I just got back from International
CES 2003 in
Today was Kyle's final Pinewood Derby. Kyle will be crossing over from Webelos to Boy Scouts in the next month or two. We built a great car and had hoped to win the illusive 1st Place trophy, but it was not to be. Kyle's record was 237 & 3. Kyle was in a three way tie for first with only one loss, when he lost his two tie breakers. Kyle earned the 3rd Place trophy. Kyle was a little disappointed, but I told him he should be proud. Some kids never win a trophy at all. Kyle has won a trophy each of the four years (3rd, 2nd, 2nd, & 3rd). I think I put a couple of photo's in the gallery.
New features alert! I added a couple of pages for your enjoyment and because I enjoy doing it. I added pages for my home theater and home network. I'm still working on the network page, but I have some content there. Check it out.
We got a break from the sub zero temps today, I think it's around 30 out there. Of course warmer temps usually bring the snow and we got a few inches last night. Not too bad though, I didn't even shovel, I just drove over it. In my opinion the temp should be reported with wind chill. When you see it's single digits here, believe me the wind is surely blowing hard and the wind chill is generally 15 to 20 below 0. Nothing like a few days of that to make 20 degrees feel warm.
The annual Central Illinois Fantasy Football League Super Bowl party was a success. I ate so much I could barely drink beer (barely). There was Italian beef, two types of BBQ pork, several shrimp rings, gumbo and on and on. Of course Darrell (Co-owner of Johnson City Trouser Snakes) and I brought the Turducken. Essentially a Turducken is a whole chicken stuffed inside a whole duck, which is stuffed inside a whole turkey and all birds were stuffed with Jambalaya (shrimp & crawfish). We ordered it from the Cajun Grocer.com. With shipping it ran about $68, but it fed 25 to 30 people. I highly recommend it.
In case you were wondering, the Johnson City Trouser Snakes is Darrell and
my fantasy football franchise. It's next to impossible to get a franchise
in the C.I.F.F.L. (ran by our good friend Pete) and it's fairly
expensive, so Darrell and I became co-owners.
Well, I've been at it again, this time I added a wireless data page. It's a little rough now, but it will be refined over time. In addition, I added music to the Home page. A couple clips from Jack Johnson and a couple clips from John Mayer. Not sure how well it'll work over dial up or through a company's firewall, but it works over DSL from my house. I'll try and highlight different musicians each week. This week, I've been listening to a lot of Jack Johnson. I threw John Mayer in there because the two are so similar. If it doesn't work, you either need to update your media player (I included a link to Microsoft's free Media Player 9) or your companies firewall is stripping it off (it doesn't work from SF either). Enjoy...
More new features to check out. I created some slide shows of my family. I wanted to streamline the menu bar, so I added the slide show links to the bottom of the Photo Gallery page. Check them out.
We're Moving! Kim and I found a new house and are very excited about
it. Now we need to sell ours. Yeah, we kind of got the cart before
the horse but when you find the right place (that you can afford), you have to
grab it. The new home is located in Old Farm Lakes and is a
stones throw from my buddy Pete Raia's house and very close to my buddy
Great news (or at least for us), we listed our house with Coldwell Banker on
Monday at approximately
We'll it's official, we're closing on both houses on 3/28. My buddy Scott and I went over to the new house this morning to do a home inspection. Just wanted to make sure everything was to code and in working order. I brought my camera along and took several pictures. The stuff in the house is not ours, it belongs to the original owners who are still living there. I put together a slide show of the pictures I took today. Check them out here: Our New Home
I removed the slide shows I created with XP PowerToys and replaced them with Windows Media Videos I created with M$ Plus! Digital Media Edition. Essentially, the images are the same, but now they're animated with background music. Check them out when you get a chance: Photo Gallery. Be forewarned, the "New Home" file is very big (approx. 17 MB). When I get some more time, I'll try and compress it down. In the mean time, I need everyone to order DSL or Digital Cable Broadband. You see, now you have an excuse for moving into the 21st Century.
I haven't created / dedicated a web page for our new home, so for more info on the sale of our old house or the purchase of our new home (with listings, images, and satellite images of the neighborhoods), click here or go to the bottom of the page and check out the "archived news" for 2/2003. Most my images are hyperlinks, Don't forget to click around.
We'll be closing on the new house on 3/24. We'll start moving ourselves in the same day. My buddies will be coming over the morning on 3/25 to get the big stuff. We close on the sale of our old house on 3/28 (Kyle's 11th B-Day). I took the whole week off to get settled in. Unfortunately, the week of the 24th is Spring Break here, so all the kids will be home to help (hinder).
