out the pictures!
28 Jul 2002 - No pictures or anything, but just letting you know what we did for Father's day. Amy and the kids joined me for lunch at Chili's and we shared a really cool dessert... called chocolate volcano or something like that. It had a brownie/cake foundation, a scoop of vanilla on top and was smothered in chocolate syrup. The insides were still warm and gooey. Very yummy. Amy also totally surprised me by reorganizing the garage. She bought some of those little drawer cabinets and took the time to sort through my "big box o' stuff" that I've had since college. It's so much cleaner and more organized now. An incredible gift. I also got a blender so I could make ice cream milkshakes. Whoo hoo!
27 Jul 2002 - Here are the pictures from Jarod's birthday party on June 9th. I've been really busy, so they're late, but what's new? Thanks again to everyone who sent stuff and came to the party. It was a great time and Jarod was thrilled. He still talks about it.
29 Jun 2002 - As promised, here are the pictures from the trip to Six Flags Magic Mountain that I took with 3 friends during the last weekend in May / first of June.
26 Jun 2002 - Although it happened way back on May 21st, you can check out some of the pictures from the boys' graduation ceremony. One year of preschool taken care of! In a few days, I'll be posting pics and info about a trip to Six Flags I took at the end of May, beginning of June. Stay tuned!
23 Jun 2002 - Just a quick note about two cute utterances heard recently. While shopping at Uwajimaya (a grocery store), Patrick asked Amy, within earshot of an employee: "Is Uwajimaya profitable?" The stunned look you're picturing on the worker's face is probably accurate. Another day, while driving near the public pool the kids sometimes visit, Amy said to me "It'd be a nice day for the P, O, O, L" Jarod said "What about the pool?" Then Amy said quietly to me that we'd have to find a better method of communication around the kids. To which Jarod replied, "Why don't you try Chinese?"
22 Jun 2002 - If the date wasn't indication enough, I know it's been too long since my last update when Windows 2000 removes the FrontPage link from my start menu due to lack of use. I have a whole bunch of updates to get out, but I'm going to stagger them by at least a day each. It gives the illusion of high content. :-) First up, what we did for Mother's Day.
21 May 2002 - As promised, however late it may be, here are the pics from our trip to Disneyland in late April. We had a great time!
13 May 2002 - I watched Star Wars - Episode II: Attack of the Clones over the weekend. I give it a very reluctant thumbs up, based on my method of rating the movie for the target audience. The only thing that saves it is that it's part of Star Wars. If you're not into it, you probably won't like it. I'm truly disappointed, but the last 45 minutes were visually astounding. Almost worth the price of admission right there. And yes, I'll post those pictures of Disneyland really soon. I promise.
4 May 2002 - I know most of you are waiting for the pictures of our trip to Disneyland. But unfortunately, I forgot my digital camera and all we had was a disposable. That means developing, scanning, retouching (`cause film sucks so bad!) and then writing up a page for the trip. I'm in the retouching phase right now. Be patient. In the meantime, I've got a review of Spider-Man for you to read.
3 Mar 2002 - I saw Collateral Damage and posted a review. Also, I updated my TV shows with some new comments now that the seasons are in full swing. One other thing, today we took the kids out on their bikes for the first time... the first time outside anyway. They did very well, probably traveling about a mile or so! They seemed to enjoy it and they're sleeping well tonight. :-)
3 Feb 2002 - Congratulations to the Patriots!!!
24 Jan 2002 - As promised, I have my short review of The Count of Monte Cristo. The super-short version: Go see it!!!
22 Jan 2002 - I've got movie reviews for Black Hawk Down and Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius... both decent movies. And make sure you check back late on 1/24 (Thursday) for an early review of The Count of Monte Cristo. A good friend was able to snag some preview passes for me.
19 Jan 2002 - The family went on a day trip down to Salem, Oregon. We visited a place called A. C. Gilbert's Discovery Village. I don't have any pictures, but you can read about our adventure.
30 Dec 2001 - Christmas pics!!! I got some time to put together a few of the better Christmas pictures. You'll see that the boys were very pleased and excited. Thank you to everyone who sent stuff to us this year... it was very kind and the boys loved every minute of it. Perhaps next year we'll be back in Boston for Christmas. Ya never know...
