Today marks the beginning of my 32nd year of life... yes, it's my birthday today.  I found myself being rather introspective today, and pondering where I have been in the past year and what may lie ahead in the next 364 days of my 32nd year. 

So last year at this time, the beginning of age 31 began with me starting my journey from the east coast to the west coast.  Since it's been nearly a year since we arrived on the west coast, it's only natural to say that I spent the bulk of age 31 getting acclimated to a new job, new part of the country, new house, new friends, etc.  Hence, the "theme" of my 31st year could be characterized as "New beginnings". These were all interesting and fun things for me, and for Christa and Chris... and I can honestly look back and be glad we did them.  31 was a good year.

Of course, the year was fraught with some challenges as well.  I would list them out, but in reality they all ended well, so why dredge them up right?  The truth is that I am very grateful for my place in life, and certainly feel fortunate to have the support system that I do in Christa and Chris.  With them in my corner, every year should be better than the next.  So far, I haven't really figured out yet what the "theme" for my 32nd year will be.  I figure it will probably be obvious by this time next year. 

As the title would suggest, there hasn't been much going on on my space as of late.  The truth is, there have been a great deal of updates courtesy of the Spaces Team... but alas, my blog has been stale for awhile now.  So, I am sure you are wondering what the heck I have been up to.

For starters, Mix 07 is next week (just in case you haven't been following the countdown gadget).  I have been preparing for the talk that Thomas' Space and I will be giving about Developing with Windows Live Spaces.  As you might have noticed, my Space is sporting a new look... which just happens to be similar to the artwork for Mix. I am pretty excited about the conference, and equally excited about seeing Vegas for the first time. I imagine that there will be much to blog about next week, so stay tuned.

Insofar as daily life is concerned, Christa and I have been busy doing some pre-summer projects around the house.  Since moving in, we have had the desire to tweak some things to give them our personal touch and make it feel more like home.  Hopefully in a week or so those projects will be wrapped up so we can get on with enjoying downtime on the weekends.

What else... Chris is growing up faster than I can keep up with.  He is starting to really talk these days, and Christa has been doing a bunch of activities with him that he seems to really enjoy.  Lately he has really been testing my parenting skills (or lack thereof) and often times he leaves me amazed at how challenging but overwhelmingly rewarding fatherhood can be.  He is the most amazing part of my life... hands down. I owe some new pictures, so check back soon for that. 

In other news, my Dad got a good report from the doctors with regard to the heart attack he had back in March during our vacation to FL (I never got that blog entry finished).  We are excited about that, and hope he continues on a good path. 

That's all for now... check back next week when we kick off the Mix 07 festivities.  There are likely to be some pictures of Thomas and I at PURE by middle of next week. :-P

On Sunday, we went to Juno beach, walked on the beach, and paid a visit to the Loggerhead Marinelife Center. You can check out their web site at: http://www.marinelife.org/index.htm .  The good folks at the Marinelife Center rescue and rehabilitate sea turtles of all kinds.  It's a great place to get up close and personal with these very large and interesting creatures.  The cool thing about this part of Florida, is that it is not uncommon to observe sea turtles in the wild, whether diving, swimming, fishing, or hanging out on the beach after dark.  The not-so-cool thing is that some of these poor critters had some unfortunate experiences with humans which ultimately led to their stay at the Marinelife center. 

Overall, we enjoyed the visit... though Chris was a bit nervous around the turtle pools. Rightly so I suppose, some of the turtles were larger than him.  Nevertheless, we had a good time.  The beach was pretty deserted due to the overcast and cool weather they were having at the time. 

This past week, the three of us jetted off to sunny Florida for a bit of respite and a family visit. Naturally, the first thing we really did when we went back to Florida was to hook up with family. We had a small gathering at my parents place where we were able to hang out with some of our extended family from Philly who were in town for vacation as well.  In a family that is large and spread across the country, this almost never happens... Needless to say, we enjoyed it very much!  Check out the photo album.

I have been thinking more and more lately about switching away from cable.  Currently, I am running cable TV, Internet, and Phone.  I have always been a cable TV guy, and I have been using cable Internet for going on 6 years now.  The phone service is something new, but I think I am finally at my wits end with all of it.  Although, there is this part of me that is nervous about going into a contractual agreement with a satellite provider, the one good thing is... the price doesn't change.  So, what put me over the edge you ask?  Well, here's the situation.

