One of the greatest, Oscar-winning actors of our times has passed away. Godspeed, Mr. Heston!
Charlton Heston starred in many of my favorite movies, chief among them: "Ben Hur", "The Ten Commandments" and "Planet of the Apes". He was in over 125 movie and TV productions, so he was very active.
My wife had the honor of meeting him at a CBA convention. You'll have to ask her about it!
I also appreciate the amount of work he did for the NRA and other conservative organizations. He will be missed!
I had to get my first tank of gas in my bike today. The main ran out at about 135 miles, and I had at least a 5 mile reserve (before I found a gas station). So, at 140 miles, I put in 2.865 gallons of gas, giving me 48.8 MPG.
I'm sure I'm not the most efficient at shifting yet, so I think I can get that to 55 with more experience. Still, much better than the 13 MPG my truck is getting!
My flight home last night from DC was on one of Frontier's brand new Airbus 320s. While they didn't have any onboard TV this week, that was not the problem I'm talking about! We had to make an emergency landing in St. Louis because of cabin pressurization problems.
We were wondering if the oxygen masks were going to deploy, or if our eardrums were going to burst! Apparently, the cabin pressure kept climbing after the pressurization controller failed. The captain said it got to 9000 feet of pressure, and the the masks wouldn't have deployed until it reached 14,000 feet. I don't know what the standard pressure is for a normal flight.
The pilot was very professional and got us information quickly and had the plane on the ground in 15 minutes. I can only imagine the coordination that had to happen to get us down that fast! After a 30 minute repair and an hour of paperwork, we safely finished the flight back to Denver.
I still don't really like takeoffs in this new plane. It feels like the plane is a little soft or shifty in the tail.
May the road rise with you.
Happy St. Patrick's Day! I found several wonderful Irish blessings here today: http://islandireland.com/Pages/folk/sets/bless.html.
We watched Patriot Games on Saturday (sans kids), and watched Riverdance this morning. We tried in vain to find a copy of The Quiet Man, but nobody carries it anymore! What's the deal with that? It's one of the most classic Irish movies to watch on St. Patrick's Day, IMO! We ordered from Amazon but won't get it until Friday.
A funny side note: The kids won't watch Darby O'Gill and the Little People, because the Banshee scares them. I think it's fun to see Sean Connery early in his career!
We're planning to have Corned Beef and Cabbage and Irish soda bread (sans caraway) for dinner tonight. Caileigh has been taking Irish dance from McTeggart Irish Dance studio (http://www.mcteggart.com/) for a few months now, but wasn't quite ready to march in the St. Patrick's parade in Denver on Saturday with her troupe.
May your day be touched by a bit of Irish luck, brightened by a song in your heart, and warmed by the smiles of the people you love.
A friend sent me the following, and I totally agree. The recent decision by Orwellian, er, California judges frightens the living daylights out of me. An extremely dangerous precedence to be setting:
A California Court of Appeal recently decided that homeschooling is illegal in California unless the parent is a certified teacher. This was a decision made in secrecy under the guise of juvenile protection. It was a result of one specific family accused of abusing the system - whether they were are not I don't know - however the three presiding judges decided that all home schooling in the state going forward would be illegal.
When you consider this along with the November 2005 ruling Fields v. Palmdale School District, you have a government that says they can, and will, take your children for six hours a day and teach them whatever they want, and we as parents have no legal right to participate in or influence their education.
I don't need to go into how this effects us in other states. We need to fight this no matter what state you're in. Whether you deal directly with home schooling in your family or not, this is an egregious attack on our liberties. Please visit the links in this email to educate yourself on the issue. If you have a fast internet connection, listen to Dr. Dobson and his guests on today's show where they explain the issue in detail.
Finally, please sign this petition at the Home School Legal Defense Association's web site. If accepted, it will limit the scope of this decision to just the one family initially involved in the case rather than punishing the 200,000 home schooling families in California. They also want signatures from those outside California to show the outrage extends beyond their state.
Please forward this email to others, and lets put a stop to this nonsense.
I'm pleased to announce that DocBook v5.0 is now an official Committee Draft! The schema can be downloaded here: http://docbook.org/xml/5.0/.
