My Caffeine Induced Meanderings

End of the line ***update links

Sat, 11 Nov 2006 00:28:16 GMT

***Jason is changing blogs/webpages again***

Spaces seems to be slowing down way too much lately, so I plan to cut back on using this blog. I have another blog, which has been in existance for about a year at http://jgrantmarshall.wordpress.com . I plan to start using that one from here on out, but if you have troubles with that site for some reason or just prefer my Spaces site (this one), please let me know by leaving a comment here or sending me an email.

OK? Great!

My Internet Fame

Wed, 18 Oct 2006 02:25:08 GMT

Weekend Project: Dry Riverbed

Mon, 25 Sep 2006 00:48:37 GMT

I wish I had some really exciting events to tell about after my blogging hiatus, but, alas, nothing spectacular has happened lately. Actually, I had better take that back because Grant did turn 4 since my last entry. He has had 3 out of his planned 4 birthday parties. I plan to post again next weekend after we have his final party with his school friends that will be a "Pirate Party".

Besides that, the big fun this weekend has been the completion of our dry riverbed! On Saturday morning, we had 12 yards of 1.5" river rock delivered for ground covering on the area between our fence and the road. As it turns out, 12 yards is alot and we even had more than enough for our dry riverbed in the back yard, too! We still have a pile about 3' high in the front, so the next plan will be to move the pile for use on the other side of our driveway... river rock the length of our property. For the dry riverbed, I dug down about a foot by about 3 wide in a meandering fashion. We placed the "weed fabric" down and laid down some bark mulch on the fence side of the river. Next, I wheelbarrowed about 15-20 loads of rock from the front to the back to place in the bed. Once done, we ran down to the real river and loaded up the Jeep with some boulders (most were for the front yard to keep cars (hopefully) off of our new rocks) for added interest in our dry bed. I think I might take one more trip to the river for some more rocks so that I can make a little rock garden.

I think we definitely made the best of what is likely to be one of the last nice weekends for this year!

YourNameInJapanese.com

Mon, 28 Aug 2006 16:37:43 GMT

jya	ei	son

Person	Flourishing	Honor

This is my name in Japanese according to www.yournameinjapanese.com. Give it a shot!

Hellgate Jet Boat Trip

Mon, 14 Aug 2006 04:55:13 GMT

OK, my previous excitement for the trip was definitely warranted. This was a great family outing and I would strongly recommend it for all ages (well maybe not real little kids).

We started out by driving down to Grants Pass, OR, which actually looked to be a pretty neat little town. My previous visits never found me further than a mile from I-5. Anyway, the offices/gift shop for the jet boats were VERY easy to find. There were 2 stories of merchandise to paw through and the interior was decorated like a rustic lodge... except there was a Starbucks stand on the main floor and we all know that no self-respecting rustic lodge would allow frilly coffee on its premises. After slathering on the sunscreen, we went down to stand in line for the boats. This was about 4pm and was HOT. They really should have more trees or somehow provide more shade. At about 415, we could hear the roar of engines as the previous trips were coming to an end and letting the people off. One boat, our boat as it turns out, had some really wet people getting off. (We found out later that a newbie was piloting the boat and was not used to this boat's "features". He evidently did a break check (throwing it in reverse causing the nose to go down and water to fly over the top) but ended up putting the whole nose under water. OOPS.) Our pilot, Rick, had a lifetime of experience and actually came from a family of river guides on the Rogue. He was great and really made the trip a personal experience. We got on the boat, took a couple pics and headed off for adventure. The engines were surprisingly quiet and it was entirely possible to carry on a comfortable conversation while at top speeds. I was amazed at how fast we could go through some pretty rough water and how little water was needed for the boat to jet past. When the boat is at crusing speed, it only needs 1 foot of water depth. The trip down the river was pretty slow. We had to slow down for others rafting and we stopped to look at the animals. We saw deer, bald eagles, osprey, etc. My favorite part was taking corners because it felt like a graceful slide, rather than a turn. We were offloaded dockside at the OK Corral Restaurant but had to walk about 1/4 of a mile up the hill to get there. It was beautiful. Designed without walls, it had natural timbers as supports and had 5 or 6 patios where guests were seated. A live musician played a variety of country and classic rock. We were treated to a first course of salad and bread which was quickly followed by chicken and ribs and potatoes. It was all you can eat and all you can drink of beer, wine, lemonade or water. The food and the ambiance were great... and so was the family time! It was tough walking back down the hill to the boats because my belly was so full. The trip back, though, was worth it. The guides really tore it up on the way back and it was FAST! We did spins, break checks and had some fun with wakes with the boat directly behind us. To say the least, we were drenched! Grant's eyes were wild with excitement and I just thought to myself, "This is one of those things that boys of all ages just love." Speed, water, gasoline, risk of death... ahhh, it's good to be a boy! By the time we got back to the docks in Grants Pass, we were all good friends with Rick and I was a little wistful of the fun life on the river enjoyed by our new friend Rick. We spent some time rummaging through the various trinkets at the shop before heading off into the sunset. It was a great trip and one that I will be making again in future summers.

