Tom Squared

I can’t exactly explain why it is, but MLK day is probably one of the most moving holidays for me. I expect it’s because ht the focus made during Black History Month, watching Roots on public TV growing up, and growing up in a predominantly African American environment. I stumbled upon this video on YouTube. The message is great, but I really love the creativity, and simplicity, involved in putting this video together. Sometimes I wonder if I could just get a video camera and some free time to become a creative videographer/photographer. Peace, +Tom

Friday at Rachel’s preschool, Kindercare , is Show and Share day. Last Friday Rachel wanted to bring a paint brush pen for show and share that she got in a goodie bag from a birthday party of a friend of hers. This brush pen is probably the best gift she’s gotten lately, she’s addicted to it. Anyway, she said she was going to bring it in and tell people she would paint a dinosaur with it. Now, this sounded a little weird, but I figured it was her explaining everything she’d do. They’re talking about dinosaurs in school, so it makes sense that she’d make the connection and draw a dinosaur. Friday, when I picked her up from school, she told me that she wasn’t allowed to show her pen for show and share. I was stunned. It turns out that because they are talking about dinosaurs, they’re only allowed to bring dinosaur things to show and share. Now, Erin and I are a bit ticked that we weren’t informed of this. Thankfully Rachel doesn’t seem that upset, but I was sure irked. Apparen...

I definitely call myself a Star Trek fan. I read this comic and immediately knew that the two of them were talking about in the first frame. When I was recovering from surgery last year I watched all of the Star Wars movies in order. It was a lot of fun. But, honestly, I still prefer the incredible depth I got from all of the Star Trek shows, from The Original Series (TOS) through Enterprise. It took a while, but I even came to love Deep Space 9, though I still prefer the idea of exploring the universe and finding new ways of seeing the world. I hadn’t really thought about it much, but there definitely are different types of people. In a lot of cases those who love Star Wars don’t seem to really understand or completely love Star Trek. They always see it as “Star Wars Lite.” The Star Trek Fans are pretty similar as well, we appreciate Star Wars, and think it’s a great story, but if we would gladly re-watch Star Trek episodes again and again. So, what are you? Star Wars or Star ...

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 ...