We were up at four but it was a restless night and we were still very tired.  Liesl tossed and turned all night long and never really let us get to sleep at all.  That is going to make today very rough indeed.

We got ready to go as quickly as we could and were on to the road at four forty five to drive across the city before rush hour started which is a real concern going from League City up to the big airport up north.  It is a long drive and i45 can become very congested if you get past five thirty or so.

The drive up to the airport was fine.  No traffic at all.  We are leaving the car at the airport and Brian is picking it later once he wakes up.  He will use the car for the rest of the week which works out pretty well.

We got to the airport and through security pretty well.  We found out that our particular flight was not in the terminal normally used by Continental  and so while we were in our terminal with plenty of time we had to take a massive hike out two terminals away to catch our flight.  That ate up a lot of time and was rather exhausting.  We did not check any luggage on this trip and are carrying a lot of stuff with us.

We had not eaten before getting to the airport and were pretty hungry, especially after yesterday when I only managed to eat once all day anyway.  So Dominica watched Liesl and I quickly picked us up something to eat.  Breakfast tacos for me.  Dominica just had a bagel.

We ended up cutting it really close and didn’t really have time to eat before getting on to the flight.  We are trying this flight with a car seat for Liesl rather than holding her in our laps.  We thought that this might work better but boy oh boy were we ever wrong.

Having the car seat on the plane meant that Liesl was pissed because she did not want to sit that way and it also meant that we had no room in our row to maneuver because the car seat was taking up so much of the space.  Bad idea.  We still had to hold Liesl for much of the trip but without having enough space to do so she was incredibly unhappy as were we.  She just screamed and screamed making pretty much everyone else pretty unhappy as well.  She is the loudest child ever.

We were very thankful when we touched down in Las Vegas at eight forty five and could get off of the plane.  Vegas falls into Pacific Time and so we have jet lag to deal with for the next few days as well.

We had a shuttle all scheduled and ready for us so we just had to grab our luggage and make it to the taxi stands.  That was incredibly easy.  Dominica is really good at getting this stuff all organized prior to us ever leaving.

We got to the hotel around ten local time which was almost noon back in Texas and one in the afternoon back in New York.  A bit later than I had been thinking that it would be.

We were incredibly hungry when we finally got to the hotel and got unpacked but we were really impressed with the hotel room.  We got room 30-034 which, of course, was on the thirtieth floor and had views out over the Belagio, Paris, Rio, etc.  It was an awesome room.  We loved the layout.  The bedroom and the living room were split only by a narrow wall that had a large LCD screen on either side – one facing the king bed and the other facing the couch.  Very nice setup.  Attractive and very functional.  There was a great workstation for me to setup my laptop as well and tons of windows with a gorgeous view.

Even though it felt like the middle of the afternoon it was still pretty early on Pacific Time so we called down to room service and ordered up some breakfast.  It took about half an hour for breakfast to arrive.  It was very impressive.  They set the table just like we were at a nice restaurant and they even brought up a toaster and toasted our bread right there on the spot so that it would be hot.  The food was excellent although at $80 for two adults and a toddler it was rather pricey.  Maybe avoiding room service is the way to go for future meals!

After breakfast I set up shop and worked for the day.  In the middle of the afternoon Andy came down to visit for a little while and then went and did some more wedding preparation stuff while I finished up working for the day.  After the work day was over we went down and met up with Andy and Miranda and Miranda’s brother Kip and his fiancee Jan and we went out for a walk in Vegas looking to find the Walgreen’s that carried soy milk as we had run out for Liesl and it was just a matter of time before she was going to get hungry and would be very upset if we did not have any more food for her.

The walk was surprisingly long considering that the Walgreen’s was practically right across the street.  But to get out to the strip required walking through the Vdara and then through the Aria and out through the new City Center shopping complex and then down the street and across Las Vegas Boulevard and then back to the Walgreen’s.  It was a good hike.  We did manage to find soy milk, though, so Liesl was happy.