28 Dec 2001 - My father came to visit in the early part of December. I just now pulled together all the photos and got them published to the site. The boys really enjoyed the visit from Grandpa. Oh, and I'll be getting Christmas pics up on the site as soon as I can. Just give me another day or two. :-)
19 Dec 2001 - I know what you're expecting. You want the link to my review of Lord of the Rings, right? Well, you're not going to get it. Yes, I saw LotR. Of course I did! But after coming out of the movie, I realized this: You may be able to discuss how the acting was, the special effects, and even character development (to a degree), but you can't form an opinion of the story. The first movie cannot stand alone. The next two movies are required to complete the story. So, you'll get my LotR review in December of 2003. But if you had to make a judgment call, my advice is to go see it.
17 Nov 2001 - A little update on the TV front. Bob Patterson wasn't good enough to last and is already off the air. I'm not crying over that. I stopped watching after the 2nd episode. Alias and The Agency are looking good. Enterprise is slightly sub-par, but I think it could grow into something cool. They have to remember to develop the Star Trek universe, not just have stand-alone episodes. But I gotta tell ya... the break out show of the season is Smallville. The plots are obvious and the style of show is well known, but there's something compelling about it. It's just a lot of fun to watch. Family Guy seems to have lost something. Not quite sure if it's worth it anymore. And most sad (but expected) of all is The X-Files. I'm going to watch the full season opener plus 1 additional show. If I still feel then what I feel now, it's going to get de-listed. That makes me very sad. :-(
10 Nov 2001 - I've been lazy about getting my movie reviews up to date. I realize they aren't as useful when the movies are almost out of the theaters anyway. But, I've got 3 new movie reviews... From Hell, The One and Monsters, Inc. One landed in each category; can you guess before you look?
4 Nov 2001 - Halloween has come and gone. I don't have too many pictures, but you can at least see the boys and Amy dressed up. I never did get a picture of me. Oh well.
27 Oct 2001 - I'm very late getting this out there, but my brother Mike visited us in September... right after the 9/11 stuff. He was a little delayed getting out here, but we got to hang for a few days before he took off to Boston. Besides seeing the kids, a highlight of the weekend was dinner at Ruth's Chris Steakhouse. You should've seen the content looks on our faces that night.
13 Oct 2001 - A movie called Sexy Beast came out a long time ago. I happened to go see it with a bunch of friends. Don't be similarly tricked! :-)
6 Oct 2001 - I've updated my section's TV listings to reflect what I'm watching this season. Of course, the season hasn't fully started, so there are some comments about the future as well.
5 Oct 2001 - Sorry for the long delay between posts. Things have been hectic around here. Webridge recently had layoffs. I wasn't cut, but my salary was. And of course, the September 11th terrorist attack left me glued to the news channels for about a week. To top things off, the whole family has been sick for the last month, off and on. But all of that stuff seems to be manageable now. So, back to the updates!
23 Aug 2001 - I wasn't fast enough getting my review of Jurassic Park III up after I saw it. Hope no one saw it by mistake! ;-)
18 Aug 2001 - On August 12th, Patrick turned 3 years old! We had a small, family party with the usual cake and presents... as well as some birthday arts'n'crafts.
28 Jul 2001 - A few of us skipped out of work on Friday to see Planet of the Apes. This movie had some highs and lows... check out the review.
26 Jul 2001 - I've seen two movies over the past few weeks. In short, go see Memento, don't bother with Final Fantasy (unless you have to see the animation, which is great).
8 Jul 2001 - Just a quick note: We had a great LAN party at Webridge this weekend. It was quite casual and worked out nicely that way. We played 4v4 in Quake 3 Team Arena. The Bad Ass, Mobius, Elerius, Gun$linger, MrBnimble, KookieCan, BookerJ and Sasquatch battled it out. We'll have another one soon!
6 Jul 2001 - We exposed Jarod & Patrick to the wonderful world of camping for the first time ever. The children were great and I'm extremely proud of them for trying it out and being brave and easy-going about everything. We had a fun time.
5 Jul 2001 - Last weekend we brought the kids to see the waterfalls.
4 Jul 2001 - First, HAPPY 4TH OF JULY!!! Let me take a moment to say that the all time best 4th you could ever have is in Boston. If you've never been, you must try it. More than just fireworks, it includes the Boston Pops in the Hatch Shell on the Esplanade where you can bring and eat yummy food picnic style surrounded by other happy Bostonians. Then they put on a fireworks display set to the 1812 Overture that rivals most places full shows. At the end, cannons go off that will thump your chest. Then come the real fireworks. And they just go on and on... and the finale is like none I've experienced anywhere else.
With that out of the way, check out what I thought of The Fast and the Furious.
