We’re Moving to Minneapolis!
So that’s the big news around here. Moving to the big MN, cold weather and all. As you all know, I left Speakeasy in mid-March and then shortly thereafter began interviewing with Best Buy corporate. I’m now responsible for Best Buy’s entire Gaming strategy - including both physical and digital. I’ve also got a couple of side things going on as well that I’ll clue you all in on when appropriate. Fun times and I’m sorry for going dark for almost two-months. We’ve got tons of pictures to upload that I’ll be handling.
And believe me, we’ll be posting more on the site given that we’ll be distant from every person that we know. Twittering, etc - which will be linked on the site as well.
Happy New Year
May the Lord bring you peace and mercy this New Year. Hello, 2009!
Did you go vote today?
We did - lines were not too long (actually, non-existent). We both voted for McCain, not because we believe in what he’s doing, but primarily we didn’t want the other guy to win. I think other guy’s statements around what he will change is unrealistic. I think for the most part he’s a good public communicator, but don’t believe him in what he’ll do. I also question his Christian background as well. Has anyone seen the type of abortion he approved as a State Senator? Look it up, it’s pretty unbelievable.
We’ll see what happens, but I don’t have much confidence right now.
Snow in March
So ya know, I like March. It’s new beginnings, spring time, it means summer’s coming, etc. Only, this March it decided to snow; in Texas I might add. The day before it snowed it was 70+ degrees, then 24-hours later it’s snowing. Here’s proof.
Holiday Season Shopping: Find a CompUSA… Fast!
Last week CompUSA was bought out by a liquidator and they are officially closing down the stores all over. It’s a mad fire sale with Jenn & I getting in on the action. Our TV has a busted screen due to some extra curricular activities (more to come on that later) and so we are looking at nabbing a new one instead of spending the $1k to fix it.
Need help? Go here to find the nearest store - forget shopping online, shop where the loot is being looted!
My Parents: Moving to Scotland
I’ll write a little more at another time, but my parents (after 6-years of wanting and working to move) are headed to Scotland to be missionaries. I really admire their drive, cause, and absolute reverence to God’s calling in their lives and the effect it is having on me, my family, and my friends has been incredible. Below is the first letter that I received from my Dad and stepmom.
What I’m Thankful For This Holiday… Best Video That Sums It Up
Amongst other things that I’m thankful for this Holiday season is our soldiers. The war in Iraq & Afghanistan often times can be a distant memory in many American lives. We take for granted the freedom that our soldiers provide us and the sacrifices that they make with their families. Because of that, I have the freedom everyday to see my wife & daughter. I have the opportunity to provide for them as well.
I’m not sure whom has seen this video that was published a few months ago by NBC, but it reminds me of the families that also sacrifice to provide American’s freedom as well. It makes all the issues that I have with the two wars we are in go away, which by the way I ultimately support. Seeing moments like these sums up what it means to sacrifice; especially to those that are lost to tragedy.
I’m grateful for the service of our soldiers and the freedom they provide me to be with my family. May grace be upon you, your spouses, and children.
Sign of Apocolypse
I don’t know that I would call the Police if the crack I purchased was “fake,” but apparently some one did…
So You Reach the Milestone and Then Lay Off?
So as you can see my last post, I reached a significant milestone with my blog. Writing for one-year, comments, number of articles, followed by a big thank you to my wife & daughter. And what’s the big follow-up that’s occurred? A big fat nothing, zero, nada.
Unfortunately, I’ve been super slammed lately with work and such, making sure we end the Quarter on a good note. However, I should be uploading a ton of pictures and videos here soon as we have had a lot of fun family activity, including a trip to New York City!
More to come tomorrow…
It’s Mike: 1-Year Anniversary
Well, exactly 1 year ago today I started writing and blogging on my own server! I’ve written 167 articles during that time frame and can say that I’ve really enjoyed keeping up with my blog. It initially started out to simply write about life, technology, and work, but grew to so much more. It ended up being more about articles on items that I’m passionate about (excluding work for obvious reasons) such as Technology, Internet, Athletics, as well as a lot about my family, pictures, and videos. So I guess I would classify my blog as more of a multimedia type experience given the videos, content, and pictures that I have published. I even had fun with some photoshop to spice things up a bit (sorry Ella, I love you though!)
I’m also amazed at all the folks that visit my site as well. While I obviously don’t get many comments (55 to date), I am often told by friends, family members, and colleagues that they visit my blog frequently. So many thanks to all of you that read it and have a glimpse of the different aspects of my life and family. We are truly blessed by it all and love sharing in our experiences.
