Wow, its been a while...

Since my last entry I put my first app on the Apple App Store and learned a lot about advertising and marketing while on a budget :p (and I am still learning new things). On top of that I've written three more apps which I should be submitting to the the App Store tomorrow :) I also got a bunch more apps under development. Its really neat how one can transition to seeing everyday things as business opportunities. I'll see something and think to myself "ya I can make an app for that".

My Aunt came to visit J and I two weeks ago, and one week ago J's parents came from China to visit. So J and I have had a packed house recently. Its been fun though. I think I have explored more of this city than I would have if all the guests hadn't come over.

Last night my Aunt took us to the Olive Garden for the first time. J and I both went for spagetti and meatballs; yummy :).

I've still been working my way through my Sherlock Holmes collection when I get free moments. Fortunately I am in "The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes" series so they are nice bite size amounts of literary genius :). The last one I read was "The Red-Headed League" which was both brilliant and funny.

Labor Day Weekend 2010 Awesomeness

During the labor day weekend J, myself and our friend N piled into our car and drove down to Galveston for some fun in the sun. It was sunny and the beaches were packed :).


We ended up hanging out at the beach for most of the morning. The water was nice and warm and there were only a few clouds in the sky.

It was lots of fun walking barefoot on the beach and wading through the warm water. I couldn't help but think about how in Canada at this time of year I would be dressing in warmer clothes (hehehe).

After the beach we went out for seafood at Willie G's. J and N had some cat fish and I had some coconut shrimp (yummy).

The rest of the afternoon was spent doing touristy things.

We checked out the shops along Strand St. and finally ended up checking out Moody Mansion.

Apparently the Moody's really liked the color red.

Finally, we made it back home and had some yummy soup that N had made the day before :)

J and Highway Driving

For the past couple of months I have been teaching J how to drive. She has come a long way and gotten really good at driving on city roads.

Originally I got J started learning how to drive with my old PS2, a steering and pedal controller and Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit 2. This actually worked amazingly well. The steering with the controller was quite realistic which got her up to speed really quickly. Although I am not sure I should of had her train on a game where the whole point is to speed and out run the cops. I guess I will count any other extra skills J picked up as a bonus :p.

Today I let J drive on the highway for the first time. She did pretty good. She wasn't used to going that fast and was white knuckling it the entire time which was kind of to be expected.

I think the more I let her drive on the highway the more I think she will get used to the speed.

I'm pretty proud of how J has progressed in her driving in such a short period of time :).

Fajita Sunday :)

Today is Fajita Sunday. J and I were inspired by J's birthday dinner at Escalante's and decided to see if we could hack the sizzling fajita recipe.

Hacking recipe's is one of our favorite past times. We'll go to a restaurant, have a bunch of dishes and invariably either J or I will say "I bet we could hack this". About 90% of the time we are able to completely hack the recipe (and a lot of the time we can make it even more awesome). The internet does help a lot though, there are lots of recipe hackers online.

So yesterday J and I went out and got the ingredients that we needed to make sizzling fajitas. When we got back we marinated the beef and made our own guacamole (mmmmmmhhhhhhhh yummy). We let the beef marinate over night.

Anyways enough about the details here is the finished product :).

Oh boy that was so good. Not quite Escalante's good but getting there. I think in about two or three more iterations we should have it perfected :D.

Hurricane Beef Jerky

J and I have been working on getting ready for hurricane season here in southern Texas. Everyone we know has been saying "This will be the worst hurricane season ever". I'm not sure if I believe them so far the weather has been great, but its still early in the season.

Anyways J and I have picked up a bunch of bottled water. We still need to get candles though we've been a bit lazy on that front. We thought we would be creative about non perishable foods to get us through power outages. I came up with the idea of making beef jerky in our oven. We don't need no stinking dehydrator :p.

We got 6.11 pounds of beef shank, cut them up into thin strips and marinated them overnight last Saturday. On Sunday we placed the beef on cookie trays using cookie racks and put them in the oven.

In the end we got about three pounds of beef jerky.

Unfortunately we made the hurricane beef jerky sooooo good that between the two of us it didn't even last one week :(. But that's okay because it just means that we have to make some more :D.

Sherlock Holmes and Following Your Dreams

I finished reading the first Sherlock Holmes book A Study in Scarlet. I didn't think I would relate to Sherlock Holmes' character, but I really did. All the movies I've seen have really mangled his character. Generally I expect movies to mangle any character that came from a novel or comic book. This happens to movies based on Marvel comics all the time :(.

The story was exciting and intriguing. I found that I couldn't put the book down. There were several places where I was thinking to myself, "How could Holmes know that?". Of course it was all logically explained and made perfect sense in the end.

The things that struck me about his character which I could relate to was that he was a scientist and that he literally created his own profession despite his colleges thinking that he was mad. Which is pretty cool.

I fancy myself to be a scientist. I find myself most in my element when I am researching something that interests me. Sometimes the funnest thing to do is to find a paper on a cool topic, reproducing the results, and then tinkering with it (hopefully expand on it and make it better). Or coming up with an idea and trying it out. The journey is the biggest reward in both of the above cases and when you are successful at it nothing beats that feeling of satisfaction.

When Watson first met Holmes at the hospital chemist lab, Holmes had just succeeded in one of his experiments and was overjoyed and that is when I started to relate to the character.

A good portion of the first few chapters of the book are about Watson trying to figure out what Holmes does for a living. Watson during these parts describes Holmes as having a wealth of knowledge in several different fields and without having a complete set of skills for any particular profession that he could think of. Later in the book Holmes reveals to Watson that he is a consulting detective. He claims that he is the only one in the world and that he made up the profession.

I really like the idea of people following their dreams and trying to make a living at what they like to do. I think nowadays too many people do things simply for money, which isn't wrong in itself, but I really think you should have joy in what you do.

My field is computer science and I really enjoy programming and certain areas of computer science are exceptionally fun. CS is a field that you have to enjoy working in. If you get into it solely for money you will want to get out of it really quick. It is hard but that is what makes it rewarding.

Like Holmes I am aspiring to create my own niche. I have my own set of goals that want to fullfil. You only live once and if you never try things when opportunities present themselves you'll end up regretting it. Right now I am aiming to live my life well and without regrets :D. Right now like Holmes, I am following my dreams :D.

My Mom's an Awesome Scrapbooker

This week J and I celebrated our 5th year anniversary :). We've been together for a total of 7 wonderful years now.

Every special occasion it seems my Mom will make a card for it. I believe she started scrap booking just over 4 years ago. She started out like I think most scrapbookers do with special papers and stamps. Since then she has really worked her way up. This is the card that she sent J and I for our anniversary.

Pretty cool, huh?