Blogrilla

All in all, it was a productive trip.  The weather was great, but I hardly got out to enjoy it.  The hotel was fine - it was attached to the training center so that was its primary advantage.

There was a certification exam at the end of the class.  The instructors made a very big deal out of it.  The encouraged us to break up in to study groups and asked us to make sure we quit studying by midnight.  They made it sound like it was the bar exam, for crying out loud!  They had a technician come in during the evening and wipe out the computers to make sure we hadn’t saved any notes or anything.  Then they administered a 60 minute test.

I have to admit that i haven’t taken any sort of test in about fifteen years.  I wondered if I still had the study skills and the focus to take a test.  The night before the test I studied for a couple of hours before getting some dinner and doing some souvenir shopping.  I was a little concerned that I wouldn’t pass it and I would feel like an idiot.  Fortunately, I finished it in about 35 minutes and got an “A”!  I was very pleased!

The trip back was ssllowww, but I eventually made it. 

I got t-shirts for three of the kids, but I thought the scorpion-sealed-in-acrylic was too perfect for Gabe to pass up.  Unfortunately, I think Ben wished he could have had something cool like that, too.  Well, next time I will make sure I do better by Benjamin.

The weekend was spent in the usual fashion: cleaning things up and running errands.  We took Chloe and Grace to a birthday party on Sunday.  While Liz looked after them there I took Ben and Gabe to the local Lasertag arena.  They had a great time.  I usually play with them too, but this time I really wanted to finish the book I was reading.  Funny - when I was in Dallas and it was just me.  The television was only on for maybe an hour a day.  The rest of the time I spent (literally) working, surfing or reading.

Now I am back and work and have to install some new software so I can use what I learned at class.  This evening … uh, nothing.  It will be quiet, I think.

I got that printer working again.  I had previously reset it and I guess it cleared too much of its memory and it lost all its settings.  Now its back up and I hope the kids will stop using my Epson photo printer to print out their doodles.

Ben is interested in Adobe Flash for his birthday at the end of April.  I looked it up at the adobe website and they want $700 for it!  I found out that the educational discount brings it down to $200, which is a bargain, I guess.  But that’s still a lot of money for a twelve year old’s birthday present.  I’m trying to find out if there are other (legal) methods of obtaining a legal copy that are cheaper.  Any ideas would be welcome!

Kids are fine.  Dogs are fine.  The little woman is fine.

That’s it for now. 

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How the Chinese plan to modify the weather in Beijing during the Olympics, using supercomputers and artillery.

By Mark Williams

[...] China’s national weather-engineering program is also the world’s largest, with approximately 1,500 weather modification professionals directing 30 aircraft and their crews, as well as 37,000 part-time workers–mostly peasant farmers–who are on call to blast away at clouds with 7,113 anti-aircraft guns and 4,991 rocket launchers.

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What kind of food is Dallas famous for?  Not seafood.

Beef.

What kind of beef?  Steak.

I went to a place last night and had a GREAT ribeye.  Sure it was flavorful, but more than that it was tender and juicy.  And it got me to thinking that although I am following all of the conventional wisdom of grilling my steaks don’t come out like that.

Why not?  What am I doing wrong?  I grill on high heat for, like five minutes and flip it.  Then I let it cook for another five minutes, depending on the thickness and the real temp in the grill. 

What is the secret?  What am I missing?

I read an article somewhere that suggested I flip the steak about every 20 seconds.

The problem, they say, is that the juices inside the steak boil and settle on the top of the steak. When you flip the steak all those delicious juices fall off the steak and are lost forever in the coals.

Flipping it every 20 seconds keeps the juices from boiling.

What do you think? Good plan?

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I flew to Dallas on Sunday night. The flight was as good as a four hour flight in coach can be. I sat next to a pair of russians who were going to Salt Lake City. They didn’t speak to me, which is fine because I just wanted to be left alone to read my book anyway.