We did some wandering around on the strip for a little while and then returned to the hotel and got ready for dinner.  Once everyone was changed and ready we met in the lobby of the Vdara where almost everyone was staying.  Dinner was Andy’s parents, Tony, Dominica, Liesl, Miranda’s parents, Miranda’s brother and fiancee and, of course, the wedding couple of me, as well.  We walked over to the Aria where we had a Spanish tapas dinner at Julian Serrano.

Dinner was excellent.  Everyone really enjoyed the food.  Tony thought that it was the best meal that he had ever eaten, in fact.  Everyone did tapas and some people went on to do paella as well which Dominica and I decided to forgo.

After dinner we stopped by the Aria’s patisserie and picked up dessert for tonight and breakfast for tomorrow to save us from the temptation of ordering room service unnecessarily.

After hitting the patisserie it was only about eight thirty but everyone was exhausted and decided that it was time to turn in for bed.  So we all went out separate ways.  Dominica and I were definitely ready to get some sleep.  Eight thirty local time is ten thirty at home in Texas and eleven thirty back in New York and since I still work on New York hours we were pretty tired – especially after getting almost no sleep last night and having traveled so much in the last twenty four hours.

Tomorrow morning I have to be up early as I am working a normal day before the wedding.  Luckily working from the hotel room has proven to be really easy.

It was a busy morning.  I got up and worked from home for a little bit then Brian drove me over to the office to cut down on the walking time.  Today is going to be one crazy day.  I am still pretty tired after not having gotten much sleep two nights ago.

Work was quite busy today.  So busy that I ended up skipping breakfast this morning so that I could speed things up and then ended up skipping lunch as well!  I was starving by the time that the end of the day rolled around.  It was good that I worked through everything, though, because I really needed to get a lot of work done so that we would be able to get out and on to the road at a decent time this evening as we have a lot of traveling to do and every minute that we leave later is a minute less sleep that Dominica, Liesl and I are going to get tonight.

I actually managed to be done with work right at five o’clock.  Dominica and Brian actually weren’t ready yet.  I had to wait twenty minutes before they were ready to roll.  They swung by the office and picked me up from there so that I could keep working until the last possible minute.  I ended up getting caught for another ten minutes but by five thirty we were out the door and on our way over to Men’s Warehouse where we had to pick up my suit that I need for the wedding on Friday.

The stop at Men’s Warehouse was very quick.  The suit was ready but there was no time to try it on since we could not get alterations done anyway.  So we just grabbed the suit and ran out the door to get on to the highway.

So it was roughly six when we got on the road to drive from Irving to Houston.  We stopped on the road to pick up some Jack in the Box to eat in the car.  JitB has a pretty big menu that Dominica and I can eat so they are a great fast food stop and the quality is really good.  We are appreciating much of the extended dining options that we have down here.

We made pretty good time once we ate and fueled the car.  It was on to the Baymont as quickly as possible to drop off Brian where he will be staying this week.  Then back on to the road to get down to the Grices’ in League City so that we could get a little sleep.  It was pretty late when we got in and got to bed.  Probably around midnight we finally got to bed.  Liesl was very restless, though, so there was almost no really good sleep for us.

We have to be up at five in the morning so that we can rush off to Bush Intercontinental Airport to get off to Vegas in the morning.  We have a very tight schedule.

We went to bed a little after eleven last night.  Liesl then woke me up around two thirty this morning.  I tried to fall back asleep after she did that but after being awake until almost four I decided to just give up on the whole idea and to just get up and get out of bed.  Better to be productive and feel good about myself rather than to just lay in bed thinking about all of the work that I should be doing but am not.

So at four in the morning I sat down at my little built in desk in the living room and got to work on my laptop.  I did a ton of work today.  I mean a ton.  The amount of work that I had managed to complete before anyone else was awake in the house was pretty crazy.

My biggest project was getting SMB IT Journal, the ezine of small business technology, migrated from a custom hosted server over to the Rackspace Cloud in San Antonio.  Not that it was a complicated project, just time consuming.  I have several CMS systems that need to go through this migration so I will be working on that as time permits.  I managed to get several systems migrated today which helped to take a load off of my plate.