New feature alert! I created a discussion board titled Nolan Forum. Feel free to add comments to one of the topics I created, or you can add your own topic. It's like a community bulletin board. We can use it to have family discussions or just talk about our interests & hobbies. We can even use it to get answers to questions about technical or non-technical matters. Try it out.
Two days until we start moving. Kim is very excited, she can't sit still. We're pretty much done packing. We'll have some stuff left out till the last minute for personal comfort but for the most part, we're ready. We close on the new house Monday morning. I'll have the truck Tuesday morning and we should be moved in that evening. Check out the new place here.
Kyle had his 11th birthday today. Unfortunately we had to
move this week and close on our old house today. However, after we closed
I took Kyle over to
Then for dinner we took him to his favorite restaurant, Alexander’s Steakhouse. It’s a place with several large charcoal grills (very large) and everyone cooks their own steak. It was a lot of fun and I think he had a great time.
It's been a couple of busy weeks, but we're all moved in. Both vehicles are in the garage, all boxes are empty and everything is in its proper place. I think we made record time moving in. I even have speaker cables and CAT-5 cables ran and the home network and theater system up and running. All computers are set up and on-line. I even installed a new double towel holder, 3 new toilet seats, and a nice wood shelf over the washer & dryer. I hung the bikes from the garage ceiling and built a new Rubber Maid building for Jake's electric F150 (and other outdoor toys). I think Lowes has received more of my money than Best Buy for the past year (in just two weeks).
Kudos to Verizon for getting my DSL up in 3 business days. I wish I could say the same for Direct TV movers program. If you move and have Direct TV, I recommend just canceling your account and starting a new one (with new equipment). The contractors Direct TV use are idiots. I had to call a local Satellite installation company to come out and fix Direct TV's botched install job.
Kim and the kids love the place. It's nearly 3 times the size of our last house. The kids pretty much have run of the basement. We set up a TV, VCR, and 2 video game systems down there and put most their toys down their as well. Unfortunately, Kim's office had to be set up down there too but it's a very large room and I think it works well.
I plan to take some pictures and create another slide show or WMV of our house with our stuff in it. I think Mom and Emmett are coming up in a week or two and they'll be bringing some additional furniture (kids bedroom and formal dinning room), so I'll wait until then to do the slide show. Our address and phone number have changed, so if you need to contact us, just send me an email and I'll get you the new info. If you want to come visit, let us know. We have plenty of room now and would be glad to have you.
I know it's been a long time since my last update but I've been busy with the new house. We had a fence installed and I've been making some minor improvements on our home (painting, shelves, etc.).
In addition, I've spent the past week in
On Monday night (5/5) from
On Tuesday night (5/6) from
On Wednesday afternoon (5/7) I went to a special session that featured, former Vice-President Al Gore. Although I don't subscribe to many of his beliefs and policies, the guy was a riot. He had the crowd rolling in laughter. He would make a great stand up comic. Al Gore was introduced by the Mayor of New Orleans as the "Inventor of the Internet." One-liners and jokes about himself flowed freely after that. It was a very entertaining an enlightening event.
Besides the show (which lasted from
I've updated the Home Network page to more accurately depict our home network today (it's always changing). In addition, I changed the Window's Media Video for Our New Home to a simple slide show of jpegs. The slide show should work regardless of where you're accessing it (home or work). The original movie was created from pictures I took with the original owners furniture, etc. The new slide show are updated pictures of our house with our furniture. You'll see some odd images (e.g. towel racks, shelves, shudders, etc.), I was trying to point out some of the upgrades I've made.
I recently purchased a new digital camera. The past couple of business trips I had to leave the Sony camera home so Kim could cover our kid's events. This past trip to New Orleans really made me want a second camera. In addition, the Sony Cyber Shot is so large there were times I left it behind versus lugging it around a new town. After much research I found the smallest 4 mega-pixel camera available, I decided to get the Canon Power Shot S400 Digital ELPH. I've created two new albums out of pictures taken with the Canon. The new albums are titled "Memorial Day on Spiria Court" & "Canon S400 Digital ELPH" and they can be found at ImageStation.com. Check out the new albums when you get some free time.
More info on the new camera can be found at Canon's website and a thorough review at Steve's Digicams. I also chose to go with the 256 MB Ultra Compact Flash card. Essentially it's a super fast type 1 compact flash card (2.8 mbps).
The kids are doing great. Jacob is out of school for Summer and Kyle finishes in a day and a few hours. We'll be in touch soon...
We bought a new toy yesterday. We were planning on renting a "Moon-Walk" (large inflatable, jumping platform) for Jessica's birthday, however, we found that we could spend the same amount of money and buy a trampoline instead. The kids love it, Kyle and Jacob were already on the tramp as I was leaving for work.
