Cymru (Wales) Road Trip

We had some spare time so my colleague Steve (from Australia) suggested a road trip. I'm so glad we went for it! We tried to get lost but our USB GPS and MS AutoRoute would not let us. It kept a nice log of our journey.

Here is Steve on the northwest tower of the castle at Conwy.

Here is the beautiful South Stack light house at Holyhead.

Spring Break 2006 - Day 9

A long day of driving!!! Saw some terrific views though, the 19 Mountain Expressway was a good scenic diversion around Charleston WV. You get to cross the New River Gorge Bridge. It felt like driving through clouds. Made decent time, driving 814 miles in 14 hours. Including stops that averages 57MPH. Really the kids slept most of the day after the exhasting prior two days.

10:15am leaving Savannah GA for Erie PA: 15,790
12:20-50pm Columbia: 15941
4:00-4:40pm lunch somewhere
6:30pm somewhere else in West Virginia: 16237
12:30am Erie PA: 16604

Spring Break 2006 - Day 8

Went swimming at hotel

Downtown Disney



Lego store!!!



Dinner with Andrew at Mama Fu in Sanford

8:15pm Leaving for Savannah GA: 15528

Spring Break 2006 - Day 5

2:25pm leaving Alphretta for Orlando: 14973
6:05pm - 7:45pm Lake Park FL: 15231

Light breakfast with the Bumpus family...everyone was groggy. Mostly a day of travel.

Spring Break 2006 - Day 4

9:05am Pigeon Forge for Atlanta: 14657
10:35am rest stop: 14738
12:30pm Alphretta

Today we visited our old friends the Bumpus family near Atlanta, GA. First we visited their nearly complete new home that will have a terrific view of a forested pond. The house will is very spacious with a sensible layout, I'm sure it will be marvelous when the finish work is done.

After an early dinner at Cracker Barrel we went downtown to the Georgia Aquarium, which is simply amazing.



We spent 3 good hours there then walked down to Olympic Park which was bustling with people. For dinner we walked a couple blocks down to the Hard Rock Cafe. The kids all bonded pretty well.

Spring Break 2006 - Day 3

Today we went hiking with my mom, stepfather, and sister in the Smokey Mountains. We took an "easy" trail to Grotto Falls...I think mom was reaching her limits! It was a perfect day in every way. The kids really like the falls, my son liked it so much he went for a "butt swim" by slipping and putting his rear squarly into the water. I soaked one shoe pulling him out making the hike back to civilization a bit squishy.

Later we went to the Dixie Stampede which was a great show! My daughter is convinced she wants to ride two horses at a time some day just like Dusty. Tip: get a vegetarian plate and a regular plate for a better variety of food to share family style.

Spring Break 2006 - Day 2

9:00am Waffle House
10:00 Explorium and lunch in downtown Lexington



1:30pm headed for Knoxville
4:00pm Knoxville Zoo
5:00pm Headed for Pigeon Forge: 14,582
Dinner with the Conrad's, putt putt, rest!

Spring Break 2006 - Day 1

1:45pm departed from Toledo: 14,091

3:15-5:00pm : 14,182

We ventured south to Wapakoneta's Neil Armstrong Space Museum. This was a decent stop with some interesting items. The size of the place is just right to see and then get back into the car after an hour or so. Megan liked the original paperback copy of Stranger in a Strange land that one astronaut read onboard a space shuttle.



7:30-8:15pm Skyline Chilli just south of Cinci: 14,300

Spent the night in a Motel 6 north of Lexington...ewe

UT Campus - Dorr Street corridor

Dorr street by campus has been looking cleaner since Corpus Christi has bought and torn down a couple of old commercial buildings. Also, Jimmy Johns and Papa Johns (any relation?) have moved side by side a bit closer to campus. With the student population greatly shifting to the south side of campus...that whole strip needs redeveloped into something cool.

I walked through the new Ottawa House East/West dorms for the first time this week. I'm really impressed, they put a trendy looking new coffee shop in as well, open to the wee hours of the night.

In any case, UT/MUO administration is thinking of a new name for main campus. Go here to give your input.

Shout out for Death Cab for Cutie

I heard Transatlanticism from Death Cab for Cutie a few years back, and although I liked it, I'm fully addicted to Plans. I know they opened up for Pearl Jam at the sports arena in 2004; now I really regret missing that show.

New toys

My new Mpeg1/2/4 video capture board came yesterday from NewEgg, as well as a dual layer DVD recorder (up to 8.5 GB per disk). I was very pleased that the price of the two...about $70 combined, will let me convert some old VHS home movies as well as other things to digital formats. My tool-less Silverstone case made it so simple, both things were unboxed, installed, and working in about 20 minutes. The part that took the longest was digging out some extra AV cables for the VCR!

weekend log

The remodeled family room is finally complete... it is 21 by 11ft. It used to be very dark with orange knotty pine shelving. I removed all the gingerbread trim, primed the whole thing, ditched the rickety ceiling fans, installed new closet doors, patched some drywall holes, new baseboard trim, and installed carpet tiles. Overall the project took me about a year, but I had many starts and stops.






...onward to the upstairs bath.

Frank Morgan

I took a colleague visiting from overseas to hear a great jazz quartet staring Frank Morgan down at Murphy's tonight. Its been a long time since I've been down to that place, brings back some nice memories.

46645

I've been toying around with Google SMS, its so kewl!

Try this one: w 43697

4 day forecast of beautiful Toledo weather...

(*****) Tag

My friend sent me a link for a new laser tag game in the UK. Even though I'm not a paintball fan, I couldn't really get excited about this high end laser tag either. There was all that work of hunting and shooting without the exhilarating feeling of knowing you inflicted pain on someone. I retorted that what the world really needs is paintball/laser tag "kicked up a notch"...taser tag.

After googling we found this and laughed our arses off.

Weekend log

Saturday we ventured to the zoo for a puppet show in the Czechoslovakian style. The kids were a little scared when all the lights went out and the music came on, but when the story started coming together they really loved it. All of the puppeteers wore all black, and the puppets were lit with black lights. It really is something to see!

Saturday night I watched Japon by Carlos Reygadas. If you are looking for thoughtful movie WAY out on the fringes, give it a shot. I really couldn't relate in any way to this movie, but I can say it was unlike anything else I've seen. It won special mention at Cannes 2002. The main branch Toledo library has a copy.

Other than that I spent the rest of the weekend painting in our new family room. I bit more cutting in with trim and it will be ready for the carpet.