I was intending to head into the office early today but ended up getting caught up with a few issues at the office that kept me from going in and then there was one phone conference after another and it just ended up being a work from home day.  A really, really busy day, in fact.

This morning I got up and walked into the office carrying three dozen doughnuts from Round Rock Donuts.  People have been waiting for a long time to get to try these.  We figured out that if you microwave them for ten seconds they are almost just like fresh.  Not quite the same as getting them down in Round Rock but still way better than normal doughnuts.

It ended up being a crazy doughnut day as someone else in the office brought in two dozen doughnuts from Dunkin Donuts this morning as well so we had five dozen altogether not including the almost one dozen that I left back at the house that Dominica and Brian tore through today while I was at work.

We ate a ton of doughnuts today.  Once we figured out how to microwave them we just ate them all day.  For lunch Brian drove over and picked up John and I and we went to Rockfish.

This evening, after work, I walked home the leftover doughnuts as Dominica was desperate to get more of them – she had finished off the box that I had left for her (it had not been entirely full, but still) and wanted more.  Liesl had started trying them as well and liked them.  My daughter is going to be very, very spoiled – her first taste of doughnut was a Round Rock Donut!

This evening we went out and did some really quick shopping at Walmart – just basic supplies.  Then we ran to a meeting that Brian had set up.  We had dinner in Dallas’ West End district at Spaghetti Warehouse.  I haven’t eaten at a Spaghetti Warehouse in probably twenty years or possibly more.  Dominica has never eaten at one and neither has Liesl, obviously.

We had a nice dinner.  We were meeting with a friend of Brian’s that he had met online on a video game that he plays on Facebook and had wanted to meet while Brian was in town.  It was nice to get to see some of downtown Dallas.   I have driven through but have never stopped there before.

After dinner we just drove back to the house and pretty much headed straight off to bed.  It was rather late.

Neither Brian nor I slept very well last night although the hotel is great.  I had to be up pretty early dealing with work for the office as I am working from the hotel today.

I really like the Comfort Suites in Round Rock.  It is a very handy location for Dominica and I as well since it is really close to where we hope to be buying a house sometime in the near future.

Jarrad ended up not being able to join us this morning so Brian and I walked ourselves over to Round Rock Donuts and picked up four dozen of them!  Brian was pretty impressed by the line of cars waiting for the drive through winding out of the parking lot, down the side street and on to the main road as well as the line of people that filled the bakery itself and lined out into the patio area outside.

It took thirty minutes or more to get to the front of the line at Round Rock Donuts.  We bought our four dozen and then walked outside and sat down at one of the picnic tables to eat a few while they were incredibly fresh and hot.

From gathering donuts it was back to the hotel so that I could work for another hour.  I ended up having several servers down and we ended up being late for our brunch meeting.

It was just after eleven thirty when we managed to get to La Margarita where we were supposed to have been at eleven.  We had a nice lunch there with some people that I had met down at SpiceWorld last October.  I had fish tacos again.  The fish tacos at La Margarita were excellent.

I ended up being paged several times during brunch which was very annoying.  We ended up having to run around immediately after brunch to find good Internet access so that I could work again for a while.  We tried McDonald’s right next to the hotel where the WiFi is normally pretty good and, at least down here in Texas, free.  But after drinking some McCafe coffee and not being able to get online while getting paged and paged by people who couldn’t handle “don’t page me again until I get online – you are interrupting me from finding a way to get online to help you.”

We gave up on Internet access from McDonald’s and ran back to the hotel and were able to sit in the car outside of the hotel and get onto the Internet access from our hotel room.  That worked surprisingly well.  Wireless has come a long way in the last few years.  Once 802.11n is ubiquitous it will be really amazing.

We were stuck there for a while.  As soon as the servers were fixed we hit the road north to Temple, Texas to meet up with a friend of Brian’s that he has known for a decade or so but has never met.  Temple is very close to Round Rock, maybe twenty minutes away at most.  We are making good use of our trip this weekend.  Three meetings between Round Rock and Temple.

