Immediate Failure

Here we are 14 days into 2007 and I have already managed to fail at all of my resolutions. That may actually be a new personal record. However, I'm not going to let that discourage me. I simply pick up and re-initiate my 2007 resolutions. In fact, I'm even going to add a couple based on recent events.

6. Take a picture of my child every day. It doesn't have to necessarily be a good one every day, but I have neglected to capture much of the first 2.5 years of his life and he's growing faster by the minute it seems.

7. Spend more time with my family on average. 2006 was a crazy year both at home and work and it afforded me an opportunity to spend a little more time with Killian, but not with he and Bobbie both. The passing of her father has helped me to realize just how precious such time is.

Speaking of Bobbie, she has been trapped in Oklahoma for the past 3 days due to an ice storm. She spent the past week there trying to get her father's affairs in order and then, on the day she was to fly out, they got hit with a pretty significant winter storm and flights out have been cancelled for the past 3 days. We're hoping that she will get out of there tomorrow afternoon, but it's still iffy. In the meantime, I'm solo dad again, but thanks to grandparents and friends, it doesn't appear that I will have to miss a workday. Well, that is unless she doesn't make it home by Tuesday. If that's the case, I may have no other choice.

The biggest bummer is that I wanted for her to be home on Saturday for Killian's arrival back to Raleigh for the first time in two weeks to help raise her spirits. It has been a tough week on her and being trapped in an ice storm states away from her immediate family can't be helping much. On a somewhat humorous note to that end, Killian thinks that "Mommy is at work." It's been one heck of a shift! He is fine though. No doubt he will be thrilled to see her upon her return, but he has been reasonably distracted by his return to Raleigh and a visit with his grandmother today. Hopefully the babysitter visit tomorrow along with her 4 year-old son will help to keep him so. He has been in a really good mood and comparably easy to deal with over the past many weeks. He's at a really fun and cute stage right now. OK, enough rambling about the boy. I will throw in a picture from his most recent grandparental adventure in Virginia though seated atop his grandfather's Harley.

I also need to start capturing more video and audio of him. I'm going to miss the way he used to say things and not have anything to turn back to for listening pleasure. I still get a kick out of old recordings of myself as a kid made on reel-to-reel and cassette tapes.

Bob Burrus

Tonight I blog of solemn news which, though somewhat rare for me, I feel that the subject is worthy.

My father-in-law, Bob Burrus, passed away late last week.

He was a man that I did not know well, having met him in person only 3 times to my memory over the 10 years that my wife and I have been together (dating and married). Thus, I do not have true knowledge to tout his positives nor to attack his negatives (not that I would on such an occasion). However, he was the father of my wife and a grandfather of my child. My experiences with him did not prove in anyway unpleasant and it is my hope that he will be remembered fondly.

As stated, I have not the knowledge to compose a true obituary for the man and will leave it to those who know him better to do so. I can tell you only that he spent his career as I know it acting on stage and would, no doubt, have held countless interesting stories that would have been told in skilled fashion. I regret that neither I nor his grandson will have an opportunity to know him so. Additionally, as a stage actor, I don't know that many, if any, of his performances were captured in recorded form for us to enjoy. To my immediate knowledge, he only did one motion picture, Tully, which we own on DVD. I hope that this isn't the only "live" version of him that we have to show our son, but that remains to be seen.

In any case, I wish him well in whatever lies beyond this mortal existence and thank him for helping to produce the wonderful woman that I have the honor to call my wife.

Vista - Ultimate or no?

In keeping with 2007 tradition, I shall now proceed to post...

Over New Year's weekend, I decided to install Windows Vista Ultimate edition as my primary operating system at home. Ballsy, yes, but I had to do an OS dump/reinstall in any case so I figured I'd give Vista a go in order to get a look at it.

I won't bother posting all of the new features and changes from XP since they have been documented all over the place, but I will point out the things that stuck out most to me just diving in:

• They have dumped the "My". "My Documents" is now just "Documents". "My Computer" is now just "Computer".
• The power button icon formerly known as Shut Down is now the equivalent of Standby mode. In order to shut down or logoff, you now have to go one step deeper into menu structure.
• The Recycle Bin now defaults to the top left of the screen. Maybe it has always done that and I have habitually moved it to the bottom right. I can't really remember at the moment.
• There is a gadget bar on the right side of the screen that is blatantly the Widget bar from Mac OS X.
• Internet Explorer 7 installs with the OS - woohoo tabbed browsing. Welcome to Firefox's world.
• The start button is a round blue icon rather than the ovalish green one from XP.
• There is no longer an Add/Remove programs in the Control Panel. Its somewhat equivalent is now called Programs and Features.
• The Event Viewer in Computer Management is a little prettier. No more pop-up windows to view details.
• There is a cool new Reliability Monitor feature that I like.

