we’re in Johnson City, Tennessee, visiting with Yvonne’s brother Robert and his roommate Gerry. It’s a five and a half hour drive from Charleston, all of which is along Highway 26 and most of which is through the good ol’ flatlands of South Carolina; near the end, however, it becomes hilly for a drive through Asheville and ending up heading north into the northeastern corner of Tennessee.

it’s been great so far, visiting with Yvonne’s family, and Robert (who is a meteorologist for a local TV station here in Johnson City) predicts snow for Christmas day, which will be nice. The family gets very excited about snow! I’m happy with snow, though considering growing up in Montreal, Toronto and Ottawa I spent about half my life with snow on the ground, I’m not quite as excited as the Texas natives.

this evening we opened our “family and friends” presents, while tomorrow, if we’ve been nice, Santa Claus will be dropping by. I heard a rumor that Santa is going to be delivering Callum a present that will blow his little mind. His dad might also get to play with it.

so Merry Christmas to all, and Happy New Year as well! And I’ll leave you with a photo of the present Amelia made me for Christmas – a way far out coloring of James, from Thomas the Tank Engine!

prepare to be amazed, my friends.

okay, so only slightly underwhelming.

this is a traffic light electronics kit I bought in Tennessee and soldered together as soldering practice for the x0xb0x I bought the other week. The x0xb0x is a Roland TB-303 synthesizer replica (the short version of the long story is that they reverse engineered a Roland TB-303, sourced all the original parts, and now sell it as a kit that you can build yourself) – it’s arguably the closest you can get to the sound of an actual TB-303. Here’s a x0xb0x in action (it’s not mine, since mine’s still in pieces).

anyway, to get some soldering practice I bought a couple of electronics kits, and the first one I’ve managed to complete is the traffic light kit you see above. It’s got a lot of parts for something so simple, but it does the trick. It says on the box you can use it for model railroads, but it seems pretty big to suit that purpose, not to mention it would be hard to put a prototypical box around it to make it look like a real stoplight, but I’m sure someone’s found a use for it somewhere. My current use for it is to put up on the mantle (where you see it now) and ooh and aah as it changes colors. Well, nobody ever said I wasn’t easily amused.

last week we returned to Disneyworld for a week – the first time around we bought annual passes (which are much cheaper in the long run if you plan to go to the theme parks for more than a few days), so this time around it was almost somewhat economical!

one of the highlights of our trip was visiting my sister Linda and her family in Tampa; we went trick-or-treating with my sister, her husband and their kids in their suburban neighborhood. My parents also came by for the occasion, visiting from Ellenton, somewhat south of Tampa and just north of Bradenton, where they spend their winters. It was very fun! Callum went as Luke Skywalker (Yvonne sewed his outfit for him), while Mia dressed as, yes, Darth Vader. Lachlan, who is 2, had a tiger costume he refused to wear, but fortunately he was sporting some surfer clothes underneath, so when he scampered up to the doors of my sister’s neighbors they thought he was dressed as a little surfer boy and as such got candy from the good candy bowl and avoided getting candy from the “bad candy for lamers without costumes” bowl.

here are a few pictures from the trip:

Callum in the line for the Test Track ride at Epcot, being a dummy. And by dummy I mean crash test dummy.

Amelia and Lachlan in the stick-your-head-in-the-totem-wall thingy at the Canada pavilion in the World Showcase at Epcot. Not sure how to better describe that.

four of us on the Expedition Everest roller coaster at the Animal Kingdom. If you look closely you can see me in the dark red shirt raising the roof near the middle of the coaster with Callum to my right, and Yvonne and Mia behind us.

Mia, who is 5, had a love-hate relationship with Expedition Everest. She rode on it, cried throughout the whole second half of the ride… then wanted to go on it again. Again she cried and said she didn’t like it, but afterward wanted to go on it a third time. After the third time she was done! Callum on the other hand couldn’t get enough of the roller coasters – he loved Space Mountain as well! Next time we go (though who knows when that will be) we’ll have to get him on the Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster at the Hollywood (formerly Disney MGM) Studios. Though I don’t know if we’ll be able to get Mia to go on that one, and she certainly won’t be riding “that scary elevator ride”.

I mentioned in this post that I would share the first chapter of my new story when it was ready, and it is ready!

This is a story I started tooling with a while back and have since then given it a new direction, some new characters, some new conflict and a new bad guy (though legends about him have been around for a long time).

In order to share the story I’ve created a new Drupal site. Within it I feature a writing blog, where I talk about writing, and the actual book itself. The blog posts are public, but the book posts are locked to friends; as such, if you’re interested in checking out Chapter 1, please request an account on the site and I’d be glad to add you as a user! Please leave a valid email so that I can ask you who you are if I do not recognize your handle.

If you do decide to create a user on my site, I want you to know that I really appreciate your interest! Please let me know what you think – as I mention on my site, I’m writing for the experience and for the criticism, not because I think I’m a tremendous writer and need to share my awesomeness with the world.

lately I’ve been getting back into writing fiction, something that for many years was part of my daily routine, but for the last several years (or maybe more than several) has been decidedly cut out.

it feels great to be back to it, though I’m sorely out of practice! I can’t say I’m altogether disappointed with the results however, and that’s because I’m not taking myself too seriously; my main goal is to get back into proper “writing shape” by reading a bunch and putting words down on paper. Maybe after a few hundred pages I’ll start criticizing myself more and getting some proper feedback, but for now, rediscovering the fun of writing is the reason I’m doing it.

