Friday, June 26, 2009

New toy

New iPhone 3GS, new ways to record my kids doing silly things. Like playing Guitar Hero, complete with 80's rocker side pony tail. They will never cease to invent new ways for me to embarrass my kids for the rest of their lives...



My first YouTube submission! (that I can recall....)

Thursday, June 25, 2009

Fun with Food

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I saw these from Boing Boing a while back and thought they were cool and my kids would love them. So the other night, when I was at a little lost at what to make for dinner. I found a pack of hot dogs leftover from a recent BBQ and decided to try it out.

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It's actually trickier than I thought to thread raw spaghetti through hot dogs. The noodles are pretty brittle. I found that doing a few spaghetti at a time helped a little, but mostly the key is to not worry too much about threading them through perfectly. They'll look fine once cooked.

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The other important thing is to cook the noodles for a minute or two longer so the part that is inside the hot dog is cooked all the way too. It's not a big deal. Mixed in with the hot dog, my kids probably didn't even noticed if the spaghetti wasn't cooked all the way.

I ended up cutting between the hot dog segments to make them look more wild. They were a fun meal for the kids. I even brought a few to work the next day as a snack. Fun for all ages!

Wednesday, June 17, 2009

Budding photographer

From Sara's pictures


As a parent, all I try to do is to provide my children with the opportunity to experience as much as possible, and hopefully somewhere along the line, they discover things that they want to spend more time on. That might mean some 3 month lessons in karate or trumpet lessons, but if you know me at all you know I am just not the pushy parents who makes their kids do anything specific. If they don't spend their summer vacation melting their brains in front of the TV, I am pretty much fine with whatever it is they do instead.

(Just to be clear, I have nothing against TV either. My kids pretty much know all of the Disney channel personalities as well. Everything in moderation. I hate parents who turn their nose up at things like High School Musical and Hannah Montana. Those shows aren't made for you. I'm not expecting you to sing along. I'd much rather have my kids knowing the words to a Jonas Brothers song than shaking their little booties to the latest Lil Wayne single....ok, WAY off topic now)

One of the things Sara has been interested in is taking pictures. If you've been around us you know that we are always taking pictures everywhere we go. Digital cameras are indispensable for us and I guess it naturally made an impression on our kids. Sara always ask to use the camera to take pictures of her own and we started to notice that she does a pretty good job. My sister had an old camera laying around so she gave it to Sara recently and she loves it. She takes it wherever she goes and wants to snap a picture of everything. With all this good work, I decided to help her put some of those pictures up somewhere to share with others. If you are interested, check them out here.

Sara's pictures

Sunday, June 14, 2009

Freed from wires, not from cords

I hate wires.

Whenever possible I get the wireless versions of all the gadgets I have around the house. Wireless keyboard and mouse, wireless networks, wireless controllers, wireless extension cords (just kidding about that last one. Would be cool though). I had the good fortune today to get wireless headphones that work with my computer as both headphones(I'm actually listening to them right now) and a headset, my phone as a bluetooth headset, and soon as a wireless headphones for the music on said phone. It's the coolest thing. I'm even giving it a plug (wireless, of course) with the Amazon link.

The downside to all of these avoidance of wires is the box of chargers that I now possess. Wireless still needs electricity, and while better than buying tons of batteries, why can't there be more of a standard chargers that more devices can just share? Having something run out of batteries is a minor annoyance. Rummaging through a box of chargers to find the right one is just plain crazy.

Tuesday, June 09, 2009

Do You Know What Today Is? It's Our Anniversary..

Apologies to Tony! Toni! Toné! for borrowing their song for the title...

Gad, I'm failing at writing more already. Shame. Ok, must put something out there. Let's do this!

I celebrated an anniversary the other day. An important one too - 10 years of marriage. It's funny, all of the usual things you hear about long marriages apply. The ones about how lucky I am to have such a wonderful woman in my life, how I would do it all over again in a second, etc...all that good stuff. The thing that probably sticks out the most as I reflect on ten years of having my other half is probably the most generic of all: It goes by fast. In a blink of an eye I go from graduating college student to a husband and father of three. It serves as a good reminder to really stop once in a while and appreciate what you have in this great adventure. I certainly can't wait to see what the next ten years will bring. Hopefully I will be even better prepared to enjoy it.

Oh, the requisite (and slightly embarassing pictures):

That failthful day
Before...

Table with a View
Today

Wednesday, June 03, 2009

Short Attention Span

Sigh... I am no longer able to put together thoughts that are over 140 characters. Thanks, Twitter...

I am going to try and get through this. Start small and work my way up. Shorter posts, more often. With your support, I can do this.

In the meantime, feel free to follow me on Twitter anyway. @ak3700

Thanks and a shout out to my writing inspiration. It's her new blog that is getting me off my writing butt. (Writing butt?? That is a weird metaphor. See? I am out of practice)