We met up with Sandy and Will in Temple without any issues.  Temple is a very small town so finding each other was easy.  We had been hoping to have had time to have headed out to their private shooting range and to have fired off some of their weapons collection including an AK-47 but we were getting late and did not have the free time that we had hoped.  So instead we just went out for a quick Mexican dinner at a little Mexican diner type place.

We were not in Temple for very long.  Maybe an hour and a half at most.  Then it was back onto the road to get up to Irving again.  The drive from Temple to Irving was well under three hours.  Maybe two and a half at most.

We got back to Irving, the drive went fine.  The whole weekend was really gorgeous with temperatures as high as seventy degrees!  That was a nice change from what we have been having.  It has been a very cold winter.  Can’t complain, though, with all of the snow that they have been seeing in the northeast.  I have managed to avoid what appears to be a record setting snow year up there.

So my alarm went off at five forty five local time this morning.  Oops.  It was late when I went to bed and I forgot that my mobile is set to Eastern time rather than Central time and I set it an hour early.  Argh.  So I only got about four hours of sleep.

A major earthquake, 8.8, rocked Chile’s second largest city this morning killing seventy eight people and generating a tsunami that is traveling across the Pacific.  At this time Hawaii and many other Pacific islands as well as Australia are under warning.  No major population center has been hit yet although populated islands have reported the tsunami already.

I worked all morning getting everything done that I could before needing to travel today.  I ended up not being able to get on the road until after one in the afternoon so I was cutting it pretty close for getting to the airport on the southeast side of Austin.  At least I got a bit of time to visit with the family before leaving for a day.

I got onto the road without having eaten all day.  I took I35E south and stopped in Italy, Texas to get fuel and to eat at McDonald’s.  The weather was amazing today.  Mid sixties as I drove down with bright sun.  Gorgeous Texas day.  It is snowing back home, of course.

I made decent time until I reached Austin proper.  There were tons of cops around Italy up until Waco or so.  Once I hit Austin traffic slowed to ten to twenty miles per hours and I had to creep most of the way through the city.

I was able to drive the entire way to the Austin airport, to which I have only been once before, without using a map or GPS at all.  That was pretty cool.  I am learning my way around Texas.  I got to the airport just five minutes or less after Brian made it out to the curb so the timing was perfect.  No wasted time at all.

We drove around Austin for a little bit so that Brian could see the city.  He has never been to Austin before so this was his quick introduction.  We drove out east and the west into the city from the outer loop.  We drove right through some cool neighbourhoods and then through the UT campus.

We did a tour around downtown Austin and got a good look at the city north of the lake and then drove north of the city and stopped off to grab a couple of beers and fish tacos at a local bar and grill chain.

We got checked into the hotel, the Comfort Inn and Suites in Round Rock right on i35 where Dominica and I stayed the last time that we were in Round Rock the weekend after SpiceWorld in Austin back in October.  It is a great hotel although it was far more expensive this time than it was that last time.

We only had a little while in the hotel to relax before going out to get drinks with Jarrad at a bar called Twin Peaks not too far away.  We knew that we would be there for a while so Brian and I grabbed a taxi to take us down there.  We got there maybe an hour before Jarrad so had some drinks.  I was very happy to learn that Twin Peaks carried 512 from Austin – my local beer of choice.

We had a good time and ended up drinking till we closed the place down.  Then back to the hotel.  We are scheduled to meet again tomorrow morning at nine thirty.  We are going to walk over to Round Rock Donuts (and Lonestar Bakery.)  I am very excited to be getting Round Rock Donuts again.  I am delivering a load of them to the office on Monday as well.

It was an uneventful morning.  Got up and went into the office.  I was able to walk today, the weather is a little chilly but not too bad.  Still just wearing a fleece.  Back “home” in the northeast everyone is getting pounded with snow and wind.

