Our Baby Boy!

We had our second ultra-sound appointment today. We have a boy on the way! Everything is going perfectly at 19.2 weeks along! We've been itching to get his room going so now we can move full speed ahead painting and littering the room full of soccer and Star Wars! Enjoy the pictures!

The Scorecard

This past Christmas saw many fantastic, enjoyable, and downright hilarious games played. Jeanne and I met my brother, Brinda, and Kaia at my parent's home the weekend after Christmas and that Saturday night mean games of 'Crap on Your Neighbor' were played (officially 'Crap' should be replaced with a more graphic expletive but I'll go with 'Crap'). Those playing were my cousin Sophie, my Uncle Phil, Mom, Dad, Andy, Brinda, and myself.

The scorecard above shows the one game Dad got plenty o' crap dumped on him, as did Sophie, but we'll focus on Dad. Were we as the other players sad or feeling sorry? Nope, not at all. He deserved every single point. I offered to post the game here on my blog for history's sake and with that he proceeded to rip the sheet up. I'm guessing he did so out of embarrassment knowing full well such a high score had never been attained in all his years of playing the card game. But before he discarded it I zip locked the shredded paper promising to reforge the card with tape. Behold it has been posted. History has been preserved. Til the next time we play Dad, here's wishing you sweet pleasant dreams of jokers being played on you.

Have I rubbed it in well enough? =)

Why I love Linux

Baby, Baby, I'm taken with the notion...

(couldn't help myself with the title of the post =) )

Baby on the way!

This past Friday we had our second visit to the doctor. All is going perfectly! We had such an exciting half-hour seeing for the first time our baby via the ultra-sound machine. It is beyond the two of us to try and put into words just how wonderful it is experiencing God's miracle hands. June 17th is the projected birthday, which means we are just at 13 1/2 weeks along. We are so, so eager to meet him/her. Until our next appointment in January we'll be staring and oogling over our ultra-sound picture below.

...To love you with the sweetest of devotion...(okay, enough Amy Grant)

A New Hope

Quick Quotes

Senator Barak Obama, 2001:

But the Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth and more basic issues of political and economic justice in this society. And to that extent, as radical as I think people try to characterize the Warren court – It wasn’t that radical. It didn’t break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the founding fathers in the Constitution, at least as it’s been interpreted and Warren interpreted it in the same way that generally is a charter of negative liberties..Says what the federal government can’t do to you but it doesn’t say what the federal government or the state government must do on your behalf.

Thomas Jefferson:

I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.

The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not.

A wise and frugal government, which shall leave men free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor and bread it has earned - this is the sum of good government.

Nikita Khrushchev, former Premier of the Soviet Union:

We can’t expect the American People to jump from Capitalism to Communism, but we can assist their elected leaders in giving them small doses of Socialism, until they awaken one day to find that they have Communism.

Our Lord Jesus, in Mark 10:

You know that the rulers in this world lord it over their people, and officials flaunt their authority over those under them. But among you it will be different. Whoever wants to be a leader among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first among you must be the slave of everyone else. For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve others and to give his life as a ransom for many.

"You Win!"

Get all your political frustrations out by playing Mortal Kampaign. Biden's 'shooting feet out of his mouth', Obama's deadly dove's, and Palin's shotgun attack moves are all priceless!

Uncle Owen!? Aunt Beru!?

Christianity and Politics

A worthy read.

Jude Michal Mardock

Darth Double Dogs

I turned 31 this last weekend. A few weeks ago Jeanne asked me if there was anything special I wanted to do this year. For some reason memories of my brother and me having themed parties growing up immediately flooded my head. I shared a few of those memories with her and we both decided a Star Wars themed party was the plan for this year!

The party was Saturday and I brought out a good portion of my Star Wars memorabilia including old collectors toys, a soundtrack, games, trading cards, and an old poster. We even utilized my new SW cookbooks I received as Christmas gifts a few months ago. We made TIE Fighter Dogs, Bubble City Salad, Darth Double Dogs, and Han-burgers.

