Twins vs Oakland

The rematch is on this weekend. The very team that swept the Twins plays just up the road and we're going Friday and possibly Monday. I really want to see Santana but we'll see what happens. Slowely pitches Friday, I believe he's making his debut as a starter. It should be a fun weekend. We're going to tailgate Friday in the parking lot next to the stadium. Hear that!! Tailgating before baseball... something that won't be done in MN even after they build the new stadium. I wish MN would've taken after Milwaukee and built the stadium with plenty of parking so fans could tailgate. We'll have to live with visiting the visitors stadiums for tailgating purposes.

Eagan Town Center

The location of work here in Sunnyvale is not great for eating lunch out. We have two selections within a mile, Subway and Togos, both sub shops. Any drive over a mile away requires at least 10 stop light interceptions, requiring an hour or more for lunch. Kind of makes us Eaganites miss Town Center in Eagan, or just having so many food joints within a short drive.

Freezen' San Fran

Thinking it's a great day out in Sunnyvale, we'd head up to San Fran and hit the zoo with Hayley. The zoo their has been highly recommended by friends who've been there. It's been great weather around here and it's almost June so the weather in San Fran would be decent too. Jen dresses Hayley in a warm jump suit outfit, I'm thinking "that's way to hot, doesn't she have shorts or something in her bag?" But I just move on. Jen as also grabbed my coat and she's dressed very winterish. I'm in shorts and a tee-shirt expecting a sunny summer day. In about a 20 mile stretch it went from 75 and sunny to 50 and cloudy misty crap. We got to the zoo and I was very thankful we had winter clothes and I was very thankful Jen grabbed my coat. Parking there was brutal as usual for San Fran. We parked about a mile away and walked in a gail force wind to get to the entrance. Inside the zoo we were sheltered by trees and what not so it wasn't so windy, but it was fricken freezen. After about 3 hours of it I'd had enough and we headed home. But we were what seemed a mile into the zoo, about where we parked, but there was no exits on that end of the zoo so we had to walk all the way across the place and then walk a mile back to the car. Not that I mind the walking but the friggen gail force winds sucked. As we started the trek back to Sunnyvale the clouds started to clear and we watched the temperature rise about 1 degree per mile. When we got back to Sunnyvale it was 70 degrees and sunny. From now on we'll be spending our days South of San Fran. If I wanted to be cold I'd live in MN.

This is like the 10th time we've went to San Fran and it's been the same thing. Why are people so fascinated with this place. I think it's the most overrated city ever. The weather sucks there.

Timberwolves Lottery Luck.... Conspiracy ???

Although my interest in the Timberwolves these days is just about zero, I had a glimmer of a hope that they'd get a top 3 pick this year. We've been in the stupid draft lottery for years and never got anything higher then 3. This year it's the same. Read We're not moving up. I think it's funny how the public never sees the lottery selection rather just the announcement of the results. I'm pulling the conspiracy theory out on this one. I think there's a pretty good chance this thing is rigged and Mr Stern hand selects the draft order based on market size. Even if he felt it was Minnesota's turn to get a good pick he wouldn't do it because of the Joe Smith deal a few years back. It's pretty clear he doesn't like Taylor and he'd rather have Taylor sell the team. I will never watch the NBA again if the Timberwolves move up the next two years when we have to forfeit our draft picks.

Simply Google

Google is great. When I was shopping for an MP3 player I mentioned that Ben loves the Zune... the response I got was "If Google had an MP3 player you'd love it, even if it sucked." I use many Google features and I could probably be considered a Google fanboy. I dream of working for Google as well. Most software engineers dream of workign for Google. But I digress.

Most people don't have a clue just how many features and tools that Google actually has. The kind of hide stuff away on the site since most of it is Beta. I was listening to the Podcast Buz Out Loud and they mentioned this website. It rolls up all Google tools and features into one site. It's some third party dude that put this together so I'm not sure how long it'll be there but check it out.

Simply Google

Another Traffic Rant

I went to pick Jens brother Nick and his girlfriend up from the airport last Saturday at midnight. Thinking that there would be no problems with traffic I gave myself about 35 minutes to get there. Low and behold about 15 minutes into the drive the traffic was dead stopped. It's friggen midnight for crying out loud. As I'm driving in this stopped traffic, that was not caused by an accident just dumb driving, I'm witnessing the normal driving behavior where people don't let people merge and when drivers need to exit they stay in the left most lane until the last minute and then stop in their lane until someone in the lane next to them stops to let them in, and when you're crossing 4 lanes to exit the snowball effect is a traffic jam 5 miles long. It's just wonderful driving in this crap. Other drivers need a mile worth of open space to merge so even if they start merging 5 miles before their exit it never happens so they stop next to their exit, again waiting for drivers in the adjacent lanes to stop for them. And I won't even bring up the drivers that need to switch lanes over and over to try and move up 3 car lengths before their exit.

My solution to the problem is to hurry the production of flying cars. Although flying cars cause a bigger problem since people will now be flying stupid instead of just driving stupid each car would need to be outfitted with a autopilot and the car would then fly itself based on a flight planned entered before taking off. This got me thinking as to why with all the technology we have today why don't we force stupid drivers to use autopilots in their cars. When they need to exit the car will force them to start merging over many miles before the actual exit so they don't slow traffic. Merging would not force drivers to stop to let other dumb drivers in.

Happy Mother's Day from Dad and Hayley

Headache Fixed??

