Tom Squared

This is the mantra that goes through my head for 45 minutes straight each Tuesday evening (we TiVo it so I watch it a day late and have no commercials). If you’re not watching it, watch the old episodes and watch it religiously. It is easily my favorite show right now (and I do love Doctor Who (and long term it will always be my favorite), Heroes and Psych a LOT) I repeat it to Erin multiple times, though tonight I’m giving it a break and repeating it to the rest of the world. If you don’t know what it is, Chuck is a TV show on NBC essentially about a Geek Squad guy (the computer tech support from Best Buy ) who gets all of the CIA’s database in his head. Hilarious show with some decent plot and great character development (for the main characters anyway). Set your TiVo or DVR now! I Love Chuck I Love Chuck I Love Chuck I Love Chuck I Love Chuck I Love Chuck I Love Chuck I Love Chuck I Love Chuck I Love Chuck Peace, +Tom

I’ve been starting to use Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) and XAML lately for developing. I still love the Web, but there’s something nice about what I expect is going to eventually supersede HTML in Web Browsers. And no, I don’t believe the browser will go away within the next twenty years, it will merely evolve until we no long user desktops for anything. So, in searching out a problem I came across this great poem. I am definitely not an engineer when it comes to… well… anything. A Poem on XAML We programmers, as you know, have malformed brains. Most of the time we tend to think like engineers, but if you give a regular engineer a new tool, the engineer will say "Thank you for this interesting tool. I will keep it in mind if a problem arises that seems to require it." A programmer, on the other hand, given a tool like XAML, starts to think: "This is very cool. I wonder what I can do with this in t...

Yesterday I finally cut the cord after almost five years. We dropped two of our XM Radios, and are keeping one mainly because of the great deal from XM when we planned to cancel it as well. It’s also because Erin can’t easily get an external music player to play in her Yukon. So, what possessed a die-hard cutting edge guy to drop XM? Honestly, part of it is that XM is nowhere near cutting edge anymore. I really loved having a comedy station, 80’s, Mix, whatever available on the same station anywhere I went. I also liked the new Sirius offering so I could listen to a football game, but, alas, the salesman who said it would be a 50$ difference after our credit was off…  by about $500. And no, his number wasn’t high, so we dropped that when I found out. The real turning point though was that I tried out Pandora Radio again. If you don’t know, Pandora is a free online music service where you pick an artist (say Bon Jovi , because that should be everyone’s first choice) and it pla...

My friend Rob tagged me for a meme. It’s been forever since I’ve done one, mainly since I really don’t like them much. Generally I think that people would find out about me based on what I write in general or in hanging out together. In any case, here’s the meme: Link to the person who tagged you. Post the rules on your blog. Write 6 random things about yourself. Tag 6-ish people at the end of your post. Let each person know he/she has been tagged. Let the tagger know when your entry is up. 1) My favorite season is sweater and turtleneck season (sometime around mid September or October) 2) I’m realizing that I’m an incredible hypocrite, hoping people will live one way without being willing to step out in faith and make drastic changes to my life (and my families) to help people in need 3) I like carrots. Not a little bit, but a lot. Almost every night for the past few years I’ve eaten one or two carrots a night (un peeled) with salad dressing to dip ...

I was having an e-mail conversation with a good friend of mine the other day. Now, e-mail conversations are never good because you only get one side and dialogue really doesn’t exist. We were talking about excess and whether it’s right to spend money on things which a lot of other people would never get. I firmly believe that I should support small businesses, even if it costs more, than the larger chains whenever possible. At the same time, I’m frequenting these places to sustain a lifestyle that is far above what 99% of the world live by. Do I keep buying raw food for my dog because it’s a little bit healthier so I can support the business owner that I like? Do I begin buying more espresso and ices cream because I want to see the owners of the store down the street succeed? I would think things like my fishing trips are more an extravagance than a necessity, and you would be better served by supporting that guide through paying for people who have little resources to go and ...

In college I found a real “relationship” with Jesus. I remember feeling alone and a bit down and was out walking on the beach during a campus ministry retreat. I felt someone’s hand in mine, and we walked together for a while. I could scream about how hard life is, how hard it is to believe in Him, and still feel comforted with the arms around me. From that point on I’ve always recognized that Jesus is my best friend, and always there even if I ignore him for a while. I’m always the most important thing to his heart, just as each of us are. I also recognized, and continue to figure out, what friendship means. If we are best friends, then I really need to make him proud of me, just as I’m proud of him. I need to change my life in a way that people know who my friends are, and why. So, I loved coming across this quote from one of my previous students, but more importantly, my friend, Kate : It suddenly struck me today how personal of a friend Jesus is. Because, okay, I knew he ...

