Kurt and Joy's 20th Wedding Anniversary

Today is Kurt and Joy Snipes' 20th Wedding Anniversary!

I sent them an electronic anniversary card from Blue Mountain and then called and talked to Kurt on the phone at the end of the day. Today is also their son Keith's 15th birthday.

Wednesday night, Morgan, Jack, Sharon and I went to dinner at Romas Pizzeria. When we were in Logan's a couple of weeks ago, the person making a balloon animal for Jack told us that this was the best pizza place in Sacramento. The pizza was excellent!

Running Amok

Morgan got into a confrontation with her mother on Monday night and started walking with nothing more than a cell phone that died just as she got coverage. Before the cell phone died, she had sent me an SMS message to pick her up, but I then I could not get in touch with her to find out where she was. By the time, she sent me a message she had already been walking for almost an hour and a half. Coordinating with Drew, he eventually picked her up after she had been walking for more than two hours. Drew took her to a friend's house where she spent Monday night. I picked up Morgan up in the middle of the day on Tuesday. I talked very briefly to her mother letting her know where Morgan was.

Although I do not agree with Morgan's strategy of hiking away from her mom's house, it is difficult for me not to be somewhat sympathetic. The events surrounding her mother's life over the last nine months are bizarre and have resulted in them moving three times in the last six months.

Cisco Executive Briefing

A large group from Sutter Health spent the day at the Cisco Systems Executive Briefing Center in San Jose. The agenda topics included: Sutter Health's environment and expectations; Cisco Systems' Storage Networking Current State, Direction, and Value for Customers; a Case Study: Cisco Systems' Information Technology; a tour of their data center with a focus on Storage Architecture, a review of management processes and tools; and a design discussion.

I came to two miscellaneous conclusions from the presentations. First, we need to be looking at technology that will allow us to use iSCSI connectors to access the SAN. Second, Sutter needs to incorporate more low end storage like NAS into our storage model.

Lazy Sunday

We had a lazy Sunday. Sharon spent part of the afternoon buying and taking food to her parents.

After helping get Jack to bed, I took off for the Courtyard by Marriott Hotel in San Jose. We have another meeting with Cisco in San Jose at 8:00 a.m. on Monday.

By going down on Sunday night, I hoped to avoid the traffic. I surprised to find myself in stop and go traffic going through Tracy and the Altamont Pass at 10:00 p.m. at night!

Hulquist's

We went to a graduation party that Larry and Jeana Hultquist had for their daughters. The oldest graduated from Humboldt State, while the youngest graduated from high school.

Waxy.org: Daily Log: InfocomBot for AOL Instant Messenger

Waxy.org: Daily Log: InfocomBot for AOL Instant Messenger

Public Toilet

A public toilet with one way mirrors in Basel, Switzerland!

BBC NEWS: Art's glass toilet tests courage (include video footage)

Las Vegas SUN: VegasBeat -- Timothy McDarrah: O'Neal may find deal fit for a King

From the Las Vegas Sun, O'Neal may find deal fit for a King.

Another Marathon?

I still have some notion of running another marathon. I have been starting to think about running the California International Marathon in December 2006 and then taking another shoot at the American River 50 in April of 2007.

I had a strong run at lunch today. After a mile plus warm-up, I run successive miles at 8:56, 8:48, 8:38 and 8:20 followed by a mile plus cool-down. Running with Wallen last weekend was good for working on my speed.

Larkin July 1983

Joe Larkin, July 1983

Kings Update

According to today's Sacramento Bee, the Kings have only six players under contract: Chris Webber, Brad Miller, Mike Bibby, Doug Christie, Bobby Jackson and Stojakovic. The Kings are in the process of formulating a qualifying offer for Darius Songilia that will allow them to match any offer he receives. The Kings hope to re-sign unrestricted free agent Vlade Divac, but that it is not a given.

The Sacamento Bee article went on to say that the Kings could have their sights set on guard. In the NBA draft tonight, the Kings drafted two guards: Kevin Martin and Ricky Minard.

Right after the Kings drafted Martin, ESPN was showing film of him and the analysts were comparing him physically to Doug Christie.

