Father's Day Weekend

No, we didn't celebrate late, I'm finally writing about it.

It was great!

I could stop right there, but I'll share more. The weather was excellent - one of the first great weather days in a long time. And when I mean great, I mean like San Diego great; blue skies, hardly any clouds, not too hot. It was just a beautiful day.

Then, my wife and kids took me to Alki Beach, some place in Seattle I'd never been before. And its a real beach! Sand (and women's beach volleyball that day), waves, roller bladers and bikes on a little path; it felt like we were in California. I didn't realize that people actually wore bikinis in Seattle either!




Alki Beach really felt like Santa Cruz, you were on the beach, yet you could see the mountains. I was really in awe all day long.



We got lunch at Christo's and then walked down to the tide pool area where Daughter had a school field trip a few week's earlier. We got there during high tide, so we weren't able to see many tide pools but we had fun dallying on the edge of the water.

We tried to stop at the Alki Bakery, but they were out of baked goods! Entirely. Being the supply chain geek, I couldn't help but realize that they failed to account for both the increase in demand due to the holiday and the causal factor of the great weather (I think the weather was the one that tipped the scale). So we went to Starbucks instead (at least their local, right) for cold drinks.

I can't tell you how great it was to be free of school, enjoying a father's day with my family and having such a beautiful day to enjoy.

Schools out for summer!

Today is the last day of school for my kids and they are all quite happy!

So am I - my grades for this quarter were posted yesterday and I was quite pleased with the end result.

Summer time (at least from school) has arrived. Hopefully, the weather will cooperate as well and summer will finally arrive. It's shaping up to be a nice day today - blue skies with high clouds at my house.

Here's to summer!

Summer is here?

I think that summer might have arrived. We've had two beautiful days in a row! I will write about my great Father's day separately and some other things I've done recently, but tonight, I want to write about how nice it has been.

Today, I saw nothing but blue skies all day long. Heather was at swim practice and I called her to see if she wanted to have a picnic dinner. She was up for it and we met on Mercer Island at Luther Burbank Park. It was a great time.

The kids tell us that it should be a nice afternoon tomorrow as well. This is probably good for Son #1, since his school is letting out after something like 2-1/2 hours; he'll get to enjoy the nice weather.

If tomorrow is as nice as today, I'll be rooting for another picnic dinner and I might even work outside on the patio table! I hope good weather catches up with where ever you may be!

Done. For this quarter.

All my finals are done and submitted.
Now I can breath a sigh of relief.
Until classes start again on July 7th.

Shopping

Yesterday, I got some new shorts - its spring time, so it is nothing remarkable.

My oldest son and I went shopping, sort of a strange father-son activity:

1. refit the liquor cabinet with vodka, tequila and rum and some bloody mary mix
   
2. I needed new socks
3. my wife strongly encouraged me to get some new shorts
4. oldest wanted to buy some candy
   

We ended up going to about 6 different places, which made the experience all the more humorous, as I forgot to buy the mixers at the liquor store and Target. We ended up at Safeway, with a detour at REI, where on top of the mixers I bought steaks and potatoes and mushrooms for dinner.

I got home and showed off my shorts to my wife - all of which she approved of. I was fairly certain she would find them acceptable because before we left, she said that our oldest had good taste. At the store, he stood outside the changing room and gave the shorts a thumbs up, down or in the middle or the best vote of 2 thumbs up. I have now doubled my non-soccer short wardrobe and none of the new ones are khaki!

I started to prep dinner and realized that I bought steaks for braising not for grilling. I didn't want braised meat, I wanted grilled steaks, with oven fried potatoes with a sage leaf, sauteed mushrooms and onions and a salad. My dinner wasn't going to be stopped, back to the store I went.

Sure, I did some other things on my Saturday (chess with a 6 year old, bike rides, working on final exams), but the amount of shopping that my son and I did approached silly. And thus, I share it with all of you.

Enjoy the rest of the weekend!