In church today Anne, our priest, made an interesting point about our church during her sermon (her big long talk in between music). When she was determining whether to join us as assistant rector, she called the bishop. The bishop is essentially the representative for our region, kind of like the House representative for your state. He responded that St. Matthew’s gives more to missions, per capita, than any other church he knows of. That in itself is wonderful. We had at least 100 people go on mission trips this year, not to mention the people who worked to organize and make it happen. But it got me thinking about what made this happen. Our missions program happened because one person was passionate about the program and the entire church supported him in that passion. Leaders put money into it and individuals volunteered weeks of their year, again and again. My own role at St. Matthew’s is a great example here. I love teaching and leading. Changing and molding lives i...

It’s the only way to describe the way I’m feeling lately. Too many things going on all at the same time. Peace, +Tom

How many of you know what I mean when I refer to Ajax? Okay, what’s it stand for? Right, Asynchronous JavaScript. So, what’s that mean? Anybody? Right, essentially the Web browser submits information back to the server and renders a response without refreshing the entire page. An obvious example here is clicking a button to submit a rating, like with Amazon [go to http://www.amazon.com/Doctor-Who-Complete-David-Tennant/dp/B000JBWWP6/ref=sr_1_12?ie=UTF8&s=dvd&qid=1223001940&sr=1-12 ]. I started using ASP.NET Ajax in the olden days when it was still called Atlas in a community technical preview. Kind of crazy to think that was over two years ago, and quite a bit has changed, though not as much as you might think. At its core Microsoft has created an Ajax base that is easy to quickly put into practice and also provides the backend JavaScript to allow flexibility and a framework for more powerful Ajax based applications. So, today, I’m going to talk about the...

Erin and I finally took the plunge. We realized over $9 three or four days a week for coffee was ridiculous. So we bought the cheapest, well-rated, espresso machine we could find. for what it’s worth, the Starbucks barista was incredibly helpful in the purchase and offered to walk us through exactly what he does and help us through the fine art of frothing milk. So, the only question left is, what flavors do we try? Does anyone have a great syrup mix that they love? Peace, +Tom

Colin’s favorite “toy” in our house is, without a doubt, the toothbrush. It doesn’t matter whose it is, though he tends to prefer Erin’s (even when she’s bought replacements). If he had his way he would always walk around with two toothbrushes in his hands and one in his mouth. Lately we’ve been limiting him to one, though today he had two in one hand and a tube of toothpaste in the other. Needless to say, this kid will have good hygiene. Probably better than Rachel, who we have finally gotten into the habit of brushing at night. Colin would brush morning noon and night. Sometimes I wonder if he is already defining his future career as a dentist. That got me thinking a bit about expectations. There are so many different times that others define our own lives… and we let them. We let our parents shape us into working professionals when all we want to do is live free and help others. We let girlfriends or boyfriends define how we should act from day to day. We let bosses define th...

I spent an evening at church listening to some of the amazing stories of people who have gone on mission trips in the past year. They showed pictures, videos and their own stories about the trip. As one person told their story she mentioned that she had “given herself to Christ” but never really “followed” Christ. The first, and only thing that came to mind, and stuck with me the rest of the night, is that I will never fully give myself to Christ, because I just can’t physically do it. I certainly try to follow Christ. I’d like to think that I really follow him, then I realize that it’s impossible. No matter how much I do, God will ask me to do more. No matter how much I give up, there are others who have given up more. I went to Jamaica on a mission trip in College. This was one of the most memorable experiences I’ve had from college. On that trip I worked at a retirement center, which is being very forgiving, since it was a strip of very small rooms with do...

One of the things I think all projects need, even more importantly that detailed requirements (since no one seems to read those) are screen designs. Every time I have to do this for a new project I open up Visual Studio and drag controls onto the page and use HTML to lay them out. It’s not bad, but it sure can take a while. Especially when you want to just move something around during a meeting. I tried Expression Web, but it really isn’t any better. I know you can do it in Photoshop and Fireworks, but, for one thing, I don’t have the money. For another, it’s pretty complex. Then I was reading Tim Heuer’s blog post on Software Mockups using Balsamiq . Balsamiq Mockup is a tool where you simply drag elements onto a page and put them where you want. It also uses a pretty obvious hand drawn style which makes clear that both, this is all for demo purposes, and that anything can be changed. One of the amazing things is that Peldi, the founder of Balsamiq , is willing to give away li...

