Sing me a song

Liam decided to be talkative earlier this evening.  I was able to grab it on film.

Liam Sings

Who needs maps?

After spending a few hours at the office earlier today, I decided to tour a bit around Washington, DC.  I had picked up a map for both the mall area and the metro system before I left the hotel, so I was prepared to navigate.

As I was getting off the train at Metro Center though, I realized that the maps were pretty pointless, because I have Google Maps on my Blackberry with GPS.  I fired it up, and turned on GPS.  As I was walking past buildings on my way to the office, and then to the National Mall, I watched on Google Maps and knew what each building was.  So much nicer than the static map (which did not label each building).  When I was walking by the IRS building I zoomed in on satellite view and saw that the building, which looks to be a huge solid structure on the outside, actually has a few courtyards in the middle (one even has a tree).  I would have never known that if not for Google Maps.

I am sure things like this are not as impressive to the younger generation, but to old guys like me who don’t remember to do things like this regularly it is quite eye opening.  A totally different way to navigate and sightsee.

Brothers

Brothers, originally uploaded by seanabrady.

Not really much more to say right. Iain loves being a big brother…although I did bribe him with Oreo’s to pose for this and a few other pictures.

sean.blog Updated

Image via CrunchBase

UPDATE: Due to a problem getting connected to the right account in Feedburner, the Feedburner feed has changed for this site.  If you subscribe to the Feedburner feed you will need to update your subscription.  Sorry about that, and I hope to get my 30 readers back some day. 


I came across an article earlier today on the Blogger Buzz blog about Blogger themes. I had been wanting to make some changes around the blog so I decided to take on the task this evening. After a few false starts with templates that looked like they would be good but turned out to be not so much so, I am ready to roll with the new site and new theme. By the way I settled on the Thesis Theme for Blogger from Deluxe Templates which is apparently a dirivative of a theme that was once done for Wordpress.

Ilta ‘09 – Legal Technology Conference

I just submitted my registration for the ILTA ‘09 conference that will be held in August in Washington, DC.  This years conference is important to me for a few reasons.

• They have added an Enterprise 2.0 track.  My thinking at work turns more and more to introducing E 2.0 concepts into our firm.
• I am expecting some interesting discussion around the Interwoven 8.5 line of products.  Perhaps some real answers relating to e-mail management?
• I am predicting that the back channel at conference this year will be quite rich.  I thought it was good last year (I didn’t attend) and am hoping for spectacular this year.
• The economy is hitting administrative travel and conference budgets hard.  I really want to attend this year, so I am planning to foot the bill on my own (and pray for a turn around so I can expense it in August).

I thought it would be fun to throw together a personal blog for conference this year, so I will kick of Sean’s ILTA ‘09 blog today.  Content should be come more frequent as August approaches.  I will be live blogging the conference, and plan to share some video as well (got to love the Flip cameras).  Stay tuned.

Pet Peeves – Simple Offense Real Punishment

I was just reading an article in the Houston Chronicle about how some Texas legislators are going to attempt to pass legislation that regulates when/how cell phones and other mobile devices can be used in a car.  I will say right now, I think this is a good idea.  They also plan to address things like reading a book and putting on make up.  I agree again that this should be high priority legislation.

What makes me sad, and is a big pet peeve of mine, is that even if these laws are somehow miraculously passed they won’t have decent enough punishments to deter people from the acts.  Enforcement on things like this is just to hard.  I don’t want to have the police burdened with monitoring cell phone usage, just does not make sense.

Instead, I think we need very strict punishments based on the outcome of choosing the wrong action.  If you get into an accident while using your phone or applying makeup you should have to pay a hefty fine and surrender your license for a period of time.  For sake of example lets say the fine is equal to the total amount of damages from the accident.  If you knew that on top of having your insurance go up, your car wrecked that you were going to have to fork over an additional $6000.00 would that make you less likely to talk and drive?  Tack on a real (no work exception) 6 months license suspension on top to make sure the point gets across.  I say the second time you cause an accident, you lose your license permanently.

Just seems crazy to me that we pass these rules, and rely on an over burdened police force to try and enforce them.  I don’t know what the real punishments should be, but I know that if I can talk on the phone and occasionally have to pay a 100 fine that I am likely to not be deterred.  I want to see punishments that actually hurt the people who break the laws.  Don’t even get me started on drunk drivers (1 strike is plenty for them).

I don’t believe we should ban in car phone use, but hands free voice and dialing functionality should be a requirement.

