Ξ June 24th, 2007 | → 2 Comments | ∇ Kids |
Zaeda turned two on Friday the 22nd of June!
We had a great little party, thrown together, since she had already had one party and has another on the way this weekend! Crazy- three parties for a two year old. Yeah. Anyways, she had a blast with Lizzie ( who we had our first overnight with that night!)
Wonderfully, the little party and the overnight with Lizzie were both just awesome. I caught some great joyful shots of the girls playing together. They danced, played fairy princess, wore their tiaras and earrings and played with all of the new gifts that they got!
Then came the happy cake! Zaeda understands cake fully now. She understands that she will get cake at her birthday, she understands singing happy birthday ( which she enjoys singing to my mom and dad’s dog, Zootie) and she is great at blowing out candles!
She also understands that if she is covered in chocolate cake, she shouldnt run and try to slather it on adults …. however, due to the fact that she is two, she didnt really care that we thought she shouldnt. So she did. Fun was had by all.
Oh yeah.. you can also sorta see parts of our new house! hehe. I really will take some more pics of the new place really soon and put them up. It is starting to look presentable!
Have you seen it?
If you haven’t, you’ve missed out on some amazing technology. Started in 2001 by Microsoft Research, it was just a pet project that turned into something more. You have to check out these videos. Even though its not really here yet, the potential in what these videos show are some amazing technology and I look forward to working with them in the future!
Microsoft Surface Site
Today I heard on the news that there was a cop killed in Marion County by some Mexicans that were coming back from a wedding. Although I don’t know their legal status, or whether alcohol was involved but judging by history and statistic I can just imagine what the facts really are. Truly a sad time.
On the note of illegal aliens, I heard on Lars that Senator Gordon Smith is going to announce a new bill that I believe has a good chance of success and truly makes sense! In short, since the illegal’s are here for jobs, wouldn’t getting rid of the reason they’re here be the place to start? I thought so and so did Lars & Smith! Senator Smith is drawing up legislation requiring the name and social security number of an employee to match in order for the business to deduct the wages! AWESOME! Do you know how quick they’re going to drop employees that they have to pay extra for? I have never really been excited about legislation, but I must admit this looks promising!
Yes that’s right kiddies, it’s that wonderful time of the year! We can all celebrate that one of our favorite Office programs we use so heavily at the church and other places turns another year today. But how old is he?
Or is it a she???
PowerPoint turned 20 today and although I don’t use the program much, I can see myself using it in the future as I’m making presentations to clients and management. So I thought in celebration I could come up with some interesting facts about our beloved program that we love to make fun of.
- Did you know PP was originally designed for Apple computers?
- It came out in 1987. 20 Years!!!
- Microsoft didn’t make it. Bob Gaskins and Dennis Austin of Forethought, Inc.
- It wasn’t originally named PowerPoint. It was called Presenter.
- Microsoft purchased ForeThought & Presenter for 14 Million dollars.
- During the first release…it was in black and white. CRAZY!!!
Am I bored? Yes. But I have to pay respects.
</nerd>
-Michael
Ξ June 15th, 2007 | → 2 Comments | ∇ Life |
Something that I’ve always found funny about non-believers and atheists?
They say we’re closed minded. Yet we’re the only ones that are open-minded enough to God.
What do you think?
I saw this on another blog and just had to add my flair to it. Working in the IT sector has always been interesting. Not only the users, but also the stuff you see with developers. They’re the ones who make the software so you can totally tell when someone has a sense of humor.
The error states “An error occurred while trying to determine the number of mouse buttons.” WHAT?!?! Someone actually had to write an error event for this?
Check out the other post here.
So i’m in love with video games. I don’t play them anymore, but I love the story, the content, the experience. Whether its first person shooters for that anger in my, the real-time strategy game for that “i’m so much smarter then you, that I will prove it on the battlefield!” feeling, or your typical role playing game for that adventure/romantic story line. So what do I need to have all of this?
Microsoft Xbox 360
As I was looking around, I saw some new video’s promoting how I could pass the expense off to my wife, so if she justify’s it then I can get it!
Here…take a look.
-Michael
Seriously… those role playing games are tear jerkers!
Ξ June 11th, 2007 | → 6 Comments | ∇ Life |
I know what you’re thinking…how long can I draw this out? Let me tell you what I have experienced today (Update: This was written on the day we got back!) was crazy….well…just crazy. So where to start?