Here is a summary on both players from ESPN:

Kevin Martin
SHOOTING GUARD (6-7, 185) WESTRN CAROLINA
SELECTED BY SACRAMENTO, ROUND 1, PICK 26, OVERALL PICK 26

Notes: One of the best scorers in the country both his sophomore and junior seasons. Averaged 22.8 ppg as a sophomore. Ranked second nationally in scoring this season with a 24.8 ppg average.

Upside: An explosive scorer that gets it done from the perimeter and by relentlessly taking the ball to the basket. Averaged nearly 10 free throw attempts per game shooting at an 82 percent clip. Has a long wing span that allows him to defend multiple positions. A very good athlete.

Downside: His thin, rail-like body concerns some scouts. His build reminds some of Detroit's Tayshaun Prince. He takes a lot of three pointers but doesn't shoot them with much accuracy. He shot 33 percent from behind the arc last season; 31 percent the year before. His assist-to-turnover ratio is awful.

Ricky Minard
SHOOTING GUARD (6-4, 198) MOREHEAD ST
SELECTED BY SACRAMENTO, ROUND 2, PICK 19, OVERALL PICK 48

Notes: Led the Ohio Valley Conference in scoring (21.8 ppg), and was fourth in rebounding (7.3 rpg) and assists (5.1 apg). Originally declared for the 2003 NBA draft before withdrawing.

Positives: Great athleticism. Does a little bit of everything. His 5.1 assist average have some scouts wondering if he could be the second coming of Ronald Murray. Has a nice shot from midrange. Creates most of his scoring opportunities off the dribble. Good defender. Tough.

Negatives: Size is an issue. He's turnover prone. A very streaky shooter with questionable NBA three point range.

An ESPN analyst grading the draft gives the Kings a "B-". The analyst actually prefers Minard to Martin.

The Condensed Bill Clinton

The Condensed Bill Clinton - Slate reads it so you don't have to.

Larkin's Birthday

Joe Larkin's Birthday

Sharon took off for San Francisco in the late afternoon. She is staying overnight in the city and attending a seminar on intellectual property rights on Thursday.

The Adventures of Seinfeld & Superman

American Express is producing short films starring Jerry Seinfield and Superman. The second webisode titled "Hindsight is 20/20" can be found on the web at The Adventures of Seinfeld & Superman.

Funeral Services for Jennifer

I attended the funeral services for the employee who died in an automobile accident last week.

Sharon and her two brothers took her parents out to dinner at Silva's Sheldon Inn for her mother's birthday; her mom will be 83 tomorrow.

The Kings lost swingman Gerald Wallace in the expansion draft. The team has also been informed by guard Anthony Peeler that he will not exercise his contract option and will become a free agent July 1.

Orinda Country Club

I spent the day playing golf in a Sutter Hospice and VNA Charity golf tournament at the Orinda Country Club with John Hummel, Todd Peterson and Debbie Sleigh. We were eight over with nine boggeys, eight pars and one birdie. I putted better than normal (sinking a couple of long putts to help us save par), but could not get my drives going off the tee.

Father's Day 2004

We had a very lazy Father's Day. After working on the house and yard for big parts of the last three weekends (plus lots of weeknights), we did as little as possible. Sharon and Jack got me a new pair of sunglasses for Father's Day.

A precious few you should hold on...

The Wallens took off early Sunday morning to go to his parents in Redding. Having the Wallens stay with us for a couple of days, talking about their upcoming twenty fifth wedding anniversary and going to Connor's wedding made me think of the lyrics to a song:

"Understand that friends come and go, but with a precious few you should hold on. Work hard to bridge the gaps in geography and lifestyle, because the older you get, the more you need the people who knew you when you were young."

Photo Album from Connor's Wedding

I put together an on-line photo album from Connor's wedding at:

http://www.heringer.org/connorwedding/index.htm

Brunch and then off to the Wedding

After our morning run, Wallen, Nathan, Jack and I took off to go to the grocery store to pick up a couple more items for brunch. We stopped by the hotel where most of the wedding party was staying. Everyone was recovering from the rehearsal dinner and trying to figure out where Mikey was; he disappeared for over an hour claiming that he was working out in the fitness room.

Eventually winding our way back to the house, we had a brunch for a number of the people going to the wedding. In addition to the four Wallens, Greg Chabrier stopped by with his two youngest, Hunter came by after Loren's basketball game with a brief appearance by Danny, and Drew and Kaylen stopped off on their way back from Irvine.