So in legal news today, SCO – the company that has been bankrupt for forever and just runs around suing anyone and everyone claiming that they own the entire universe and constantly losing horribly in court and being unable to settle their legal debts – has now decided to not pay their attorneys.  Now honestly, can we feel bad?  These lawyers were aggressively attacking innocent people and companies on behalf of SCO and working to keep a parasitic  and evil company functioning longer in the attempt to lash out and hurt the American public.  So no pity from me.  And really, who couldn’t see this coming?  Did these lawyers really think that SCO was going to pay no one else but would pay them?  Ha ha.  That’s not how this game works.

Work was pretty busy today.  We still had “visiting dignitaries” at the office today so instead of casual Friday it was “dress up” Friday.

For lunch three of us went to Schlotzsky’s Deli to which I have never been before.  They have a veggie sandwich that was pretty good.  Nothing really special for a vegetarian but it was decent.  Now I know that that is a place that I can eat at from time to time.  That is always an issue being a vegetarian.  You never know when you will find something to eat at a new place.  It makes you think twice before trying out a new place.

This afternoon was very, very busy.  Hardly a free moment at all.  It was crazy up until a quarter after five and then everything just died down all of a sudden.  By six I decided that things were so slow that I could head for home.

I got home and discovered that the apartment was empty.  Dominica had neglected to tell me that she was going out shopping.  That would explain why there was no answer when I called home to find out if she wanted to go out to dinner this evening.  I was home for probably forty five minutes or so before she called to find out if I was still at work or not – her plan had been to pick me up and go out to dinner.

I was already in my pajamas for the evening but I changed back into normal clothes and then the family picked me up and we went out to get On the Border.  We decided that we just wanted to get take away (I probably should have just stayed at home now that I think about it) and while we waited for that to be ready we ran over to PetsMart and go Oreo’s toenails trimmed which he desperately needed to have done.

We came back home and ate dinner and watched some Netflix on demand movies.  It was a pretty slow evening.  Nothing eventful.  Liesl stayed up way too late tonight.  It was around midnight or later when she finally was able to fall asleep on my lap.  I have to be up early tomorrow so I had been hoping to get to bed quite early tonight.  That never works out for me.

Tomorrow I have to be up bright and early to do deployments again.  My Saturdays are really just an extension of Friday night.  So no extra rest for me.  My alarm is set for six forty five.

Tomorrow afternoon, after work is done, I am driving down to Austin where I will be picking up Brian from the airport and getting a chance to go out drinking a little on the town.  We are staying there on Sunday night and then driving up to Irving on Sunday afternoon after stopping at Round Rock Donuts to stock up on the world’s best fried pastry treats.

Well I am now officially thirty four years old.  This is also my tenth birthday to have been announced on Sheep Guarding Llama.  I have been blogging for almost one third of my life.  I have been blogging for more than one third of my life during which I knew how to write.  Someday there will be a large percentage of the population who have been blogging for their entire lives but I was blogging before the term existed so for people of my generation this is a really impressive figure.

I got a good night’s sleep last night.  Went to bed nice and early and did not get interrupted too much.  I didn’t get up until a quarter till eight this morning.  Then it was off to work.  I walked again today.  The weather is pretty nice.  Still a little chilly but the sun is out and the day is gorgeous.  Great weather for walking to work.

This morning was pretty slow and I managed to get my latest article “In House Email for Small Businesses” posted on SMB IT Journal.

Dominica made lunch on the early side today so just before noon I left the office and walked home and joined the family for lunch.  Liesl was awake which was a nice change and we spent my entire lunch break hanging out together at home.  That made the walk home well worthwhile today.  That was a lot of time with my daughter that I do not often get and that is good as I am going to be out of town this weekend and not get to see her all that much other than Saturday morning and Sunday night.

Work was pretty slow this afternoon.  All of the guys who are here from New York and New Jersey are snows in today.  The weather is great in Texas but the northeast is getting blasted with a “snowicane” – tons of snow and incredibly high winds.  Not fun at all.

Dominica went shopping at Kroger this evening and picked me up from work just after six.  Then we went out to Rockfish for some dinner since it is my birthday.

After dinner we came home and just relaxed.  I played with Liesl and Dominica played some Dragon Age: Origins.  I often prefer watching her play video games rather than watching a show because it doesn’t require very much of my attention and I can easily go read with Liesl or clean around the house or do whatever task needs to be done.

