Saturday, December 17, 2005

Jingle Bells Hidden Message

This is excellent. Merry Christmas to all.

BBB

Thursday, December 15, 2005

The One

This is Sam. He & I flew out on a couple of hours notice to Milwaukee to work with a customer. I've been up all night... he's gonna take over around 7am. Fun stuff. Anyway, Shyam is damn good developer and a hell of a nice guy. He was given an award recently & they superimposed a picture of him on Neo's body. Very funny. He's known as THE ONE.

The One

Is it 7am yet?

BBB

Monday, December 12, 2005

Animated GIF

A little animated GIF of my son can be found here. And another one here.

Friday, December 02, 2005

Tom Yum Goong

This is a bit hard to see, but there were some really nice shrimp in there. Not used to having the heads on, but it turned out to be one of the best bowls ever. Guidelive has a review of Jasmine Thai.

Tom Yum Goong

Here's a picture of mama.

Little Cousins

My brother-in-law & family recently visited us for Thanksgiving. We really had fun with them & Noah got quite attached to his only cousin. His wife sent me these pics.

Here's a shot of them in his boat.

noah-and-cousin

And one of me taking a picture of the both of them with big old Maggie headless.

me-taking-pic

Have a nice weekend.

BBB

Thursday, December 01, 2005

Halloween 2005

We had a halloween party again this year. It was attended mostly by our friends with kids. Our neighbor was overheard suggesting to some of our other friends that they sneak out and get away from the kids. That so friggin' pisses me off. We won't be inviting her to any more parties. I'm 38 years old & have had plenty of booze-em-up Halloween parties. I still made the killer Chatham Artillery punch, a fresh keg of Shiner Bock, and plenty of other booze. What were they expecting, a bunch of naked people???

Anyhow, on to the pics. Thanks for bearing with me.

In the middle of town, where buildings stand tall, There lives a little man called Fireman Small...

Fireman Small

Noah and his Nana Davis still in his jacket.

Nana and Noah Halloween 2005

In his Steeler overalls given to us by "Ponytail Scott", the #1 Steeler fan. Hugging on a girl as usual.

Hugs

And finally pajamas and sombrero... I have one of him pushing his lawn mower also in the sombrero, but I didn't think that was PC.

Astonished

A few of the playroom. That old TV was the wife's when I met her in college many moons ago.

Kids

As far as lack of posts, I'm just out of it right now. I'll be back.

Thursday, October 27, 2005

I Still Love the Astros

Of course the series didn't turn out as I had hoped, but they did have a damn fine year. All the games this series were close & Backe's performance last night was stellar. He put them in a position to win the game & they just couldn't get it done. Pinch hitting for Backe with Bagwell was not the best move in my opinion. Bagwell grounded out & then the next inning Lidge gave up a run & that was that. Backe wanted to win that game all by himself & I think he might have surprised Garner & gotten on base somehow. I hate to say it, but Bags is old & just can't catch up to those high fastballs any more. Maybe he will be better next year, but I'm sure it will be with another team.

Morgan Ensberg. I hated this guy for a long time but then I was a convert towards the end of the season. He was hitting for power and doing it in the clutch with men on base. Then the playoffs started & he went to shit. We were calling him fancy boy during his bleached hair phase... I feel like calling him much worse right now.

It's a long way back, but maybe they can keep it together for one more season and make a run again next year. They won't give up & neither will the Houston fans. I mean, the 1st NLCS ever is a fine achievement. I know that's from the book "Things Losers Say", but it is still true. I got a lot of enjoyment stomping on the baby braves & making pujols cry.

BBB

Friday, October 21, 2005

The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated

Just busy.

Took a trip to North Carolina to visit my parents. This is Noah on the porch of my grandmother's house, known to everyone as "Mama Dell". I think this pic looks great huge... I like it uncropped so I can see the porch I fell off 100 times as a kid.

Noah on Mama Dell's porch

A gift from a great aunt that lasted about 5 minutes before he broke it.

Sax Noah

These cars from the same aunt didn't last much longer. The wheels fell off after a day. Cheap stuff I guess... no biggie. I think this pic is nice because of the natural lighting. I held this still w/o a tripod in natural light in the house. I had to shoot 15 of them before I got one in focus. Lesson... shoot often.

