Monthly Archives: January 2010

Movie Code

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Because I will likely forget the code snippet I used to display the video of the basketball game, I am going to post it here so I can easily find it again later. Also, it may help someone else, who knows?

<object classid="clsid:02bf25d5-8c17-4b23-bc80-d3488abddc6b" width="480" height="385"
codebase="http://www.apple.com/qtactivex/qtplugin.cab#version=6,0,2,0"><param
name="name" value="[NAME-HERE]" /><param name="align" value="left" /><param name="src"
value="[URL-TO-VIDEO-SOURCE]" /><param name="autoplay" value="false" />
<param name="controller" value="true" /><embed type="video/quicktime" width="480"
height="385" src="[URL-TO-VIDEO-SOURCE]" controller="true" autoplay="false"
align="left" name="[NAME-HERE]"></embed></object>

Detroit Basketball

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Thanks to a promotion that Meijer does called “Meijer Ticket Zone” tonight I got to go see my first professional basketball game! Melissa and I got free tickets to go to the Palace of Auburn Hills to watch the Detroit Pistons play against the Miami Heat. This was my first time ever in the Palace, and I was impressed with the venue though I am not certain if I would want to see a concert there. While the experience was enjoyable, I still stick with my previous thoughts that I would rather watch the game from the comfort of my living room. The worst part about the experience was the drive to and from the venue; lots of traffic coupled with the fact that I really didn’t know where I was going didn’t make for the best driving experience. I’m sure the next time the trip will be easier, assuming there is a next time. The parking was ok, though the $25 parking fee was not to pleasing. The event was enjoyable and Melissa and I did have a good time, unfortunately though the Pistons lost 65-92. We took a few pictures of the pre-game set up and the outside of the Palace using our phones, they can be viewed here; additionally I took a short video (again with my phone) of the Pistons coming out onto the court, and that can be seen below.

Kylie Goes to the Dentist

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Kylie had her dentist appointment today, and in typical Kylie fashion, she did magnificent. At this particular dentists office they ask the parents not to come into the examination room with their children as they find this helps the child to be more responsive and cooperative with the doctor and hygienist; this made Mommy a little nervous but appeared to have no impact at all on Kylie as she happily waived good-bye as she walked away for her exam.

The exam started out with all of us (Kylie, Mommy and I) in a small meeting room with the hygienist who explained all the policies and procedures to us, including the above mentioned “No Parents” clause. She also told us that after the exam was completed we would come back into the meeting room and the doctor would tell us how Kylie did and what was found. At the end of this meeting Kylie went off with the hygienist to her exam (a little too nonchalantly for Mommy), while Mommy and I went back to the waiting room.

After what felt like an eternity for Mommy, Kylie came back out with hygienist and we went back into the meeting room to speak with the doctor. Both the hygienist and the doctor said that Kylie did fantastic and was one of the best first time visits they had ever had. We were then told that Kylie has no cavities and that the malocclusion of her rear molars is perfect at this point with a class 1 malocclusion with no spacing or crowding issues. The doctor also said that her jaw proportions were perfect and in balance which is great to see in someone so young and that typically this is not something that they grow out of. He told us this was really good news and that it basically means that, in theory, we should have no issues with her teeth developing and she will most likely not need braces.

All this information was discerned from both the visual examination and also from the images revealed of Kylie’s ex-rays. Yup, she even had some of those done on her visit to the dentist and even they did not seem to phase her! Kylie was very proud of herself for wearing the heavy apron and collar (to protect the thyroid) and said that “it didn’t even hurt.” Then the hygienist showed us a simple way to floss Kylie’s teeth; by having her lay her head in our lap and slightly tip her head back. Admittedly this is something Daddy does not do often enough for himself (his dentist reminds him of that fact every 6 months) so hopefully we can do a better job with teaching Kylie of its importance.

I have to say that overall this was probably the best possible outcome for her first dentist appointment, and Kylie is already talking about it and looking forward to her next one!?

Kylie’s a Cowgirl

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Tonight Kylie, Melissa and I all went to Meijer to buy a few things. On the way out Kylie asked if she could ride on the horse at the front of the store, seeing as we actually had a penny on us we were more than happy to let here have a few seconds of fun. Being a father has taught me that making your child happy is one of the simplest ways to make yourself happy. Share in my happiness and view the video here.

