2006 Holiday Recital

Originally uploaded by hniels.

The twins and Megan had their annual holiday recital at school. This was the first time Madeline was not in it because she’s now in the middle school.

Here is a cool image I found on the internet. It shows your odds of dying!

When you sit back and look back at how things have changed with computers in the last 20 years, you truly have to be amazed!

Today I was looking at a blog at engadget.com and they were featuring the Commodore 64 computer. They had a picture of one of the first computers that I had owned as a kid.

My 6 year old son Mark was looking at it too and I was telling him that was my first computer.

He asked me if it could play Internet games. I had to explain the computer was not connected to the internet but we did have a 300 baud modem that I could dial into another persons computer and read text faster than it could be sent to the computer.

He then asked if I played music and I said only songs that were created with a MIDI device (which was cool then) but there was no one singing in the music.

Mark then gave me a look like “what can you do?” and then asked if I could put pictures on it. I said nope, but I could draw my own pictures. He looked really puzzled now! “Dad? How can you draw without a Mouse?” Man! Those were the days when we used a computer without a GUI and a mouse!!

He finally said, “Man that must have been boring!!” Far from it Mark, far from it. It was fun to learn how to make it do what it could do. I learned to program because I really wanted to see what I could do. For some reason I was just hooked to the idea of making it do what I wanted it to do, or at least trying to make it do what I wanted it to do!

Plus I told him we had no idea back then on what the computer would be capable of doing. Back then I never thought about putting music or pictures on my computer and I the whole idea of the internet……well that must be some huge BBS!

I told him to think what we maybe able to do in another 20 years! The light bulb went on. Who knows maybe in 6 years from now he will create the next killer app!! However I think Madeline will beat him to it. She is already reading my HTML books and figuring out how to do web pages!

Wells is 2:40 PM PST and its roughly less than 10 hours before I see the LAST Star Wars movie ever made. This is definitely a bitter sweet day for me. Bitter because I now realize that the saga is complete and over but sweet to finally see it all come together.

I don’t know about you but these movies had a real effect on me (especially Star Wars IV: A New Home and the Empire Strikes Back). I guess part of it is because I was 5 years old when I first saw Star Wars. I believe that when your 5 or 6 things can have a huge influence over you positive or negative. (I know this also by having twins that just turned 6 this month). There is very few things I remember before I was 6 but I still remember to this day the first time my mom and dad took to me to go see Star Wars. After that 2.5 hours my life changed forever. That’s all I could think about. Star Wars was IT! I breathed Star Wars. Everything I owned was Star Wars. I had to listen to Star Wars.

However I was not the only one. I had friends that were fanatics over it too. One friend I remember the most is Richard. Richard also had a sister who was about 4 years older than us. She was also a Star Wars nut. The one thing we would do when I would go over there was put on this Star Wars record (yup those huge black disks) that had the entire movie played out. We would not just listen to it but re-enact the entire movie. We would do this over and over. We had guns and light sabers! This was the days before VHS and Beta! We had only seen the movies a couple of times but this allowed us to replay the movie in our heads over and over again! I can still remember my friend as clear as day playing Han Solo and yelling “This is not like dusting crops boy. We could fly too close to a star … and that would end your trip real quick now, wouldn’t it!” as it played on their turn table.

We went the first day Empire Strikes Back came out! The funniest thing that happened to me was the next day. I was talking to my 3rd grade teacher and I said “I CAN’T BELIEVE DARTH VADER IS LUKE’S FATHER!”. The Teacher actually started to scream at me! “I CAN”T BELIEVE YOU TOLD ME THIS! WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU!” and walked off so pissed off. How the hell was I supposed to know not to say anything when you’re 8 years old! That goes to show how much of an impact this movie had on people. Even the adults loved these movies.

Then there was Return of the Jedi! My brother and I stood in line for over 5 hours to be the first people to see it (Along with the rest of the family, but they went to eat and go to the mall before they showed back up). Star Wars as the only time when the lines would go around the entire movie theater.

Now fast forward 16 years later for the Phantom Menace! I could not wait to see this movie! It was over 16 years since a new Star Wars was released! I was now an Adult with 4 kids. My twins were born not only 2 weeks before this. I took my then 5 year daughter to see it with me. Kim was still recovering from an emergency trip to the hospital because of complications after the birth of the Twins. We were coming home from the hospital when she dropped us off. To this day I still get an evil look from her that I left her alone with the twins in complete pain to go see Star Wars. But I also think she realizes how much I would been pissed off if could not to go see Star Wars after waiting for 16 years! (I Love you Kim!)

After seeing it I was pretty confused. I could not figure out if I loved it or if it was just ok. I enjoyed it but I wanted more! I wanted that feeling I had when I saw the previous three movies. I guess 16 years of waiting for something like this, I expected more! However I did go see it over 15 times while it was out! I put it 3rd on my list: Empire, A New Hope and then Menace.