This is the result of several years work. Special thanks to all of the Committee members involved:
* Steve Cogorno, Sun Microsystems
* Gary Cornelius, Individual
* Adam Di Carlo, Debian
* Paul Grosso, Arbortext
* Dick Hamilton, Individual
* Nancy Harrison, IBM
* Scott Hudson, Individual
* Mark Johnson, Debian
* Gershon Joseph, Tech-Tav Documentation Ltd.
* Jirka Kosek, Individual
* Larry Rowland, Hewlett-Packard
* Michael Smith, Individual
* Robert Stayton, Individual (Secretary)
* Norman Walsh, Sun Microsystems (Chair, Editor)
Next step: OASIS standard!
I went to my first party caucus on Tuesday. Apparently many others also attended for the first time!
The chair of the caucus was stunned, saying that on average, attendance is about 2 people per precinct. This year, that number was about 40 per precinct! At this caucus, we had about 1000 people in attendance, though I don't know for sure how many precincts were represented. They even ran out of ballots (by about 400!) and had to race to get more printed!
Speaking with a colleague last night who attended the other party's caucus, they had the same situation: many first-timers, and high attendance!
I think this is a very good sign. It means that people are taking this next election seriously and getting involved. No matter which party you align with, it's important to exercise the freedoms our forefathers fought for and our Armed Services continue to fight for.
As a result, I signed up to be a delegate to the county, district and state assemblies. Why not? It's time to get involved!
Democracy at work. I love it!
So, Sunday afternoon, my wife and I were enjoying a movie in our room before going to a Superbowl party at a friends house. The kids were having quiet reading time in their rooms. All of a sudden, we heard a very loud BANG somewhere downstairs.
We raced downstairs to figure out what had happened and couldn't find anything! Then when it was time to hop in the van and head out to the Superbowl party, the garage door wouldn't open! Much inspection ensued. I pulled the red emergency release on the door from the garage opener, but the door seemed about 100 times heavier than normal! I couldn't lift it to save my life. Then I noticed it, the main spring on the door was now in two pieces. The spring had snapped, and somehow, half of the spring was holding the door down under tension!
Thankfully, since I had recently bought my new motorcycle but hadn't cleared the 3rd car garage to make room for it, I had parked my truck in the driveway. We had a way to get around town, though cramped, for 5 people. We had bought an opener for the 3rd car, and Sears was supposed to send a guy on Tuesday to install it.
Realizing that I needed someone who could do repairs to both garage doors and also install the new opener, I remembered a recent post on Blue Sky Workshop about Arko Garage Doors. I gave them a call, and they had all the parts available and could come out Monday afternoon! They did a great job on the install and had the best prices in town based on my earlier searches. I would HIGHLY recommend Arko.
Now we can use both garage doors again, and no longer trapped inside!
The roads still aren't in that great of condition to be fully out and about, so my first ride was just around the neighborhood to get used to my new bike. Of course, as soon as I got home and attempted the first ride, I found out the battery was drained, despite taking it for a test ride earlier at the dealer.
After a night of battery charging, the bike was finally ready for my first ride!
You may remember that I took the Motorcycle Safety Foundation basic rider course back in September. Slowly I've been gathering equipment for the last few months, but have been lacking my set of wheels!
I've done a ton of research and had my heart set on a liquid-cooled, shaft drive bike with low miles. I had also grown quite sweet on the Honda Shadow Aero, though I also considered the Honda Shadow Spirit, Kawasaki Vulcan and Suzuki Marauders. Originally, I had looked at the Yamaha V-Stars, too, but they are not liquid-cooled, so quickly fell out of the running. All of my other bike expert friends (Kirk, Mike, Cliff, Tony, Gary, Fred, and Mark) convinced me that my first bike should be in the 750-800cc range. This week my friend, Bill, sent me a few links to craigslist and on ebaymotors.
One particular bike on ebay caught my attention and I called up the dealer to see what they would be willing to sell it to me directly for. Kris and the guys at Maverick Motorsports in Laramie, Wyoming were absolutely terrific, and gave me a great deal on my dream bike!
Without further adieu, here it is: my 2004 Honda Shadow Aero with 2200 miles on it!
I rode it around the neighborhood today to get used to it, and can't wait for it to be my full-time commuter!
