Last night we went to times square. I cannot believe how big some of the video screens are. I didn't even know they made high def video screens at that size.

There were so many people. The giant QA codes were cool because you could scan them from blocks away. At least with my phone you could.

Strangely the giant ads were for godaddy. For such a huge tourist attraction you would think a company that provides a service that applies to more general or consumer needs would have wanted that space.

Who goes to the square and decides they need a domain or some server space? I mean even I didn't.

(e:hodown) and I went to Quality Meats in manhattan last night. The food was so amazing. Sadly I only took one pic of two food items - mint and butter edamame and beef bone marrow. We also had a giant bouquet of sea food with lobster, shrimp, crab, oysters and raw clams. It was a fantastic beginning to the trip.

Funny story. At the airport I had to pee and was running to the baggage area. Then my phone buzzed and I started paying attention to my phone and ended up in the middle of a bathroom. When I finally looked up because I didn't see the urinals I realized I was like 30 feet into a crowded women's room and all of the women were staring at me. I ran out fast.

Almost missed the plane. My sear is 20a and I accidentally sat at gate 20 waiting. I clearly am bad at air travel. Ended up being the last person on the plane.

We went to Shango brunch for my mom's birthday. The food was delicious. I had cornmeal fried oysters with poached eggs over potatoes. My dad got the chicken and waffles. It looked so good. Mom got chicken and grits. We all got the gumbo which I auggest you try if you go there. Last year for her birthday he got the same thing at seabar.

Afterwards we went to my mom's for dessert and gifts. This year we got her lobster and giant crab legs. I am a big fan of food gifts. I hope she enjoys them.

Its not that I don't love it but how can this be considered new music

There was this ridiculous oversight bug where every year's december blogs were not showing up when you clicked the date cloud for 12/any year. Turns out $date < 12 doesn't leave any love for december oops. Thanks for catching it (e:tinypliny).

This hat might have been hidden forever

This lime ipad with the orange phone attachment is my favorite color scheme but when I saw it on my desk I couldn't help but think fisher price. It just doesn't look serious.

First I have this horrible cold. I am so sick of dry air. Even the humidifier doesn't cut it. I am seriously considering ditching this house in favor of one with radiators. I know the obvious answer would be to switch to something like radiators but we have been saying that for almost a decade. It seems like it would just be easier to start over with a new radiator equipped house.

I have been working 50+ hours on the work front - working on a new superior version of the intranet that I created a few years back. On monday we have the focus group and then I am that much closer to done with this phase and can hopefully go back to normal work weeks. There is no way I am working this much in the summer. I am excited about the new possibilities with new design and structure.

Then on wednesday I am off to NYC to visit with (e:hodown). I am so excited about restaurantravaganza. I have never been to NYC when I could afford to eat anything other than fast food and one dinner. Apparently, one of our stops is at a bacon meal that include bacon in every course. Dessert includes a chocholate bacon brownie. That could be awesome or sickening. I know I thought the voges bacon chocolate bar would be awesome but once I bought one for (e:mike) and it was sort of blah.

I promise I will blog a ton from NYC. Sadly, my new galaxy note is scheduled to arrive in Buffalo on Feb 17th - two days after I leave for NYC. This makes me sad because it has LTE capability and LTE is in NYC but not here. I saved $50 by pre-ordering and it doesn't officially land in stores until the 20th so I could not have bought it in NYC anyways.

I wish I had more exciting stories. I have been reading about computers, managing servers and programming so much that I have nothing else going on. Luckily, in a weird way, this awful cold times with when I had so much work to do. Being sick pretty much limited me to being in front of the computer.

At work we are finally implementing a policy requiring version control. (e:jim) is to thank for starting that crusade. I have been trying so hard to get it official since he left. You cannot believe how much drama surrounded it's implementation. Years later we are catching up to the rest of programming society. That is just how slow everything works in large gov't orgs.

On the tortoise front, they are still humping 2-4 hours a day. I thought at least they would have a mating season. Somehow the little one has figured out how to flip basra on his back. This is actually really bad for a large tortoise as their lungs are on top and get crushed when they are flipped over. I guess he deserves it.

Yesterday, (e:matthew) sent me this link to the most disgusting article about cat parasites that infect humans

It makes me hate cats even more but now I feel like the only acceptable solution is incineration, not blending, and especially not with hand blenders like I previously thought.

While I been sick the last couple days I made myseld these really good rice noodle bowls.

This one had collard greens, celery, dandelion, carrots, radish, mushrooms, muenster cheese, meatballs, and an egg.

The other night we tried to go to Mother's for a late night dinner. It was closed so we went over to Scarlet across the street. The artichoke francaise may be the best appetizer I ever had there. It was battered and pan fried large artichoke heart based with a caper sauce. I feel bad the picture is so high contrast and that I ate some before I snapped the pic. It looked really well presented before I dug in.