More on Blogging
CORANTE ON BLOGGING - a page all about blogging, from the same source as AMATEUR HOUR.

Blogging
AMATEUR HOUR: the "me" in media. Doesn't just pertain to blogging, but discusses the effects of blogging, why people blog, etc. Another "its a way for the masses to be creative" type article. I thought it was very good.

Browser Tabs
Mozilla supports browser tabs, which are pretty cool. A friend just pointed me to Tabbrowser Extensions. It gives you even more tab functionality, such as locked tabs, default options for dbl-clicking on a tab, in the tab-bar, etc. Some cool stuff.

Expert
Its flattering... but also a bit scary when someone walks into your cube and says, "Hey, you are the expert on the system and know everything about it." Yeah... I know quite a bit... but almost always the question they ask is in the area I'm least familiar with. :-}

Tif
Tif, my talented, beautiful and amazing older daughter, as she called herself in my guest book, has signed my guest book! That is very cool. Someone reading my blog! As I very rarely use the phone, and am not all that great at email, this is a great way for her to keep up on things. Lastest "Tif news"... she and Brian are looking for a house. Very cool! Apparently the biggest problem is finding a living room big enough to hold their TV and give them enough room to sit far enough away from it! I wish I had THAT problem. :-) And yes... I love you too Tif!

Lady Jaime
Lady Jaime has been invited by her Uncle Edward to spend her 16th birthday at his country estate. She is welcome to bring along some of her closest friends. As some of them may have never seen his castle before, the day will start with a tour. After the tour the young ladies may retire, freshen up, and then arrive for tea at 1:00 PM. Dress is formal, as required of all young english ladies! As there are many activities at the castle, the ladies will not be staying in the castle, but will be housed in the Pink House, with a chaperon. (The chaperon is required, as it is rumored that the stable boy has quite the feelings for Jaime!). The ladies will arise the next morning to a scrumptious breakfast back in the castle and then may return home at their lesiure.

OK... So Jaime isn't a "Lady", isn't English, and has no "Uncle Edward". But she has apparently been watching way too many "chick flicks" like Mansfield Park. ;-) But hey... you only turn 16 once, and she is so cute and beautiful! Her and her friends, spending the day at Glen Eyrie castle, spending the night in a house all to themselves (with a few adults in the other room!) and then breakfast the next day. How cool for them! And they'll be pretending they are in England the whole time... I'm sure. Much too "chick flick" a setting for me... but I'm very happy for her. As for me, I'll probably send them best wishes and then go watch Bruce Wills blow something up, or something like that.

Love ya so much kid!

1/2 a pound makes all the difference
I usually just delete SPAM w/o even reading it. I've been getting a lot of "lose 22 lbs in " mail. But today I got "lose 22.5lbs in 3 weeks." Wow... an extra .5 lb... I just had to open it and check it out.

OK... so I really just deleted it. Do they really think the extra *.5* lbs is going to grab someone's attention?

Speaking of SPAM... CO has a great No-Call list. Are phone has almost stopped ringing w/ annoying calls. Now some state rep wants is sponsoring a bill for a No-SPAM list. Would work just like the No-Call list, but for spam... Would this really work? I think *most* the spam I get is not by legit companies or is by individuals. I think it is a great thought - get rid of SPAM... but is this a feasible solution? Not sure.

GotW
Been reading some articles in the C++ Journal by Herb Sutter. Some great stuff. His articles are available for free at various sites off his main page.

Close, but never happend
Luckily this never happened when I was jet-skiing.

OK
It's a bit bizzare to me that I did a search on Amazon for Martin's book "Agile Software Development, Principles, Patterns, and Practices" and on the page that came up was the following: (in addition to the book itself).

Customers who wear clothes also shop for:

• Clean Underwear from Amazon's Target Store

I'm not sure what search engine (or whatever) thought that someone interested in a C++/OO-Design book would also be interested in Clean Underwear...

32 Bleu
My original post on Sixpence said I didn't know where 32 Bleu was. I've since updated that note with the link. Asked around, no one knew. Went out to Google and typed it and and up it popped. Cool. Turns out it is an "american bistro & concert night club" on 32 S Tejon St. They are playing Monday, Feb-3, at 9 PM. All ages. I'll probably see if I can get a group of people to go!

Googlert "Googlert is an experimental free service which keeps you updated on what the web is saying about you, your products or your interests. It does this by performing regular Google searches on your behalf and sending an email alert containing any new results that appear."