We boarded our plane at Newark, NJ heading towards Seattle, WA. Our plane was supposed to leave at 6:00pm EST. That didn’t happen. Our plane was late and we didn’t start boarding till 7:20pm. Key word here….”board”. Boarding doesn’t mean leaving. We were on the air craft, another Boeing 737-800 series for a little bit (20 minutes after everyone was sitting and ready to go) when our wonderful pilot says over the old school sounding intercom system “We are just waiting on some paperwork as we needed to get a component replaced.”. You know what I’m thinking to myself at that very moment? George Carlin’s routine where he talks about airline funnies:
Carlin’s pilot impression: Please remain calm while we finish some paperwork
Carlin’s interpretation of said impression: BROKEN PLANE!!!
After about another 20 minutes, we start to move! Hurray! Pacific northwest here I come!
And then we stop.
Wait a couple minutes and then another plane lines up next to us. And then another one. And one by one (the ones I can see) I start to whimper inside. I figured there was about 10-15 planes all lined up, and something tells me we weren’t the first since I couldn’t see the other side of the plane and people were counting things on the other side. :blink: How long will this be? How much more can I take? What is the quickest way to get off this plane? How can I do it covertly? Can I do it covertly? Of course I can, I can do anything. But then I began to doubt myself and thinking of George Carlin at the same time…which for me is a bad thing. Can I get around the tap dancing wanna-be Broadway star next too me, through the drunks in 1st class, and over the hefty midget’s so I can get off the plane and help others?
After an hour or so…we start seeing planes move! HURRAY! As we taxi to the runway and start our take off, I start to count! 1…2…3…45?? I counted 45 planes before I started to lose count (And yes…I can count to 50…pfft) and after that I was just so relieved to be free of static ground and be in the air that I felt like screaming “HAHAHAHA SEE ME!?!!? I’M IN THE AIR, AND YOU’RE NOT YOU MOTHERS!”, but then I grounded myself as that would be insensitive to others.
:blink:
Oh…you thought I was done??? HAHAAHA…right. So aside from the fact that we had wanna-be Broadway star next to us practicing tap dancing…with his hands and then writing something down, it was a pretty smooth ride. Sure, there was the typical baby crying, and “slight” turbulence and the rather “gut defying” landing into Seattle, but that doesn’t top off what happened when we arrived at Seattle. What happened? We missed our connecting flight! As we SCRAMBLE to the gate, I see our plane. It’s sitting at the gate happily waving to us. Goodbye it says! Ok…no problem. We’ll just catch the next flight. Well at 11:30pm (which it feels like 2:30am as we’re now used to EST) there are no more flights to Portland, OR. They start bright and early 6:00am. Needless to say, us and a few other passengers were rather upset. But we’re about to get even more upset about what happens next.
So Alaska Air wants to take care of us and book us for a room and some free food. After an hour of waiting in line for them to book the room and such, they tell us to wait by the shuttle area for the hotel shuttles. No problem! Our shuttle finally arrives (12:30am) and the driver looks at all of us with his eyes full of terror as we surround him. Then I notice why. There is about 30 people, and about 8 seats in the shuttle. Heh. He makes a frantic call to his hotel “Send Reinforcements!” and then says that he can only take 8. He takes his 8 and then leaves…quickly.
I think we might have scared him.
After an hour of waiting (1:30am), I get the great idea of calling the hotel to see where the shuttle is. But since I was so tired, I just asked if there was a room in the hotel. The person on the line said “No…we’re sorry…we’re full right now.” WHAT?!?!?! ALASKA BOOKED US IN A FULL HOTEL! As I’m freaking out! I’m trying to figure out if the guy knew I was apart of the “Alaska Air Krew” that booked him, or that I was just some random Joe. I notice another 20 minutes go by. The same shuttle driver arrives (Reinforcements???) and what do I do? I take charge. I let him open the back and I threw our bags in and I lead Melanie into the van. People took notice of me making the first move and soon, there was not only 8 seats…but 12 people in the van! I was next to an older guy who looked like he was under some serious stress caused by the rather large women on top of him.
I don’t think it was good stress caused by a women on top of him either.
