Number Ten Scores Again!!!

WHOO WHOO!!!

Tommy scored again during his game on Sunday as his team won 6 to 3. They lost on Saturday 8 to 0, but on Sunday they played well, and Tommy even scored a goal :) Here it is for your viewing pleasure...

Hockey Baby!!!

I guess the title is backwards, because I am going to talk about baby first...

We are expecting a new addition to our family in March, and yesterday we had an appointment with the Fetal Medicine specialist... We know her pretty well, because she consulted on Austin's heartbeat issue, and was involved with Autumn's Turner's Syndrome. It was a little surreal walking in there after the last time when we received such terrible news, but this appointment was awesome. They did an ultrasound and checked everything, and by the looks of it we are growing a healthy jumping bean. It was a pretty big relief for Dawn and I, and hopefully Dawn will let herself get a little more excited now :)

Now, on to Hockey... We have been busy going to practice etc, and on Sunday we had two Exhibition Games in Port Huron. We won the first game 5 to 1, and tied the second game 3 to 3. The biggest excitement was that Tommy scored in the first game. I have a video of the goal below including the wave to Mom afterwards :) Great Job Tommy!!!

The McCain Team

I joined The McCain Team, and added an icon to my blog as well... The most important thing is that everyone needs to exercise their right to vote, because we are truly blessed to live in a nation where every citizen has a voice...

Passwords again...

I know it will seem like I am beating a dead horse here, but I think it is warranted based on the information in this article about how someone broke into Sarah Palin's yahoo email account...

So, again my post from July is worth reading again about how to create secure passwords, but I would like to add a little to it. You can add notes for yourself in the "comments or notes section" in KeePass, or Password Safe for the password reset questions that you setup.

Just looking out for my loyal readers :)

Google Chrome

I just wanted to take a quick minute, and blog about Google Chrome. It is a new web browser that was built from the ground up by Google. All of the other major browsers in existence have been "upgrades" that have evolved over time. Here are some of the highlights...

- Individual Tabs as processes - We have all had a browser "lock-up" on us from time to time, but if this happens in Chrome it will only lock up 1 tab, because each of the tabs is its own browser running independent of the other windows.
- Task Manager - Yes, they built a task manager into the web browser.
- Tab Management - You can drag tabs fluidly, and pull them out as their own independent window, and then put them back into your main browser window. You can also setup a set of tabs as your homepage, so that all of your regular webpages open up when your browser opens.
- JavaScript - Fancy stuff on webpages has been re-programmed so that it can run extremely fast.
- User Interface (UI) - The UI is streamlined, and the goal for Google was for the browser to "disappear", so that you could use the application inside of the web browser without a problem.
- Independent Applications - You can turn any webpage into its own independent application that has its own icon on the desktop. It is really cool for Gmail, Google Calendar, and Remember the Milk.

Overall, the speed of Google Chrome is fast, and it really does change the browser experience... However, they haven't released the Mac or Linux versions yet, and there are still some web pages that don't work in it, but as with everything Google it is only a "beta" and they are working to correct those issues...

Check out Google Chrome by clicking here!

Big News!!!

You might want to head over to Dawn's Blog for an important announcement :)

Dawn's Latest Post

Having a Great Time in Florida!!!

Disney Excitement!!!

Well, I am up earlier than I need to be. *sigh* I couldn't fall asleep and the last I looked at the clock it was 10 PM, and then I was awake 2 AM. Well, I guess that is what happens when you are a Disney freak like me :) They boys were pretty pumped up last night, and Austin was really smiling from ear to ear, and super excited about going today when we tucked him in. It was cool to see him all "geeked up" for going.

I tried to check-in online with AirTran yesterday, but I couldn't so I called them to make sure our seats were assigned together. I think we have everything covered, and as long as we get some rain-free days we should be all set! Although, a friend at work made a good point that a wet day at Disney is always better than any day at work. I guess I agree with him :)

If you want to follow along I am going to try at Twitter as much as possible, or you can click this link to see a map or list of what we are doing... I have filtered it so it will only show updates from me.