Wallen, Jack and I ended up running Hunter out to where the groomsmen were getting ready. This turned out to be fortuitous. Geselbracht had gotten his signals crossed and was not where the limo was picking up the groomsmen. Unfortunately, Geselbracht had Mikey's tux! We took Mikey back to the hotel to meet with Geselbracht.

Afterwards, we rushed back to the house with just enough time to get ready to go to the wedding. Leaving Jack with a babysitter, Sharon and I followed by the Wallens took off for the wedding about 3:40 p.m. The wedding was held at the Wheeler's home just off the River Road. It was a very nice wedding and reception. There were a number of people at the wedding that I have not seen in years, including Pete Bradley, Tib Belza, Ray Perez, Paul Salisbury and Steve Wiley. Sharon and I had a great time. We headed up getting home a little after 10:00 p.m.

8:08's

Wallen and I were up and out for another early run. We were about 20 seconds faster through the first three miles, running the third mile in 7:58. I faded a little in the second half and we ended up running 6.4 miles in 52:01 for a an 8:08 pace.

Dinner

Jill, Becky and Nathan flew in on Friday night. Sharon made cornflake chicken, scalloped potatoes and asparagus for dinner.

8:03

Up early, Wallen and I went out for an early run. We covered 6.4 miles in 51:30, an average pace of 8:03! Wallen was talking and laughing the whole time, while most of my responses consisted of grunts. I am sure that I will not be able to walk tomorrow...

Dinner at Moxie's

It is going to be a busy weekend. With Connor's wedding on Saturday, a number of people are coming into town. Wallen flew in Thursday afternoon. He, Sharon and I went out to dinner at Moxie's. The food was excellent.

Apple Macintosh 128k

As part of getting the guest room cleaned out for the Wallens, I came across an original Apple Macintosh 128k. I got this computer in September of 1984 about two and a half months before Drew was born. It is almost twenty years old!





The guest room closet also included an IBM Thinkpad 765 that I used from 1996 through 1998 and an Apple Newton Messagepad 2100. I have started saving some of the documents from both of these machines. The documents include a long letter I wrote in August of 1991 detailing the break-up of my first marriage over the first nine months of that year and trips notes from my trip in April of 1995 to visit the Nooter's in Moscow, our honeymoon trip to Italy in October of 1996 and our first anniversary trip to Grand Cayman in October of 1997.

Financial Plan

Sharon and I met with our financial planner this morning, Adam Andelin, to work on the annual update to our financial plan. This is something that we started in 2002. I have been very pleased with the work that they have done for us. Adam is an associate of David Stone and I would recommend them to anyone looking for a financial planner.

Updates from the Nooter's

Barb Nooter has posted a number of letters describing their experiences living in Tanzania at:

http://nooter.blogspot.com/

She has also posted a number of pictures from their safari, of their house in Dar es Salam and of their day at the goat races! You can find these pictures at:

http://nooter.textamerica.com/

Unsettled day at work

Monday was a difficult day at work; a woman who works for one of the teams that reports to me was killed in an automobile accident. I found out from human resources shortly after I walked in the door and before anyone on any of the teams. I spent most of the morning talking to the managers that report to me and getting them to talk to their individual teams. Donna has largest group of employees, including the team where the woman worked; she spent the most time talking to groups of employees.

Another day working on the house

We spent a long day working on the house, including finishing up the painting, power washing the front entry and working in the yard. I ended the day after 11:00 p.m. getting a new window shade hung in the guest bedroom.

Miscellaneous Links

Jack enjoyed playing Railroad Tycoon this weekend!

Another animated Beatles video!

How AirTunes Works

end of the season party for baseball

With Connor's wedding next weekend and the Wallen staying with us, Sharon and I are making a push to do a few more things around the house. We worked in the morning cleaning up the guest room.

In the afternoon, we went to a party for the end of Jack's baseball season. The kids swam and played in a bouncy house. After a barbecue, the coaches passed out the trophies.


After the party, we spent the rest of the day painting two more walls RED!

Bush/Zombie Reagan 2004

The campaign has begun; check out the Bush/Zombie Reagan 2004
web site!

Make sure that you read the Frequently Asked Questions!