Off the top, those are the only key ones that come to mind. I was pleasantly surprised that pretty much all of my hardware was recognized and picked up during installation with the exception of my SoundBlaster Audigy 2 sound card. There were no Vista drivers on Creative's website, so I guess that one will have to wait awhile. However, the onboard Realtek is working just fine, so iTunes is still cruising along. No problems with software compatibility yet either, with the exception of Symantec Antivirus. I had to download a beta version from their website which will expire in 30 days. I'm assuming that they'll have a retail release by then.

I do have one outstanding Vista issue, however. It won't boot without the DVD in the drive. I've read some online feedback on this and it appears to be a known issue where it will load the boot info to an incorrect drive on occasion. No simple way to fix it, so I'll live with it for now.

OK, off to bed. I head to Virginia tomorrow night for work, so I may not get around to another posting until I return on Saturday night or Sunday. I will try to post from there however.

2007 - Better than 2006?

Let's hope so!

For those that read my infrequent postings to date, you'll know that 2006 brought an unpleasantry to my immediate family that was most unwelcome - cancer in the form of melanoma for my wife. I don't think I actually blogged about it, but my grandmother also suffered a heart attack. So, both very sucky things, but much to our fortune, both victims pulled through with minimal changes to their lifestyles. I thank all of those who were along for the ride on these to give me support. So, to that end, I say "Good riddance, 2006!" It is a year I'd like not to repeat.

So, with those ugly items staining last year, I look forward to 2007 to be a better venture. Here's hoping that it brings health in prosperity to my family as well as those of my readers. That's not to say that there weren't bright spots in 2006. In fact, there certainly were. But, the negatives definitely outweighed the positives last year. Thank goodness for Killian to keep me entertained in the down times.

I haven't posted much of late because I claim to be busy and to not have time to post. Though it is true that I'm busy, it's more true that I don't take time to post than it is that I don't have time to post. I'm hoping to change that in 2007 as well as I intend to dedicate 30 minutes/day to piecing together a blog posting. It's not much and I may well not use the full 30 minutes or come up with anything that I really deem worthy of posting, but I am going to attempt to at least toss something up here each day that I have access to a computer to do so.

To that end, I present my five resolutions for 2007. Sadly, there are likely a few unaccomplished leftovers from 2006 in here, but that was last year...

1. Daily blog posting - I resolve to post at least something to the blog on any day that I have access, regardless of its readworthiness (yeah, creating words on the fly).
2. 180 - Goal for weight loss. I haven't weighed myself in a couple of months, but I'm sure that I'm bumping right up against if not directly on top of the 200 pound mark. I resolve to get down to 180 and, hopefully as a result, to get my blood pressure and cholesterol in check. I'm on blood pressure medication now, but I'd very much love to not be so anymore.
3. Pizza and fried foods reduction - I had initially intended to resolve to give up pizza and fried foods (ties right in with resolution #2), but I don't think that would be a realistic goal given my daily lunch opportunities. So, instead I resolve to eat fried foods or pizza at the most three times/week. If all goes well, I will do my best to keep that to 0-1 times/week.
4. Routine - I resolve to add some routine to the daily aspect of my life. Specifically to the organization and cleaning issues. I am going to introduce a daily/weekly chore plan (ie. vacuum every Saturday, clean home office/desk every Sunday, etc.). It will not be overbearing and the chores may be minimal to keep it realistic. However, in doing so, hopefully it will be a habit that I am able to upkeep.
5. Exercise - Yep, another one that ties into goal #2. I resolve to introduce an exercise regime (hey, that ties in to #4 sort of as well - sweet... synergy). It may also be fairly simple... DDR, a walk around the block nightly, treadmill, jumping rope... but no matter what it is it will definitely be much more than I have done in the past couple of years which amounts to just shy of absolutely nothing.

So, there you have it. Those are my initial goals for 2007. All achievable, I think and I'm even starting on the right foot for #1 by posting this very entry.

As I said at the beginning of this post, I sincerely hope that 2007 brings us all a better year and if you had a great 2006, then how about a fabulous 2007?

Happy new year to all!