Twisney for NetPappy

In other news the boys and I did a bunch of running around yesterday and we ended up getting Crocs. I couldn't believe how comfortable they were, and they should be nice for wet days at the parks. However, I don't like taking a new pair of shoes to WDW, because of the chance for blisters, so hopefully that won't happen.

Also, at church last night I spoke to Stan, and he is still interested in becoming Catholic. We had discussed it over a beer or two at a baseball tournament and I was shocked to learn that he wasn't Catholic. His two boys go to school with Tommy and Austin, and I know his wife is, so I guess I just assumed he was. Well, I guess we are good to go for RCIA classes, and I am looking forward to it, because it has been several years since I went through it, and I was a lot younger then. I was raised general Protestant, and at first Catholicism was weird, and I had heard so many "attitudes" towards it when I was young. I must say that I am really glad I converted, and that we have made church an important part of our family life. I also am really glad I joined the Knights of Columbus *shameless plug* because I enjoy hanging out with the guys, and doing the work we do for charity.

Well, I guess I should get going... Have a Great Week, and stay tuned to our blogs for continuing updates :)

WHOO WHOO Vacation!!!

Today is my last day of work, and then it is Disney World Vacation for me :) We will be at the airport 48 hours from now, and we can't wait!!! Of course we have some running around, and all the packing to do yet, but the team is ready to roll, and it looks like Tropical Storm Fay is finally moving out.

Stay tuned for more details :)

Our Precious Angel...

So, here is my second post for today, but this one is much more important...

We found out today that the marker was placed for our daughter Autumn Rose. Dawn was busy tonight, and had stopped by earlier today, so I decided to stop by with the boys this evening. I had stopped by last week, and saw that they had set the foundation, so I figured it would be soon, but I wasn't sure if I was ready to see it. There have been some flowers on her grave most of the year since December (thanks to our parents, and my brother), but it was primarily the rectangular cut-out of sod that brought back the memories and pain of that cold day in December for me.

Dawn and I had selected the marker, so I knew what to expect, but I also knew that staring back at me was going to be her name. This was the name we had spoken about for years if we ever had a girl, and in my own mind I probably had walked her down the aisle a dozen times, taken her to breakfast at Cinderella's Castle, watched her play sports, and been to a dance recital or two. We never found out what we were having for either of the boys, and these are the thoughts that you have when you are excited about being a dad.

So, I headed out there... The marker turned out really nice, and I am so happy that we decided to get it. It was hard to stand there and read her name, but it was easier than I thought it would be. (I just spent a few minutes reading my old posts from December... Whew, that was a hard ordeal...) So, now the world will know that in that little piece of ground is buried Our Precious Angel that in just several weeks touched our lives forever...

My blog & twitter timeline...

I know I have been slacking on posting, but here you go... Hopefully not too techy...

Anyway, I received a link from my buddy Jason, but I have confidence that he won't blog about it, and I wanted to share it with everyone. The URL is http://www.dipity.com and what it does is allow you to create a time line and flip book that can include multiple feeds easily, so I added my blog, and my twitter RSS, and voila... You could also add your photos via their RSS feeds (photobucket, picasa, youtube, etc), and with all that stuff being date stamped you have an easy way to produce a chronological display of all those different sources. I can't help but think this would be awesome for a "baby-book" type application. Here is my timeline...

Poor Bird... A picture for Jill M...

Jason, and I were walking out to lunch on Friday heading to A&W for some draft root beer, and some world class coney dogs... We walked past this vehicle in the parking lot at work, and I had to take a picture for Jill M, because she is the only person I know that takes pictures of puke and dead rabbits...

Good Luck Adam!!!

So, today was the last day of work for a friend of mine, and I just wanted to take a second to wish him the best of luck... He is leaving a successful career in Cisco Routing and Switching to pursue his MBA from the University of Chicago. I have worked the closest with him over the last 3 years, and we have done several projects together including (but not limited to, because I am sure I will forget some)...

Initial Phone System Deployment
Remote Phone Testing and Deployment
Wireless - He did most of this, but I added my $.02 :)
VPN Implementation
New site integration - the one I am still working on
Video Conferencing Deployment
New Building Expansion

It has been a busy 3 years, and while there were challenges I would like to think that we had some fun along the way :)

I did have the pleasure of taking him to his first Disney experience last year at Disneyland when we went to the Cisco Networkers Conference :)

Good Luck, and God Bless...