Pulled the previous from Ev. Checked it out. I used to use Spy... something, I forget now. I didn't have that many searches and mostly what I turned up wasn't all that relevant. Maybe I'll give this a shot at some point.

Raised in a different place
Jaime is always ragging on me for how I pronouce 'poem.' I found out today that I right... with at least 32% of the population. Must just be that I grew up in a different area than her!

HS
V: Do you need a ride home this afternoon?
J: Yeah
V: Well you'll have to wait while I move my stuff. Hey, you can help me move it!
J: OK
V: I guess I should tell K I'm moving out.
J: Yeah, you don't want her to be shocked when she sees all your stuff is gone!
M: Are you moving out of K's and moving in with J?
V: Yeah. K is just so disorganized... and it is so hard living with a disogranized person.

After thinking about it, it stuck me funny. Sounded like a couple of people talking about roommates or something. But no, it was two high school girls talking about changing locker partners.

Jaime starts back at high school today, after being home schooled for the past year and a half. Good luck kid. I think it will be a blast!

Sixpence
Was in Guitar Center Monday buying some sticks and Tina saw a poster for Sixpence. I didn't see it (she told me after we left), but I thought it would be cool if they were coming to town. Went and checked their web site, and sure enough they will be at 32 Bleu on the 3rd... Not sure where "32 Bleu" is, but I'm going to find out.

I've been listening to Divine Discontent quite a bit the last few days. Paralyzed is a pretty errie song... but also very cool. Also I was very surprised to hear Don't Dream It's Over done by a Christian band?. I *thought* this was a Frampton song, but I guess it was done by Crowded House. Very cool. Also I though that Leigh's vocals on it were very good.

SPAM
The worse thing about SPAM, imo, isn't dealing with having to delete it. Using MailWasher I can do that fairly easy and it doesn't take all that much time. The real issue is that I'm always worried that I'm getting mail from someone that I haven't marked as a friend, that is legit, and their address just looks like SPAM. So now I'm at least bringing up the beginning of the mail in MailWasher so I can check. How annoying.

Underpromise and overdeliver
Good article by Joel on why you shouldn't discuss future software features until you actually have them developed.

Common sense has prevailed
Judge Throws Out McDonald's Obesity Suit
"If a person knows or should know that eating copious orders of supersized McDonald's products is unhealthy and may result in weight gain ... it is not the place of the law to protect them from their own excesses," the judge said. "Nobody is forced to eat at McDonald's."

You always here about these stupid lawsuits... but so many of them win. I'm glad at least one judge made the right decision!

Google News
Google News, an interesting way to check out the news. It is in beta and probably been around for a bit, but I just took a look today after seeing yet another mention of it on a blog.

To me, this is one cool thing about reading blogs. Rather than surfing the web and trying to stay up on everything, I can find a few people whose opinions seem valid, and follow their links. This allows me to stay more up-to-date than usual, but w/o all the effort on my own part. That is how I used stating the obvious when it first came out.

Worship
I drummed again Sunday, and it was great. It is hard to explain, but I was really on. Maybe not in a "I'm so great" kind of way, but in a flowing kind of way. Yeah, I probably sped things up some, like I always do :-}, but you could just feel God's presence. We really started moving. I had a great time and was playing hard. I need to find some Vic Firth sticks, 'cause the B2 and B5 sticks I got from Graniers just aren't lasting. (I think they are generic Zildjan sticks w/o the brand name). I chipped a wood tip and also chipped the nylon on a nylon tip. Oh well. I have one old Vic Firth stick (nylon-tip) and it is great. Anyway, Sunday was great. I came off the stage shaking. One thing that was really cool, and helps builds the dynamics (I think) is that I'm starting to play the toms much more. Not so much in rolls, but just as occasional hits. Michael has been doing this lately and I think it really adds, so I started doing it. It is pretty cool when you feel like you are flowing, and that the Holy Spirit is playing through you, and you do stuff that you've never done before and it just works. Stuff that you'd normally never be able to do. Its a God thing. :-)
Teresa is great to play with too. She's like, "Hey, I want you to play passionately in that last song... and I know you can. Just go with whatever you feel!". It is really freeing, and lets the Holy Spirit just take you where he wants.
Very cool stuff.

