I've been searching around and have found some interesting looking plans and blogs from other folks who have undertaken this project with varying results. One of the problems I will be facing is the distinct lack of sun. My backyard is surrounded by trees which makes my plant selection limited. Many suggestions are to use all native plants to populate your garden, I feel that would not give me the result I want. I suspect I will wind up with some ferns, moss, azaleas, hopefully at least one cherry tree and a Japanese laceleaf maple.

I am also hoping to add in a koi pond as well. Not a huge one but enough to allow for the sound of flowing water, at least 2 levels of water and hopefully a design that would attract frogs as well as birds, but flow enough to keep mosquitoes out of there. It would also be sweet if I could extend it enough to provide a location for a nice bridge and a stone lantern in the water.

If when I start up this project I'll be sure to photo blog it for anyone else who might be interested in doing something similar.

Despite what people may believe Japan is not Disneyland. Sure they tend to lend towards cute when able and that is fine, however there are no giant robots walking the street. All of the crazy things you find on the internet about Japan are generally only found in quirky places. for example the crazy school girl panty vending machines; I didn't see any of those. I did see beer, drink, pizza, snack, and book vending machines.The crazy bizzare toys you see touted, are generally not commmonplace. Well that is unless it is a giant robot, then it probably has it's own section at any decent toy store. Schoolgirl's wearing crazy outfits? OK those exist. I'm going to expand later and have a blog entry dedicated to Japanese fashion. My offerint to you about crazy Disney Japan, don't get too excited about that. Japan is a country not a theme park.

For most of our trip we spent time with family and friends. Mayumi's mom discovered that she isn't able to successfully watch both of our kids by herself. This revelation occured one day when Mayumi and I went out by ourselves while Oakel went to Japanese school. She watched Sean during the day and when Oakel finished school she picked him up. The school is honestly almost her back yard. There is one house and a street dividing them. She picked up Oakel as he began to get the glazed look of doom. For those without children this occurs once the child passes into the tired uber energy stage. They do things they know will get them in trouble with a fevered giddy child energy that is impossible for an adult to have. Not even Robin Williams has that kind of energy. This occured daily around 3:00 especially if we couldn't get him to nap at 1:00. Getting Oakel to nap is like getting the titanic to not sink 100 years ago. Sure it could be done but we have to develop time travel first. So I would usually be given the task of watching Oakel during this time. Did I mention I spent most of my time in Japan very tired? Anyway we usually went to be at 8:00 and woke sometime around 4:00 - 6:00 depending on how far into the trip you go. I now see a great advantage to waking up an hour earlier and am trying to continue that trend. It really wasn't that bad going to bed so early because there were no shows for me to watch, no internet and no friends to hang out with. I actually didn't mind going ot bed so early, especially knowing I would be waking up early.

Oakel is a cool little kid. It was really just cool watching him communicate. He would talk to me in English, then while we were talking someone would speak to him in Japanese and he would finish what he was saying to me and switch to Japanese to answer the other person. Once Oakel is old enough to spend some time away from us I hope for him to spend a week or two with my parents and a week or two in Japan each summer. Well unless we move to Japan, then I hope he can spend a month with my Mom and Dad. It is amazing how quickly he can pick up two languages. Sure he isn't the most articulate and he is a little hard to follow from time to time but TWO languages. Bi-lingual from birth kids have it made. If we move to Japan he is so going to own his foreign language classes ;). Another funny thing about that. Oakel has developed quite a southern dialect. I'm working to try to minimize it as much as I can but it is SOOOOO twangy. I know I have some myself but not like his. Silly piedmont dialect ;) kidding kidding.

Anyway we are back, I am back at work, the kids are in school and the hodrum habbit of life is starting to settle back in. I'm going to try to start injecting some diversity for us. We need to have more fun and less routine I think.

