mesterycom

tooth fairy, bikes & sunshine

2011-04-14T22:17:00.008-05:00

Halle lost her 1st tooth on April 9th! She was SO excited. She also wrote to the tooth fairy and asked her what she looked like and what she will do with her tooth! The fairy wrote back, but left Halle's questions up to her imagination!

During the week of March 16th (spring break) we took Tyler's training wheels off his bike! He was determined and just took off. His motivation for taking his training wheels off was that he wanted to go faster like his big sister!

Super G has been playing with his big brother a lot. The spurts of warm weather have been fantastic. We've been on bike rides, and at the parks a lot. Here they are on top of an upside down slide with Gavin's toy motorcycle!

Science!

2011-02-06T21:44:00.005-06:00

It was off to the Children's Science Museum this week with the boys. We just got our yearly pass and the kids were very excited. It's always a great adventure going to St. Paul, parking on the top of the car ramp, and walking through the sky ways to the museum. It's one of my favorite places to visit with the kids, and they loved it!

Happy Bir-Thanos-day!

2011-01-27T15:11:00.018-06:00

Holy balls, its your Birthday,

I have a poem and something to say,

Just look around, and I think you'll see,

The pictures go along with my jolly glee.

Maybe this year we'll be green and gold,

To match the pack, and not get so old.

The kids and I think you rock,

We lean on you like a solid block.

You are OUR super hero Dad,

Love your 3 fans, that call you rad.

I love you, I love you, I love you,

Sweet husband!

Super "G", "T" & "H"

2011-01-17T21:36:00.003-06:00

The kids have had a blast with their hand made super capes! Special thanks to gma B. The only complaint heard so far (coming from Super "T") is that he wished his cape would help him fly!

Watch out!

2010-11-12T16:48:00.001-06:00

See his tongue sticking out?

And the mischievous eye wink?

It = trouble.......

And something is up!

Spooky

2010-10-23T13:14:00.001-05:00

We took the kids to the Valley Creek Mall for a fun Saturday morning of trick / treating. Batman, Wolverine, and the witch had fun! We also had fun with some friends that met us there.

Happy Birthday Sue!

2010-10-09T13:03:00.001-05:00

Happy birthday to my wonderful wife! Her actual birthday is tomorrow (10-10), wanted to get this posted a day early. Some great photos of her with the kids and her birthday French Silk pie follow. I love you Sue!

Lemonade & Toys

2010-10-05T19:28:00.004-05:00

A few weekends ago our kids and their neighborhood friends decided to sell toys and lemonade. It was fun watching all of them decide what to do. They made signs, all contributed old trinkets and worked together. They celebrated with big cups of lemonade. They were excited and made about $3.00. Not bad for a few hours in the fall sunshine.

Truck Day with Aunt Megan

2010-09-29T19:36:00.002-05:00

It was the annual truck day in Woodbury this past Saturday. The kids were excited to check out all of the trucks and to show them to Aunty Megan. They had snow plows, buses, fire trucks, and police cars to name a few. However, the favorite by far was the ice cream truck. As soon as the kids spotted the ice cream truck we were there .......and ice cream was being sold, of course. Aunty Megan treated them and made their day!

Art Adventure!

2010-09-05T20:07:00.016-05:00

Do you see Kyle & the kids in this picture? Isn't it cool?!

We went to the Franconia Sculpture Park near Taylor Falls today and it was a blast! The art sculptures made us think and appreciate the talented artists. The kids loved running in all of the open space & exploring the art. Afterwards we did some hiking in Taylor Falls and stopped at a small pizza & malt shop to replenish. We highly recommend the adventure!

CANNONBALL!

2010-06-27T13:00:00.005-05:00

Holy Toads

2010-06-24T21:07:00.008-05:00

The kids and I were all playing in the backyard Monday morning when Ty saw a toad hop around on our patio. Well, 1 toad led to another and another....After about an hour of toad searching around the rocks and in the yard, the kids found about 20 baby toads! They put them in our sand & water table and they have been their entertainment all week.

Halle & Ty have eaten breakfast, gotten dressed and been ready to play outside all week by 7:45am to check on their toads. They have taken them out for exercise, given them showers and haul them around in a big 5 gallon bucket to show the neighborhood kids! Some toads have escaped and some have been not so lucky. All in all its been great simple - summer fun!