Yum
Went to practice last night, which got over early, about 8:30. So I did some church bookkeeping stuff for a while and got home close to 10:00. Then I decided I was hungry and an omlete sounded good. So I made a spiral ham, artichoke, sun-dried tomatoe, roasted red-peppers with mozz and provalone cheese omlete. Wow..., was I in a weird mood or what? But it tasted good...although a little filling once I started eating it.

Now sitting here, blogging, reading the work bbs, etc. while I drink a latte I just whipped up w/ the machine that Tif & Brian got me for Xmas. Cool stuff.

'Cause it is free
An interesting article by Clay Shirky on "Weblogs and the Mass Amateurization of Publishing." I think that buried in it are some reasons people blog.

YMBOA
The Young Man's Book of Amusements, written in 1854. One of "The lethally ill-advised..." experiements is the "Artificial Volcano". Wow.

Low Carb
Doing the whole protien/fat but low-carb diet thing. Spices help some... and sometimes spagetthi squash... but sometimes you really just want pasta or some carbs! I thought about trying Vietnamese spring rolls (homemade). How much carbs could rice noodles have? Not like pasta or anything. Hmm... 50 CARBS! OK, so much for that.

But I opted for a Califonia Roll and edamame today. Not that much rice in one roll, and the soy should be some good protien.

Downsized techies
I thought that GeekMaids.Com was pretty creative: Creating order out of chaos. Cleaning and Beyond!

Dinner Last night's dinner: Salad, Chicken stuffed w/ Proscuttio, Sage and Cheese and Green Beans w/ Red Peppers and Water Chestnuts. Yum. Chicken - each piece: 1 boneless/skinless breast, cut on three sides, 1 slice proscuttio, 1 chunk (1/4 inch x 1/4 inch or so and length of pros. Mozz. Place sage leaf and Mozz on Pros and roll. You'll end up with pros/sage wrapped around the cheese. Stuff into the breast - seasoned with salt/pepper. Heat olive oil and butter in skillet. Place breast in skillet and season w/ salt/pepper. Saute on each side until desired color, cover and let simmer until done. Mabye 10 minutes. Slice a fair amouznt of mushrooms (1/2 pound) and maybe 2 cloves garlic. Heat pan to very hot, but not smoking. Add a tiny amount of oil (just enough oil for the mushrooms to absorbe) and garlic to the pan. Saute mushrooms until done and no moisture in the pan. Deglaze w/ a cup of chicken stock, add some butter for flavor and some more olive oil. Add in sliced sun-dried tomatoes. Remove from heat and pour over chicken and serve. I was a bit worried about all the flavors (all those in the sauce plus the sage in the chicken), but it worked out very nice. Green Beans - blance them (boil for 4 minutes, plunge in cold water and drain). Add green beans and water chestnuts to hot skillet w/ olive oil. Saute for a few minutes, throw in diced canned red bell peppers, then serve.

Cold, finally
I guess the cold is finally starting to move in. I think I've worn a coat a few days so far this fall/winter. Even if it is kind of cold, the trip between my car and the office is fairly short, so I've just been wearing a vest. This morning the wind was blowing and it was just too cold for that. I heard that a cold front is supposed to be moving in. Having it be in the high 30s to 50s every day has been very nice!

X-box
I'm definately not a Microsoft zealot, but I'm not an anit-Microsoft zealot either. I pretty much try to stay away from IE, and use Mozzilla instead, but only if it doesn't make my life more difficult. For instance, Blogger just works easier with IE, so I use it here. So... I'm not like some who will run Linux on the PC and use a Windows emulator and pretty much do everything the "hard" way, just to keep away from the Evil Empire. But in general I'm not a hugh Microsoft fan.

So... when I had the choice between an X-box and a PS2, I thought about the PS-2 (because it wasn't Microsoft) but opted for the X-box (because it was the latest and was reputed to have cool graphics). I'm glad I did. It is a very sweet machine. The games are great, and last night we networked 4 boxes together and played Halo with 13 players. (I fared rather poorly, but that did not decrease the enjoyment of the game). Networking the boxes couldn't have been easier. The guy, whose house we were at, had a hub he bought for $5. He plugged 4 ethernet (I think) cables into it, plugged them into the back of the boxes, and off we went. No configuration, no messing with anything. Just plug them in and go.

Regardless of their "evil" reputation, Microsoft has made a VERY nice game machine, IMO.

Object Mentor, Inc
Dealing with some nasty diamond hierarchy design issues today. opie pointed me to some articles that look pretty good on Object Mentor, Inc.

