Nintendo warning on 3D games for young children

Interesting article / warning in the WSJ (credible source) for the little ones and some 3D technology to be aware of and send to other folks.

http://on.wsj.com/hl3Ba9

My Kind Of Town....

Look at that beautiful Chicago skyline, and Lake Michigan, all from 1300 feet up. That is us, as viewed from the 103rd floor of the Willis Tower, on what's called the Sky Deck. Yes, this was once the Sears' Tower, and for longitude and latitude purposes, still is, however I guess they thought they'd change it since Gary Coleman died. Anyhow, we stood in line in the frigid cold outside, moved slowly through a snaking line on the ground floor, only to be crammed into an elevator and deposited up ONE floor. THAT'S where the tickets are purchased and lines are longer. For future reference, get there before 10, (that's when it opens), stand in line, and you'll have less of a line inside. Get there midday, and rottsa ruck!

The whole trip to Chicago was very nice. Everyone treated us nicely, the relatives, the kids, our vehicle; all went well. Chicago traffic is still Chicago traffic, and avoidance of certain highways at certain times of the day is always adviseable, but live and learn. Personally, I enjoyed getting off of the congested highways Wednesday night, on our way to Aunt Mary's house, and driving through the city streets, just south of the big city itself, however, I wasn't getting car sick. No one lost anything during that ride, but Katie did say later that she wasn't feeling the best. I still think if I ignored the GPS, and drove the surface route I plotted, we would have been there in less than the 65mins it took us, but we got there unscathed, and early enough for Mom Brody to visit with her sister in law for a good spell before everyone else popped in.

The kids were great the whole trip. The hotel was good, and free breakfasts were more than welcomed to the budget. They even had a free drink manager's reception at night...sorry Terry, one drink free max. All things said and done, if car and money permit, next Christmas break, we may do it again, but we'll just drive by the Willis Tower next time. Oh yeah, and we did see the Sally the dinosaur's skeleton at the Field Museum as well. Very nice trip and we're home safe and sound. GPS worked out rather well.

Christmas Photos

Just a few Christmas photos! (and one of Luke in his first ever Christmas program at preschool). We had a great morning and Luke was very cute opening his gifts. Thanks to everyone for all the great gifts!!

HAPPY 9TH BIRTHDAY, NATALIE

WHAT CHRISTMAS IS ALL ABOUT!

I AM IN SAAAD SHAPE!

Perhaps I have PENTAPHOBIA....

The Recipe For A Snow Day

I'm not quite sure which order it goes in, or even if there is an order, however it has something to do with a little snow, a little wind, some really cold temperatures, and a little luck. However, if you ask my children, they will have a different recipe.

Last night, they pulled out all the stops. There was the spoons sitting on ice in the freezer when I went in there before bedtime. These would become frozen, or really cold, then be put onto the boys' window sills. At bedtime, my boys came up to me with their jammies, and underwear I'm sure, all inside out and backwards, looking for a white crayon which they put under their pillows...No WAIT!...it was the spoon under the pillow and the crayon on the window ledge. Boy, these things are confusing. Then there was the stampede of elephants when they were supposed to be lying down...no, that was the "Snow Dance." I'm sure there were also several pleas and prayers made to the snow gods, because although we only got an additional 1/4 - 1/2 inch of snow over night, and their school district was not closed when I went to bed, it was on the list this morning.

For whatever reason, my boys are home with me today. Sad to say, I think that cancels Tommy's 5th grade music concert tonight, but I don't see any of my boys shedding any tears right now. Even Jim who is often meloncholy when Katie leaves, was a bit better knowing he had his brother, "EAODDD!", home with him today. Thank you snow gods, my kids are greatful. Just don't make a habit of it.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, ERIC

40 YEARS OLDER TODAY

Addy's first encounter with The Fat Man

Addy's first meeting with Santa was long enough to get these shots.....

My Favorite Constellation... Orion

Any time I happen to be out at night, I always look and see if  I can spot Orion. It is the most recognizable Constelation in the sky.

BETELGEUSE... BETELGEUSE... BETELGEUSE!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO OUR BELOVED DADDO!!

You've come so far, you've accomplished so much, the most IMPORTANT of which is creating and raising such an incredibly loving, happy family. We wish you the happiest of days and years to come!!! LOVE YOU, DADDO!!!!! (I need to work on putting together those fancy montages that you are so good at)

Army Brat

Yeah...my job can be very fun. And yes...I AM a dork.

A Very Nice Thanksgiving

As we gather together....

...we are thankful.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING, EVERYONE!