Jet Boat Trip

Fri, 11 Aug 2006 16:12:11 GMT

I'm soooo excited! Later today we are heading down to Medford for a Jet Boat Trip on the Rogue River. We will be travelling up the river to a ranch where we will be served dinner. The trip is put on by Hellgate Jetboat Excursions (the link is: http://www.hellgate.com/Splash/ ...in case the other doesn't work). I will write a trip report when I get back.

http://www.gamedesign.jp/flash/dice/dice.html

Mon, 31 Jul 2006 23:59:33 GMT

http://www.gamedesign.jp/flash/dice/dice.html

fun game of conquest... caution: addictive!

FW: Skinner Butte Park

Sat, 15 Jul 2006 18:53:07 GMT

This is the new playground the day after it opened. Quite busy, but loads of fun!

upcoming.org

Fri, 14 Jul 2006 23:04:39 GMT

Looking for something to do this weekend? Check out what other geeks (& non-geeks) are doing at http://upcoming.org/ . You can see what is upcoming and make plans for events in your own area. This may be a very cool site!

Mac vs. PC vs. Commodore 64?

Wed, 12 Jul 2006 20:07:31 GMT

You've all seen the Mac vs PC commercials?

Here is a link to Commodore 64's response: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_YfgmusXRJw

Good stuff!

Happy 4th of July

Tue, 04 Jul 2006 15:07:33 GMT

Happy 4th of July!!!

Grant and I are up and getting ready for a fun 4th. We will go to the city wide breakfast and then come back to fix up the house with final touches before everyone gets here. Then we're off to the parade and back home for a BBQ. I'll be sure to get some pics uploaded, so check back soon!

New phone

Mon, 03 Jul 2006 17:36:53 GMT

hehehe... I got a new cell phone after the traumatic trip through the washing machine of my previous phone. My workplace looks to move to smartphones/PDA phones for a number of mobile workers and since one of my roles is Cell Phone Guy, I now have one (for support reasons, of course)! I have a Cingular 8125 which is a phone/pda and can surf the net with GPRS/EDGE (according to Wikipedia: "EDGE is also an acronym for Enhanced Data Rates for GSM Evolution. It is a technology that allows wireless devices to connect at data rates up to four times faster than existing GSM and GPRS wireless devices.") or Wi-Fi and has Bluetooth and infrared for simple connections. It has a slide out keyboard to ease the composition of emails, etc. and also has a 1.x megapixel camera/vid camera built in.

So far I like it but coming up against an acquaintance period... called Natalie a bunch of times unbeknownst to me, so I lock it after each use now. I plan to upload some pics of Grant eating Coldstone taken with the new camera soon.