The prerequisite for attending the party was that each person had to try and dress up as a Star Wars character. This was by far the most exciting bit of the party! What a fantastic time! On to pictures...

Josh as Luke Skywalker


Mike and Lianne as Queen Amidala and Obi-wan Kenobi


Rob and Rachel as Queen Amidala and Anakin Skywalker


A Jedi trio (Anakin, Obi-wan, and Luke)


Jeanne and me as Princess Leia and Han Solo


No messin' with Princess Leia!


Wielding Darth Double Dogs! The Jedi Knight on the far right is my co-worker Mike...


Star Wars Trivial Pursuit


Memorabilia


A fine resemblance to Anakin =)


An orbiting TIE Interceptor

The Perfect Shot

"Starbucks Promises Customers Perfection"

Instead of dumping shots straight into the paper cups they'll serve to customers, Starbucks baristas are getting back to pouring espresso into shot glasses first.

I'm gonna give all the credit to my bro-in-law, Rob, for pushing 'Bucks into thinking that quality might just be better than quantity =). The article mentioned the auto-shot machines but didn't say if the retraining had occurred on those same machines. Or are new machines are being rolled out? Maybe I'll go ponder this down at Stumptown.

Flightstats: Webware 100 Finalist

Vote here for your favorite! =)

FlightStats and FaceBook

This week we at FlightStats launched an application on and for Facebook! A good portion on what you would find on the main website can be found in the Facebook application; flight tracking, flight status, delays, and more!

We've had some good early press about the launch! Check out the following links.

Resource Shelf
Planet Facebook (blog)
Facebook News (blog)
24-7 News
PR Web

If you haven't already create yourself a Facebook account and add the FlightStats application. I know, I know, Facebook is another social network but to me it seems to be a bit more mature than say myspace, and it is suited for more of the older crowd. And I'd love to be one of your 'friends' as well =).

FlightStats in the WSJ

The WSJ posted a cool article about flight alert services. FlightStats received an 'Excellent'! So hurry and go get your self a copy of today's Wall Street Journal for the scrapbook!

An excerpt:

The most useful source of more information was at FlightStats.com, which collects data from airlines, airports and the Federal Aviation Administration and sends frequent updates. A big advantage of FlightStats status alerts is that the service sends messages when planes actually take off and when they actually land.

Update 10:30am: A podcast of the above story can be found here. The article and podcast are both by the same author, but in the podcast he is way over the top about FlightStats services than he is in the written article!

Update 10:30am: Here is an echo for the above story from the News Tribune from Tacoma.

Update 12:56pm: More news!

Update 1:39pm: Bloggers are catching on!

Fantasy 08

Fantasy leagues. I've enjoyed a few NBA fantasy seasons and I believe I have done one MLB season. I faired well in all of them but I was left frustrated that though I made what I thought were wise transactions, and most were given my purchases and trades improved the value of my team, I stood in the middle of the pack by seasons end.

As some of you know I check into some political blogs to keep myself informed of the 'news'. I saw an interesting post that lead me to RealClearPolitics' play-money '08 market powered by Intrade. Wow! How fun is this! Register and try it out. Talk about a cool fantasy 'league'.

GOP Senate in 08, a contract/stock that seems to be doing well for me at the moment.

Update: GOP Senate contract is down. Darn Dems.

It's done!

We finally finished the deck this week! Thanks to all of you who helped along the way! We couldn't have done it without your encouragement and advice. I've attached a few photos of the old deck we tore down, a few photos of the new deck being constructed, and a few photos of the completed deck.

Julio

Jeanne, Belldar, and I took a little hike today through Forest Park here in P-town, and we stopped by the Audobon Society of Portland. They rescued and raised this Great Horned Owl, cutely named Julio. Being raised by humans made him super friendly. Beautiful bird!

A Winter Hawthorne Bridge

A New Year's Eve Engagement

Took this photo the night our good friends Mike and Lianne became engaged. Thought I'd post it for them.