Boy, did a lot of people hate this movie. It then became the COOL thing to hate Star Wars! I think people forget that is made for the kids, not us adults. If you had gone into the movie as if you were as child, I think you may have enjoyed it alot more. I know my daughter really like it.

But looking back, that damn kid who played Anakin really screwed it up for me. Jar Jar was bad but I did not have that much problem with him. Also I think we could have skipped Phantom and started the prequels with Attack of the Clones. Then we could have made the last movie over two movies. This is what we all wanted to see anyways!

What I really love about Star Wars is that I am able to share this with my kids! They love these movies and play with Star Wars toys all the time. They seem just as excited when the commericals come on as I do. My wife makes a good point though. They get excited because this is something they can share with Dad! But I think they would like these movies regardless if I did or not.

Star Wars has influenced so many parts of my life. If it were not for John William’s music score, I don’t think I would be into classical music as much as I am. Star Wars also got me really interested in Space, which got me interested in mathamatics which got me interested in Computers! I guess I can say thanks to Star Wars for so many things and I am going to miss it when it’s all over and done with.

We were off to diner at Red Robin by the mall and next to it is the movie theater. I saw signs for “Star Wars 12:01″ and one for 3 AM. I was instantly confused! I thought Star Wars was coming out tomorrow? I started to panic! What day is it? I look up towards the beginning of the line and there are already 15 people in line! Yes 30 hours before the movie is about to premiere and they are waiting in line! Where I live this is not common.

And I thought I was a Star Wars geek! I guess I will have to be in line tomorrow by 4pm so I can at least get a good seat for the midnight showing. Good thing I got my tickets 20 days ago!

On Friday Apple was releasing the next version of their Operating System called 10.X Tiger. Apple was having a kick off party for geeks like me at the Apple stores to introduce the new operating system. It starts at 6pm and I was not sure if I wanted to drive an hour to the store or not. Kim finally told me to go with Megan and have fun.

So off to the store we went. When we got there it was close to 7pm. A line out the door had formed for people waiting to get into the store. Now I truly felt like a nerd/geek/dork! People would stop and ask what the line was for. I would tell them it was for the new Operating System for the Mac. I would either get the look like “WTF are you talking about?” or “What a dork!” Oh well, I was here and I might as well wait in line to get what we came for.

Finally after about 20 minutes we got into the store. The lady at the front door gave us a ticket to scratch off for a prize. I am the one guy who NEVER wins anything. There could be 4 people in a room and giving out 6 items and I will be the one that does not get anything. So I gave the ticket to Megan to “Have Fun” with. She starts scraping off the ticket from the bottom. It said “Please see an Apple Rep to claim your prize”. Megan shouts, “Dad! We Won!!!” I took the ticket to get a look at it. What did we win? She was leaving me in suspense! Probably won a iTunes song or something! Well I told her to scratch the rest of it off. Holy crap! It said a 6 gig iPod Mini! I had to take a second look. I actually won something! Megan and I were so happy and I think that was the first big prize because a lot of people working there were like really surprised/happy!

It took another 20 mins to fill out all the paperwork but at the end we did get a new iPod!

Oh and I did buy the new OS for my Mac!

I don’t know if I told everyone that reads our blog, but we are building a new House!! The community we live in now is great except for one thing; half the houses on our street are either empty or they are rentals where people are moving out every 6 months. It’s crazy because each house in our neighborhood is worth well over $500,000. Every house is a min of 2600 sqft to over 3,300 sqft. The house next to use has been empty for over 6 months now and the other one across the street has never been lived in.

The problem was the builder let investors buy up all the houses. We did a count on the street when the phase we moved into on how many 4 rent signs were in windows. Of the 10 houses, 6 were rentals! Now I have nothing against rentals but I have a problem with the investors buying up the entire neighborhood only to dump them later. They were artifically inflating the prices of homes because they were buying them from the builders as fast as they could sell them. So now that the market has slowed down and its been over a year since they have bought the houses, they are now trying to sell them! They can’t rent them anymore because if someone can afford to pay 2,500 a month for rent they can pretty much afford to buy one of the houses themselves. The builders now realize the problem that has been created and are no longer seelling them to investors. And guess what! The prices are not going up like they were either.

So enough of my ranting of the place where we live right now. The house we are building is bigger than what we have now and we really love the floor plan. It should be ready in August for move in so we really can’t wait!

The other day I was given a LiveSTRONG yellow band to wear on my wrist from one of my clients. It’s the Lance Armstrong Foundation.

What’s amazing is my Dad the other day called me asking me about it and I told him I had one on. I think he was a bit shocked about it and shook him up a bit. It inspired me so much that I went and bought several bands from the website to support the cause.

My Grandfather died a horrific death from cancer and I never got to know him because he died when I was only two years old!

Recently one of my clients also has been fighting cancer and is beating it.