Cell phone washing

Thu, 29 Jun 2006 19:38:35 GMT

Although I couldn't find the tag, I have recently found out that cell phones must be dry clean only. Yep, the brand new cell phone that I have been talking about on here went through the wash and is now D-E-D, dead. It's a little embarassing that I am, among other roles, the cell phone guy for campus and I lose a phone to the washing machine. Luckily, the Cingular rep has offered a professional courtesy to only charge an arm, but not a leg.

I'll let you know when I get a new phone... It's looking pretty likely that it may be an impressive upgrade!

Home Again, Home Again

Mon, 26 Jun 2006 02:28:49 GMT

Flights yesterday went reasonably well with the exception that the ORD-PDX leg was late which caused us to miss the PDX-EUG leg. This caused us to wait for another 2 hours to finally get home. I did meet some nice, interesting people that sat next to me on the flights. The first was a mom who had a 3 year old (just like Grant). We talked about kids and families and our home towns. She was going to her Aunt's funeral, but the Aunt had lived to her 90's, so had a good long time on earth. From ORD-PDX I sat next to a guy, probably younger than I am, who works on printing presses for a living and travels away from home on every Friday and Monday. He was obviously a frequent traveller and I also had/have a pretty in depth travelling record with my days spent at Horizon, so we swapped travel stories and how stupid airlines are. ;*) ...sorry, Josh, but you know probably better than anyone else. He was a pretty rough talker and told a story, loudly, of a plane in Hawaii that lost its roof and then a stewardess got sucked out. Got a couple glances for that one... ha. All of our bags made it... believe it or not!

Nat & Grant were waiting for us at the terminal. Grant ducked under the stanchion barrier to give me a big leg hug. He evidently missed me as much as I missed him. We ran a couple of errands and then headed home. I just kind of lazed the afternoon away because I was not feeling exactly peppy. Thoughts of the kid who did this every Friday and Monday crossed my mind; there is no way that I would do this for a living... definitely not as fun as it sounded at first.

I watched most of the OSU baseball game, but gave up around 830 (I had been up since 145am). I ended up sleeping for 11 hours. I can't remember the last time I slept like that and I should probably put it on the calendar because it probably won't happen again.

We woke up and went to church this morning. After church we had brunch with family, which is a new tradition for us. We ran some more errands afterward, including buying an air conditioner for the upstairs since it was about 96 degrees today and estimates of it getting hotter rather than cooler the next few days. I sure hope it stays nice through the Fourth.

It feels good to be home again with my family and to be back to normal life.

Last Day

Sat, 24 Jun 2006 02:14:32 GMT

The conference was over early today, so we took off to Niagara Falls! It was about 2 hours to drive there but well worth it. I don't know what exactly the deal was but there were a number of other drivers that got flat tires &/or into wrecks. One was an SUV rollover and the other was a Jeep Grand Cherokee literally on top of a Pontiac. Scary... I did not speed or tailgate today. Anyway, one big complaint with driving in NY is that none of their streets are labled sufficiently or at least not so that we have found. This is what helped us to find the scenic route to the hotel the first night, but otherwise has been annoying. Luckily, we found another scenic route to NF through Little Italy... evidently a suburb of the city, Niagara Falls. When we finally got to the falls, to park anywhere, it was $10! Yikes, that hurt to pay that much to park in a gravel lot. Again, signage was pretty poor but we were able to wander to find the falls, eventually. We found the "Maid of the Mist" boat tours and did that first. It was only $11.50 and a must do for anyone going to the falls. Lots of fun even though the views are much better further away. The mist was so thick and the wind coming from the rushing water was so strong that it was difficult to see. The cool water was very refreshing on this HOT day. After the sea cruise (this one's for you, Honey), we hiked to the side of American Falls... the wussy ones and took a few pics. We continued on down and around to the Horseshoe Falls, which I would estimate to be about 3/4 of a mile hike one way. More pictures ensued but we found it difficult to take very many because it was pretty crowded. Before we were done for the day, we ate lunch at the Hard Rock Cafe. We each had a pulled pork sandwich and it was quite good.