Wish List

2010-06-15T21:18:00.005-05:00

Mom: "Your Birthday is coming up Halle, what's on your wish list?"

Halle: "I want a real poodle dog. I just love dogs. Please, Mom!"

Mom: " You can put a poodle on your wish list, but you might (won't) be getting one."

Tyler: "Sure Halle, I'll get you a poodle dog. Where do we get those?"

Halle: "At the pet store Ty, but Mom & Dad probably won't let you."

Mom: "Halle, what else is on your list?"

Halle: "A pony!"

Mom: "Ok, I think it's time to go to the park! :)

Kids Workshop fun

2010-06-05T19:40:00.006-05:00

We all went to Home Depot this morning for the free kids workshop. Its the first Saturday of every month.

They used a hammer and lined up the nails.....

They used wood glue, a screw driver and we all worked as a team.....

The kids got to keep the Home Depot aprons, and were proud of their new home made soccer game! We highly recommend it! (Gavin didn't finish his of course- he was busy eating a sucker and looking at the forklifts!)

Beach Time & Sea Monkeys

2010-06-01T21:18:00.003-05:00

Beach Day (forgot our camera!):

We enjoyed a fun morning at the beach this past weekend. At first Kyle and I thought we'd just get to sit in the sand and play w/ the kids but we quickly realized we had to take a dip in the water! It's just not that easy for Kyle and I to jump into cold water anymore! Halle & Ty were running in and doing cannonballs, and Gavin walked in up to his chest ready to splash. It became very busy, very fast, but we all had a blast.

Sea Monkeys:

Ty got some sea monkeys for his Birthday 3 weeks ago. We started out the water and added the sea monkeys - soon we had 6-7. However, a week later we were down to 1. The directions say to feed the sea monkeys every once in awhile when the water is clear. We were down to 1 sea monkey and I was anxious to not look at a mucky sea monkey container so I threw the food out. The last few days, 4 more sea monkey babies have been swimming around plus the big 1! The kids love looking at them.....but I wonder what else I could feed them?

New Pics!

2010-05-30T08:07:00.003-05:00

Just posed some new pictures from April and May, so go and check them out here. Lots of fun things documented for all to see.

Open vSwitch Reaches 1.0

2010-05-18T12:04:00.002-05:00

Looks like Open vSwitch has reached 1.0. Open vSwitch is an interesting product for Linux that replaces the bridging module in the Linux kernel. Since it runs in the Linux kernel, this means you can use it with KVM and Xen as well. You get some advanced features for your bridging module and some greater visibility into what all the ports on that bridge are doing. Overall, a nice piece of software.

Worth noting that this somewhat competes with the Cisco Nexus 1000V, which is a product I've been working on for the last 3 plus years. Always good to get some competition in the market place, even if the two products (Nexus 1000V and Open vSwitch) run on different hypervisors. Nexus 1000V only supports VMware ESX/ESXi, where as we've already mentioned, Open vSwitch supports only Linux.

How the Nerds destroyed Facebook

2010-05-14T10:38:00.001-05:00

Lest we forget what a bunch of enterprising young people can do when ticked off, I give you Diaspora. Since FB has decided that giving away your information to advertisers is the way it intends to make money, it was only a matter of time before people started to work out their own social networks. What makes Diaspora so interesting to me on a technical level is that first of all, the source code will be open sourced. And second, it lets you create your own hub, controlling the content you want to distribute yourself. No more centralized control ala Facebook.

Check out this great (but tiny) article on how these 4 college kids are going to change the social networking world. Definitely worth a read.

8 years (and 1 day) together!

2010-05-12T10:05:00.015-05:00

Yesterday Sue and I celebrated our 8 year anniversary. She means the world to me, and not only is she the love of my life, she's also my best friend. When we first met, I felt like I had known her for my entire life. In fact, about 3 months into dating her, I even told her that I would marry her someday. I was pretty confident I had found my true love! 8 years later, I love her even more than the day we were married!

Thought I would share some of my favorite pictures from over the years of the two of us!

The Dream Out Loud Challenge

2010-04-05T12:34:00.004-05:00

The Minnesota College Savings Plan 529 Plan is sponsoring a contest called "The Dream Out Loud Challenge" that asks the question: "How Will You Change the World After College?" The contest is open to students starting in kindergarten! Now, asking a kindergartner who might not even know what college is how they will change the world after attending college is very interesting. Halle's video response that we submitted is below. We're pretty proud of her, she did a nice job!