Downtown Toledo pics

Today for my walk I made two laps around the Lucas County Courthouse and something struck me as odd. The Ten Commandments is displayed prominently from the corner of Adams and Erie. The monument is about 5 feet high and has a couple Stars of David and the all seeing eye, like on the dollar bill.



Further down Erie and less prominently displayed is the Bill of Rights.


Religious establishment, or just that the Eagles had the idea of sponsoring their donation before the ACLU? Probably the latter.

ok, I'll play along...

Jason tagged me, so I'll take the opportunity to talk about myself, this is my blog after all.

Four jobs I've Had...

1. Paper delivery for the Defiance Crescent
   
2. Field worker for Dekalb
   
3. Short order cook for Frisch's Big Boy
   
4. Warehouse grunt for Hardees

Four movies I can watch over and over...

1. The Princess Bride
   
2. Reservoir Dogs
   
3. Dune (original)
   
4. Forest Gump

Four TV shows I love to watch...

1. In a Fix
   
2. Charlie Rose
   
3. BBC
   
4. Project Runway?

Four places I've been on vacation...

1. Cleveland, OH
   
2. Ann Arbor, MI
   
3. Dayton, OH
   
4. Fort Wayne, IN

Pretty exotic huh? Yes, I've gone other places too.


Four favorite dishes...

1. Anything my wife cooks (safe answer)
   
2. Indian/British hot currie (not a narrow topic I know, terrible with names)
3. pizza
   
4. Sushi

Four websites I visit daily...

1. news.google.com
   
2. maps.goole.com
   
3. mail.google.com
   
4. theonion.com

Four places I'd rather be...

1. Everywhere
   
2. nowhere
   
3. somewhere
   
4. underwear? (whoa! where did that come from?)

Four bloggers I'm tagging...

1. Jim
   
2. I've always sucked at tag...

If this were a scored test I'd barely pass, what a slacker!

A meditation on the speed limit

These guys are lucky they didn't die trying. Basically a group of friends tried to see what would happen if they all drove the speed limit on a crowded Atlanta highway. They blocked all lanes for a few miles, containing all traffic to 55. The clip is produced nicely...very funny.

Downtown Toledo pics

You don't expect to see horses frolicking downtown, but if you look hard you will find them hanging out at the TPD ranch.

The one at the fence kept sticking his tongue out. Thanks to Mr practical joker horse, I had to retake the shot several times.

Toledo, a great place to raise a family?

I've heard this time and time again...I guess there is evidence to refute this claim:

race riots

forced teen prostitution ring

and now terrorists?

Keep it up COSI

COSI Toledo is so important to the long term technical and social scene in Toledo. Support it, even if you don't have kids. Looks like they've been recently recognized for an award...nice photo of Dr Walsh and Laura Bush here.

funny

Catching up on email since returning from the trip, thanks for this one Andrew...

Last day in UK

I purchased a map of St Helens and surounding areas, caught a train a few towns down the track, and then wandered my back to the hotel. I estimate based on the map that I walked around 30 miles all together over an 8 hour period. It was really cool to stop through the town centers and see what people really live like over there. I stopped and spoke with various people, all of whom were friendly. One was very guarded until I assured him I was not a j witness.

After I ate and rested a while and ventured back out to hear some live music at the Citadel. Daniel Amor opened for Amy Wadge. I totally fell in love with Amy, she is so amazing. She rocked the acoustic 6 string, 12 string, and piano all the same. She was very energetic and funny, great great show. She was backed up by a pretty good band as well, including another keyboardist and standup electric base. I took a non flash snapshot, hope she doesn't mind...

Another year wiser

Yesterday was my birthday...so I've been blogging for a whole year. I think I've achieved my goal of having an online journal that captures snapshots some of my thoughts, interests, and activities. I've made some great new friends this year, and had many excellent experiences.


In the evening we went to a great Thai restaurant in Lymm. I was joined by Icaro, Steve, Bob, Udo, and Peter. We drank a good amount of Sigha beer. Afterward Bob hosted us at his home where his wife Sharon served up some deserts and champagne. In the photo from left to right: Udo (Germany), Peter (Denmark), myself, Bob(US), Steve(Australia), Icaru (Brazil).



Some of my friends/coworkers put together a nice audio montage wishing me happy birthday from back home. They called and recorded messages at Bob's house all day and he compiled them into one. When I heard my daughter's I wanted to be with her right then... we'll all be together again Sunday.

Rugby League - Wigan Warriors

Today was the last day with the SAP EP6 consultant. After work we headed up to Wigan for a rugby match. Excellent game, Wigan won.



The area around the stand (stadium) is built up very nicely with shopping and resteraunts. We had a round at the Red Robin after the match, not a chain like you have here. In England you have these pubs everywhere that have great food, beer, and character. If you are looking for the mens room, its always refered to as the 'gents', and if you would like chips, they are 'crisps'.

Manchester

After work today we headed for Manchester. We walked around down town for a while, what a beautiful city. Excellent mix of old and new architecture. There are many colleges in town and hence many hip urban gen x/y'ers. We stopped by a candle light vigil for the Brittish soldiers who died in Iraq.

After dinner, went to the Life Cafe to see Ben Lee, Tina Dico opened. They were both so terrific...some of the best music I've heard live. Steve was worked up when I called them folk singers, but its really what they are. Hip young folk singers, they play accoustic guitar and sing melancholy songs. There were fun and lively songs too, good mixture, good good time.

At the end of Ben's show he sang We're All in this Together, he walked in through the crowd and we were all singing it together, it was quite moving.

Winter 2005 Vacation - Day 6

Grandpa and Grandma Myers flew in today and they took the kids for a while to see the various things at Circus Circus. I took Megan to China Town, which I admit was pretty cool. When you start seeing restaurants like Tofu Hut, you are getting close.


My favorite shop had some great geodes, jade/bronze sculptures, and swords, oh yeah. Of course there was San Rio junk everywhere which had Megan cooing. Also, we just had to get the Hello Kitty silk kimono for our daughter.



Here is a photo of the Myers family gathering at the nearly perfect Claim Jumper restaurant in Henderson Nevada, on the evening before our departure home.

UK Trip day 1

I'm in the UK for a bit, and won't bore you with the boring work details. I arrived today at 8:30am.

Crashed for a few hours and then set about walking around St Helens, Mersyside, UK, which is where the global headquarters for Pilkington (LOF) is currently located. Speculators may say we will soon be owned by the Japanese company NSG.

Here is a picture of a middle to lower class nieghborhood, as if driving on the wrong side of the street isn't bad enough, they also park however they feel.


