Jack's 1st Birthday

We celebrated Jack's first birthday this past weekend and as promised here's the video(s) of his first cupcale.  Sorry it took so long - I now have intimate knowledge of YouTube's usage policies.

Carlos' First Wrestling Match

Carlos had his first wrestling match on Saturday and I must say - it was awesome!  I know nothing about wrestling; it's one of the few mainstream sports that I have no experience with.  But that didn't stop me from cheering loudly, using a lot of generic encouragements such as "come on", "don't give up", and "stick with it".  I plan to do a little research so I can at least understand a bit about what's happening.

I was incredably impressed with the amount of dedication shown by these young kids.  Weigh-in was at 7:30 AM and some kids had to do sprints in the gym wearing several winter jackets to drop a few ounces and make weight.  It was obvious during Carlos' match that he had a number of weapons at his disposal, and throughout his 5 matches I could see improvement - he was learning and adapting as the day progressed.  It is amazing how much he has learned in such a short amount of time.  I am now a big fan of wrestling.

Here's one of Carlos' matches against the toughest kid at the tournament.  It ended in an L, but it was a very exciting and competitive match.  I was very proud of his performance (sorry about the poor quality - I only had my BlackBerry with me).

Around 6 PM the main part of the tournament was wrapping up and they were getting ready to progress onto the finals.  Prior to doing so, they decided to announce the raffle winners.  Well the kids have the attention spans of kids and started going ballistic as they were getting the mic setup.  It was as I'd imagine a "Ballroom Blitz" video if there was ever one made - they were all wrestling and going nuts.  The lady announcing the raffle asked for silence two or three times, gave up, and started screaming at the top of her lungs "shut up" through a microphone that sounded like she was 2000 leagues under the sea.  I was dieing laughing and managed to tape part of it, where you can hear her yelling shut up and trying to announce the winners.  I think you probably had to be there, but who knows:

Jack's Walking

Soon after I left for my trip, Jack started walking.  Here's a quick clip that Carrie and Carlos caught:

He's now walking several steps at once, able to traverse the kitchen and living room in one trip!

I've Been Tagged (I/ITSEC 08)

Well I've been tagged, and sadly the 4th picture in my 4th folder is a boring Visio drawing.  So I renamed a few folders and photos (not kidding) to make this the 4th picture in my 4th folder:

What a coincidence, its a picture from the I/ITSEC conference I attended last week!  That's our entire company minus about 2 people from the San Franciso office and about 5 from the Madrid office.  In case you were confused by the picture, no we are not a freelance modeling agency, we do software stuff (perhaps the Transformers jacket worn by one of our engineers keyed you off).  

The conference went well; we had a lot of traffic in our booth:

Notice the 30" Mac monitors Mike (2560x1600 resolution on each - drool)?  

We also did a good bit of goofing around including several successful Rick Rolls.  For those of you who are not in the know; Rickrolling is where you send someone an email with a link to say some photos that you've posted on Snapfish, but the link really sends them to this awful 1987 video for Rick Asley's "Never Gonna Give You Up" video:

 

Consider yourself warned!

Well Jack's bithday video is uploading to YouTube as we speak along with Carlos' wrestling video so more posts to come!

Bath Time

Jack has been going crazy in the bath lately.  We couldn't get the best angle for obvious reasons, but you should be able to get the general idea.

Crawling v0.1.1 (Beta)

In case you missed my software weenie joke in the title, Jack is in the early (beta) stages of crawling. Forgive the length of the video, I can't seem to find time to edit video these days ...

Happy Birthday Carlos!

As you all know Carlos turned 12 last week, and today him and I celebrated by shooting each other in the face.

For his birthday he wanted an Airsoft gun, which for the uninitiated is essentially a battery powered BB gun except it shoots plastic BBs at about 1/4 the velocity and they are fully automatic. Being that the velocity is lower they are safe to shoot at one another provided your wearing eye protection, etc - so I ended up getting two.

We headed up to the woods behind our house today and played hide and seek with weapons.


Highlights include:

• Carlos shooting me in the chin from about 15 feet away without realizing it. I was well hidden and his approach throughout the match was to let the lead fly when he was hunting. He sprayed a bunch of shots randomly into the brush and got me. When I jumped up to indicate he'd won he jumped back - he didn't realize I was right there, he just got lucky (do I sound bitter?).
• Me flanking Carlos and shooting him in the butt.
• Carlos unloading on me from a great hiding spot and peppering me with about fifteen shots before i realized what happened.
• Carlos wanting to go home for water and me begging that we play a few more rounds first.

Every firefight ended up with us both laughing, it was good fun. I'm fighting the urge to go online right now and purchase the biggest badest Airsoft gun, night visions google, UAVs, you name it, so I can get the drop on him ...

While I'm at it, here's another picture of Jack.

The Ubiquitous Robert Best

At only 31 years of age I have managed to rack up a pretty respectable resume - don't believe me? - Google it. You will find out the following things about me that you may not have known, just follow the links.

For one, I am an accomplished Barbie designer who also appeared on the television series Project Runway. I sum it up as follows:

"I think my design style is always a little bit reality based. When I design for Barbie^® doll, I think that I'm still designing clothes. I don't think I'm designing for a doll. If a woman responds to it thinking it's something she'd like to wear, I know it's been a success."

.... Fantastic.

I'm also an entrapanuer who owns his own marketing company. This company was really a natural extension of myself; being that I am such an extrovert and natural salesman.

