We received Beatles Rock Band as a Christmas gift. I must admit that it is truly fun for the whole family. I have never seen RJ concentrate so much. He even had his tongue hanging out of his mouth.
Christmas is about the celebration of the birth of out Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. How do we celebrate that? We worship and we gather family and friends. We make memories.
My most memorable Christmas to date was five years ago. We just brought our youngest son home from the hospital.
However you celebrate, make it special. You never know if it may be someone’s most memorable Christmas.
The light of the Christmas star to you
The warmth of home and hearth to you
The cheer and good will of friends to you
The hope of a childlike heart to you
The joy of a thousand angels to you
The love of the Son and God’s peace to you
Merry Christmas!
The light of the Christmas star to you
The warmth of home and hearth to you
The cheer and good will of friends to you
The hope of a childlike heart to you
The joy of a thousand angels to you
The love of the Son and God’s peace to you
The warmth of home and hearth to you
The cheer and good will of friends to you
The hope of a childlike heart to you
The joy of a thousand angels to you
The love of the Son and God’s peace to you
I decided to change this site over to the WordPress beta releases. I have had a local copy of the nightly builds running for a while, but got tired on syncing the content back and forth. I do daily backups, so I am not terribly worried about losing anything.
So, if you are poking around and notice something a little wonky, please use the contact me link at the top of the page and let me know, or just leave a comment.
It was not very long ago that I realized that my boys had never seen the Wizard of Oz. I also didn’t realize how much of my every day vernacular this movie had affected.
Chasing the boys around the house saying, “I’ll get you, my pretty” had much less meaning without knowledge of the Wicked Witch of the West.
When the boys spill, and some of it gets on me and I say, “I’m meelllllting” didn’t have nearly the same effect.
The movie has been on television a lot lately, so I recorded it one evening, hoping that they boys would sit through it, if only once. It was bit of struggle, but I did manage to convince them to watch the movie. To my surprise, they have watched it every day this week. It warms my heart to see my boys enjoying something that I enjoyed when I was a child.
My little boy is five today. 
Why can’t kids just sit still for a picture instead of making faces. He is such a little goofball sometimes.
SQL Server Deep Dives
I finally received my copy of SQL Server Deep Dives in the mail today. I have waited for this book for several weeks, and am already through the first chapter. With what little I have read thus far, I really like this book. This makes hard copy book number three that I have read this year. (I know that does not sound like very much, but I have read countless eBooks this year. And I really mean countless … ummm … because I can’t tell you how many.)
If this is something that you think might interest you, consider buying a copy. The author royalties go to support War Child International.
Nikon D90
I have wanted a digital SLR camera since the day the Nikon D40 came out. Today I finally gave in and bought one … the Nikon D90.
Our previous camera only took clear pictures when the flash was on, and almost nothing turned out in low light. Over the years it has gone from a couple of seconds to save to nearly thirty seconds for each picture. The color was distorted and the focus left a bit to be desired.
It was the children’s Christmas program this morning at church and our current camera was just not cutting it. This meant that I missed a lot of good moments waiting for the camera to be ready and almost capturing them and realizing the picture was out of focus. Today was the last straw.
I have been a photography buff for years, and definitely think that it is about time to pick up a hobby that I have to be out and about to enjoy.
The boys really enjoyed the first snowfall of year that lasted longer than a couple of hours, even though it wasn’t that much. They had just as much playing in the slush when it melted.
I use Google Reader almost on a daily basis. I wake up in the morning, get a cup of coffee and read the news. To me, it is the newspaper of the new millennium. I fluctuate between 100 – 200 subscriptions at any given time. I go through over 400+ articles on daily basis. I thoroughly read well over half of those. I have my subscriptions tagged with “Must Read”, “Should Read”, “Would Like to Read” and “Will Read if I get Around to it.” (These are not the actual tag names, but hopefully you get the picture.)
I an average day, I will visit Google Reader five or six times, mostly to clear out the articles that I am not terribly interested in reading. What ends up happening most of the time when I am in these moods is I Star the articles I am going to read more thoroughly later. This leads to a plethora of Starred articles by the end of the week.
Saturday morning is my time to go through those articles in-depth. (These are mostly professional development type articles, so thoroughly reading and comprehending most if not all aspects of them is time-consuming.) At the end of the week, I read most of the articles, but some are left behind. They are left, not because they are unimportant, but simply for lack of time. My goal for the remainder of 2009 is to “clear” my Google Reader Starred Items.
I have spent almost four hours this morning going through my Starred Items, and have cleared over 25% of the backlog. With a wife and kids and Christmas and work and … well, you get the picture. This is my great Google Reader purge, and I am adamant about consuming every piece of information possible.