Liesl asked to go to bed for the first time ever today.  I said “Do you want to go to bed?” and she emphatically said “Yes” and so I carried her in and put her in her pack and play and she curled right up without any complaints at all!  Now this is some serious progress.

Unfortunately Liesl woke back up fifteen minutes later and stayed up for another two hours.  But at least there is progress and she is starting to learn how to communicate her need to go to sleep to us.

For my birthday I got a gift certificate to Casual XL Male (I desperately need more work clothes after more than a year or working from home!!) and Dominica ordered me Final Fantasy XIII from Amazon which is due to arrive on release day which is March 9th.  We got the PS3 version of the game since no one has listed a reason to get the XBOX 360 version yet but the PS3 version fits all on one BluRay rather than three DVDs.

Today Akio Toyoda is sitting in front of Congress expected to explain and defend his and his namesake company’s actions involving the lack of safety and lack of responsiveness to customers and US safety commissions resulting in many American deaths.  As the cited article mentions, facing down a Congressional Oversight Committee likely means the end of Toyoda’s nepotistic career.  It likely means an end to Toyota’s reign as the master car maker as well (technically it was surpassed by VW in December anyway.)  It would take a very foolish person to buy a Toyota vehicle today now that so much is known about how Toyota treats its customers and how little they take safety into account.  Toyota’s are not cheap and they will not be a status symbol again for a very long time.  This is a blemish that hopefully the company will never live down (although the populace has legendary short memory retention so we will see.)

Toyoda is also facing questioning from the US government as to whether or not Toyota was treating American customers differently from their Japanese counterparts.  This is the same question that came to my mind.  Had deaths been occurring in Japan would Toyota have looked the other way and allowed the dangerous vehicles to remain on the road?  Is it only because the deaths are Americans that it does not matter to them?

Toyoda did admit that the company’s focus had become “confused” – since he claims that the focus was supposed to be safety he clearly admitted that safety was no longer the focus.  Not the same as not caring at all, but it is the first step.  Toyoda also belittled the deaths that have occurred by claiming that the “…vehicle can be controlled with firm and steady application to the brakes.”  Thanks, so he is placing the blame on the drivers rather than accepting responsibility.  Nice Toyoda, real classy.

At the end of the hearing, representative Marcy Kaptur said she was “disappointed” with Toyoda’s testimony and did not feel he had shown sufficient remorse or had taken enough note of the amount of complaints over the last decade.  The fact that Congress is pointing out that Toyota has a terrible safety record for a decade is extreme.  Toyota is definitely faced with having put Americans at risk and now has to face the music for getting caught selling us substandard, dangerous crap.

Yahoo! Finance ran a good story highlighting the cultural differences exposed in today’s hearing.  Toyoda, with his name on the company, failed to take responsibility for his and his company’s actions.  In Japan this is, we are told, acceptable.  In America, it is not.  Apparently in Japan no one has to take responsibility for corporate actions.  Corporations, perhaps, are considered to have greater rights than real people have.

What really came out of the hearing can be highlight thusly: Toyota and Toyoda just don’t seem to be too concerned about American lives (or possibly any lives) and they don’t see safety as a concern of their business, Toyota even today continues to claim that their cars are safe even when clearly they are not and Toyoda admits that they have no idea why the cars are killing people making his previous statement that some or all of their cars an obvious lie.  Bottom line is – don’t buy Toyota.  Ever.

It was super cold this morning so I drove to Jamba Juice and picked up the morning oatmeal.  Of course, they were not able to handle the order even though I do this every week, so it ended up taking an hour to get the oatmeal.  I’m thinking that it isn’t worth doing this any more.  The oatmeal might be really, really cheap but the effort necessary to get it is pretty extreme.

I dropped off oatmeal for Dominica and Liesl on the way to work and then went in to the office.  We have some people in from New Jersey today that I have not seen in quite a while.

For lunch today, as it is national tortilla day, John and I went to Mi Cocina and ate a large amount of tortilla chips.

