Saturday, September 20, 2008

I'm up in Redmond, Washington

I'm in Redmond at the Redmond Marriott Town Center hotel for the Pacific Northwest Software Symposium. Yesterday's sessions were interesting. I learned much more about SOA and the Java Messaging Service (JMS). The speaker for my sessions was Mark Richards. The keynote speaker last night was Jared Richardson (Jared's blog). Jared's speech on Career 2.0 was humorous, but good. I'm going to have to follow some of his suggestions. I already do "sanity hacking", using PHP/MySQL/Python/etc. at home to keep up my skill set, and learn new skills, beyond the Java that I use at work. Today, I'm planning on attending seminars about the Google Web Toolkit taught by David Geary, and Java Regular Expressions by Neal Ford.

This afternoon, Joy is coming up here with our friends Les & Keri to go see The Phantom of the Opera at The Paramount Theatre. We're planning on going out to eat before hand, and it gives Joy an excuse to dress me up in a suit and tie. Oh, well, when Joy's happy, I'm happy!

Monday, September 15, 2008

A new baby elephant

On Saturday, we went to Oregon Zoo to see Samudra, the baby elephant that was born on August 23. He was sleeping when we were there, but still cute. They have a new frog exhibit, which Joy liked, being the frog lover that she is.

On Saturday night, our son John was at a friend's house. He was planning on taking a fishing trip with them yesterday; however, he was out playing tag in the woods in the dark Saturday night and collided with a tree, ending up with a broken nose.

Yesterday, we had a 50th birthday party for our friend Les. He was totally surprised. Joy made him a birthday cake with a golf theme.

Next weekend, we're going to see The Phantom of the Opera with Les & Keri at the Paramount Theatre in Seattle. It should be a fun time.

Tuesday, September 02, 2008

September is here--August is gone

It was a quiet Labor Day weekend at home. We worked on organizing the garage, relaxed, and watched movies.

Friday evening, we watched Doctor Zhivago. It's been many years since I've seen it, so it was somewhat different than I remembered.

On Sunday evening, we went to Mt. Hood Theatre with our friends Les and Keri to watch a double feature, Hancock and Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Both were fun, if not exactly Oscar contenders.

Yesterday afternoon, we watched Airplane and The Italian Job on DVD. We've gotten several of these older movies recently at bargain prices.

I'm glad that Hurricane Gustav has turned out to be less destructive than it could have been, but I still feel sorry for people that have lost their home and possessions due to it. After Katrina, I'd have been moving to higher ground, myself!

We've been keeping up pretty good in our diet and workout regimen, going to the gym almost every day, even if just for the swimming pool and sauna.