Thanks to Aaron for the link.

I'm trying out something new. I have been using Technorati for a little while now to snoop on anyone that posts on Safe Eyes or Safebrowse.com. Yesterday, I mentioned Safe Eyes and already this morning, they had picked it up! So, here is my personal profile on Technorati's site.

Technorati Profile

First of all, an apology.  My new job at Safebrowse.com (writing the #1 rated parental control software, Safe Eyes) keeps me a lot busier than my previous job.  So, I rarely have time to post here.  I always feel like I shouldn't bother if I can't give you, the reader, something worthwhile and "meaty."  I've also taken up/rekindled several hobbies recently such as playing guitar (I bought a sweet Schecter electric guitar), playing Xbox360 (Gears of War rocks), and watching Planet Earth on HD-DVD.

A word about Planet Earth (HD-DVD):  BUY IT!  Ok, that was two words.  Here's two more: If you can't buy it, RENT IT!  So, I lied again.  What little I've seen of it rocks.  This is a reason to have an HDTV and the HD-DVD player for the 360 (or a standalone unit if you're just made of money).

Oh, and lastly, my blog will be moving soon.  A friend of mine offered to host it and turn it into a Wordpress site (which, he tells me, is pretty cool), so I'll be moving it over to his server, trying to archive my posts here, and eventually abandoning Live Spaces.  It was a nice run, but I just want something that's not so heavily tied to Microsoft and Windows.

Oh, and as Steve Jobs is fond of saying, "One more thing..."  I put some more pictures and stuff up at our family website.  Check it out if you have voyeuristic tendencies or if you just like me.

For Christmas, I was given a green 4GB iPod Nano by my wife. I love it.  I have been listening to it so much, I'm going to cancel my Sirius satellite radio subscription because I don't feel like I need it anymore.  I ordered a cable to go between my iPod and my Kenwood head unit in my car. It's a basic cable from a third-party company (not from Kenwood because theirs disables all navigation via the iPod wheel) that pipes the audio into the proprietary auxiliary port on the back of the Kenwood and charges the iPod all through the one cable/connector. Originally, I had planned on getting it from Amazon.com (via Crutchfield). Well, I put off ordering it and suddenly, the other day, it went out of stock at Crutchfield/Amazon. So, I had to scour the internet and finally found a place called ShipSound.com to get it from which was actually a few bucks cheaper than Crutchfield. So, what does that have to do with UPS? I'm getting to that. Those of you that read this blog know I'm a bit on the wordy side.

So, it shipped out yesterday morning-ish via UPS Ground. It shipped from Nashville. We are about 3.5 hours from Nashville. This morning at 3:15am (according to UPS's tracking website) it was in Doraville, GA at the distribution center. Will it be delivered today? No. Because I ordered it Ground instead of paying a premium for overnight or 2-day, they're going to make sure that it takes a little extra time to get to me. They show an estimated delivery of Monday, January 15th. JERKS! I could have it in my possession now, but NOOOOOOO, they're going to hold it up just to punish me for not paying for expedited shipping even though it shouldn't take more than a day to get here from Nashville!

In a word:  busy.  I've begun a new job working in a new (old) programming language in a new area of expertise.  So, I've had little time to post at work like I used to.  Of course, Thanksgiving and now the upcoming Christmas season have kept me busy at home.  And that's even before I count Kayla and Gears of War--in that order.

I do have something for today, though.  Saturday night, we had to go to Walmart for groceries.  We left Kayla home in bed with Grandma keeping an eye on things and went out about 9pm.  When we were leaving, this was parked in the parking lot.  The camera phone pictures don't do it justice.  The lights were flashing spasmodically and the entire spectacle was certainly a sight to behold.  Only in Paulding County....