Yesterday was a rough day

Yesterday was a rough day. Not because of work or school or kids. I was out of coffee beans for my espresso machine. Barring one sip of my wife's drip coffee, I had none.

And though I claim not to be an addict, at about 11 am my head started to ache. As much as I tried to deny it, I knew it was from a lack of caffeine.

How could someone living in the greater Seattle metro area where Starbucks are so prevalant as well as many better, independent cafes, run out of coffee beans. That I blame on the day before. It was a rough work and school day. They two just flowed together with a brief family dinner in between.

I really intended to buy more beans, but at 9:45 pm I was ready to call it quits. I should have known better.

I bought beans last night and have enjoyed many an espresso today. Today is a good day - no work, not too much school and I've got coffee!

Sync your iPod in Ubuntu with Virtual Box

I did it finally. I've been able to sync my iPod under Ubuntu. Now, I cheat a little bit and I use Windoze XP running in a virtual machine, but it works! This is the last hurdle for me to cross - managing my music under Ubuntu.

Using Virtual Box, I am able to run Windows XP on Linux, and inside that, I am able to run iTunes. I keep all my music on a removable USB drive, so I am able to access it by mapping the removable drive to my virtual Windows.

Virtual Box supports USB connections to the guest machine, but only with the non-open source version of the software. It is still free, though.

In order for the guest machine to recognize the device, you have to setup a USB filter. I'm not sure what you are filtering, but it makes it work.
Once you have it connected to your virtual windows, the sync takes a while to start, but it really works.

Now, all isn't well. There is a known bug that some applications have problems writing to mapped drives from the guest machine. ITunes is one of these (Microsoft One Note is another); trying this causes a blue screen of doom. But I was able to get around this.

I started iTunes on my guest with a new library, all on the virtual machine. I was able to purchase a song from the ITMS and save it in the virtual machine. I then closed and re-opened iTunes, with my real, mapped drive music library and added the newly purchased song to my library.

It is a little inefficient and takes up some more disk space, but it is much better than making a 40 GB virtual machine in order to store my music library inside. Now, with a little cheating, I can using iTunes Music Store and sync my iPod, all under Linux.

Catching up

I've been swamped of late and been unable to pay attention to this blog much. This quarter school has been intense. I've had lots of great ideas floating around that I wanted to blog, but I've never gotten them written down. I could use Jott, but I was hoping to make more substantial postings than 30 seconds allows.

Ubuntu Hardy Heron
I've almost switched 100% to Ubuntu, as I've posted before. There are a few applications that I run in a virtual Windows XP, but I'm loving linux. The OS is fast, stable and free. Recently (in terms of blog posting) I upgraded from version 7.10 to 8.04. I had all these great things I wanted to write about the upgrade process; but I can sum them up in just a few words - it was easy and seamless. As a newb, I was thrown by the fact that my kernel was upgraded at the same time, but I quickly figured that one out.

OpenOffice 2.4 was great, as it has enhanced support for Microsoft's XML document format, but I removed Firefox 3 beta 5 because prime time just wasn't ready for it. Developers haven't made compatible versions of lots of the plugins that I've come to rely on in my browser.

One of the funny things, as I was discussing this upgrade with my college room mate, one of my linux resources, I was upgrading to 8.04 from 7.10 and he was upgrading from 6.06 to 7.10!

Business School
This quarter has been very challenging from a time management perspective. Our two classes are almost entirely based on preparing case studies as a group, which is a big change from the previous quarters. It's take us most of the quarter to really figure out how to work effectively and we are still struggling somewhat. Its taken lots of really late nights (or early mornings, depending on your point of view) to get the work done.

Last week, my kids asked when I was going to eat dinner with them again (I wasn't there). My youngest had been keeping track, accurately, no less of how many dinners I'd missed because I was at school or working on case study with my group. Three more weeks and this quarter will be over.

