Ruby at the Beach

So, I got a video camera for my birthday and I've been taking some video lately; mostly of Ruby. Here's a sampling. Watch for more to come.

Lauri McDonnell Single Handedly Brings Parties Together

Thanks for Lauri's Mom, Beth, for bringing to light Lauri's incredible accomplishment. In a display of partisan cooperation, Lauri brought the two candidates together recently for a commercial real-estate summit. Of course, we're all very proud.

Bryce Versus the Squirrel

My life with Squirrels has not always been so harmonious. As I was returning home one day many years ago I saw a squirrel that has gotten itself trapped in our garage.

To the squirrel, the garage was pay dirt. My parents (I was still living with my parents at the time) had just bought a ton of birdseed and they kept it in a cardboard box on the floor of the garage. To a young squirrel, this was dinner served on a silver platter. Ten seconds of chewing was all it took to get through the box into the yummy birdseed.

When I got home and saw the squirrel, I didn't think much. I had spent the last four years of my life at Whitworth amongst the small gray vermin and knew they were scared of people. To get rid of this infestation was going to be simple. I charged at it.

At their quarterly meetings, squirrels get together and decide what they will be collectively afraid of. Humans charging at them is something they agreed would scare the piss out of them which can only be followed by running up the nearest tree as fast as possible.

This squirrel missed that meeting. Rather than run away, which you recall they are supposed to do, this one charged back. I didn't know what to do. All of a sudden, I had a squirrel running up my leg in an obvious attempt to protect the enormous box of birdseed. This was not going well. I did the only thing a grown man could which was to scream like a little girl, prance around trying to shake it off, and jump in the back of my truck once it fell off my leg.

What an experience.

Ruby, our new puppy, love her new chew toy my sister got her: a squirrel.

DOH! Missed One Yesterday

I was getting back into the swing of things really slowly and missed the blog a day yesterday. Sorry about that.

Monday, Lauri and I volunteered to get bumped from our flight out of Oakland and opted instead to fly out of San Jose. In exchange, we got some great incentives from the airline and have most of our next vacation paid for. How sweet it is.

It wasn't an easy decision however as we were in possession of our three year old nephew. We were scheduled to fly out of Oakland and land by 7pm in Portland. Plenty of time to make it home, have a cold one, and head to bed. The flight was oversold by six though and they were willing to make it worth our while to stay later. We took the bait.

They shuttled us from Oakland to San Jose airport where we played with Landon (the three year old) for a couple of hours. We had dinner at the terminal and he started to get groggy! Perfect! We made it back to town by 11 that night after Landon slept the whole flight.

Thanks Southwest for the great service and free stuff! I have to ask though: what's been your most frusterating or best experience flying?

Just Made It!

We just landed in SF and are at Lauri's parent's house. I was really worried I wasn't going to make it in time to do this post. Blog a day is still going strong!

We're in Napa Valley for a wedding this weekend should be a good time. CA is WAY different that Oregon even though it's a bordering state.

We were on a plane today with our nephew. We were his transporters from Portland to San Francisco. He was really good though it was an experience being in charge of a three year old. Everywhere we went, people thought he was our son. What a sobering experience. We have no business being totally in charge of another human being :)

All for now, be back soon.
Bryce

Gas Prices Fun?

I've been noodling about an online program I've been wanting to write but haven't yet had the time. Since a lot of people are reading this lately, I was thinking I'd ask for some input.

I want to create a game where we find the lowest gas prices in town. I can create a map where you enter your zip code. The map will show you local gas stations and the current prices they're offering. You can enter your address and your work address and see gas prices on your route home. That would be kinda cool right? The one thing is that it would have to depend on people entering the prices they see. There's no place that publishes such information.

This is still just kind of an idea that's floating around my head. Let me know if you think this would be fun/useful.

I'm a social networking whore

Did a really warm place just freeze?

Today, I joined Facebook and Twitter. Two of the latest social networking phenomena to sweep the online world. A client of mine asked if I could write an interface for these two applications so I took the plunge. Crap.

I think everyone knows what facebook is. Twitter, though, is a small application that you can update your friends with. With a limit of 140 characters, you post small messages to a website about what you're up to. Best of all, it's written in my favorite programming language: Ruby on Rails.

Soooooo check me out on Twitter and Facebook!