Flatirons is doing some VERY cool work with the FAA. One result of this work is a tool called VISAGE, a geospatial visualization and analysis tool that processes data into files that are loaded into Google Earth. These faces of VISAGE provide aeronautical viewing for the FAA legacy En Route system adaptation (ACES) and the modernization effort (ERAM).
You can check out the solution brief here:
http://www.flatironssolutions.com/downloads/VISAGE_Datasheet.pdf
If you are interested in seeing a demo, check out one of the following links:
http://www.flatironssolutions.com/VISAGE/Demos/VISAGE_ACES_Demo_lores.rm
http://www.flatironssolutions.com/VISAGE/Demos/VISAGE_ERAM_Demo_lores.rm
Saw an interesting post on the O'Reilly blog from XML 2007:
Instead of SOA (SOAP, XML Schema, WSDL, UDDI, WS-*) move to ROA: RelaxNG, REST, Atom, AtomPub, and OpenSearch.) [I’ve never heard “Resource oriented architecture”/ROA before.]
Sounds right to me! Of course, you know my famous quote:
If you're not RelaxNG, you're working too hard!
Sounds like the industry is finally catching on! I'll have to look deeper into this ROA approach as well.
Once again, I'm left disappointed because I couldn't get travel authorization from my company. This happened when I was at Sun, and now at Flatirons. It's frustrating because the big XML conference is one of the best opportunities to learn about cutting edge developments in the industry and to network with industry leaders. It's about the best form of training I can get anymore. Once you are at a certain level of XML expertise, web courses just don't cut it!
Unfortunately, my paper wasn't accepted this year, or I would have tried to find a way to pay my own way to get there. I had to do that one year when I was at Sun, and swore I shouldn't have to do that again.
I'm also disappointed, because I'll miss the annual DocBook Dinner! Hopefully I'll get a chance to see everyone at some point during the new year...
As yesterday was the first Sunday of Advent, we studied Prophecies concerning the coming of the Messiah. The Star of Bethlehem also plays a significant part in foretelling the coming of the King.
We watched an extremely interesting video concerning the Star and research that was done matching the Scriptures and celestial positions using the Starry Night software. More information can be found at: http://bethlehemstar.net/.
If you have any kind of interest in astronomy or are looking for deeper meaning to this Christmas season, I would highly encourage you to check it out!
Dear Family and Friends,
This year we're trying something a little different. We're sending out Christmas Cards without the traditional letter and directing people here to do our part in "being green".
We've had a great year! Here's an update from each of the family members:
Dawn - I'm still busy with homeschooling the kids, which I enjoy more and more as the kids get older and we start talking and learning about really interesting things like the science of creation or the effect of Christianity in Rome or the foundations and beliefs of the United States. It's great fun! This year was extra chaotic as I directed our church's summer VBS program, hosted my Grandma's 80th Birthday and am currently co-directing the Christmas play. The word 'No' is still a concept beyond me. Scott and I did manage to spend some quality time in NYC for our 11th anniversary where my wonderful husband took me to "Mary Poppins" and "The Lion King" on Broadway. I loved every second of it and then and there determined to bring the kids to "The Little Mermaid" which was being held in Denver for pre-Broadway shows in August. We had a magical time. Oh, and we went back to Disneyland with our adopted family Mo and Alex Gulas in September. I know, it's an addiction but one not likely to end any time soon. Overall, God is good everyday and has blessed us with a fabulous year!
Scott - I'm now in my 3rd year as a consultant, and I've spoken at 3 conferences and have a technical book out with an interested publisher! I've been fortunate to only work with one major client this year, and that work has taken me to New York City, San Francisco and Oxford, England! Oxford was a particular treat, since I took a little extra time (on Mother's Day nonetheless, which Dawn continues to point out...) to go on the C.S. Lewis tour and experience this incredible city! Dawn and I have been able to travel quite a bit together this year, including New York City, San Diego (twice), and our favorite: Disneyland! It was great to spend the day with Brandon and getting to meet Carina! We also got to see the Red Bull Air Races in San Diego on that trip (very cool!). I was also blessed to take Collin to a Broncos game, and Connor to Game 3 of the World Series! Caileigh and I have a special engagement in December, too. This year, I also took the MSF safety course and now have my motorcycle endorsement, and am saving patiently for a good commuter bike. Life continues to be busy, but fun, and blessed with good family (including a new nephew, Garrin!) and friends.