Soccer Coaching
Yes, I'm coaching soccer again. This season is super low key - 5 kindergarteners playing 3 on 3 soccer. The goal here is to have fun and teaching the basics. I think I've been successful at that and I've been having fun too. I'm glad I was able to work this into my schedule and I think so was my youngest, too.

I can't promise much, but I'll try to keep up on this blog a little more. Maybe they'll be short quick posts, but I'll keep you in the loop!

He's not paying...

I noticed my college room mate online this evening and his IM status message was pretty funny.


I wonder how his ISP feels about him not paying.

And if his ISP is actually reading this, it does say paying attention. I have no knowledge of sharing cable service or finding excess coaxial cable around frat houses.

For Mother's Day?

As Mother's Day is approaching, a lot of the ads that get into my mailbox are becoming mom focused. I quickly scan them and delete them, like most other ads, but the fact that they have Mother's Day themes sticks in my head.

I also get lots of spam. And almost 100% of the Spam is to enlarge my male organ.


Imagine my surprise when I see this ad from Red Envelope...

Compared to all the spam, that subject line seems pretty racy for Red Envelope and not quite the subject for Mother's Day.

But here is another twist. I followed the ad with the text, "Not everyone desrves flowers." Not quite the right sentiment with Mother's Day approaching, but I'll check it out.

Son 3 was quite surprised and wanted some explanation, "Is that guy POOPING in a box?"

His next statement was, "Click on his butt." I guess the surprise didn't last too long.


I was intrigued. I had to see what the product looked like.


It's chocolate. Or that's what they say at PooParcels.com. That's pretty disgusting. I wonder how they make them? Do they have a row of strange sex toys [safe link to my wife's blog] that extrude the chocolate? That might be too shocking too see!

I don't think that this targeted advertising is working well. Funny gifts, yes. But not for Mother's Day.

Now, I've got to figure out how I want to mail poo too...

My weekend with Kid 3

This weekend, Heather and Kids 1 and 2 had a swim meet. Kid 3 and I stayed home, partially because it is easier on him and because I had an MBA small group meeting in the middle of Saturday.

So, he and I got to spend the weekend together. It was mixed, as he came to the team meeting with me (I was the first to break the bring your kid to the group meeting), but we got to enjoy ourselves too. But most importantly we had beautiful weather while we were out and about.

We got to our meeting location early, so we played frisbee in the parking lot of Building 34 at Microsoft's Redmond campus. After the meeting, we played frisbee more in the parking lot and decided that we needed to find a park, not a parking lot.

I thought that there was a Burger King in Redmond (Google Voice 411 proved me wrong) so we drove back to Issaquah and got food to go there and then headed to Tibbet's park. We played frisbee, watched kids play baseball and then Parker played on the playground and I read a case study. Kid 3 eventually decided he had enough; he was getting hot wearing a black shirt.

We had a lot of fun and Heather called and said that we should eat dinner outside. I stopped at Safeway and bought steak, shrimp, asparagus, sweet potatoes, red onions and portabello caps to grill. After I had cooked everything, I got the validation of a lifetime, Heather said, "You overdid it with the vegetables." Can you believe it, too many vegetables? And what she doesn't realize is that I only cooked half of the vegetables I bought! There is a pork tenderloin in the fridge for tonight.

As it started to cool off, my arms were itchy. I thought at first that there were bugs out, but I actually got a light sunburn on my arms. Is spring really here?

Sunday held another half day of swim meet for Heather and the other kids. So, Parker and I made muffins and then made lists of what we should do. After he made his own Remember the Milk list, we realized that we needed to brush our teeth.


He joined me in the master bathroom and we brushed our teeth together. He brought his timer (pretty good for a 6 year old) and we brushed for 2 minutes. At the end, he said, "That was a long time." Maybe he doesn't use that timer all the time. But even more funny, he decided that we needed to write down on our lists that we brushed our teeth!

I had some reading to do and then we played Wii (he did check it off his list) and we headed out to do some errands (on my list). We drove to the outlets in North Bend to buy some soccer shorts to replace some that I got in college and Heather decided were dated, too short and just plain ugly.