I was reminded of this fact just this week.  The other night, we were having hamburgers.  Our grill has been out of commission all summer due to the gas jet thingies (yeah, that's a technical term) rusting out.  I could've replace them except for the fact that the screws that held them into the burner were totally rusted and sheared off as soom as I attempted to turn them.  So, we haven't grilled anything outside for basically the whole summer.  Now, an additional item of note is that our house is high off the ground and on a hill, so the back deck is about 12 feet above ground.

Ok, those facts set up, here's the story.  As I said, we had decided to have hamburgers.  Usually, we'll just throw them on the non-stick griddle and fry them up, but I insisted we try grilling them on this little, hibatchi-sized, propane-fired, portable camping grill we have.  I get it all out, set it up (on the deck because I don't want to go down all the steps everytime I need to check on the burgers), cleaned it, and away we go.  Unfortunately (perhaps due to the crappy, lo-heat of this portable grill or perhaps due to the different recipe we used this time), the burgers started to fall apart, so I had to pull them off and put  aluminum foil down on the grill surface.  They still were not cooking very well because this grill just sucks to use.

So, finally, the burgers were done enough (and had mostly turned into grilled ground beef).  I pulled them off the grill and shut the gas off.  Then, I started to pull back the aluminum foil.  As soon as I did, I was met with 3-foot flames (keep in mind this grill is only about the size of two or three DVD players stacked on top of each other and 6-inches off the wood deck).  So, what did I do?  Well, I briefly thought of the fire extinguisher under the kitchen sink.  Then, it hit me.

I thought back to the movie Gone in 60 Seconds with Nicholas Cage.  At one point, his sort of loser brother catches breakfast on fire in the kitchen.  While his brother freaks, Nick Cage calmly pulls a box of baking soda out of the cabinet and douses the flames by pouring it on the grease fire.  That was it!  I walked into the kitchen dodging my two dogs and my 17 month-old daughter, grabbed a box of baking soda out of the spice cabinet (it absorbs the odor of the spices), and poured a bunch of it on the fire.  Crisis averted--all thanks to Gone in 60 Seconds.  I guess I showed my mom that all that time watching movies wasn't a total waste!

My hope in society has been somewhat renewed.  Let me tell you why.  It's been a long time since I've believed in the idea that if you pay more for something, it is somehow better.  Typically, that's just a marketing game to get you to buy one product over another and you don't usually get anything more for your money.  I have found an example where that does not hold true.  The strangest part is that it is in regards to a company that I have always considered one of the worst offenders of the aforementioned marketing game.  Honda.  Yes, Honda.  I have always had issues with their cars being overpriced.  That opinion has not changed.  Let me start at the beginning, though...

A few weeks ago (before our road trip adventure to New Mexico that I have yet to write about), I wished death upon my lawnmower.  I did!  I had a 5 year-old Toro that doesn't bag (because I ran over said bag with our Jeep--yeah, that sort of runs in our family) and I was mowing some particularly thick grass that it just was bogging down in (because I have to mulch since the bag doesn't work).  I was cursing the mower and wishing it was dead and suddenly with a puff of smoke, it was.  I'm quite sure I actually blew up the engine.  Fortunately, I was nearly done.  The next time the lawn needed mowed I borrowed a friend's mower, but that wasn't really convenient and it wasn't self-propelled.  The time after that, we were on vacation and my pastor was kind enough to come down here with his mower and mow my grass (what a guy)!  Now, though, it was getting to the point where it was past due for another mowing, so I faced a choice--borrow a mower again or just suck it up and buy a new one.

One of my friends was a landscaper and swears by Hondas and I asked him, "Are they really worth the extra money?"  His answer was an emphatic yes, but I still wasn't convinced.  A new Toro was $299 ($399 to upgrade to the rear drive model).  The cheapest Honda that is self-propelled was $399 and that one wasn't even variable speed.  Some of their mowers (push mowers, mind you) are $700!

