If you point your cell phone browser to www.mymbn.com/swing you can pick one of about a hundred audio streams and listen to it over your cell phone. My friend Tim works for this company. You might have to register at mymbn.com first... I don't remember... and I'm blogging from my cell right now. :-)
You might be thinking... "so what!?!" Well, say you can't hear the Baylor basketball game in your radio market. Boom, there it is on your cell. Try it out!
March 31, 2004
March 30, 2004
worth sixty-five thousand words
Also, there's this composite shot of the atrium at the Texas State History Museum.
Scroll down for Lydia's narrative of the weekend.
By the way, Bob Bullock was Texas's 38th Lieutenant Governor. Come on... don't you know your Texas Lieutenant Governors?? David Dewhurst would be embarassed for you.
phone number l i m b o
Well, as a testament to phone number portability fiascos, our normal home number is not working right now. You can reach us on our cells, or at 369-1350.
Alamorons
You'd think... you'd just think that being within 100 miles of the real Alamo, that the Alamo rent-a-car people would want to be on their best behavior. When you think of central Texas, you remember the Alamo. Now, when I remember the Alamo, I'm going to remember my car rental experience in Austin.
When I picked up the car, I presented my printed-out reservation and confirmation number with the quoted rate of $98.94. When I walked away from the counter, due to my lack of detail, I was leaving with a rental contract that said $313.60. When we returned to drop the car off, I asked the guy checking it in what I could do about it.
"Uh... for rate problems, you have to go inside."
So I went inside. After extensive explaining and recounting of my situation, the lady behind the counter said, "well, we can try and credit your account, but I have to have a manager do that, and he won't be in until tomorrow." So I left the counter with my confirmation numbers in hand and a promise that I'd be credited and get a fax as confirmation.
Monday comes and goes... and no fax.
So, I pull up my confirmation and my credit card website showing the whole bill and give Austin Alamo a call. After a not-too onerous voicemail tree, I get to a live person.
"Hi, this is Heidi."
"Can I speak to a manager?"
"Well... they're not here behind the desk... I'd have to call one. What do you need?"
Ten minutes elapses while I explain my situation and she looks it all up on the computer.
"Um... I can't credit your account, but let me call a manager."
Duh.
When I get to the manager, he's been explained my problem, so he's about to get me credited when he says,
"Uh... I ran into a slight problem."
Arg.
"Southwest [through whom I placed the reservation] will let me credit three days of your reservation, but it won't let me credit the first day because you picked the car up two hours early."
"So what are you going to do about that?"
"I can send you a coupon for a free day's rental."
Whatever. "Okay, I'll accept that."
The car rental will end up costing $140 instead of the $98 quoted. Amortized over four days, that's not horrible. And, really, I should have caught the wrong rate on the front end. The moral of the story is, don't pick up your rental car before your reservation time, and DON'T forget to read the rate you get on your rental agreement.
When I picked up the car, I presented my printed-out reservation and confirmation number with the quoted rate of $98.94. When I walked away from the counter, due to my lack of detail, I was leaving with a rental contract that said $313.60. When we returned to drop the car off, I asked the guy checking it in what I could do about it.
"Uh... for rate problems, you have to go inside."
So I went inside. After extensive explaining and recounting of my situation, the lady behind the counter said, "well, we can try and credit your account, but I have to have a manager do that, and he won't be in until tomorrow." So I left the counter with my confirmation numbers in hand and a promise that I'd be credited and get a fax as confirmation.
Monday comes and goes... and no fax.
So, I pull up my confirmation and my credit card website showing the whole bill and give Austin Alamo a call. After a not-too onerous voicemail tree, I get to a live person.
"Hi, this is Heidi."
"Can I speak to a manager?"
"Well... they're not here behind the desk... I'd have to call one. What do you need?"
Ten minutes elapses while I explain my situation and she looks it all up on the computer.
"Um... I can't credit your account, but let me call a manager."
Duh.
When I get to the manager, he's been explained my problem, so he's about to get me credited when he says,
"Uh... I ran into a slight problem."
Arg.