Here are some pics I had handy...

Crazy Project, Voicemail, and Passwords...

Good Morning Campers... It is 5:25 AM at the hotel I am staying at, and I woke up, because I went to bed at a little after 10 last night. Of course the internet is down, so I am typing this in TextEdit, and will paste to blogger later. I have been really busy with this project I am doing to setup a new site for the company we purchased last year. The good news is that I only have one more telco circuit to be turned-up, and I should be doing that today. The bad news is that every time I think about this project I get overwhelmed by the amount of work left to do... I swear I am losing hair, and going grey (or is it gray) over this one. You can read over at Dawn's blog about the great weekend we had over the 4th of July. It felt like we were trying to cram in all the family time we didn't have last week while I was traveling into the few days I had off, but nevertheless it was awesome.

I was reading my Google Reader last night, and there was a post on lifehacker about whether or not we should get rid of voicemail in the world... I am totally for the removal of voicemail, because I find that it is cumbersome to access, slows me down, and doesn't fit into "my workflow" (which is driven by email). We have people at our company that can utilize our voicemail system so rapidly that I can't keep up which is crazy because I am the phone guy. They know all the buttons, and are proud of the fact that they can speed through it. I, however, am just glad that we have Cisco Unified Messaging, so that my voicemail shows up in my email box. I can then have the phone system call me and play the message, or I can play it through my computer speakers. The only problem this causes me is that people tend to forget their passwords (because they don't use them), and when they go on vacation and try to leave an out-of-office message they need their passwords reset. On my cell phone I have switched to YouMail which I love, because I get a text message that a voicemail was left, and it tells me who called, the length of the message, and I can login to a webpage to hear the message instead of dealing with the cumbersome TUI (in telco speak that is Telephone User Interface). *stepping off soapbox about voicemail*

BTW - the internet just came up, but I am going to finish this post here, and then paste it in :)

The next topic is for my dear wife, and while some of you might think tech post, you might want to read this one... I spoke on January 3, 2008 briefly about passwords, and the application of the year for 2007 being Password Safe, however, a former boss of mine used to say something to the effect of, "I reserve the right to be smarter today than yesterday", so I am going to speak about another program here as well... This all started, because I was logging into our Credit Union website to balance the checkbook, and they prompted me that I needed to change the password. I tried my latest and greatest password that is "easy to remember", and it didn't meet the criteria, so I looked a little closer to the rules for their passwords, and it apparently didn't like the fact that I had the same letter back-to-back. So, I got frustrated opened my KeePass, and generated a password... KeePass and Password Safe are two programs that allow you to keep your passwords encrypted and secure, and is the only way to have super-secure passwords (unless you are super duper brilliant, and can remember 20 letters, numbers, and symbols jumbled together).

Let's talk about the types of passwords that you have these days, because I see them fall into two categories... The ones I need to remember, and the ones I don't... We all need one that we can remember which should be created by using the first letter of every word in a phrase (provided those letters don't form a word themselves), and also include a number or special character. An example would be taking the phrase "Joe is an excellent blogger and I enjoy reading his posts", and the password I would use for that is Jia3ba13rhp* (I substituted a 3 for the e's and a 1 for the I), and you can see that it is a pretty good password, but because I know the phrase it becomes easy for me to use. I would use this easy to remember password for logging into my computer every morning at work, my gmail account and/or securing my password database in KeePass, or Password Safe.

The other type of password is the one that you really don't need to be able to reference from memory, and therefore the more secure it is the safer you are. In fact, think about the number of websites you sign-up for with the same username, and password combination, and the fact that with a cool webpage I could get you to sign-up for my site with those same credentials, and now I can access your bank account, ebay, paypal, etc... I am slowly moving all my passwords to a password database to alleviate this problem. The password database is encrypted, local to you (I recommend backing it up to a USB Key regularly), and can generate super-secure passwords with the click of a button. So, next time you are at a web page ready to register with your old standby password, stop and think that now would be a good time to be smarter today than yesterday and get your password database going...