Additionally, I'm an accomplished lyric baritone (ignore the picture, I used to be heavier, older, and balder) - not surprising to the privileged few who have witnessed me playing Rock Band or have seen my impromptu American Idol audition tape on a trip to the Outer Ban. Here's some of my praise:

"...superb..." - New Classics;

"The performance by Robert Best is magnificent" – New Music Connoisseur;

"...a rich and attractive voice as well as an astute musicality..."
"...warm baritone voice... superb singing." - The Journal of Singing;

"...sensitive and intelligent interpreter ...crystal clear diction." - CMS South Central News Bulletin.

... an astute musicality - that should be on my headstone.

I also did some engineering stuff, like writing a paper.

BTW, the impetus for this post was a website that was forwarded along to me; howmanyofme.com.

As of this posting there are 768 Robert Bests, 42 Carrie Bests, 56 Carlos Bests, 3 Jackson Bests, 7 Benny Bests, and only one Tiki Barber Gonzalez in the US.

Feeling Better

Jack is still on the mends, but he's feeling a bit better. He loves playing with his balloon that Nana got him when she came to the hospital.

What's Up With Jack?

I won't keep anyone in suspense - Jack's endoscopy revealed some "severe" lesions in his esophagus due to his acid reflux. He also had two ear infections which have been treated since Sunday evening with antibiotics. With the ear infections mending he has started to eat again and we're told that once the medication starts to heal his wounds we will see the return of the veracious eater we knew a month ago. We're also told that the medication(s) should help prevent this from happening in the future. Jack is still tired, but is quickly getting back to his old self, i.e.:









For those of you that have not heard the full story we have been in and out of the pediatricians office for the last month. Jack's eating decreased and he was having trouble sleeping at night - usually waking up in pain. We tried switching around his acid reflux medication, thickening his bottles, changing formulas, keeping him elevated, etc with no avail. He lost over a pound in the last two weeks.

Things came to a head this weekend, on Saturday he was running a fever and acting very upset. He is literally one of the happiest babies I've ever seen, so this was quite unlike him. We were able to get the fever down by the evening, but he woke up in the middle of the night in severe pain. By Sunday morning he hadn't eaten anything for several hours and was beginning to look dehydrated. We force-fed him Pedialyte with a syringe (something we have been doing for several weeks) but he still looked bad. At noon we brought him to the ER, and he was admitted to the hospital by 6 PM. They took blood and X-rays, all of which came back OK. He had two ear infections which they began treating. He refused to eat anything for the remainder of Sunday, but they had him hooked up to an IV so he remained hydrated. He refused to eat all day Monday, but on Tuesday he had his Upper-GI which wasn't very telling, although it did confirm his acid reflux. After the test we tried to feed him a thickened bottle and - hooray - he ate a whopping 7 oz. Today he had his endoscopy and the news was good, at least for me. I think I would have been more worried had they not found an explaination for is decreased appetite.

Coincidentally, one of the pediatric nurse's son had the same exact problem a few months ago. She told her pediatrician that her son just wasn't right and after several weeks of wrangling she brought him in in tears and said they needed to fix him. After an upper-GI and endoscopy he had the same diagnosis and we're told he is doing well and eating like a horse after a months worth of recuperation, which is quite reassuring.

I want to thank everyone for their well wishes and prayers - I was especially touched by Katy's blogs and the kindness of her friends. I hope to meet them when we finally make it to Kentucky.

Back Home

I'm back home after a week in San Francisco at the main office. We had some free time on Thursday evening and went to a Giants game. The one good thing about them dropping Barry Bonds is that the attendance has dropped of significantly and we got some good seats along the third base line.


Which happened to be right in front of the bullpen.


Yesterday I noticed that my passenger side hubcap was missing and I thought I may be the victim of a hate crime. I had my car parked at Morgantown Airport with my Syracuse University sticker that Sarah got me a few years ago proudly displayed. I'm thinking that someone might have taken exception to it and taken one of my hubcaps... Anyways, I decided to go to the airport with Carlos on our way to some bowling to see if maybe it was there. It was not, but we arrived just in time to see a MH-53 land.


Sadly, the pilots wouldn't let me fly just because I've logged several hours on a MH-53 sim...

Getting Back to Normal

Provided we feed Jack around 11 PM he has consistently been sleeping until around 7 or 8 AM. Occasionally he'll wake up a bit earlier, but for the most part he's been doing good. Now that Carrie and I are getting a full night's rest (or should I say we have the opportunity to get a full night's rest) we've started to get back to our normal schedule. Or should I say, Carrie has decided that we're going to get back on our normal schedule in a way I liken to Martin Luther nailing his 95 Theses to the door of the Wittenberg Castle Church bringing about the Protestant Reformation.

For the past 4 months, if we didn't have anything planned for the weekend we spent the time lounging around and catching up on rest. Unless a chore was deemed critical, we weren't doing it. After returning for my last trip to Pax, I returned to my home office, docked my laptop, powered up a few PCs, and glanced over at my whiteboard which serves as a ToDo list/scrap paper. I quickly noticed that something was awry ....



While I was gone, Carrie hijacked my ToDo list and added some decidedly "weekendy" tasks. Guess I'll have some pictures up on the blog soon of the progress in the basement ...

I complained to Jack, but he had no comment.


Editors Note: Certain portions of this post have been exaggerated for entertainment purposes.