"Southwest [through whom I placed the reservation] will let me credit three days of your reservation, but it won't let me credit the first day because you picked the car up two hours early."
"So what are you going to do about that?"
"I can send you a coupon for a free day's rental."
Whatever. "Okay, I'll accept that."
The car rental will end up costing $140 instead of the $98 quoted. Amortized over four days, that's not horrible. And, really, I should have caught the wrong rate on the front end. The moral of the story is, don't pick up your rental car before your reservation time, and DON'T forget to read the rate you get on your rental agreement.
March 29, 2004
Texas Tour 2004
Wednesday night we left church at 7:00 p.m. and drove to the airport to catch our flight to Austin. We arrived in Austin a little after 11:00 p.m., and took the shuttle to our hotel. While I was eating breakfast, Patrick to the shuttle back to the airport to rent a car - a Chevy Malibu "Classic." 
This is the GM code word for "crappy." The Malibu has recently been redesigned, and apparently they had a few of the old design leftover and slapped "Classic" on them. This car has ONE cupholder in the front. My Toyota truck seats two and has THREE cupholders. It feels like you can't see over the dash, and the height of the seat is not adjustable. The driver's side window sounded like it had a cat trapped in it. I wouldn't normally digress on a subject as boring as a rental car, but we drove nearly 800 miles in the car over the weekend, so I became very familiar with it.
We had some time to kill Thursday morning, and somehow we ended up at Fry's. This is a must stop for the Watts family when west of the Mississippi. We met Jason and Erin at Buffet Palace, which is just fantastic, but I must say is a little better at dinner.
After lunch, we went to see Giles and Jennifer, and their preparations for the birth of their daughter. Jennifer wasn't due until the end of April, but right now is in the hospital and will deliver on Saturday at the latest (see Giles' blog for updates).
From there we headed on to Dallas, where Mom and Allison were finishing up their open house at their school. We went out to eat and back to the house. On Friday morning, we went to Ft. Worth to see Patrick's Uncle Jim. We had a good visit and got to see some great pictures of Patrick's paternal grandparents and other relatives.
Friday afternoon, we ran errands to prepare for the shower. Everyone came over for dinner - John and Michelle, Michelle's mom, Michelle's sister, and Allison.
Saturday - THE BABY SHOWER. We spent all morning gettng ready for the big event. Michelle's mother, Diane, made some great cream cheese mints, and we had a cake that matched the decorations. Michelle got lots of great stuff - including a Sit 'n Stroll for all those trips on Southwest.
That evening we went over to John and Michelle's house and helped put some of her loot together, and played with Jedi, their four-legged child.
We left Sunday morning and headed south towards Austin. We stopped by the hospital to see Jennifer (sorry we woke you up, Jen!), and then we went to the Texas State History Museum. This is a great place, even if you're not from Texas. It's very interactive and interesting. I wish we had had more time there. We also saw the new Nascar in 3-D Imax movie there. It was awesome. It was better than Cats. We had to get to the airport to catch our 5:50 flight to Nashville. We're pretty tired, but it was a great trip!
placeholder
We're really anxious to blog about our weekend in Texas... lots of fun and exciting things to talk about... but Lydia's busy at work, and I'm swamped trying to get this launched. Blog entry coming soon...
March 28, 2004
b. y. o. pc.
The University of San Francisco is inviting all comers to bring a laptop and hook it up to the world's first "flash mob" supercomputer. Read more in this New York Times article. They're trying to break into the Top 500 (see "list in HTML" link) list of supercomputers. If this works, expect to see hundreds of colleges and users groups sending out the "y'all come!" to their student body to try to beat 'em.
March 27, 2004
breaking news (literally)
Jennifer's water broke yesterday! Amazingly enough, we got to see her just two days prior, and she seemed ready for the long haul (not that we're OB/GYN experts or anything.)
We also got to meet Giles' brother Andrew and our cyber-friend Mark Millard who informed us that he has a friend who is a fan of our blog! It's a huge burden to have a following... but I hope that we're up to it. You like us... you really really like us!