One of the best things about being a parent is to see someone else notice what you’re doing, and get passionate about it. When I started the dream journal, it was just for me to see what I’ve been thinking about. It’s helped me remember a lot of details in dreams, and move past them, never having them again. It’s been great. Alas, it’s another thing I stopped doing recently since waking up in the middle of the night and writing for 15 to 30 minutes made me too tired in the morning. But, I also saw how much my dreams drove my daily thinking, like I’d dream and forget about some song, wake up and have all kinds of memories related to that song. Rachel soon noticed what I was doing with the pad of paper in the morning, and asked about it. From then on she would wake up each morning and proudly tell me what her dreams were that night, and then tell me to go write them down. These aren’t incredibly deep or long ones. One on August 15th was Tico (the squir...

I was talking to a teen tonight at Starbucks who was asking to hear my life story. We’d started that conversation over a week ago, and I never finished. The main reason I finally figured out tonight, is that there was too much detail without a point. Every other time I tell a story about my life, it’s been in conjunction with either a talk or some point I want to make. Here I was just going through my life and I actually think the teen was more interested in the story than even I was. Truthfully, stories don’t stick unless they impact the person hearing them. There’s no point in telling a story without a point. Really, it needs a point that resonates with the listener. So, the next time you’re telling someone, even your spouse, about your day, think about what the point is. If it’s simple information then it’s probably going to go in one ear and out the other. It it’s going to make the listener feel something new, both the story and the feelings are tied together and may never b...

I don’t think I’ve ever actually given an update on what’s going on in my life here in the blog. That’s mainly because whatever I write about is generally what’s going through my head and either directly or indirectly related to what’s going on in my life. If you read carefully you’ll get a pretty decent picture of who I am, without some of the depressing parts (those are for personal conversations, thank you very much). But then a week goes by, or a month, or multiple months, without any consistent posting. I figure it’s fair to give a quick update. First, nothing earth shattering has happened. Work is going very, very well, though the company shall still remain nameless for fear of random stupidity misunderstanding from legal. It’s busy, pretty interesting, and I genuinely enjoy the people I’m working with. I also get to work from home a bit more, which is great. I also stopped waking up at 5 a.m. Since Colin kept waking up in the middle of...

When I was in high school I discovered the band Asia (about a million years after they started making music). One of the songs I put on every morning for at least a few months, at full blast was Days Like These (I Fell Like I Can Change the World) from Then & Now (act fast, you can get the album for 24 cents on Amazon). Then I got in contact with my friend Laura from high school. I don’t know if I’d say we were the type of best friends who stay in touch forever, since it’s been about 15 years since we’ve talked, and we were only friends for about a year. But when I think of high school Laura often comes to mind. There’s a point, really. In high school I’d pick Laura up and she’d drive up to school. It was her way of getting driving experience with her permit. When Annie Lennox came out with Walking on Broken Glass in her Diva album, we’d blast that music, both of us singing at the top of our lungs. We must have looked (and sounded) like idiots, but at those moments we we...

While I was at Starbucks tonight with some teens, we ended up talking a bit about God. Something a bit odd since we usually just talk about life, but eventually discussions on life do turn to God.  We went all around in the discussion, from free will to incest and landed on sin. You know… is it a sin to have incest, is it a sin to be homosexual. What this led to was my own thought about sin. I think Jesus made sin incredibly easy to understand, and immensely harder to follow. Jesus came and said that there are only two commandments you should follow (the old rules can kind of be thrown away). You should Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind and soul. The second commandment is that you should love your neighbor as yourself. Seems easy, right? It’s one of the great things from Christianity, while there is a lot of gray area, there’s also a lot of clarity. All I have to do is love god with everything I have. To do that I recognize the love I have for myself and give ...

While I was perusing Flickr for photos on a small town for a previous post I came across this photo by Valerie Walsh ( valgalart on Flickr). Poking around her photostream there is some pretty neat stuff there. Like these: I definitely recommend checking them out and her Web site . Peace, +Tom

I’ve continued the dream journal each night. Some days, like last night, nothing happens. But more often I have some incredibly detailed, long, and sometimes interesting dreams.  I had this one just a few days ago, making me think I should think about moving so a smaller town, or at least one with a museum inhabited by monsters. I was on the Metro with Erin, though it was more like a commuter train or Amtrak train going WAY out beyond DC. We were going to some far out place for a trip or weekend called 777. Some stuff happened in our car, but I don’t remember what. At a stop we then went up to the front car (Erin and I) and were talking to some people, including the conductor. The conductor realized something was missing and sent me back at the next stop, to a car at the back of the train to get it, a Bluetooth headset or something. As I ran to the last car I overshot the train. When I turned around to run back to the last car the train had begun pulling out of the statio...