I'm Back

Time to step back from the ledge my loyal readership - after a long sabbatical, I'm back. This blog was born in the midnight hour and that is when it has thrived, like Nosferatu coming out to feed at night. Around the three month mark, as many have foretold, Jack seemed to hit another milestone in his quickly evolving life. Between 10 and 11 PM he falls asleep and stays that way until between 2 to 3 AM. The key is, when he wakes up in the middle of the night, he eats quickly (usually between 15 - 30 minutes), gets a diaper change, and needs to be rocked for less than 5 minutes before he's out again for another 4 hours. This coupled with being asked on more than one occasion if I'm a workaholic have made staying up late and working a rarer occurrence - usually only a couple of nights a week. The other night's I'm in bed before midnight, although I must admit that I'm usually reading, watching TV/movies, etc until a bit later. What can I say - I'm a night owl.

Anyways, I seem to have a tad bit more leisure time now that Jack's hit this milestone [knocking on wood]. In the past few weeks I've managed to see several movies, watch my backlog of Tivoed shows, and read about 200 pages of a book. I finally had a chance to watch No Country for Old Men which was pretty good, although I preferred Fargo as far as Coen Brothers' movies go. I think it was a better overall movie, although No Country for Old Men is more memorable if that makes any sense. It all has to do with Javier Bardem's character, definitely an iconic role in movie history. Man as I write this I'm thinking maybe I do prefer this movie ...

I tried to catch up on everyone else's blog's - saw that I was "tagged" on Jess' blog. I'm supposed to list 7 random things about myself, and I figure for the people that read this I mine as well try to make them interesting, so here goes:

1) As you may have guessed I take after my Mom and Dad in that I love good movies, and after my Uncle Dave in that I love music (there is a pretty prominent example of this in my life but I'll never tell). I bought Sirius satellite radio about a year ago and I listen to it for several hours everyday.
2) I have OCD ... at least that's what the professionals tell me. With work it's gotten a lot better but it's still a hindrance. The earliest I remember it being an issue was when I was around 11 years old and I had a ritual that I carried out every night before going to sleep. I won't go into details (because it would take several thousand words) but it involved rolling over and looking at my clock and it having to be an even number between a certain range, several times in a row. If I screwed up, there was a penalty period and some other things I had to do for penance. It got progressively worse for about two years until it took over two hours each night to get everything right and I could go to sleep peacefully. I was crippled with fear that if I didn't do these things I was going to get in trouble, picked on at school, or worse - that something would happen to my family (and of course when these things did happen I could recall something that I must have done incorrectly that brought it on). Those days are long gone, but I still always try to sit on the left side of planes (I am overcoming this one), still have major issues with numbers, still have some issues with germs, may or may not be able to tell you how many tiles are in my bathroom, wow I better stop writing or I'm really going to freak you guys out. Seriously though, it's manageable now or I wouldn't write about it. Still if you notice I'm zoning out while you're talking to me don't just assume it's because I'm not interested in what you're saying. The C stands for compulsive ...
3) The most embarrassing thing that ever happened to me was pooping my pants in front of some girls I liked. One summer we went to visit a friend of my Dad's and he had two daughters that were roughly my age, named Cheryl (I think) and ... I can't remember - maybe my Mom or sisters can refresh my memory ... Anyways, we got dropped off at the pool and after about 15 minutes of being there my stomach turned. I ran into the bathroom and it was nasty (remember I'm a bit of a germaphobe). The girls said their house was only like 10 minutes away so we decided to hoof it. About a half an hour later I lost control and crapped my swim trunks. I wrapped my towel around me like a Sumo wrestler's diaper and jogged to the house with the girls in tow and cleaned myself up. Fortunately the girls were very supportive and I found out later in the week that they both had a crush on me, otherwise I wouldn't be writing this story...
4) I repeated first grade. As I entered second grade for the first time I was overcome by extreme laziness. I would just write down random numbers on my math work (well getting back to number 2 they weren't random, but they were incorrect), I was upset that I wasn't the fastest kid in gym class, etc. When my Teacher and Principal sat down at my kitchen table with both my parents and presented the option of going back to first grade it sounded pretty good. After all I had some good friends in that grade, I was pretty sure I would be the fastest kid in gym class, there was a lot more coloring, and Bridget Bohn was in first grade and she wore panty hose.
5) I'm a recovering alcoholic (like how I just slipped that one in there). I started attempting sobriety about 4 years ago and haven't had a drink for about 2.5 years. I think it's pretty cheesy that I put this in my blog and I'm certainly not fishing for compliments, I just think it's important for several reasons that I put it out there in clear terms at this point in my life.
6) I don't remember the majority of my childhood. I remember bits and pieces but am amazed by the way other people (including my sisters) can recount endless stories from their childhood. It bums me out.
7) I don't have 7 people that I can tag ...

So I'll tag Carrie, Corinne, and Katy. I despise fwds, particularly the ones that mandate that I bother other people and fwd along an email to them, so don't feel obligated to follow up on this. But if you're struggling for a theme for your next blog like I was, here it is ...

It's Official

Carlos is my son. On Wednesday February 27, 2008 I adopted Carlos! Man, am I lucky or what? - Two sons in a matter of a few months. We were all a bit nervous about going to court, but luckily things went smoothly. We were joking around quite a bit on the way to court (shocker) as I was practicing my go-to court lines, including such favorites as:

I'm out of order??? You're out of order!!! This whole damn court is out of order!!!

and the ever-popular:

You want the truth? You can't handle the truth!!