1 Jul 2001 - For once, I actually have a backlog of information to post to the site. My life is usually too boring to sustain frequent news. So for now, here's a mini golf excursion from last week with pictures for your enjoyment. :-)
30 Jun 2001 - I have new information about the bowling "situation" at RPI. Read the updated page.
23 Jun 2001 - I saw Tomb Raider.
22 Jun 2001 - Something was amiss at the 2001 RPI Reunion. What could it be? Find out here.
18 Jun 2001 - Rational and Webridge went at it on June 16th in a heated Unreal Tournament battle. As a member of the Webridge team, I bring you a first hand account of what went down. Check it out.
15 Jun 2001 - I spent a week on the East coast for my 5 year college reunion. I got to see some old friends and had a great time doing it.
5 Jun 2001 - It's still a little early, but we decided to have a small birthday party for Jarod today. (I'm not going to be in town on the 9th.) We (just the four of us) had cake, ice cream and opened a few presents. I can't believe he's 4!!! Four is a big number. That makes me old. He's going to be in school soon! I don't know if I can handle that. It's amazing how kids' birthdays are as much a milestone for the kids as they are for the parents.
26 May 2001 - Sorry for the long break between postings. I've been busy and away. Moving right along... I have seen The Tailor of Panama and Shrek over the past month. Check out what I think about them.
22 Apr 2001 - The boys helped me with a big painting project this weekend. Check out their fine handy work!
9 Apr 2001 - My first day back at the office after a long trip in Japan. And what better way to greet me than with a cubicle filled with...
1 Apr 2001 - I feared it might happen and it did. We had an earthquake. It wasn't in Tokyo, but it was close enough for me to feel it. From what I can gather, it was a 6.2. Tsunami warnings were put out after the quake and about an hour later, a huge wave washed into Tokyo. Fortunately, I was on the 30th floor so I was only wet up to my ankles. With all that commotion, you-know-who woke up. That's right, Godzilla came romping thru town and chewed into the side of Akasaka Prince Hotel where Sean & I are staying. It tried to bite into my room, but I gave it the ol' Sasquatch glare and it got the message. Unfortunately, Godzilla ate Sean. Ah well, looks like there's no more project work to do if he's gone. Maybe I'll head back to the states early.
31 Mar 2001 - Friday night was a blast. Most everyone at the office met up at a Chinese food restaurant called Shinbashi. We ate, talked and laughed a lot. (I ate ear... ear of what, I don't know.) Today (Saturday) was unfortunately spent mostly in the office. I'm having a hell of a time getting 2608 installed... but unless you're WEBR, you have no clue what I'm talking about. Sean came into work as well... we broke at 4pm for dinner and went to an Indian restaurant called Moti. I had the best Chicken Tikka Masala ever and the Nan was big! Finally a place to fill me up unlike Shalimar in Portland, OR. After dinner, Sean headed back to the hotel, but I returned to work to try my best to get up and running. Oh, but I almost forgot the most important detail about today. It SNOWED. I kid you not, it snowed in late March in Tokyo. Maybe it's normal, maybe not. But I am convinced it caught even the locals by surprise. (Most of them were walking around with not enough clothing on to keep warm.) I'm *so* glad I took my raincoat with me!!! If the weather doesn't clear up tomorrow, there may be no outing and no new pictures from Japan. Sorry!
30 Mar 2001 - Once again Sean & I headed out for dinner together last night. This time to the Garden Palace area of Ebisu. It took 2 trains to get there and a bit of walking. I don't recall the name of the restaurant, but it was easily the most "authentic" place I've been to yet. I couldn't identify most of what I ate beyond "some part of a chicken," but nearly everything was fabulously tasty. I'm still not sure what's in store for the weekend, but I will try my best to take some good pictures. The weather has been bad the last 2 days, so it's iffy.
29 Mar 2001 - Sean & I hit Spago's in Roppongi for dinner last night. I had really good swordfish. Right now, the entire office is gone... they all went to the customer site for a meeting. I got to stay back. They don't want some crazy American Sasquatch there anyway. I went to Mos Burger for lunch. I will definitely be going back there before I leave. Nothing much new today, but if you haven't seen the few pictures I took, go here. More pictures later.
28 Mar 2001 - My 3/28 is almost over, but yours is just beginning. Huh? Read on...
19 Mar 2001 - I haven't been able to see the International Space Station yet. But we can all hope for a great show from Mir's reentry on or about March 23rd. Most will not see it first hand, but hopefully these guys will help out.
