Friday, March 30, 2007

Beautiful Day

Not a cloud in the sky, peak has fresh snow, the trees right below the treeline have fresh powder in them. 19 degrees, 60 MPH riding in on the Harley. A bit brisk, but what a nice ride. :)

Thursday, March 29, 2007

PeaBaby's first pics

Tif fixed the uploading of her pics so her ultrasound pics now show up. So if you haven't seen them yet, go check them out.

Tuesday, March 27, 2007

Little Boys

Pulled into the garage last night and got off the bike - two little boys (5 and 7 maybe?) came sliding up into the driveway on their skateboards and popped them up, grabbing them, then stood looking at me.

Boy1: Hi
Me: Hello
B2: Hi!
M: Hi!
They look around for a second.
B2: My dad broke his arm on his motorcycle
M: Oh?
B2: But he can drive it really good now! and grins
M: That's good
first boy skates off - second boy looks around
B2: Is Darren still here? next door neighbor kid
M: No
B2: He moved?
M: Yeah
B2: Ok... and skates off

Hey... I'm going to have one of these pretty soon! :)

Pictures play through my head of pulling up to Tif's on the Harley and PeaBaby comes skating down the street on his skateboard yelling "PapaJames!" - Yeah... I'm all choked up now. This is going to be *so cool*!

Thursday, March 22, 2007

PeaBaby is a boy

At work and busy... but just had to announce that PeaBaby is a boy. How cool is that? :)

PeaBaby,

Sorry about calling you she and her. Won't happy again.

Love ya,
PapaJames.

Boy or Girl?

Tif goes in for an ultra-sound today and they say the can find out if PeaBaby is a boy or girl. Since they were "sure" Jaime was a boy (and she obviously isn't) - I'm not sure I trust the results... But I guess they've come a long way in the last 20 years. :)

Tina is going to call me... So today is the day we find out. I'm all nervous for some reason (or maybe exicited is a better word), all of a sudden.

Tuesday, March 20, 2007

Pipes

Tina has been wanting to "pipe" the bike for some time. As they say, to "make it sound like a Harley." I thought it voided the warrenty, but she talked to the service guys and it doesn't. Yesterday I took the bike in for scheduled maintenance, and found out last night was "HOG Night". Given we would get at least 15% off on some parts, and 25% on others... we went for it. Got the parts, waiting for one more to come in, and then we are having it piped. Before the big trip to the AZ Rally in May.

As part of having it piped, they are doing a dyno-tune on it. Which should give us some more power and make it a bit easier to take the hills when we are both on it, with full bags plus the T-bag. That should be cool. They asked if I was thinking about doing any other work to the engine. Such as moving it from a 88 to a 96 or 103. "Not right now"... We'll see. :)

I did talk to them about the fact that I'd like it louder with a low-rumble (Harley sound) but I don't want it backfiring all the time like some bikes. And they said that was possible - its based on how they tune it.

So... its exciting... We'll see how it turns out. I think we'll take it in next week. Which will give us a chance to put some miles on it before the trip at the beginning of May. We will also need a new back tire... but we might put a few more miles on the one we have before the trip.

~8250 miles on it since July. So less that a year, w/o all the Spring riding, and with a hard winter. Looking at probably 10K miles a year or so... Guess we are going to go through some tires. :)

Oh... and the official line isn't "Because it sounds cool" or "Because it makes it sound like a Harley" - but "Loud pipes save lifes! In other words - If they can't see ya, but they can hear ya, they know you are there." Which I totally agree with - but I think the first two play into it as well. :)

Teriyaki Chicken

Not much a recipe... more of a serving suggestion for Teriyaki Chicken. :) I haven't been cooking "big" things lately, just throwing stuff together that is easy and I can:

  • Throw in the slow cooker
  • Prep before work and quickly cook when I get home
  • Prep/cook quickly when I get home

I usually don't feel like cooking much after a long day at work, and neither does anyone else. So usually its fast food, slow cooker, or something that is pretty easy. Here is one such recipie.


4 Boneless/Skinless Chicken Breasts
1/2 C Mr Yoshida's Teriyaki Sauce
1 t Five Spice Powder
1.5 t Ground Ginger
2 Cloves Garlic, sliced


In the morning:

Combine all ingredients except chicken in a gallon size zip-lock bag. Combine. Add Chicken, push out all the air, and then zip. Place in a container (in case the zip leaks) and put in fridge for the day.

When you get home:

Put the chicken on a rack, back at 350 for... 45 minutes or so. Till its done. :)




I usually serve this with Ramen Noodles - cook normal but pour off the broth. Just a fast way to make some noodles. And some stir-fry veggies.

I did the above last week - but diced the chicken. When I got home, stir-fried it with veggies I had prepped in the morning (cubed/sliced: onion, celery, water chestnuts, mushroom, red bell peppers) and then stir fried 1/2 a Nappa Cabbage on the side. I then made a "bowl" of noodels, cabbage, stir-fried chicken/veggies. Yum.