After I got through doing my best Jack Nicholson we started joking about the judge putting Carlos on the stand after I finish the first tirade (This whole damn court is out of order!!!):

Judge: Carlos, does your Dad always swear like that?

To which Carlos responded:

No, he mostly just lies, Mom's the one who swears all the time.

Hahaha, we were rolling. (For the record I pull people's legs .... lie is such an ugly word).

Anyways, we learned later that the judge himself has two adopted children so he was well suited for our "case". I got to take the stand and the judge threw me a softball asking how I felt about Carlos. Fighting back tears I told him and Carlos that I feel truly blessed to have found Carrie and Carlos and have no doubt that God led me to them. I truly couldn't ask for a better son, Carlos is such a thoughtful and considerate young man. If Jack turns out to be half as good as his older brother than he'll have a leg up on anybody else.

Carlos has endured the learning curve I undertook (and am still taking) by switching from a relatively immature, short fused, self-centered, impatient boy into the slightly more mature, less self-centered father that I am today, to which he is owed a lot of credit. It's common knowledge that the oldest child gets it the hardest, and I imagine this is compounded by having a young and inexperienced step-father who tends to be somewhat of a hardass discipline-wise. But Carlos has never been disrespectful, has never questioned my leadership, which speaks lengths about his character. It seems fitting that now that I am being thought the lesson of patience from nature's little teacher; an infant, Carlos is entering the most formative (and from what I hear the most trying) years of his life - the teenage years. It seems like my lesson couldn't have come soon enough. I still have a lot of work to do, but I'm getting there ...

Well, that's all for now. I'm in lovely Binghamton NY, and still have a bit of work to do before I can call it a night, along with a late night treadmill run. Remind me to tell you about the last time I was in Binghamton and decided to take a jog outside at 1:30 in the morning ... They say engineers are book-smart but lack common sense ... not me!

Overwhelmed

The nature of blogging is that you oftentimes feel like you have nothing to say and struggle to put together a post. Alternatively, when there's a lot going on you feel overwhelmed. If I can drivel on about Krang for a few paragraphs how am I ever going to summarize all that's going on without spending an hour of my life. Here goes...

Sarah's home from Iraq and we couldn't be happier. I hope her primary focus is herself and I hope she's being self-centered in a good way.

Turned 31. Things that didn't used to hurt hurt. Need to stretch before running. Carrie says she saw a gray hair. There's more hair. At least no back hair. It takes longer to shed 10 pounds. Got a birthday card from my State Farm Agent. He enclosed a life insurance form. Is he trying to tell me something?

Work's good, always new, always challenging, who could ask for more?

Jack's getting bigger and more active. I can make him smile and can sense that he'll be laughing soon. He sleeps much better (knock on wood) from about ~9/10 PM to ~1/2 AM, quick feed then until ~5/6AM. Mobile's and ceiling fans rock.

Carlos is doing really good. Him and I kid each other constantly. Under my tutelage he's identified a number of go-to subjects that he can give me a hard time about and goes to those anytime we start joking with one another. We crack each other up.

Had the Oscars on last night, one of the awards was given out by troops in Iraq. Did anyone else notice the scenery in the background from the pictures Sarah sent and I posted on my blog? The Hocus Focus master did. :)

And a few pictures of Jack:




Less than 10 min, not bad, but maybe I've cheapened blogging similar to speed-chess. Wait, that's practically an oxymoron.

News From Sarah

I was forwarded an email a few days ago that was sent from who I believe is one of Sarah's COs mentioning many awards that she is eligible for or has already won. To be completely honest, I didn't understand a large portion of the email, so I can't wait to talk to her to get the skinny.

I was also sent another email with this new picture (again, love the smile :) ):


Interestingly, the email also mentioned how the work of Sarah and others in her field is paying off in big ways, with a link to the following news story attached. I'm including the text inline since some people have had trouble bringing up the original article. If you'd like to try though, the original article can be found at the link.

US says captured papers reveal Qaeda in Iraq weakened

Feb 10, 2008

BAGHDAD (AFP) — A diary and a document captured during raids on Al-Qaeda leaders in Iraq show the group has been weakened and that civilian anti-insurgency groups are making an impact, the US military said on Sunday.

Both documents were captured during raids by US forces in November, military spokesman Rear Admiral Gregory Smith told a news conference in Baghdad.

The 16-page diary is that of an Al-Qaeda sector emir named Abu Tariq in Balad, north of Baghdad, while the other document is a 39-page memo written by a mid- to high-level Al-Qaeda official with knowledge of the network's operations in the western province of Anbar.

"Abu Tariq's diary provides clear and compelling evidence that the Iraq volunteer citizens' groups ... are restricting the terrorists' freedom of movement," said Smith.

"The diary shows that Al-Qaeda regards these groups as a grave threat and the terrorists are increasingly targeting them," he added.

Smith said the emir in the diary complained that he once commanded nearly 600 fighters "but the tribes changed course" and his force had now been reduced to "just 20 or fewer terrorists".

Around 130 Awakening groups have been formed across Iraq comprising around 80,000 Iraqis -- 80 percent of them Sunni and 20 percent Shiite -- since the first was launched by tribal leaders in Anbar in September 2006, according to US officials.