Don't get me wrong. It is a nice OS. The problem is that it tries to be so much more than an OS. Same thing with Mac. What consumers want and what they need are always different beasts and a happy middle ground needs to be reached. Let us look for a moment.
Windows has had multiple anti-trust lawsuits against them for including things such as a browser, an email client, and a music player. Since these are installed by defacto and are the prefered program by default and as such are quite integrated into the OS it is an unfair market advantage. Mac provides the exact same integration and I haven't heard much news about how evil their integration is.

OS. This is short for Operating System. Thsi should be an environment for programs to run in. This does not mean that the OS needs to include by default a bunch of games, utilities, and programs. I would much prefer Microsoft to strip out all of the ancelary applications and services and instead concentrate on making a good OS. Sure bells and whistles on the OS level are nice, but save your media player as a download. Provide all of the added functionality as micropurchases or free downloads, or as a seperate CD, but keep the OS trim and slim. Same goes for Mac. Slim it down.

If I want somethign to play music I'll go to the internet and get what I want. You provide a driver base and an interface please. All of the other applications make my life as a tech guy so much more difficult. All of the changes that folks are going to need help with which really should not be an issue will overrun any issues with the actual OS.

Keeping all of these little applications patched is another bother. Why do I need to download megabyte after megabyte of patches for some part application supplied with the OS I'll never use?

So my suggestion for redmond on the next windows release, concentrate on the OS and leave applications out. Develop them for the OS AFTER you have a good OS and make them much more optional. I don't need a media player that is attached to the kernal, nor do I want a web browser as my primary interface with my applications.

If you are unfamiliar with Livewire is is basically Mountain Dew with orange Icey-Pop like flavoring. They are amazing when really cold, and quite god when warm. They are about the same color as orange Fanta and pack the MD punch of Caffine and Orange Juice. Mmmmmmmmm.

Well I just discovered that I can order Livewire at a local grocery store. Now my trips to Va are over and I am just a little sad about that. I actually found that by being less available I enjoyed what I had more, now once again I am taking them for granted and not enjoying them as much.

I suppose this just works with the human condition that when something is worked for it is sweeter. If somthing is rare it is worth effort to get. McDonalds did this with the McRib which was marketing genius. Between McRib releases I would forget how nasty those things were and instead think about pork, onions and a sloppy sauce.

I worry about bills. Can I pay them? What if one of us lost or quit our job? Why did I switch my job? My other work made me feel like I was accomplishing something, Project Management makes me feel like I'm fighting with myself.

Are the kids dead? At night I worry about the kids. Sean is still in SIDS territory and he sleeps on blankets with mom. When Mayumi is out with a kid or two I worry that they will be in an accident. I worry when she Mayumi comes home hours late after hanging out with her friends and not calling.

I worry about my past, and my future. Things I have said or done that may come back and haunt me. Things I have to do that may cause me trouble.

Hopefully by getting this out of my head they will ease.

I don't want to worry this much. Worry can be constructive; it makes you look at things from angles. It helps prepare for surprises; it keeps you from falling asleep and keeps you asleep. It makes you sleep like the dead, unless your child coughs, or rolls over, or murmurs in their sleep, and then you bolt upright, mind reeling. Fight or flight fight or flight. Heart pounding, adrenaline gushing, is he sick, do I need to run him to the bathroom or wash sheets?
Then looking down at a sleeping child curled up and comfortable. There is nothing like a child sleeping comfortably to put you at ease. Not that you can sleep with that much adrenaline in your system, but at least you are at ease, teeth chattering, heart rate up. Sometimes you wish some unarmed creep would break into your home so you can release one of these adrenaline spurts. Then I look around my room and realize I don't even have a bat.

I think I understand now why my mother holds such tension in her shoulders and why my dad has almost no need for a massage. She and I worry, we think about things that make us tense and put on our game face for the world. My dad, he gets angry. He tells you what it is you have done wrong and lets you know how to fix it. Perhaps if I could master his ability I would not worry. Could it be that worry stems from internalization of issues? Because I don't tell folks the things that bother me most I have created a mechanism to steep my thoughts into worry? I don't remember worrying this much before I became a Project Manager.

Regardless I worry, and I need to worry less.

