We saw the Yankees Scranton/Wilkes-Barre Farm Team play the Rochester Red Wings at Frontier Field tonight. The company my dad works for was having their annual Red Wings outing where everyone gets food, drinks and decent seats at the game. It’s always a good time and this year was no exception. Rachel and I went with my parents and my niece Cassandra. Unfortunately the Red Wings Lost, but don’t worry, we’re going back again tomorrow and they’re sure to win then!
This morning I woke up before dawn to take my parents to the airport for their first trip together ever. I know that sounds strange but you have to understand, They have three only children. They’ve basically been raising kids for the past 40+ years. Every vacation they’ve taken has been either with or for their kids.
In fact my parents are responsible for making me want to travel so much. For at least 10 days every summer(often longer) my parents would ship us off to some location for a family camping trip. We didn’t always go far, sometimes we’d just go to places nearby like Oneida Lake or Letchworth State Park. Other times we’d trek cross country to Mount Rushmore or Yellowstone National Park.
My parents gave up a lot while we were growing up. They’ve had this trip scheduled for almost a year and it wasn’t until 3 days ago I learned that this would be the first vacation they had taken together (alone), or even the first time they’d flown together. It’s funny the way people assume you realize or know things just because its what they consider common knowledge.
Thanks Mom and Dad, I owe you a lot.
And Now we Bring You, Bryan’s Pants.
First of all we just want to say thanks to everyone who brought down the house last night. We had some mighty fine dancers out there (you know who you are 😉 ). As our first act as husband and wife we would like to announce the MVP award. And the winner is… (the choice was obvious…) Uncle Jerry for his outstanding dance numbers. Thanks Uncle Jerry for making our first decision together as husband and wife so easy. We haven’t had that much fun… ever. To see all of our friends and family celebrating our love with such enthusiasm touched our hearts in a way we’ll never forget.
Check out some of the first available candid shots from yesterday here.
Thanks to everyone, we love you,
Mr and Mrs Aldrich
Rachel and I went to the pier last Thursday. It was a beautiful day but there was some cloud cover to the west. A perfect opportunity for a beautiful sunset and a change to test out my new Gradient ND Filter. About 1/10th of a mile from the lake it dropped about 10 degrees (as expected) but the visibility also dropped to about 10 feet. The fog was so thick it was very difficult to get a decent photo. I was able to grab a few that came out decent. The fog even started to lift when we were leaving and I managed to get a shot of a dew covered spider web. If you’re interested take a look at the full album otherwise the picture to the left is a pretty good summary of how the shots came out (ie: crappy).
In other news Rachel got a promotion! She was previously working at Britton Rd Wegmans which is a level 4 (out of Wegmans reverse 5 level scale, 1 being the highest ie: Pittsford) which has to do with revenue. Usually when you move within Wegmans you move up one level at a time or you move laterally. This is to ensure you can handle the pressure and the different environment. Rachel had the opportunity to move 3 levels up to Perinton. She went from a level 4 straight to a level 1. Needless to say this is a great opportunity for her and she’s very excited.
Denver! We haven’t even posted about him yet! Obviously we’ve been slacking. Well a quick update… after bringing him home about a month ago he has learned a lot! Today he even rang the bell tied to the door to let us know he needed to go outside. We took him to the Lillac festival on Monday, and just like London he got compliment after compliment.
The wedding plans are certainly coming along (i hope…) its only 3 weeks away and I cant wait. Well… I can’t wait for the honeymoon that is. I’m pretty sure it’s a well known fact that the wedding is for the Bride and the families and that the groom is just along for the ride and for the vacation afterward. In that respect we’ll be in Hawaii in 24 days from right now. Best news I’ve heard all day.
Roger’s Bachelor Party. Don’t worry the strippers aren’t in the video.
I’ve always been interested in Genealogy. Tonight I found Geni.
Yesterday Rachel and I went to go see the Puppies again. They’re getting Huge! I think we’ve picked out the one we want. Rachel and I both like “Mr Light Blue.” Maybe I’ll setup a poll to let people pick which puppy they think we should get. We still need to decide on a name. If you have suggestions let us know.
Matt showed a few coworkers and myself two cool things to fight off SPAM. A feature built into all E-mail servers and a new telephone service. Both of which if implemented properly will significantly reduce the amount of SPAM you’ll get.The following E-mail addresses are all equivalent:
Start only handing out E-mail addresses with +___ in them. This allows you to filter the incoming E-mails very easily, see where a lot of your spam is coming from (aka who’s selling it) and maybe take some actions in that regard.
Grand Central is a free telephone forwarding service that you can use as your own personal phone screener. One of my favorite features is the ability to send all incoming phone calls for anyone you don’t already know to voicemail. If you do want to take all phone calls, people you don’t know are prompted for their name and you are given several options before ever talking to them. The available options include recording the conversation, sending it to voicemail (and listening in) or simply taking the call. Check it out it’s really slick.
According to PC World the 50 Most Important People on the Web.
If you like to browse Blog’s In the WordPress development Blog‘s most recent post they listed the speakers of the SxSW this weekend. I started browsing a few of them. Some are very interesting, I’ll post my favorites later.
I’ve said for a while that the next car I buy is either going to have built in GPS or i’m going to build a computer (with GPS) to put in the car. It looks like BMW is getting it right. Check out their latest onboard computer, its pretty sweet:
I’ve always kept track of a lot of websites and with RSS it certainly makes it nicer. However I never found an RSS Reader that I really liked. Recently a friend alerted me to Google’s Reader. I’ve started importing RSS feeds that I like to keep an eye on and it’s pretty nice. However I found that it means there’s just another site I have to go to to see if anything new has happened. I did some googling and found a Google Reader Notifier Extension for Firefox. Seem’s to be exactly what I wanted.
I added a Wedding page to the site. At the moment it just contains a count down timer. We’ll add more relevent info later like time/date/place/photographer/dj/honeymoon/hotel suggestions/etc.
Rachel and I will be in Buffalo for St Patricks day. We’re going to see Piebald. They’re kicking off a new tour starting in Buffalo and Rachel’s friend Allison knows them. We’re tagging along and we might even get to meet the band. Pretty sweet. If you want to listen to some of their stuff take a look click here.
About a year ago I started a major project. The digital archiving of all my parents old photo albums. It’s a slow and painful process but often times very rewarding. I have been rather busy lately but for some reason today I decided to scan an album or two. I happened across 2 pictures of some importance. One of my uncle Jerry and another of my Aunt Pauline. Both of which I think may be their Senior pictures. The reason I think this is because they both look very nice and on the back of my Aunt Pauline’s picture it says her age at the time is 18. It’s amazing how much they still look the same even after more than 40 years.
With all the recent talk of alternative transportation and some of the photographs I found, it made me think about how things have changed so much already, but not as far as they said they would. In the 50’s people were claiming we’d be driving Nuclear powered cars. The 60’s gave us The Jetsons. What happened to all of the promises? Well as far as the Nuclear car goes, experiments soon led us to understand that even if it were possible it wouldn’t be safe. As far as the Flying car goes, I’ll let Dante and Randal explain:
Watching the video again made me think about what did happen to the flying car so I did some googling and came up with Urban Aeronautics. Seems crazy and a bit far fetched doesn’t it? I thought so to so I did some digging and their X-Hawk seems legit. Check it out. There actually seems to be quite a few examples so the flying car may not be as far off as it seems.
Last night we went to The Old Toad for a few drinks with some friends. I love that place, probably my favorite bar in Rochester. I tried a new beer ‘Old Chub’ It was pretty good, served like Guinness it was a bit dark and heavy but those are the kind I like.
This morning Rachel and I went over to see the Pups again. They’re getting huge! we think they doubled in size since the last time we saw them and its only been 2 weeks.
I found out that Greg is providing a public service. Completely random and unexpected.
Randy Aldrich 