Cars

Breakfast at the "City Restaurant" in Franklin, NC. Excellent food and service. Note the Steelers overalls. A very good friend of mine gave these to Noah. I figured the Oilers have been dead long enough so I let him wear 'em. I still had to be very careful not to burn my native Houston skin.

Steeler

We took a few walks up my parent's road. (cellphone pic)

Road Home

And played at the Wesley's Park, also in Franklin, NC. (cellphone pic)

A Picture Share!

Chicken Biscuit before the ride home. (cellphone pic)

Biscuit

This was Noah's 2nd plane trip. (last year we went to Vegas) No problems with him... I was whining more than him. It was just us two on this trip... very tiring, but very fun! This is on the plane on the way back. He loved the window seat.

Noah on Plane

I leave you with this... GO ASTROS!!!

Saturday, September 10, 2005

Cyborg Name


Biomechanical Intelligent Lifeform Limited to Yearly Battle, Assassination and Immediate Nullification


from Iridesce Sent.

Thursday, September 08, 2005

Office

For some reason I was recently moved from my cube of the last 4 years to an office. I liked my cube. It was a double & had a desktop going all the way down one side. Made it perfect for a temporary lab. This is more of a typical layout, so I will have to make some modifications. One of those desks is gonna have to go. These things look like they are ancient, so I may do a midnight requisition for a replacement.

office

Lots of stuff still to unpack & gotta get some stuff on the walls. This office has bad juju so I plan to sacrifice a temp worker next week and again on Halloween. That's after I bash their head in with the hefty red swingline. Thank god tomorrow is Friday.

BBB

Sunday, September 04, 2005

Purple

Purple Thistle

Friday, September 02, 2005

Looks like the Arizona Desert to Me

This mars panorama is awesome.

Get Off Astros!!!

What a game!!!!

Tuesday, August 30, 2005

August Heat

Our last Roughrider set of tickets was last week. We took Noah & my brother and had a great time, even with the heat. We left in the 10th inning of the 1st game. (turned out to be a double-header)

Tom and Noah In front of Ikea

Since it was the golden child's 2nd birthday, we bought all kinds of junk. He really liked this big hand.

DSC_6545

And his 1st cotton candy!

DSC_6539

Last week we also took some treats to daycare for his birthday as well. Here's the dynamic duo having some monkey bars. (frozen chocolate covered bananas)

Noah & Max Eating Monkey Bars

I think they liked 'em!

DSC_6482

I leave you with a scowl!!!

Leave Me Alone!!!

BBB

Wednesday, August 24, 2005

PC Problem Solved

I have been experiencing a recurring slowdown on my PC for about a year. Basically it would run fine for a while but then would just start dragging & was only usable for limited browsing. No photo editing was possible. It always seemed to happen following high memory or disk usage. I did all the virus scanning & spyware checking possible, ran process explorer & file monitor to look for something eating up cpu. Nothing found... reinstalled xp home... took the stupid thing to CompuRussia and even had them look at it. Then I bought & installed xp professional and it seemed to go away for a while. But it was just a dream now I see... it was all just temperature & timing. You see... summer was at an end when I bought XP professional.

Note: I had never taken a PC in for repair until that time. I cut my teeth in computers maintaining PCs, but I figured maybe it was just something new. They didn't figure out anything except how to charge me for excess labor. Turns out it was a new problem to me...

At lunch today I was explaining the issue to a couple of coworkers for the 10th time and Ben said it had to be either a driver or hardware related. (nice narrowing of the field, ha) I decided to assume he was right & started looking at the hardware. When I got home today, the PC was slow. I went to "My Computer" & clicked "View system information" to head to the device manager to review what was installed & see if anything was showing a conflict or trouble. Before I clicked off the main tab, I noticed that the reported CPU speed was only 836 Mhz!!! No wonder it was running slower. The CPU had been stepped down from its regular 1.67 Ghz speed.

Wonder what would cause a CPU to slow down like that? All I could come up with was temperature. I did some googling for "cpu temperature slowdown" and came up with this article. My cpu seems to fit that Athlon XP 1.33Ghz+ category & max out at 90°C. Recommendations are for 20°C less than the max temp, or 70°C.