So, tonight, I find myself standing in Home Depot talking to a girl who knew absolutely nothing about mowers and who admitted as much before she even approached me to see if I needed help.  That's a story for a different post, though.  Long story short (is that even possible at this point), after some hemming and hawing, I decided to get the base Honda that has variable speed rear-drive.  $499!  This thing better be good.  Five minutes and a service plan later, I'm loading it up in the Jeep to bring it home and give it a spin.

Here's the good part of the story.  It was worth every penny.  The rear drive takes some getting used to and I'm not in love with the lever you have to hold to engage the self-propel mechanism, but what a cutting machine!  Not only did it power through stuff that my Toro would've gagged on (once again, I let my grass get too long), but it was very easy to manuever around.  With the length of my lawn, it would've taken me at least an hour longer to mow it with the Toro and considering I finished up in the near-dark, I probably wouldn't have made it to the end.  I never thought I'd admit to paying more for a Honda and actually considering it a good deal!

Oh, and one more thing.  Just in case you were wondering, none of the above (about willingly paying a premium for a better product) applies to Sony.

One year ago today, one of my friends gave the ultimate sacrifice serving our country in Iraq.  He will always be a hero in my eyes.  Specialist Joshua Dingler was a member of the 48th Brigade of the Army National Guard out of Georgia.

Since I wasn't blogging at the time, I'll point you at one of my blogging (and real-life) friends' blog posts about Josh and let you read what he can say better than I could anyway.

Here's to you, Josh--see you in heaven!

So, over the weekend, I turned 30. Saturday to be exact. According to one of the guys here at work (he's 40), it's all downhill from here and I'm lucky my legs still work. Personally, I don't think 30 feels any different than 29 did (although, my back hurt for about 2-3 days last week due to an inordinate amount of standing on concrete that I did last Saturday and Sunday).

Saturday was a blast, though. Literally. I got to do something I hadn't done in years. One of my friends has 5 acres right next to 5 acres owned by his brother, it's outside the city limits, and neither has built on the land, so we decided to set up a little mini shooting range out there. So, Saturday morning, we head out there with a couple other friends and targets in hand to shoot some stuff up. I have a S&W .38 special revolver (old police-style), an Eastern European 9mm (Makarov), and a Ruger MkII .22 pistol (which is really my wife's). One of the other friends that went with us recently bought a .40 cal Steyr handgun. He bought it off the internet sight-unseen based on the reviews of others he had never met (isn't the internet great). He has shot it once or twice before, but wanted to shoot it again. I also wanted to give it a try and shoot all the stuff I own that I haven't shot in probably 4 or 5 years.

So, we head out there, find a decent spot (it's still hilly and too many trees, but we managed to find a good 75 feet of fairly open corridor), and set up. After John (the owner of the Steyr) fired off a clip or two, he handed it to me. I sighted in at a target and proceeded to put all 12 rounds in the paper at about 55 feet. I now have that target hanging on my cube wall here at work. See the attached photo to see why. Now, I grew up shooting. From the time I was about 7 or 8, I can remember my parents taking me to the range and my dad teaching me how to shoot and about safety. So, I've been doing this a long time. It was good to know it's a bit like riding a bike, though--after 5 years and turning 30, I've still got it!

After shooting, I went home, got cleaned up, took a little nap, played with Kayla, and we headed off to another friend's house to grill some steak kabobs and have a little birthday celebration. That was a lot of fun. As the evening got later, they put their two kids in bed and we put Kayla upstairs in a pack-n-play asleep and got to just be "adults" for a while. We played Settlers of Catan followed by a fun, little dice game. We didn't get home until about 1:30am! So, all in all, a great birthday. I got to relax, do a bunch of fun stuff and was able to completely ignore my grass which is nearly to the point where we could lose our beagle in it.