How to Fix Baseball

2010-03-31T15:14:00.003-05:00

Fabulous post by Matt Tabbi here. This is really great for it's notable quotes:

With regards to baseball needing a Mel Kiper type for it's draft:

"And perhaps most critical, the baseball draft needs its own Mel Kiper Jr. to hype it on TV, and for that to happen, the leading candidate, Baseball America draft guru Jim Callis, is going to need a Heidi Pratt–level plastic-surgery regime, including the insertion of a diesel-powered titanium jaw and a hair transplant from a Japanese macaque."

With regards to the lack of "fat" in baseball:

"Now that the steroid era is supposedly over and second basemen no longer have to look like Siberian cage fighters, can we please bring back really gross fat guys with bad facial hair? The best we’ve got now are Prince Fielder, Boof Bonser, and maybe Dodgers closer Jonathan Broxton (whose biggest competitive advantage is that he looks like he’s carrying a humongous dump in his pants), but David “Boomer” Wells in his Yankee prime could have eaten all three of those guys for breakfast and taken the rest of the day off for beer and air hockey. Who doesn’t miss the days when you could peek into the Mets dugout between innings and see Mo Vaughn gnawing on a whole bull elk carcass? Or watch Rich “The Beautiful One” Garcés gain three shirt sizes while warming up between innings? With the new emphasis on defensive metrics, baseball is fast losing its great fat tradition. That’s why blossoming fan favorite Pablo Sandoval is so important to the sport — not only is he the only hitter on the Giants who can reach the warning track, but he might be the only guy left in the league who’s at risk of having a meatball fall out of his glove during play. Bring the fun back, baseball! And for you Yankee fans:"

Well worth the read.

New pics

2010-03-23T10:11:00.002-05:00

Finally got some new pics up. Go here to view them (standard login required).

Marching

2010-02-24T10:09:00.001-06:00

Demolition derby

2010-02-14T09:12:00.002-06:00

The boys having fun.

Gavin

2010-02-07T18:21:00.001-06:00

Is it halftime yet?

Pre Superbowl Excitement

2010-02-07T17:03:00.001-06:00

Sue and Tyler

Go Gophers!

2010-02-07T14:51:00.001-06:00

Tyler and I.

Halle and Sue

2010-02-06T10:45:00.001-06:00

Getting ready to go out.

Sledding

2010-01-31T18:53:00.001-06:00

Had some fun sledding at the neighborhood park today. The weather was perfect for it! It was Gavin's first time going down the hill on a sled, and he had fun. Halle and Tyler really enjoyed it, I think they may have gone down a few more times than Gavin did.

Kyle's Incredible Hulk Birthday

2010-01-28T08:17:00.001-06:00

Sue made me a spectacular Incredible Hulk birthday cake for my birthday! Wanted to share the pictures of the cake and the celebration. On top of the cake, Sue and the kids had some games lined up as well. It was a great way to celebrate my 34th birthday

Happy Birthday Kyle!

2010-01-27T14:04:00.004-06:00

Dear sweet husband,

You brighten my day with your sweet smile,
You make the kids laugh with each hog pile.

Husband, you are the best,
I love you and I feel blessed.

Tonight we will celebrate with your favorite dish,
It will be a nice spread and quite lavish.

A cake is waiting all covered in green,
It just might create a little scene.

So once you come home from your work down below,
H,T, G & I will be ready and the house will be aglow.

Happy Birthday sweet husband,
Happy Birthday sweet daddy,
Happy Birthday to YOU.

We love you SO much!

Love,
Your wifey, H, T & G

A Turtle - Snake...

2010-01-26T14:26:00.004-06:00

A conversation I had with Ty while he brushed his teeth. Apparently, he remembered seeing a commercial at some point?

Ty: Mom, did you know that there is a turtle snake thing that can go down the drain and grab things if they get stuck? You just take the drain thing off and it goes way, way down there!

Me: hmmm, a turtle snake? Wow!

Ty: I think it works on the toilet too...like when I put to much tp in there? It's really cool Mom.

Me: Ok, plumber Ty! Lets not test anything out.

Fun in the snow

2010-01-02T15:23:00.000-06:00

Cisco MN Holiday Party

2009-12-26T13:29:00.001-06:00

We had our annual holiday party on 12-20-2009 at Luci Ancora in St. Paul. The food was great, as was the conversation. In the photo above (clockwise starting on the left) you can see Tim and his wife Roberta, myself and Sue, Mark and his wife Katy, and Dave and his wife Deb.