When we got back to the hotel, I found some coordinates to Harriet Tubman's grave to plug into the GPS and we drove up the street to find it. We walked circles around it a couple of times but found it eventually. Tonight we just packed up and will go to bed. We plan to wake up at 345 am tomorrow to head to the airport... ick.

Conference: Day 3

Fri, 23 Jun 2006 01:44:16 GMT

Today was much more informative with aspects that I have previously had little experience with. It has been interesting to see how other campuses use the same product differently. It has also been nice to become more in touch with the "community".

After the conference today, we hit quite a few geocaches, but were unable to find some since I didn't print out any of the hints. Geocaching has acted as a tour guide for us, though, and has shown us some interesting things that we probably would have skipped. Today we saw where the first conference for women's rights was held and a statue/plaque dedicated to when Susan B. Anthony had a chance encounter with Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Senecca Falls is known as the birthplace for women's rights. We also visited a bridge made famous in the movie, "It's a Wonderful Life". In Auburn, we saw the grave of William Seward (but were unable to find Harriet Tubman) and went to the location of Harriet's home. Again, the amount of history and historic places is staggering. I am by far more excited to be here than I was at the prospect of coming here.

Maps

Thu, 22 Jun 2006 03:08:09 GMT

P {margin:0px;padding:0px;} body {font-size:10pt;font-family:Tahoma;} I promised my wife to put up some maps so that she and Grant could see where I was geographically.
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&q=37+William+St,+Auburn,+NY+13021&ie=UTF8&om=1 is a link to our hotel. Zoom out to see where I am in the state of NY.
Here's a link from the hotel to Harriet Tubman's house! http://maps.google.com/maps?f=d&hl=en&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=34.534108,59.238281&saddr=37+William+St,+Auburn,+NY+13021+%4042.928751,-76.566811&daddr=180+South+Street,+Auburn,ny&ie=UTF8&ll=42.922335,-76.566124&spn=0.015587,0.028925&t=k&om=1
I'll check this out tomorrow. One of the sites I stumbled upon tonight on my walk was the cemetery of both Tubman and Seward... guess I'll have to check that out, too.

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Day 2

Thu, 22 Jun 2006 02:11:27 GMT

I have a few pictures uploaded now, so feel free to browse the gallery. I attended the conference in Seneca Falls, NY. The old buildings with beautiful architecture and well manicured lawns are note worthy features in the area. There does not seem to be many fences and the mowed lawns kind of flow from neighbor to neighbor both in towns and rural areas.

The conference went well today and I learned quite a bit. We were fed breakfast, lunch and dinner today... and all meals were quite tasty. I was impressed with the quality. The campus was surprisingly spacious and lucky for me the wireless internet access was ubiquitous. There was even supposed to be a Geocache on the campus, but Aaron and I were unable to find it.

After the conference today, there was a trip scheduled to some local waterfalls, called Taughannock Falls. It was named for an Irriquois (?) chief who was killed by a Cayuga warrior and thrown from the falls. The name means "filled with trees". It was a REALLY easy 3/4 mile hike with some interesting geological formations.

On the way home, we stopped at the Auburn Mall where there is a Bass Pro Shop! This is a total guy shop and I could have spent hours there... & I hate shopping. This was a true outdoor store with boats, guns, flyfishing, spinning reels, ATVs, etc. I grabbed a few pics with my phone of the fish tank inside. Fun stuff.

Tonight, Aaron hung out at the room, while I went out for a walk around town. On my walk, I checked out the William Seward home and gardens, Fort Hill and lots of neat buildings.

We are watching the OSU Beavers in the college world series in baseball on TV now... we'll see how long we last, it is after 10PM now and only the 2nd inning.