Eventually the sun set and I went back to the Hilton. Icaru arrived from Brazil around 9:00pm and we chatted for a while, then off to bed. I laid in bed for 3 hours before falling asleep after 1am...ugh

Birthday madness

My son turned 6 today. We went for dinner at HJ's Prime cut on Heatherdowns. A good friend of mine, Andrew, was in town this week from Orlando so he joined us. After dinner half of us wanted ice cream and the other half warm beverages, so we ventured down to Levis to please everyone between Maggie Moo's and Starbucks.

Here is a picture from the official birthday party on Saturday:

It was crazy in my 1900ft^2 house on Saturday. I think most enjoyed it but the elder folk nursed headaches afterward. By the way, not all the kids decided to join the photo...I think there were 15 in all.

Yes there is red eye in the photo and the room we partied in is unfinished, both signs of how busy I've been lately.

Downtown Toledo pics

As many have commented, we've been spoiled by warm weather this January. The geese don't seem to mind.

weekend log

On friday evening we went over to the new Smokey Bones restaurant on Talmage. Its easy to see the staff is mostly inexperienced, but they were trying pretty hard. My son loves working the audio controls for the televisions. Its funny that we don't allow eating in front of the TV at home, and eating at this restaurant reminds me why. The kids were like zombies, eating their food with glazed over expressions while staring at the cartoons.

On Saturday I drove the boy out to my dad's house for an overnighter. This gave us some much needed time to spend working around the house. It also gave him some much needed attention.

More of the same on Sunday. The remodeled down stairs room is ready for a last coat of paint and then the carpet. I hung a nice netting around my daughter's bed using 2 50lb drywall hangers. I gave the kids strict instructions not to pull on it. As the experienced parents would guess, that lasted under 24 hours. Megan called me to me that it has been pulled off the wall with a healthy chunk of drywall still clinging to the hangers. ugh...

At least I still have the drywall tools out from the work downstairs.

Downtown Toledo pics

I think this is a cool view of Toledo, from the park lands near OC headquarters.

Nice correspondence from Senator Dewine

I wrote both Senators Voinovich and Dewine with my feelings on the ANWR Defense bill rider. I've gotten responses to all of my messages to Dewine, and never a response from Voinovich. The messages are the same, wether they be electronic or snail mail, regardless of the political topic.


January 10, 2006


Dear Aaron:

Over the past several months, a healthy debate has occurred in our country about drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). I appreciated knowing your views on this important issue.

As you know, after a great deal of thought, I voted against drilling in the ANWR. I thought the risks outweighed the potential benefits. The United States will never be petroleum independent-we simply do not have the oil. Department of Energy (DOE) figures show that we are currently 56 percent dependent on foreign oil. The DOE estimates that the ANWR would reach full production by the year 2020, and even then, it would only decrease our dependence on foreign oil by about 2%.

We desperately need a comprehensive energy policy, and the Administration should get a lot of credit for putting a comprehensive package together. The energy bill that the Senate passed this Congress addressed important issues, such as electricity reform, nuclear and hydroelectric plant regulations, energy efficiency standards for buildings and appliances, new gasoline content standards and many others. These, in particular, are more important to the energy needs of Ohioans than drilling in Alaska.

While I oppose drilling in the ANWR, I do not believe drilling should be restricted on all federal land. The federal government is the caretaker of millions of acres, which undoubtedly contain oil and gas reservoirs, and I support the President's efforts to identify potential energy sources on our federal lands. In less fragile ecosystems, oil and gas exploration can coexist with the natural environment. I believe that it is our duty to find these sources and then carefully assess the costs versus the benefits in each case.

Again, thank you for sharing your concerns. If you have any further questions or comments please feel free to contact me.

Very respectfully yours,

MIKE DEWINE
United States Senator

Winter 2005 Vacation - Day 4

We spent a good deal of today at the Lied Discovery Children's Museum.

The girl of course lost herself in the drama section...


while the boy set to work in the mining operation...


As always, our COSI membership got us in for free. This facility was very nice, slightly better some ways than COSI Toledo. It was also colocated with a good sized branch of the public library.

Winter 2005 Vacation - Day 3

On tuesday we drove to the Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area. Maybe it isn't exciting for people accustomed to the desert/mountain terrain, but growing up in NW Ohio it knocked my socks off. There are plenty of trails for all levels of expertise, including an interpretive trail that has kids in mind. I could tell these two were raring to go.



The park is set up as a one way driving loop with stops about every mile. Each stop has trailheads. The more adventerous can get a rock climbing permit and stray from the path. It really was beautiful out there. At first I was disapointed because I wanted to check out Death Valley, and the drive out there was too long. But there would be enough trails right in Red Rock Canyon to keep us busy for a long time.



Later in the evening we drove out to Henderson to visit my youngest brother Cain. We checked out his apartment and then headed over to Buffalo Wild Wings. Later that evening we went bowling at our hotel. The place is pretty amazing, upstairs it seemed as big or possibly even bigger than Imperial Lanes here in Toledo. I used Cain's ball pretty miserably until the 10th frame where I threw three legitamate strikes. The boy lobbed one into the alley next to ours...at least none came rolling back at us. A guy in the lane next to us was screwing around and ended up flat on his back out on the lane. His head was 3 feet beyond the fowl line heh heh.

Winter 2005 Vacation - Day 2

The first thing we did is venture out to explore some territory, off the strip. From Tropicana, we took Decatur road north to Trader Joe's. We stocked up on foods to have healthy breakfasts in our room for the rest of the week. We also stopped at a Borders to get a couple of good local maps. Later we stopped at a city park and let the kids play for a while. My son made friends almost instantly with a boy who was remote controlling some bizarre looking creature. It was called a Shell Shocker, and I have to say it was pretty cool. It put up with a lot of use and the battery life was amazing. The kids were ramping it off the play structure and it didn't skip a beat. Megan and I spoke with Adam's father while the kids all played for a while. Interestingly that its hard to find native Las Vegans, seems like almost everyone is a transplant.

When it was time to go, my son was telling Adam his address and inviting him to come on over some time (be sure to bring the shell shocker). Later he wrote Adam a letter that he expected us to mail...not quite understanding that we will probably never see the two of them again.

In the evening we drove over to the Premium Outlets at Las Vegas because I needed another pair of shoes. They have a Timberland outlet and its often hard to shoes of freakishly large proportion in regular stores.

There was this really cool building next door...



I'm such a geek for architecture. The center section is bowed with corrugated metal, and backlit. I guess this is considered the backside of the World Market Center.