Euro Trip Part 1

I recently had the opportunity to travel to the U.K., England specifically, for work. The work, explicitly, was done in Ripon, North Yorkshire, England while we stayed at a hotel in Boroughbridge, North Yorkshire. Sadly, I can comment very little from a tourist perspective as I spent the bulk of the time either working or attempting to adjust to the time change. I was there for more-or-less 4 full days. I arrived on a Sunday morning at 9am their time and departed on a Thursday morning at 11am their time. I actually flew into Manchester, England and we drove from there to Boroughbridge.

Things that I learned/experienced as a result:

• Adjusting to a 5-hour time change forward is difficult. It took me a full 3 days to start to feel fairly in sync. Adjusting to the 5-hour change back in also tough, but not quite as much.
• As U.S. residents, we are currently comparably poor in England. At the time of my travel, my U.S. dollar was worth the equivalent of about 45 cents to me there.
• Traditional food there is very bland. I sampled quite a few different items and was overall unimpressed. I'm sure that they have delicious dishes, but I stuck to some of the standards. One surprise side dish was "mushed" peas. Why anyone would take an only moderately tasty vegetable to start with and then make it almost inedible my mashing it to a pulp is beyond me unless it is for the sake of feeding it to an infant. Also present at many meals was black pudding. I steered well clear of that having received fair warning before embarking.
• In the rural town in which we stayed, *nothing* is open beyond 10pm. While attempting to adjust to the time change, I ended up having to nap the first few days after working and by the time I was waking, all was closed. Any form of shopping was unavailable after about 5:30pm as all of the local shops closed at that time. Very bizarre. We didn't really get to spend anytime in actual Ripon or Manchester, but I'm sure that one or the other would have offered at least a little wider time frame for touristy things.
• I did get to visit at least one local pub which was kind of quaint and neat. There were 10 of us travelling together and we pretty much filled the place when we walked in.
• You must order "still" water if you want a standard glass of water. Otherwise, you get carbonated water. Yuck.
• If you wish ice in your beverage, you must specify. Otherwise, prepare for room temperature.
• For the most part, all of the English folk that I encountered were particularly courteous, even to include airport personnel. Go figure.
• A Best Western hotel there does not necessarily mirror that of your typical Best Western stay here. We stayed at two of them, one in Boroughbridge and one in Manchester, and they were both especially old buildings with a Best Western name stamped on the sign out front. My primary room had no form of air conditioning and heating was done with a radiator. In addition, I had bunk beds in addition to my "king sized" bed. The king sized bed was technically two doubles pushed together. As a bonus, one of them was obviously more used than the other, creating a healthy physical divider in the center. Oh yeah, that made for comfortable sleeping. The sides of the mattresses were freaky stiff giving you the pleasure of feeling like you are sleeping in a wooden box. Also, the English are apparently freakishly short as the beds weren't of any length that I am used to. Not like midget short, but definitely shorter than average.
• Driving on the other side of the car and road is bizarre. I was only the passenger throughout, but it was a very strange experience to be on that side of the car without a steering wheel. Almost every time that we went to get into the car, the front seat crew went to the wrong side by habit. Also, roundabouts make for some daredevil driving adventures. That could be a posting all to itself sometime.
• Possibly even more strange than driving on the wrong side of the road was being a pedestrian at an intersection and having to figure out which way to look for what oncoming traffic. It sounds really simple, but it is surreal to experience.
• I still don't like flying. Throw in the fact that it took us 7 hours to get there and 8 hours to get back and I *really* don't like flying for that long. If I have to do it over again, I am willing to pay whatever the difference between coach and business or first class to fly. Wow, those coach seats are pretty frickin' small for that duration. We flew on an Airbus (3 seats on each side with 4 across the middle for a total of 10 across).They served a meal in-flight, but it was very shortly after we took off. Whod've thunk it? I, of course, ate at the airport prior to departure so I wasn't anywhere close to hungry when they served the meal. Fortunately, they served drinks a couple of times and a snack a few hours later so I didn't go to starving partway through the flight.
• There is a duty-free shop *on* the plane. They literally walked around and started selling stuff during the flight. This is something else that I didn't expect. Literally anything from Toblerone chocolate bars to iPod docking stations. You didn't just pay for them from a catalog for pickup later, they literally had the items on the flight to sell to you on the spot. This occurred both on the way to and from the U.K.. Don't think I've mentioned it yet, but we flew USair.

OK, enough for this round. Until Part 2...