When Jacque and I went to Alaska before her rotation there, we took a few pictures.  I've been playing with Picasa's geotagging feature and they now have a map view of picture albums.  Check it out if you like, it's kinda neat.

http://picasaweb.google.com/bschrock/200704Alaska/photo#map

From Stillwater Flood

Jacque and I went out a snapped a few pictures after the June 1st flash flooding in Stillwater.  Boomer Lake went over its banks a bit, even going over all 3 sides of the spillway (two of the sides are a couple feet higher than the main spillway).  I had a difficult time getting home that evening, having to turn around four times to avoid going into high water.  Thankfully our house isn't in a low lying area and had enough drainage.  We did have a nice pond in our back yard though.

There was a nice view when it was all over though...

The second day of the conference was pretty easy for us.  We only went to the exhibits, and spent the rest of the day exploring the San Jose area. 

We talked to a few companies at the exhibits, including Mathworks and SlickEdit.  There were a lot of companies there, and a lot of attendees as well.  Here are a few pics of the main exhibit area:

Click for larger version:

As for the important part of today, we spent a lot of time on the VTA busses and light rail trying to find places to eat.  Google local got the location of our chosen lunch establishment wrong, and I forgot to check their website for better directions, so we walked around Santa Clara for a while until finding another bus.  Luckilly, Krungthai has two locations and we at least found one of them, and had a pretty good lunch.  Black Angus was on the menu for dinner, with dessert at Cold Stone Creamery.  We ate pretty well today, but with all the walking we did, hopefully it didn't do too much damage.

We also got to see some more of San Jose, including the Adobe building, The Tech museum, HP Pavilion (I don't have a picture of that one), and other places.

The Red Team HUMMER from the DARPA Grand Challange was also parked outside the conference:

I'm sure some of you will be shocked to see something new here, since it's been quite a while since I've updated.  Enjoy it while it lasts, and I'm not making any promises this time about regular updates...

This week, I'm attending the Embedded Systems Conference in San Jose, CA with a co-worker.  It's pretty much a nerd-fest talking about computer systems other than traditional PCs (everything from iPods to industrial robots and controllers in cars).  The first day was the Microprocessor Summit, so we spent the day in four classes about (guess what) microprocessors.

The first class went over the results from a survey of developers.  There wasn't much that was interesting except that bluetooth doesn't seem to be as much of a big deal this year and that only 44% of design projects are on time.  The James Spader look-alike speaker did manage to keep it interesting though.  The second class was new product announcements from three companies, while the last two were mostly about existing products. 

The speaker/moderator:

James Spader:
 

More importantly, we found a buffet place to eat on Sunday night; and as Bucky is pointing out, they deliver.

The food at the conference on Monday was also pretty good, and there were plenty of snacks.  Therefore, I'd say the first day of the conference was a success.

We Jacque finally picked up our wedding pictures today, and I've been busy putting them online.  All of the ones we had professionally taken are up, and I'll be adding some of the others that I have soon.  To view them, click here.  As a warning, there are a lot of pictures... it may take a while for the page to load.  If you want a higher resolution copy of any of them, let me know.  I've only got so much space and there are over 800 pictures that are there or will soon be, so I can't put the high-res ones up.  Enjoy!

Well, it's fall so that means it's football time in Oklahoma! But this season isn't off to the best of starts. As Chris so aptly put it, the debacle in Norman happened last weekend. Hopefully, the Tulsa game will turn out better (as it should). As I write this, OSU is finishing off Schnellenberger's team, so at least their season is getting off to a good start. I've managed not to get too much ridicule at work (a lot of OSU fans), but the Sooners aren't helping that much.  I'm looking forward to seeing the Texas/Ohio State game. It should be pretty interesting. As much as it seems wrong to want Texas to win, I would like to see them beat Ohio State. 

Onto a quick work update: I'm starting to really like my job. I'm doing everything from winding antennas and playing with a Dremel tool to designing circuits and programming .NET applications. While some bits of it are definitely better than others, I like the variety. I figure I'm working on, or have worked on, about seven different projects of varying sizes since I've started. Only one thing I've worked on is an existing product, making a small fix.  The others will hopefully be out at some point (if we ever get them to work).  I'm realizing I actually learned a few things in all my classes, but also realize that I should have taken a few more (e.g. magnetic fields). 

Speaking of work and programming, I found that I really like what Microsoft has done with the new Visual Studio 2005.  It makes programming way too easy.  As many problems that pop up with Windows and IE, MS makes some great developer tools. 

Well, one more work day this week, so it's off to bed...

Google has started adding hurricane aftermath pictures into it's Google Earth program, available at earth.google.com. Here is part of the one they have up so far. (Henderson Point on Bay St. Louis, MS)

Before:


After:

UPDATE:
Here's a Google Earth placemark that shows damage to downtown New Orleans including the Superdome. Katrina-New Orleans.kmz (3.22 MB, opens in Google Earth)

I thought I'd update everyone on the newest addition to our family, our dog Baylor. I had posted some pictures of him that were taken just after we got him. He's now about 5 months old and finally starting to grow into his ears...

Baylor at 2 mo.


Now at 5 mo.