Posted by marshall
Sun, 08 Jan 2006 13:16:00 GMT
If I were the type to make New Year's Resolutions, I might make one to update this blog more frequently over the course of the next year. But despite my best attempts to revive this thing every now and then, it seems to languish for months at a time with no posts. Ah well. I recommend an RSS news reader (Firefox, Safari, SharpReader, NetNewsWire) if you'd like your computer to do the work of checking this blog for you.
Lara and I spent Thanksgiving in San Francisco with my brother Adam and his wife Britany. Good times. We ate at a restaurant on the pier called Butterfly, which served us a quite nice Thanksgiving dinner. The Sony Metreon was playing Chicken Little in Digital 3D, so we went to go see that. Nice, but not the completely stunning experience I was expecting given the technology. Adam & Britany headed out of the city before Lara and I did; we spent a couple more days walking around and seeing the sights. San Francisco's such a great city: the international flair, the bush man, the ability to get just about anywhere by walking, the ocean, the bay, the nearby forests and mountains...it's a neat place to be.
Adam and Britany got an iSight as an early Christmas present from other family members, so now 5 out of the 7 households in our combined family (Lara's parents/siblings and mine) can do video chats. Multi-way video chats in iChat are very cool:
Lara's mom and my sister Ingrid are the only hold-outs now...both under the heavy influence of friends/family who only know Windows and still cling to antiquated notions of the superiority of Windows over the horrible, unstable, limited old Mac OS. Understandable if one's never spent any significant time with OS X, but sad nonetheless. Ingrid just had to get her system reformatted because of some malware that couldn't be removed by Spybot or Ad-Aware or other scanners; I don't think she realizes that these problems are not universal to all computers.
It was a fairly quiet Christmas this year; we didn't do any traveling, so we were pretty much by ourselves. We opened presents in the morning, and spent a fairly lazy day at home before going over to my friend Jon's apartment to play Compatibility with him and his fiancée. Fun times.
For New Year's Eve we invited some friends over to play games, eat snacks, and watch the ball drop on the big screen. We don't have cable, so we were using the EyeTV with an antenna. Unfortunately, we're pretty far from the TV transmitters near L.A., so the picture was kind of going in and out. At least we saw the Big Moment clearly.
That's about it for the major events. 2006 should be an interesting year, what with MAF's move to Boise, Apple's move to Intel, and our move to a vegan lifestyle. Just kidding about that last one. With Carl's Jr. now serving hand-dipped chocolate malts, there's no escape for me now.
Posted in News, Pictures
Posted by lara
Sun, 15 May 2005 04:52:11 GMT
We made it safely home from Indonesia, and it's now past our bedtime!
Posted in Indonesia, News
Posted by lara
Fri, 22 Apr 2005 12:22:46 GMT
The airplane from LAX to Taipei was huge! It had 10 seats across with 2 aisles! And each seat had its own TV, which had movies and video games and music on demand. So I learned a little Mandarin and Italian and played Chinese Checkers with the computer. But of course I slept first! It seemed like we would never get off of the plane! Those 14 hours are just a very long time to sit in one seat. I sat next to some Indonesian ladies. So once we woke up in the "morning" (in quotes, because when you go in that direction you're following the sun so it was dark for a good long time), they discovered where I was going and they were teaching me some Indonesian. It was much appreciated.
So I went from LAX to Taipei (Taiwan), then from Taipei to Penang (Malaysia), and then to Medan (Indonesia) and then up to Banda Aceh (final stop in Indonesia). Marshall met me in Penang, which was an awesome surprise! I wasn't expecting to see him until Medan. However, he'd had to go into Malaysia so that he could re-enter Indonesia and get a new 30-day visa that way. So we both now have 30-day visas, and we are ready to be in the Internet Cafe tomorrow. Also, it was great to have one of the guys from JAARS to travel with. He is on his way to work at the Internet Cafe in Meulaboh, and he ended up on the same flight as me. That way we were each able to have another person to speak English with. :-)
This is definitely the closest I've come to being in a place where I can't understand anyone else. At least in Ecuador I had taken Spanish lessons before I left. Here the language is totally unknown to me, although the pronunciation seems a lot like Spanish and they do use the latin alphabet. And I've been pleasantly surprised at the amount of English I've heard and seen around me. English was spoken as one of the languages on all of the flights, and all of the flight attendants spoke English with me. So I am thankful to say that I have not yet been in a place where no one could understand me. But it was frustrating to me that even "yes" and "no" are different.
