Link from Joe I need to check out tonight. http://www.apple.com/server/macosx/features/podcasts.html

http://www.rubyonrails.com/screencasts

Things are going good. The 4 projects I was on before are all in different states of QA and UAT and I am on a new project now. The weekend was great, there was a block party type thing on Saturday that I walked around for a while, went to Korea Town for some good Korean food, saw the movie Hancock, and even did some star watching from the roof on Saturday night, it was a nice clear night.

Changed my mind on my car, I am now going to bring the car up to NYC, I think it would be good to have it here. Not sure when I will make it home to get the car, but soon.

I had a great weekend, I went out for a going away party for work on Friday and then ended up going to New Jersey. I had an amazing time, went to a bar right on the river and the New York skyline looks amazing from the Jersey side.

I am going to have to add a username/password back to the message section. I have no clue why, but for some reason I am getting spammed without having it on there. I figured my site got such low usage that it would be below the spam radar. I was wrong. I will have to do that this week sometime. I am trying to remove the span messages, but if you see something that looks funky, don't click. I will fix up soon.

I went out for a little bit last night, had a good time. It was one of the QA guy's last day so we went and had a couple drinks with him after work. It is also restaurant week in Manhattan, so I went to a fancy restaurant called Anthos with some friends. It was good, tad bit on the expensive side, even though it was restaurant week. I had mussels and calamari as an appetizer, then some milk fed chicken for main course and some chocolate thing for desert.

http://www.anthosnyc.com/

I am back to regular work routine in NYC. The trip home was good, I got to see family and also did the annual canoe trip.

The water was high this year so there was less paddling and got to the islands extremely early this year, the trip flew by. We had 8 this year, only 7 on the first day, had to pick up Coy on Saturday morning. All three Betts brothers were there and all 3 are engaged, they should just have one super big wedding. Stevie B and his buddy Nick and one of Little Betts's friends made up the 8.

No crazy stories, Coy yelled at me for firewalking, thought my leg was on fire, little Betts had the saying for the year, "That's bad ass" and no one liked me talking about Stargate SG-1. No one tipped the canoe completely but one guy took a pludge on Sunday morning trying to get in his canoe, the current one fast and he was a step off of getting in.

and the canoe trip begins...

I am up in Conneaut Lake staying with Jen and Schep for a few days and working up here. I have a product going to production tonight, so have to be online and ready to fix something if it doesn't go smooth. I am hoping for smooth.

I got to see a bunch of people yesterday that I haven't seen in a while (haven't been home in around 6 months). I saw mom and dad, of course, plus Grandma (just turned 91 few days ago) and aunt Sandy. Then stopped and saw an old high school buddy, Chris Claypoole, that I haven't see in a while. He is doing good, married and 2 little boy. I then stopped and saw Dan and Sandy (family friends from growing up and football coach), I hadn't seen either of them in probably a good 5 years if not longer.

I worked from Jen and Schep's new house today. The place is as beautiful as I thought it would be, it is an amazing house sitting right on Conneaut Lake.

Swamped at work, not sure I can pull everything off, I am running into some problems. There are things that were either not done correctly or just not caught on previous releases that are now coming up and taking me off guard. The next production deadline is Monday and that will be a tough one for me to make, plus there are other projects that I can't get behind in too. Long days ahead, but no complaints, will make all the dates one way or another.

I got a message from Aunt Sandy this morning on Yahoo Messenger, as I was shutting down the computer, I read the first sentence and then it was gone and I don't have it set to save the history.

Weekend was semi productive. I worked on work work Sunday, I had a product going to production, so had to be on and run tests, plus I had defects in the other ones to work on. Saturday I didn't do a whole lot, twisted my hair, out too late on Friday. Good night friday, coworkers birthday party. Bad part is missing a full day of productivity, but need to get out sometimes or I would be a complete hermit.

I am home, got quite a bit done, but not enough, need another good day tomorrow. The one project is going to go live on Sunday, will have to work a few hours there, but it was close to not making the date, so that's a good thing that its going.

I guess they are filming a movie right in front of my house, they have been out filming for the last 3 nights and I think they remodeled a building two down just for the movie. I think it is called "I hate Valentine's day." http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0762105/

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Slammed at work today, going to be a long night, hopefully can be out of here by 10ish.

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Talked to Mom and Dad today, both were at the house and both sounded pretty good. I will be up there in a week to visit.

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Yesterday was a decent day on productivity, but need to step it up a little bit today. I need to knock of all the referral line issues, which actually stem from a few releases ago, and the 3 Service Tracking bugs.

I just got tickets back to Pittsburgh for July 19th - July 28th. I will probably work from the Pittsburgh house Monday and maybe Tuesday. Then drive up north and work from somewhere up until Thursday. Then the canoe trip is that Friday - Sunday, get back early sunday afternoon, so relax for rest of day and then see if someone can run me to the airport on Monday. I want to leave my car up North, doubtful it will sell, but better chance up there at Yorkies than in Pittsburgh street.

Hey Dawn, what days are you guys going to be there? I need to get out once in a while, maybe come over one evening, play some poker. Let me know, I think I caught night number 2 last time, maybe I need to do #1 this year :)

Weekend was good, I was playing with website code both days. I am adding in the goals section, but making some changes and keeping semi private for a bit.

I started watching series one of Stargate SG-1. It has the old macGyver as the main character and is pretty good show so far. I have seen a few here and there through out the years but wanted to start at beginning. I didn't realize that it started out a ShowTime series.

