Ian in I.T. » My Life

Minecraft Update

ian — Tue, 05 Apr 2011 21:04:45 +0000

Our little world is coming along quite nicely. We have several things from Lord of the Rings built. Alex is building Asgard with the Rainbow bridge. Jake and I have been building a Roman Coliseum. There are lots of other things going on. Here’s a render of Minas Tirith.

Dungeons and Dragons

ian — Sat, 05 Feb 2011 19:42:40 +0000

Recently my life has been completely full of Dungeons and Dragons role playing. I normally play once a week on Wednesdays. Lately it has been at least twice. Last night I ran a session for my nephew and his friends. It was their first time and it went really well. They all wanted to know how many times a month we could play. I think they enjoyed themselves. I might be able to do once a month. It was fun to see them get into their characters. We’ll have to do it again soon.

Brian Regan

ian — Mon, 13 Sep 2010 15:41:52 +0000

My 2 boys are huge fans of Brian Regan and have so many of his jokes memorized. We were pretty excited when we saw that he was coming. We were lucky enough to have such a great neighbor/friend that manages the bookings for the Colosseum on campus. Kami asked if there was any way that we could meet Brian and he said he’d look in to it. Thursday he stopped Kami in the cul-de-sac to tell her that we should show up at 6:30 and we’d be able to meet him.

It’s a little weird knowing that you are going to meet a celebrity. What do you say? We figured we’d wing it. We also brought a box of pop-tarts for him to autograph. We showed up a little bit early and went to the place we were supposed to wait. The boys were being pretty crazy. They couldn’t keep still while we waited. Finally we were taken down to the locker room with about 15 other people. 2 of which were young reporters from the middle school who had been planning on video taping an interview but were not going to be able to because of time constraints or something. I’m not really sure of the reasons.

We got down to the locker room and waited a couple of minutes for Brian. He came in and worked his way around the room. My boys were kind of in shock. He shook Stuart’s hand and Kami told him he had his jokes memorized. We asked him to sign the box of pop-tarts and gave him a sharpie. It was the kind that you click instead of pulling off the top. He tried to pull the cap off and I pointed out that it was the click kind and he started to ham it up that he would have been there a while. I got a picture of that. Then he continued around the room.

When he got to the reporters one of them mentioned that they were supposed to interview him but something had happened. Brian was so sweet about it. He told them they could do the interview and then told his manager guy “I don’t know what happened with that but we need to fix it.” When he finished saying Hi to every one we all got some photos with him and then they cleared the room for the interview. It was really nice.

So then we went back upstairs to the show. It was really good. The opening act Kermit Apio was really funny. Not quite as goofy so he didn’t entertain the kids much. I thought he was great though. Then Brian came out and was hilarious. Stuart was laughing so hard. Andy fell asleep. My face hurt from laughing so much. He did all new material until his encore set where it ended up being requests. It was really a phenomenal show. Here’s some pictures.

If you don’t know why we brought pop-tarts, here’s his bit on that.

They have arrived

ian — Sun, 29 Aug 2010 23:59:49 +0000

We got the puppies yesterday. They are so adorable. We named them Malcolm and Jayne. Here are some pictures and videos.

Puppy Naming Poll

ian — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 23:25:11 +0000

I have setup a little web page to help us name our puppies. Vote on the ones you like. You can even submit your own names. Vote as many times as you like but please don’t abuse it. We won’t be using this strictly but we will take your opinions in to account.

Poll

Upcoming adventure

ian — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 16:14:59 +0000

This week we got a fence installed around our back yard. Really we just finished off the parts that our neighbors fences didn’t enclose. We have been telling the kids that we couldn’t have a dog because we didn’t have a fence. Well, now that we have remedied that situation and we are ready for a dog. We did some research about dogs and have decided that we like Beagles best. Kami started looking on all the websites we could find for dogs in the area but couldn’t really find what we wanted. She did find some scams though. Eventually she found a posting for some puppies that were just born and would be available on September 1st. We decided that we wanted to get 2, a boy and a girl. We drove to Kennewick, WA yesterday to meet the owners and the puppies. The kids were so excited and the puppies were so cute. We picked out the 2 that we wanted and put a little money down. We might be able to pick them up on the 27th. We are anxiously awaiting the call from the owner that it is time to get them. Here are some pictures from the trip. The first 2 pictures are of the 2 we picked out.

puppies

Now we need to pick names. We probably won’t settle on them until we get them home but we are open to suggestions.

Non-Newtonian fun

ian — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 03:22:52 +0000

My son has a book for boys and in it there was a recipe for Ooblek that he wanted to do. When I looked at it I saw that it was just corn starch and water. We’ve had a good time talking about physics and fluids. When he was 2 I would never have thought he’d be doing this.

Floating Arm Trebuchet revisited

ian — Sun, 25 Apr 2010 02:35:18 +0000

I am going to help a colleague build a trebuchet this week and so I figured I should get back to mine before then. So Jake came over today and we got it really close. We have to rig up a new trigger mechanism that isn’t connected to the projectile pouch. Other than that I think it is going to work awesome. Here’s a vid.

What says Christmas more than a giant Burrito

ian — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 21:49:52 +0000

Today we had the annual Terre View Ward Elder’s Quorum burrito social. Thanks to Bill for getting the burrito and using his honed giant burrito serving skills. I tried to get my own slice and ended up with a big pile-o-burrito on my plate. Needless to say, it was a delicious lunch and a good time with the guys. Looking forward to it next year.

Boise Magnetic

ian — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 18:53:53 +0000

On Monday, my brother in-law,Matt, and I went to Boise, ID to see Metallica. It was by far the best live show I’ve seen. They were genuinely excited to be there even though this was the 118th stop on the tour. The pyrotechnics were amazing. The sound was awesome. Every song they played was great. Here’s the set list. A bunch of oldies.

That Was Just Your Life (Death Magnetic)
The End of the Line (Death Magnetic)
For Whom The Bell Tolls (Ride the Lightning)
Holier Than Thou (The Black Album)
Fade to Black (Ride the Lightning)
Broken, Beat & Scarred (Death Magnetic)
Cyanide (Death Magnetic)
Sad But True (The Black Album)
One (And Justice for All)
All Nightmare Long (Death Magnetic)
The Day That Never Comes (Death Magnetic)
Master Of Puppets (Master of Puppets)
Damage, Inc. (Master of Puppets)
Nothing Else Matters (The Black Album)
Enter Sandman (The Black Album)
Stone Cold Crazy (Garage, Inc)
Hit the Lights (Kill ‘em All)
Seek and Destroy (Kill ‘em All)

One of the coolest things they do is offer a download of the recording of the concert. So now we can relive the whole experience. Boise ID 2009

I can’t wait till they come back.