Also, traffic was of course interesting. One thing is that it's disconcerting to drive on the left instead of on the right. And then you add the people piled onto motorcycles or into small vehicles, plus the random cows... and it gets pretty crazy. Kind of like Ecuadorian driving, except that you're driving on the other side of the road.
Okay, well, it's been a long day of traveling and I am going to go to bed!
Signing off for now...
Posted in Indonesia, News
Posted by lara
Wed, 20 Apr 2005 21:09:29 GMT
I am happy to report that I now have a valid passport, and I am vaccinated for hepatitis A&B and I have a prescription for malaria preventative. I leave tonight! Yeah!
Posted in Indonesia, News
Posted by lara
Sun, 17 Apr 2005 03:07:50 GMT
Yes, it's true. I (Lara) am actually posting something to our weblog. I am excited to report that I get to see Marshall again soon. And not only that - but I will see him in INDONESIA in less than a week!
We were talking online on Wednesday night, and Marshall mentioned that they had still not found someone to take his co-worker's (Tom's) place when he heads back home to his family. So he asked if I would be willing and able to come so that we could both work in the Internet cafe for a few weeks. So he checked with Joy (Marshall's manager at MAF in Redlands) on Thursday morning (California time). And after some e-mailing back and forth, I spoke with Joy myself on Friday morning. I asked around at Trinity Church, where I have been working for just under a year, and they gave me approval to take a few weeks off. So on Monday I have an appointment to renew my passport. And Wednesday night / Thursday morning I am off to Indonesia. So I'm going to go work in the Internet cafe with Marshall for a few weeks, and then we'll be back in time for my sister's wedding in mid-May. Yeah!!!!!!!
Posted in Indonesia, News
Posted by marshall
Wed, 16 Feb 2005 02:21:43 GMT
Nothing says "matching multi-colored precious jewels in the depths of space" quite like an 80's-inspired easy-listening synthesizer soundtrack. Chaining explosive gems is cool, but don't blow away your hypercube!
There have been many times over the past couple of months that I've thought about posting something, but then I realize that the things about which I would post depend on knowledge of previous events about which I have not yet posted. It would require a good bit of writing to explain how Josh Arieli got me interested in the finer points of GSM cell phone technology, how I've been waiting for several months for the Sony Ericsson S710a to be released, how a brief experience with Dad's Treo 600 got me hooked on Palm-based phones with keypads, and how the Treo 650 collected all of my most-desired features into one hand-held quad-band GSM communicator thingie. But all of that would be required in order to adequately explain my elation at the arrival of a package from FedEx the other day. And so I go back to playing some addicting blow-up-the-diamonds game that happens to have an excellent Palm OS incarnation. Not to mention a soundtrack that channels the spirit of the Amiga MODule scene with an uncanny talent.
And so, in an effort to catch up to the modern day and pave the way for the blog postings of the future, let me explain the events of the past several months.
No...there is too much. Let me sum up.
There's the mini-golf booth at Halloween Happenin', the WxRuby rich-client intranet project at MAF, the surreal Bond concert, the weekend at Disneyland, and Adam and Britany's Thanksgiving visit. There's the Moody Aviation student that stayed with us, the Lord of the Rings Extended Edition Marathon, the reading of the Christmas story in a barn, and the visit of Lara's dad for Christmas (he particularly liked seeing the Queen Mary). There's New Years in Chicago, the announcement that MAF isn't moving until Summer 2006, and the discovery that Carl's Jr. in Boise has free wireless internet access. There's the power surge that hit the iMac and wiped it out for three weeks (the data was recovered and it's on a UPS now). There's Lara's piano lessons, Beth's visit for Lara's birthday, and a guest from Chicagoland visiting for Trinity's women's ministries internship. Gourmet Pizza Shoppe still has the Bart Simpson, Casa Maya still has Taco Tuesday, the Outback still has Alice Springs Chicken, but El Torito Grill is no longer serving chocolate espresso creme brulee.
And that just about brings us up to the present.
Now that that's all as clear as the streaked windshield of a California car caught in the first rains of winter, I'll return to detonating pretty rocks and waiting for inspiration to hit, secure in the knowledge that I can post freely without pages of explanation. Inspiration's pretty random, though, so I wouldn't stay up too late waiting if I were you.
Posted in News
Posted by marshall
Fri, 15 Oct 2004 14:59:43 GMT
This week, MAF formally announced that the headquarters will be relocated to the Boise, Idaho area this next summer. The move is expected to take place in the July-August 2005 timeframe. This doesn't come as a surprise to us; MAF started looking into relocation a couple months after we arrived, and Boise was the location recommended to the MAF board last month, so we were expecting it. Nevertheless, it's official confirmation that we're being plunged back into a well of uncertainty.