To test my theory I rebooted my PC & verified it was at 1.67Ghz. I downloaded speedfan and measured the temp. Temp 2 was at 68°C, which was close enough to 70°C to keep me looking. I started up Norton (a past trigger of the problem) and also started opening images in Nikon Editor to suck up memory. To make things worse I started modifying the images rather randomly which always causes Nikon Editor problems... seems to keep a big ass undo buffer or something. As soon as it spiked to 70°C, the system began to crawl. It took a while, but I got the system properties open again & I was back at 836 Mhz.

I've since taken the cover off my PC & will probably add another fan somewhere eventually.

I hope this problem stays solved.

BBB

Monday, August 22, 2005

Chocolate Lover

The golden child partied with some chocolate last night. Lee Ann made frozen chocolate covered bananas for daycare treats this Wednesday for his birthday. (party this weekend) It's normal for her to make treats, but for this birthday so far she has made monkey-theme invitations & decorations, did a practice run of kids crafts for the party, and scheduled a maid for the day before the party. This is a new phase of Martha Stewart fever.

Chocolate Lover

The monkey invitations were based on this resized PDF version from the MS party planner. I won't tell you how much time I spent getting this the exact size she wanted. :)

BBB

Wednesday, August 17, 2005

Garland Beer

Garland just started selling beer & wine in grocery and convenience stores. My 1st trip to Kroger in a while left me a happy man yesterday. Being from Houston, this dry-county/city crap threw me for a loop when I 1st moved here. This beer-o-plenty will take some getting used to.

Garland Beer

The missing 12-pack of Shiner Bock is in my cart just out of view. It's already being recycled so I will have to make another visit today.

BBB

Monday, August 15, 2005

Dexham Prairie

Recently I read that one of the last prairie remnants around the Rowlett area is scheduled for destruction starting in September 2005. This past Saturday & Sunday I rose with the sun & drove the 10 or so minutes to see for myself what we are losing. The prairie is around 75 acres with an additional 25 acres of marsh & flooded hardwoods. I didn't make it to the marsh this time, but hope to before it is destroyed. A view just after sun up.

Dexham Prairie

and another...

Dexham Prairie

The area seems to be used mainly for biking right now and the damage seemed to be concentrated around the trails as expected.

There were many different plants thriving...

Variety

and some wildflowers in bloom.

Yellow Flower

I think this is some kind of thistle.

Thistle

And lots of birds... identifications coming later.

Bird

Look Down

In Motion

and more flowers...

Purple

Yellow

More Yellow

It is sad that it is going to be gone so soon. By the time my son is old enough to understand this, the subdivision will be built out & animals long gone. All in the name of progress... right???

Friday, August 05, 2005

Rest In Peace Hunter Kelly

Poor little guy. I hate the Bills, but this is still sad.

Hunter Kelly 2/14/97 - 8/05/2005

I am from Houston. If you don't know why I hate the Bills, well... let's just say they have made me cry before.

BBB

Saturday, July 30, 2005

Out There

Wife is taking son to see grandma & both are getting a haircut. After about 11am, I am on my own for a few hours. I'm thinking trip to Trinity Hall by train for a few Guinness might be in order.

It was a nice morning here in North Texas if you got up to enjoy it. I was out at 6:30am taking a few pictures. Unfortunately I didn't prepare my equipment due to one too many bourbons last night. So after about 10 shots I had a dead battery. And no AAs with me for the spare pack. Amateur mistake. Oh well, I'll wash my shame away with a few Guinness. Sláinte!.

Thursday, July 28, 2005

Hawk

Update: Jack Hill from the Preservation Society for Spring Creek Forest says it's a immature Red-Tailed Hawk.

Went to take some pictures at Spring Creek Forest last Sunday morning. Saw a few things, but really didn't get any decent pics. But then on the way home I drove down one of the backstreets that is surrounded on both sides by old farmland/prairie. I had the top down on the Mustang and was really just cruising for a few minutes before heading home. All of a sudden I heard a loud shriek & saw this hawk on top of a telephone pole.

sitting-hawk

I watched him for a long time and even moved a couple of times to follow him. I was hoping to get some shots of a kill, but no luck. This has to be a regular spot for him, so I'm gonna check it out. Looks to be a pretty good size fellow. This is a bit out of focus, but I like it anyway.

hawk

I took tons of pics, but most were out of focus or just too far away. He moved on me a couple of times.