Super G is 1!

2009-12-17T13:31:00.003-06:00

Santa Claus Is Coming to Town...

2009-12-11T21:06:00.001-06:00

Santa was wandering around our house last night........He was short & plump, and full of giggles.

The Mestery Marching Band

2009-12-05T13:11:00.005-06:00

Behold! The Mestery Marching Band in action!

Christmas at Macy's

2009-11-22T14:40:00.006-06:00

We took the kids to the Macy's 4th Annual Santa Land today. They had a blast looking at all the fun displays. It's fun to take them into the city since we live in the suburbs. The tall skyscrapers always fascinate them.

After seeing the display, they also got to see Santa:

They were excited to see Santa, but afterwards, Tyler was upset that Santa kept his list! He wanted the list back. We had to explain to him that Santa kept the list so he would know what to bring him on Christmas Eve.

We also walked through a skyway, here's a great picture of Sue and Gavin sitting in the skyway:

Gavin

2009-11-22T08:16:00.003-06:00

Sue took this great photo of Gavin, thought it would be fun to share it below.

Giapponese

2009-11-21T09:24:00.004-06:00

Ate at Giapponese, a great sushi restaurant in Woodbury last night. It was Sue's first time eating sushi. We went with our good friends Stan and Marcy. I think it was some of the best sushi I've had! And who would have guessed it would have been in Woodbury? And here's a tip if you go there: Ask the wait staff about anything off the menu, because some of the best makizushi we had was off the menu!

Bee-bim Bop!

2009-10-25T21:11:00.005-05:00

The kids have checked out the book "Bee-bim Bop" from the library a few times now. We've enjoyed reading the book to them, and they love shouting along each time we say "Bee-bim Bop!" Since they enjoy the book so much, we decided we'd actually make Bee-bim Bop for dinner this weekend. It turned out to be a fun time, and the kids seemed to like it quite a bit. Halle's friend Haley even came over for dinner and had her first experience with Korean food. Overall, we'd recommend Bee-bim Bop for a fun night of Asian cuisine!

Gavin is walking!

2009-10-03T19:09:00.003-05:00

Took this fun (but short) video of Gavin walking now. 9.5 months old and already on the move! I think the last 2 months spent running around behind his fire truck and Mickey Mouse walkers helped him! Will try to post longer videos tomorrow.

The photo shuffle

2009-09-17T10:26:00.003-05:00

So after some feedback, we've moved back to the old photo site on mestery.com. The new (now old) photo site is still there. Check out the front page for some info on it.

Also, new photos from August are specifically located here.

Here's a sample picture of Sue and I from our trip to San Francisco on Lombard Street!

Gavin pushing Tyler around

2009-09-17T06:30:00.004-05:00

Man can they entertain themselves. Not sure if Gavin is pushing Tyler, or Tyler is dragging Gavin:

Mestery Kids

2009-08-09T06:39:00.000-05:00

Gavin walking, Tyler teaching

2009-07-31T20:38:00.000-05:00

Sue took this fun video when she was home with the boys. Gavin is enjoying himself by testing his physical limits each day, he can pretty much stand by himself without support now. Amazing to watch his determination!

Chasing Gavin

2009-07-29T20:49:00.000-05:00

Photos for July

2009-07-29T10:47:00.000-05:00

New photos for July are here and here. Check them out, lots of great pics!

Singing and cruising!

2009-07-26T07:28:00.000-05:00

Halle and Tyler singing at breakfast. Don't you just love how Halle gets brothers in there at the end?

Gavin cruising!

Gavin: Crawling Machine

2009-07-25T16:20:00.000-05:00

Gavin crawling. The crawling months are great fun, it's like the kids are so excited to finally be mobile!

Choo Choo Bob's Train Store

2009-07-24T16:23:00.000-05:00

Took the kids to Choo Choo Bob's Train Store today. They had a blast, and so did we! Afterwards, we went to Java Train for some coffee, ice cream, and playing. Overall, a great family day. We almost did the triple play by going to Uncle Sven's Comics Store, but that would have been too much fun. :)

Below are some videos taken with our new Kodak Zi6 video camera.