Lara and I love it here in Redlands. The constant sunshine, the mountains, the ocean, the food, the annual passes to Disneyland, the 20somethings group at our church...we really do not want to leave. This is especially true when the new location's description of "having it all" is "hiking, camping, kayaking, river rafting, hunting and fishing," which aren't exactly what I look for in a city. One of the reasons we left Pittsburgh is that it was too small for us, and the population of Boise is half of that of Pittsburgh. The closest city of any size (translation: the closest city with an Apple Store) is Portland, six and a half hours away.
At this point, we're more tied to this area than we are to MAF, so it is unlikely that we will end up moving to Idaho with the organization. That means I'll have to go hunting for a job again as the move date grows closer, which I'm not looking forward to. Thankfully there is a good bit of time before the move takes place, thus we're not as stressed as we might be.
So it begins.
Posted in News
Posted by marshall
Sat, 11 Sep 2004 16:13:00 GMT
This is great! More family joining the world of near-instant content publishing. Check it out!
Posted in News
Posted by marshall
Tue, 07 Sep 2004 13:29:58 GMT
It's been a busy but very enjoyable weekend. Lara and I went with our friend Danielle (who both works for MAF and goes to Trinity) to Castle Park in Riverside on Saturday for some mini-golf. We did one round of 18 holes, and then we were ready for a break from the warm summer sun. We drove down to Newport Beach and went to El Torito Grill for a mid-afternoon dinner, and then we visited Fashion Island for a while. The stores at Fashion Island all closed early at 7pm on Saturday; we stayed until they forced us out, and then returned to Castle Park for another round of mini-golf (Castle Park has 4 courses), this time without the sun. After that we all returned to the apartment and reviewed some classic Strong Bad messages (including the one for Labor Day).
On Sunday we went to Cuca's for some Mexican food after church, and then Lara and I spent the afternoon doing various projects at home. We went to 20somethings in the evening, and then I joined some friends at Denny's while Lara got some extra rest at home. I demonstrated the fork trick to the table, and taught a couple of others how to do it. Special thanks to my friend and former roommate Allen Cheng for introducing me to such a fine late-night diner amusement.
On Monday we met some of the 20somethings group at California Adventure. Strangely enough, Labor Day isn't a "blockout day" for any of the season passes, even the one that blocks out almost half the year, and we ended up with 10 people going. We rode Soarin' Over California (one of the best rides at either of the Disneyland Resort parks, in our opinion) together, and then some of the group rode the rapids while Lara rode the swings and I and a friend (Anthony) rode the roller coaster. We then journeyed over to Disneyland and rode Pirates of the Caribbean before Lara and I had to leave for a BBQ at the Manleys' house. At the BBQ, we attempted to re-create Nick Tahou's Garbage Plates with the cheeseburgers, macaroni salad, and home fries. We then played an amusing kind of reverse-Clue game called Kill Doctor Lucky.
Friends, fun, food, fellowship...what a great way to spend a holiday weekend.
Posted in News
Posted by marshall
Thu, 02 Sep 2004 15:38:16 GMT
We spent the last weekend in Chicago celebrating Mom's birthday. She didn't know we were coming. We flew in to O'Hare airport on Saturday evening, Andy and Ingrid picked us up at the airport, and we surprised her at home. I think she enjoyed it. :-)
After church on Sunday, we went to see Andy and Ingrid's land where their house will be built in the coming months; they should be moved in by Christmas. We had some good Chicago-style deep-dish pizza at Giordano's for dinner. On Monday -- Mom's actual birthday -- we slept in and then celebrated at Portillo's/Barnelli's, which has excellent ribs and delicious chocolate cake. We spent Tuesday morning visiting Mom and Dad at Moody, walked over to the Michigan Ave. Apple Store (free parking with the purchase of a computer!), ate at the Moody cafeteria, and then flew out of Midway airport back to California.
Overall, it was a short but very pleasant trip. It was great to see Mom, Dad, Andy, and Ingrid, and there was plenty of time to relax and read or watch TV or whatever. Both Lara and I enjoyed it a lot.
Sadly, I did suffer a loss over the course of the trip. The overzealous security people in the Ontario airport took away my little Victorinox classic style pocketknife that my uncle Dan gave me many years ago. Never mind that the forks and knives in the restaurants inside the airport are far more sharp than my pocketknife was; it obviously was a Threat to National Security. Another reason to fly out of Palm Springs; apart from the more pleasant feel of the airport, they never gave me a problem about my keychain.
Posted in News