We also got to meet Giles' brother Andrew and our cyber-friend Mark Millard who informed us that he has a friend who is a fan of our blog! It's a huge burden to have a following... but I hope that we're up to it. You like us... you really really like us!
March 23, 2004
as always... a work in progress
So I spent a little time recently playing around with our CSS and tightened things up around the blog. The design has changed with inspiration from several sites... some listed at right. I'm not thrilled with the background right now, but hey, it's better than leprechauns!
March 19, 2004
sticking his chest out
Jason is becoming quite the woodworker. Maybe he can build a crib for Giles and Jennifer.
March 18, 2004
quote of the day
"He's the kind of guy that puts two and two together and gets 1.4872." --Patrick
(I mean... attribute the quote to me... not that I'm that kind of guy.)
(I mean... attribute the quote to me... not that I'm that kind of guy.)
March 17, 2004
March 15, 2004
a gallon of Starbuck's
Inspired by Rob Cockerham's The Price of a Gallon.
I did the Grande Coffee one without a calculator.
| Drink | Size | Price | Price/Gal. | |
| Brew-it-Yourself Starbuck's Coffee Based on buying from amazon and Rob's experiment | 1 bag | 16 oz. | $9.50 | $2.97 (brewed) |
| Coffee | Venti | 20 oz. | $1.70 | $10.88 |
| Grande | 16 oz. | $1.60 | $12.80 | |
| Tall | 12 oz. | $1.40 | $14.93 | |
| Caffe Mocha | Venti | 20 oz. | $3.60 | $23.04 |
| Grande | 16 oz. | $3.35 | $26.80 | |
| Tall | 12 oz. | $2.80 | $29.87 | |
| White Chocolate Mocha | Venti | 20 oz. | $4.30 | $27.52 |
| Grande | 16 oz. | $3.80 | $30.40 | |
| Tall | 12 oz. | $3.25 | $34.66 | |
| Espresso | Doppio | 2 oz. | $1.75 | $112.00 |
| Solo | 1 oz. | $1.45 | $185.60 |
I did the Grande Coffee one without a calculator.
Patrick and Lydia's Online Book Club
I know Oprah's Book Club selection are a little more esoteric, but I'm taking my audience or lack thereof into consideration here. The selection for this month is Count On Us: A Tennessee Number Book. Our two-year-old friend, Wesley highly recommends this book. His favorite part is the page with the racecars. There are twenty of them.
March 14, 2004
insanely great baby ideas
We found out today that our friends Dave and Christina are expecting (sorry, no link) their first child this September. I know he/she will be born on September 13th. We're thrilled for them! With all of the baby-happenings around us, this seems like a good time for us to share some of the things that we've noticed our friends do that we just think are insanely great ideas related to babydom.
pre-natally
decide on the name, but save it
friends of ours who gave birth to twins a little while ago did this. When you're expecting, you run into the same mantra of questions from acquaintances and even friends. Well-intentioned folks don't realize that you're hearing the same four or five questions seventy-three thousand times over the course of nine months. One of the top five has to be, "have you decided on a name??" In the case of this couple, it was "names," of course. Their response was, "yes, we have, and we've decided to reveal them when they're born." To me, the beauty of this response was that they didn't even really have to have completely settled on the names!! I have no doubt that our friends did, but if you don't, it completely defuses a potentially annoying situation with a satisfactory answer.
post-natally
teach your baby sign language
This is beginning to become a trend, and two of our friends are well into the process with their one/two year olds. The concept is that if a child can express him/herself pre-verbally, that child will be less prone to tantrums because they can be understood. As a side benefit, the converse is also true... the parent will be less prone to tantrums too! From the two examples we've seen, it works, and doesn't delay verbal development at all. Amazon has several books and videos on the subject.
