Paul's Down-Home Page

Right now, I’m in an airport. Yes, yes, I know, quelle surprise, right? This time, I’m in Atlanta en route to Alexandria to see my mother, grandmother, uncles, and cousins. I’m really looking forward to the visit, even if it means being at ATL at 0600 Sunday morning.

Acuitus was kind enough to give us all two weeks of extra vacation at year’s end, thus my visit. When I return home, I’ll spend Christmas with the boys, then we’re heading north to visit friends in Seattle for a few days.

After that, it’s back to the grindstone. I expect to be really busy for the next few weeks, mostly with activities that don’t involve being near a computer (except, of course, for work). I also need to upgrade the blogging software I use, and I’m not sure how long that’s going to take.

Bottom line: don’t expect to see much from me here until early February or so.

Until then: Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Sorry for the lack of updates. I have been dealing with a wide variety of challenges, including a very busy work schedule and all the normal holiday uproar that comes this time each year. Right now it’s around 6am and I am blogging while running two loads of laundry (one in the washer, one in the dryer) and patching a mail server at work. That should tell you something.

• Remember, kiddies, when you’re installing an Exchange rollup, always run it elevated. If you don’t, it won’t work, and it won’t give you a meaningful error message. (Not that I’m bitter.)
• The more I use Windows Phone 7, the better I like it, but it’s still not quite a 100% replacement for everything I need my mobile device to do.
• I am super excited about going to Alexandria this weekend to see my family! It won’t hurt that the Saints will be playing on TV while I’m there, either. Plus, there’s a good prospect for me to do a little home improvement while I’m down there.
• Boy Scout rechartering is about as big a paperwork hassle as I’ve ever seen. I’ll be so glad when it’s finally done.
• We had a fantastic office party yesterday, with a hilarious “white elephant” gift exchange. I got a lovely set of Star Trek glasses that the boys have immediately adopted. (They are very like, but not exactly, like these.)
• My travel year will end with just over 75,000 MQMs on Delta, making me Platinum Medallion again for next year. I already have my first trip of 2011 planned– Redmond (again) for Microsoft Certified Master Exchange rotation 7 (or 8? I lose track.
• I have three solid non-fiction book ideas: two technical, one not. However, I only have time to write one of them. Decisions, decisions.
• We just dropped an update to LDS Tools that features a ton of work that I did. There are two more updates right around the corner, too– one that’s already in the pipeline and another that should drop in early January. If you’re LDS and have an iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch, you’d probably like this app.
• David starts driving school next week. Yikes!

• The boys and I have had a grand time playing with the Kinect, even though we only have the included Kinect Adventures game. I think the real potential of the sensor is yet untapped but it will be fun to see how different game developers make use of it.
• Speaking of Kinect: at Microsoft’s Lync launch yesterday they demonstrated using an Xbox with Kinect for video conferencing with a Windows PC running the Lync client. I can’t wait to get this operational, especially if it means we can put an Xbox in the control room in our Pensacola facility.
• And speaking of Pensacola: I continue to be impressed by the young sailors I get to teach. Your Navy is in good hands.
• And speaking of Pensacola: I continue to be impressed by the young sailors I get to teach. Your Navy is in good hands.
• And speaking of hands: I am not a fan of the TSA’s new groping procedures, nor their porn-o-scope scanners. I think this guy had the right idea, as does this one. It interests me to no end that flights entering the US– you know, like the ones the underwear and shoe bombers took– don’t have these screenings. Shouldn’t we be focusing on the most likely threat sources?
• And speaking of focus: I saw the Samsung Focus at the Pensacola AT&T store, and I quite liked it. I am waiting for a review unit to give it a more in-depth test, but it certainly looks promising so far.
• And speaking of so far: I am so far from being ready to run my Thanksgiving-day race that it’s not even funny. I seem to have developed a hacking cough over the last two days that has kept me off the streets; I’m hoping it gets better soon.
• And, finally, speaking of soon: thanks to all who wished me a happy birthday! I won’t soon forget!

Happy Halloween to all my readers!

I had the boys this weekend, and I have been promising to take them to Great America. For those of you who are not from Northern California, you may not be familiar with great America it’s the local equivalent of Six Flags, or at least that’s what it’s supposed to be. I had read some fairly negative online reviews (at Yelp, where nearly everything seems to be negative) and I wasn’t sure what to expect. However, a promise is a promise, and yesterday it was time to deliver. We bought our tickets online directly from the Great America website. This is substantially cheaper than buying them at the park.

I was a bit worried about the weather. The forecast called for highs in the mid 60s with a 60% chance of rain. Sure enough, it was raining in Morgan Hill when we left, but the further north we drove, the fewer clouds we saw. By the time we arrived in Santa Clara, it wasn’t exactly warm, but it also wasn’t raining.