When two people are in a conversation, in reality, one person is talking, expressing their feelings on “whatever” and the other is listening. Often the shy, quiet people are good at being the listener, sharing a little bit about themselves, but mostly waiting patiently while the talker discusses their life. What’s interesting is that most often the person talking the most isn’t actually driving the conversation. More often the listener will add in a single question or comment that gets the talker to expand on one area. Most often it’s the listener that drives the conversation down a specific path or line of thought. In most cases the person talking don’t even realize it. We often think of the “talker” as the person dominating the conversation. It’s interesting that the person who dominates actually has the least control over what they are doing. How often have you realized that the times you feel most in control, are also the times someone...

God works in some pretty funny ways sometimes. I went to bed last night at 7:45 to get a nap before going to a movie. As I began waking up and thought about leaving for the movie, I got a phone call and talked to a distraught friend for an hour and a half. The nap was incredibly helpful, but not at all in the way I’d expected. I love it when a plan comes together… Even if it’s not my plan. Peace, +Tom

I’ve had a whole lot of different dreams lately.  This journal is working out somewhat well, though I find it pretty hard to actually get up in the middle of the night and write the dreams down.  Then one morning recently I was writing a dream and it took about 15 minutes to get down.  Needless to say, Erin was thrilled . When I told Rachel what I was doing the piped up with her own dream from the night before. I dreamt about where I was at school with my pajamas on and I took me panties off because they were wet and I showed my butt to the floor. She said that unabashedly and with a big smile. Maybe this is where high school nightmares of showing up at a test in your underwear are born. Peace, +Tom

I mentioned in an earlier post that I was in the middle of watching Newhart when Joanna said a useful line.  If you don’t know, Newhart is a TV show from 1982 – 1990.  It’s a show about Bob Newhart (one the the best comedians ever, check out his biography , you’ll laugh your tukus off… if you’re cheap it’s a penny used on Amazon), and is making clear to Erin where I got some of my idiosyncrasies. In any case I’m sure you’re asking yourself, how was Tom watching Newhart on TV when it’s so old? That seems like the perfect question to talk about Hulu . Hulu has been around for over a year, but it’s been a closed beta.  Now it’s finally open, and anyone can watch TV and movie episodes.  The quality is excellent (so good I can run them on my TV off of my laptop) and the shows start right away.  What’s great is that they really have a LOT of TV shows and movies. There’s old stuff like Benson and new stuff like The Office .  They even hav...

Our expectations of others is clearly defined by our own capabilities. What I mean by this is that what we expect other people to be capable of is based on what we think we’re capable of ourselves.  For example, I believe I know a ton about computers, both hardware and software.  A little about Macs, but a lot about Windows.  Whenever I talk to someone else about computers, I initially expect they know as much, or less, than I do about computers.  So when we’re talking I “dumb down” the language until someone tells me “yeah, got it, I know that.” I also overhear people who need need a few months to come up to speed on a new project.  It just takes a while to understand the client, what the application should be doing, and how everything works.  When that same person meets with someone new to the project, they expect that the new person knows less than they do about the project, and that it will take a long time to get the same u...

We’ve been going to Let’s Dish to prepare our dinners for about a year now, and we really love it.  In case you’ve never been, and never heard Erin and I gush about it, Let’s Dish is a place where they get all of the ingredients together and we come in and prepare our meals.  We split all of the meals, so that our 8 meal session lasts for 16 meals, just a little under a month. One of the funny things I always find myself doing is comparing meat.  The staff do a great job separating out meat (either chicken breasts, flank steak, pork loin), and yet I still compare all of the options.  Heck, I find it incredibly difficult, if not impossible, to tell a difference, but I still compare each time. A few weeks ago our television died.  The bulb burnt out and the TV (even without the bulb) had a weird ticking noise.  So we decided that instead of spend hundreds of dollars getting it fixed, it was time to get something new. There I am at Costco about to buy a...

It’s day 3 of my reincarnation, and I have to say that strange things are afoot in dreamland.  I vaguely remember having some sort of existence years ago, when my dreamer was in college, but can’t recall a single thing he wrote.  I sure hope it was more interesting than this stuff that is now filling my pages, shaping my view of the world. Things are either incredibly boring, or new career ideas are afoot. Check this one out: 7/15/2008 I ate bourbon chicken from Let’s Dish and popcorn during Live Free or Die Hard. Read “The Terror” by Dan Simmons before sleeping Up at 6:26 I know I dreamt something about a big-screen TV and another about work or a coffee maker, but I can’t remember them. Puhleese, how boring can you get?  If this is what I have in my near future, just throw me into the fire now.  Using me as paper for the bird cage would be preferable to this boredom. Then I get nights with tons of dreams (four dreams two nights ag...