On The Road Again...

We spent some time in the car over the Christmas vacation week.  We picked-up Nana from her home in Watsonville, stayed the night there and brought her back to Sacramento the next day, to spend the week with us.  Unfortunately we saw many accidents amongst the holiday traffic along the way.

We had more family over for early Christmas gift opening, then later Christmas dinner and gift opening for the rest of the family.

The next day while the big girls went shopping I took Anna to breakfast at a restaurant of her choosing.  Then we went to feed the ducks at the park and played on the massive playground equipment / maze.  Squeezed in some quick tech support at the church for some networking problems.  Hit Starbucks on the way home and played educational games on the computer until the shoppers returned home.

Then we repeated the trip to Watsonville to return Nana home and stayed the night again before coming back home the next day.

In between this I ended up working while on vacation for about 16 - 18 hours.  Of course these were the late night early morning hours so I lost some sleep too.  Luckily for all but 6 of those hours I could remote into the office to work. Sitting on the couch with my laptop.

Better flight stats results

 

Posted by Nick Weininger, Software Engineer

The holiday season is upon us, and we know that many amongst you are traveling to be with family and friends. To make sure you spend more time celebrating and less time waiting at the airport, we're introducing a new flight status feature that we hope will make your travels easier.
For the latest information on a flight's status, simply search for an airline and flight number, and the first result will tell you whether your flight is on time or delayed as well as the estimated departure and arrival times. Here's a quick example for a specific American Airlines flight:

Hopefully this makes your travels a little smoother. Happy holidays from the Google Search team.

P.S. We're still working on building a search feature that will find your lost luggage ;-)

Better flight stats results
Karen
Tue, 18 Dec 2007 20:48:00 GMT

Below Freezing

This doesn't happen very often here in Sacramento...

This morning I got up early to go for a run before work.  This time I skipped my usual routine of checking the temp & weather online, because I already knew it was going to be cold.  So, I just put on the cold weather running clothes and headed out the door expecting to get my usual 3 miles in.  Everything had a heavy coating of frost and it was pretty cold.  I headed down the street, but as I rounded the first corner heading for the 1/4 mile I was already thinking it was too cold to be out.  By the time I crossed the 1/2 mile I turned around and sprinted back home.  When I checked the official temperature it was 29-30 degrees out!  If the sun was out that probably wouldn't feel as cold, but in the early morning before sunrise it was cold!

More of Anna playing in the Surf

Watch at YouTube

Anna Playing in the Surf

Here is Anna playing in the surf at Sunset State Beach over Thanksgiving break.

Watch at YouTube

Happy Thanksgiving

View at YouTube

Shorter week than expected!

Wow, I just realized my daughter's school is off a day earlier for Thanksgiving than I am. So, I'll have to take an extra day off work, which makes this a 2-day work week.

That may sound great, but I have so much work to get done this just reduces the time I have to get it done.

Update: Looks like it will workout after all. The after school program is remaining open that first day to watch the kids!

Just a Test Post Using Windows Live Writer

I just installed Windows Live Writer, a free desktop application from Microsoft that lets me write blog posts offline and post them to any of my blog(s) later.

I used Live Writer to create and later edit this post!  The only issue I had was inserting the photo.  Though, it does allow me to select an image from my computer or the web it had a problem retrieving this image from my flickr page.  I just edited the post in Blogger to fix the image reference and then edited the post again with Live Writer.

Father and Daughter Day

Anna and I had the day off together today.  After seeing Julie off to work, I let Anna play with her dolls for little bit in the morning.  Then I had planned on checking into the price of having a full color 36"x60" poster printed, and Anna wanted to check out the California Museum for History, Women, and the Arts downtown, which has had 3-4 uniquely painted 5 ft tall figures of Mickey Mouse on display.  We headed out and after our first stop at Kinkos we headed off to my second choice of printers, Brownies.  Along the way we passed by Blue Diamond Almonds.  I thought, hey we should check it out.  Anna liked the models in the lobby and we tried a few flavors of almonds before leaving with 3 small cans.  Then we headed over the the California Museum for History, Women, and the Arts, which turned out to be closed.  However we were able to see the Mickey Mouse's through the windows.  We headed off to lunch after stopping at the second print shop.  After lunch at Chipotle. I remembered hearing about a place at the mall called Build-A-Bear.  So, I asked Anna if she would like to go check that place out.  We had never been there so, I didn't know what to expect.  The place was packed and there was no guidance as what we were supposed to do.  I eventually figured out where we were supposed to start.  Anna picked a Poodle from the wall of bodies and we advanced through the stations to "build" the Poodle.  First we added a magic sound box, then went to the stuffing station where Anna also adds a  small heart that she puts some of her own love into, next is the fluffing station, then Anna picks out some clothes, we continue to the station where we create the birth certificate.  The grand finale is when I step to the register and find that this stuffed animal is going to cost me $55 out the door...

Well it was worth it.  We had fun and Anna loves her Poodle.  She sleeps with it every night, and it rides in the car to school with her in the mornings.

Home Depot Monthly Free Kids Project

This was back in August.

View at YouTube