LifeStream Moves

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As I thought might happen, I changed my mind and decided to move LifeStream to its own page, so as not to clutter the front blog page. While I like the idea of having my daily information for future reference and such, I have decided I do not like the daily posts filling the front page. Now the posts are on there own page, which can be found along the top navigation links. This page will now be my central repository for my life stream, and with this option it gets update throughout the day, instead of just once a day with the digest. I definitely like this configuration better, and seeing as the page has the information from the last few days, I have decided to delete the previous LifeStream digest posts..

LifeStream goes Live

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I just implemented LifeStream, an application plug in that will aggregate my online activities and display them on the blog. This is based on my user name and account information for various online sites that I use, such as Digg. For a while now I have been looking for a way to gather my information in one central place and now I can (as soon as I get everything fed into the plug in that is). As of now I am linked into my Delicious, Digg, YouTube, Flickr, and Hulu accounts. Should I ever actually get an Xbox 360 I can also link into my Xbox Live account. I am also working on linking in with my Google Reader account, but am currently experiencing an issue which I hope to resolve soon. What this allows is for me to have one location where I can see what I have done each day, if that is add a bookmark to Delicious or like and article on Digg, I can see it here for later use, and share my findings and viewings with others, if anyone else is interested of course. As of now the plug in will create a daily post with all my activity, this may change in the future.

A New Gallery

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I installed a new version of Gallery today, and though I am still working on the configuration, I think I like the new set up. The new version has comments enabled, so people can leave comments on pictures if they’d like (depending how this goes I may disable this feature in the future). There is also a new sidebar (that auto hides) which features a random photo (which changes every time the user views a new picture or page), it also has links to other pictures in the current album, and options to leave comments and view slide shows. This version of Gallery and the theme being used also allows for a thumbnail view for navigating the album (there are 20 thumbnails at a time). At current all the dates are wrong on individual image pages, and I am not sure if I am going to log in and fix this as there are over 8000 items in the gallery. I will continue to play with the new settings, but all the photos imported over from the old gallery without any issues. This new version is database driven, so load times seem a little faster for the larger albums and a little slower for the smaller ones, which is normal, but overall this one does have better performance than the old. I am pretty happy with my decision to upgrade to this version so far.

Wii Fit Begins…Again

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In an effort to maintain my New Year’s resolutions, today I took my first step in what I hope is a successful attempt to lose weight, I re-started my use of the Wii Fit. It turns out that the last time I used the Fit was 355 days ago. I know this because the system keeps track of that and is only to happy to make me aware of it when I started it up. I decided to clear my historical data and start fresh so I don’t have all the old data from almost over a year ago skewing out the numbers. It is my hope to be able to use the Fit everyday, though I am pretty sure that isn’t going to be possible, so instead I am setting my goal to be as frequently as possible. In any event it should be fun to earn enough credits to unlock all the activities again.

Posted in Ed

It’s 2010!!

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Happy New Year!!

This year, in hopes of self improvement across various areas of my life, I have decided to make a few resolutions:

  1. Lose weight
    • I am going to try to be more conscious of what I eat and perhaps more importantly, how much I eat.
    • I need to find ways to be more active, which for me is more of a time issue than anything. However there are things I can do to assist in this:
      • Starting on Monday I plan on taking the stairs at work more often.
      • I am going to start parking on the lower parking deck again, thus forcing me to take an additional flight of stairs
      • I am going to start parking farther from the stairs on the lower deck, thus forcing me to walk further to get to the above mentioned stairs.
      • I also plan on starting back up using the Wii Fit as often as possible.
  2. Reduce debt
    • I plan to focus on paying off my smallest debts first and then snowball those payments on tot he next smallest debt.
  3. Learn something new, either a skill or useful knowledge
    • Read a book on a new subject or skill
  4. Finish reading The Bible
    • On June 1st 2009 I began reading the Bible, not for spiritual reason but rather for information and perspective, by using a website that would email me a daily reading that would allow me to finish the Bible (both Old and New Testaments) in a year. At this point I am about a month behind in the readings. As such I need to make time to read a little each day in order to complete the reading.

There I have it, nothing I think will be too overwhelming, and I think they are actually achievable. While I have mental number in regards to how much weight I would like to lose, I purposefully decided to implement that number in my resolution, lest I end up feeling overwhelmed and give up; besides any weight lose is going to be a good thing for me. I also didn’t set a solid number for debt reduction because again, and reduction is an improvement. Hopefully I can find something new to learn that will lend itself to help improve my career, as that would help the debt situation in the long run (or so I would hope), or perhaps a new hobby. Wish me luck.

Posted in Ed