Clutter
Ok... I've got to put some clutter on my desk. I'm tired of people walking into my cube and saying, "Oh my gosh. I can't believe how clean your cube is. I don't think I've ever seen it this clean."

Actually I don't mind... I guess I just never thought about how it would effect folks. :-)

Worship
I've been playing quite a bit the last few weeks. Its been great.

• Dec-21: Xmas service @ ICC - percussion : Little Drummer Boy was a blast
  
• Dec-29: ICC - percussion : Tif was coming and I thought it would be cool.
  
• Dec-31: NCF youth - percussion : Part of the "Imago Dei 2002 Reunion Tour" :-). It was great playing with everyone from camp. John Larson is such a great worship leader. He flows so well. I was in the zone the whole night. We played from 10:30 - 12:30 or so. It really rocked. It is great playing for youth (because you can be loud and just go for it) and it is so great playing with someone who leads so well. You know where you are going, you're flowing with the Spirit. Its great. I was dancing like a mad-man. :-).
  
• Jan-5: ICC - drums : Michael cut his thumb so they didn't think he'd be able to play - and Steve was playing guitar, so I drummed. It was great. We did two new songs (one of them I knew). One was 6/8 time... Yeah, it was a struggle, but Steve showed me a beat and I got it. I was totally in the flow. Had some trouble, but it was so fun. I broke one of my "unbreakable" sticks, tossed it, grabbed another. Then in another song I was catching the tips on mics, symbols, etc. and one went twirling out of my hand and I had to grab another. Kind of squared off the tip of my wooden tiped sticks - from just chipping at them. I was playing very hard. But it was so cool. I came off shaking - adrenaline, the Spirit, etc. Great stuff.

I'll be playing drumming twice more in Jan due to people being out. Ken said we could move some stuff around in the drum cage, so the mics, etc. aren't so much in the way. That will be nice!
I'd do it all the time... if it wasn't for trying to keep some balance between ministry and home!

Its a strange day
I get into work, and there is candy throw/sprawled across my desk and onto the floor. My desk which is usually pretty messy, but which I cleaned at the beginning of the year. Maybe seeing my desk so clean was just stressing someone out... or as a co-worker said, "Maybe the janitor has a crush on you." Now there's a nice thought! :-S

People
I used to be pretty introverted... still am really, but I guess once I got into my 40's or so, some of Tina's extroversion has started wearing off on me! I now actually will talk to someone standing in line etc.

Saturday I run into the store to grab a few things... and the place is crazy. I end up standing in line for 20 minutes, 'cause I have about 17 items so no express lane for me. The elderly gentleman in front of me (who has about 6 things) turns and starts talking to me for about 15 minutes!

Him: Man this place is crazy
Me: Yeah
Him: My daughter is getting home from vacation tomorrow, and the wife said we have to have milk in the house. I told her I'd get it tomorrow... but she said we needed it now. Glances down at my hand, sees I'm married. You know how it is. Once they start nagging, thats it. You might as well just go out and get the milk.
Me: Ah ha
Him: Look how busy this place is. Now they want you to use those scanner things. Just trying to make us do their work.
Me: I usually use the scanner, it is pretty quick. But I have to many items
Him: I just don't trust those things.

And so the conversation goes. Mostly about his frustration with customer service and how the store is run, and how his wife nags him so much to get the milk. Pretty bizzare. I'm always amazed at what people will talk about, with complete strangers.

How mild is it
Saw a motorcycle cop giving a ticket on I-25 on my way to work Friday... I've been seeing about one a week. Pretty bizzare for Dec and Jan!

Aww
Post from b-may:

CHAGRIN
Tall and beautiful. Talented and very funny.
I love her more because she falls down. A lot.
Chagrin and the Men I Have Loved

I thought it was cute that he posted it, and I thought the article was cool. Somehow reminded me of Tif and Brian. I think the last line of b-may's quote fits especially well. Maybe it is a Brian kind of thing. :-)

Movies
Ev posted an entry on keeping a movie blog... just for the heck of it. Maybe you will too. Hey... why not. So I've started one as well. Probably not much interest to anyone but me, but I'll give it a shot.

I'm back
Wow... Always figure that I'll be on-line during the holidays, but the last two years that has rarely happened. Logged on the first few days, then Tif and Brian got here, started doing Holiday stuff, got the X-box and stayed up late all night playing games.

A very good time off. No work. Didn't think about work. Just played and hung out.

Now I'm back and will start posting...