Sleestaks!

Any guesses on what these are? How old are you? If you're younger than 30 or so you probably don't know what they are.

But I do.

No release date yet, but this looks like a cool movie, especially if you remember the series!

I also remember calling someone a 'sleestak' and having them look at me really strangely!

Got a Wii, lost to Deb

I've been looking at a Wii for a while now and today just about every store around here had them. 'Minimum of 15' read the ads.

So, at 10:45 Meghan and I went to Best Buy and waited on line. Yes, I waited on line for a game. Not at midnight, I'm not that much of a geek, but we did wait on line.

We got a Wii and and extra controller. On the big TV it looks really good.

Deb's first time playing it she crushed me at bowling. But I crushed her in tennis. Meghan gave me a run for my money in baseball and bowling. No one would play golf with me though. Of course I play golf on the Wii like I do in real life, so it wasn't something to brag about.

Courtney wasn't home when we got it, so we waited for her to detect the new cables and little white box. Once she did she jumped all over Deb.

Christopher just sits there and watches the screen or us. He hasn't tried to play yet, but I'll give him a week or so. The biggest challenge is to not hit him with the controllers!

So, anyone recommend any good first person shooters? Quake/Doom etc. type?

Syracuse beats UMASS in Lacrosse - no tourney chance this year

For all the grief I gave John and Joe about UMASS beating Syracuse in basketball, they were unusually quite last night.

See Syracuse kicked UMASS' a** yesterday in lacrosse at the dome. See here and here.

Well, hopefully this means Joe and I will be watching Syracuse on Memorial Day.

Touch a truck 2008

This year Christopher was old enough to go to the local 'touch a truck' event so we all went. I think Courtney had more fun than Christopher!

This is a yearly event that a number of the towns in our area hold in the spring. The name is pretty much what you get: they bring out all kinds of trucks and let the kids climb on them.

This year there was no fire truck for some reason, but a police car, several front loaders, a cement truck, a real John Deere tractor and several other trucks from the parks and recreation group in Kennesaw.

Some more pictures on the Flick site.

Doing my best to help the economy

This was an expensive week.

First the oven finally died. So we now own a nice 'double oven'.

Then the A/C downstairs crapped out. Fortunately only the downstairs was bad instead of both systems. And the furnaces are fine. I guess 11 years on 'builder class' units was pretty good. Many of my neighbors had theirs go out 2 years ago and last summer.

Being in Atlanta it is already in the 80's so the AC is going to be a requirement in a few days so it was replaced yesterday.

Joys of home ownership.

Spring Break - Boys vs. Girls

Tomorrow is the last day of Spring break for the girls, then a grueling 7 weeks of school before summer break.

This year we decided to stay in the south and do something local. I took the second half of the week off so we could do something as a family. Except the 10 and 13 year olds don't want to do something the 2 year old would like ...

So, we split up.

Deb took Meghan and Courtney to Huntsville, AL to the Air and Space museum there. About 3 hour drive from our house, the arrived mid-morning Thursday and spent most of the day there. Unfortunately, we don't have any good pictures. The museum part was fun the said, but they really liked the rides. Courtney had never been to an IMAX movie so they did that as well. After seeing the Blue Angles she was so excited she couldn't stop talking about it.

They spent the night at a hotel with an indoor/outdoor pool and had a blast. Friday they went to see the Science Museum, but that was kind of boring for Meghan since it was targeted for a 10 and under crowd.

Being in the south, in the spring, they had some bad weather. Namely tornado warnings and thunderstorms. They spent 2 hours in a parking garage waiting for it to clear. They made it home safe and sound.

Christopher and I? Well, we had a boys weekend. We went to the park to play on the new slides, climbing walls and to pick up sticks. Christopher found a storm drain and it took all my powers of distraction to get him away from it. He kept trying to put all the sticks he found down it.

We then TRIED to take a nap, but being party guys were too excited to. In the afternoon we wandered around the neighborhood, played in the yard and played some ball. After a shower to wash off all the damn pollen we went to dinner.

I guess a guy taking a 2 year old to a restaurant by himself was a big deal. I've done it many times, but we kept getting looks and people smiling at us.

Thursday night was typical Christopher. Asleep at 8, up at 2, awake until 3:15 or so, then back up at 6.