Halle's 5th Birthday Party

2009-07-11T09:02:00.000-05:00

Halle turned 5 this week on Wednesday. She had a little party with some neighbourhood friends. The kids all had a blast, and Sue did a great job with the party. Here are some fun pics:

The kids having fun in the pool.

Birthday cake time!

Halle and her best friend Haley.

Evelyn, Tyler, and Halle.

"Can I talk to your Mom?"

2009-06-15T21:22:00.000-05:00

Are you serious?

I was mowing the lawn tonight and a salesperson walked up to me (sue) and asked if he could talk to my Mom!? I laughed and said, no!

He then realized that I was the Mom of the house!

- I also can't believe that people still go door to door selling junk. What a joke!

Fun Photo Shoot

2009-06-12T21:47:00.000-05:00

Towards the end of May Sue took some great shots of the kids outside. She did some amazing work using Picasa to crop them and make them look pretty fabulous. I even managed to take a great shot of her and the kids! Check them out below.

New Photo Site

2009-06-12T21:36:00.001-05:00

The old "album" script we had been using to maintain our photos online was growing weary. We recently switch to using picasa to manage our photos. It has the ability to export albums as HTML albums, so we're going to try this approach.

Starting from May 2009 and forward, our new photos online will be available here:

New Mestery.com Photo Ablum

So go and check it out. Sue has put our best photos from each month there.

Enjoy!

Finally: New Photos!

2009-06-12T18:56:00.000-05:00

We're just catching up, but some new photos from May are now on the website here.

Lots of fun things happened in May:

Tyler turned 3. It's true: the kids do grow up fast!
My folks came down from Moorhead to visit us. My dad and I took the kids to Free Comic Book Day even! What a deal! Sue and the women went to a play.
We had a big Bohlke Bash for Mothers Day at Al and Sues.
We took the kids to Maplewood Nature Preserve.
Halle had her field trip to the Como Zoo, which Tyler and I attended with her.
She then graduated the next day after performing some songs with her classmates for the parents.
And the day after that, she had a big end of year party at Redrock Elementary with all her classmates.

So, lots of great times.

Oh, and isn't this picture of Tyler great?

"Pick a Hero"

2009-06-02T20:35:00.001-05:00

We play a family game of "pick a hero". Halle & Ty love it and request playing it often. Kyle found a comic book store that sells super hero figurines for a buck so we have a good selection of super boy and super girl hero's. Kyle keeps us updated on what their super strengths and claim to fames are.....Cyclops, Super-girl, Spiderman and Storm are a few that go fast in the first rounds. Halle and I like to pair up Hulk and the mermaid girl or The Invisible Woman and Wolverine to make it like matching up the prince and princesses! Kyle and Ty pick more for the roughness of the hero! We also make trades which make it even more fun!

Preschool Graduation!

2009-05-25T16:51:00.000-05:00

Last week was Halle's last day of preschool. Hard to believe she'll start kindergarten in the fall. They had a little ceremony for the kids on Wednesday. The kids performed some songs in the Woodbury Central Park Auditorium, and then they got their diplomas. It was very cute!

Below is Halle getting her diploma:

And here are all the kids posing for a class picture:

Happy May? Already?

2009-04-25T23:03:00.000-05:00

Can't believe it's already almost May! Where did April go? Got around to updating our photo site, so check it out for some new late March and April pictures. Lots of good ones in there! Like the shot below of Gavin smiling.

Transformers

2009-03-25T08:45:00.000-05:00

Some fun videos from the old Transformers movie from the 80s:

2009-03-11T12:57:00.000-05:00

That's a fine little picture of a future Cisco employee. To see some additional new pictures for February and March, head on over to mestery.com.

Wearable computer interface

2009-03-09T17:54:00.000-05:00

Very cool video of a wearable interface. Things like this will be enjoyed by my kids!

Because we're aliens, and that's how we roll

2009-03-03T15:08:00.000-06:00

Just saw the great SuperBowl add for Hulu with Alec Baldwin again. Love that one, so reposting it here for all the enjoy.

New pictures on mestery.com!

2009-02-23T15:31:00.000-06:00

Just got around to updating the website with some new pics on the website. Lots of fun pics from the month of February, check them out!

"He'll be an engineer"

2009-02-17T10:34:00.000-06:00

Taken from a friend's blog.

Skating going well!