For dinner tonight we were going to go to my parent's favorite BBQ shop. Unfortunately they close early on Sunday and were already out of BBQ when we called. We went to this other place that Mom had been told was good. The Q was... well.. fair. Her parents just picked at it and obviously didn't care much for it. Neither did Mayumi, Mom, Dad or I. I did, however, enjoy the collards. I got a side to go because it isn't every day I get to eat collards. Tomorrow we go to Beaufort/Morehead city. I will be taking them to El's for a shrimp burger, hit the Sanitary for lunch or something, and show them around the old hunting grounds. Look here is where I used to live. Ok, it is actually the corner lot three houses north in that pic. Here is the pizza hut. That is about it. I'm sure we will drive around some and look at boats, houses, front street and such but overall that is what Beaufort was to me. Not much excitement left in that little town for me at this stage.

I am enjoying this trip much more than my Mother-in-law's last trip. If you recall she and Oakel got in to a little misunderstanding and it just seamed to stick the entire trip. This time they seem to be getting along nicely. Oakel has been hugs and kisses the entire time. Sean is, well, 6 months so he is full of other juices as well. Here is to hoping that everything holds out until Friday.

4 eggs beaten
1 cup sugar
1 tbsp flour
1 cup cold water
2 1/2 tbsp butter (warmed to liquid)
5 tbsp vinegar

Sift flour and sugar together. Add water while stiring the mixture.
Add the butter and mix. Spoon in 1 tbsp at a time of vinegar until mixed.
Stir in the beaten eggs.

Put on stove over medium to slightly below medium heat stiring constantly until about the consistancy of batter. pour into pie crust and bake at 325 for 25-30 minutes. The pie crust will turn golden which will indicate that the pie is done.

I am not a very good baker and my custard wasn't perfect. Little bits cooked into scrambled eggs so I used a skimmer to pull out the cooked parts when I poured the custard into the pie crust.

I think I would like to make some savory pies. I've never had meat pies or the like so I think it would an interesting flavor and an interesting new hobby.

I'm also going to start cooking pear preserves. I'll post about that as I do it.

and a newer photo

Woody, at least there is nobody gunning for me :)

I couldn't participate in the first 48 hour film project and I regret that. Now I block off that weekend and baring family emergency I'll be there. This year was a blast for me and I feel that the films keep improving from year to year. At first I thought this might be because folks are getting the hang of it, or working on their skills during the year, however we had some very strong shows from first year guys so I guess we are both improving, and drawing in a more skilled group of participants. I really found myself enjoying more of the films this year and having to sit through less of them. I am no film critic but I know what I like and I will not sit here and name names in order to be troll bait. I will simply make 2 observations.

Sound.
Sound almost got us last year and this year. Both years sound was the last thing we were working on and both times we wanted more time to tweak it more. Creating good audio is difficult and doing it on a strong tmie constraint will make or break your film. If you can't find a dedicated sound person make sure you leave ample time at the end to go through and balance your audio, clean up what you can, and get your film in on time. I'm sure there are tutorial throught the internet .

Time:
It is difficult to write a 7 minute film. It is even more difficult to know when to stop filming. Some films will take the entire 7 minutes to tell, some may only need 4. If you only need 4 don't make it 7 just to fill time. When you are writing your script make sureyou don't write a 15 minute film.

I thought these thing, and I also heard others echoing my thoughts. I hope that this will help next years bunch of films excell and make the judges really have to earn their pay. This year there were MANY strong contenders for best of city and I don't think any of the teams will begrudge the winner. Hopefully TIFN will be ready during this year and help us all create better films.

I've been taking this one on one time to work on a couple of issues. Potty training. This is a slow process. He will sometimes let me know when he needs to go, but most of the time he will say he is fine and then POOP. I can't wait for this to be done. GAH.