Winter 2005 Vacation - Day 1

We flew out of Cleveland to Las Vegas with the kids. They weren't too bad on the flight, I can't imagine how wiggly they would have been without the new portable DVD player from the grandparents. The jet was nice (boeing 737, leather seats), but SWA truly is stingy when it comes to food and drink. The flight was a little over 4 hours and all we had was some crackers/fig newtons and cup of pop.

My son really wanted to ride a train, and we kept telling him "no, no trains on this trip". He only gloated a little as we stepped onto the McCarren Airport tram from our terminal to the baggage claim. We picked up the Chevy Cobalt rental and made our way to The Orleans at 8 pm, which was like midnight our time. I wanted to see my youngest brother on Christmas day since he was all alone, but we were totally whipped. We ate dinner and then slept like stones.

Life, the holidays, and everything...

The holidays have been terrific for us, and very busy. We had a solstice party and hosted some friends for some nice food, drink, and various fun things. We made some nice crafts, including a couple of ginger bread houses. Can you guess which ones the kids did? (yes, the creative one)



I stayed up till 4, but everyone else crashed, so I gave in. I will stay up the whole night again...eventually. Sam, Kevin, Fiona, and Miles, we had a great time and I'm so glad we met at Wildwood Metro this summer. It was so unlikely, that I was out and decided just for the heck of it to stop with Liam at the 'alternative' playground.

The next day some UU friends of ours came over because our long lost Laura Lago was in town (more food and drink at our place).

Friday we had a Christmas party at my brother's place. Megan made a great tieramisu cake. Christmas eve we spent totally at home preparing for our trip. Christmas morning we opened a few gifts that magically appeared overnight. Around noon we headed to Cleveland...let winter vacation 2005 begin.

Downtown Toledo pics

The riverfront near the steam plant a week before Christmas.

Downtown Toledo pics

It was a brisk day, but beautiful by the river as you can see.

what a difference a day makes...

I haven't broken my walking habit just because of a little cold...in fact I found a partner as of late. He was always out walking and sometimes we crossed paths. On Wednesday we went down to the river and it was not even close to freezing over. Today, see for yourself!

Toledo's PV Heroes

A while back Megan and I decided to check out the local United Church of Christ congregation in Sylvania. The congregants and service were nice, but thats not the point. After service, we met a guy named Al Compaan, who is a physics professor at UT. He was telling us about the solar electric system that he & his wife recently had installed in their new home.

I saw an article in the Blade so I emailed him for some more details. As you can see, Al and Mary have recieved the 2005 Ohio Governer's Award for Excellence in Energy (there, you see, Taft isn't all bad).

I drive past a new PV array on my daily commute to work down Dorr Street. I figured Al would be involved somehow, sure enough, he had the scoop on that project too.

Here are some resources that might get you thinking about your own project.

weekend log

I spent much of the holiday either relaxing at our house with my wife and kids, or doing homework. My grandfather turned 80 on Saturday, so we drove out to the sprawling metropolis of Grelton for that party.

One of the days, Friday I think, I noticed a bunch of birds hanging around. Here's a shot I snapped from our dining room...three blue jays and a mourning dove. Later I saw a woodpecker, numerous cardinals, and the typical sparrows/finches. This feeder has lasted longer than any other we've had.



Megan purchased it for me from Wild Birds Unlimited. It is truly squirrel proof too, the best they can do is scavenge around the ground. I've seen them hanging off it upside down, but the spring loaded base shuts when anyone too heavy attempts getting food from the holes.

Today I finally watched Master & Commander...it was good but I was a little let down. I'll give it 3.5 stars. The prior movie I saw, about a month ago, was Raising Victor Vargas. I'll give that one 2 stars. It was moderately interesting and subtly smart and funny, but nothing I'd watch again.

I'm dreaming of a white...Thanksgiving?

My new Tilley hat arrived yesterday. Just in time for today's lunchtime walk!

This lady was dressed quite inappropriately.



With the snow you couldn't even see the new I280 bridge construction from Promenade park.

Downtown Toledo pics

Hopefully Carty can keep One Seagate (former OI headquarters)



from turning into the completely abandoned 200 N. St Clair (former OC headquarters)



Notice the boarded windows going up the side. The ground level doors actually have ugly plywood boards covering the entrances as well.

weekend log

...did homework almost all weekend long, that was a downer. Unless Samkon Gado and Bubba Franks pull off a miracle for the Packers tonight, my fantasy football team will lose, another downer. The one bright spot on Saturday, Megan's oven baked pancake!

Downtown Toledo, the good and the bad...

I often walk around downtown on my lunch hour. Predictably, I find things I like, and things that could use improvement. So I'm going to start posting some of these things to my blog. Today I saw two noteworthy things on Monroe street.

Bad first:



A rather large hole in the ground, exposing some ugly building backsides. This is from the warehouse fire last month. I expect they will continue backfilling and turn into another boring parking lot.

Now the good:



The new Paula Brown shop has opened. It is a terrific store, but sadly most of the stuff is out of my humble price range. If you are looking for fine linens, table settings, kitchen wears, stationary, artwork, jewelry, etc, this is the place downtown. Also, they had some great Japanese art prints. They've done a nice job renovating this interesting old building. I think formerly it was Port Lawrence Antiques.

It was really cold and starting to snow, so it was a short walk today.

voting for grass roots candidates...

In Hillsdale Michigan, an 18 year old write in candidate (too young to be an official candidate at registration time) won the mayoral election over the 51 year old incumbent. That is really something encouraging! It reminds me of my old friend Travis Sheafer who was elected for Napoleon city council right after high school.

Congratulations Michael Sessions on a true grass roots effort, job well done, and what sounds like an excellent approach to taking on the new responsibilities.

College Town idea - Update

I knew UT Foundation bought the old NAPA store, but now they bought Mac's Motors as well. The real estate along Dorr is so CHEAP! As Krompac says, it is an untapped resource. Polling students is good, but I have a feeling many UT students don't know what they are missing. I hope the survey is guided by successfully blended campus/community settings like Ann Arbor and OSU.


Original Post - August 14th 2005:

As tonight winds down I can feel the energy around campus. Today I heard the UT marching band warming up. Students are trickling into the apartments. It won't be long until UT is back in full swing, I love that feeling.

I really wish the Dorr Street corridor would be developed with nothing but a college town atmosphere in mind. It is really a perfect strip of low cost and blighted land perfect for that purpose. UT has invested so much money in that side of campus, and it will be brimming with students this year upon completion of the huge new dorms. Two other large apartment complexes on Douglas/Westwood are finished now. And finally now the apartments near Dorr/Secor have finally been reclaimed for students. Last year I saw the changes taking place and it has done so much to spruce up the area (both grounds and inhabitants).