The only catch is that you have to be willing to teach your child's co-caretakers certain signs too! Lydia was keeping our one year-old friend and she kept showing her a certain sign that she couldn't make heads or tails of. Lydia called our two year-old friend's mom and described the sign to her and she translated... "milk." It kind of looks like the motion you make when you milk a cow.
con your kids into eating what they need
Our one year-old friend eats all of her vitamins and vegetables at every meal. Because they're buried. She loves pancakes, and she loves baby food fruit... she'll devour every bite of either one. So when you pour liquid vitamins into the fruit, or if you add broccoli and carrots to the pancake batter, she'll never know she's getting her nutrition. And, at the rate that kids grow over the first few years, the extra calories will only make her stronger.
have the best baby on the block
Yes, this is an Oprah find, but it looks amazing. There is a book and DVD entitled The Happiest Baby on the Block that really has one purpose: how to stop your baby from crying. Dr. Karp goes into great detail about five things that can help a child lose the need to cry based on everything from the expected (food) to the different volume level the child experiences outside of the womb. We gave it to my brother and sister-in-law who don't have anything to try it out on yet, but it seemed to work great on Oprah. She quit crying almost immediately. (kidding.) Your mileage, of course, may vary.
pre-natally
decide on the name, but save it
friends of ours who gave birth to twins a little while ago did this. When you're expecting, you run into the same mantra of questions from acquaintances and even friends. Well-intentioned folks don't realize that you're hearing the same four or five questions seventy-three thousand times over the course of nine months. One of the top five has to be, "have you decided on a name??" In the case of this couple, it was "names," of course. Their response was, "yes, we have, and we've decided to reveal them when they're born." To me, the beauty of this response was that they didn't even really have to have completely settled on the names!! I have no doubt that our friends did, but if you don't, it completely defuses a potentially annoying situation with a satisfactory answer.
post-natally
teach your baby sign language
This is beginning to become a trend, and two of our friends are well into the process with their one/two year olds. The concept is that if a child can express him/herself pre-verbally, that child will be less prone to tantrums because they can be understood. As a side benefit, the converse is also true... the parent will be less prone to tantrums too! From the two examples we've seen, it works, and doesn't delay verbal development at all. Amazon has several books and videos on the subject.
The only catch is that you have to be willing to teach your child's co-caretakers certain signs too! Lydia was keeping our one year-old friend and she kept showing her a certain sign that she couldn't make heads or tails of. Lydia called our two year-old friend's mom and described the sign to her and she translated... "milk." It kind of looks like the motion you make when you milk a cow.
con your kids into eating what they need
Our one year-old friend eats all of her vitamins and vegetables at every meal. Because they're buried. She loves pancakes, and she loves baby food fruit... she'll devour every bite of either one. So when you pour liquid vitamins into the fruit, or if you add broccoli and carrots to the pancake batter, she'll never know she's getting her nutrition. And, at the rate that kids grow over the first few years, the extra calories will only make her stronger.
have the best baby on the block
Yes, this is an Oprah find, but it looks amazing. There is a book and DVD entitled The Happiest Baby on the Block that really has one purpose: how to stop your baby from crying. Dr. Karp goes into great detail about five things that can help a child lose the need to cry based on everything from the expected (food) to the different volume level the child experiences outside of the womb. We gave it to my brother and sister-in-law who don't have anything to try it out on yet, but it seemed to work great on Oprah. She quit crying almost immediately. (kidding.) Your mileage, of course, may vary.
March 11, 2004
we're not so blue any more
Today was a looong day, but a good day. Lydia's signing up for her first Paypal account right now!
March 10, 2004
feeling blue
So I get to work today, and my monitor has lost it's green gun. Everything is tinted blue. Arrgh.
Lydia and I are having similar days.
Lydia and I are having similar days.
March 9, 2004
How to annoy me
To borrow from my favorite blog (other than this one) - www.dooce.com - (A word of warning - there is some colorful language on that blog.)
How to annoy me: Park your non-compact car in a compact space behind my pickup truck.
How to annoy me: Park your non-compact car in a compact space behind my pickup truck.
March 8, 2004
leap to voip
I'm sure many of you know that Lydia and I are in the process of changing phone carriers. Not phone numbers, mind you, but carriers. We'll still be at the same old number, but our calls are being handled by Vonage. If you have a cable modem, you seriously need to consider ditching your land line and going to this service. It's pretty easy, and you can keep your own number. You can also try it out for two weeks and see if you like it before you commit.
