Today is my father’s birthday. Yes, I realize mine was Monday. To make it even weirder, my brother Ted’s birthday was yesterday. Let’s just say this week was hard on my mother when Ted and I were kids.
Happy Birthday Dad! He’s on the road today, so he won’t see it until after his birthday is officially over, but it’s the thought that counts, right?
No, I’m not referring to this hilarious line from Clerks. It’s my birthday today – can you guess which one?
(note, there’s no real point to this post, except to have “I’m 37!?!” in the title. Let’s just say I’m a big Kevin Smith fan. In case you haven’t see Clerks, most lines from that movie are NSFW. )
Update: David Ing’s son broke his arm over the weekend. That led David to write “If you are away from your family a lot then my advice would be to fix that as quickly as you can.” +1 on that sentiment. I went from field architect evangelist (travel requirement ~50%) to HQ architect evangelist (travel requirement ~10%) when Patrick was born. Of course in MSIT, I almost never travel, something my whole family appreciates. Something to be thankful for as I turn a year older.
After a week’s vacation, I’m back in the office. I might have left with an empty inbox and newsreader, but I returned to nearly 300 emails and over 500 news items. Actually, 300 emails for a week is actually really good – most of them are in my “low priority” folder which means they are internal mailing list emails rather than things I actually have to deal with.
Major thanks to Dale for keeping the lights on around here while I was gone. With my renewed commitment to blogging this year, I’d rather not see DevHawk “go dark” for a week while I get some R&R. If you liked what Dale had to say, go subscribe to his blog. I hope he keeps up with his daily posts, now that he’s no longer on the hook around here.
Anyway, since I have little idea what’s going on in the technical blogosphere, this is a vacation wrapup instead. Normal Morning Coffee returns tomorrow.
We spent a week in Southern California. Two days with my brother-in-law in Santa Barbara, two days at Disneyland and two days with my uncles in Palm Springs (with travel days between). We had a blast, but that’s a lot of driving. Next vacation, we’re going somewhere we don’t know anybody and staying put the entire time.
My brother-in-law has three kids, including a son a few months older than Patrick and a daughter a few months younger than Riley. I’ve long said I would never move back to Cali, but seeing them all play together made me think it might be worth it. I don’t have any cousins (my father was an only child and neither of my mother’s two siblings had kids) so I didn’t realize what a big deal it is. I think Patrick misses his cousin Jack more than he misses Disneyland.
When I lived in LA, I used to have a season pass to Disneyland. But seeing it thru my kids’ eyes made it brand new again. Our two days in “The Happiest Place on Earth” were a blast, though in retrospect we should have taken a day to rest and hang out at the pool between the two days.
Riley’s favorite ride was Pirates of the Caribbean (which she calls “Yo ho ho”). My friend Brooke told Jules that little kids “natural reaction” is to hold on tight during the drops, but Riley put her little hands up and shouted “Wee!” They recently added some elements from the movies (Capt. Jack Sparrow and Davy Jones) to the ride. My wife and I were worried they were going to ruin it, but the changes were fairly small and subtle and we liked them.
Patrick’s favorite ride was Buzz Lightyear Astro Blasters but the Jedi Training Academy was a close second. His Jedi training was my favorite moment at Disneyland. He got to train with a lightsaber and fight Darth Maul. Here’s a video clip of my young Padawan:
The big problem with Jedi Training Academy is that they only pick a limited number of “younglings” every show. Patrick didn’t get picked the first time we went, and frankly I pushed him out there the second time without him officially getting picked. You could conceivably waste an entire day at Disneyland attending all six Training Academy shows and never get picked. That sucks.
Biggest disappointment of Disneyland: Patrick being 1″ too short for Star Tours. I was bummed.
Disney’s California Adventure is a nice adjunct to Disneyland, but as a stand alone park it pretty much blows, though Jules and I did enjoy the Tower of Terror.
Disneyland seems to becoming Disney-Pixar Land. Pixar movies are the basis for several of the newer rides, including the new Finding Nemo ride opening this summer. There was an article in the Disneyland Pixar Evolution in the airplane magazine so I’m not the only one who’s noticed.
After two days in Disneyland, I expected Palm Springs to be a let down. But instead it was a nice casual cool down after two hectic days in the Magic Kingdom. Plus it was great to see my Uncles, who we hadn’t seen since last summer when my brother got married.
We flew home Saturday so we could have a casual Sunday before heading back to work and school today. We watched Phantom Menace last night, though the kids are still a bit young for it. We decided on Episode I instead of the original Star Wars because it has a little boy (i.e. like Patrick) and a fight with Darth Maul (i.e. like Patrick). But it doesn’t hold a candle to the original trilogy.
It was a little too cold to make a snowman at my house, so we headed over to the big hill near our house for a little sledding. The hill was pretty trashed – we weren’t the first ones to down the hill – but we all had a fun time nonetheless.
Here’s Mommy and Riley, riding together:
And here’s Patrick, riding by himself like a big boy:
Riley calls Patrick “Bubba” because she can’t say “brother”.
And since I promised my teammate Maureen a snowman photo, here’s the last one we built:
On top of all this snow play and sledding, I got my STS working with WCS. More on that tomorrow.
My wife was poking around on YouTube and found two videos she wanted to show me. The first was a music video from a band called okgo where they dance on treadmills. Interesting for about 60 seconds. Unfortunately, the video is three minutes long. Still, it is currently #8 on YouTube’s Most Watched All Time list. The other was a much funnier video called Stick Magnetic Ribbons on Your SUV (sung to the tune of Tie a Yellow Ribbon ‘Round the Old Oak Tree). The song is by the Asylum Street Spankers and the video was produced by Devil’s Night Productions.
Among Devil’s Night’s other work is an almost unknown movie called Matters of Consequence that stared Morty Coyle. Morty fronts a band called All Day Sucker, which was born out of the ashes of a band called THE iMPOSTERS. Back when I lived in LA, I used to go see THE iMPOSTERS pretty much whenever they played. This must have been the second half of 1996, when I was dealing with a massively broken heart. They had a regular gig every week, though I forget the name of the place. But I was there, pretty much every week. I used to carry Morty around the club on my shoulders during the harmonica solo of Rational Anthem. Wow, was that really 10 years ago?
Anyway, you check out a few songs from of All Day Sucker on their MySpace page. Some of the songs – Heavy Weather and Rub It In – date back to the iMPOSTERS days. Their album is available from CD Baby and from Zune, Rhapsody and iTunes. (No direct link for artists on Zune?) Check them out.
It’s amazing how small the world seems when you run across old friends online like this. Especially when the recent wind storm and power outage two weeks ago served as such a rude reminder of just how big the world really is, regardless of how it seems.