All I Need is a Mugging

Today, I came in to work and noticed that my drawer was open. Someone had ruffled through my desk drawers and found my small cash-stash ($50 in ten dollar bills and quarters) that I keep around for pizza lunches on Fridays.

The list of theft's that I've been a victim of now include:

• Cash ($50) from desk at work
• MP3 player ($20) from coat pocket while playing indoor soccer
• Wallet, glasses and keys ($130) from church while attending a potluck
• Bicycle & snowboard ($970) from apartment (they ripped the door off)
• Backpack (Wallet, Thomson Portfolio, MP3 player, reading glasses, portable game system - $430) from my car's trunk while packing up from a LAN gaming party
• Ironman watch ($40) from pants pocket at gym

I'm averaging a theft every 10 months for the last 5 years.

How about you? Any stories?

The Johnsons Set Up a Christmas Tree!

Link: http://www.youtube.com/v/1aOYi-4loIE&fmt=6

With the scent of freshly baked cookies hanging heavily in the air after an afternoon of baking, we set out to put up our christmas tree. Pandora Radio set the mood with hits from the "Rockin Holiday" station: http://pandora.com/stations/574a57ea7384db17645cedeeb33c1e25425ba2910f7abf8b. I marched box after box of tree trimmings, decorations and other such flair up the entry stairwell from the garage under the approving eye of my 14 month old daughter. With each box came an inquisitive look followed by a pointed exclamation and bubbling laughter. Annabelle was getting quite excited!

I opened the first box, and immediately Annabelle was touring the contents. Each item was observed, moved, poked then discarded for the next item. We started to assemble the tree. When I unfurled the lower branches, Annabelle didn't quite know what to make of the bouncing branches, and stared for a few seconds til Cheryl asked her what she thought of that. As you saw in the video, Annabelle promptly did an interpretive dance to display the awkward excitement of the event.

Soon after, came lights, ribbon and ornaments. Annabelle put up the plastic ornaments near the bottom, while Cheryl and I adorned the upper sections of the tree. When the angel topper came out, Annabelle lept into my arms, ready to assist in its placement.

The tree was finished, so we tossed the boxes back into the garage then laughed, played tag, and danced around in the living room til we were all exhausted enough to hit the sack. What an excellent Sunday!!

Productivity and Curiousity

I'm a curious guy. When a thread piques my interest, watch out!!

What happens in between topics of interest? Laa dee da dee da, skipping around, eyes wandering in a lackadaisical fashion... dee dee doooo... Cheryl to David, "Honey, why does salt make ice melt?" *Poof, alert, interested* "Hmmm... I don't know" *gears revving, BAM!!, sonic boom, David flies through wikipedia and google scholar to related links, topics and visualizations* *crack-azapers* *the yellow brick road bursts into a million pieces as David's wake follows him past Oz...* "Aha!! ..."

I tend to drift while I'm between topics of interest, but when I'm interested, I fly. Time seems to do the same, passing slowly when I'm bored and cheating ahead when I'm interested.

Topics that caught my eye this weekend: 

• .NET and C#'s amazing catch-up to Java (including multi-platform runtime, open source support for projects like xStream, Spring, JUnit, and the frickin amazing new & free Web Developer Studio by Microsoft... http://www.microsoft.com/express/download/default.aspx)
• Java EE design patterns, security approaches, scalability concerns...
• NetLibrary's stunning varienty of technical refferences
• The drama involved in crowning Solomon king of Israel and Judea.
  
• The relationship between water phase changes and solutes
• Mind mapping tools as a solution for writing technical documents, authoring presentations, composing emails, keeping track of work... (see FreeMind: http://freemind.sourceforge.net)

What did you find interesting this week? Pique my interest with something cool!! I'll love you for it. :)

The Content of My Blog

Here's a visualization of my last six months of blog posts:

http://www.wordle.net/gallery/wrdl/334931/Untitled

Moments with Annabelle 8-10 Months

Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hrg4wDAaNlA&fmt=6

All the Small Things

I love my life. :)

Yesterday, Cheryl was out with some old friends. I started the day with an hour face-to-face chat with my brother via Skype. (P.S. If you have a skype account, email or facebook me your skype account sn so I can talk to you too...)

Allan's friggin brilliant and proving it at school. I love hearing about the ridiculously awesome things he's up to.

After our chat, I watched a B-movie on the sci-fi channel, then drove over to North Ponds park, strapped on my roller blades and went for a five mile jaunt up the path.

After that, a trip to wegmans, another B movie, some video games... It was a very relaxing day.

The beautiful thing about being me though, is that even with such an uneventful, relaxing day, I learned a lot and honed my existing skills...

My average day activities are what I love so much about my life. Right after waking up, I played blocks with Annabelle, had a delicious breakfast, danced around the apartment to the foo fighters, muse, blink and system of a down, juggled, stretched out, did hand stands, practiced balancing on one hand... The things that are novel to me include my trip to Wegmans where I visited each isle 1 or 0 times... the research I did on wood-working and how to build the shelves for our garage... the whitepaper I read on agile data management... the design patterns I investigated... service oriented architecture approaches.

All that's a heck of a lot of fun to do and learn, but it certainly doesn't make for good lunch-time conversation. I'm making headway in so many ways!! I've got our finances under control. I have a new method of approaching difficult topics with Cheryl and we're closer because of it. I've got a system for preparing great meals on a regular basis. They're all fantastic things!!! But how much of that is interesting to blog about? Believe me friends, my lack of blog posts recently doesn't mean that my life is slowing down... I'm simply filtering out the stuff that's not of general interest.

P.S. Here's the photo gallery of the Johnson-Herring annual apple picking trip: http://picasaweb.google.com/ultimadj/BerryPicking2008

Johnson Moving Day

Album Location: http://picasaweb.google.com/ultimadj/MovingDay

The night before the move, Cheryl, Annabelle and I brought our sheets, toiletries, a few blankets to our empty new apartment. We slept on the floor without a mattress after playing a few games and chasing Annabelle through various rooms and closets. We were all so excited that we could barely sleep. The evening was wonderfully cool, a luxury made possible through the central air conditioning. Our old apartment didn't have an air conditioner of any sort. Cheryl's dedication to living within our means can be attested by the fact that she went lived in the tiny apartment with no air conditioning and shoddy heat for the entirety of her pregnancy.

We woke the next morning feeling refreshed, sizzling with excitement about the task at hand. I drove out to Henrietta to pick up the moving truck. Trying to rent a truck only a week in advance had proven to be an issue... Budget and UHaul had no trucks of ANY size available in the area. Fortunately, AAA sent me to Penske where a truck was not only available, it was less than half the cost of either competitor.
I drove the truck to the old apartment where Cheryl's closest friends were already starting to gather, preparing the apartment for the move to come, putting knick-knacks and cleaning supplies into the final few boxes. I missed having Nate with me. For our last move, he was the first there, helping me to get the truck and the last to leave, chilling with us after the move was over.

Soon, others started to arrive. The first heavy lifters assisted me in placing furniture onto the truck though eventually, the movers were so efficient that I ended up managing placement of items in the truck more than actually carrying myself.
The truck was loaded swiftly and we headed off to the new apartment. The contrast between old and new was stunning. The truck was unloaded quickly, and it was time for pizza. After pizza, beer, soda and slides, the crew members gradually left 'til Cheryl and the final few unpacked the essential items. In the following days (two or three), Cheryl not only established an organizational system for the new space, she managed to unpack and reorganize the available space into a livable apartment.... her skill in such matters in unrivaled in my opinion.

The move was a blast, and the helpers a joyful blessing. Thanks to all involved!!