This is goodbye

Well, I am officially shutting down the blog. I have been keeping in touch with a lot more people via Facebook, and just haven't had the time or inclination to keep the blog going.

I'll be removing the blog completely in the next few days.

Yes, I am still alive

Well needless to say, I have not been updating weekly. The "other website" (which I won't name to maintain some vestige of anonymity here) simply consumes most of my free time these days. Which is a happy thing for the most part, I am really enjoying it and starting to have some measure of success.

My civil case on Jury duty went quickly, only two days. The experience was not too bad. Everyone on the jury was pretty civil and level-headed, so deliberation did not take long.

It's spring here, which means a yo-yo of up and down temperatures; shorts one day and a jacket the next. We even had some snow flurries yesterday. I expect it will level out in the next few weeks. I hope so, because I am tired of catching a cold every two weeks. And I am ready to drive the Mini around with the top down!

And the duty goes on...

One thing for sure you never see on shows like Law and Order is that jury duty means a lot of sitting around and doing nothing. I have to say that the jury office in my city isn't bad--free coffee, free wi-fi and lots of magazines. But it gets a little tedious when you don't know how long you'll be waiting.

I did get selected for a criminal trial last week. The first day was lots of questioning of the jurors to determine who would make up the final panel--several hours for that part alone. I ended up being selected.

Then on the second day we waited in the deliberation room until noon, went to lunch, came back, and found out that the guy had agreed to a plea bargain (which took all morning to complete). The case was going to be pretty brutal from what I can tell (I won't put details here) so I can't say I am sorry I missed being on that particular jury.

Then today I got put on a civil case...

Duty Calls

For the first time ever, I've been called for jury duty. I have no idea how long it will go or what kind of trial it is. I'll find out more first thing Monday morning.

I'll bet we don't get a cool glass-walled courtroom like on CSI Miami.

Fun with Weather

We seem to have gotten through all of the ice and snow storms relatively unscathed. It snows an inch here and everyone panics and raids the supermarket. Several times last week I went into work only to discover I was the only person from my group that had come in.

G hits her big three-oh birthday this week, so I am still figuring out what to get her... if anyone in the family has a great 30th birthday gift suggestion, let me know! We're likely doing a big birthday bash in a week or two when we've had some time to prepare.

Mini Me

I wanted to wait for a nice sunny day to snap some pictures of the new car, but apparently this isn't going to happen until spring gets here:





The mini handles pretty good on the ice and snow.

Bringing in the New Year

Hello everyone!

My New Year's resolution for the year? Update this blog at least once per week. As any of you who know me personally know, my energy has been devoted the the "other blog" (not listed here for anonymity). It's now in pretty good order.

G and I had a great Christmas and New Year's Eve. We spent Christmas with her family this year in Tennessee. My best present was G surprised me with a new Mini Cooper! Actual pictures to follow in a later post.


(not my Mini, but close!)

We're back

At long last, here are pictures of our recent vacation: First to Colorado Springs and then Las Vegas (you can just click the "View Now" button in the upper right hand of each album. You don't have to join snapfish). Both trips were a lot of fun. We got to see G's Grandfather on his 92nd birthday, and meet a lot of here family that I'd never met before. Also made a trip up Pike's Peak, which the photos don't do justice to--very beautiful.

The Vegas trip was also fun, although VERY hot (112 degrees during the day). We stayed at the Planet Hollywood in the "Good Will Hunting" room, which had props from the movie in cases. Cirque del Soleil's "O" was of course fantastic, although we were not allowed to take pictures.

Trip-O-Rama

G and I dashed down to Dickson, Tennessee for her friend's engagement party over the weekend. It was a quick trip but fun. We are now gearing up for a none-too-soon week of vacation. First we are going to Colorado for her Grandfather's 92nd birthday on the 4th of July. It's pretty amazing to think what he has seen in his life--when he was born (1916) World War I was still going on, and people were driving model-T's. I'll get to meet lots of G's family for the first time.

Then we are off to Vegas! Neither of us have been before so we are very excited. It's pretty amazing how inexpensive the hotels are--we are staying at a 4-star hotel that will cost us less per night than the 2-start motel we stayed at in Dickson. The highlight of the trip will be going to see Cirque de Soleil's "O".

I'll make sure to post lots of pictures when we get back.

Spore Critters

As promised, here are my favorite creatures (so far) I've made in Spore:

One thing I find really cool is that the data for the creature is actually stored in the picture file. For the technically minded, it's evidently encoded into the alpha channel of the PNG file. So all you need to load it into the Creature Creator is the picture itself. From the web site:

How do you see one of these Creatures in your Spore Creature Creator? Right Click on the thumbnail image of the creature. Save the image to your desktop. Drag the saved image from your desktop into the Spore Creature Creator. Voila! The Creature is in your game.

I promise to move on to something else on the next post :-).

Addicted to Spore

Well, I think I'm officially addicted to the new Spore Creature Creator. It's a simple program that lets you design and test out your own alien life forms. Despite having no real game play to speak of, I can spend hours tinkering around and making new critters with this thing. It's very simple to use and automatically figures out the animations and sounds for whatever you make. I splurged and spent the $10 to get the full version (comes with more creature parts), but the free trial is great in and of itself. I'll post up my latest creations in the next few days.

The full game comes out in September that lets you take a creature from a single-celled organism all the way up through civilization and space flight (the original title for the game was "SimEverything"). Looks pretty cool. More information here.

Everybody's Doing It

Well, not to be left out by my sisters, here is my blog wordle:

A little respite

Well, last weekend was the first in a month that we didn't have relatives in town: G's Dad and Brother three weeks ago, my parents two weeks ago, G's Mom, two sisters and niece a week ago. All three visits were great, but it was nice to have a little time to ourselves this weekend.

We are slowly but surely getting the condo furnished (thanks in large part to the nearby wonderfulness of Ikea). We are planning on doing Thanksgiving at our place this year, so any relatives reading this who want to come, please give us a heads up!

Now that's love

In addition to my Kindle, G also gave me an Iron Man action figure for my birthday. Proof positive that I married the right woman.

Iron Man wields his
mighty dry-erase marker

Happy Birthday to Me

The big birthday present this year: a Kindle book reader. I've had it for about a week now.

I've read a lot of reviews of the Kindle, are here is my take: I love this thing and use it every day. I think Amazon knew their target audience here--it is definitely designed for book geeks instead of techno geeks (I can say this being a proud member of both groups). The e-ink screen really does read like paper, and you can do things like bookmarks and notes very easily. In addition to the books you can buy, there are a ton of free public-domain books (see Feedbooks.com) and I have been catching up on old H.G.Wells and Jules Verne novels that I've never gotten around to reading before.

The free web surfing is limited but handy, especially for checking email when I am out-and-about. Don't expect this thing to be an iPhone but it's more than adequate for simple internet access.

There are a few minor design issues--it's easy to accidentally flip pages until you get used to the buttons, for instance--but overall I am extremely happy with it.