2009-01-31T15:03:00.000-06:00

Halle had her 4th skating lesson today. It went very well! She's been enjoying her skating lessons quite a bit. Today she went all by herself. Previously, I had been going with her and either skating alongside her or watching from the practice area. She told me this morning she wanted to skate alone today. So I sat with the other parents on the bench and watched her. She did a great job! She even wanted to practice in the practice area afterwards. I was very proud of her!

She's improved quite a bit since her first lesson 4 weeks ago. She has such a drive to improve and master whatever challenge presents itself to her. It's a great quality to have!

The only sad part is that on the drive home today she told me from now on she wants to go to her lessons by herself. Guess I'll have to take her to the outdoor rinks to skate with her now!

We're still here

2009-01-25T21:39:00.000-06:00

Yes, we're still here, just not updating the blog as often as we'd like. I guess we have our new 5 member family to blame for that, there's not as much free time now. Or maybe we can blame Facebook. Seems like when we do have time, we're wasting some of it there. Either way, new photos coming to the Mestery website soon. Stay tuned.

Worst video game ever

2008-12-30T18:58:00.000-06:00

SuperMan for the N64. The language is extreme at times in this video review, but it's hilarious!

Mestery Babies

2008-12-28T15:05:00.000-06:00

Thought it would be fun to post pictures of all the kids when they were born. It's fun to go back to mestery.com and compare them, thought I'd put a few here for others to see. It's fun to see how the kids were alike and different at the same time.

Below is Halle at birth:

Here is Tyler at birth:

And finally, here is Gavin:

Gavin James Mestery

2008-12-26T11:56:00.000-06:00

It's taken a while to find some time, but I'm finally able to post an entry about the birth of our son Gavin James. He was born on 12-17-2008 at 8:10AM. He arrived after an hour of labor. He weighed 8lbs 13oz, and was 22" long. He's a happy baby and our family was very happy to have him arrive before Christmas! We're having fun adjusting to 3 kids. Time seems like it's at a premium now, but I think that will get better once Susie feels more like herself and Halle is back in preschool after the Christmas break.

Below are some pics of our new son. We'll be adding some to the standard mestery.com website later today, so check back tonight for a full slate of pictures!

Here's a picture of Halle holding her new baby brother.

Here is Tyler and Gavin (and daddy):

And a few pics of mom and dad with their new baby boy:

Here are Papa and Nana Mestery with Gavin:

Here are Grandma and Grandpa Bohlke with Gavin:

Also, a belated Merry Christmas to all! Hope everyone had as wonderful and joyful Christmas as we did. We have lots to be thankful for, and we're looking forward to a fun 2009!

Working from home takes on a new meaning

2008-12-11T10:26:00.000-06:00

As most of the readers here know, I work from home for Cisco Systems, a company out of San Jose, CA. There are actually 4 of us in the MN portion of our team, and we each spend the day working remotely. Last week, one of the members of our team from San Jose was in town for the week to help his sister move out here. While he was here, we spent time working from my house and Mark's house. It was a fun experience, and reminds me a bit of what I miss working remotely from home. (Not that I have any interest in driving to an office again at this point.)

Here's a picture of Mark, his son Dan, Anush, and myself working from Mark's house.

Dad, wakeup! It's the snowplow!

2008-12-10T03:32:00.000-06:00

So on Tuesday morning Sue and I were sleeping peacefully in bed, dreaming of candy canes and our new baby who has yet to arrive. Our peaceful slumber was interrupted at about 7:25 by our bedroom slamming open and the sound of Tyler's voice yelling:

"Dad! Wakeup! It's a snowplow outside!"

The hallway lights were on full bore and our bedroom light was flicked on as well. Tyler blasted out of the room running to the baby's room at the front of the house to watch the snowplow, the entire time yelling at me:

"Dad, come here! It's the snowplow!"

At our house, the snowplow is clearly the most exciting thing!

Happy Turkey Day!

2008-11-26T14:46:00.001-06:00

Wanted to wish everyone an early Happy Thanksgiving! We're hosting my side of the family this year, so the house will be busy tomorrow.

Also, wanted to relate a funny story. On Monday morning Halle and I were downstairs eating breakfast. I told Halle that I slept like a rock that night, and asked her how she slept. Her reply:

"I slept like a guitar!"

Gotta love the Rock & Roll connection!

Any fans in Jacksonville?

2008-11-23T16:44:00.000-06:00

Wow! Just watching the Vikings game this afternoon. Here's a question: How many fans actually went to the game? From looking in the stands, not many it appears. I realize the Jags went down early and people started leaving, but in the shots of the stands I saw in the first quarter, there were plenty of empty seats. Is the economy finaly starting to affect football attendance?