that said, in the coming weeks (or maybe days?) I’m planning on sharing my latest project with friends! I’ll be doing it on a Drupal site (that I created partially because I wanted to share my book, but perhaps mostly because I wanted to learn how to use Drupal, thanks to my good friends Lynette and Earl). I’ll be writing a chapter at a time, and posting each one to my site as I come up with it.

more about that when I’ve finished the the first installment! As I mentioned, I’m not exactly in proper writing form, so it may take a while to get going… but I’ll get there!

for the past several months we’ve been letting Mia’s bangs grow out. As such, her hair’s been looking like that of a shaggy dog lately, hanging down over her eyes for most of the day… we’ve been using barrettes and bows in her hair to keep it out.

to get an idea of what she looked like, here’s a picture… yes, Mia is in fact painting her younger brother’s nails purple!

anyway, yesterday we took Mia (who turned five a few days ago, by the way… happy birthday to Mia!) to get her hair cut, and I got the hairdresser to cut her hair so that it was all the length of her newly-grown out bangs. As a result she had five or six inches cut off the back. It was a bit of a risk, but I must admit… she looks great! Here’s a picture of her new haircut; meanwhile she is wearing a dress that Yvonne made for her:

note that you can see her missing tooth in this picture… as I mentioned in this post we had to have one of her front teeth removed, and as she’s only just turned five she’ll be missing a tooth for the next two or three years! Albeit it certainly does add to her “character”. Here’s another picture of her haircut.

meanwhile, Callum has a Portal (the video game) addiction… while he’s unable to play certain levels (he’s only just turned seven), he’s played the ones he can play over and over… and frequently says things like “hey, remember that part of Test Chamber 17 where you have to do this?” Anyway it’s a friend’s birthday tonight, and we’re going over to their house for a party, so I asked the kids to decorate a paper bag, one side each, with “whatever you like”… and this was what Callum drew:

so… there’s that.

finally, the other week I got a new computer – a 17″ i7 MacBook Pro! I’m extremely pleased with it, so much so that here’s a picture of me loading software on it! The kids are in the background laughing at – yes – a YouTube video of some guy mucking around with Portal turrets.

here’s a picture of Mia at the Princess Dinner at Norway in the Epcot World Showcase. You’ll notice that Mia has all of her front teeth; this was before we had to have one of them pulled. I’ll post pictures of her new look later. She bonked her top front right tooth on the counter while trying to wash her hands in the kitchen sink, and it got infected and had to be removed – the root of the tooth pretty much disintegrated. As she’s only 4 years old she’s going to be spending the next two or three years of her life missing a front tooth, poor thing. Not that she seems to care in the slightest! Anyway this is a pretty good picture of Mia in her element that I neglected to post in my last Disneyworld post, so here it is!

and here’s a photo of Mia and Lachlan doing some reading, the way humans were meant to – upside-down on the couch. Mia is a pretty voracious reader. I think Lachlan was just looking at the pictures – but hey, he’s only 2.

the week before we took the family to Disneyworld. It was of course pretty fun, and everyone had a great time. Some of the highlights included riding the monorail around and around, meeting up with my sister (who lives in Tampa) and her daughter, doing the Princess dinner at Norway in the World Showcase at Epcot, and eating at a variety of character dinners. We also went on a whole bunch of rides – Callum really liked Expedition Everest, the roller coaster that features the elusive yeti. Mia, on the other hand, wasn’t so keen on the Tower of Terror or Splash Mountain. Maybe in a few years.

a personal highlight was watching the International Space Station pass over central Florida on April 28th. I wasn’t quite sure what to expect, having never seen it, but I certainly didn’t expect it would be so bright and clear. I waved; not sure if anybody up there waved back.

of course we took a bunch of pictures while we were there, and so of course I’m going to post a few here (clicking on them makes them bigger).

Obligatory picture of me hanging with Mickey Mouse. Looks like he’s about to do some farming.

Callum, Von, and Mia hanging out at Disneyworld. Oh no wait, that’s not Von, that’s Pluto.

Callum and one of his favorite things – the Disneyworld monorail. Callum actually loves monorails even outside of Disneyworld… one of his favorite movies (perhaps tied with the first Harry Potter movie for first place) is a documentary called High Tech Monorails.

The kids outside the LEGO store at the Disney Marketplace. Those aren’t real dogs. They’re made of LEGO. FYI.

Von and Lachlan outside the LEGO store. Von is trying to listen in on the LEGO lady’s cell phone conversation, while Lachlan is simultaneously trying to beep her nose.

Callum and Mia with Goliath from JoJo’s Circus. If you don’t know what JoJo’s Circus is that’s probably okay. I almost got into a fight with Goliath because I kept calling him “Dudester the Lion”. Well okay that’s not really true, but that would have been pretty funny.

yesterday morning was Bring Your Child to Work Day here at Blackbaud, and I brought my eldest son for half of the morning, and my daughter for the other half. It was pretty fun! This morning while I was at work my son (who just turned 7) filled out the form that came in his goodie bag. Here it is exactly as he filled it out:

Child’s Name: Callum
Parent’s Name: Brian
Parent’s Job Title: program manuger
Department: PD

1. Describe your parent’s job and duties.

meetings

2. What have you learned in school that would help you be successful at this job?

reading and Science

3. What is the hardest thing about your parent’s job?

meetings

4. What does your parent like most about their job?

People

5. Do you think you would like to have your parent’s job? Why or why not?

Why not

6. What do you like most about Blackbaud?

that it is a 4 story bilding.

I should point out that on this particular morning I went to some stand-up meetings to check on how regression testing was going, and then to a sprint demo, so his vision of what I do all day was a little skewed. Still, I found it pretty amusing.