Publishing to Live Spaces

I have decided to also replicate the content of this blog over to my Microsoft Live Space.  I am doing this mainly because both Blogger and Live Spaces allow publishing via e-mail.

I will add that I am really quite impressed with many of the new set of tools from Microsoft.  I am writing this in Windows Live Writer (the best blog editing tool for Windows in my opinion), and I think that the Live Photo Gallery application is very nice.  The changes to Live Sync, Mesh and Folder Share are nice.

I might need to spend a bit of time investigating the whole suite of Microsoft services, although I doubt I will leave Google.

If I was at CES…

If you were bored, and decided to spend a day recently cyber stalking me (did you?) you would have seen me looking around at CES gear reports.   I love reading about what mobile (and not so mobile) gear people take with them to conferences.  I also love reading the after conference reports where people say how well the gear worked, and generally recap the event.  I am also usually interested in what bag people are using to haul things around in.  Have not seen to many bag reports this year though.

I decided that I would throw my gear bag out on a table as well, and snap a new gear picture.  It has been a while since I have done a “what’s in my bag” post anyway.

Things have changed a little bit from last January when I took this picture.

I do still have some of the things in the first picture, like the Dell, but with the 901 it rarely ever leaves home.  The web cam in the earlier picture as well as the bluetooth chip have been retired since they are both built into the 901.  Both pictures have notes on Flickr to say what everything is.

The bag on the left is my old Timbuk2 Metro Messenger, and I use that bag for weekend use around town.  It is easier to hit the store/mall/park with this bag than the backpack.  The pack on the right is my fairly new Tom Bihn Ruck’s Sac.  The pack is designed to be small, light and carried by someone with a small frame.  I think it works great.  Not a lot of pockets, but with the interior rings for the pouches work great.

Welcome to 2009

AH!  I woke up this morning, 3 hours late, and find that 2009 looks much like 2008.    Every January 1st should have blue skies and be a perfect day.  Unfortunately, it is cloudy here and does not look like the sun will peek through anytime soon.

I want 2009 to be a year of changes.  Change is good, and I want to lead the charge.  We will have a new baby in April, I will turn 38 in June and I have my 20th high school reunion in August.  I want to be ready for these big events with some real changes throughout the year.

Change #1:  Take better care of myself.  I am terrible about going to the doctor when I am sick, much less when I am healthy.  I actually don’t even have a doctor I would call my primary care physician.  I don’t get enough exercise, and I tend to not keep very healthy sleeping habits.  I will find a doctor and schedule regular visits as recommended, exercise daily (we have a Wii Fit and and exercise bike as well has real bikes and our legs), track my health, and make regularly scheduled dentist appointments.  I will wake at 5:00 am every day and go to bed each night when I am tired.

Change #2:  Lists, Lists, Lists.  I have lots of things I can and should be doing.  I own a lot of things, and we often get new things.  We have a yard full of plants.  All these things can and should be written down on lists.  I get frustrated with myself when I need to do something and I don’t have the details I need.  This year I will create maintenance lists for the house and cars, lists for my health, home inventory lists, a complete list of my games, music, books and dvd’s.  I will keep lists of important numbers handy, and make a list of the correct size and other requirements for any consumables we have (air filters, light bulbs, batteries etc).

Change #3: Board Gamers Delight.  Every year I say I am going to play more games.  I plan to this year.  I am going to play the games I want, and do so on a regular basis.  There is no excuse for someone with as many games as I have to not have regularly scheduled game nights.  I want to put together a weekly game night, each week.  I think maybe Tuesday nights will work best.   I will game from 6:30 – 10:00,  basically enough time for one good game or a couple of quicker ones.  I would really like to find a place in Pearland that would let us come in and game each week similar to how the Dallas Board Game group works at Borders.  I have made the decision to no longer chair the Shadow Creek Ranch sponsored SCR Gamers group, and will instead work to create a Pearland/South Houston wide gaming group.

Change #4:  Time for RPG’s.  I purchased 50 or more RPG products in 2008 and I played 1 RPG.  Hmmm.  Something is wrong there.   I want to get some regular roleplaying started.  I am honestly not a huge fan of campaign play, perhaps I have just not played a good one.  Regardless, I want to play a variety of games.  I just got Savage Worlds the other day and I am very anxious to read and play it.  I will work this in each week.

