Not sure if anyone out there pays attention to my Flickr photostream , but I decided to change the way I am displaying my photos. I have decided to mark most pictures of friends and family as "private". The reasons for this are two-fold. First of all, I decided it was best to maintain some semblance of privacy and not show every single picture of my family and friends all over my photostream to everyone. I have left some pictures of adults from trips and vacations as public, but I am trying...

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Friday I went skiing for the first time in a couple of years. It was my first trip to Perfect North since my first "real" trip skiing at Snowshoe Mountain . So naturally I was a bit rusty on my first couple of runs. I even fell down on a simple run that I have had little trouble with the last few years. Outside of that first fall, I felt I skied quite well considering I hadn't skied much lately. I only fell one more time after that first stumble - this other fall was near the beginning...

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Finally, after much speculation, rumors, and other innuendo, I have released the new theme to the ol' website. I call this theme "Shenandoah", mostly because the banner is from one of my pictures I took while hiking around Shenandoah National Park (the picture in question is shown below). For now, I am sticking with Graffiti as my site's engine. I've been poking around the latest code drop from the Codeplex site, and one of the things I wanted (routing) is enabled. Now, I just need to wait...

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Thus another Bengals season comes to a close. They got to play one more game than usual this season by virtue of making the playoffs. The Bengals were the proverbial blind squirrel this year, and they found their nut thanks to a better than average defense, a solid running game, an off year by the Steelers, and some lucky bounces. I'm not going to do a retrospective for the entire season, there are better sources for that. I just wanted to post some thoughts after simmering down after watching the...

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It's been quite awhile since I've posted. I admit it, I'm not a very prolific blogger - newer job, new baby, personal projects, blah blah blah. Really, if I was inspired I would have time to take 30 minutes a few times a week to post something. But due to laziness (or inertia) I haven't been. I sometimes wonder if I should just make this a more static site and not even put up the pretense of being a blogger. But... I think I will continue to pretend to be an occasional blogger. After all, I've been...

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So Outside Magazine ranked Cincinnati #9 in it’s 2009 best places to live list . I found that interesting, to say the least. Not that I entirely disagree, because I do live here and like where I live (particularly East side – much better than North side). But, I have lived here pretty much my entire life and I do know that the adventurous types might find the area a bit lacking. Sure, as the article does say – we do have fairly easy access to the mountains and rivers of Kentucky...

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Just about a month ago I worked my last day at Strategic Data Systems (SDS), and in turn, I started my first non-consulting job ever since I graduated from Miami University in May of 1998. That's right, I was a software consultant (mostly as a developer) for the first 11 years of my career. Truth be told, consulting fit me well - I liked the variety in work, the challenging and interesting projects, and working with many different people (technical and non-technical). However, this past winter I...

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The question is do I want to be a typical geek in this announcement. Do I want to say "A new process has spawned." Or, do I want to state "Version 2 has been released". Any of those phrases are kind of cliche when we developer types have a new baby. So, I decided to forgo that and just announce that she is here. I know, very "edgy". Without much ado... our daughter, Emilia Ruth, was born on Thursday, May 28th at 6:53 PM. She weighed 6 pounds, 3 ounces at birth, and was...

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Family star may head Toyota in crisis One thing that struck me about this article was this - "Unlike their Western counterparts, Japanese executives are widely expected to resign to take responsibility for dismal results." It seems that the American CEO's like to blame the "economy" or "market conditions" for poor results in a company. Sure, the economy is in the crapper right now, but our executives do seem to prefer to shirk blame instead of taking responsibility for...

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