To my Ella - You are truly a blessing in my life. Watching you grow over the past 14 months has been amazing. Words cannot express the joy that I have when I am around you and when you smile, talk, garble, yack, clap, hug, kiss, slap, and gaze at me. You are an inspiration to your Mother and I and we will always love you, teach you, care for you, be an example of God’s word to you, pray for you, and provide you the best life we are physically able to provide. You love it when I sing to you, play with you, walk and talk with you, kiss and hug on you, and read to you. Your smile, your cute little curls, and your big-blue eyes will always be forever burned in my mind.
To my Wife, Jennifer - Since the day that I met you I have loved you. You constantly amaze me with your patience, gratitude, warmth, desire for Christ, and being the best Mommy in the world. I truly could not succeed at life without you and know with out a doubt that you are in fact my soul mate. Your encouragement and voice are always on my mind, bringing peace to me daily. It’s been a joy and blessing to be married to you for 5 years, 6 months! You are my best friend, my companion, my love, by sweetheart, inspiration, and motivation in Christ. Words can’t begin to express my thanks and all I know to say is “Thank you for loving me”.
Apple’s iTV & iPhone
With Macworld happening this week (not to mention CES), I was actually impressed with Apple’s latest offerings coming about. As most of you are aware, I’ve been looking to build a media center PC or Home Theater PC (HTPC) within the past couple of months. I was actually fixing to pull the trigger on either the VoodooPC Aria or Niveus Rainier Media PC. However, lately I’ve run into a couple of set-top box solutions, such as an amazing Helios X3000 product, that stream your media from a storage server (which I already have) and play it in high-definition over your TV. Considering that I want to mainly stream music, photos, and movies from the file server - this is looking more like the traditional path I should take. However, I decided to wait until Apple came out with their stuff as there was a rumor about the iTV coming out.
Hello New Brand; Bye NetFire
Hi Friends. It’s been a while and I’ve been super slammed with work and all. One of the highlights that I’ve been working on for the past 9 months or so is a huge launch at Speakeasy. As most of you know, the division that I manage is all services that are located in our datacenters. That brand at the moment has been channeled through NetFire, but as of 15 November we are now known as Speakeasy Managed Services. It’s such a huge milestone for us as Speakeasy really transitions itself from not just being a server provider, but really a solutions provider. For me, the NetFire brand is very sentimental because it was the primary brand of our company before Speakeasy acquired us in June 2004. We’ve seen a lot of changes over the past 4-years, most of which have been very positive. Regardless, this is very exciting for me and my staff and it’s a rare opportunity to take part in with a company as dynamic as Speakeasy. I wish that this milestone meant that things would slow down some for me, but it’s probably going to be the opposite. Therefore, if you are one of those complainers that says I never have time for you… well keep on complainin’. Haha! Just kidding! No, really, I expect to have some time available now and to update the blog more.
/mike
Speakeasy Wins PC Magazines ‘Reader’s Choice Award’
This week we received some really good news at Speakeasy! According to PC Magazine, we were the Reader’s Choice for DSL! Here’s a snip from the article:
“The best provider this year is one of the smallest: Speakeasy was head and shoulders above the competition. It wins a Readers’ Choice with the category’s only significantly above-average overall score (8.6). BellSouth gets an honorable mention with a better-than-average 7.6, and AT&T (including SBC Yahoo!) tanked, with a significantly worse-than-average 7.2.”
As a privately held company, awards like this mean so much to our staff as a whole as we work extremely hard towards driving a solid product and providing excellent customer service.
7-Eleven Dumps Citgo
While 7-Eleven claims that they were going to drop Citgo because of other reasons, they are ending their agreement with them because a contract expires next week. Now if I’m an advisor to Chavez of Venezuela, I probably wouldn’t tell him to bash the US President on US soil when a contract is up for renewal. Good for 7-Eleven!
Ella Patty-Cake’s & Begins to Talk
Here recently Ella has begun to respond to her environment as well as understand Jenn and I when we talk to her. Her Papa recently taught her how to do “Patty-Cake” and she now responds to us when we say “mama”!
Citgo = No Go; Hasta la vista Chavez
Oh baby, I’m pumped up now. As you all know by now, Hugo Chavez, president of Venezuela, spoke at the UN yesterday and called president Bush the Devil. Further, he called Bush an alcoholic and other misc names. I’m not sure that I really care what old Hugo says from his presidential suite in Venezuela land (as I could care less what he says), but I officially have an issue with him coming to the US and bashing our head of state.
