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.

I want this 3d home mill so bad. I think having one could get me to love 3d modeling again. The thing thar got me disinterested was the output format being always video or images. To be able to bring the creations to live would make the art much more fun. Imagine how awesome a slightly larger and sturdier one if these could be for home restoration projects.