Change #5:  Online Life.  I don’t want online time to control what I do, but I would like to increase my online presence in positive ways.  I will continue to improve my contacts with people online who share my interests.  I want to radically increase the time I spend corresponding with old and new friends, and less time buried in the noise of Google Reader.  I have a new deck of Akoha cards, and I plan to use them all this year.  I want to create meaningful connections in Twitter and Facebook, and grow them each day.  I will attend more local functions around my favorite things (game conventions, technology/geek meetups).   I will continue to write for this blog.  I am going to write whatever I want as I think of it.  I won’t be hesitant to post things based on what I perceive others will think of it.  I will integrate video and audio information into this blog in 2009.

Change #6:  Plan for everything.  I have a bad habit of sitting in front of the computer all day doing nothing of importance if I don’t plan.  I will set aside time this year to do the things I need and want to do.  Importantly, I want Melissa to help me develop these plans so that she can react accordingly, and be a part of the plans.  I want to set aside time to:

1. Take care of the house.
2. Do a new fun thing with Iain ( and new baby).
3. Plan my RPG sessions.
4. Learn new games.
5. Write for this blog.
6. Maintain my online me.
7. Review my upcoming calendar and tasks.
8. Play the video games I already own.
9. Exercise.
10. Plan our DVC vacations, something new every year.
11. Everything else.

This is all a pretty tall order, and I am sure there will be other changes as well.  I am excited for 2009, and I am ready to make this an amazing year for Melissa, Iain, URL (new babies in utero name) and Myself.

Happy New Year!

2008 – Another year in review post

2008 is just about done.  Truth be told, I can almost not bother to stay up till midnight to see another year pass (although I likely will).  Looking back it has been a fairly casual year, not a lot has changed for me, but at the same time big changes are set to come.

We are expecting our second child in April.  We have just gotten used to having a “big boy” who can almost always take care of himself (for basic things), and we will be going back to ground zero as it were.  We are very excited to be expecting a second child though ( another boy), and I know that Iain is looking forward to it.

Work continues on, but we don’t really have anything exciting or new or even very interesting going on.  It is just more of the same, and I doubt we will see the excitement level shift to far forward with the economy the way it is.  I am hoping to use the time to better enhance some of our existing tools with

I simply did not play enough games this year.  I bought quite a few, and branched out into some new game genre’s this year, but I once again did not get enough games on the table.  I think this is partially due to the lack of the right set of opponents.  The vast majority of my gaming has been with the local game group, which tends to be more social.  We play games that can play everyone that shows, and tend to shy away from anything to complex.  Most of the games I am wanting to play are 2 player games, which does not work well in that environment.  The gaming experiences I have had were good though.  I am getting more and more interest from people at work, and we spend many a lunch hour playing fast games.

My Wii is my favorite video game platform of 2008.  Loads of fun.  We just added a Wii Fit to the mix as well as Wii Music, so we have plenty of Wii fun for the year ahead.  My XBOX has been relegated to playing the board games on XBOX Live arcade (if you want to play me on Ticket to Ride, Carcassone, Lost Cities or anything else give a shout) and watching movies via Netflix. 

This year has certainly been a heavy social network year for me online.  I have met tons of people through Twitter and have gone from a handful of Facebook friends to almost 140.  I also switched this blog from my self hosted Wordpress blog to a Google hosted Blogger blog.  So far I am liking it, and so far the new blog has renewed my interest in blogging.  I think I have written as many posts since I started this new blog in November as I had the rest of the year.  I don’t know why, but it just seems easier to upkeep this blog.  I didn’t start audio or video podcasting this year.  I really wanted to add some video or audio content to my blog, but I am just not comfortable with the whole talking to myself yet.

I had a good season of Fantasy Football.  I placed 5th which was pretty amazing considering my team fell to pieces near the end of the year.  I had Plaxico Burress on my team which should say enough.  Dexter was the best show on TV again this year.  I don’t watch much TV, but it was easily the best thing on.

The only other big news this year is that we went to Disney World in September and managed to miss the fury of Hurricane Ike.  Houston and the surrounding areas got hit pretty hard.  I still drive my a pile of downed trees everyday on my way to work.  They have been collecting and mulching the trees for months now, and they obviously have months to go.  We did get a slightly extended vacation staying down in Florida, which gave us enough time to finally buy into the Disney Vacation club.  We are looking forward to many Disney and other vacations in the years to come.

I will be posting a look ahead at 2009 tomorrow.  Right now, I am going to watch some Doctor Who, and maybe play a game of Talisman.

Happy New Year everyone!!!