2004 SHSS IT Golf Tournament

Three out of the last four years, Donna and Kevin Gainsley, Sharon and I have played in the SHSS IT Golf Tournament. Last year, Kevin, Donna and I played with Jane Wong. This is the first time I have played golf since Rudy put together the group to play with the CEO last November!

Given how little Donna, Sharon or I have played, we did pretty well. We were +4; +1 on the front nine and +3 on the back nine. Although we failed to get a birdie, I think that this is the best score we have posted in the tournament. Rudy, Lew, Dave and Sam Samms posted a 56, -10.

Today was Jack's last day of kindergarten!

Apple - AirPort Express

One of the things that I have looking for over the last year is a device that would let me distribute music within our house using the 802.11 wifi network. When Larkin and I toured the Intel's Information Technology Innovation Center, they had one piece of hardware on display for distributing music using wifi, but I could never find the vendor on the web.

Airport Express

Apple has announced a piece of hardware that comes close to what I think I want. The AirPort Express with AirTunes brings your iTunes music in a PC into wherever you have a stereo or a set of powered speakers. Based on the documentation, you connect your sound system to the audio port on the AirPort Express Base Station using an audio cable and AirTunes lets you play your iTunes music through your powered speakers wirelessly. iTunes automatically detects the connection of your remote speakers, so you just have to select them in the popup list that appears at the bottom of the iTunes window and click play. The Airport Express is not shipping until July; I have one on order.

I am a big fan of iTunes. I have bought about one album a month from iTunes since the windows version was released. More importantly, I have not bought music from any other source during this period.

Monkey Bar

Rudy organized a going away party after work for Dave Hamilton at the Monkey Bar. Dave is leaving Sutter to start his own consulting firm.

10k plus at lunch

I have a 6.4 mile out and back that I will run at lunch when I am at Mather and can create a hole in my schedule. About 2/3's of this course is on an old bike trail that loops around the east end of the Mather airport. Today, I cruised out running about 8:30s for the first four miles and then carried a 7:52 over the fifth mile. This is a pretty good time running by myself; normally, I have to chasing a rabbit like Wallen to have that kind of split!

Exchange mail server down!

Jack played in his sixteenth and final baseball game of the season!



About 10:30 a.m. on Tuesday, we lost one of the exchange mail servers that support about 700 people, including the CEO, COO, CFO and CIO. We have a number of distributed exchange servers that support almost 25,000 users.

It is amazing how important e-mail has become as a tool for communicating and documenting. The level of angst that senior management started to exhibit after only a couple of hours without email (sent real time to their blackberries!) is intellectually interesting.

Not only does this team report to me, but I was executive on call for the week. With the system still down Tuesday evening, I ended up heading to the data center about 11 p.m. to run incident command. Working with Microsoft, the team finally got the server up and running a little after 1:00 a.m. By the time, I got back home and in bed it was close to 2:30 a.m. Unfortunately, I had meetings at CPMC in San Francisco. I dragged myself down to the bay area for the meetings and then back to Jack's game, LONG DAY...

Morgan's schedule for her senior year in high school

When school starts in August, Morgan will be a senior at Union Mine High School. Her schedule for next year includes:

jazz band - zero block;

ap literature;

ap statistics;

choir;

drama 1;

theater tech;

dance 1 & 2;

italian 3 - independent study;

intermediate instruments (for practice time); and,

gov & econ - graduation requirement.

The class schedule from her just finished junior year is here!

Mazatlan February 1988

Moving some stuff around in one of the bedrooms, I came across a box of pictures, including these pictures taken in February of 1988 during a trip to Mazatlan.

The fishing on this trip was a very different experience than the recent Cabo trip. Rather than a big, comfortable boat in the middle of the Cortez Sea, we were in little tubs just outside the harbor. While the boat with Connor, Geselbracht and Bachman actually caught a couple of nice fish, the boat with Chabrier, Hunter, Nooter and I caught nothings but eels. We ran our own contest for most eels and biggest eel!

Clicking on the photo will open a larger copy!

More painting

I spent a couple hours after dinner taping and painting. Unbeknownst to me until this weekend, the project also included painting the niche four different colors.

We spent all day working on the inside of the house.

One of the books that I have read over the last month is My Losing Season by Pat Conroy. The story is mostly about Conroy's senior year playing basketball for the Citadel with flashbacks to other parts of his life. The book is very well written. It makes my realize how poorly written some of the other books I have been reading are. I need to stop wasting my time reading books like Tom Clancy's Op Center, Net Force and Power Plays novels!