I dedicate my band to my Grandfather and my client! I am proud to wear the band!

ALL can say is OMG! This is awesome. When google does something, they do it great! You have to go try it now.

The url is http://maps.google.com

Well I finally have had it with my DSL. On Christmas day it went out and for 3 days and I had no internet! NOOOOO!!! What’s a man to do without his Internet!!! I felt something was missing in my life and could not continue!

I called the phone company on Sunday (I let them have Christmas day off) and they said they could not do anything until sometime in the week. Now this is BS. I hate the phone company. Did I tell you I hate the phone company! They really don’t care about customer service.

Well I had enough and I called the Cable company. They said how quick do you want it? I said today! They said sure! Cool! So all I had to do was head down to the cable company office and pick up a modem!! I was stunned! I don’t remember if I wrote about my pain when we moved into the new house and the phone, but it almost took a month for them to get their butts out here to even get us a phone, let alone DSL. (I would have gotten cable then but it was yet available in our new area)

Within 45 mins I had Internet back! What I can say! Life was good again! What is really good is that its about 3 times faster in the downloads and 2 times faster in the uploads compared to that thing called DSL!

Take a look at this year’s Halloween pictures. I took the kids over to Tracee and Craig’s new house to go trick or treating. It was nice having halloween on a sunday for a change. As we all know we also had daylight savings time kick in on Sunday so it got darker much quicker than usual. (At least it seemed that way). The kids made out like bandits with all the candy they received! The neighborhood where Tracee and Craig live is brand new and when you have new houses that usually means that most of the people have kids. More kids = more houses open for business!.

Enjoy the images!

A Couple of weeks ago we went up to Big Bear for three days. It was very relaxing and we had a lot of fun. I’ve been working a ton in the last 6 months and we did not get a chance to have our summer vacation. So why not get a cabin in Big Bear? Sure, that’s perfect! It’s only two hours from home and it’s away from the civilized world! What is there not to love about that. Kim was so shocked that I did not even bring my computer with me. The last thing I wanted to do was open up that notebook while we were there! It was a great break and it was what I need to get back into the grind. My brother Adam is still down from Canada and he also came with us. I know he totally enjoyed himself. Got to bring his guitar and relax!

Check out the images!

I had my 33rd Birthday! We all went out to the Road House! For the gifts I received, you guessed it:Star Wars!

Don and Mandy bought me the new Star Wars Battlegrounds game for the XBox.
Craig,Tracee and the girls purchased the Attack of the Clones on DVD and a life sized yoda poster. You ask, “Don’t you already have Episode II?” Of course I do, but the kids have scratched the heck out of it and I would love to have a new version! Ask and you shall receive!

Linda and Bill mailed me a Starbucks card! That’s the coolest when you don’t have cash on you and still need coffee!

Thanks everyone for the gifts.

Check out the images in the 2004 sections!

Oh I almost forgot. It’s also Katie’s Birthday! We celebrated our birthday together! If you look at the photos and wonder what is on Katie and my head; it’s a cofee filter. The Road House likes to make fun you on your birthday by singing to you with these “Birthday hats” on your head. They used to get toliet seat covers and use them. I bet this stopped because someone got upset with something your supposed to sit on was put on their head!!

So I asked Madeline the day before her birthday where she wanted to go. I am thinking Macaronni Grill or On the Border. Nope! She wants to go to Home Town Buffet! I thought she was joking! Of all the places to go on your birthday, she picks Home Town Buffet. For some reason the kids love that place. I think its because they can pick any food they want and they love the desert section! So we all headed down to Home Town Buffet! The bad news is Craig got REALLY bad food poisoning! I don’t think we will be going back there anytime soon.

Check out the images of Madelines Birthday!

Wow! Can you believe how time flies. I now have all 4 of my kids going to the same school. We decided to split up the twins and put them into different classes. I think this will work out better because that way they can gain their own identities. Plus we’ve learned that they were working together in preschool to get things done! Smart kids but thats not going to help them in the long run.

Madeline is now in 4th Grade and has her old 2nd Grade teacher. We just love her and we are so glad we get to have her as a teacher again. Next year Megan will have her again (She was Megan’s second grade teacher last year.) Now if we can only get to switch back to the 2nd grade when Mark and/or Maloree start second grade!

You have to love this:

The reason I named my son Mark is because my child idol was Mark Messier (plus we needed another M name). He is one of the greatest hockey players of all time. He just retired this year. What is distinctive about Mark Messier is that he wears the number 11. My entire youth and adult hockey career I’ve made a huge effort to always be #11 regardless of the sport I play. In fact the photos you see of me and my brother’s playing I am wearing #11. Well Mark was assigned seat #11 at school. Now that is just plain cool if you ask me! If we were living in Canada I would have have EXPECTED the teacher to assign him #11. But there is no way this teacher would known the origin of the number and the name. My wife caught it because she knows this crazy number obession since we were in High School.