And as the driver starts driving, we’re taking some crazy turns at speeds even I wouldn’t have taken with a top heavy van. And then I had an epiphany! I look around, everyone has long faces, tired, red eyes, the works and then my imagination starts working (of all times, this!?!?). The night turned into day, it was hot and dry! Then all the men had straw cowboy hats. And then I had one too! AWESOME! But then it wasn’t awesome as I hear sirens and lights towards the rear. I’m thinking to myself “What the heck???”. And at that moment, my wife yells “LA MIGRA! LA MIGRA!”. Everyone started yelling in Spanish! As we’re jolted to each side swerving to evade Immigration, I’m just thinking to myself…how are we going to get to the border in time?
And then we arrive at the hotel.
After that, the excitement turned off, and so does this story as there is nothing exciting about the rest of the trip. We got a couple hours of sleep as I called Alaska to see if we could move our flight up. We got on the plane, and arrived at PDX to be greeted by little Zaeda informing us that Grandma had parked the car in section “4B” which is the exact place where the Chrysler 300m was, as indicated by the sign. Eat your heart out Jack S & Chance C!
-Michael
I know what you’re thinking…where is Tuesday and Wednesday? Well, for me I was just working and as much as I know you all want to hear what I did…i’ll save you the trouble. Let’s put it this way: I felt like I was part of Geek Squad going to a home to setup a computer for Internet. Wow, great work for a so called “Project Engineer”.
But now for the juicy stuff! My boss made reservations right on Times Square, at the Millennium Broadway Hotel. So all we had to do is was ride the elevator to the 37th(!!!!) floor and we were in our room! That was the highest floor I have been on since then, and maybe even Melanie’s. In either case, it was fun…it went up and down so fast it was like we were on the International Space Station with no gravity!
(Yes, I just did focus my excitement not on Time Square, but an elevator ride.)
Again, Time Square was just as bright has I had left it. So many people at a late hour as well. Toy’s R’ Us was open and we just had to go in. Got some stuff for 
Zaeda (My daughter for everyone who doesn’t know…I’ve been asked who she is a lot lately). So many people trying to sell us stuff on the street too. Apparently there are WAY too many comedy shows as I was asked by at least 6 people if I wanted to “Laugh, drink, and party the night away”.
Fun!
Wednesday morning we woke up and there began our day of walking. We did so much walking it was crazy! Some of the sites we went to were…
- Museum of Modern Art
- World Trade Center (What’s left of it anyways…)
- Central Park
- Statue of Liberty
Statue of Liberty was great! We were told that we should ride the Staten Island ferry instead of the Liberty ferry. First, it’s free. Second, we get to see it twice. Once there, and again on the way back. Rather impressive sight to see 
though! Towards the evening, we went to the Empire State building. That was AWESOME! We were thinking there was going to be a long wait in line to get up there…but there wasn’t! And to see the city up there, 360 degrees was just STUNNING! Again, sorry about the crappy cell camera shots, but they’re better than nothing! So remember I told you that there was no line going up to the top of the Empire building? Well…THERE WAS GOING DOWN! The time it took for us to go up…prolly 10-15 minutes. Time to go down…probably 2.5 hours! We waited in line just going back and forth from one end of the room to another (and this was a huge room, width size of our sanctuary @ Sunset) and although there was was venting, there was no air conditioning. Rather hot in there. So we did our time and finally got to the bottom. That was the end of that night.
Friday we kind of woke up late, around 9:00am. Walked around and got some breakfast. We hit FAO Shwartz and I got to hit the NBC store. Got some kickin “The Office” shirts for…well…my office peeps @ Sunset. After that though we had to head on back to the hotel and wait for our shuttle ride from Hell…
Shuttle Ride from Hell
Yes kids, you read that right! Driving in the Big Apple is crazy. What’s crazier? Driving in the big apple, in a 12 seat passenger van full to the brink (including all of their luggage), with a good chunk of our weight to the left side, making hard left turns, avoiding cars, avoiding pedestrians, Aziz (I don’t know the drivers real name, so I will just racially profile) cussing at cars, Aziz cussing at pedestrians, all while talking on his cell phone to tell dispatch his shuttle was full and he couldn’t pick up more people…repeatedly. Oh…and also the George Washington Bridge was closed so there was WAY more traffic (Not sure how much worse it could get…) then what there typically is. In all, I had fun…I don’t think my wife did.
Once we arrived at the airport and worshiped steady concrete for a second, we thought the fun was over. Oh no. It had just begun. Coming soon!
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