the intersect of music, family, work and faith
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Blog facelift
Mar 9th
Given the rare but steady interest I have in writing something worth sharing that’s longer than a “tweet” or a Facebook status entry, I’ve updated wordpress and refreshed the design of my blog.
Whether anything actually gets written or shared in the future remains to be seen, but at least the infrastructure is fresh and ready to go!
My wandering thoughts revolve around potentially writing and sharing some of the songs I’m working on, talking about good food (and the restaurants who make it), and sharing thoughts on my work/technology when the urge strikes.
Tagged by Tim..
Jan 18th
Ok, I’ll play the game since Tim took the time to tag me.. even though as I remind folks, this is not a blog..it only looks like one!
1. What’s the most fun work you’ve ever done, and why?
I’m geeky like Tim, but at least I don’t think about firmware as being something “fun”. So, I’ll do a little better and say that the era of my career where I got to do a skunkworks project and port Java (the Virtual Machine) to Linux from another OS was probably the most fun I’ve had in my career. It was a task assigned to me and one other employee, and making it all work in a matter of weeks with no external pressures or deadlines or even status reports was a blast! And surprising Sun at their own game at JavaOne that year was fun as icing on the cake as well =)
2A. Name one thing you did in the past that you no longer do but wish you did?
Play basketball (almost) every day of the week!
2B. Name one thing you’ve always wanted to do but keep putting off.
Take the family on an overseas assignment for awhile. I think we have to stop having kids for that to happen someday.
3A. What two things would you most like to learn or be better at, and why?
(a) Bass Guitar– I play now but I would love to be better at it; and I am actually working on it slowly
(b) Cooking! — I’ll steal from Tim since I’ve taken his point-of-view already and spend a reasonable amount of time cooking and enjoy it tremendously. But, it would be really fun to take it to the next level (open a restaurant?)
3B. If you could take a class/workshop/apprentice from anyone in the world living or dead, who would it be and what would you hope to learn?
Related to above, I’d love to work personally with Norm Stockton on bass..of course, with his 4 DVD instructional course on my shelf, it’s almost as good. However, he’s an amazing bass guitarist and I’m sure taking personal lessons would be way more exciting than watching the DVD course.
4A. What three words might your best friends or family use to describe you?
talented, jokester, compassionate (submitted by a close family member) =)
4B. Now list two more words you wish described you.
financially independent? (just kidding–please don’t send me home business offers!)
5. What are your top three passions?
Passions sound really important..I’ll skip all the ones that are hard to quantify and are way up there at the top (family, church, God, etc.) and go with some easy fun ones: music, college basketball, computer/software tech.
6. Write, and answer, one more question that YOU would ask someone.
Q. Who came up with this crazy idea? And are they cataloging it somewhere for future blogger investigations!?
A. I have no idea.
The Honeymoon (spot) Is (nearly) Over!
Jan 16th
This post is something I’ve been thinking of doing for years–but a few things got in the way. One, when the news first hit (in 1996-7) I didn’t really have a blog or a website. Two, in the decade since then, the inertia of going and scanning some honeymoon album photos (we didn’t exactly have a digital camera in 1994!) and figuring out if we had pictures to compare to recent Montserrat images since the volcano became active, has kept me from making much progress. But, with the new year bringing news of another large set of rumblings and activities, I decided it was a reasonable time to do the work.
The Background
In December 1994 Margaret and I spent our honeymoon on the wonderful island of Montserrat. Towards the end of the week there, we hiked the tallest mountain (Chances Peak, ~ 3000 ft.) and hiked (down) into an infant volcano. Our guide, “Archie Bunker”, (yes he asked us to call him that) said as we hiked into the volcanic area: “did you know that in 24 hours, through a set of earthquakes and geological activity, that this infant volcano could become active and built itself into a mountain?” It seemed a bit exaggerated–little did we know that in 1995 that very thing would happen.
Plymouth Destroyed
In 1997, the main town of Plymouth was basically destroyed in what was the first large eruption of the now-active volcano. At the time, many residents left and a safe zone in the north portion of the island was marked out for those that stayed. It was major international news and even caused a British government official to quit over a “row” regarding details of payments provided to families repatriating on other islands. Since then I’ve seen Montserrat rarely in the news until January 2007. I’ve now found the Montserrat Volcano Observatory website and what follows is a series of photos combining scans of a few photos from our 1994 trip and photos from the albums on the MVO website. (If the MVO website gives you fits, give it a try later..seems they have been hit with a lot more web activity than their bandwidth or servers can handle!)