Blog Title: edpaffjr.com

Not NAS The Rapper

Another day with some downtime for the website. My apologies for this one, as I cannot blame it on Comcast or any outside source. My hard drive filled up completely on my server. I had absolutely no space remaining. I’ve been looking into buying some more drives or possibly getting a NAS setup. I’m still reading up on this though, so feel free to add suggestions. For now, I need to remember to move some files that don’t need to be on the server off of it and onto my other PC. I hope I can get to that tomorrow.

After Five Years

Earlier this week was my official five year anniversary for my current job. The time has flown by! I was able to select a gift for my years of service from a website catalog and chose a globe. I figured I would use it more than some fancy pen. Now I just need to find a good spot for it in the home office. As far as work goes, things are continuing to improve after a recent shift of our organizational groupings. At first I was not very excited to be back to quality assurance testing full time, but I am slowly taking on more advanced testing tasks. Hopefully things continue to improve.

Racquet Or Racket?

So I bit the bullet and joined the DU rec center that Kim joined over a month ago. We’ve really been getting into racquetball and are playing two or three times a week. We have definitely improved since the first few times, and can now play a regular match (best of three) in under an hour. We got some rackets, goggles, balls, and gloves as a Christmas gift that have been seeing a lot of use already. I’m still the overall leader, but Kim has been known to win a match or two from time to time.

I have my first hockey game in quite some time tonight. I’m hoping that I remember how to skate.

Paff’s Blue Ribbon

Saturday was mostly dedicated to my most recent hobby, homebrewing. My parents sent a starting homebrew equipment kit from Midwest Supplies to me as a Christmas gift. In addition to everything I needed to start brewing, it also included the needed ingredients for my very first batch of beer, an amber ale. So I successfully (at least so far) steeped some grains in the large pot, added some malt extract, brought the mix to a boil, added hops to the boil, cooled down the wort, transferred to a fermenting bucket, and added the yeast. I think those were the basic steps I took so far. Oh yeah, lots of sanitizing various equipment as well. I checked on it this morning to find some bubbling in the airlock that sits on top of the fermenter, which is a great sign. Now I must wait for the fermenting to finish, at which time I will attempt bottling.

Still A Great Season

Happy New Year! Last night we headed downtown to Jackson’s to watch the Cincinnati Bearcats take on Virginia Tech in the Orange Bowl. For the few UC fans in the house, things started off great with a quick touchdown less than two minutes into the game. Unfortunately it was nothing but Hokie scores after that. Though the final score was 20-7, it was actually much closer than that. The end result boiled down to missed opportunities, including one missed field goal, VT stopping the rush on a fourth and goal, and four interceptions, one of which was in the offensive end zone. Had that one catch gone the other way, it could have been a completely different game. No reason to make excuses though, making their first ever BCS bowl appearance was quite an accomplishment for Cincinnati, and I look forward to the coming years.

New Firmware For New Year

Last night, I noticed that the Wii was not connecting to the internet as it should. I checked my computer and sure enough the internet connection was down, though all lights on the cable modem and router looked okay. I gave up on it until this morning, hoping that the issue would resolve itself. Well it didn’t, so I first removed the router from my connection and plugged my PC directly into the cable modem. After refreshing everything, my connection was working again. So I was able to get onto work, but I really needed to get the router back inline so everything else would work.

So after awhile, I plugged the router back in, restored the factory settings, did a hard reset, and still no internet. I was baffled! So I started to think that maybe the router had gone bad. I even went so far as to look for a new one online, which I could pick up during lunch from Best Buy. I then remembered all of the open source firmware available for the router, Linksys WRT54G, and decided to try one of these out. I figured the worst I could do was completely break the router, which was already not working for me. After consulting with my adviser, I opted for DD-WRT and quickly got it installed. Incredibly, it worked right away! All I had to do from there was re-configure all of my port forwards, wireless security, etc. I don’t know why the official firmware wasn’t working for me, but I’m glad this one is, and I’m really liking the advanced functionality.