Work wasn’t too bad today and I managed to head for home around five thirty which surprised Dominica as I am never home at that time.  Liesl was very excited to see me.

We did pretty much nothing tonight.  We ordered in sandwiches and watched a few movies via Netflix OnDemand and I played with Liesl all evening until she went to sleep around ten.  I was pretty tired and decided to turn in myself at ten thirty.  I need to catch up on some sleep.  Dominica stayed up for a while after I went to bed watching her Australian television show McLeod’s Daughters to which she is now addicted.

Spy at Harrington High is a really great, technical blog post that goes into many of the technical details and some of the background on the case in the Philadelphia area’s Lower Merion School District’s spying on minors.  The article details some of the important aspects of the case including that if students did not allow the spying or made any attempt to block the spying that they would be expelled from the school – meaning that the school was additionally threatening them with a loss of education rights in addition to their other crimes.  It also talks about how the software used posed additional security risks, how the software caused police to enter an innocent home looking for criminals, how students trying to use necessary educational tools would have their personal computers taken from them by force, etc.  The level of criminal and abusive behaviour being documented against this school district is unbelievable.  Fortunately the FBI is not investigating but as almost everyone discussing the case keeps mentioning – no one is doing the necessary digital forensics here to ensure that the school district is not destroying evidence to protect itself.

I worked from home this morning.  At ten I had my Virtualization webinar with CDW and SpiceWorks.  I was one of the presenters – not the main one but I did the bulk of the question and answer bit at the end.  It was fun and I think that the information presented was pretty useful for those in attendance.  I do wish that we had had more time for the Q&A though as there were many people with good questions who did not get a chance to have them asked and discussed on the call.

This was my second time doing an online webinar with SpiceWorks.  The last one was on backup and was a panel discussion.  Nice to do some different styles of talks.  Good experience and exposure for sure.

It is really cold today, there was a tiny bit of snow in the air now and then today but nothing on the ground.  Way too cold for Texas, though.  Ugh.  We didn’t sign up for this.  It was supposed to be warm!

Dominica made a late breakfast for me that I ate while I was on the webinar and we skipped eating lunch.  After the webinar was over I talked to dad on the phone for an hour or so and then drove over to the office to work for the rest of the day.

I got home this evening at a reasonable time, just a little after six, and we just stayed in and relaxed this evening.  We watched The Suite Life on Deck and I hung out with Liesl.  Dominica cooked dinner at home.

UPS delivered some new books for Liesl this evening.  We got two sets of Sandra Boynton books that she loves.  We also got the latest Wiggles DVD.  Liesl immediately wanted to watch that.  She is getting so much older – now she can pick out the Wiggles and decide that that is what she wants to watch even when it is a video that she has never seen before.

So the new DVD, Hot Poppin’ Popcorn, a circus themed video from the Wiggles is utter garbage.  We had high hopes as the last four videos from the Wiggles have been great.  Let’s face it, we bought the DVD on release day via Amazon PreOrder.  Dominica, using my account, was the very first (and currently only) review on Amazon too.  The video is actually painful to watch.  The Wiggles have gone backwards to their old, cheap sets and the entire video is all shot in one round set with all of the dancing being just the Wiggles walking in a circle.  Really?  How could the Wiggles make this garbage.

The music in Hot Poppin’ Popcorn is pathetic too.  The Wiggles used to be known for catchy tunes but even Liesl couldn’t stand this and wasn’t able to keep watching it at all.  The circus theme was not a smart one – who goes to or likes the circus today?  The circus is creepy as it is.  The special guest that they got for this video, Jamie Redfern, is super creepy looking too.  None of this is good for children.  This might be a new low for the Wiggles although much of their really old stuff was really bad too.  We couldn’t help but wonder if there is some lack of funds for the Wiggles and they are reduced to doing stuff like this rather than the quality stuff that they used to produce.

It was a very quiet evening.  Liesl stayed up very late and could not fall asleep.  Dominica and I were ready to pass out by the time that Liesl finally went to bed.

Has anyone else noticed that there is not a Kindle application available for the newer BlackBerries?