So, my wife needs to download one of them, and I recommend KeePass (versus Password Safe), because it has better "cross-platform" support, so someday when she gets a Mac she can just copy her database over. Once she gets that setup I can give her the cryptic, couldn't type it if she wanted to, password that is on our Credit Union account :)

If you are looking for a really techie post check out this post from Jason that I use to sync my password database from my work computer to my MacBook with ease...

Dawn at Today Show

Dawn went to New York, and left me at home with the boys... I don't want to sound like a wimp, but let's just say it has been a rough go of it for me. Keep in mind that she went to DC just a few weeks ago, and my work has been extremely crazy lately (and it is going to get worse before it gets better).

Anyway, several years ago I went to New York on business, and on a cold November morning trudged several blocks to be at the Today Show. I had told Dawn to tape it, but she didn't, because she got up late. So, as she sat there eating her Cheerios, she saw me waving, and saying, "Hi Dawn, I Love You".

Of course, I had to work this morning, but I setup the DVR, and after watching the video below you will see that she decided to say hello to Julie... So, I guess that tells you where the boys and I rate these days... Anyway, here is her 1/2 second of fame (if you look close you might also see Jill, Lupe, and Amy)... I put this together pretty quickly (on the MacBook of course)...

Happy Birthday Dawn!!!

Today is my wonderful wife Dawn's 30th Birthday. We have been married for 10+ years and I know that I would choose her again in an instant. She is my best friend and I can't imagine my life without her. We have been blessed with two wonderful boys and a happy home.

So happy birthday baby and here's to another 30 years of happiness and whatever god has instore for us.

We are driving down to the Tiger game, so let's hope they can win.

Summer Time...

Summer Time is here...

The kids and wife are out of school. We won our first softball game on Sunday, and the weather is getting nicer here in Michigan.

Tommy is still playing Hockey, and we have the tournament in Toronto in a couple of weeks. He will then be done until August, so he will get a little break. He is also playing baseball, and seems to be enjoying it...

Austin is doing good, and seems to be really talking quite a bit, and with lots of clarity.

Dawn is still playing hockey, and it sounds like it is going to continue into the summer. She is also going to New York with a couple of friends right before we go to Toronto, and I think she is excited about it.

I am keeping busy at work with the integration of our new facility out east. It has caused me to miss going to Cisco Networkers in Orlando on June 22nd... I wish I was going, but I don't think they are going to change their mind, so hopefully the project will go well, and I can minimize the amount of traveling that I have to do.

Sorry for the short post, but not too much going on...

Softball Season...

We had a practice and cook-out for our Co-Ed Softball Team last night... Dawn is the coach/coordinator, so we had a practice, and then had everyone came over to the ranch for a cook-out and potluck.

The turn-out for the practice was good, and we were able to field a full team. I would like to welcome Nate and Amy to the team... That meant we had a house full of people for the party afterwards... I grilled the brats, burgers, and hot-dogs. Doug (who is now to be called Woody) brought some wood from his renovations, so that we could have a fire on our deck in the fire pit. We drank a ton of brews, and everyone had a great time... Here are some pictures the morning after...

We drank lots of beer...




We set the table on fire... Yes, I had to run and get some water to put the fire on table out :) It was pretty crazy that there was a glow below the table for a little bit...

Mr. Mom Checking Out!!!

Dawn is on her way home, and should be here sometime tonight... So, that means I get to check-out from Mr. Mom action. The boys were pretty good for me, but I run a tight ship (ruh-roh Tommy just walked down here saying he can't sleep...) I just sent him back to bed :)

Tommy had hockey practice tonight for the Stars. After practice we went and did two Geocaches. It was raining a little, but we powered through... I had Tommy looking out for muggles on the second one, and I think he was loving it :)

If you don't know about geocaching, here is a quick description for you. It is a game where you utilize a GPS to find a "treasure" that has been hidden by someone else. We like to do it for an outdoor family activity, or as part of a bike ride... You can learn more at http://www.geocaching.com

I have gotten a new BlackBerry 8330 at work, and I love it... As you know I am the phone guy at work, and I suggested that we look into BlackBerry to replace our Windows Mobile Solution that was integrated with mNotes (we use Lotus Notes for email). I must say that this is one of my best contributions, because the BlackBerry is working great, and so far everyone is pleased with the results...