Who's your phone company and what does he do?
Vonage sends your phone calls over your Internet connection to a "Digital Phone Adapter." This little box sits between your computer (or router) and the cable modem and turns bits and bytes into a regular phone call. Here's Vonage's simple diagram of how it's set up. As you can see, they just show it going to one phone, but if you're even just a little bit creative, you can set it up so every phone in your house uses it. That's what we've got.
Why did we switch?
One word: price/feature ratio. Okay, three words, but you get the idea. Here's the comparison:
With BellSouth, it adds up FAST. Vonage easily gives you $50 worth of features for free with your basic service. Plus, the emailed voicemail messages are easily the best feature ever created. And... I haven't included fees, fees, and more fees from BellSouth.
What are the drawbacks?
- there are not a lot of alternatives in the VOIP space that make sense right now. Vonage has a couple of competitors, but they aren't available nationally. (See Voxilla for some options.) It's not a mature space.
- your phone service is at the mercy of your Internet provider. Back when we first moved in, Comcast would work on our Internet connection periodically. Now that the neigborhood is completely built out, we have had quite a good amount of uptime on our cable modem connection. However, even when the cable modem is out, Vonage allows you to automatically forward your phone calls to another number... in our case... my cell phone.
- sometimes you get an echo effect. If your broadband connection isn't very busy (you're not running Kazaa or some other bandwidth hog,) the sound is great. If you hook the Digital Phone Adapter up the way they suggest, it can regulate the bandwidth that it needs to keep your Quality of Service (QoS) up to the point that your calls always sound good.
- 11 digit dialing. Every outbound call is a long distance call. It seems to me they should be able to build this in to the DPA (if the first digit is one, make an 11 digit call... if the first digit is not one, make a 7 digit call,) but they haven't yet. Once you get used to it, it's no worse than dialing 9 from an office phone.
We've opted for the 500 minute $14.95 a month plan. Why? Because we don't use our home phone that much. We make about four long distance calls a month. Additional minutes are only 3.9 cents each, so we'd have to go an extra four and 3/4 hours to incur the charge of the next plan up. You have to be a HEAVY phone user to make the bigger plans worth it.
Some features we don't use (yet) that are really cool:
- you can have multiple phone lines in different area codes that all ring your phone. So here, in Tennessee, I could have an extra local phone number in Idaho, or anywhere Vonage has service. The big advantage to this is that for $4.99 a month, you can set up a number that uses your minutes that is a local call for that area code. So if we wanted, we could set up a 214 area code number that is local for everyone in my family who lives in Dallas. Extrapolate the possibilities... your relatives might never have to call long distance to you again!
- cheap international calling. Because calls go over the internet, there's only a small upcharge compared to normal international rates.
- extreme phone number portability. Because Vonage works over the Internet, it's really only tied to your Digital Phone Adapter. If we wanted, we could take our digital phone adapter with us to a hotel that had free broadband Internet, and it would ring right there with our home phone number! Plus, that works anywhere you have broadband Internet... even overseas! We could be in Guam, but if we had our adapter plugged in to an Internet connection there, you could call us locally from Nashville.
If you're interested, drop me an email and I can tell you more about it. You get a month free, and I get a month free if I refer you!
Who's your phone company and what does he do?
Vonage sends your phone calls over your Internet connection to a "Digital Phone Adapter." This little box sits between your computer (or router) and the cable modem and turns bits and bytes into a regular phone call. Here's Vonage's simple diagram of how it's set up. As you can see, they just show it going to one phone, but if you're even just a little bit creative, you can set it up so every phone in your house uses it. That's what we've got.
Why did we switch?
