Are You Going To San Francisco?

Why, yes I am.

I flew up to San Francisco this afternoon. I am here all the way through next Saturday morning for a conference. The conference is about nerdy stuff, so I won't bore you with it on this blog (it is called JavaOne if you are particularly interested).

My room in my hotel is on the 29th floor, which should make for some interesting times if we have an earthquake while I am here. The upside of being this high is that I can't hear much of the city noise (ever notice that downtown San Francisco is super noisy?) and I have a pretty good view.

Here is a shot of the Moscone Convention Center, where the conference is. This is actually from the window in my room, so I get to look down on the conference all week (in the physical sense, not just in the intellectual sense as I will be doing that anyway!).



This shot is from a window in the hallway on the 29th floor, if you look closely you can see AT&T Park, where the San Francisco Giants play baseball, oh and of course San Francisco Bay.



Unfortunately I started coming down with flu symptoms Friday, probably due to the lack of sleep last week preparing for the exam I took Friday afternoon. Today I still seem to be heading downhill in terms of symptoms. A long week ahead for sure.

insert witty fork pun here...

Tonight at dinner Callum decided he was tired of me feeding him and wanted to use the cutlery. As the grownup forks are a bit unwieldy for him (aka - he uses them as weapons) I decided to break out the cutlery set he received for his 1st birthday in Australia. As you can tell by the video the experiment went well. It went so well that he requested I cut up all his food so he could eat it with his new fork... toast included.

enjoy!

Part 1


Part 2

Party Time!....

Craig's just left for the north... San Francisco for his week at JavaOne... and Callum and I are left to our own devices. Let the party commence...

(and by 'party' I mean a few park visits, a lot of chasing, giggling, and constant cleaning...)

Certified : Totally Nerdy

I sat an exam this afternoon and I am happy to say I passed.

Officially, I now am a "Sun Certified Enterprise Architect for the Java Platform, Enterprise Edition 5" (I was previously certified on the 1.2 platform), which won't mean much to most who read this (and neither should it). But you can rest assured that it is a reasonably difficult certification to get and makes me officially the nerdiest of the nerds (if there was any doubt of course).

Personal high-five to me.

Where's Callum?

a short video of my favorite man...

Why are there no lights?

Birthday Present

Not surprisingly, what with both Jen and I working in the IT industry, Callum has been exposed to computers pretty much since he was born (I had my laptop in the recovery room at the hospital!).

This familiarity has given him a false sense of accomplishment and he thinks he knows how to use them. He demonstrates this by slapping the keyboard of any laptop he can reach at any possible opportunity.

So for his birthday yesterday, I decided to try and turn this somewhat destructive behavior into something a little more constructive and bought him his first video game. It is rated for 18 months and above and basically just requires the kid to hit random keys on a keyboard and it does crazy kooky stuff on the screen depending on what key he happens to hit.

So for your enjoyment, here is Callum's first sanctioned use of a computer (notice he has the sense to be using a Mac!).

18 Month B'Day

We celebrated Callum's 18 month birthday today. I think the 18 month birthday is a special one because it is the last "month" birthday. Next big birthday is 2-years old and after that you stop counting months.

Jen made an appropriate sign.



Callum had a treat for his birthday of a single cupcake with blue icing. He also decided to give a spoon a try to mark the occasion.

Bolognese Face

Moore noodle eatin' fun.

Subscribe!

I finally got around to making it easier for people to keep up to date with this blog.

You will notice a new section over on the right hand side called "Subscribe!". There are two links in there, one for subscribing to the blog via a Feed Reader (if you don't know what this is already, I would suggest skipping this option for now) and a 2nd link for subscribing via Email.

If you click the email link, you will go to a page where you can enter your email address - the page is on a site called FeedBurner, don't be alarmed, it is OK, your email address will be safe!

You will then get an email asking you to confirm that you really did want to subscribe. Just click on the link in the email, this will launch your browser and show you a confirmation page letting you know your subscription has been activated.

You will now get an email each time there is a new post on the blog.

Too easy!

Earthquake Virginity Status = Negative

We had an earthquake here about 25 minutes ago now (8:39pm Sunday night our time). I was downstairs and Jen had just taken Callum upstairs to put him to bed. It started with a low intensity vibration, nothing more than what a truck driving past might generate. Jen says she thought Callum was jumping up and down in his crib. Finally we got a decent jolt after about 5 seconds, enough to get Callum's attention. I heard him make a panicky noise. Jen apparently scooped him up pretty quick at that point. It was over pretty soon after that - the whole thing lasted less than 10 seconds.

This is the first one that Callum has noticed. I do recall another one last year sometime when it was just him and I at home and I was feeding him a bottle on the couch. He didn't even break his sucking rhythm for that one. So I think it is fair to say that he is no longer and Earthquake Virgin.

The USGS is reporting a preliminary magnitude of 5.0, but I will be surprised if it remains that high, based on what I felt and how close the epicenter was (about 2 miles due east of LAX). I would expect a 5.0 to generate a little more entertainment based on some of the 3s and 4s I have experienced since I have been here.

Can you say "irony"?

Yes, that is a guy who lost his arm, and yes he tattooed a shark on it.

A golf clap for you sir.

Cool Photo Of The Space Shuttle

The Space Shuttle Atlantis is currently on a mission to meet up with the Hubble Space Telescope and Lasik its lens (or something like that).