Designating a section of the city as College Town and focusing development around a student and young professional theme could work wonders for retaining some of those grads. Instead of thinking the town is one that dislikes them, they would think the town understands them and supports them. The area along Dorr does not conflict with the family oriented areas of Old Orchard and Ottawa Hills. It is within easy walking distance of the majority of student housing.

Larry Dillin, we need you! Follow Corpus Christi's lead and do something successful. Exploit the synergy of our beautiful, intelligent university with thoughtful, rational development!

pump up that ego

Yeah, so I'm in grad school and I have this math class that is actually making me think, hard. I thought this 8th grade quiz would be a fun diversion. Luckily I didn't embarrass myself.

You Passed 8th Grade Math

Congratulations, you got 10/10 correct!

Could You Pass 8th Grade Math?

The Axis prevail...

Had a good 4 person match of Axis & Allies last night. I played Japan. It was a much needed respite from more difficult things like work, school, family. I made a new friend named Nick, who played Germany. We used good teamwork to put the squeeze on Russia. We had to call the game at 1am. Shamy was Russia and US, Allen was UK.

Am I a Libertarian?

According to this I'm pretty far into Libertarian territory.


Of course it was only about 10 questions from a libertarian web site. Still, all things considered their demographics of people taking the test were pretty balanced.

If you are a regular aaron.blog reader, take the quiz and let me know where you score. I'd like a survey of where my friends, family, readers, and detractors/lurkers stand.

Must have desktop Trebuchet

Since my cube nieghbors are much too nice to throw things at over the wall, I'm hoping someone buys me one of these nifty portable trebushets to launch some serious paper wads down the hall at my esteemed colleagues.

Ahh, the good old days at MCO... when the supply closet was always stocked with plenty o rubber bands.

weekend log

I had Friday afternoon off and so did Megan, so we had a nice 2 hour lunch together and then a long walk down the UT/Parks trail. I try to take those plastic grocery bags with me when taking a walk. I gathered up 2 bags full of litter on this expedition.

On Saturday I took the kids for a double header to COSI in the morning and the Zoo in the afternoon. We ate lunch on the patio at COSI, it was gorgeous weather. Its good that COSI (or the city) is finally repairing some of the concrete that has been flaking off that building. Its pretty sad that a building that new has problems like that. Quality isn't what it used to be. Take the Pythian castle versus the new buildings at Levis. You can see a photo of the Pythian in my downtown fire pics a couple weeks ago.

We also watched some of the rowing races down the river at the Docks. One of my colleagues said there were many visitors from out of town for the races. He also said they finally found the body of that missing doctor. So all of the visitors this weekend were greeted by a body floating in the river and race riots.

On Sunday Megan took the kids out so I could do some homework.

Downtown Fire

We had a view of the downtown fire from our office building today. Seeing the huge brick wall collapse was surreal. I'm assuming some cars are beneath that rubble. A colleague of mine took some photos and I fixed them up a bit for you.


I regularly walk by that corner (Monroe and Ontario) and it always smelled so bad from the dampness and the birds. At the beginning of the fire, you could see a couple hundred pigeons just circling above, not sure where to go.

I always thought the architecture of that building (arches especially) gave it good potential for some renovation project like the Bartley Lofts.

weekend log

Friday night I was called in to work because my main database server was very sick. The data volume lost two drives from the RAID 5 team.

On Saturday mom took the kids for an overnighter. Megan and I spent some much needed quiet time together. We had lunch at Saigon Bistro, one of her favorites around town. I had the Pho Tai, which is a hot broth noodle dish with steak and green onions. They put sprouts, limes, and other various spices on the side for you to add to your liking. Later we went to see the Pibare Krishna Rasam by Sujatha Srinivasan, a beautiful collection of short Hindu poems and proverbs choreographed to live music and dancing. Absolutely fantastic! The dance school is based in Cleveland.



Sunday was the boring housework day, along with study time. I'm slogging my way through a differential equations course...ugh. Hopefully my fantasy football team will pull off an upset against my brother's team. The Tizzles are hungry for their first win of the season.

What is wrong with these people?

So we have had a roadmap for peace in Israel. Sharon withdraws from Gaza, taking great political and civil heat in doing so. I first thought the stories of settlers tearing down their structures before exiting seemed bitter and shallow. Next, Israel sent in troops to physically remove the remaining settlers from occupied Gaza. The keys to the kingdom are peacefully handed over. Then what happens? Massive chaotic Palestinians pouring into the areas, overwhelming their own police, with the extremists claiming the credit for making this day come true. Right, so if Arafat had lived just a bit longer this would have happened anyhow...my intuition says not. Palestinians torch the remaining synagogues and structures instead of dismantling in a civilized way. Now I thought THAT was really shallow and insulting as well. Now, just a couple weeks later, the militants are stupid enough to start shooting rockets/mortars into Israel?

News Link

Like they have a real chance at accomplishing anything? Unless of course what they are trying to accomplish is more occupation, more chaos, more physical retaliation, and less life. So the circle of violence grows and grows and grows. Darwin, where are you?

Basra Jailbreak

Today two British soldiers being held in an Iraqi prison were busted out by their comrades. What a shame the jail was destroyed and 150 criminals also went free. The Iraq situation gets crazier all the time! If there is control in Basra, why would this be necessary?

News Link

Pledge of allegiance unconstitutional?

Just in from AP "SAN FRANCISCO - A federal judge declared the reciting of the Pledge of Allegiance in public schools unconstitutional Wednesday, a decision that could put the divisive issue on track for another round of Supreme Court arguments."

News Link

Michael Newdow, the same man who brought the case to the supreme court last year, is back with the same argument. How could this be? Because the court threw the case out on a technicality. I just rolled my eyes when I heard that reasoning. He is back with 3 families that have full custody of their children. Well, nothing like a hotly divisive issue to give Roberts a baptism by fire! They should have known the case would be back.

I actually believe the pledge should revert back to the original, without the words "under God". If you believe in God, great, praise Him, her, it, however you believe God exists. If you don't believe in God, what good is it to say you think the country is under God? Does it make them less of a citizen? Does it make them less patriotic to believe only in what they can see/feel/prove? Why drive a wedge into patriotism?

Similarly, why should someone swear in under oath with a Bible if they don't subscribe to that religion? It makes no sense at all. They should be swearing by their own integrity, under penalty of perjury. Bearing false witness is already a sin according to the ten commandments, so isn't this procedure sort of redundant for Christian's sake?

