Normally I am not a big Christmas music person.  It's not like I got beat as a child, but I just do get in the spirit when every radio station is playing the same song over and over for 24 hours.  One exception to this will be November 19th when Tran Siberia Orchestra comes to the Seagate Center in Toledo.  I saw their Christmas show two years ago in Ft. Wayne and have been waiting for another chance to see them.  Hopefully this well help with my sadness of missing the Nightwish concert in Detroit recently. 

Not much new going on right now.  This week has been somewhat boring other than getting nailed in Portage for going 41 in a 25.   The speed drops from 35 to 25 in about 10 feet and there is always someone watching.  I blame my doctors visit prior to this.  I had to fast for 14 hours for bloodwork so when I was done the first thing I did was go through Wendy's for some food.  Being too busy scarfing down said food I blew right through the speed trap and forgot where I was.   The $145 fine is just what I needed too. 

It has been awhile since I have scoured the net for all my favorite authors' websites to catch the latest news.  I am quite suprised I had not even heard this in the news, but then again I do not watch the news.  Today I realized that one of my all time favorite authors James Oliver Rigney, Jr (aka. Robert Jordan) passed away from a rare blood disorder on September 16, 2007.  I feel the need to post a link to his blog because he is the reason I became interested in the Sci-Fi/Fantasy genre.  If you knew of him then I encourage you to visit the site and read the touching posts from his family and fans.  His story telling was extroidinary and meant a lot to me. 

http://www.dragonmount.com/ 

Things have certainly changes from my high school days of creating web pages in notepad.  The best sites were those that could fit the most animated gifs and you had to use blank image spacers to take a design idea from page to web.   I look back on my methodology of putting together what I considered effective websites and laugh.

CSS is by far the best advancement in terms of the presentational layer.  What took me hours to do with tables can easily be manipulated and de-bugged in half the time using CSS.  The majority of the sites I create now are based heavily on CSS to format all presentation and tables for semantic purposes.  There are times when I am not able to get away with this. Most of the controls I use in ASP.NET 2.0 default to a table rendering model.  There is a CSS friendly model out there, but I have found that a lot of the base functionaly is not included and more times than not it caused trouble when in conjuction to forms and postbacks.

When I first started working for Aardvark, Inc. I was intimidated by the .NET framework and using Visual Studio.  Up to this point I was a DreamWeaver/Notepad man.  What I have learned during my time here is that designers and developers need a common platform to design rich web experiences.  The ability to edit code, design and database connection all with one IDE is extremely powerful and efficient.  Visual Studio is not without faults, but I honestly cannot see myself developing any other way at this time.

Silverlight is another piece of the equation I hope to learn soon.  This is Microsofts attempt to compete with Flash, but created a RIA that can be built from the ground up using all of the currently available programming languages in the .NET 2.0 + framework.  I know a good bit of Flash, but am interested to play with Silverlight to see what the capabilities are.

It has been a busy couple of weeks lately.   Last week I had a sleep study done and found out that I have sleep apnea.  I am not sure yet if I will need to use a machine, but I would assume that is the course of action.  Not much cool about wearing a mask to sleep unless I can find a way to mod it.  Maybe I'll paint the thing and talk like Darth Vader in my sleep.  Somehow I think Casey wouldn't be too fond of that either.

Casey and I checked out P.F. Chang's at the new Fallen Timbers shopping center in Maumee.  Gretchen was with us as well while we waited forever to get a table during lunch hours.  The food was great and I highly recommend everyone try it out.  The shopping center itself is amazing.  There are still a lot of stores that are in the process of opening, but you can easily spend hours looking around in the shops that are doing business.  Of course I would spend all my time at Barnes & Noble and Gamestop once that opens.  I did go around to the clothing stores with the girls, but I couldn't find any dresses that fit me; go figure.

Not much else went down in the last week other than sitting on my computer and playing games or being glued to the TV watching Heroes/Smallville/Journeyman/House/Chuck/CSI (Original).

As you probably have noticed some things look different with the site.  I just updated the version to the newest release and am in the process of copying over the changes I made to the last version.

So far BlogEngine has been great to work with, but there isn't a great way of upgrading it without overwritting files.  So you will probably see posts like this in the future when I am going through this.

This past weekend my parents and sister came to visit for an Apple Festival happening at MacQueen's Orchard in Maumee, OH.  I wish the weather would have been cooler, but we all had a great time despite that scorching heat.  There was a lot of arts and crafts type booths and plenty of food to go around.  Apple fritters, apple cider, bbq, gyros and well of course apples.  We stuck around for about 3-4 hours and then went shopping a bit.

Later that night we went out to dinner with everyone plus Gretchen and Angie, two of our friends.  The place is Trotters Tavern and they have something they call the Brown Jug, which quite simply is a huge piece of delicous steak in a special sauce they make up.  I learned that I don't need the 16oz steak if I want to eat my fries and roll too.  Of course this did not stop me from ordering ice cream 15 minutes later at Marble Slab either.  I am sure Becker feels my pain on this one!

Sunday everyone left and Casey and I decided to drive around a little.  We checked out the new mall, Fallen Timbers, that just opened near Maumee.  This place is huge and still under construction in areas, but what we saw was great.  If anyone has been to Levis Commons then this place is like that on crack.

Well that is all I have for now.  The next few weeks I will be implementing the latest release of BlogEnginge so you might see some odd things happening during that time.

We finally got our new carpet put in to replace the damage from the flooding.  The fun begins as we start moving everything back downstairs.   At least things seem to be getting back to normal around here.  

This weekend we plan to lay down some tile in the other room so that might prove to be interesting considering lack of handiman skills. 

I have been on vacation for the last week so that is why you have not seen any updates.  I am also still installing software onto my new computer so doing anything graphical is going to take me more time since I have to do so during lunch hours at work.

We were on vacation in Hocking Hills so stop back for a trip summary and pictures soon. 

I am sure many of you have seen the news about all the flooding going on in the MidWest area due to the rains we have been having.  Our basement decided it was time to test our might by flooding up to 6".  Coming home to find that your basement is a swimming pool is not a fun experience.  Luckily we were able to get a cleaning crew in within a few hours and started the drying process in time to save the walls and most of our property.

Right now we are in the process of getting new carpet put in and then moving everything back downstairs.