Since I still had 1/2 a nappa cabbage left - and it keeps, this week... Doing the above and cooking the breast. Then stir-frying the nappa cabbage and a side dish of snow peas, onions, yellow bell peppers and water chestnuts. Pretty much the same dish, but a little different. Like I said... things I can cook fast. :)

Recipies

I've decided to move my recipe blog here. Now that blogger has lables, there isn't much reason to have separate blogs. This capability gives me the ability to put everything in one place, but stills allows people (or me) the ability to use the lables to refine searches, read back through previous posts about a particular topic, etc. Having a number of blogs, I used to cross post here on my main blog saying "Go check out xxx on my yyy blog." Now I don't have to do that. I'll keep the other ones - since I'm not going to go move all the old entries here - at least not now, but new stuff will just show up here. Anyway - that is why recipies will start showing up here. :)

Saturday, March 17, 2007

PeaBaby's Mommy

Tif if starting her own blog. PeaBaby's Mommy. How very cool. :) - Now I can read it and cry. :)

Speaking of PeaBaby... Here are a couple of pictures. One of PeaBaby's first present from us. Yeah... Harley booties. Who would have guessed? ;)


And a pic of Tif at 16 weeks. I probably won't post to many more pics of Tif here - since she'll be posting them on her own site now! Yeah!

Date Day

I'm not real good about taking time off - which is why I usually end up "burning" some days every year. "If you don't use them, you lose them." Yeah... didn't take enough vacation so the vacation day just goes away. I know - crazy huh? But I usually have so much that I take 2 weeks or more in Dec - and still end up burning them. Well with the Harley, Rallies and the like, *maybe* I'll end up actually taking more days... We'll see.

Anyhow - Monday I started thinking about taking Wed off. Tina's last day of recoup after her knee surgery - she was going back to work on Thur. So I thought it would be a cool surprise. But again - maybe something important would come up at work and I wouldn't take the day. But my Tue morning I figured life was short, nothing was going on and I should go for it. (Yeah I know - not a big decision for many folks, but that's just me.) So Tuesday before I left I told her "If you've got plans of doing anything tomorrow before you go back to work, you should do it today because I'm taking the day off." Totally surprised her.

Wed was awesome. A "Date Day" as we say. Tuesday was beautiful, and Wed was supposed to be the same (but turned out not quite as nice) so we decided to go riding.

We slept in, slowly got around, and then went to Gunther's for breakfast. From there we drove "up the pass" to Woodland Park and stopped at the Doughnut Mill for a Pecan Roll and coffee... Ok - I stopped for more food. Since we had eaten breakfast like 45 minutes prior, Tina didn't need any more food. But its more about the hanging out and taking a break that the food for me. It was a nice ride up. Not much traffic so that was fun. When we first got the bike that road was a little intense - lots of curves, marked 35 in spots, etc. Now its just fast and fun.

We had decided to see Wild Hogs, so after that we headed back down the pass and into town to the show. The plan was to go to the 2:00 and then probably home to just hang out, nap (yeah - at this age napping can be a fun thing...), and then make some dinner.

Well we made it to the 1:30 show. The movie was great. We laughed and laughed. Plus some of it really hit home. Some folks ask if the whole "mid-life crisis" is identifiable. Maybe. But I choose to think of it as the "life is short - we should be enjoying it." Which is maybe the definition of a mid-life crisis. Not sure. In any case - doing things like taking a day off to go riding and be with my honey is what it is all about. Great movie.

Oh... and not only was the story great, but almost every motorcyle in it was a Harley, which was cool - and the soundtrack was great. We seriously need to see if we can get it off of Amazon or something - because we *have* to have it for our next trip!

We came out of the show - to go home and catch some zzzs. But it was just way too nice out. So up to Palmer Lake (a short fun ride) for a steak and beer at O'Malleys. And then finally back home around 6:00.

It was an awesome day with my honey. Put about 110 miles on the bike, spent some time with the wind in our faces, a great movie, some good food, and just a great time hanging out.

After seeing the movie we can't wait for the trip to AZ. We've been excited to see Tif, Brian and the Pea. And excited for the ride - but now we are even more excited. As Peter Fonda's character said, "Ride hard or stay home!" :)

Work

Works been really busy... from a "there is a lot going on" point of view, more than "there is a ton of work everyday" point of view. I guess - lots to think about / work on, vs tons of coding to do.

I'm kind of getting back to more of an architecture, take a bigger picture sort of role, and less of a day-to-day, down in the trenches, coding point of view. Which is cool, 'cuz I like the bigger picture better. But it was good to spend 18 months down in the trenches. Not that I've stopped coding, its just in this current spurt I can spend an hour a morning and some time here and there during the day coding, and still get done what I need to - and spend the rest of the time looking at ways to improve things, consulting with other folks etc.

Its an exciting time for us. We didn't do much new work for quite some time, and then in Oct 2005 we started a new implmentation using an Agile/XP approach. It was some cool new work. Got that up and running and kind of put it in maintenance mode and spread XP to a few more legacy teams. Then in Dec went and talked to some new customers and put up an intial stab at a new system in a week. That was very cool. A full system, taking data and displaying it to the users - in one week. Now working the second phase of that. And besides that we are in intial phases of another new implementation and then met yesterday to talk about a 3rd one. So - pretty much mainteance mode and improving existing systems for several years, and now a new system 18 months ago and then 3 more this month. And we are hiring again.

We are now considered one of the top 100 critical projects in all of IT. So the execs know about us and talk about us. Lets us do some cool stuff - but with the spotlight can come the pressure. But all good things.

So anyway, work is exciting and keeping me plenty busy.

I know - spurts

I tend to blog in spurts. I kind of do everything that way, other than work - and even there its probably spurts of one kind of thing, then another. I'll journal at work every day for weeks, then a few weeks with nothing, then resolve to start journaling again. Not writting journalling, but what I did. Helps with reviews, time sheets, remembering what we thought about a design, etc.

Anyway... need to catch up on blogging. So this will probably be the beginning of another spurt, until it ends. :)