Nice shot Wilkowski

It is time to take down my yard sign. I guess the people of Toledo really do not want change from the last 12 years of relative economic and population decline. If the supporters of Ludeman and Wilkowski joined together under one candidate they would have amost tied Carty, and beat Ford by 10%. I support Ford in the final election. He balanced the budget in hard times, and does not throw damaging temper tantrums when things aren't going his way. Ford certainly had the grass roots support out in force yesterday. I was handed two pieces of literature when walking in to vote, had one on my door when I came home, and found TWO answering machine messages from him. All this and I'm a registered republican!!! I received nothing from the republican party during the entire season thus far. I always vote for the best candidate regardless of party, but I found this fact interesting.

Hurricane Katrina

I heard about the shoot to kill orders this morning. Officials already know the majority of the people left behind at this point are impoverished, many of whom are blacks. Now that many those remaining have been forced to live like animals, you say you are thinking about killing some of them? What does an animal do when backed into a corner? Not only have they opened themselves up racial backlashes, retaliatory attitudes, and lawsuits, they've practically invited others to join the rioting. With any luck, people will be too tired to take this approach, and just be thankful for finally getting rescued.

There are armed thugs, armed vigilantes, armed people teetering on both sides of that fence, and even unarmed people still roaming the flooded streets. Police always have the right to respond with deadly force when they are attacked; there is no need to tell people watching TV that they are sending in troops ready to kill. That message is being stated for the benefit of the world disgusted by the reports of looting. Let me ask, with 2 million without power across that region, how many people in New Orleans are watching CNN?!? Declairing the will to use deadly force, whether they intend to kill or not, is a foolish strategy, because the people you are going to kill are not even hearing the message. The people hearing the pre-meditated message are bound to hear stories of injustice, and they will put the two together making a conspiracy out of it. The rhetoric will fly.

4 civilians were killed at Kent State in a protest 40 years ago and we've never stopped hearing about it. Think of that, combined with an element of desperate survival and throw the race card into the mix...if the guardsmen open fire on anyone publicly perceived as innocent you could have LA riots all over again. Lets pray for calm.

weekend log

Saturday I worked around the house...put the finishing touches on my son's new bedroom. It is lofted with a nice cozy reading corner. He is quite happy with it except that we haven't brought his computer in yet. My daughter is desperately holding on to it in her inherited room. Its alright, I have another one to build up that just needs a monitor. Using a program like GameDrive makes kids computers so easy to maintain. A virtual CD drive keeps the software thinking the CD is installed even though it is safely tucked away from the mangling hands of youngsters.

On Sunday we went over to the first annual art fair at Levis Commons. It was very comparable to UT's Art on the Mall. Not quite as scenic as campus, but has more eating venues and good parking. I didn't see two of my favorite artists "Mr Atomic" aka the Kersey brothers. Their vibrant works can be seen all over Toledo, at the Docks for instance (Tango's, Old Navy Bistro). I have one of their paintings by Mark at home called "Computer Man".

Weekend log

On Friday my brother came up to help me install nice new baseboard trim around the new room downstairs and a bedroom upstairs. Having that 18v Dewalt cordless nail gun sure speeds up the job!

Saturday I installed new gutters along the front of the house.

Sunday I finished the jacks for voice/data/cable wiring for the new downstairs family room. The centralized wiring closet is working out nicely. In my first escapade with X10 home automation, I wired my cable modem and firewall router to be rebooted remotely via the computer. Later I returned the favor to Rion and helped him install crown molding in his country mansion. I guess its not a mansion yet, but you could fit my house inside his with room to spare, plus mine has two kids in it and his has none.

A new start for Westgate

I hope Costco makes it happen in Westgate:

http://toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050809/BUSINESS10/508090348

Westgate's demise has really bothered me, coupled with the empty retail around the closed Food Town on Secor. A Costco in place of the old Dillards is convenient to the city dwellers and will be an incredible improvement to the area. It is an anchor that will revitalize the whole retail district around Central/Secor. I'm sick of having to go to the burbs for decent big box shopping (and don't jump on the "why Walmart and every other big box is evil" bandwagon with me, I disagree).

I just hope they improve the look of the shopping center to mesh better with the classic neighborhoods. I think Home Depot did a decent job of that a few years back. I doubt they would have put in the money and effort if there wasn't so much community "involvement" during that ordeal. Yes, we'll have to deal with some juggling of retail space regarding the surrounding shops. In the end there will be room for all of them I'm sure, even if it means moving across or down the street a short ways. They will all benefit in the long run (probably even short term as soon as Costco opens).

Shankland disturbs me...

In the August 3-9 issue of Toledo City Paper Terry Shankland (a candidate for City Council) claims COSI is dead, dark, and dingy. He says it cannot support itself financially so it makes no sense to keep it. That way it can be a shopping center again, albeit a heavily subsidized one ("we can't kill the stores with high rent"). Does anyone see a contradiction here? Further more, to say it should die because it doesn't break even is nonsense. Using the same logic we should shut down the libraries, parks, and public transportation.

COSI is a huge success and asset to this region. Believe it or not, it helps make downtown a destination, not just for Toledoans. Educated, creative families want venues like this, the zoo, the stadium, the metro parks, the museum, etc. Thousands of children come to our COSI each year to prop up their science curriculums and build enthusiasm. We all know Toledo schools could use all the help they can get. Many progressive cities have science museums for their children. We have a great one that should be maintained, improved, and encouraged.

About COSI being dark and dingy, it is not by any means dark unless you consider the areas that are SUPPOSED to be dark. Dingy may be true, I've commented on some of the dust accumulating in certain areas to the COSI administration. They said they were going to pose a funding issue to the voters a while back, but the Ford administration asked them to hold off to be part of an overall arts improvement budget. It seems to me they should just bring it to the voters independently. The independent venues that are supported directly by customers, voters, and benefactors seem to be the most successful. When city politics get involved, enthusiasm and progress seem to come to a grinding halt. I'm thinking of successes like the Zoo, Metro Parks, Museum of Art, Rep, etc.

As for having more retail space downtown, there seem to be plenty of other vacancies. Leave COSI alone, better yet, support it.

ROADTRIP!!!

Mom picked up the kids on Friday night so Megan and I split. We decided make Chicago our destination. Traffic was nasty getting there so we pretty much arrived at the hotel and crashed. Saturday was so beautiful...we had a leisurely morning of eating and shopping. Megan couldn't miss the Sanrio store, and keeping pace I required a trip to the Lego store. Later in the afternoon we walked around Oak Park. We saw FLW's Unity Temple, an awesome venue for a UU congregation. The town is gorgeous, we walked around the neighborhood admiring the old homes. For Toledoans, it is like the Old West End on steroids. It had a very lively main street, very pedestrian friendly and alive with activity. We ate at the Khyber Pass Indian restaurant, it was excellent.