No, its not Santa Claus yet...

Aunt Kee is coming to town for Addison's very first Thanksgiving. HO-HO-HO!

Is Luke destined to be a millionaire?

I think he's well on his way... :-)

We were eating lunch and I picked up the WSJ to do a little reading. I glance over and see this...SO cute!

OH! OH! BEWARE THE TAG POLICE!

Unknowingly, AJK tore off the tag from under Nana's chair that said,  "DO not remove under penalty of Law!"   

 We're DOOMED!

Out with the Old....In with the New

Well, I gave it a shot. I drove the mini-van for as long as I possibly could. I just never felt comfortable driving it (mentally, not physically). Although I liked the functionality, I just could not continue down this path. It is not who I am. So to that end, I bid adieu to my 2007 Honda. Hopefully it will find a nice home with people who will appreciate it more than me.

So you ask....."What did you get instead?" The answer is quite simple. I loved my 1998 Tahoe (except for the maintenance and repairs). So I executed appropriately. I feel whole again. And no Kirsten....I am not in midlife crisis. I would have gotten a Camaro instead. Of course you can see that Sadie is quite happy (nothing to do with the car, she is just always like that.)

That's all the time I have.

Thanks...You've been great!

On this Thursday, Nov 18, 2010

And I'm proud to be an American...

I am considering auditioning for the remake of "Private Benjamin"...if they ever make one.

My "soldiers" are actually all actors. Cuz the military doesn't allow active military to plug golf grips in commercials. Altho a portion of the proceeds from the new camo grips go to the "Troops First" foundation.

p.s. That helmet I am wearing WEIGHED A TON! If I tipped my head to one side, I would topple over to that side.

Happy Sweet Sixteen to our Kel-Belle!!!!

Can't believe she is Sixteen, though we always knew how sweet she is!!!

We hope you have a GREAT birthday, Belle!!! Love you!!

Have all your blog updates go to a single reader

Problem: You like to read from a bunch of different blogs, but think it’s a pain to keep checking them to see when someone posts something. And you don’t necessarily want to ‘follow’ the blog (which involves you giving up some personal information and / or having to create a profile) / or you just don’t want blog postings cluttering up your eMail.

What you’d really like: Is to have all the postings from all blogs, delivered to a single ‘reader’ – consolidated so you can catch up on the ‘news’ from each blog you want to keep in touch with. One spot to check.

Solution(s): The essence of what you are looking for is called an ‘RSS Feed’ (for Really Simple Syndication – no, I’m not kidding). And it’s just what it sounds like. It’s a standard for sending content from one place to another. There are other variations / standards like Atom – but you don’t have to worry about the nitty gritty to use them. All you have to remember is the following picture:

How to do it: There are two basic steps:

1. Decide on a ‘Reader’ tool. This is the tool that aggregates all of your feeds together.

2. Add all your feeds to the tool.

Step 1 - there are a lot of ‘Reader’ tools out there. Some are free, some you pay for. They come in a variety of types:

• Stand-alone applications that you run on your computer
• Apps that can run on your iPad / iPhone / Black Berry (visit the app store for each)
• Plug-ins for your browser (www.feedly.com for Firefox is a good one)
• Web based readers like Google Reader (www.google.com/reader)
• RSS Reader Applets for portal pages like iGoogle and myYahoo
• Readers that are built-in to apps you already use – like LiveMail and AppleMail)

The best thing is to play around with a few different readers. You can use many different ones on many different computers all at the same time. I routinely use LiveMail’s built in reader, a Google Reader applet on my iGoogle page, AppleMail on my iPad and RSS Feeder on my iPad. It just depends on where I’m at and what I’m doing – they are not mutually exclusive. You can also play around with different ones out there until you find one that works best for you.

Step 2 – Subscribe your Feed tool to the blogs and news you want to follow. Note that ‘subscribing’ to a feed is different than ‘following’ a feed. Unlike following, subscribing is a fairly anonymous process. You don’t have to follow the blog, or even have a login on the blog hosting site. To subscribe, all you need is the ‘feed’ URL. To find this, look for the ‘Internet-ional’ icon for feeds:

If a blog or news site offers a ‘feed’ then it will be on or near the above icon. What you are looking for is a URL that you can then enter into your ‘feed’ tool that you’ve chosen to subscribe to the feed. For example, on my blog (http://mo-kenyan.blogspot.com) – you would see the following on the left hand side:

Generally you can subscribe to just the blog – or to the blog, plus all comments made to postings. It’s up to you. Let’s say you just want to subscribe to the ‘Posts’ – clicking on the ‘Posts’ feed icon, you would get:

Many sites offer the ability to automatically tell the ‘tool’ to subscribe to this feed. For example, if you are using ‘Google Reader’, then you’d click the “Add to Google” and it would automatically subscribe that reader to the postings made to my blog.

