The competition for Star Wars roles was really tough.

(Links from my bro...)

...in case you didn't get enough gravity in the last one...

I'm really not sure why things like this amuse me so much. But, there they are...

(Link from Vijaye...)

Chris says my blog is out of date. He's right of course... this is my first post of 2007. Hmm...

Pair programming is fun, I agree. The stuff we got working last night was really cool.

But, I don't blog technical much anyway...

Brian's a better/faster content poster than me...

I had a little kick-off for the holiday season last Saturday. I used the opportunity to finally pop open the 5-liter bottle of '96 Pride Cab that's been in my cellar forever. It was good...

Here's a snap of the bottle I took:



That's one big bottle. Six and two-thirds "normal" sized bottles, all in one. Turns out, we didn't have any trouble finishing it off.

Anyway, Brian posted some great pics of the event. It's only fair to say that Erick wasn't in nearly the state that you might assume based on some of these pictures...

Some people just suck.

I just turned off the ability to add comments to entries on this site. I had to do this because some pustulent piece(s) of garbage decided to spam the comments in order to add links to themselves... probably a google hack to increase traffic, etc.

Well, this'll fix their wagon... silly me for allowing a link in comments in the first place.

The past few years (including last year) we've taken a trip to Cannon Beach, OR. This year is no different; we spent last week there, and are once again ready to make arrangements for next year.



This time, our rental house was quite a bit different than the other years. It was quite a bit smaller. There were three bathrooms (well... three rooms in which there were toilets), but there wasn't one in which I couldn't touch opposing walls with my elbows. The ceilings were a little over 7 feet tall and I had to dodge the light fixtures. It was very old (registered historical structure, actually) but modernized and renovated. It even had free (sorry...included) wireless network access.

But the key aspect of this house? Location. You could walk outside barefoot, cross a small gravel road, and be walking on the sandy beach. No walking along a road, or down a few dozen stairs to get to the beach; it was right there.

We did many of the same things we did last year, including a visit to Ecola State Park (from which these two pictures were taken). I saw a seagull paying strangely familiar attention to a family enjoying a picnic, but didn't stop to ask if it remembered me.

Unfortunately, I think I got a grain of sand in one of my camera lenses, as it refused to auto-focus without assistance (and the noise it made while trying to do so was... unhealthy). I didn't get nearly as many pictures as last year, but in a pinch I could pass last year's off as this year's. Turns out the terrain hasn't changed much in a year.

The weather was not entirely cooperative. The highest temperature was probably less than 70 degrees, and we only had a few total hours of blue sky. It was a bit disappointing to get bundled up for the beach in August, but that sure didn't stop us. The best part was the lowest-of-the-year tides, which allowed for some really great tide-pool viewing. We walked right up to within 20 feet of the Needles. Saw exactly 9 million starfish. Rachel poked every one of them with a stick.

When not at the beach, or lounging in the house (watching the girls play at the beach -- did I say how nice it was to be right on the beach?), we were probably at Cannon Beach Bakery trying to snag a few more apple cider cinnamon doughnuts, or picking up some more chocolate peanut-butter taffy at Bruce's, or otherwise browsing/eating at the various goody shacks in town.

And of course, it's always wine-thirty, even in the sand...

Watch this to find out...