I am having a great time, but missing my family. I'll update tomorrow!

Conference in NY

Wed, 21 Jun 2006 18:43:14 GMT

Greetings from Seneca Falls, New York! I am at a conference for the main "record keeping" application of our campus being held at New York Chiropractic College.

A co-worker and I flew from EUG to DEN to IAD to SYR. The flights were pretty smooth, despite an hour delay in Washington DC (IAD). The one bad thing was my co-worker had a checked bag not show up. I, on the other hand, knew better from my days in the airline business than to check luggage with that many hops.

We made it to our hotel room by way of the scenic route... taken inadvertantly. It actually turned out great because we were able to see a beautiful sunset and some very interesting little towns (I am ready to move) and also found the road to take to the conference in the morning. Perhaps I'll be able to research the town we passed through, that I liked so much, later and tell about it here. (Follow link to Skaneateles, NY... cool town, very picturesque.)

For dinner, we went to the Subway and both initially forgot to ask for receipts for the expense report and had to awkwardly ask for them after the fact. We went to bed at about 11pm EDT (8pm PDT) and were awoken at about 2am with his missing bag.

The conference has been pretty interesting so far, but only the last module of the day was particularly useful for me (they're all useful, actually, since I am the guy supporting the entire school). We are now done, but will next depart for a sight-seeing trip to some local waterfalls, sponsored by the conference. When we return, we will have some dinner at the school and then head for the hotel. I have actually downloaded a bunch of geocaches to my GPS, so we might hit some 'caches tonight, too. (There's one here on campus that I took a walk around at lunch, that I might introduce my co-worker to here in a bit.)

OK, this has turned into a book, so I'll stop so that I can bore you another time... bye.

Mon, 19 Jun 2006 05:17:35 GMT

P {margin:0px;padding:0px;} body {font-size:10pt;font-family:Tahoma;}

Poly the =^..^= (cat) joined our family this weekend! She is so named for her "polydactyl" toes....she has 7 toes on each of her front feet! She is soooo sweet!

She joined Jason and Grant in their snuggle after Grant's nap...a good 30 minute snuggle until Grant got too hot and restless to sit there an instant longer! He's so gentle and "helpful" with her....checking in on her and making sure she doesn't bump her head! hehehe!

She really seems to be a gentle little soul. Cuddly, yet curious and playful. Not afraid of the dogs...even Brandy running up to her only brought a small "spit" warning and one of those big mitts of hers up into the air in a "STOP!" warning. Skyler didn't seem to mind her, only snifffed her and went on his way. Annie, however, has her nose a bit out of joint. Sniffed her, hissed at her, and has been keeping to herself today. Guess she'll learn to deal w/ it!

Anyway, here are a couple pics of the 3 snuggling!

~Natalie

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Custom List: Favorite Websites

Sun, 12 Feb 2006 06:49:26 GMT

Favorite Websites

Geocaching
Online treasurehunt where you are the search engine
ThinkGeek
Online store for all your geeky needs
wikipedia
Book Crossing
Spread literacy around the world! Log your books here and sharethe love!
The Marshalls Gear
Wanna be like us? Now you can buy the t-shirt!
Tech on Memeorandum
Tech Blog Aggregator
Politics on Memeorandum
Political news aggregator
Digg
A tech news site
Digital Life Webcast
Patrick Norton's weekly tech show
The Spacecraft
MSN Spaces Developers

Blog list: Blogs I Read

Sun, 12 Feb 2006 06:45:46 GMT

Blogs I Read

A Cup of Life
My Mom's Blog
Mikah's World
A highschool friend's family
RocketBoom
Video Blog
It's Jerry Time
Jerry's Life - Vlog
Scobleizer-MS Geek Blog
Robert Scoble
Grandma Rose-Wyatt
Holm Happenings
Aunt Debbie
A Random Act of Blogging
A WOU friend
George Ou
Networking and security expert