Not much to report. I received a new 10GB Apple iPOD from a
drawing I entered at a conference in
In our area Verizon announced it will reduce the monthly service for DSL from $49.99/month to $34.95 per month. In addition, if your account is served from one of their ATM switches Verizon can upgrade the basic account from 768/128 kbps to 1.5mbps/128kbps for FREE!!!! I called them last week and as of today, I consistently break the 1 meg barrier (average speeds of 1308/137 kbps). Not too shabby...
Kim also broke down and purchased a safety net for our new trampoline. She was worried that Jake and Jess might bounce off the tramp and onto the ground. No chance of that happening now. Kyle, Jake, and Jess love it. Those kids are on that thing all day long. I swear sometimes Kyle is on it before I leave for work in the morning and they're all on it when I come home. I should have bought one of these a long time ago.
Kyle left today to go to his first Boy Scout summer camp. He'll spend the next 7 days in the woods earning all sorts of badges. He's very excited about it and I can't blame him. Camping, canoeing, swimming, archery, rifle range. Hell, I wish I were going.
Jake is in T-Ball now and has practice a couple nights a week. We're still waiting for his first game. So far they've only had practices.
Kim starts her volunteer role at St. Mary's Annual Vacation Bible School tonight. Fortunately it's only a week long and she's able to take Jessica with her. Jake is in his own vacation bible class, which gives me plenty of quiet time to review for my upcoming speaking engagements.
Jessica turns three on Friday and we plan to celebrate on Sunday. We'll have all the old neighbors and some of our new neighbors over for the usual single digit birthday treats (i.e. cake, ice cream, and of course BEER!).
Man, it's been a busy month and I can't wait till it's over. I spent all last week in a conference in Manhattan. Here's another place I'd hate to live. There are way too many people for me. In addition, the cost of living is very high. It cost me $48 to take a car from LaGuardia to my hotel room (one block from Times Square). My first meal was at a small deli, where I ordered a Pastrami on Rye. I didn't order any sides and only had water to drink, can you believe it cost $13! So I'm in town for 30 minutes and I'm down $62. Next I went to a package store to get a six pack to take back to the room. A six pack of Busch Light was $11.99! Needless to say I spent a small fortune the week I was there.
The conference was CeBIT America and I doubt I'll go back next year. Seemed a little disorganized and didn't give enough depth in the wireless arena (my main area of focus). I did get invited to tour the PC Magazine Labs. This is the lab where their analysts evaluate all products that the magazine covers. I was very impressed with the facility, the analysts, and the methods they employ for product evaluations. I'm a big fan of their magazine as well. I even got to meet a couple of semi-famous people. I was talking to this guy in the lab that looked very familiar to me. Finally I asked him, "Have we met, you look very familiar to me?" Come to find out we hadn't actually met, but he was the Contributing Editor for PC Magazine and the host of the former TechTV program titled Silicon Spin. His name, John C. Dvorak. What a down to Earth guy. I took tons of pictures of NYC and PC Magazine's labs. Check them out here:
If a whirlwind trip to NYC wasn't enough, I had to come back and give a presentation this morning to State Farm's entire Technical Services Division (about 350 folks in all). I prepared for it on Sunday. I spent a couple hours putting together slides and rehearsed until I could get it completed within the allotted time (and still give them plenty of info), only to come in at 7 AM and have my boss change the whole presentation. I had about an hour to revamp my thoughts and slides and fortunately I was able to pull it off.
Tomorrow afternoon and Wednesday afternoon I have dress rehearsals for a live Interactive Distance Learning broadcast I have to do this Thursday. Essentially an IDL is a live broadcast via satellite to all State Farm locations across the United States. The viewers can interact via a touch pad. They can respond to my multiple choice questions or key in to ask me questions. It's really a high tech set-up and very closely rivals TechTV's set-up. We have several professional studios with all the broadcast hardware you'd expect to see at any TV station. It's a good alternative to having folks fly here for training. I've been rehearsing the script all evening. Like I said I can't wait till this week is over.
Fortunately I have some major relief coming. This Friday is the annual Hacker's Elite Golf Tournament. I plan to really cut loose! Additionally, this Saturday night I've been invited to attend the Jack Johnson / Ben Harper concert at the Verizon Center in Indy ( Box seats and VIP parking). However, I turned them down. My little girl turns three this weekend and I plan to relax around the house (and recover from the golf tournament!).
Well, I have to go and review my script, AGAIN.
We're HOME!!! We spent the past 10 days on vacation in Florida. On the drive down we left at 6 AM on a 7/11 (my birthday) and made it as far as Macon, GA. I'd like to extend an extra special thanks to our friend Amy for getting us the "special" rate at the Hampton Inn in Macon (AWESOME!). We made it to Jacksonville on Saturday (7/12) at 1 PM. We spent the week visiting with family and friends. We stayed with Kim's mom while in J-ville.