If you don’t see your tool listed (for example: LiveMail) – then you’ll need to get the URL and enter it manually into the tool. An easy way to get the URL is to hover the cursor over ‘Atom’. In your browsers status bar at the bottom, you’ll see the URL. Or, even easier – you can click on the ‘Atom’ and it will take you to the ‘feed’ URL. In this case: http://mo-kenyan.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default

You then just copy and paste this URL into your ‘feed’ tool that you are using. For example, if you’re using Windows LiveMail, then you would go to the Feeds window in Windows Live Mail and click the Feed button in the upper left corner. You’d get a pop-up that would look like this:

Once you do that, you’ll start getting your ‘feeds’ at regular intervals from all the blogs you’ve subscribed to. Each reader generally has a way to configure how often it ‘checks’ all your feeds for updates. Usually the default is daily, but you can change that.

Finally – one final note. Many tools are integrated into each other depending on the relationship of the tool providers. For example, subscribing to feeds in Google Reader will make them available automatically in other readers like the iGoogle applet. Similarly, subscribing in LiveMail will automatically add them to your feed list in Internet Explorer. I just mention this because it can be a little maddening sometimes to see feeds showing up in different readers and you think, “How did it know?”

So that’s it. I didn’t try to make this an exhaustive discussion on feeds, or even a comprehensive tutorial. There are a lot of those out there. I just thought everyone might find this useful as a way to get started.

For further reading, search for “RSS Tutorial” and you’ll get a big list of additional reading to whatever depth your heart desires.

Enjoy!

IN MEMORY OF....

THE EDMUND FITZGERALD

November 10, 1975

...and the 29 sailors who lost their lives on Whitefish Point 35 years ago.

Food & Wine and...Oh my!

So we finally got around to attending the EPCOT Food & Wine Festival today. The key to finally going was gettting a friend to sign us in so we didn't have to pay the $80 or so EPCOT admission...becuz you then ALSO pay for whatever foods and wines and beers, etc. you want to eat. So getting signed in finally made it reasonable.

And we had a blast. The weather was nice and chilly, the crowds were relatively light, and man, we had some gooooood food. A cheese fondue we got from a booth called "Charcuterie & Cheese" was sooooo unbelievably delicious that we could NOT bring ourselves to throw away what was left over after we'd dipped all the breads, etc. they gave us to dip. So...Brendan chugged the rest. And I did not judge him. Cuz it was THAT good.

Some of the yummiest stuff was at the booth of our homeland...yes, Poland. Had the potato pierogi and kielbasa there. VERY good. I was proud.

And believe it or not, the BEST thing we had there came from our friends across the river, Canada. A cheddar cheese soup that was, quite honestly, one of the best things either of us have EVER eaten. AND my friend who signed us in actually has the recipe so we will be getting that from her toot-sweet.

Other delicacies we had were Escargots and Braised Short Ribs in Cabernet and mashed taters from France. I actually had Escargot once before and really liked it, and the ones we got tonight were delicious. So I guess I can now officially say I enjoy Escargot. They actually taste like mushrooms, in my opinion. We had the bison chili from the U.S. as we both like bison and buffalo meat. However, altho it was very good chili, it wasn't anything "special" or particularly "bison-y."

Stopped in Germany for some VERY yummy Spaetzle Gratin with Ham & Cheez. Brendan was enjoying several beers in the Biergarten as well. I had some Riesling. As you see from my expression below, I do not enjoy the beer. Also had Lettuce Wraps with Roast Port & Kimchi Slaw, and BBQ Short Ribs, both from South Korea. The lettuce wraps were one of my favorite things. Very yummy.

Wanted to stop in and take a quick ride on "Soarin'", as I really enjoyed it when I rode it with the girls last year (multiple times) and wanted Brendan to experience it...but the wait was 45 mins and by then we were tired, full, and ready to head home.

Good food. Good drink. Definitely going to try to make this an annual thing.

Tis the Season...

Talk about Winter arriving all at once. While we were out today, we saw the first snowflakes. (Not as good tasting as December snowflakes.) Then when we got to Walmarts, we were greeted by a Christmas Tree and the accompaning Christmas Carols. I looked for the  fat man in the red suit, but  did not see him. Can Spring be far behind?

