Weekend :)

The week went really fast. Hard to believe we were in Mexico just over a week ago. John and I have been getting ready for the Job fair next week. We will be traveling to Anchorage for most of next week hoping to fill the last few spots left in BSSD. I will be responsible for scheduling and maintaining all of the video conferences during the week. BSSD and other school districts will have video conferences set up to bring in administrators and or principals into interviews with prospective hires. BSSD is also providing a large portion of the computers at the job fair which will be used for the attendees to check into the fair, or to sign up with ATP (Alaska Teacher Placement), which is the best way to get a job in the state.

We got an xServe in last week we are hoping to use to set up quicktime streaming of our video conferences for the rest of the year, and for the years to come. Currently we are using GCI’s Starbak system which only streams in Windows Media player. This pretty much doesn’t work for us. It is a really finicky media codec, and doesn’t work reliably on Apple machines. Quicktime on the other hand is truly universal, and when using the new H264 codec has a very small file size, yet still has very good video quality. So I have been working on setting that up this week. we are bringing the server down to Anchorage next week, hoping to install it.

The weekend hopefully will involve a lot of relaxation. Erin and I fly out of here on Tuesday evening. Erin will be heading over to Valdez on Wednesday morning. I will work the rest of the week in Anchorage with John, then fly into Valdez on Friday night. I guess my dad will be in Anchorage Thursday through Saturday, so hopefully we will be able to hang out a bit before Valdez. He is in for a telephone board meeting. He will join us back in Valdez on Saturday evening. I took Monday off, so we won’t have to leave Valdez till that morning, getting back into Unalakleet that night.

Got an email from Mike Svir tonight. Sounds like he and Amanda had a good time down in Florida for their spring break. I am looking forward to seeing them this summer. They are really cool, and I miss hanging out with him. So this summer should be a lot of fun.

I’ve been stumbling around the internet and ran across a couple interesting sites.  The first one has some amazing 3D sidewalk art, and the other one had “The worst analogies ever written in a high school essay”.  I thoght it was funny, so I’ll pass it on.

Brownies

Today went pretty fast. Work was good.  We have a lot of video conferences (vtc) this month since it is job fair season.  The powers at be like to connect to colleges across the country so they can interview prospective hires.  There is a VTC tomorrow morning starting at 6:00 AM.  :(  Ick…  We have a couple later this month that start at 5:30 AM.  The reason for the early hour is we are connecting to schools out east, so the time zone change is really against us.

Erin and I decided to go to Valdez next weekend for Easter.  It will be nice to hang out with the family.  Wish Katie could sneek up to join us.  I know that isn’t always that easy.  So I am taking the Monday after easter off giving us a little more time there.  I will be traveling into Anchorege to help out the the job fair there.  So my ticket out of Unalakleet is taken care of by the district.  Erin got her ticket using miles, so we just need to get from Anchorage to Valdez.  I think my parents bought a book of tickets with Era, so hopfully we can use a couple of those.

Had a hankering for some brownies, so about an hour and a half ago I started making some, dumped in all of the ingredients into a bowl minus the eggs, and realized I was three eggs short.  Erin was kind enough to run to the Igloo and get a carton of them for me.  So we just got done eating warm brownies right out of the oven with a tall glass of cold milk of course.  Well, its time to brush teeth and hit the sack.

Back @ Work

Well, today was the first day back after a very nice vaccation with Erin down to Mazatlan. I got up this morning wanting desperatly to stay in bed. I went to have some cereal for breakfast, and as I was filling my bowl up with Honey Bunches of Oats, I realalized that if I filled the bowl up to the normal stoping point, there wouldn’t be enough left in the box to fill up the bowl for someone else. So I decided to finish it off. This decision however caused me to have an enormous bowl of cereal for breakfast. It took me forever to eat all of it, and I was really stuffed afterwards. So off to work I go.

As I entered the building I ran into Randy Fleharty one of my co-workers. He said he had something for me, so after we swiped in for the day. We went over to his desk where he presented me with my fist MacBook Pro. Which is what I am blogging from at this moment. For those of you who don’t know it is the new laptop made by apple. It is five times faster than their previous laptops, has a built in webcam right above the screen, and a remote control for switching through your music, pictures, and movies.

One of the cool applications that comes with it is called Photo Booth. It works just like like a photo booth at the archades or in the malls. You sit in front of the computer and puch a button, it does a count down and takes your picture. It also has some features that allows you to play with how the picture is taken. Here are some examples….

So thats kind of fun.

We had a pretty relaxing evening.  Tried to play a little Mario 3, but the game kept glitching up.  Gotta love the stability of 8 bit gaming.  Well, I had probably get to bed.  I now have to get up early and go to work every day, so I should get back into the routine.

A new site…

Sunday has been a pretty lazy day.  Erin has been working on the laundry a bit and catching up with family on the phone.  I watched the Detroit Red Wings beat the Minnesota Wild in a fast paced hockey game this morning.  Aside from that I have been realaxing in front of the tv, and playing around on the web.

I started working on my “professional” website.  If you are so inclinded you can check it out at www.whb3.com.  It is just getting started, so there isn’t any content on there yet, but I think its a pretty good start.

Well back to work tomrrow.

Lazy Day

Got up this morning around 8:00 AM. I know that is crazy early for a weekend, but I think I am still on Mazatlan time which is two hours later. So I really didn’t get up till 10:00 AM on my time clock.

Erin and I had blueberry pancakes for breakfast. They were pretty tasty. We followed that up with some TV time on the couch. After relaxing for a while we walked down to the store and the post office. Vin sent me a couple batteries for my laptop which was awesome. The batteries I have now don’t last very long at all, so it will be nice to get some length back into the amount of time my machine runs on a charge cycle.

Erin has done some cleaning today which is really nice. The place seems to get messy on its own. Im sure I have about 99% reponsability for that happening. We need to get laundry done from our week down south, and get ready for the last 9 weeks of school.

The big plan for next year is to build a climbing wall in the apartment. Erin and I are starting to price out options, but I kind of have my mind set on this design. It’s a 9 foot cube shape with an open bottom, and an one open face.

This picture shows the top open, but there will be a “wall” on the top so you can utilize holds that will be screwed into the celing, both side walls, and the back wall. The floor will hopefully be a couple of matresses for cushening the falls. As you can see the back wall has a bit of slant to it which really can build up your strength. Having not climbed in so long, it will take a lot of work to get my strength back to where it was, if I ever can.

Erin has suggested I look for holds like thsee from MooseJaw.com. The picture is from their website. This is a package they sell, it has 60 holds, and the T-nuts to screw them into the wall. It seems like a pretty good deal. I don’t know how many holds I will need, but it would be a good start.

I have to still do some messuring, but I think it will fit in our other bedroom. Im pretty excited about the idea. I have really missed climbing since I have moved up to the arctic.

Well I had better get going. We are heading down to the Johnsons to visit in about 45 minutes, and We are making salsa, guacamoli and homemade tortila chips. Hopefully they will be a hit. It has been a rough transition coming back to a lack of warm weather, having to clean for ourselves, and no chips and salsa. So we are trying to make up for some of those losses.