The groups are credited by US commanders of being a major factor behind the 62-percent drop in attacks across Iraq since June and for putting Al-Qaeda to flight in most of their strongholds.

Smith said the Anbar document contains the assessment that "the Islamic State of Iraq (Al-Qaeda) is faced with an extraordinary crisis, especially in Anbar."

"It is a pessimistic assessment of Al-Qaeda in Iraq's long-term prospects in Anbar," he said, adding that it recommended foreign fighters be moved out of the province to other areas "where they may have greater freedom of movement."

The document, according to Smith, bitterly derides the "traitors who are taking on Al-Qaeda" and complains that the citizens' groups and increasingly effective Iraqi police are making it more difficult to operate in Anbar.

The document showed that suicide bombers arriving in Iraq sensed they were being "misused and undervalued" and were asking to be assigned new missions or to be allowed to return to their home countries.

The author criticises his fellow emirs of being uncooperative and being over-reliant on suicide missions.

"The emirs too often lack leadership and military experience, they suffer from lack of support from local residents and are forced to have to confront more than one enemy at a time," Smith quoted the document as saying.

He said it identified Al-Qaeda's most dangerous enemy as being the "renegade tribes" -- the Awakening groups.

"We lost cities and afterward, villages ... The desert became a dangerous refuge ... We find ourselves in a wasteland desert," Smith quoted the document as saying.

He cautioned however that the diary and document do not suggest Al-Qaeda is defeated within Anbar or across Iraq.

"This does not signal the end of Al-Qaeda in Iraq, but it is a contemporary account of the challenges posed to terrorists from the people of Iraq," Smith said.

"Al-Qaeda remains a significant and dangerous threat in Iraq."

The documents are believed to be authentic, he added, because they contain details that only Al-Qaeda leaders could know about specific events on the battlefield.

On The Road Again

Well I'm off to Tampa on Tuesday for the first delivery of our company's newest Image Generator - version 4.0. In preparation I have been working like crazy to get some software done for the new system. Luckily Jack is a chip off the old block and I was able to illicit his help to leverage the workload.

Can't wait till he writes his first rootkit, I'll be so proud. :)

A Few More Pics

Zoning Out

For some reason I'm particularly tired tonight and as either Carlos or Carrie can tell you, I have a tendency to get weird when I'm tired. Carrie finished feeding Jack around 10 tonight and my shift began. Jack was pretty fussy so I strapped him to my chest in the Baby Bjorn and began my evening ritual of walking around to soothe him.

When he's in one of these moods, it's actually pretty funny. He's perfectly content until the moment I stop moving at which point he loses it. As soon as I start walking again, he calms back down. The whole thing makes me feel like Krang, actually Jack would be Krang and I'd be the amorphous humanoid that carries him from point A to B.


When I thought of this I started moving and talking in a robotic fashion (my Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle memories are hazy so I don't remember how Krang moves or sounds) which left Jack quite amused (he's starting to smile more) and perhaps a little bemused. The next thing I knew, about an hour had passed and he was asleep.

The Jackson Four

Over the course of the past 5 years my video game playing has slowed to a crawl, but occasionally a game comes along that I get into. Carlos saved and saved and recently bought a game called "Rock Band" for the Xbox 360. It comes with drums, a guitar, and a microphone that you have to "play" in harmony to a variety of songs to gain points. Here's a movie that shows what the game is like:



When Carlos got the game on Monday night we formed our family band which as of now is unnamed (we are entertaining suggestions (no puns please)). We started with legendary axe-man Carlos on the guitar, Carrie and Jack on the vocals, and yours truly on the drums. I was stoked to find a song I really like that is somewhat "underground" - Maps by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs - on the track list, so after some cajoling we fired it up.

The fusion of our uncoordinated, off-key, off-tone, seizure of an attempt at music would have sent Simon Cowell straight to the bottle/antidepressant combo. I literally shuddered and felt myself flushing mid-song. Needless to say we are going to have to schedule some band practices before taking it on the road.

World Champs!

Well I'm excited to say that I witnessed the greatest win in NY Giants franchise history and perhaps the biggest upset in NFL history. Needless to say, when you have a dog named Tiki Barber, the Giants winning the Super Bowl is a big deal. Jack must be a good luck charm because in the span of a few months my beloved Boston Red Sox won the World Series and the Giants won the Super Bowl. If Syracuse wins the NCAA Men's Basketball Championship I'm gonna freak.


Well I've always been a bit of a sports nut. I remember being young and watching the Red Sox, Giants, Knicks, and Syracuse games with my Dad. Many of my obsessive compulsive tendencies were born during the Knicks many playoff games against the Bulls and the Heat. I'd elaborate on this but it's hard to put into words and you'd all think I'm crazy. Suffice to say I used to, and perhaps some of me still does, believe that my actions, or in some cases my lack of action, can determine the outcome of a sporting event. Syracuse doing bad? Well maybe I'll leave the room for a few minutes and see what happens. Ah, they went on a 8 point swing, I must be bad luck. Maybe I shouldn't watch the rest of the game. Oh man - Eli just threw a pick in the red zone. It's probably because I've been too boastful in my blog. I should've left all the "Go Giants" stuff out of my last few posts.

I knew going into this Super Bowl that it was all about remaining humble and embracing the Giant's underdog status. Plus all us Giants fans knew what no one else did - the way to beat the Patriots is to play smash mouth football, which happens to be a mainstay of all Giants teams. When they started off the first drive running the ball up the middle, with Brandon Jacobs running over linebackers, I knew we were on the right track.