We parked (an additional $12) and headed for the main gate. It would be an exaggeration to say that the crowds were sparse; there were no crowds! We breezed through the entry line, but only after passing through a metal detector. It turns out that pocket knives of any size are not allowed in the park, so I had to check my Swiss Army knife at the gate for later pickup. That done, we entered the park. It quickly became evident that the park was ready for Halloween; there were decorations-skeletons, zombies, and all manner of bloody and or gross stuff-everywhere. Many of the rides and activities were decorated in a Halloween motif, too, but none of it was scary. The scary stuff only happens at night, during a separate “haunt” event that is intended for teens and adults.

Matt doesn’t really like thrill rides, so we took turns riding on various things. There is a good-sized carousel-two levels, in fact-that we enjoyed riding, then we went on to the Vortex roller coaster. I’d rate it a 6/10; it was fun, but it buffets your head back and forth between the unyielding bars of the protective cage, so I ended up feeling as though I had just finished sparring class. The only other standout ride was Flight Deck, a fantastic hanging coaster with two loops, several twists, and a naval aviation motif. Matt and I also had fun driving the gas powered go carts, in which he drove his own kart and caused zero accidents, unlike his old man, who was rear ended by an even older man who wasn’t paying attention to where he was driving.

We closed out the park by riding the cable car, which turned out to be surprisingly enjoyable considering that neither David nor Matt are big fans of heights. It was neat to be able to look down and see some of the logistical parts of the park that are normally invisible to ground dwellers. Speaking of logistics; one of the common complaints I saw on yelp was that the park was dirty, rides were broken, and employees were at best apathetic and at worst actively hostile. It’s true that great America is not Disney World. Having said that, I didn’t notice any major disrepair; everything was clean, and the few employees we interacted with were pleasant enough. I’d go back, although it wouldn’t be my first choice to go in the summer, when it’s bound to be crowded and noisy.

I was not about to pay amusement park prices for what I knew would be terrible food. Instead, I took the boys to The Counter at Santana Row. The Counter in Palo Alto is one of my favorite places to eat, and the boys took to it like I thought they probably would. It was a rather late lunch, but we enjoyed it all the more for the delay. Then we went home to get ready for the church chili cookoff. This is apparently a widespread Mormon tradition; we had one each year in Ohio, and a friend of mine was just telling me about one in their ward in Texas. The one here actually combined three wards, so it wsa much larger than I was expecting, with many more varieties of chili than I could hope to sample. There were probably close to 75 cars set up for “trunk-or-treat” so the boys got a ton of loot. We finished up the night with a CHiPs marathon. OK, two episodes isn’t exactly a marathon, but it feels that way sometimes.

After church yesterday, we came home and broke our fast with various leftovers. David and I alternated between watching the Saints-Steelers game and game 4 of the World Series, then Matt and Tom got their costumes on and we went out to brave the elements– a cool, clear evening with throngs of kids wandering around Arlene’s neighborhood. Meanwhile, David stayed at my house to hand out candy. We got the better end of the deal; he said only 4-5 groups of kids came to my door, while we hit a large number of houses across town. Then we came back and watched the end of both games, flipping back and forth whenever things got dull or we hit a commercial.

Today I extended my weekend by staying home to take Tom to the pediatrician; Arlene was sick all weekend, and Tom’s cough had deepened. Turns out he had bronchitis, but nothing a Z-pack won’t cure. (And thank you, Wal-Mart, for selling me one for $6. Much appreciated!)

A quick technology note: I shot some video of Matt at the go-kart track with my iPhone 4. Sadly, I forgot that it wants to shoot video in landscape mode, so I was holding it upright. The video came out well, but when I used iMovie to rotate it 90°, it has a weird Jell-O-like motion that renders it unwatchable. The pictures I took using the camera, though, came out splendidly. I really like having the auto-HDR function; it helps quite a bit for novice photographers such as myself.

• I really like the idea of being able to vote for "none of the above." If you live in California, you know what I mean.
• This article (moreso, the comments on it) is fascinating, but that’s because I’m a nerd.
• Ever wonder what medicine was like in the 18th and 19th centuries? Check out this archive of notes from British Royal Navy ships’ surgeons for a look (but be warned: there be grossness ahead.)
• Two especially-interesting-sounding books: Chocolate Wars: The 150-Year Rivalry Between the World’s Greatest Chocolate Makers and Running the Books: The Adventures of an Accidental Prison Librarian. Hard to decide which one I’d want to read first.
• After 20+ years, Zebra still holds up pretty well. Some things age better than others.
• A busy travel year is wrapping up: Vegas next week, Pensacola the week after that, and hopefully a trip to Perrysburg sometime before the end of the year. Then a new year, and with it new opportunities and challenges.