When I picked up my car they wanted to give me a big ol’ SUV, which declined. They said they were sold out of mid-sized sedans and offered me a pickup truck in lieu. I said “no” to that too so they managed to round up a 2008 Sebring Convertible.

HOT!

What an excellent car! I have an old 2000 Sebring convertible and the new one is in a whole other class from my current transportation.

For the last couple of evenings I’ve taken it out just to drive it around a little.  Compared to snowy new england spring is looking pretty great in Dallas.  I tried to get to the Dallas Arboretum today before they closed the gates, but I wasn’t in time.  It took me about an hour to get there from Addison, Tx and they were already closing up when I arrived.  The book depository in Dallas closes long before I can get there.  I was thinking about going to the Fort Worth Stockyards.  They’re supposed to have the worlds largest honky tonk.  If I had someone to go with it might be fun, but I’m not sure I wan to spend all that time and effort getting over there just to feel uncomfortable and drive home, you know?

I spent the last couple of nights working and watching television.  Its been pretty quiet here.

Class has been good.  I’ve been learning the stuff I came for and that’s worth a lot.  I’m excited about getting back to work and getting things set up so I can put my new talents to work.

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On Sunday evening I will head off for Dallas, Texas to get some more SAP training.  I try to go once a year and learn something new.  These days I am pretty comfortable with all of SAP’s regular technology, but they keep introducing new stuff and I need some help with some of their Java-based Netweaver technology.  The class is called End-To-End Root Cause Analysis. 

Yeah, I know - but I think it really will do a lot for me.  Right now, when something wonky happens I don’t really know where to begin in diagnosing the problem and I am hopeful that this will fill in a lot of gaps for me on how the server works.

So I leave Sunday evening at 5:30pm and arrive in Dallas at 9pm.  So I should get to my room by … maybe 10-ish.  It is a five day course so I will be there until Friday evening.  My plane doesn’t get me back to Boston until 10pm on Friday.  I’m sure the little woman will be thrilled with that.  Last time I travelled I cut the trip short to come home a day early.  I wasn’t getting anything out of the trip and she was having a hard time; so I felt pretty bad about being gone.  I hope this trip goes better.

I always call home to talk to the kids to see how they’re doing.  I wind up trading emails with Liz during the day and talking with her on the phone for quite a while.  Last time I used the hotel phone and got KILLED on the bill.  I had a hard time explaining the mammoth bill to my boss.  He was a pretty easy-going guy and didn’t care much, but I felt bad about it.  I also brought the kids home some gifts from Texas.  Each girl got a stuffed Armadillo and each boy got a Texas baseball cap. 

I can’t bring myself to purchase any Dallas Cowboys merchandise.  If you have any suggestions on gifts for the kids, let me know.  I’m all ears.

This is where the classes will be held.  Its a fine facility, but nothing interesting about it.  I was there last year for a class on SAP Portals. 

I don’t know what I’m going to do in Dallas besides go to this class.  I’m not a big fan of Dallas.  That may just be because I don’t know the city.  I will be out near Addison.  Its a suburban “town” with lots of glass and steel buildings.  Lots of restaurants and strip malls.  I think there must be houses, too but I haven’t seen many.  That isn’t surprising - I don’t usually get out much on these things.  If you have any suggestions for things I can do in Dallas, let me know.

Every Easter we go to a mansion - its all closed up and everything.  Its nobody’s home - its an organization’s HQ and it has beautifully manicured grounds with lovely gardens.  Well, they become lovely later in the spring.  At the end of March everything is brown and kind of bland.  But every Easter we go there in the morning and Liz hides Easter eggs for the kids.  They run around and collect the eggs looking for the special one.  It used to be the one with a rare or special coin.  This year its been replaced by some kind of metal rabbit. Me?  I take the pictures or video of the whole event.  I have trouble getting interested in Easter.  The holiday does nothing for me, so I tag along and try not to drag anyone down.

We’re going to have some kind of special Easter dinner/lunch early in the day so I can make my plane.  I should take them out for a nice dinner instead of having Liz make something.  I wonder if its too late to make reservations.