I worked a pretty long day today, 8:30 AM - 8:00 PM with hour break, so 10.5 for the day, plus watched Rosetta Stone movies on subway to and from work.

Its a good day. I have a pretty good ability to both find people and find information about people with the web. I have had friends call before to do some research and normally can come up with some good stuff, however, I have tried for years to locate Crystal and I had no luck at all, I could not find her anywhere on the web. I know she got married and didn't have the marriage name to work with. However, she just found me (I am easy, kenyork.com not too hard), but that is good thing, i haven't heard from her in probably a good 6 or 7 years.

Work is OK, went to lunch with manager, that can be trouble :)

Things are going good, I am finally flying back in to work mode, mind is on target. Juggling 4 different enhancements right now, 1 in QA, 1 going to QA tomorrow, and working on 2 in development. Trying to get at least 10 hour days in and doing 1.5 hour of Vietnamese on subway using the Rosetta Stone videos I made last weekend.

I had a good weekend, got quite a bit done. I have 40 mins of Rosetta Stone video set up for my iPhone so I can review in the morning and nights. I have plenty of new lessons to add but 40 mins is good for now.

I also got 7 new photo albums up from Vietnam trip. I have 2 left, trying to get those all up so that I can get some NYC photos up.

Vietnam - Cat ba - Island about 2 hours east of Hanoi, close to china, great rock formations.

Vietnam - Ta Cu - The laying Buddha in the mountains.

Vietnam - Can Tho - Small town we stayed one night in, did a boat tour with the floating market.

Vietnam - Mui Ne - Resort town, we did a bike tour of some sand dunes, stayed 3 beautiful nights in a bungaloo.

Vietnam - Cu Chi tunnels - Tunnels about an hour south of Saigon.

Vietnam - Phan Thiet - Small town close to Mui Ne, very local with great food.

Vietnam - Phu Quoc - Beautiful island off the west coast, about a 3 hour Ferry ride. Heading towards being fully blown tourist island, but still isn't there yet. Very peaceful place.

Sample Video of Rosetta Stone Training for iPhone - Just a 40 sec sample of what I did all weekend, I have 45 mins worth of video.

I went out for a couple drinks after work with some coworkers, good times, nothing too crazy. My new thing is rolling my own cigs, since the price is so high in NYC and I should quit anyways. So now I roll one up at work and looks like I am smoking a joint in front of the office. I get a few looks.

They are giving me a 4th project at work, so not going to be able to make it out of town this weekend. Need to get everything caught up with the other 3 before I start on a 4th on Monday. Sorry Mom & Dawn.

Lakers just got destroyed by the Celtics in game 6, wasn't even a game in the 2nd half. I added a new photo section while watching it. Just a busy day at work, but good, got alot done. Need another couple of those and things will all be done on time.

Hue Pictures

Work will be busy this week, I got a couple different things to do. I worked til 7 tonight, which is an ok start to the week, but will need to put in a little more tomorrow. I am having sushi right now below my apartment, I love by sushi restaurant, they are always hooking me up with a bunch of stuff. Nothing much other than work will be happening, if I get enough done by Friday I might to Boston on Chinatown bus.

The Flip Cup tournament was a good time yesterday, we didn't come close to winning, but still had fun. We won our first match and then got killed in the second one and we were done for the day. But we stayed until the 3 hour open bar was up and just played for fun. I stayed in Manhattan and went to some coworkers house after and hung out. I played Guiter Hero for the first time and finally made it back home around 1 AM.

I finally got new code up on the site and I want to start using it again, just been slackin'. I still need to fix some things, but it is a little bit better and easier to read. I got two more Vietnamese photo sections up and have some pics of Dawn and family.

Saigon Pictures

Nha Trang Pictures

I started playing with youtube some and making some playlists. I found some good Ani DiFranco videos, 1 from 95 and one from recent. I also found out she has a new album and I just snagged it off the internet, new music always makes me happy. I have a couple more Vietnam movies to make and more photos to get online as well.

http://youtube.com/view_play_list?p=57CBA6A0542E2F8F

I am playing with making a movie for Rosetta Stone Vietnamese. I have been listening to the lessons for the last 3 weeks on the train again, around 45 mins each way. But I have been slackin and not doing the lessons at night. So I am going to make a movie where I use both the pictures and audio from RS so that I can have both while on train each day. Should be helpful. I am using Sony Vegas Movie Studio to make the movies and a program called SnagIt to grab all the screenshots from RS. It takes a little time, but will be worth it.

I have been moved to three different spots at work since I have been back. They are trying to get teams more organized and I had to go to a temp spot for 2 weeks while others moved out of my perm spot. So this guy I sit by now was talking about getting in this Flip Cup tournament at a bar and needed 2 more people for the roster. So I am now replaying my college days for an afternoon and playing some flip cup.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flippy_cup

I am going to try to upload some new code to the site tonight and once I do, I will start writing things some more. I had no ambition to write anything until I got the code changed and it took me a little longer than anticipated (always the case).

hopefully tonight.

Soon mom soon.  (probably start again on Monday, hopefully)

Enjoy the day.

Vietnam Video # 3 - Cao Ðài - http://youtube.com/watch?v=JkMaW_G2gGQ

Info on Cao Ðài - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cao_Dai

Getting back in to a work mode, taking a while to get fully adjusted.