I started out paying about $88 a month for digital cable, "high speed" Internet, and VOIP phone service.  Over the first 6 months, my phone service suffered from a 75% success rate.  While it was great getting unlimited domestic local and long distance for ~$30 a month, if you can't actually talk to people successfully, then you really aren't benefiting from the service.  Then there is Internet... "high speed" as they call it.  At a whopping ~145Kb/S download speed, surfing the net is almost as fast as watching paint dry. I mean, they talk about "powerboost"... what does that get me, 160Kb/S??  Cable TV is about the only technically sturdy leg on this three-legged stool.  But after 6 months, they jacked up the price on me... from $88 to $158.  It was barely a deal at $88... for $158, I am going to start shopping.

So this week, I will start exploring DSL and Satellite.  At this point, I am just seeking a stable, reliable, and useful service at a reasonable price.  Now don't get me wrong, $88 is a steal.  I am much more likely to be in the $150 range for these services combined... Let's hope I can find something that just works well, and isn't full of surprises like cable.  More to come...

It was pretty obvious from my last entries that I don't like living without power.  I have always been pretty honest about the fact that I am not much for "roughing it".  That's the beauty of living in the USA where, for the right price, you can obtain the comforts you desire. 

So today, the electricians came out to wire up my shiny new generator into the main breaker panel.  I have been waiting for this day, and every passing wind storm that has blown through over the past 3 weeks has left me feeling more uneasy about the stability of the power grid.  So, now I no longer have to worry as much.  If the power goes out again, I will have enough standby power to run critical electric (e.g. Coffee Pot, Heat, Lights, Microwave)...notice those items were listed in order of importance. 

Being the "tool and gadget" guy that I am, I thought I would share a bit about how this nifty little system works.  It all boils down to a simple circuit breaker that enables the power to flow from the generator into the main breaker panel supplying power to any of the available breakers in the box. At the same time, it disables the flow of power from the main utility line.  The generator gets hooked up to a port on the outside of the house using a weatherproof 20 ft cable.  So, power goes out >> fire up generator >> flip some switches >> light the place back up. Beautiful! The nice thing about this design is that it lets me control which breakers I choose to run based on the load that the generator can handle.  In my case, 7000w running and 12000w peak should be enough to run everything but the 30 and 40 amp breakers, of which there are 3.  If I get really serious about running everything and want to upgrade to a 15000w generator... no problem, just have to change the generator. I added some photos below to illustrate the point. 

So, in the event we have another storm like the one on December 14, I will be better prepared than before.  If not, well then I can now successfully run any household appliance in the middle of nowhere.  Either way, I think I'll sleep a bit better at night knowing that my family will be warm if something does happen again.

So I have been getting a lot of emails and IM's inquiring about where I have been since my last blog post.  Turns out, 5 days without power sort of threw me out of my normal rhythm and only now do I feel things returning to normal.  If you add to that the usual hectic holiday times, vacation, and then getting back into work... time tends to fly by.  So for those of you paying attention, here's what's going on with me.

Christmas and New Years went well, we did get power back a few days before.  So, final preparations were sort of hurried and it seemed like it flew right by.  Look for some updated photos coming soon in the new photo album.  We had some visitors during the holidays, which was nice.  My dad joined us for a bit, followed by Christa's mom.  Both got to experience the power outage, and since they are both veteran hurricane survivors... it was more of an inconvenience than anything.  Both enjoyed the visit with the grandson more than the parents... I am pretty certain of that. :-)

The high note was of course watching Chris discover the joys of Santa Claus' generosity toward children that are good all year long.  I doubt that he comprehends that the pile of toys under the tree is much more than just that, but it sure was a blast watching him stare at everything when he first came downstairs. 

Generally, we love Christmas... it's our favorite time of the year.  We made the best of it despite the setbacks and Santa made sure that next year, backup power will be available if this happens again...<wink>  Seriously though, we felt pretty fortunate to have the exciting and rewarding year that we experienced in 2006, and we are excited about our 2007 adventures.  So, keep reading... and feel free drop a comment from time to time.