18 Mar 2001 - No One Lives Forever is the latest game to contend with the Sasquatch. Overall, it's a great game, but there are a few minor issues. If you're a gamer, pick it up!
10 Mar 2001 - I just wanted to express some frustration over the recent and upcoming losses of some online merchants. A few weeks ago, eToys filed for bankruptcy. Webvan (which purchased HomeGrocer.com) only has enough money to finish out 2001. I have found these services to be invaluable. I tire of driving to stores only to find a pathetic selection and high prices, not to mention all the humans. Since I don't see why an online toy store is less likely to survive than a physical toy store, the reason for the demise must be the population. The web has come before its time... or more accurately, the population of inadaptable humans is too great. I predict a huge resurgence of online marketplaces by 2020... when the existing inflexibility is gone. Preferably sooner. In the meantime, it's either Amazon or fossil fuel burning - take your pick.
19 Feb 2001 - Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and The Wedding Planner go through the review machine.
18 Feb 2001 - I was having a little fun with Jarod a couple weeks ago. Amy & I were standing together in front of him, so I started drilling him with questions. "Jarod... who's bigger, mommy or daddy?" Daddy! "OK, who's lighter?" Mommy! "Who's stronger?" Daddy! "Who's hair is longer?" Mommy! "Who's smarter?" Me!
He didn't miss a beat... it just came out. The scary part is that he might be right.
17 Feb 2001 - Jarod's & Patrick's sections were unbelievably out-of-date. Sure, there aren't that many new pictures of them individually... that's to be expected. But their personalities were the most shockingly wrong part of it. I've updated them as best I could, but I may have to do a complete rewrite soon.
19 Jan 2001 - I updated a bit of the stuff in my section. Go there.
18 Jan 2001 - For my family members back East, you'll be happy to know that I bought a new digital camera. This means that updates to the site will be more frequent, with more media and, of course, more kid-centric. Jarod's & Patrick's picture archives have a huge gap in them that I'd like to prevent from getting any bigger. (Yeah, we have hard copy pictures, but I don't have a scanner.) If you're wondering where my existing digital camera went, I gave it to my brother before he took off for Malaysia. He's been there a while and has taken many pictures. Check them out.
24 Dec 2000 - Well, I didn't have any luck seeing the Space Station. It's not that it couldn't be done, it's just that during this time of year it's very cloudy in Portland, OR. Ah well, I'll just have to wait `till the weather clears. On another note, all of us in the U.S. will get a special treat tomorrow morning in the form of a partial solar eclipse. Enjoy!
23 Dec 2000 - I took off from work a bit early today to catch Cast Away with some friends. Tom Hanks is most definitely one of the greatest actors of all time.
7 Dec 2000 - I was thinking... since they just unfurled the solar collectors on the International Space Station, it must be very easy to see. And this just so happens to be true. It is behind only the Moon, the star Sirius and the planet Venus as the brightest object in the night sky. That means you can easily see it with the naked eye. So, the question then is: When can *you* see it? Turns out, I found the answer! Naked Eye Visibility of ISS The site is updated every so often to let you know the upcoming week's information for your city. What I'm more interested in is seeing it through my telescope. It'll probably be hard to track, because of its speed (and my lack of skill/understanding), but even if I see it for a moment, it'll be one of those bizarre, oh-my-god-there's-a-universe-out-there types of moments. While we're on the subject, go to LiftOff to track, in real time, satellites over Earth, including, of course, the ISS, as well as Hubble, Chandra, Mir and all those thousands of commercial satellites up there. (What's funny is that I helped build a website at Webridge for a company called PanAmSat which has many satellites up in orbit... all of which are able to be tracked through this NASA website.) Enjoy! I'll let you all know how my attempts at viewing go!
2 Dec 2000 - I've had a busy week in terms of movies. The Webridge Moviegoers went to see Unbreakable and on my own, I took my kids to Rugrats in Paris and saw The 6th Day with some friends. I'm also looking forward to a lot of the movies slated to come out in the next 1-4 months. For now, you can read my reviews.
13 Nov 2000 - Most of you know that in February, I took the full plunge into "Married... with Children" type life when I bought a 2000 Toyota Sienna XLE. Don't get me wrong, this is a fantastic minivan second only to the Honda Odyssey, I would think. But that's not why I'm writing here today... oh no... not by a long shot. What I wanted to mention was my latest car purchase. (I had to get something to replace the 1996 Geo Metro that was totaled in an accident in August.) I just bought a 2001 Acura 3.2 CL Type S. This is one HELL of a car and I'm lovin' it.
