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Games I’m Looking Forward To In 2012
I’m a bit of a gamer, even if I only play on my PC. Chrissy and I just got new computers, so I’m ready to play all the new stuff coming out this year! There are a lot of games coming out in the near future that I’m looking forward to cracking open. Mass Effect 3 — Although I wasn’t as impressed with the sequel to Mass Effect as I was with the original, I’m still interested in the third title from this series. The cut scenes are amazing and Bioware plans to support multiplayer this time around. Bioshock...
read moreThe Boys Start Karate
When I was in college to earn my MBA, one of my professors assigned an exercise component to the class. I wasn’t one for working out (I’m still not), but I had always wanted to take karate classes. I signed up at the local Kempo Jujutsu Martial Arts Academy. I trained under Dale Hestermann for a year and was awarded my orange belt. What started out as the fitness portion of a graduate class grade did wonders on improving my self-esteem and confidence. Chrissy and I had talked about putting the boys into karate a while ago,...
read moreNaNoWriMo Update: Lessons Learned
The NaNoWriMo experience was eye-opening for me. I took a lot away from this. The first thing I learned about writing is that it takes a long time to write a thousand words. Some days, I would spend the morning commute thinking about what I wanted to include in a particular chapter. I might act out particular scenes in my head. Planning is hard, and that’s before any writing is even done. On the commute home from work, I would then try my best to dictate at least one chapter into my iPhone. Sometimes I would falter on the...
read moreAll Sorts Of Problems With AT&T U-Verse
When we switched from Dish Network to AT&T U-Verse for our television needs, we had some pretty high hopes. I had expected the U-Verse to behave at least as well as the service we got from the Dish Network. Maybe possibly be better, since we never had on-demand shows before. Boy, was I disappointed. Within a week of setting up the new service, we needed new hardware and suffered a ton of problems, some minor and some major. The first problem was that the DVR shuts down if you don’t use it very often. Not only can you not...
read moreLegos Were The Key Present This Year
Chrissy and I both loved playing with Legos when we were little. Each of us had a sizable collection. Although I have no idea what happened to my Legos, Chrissy’s mom stored hers away. When Aiden was old enough to play with them, she brought them out of storage. Aiden enjoys building things with Legos, and surprisingly, Gavin shows interest in them as well. The boys received a couple of Lego sets for their birthdays last summer. Aiden got a police boat and Gavin got a fire boat. The boats see a lot of play time (not in the...
read moreOur 2011 Christmas Letter
The annual family holiday letter was completed and packed into this year’s batch of Christmas cards, but I wanted to post it to the web site in case anyone who isn’t on our holiday mailing list would like to know what we were up to this year. If you’re not on our Christmas card list, but would like to be, please let me know! The “online version” is now enhanced with links back to blog posts that give more details. Click “Continue Reading” to read the 2011 Christmas Letter. Hello and Seasons Greetings from the...
read moreAzek Decking Is Slippery When It’s Cold
A couple of years ago, we sunk a lot of money into a new deck. I didn’t want to spend a lot of time on annual maintenance, so we went with a plastic decking called Azek. It looks like a wood plank, except that it will never rot, change color or stain. Also, it’s solid, unlike some of those other plastic decking types that may be hollow. It makes a really good deck. The one problem that we have with our Azek decking is that the slightest bit of frost can make the surface slippery. I didn’t think that this would be...
read moreThe Water Main Broke Again
About seven years ago, a water main broke behind our garage. I remember that it was toward the end of December, and we thought that maybe the neighbor’s pool had sprung a leak. There was a lot of water. The town came and drove a bobcat through our backyard. It just made a big mess. Workers were digging in my backyard late into the night. I’m not sure if water mains are like lightning strikes, but it happened again in the same spot. Again, the town brought in equipment and dug up a goodly chunk of my backyard. ...
read moreMooses And Muffins Live On Stage
Chrissy has been a big fan of the Laura Numeroff books for a long time. When she was still in college to become a teacher, I gave her a copy of “If You Give A Mouse A Cookie” for Valentine’s Day. Since then, Numeroff has penned many similar books like “If You Give A Pig A Pancake” and “If You Give A Moose A Muffin”. Chrissy has the whole collection. The Center for Performing Arts at Governors State University hosts on-stage plays for children in their fantastic auditorium. Ticket prices are...
read moreEver Hear Of NaNoWriMo?
For the last couple of years, several of my Twitter friends have participated in National Novel Writing Month, also known as NaNoWriMo. Basically, it makes a goal of writing a 55,000 word novel during the month of November. I almost signed up last year since I had a neat story idea. I decided to give it a try this year. I don’t have time to actually write stuff, so I used the iPhone to dictate directly into Notes with the new voice recognition software in the keyboard. I got mixed results with this. On the one hand, I...
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