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The weekend went very well.  On Saturday Chloe had two performance’s as a baker in the school play, The Emperor’s New Clothes.  She was stellar. I went on Saturday night and although I am a little biased, I think she did great.  The rest of the day was spent running errands and taking care of chores.  We had guests who arrived on Saturday and stayed through Sunday afternoon.  They’re family friends and its always great to see them.  They stayed for nearly 24 hours, but it wasn’t enough.

Grace turned six on Saturday and had her birthday party at The Kids Playground in Woburn, MA.  She had all of her favorite friends from school there and everyone had a good time - even her older brothers.  In fact, an hour before we needed to leave Ben got a call from his best friend asking if he could come over for the afternoon.  Ben didn’t even ask us if he could go - he knew he was expected to go to his sister’s party.  He had a good time, too.

The kids are all doing well at swimming.

I’m doing lousy at loosing weight.  I have the best of intentions but they don’t seem to turn in to the steely resolve that I need.  I’m getting frustrated about it.

Liz’s birthday was yesterday.  I had already done my bit by taking her to Bon Jovi and treating her to an excellent weekend.  I still think it was a little bit of a let-down for her.

Ben is doing great at school.  He had a difficult second quarter but has really turned things around and is getting all A’s now.  I’m very proud of him.

Work is fine. I didn’t get the promotion I wanted but at least the new guy they hired seems to be good and I think that I will like working for him.

Grace will spend this spring playing T-Ball for the Melrose National Little League Rockies.  What is kind of cool is that I already know about half the kids on the team and their parents.  Some because of previous t-ball experience, or from the elementary school or from cub scouts.  It was a real pleasure to see so many familiar names on the email.  Oh and I like them all, too.  Every April the little league holds a short parade to kick off the season.  There are fire trucks and the mayor and bagpipes.  All the teams walk from an elementary school to the nearby ball field.  Grace is excited about getting to walk in a parade.  I don’t think she remembers watching the other kids walk in the parade, though.  I also offered to help with coaching the team.  I helped out some in the past and had fun - I think this will be good too.

Ok, I have to get back to work.  Drop me a line, if you’re able.

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Study: 1 in 4 teen girls has an STD - The Boston Globe

[...]

The study’s authors analyzed data on 838 girls between ages 14 and 19 who participated in the 2003-04 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, an annual study that assesses a broad range of health issues. For the analysis, the teens were tested for human papillomavirus (HPV), chlamydia, trichomoniasis, and herpes. By far, the most common sexually transmitted disease was HPV. Of those infected, 15 percent had more than one STD.

For REAL?!  This is amazing.  ONE IN FOUR?!  wow.  And HALF of adolescent black girls.  Whoa.  One good piece of news is that the vaccine for the human papillomavirus is effective against cervical cancer as well as genital herpes.

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Urban Legends Reference Pages: Arizona Mountain Lion

Holy Cow!  This cat is for real.  Check out how BIG this thing is!  They said it was about 200lbs or 22olbs while most mountain lions are in the 80lbs to 150lbs range.

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You may have noticed in my previous post that on Saturday I changed a tire during our monsoon.  On Monday I noticed that on my own car there was a terrible vibration - NAY!  a veritable “shimmy” going on in my Sebring’s front-end.  So on Tuesday I worked form home and had my tire place take a look at the car. At 30mph the whole steering wheel would turn an inch to the right then an inch back to the left - really fast.  At 55mph+ it would vanish entirely.  I guess it was still going on, just so fast that the jiggling stopped.

The tread was separating from the radials underneath.  So I had the shop replace them and all was well.  I got a fair amount of work done at home and had a good day.

Ben brought home a mid-term progress report.  It was outstanding!  I was very proud of him.  I have been having to check his work every night because he went through a spate of not doing his homework.  But now that his homework is getting in he’s getting good grades on tests too!  Go figure.  So he’s really proud of himself and I am too.  If he keeps this up he’s going to get straight A’s for the quarter.