The last time I saw the chiropractor about a month ago he said based on my activity of running 3-5 days a week was probably causing my headaches. He said when most people run they tend to look down at where they're running which causes tension in the neck. He told me to concentrate on running with my neck straight and to do more cross training activities besides running. He also asked what else I do when I work out. I told him I pretty much just run. He said running mainly works out the muscles on the back side of the body and this could also be causing strain on the back and neck. So he also recommended working my abdominal muscles. After this discussion he worked out the knots in my back for about 40 minutes and then adjusted my neck. He said just adjusting the spine without working on the muscles would cuz the spine to go out of alignment. This was by far the best adjustment I've ever had.

Since this appointment I've started going to 15 minute abs we have here at work Monday/Wednesday/Friday mornings that ends with 15 minutes worth of stretching. I used to think that I know what exercises it takes to work out but I'm finding out that I know very little. I had no clue the number of exercises one can do to work out abs and back. We have a different instructor for every class so that keeps it interesting too. The stretching is great. I've also started cross training so I'm running maybe 2 times a week mixing in biking, roller blading, and the elliptic machine.

Since I've changed my routine my head has been feeling a lot better. I don't know if it's one thing I've changed or the combination of everything I'm doing but I'm much happier without the headaches.

Toys

So we bought Hayley a portable doodle toy the other day. She had no interest in it at the store but I bought it for her anyway since she's been getting into coloring. To date it has been the only toy that she's used for more then a few minutes. She actually sat with it for a couple hours the first day and she's used it quite a bit since.

When Mason got together with Hayley they fought over the toy so we decided to buy another one. When we got to toy section at Target we showed Hayley the full size version shown in the picture of this post. I've never seen a more excited face on her. She loudly inhaled and wanted the toy right now. Seeing her get so excited was awesome. Jen took the toy from Haley to carry to the checkout counter and Hayley had a major fit so we didn't give it to her that night. The next day I showed her the toy again and she got more excited then the day before. I broke it out for her and she loved it. I totally understand why kids can get spoiled so easy. Seeing their face light up like that is a major rush for the parents as much as it is for the kids. Well at least in our case...errr... my case, Jen is probably tough enough to resist toy binging

Alcatraz

 

Last weekend we finally made it to Alcatraz. I was a little bit surprised as to how small the cell house is. I've always pictured it being much larger. It certainly is not short on cells though with three levels of cells. It's amazing how small the cells are. There is barely enough room to fit the bed in the cells. After seeing the layout of the place it would be interesting to watch the old Alcatraz movies to see how accurate they were.

iPod Jottings

So I've owned the 30 gig iPod for about 4 months. I'm very happy with it. Like I said before, I use it mainly to listen to podcasts during the day and to work out. One feature that I never evaluated when I was deciding which mp3 player to purchase was the ability to play games on it. One day I was looking at the iTunes store and I just thought I'd peak at the available games. The original Ms Pac-Man was on there, I was hesitant at first but I decided to download it and give it a shot. It is exactly like the video game. To play it you need to just touch the scroll wheel, no actual pushing buttons. Music still plays in the back ground so you can still push buttons to navigate between songs. After playing Pac-Man for a while I figured I'd try Holdem as well. These games entertained me on during my flights to and from MN. The latest game I downloaded is Zuma. Zuma is a super addictive game, so much so my last flight to CA was like a time warp time went by so fast. So if you own a video iPod I highly recommend trying out some of the games that are available for it.

The Aftermath

So after figuring out everything we lost yesterday the most expensive items were probably the keys to our car in MN. We also lost our truck keys as well but those only cost about $50. The car keys are well over $100. Pretty crappy.

They dudes got like 3 charges in on our bank card that we'll have to protest but that wasn't so bad I guess. They started charging stuff around 9ish last night so they must have stolen the stuff right after we carried our groceries in. Although in my head I want to catch the guy and pummel his arse, the reality is, he's probably 6'5" 300lbs dude that could crush me like a grape. So I'll leave it alone.

Unlocked Car = Stolen Clubs = Early Season Exit

I got in my car this morning and noticed the glove box was open but didn't think anything of it until Jen emailed me a few hours later asking me to bring her purse and jacket in when I got home. Then it dawned on me that it was opened. So I went out to take a look and sure enough Jen's purse and coat were gone. I popped the trunk and found my clubs gone too. I realize it's my fault for leaving the car unlocked but it still sucks. We went grocery shopping yesterday and in the bustle of getting all the groceries in I must of missed locking the door.

So after kicking off the golf season last weekend it may have just come to an abrupt end. Which kind of sucks. I don't think I want to deal with buying another set down here cuz I don't golf enough and I don't want a crappy cheap set.

Cross Training

This weekends activities has me motivated to change my workout routine. For the last 8 months or so I've been running on a treadmill 3-5 times a week for an hour at a time. Running is starting to get boring a bit so I've been pondering how I can mix it up and my knees get sore after 3 days of running. It was so nice out this weekend that I decided that I'd run outside. After a 9 mile run I was feeling pretty good. Saturday we did some mountain biking. After going head over handlebars and putting a big gash in my helmet (thankfully I was wearing a helmet), we decided to go back to the usual trail. I had no trouble climbing all hills and I wasn't really tired from running the day before. On Sunday I was trying to work my way up for a workout but I didn't really want to run again so I decided to break out the Rollerblades. Today my legs are still feeling the burn from rollerblading. Which got me thinking that I should start a hard core Cross Training routine. So my new workout will consist of rotating Running, Biking, Rollerblading and maybe some swimming if the pool warms up. I think mixing up these activities will make it easier to workout everyday without getting sore knees. We'll see how it goes.