Well this win ranks right up there - number three on my list. Number two goes to Syracuse winning the NCAA Championship in 2003. Number one was the Red Sox winning the World Series in 2004. I am not ashamed to say that I cried at the end of that game.

8 Weeks

Ok, so yesterday Jack turned 8 weeks so I had to take a few more pictures. I have yet to get a good one where he is smiling, although some of these come close. It seems like he is changing so fast now. The first month seemed like not a lot happened other than he got a little bit bigger but now he is interacting more with us and his toys (he loves his play mat). He can roll over from his belly to his back and he is working on rolling from his back to his belly. He supports his head really well and he "talks" up a storm when he is excited. What a sweet little boy. :)

Language Nuances

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Well since Rob is Italy, I thought I would try to put some pictures up on our blog. Unfortunately, not all of the pictures I took came out as nice as I was hoping. Oh well. Here are a couple of new pics anyway. Love you all! Carrie

Italian TV is Wierd

Well I made it OK and am struggling to stay awake until midnight so I can get a normal sleep schedule going for the time I'm here. The combination of very little sleep, the long travel hiatus, and the long journey have left me feeling a little homesick. Typically I can find some consultation by turning on the TV when I'm traveling, unfortunately Italian TV is weird. I present Exhibit A:



There are instances of TV, movies, books, music, etc being so bad it's good - but I have yet to find that here. Interestingly though, The Ghost Whisperer is much better in Italian where you can't understand what anyone is saying.

Oh well, at least I can wax on the endless assortment of 80's tunes that pump out of the hotel's sound system in the lobby. Carrie would be in heaven...

Back to Italy

Well I'm headed back to Italy tomorrow after very short notice - but at least I get to fly first class (doing my world famous Robin Leech impression as I write this).


I'll fill everyone in on the details when I get back. Oh, here's a good one of Carlos and his brother:

Congratulations Sarah

... Or should I say Senior Master Sergeant Fisk. My sister Sarah received word earlier in the week that she earned a well-deserved promotion.

Congratulations Sis! You really deserve it!

It's Been a Long Time Since I Rock and Rolled

My apologies to my faithful readership, I have been preoccupied with work and a number of other things, subsequently my heralded blog has suffered. But if absence makes the heart grow fonder, than you should be fonder than a mofo - technically speaking.

You see I am putting the finishing touches on a piece of software that I'm writing and it will be used by a number of people with varying degrees of technical aptitude. Therefore, I have been writing some very comprehensive help and this has left the right side of my brain aching and in no shape for blogging.

But I'm back, and I have several things to talk about. The first is that I have a new niece! I urge you all to follow the links to the right to get updates on Kendra Ruth Durec. She was born on my sister Jessica's birthday, January 12, and from what I hear she and Mom are doing great. She is so cute and I can't wait to meet her.

Last week my Mom came to visit and we had a great time. Among other things, Carrie and I were able to go on a date. We saw Juno (because the theater we went to is no longer showing No Country for Old Men) and it was really good. I started to really feel my age prior to the movie starting as I listened in on the conversation behind me and I realized that kids are now also speaking in acronyms as opposed to just texting this way. They might have the acronym heavy US Military beat. It's nice to see that some of the old staples, such as using "like" about 15 times per sentence, are still around. The movie was very good, I could tell that the lack of sleep was really starting to get to me because I was an emotional wreak.

I love talking to my Mom because I always find out new and exciting things about my family. I knew that both my Great Grandfather (Walter Hard) and Great Grandmother (Margaret Steel Hard) were authors and poets who lived in Vermont (check out what I found Mom/Jess/Sarah: follow this link to The Vermont Encyclopedia which has a lot of history on Nana and her parents). What I didn't know was that my Great Grandfather also served one term in the House and four terms in the Senate! That's right, my great grandfather was the f-ing Senator of Vermont! (the aforementioned Vermont Encyclopedia mentions this). This blew my mind, I can't believe I never heard this ... maybe it's just me, but this seems like a huge deal. With genes like this it's no wonder I'm the a national treasure that I am.

While Mimi was here we also snapped some more pictures. I read a book several years ago called Bag of Bones about an author suffering from writers block. Lucky for him he had a stash of books that he had written along the years and he was able to satiate his publisher for several years by dipping into his stash and producing a "new" book. Well I suffer from picture block, and I now have my stash. I plan on releasing a few at a time until you guys are talking to Jack on the phone and I am posting "new" pictures of him laying on the floor flailing.






Bye for now. Go Giants! (keep crying T.O.).

Iowa Caucus

Well I've put off posting about the Iowa Caucus for several days now mostly because I've been busy and also because I have yet to find a forum that I can discuss politics without getting frustrated. It seems to me that most people that want to discuss politics have a hard-line party affiliation and will defend their party's candidates with almost blind loyalty. For the life of me, I cannot figure this out. For the longest time (and still partially now) I felt like this was due to my naivety to the ways of the world. Maybe when I get a house, a family, and start paying more taxes, I'll see why I should favor party A over party B. This has yet to happen and I don't know if it ever will - I don't think I'll ever base my political decisions on my bottom line.