My Year In Cities 2008

My travels for the year are finally over and for the third year in a row here is my year in cities:

• Denver, CO *
• Avon, CO
• Steamboat Springs, CO
• Tabernash, CO
• Keystone, CO
• Silverthorne, CO
• Cincinnati, OH *
• Breckenridge, CO *
• Canon City, CO
• Lee’s Summit, MO *
• Cedar City, UT
• Salt Lake City, UT
• Paris, France **
• Barcelona, Spain
• Cannes, France **
• Monte Carlo, Monaco **
• Nice, France **
• Pisa, Italy **
• Florence, Italy **
• Rome, Italy **
• Naples, Italy **
• Pompeii, Italy **
• Sorrento, Italy **
• Capri, Italy **
• Venice, Italy **
• Split, Croatia **
• Palermo, Italy **
• Minster, OH
• Baltimore, MD

Each city listed indicates at least one night spent there. Those cities marked with an * were visited multiple times on non-consecutive days. And those cities marked with ** are ones I did not actually stay in but were visited during our honeymoon cruise. We spent a good amount of time in each place and felt that they should be included.

Wii Wish You A Merry Christmas

It was definitely a Wii Christmas for us. My brother got us a Wii Fit, which was delivered last week and we’ve already started using. I love all of the balance games, which I really think should help strengthen my ankle even more. Also, shortly before we left Denver for Cincinnati, Kim gave me Rock Band special edition including the game, one guitar, a set of drums, and the vocal mic. We busted that out of the box for a few quick songs before leaving town. Kim’s family also got the same thing, and I definitely played my fair share of the game with our new band, The Three Wisemen. My family also got us some more Wii games, including Rock Band 2 and a Shaun White snowboarding game to play on the Wii Fit board. I haven’t played those yet, but you can be sure it won’t be long before I do.

Winter Dew Tour

Sunday we got in our third day of the season, once again at Breckenridge. The conditions were nice, a bit icy in spots, but I’m sure with the dumping that’s been going on yesterday into today that has changed. But we decided on Breckenridge not because of the snowfall, but because of the event taking place that day, the first stop of the Winter Dew Tour, a three stop skiing and snowboarding competition. It was a multi-day event, with Sunday being the last day and host to one of the biggest draws of the competition the finals in both mens and womens superpipe.

Somehow we missed the women, as I thought they didn’t start until 11. But when we arrived shortly after 11, we found out that the mens competition was about to start and that Gretchen Bleiler had already won. You may remember her from the 2006 Olympics, where she took home the silver behind fellow American Hannah Teter, who is also participating in the Winter Dew Tour. Anyway back to what we actually saw, the mens finals, where we got to watch snowboarding champions such as Shaun White and Danny Kass, winners of gold and silver respectively at the same 2006 Olympics. It was a thrill to see these guys pulling off some amazing tricks in the monstrous halfpipe. But this competition was anyone’s game, so it wasn’t too surprising that neither of these guys won, though Shaun White did get second after a great second run. The winner of this event was Danny Davis with a score of 94.75 after a run comprising of a switch backside 720, a backside 900, followed up with back-to-bak 1080s, and finally a frontside 900. Incredible.

Here’s a photo I shot from the bottom of the halfpipe, the only one I got before the camera batteries went dead. If you look on the right side, all the way at the top, you can see a small figure in the middle of a trick.

NOW 2008

I’m much later than years prior, but I finally wrapped up this year’s NOW That’s What Ed Calls Music CD. What can I say, it was a busy year! You will definitely notice a wedding theme to this one, which is applicable since there are a number of songs included that we used for wedding DVD’s, etc.

• Ray LaMontagne - You Are The Best Thing
• Jason Mraz - I’m Yours
• Brett Dennen - Make You Crazy
• O.A.R. - Whatever Happened
• The Beautiful Girls - I Thought About You
• Kings Of Leon - Sex On Fire
• Vampire Weekend - A-Punk
• Fleet Foxes - Ragged Wood
• My Morning Jacket - I’m Amazed
• Will Hoge - Dirty Little War
• Virginia Coalition - Stars Align
• Ingrid Michaelson - The Way I Am
• Mike Doughty - 27 Jennifers
• Michael Franti & Spearhead - Say Hey (I Love You)
• Newton Faulkner - Gone In The Morning
• Eric Hutchinson - Rock & Roll
• Sara Bareilles - Many The Miles

I won’t be printing of many (if any) copies of the compilation like I have in the past. There simply isn’t enough time, and I think most people want it on their iPods and mp3 players anyway. So the entire thing is obviously available for download from this site and I’ve also added it to sendspace.com (download link toward the bottom of the page), which should be a much faster download. As always I hope you enjoy it and happy holidays.

I should have mentioned that if you do want a hard copy of the CD, the artwork is included in the zip file so you can print it out and make one yourself. :)