My reading list from the last twelve years has been updated and is on-line at: http://www.heringer.org/books.htm.

Logan's Roadhouse

Jack played in his fifteenth baseball game of the season. With one game to go, he has definitely made a lot of progress with his hitting and fielding. Like the rest of the team, he is still a little unclear on the situational stuff (i.e. which base to throw to).



We spent the rest of the day making a run to home depot and working on the house. We went out to dinner at Logan's Roadhouse. The chain claims that the restaurants are modeled after 1930's and 1940's roadhouses.

I have included a couple of examples in the past of google bombs, including miserable failure, waffles and Jew. Now someone has turned the whole idea into a contest. DarkBlue.com is giving away an Apple Mini iPod and a Sony Flat Screen Monitor to anyone who can take their page to #1 for a non-commercial, nonsensical search term - currently with no search results. In my feeble attempt to help someone win, I am linking to Nigritude Ultramarine.

Still working on the Upstairs Hallway

I spent another hour plus after dinner working on the upstairs hallway. All of the moulding is now in place. I have gotten everything to the point where I can finish the project tomorrow by touching up the paint. With house guests coming in two weeks, Sharon has plans to paint and repaint parts of the house. We will start on these projects tomorrow.

At work, we kicked off the budgeting for 2005 over the last two days. It is hard for me to start thinking about next year already. In the same breath, it is hard for me to believe that it is already June. Morgan finished her junior year in high school a week ago, Jack will complete kindergarten at end of the coming week, and Drew comes back from his first year at college in two weeks.

Generic Names for Soft Drinks by County

Generic Names for Soft Drinks by County

sacbee.com -- Sports -- Questions all around: Q&A with Rick Adelman

Larkin sent me a link to an interview in today's Sacramento Bee that Mark Kreidler did with King's Coach Rick Adelman. It is excellent. There are several quotes from Adelman that ring true to me, including:

And I think we obviously need one more big guy [me too!]. You look at our team, and I think it's pretty obvious that the area we got hurt in was people attacking the basket on us. So I think if we can become more athletic and become more of a factor at deterring people attacking the basket, it's certainly going to enhance our defense.

From my standpoint, I'd certainly like for him [Divac] to come back. I think he's so valuable to this team, on and off the court. He has had a huge impact on this team, and if you didn't have him, not only would you be missing a skilled player, but also the glue - a major part of the glue that held this team together.

you start with Mike Bibby and Doug Christie, and Peja, Webber, Brad (Miller) and Bobby - that's six solid, very solid NBA players who all are proven. That's a heck of a lot more than most teams have...

sacbee.com -- Sports -- Divac isn't ready to quit

There is an article in today's Sacramento Bee titled Divac isn't ready to quit by Marty McNeal. In the article, Divac says:

I'm going to play one more season... At the end of next year, I'll see how I feel. My first choice, like I've always said, is to play with the Kings. I want to retire here if possible. I love the town and the fans.

More Baseball

Jack played in his fourteenth baseball game of the year.

There are some pictures on Drew's web site from his appearance at the Cosmic Cafe on March 28th. Drew has an album of five songs that he worked on over Christmas break. He recorded a couple of more songs during spring break. Once school is out in June, Drew will be pulling together an album of 10 or 12 songs.

Morgan's SAT scores

Morgan got a 720 verbal(!) and a 510 math on her SATs. The SAT test will be changing in less than a year. The perfect score will rise from 1,600 to 2,400. The extra 800 points cover a new, third section designed to evaluate writing prowess adding 45 more minutes to the three-hour exam. The new section includes a a 25-minute timed essay.

I spent most of the day at Glen Cove for the SOMA Meeting; this is the steering committee for Sutter Health's outpatient electronic medical record project.

Multimedia Links

Here are a couple of interesting multimedia links from the web. The first is a flash cartoon video of the Beatles' Come Together. The second is a movie trailer for The Incredibles, a Disney/Pixar animated film coming this fall.

Divac to the Lakers or Clippers?

At the end of Mark Heisler's column titled In the East, There's No Guarantee of Offense in the May 30 edition of the Los Angeles Times, he says that:

"Clubhouse leader Vlade Divac is telling friends he'll be a Laker or a Clipper next season."