Going to bed. Oakel was sleeping by himself for a while. Then he started waking up at about midnight every night. Mayumi started sleeping with him and now he requires it. I've been working on this. I can now put him in bed and lay down for story time. We sing twinkle twinkle little star, and it is bed time. He will stay in his bed and recite the no nos. I don't prompt him for them he just recites them. They go something like.
No jumping on the bed
No playing with the light
No screaming
No running
Stay in the bed

Of course they are in Oakelese but he gets the idea. He still will cry a little sometimes and I have to go sit with him for a while. I feel horrible making him sad like that, but he needs to be able to sleep without someone being there the whole time. Now when he wakes up at night instead of screaming he comes and sneaks into the bed with me :) I'll admit I kind of like that.

I'm also breaking him of taking his bear with him to school. They recently put out a little statement that some kids have been fighting over personal toys and asked that we refrain from bringing them. Going on day 3 without taking his bear and he seems OK with it. Did I mention that I work hard at distraction techniques :)

It will be nice to have Mayumi home. Every day I have a greater appreciation of single parents who actually take the time to raise their child instead of letting them develop into little monsters.

Let that sink in a moment. Big, and by Big I mean like more than just large. If we were to print all the information on the internet, double sided and on regular letter, it would be.. I don't know let me generate a statistic (rolls dice) 100 million tons of paper.
OK now that you know I don't know exactly how big the internet is let me move on to something I do know. The US internet has started sucking. When I say suck I mean our crappy connection speeds. Sure there are a few exceptions but in general we get excited about 5Mb per second download with only 512K upload. Well Mr. McSpeedy internet let me tell you something, that sucks. In Japan for about $22 a month you can get 26Mbs to your home. Ok we pay that for 1.5Mb. "Sure Japan is all developed and stuff" you may be thinking. This isn't just in their big cities. Part of the deal they have with the Government is that they have to provide this to the smaller cities and villages as well. I am fairly sure they don't have fiber running to all the villages but I also guarantee that the folks in those villages wouldn't have computers to use, however they can flip open their cell phone and have transfer speeds comparable to our broadband. Let me restate that, their cell phones have transfer speed comparable to our wired broadband.

Part of the problem here is that our current President has no interest in broadband and has provided no incentives or legislature to encourage the development of broadband. The cable and phone companies have no real desire for ultra high speed broadband as it would cut into their bread and butter services. Imagine if you could purchase a movie online and download it in 5 minutes and then watch it when you wanted to, would you pay $14 a month for HBO which may or may not be showing the movie you want? Let us take that a step further. Would you subscribe to an online site that could stream (imagine PVR) a movie to your house in real time based on what you wanted to watch and charge about the same as you pay for HBO, except you get to choose from the full catalog of movies? Phone companies are already realizing that they are going to go the way of the telegram before long.

In Japan you can add VOIP for $5 a month. Lessee that takes your 26Mb connection and phone bill up to $27. Currently I pay $74 for Vonage and Road Runner.

Back to the legislature. Originally Clinton was interested in the internet. He had plans to make the US a highly competitive internet entity. There were incentives and a push to make line owners (cable and phone) allow third party companies to lease space on their lines thus allowing competition where otherwise there would be none. The companies were to run fiber to the house. Well Clinton left office, and so did the momentum. The companies complained that the extra fiber was going to kill them so they negotiated fiber to the node and then copper to the house. Then they argued that forcing them to allow third parties to lease their lines was just bad. Now we are thankful for 5 Mbs internet because we as US citizens don't understand how much we are getting boned.
There have been cities which tried to create a municipal internet but have been sued by cable or phone companies because it puts city government in direct competition with private industry. Go figure. If a monopolistic company teams with another and both decide to price/speed fix something, then the people get pissed because they don't provide then the companies can sue. Sweet.