Connor - I am 9 years old and in 5th grade, and learning Spanish, Latin and started a new math program from Singapore (Singapore Math). In June I went to a Bible camp by myself for the first time, called Maranatha. I went with my best friend, Austin. I played basketball last January, and I learned about a new programming language called Scratch! I continue to learn piano and compose my own songs, too! I really liked going on California Screamin' at Disneyland and getting soaked at Sea World. I got to meet Dusty Baker at the World Series, which was AWESOME!
Caileigh - I am 6 years old and in 2nd grade. I have a really fun math and I like to do art the most. I had swim lessons and went to Soccer Camp this summer, which I really loved. The new Nemo ride at Disneyland was really fun. I liked the roller coasters too. I also went to Sea World and saw the dolphins which I really liked. I got to talk to a dolphin trainer, too. I had a great time seeing Little Mermaid before it went to Broadway! I really studied hard and got a really big part in the Christmas Play; the character's name is Holly. Merry Christmas!
Collin - I am 6 years old and in 2nd grade. This year I went to Disneyland and my favorite was getting Miss Mo on Tower of Terror, since I had to go on Pirates (I was scared and didn't like it)! I went to Soccer Camp with coach Poncho and I loved it. I've been in soccer for a long time. I also went to Grammy's house with my favorite cousin, Jadin. I also went to the Children's Museum with my friends Carly and DiDi. I loved going to a Broadway show, too. It was very special and I didn't have to wear a tuxedo! I went to the Broncos game and had Dippin Dots (yum)!
We hope you enjoy this special time of year as we celebrate the birth of God's son! Merry Christmas!
More big news in the standards world today! The DITA 1.2 feature proposal #12058, "Design and language specification for DITA learning and training content," submitted by the DITA Learning and Training Content sub-committee was approved at today's DITA TC meeting.
Congratulations to John Hunt and all the members of the DITA Learning Content SC! The specification and sample plugins are all publicly available. Next steps for us is to work on our Best Practices for Implementation and create some sample processing for the DITA OT. This effort will continue into the first quarter of 2008.
I was on the road last week and didn't have a chance to post the GREAT news!
At the DocBook TC meeting on November 7, 2007, DocBook V5.0 was approved as a Committee Draft! This draft was a result of several years of hard design work, especially by Norm Walsh, who created 9 Beta Releases and 7 Candidate Releases since October of 2005.
The most exciting feature, IMO, that this standard is based on RelaxNG rather than DTD. DTD and XSD are still supported/provided, but the canonical format is now RelaxNG (RNC). Vendors, start your engines and add support for RelaxNG validation! Actually, several vendors are already "ahead of the game" with RelaxNG support: oXygen XML Editor, XML Mind XXE, Editix, Emacs nXML, Cladonia Exchanger XML Editor. Conspicuously missing: PTC Arbortext Editor and XMetal. [NUDGE: C'mon big guys!]
The other exciting result of DocBook v5 and RelaxNG, is that it makes customization layers EXTREMELY easy to manage. The DocBook Subcommittee for Publishers proposed a new modularization of the RNC schemas for DocBook v5 to create Core DocBook and additional schema modules, which have now been incorporated into the v5 source. As a result, we've also been able to produce an initial draft of an official DocBook Publishers customization very easily!
This is great news for the entire DocBook TC and community!
Thanks to http://www.heavens-above.com/, I was able to figure out when to wake up this morning to see BOTH the International Space Station and the STS-120 Space Shuttle Discovery!
I wish I had a digital camera or video camera with me, because it was really very cool! They passed right over Colorado moving from Southwest to Northeast. The whole thing was over in about 5 minutes, so I really didn't want to run in and wake up the whole house trying to find my equipment.
I should prepare a little better next time. Still, it was a really cool site to see!
Congratulations to my sister, Heather, and my brother-in-law JC on the birth of their 3rd! Baby boy, Garrin, was born around 2:30pm. His name means "Guardian".
Glad everything went well, and look forward to meeting my new nephew soon!
What does the title of this post mean? APPLE, GIVE US JAVA 6 IN LEOPARD OS X!
For more details, see: