New York

A big red truck for A big old Canton softy

~ randyaa ~ 2 Comments

So my dad finally decided to retire and it’s a good thing too. He’s been bugging all of us with his proclamations of retirement to hunt with his brethren for months now. He got a pretty good early retirement package from EDS and figured he should take it.

I’m happy for him. Retirement is an event that we all plan for (hopefully) and work for our whole life. Unfortunately because of the way our society works very few can actually enjoy it once it arrives. I’m very proud to say that he won’t be one of them. He’s plenty more active than I am and has so many projects going at any point in time that I cant picture him being done with everything he has planned already until into his 90s. Not to mention the zany adventures and crock pot ideas he’ll cook up between now and then.

For those of you who don’t know him, he’s a hunter, from ducks to bears and everything in between (I just recently saw the light in his eye when he told us about the recent spike in the Moose population of New York). He likes the outdoors and has spent probably more than 50% of his life outside. This is at least partly due to being born and raised on his parents homestead in Canton NY. That’s right he’s a good old fashion country boy.

Dad’s 2007 SilveradoHe also likes his toys, and for what I assume is his retirement gift to himself he bought himself a nice big red truck. Not just any truck, a Brand New Chevy Silverado extended cab Z71 4×4 fully loaded. He’s earned it though. Over 30 years dedicated to the same company and same wife. Both are pretty rare these days.

My Dad is a great guy, an excellent father and a patient teacher and has the best years ahead of him.

Congratulations Dad, you deserve it!

When eating an elephant, take one bite at a time

~ randyaa ~ 2 Comments

Mr Light Blue

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:

  • yourname@aserver.com
  • yourname+yahoo@aserver.com
  • yourname+newsletter+yahoo@aserver.com

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.