So why am I so pumped up? I'm tired of unreliable, slow broadband. I'm tired of being treated as a criminal because I am a consumer. I'm tired of the FUD (fear uncertainty doubt) that the big companies and government put on digital media/technology. My generation and those after me will be crippled in a global market because we allow big monopoly companies to control our technology. Look at the RIAA, Look at internet providers, Look at our cell phone companies. We are allowing our Big Business companies to legislate the US out of validity. Before long the US will no long be ahead in anything, but fade into mediocrity and before long out of relevance. The internet connection is not the cause of this downfall, far from it, however it is one example. In the future the internet will be more and more important. It will be how we are entertained, how we vote, how we communicate, how we do business, and we will be stuck in technology decades behind the competition. This is a lot more important than little Bobby wanting to download movies, this is relevant business, and we won’t be getting this business in the US unless we start making a change now.

If you are thinking about going to Leblon be hungry. This isn't one of those high dollar tiny meal joints; you better bring your A-game. It would be easy to fill up on the "salad" bar. The salad bar had smoked salmon, steamed shrimp, artichoke hearts, muscles, proscuito, cheeses, herbed potato, oh and salad makings. They had so much more than that but I can't remember everything that was there. I didn't even try the multiple soups that were there.

On the table in lieu of the loaves of bread or rolls one usually expects in joins like this they had small cheese bread poppers. They have perfected the cheese bread popper thingies. I would gladly sit down and eat a ton of them. They were soft, warm, and easy to eat. I made myself only eat two before the meat plate arrived.

Meat plate you ask? Yes, MEAT plate. The way this works is thus. There is a token on the table that is about the size of a drink coaster. One side is green and says roughly "bring it", the other side is red and says something to the tune of "I'm a wuss, and I can't take it anymore! Let me chew for a minute dude!". While you are in green mode the angels ..erm.. Gauchos or meat slicers walk around with meat on a stick. They will come to your table and ask if you would care to try whatever meat dish they currently have skewered. If it is a slicked meat you use a small pair of tongs to grab it before they completely sever the meat. This can be a little intimidating as they have knives you would expect some homicidal robot to wield as it chased humans through a jungle. Other meats are simply delivered to the plate in whole from the skewer. The Fillet Mignon was that way. Did I mention they have meat?

From what I remember I ate: Turkey breast wrapped in bacon, Pork Loin seasoned with garlic, Pork loin encrusted in cheese and goodness, Fillet Mignon, Prime Rib, Lamb shank, Chicken cooked in goodness, Misremembered beef cut touted as the house specialty. This is after a full plate of "salad" bar. In the end the meat won. Like in Vegas you can't beat the house.

For desert I chose the Key Lime Pie. I'm not a big fan of Key Lime but every now and then the old tongue just gets a hankering for it. This was that evening. Well it was Awesome! They made a really good pie, and as is normal for me when eating Key Lime, the second to last bite almost didn't go down. My body decided that with all that was in the tummy it would have NO more of that Key Lime. Regardless of the tastiness of that pie the last bite had to remain on the plate.

Cost?
Two people with a gracious tip (they rocked) came to about $90.

About $26 per person for the meal, I had cola, we both had coffee and desert. I can not recommend Leblon enough, but to completely enjoy it, you really do need to bring your A-Game.

Both of these products provide control over classroom machines including white and black lists for programs and websites. There are tons and TONS of other options that both offer and on Friday I'll be sitting down and doing a comparative analysis of the two.

Several things have led to us seeking out this type of software. We have an instructor who feels it necessary for us to spend thousands of dollars per computer lab to be able to insure that his students don't cheat ... at a University level, The ability for an instructor to better manage a classroom by limiting what students may be distracted by on their computers, and by offering teaching tools such as impromptu polls to gauge the classes comprehension, ability to offer a bluebook type testing environment by only allowing certain applications to run, allow monitoring from the instructor station during testing, as well as a digital whiteboard.

Since technology is becoming more deeply integrated into the teaching environment at the University several of these issues need to be addressed. Products such as these could assist distance learning students when combined with live streaming audio allowing the University to expand enrolment by allowing distance only slots for certain classes which may overflow each semester, and help the distance learning department enhance their offerings through more interactive classes for non-traditional students. Both of these scenarios should appeal to any University which has space concerns.

After I have analyzed these two products and spoken with their companies I'll review the actual products rather than the ideas supporting the need for such software.