12 Nov 2000 - I saw Charlie's Angels! I have to confess: I'm totally in love with Lucy Liu, but that alone may not have been enough. Read up on what I thought of the film.
15 Oct 2000 - The string of good luck is broken! I was getting worried that I was being too lenient on judging movies. It seemed as though my "thumbs up" category would grow forever. Fortunately (?), the last two movies have brought the "thumbs down" group back into the game.
2 Sep 2000 - I just registered at Where's George.com and entered $40 worth of cash. I remember doing this kind of thing when I was a kid... writing "djb" on all the bills that went thru my hands. Now it's web enabled and database driven. Rock on! (I set up a profile too.)
2 Sep 2000 - The most recent film viewed by the Webridge Moviegoers was The Cell, with Jennifer Lopez and Vince Vaughn. Read what I thought about it.
17 Aug 2000 - Recently, I participated in what some might call a foolhardy competition. I took The Taco Bell Challenge. My good friend Scott challenged anyone to eat $10 of Taco Bell food inside of 1 hour. [There used to be a link here to his site with pictures and a play by play, but it's gone now.]
19 Jul 2000 - I don't want you guys to get the wrong idea... that all movies are good in my eyes... but lately, I've just had a string of good luck. Check out the latest in the movie reviews section for Titan A.E. and X-Men.
22 Jun 2000 - I saw two movies recently... so close together that I posted the reviews at the same time. Go see what I thought of Gladiator and Road Trip.
20 Jun 2000 - A few days back, I tossed a quarter to a fellow web developer and said, "Go develop me a website." I was mostly making fun of what customers typically expect of us web developers, but he took it to heart... and took my quarter. Here's what I got in return.
17 Jun 2000 - Jarod turned 3 years old on June 9th. We had a small party, some cake & ice cream and a happy 3 year old.
11 Jun 2000 - Shanghai Noon was the movie of the week for the Webridge Moviegoers club. Another hit for my man Jackie Chan. Read the review.
17 May 2000 - I went to see U-571 this past weekend. Not a bad movie... an almost-must-see for people into war movies. Read my short review.
30 Apr 2000 - Eeek! It's been far too long between posts! Terribly sorry about that. There are a few major events that have recently occurred. First, we got a minivan. This is fairly old news, but I thought I'd mention it. We got a 2000 Toyota Sienna. We bought it from CarsDirect.com. I was extremely pleased with how that sale went. A Toyota dealer said they couldn't get the exact car I wanted to me until April... (I was asking in December...) but CarsDirect.com said it could be gotten by February... and they delivered! Normally, they can find a car within the week, but this was a tough order. Again, it was a fantastically good service. If you want details on the Sienna or CarsDirect.com, just email me! Second, Webridge moved! We are now much closer to where I live. That makes me just as happy as can be. Third, the government is being idiotic again. There's not enough room here for a full explanation, but suffice it to say that breaking up Microsoft will be a very big error on the government's part. My prediction: In the end, the Supreme Court will be involved and anti-trust law will be rewritten to accommodate the new era we are entering.
26 Mar 2000 - What the hell's wrong with the Census Bureau??? First, they send out a piece of paper that states that they'll be sending out some more paper in a couple of weeks. WTF? If they're worried that I'm the type of person who will throw away mail without looking carefully at it, then what makes them think I'm going to read their pre-mail? Way to kill a tree guys. So then they send out the Census form and I fill it out. But the questions specifically ask "How many people lived here on April 1st?" So, I guess I have to hold onto it until April 1st, right? (Someone could die or move in or whatever.) Then I get YET ANOTHER PIECE OF PAPER from the Bureau asking me to please send it in now, as fast as I can. Didn't they read their own form? The government should be scolded for such idiotic behavior.
10 Mar 2000 - The Webridge gang had some fun today!!! We all took off for a company sponsored viewing of the movie Mission to Mars. Everything about it was a really great time, except for that annoying little span of time where the movie was playing. Read the pseudo-review here... it didn't deserve a real review.
2 Mar 2000 - Well, these pictures are from January, but you wouldn't know it by looking at them!!! The weather in Portland may be rainy some of the time, but it's truly nice when your little kids can go to the park in the "dead" of winter.
2 Feb 2000 - These pictures are slightly late to the game, but they're not that old. It snowed here in Portland just after Christmas. Check out some pics of the little ones playing around.