Today I wired the downstairs for cable, telephone, and data (the gigabit backbone grows). I creatively snaked it through the stairwell by popping off the top step, down to the central wiring closet. 5 of the 9 rooms are wired now. 2 more will happen later in the fall. Also, its time to begin X10 experimentation.

An amazing journalist/blogger

Its too bad I learned of Steven Vincent's blog only in death. He was a terrific writer and seemed to have little restraint in his investigative work.

http://spencepublishing.typepad.com/in_the_red_zone/

I've always felt that turning Iraq into a democracy would be handing its future to a heavier political influence from Iran (via religion), and after reading parts of SV's blog I feel my predictions are partially verified. Not exactly a step in the right direction, or at least in the intended direction.

weekend log

On Friday night I mowed the grass for the first time in 6 weeks. Later we killed some time out at Media Play and Target.

Saturday we puttered around the house in the morning. Megan made these awesome baked pan cakes with fruit compote for brunch. We stuffed ourselves at Shorty's BBQ in the afternoon...great patio setup there. In the evening we went to a park in Perrysburg and poked around downtown. Because of the temperature and relative niceness of the day, it would have been sacrilege to not have ice cream somewhere. We went down to Maggie Moo's at Levis, and once again it was terrific. I thought it might have just been a fluke when they opened up but no, its some of the best ice cream I've ever had, aside from some of the home made batches we've made.

Sunday was spent painting, cleaning around the house, and paying bills. Not much excitement but made some great progress on the room downstairs. In the evening I planted a willow tree from a start my mom gave. Its only about 5 feet tall now, I really hope the transplant takes. Also I started reading The Guru's Guide to SQL Server Architecture and Internals by Ken Henderson.

not my child!

There is a lot of buzz around recent findings of hidden content in the Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas game.

http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/050720/205985.html?.v=1

This reminds me of an incident at Target that always makes me laugh. An adolescent was asking the Target associate to purchase a copy of GTA. Because of the rating system the associate said he would have to get his parents consent. A couple minutes later the boy comes back with his mom. The associate explains to the lady that the game includes gang violence, stealing cars, driving recklessly, etc. The mother seemed ok with it and was about to purchase the game. The associate then mentioned there was some sexually suggestive material such as prostitutes and girlfriends. The mother's jaw nearly hit the floor as she snatched the game from her son. He looked very ashamed. Basically that tells him that its alright to simulate being a criminal, but once you throw sex into the mix someone has crossed the line. If given the choice between your kids thinking about sex, or thinking about shooting someone and stealing their car, which would you prefer? Maybe you say neither, but this mother's reaction will always stick with me.

A very cool idea...

I hope the young men make a ton of money from this innovation, a peltier system to cool your car instead of the traditional freon/compressor type setup.

http://www.sltrib.com/utah/ci_2841984

throwback to third grade

kid B: [doing lots of stuff to get attention, some of it stupid] "I rule!"

kid A: "no, you're stupid, and you're gonna get us all in trouble"

kid B: "I'm rubber, you're glue..."

kid A: [takes over the game excluding kid B and his buddies]


Toledo Journal article

Wow this mayoral race will be crazy!!

weekend log

Friday evening I took the fam to the library's Harry Potter party. It truly amazed me...I've never seen that many people at the Toledo Main branch. It was surreal also with all the costumes. They had a magician, bird handler, lots of crafts, tv stations playing the prior movies, free refreshments, and more. Saturday I spent the day working around the house. Sunday we went to Ann Arbor. It was a real nice weekend...

weekend log

Saturday morning I attended a timberframe seminar, home tour, and shop tour. When I returned home, Megan was frantically trying to dry up the basement from the hot water heater that decided to stop storing water. I got a hose to empty the tank in a more controlled manner, but the piece of junk valves at the hot water heater did nothing to stop the flow. So I had to shut down water for the whole house until I could get a new one from Lowes and Sunday and get it hooked up. What a pain...I hate those household projects that are just getting you back to where you were before.

new music review

I picked up the new Ben Folds album Saving Silverman a week ago. Ben Folds (with and with out the 'five') has consistently been one of my favorites for the last 7 years (Whatever & Ever Amen). Here's my review on Amazon.

blogger legal guide

I'm still catching up on my mail from June...came across this new legal guide for bloggers posted by the EFF.


http://www.eff.org/bloggers/lg/

Its good to be back...

Today was my first real day back on the job. It actually felt good to be back in the office and see the people I missed all month. Having good peers and a good supervisor go a long way in keeping me happy at Pilkington. Creative work assignments, flexible scheduling, and good pay don't hurt either. Now if we could just get the locker room and grassy field for lunchtime games of ultimate frisbee like OC has...

Tonight I went to the local .NET user group meeting downtown. Joseph Poirier gave a presentation on a dispatch application he wrote for a local company. Its really great to come together with other techies in the greater Toledo area.

Final day at Teched 2005

I didn't want to miss the 8:30 session, and somehow I woke up in time to catch the bus over there without the use of my alarm. I didn't even walk fast, actually I couldn't walk fast because my feet were so sore from walking through the freaking everglades the night before. Oh yeah, did I mention that? Andrew found an excellent short cut. And when I say short cut, I mean tall wet grass and it took us twice as long to walk back to the hotel. I was sure a croc would crawl out at us any moment.

PRT355 Enterprise Project Server integration with Sharepoint by Jean Francois LeSaux. Jean gave a terrific session showing the architecture and integration points between sharepoint and MS Project (PWA ans Professional). Allows for task integration with Outlook/Exchange. Allows for personalized web portal including task list and gant charts, and health of projects.

DAT310 Programming SQL Server Management Objects with Michiel Wories
MicrosoftSQLTools.com - Shared source initiative he started
You can perform any SQL management task programmatically through SMO.NET. Communications settings (partial object instantiation or full) can be configured to meet your own scalability needs.

Lunch

DBA417 Maximizing Query Performance in SQL Server with Burt ??? (MS SQL Support escalation engineer). This guy was FREAKIN AWESOME. This was hands down the best session I attended at tech ed, and if you have access to the webcast sessions online, go watch this one.

Tech Ed '05 was great, and I really look forward to going to Boston next year if possible.

Teched Day 4

Hands on labs all morning, the cool thing about HOL at teched are the dozens of lab assistants who are actually knowledgeable about the products and demos and are literally sprinting around to help people.