Well, that's all for now...

Hockey - The Last Dance Tournament - GO STARS!!!

The Mid-Michigan Stars travelled to the greater Detroit Area this weekend to participate in "The Last Dance" tournament. Here is a quick run-down...

The first game of the tournament was Friday Night at 5 PM against the "International Stars" which we believe was a team from Kensington Valley. The MMStars were victorious by a score of 10 to 1. They didn't play great during the game, but they did play well enough to win, so we were happy for that.

We went to a Sports Bar with the team for dinner, and then back to the hotel for some R&R...

The second game was at 7:00 AM on Saturday morning... We were excited because this game was against the "5th ranked" Mt. Clemens Wolves. We had played the Wolves last Saturday in an exhibition game, and beat them 3 to 0 in a wonderful game. However, this was a new day, and we wanted to play tough against them. The game was good again, but we came up on the short side and lost 3 to 2.

We went back to the Hotel for the breakfast buffet, and some swimming... I decided to try and take a nap, but after laying down for awhile I was "mugged" by Tommy, and a bunch of his teammates asking me if I taped the whole game, or just Tommy. I told them the whole game, and in a few minutes there was this pounding on the door... I tried to ignore it, but eventually got to the door, and found Tommy, and Brady asking me to get the video working on the TV/Computer... I shut the door, and tried to ascertain whether or not I was properly dressed to leave the hotel room... I ended up getting the video pulled off of the camera, and on the beloved MacBook, so that the coach could review it. It was determined that the Head Coach watched the entire game at least 6 times, and knew what our issues were against Mt. Clemens...

The third game was at 5:00 PM on Saturday evening... We were in a must win situation, so that we could go to the Championship Game on Sunday. We played against the Livonia Knights, and won the game 5 to 1. The game was pretty good, but there were several penalties including Tommy for roughing the goalie long after the whistle was blown.

Saturday night we relaxed, ordered pizza, and then I put the kids to bed about 9:30 or so... I hung out in the hallway with some people, and distributed some beer to my new found friends...

The Championship Game was at 7 AM on Sunday morning... The Mt. Clemens Wolves scored first, but we were able to battle back, and win the game with a final score of 4 to 2. Tommy played pretty well, and one of the coaches even told me that he thought he played really well today... The MVP for the Stars was "The Team". The team is always the MVP for their games :) We were in the locker room, and the coach announces that while the players MVP is the team they are going to have a Parent MVP. He then announced that because the video seemed to help they were giving it to me :) So, I guess it paid off to get my nap interrupted :) We really love the team we are on, and are enjoying the players, and their parents. It is a great group of people!

It was a fun weekend, but we are all tired, and hoping to get to bed a little early... Dawn left for Washington DC this morning, so it is just me and the boys here at the Papesh ranch :) Here are a few pictures...

Update - still trying to blog again...

Here is a quick update...

Last Saturday - I completed my 4th Degree with the Knights of Columbus. It was a nice event, and I am really glad that I did it. Here is a link to some information about the 4th Degree. I wore my Tuxedo, and Dawn wore her fancy dress from White House Black Market.

Baseball - Tommy had a game on Monday, and on Wednesday. His team won both games. He is doing fine, and enjoys playing both 2nd base, and catcher. The coach pitched on Monday, and on Wednesday the kids started doing the pitching.

Tomorrow Night we have a scrimmage for the Mid-Michigan Stars, so hopefully Tommy will do well.

Work - It has been crazy lately... We are working to implement a BlackBerry solution for mobile users. We are also working on a phone system for our site on the east coast.

Whew! - We made it out of April! The month of April was going to be hectic for us with Hockey (for Tommy & Dawn), Volleyball (Dawn), Baseball (Tommy), Dawns Birthday Party and regular life... We are now in May, and it already feels like it isn't as busy at home :)