One word: price/feature ratio. Okay, three words, but you get the idea. Here's the comparison:
| Vonage | Bellsouth | |
| Phone Line Base Cost | $14.95 | $12.34 |
| Features | ||
| Call Waiting | included | $4.50 |
| Talking Call Waiting | not available | $3.00 |
| Three-Way Calling | included | $5.00 |
| Call Return (*69) | included | $5.00 |
| Repeat Dialing | included | $4.00 |
| Caller ID with Name and Number Delivery | included | $7.95 |
| Call Waiting Deluxe | included | $6.50 |
| Privacy Director® Service | included | $5.95 |
| Star 98 (voicemail access from home) | see Star 123 | $1.00 |
| Star 123 (voicemail access from home) | included | see Star 98 |
| Message Delivery Service (group messaging) | not available | No Charge |
| Call Forward Don't Answer with Ring Control | not available | $1.00 |
| Voice Mail Service | included | $3.95 |
| Submailboxes | not available | No Charge |
| Email voice messages received | included | not available |
| Message Waiting Indicator with Audio and Visual | included | $0.50 |
| Call Forward Busy Line | see Call Hunt | $1.00 |
| Call Hunt (forward to any number of lines when busy) | included | not available |
| Preferred Call Forwarding | not available | $4.00 |
| Call Forwarding | included | $4.50 |
| Remote Access to Call Forwarding (Vonage via internet) | included | $6.00 |
| BellSouth® Call Selector (distinctive ring) | not available | $4.00 |
| Call Block | not available | $4.00 |
| RingMaster® Service - Additional Telephone Numbers (Vonage allows numbers outside your area code.) | $4.95 | $7.00 |
| Anonymous Call Rejection | included | $3.00 |
| BellSouth 25 Cent Call Plan | included (free) | $4.95 |
| Call Tracing | included via web | $4.00 |
| Speed Dial 8 | not available | $4.00 |
| Speed Calling 30 | not available | $4.50 |
| Outgoing International Call Block | included | not available |
| Toll Free Plus (give yourself a toll free number) | $4.99 | not available |
| Dedicated Fax line | $9.99 | $12.34+ |
| Enhanced 411 service (info, sports, movies, etc.) | $.99/call | not enhanced |
| Real-time online account management | included | not realtime |
| Free phone calls to any other Vonage subscriber | included | nothing free! |
What are the drawbacks?
- there are not a lot of alternatives in the VOIP space that make sense right now. Vonage has a couple of competitors, but they aren't available nationally. (See Voxilla for some options.) It's not a mature space.
- your phone service is at the mercy of your Internet provider. Back when we first moved in, Comcast would work on our Internet connection periodically. Now that the neigborhood is completely built out, we have had quite a good amount of uptime on our cable modem connection. However, even when the cable modem is out, Vonage allows you to automatically forward your phone calls to another number... in our case... my cell phone.
- sometimes you get an echo effect. If your broadband connection isn't very busy (you're not running Kazaa or some other bandwidth hog,) the sound is great. If you hook the Digital Phone Adapter up the way they suggest, it can regulate the bandwidth that it needs to keep your Quality of Service (QoS) up to the point that your calls always sound good.
- 11 digit dialing. Every outbound call is a long distance call. It seems to me they should be able to build this in to the DPA (if the first digit is one, make an 11 digit call... if the first digit is not one, make a 7 digit call,) but they haven't yet. Once you get used to it, it's no worse than dialing 9 from an office phone.
We've opted for the 500 minute $14.95 a month plan. Why? Because we don't use our home phone that much. We make about four long distance calls a month. Additional minutes are only 3.9 cents each, so we'd have to go an extra four and 3/4 hours to incur the charge of the next plan up. You have to be a HEAVY phone user to make the bigger plans worth it.
Some features we don't use (yet) that are really cool:
- you can have multiple phone lines in different area codes that all ring your phone. So here, in Tennessee, I could have an extra local phone number in Idaho, or anywhere Vonage has service. The big advantage to this is that for $4.99 a month, you can set up a number that uses your minutes that is a local call for that area code. So if we wanted, we could set up a 214 area code number that is local for everyone in my family who lives in Dallas. Extrapolate the possibilities... your relatives might never have to call long distance to you again!
- cheap international calling. Because calls go over the internet, there's only a small upcharge compared to normal international rates.