Now, having made it here, I don't really think 30 is that big a deal. Maybe when I hit 40, I'll be blown away by that, but I doubt it. I'll just continue to take it one day at a time.  Oh, and don't mess with me.  :-)

Yeah, I know I haven't written in a while.  Since that's the case, I'll have to boil this post down to some bullet points:

• It's hot.  95 yesterday and near that today.
• I got a Nintendo DS Lite (on release day, no less).  It's awesome.  I love it.
• We had our church's Vacation Bible School last week.  My wife is the director, so we were quite busy all week (Saturday - Friday).
• I played Halo2...in matchmaking...and actually enjoyed it.
• I've become so obsessed with my lawn that I've begun watering it off and on.
• Valerie and I went to see Cars and both loved it.  I will be there Day One for the DVD when it's released.
• I shaved off my goatee.
• Kayla got all but one of her first set of molars.  That last one's been rough.

I guess that's about it for now.  I've probably missed something, but that's life.  I'm going to try and make more of an effort to post regularly again.  I'll also go update the picture album with some (sort of) new pictures from our mini-vacation to Callaway Gardens.

Well, it started out with my entire immediate family coming the Friday before last.  My sister and her husband and toddler and my mom, dad, and younger sister.  It was a blast.  We celebrated Kayla's 1st birthday and the two cousins got to see each other and play together.  We also went to the new Georgia Aquarium.  That was neat.

Then, after a quick house cleaning and a few hours of rest, Valerie, Kayla, and I were off to Callaway Gardens for a mini-vacation.  We stayed down there two nights (in a 1-bedroom cottage with a full kitchen) and got to see the Gardens.  Beautiful in spring.  Kayla helped feed the big goldfish in one of the ponds, we saw some turtles, wandered around the garden where they film PBS's "Victory Garden South" and even got to play with the butterflies in their butterfly conservatory.  It was nice to just get away and relax a bit.

Not only that, but I had a whole week PLUS off from work.  What a break.  It's hard to get back into the swing of things, though!

Originally, I had placed an exclamation point at the end of the subject line, but it was quickly removed when I realized what I was about to post and how non-exclamation-worthy it was.

For a long time I have put off registering a domain and setting up a "real" website for our family.  Well, no more--you can now visit www.forwheelers.net (don't go to the .com, it's one of those stupid ad-sites for four wheelers).  Basically, I just ported everything from our old ISP member site over, but very soon, I will embark on a grand redesign and create something that doesn't look craptacular.

*waits for the comments from the "peanut gallery"*

Ok, so it's true.  I tend to do things the way it's always been done.  For years I've been buying checks three-to-a-sheet and printing them off from Quicken (I tried MS Money for a brief few months at one point, but that's a story for a different time).  After the prodding of one of my coworkers, I finally checked out my bank's online bill paying website (which is completely free).

I still haven't come to fully trust it, but I have to say I'm fairly impressed.  I still have a somewhat nasty habit of waiting until the last minute to pay bills (partly because I hate the drudgery of entering all my debit receipts into Quicken's ledger and partly because I hate parting with money) and with online bill pay this can be bad.  My bank requires a 4 business day advance entry of upcoming bills to pay.  So far, though, I think I'll continue on down this route.

So, if your bank has online bill pay, if it's free, and if you're still writing checks, check it out--it can't hurt!  And, if you're paying for a checking account or bill pay at your bank, check out Washington Mutual.

We have a two-car garage.  For a while now, we've been unable to park more than one car in there.  It has gradually gone from that state to a state where it was almost impossible to even get to anything stored in the garage because you couldn't walk there.  I was actually running out of places to put things.

Friday, I had the day off for Good Friday, so my wife, mother-in-law, myself, and even little Kayla spent the morning in the garage.  While I mowed the lawn and cleaned up some of the yard, Valerie did a fantastic job of organizing, throwing out, and re-stacking stuff.  Then, we took a Jeep-load up to my mother-in-law's storage unit.  Now there are two large open spaces where I can walk around in the garage.  Still can't park a car there, but I'm "this much" closer.

Hooray for spring cleaning even if it is back-breaking work and ate up most of my day off.