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Friday night I spent trying to memorize blackjack strategy in preparation for our trip to Mohegan Sun. 

On Saturday I drove Liz and the kids to swimming lessons.  While they were doing that I dropped the dogs off at the “puppy resort“.  I came back and picked them up only to discover that I had picked up a nail in a tire somewhere.  It was raining like CRAZY and Liz suggested we call triple-A.  I couldn’t do that.  I decided that it would only take me fifteen minutes to change the tire in the first place, so I could have the temporary donut on before their dumb tow-truck would even show up!  So my pride led me to change the tire.  Really it went fine - the only trouble was that Honda has been very clever in how they hide their spare tire so it took me a while to figure out how to break in to the spare tire.  Also one of the nuts on the tire had a special lock on it to prevent the tire from being stolen. Sadly it also prevents it from being changed.  I found the key after a few minutes of looking.

So the day didn’t start off well.  There were torrential downpours followed by a monsoon forecasted for that day.  Nonetheless we didn’t let it stand in our way.  I dropped the kids off at a family friend’s house then dropped our van off at the tire shop down the street.  That part went well.

Although visibility was terrible we made it in about two hours - traffic was light because of the aforementioned monsoon.

Mohegan Sun was beautiful.  I had no idea it would turn out to be so visually appealing.  I mean, technically all they really need to do is put in a bunch of tables in a warehouse and I bet they would make money hand-over-fist.  But they spent a lot of time, money and effort designing a beautiful atmosphere and I really enjoyed being there.  We had several good meals.  Initially I went looking for the blackjack table because I wanted to make some money.  The last time I played I did pretty well making about $400 on a $5 table.  I was very happy with that and was hoping for similar luck.

Unfortunately, I quickly saw that the tables were all set up for minimum bets of $25 a hand!  Sure, I like to gamble, but I don’t like to gamble that much.  Liz encouraged me to play anyway, just to set reasonable limits.  The problem is that if I was going to play with minimium bets of $25 I wouldn’t feel comfortable without a $500 bankroll.  Based on how busy the tables were there are a lot of people who like to play with that much money.  But I’m not one of them, I have to admit.  Maybe I can grow in to it someday, but not today.  For now, I’m too cheap.  I work too hard for my money to part with so much of it so frivolously.

So we walked around and enjoyed the sights.  We played some slot machines.  I hate slot machines.  They’re so dull.  I did ok on them, but I didn’t have any fun doing it.  From now on, assume that if I am playing blackjack its because someone else talked me in to it.

The concert was good, I guess.  Daughtry was alright.  Bon Jovi put on a good show.  There were lots of hot girls in the audience.  In fact, it was mostly girls.  Sure, there were guys there - but they were ALL with girls.  We got some t-shirts for the kids.  Liz had a great time and that’s what mattered.  I think I was good company.  Don’t get me wrong, the music didn’t offend me - it wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t anything I get excited about.  So I killed some time and “danced” with her in the aisle when she seemed to be in the mood.  I tried hard to be a good date for this event and I think I did a good job.  We finally got out of there around midnight.  I was so tired, but I was prepared to stay up and party for a while.  I was pretty relieved when Liz begged off saying she was very tired!  Whew!  So we crashed early.

We took a long time waking up and leaving the hotel on Sunday.  We had an uneventful drive back and Liz remarked when we got back on what a great time she had.  Several times.  So it was a success!

The kids came back from the friend’s house exhausted and reeking of wood smoke - like some kids who had spent the day outside near a wood-fire.  They went swimming at an indoor pool all day saturday and sunday morning.  It sounded like they had a great time.

So it was an eventful weekend and was certainly the highlight of the season.

Gracie’s birthday is coming up this weekend.  We’ve got some friends from Maine coming down for the occasion.  That’s a big deal for us.  So this weekend will also be busy, I think!  Also Chloe’s play will have two showings on Saturday.  I’ll see if I can find some reviewer’s notes for it!

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