I am very much an idealist who focuses on the issues that are important to me and votes for the candidate whose positions match the closest with mine. I am not silly enough to believe that the candidate will follow through on their campaign claims 100% ("Read my lips, no new taxes") but for me this is the only criterion that I have to base my decision on and I have to at least trust that they will be earnest in following through on their campaign promises provided they are feasible. I don't think any political party matches with my beliefs closely enough to say, I'm a Democrat, I'm a Republican, I'm a Libertarian, ...

That being said, here are some issues that are important to me in '08. They are in no particular order, and I have labored hard about whether or not to write about these issues as I'm sure that every person that reads my blog will have at least one contradictory viewpoint to mine. But your all stuck with me through birthright or law and forced to love me so I mine as well be honest.

The first issue I'll comment on is immigration. Again, I'm an idealist and I cannot look past the history of this country and the part that immigration has played in it. I'm in favor of providing a means for illegal immigrants to become citizens but am concerned about seemingly rewarding illegal aliens for breaking the law and also effectively jumping in line ahead of people that are trying to enter the country legally. I like the Senate's plan of allowing the nearly 12 million illegal immigrants living in the country now to qualify for citizenship eventually after learning to speak English, paying a fine, paying any back taxes, holding a job, and passing a background check. I do not equate this to amnesty, contrary to some people's opinion. They have also proposed greatly increasing the number of green cards issued this year to get through the huge back log of people that are waiting to immigrate legally, such as the number of Filipino immigrants that have gotten press.

I am opposed to strengthening border security, I feel like this is a just putting a band aid on the real problems. I would instead rather focus on why it is so attractive to enter this country illegally and work on those issues. One of these issues is the plethora of businesses that hire illegal immigrants. I think businesses that cannot provide documentation for workers should be heavily fined and perhaps have their licenses revoked for repeat offenders. This is where the guest worker portion of the McCain-Kennedy Bill would come into play. Through a guest worker program foreign workers would be matched with US businesses through a database and could be hired once the companies provided proof that they could not hire American workers to do the job.

The next issue is gay marriage. I am a big supporter of gay rights and think gays should be afforded all the rights of other citizens. I think the main argument against gay marriage is predicated on religion and I think religion has no place in politics or governance. In a democracy you have to be objective rather than subjective and if you want to ban something based on your religious beliefs, then you want to live in a theocracy.

I think in 50 years when our grandchildren look back on the gay rights movement it will be similar to how we look back on the civil rights movement and suffrage. When the history books are written which side would you like to say you were on?

Another issue is abortion. Historically I have flip-flopped on this issue, but eventually you have to pick a side. I simply cannot imagine forcing a woman who has been impregnated through rape to carry the child, so I am pro-choice.

I'm for the death penalty. I think some crimes are so heinous that the perpetrator deserves to die. I know this is vengeful and I have flip-flopped with this issue for several years, but this is just where I am with this now. I also think it serves as a deterrent to other criminals.

Gun control is a minor issue for me, so I don't know a lot about it. I like the idea of the Brady Bill, I think anyone who wants to own a firearm can wait a few days and not be opposed to having their background checked. I think people should be able to purchase and own automatic weapons.

Wow, I'm remembering the other reason I stay out of political discussions, they are tiring! So enough about my views for now. As a gear up to the election season I urge you all to visit Smart Select.com. You can answer a series of questions and it will attempt to tell you which candidate's views on the issues most closely match yours. This will at least get you thinking about the issues and give you a warm up for what things to listen for during the upcoming debates.

OK, now for some issues that aren't on the radar but are also important to me.

I'd like to see the eradication of the non-existent adjective "funner" from the national lexicon. Violators will be forced to attend English classes with the illegal immigrants attempting to gain citizenship.

I'd like to see a candidate address businessmen cellphone dicks at the airport. You know, the self important A-holes sauntering around the gate having superfluous quasi-business related conversations at full volume just so everyone around them can have the knowledge that they're big important business men on a big important business trips. You know, the ones that still get annoyed at airport security despite the gold member card on their carry-on indicating they fly a lot and should be used to it. You know the ones that roll their eyes and get impatient with having to deal with families on a Saturday flight as if it were a 7:00 AM Monday morning flight that is 95% business travelers.

I'd like to see the number of adjectives used to describe a new station's meteorological department limited to two. And now to Amanda Huggankiss on the High Definition Super Digital Doppler in the Channel 11 Severe Storm Weather Center.

I'd like to see MasterCard be forced to retire the "Priceless" add campaign. It's been 10 years, I've received 100+ dumb forwards based on this theme, it's enough already.

Yikes, Jack's getting hungry. Go Giants! Best out.

Happy New Year

Happy new year everyone! I'm always excited around new year's - I like looking back on the milestones of the previous year and set some goals for myself to accomplish in the upcoming year.