We decided that we would eat lunch there too. Kid 3 was impressed that there was a Taco Time, Burger King and McDonald's all in the same place. I took advantage of that - he got chicken tenders from McDonalds, I got a cappuccino from the McCafe and then I got a burger from Burger King.

The unsnobby coffee from McDonalds is crap. They don't even steam the milk by hand. They have a machine that froths the milk and dumps the milk and coffee in the cup at the same time - all comingled and not a good cappuccino. It is cheap, but not good.

At Burger King, I decided I would have a Steakhouse Burger - the new Angus burger with onion crisps and A1 sauce. The guy behind the counter asked if I wanted the Classic or the Loaded version - has it been around long enough to be awarded "Classic" status? I wanted the lower calorie one and Kid 3 dumped his McDonalds drink on the floor of Burger King. We took my sandwhich and went across the street to the outside seating at McDonalds (and free refills on spilled drinks).

I saved $5 on shorts, $1.20 on gas (with my $ 0.10 per gallon discount at Safeway) and it only cost me $3.50 in gas to go there and back; less than one gallon in my MINI, and we got an enjoyable drive out of it too.

Kid 3 added to his list "Go to a lot of stores" after we got home. He sure knows how to make a to do list look as if he'd been productive!

All in all, it has been a fun weekend. I've spent a lot of time with Kid 3, a lot of time working on school and enjoyed the nice weather! I hope that you are able to take advantage of the good weather as well!

Hardy Heron is here!

Today was the day! It came with great trumpeting - Hardy Heron, the latest Ubuntu distro has been released.

I had put on my RTM task list to download it today and once my computer booted (I needed to do some work with a Internet Explorer only site), I tried to download it. It failed at least six times while I was trying to download from mirrors in the US.

I got crafty and decided to try a mirror in Taiwan, before they were awake. No such luck. It failed too.

I never got more than half way through and it failed. I bet if I had tried to download a torrent, I would have had no problems at all.

I was working on some school stuff very late in the night and I tried to download it again. Being crafty, again, I headed East... I was able to download it from Czechoslovakia with out problem.

So, hooray, I finally have it. Its been burned to a disk and maybe this weekend, I'll install it!


Note: My wife is suggesting that this post is less geeky than my previous posting about Sam's Club, rice and economics. Feel free to weigh in!

Skyrocketing rice prices has Sam's Club limiting sales - CNN.com

What are they thinking?

Skyrocketing rice prices has Sam's Club limiting sales - CNN.com

Retail chain Sam's Club will limit the sale of large quantities of rice amid a dramatic increase in the global price of rice.
The store will limit customers to four 20-lb. bags of jasmine, basmati and long-grain white rice, the company said in a statement. Its restriction mainly will affect businesses that buy rice in bulk, but the company said "a typical Sam's Club Business Member does not buy more than 80 pounds of rice in one visit."

If the price of rice is going up, limiting the supply is only going to further raise the price of rice. Its simple economics!

I'm not sure if this is to be a thinly veiled, "lets save the rice for the other people" or just an effort for Sam's Club (and Costco too) to further profit in a tight economic situation.

I was able to find news articles about this with a quick google search, but I wasn't able to find any press releases from either company. I'm tired, so I didn't look too hard, but it wasn't too hard to figure out that this is ridiculous anyways.

Good night for now. Think of what kind of great thoughts I could come up with if I wasn't holding my eyes open with toothpicks...

Espresso, every day, all day

I've been drinking lots of espresso lately. I've done it in the past, but one of the differences is that now, I'm drinking over the course of the day. It's now 7pm and I just heard the espresso machine go through it's cleaning cycle - its been 2 hours since my last shot, father.