So fine, we have some political issues going on here in the States with President Bush, but Hugo shouldn’t take that as an invite for himself to join in on his opinions. You’re not an American; at best you’re a wanna-be. You want to ramble on about how Bush is the devil, stole your tooth before the tooth-fairy could get there, and kicked your dog? Fine, go ahead. But do it from your own country. Oh Hugo, you must have thought that because we are having issues that we would side with you when you toss 2nd-grade comments at our President? Laf. You’re crazy (figuratively and literally speaking)! You think America is going to say ‘Amen’? Try again wacko.
However, I do find it funny that all the major news corporations are pointing to the fact that Citgo is a Venezuelan run company. It’s kind of like they are saying, “Hrm, I wonder if America will boycott Citgo ’cause Venezuela owns it.” Haha! Yeah, you guessed it. Jenn and I will never buy Citgo gas again for as long as we live. I bet the main guys in Houston are saying, “Oh crap, get your resume ready.” Yeah, I’d get my resume ready as well.
Hey Hugo - go home and cry to someone who cares. Good riddance and don’t come back.
Ok CNN, I Officially Have an Issue Now
So those of you that know me understand that I lean more on the conservative side with the Republican party. I’m also aware that as a member of this party my opinions may be naturally biased. Further, I’m also aware of how biased CNN is as a news organization against the Bush administration towards his policies and initiatives. I’ve tolerated some of their ignorant news casts here in the past, but recently have become tired of their recent antics.
Vacation, College Football, TV Shows
Hey friends, been busy again with traveling and family vacations lately, so I haven’t been able to update the site as of late. We took a trip to Colorado with some family for a week and spent some time in the mountains. Needless to say it was a well needed break from the daily grind, more specifically the internet.
We’ve also been busy with catching up on the College football scene here recently. As I’ve mentioned before Jennifer and I are avid football fan watchers, so Saturday mornings are often spent watching the latest and greatest and then discussing potential outcomes for the day. I guess it’s kind of like watching Saturday morning cartoons… but it’s College football. hrm.
Also, Grey’s Anatomy starts back up this Thursday with a new season. Fun stuff! What you may not know is that they are playing the season ending episode of last season tomorrow night! ABC is also doing a free download via iTunes of the series final as well. Go nab it, hurry!
I’ll post some pictures here shortly of some of our trip.
/me out.
Busy Week; Again!
Hey friends. Been another busy week this week. Tons of work stuff going on and I bought a new car. Yup, that’s right - I got a new ride. For those of you that know me, I’ve been eyeing the 2006 VW Passat since last November. It’s really a great car, but the Tundra just wasn’t very practical for me any more. You see, I drive 35 miles one-way to work each day and that’s it. I don’t use the pick-up much for hauling stuff. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I loved my white pick-em-up truck, but at the end of the day I don’t need it.
The Passat’s a nice car, safe, more comfortable, cheaper on gas, and more practical for the fam. Oh, it’s also got 280 ponies under the hood; yeah, it moves! It’s also got the best crash rating and has 8 airbags, which is a plus. I’ll take more pics soon, but here’s a couple of quick snaps:
Wow, long time.
Hey friends, I was in Seattle all last week so I was unable to update the site. Been slammed with work, rolling out a big transition. I should have quite a bit of updates for you, however.
Interesting article earlier this month over at Wired regarding VoIP integration. Stay tuned..
Monday Night Howdy
Here’s some recent news that’s exciting to me:
Verizon introduces multi-room DVR. Nice product made by motorola, but doesn’t allow for play-back of digital media such as movies. However, I’m sure that’s soon to change.
Good video talking about WiMax for you new.b’s. Sprint also announced a $4 MM investment into WiMax. A few weeks back we spoke about how that I believe WiMax will power the next generation ISP, which could very well be a media based firm like News Corp.
HP Comes out with Streaming media TV. Uses WiFi or ethernet from your media center PC. Not bad.
Team USA is romping again. Two words: Coach K.
She crawls, sits-up, stands, and cuts a tooth - All In One Week!
So Ella has really been growing lately. And by lately I mean within the past 7 days. She’s learned to crawl, sit-up, pull herself up into a standing position, and cut a tooth all in the same week. We took a video of her last Saturday night as evidence and man was it funny. We often forget that she tends to spit-up as well, so those of you with a faint heart consider yourself warned! Na, it’s really funny though. Check it out!
Thursday Night News Round-up
What’s Hot:
Pics of MP3.com liquidation. Say good-bye to the dotcom erra.
Golden Nintendo w/ Zelda. Oh the days.
MyKey is out. Only thing is if the batteries run out, you’re toast.
Finally more iPod car integrations. About time!
Remind me, what’s YouTube’s biz strategy again? Exit, Exit, Exit…
Pretty good iPhone design. Only it will never happen.