On Wednesday (7/16), we drove down to Ormond Beach and stayed at my mom's beach house. After a few days playing on the beach, I ran down to Tampa to visit my Uncle Ray and cousins (Nikki & Eric). We headed back to Jacksonville on 7/19 for an overnight stay. The next afternoon (7/20) we left for Illinois. This time Kim and I decided to drive straight through. Kim took us from Jacksonville to Chattanooga. I took us from Chattanooga to Bloomington (the night shift). Even though we ran into a terrible storm in Central Illinois (near Champaign), we made it home by 4:30 AM on 7/21.
We all had a great time. Check the pictures out here:
We're experiencing technical problems with both our web server and our email server. Our hosting company (www.one2host.com) reports that several of their email servers have been black listed due to SPAM. I guess we have a lot of spammers using this service and due to their illegal activity, many of us are now suffering. One2Host is working on moving our email accounts to a new server (new IP). It may be awhile before any of our 5nolans.org email accounts are back up. Just send email to my work or hotmail address. Kim can be reached through her Verizon email address. Let me know if you need it.
I'm not sure what's going on with their web servers. Our site's been down most the weekend. When it has worked, it's been very slow. In fact, I haven't been able to publish changes for almost a week. Today is the first time it's worked. Any how, keep checking back.
This site will not be updated for some time. I'm in the process of completely rebuilding my web site. It's not by choice. I got a new laptop (IBM X30) and when I moved the web files over something got corrupted and now every time I fire up FrontPage and try to open my web, it crashes. Thanks M$! Fortunately I still have the T23 until 9/2, then I have to trade it in for another X30 (it's a work thing, I know it's a tough job but somebody has to do it). Any how, I'll do my best to get it up and running ASAP.
I still have the T23, so I'll be able to maintain the website using FrontPage until I learn how to use Dreamweaver MX. I'm not sure what happened, but FrontPage continues to crash on my new X30. It's very unreliable and I finally got fed up. I'm working through the on-line help tutorials now, should be another couple weeks before I get Dreamweaver figured out, then another couple weeks to design a new website. I hope to have a new and improved site up in a month or so. I'll continue to update this site as time permits, but the sooner I get off FrontPage the better.
Well we're finally back. I never did get FrontPage working on my new X30. I have no idea what the problem is and apparently Microsoft doesn't either because there's no info on M$ TechNet or KnowledgeBase about the error messages. And as you can probably assume, I never did finish my self-study Dreamweaver course. I guess I'll have to keep updating this site on my old T23. FrontPage sucks!
We've been busy with work and the kids activities. Kyle's football team, the McClean County Cougars went 10-1, Jacob's t-ball team did well (they're so young, they don't keep score), and Jessica's ballet classes are going well. All the kids are getting very good grades and Kyle even made the honor roll. Kim's still doing transcription work at home and running the household. My career is going strong, I've been very busy evaluating new converged devices and wireless VoIP solutions. Fortunately I haven't had to travel much (aside from day trips), but that'll likely change soon. With the new year comes a new travel budget. I'll probably hit at least three conferences next year and several field office visits.
We had a great spread of food on Thanksgiving. We'd like to thank Grandpa Mixon for providing the feast. He sent everyone in the family a Thanksgiving dinner from Omaha Steaks. It came with the turkey and all the fixings (sage dressing, roasted garlic mashed potatoes, green bean casserole, etc.), it was very good. Thanks again Grandpa.
If all goes well this weekend, I'll have updated pictures and even movies of
the family for you to view on this site.
I created a new video comprised of family pictures. It's located on the home page.
I'm not sure if anyone noticed, but this site was down all day last Friday and most the day Saturday. It appears that my hosting company (www.one2host.com) failed to renew my domain name and it expired even though I paid them more than a week ago. Anyhow, after several trouble tickets and firm emails we're back up.
It's official I'm now a true GEEK. I'm finally running Linux at home. Some friends at work told me about a software package from Mitel Networks called an SME (small to medium enterprise) server. Essentially it's a full featured communications server and gateway. Mitel sells this as the 6040 Office Server and the 6000 Managed Application Server. However, it's built upon Red Hat Linux v7.3 (Red Hat 2.4.18-5 kernel). Being open source, Mitel Networks provides free unsupported developer editions through their developers site http://www.e-smith.org/. I'll probably feature it on the "Cool Stuff" page but briefly, it features the following: DNS server, DHCP server, LDAP server, Mail server, web server, and full featured gateway with integrated firewall. I'm using it to host our new domain www.5nolans.com and email accounts. Check out the new site at 5nolans.com and check out the SME Server and host your website yourself.