Anyway, today the shuttle passed between the earth and the Sun at about 9:17am our time. Below is a photo of this happening. You can see the shuttle and the telescope is just below it.



The shuttle was at an altitude of about 600km (375ml) and it was only in front of the Sun for 0.8 of a second!!!

Job well done to the photographer, who was in Florida and used a special telescope with a sun filter on it to get the photo.

Ice - Its Quite Cold Really

Callum has discovered the joys of having an ice dispenser in the door of our fridge. He is now tall enough to press the little lever that controls the filtered water and ice.

This also means he has discovered ice and unexpectedly it seems to be love at first sight. He doesn't mind picking it up, or at least chasing it around the kitchen floor as he tries to pick it up. He is even pretty happy to put it straight in his mouth.

This afternoon we actually witnessed him biting chunks off of a bigger cube and happily eating them. I think he gets this from my Mum (his Nandi). I know she is a big fan of eating ice,

Here is an action shot.

Purple People Eater! Oh, Wait ...

Shari sent this photo of Alison today.


So I open the email and for whatever reason the photo renders very slowly from the top down. So all I saw initially was Alison with what looked like a set of dinosaur/dragon spikes on her head. My initial reaction was, "Oh, Alison is wearing some crazy fancy dress monster costume".

Then the rest of the image finally rendered in and I saw the princess carriage at the bottom. Which of course means that the monster spikes on her head, are actually a princess crown. My bad. Bad uncle.

It is cool that she is standing though!

Jen Riding

Not sure if Jen intended to post these photos, but she hasn't yet, so I will. They are from one of her rides at the beach this week.

We live pretty close to the beach, but sometimes it is nice to just ride at the beach and not too and from the beach with traffic. This results in this awkward looking arrangement on the back of Jen's car:


The scenery can't be beat though:

m is for...

mother's day - the third...

this year the events were designed for relaxation. i started the day in bed and was greeted by little foot steps and a cute little hug to wake up. then a large breakfast/lunch (brunch anyone?) where i ate far too much bacon. some presents - a bike-o-meter, water bottle holder for my bike, and two cd's. then a lazy day lounging and playing with craig and callum. finally we ended the day with pizza and beer and a movie with a mostly happy ending. it was a good day.

today i took the bike out for my morning spin with the new bike-o-meter installed. i can tell you that the fastest i went today was 15 mph, and my average speed was around 9 mph. i can also tell you that my entire bike ride was 10.1 miles round trip. i love my fancy bike-o-meter. tomorrow i plan to try out the water bottle holder - i'll let you know how it goes.

Oh Facebook, Why Do You Mock Me?

So, I have been doing a lot of reading lately on the topic of Personal Branding. It's possible that a good Personal Brand is the key to seeing my career reach the next level, and it is also possible that it is a crock of shite. But for the moment I am going with the thought that in the worst case, it cannot hurt.

Anyway, that was a long way of getting to the point I was going to make, which is that I now have a Facebook account. Yes, yes I know I have publicly mocked Facebook in the past including on this very blog. So all of you who love to see me eat my words, please go ahead and bask in the glory that is now all yours ... times up.

Apparently a good Facebook profile is an essential element in a Personal Brand in today's social networking obsessed world. So if you are a Facebook type person, here is my profile, go friend'ing crazy..

And while we are at it, if you tweet, as in Twitter, then you can find me here.

Laundry Day M&M

A picture is really worth those famed 1000 words sometimes.



So yes, that is Callum in his red M&Ms onesie playing inside of a dirty laundry basket (thankfully empty) and wearing white tennis shoes to complete his outfit (the shoes were his idea).

This is how we spent today.

Early Mother's Day Present

Callum came home from daycare today with a present for his Mum/Mom for Mother's Day. Jen was suitably giddy.

Got Wood?

So today is Jen and my 5 Year Wedding Anniversary. Apparently the traditional gift for 5 years is Wood. So in honor of this we went to Disneyland today (OK, so I have no idea if there is really a link between Disneyland and Wood, but work with me here!).

Here is Jen with her Mickey Mouse Cookie.


And here I am with a Cigar Store Indian, proving once again that political in-correctness and racial stereotypes are alive and well in the Magic Kingdom.


We had lunch at the Blue Bayou, which is the restaurant you can see off to the right when you first start out on the Pirates of the Caribbean ride. It is basically impossible to get a seat in that restaurant if you just walk up on the day and try to get a table. We had the good sense to make reservations the day before, which was even surprising we could get reservations that close to the day. I think we got lucky because the summer tourist season has not yet kicked in and it was a weekday. Which also meant the lines for all the rides were less than 10 minutes each, so we whipped through them really quick. Which gave us time to sample a couple of adult beverages over in California Adventure and hit the rides over there as well.

Very tired and sore feet tonight though.

Who Needs Expensive Toys?

I was in training at work today for some software stuff that is neither interesting or relevant to this blog.

However, the upside of the training today was a catered lunch. And the lunch came delivered in what I am sure was intended to be a unique way to present an office lunch, but effectively equated to delivering lunches in individual shoe boxes. Knowing Callum's fascination with his wooden blocks to play with, I immediately saw an opportunity to give him a cheap new toy - giant blocks!

And this is what ensued when I got home.

Swine Flu - Patient Zero