Tuesday, December 27, 2005

Christmas Gift

Hope everyone had a very Merry Christmas. Spent Christmas Day with Becca's parents and met my parents and sister in Ann Arbor yesterday. Did check out the University of Michigan while we were in town.
 
I would be remiced if I did not mention one of the gifts I received on Christmas. Here is a link so you can see what they look like. Enjoy!

Friday, December 23, 2005

Pistol Packin' Mama

This is a true account recorded in Police Log of Sarasota, Florida. An elderly Florida lady did her shopping and upon returning to her car found 4 males in the act of leaving with her vehicle. She dropped her shopping bags, drew her handgun, and proceeded to scream at the top of her voice, "I have a gun, and I know how to use it! Get out of my car!"

The four men didn't want for a second invitation. They got out and run like mad. The lady somewhat shaken then proceeded to load her shopping bags into the back of the car and got into the driver's seat. She was so shaken that she could not get her key into the ignition. She tried and tried and then it dawned on her why.

For the same reason she did not understand why there was a football, a frisbee and two 12 packs in the front seat. A few minutes later, she found her own car parked 4 or 5 spaces farther down. She loaded her bags into the car and drove to the police station to report her mistake.

The sergeant to whom she told the story couldn't stop laughing. He pointed to the other end of the counter where the 4 pale men were reporting a car jacking by a mad, elderly woman described as white, less than 5 feet tall, glasses, curly white hair, and carrying a large handgun. No charged were filed.

Moral of the story: If you're having a senior moment, make sure it's memorable.

Wednesday, December 21, 2005

This Year In Pictures

I just looked at the year in pictures 2005 on MSNBC's website. These pictures are amazing. Make sure to look at both Editor's choice and reader's choice. You can cast your ballot for the pictures you like too.

Twas the Blog Before Christmas

'Twas the blog before Christmas, when all through the house
No blogger was stirring, no hand moved the mouse.
The postings were stacked by the tag cloud with care,
In hopes that more readers soon would be there;

The users were nestled all snug in their beds,
While visions of updates danced in their heads;
And me with my podcast, downloaded like that,
Had just settled down for a long winter's nap,

When out from my laptop there arose such a clatter,
I sprang to my desk to see what was the matter.
Away to the portal I flew like a flash,
Tore open the reader and refreshed the cache.

The enclosure attached soon gave me to know
That new entries were here, more news I should know.
When, what to my wondering eyes should appear,
But a raft of new updates, eight headlines so clear,

With a quick Wiki update, who could it be?
Our investor, of course, a leading VC.
More rapid than eagles his portfolio came,
And he whistled, and shouted, and called them by name;

"Now, Blogspot! Now Feedster! now, Movable Type!
On, FeedBurner, FeedBlitz! (On Marketing Hype!)
To the top of the feed! To the top of them all!
Now blog away! blog away! blog away all!"

As valuations that before the wild bubble do fly,
When they meet with a fund, mount up to the sky,
So up to the top of the investments they flew,
With RSS data, and named it Web 2.

And then, with a twinkling, I read in my news
Each notable posting, contrary views.
As I drew back my hand, and was turning around,
Down to my trackback he came with a bound.

His comments were brief, what was ado?
Were adwords OK? Did users click through?
A bundle of mashups he had flung on his back,
And he looked like a peddler just opening his pack.

Our AJAX - how it twinkled! Our tagging - how merry!
We socially networked to his brand new BlackBerry!
Our RSS valid, we were well syndicated,
We subscribed to the feeds that we loved (and we hated);

The stump of our web site held tight in our teeth,
The hyperbole encircled his head like a wreath;
We tagged Technorati, we blogged with the best,
On Feedster we surged and made the A-list.

He was chubby and plump, a right jolly old elf,
And I laughed when I saw him, in spite of myself;
A wink of his eye and a twist of his head,
Soon gave me to know I had nothing to dread;

He spoke not a word, but went straight to his work,
And marked us on Frappr, and Flickr he searched.
And laying his finger aside of his nose,
Updated his blog, up our OPML rose;

He sprang to his feed, gave his investments a whistle,
And away they all flew like the down of a thistle.
But I heard him exclaim, ere he drove out of sight,
"HAPPY CHRISTMAS TO ALL, AND TO ALL A GOOD-NIGHT!"

