Privately, Katie Jo has always been a crazy cat in the privacy of our home. She has a zany sense of humor. And she has a very kinetic level of energy. At school and in public, she's displayed a very shy and demure demeanor. But as she's progressed through the school year, her true personality has started to show through.She's gotten much bolder lately in terms of how she explores, experiments, and relates to other people. For years, she'd only hide behind me when we met a stranger or even a person that we knew casually. When it came to relating to the material world, she'd be very shy with new … [Read more...]
Archives for March 2007
A Day at Ground Zero
March 25, 2007 by Leave a Comment
It'd been probably 10 years since I was last in NYC. The last time I came to NYC was to visit the Deloitte offices located, then, in the World Finance Center immediately adjacent to the World Trade Center. (The World Finance Center Deloitte was in then was the background building to the left with the round top. Deloitte has since moved to other digs around the city.) I had the pleasure of visiting the WTC, seeing the observation deck, and seeing the marvelous sights of downtown Manhattan.This trip brought me to Manhattan to speak at the local SQL Server user group and visit some friends and … [Read more...]
Winter Wonderland
March 22, 2007 by Leave a Comment
Nashville is very pretty in the winter snow. We usually get a few snow falls every winter, with just enough accumulation for the kids to throw some snowballs around, but not so much that the whole town is immobilized.On one of my February business trips, I was able to snap several pictures like this from the window of the airplane. Of course, the irony here is that most of February was temporate. We usually get our last and biggest snow falls of the season in early to mid-March. But this year, it all came in February and not much at all came in March. Who can say what the weather will do these … [Read more...]
The Crucible
March 20, 2007 by Leave a Comment
Dylan did the sound and an interesting pre-play multimedia presentation for the high school's production of The Crucible. Here he is getting ready to do a dry run of the multimedia slide deck. He created it using Microsoft PowerPoint and added in a musical soundtrack and set it to auto-step through all of the slides.Unfortunately, I had a business trip that conflicted with seeing the full, regular play. But I was able to make the dress rehearsal. Now, you may not know this. But I did quite a lot of acting and stage work back in high school. And I have to say that if my plays were half as tight … [Read more...]
Hamsters really ARE rats…
March 18, 2007 by Leave a Comment
We have a really cute, placid, and fat hamster named Pippy Lu or, alternately, Lulu depending on which Katie Jo. Normally, hamsters are just little, fluffy balls of cuddly goodness. But every now and them Emily takes it upon herself to bathe the hamster - usually if it's getting a little bit rank. Once you see them wet, you realize that they are indeed rats. Just with cuter fur...These poor little critters are native to the deserts of Syria (exploring archeaologists first brought them back for their kids in the 1920's). So they naturally don't like getting soaked and actually can get pretty … [Read more...]
Thinking about Inventing Your Own Language
March 16, 2007 by Leave a Comment
Here's an interesting website article that tells you all about creating your own language - http://zompist.com/kitlong.html#alien. So if you're thinking about writing the next great American science fiction novel, then you might take this into account. It's kind'a funny and fun to read. It takes into account things that I hadn't considered such as adding in language components that are foreign to English, but well-known in other languages such as Mandarin.Best regards,-Kev … [Read more...]
A week in CA
March 14, 2007 by Leave a Comment
Once again, I was called back to HQ for a big series of meetings for our Q1 yearly kickoff. In previous years, I'd been very active in actually compiling the content of several of the meetings in the SQL Server business unit for Quest, and also for assisting in deciding on key strategy for the SQL Server business unit overall in conjunction with other top decision-makers of the company. (At that time, my title was senior product architect and, later, director of technology for the SQL Server business unit.)But since I ceded that component of my job so that I could focus more on family time and … [Read more...]
I survived (again)…
March 11, 2007 by 3 Comments
Ok, so my last post was about how I survived a terrible ordeal. So guess what happens one week after the posting on 3/4/07? You guessed it - it happened again.My daughter Katie (the youngest) came down with a nasty stomach flu on Friday night. I spent most of the night sitting up with her. She was so bad off that even Kelly felt compelled to come over and spend a few hours comforting her. She couldn't keep anything down and was throwing up everything we put in her. Despite constant hand washing, I somehow managed to get the virus. I had a headache by Saturday night and on Sunday morning … [Read more...]