Two lectures after lunch...

PRT376 Sharepoint Portal Server Search Technologies
A good overview of searchable scopes of webs and subwebs, metadata, and list content. Gave overview of Sharepoint table structures within SQL. I forget his name, but the guy liked his whiskey. He gave out shots at the end.

DBA421 Inside SQL Server User Mode Scheduler with Ken Henderson.
In depth look at how SQL uses cooperative multithreading under the covers using worker fibers hosted within the main SQL thread. SQLPERF(umsstats) is good way to measure the health of your UMS. Ken gave me a copy of his newest book for asking a question...how cool is that!?!

Andrew and I went to Universal Studios together...the spread was amazing. You really couldn't ask for more, and the theme park wasn't bad either. We hung out at the Bob Marley club after the park closed. Unfortunately the busses were all gone by the time we were finished. It was nice evening and we were both wired (and mildly inebriated) so we decided to walk back to the hotel...how far could it possibly be? OH MAN was that a mistake, I'm pleasantly surprised we survived. About a mile away from our motel a taxy slowed down for us, but at that point we couldn't give up. We literally walked for 2.5 hours, arriving back at the hotel at 2:30am. Fortunately we never seem to run out of things to talk about so all ended well.

Teched Day 3

Went to two lectures today and filled the rest of the time with hands on labs.

PRD393 SAP and Sharepoint with Justin Chandoo offered a nice survey of integration techniques. Go to www.microsoft-sap.com for more info on the api and new developments, especially regarding Mendocino. Also there are some SAP Web part samples on gotdotnet.


DBA311 SQL Recovery Best Practices with Kim Tripp was an awesome demo highlighting partitioning, split file groups, schemas, piecemeal restoration, and snapshots.

I have no recollection of what happened after this... :-)

Teched Day 2

I went to a hands on lab for the new SQL management console, the improvements have really made me dread going into Enterprise Manager and Query Analyser.

After lunch I attended Jespen Johansson's "Anatomy of a Network Hack". He is a great presenter, hilarious, but also very very useful. I did a great job of scaring the pants off every admin in the room (I estimate a thousand of them packed in).

My last session of the day was on Sharepoint with Mike Fitzmaurice(Microsoft) and Ted Pattison(Pluralsight). They covered generation of your own Sharepoint Templates.

Teched Day 1

Had a great Sunday evening with Andrew, we ate at Charlies Steak house which is rated #2 in the nation. After that we went up and down the strip just to see what was going on. There is SO much to do here! I'll post pics soon.

I attended some great sessions on Monday, most noteworthy was a SQL index tuning session with Kim Tripp. She is AMAZING! There are a couple of .NET Rocks episodes and free online webcasts from her that you could check out if you don't believe me.

The sharepoint sessions were cool so far, and I've been making my best attempt to talk to people in the audience to get their opinions on the product. Bill Sharp from Mindshare gave a great talk on the strengths or best practices for Sharepoint Portal Server 2003. I spoke with a 'retired' programmer who is building a patient records application for a medical practice for fun. He considers the Sharepoint services (WSS) framework to be the best application platform to build web applications on these days. Alex Paytuvi from Quilogy introduced a bunch of free business line templates for wss that looked terrific. They are basically application starter blocks that are about 80% finished. The example sites he walked through were project management, IT admin, and HR recruiting. Each template was thoughtfully configured using the taxonomy (terminology) and predicted uses for each task.

Jullien Sellgren from Metalogix lead a great hands on lab for scripting the content loading and even altering the structure of WSS sites. WSS out of the box is very similar to DotNetNuke as configurable site all via the browser interface. But in major conversions of content into WSS, it is awesome to be able to programmatically build the web parts prepopulated with content. Metalogix provides a free wrapper class that makes use of FrontPage RPC and web services to make all the magic happen within a simple consolidated API. Think about how cool this would be for change management in major web portals! I really would have liked an approach like this when we migrated our old IBuySpy portal to DNN. Maybe there is a decent way to do it but I never found it. Probably when the next version of DNN supports web parts a solution like this would support either type of portal.

Monday evening was the grand opening of the exhibit hall which means great grub, free drinks, and lots of creative marketing. Andrew and I made our way through the menagerie and talked with some of the vendors. My favorites included: Mimosa (transparent Exchange archival), Red-Gate(terrific SQL tools), MS Live Meeting(virtual team facilitation), Patch Link(server patch mgmt), and Macrovision(ton of including Installshield).

After the exhibitors closed up for the evening we headed down to the jam session. Those geeks can really play! The night club they rented out was top notch.

Pre-TechEd

I've been lax in posting recently, its been a whirlwind with my daughter's birthday party, sister's graduation, and getting ready for my three trips in June. In the event you care about our experiment with South Beach, it really seems to work. Whatever flab I did have around my gut was gone at the end of the two weeks. Unfortunately some splurges at the birthday party, graduation party, and homecoming party of my brother Cain have negated any benefits. In all the diet seems to really have helped stabilize Megan's sugar levels, which was one of the main goals.

My first trip of June is TechEd '05 in Orlando. I flew into Orlando Sanford this morning, a small airport slightly north of the bigger Orlando International. Getting shuttle service to my hotel was a bit hectic. Why did I fly in there? When booking the direct flight from Toledo, I guess thats where TMA goes!

When checking into the Wyndham I was asked if I had transportation...answering no she pointed me towards the bell hop and said to talk to them. As it turns out, the Wyndham here has its own convention center, 3 pools, various nature areas and restaurants. So I joined one of the hotel golf carts and headed off to the back 40 for my room. The room was small and had a very small table, so I politely complained and they moved me to a suite, with desk, king sized bed, fridge, etc (for the same price). Someone needs to give that lady a raise!!!

I checked in to TechEd and picked up the yearly swag. The laptop bag this year is not quite as impressive as last year's backpack, but decent quality. The thing weighed about 20lbs from the massive amount of marketing literature and software included. Before I left Megan said she expected me to pick up some sun screen, and the bottle had better be half empty by the time I return. Problem solved--I have Microsoft sunscreen from my pack. There will be far fewer geeks walking around sun burned this year...if their testosterone permits them to use the thoughtful gift!

There is an Alien Ware area set up with Far Cry gaming tournaments. I walked in and played a round thinking I would get trashed since I don't play that game. Turns out I only missed qualifying for the next higher round by 1 'point'. There are about 30 people playing together, and the top 2 from each round are deemed worthy.

Tonight I plan on hanging out with my old friend Andrew.