Tuesday, December 20, 2005

2005 Year-End Google Zeitgeist

Google has released their 2005 Year-End Zeitgeist. To quote the site:
 
It turns out that looking at the aggregation of billions of search queries people type into Google reveals something about our curiosity, our thirst for news, and perhaps even our desires. Considering all that has occurred in 2005, we thought it would be interesting to study just a few of the significant events, and names that make this a memorable year. (We’ll leave it to the historians to determine which ones are lasting and which ephemeral.) We hope you enjoy this selective view of our collective year.
So here's a link to their findings on the top 10 searches on google.com, news.google.com, and froogle. Interesting stuff.

Snow Globe

Just saw this on Topher's blog and wanted to share it with you all. Thanks to Topher for putting it on your blog.

Monday, December 19, 2005

Fun times...

Hope everyone had a splendid weekend. At 4am on Friday morning Becca and I were at St Mary's Hospital ER with me in much pain. As it turned out, I have/had a kidney stone. Bill and Deb became my new friends when they brought the pain medication. I took the day off Friday and did a lot of sleeping thanks to the pain meds.
 
I returned to work today hopeful that the stone has broken up and I am over another kidney stone (for those of you keeping track, this stone was number two for me). I have not taken any pain meds since Friday so I think I'm over it but we'll have to see.
 
Anyone has any fun kidney stone stories to share?

Thursday, December 15, 2005

Lunch at Bennigan's

Yesterday my team at work went out to lunch at Bennigan's. We had a wonderful time and good food. At the end of the meal after everyone had paid, everyone was given an envelope. Inside the envelope could be a certificate entitling me to one of the following: a 42" HD Plasma TV, iPod nano 4GB, free appetizer or free dessert. Our waiter told us that we would definitely receive one of the last two. We cannot open this envelope until January 2006 and we must open the envelope in the presence of a manager at Bennigan's.
 
My team was planning on all of us bringing our envelopes in January and sharing free appetizers, but I just noticed that you can only open one envelope per party. Marketing ploy! (Though an iPod nano 4GB would certainly be nice.)

Tuesday, December 13, 2005

grbloggers.com

I am of the opinion that if someone or something helps me out, then I must give credit where credit is due. I have noticed hits on my site going up since I became a member of grbloggers.com . This is a group of people who live in Grand Rapids, Michigan who have blogs. If you live in Grand Rapids and have a blog, go to grbloggers.com and sign up. All you need to do is put some code in the HTML of your blog so that visitors to your site can be directed to other grbloggers.com sites or the main site itself.

Saturday, December 10, 2005

The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe

So has anyone seen this movie yet? I think Becca and I are going to see to this tonight but I wanted to get your opinions on the movie. Comment below...

Tuesday, December 06, 2005

Why am I so tired?

A member in my small group just sent this to me and it was too funny not to post on my blog. Enjoy!
 
For a couple years I've been blaming it on lack of sleep, not enough
sunshine, the kids, too much pressure from my job, low blood
pressure or anything else I could think of.

But now I found out the real reason.

I'm tired because I'm overworked.

Here's why:

The population of this country is 273 million.

140 million are retired.

That leaves 133 million to do the work.

There are 85 million in school.

Which leaves 48 million to do the work.

Of this there are 29 million employed by the federal government.

Leaving 19 million to do the work.

2.8 million are in the armed forces preoccupied with finding Osama BinLaden.

Which leaves 16.2 million to do the work.

Take from the total the 14,800,000 people! Who work for STATE and CITY GOVERNMENTS.

And that leaves 1.4 million to do the work.

At any given time there are 188,000 people in hospitals.

Leaving 1,212,000 to do the work.

Now, there are 1,211,998 people in prisons.

That leaves just 2 people to do the work.

You and me.

And there you are sitting on your butt, at your computer, reading jokes.

Nice, real nice.

Monday, December 05, 2005

New Office

Well we are in our new offices. I am very glad that I threw away so many things before we moved because now I have work surfaces that are completely clear and clean. Very nice! There are a few boxes of things that will be shipped to Brazil soon. When those boxes are gone I will have more space and that will be nice.
 
My new office is a 10x10 whereas my old office was an 8x10. I did not request a bigger office, but because of the way the room is setup here, they had to give me a 10x10. I'm not complaining at all.

Friday, December 02, 2005

Greetings from Singapore

Here at work they are rebuilding my team's offices so today our computers have been moved into the Singapore room so we can work while they build our offices. It is definitely different to be working so close to my other co-workers (though they have been away from their computers for a lot of the morning so far) but at least we can be productive. Fortunately, I have a lot of podcasts to listen to so the day won't be too bad. Thank God it's Friday! Enjoy the weekend. Hopefully I write an entry on Monday from my new office.