Lifehacker had a post on the benefits of small, frequent infusions of caffeine rather than a large blast and the link to the full, article on Wired is Caffeinate With Care: Small Shots Do a Brain Better Than Big Blasts

But I guess, I'm doing the right thing! The article refers to "frequent, small doeses" to "maximize alertness and minimize jitters." I have no issues sleeping or shakiness at all. Some of the people in the study even reported " periodic small shots made them feel clearheaded and calm." Zen through espresso any one?

I read an article about a UW researcher who has found new evidence that caffeine applied to skin might help prevent skin cancer! I found an article on Web MD dated 2002 saying the same thing, but hey, I wouldn't mind some young, cute barista rubbing espresso over my body to help protect me. Maybe Starbucks should offer that as a service to get people into their stores!

Thanks to CameoSteph on flickr for the picture.

Is it spring yet?

For the last two days, I've awoken to snow on the ground. The days have been cold and the skies grey.

Today, I can barely see because the sun is shining so brightly in my window. Is this spring or is Mother Nature yanking my chain?

Sixth grade jokes

We've gotten to that stage in life with our kids. Saturday morning Son 1 shared a joke that he learned from one of his friends.

I'm sure you've all heard variations on jokes like this, but it goes something like this.

Teacher to Struggling Student: If you get an A on this test, you can come to my house for a BBQ.
Struggling Student gets an A on the test, and goes to BBQ at the teachers house.
Teacher: Since you did so well, you can stay for a sleepover.
Teacher: Since there is only one bed, you can stay in mine.

By now, I'm sure you can see where this joke is going.

Struggling Student (now in teacher's bed): It helps me fall asleep to stick my finger in my Mom's belly button.
Teacher: Okay.

Now, Son 1 delivers the punchline. Remember, he is telling this to his MOM!

Stuggling Student: That was my finger.
Teacher: That was my belly button, either.

Both Heather and I scrunched our foreheads for a moment while we thought through the punch line. We quickly figured out that it should have been.

Stuggling Student: That wasn't my finger.
Teacher: That wasn't my belly button, either.

On top of misdelivering and misunderstanding the joke, he was telling it to his Mom. While there's no stopping sixth graders from telling jokes like these. But you don't tell them to your mom!

They didn't mention snow

This spring, I've gone back to coaching soccer. I've got a co-coach and it's kindergarten soccer. We're just working on the basics and the kids aren't old enough to have developed attitudes yet. Amongst everything else I'm doing, it is relaxing and Kid 3 really wanted to play soccer.

The program is really low key - two practices (one of which was optional) and then games begin. Its only Friday evenings, no goalies, no keeping score, just having fun.

The organizers said that practice would be canceled if it was raining. They didn't mention snow. Who would have thought that it would be snowing in mid-April in Seattle. By 6:30 when practice was ending, it was snowing pretty hard. The kids didn't care, they were having too much fun.

I like snow, no matter when it comes. I do wish I was a little more prepared for it, because I've been home for 30 minutes now and my fingers are still warming up. Happy Spring!

My kisses are electric

Tonight, when I kissed my wife, she jumped.

Don't sit there and tell me about static electricity.

It's my kisses.

Raped by higher education

I just bought my text books for this next quarter. I'm only taking two course, an Accounting course and a Marketing course. You'll have to forgive me if I'm walking funny, I've been raped.

My text books cost over $400. Two classes. Today, my wife and I went to the bookstore and purchased 1 reader and 1 text book. I had already purchased another textbook online. The cashier did a double-take when he saw what had been rang up for the two books sitting in front of him. He took a quick look at the books and knowingly said, "Ah, business school."

At least he was kind enough that as he handed me my receipt, with the typical, "Thanks for shopping at the bookstore," he also added, "I'm sorry for you and your classmates."

That's not my thing

While I was catching up on the days news, my Firefox browser created some pretty funny tab names.

This one, I needed to get a screen shot of.



Really, that isn't my thing. I don't even want to imagine what government agents might do with their sunglasses, guns, badges or earpices.

The real article, though is one about DB Cooper and the recent spate of clues as to where he landed. Good Northwest news!

Just be careful of how many tabs you have open!