On December 31, 2006 I officially became the 30th full-time employee of Aechelon Technology. I was hired to be one of three "Integration Engineers" in charge of delivering and maintaining the hardware/software involved with our company's Image Generators (IG) as well as helping people integrate them into their systems. In flight simulation terms, the IG is the computer(s) that draws the scenery seen by the pilot through the cockpit windows as they are flying. Here's a good example of a customer that created a specific type of simulator using our IG:



The scenery that is rendered is created from very high resolution satellite images that are taken of the area of interest. These images are combined with real world elevation data for the same area to create a 3D landscape that is indicative of the real world. After that we implant 3D models of certain buildings, trees, airfields, etc that the pilots use for visual reference in real life. Because we need to simulate everything the pilots can encounter we also render friendly and enemy aircraft, helicopters, technicals, aircraft carriers (including LSEs), enemy combatants, rain, snow, lightning, explosions, fire, smoke columns, rotor wash, etc. Additionally, we simulate all the visual sensor systems for any given aircraft including forward looking infrared (FLIR), night vision goggles (NVG), low-light TV (LLTV), etc. These are all physics based - where the material type for every pixel is taken into account along with temperature, humidity, etc to determine how hot something is to draw the correct infrared image. We have both simulated NVG which works in a similar fashion as the FLIR, as well as stimulated NVG which I think is really cool. For this the pilots wear their issued NVGs and we render an image that provides just enough light to stimulate the frequencies of the electromagnetic spectrum that the goggles detect causing an image to be displayed that looks just like what the pilots would see if they were flying in the middle of night with their goggles on.

Anyways, I was hired to help install these systems and also to work on my specialty which is the communication between the flight simulator and the image generator. My goals going in were to write some software based tools that would make my job easier, and more importantly the costumers, by providing a tool that shows them how to communicate with the IG to meet all of their requirements. For those interested we send UDP packets over a dedicated Gigabit Ethernet connection between the IG and the flight simulator at 60 Hz (we send data 60 times a second). I got the basics for this tool done rather quickly and it has now evolved into something that Carlos enjoys playing with. I have it written now so he can use one of his Xbox 360 controllers to fly around (which isn't easy in 3 dimensions, check out the math) , fire missiles, fly with wingmen, etc. Through much of the process of writing this tool Carlos was my unknowing beta tester, finding bugs for me along the way.

In March we had our annual all-hands meeting at our main office in San Francisco. The whole family was invited but Carrie and I decided we wanted to go by ourselves since we hadn't been away alone together since our honeymoon and before that - never. We arrived early to tour the city and stayed late to tour a bit more. Oh yeah ... and we also conceived Jack there. Heh ... sorry if that's TMI, we're very open in my family. :) A few weeks after returning from San Francisco Carrie gave notice at ProLogic and decided to become a stay at home Mom for at least the time being. The first couple of weeks were rough for her (I've always maintained that this is harder than me going to work everyday), I think she was feeling kind of listless, but we talked about it a lot to make sure we understood each others concerns and expectations for the next few years. To keep herself busy she took up jewelry making and attended a few shows among other things.

A few months later we decided to finish our basement and decided that we mine as well get some estimates just to see if we could find something that was reasonable. We thought we had and to make a long story short we learned several lessons along the way and any contractor I deal with in the future will undoubtedly think I'm a dick because I'm not going to make the same mistakes twice. Once the basement was finished I was able to move all my work stuff down to my new office and we started getting Jack's room setup. In retrospect it's funny how I rushed to get a bunch of stuff done in his room shortly before he was born and he has yet to really sleep in there.

Carlos finished out the school year strong, and began worrying about the perils of middle school on the first day of summer vacation. He had a good summer vacation - going to Camp Choosy again and meeting up with some friends from the previous year. He also went to his old babysitter's house for a few weeks so he could swim and play with his friends from there.

Towards the end of the summer Carlos and I competed in a sprint triathlon here in Morgantown. I didn't train for the biking or swimming part and found I forgot how tiring swimming can be - no wonder I was in such great shape when I was a kid. The next week I made my first trip to Italy for work, which happened to be my first trip to Europe. It was pretty amazing, and I learned a lot about myself. I also learned how to drive stick shift with the best motivation possible - necessity.

This same week Carlos started school and decided middle school ain't no thang but a chicken wang. He made several new friends and has gotten straight A's the first two semesters. It's still a bit weird to see him getting ready for dances and talking about who's dating who, the fight that happened at school, etc. Fifth grade just seems too early for all that stuff...

After a few months of school I went in to Carlos school to give a career awareness presentation. I felt obligated to do so because my job is very exciting to kids (it's essentially like creating the most kick-ass video games imaginable) and is a good platform to talk about the importance of Math and Science (even English) in the Engineering disciplines. I also feel like I'd like to get more involved with the school system as a tribute to my father. My mom gave me a box not to long ago containing my Dad's eulogy and several writeups from periodicals, college newspapers (he was a Dean at a New York State college), the papers, etc. As I read these I remembered how involved he was with our school system (he was a school board member) and how many friends he had there. Do you ever have the feeling that your meant to do something in life? Besides my career I feel like I am supposed to be involved with my children's school to help both them and their peers. I feel like these are the things that God put me on Earth to do.

Anyways, Carlos was a bit nervous about having his Dad come in and talk to his whole grade. Luckily my ice-breaker jokes went over well and the kids were super stoked about my career. Carlos, by his own account, was the most popular kid at school and was absolutely beaming for a few days.

In December the most exciting thing of the year happened, which you are all up to speed on - the birth of Jack. Right now we are still dealing with the joys and pains of having a newborn in the house.

Looking forward to the new year my main goals personally are to continue to work on my deficiencies as a father and husband (nobodies perfect). As I've mentioned I want to look for more opportunities to get involved at Carlos' school. At work I have a finical goal (I know this sounds materialistic, but our companies success is reflected in our profits, so essentially I want us to be successful and I have a number that I would consider successful) and see some of the new software I'm writing put to use. I have also been brainstorming on some software that I'd like to write and officially open-source to get my name out there. I think the tool could be quite useful to a lot of people if I find the time to write it.