Halloween 2009

Brian in Culture | 0 Comments December 12, 2009

Some shots of various Halloween activities for 2009

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Bundle This

Brian in Geek, Rant | 0 Comments November 23, 2009

Every time I need to talk to Qwest (our ISP) about anything I get the same thing:  in their focus to upsell me with bundled packages they forget all about why I actually called.

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Welcome to UrbanPotato V3

Brian in Geek | 4 Comments November 17, 2009

UrbanPotato got tiring.  It’s tiring to look at and tiring to manage.  Comments died long ago due to spam.  Uploading pictures and editing content is a chore.  So it languished and I moved most of my updates to Facebook.  But Facebook has its limitations.  It’s hard to write witty prose in your status updates.  It’s hard to have a creative outlet when your look and feel is dictated by someone else.  With Facebook, I belong to one of the many.  It’s great to be part of the group, but it’s hard to have a unique voice.

Today, UrbanPotato gets an update.  Gone is the hand-crafted-in-another-life “LiveCast” blog engine I wrote so many moons ago.  I’m too busy these days to update that code.  In its place I’m now running the excellent BlogEngine.NET, originally written by Mads Kristensen and now maintained a horde of talented developers. It's flexible and simple enough that I could easily make it do what I want, and I can post using Word or Live Writer instead of a bad web interface.

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Caribbean Cruise

Brian in Explore | 0 Comments October 4, 2009

For Christmas a couple of years ago our family received an interesting gift: an week long cruise in the Caribbean with our extended family. My dad must have really run out of gift ideas or just can't do math. A year of logistics later and thirty family members boarded Canival Cruise Lines in Florida, bound for a week of tropical paradise.

Cruise ships are ridiculous contraptions. There is only one reason to build a floating hotel that holds 6000 occupants: because you can. While no one will win any awards for writing a travel book from the cushy confines of their stateroom, cruise ships are a great way to get out and see a little peek of the world -- especially if you're carrying a three year old in tow. While Cole would quickly tire of a walk up the Eiffel Tower or an all day visit to the Louve, the short day-trips and consistent evening surroundings of the ship were perfect.

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Three and Unstoppable

Brian in Life | 0 Comments October 4, 2009
Cole is now three, almost four, and he is an unstoppable terror.

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