16 Jan 2000 - Amy's trying to foster the artist in each of the boys. Or maybe she just likes to create messes for me to clean up... not really sure. :-) Either way, here are some pictures of the boys painting.
2 Jan 2000 - Happy New Year to all of you. I hope you had a good time celebrating the new year. Seems the y2k bug has been pretty tame thus far, but there have been a good number of mishaps, like the man in Germany getting $6.2 million deposited in his bank account and several websites reporting years like 1900, 100 and 19100. We'll see how Monday goes when all the businesses rev back up. In any event, happy 2000!
2000!
29 Dec 1999 - Christmas has come and gone. I was a little slow getting the pictures up, but I was really busy unclogging a sink during the time I had allotted for posting these pics! Everyone had a great time... thanks to all of you!
20 Nov 1999 - Elaine (my stepmother) made some really great sweaters for the boys. We just got them a couple of days ago and we wanted to show them off to everyone. Click on the picture to see more!
7 Nov 1999 - Halloween was a blast. Check it out!
7 Nov 1999 - As most of you remember/know, Amy took the boys back to Boston for a celebration of her grandmother's 90th birthday. Here is some evidence.
7 Nov 1999 - I finally got the pictures of Patrick's birthday posted. Sorry for the delay, but hey, what's new?
14 Sep 1999 - I have resigned my position at Intel for a new opportunity at Webridge. You can read about the details here.
12 Sep 1999 - My brother Mike came to visit us in early August just before he started his new job. I just now got those film pictures scanned in. I apologize for the poor quality, but it IS just regular film. :-)
6 Sep 1999 - I have been beyond bad about updating the website. In fact, now that I look back into my "pictures ready to post" folder, they all seem so outdated. What's worse is that I don't have any more recent ones!!! The regular film camera has been in overdrive over the last few weeks due to the trip back to Boston, Patrick's birthday and a lack of batteries. I've updated Jarod's and Patrick's pictures with what I've got though. I WILL get Patrick's 1st birthday pictures up at some point, but they aren't much. (He was really sick during that time.)
27 Jun 1999 - Glenda came out to visit us for a while. Check out some of the pics.
27 Jun 1999 - Jarod's birthday was June 9th. Sorry for the delay!!!
27 Jun 1999 - Here's something from back in April that I didn't get around to posting until now... just some pictures of the boys in the backyard.
19 May 1999 - I saw The Phantom Menace today at 12:01 AM. I waited in line for 5 hours to get decent seats. Here's the review (no spoilers).
23 Apr 1999 - Hey everyone... check out the The Family section to see what fun can be had with a simple black cowboy hat!
23 Apr 1999 - Well, the deed is done. Today, I had a vasectomy. It was nearly 100% painless during the procedure and I have only mild discomfort now. I guess you could say 2 boys was plenty of family for me! If you have any questions about vasectomy from a recipient's point of view, feel free to ask!
1 Apr 1999 - The opportunity presented itself to update Patrick's pictures section with ALL NEW pictures. While I was at it, I created his archive section in the same fashion as Jarod's, albeit with fewer pictures.
29 Mar 1999 - I had the time to revamp Jarod's Pictures area to include new pictures plus his archive. Be warned: visit the archive only "if you must" as I've made no effort to make it nice for you modem users. Patrick's new pics are coming soon.
25 Mar 1999 - The boys' skills sections have been updated to reflect their newfound abilities.
19 Feb 1999 - To finish up the deluge of new posts, we've got a pretty fun scene of the 2 boys coloring together!
19 Feb 1999 - Patrick & Jarod have had a few pictures added to their libraries. Patrick has some especially cute ones.
18 Feb 1999 - Back in January, this really cool rainbow appeared behind our house.
18 Feb 1999 - Jarod's skills section is changing. He knows so much it might not be needed for much longer.
18 Feb 1999 - I added a couple new pictures of Boston the cat. She was looking rather stylish on that day.
12 Jan 1999 - Both Jarod and Patrick have made some advances in their skills over the past week.
9 Jan 1999 - I've made an addition to the site! Boston's stuff is back online and she even has a few new pictures for your enjoyment!
1 Jan 1999 - Welcome to 1999 everyone!!!
26 Dec 1998 - The entire website has been redesigned. The hope is that you can find information more easily, it will gracefully allow storage of older information and will be easier for me to update. Plus, I've changed it around so that everyone in the family can present themselves on the web as they see fit!