- extreme phone number portability. Because Vonage works over the Internet, it's really only tied to your Digital Phone Adapter. If we wanted, we could take our digital phone adapter with us to a hotel that had free broadband Internet, and it would ring right there with our home phone number! Plus, that works anywhere you have broadband Internet... even overseas! We could be in Guam, but if we had our adapter plugged in to an Internet connection there, you could call us locally from Nashville.
If you're interested, drop me an email and I can tell you more about it. You get a month free, and I get a month free if I refer you!
eat out cheap
Lydia and I love to eat out. And, we love to be cheap. But... if you're reading this, you probably already knew that. So, whenever we find something good and cheap to eat, we like to share. Check out restaurant.com's eBay Store. Here, you can bid on gift certificates for 50% off your meal or (even better) pennies on the dollar $25 certificates. Of course, there are sometimes restrictions, but the deals far outweigh them!! (Sorry, North Dakota... no participating restaurants yet.) If you're traveling, this is a great way to get a great meal out for next to nothing. We're taking several trips over the next few months, and I'm planning on getting gift certificates for them. Plus... there are new ones posted all the time, so as long as you can find an internet connection and a printer, you can purchase and print them out whenever and wherever!
Tip: on the restaurant.com ebay store homepage, instead of clicking on a state, type your city name in the search box. If you get too many spurious results that way, try again, but this time uncheck "in titles & descriptions." I noticed that if you enter "Los Angeles" with the box checked, you get some restaurants in other cities that have chefs from Los Angeles, etc.
Tip: on the restaurant.com ebay store homepage, instead of clicking on a state, type your city name in the search box. If you get too many spurious results that way, try again, but this time uncheck "in titles & descriptions." I noticed that if you enter "Los Angeles" with the box checked, you get some restaurants in other cities that have chefs from Los Angeles, etc.
March 3, 2004
quick job update... I still have one.
As widely reported, Warner Music Group cut about 1000 jobs yesterday. Although I kept my current job, some of my co-workers were let go. Our division feels the loss acutely, but we already know that certain parts of the jobs we lost will be outsourced to freelancers and parts of the jobs we lost were already being transitioned and assimilated by other parts of our team, so at least in the long run, we will continue to be the great division that we are.
The five people who left are already missed, even though some of them won't be wrapping up their jobs here for a couple of weeks. What they're going through is more comprehensible when you are able to have first-hand conversations, but I can't help but think about the other 995 people that I don't know. The five from our division all have strong faith to rely on, but chances are, many of the others in WMG worldwide may not. If you have a chance to pray for those that lost their jobs yesterday, pray for comfort for them and their families, courage to find a new direction, and if they don't have a relationship with Jesus, that they'll find Him in the trial that they're currently facing.
The five people who left are already missed, even though some of them won't be wrapping up their jobs here for a couple of weeks. What they're going through is more comprehensible when you are able to have first-hand conversations, but I can't help but think about the other 995 people that I don't know. The five from our division all have strong faith to rely on, but chances are, many of the others in WMG worldwide may not. If you have a chance to pray for those that lost their jobs yesterday, pray for comfort for them and their families, courage to find a new direction, and if they don't have a relationship with Jesus, that they'll find Him in the trial that they're currently facing.
March 1, 2004
Niece Countdown
Patrick and I met at P.F. Chang's for dinner Friday night, and immediately compared notes on what we had bought for our niece that day. I can't tell you here, because it might ruin the surprise for her parents. Anyway, we're already spoiling her and she hasn't even been born yet. I'm hoping her first words will be, "Take me to see Uncle Patrick and Aunt Lydia." Of course, I do have an ulterior motive in showering her with gifts - she may choose my nursing home.
And just so we don't have the only blog in America without something about The Passion of the Christ on it, I will report that Patrick saw it with some people from our Sunday School class Saturday night and was very impressed. I chose not to see it. I think I'll just read the book instead.
And just so we don't have the only blog in America without something about The Passion of the Christ on it, I will report that Patrick saw it with some people from our Sunday School class Saturday night and was very impressed. I chose not to see it. I think I'll just read the book instead.
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