Great food.

2008-11-15T00:44:00.000-06:00

We took the kids out to our favorite Woodbury restaurant tonight: Thanh Truc. This is clearly the best restaurant in Woodbury, the food is always fabulous. Sue and I have always enjoyed going there, and we've taken the kids there a few times as well. Tonight when we went, we ordered an appetizer of Cream Cheese Wontons, Kung Pao Beef, and Chicken Pad Thai (spiced at an 8). Halle ate some wontons and Kung Pao Beef, but Tyler really surprised us. He plowed right into the Chicek Pad Thai, and then worked his way to the Kung Pao Beef. By the time he was on a roll, he was eating rice and onions even! He's trully an advanced eater.

Happy Halloween!

2008-11-02T23:51:00.000-06:00

Halloween was great this year. We went out with multiple neighbors, and the kids and adults all had a blast. Some pics of the fun are below.

Here is Halle dressed as a princess:

And here is Tyler as Wolverine:

Here are Halle and Tyler with their neighborhood friends Jacob and Haley:

And finally, a shot of the kids with all their loot:

Kleinsasser

2008-11-02T11:17:00.000-06:00

This story from Reusse of the Strib this morning makes me yearn for the days that Jimmy was catching passes instead of just blocking for people.

Watch the great video below of Jimmy hauling in a long pass and taking it all the way in the rivalry game between UND and NDSU from 1998. Great stuff!

Moblin Clutter

2008-10-22T17:55:00.000-05:00

This is a very cool user interface for the Moblin OS from Intel. Check it out below:

Moblin is nice because it is built on Linux, and Intel wants to put it into all the new MIDs it's building in the future. The Aigo MID in particular looks pretty cool.

Thanks for the pointers Jayesh!

pNFS

2008-10-22T16:27:00.001-05:00

This is an excellent article on pNFS. If you're not familiar with it, pNFS is essentially parallel NFS. The backend server is now multiple servers, and data is stripped across them. A metadata server is introduced that handles the file layout on the data servers. Clients talk to the metadata server to get file layouts, locks, etc., and talk directly to the data servers to get the data. It's all backwards compatible as well, so clients without a pNFS extension can simply talk plain old NFS and get their data as well.

Very interesting article. Glad to see pNFS coming along so nicely!

Cisco Ships Mexican Folk Music On VPN Client CD

2008-10-08T18:47:00.000-05:00

Disclaimer: I work for Cisco.

Still, this is funny:

http://idle.slashdot.org/idle/08/10/08/1418232.shtml

T-Mobile G1

2008-09-23T14:58:00.001-05:00

Finally, the first Google phone shows up:

T-Mobile G1

Looks pretty nice!

Cisco Nexus 1000v

2008-09-17T08:34:00.000-05:00

As some of you may know, I work for Cisco Systems. Yesterday was an exciting day for the team I'm on, as the product we've been working on for the last two years was officially announced at VMworld! We debuted the Cisco Nexus 1000v. Many long nights have gone into this debut, I'm quite excited to see it finally make it out there. This is going to be huge for the virtualization industry.

Check below for some analysis of this event:

Colin McNamara on Cisco Nexus 1000v
Rational Security on Cisco Nexus 1000v

Want to learn how to be a computer scientist?

2008-09-02T17:54:00.000-05:00

I'm sure everyone does. The good news is now anyone can learn the basics of computer programming right in their web browser. Check it here. They start you out with the standard beginning computer science program: "Hello, world." From there, you learn more and more. The cool thing is each little program you learn about and write can be run right in the browser window since it's all JavaScript.

Cool!

Wolverine vs. Sabretooth!

2008-08-31T14:56:00.000-05:00

Stop motion is fun.

Wolverine vs. Hulk!

2008-08-31T00:01:00.000-05:00

New August photos up!

2008-08-22T10:16:00.000-05:00

We put some new photos up on the photo website last night for the month of August. If you're interested to see what the kids and Sue and I have been up to, check them out here.

Flobots - Handlebars

2008-08-18T15:19:00.000-05:00

Fun song and video!