My running blog

Just FYI, I started a personal running blog.

It's at http://mo-Kenyan.blogspot.com

To the Sea...

So Natalie and Nicole took a trip to the ocean for the first time. They seemed to really love it, especially once they started body surfing and then boogie boarding. And Cole thought it was pretty cool that the water tasted like salt. It was fun to watch them discover this new joy.

TRICK OR TREAT?

Talk about dating ourselves... When we were young, we referred to it as "going out begging" and when we went to the doors, we yelled, "HELP THE POOR."

Our costume was some burnt cork on our face and hands... not politically correct but it was all we had.



IZZAT.....IZZAT...?

                                             ---
"IT'S THE GREAT PUMPKIN, CHARLIE BROWN...."

At 8 P.M. Eastern On Channel 7 (ABC) Thursday, October 28...

iPad and Apple in general

So now after several days I am completely enthralled with my iPad that I got for my birthday (thanks honey!)

Sitting here on the bed, being able to look at various options for Paiges new laptop, jumping to google to do research, looking up pricing on Amazon for networked storage and wireless upgrade options,jumping in to answer emails, check on the weather to plan our weekend, look up running routes, im'ing and not once having to get on a 'computer'

I just find it amazing where technology has come. We have a quite old computer in the office that needs to be upgraded. But what would best suit Paige is a Mac Book Pro so she can be upstairs with Luke and also take it when she travels to upload her photos and edit them while away from home. We are going to centralize all of our storage to a networked disk storage box that will plug right into our network. 2TB of storage that is accessible from her laptop and mine. Of course that storage is mirrored all handled by the device itself. Paige doesn't need to have stuff locally on her laptop because the networked storage also can act as an iTunes server and all her photos can be accessed directly on the device. If we are away from home it is accessible over the Internet. She can upload photos from her camera, through the laptop and directly to the storage in our house sitting a thousand miles away.

I'm happy with my work laptop, BB (to be an android phone in the next year) and iPad. We really don't need to have a computer in the office anymore because now our office is anywhere.

And with Apple TV or some of the other media devices which I expect to be pretty mature and content rich in the next year or so, I don't think well need cable tv. Today I could actually stream movies via NetFlix right to my iPad. Of course with Apple TV, I could be watching a streamed Netflix movie on my iPad, touch the screen and it would instantly start streaming to the TV.

Yeah I know, this is all pretty geeky stuff. (and believe it or not I left off a lot of truly geeky things that I can also do with all of this - Terry will note that I didn't use the abbrev NAS :) but my point is that sometimes, because technology is my job, I forget to take a step back and truly marvel at how fast things have moved. Remember watching those old Star Trek series shows and Kirk would be typing on a tablet? Yeah - that's already here and I have to say that's it's darn useful too.

Anywhoo. I just think this stuff is really amazing and wanted to share in how that is shaping how we work and live.

HOW IS THIS POSSIBLE???

How is it possible that our sweet little Kylie can be 18 years old???

Happiest of birthdays to you, Kylie Marie!! We love you!!

Trucker Humor

Check out the signs on the back of this giant semi that we passed on the highway. Note: we didn't PASS him, per se....he was in one lane and we were in the other. Just didn't want you to think we didn't heed his warning signs!

Snoopy.... I mean sPike, Come Home

Nice to be home after a nice visit with Kevin and family. And now, we need our  dOg and heard that he is on his way home. Hope his little paws don't hurt. That is a long walk. .. and swim.

HAPPY 47th BIRTHDAY, KEVIN

The "upload image button is notworking for this Netbook, so Kevin has been saved from any embarassing pictures or characatures. Nice to be able to be in Colorado on this special day and help in the celebration. As for the missing image.... everyone us your imagination.

OUTWITTED, OUTPLAYED, OUTLASTED....

....Yes, that's right...I am a SURVIVOR! Today marks 2 years of cancer survivorship for me. In some ways it feel like it was just yesterday, in most ways it feels like another lifetime ago. Regardless, I am damn happy to be here and to feel so good. And if my scans come back clear next month, then I get to get my port taken out AT LAST!!! What a nice early Christmas gift that will be!!

To all the females reading this (and to the males, too, as you need to make sure the females pay attention) - PLEASE Check Your Chest on a monthly basis!!! My doing so allowed us to catch this sucker early enough to treat it successfully.

Love you all. So very happy to be celebrating such a great thing today.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, EDMUND ERIC SHEEN!!!!

A thousand pardons for this being one day late, but tons of love and good wishes are there regardless! We love you, little 6-year old!!!