Friday was pretty calm, went to the mall to look at a few things, ate lunch then came home. He loves elevators. One story: I stopped to get him some water at one of those cookie places and he started pointing at the cookies going 'more, more'. I got him a cookie then we 'wrestled' with the water bottle. He was giggling and laughing so much people were making comments as they walked by.

Spent most of the afternoon watching the weather channel website to tell Deb where the storms where they were hiding from.

One thought: the Man in the Yellow Hat really is an idiot. I've had enough Curious George to last me a while!

I've been meme'd

Laryssa, who I went to college with has decided to 'tag' me with one of these blogosphere 'meme's. Here is her post defining the rules.

Five things I was doing 10 years ago
1. getting used to having a second child. Courtney would have been 3 months old
2. getting used to having a toddler who asks 'why' all the time (Meghan would have been 3+)
3. experiencing our first spring break with kids (I think it was this time of year)
4. figuring out what to do with the mud pit that was my backyard (we moved in July 97 and nothing grew the first summer/fall)
5. working in an interesting job with engineers from many different cultures, learning how to navigate that

Five things on my 'honey do' - err - 'to do' list today
1. take Courtney to softball practice - done, but one one else showed up so we had the batting cages to ourselves for 30 minutes
2. mow the lawn - not done, rained too much yesterday and this morning
3. find where to put all the damn A/V cables in my office - partially done ;-)
4. led Deb take a nap - going on now
5. paint the trim - not going to happen this spring break. Decided to do some family stuff instead (post later)


Five snacks I enjoy
1. vanilla frosting straight from the can
2. Little Debbie Nutty Bars
3. apples
4. Little Debbie Swiss Cake Rolls
5. Beer and cake

Five things I would do if I were a billionaire (who says I'm not?)
1. Run a nitro funny car for a season (or 10)
2. Build a cobra kit car
3. Definitely some charity donations and work. With unlimited funds volunteering could be fun
4. Visit the top 5 attractions in the top 100 cities in the world. Need to think about how to define 'top 100 cities'
5. Go to every Giants football game. Anywhere. (Did I mention they won the Super Bowl?)

Five of my bad habits
1. Curse a little bit (or a lot actually ...)
2. spend too much time on the computer
3. work too much
4. slightly impatient at times ;-)
5. I'm sure Deb or others can add to this ;-)

Five places I've lived
- See here

Five jobs I've had
1. waiting tables at a family owned Italian restaurant - best food I've ever had. Learned there is more to Italian than Pizza and Chicken parm
2. Washing dishes/dietary aide in a nursing home - most fun I had at a job. Lots of other teenagers worked there at the same time
3. software developer for factory automation and food safety systems - kind of sobering what goes on in the food supply chain, but also what steps are being taken to protect it
4. software developer for warehouse management system - first unfortunate introduction to politics
5. VP engineering and now CTO for an Internet software company - learned more about building scalable systems then I could have expected.

Small town sports

This past weekend we had opening day for Courtney's softball league. This is the first year at this park, having played for the 2 1/2 previous years at a County league park.

While our zip is 'Acworth, GA', we are actually in unincorporated Cobb County, so we had to sign her up to play in the Kennesaw league.

The previous seasons, Courtney and Meghan were on one of 8 or 10 teams in their age brackets. Often we'd see a team twice in a year. It was definitely a well structured, almost business like league.

Kennesaw is very different. Very small town feel. During the games you can hear the trains going through downtown. Courtney has 3 teams total in her age group. They also do things a little different. Last fall Courtney's team had to forfeit a game because we had the coach's 8 year old daughter playing 10 and under so we would have enough kids to play. Someone knew she wasn't 10 and tattled on us.

This park has a different view. If you're down a kid (or three) you can take anyone from the age level below you. So I watched a couple of 10 and under girls playing 12 and under on Saturday. I like that view. It is more 'let the kids play' instead of 'win at any cost'. I also don't hear the annoying 'fall ball is for learning, spring ball is for winning' at this park either.

Anyway, on Saturday they had a small parade of the teams, each team made a banner and the banner contest was judged by the mayor and several city council members. Kind of reminds me of some of the baseball games we played at Rogers park when I was a kid. Definitely more small town/community than the bigger park.

While I was a little concerned by only having 3 teams at first, I think I like this a lot better.

Pictures coming soon, when I remember to bring the camera to a game.