Afton State Park

2008-08-16T15:36:00.000-05:00

Took the kids to Afton State Park today. Everyone had a blast! Nothing like some hiking in the woods to get your appetite going. We had a nice picnic in the lower picnic area overlooking the St. Croix river. Then we went and walked along the river and let the kids throw rocks and wade in a bit. The hike back wore everyone out. Tyler was asleep before we made it out of the park!

Amazing gymnastics

2008-08-11T10:15:00.000-05:00

We were watching the gymnastics last night. Halle started gymnastics this summer, and she got a kick out of watching the US Womens team perform last night. But, nothing we saw last night compared to the video below. Simply amazing.

Erlang: The Movie

2008-07-06T17:43:00.000-05:00

Too funny:

There's a baby in my tummy!

2008-06-26T12:37:00.000-05:00

This morning when Tyler got up, he came walking into our room. After crawling up into our bed, I asked him if he wanted to say good morning to the baby (in mommy). I then asked him if he knew where the baby was... He indicated it was in his tummy, and pointed to his belly button. But he next said this:

Ty: "I want to go in there too. I want to stick my head in there."

He then proceeded to attempt to put his own head inside his own tummy.

What a funny guy!

Kung-Fu Panda!

2008-06-22T03:19:00.000-05:00

Last week on Tuesday I took Halle to see her first movie at the theater: Kung-Fu Panda. It was a fun time! She enjoyed the movie, but I think for the most part, the gummi worms she got to eat were her most favorite part. It was a funny movie and a fun experience for daddy and daughter. Looking forward to taking her to Wall-E next!

SUV Confusion

2008-06-16T12:32:00.000-05:00

Hilarious comic on xkcd today. Check it out here!

Another hint ...

2008-06-11T13:53:00.001-05:00

Sue and the kids!

2008-06-08T16:46:00.000-05:00

Fedora 9: Part II

2008-05-26T22:17:00.000-05:00

Now that I've had Fedora 9 installed for a week, I've had a chance to get over some things. My biggest complaints still:

The fact they chose to package a pre-release version of the xorg libraries that breaks compatibility with the binary Nvidia drivers. This decisions was just pointless in my opinion. Why break compatibility with a binary driver that at least 50% of your user base uses? Doesn't make any sense. And the nouvea driver is not the answer. I want 3D!
mdadm when run from udev with a raid10 array segfaults during bootup. This segfault is what is causing my raid10 setup to not work during boot. I figured out a way around this: I manually start the array and mount all filesystems in rc.local. But this solution sucks, and is NOT a long term answer.

So, those are my complaints as they stand now. I haven't even gotten to test out much of Fedora 9 because of the graphical issue. Here's hoping the Nvidia guys are nice enough to update their binary driver to match the Fedora 9 xorg libraries!

Fedora 9: Thumbs Down

2008-05-18T15:06:00.000-05:00

Just spent the last 12+ hours desperately trying to salvage a failed Fedora 7 to Fedora 9 upgrade. I'll detail the issues here:

The first issue is that the Fedora guys STILL haven't modified the installer to correctly install grub onto a md device! This is my third Fedora release using a complicated md setup, and my third install failure. Luckily this is easily fixed by simply manually installing grub onto each individual piece of the mirror by hand.
Fedora 9 doesn't load raid10 into the initrd, even if you are using it, as I am, with the md device.
Fedora 9 fails to automatically setup my raid10 md device, and subsequently can't find any of my logical XFS volumes on that md device. This has led me to a convuleted rc.local approach to fix this, that is far from elegant and in fact flat out stinks.

Overall, I'd say skip Fedora 9 if you have an even marginally complicated setup with md and LVM volumes.

FYI, my setup is that I have 2 400GB Seagate drives mirrored with 3 partitions on them setup as /dev/md0, /dev/md2, and /dev/md3. md0 is /boot, md2 is /, and md3 is swap.

I then have 4 additioanl 400GB drives setup as raid10 for /dev/md1. Raid10 is stripping across mirrors, very reliable and high performance on reads. This is the array that Fedora9 has problems with.

Blue October

2008-05-08T11:01:00.000-05:00

Very good song.

Our Lady Peace

2008-04-17T18:55:00.000-05:00

How have I not heard much about this band? All the songs I've listened to have been great! Check some of them out below.

David Cook: Rock Star

2008-04-16T19:52:00.000-05:00

Last night I watched the most amazing American Idol performance I've ever seen. David Cook is a rock star. How many people could take an old Mariah Carey song and turn it into what you'll watch below? Amazing. Simply amazing.