Ready or Not

Last weekend I traveled to Bakersfield with my quartet, Ready or Not, to compete at the district level barbershop competition. Bascially what this means is that 100 quartets competed at the division level, and only about 20 were invited to compete at district. We sang on the first night, and only 10 were invited (qualified) to sing the second night. In the end, we took 6th place (out of roughly 100) so we were very excited about that. If you'd like to see us in action, watch these videos of the contest. The first one is the 2nd night of the contest--I think we sounded a lot better the second night so I'm posting it first, just in case you only want to watch one of them.

For more info on our quartet, we have a website: www.ReadyOrNotQuartet.com

September Pics Are Up

At the end of each month I post whatever pictures I took that month onto my flickr account. This way I can keep track of what I've uploaded and what I haven't. Mostly, as you know, all the pictures are of my kids. SO CUTE! I think I uploaded about 60 pictures so if you'd like to browse through them, see my photostream by clicking here.

Otherwise, enjoy some of my favorites here below:

Drive Through Yosemite.... From Home!

Most of you know that Google Maps has the awesome "street view" option. This morning I had the idea of seeing if street views were available in Yosemite. Yea, they were! I enjoyed driving around with my mouse. Makes me feel like I'm there. You should try it too.

Here are a couple of screen shots I was able to capture from my drive:

That's Half Dome on the right:

Mission Photos

I estimate that I took around 500 or so photos on my mission. This, of course, was back in the archaic days before the advent of digital photography. Saddly, my HUGE stack of mission photos is just sitting in a bin somewhere in the garage. One of these days I need to dig them out and spend 74 thousand hours scanning them in so as to preserve them.

I actually attempted that about 6 or 7 years ago. I scanned in merely about 50 photos. Apparantly, to my dismay, I only scanned them in at SUPER low quality. Nonetheless I found those scanned photos hidden in an obscure place on my hard drive. So after reliving the memories for a few moments I uploaded them to Flickr.

If you'd like to browse through the few I have, click here to view my mission photos Flickr set.

Otherwise I've posted a few of them here on the blog. Enjoy:

Heroes is Back, Among Others

The best show to grace TV airwaves is back on the air. Heroes delivered a fantastic 2 hour premier last Monday and this coming Monday cannot come fast enough.

As with previous seasons, this is the one show that I simply cannot DVR and watch later. I must watch it live, or at least only 15 minutes behind (enough to fast forward through commercials).

So far the season has started off wonderfully.

In addition to Heroes, there are a few other geek-favorites of mine that are starting up. I DVR'd the first episode of the new Knight Rider but haven't watched it yet. The second season of Terminator has started and, in my opinion, it is a fantastic show--love it!

And don't count out Smallville. Going on thier 8th season, this one has started off strong. I LOVE that Lana is out of the picture but I hate that Lex is gone too. The show isn't what it used to be without him. Still, the new producers have churned out a few great season-starting episodes. While the dynamic has changed over the years, I still easily count this as one of my top favorite 3 shows.

I started watching Fringe. I've seen the first two eps so far. It's supposed to be the new JJ Abrams show. So far I'm not terribly impressed. I think I'll give it one more episode to hook me in but somehow that doesn't seem likely. It's kind of like an X-files but seems to drag for me.

I'm interested in seeing "My Own Worst Enemy", starting next month. Looks interesting.

And of course there's Lost. Hasn't started yet, but I'm still waiting like a boy on Christmas morning for it to get underway.

I also enjoy Criminal Minds. The season premier recorded, but I haven't gotten around to it yet. Cold Case is good, hasn't started yet.

I don't typically think of myself as a huge TV watcher but looking at this list, you'd wonder how I have time to do anything else. I didn't even mention American Idol or College Football.

But in the end there is only one hierarchy of shows--the top three. I could probably give up the rest if forced to at gunpoint, but these three would have me questioning mortality if given the same option:

1. Heroes
2. Lost
3. Smallville

Enjoy the season.