DSC_5852

Tomorrow is Friday... enjoy it and the weekend.

BBB

Friday, July 22, 2005

Sunrise

I admit this isn't today's sunrise. It was taken on May 24, 2005 outside my office in Plano. The EDS building is just on my left... if you know the area. I do not work at EDS. Get up in the morning and check out the sunrise. It has never looked so beautiful with the pollution level being so high.

sunrise

The Astros won again last night which has me in a good mood. Doing thai at Jasmine today as usual. Got a busy weekend and the in-laws are coming over tonight. That's not a bad thing though... they are bringing dinner with them.

Friday, July 15, 2005

St. Swithin's Day and a JavaOne Followup

'St Swithin’s Day, if it does rain
Full forty days, it will remain
St Swithin’s Day, if it be fair
For forty days, t'will rain no more.'

courtesy Earth Calendar.

Kind of the Groundhog Day equivalent.


I'm so glad it's Friday. We are planning a trip to Trinity Hall tomorrow around lunchtime. I haven't been since St. Patrick's Day and I'm really looking forward to it. They pour the best Guinness in town. Stop in & say hi.

Trinity Hall



I wanted to post a few more pics from JavaOne. Here is another of the rest areas, this one filled with bean bags. There were people behind the screen watching the movie in reverse.

Rest Area with Movie

This was another JavaOne attendee who was staying in the same hotel.

JavaOne Drinking Buddy

The best thing about this hotel was it's bar btw. He got really drunk & hit on a lesbian one night. She let him buy her 2 drinks before she told him. He responded with "My parents would kill me if they knew I bought a woman, who isn't even a woman a drink!". The majority of the people around this bar were gay & didn't appreciate it. I just thought it was funny... I thought she might kick his ass.

There were plenty of gaming areas. Arcades games...

JavaOne Games

... and PC games ...

JavaOne Games

... and even Console games ...

JavaOne Games

The sessions were better. I really liked Bil Lewis' talk on Omniscient Debugging. He is a college professor and very dramatic.

Here he is listening for an answer he posed to the audience.

Bil Lewis

The crowd responded with the correct answer and he's basking in the glory of it. I laughed my ass off.

Bil Lewis

There is a recurring talk every year in the "Programming Puzzler" theme by Joshua Bloch and Neal Gafter formerly of Sun... now of Google. It's hilarious and informative at the same time. Here's Josh explaining something.

Joshua Bloch

And Neal doing some slide work.

Neal Gafter

I spent a lot of time in the Alumni lounge with it's free drinks, snacks, wifi, workstations, etc.

Alumni Lounge

Here's James Gosling & Scott McNealy hugging after Gosling was given an award.

Hugs and Kisses

They also give out awards for best projects and the Brazilian Healthcare system that centralizes all medical records, etc. using Java won. They showed an excellent video. She was cheered more than anyone else.

Brazilian Developer

Bill Shannon, a very smart person & Sun Engineer. I've been in a conference call with him once, but didn't want to bother him. He was reading a book everytime I saw him.

Bill Shannon

From the bus window on the way back to the hotel.

Fire Engine

This is Duke, the java mascot, being helped down the stage stairs. Ha!

Duke

The 10 Year Birthday Celebration for Java.

Celebrating 10 Years of Java

Scott with a Dukulele. Think ukulele but shaped like Duke.

Scott with a Dukulele

The inevitable demo crash.

Compile Error!!!

This is Jonathan Schwartz, Sun's President and Chief Operating Officer.

Jonathan Schwartz

A shot of the 4K x 3K screen used for the General Sessions. Size according to Gosling.

JavaOne Stage

And a shot of Scott McNealy, James Gosling, and John Gage.

McNealy, Gosling, and Gage

It was a Geekfest to the Nth degree and I enjoyed it. Next year it's May 15 - 18 and I hope to take the family for some adventures.

Have a good weekend.

BBB