Mountain getaway

As Heather said here, we had a real enjoyable mountain getaway. I thought I would label some of our favorite and least favorite things.

Lodging: We stayed at Parkway Vacation Rental's At Home with Nature. I would issue a Buyer Beware on these folks. While their service was excellent during the sale - when we got to the location we found all sorts of problems in the house. Once told about it - they promised to fix them the first day we were there and never did. Here are examples of what we found:

• Mold in the kitchen sink and shower
  
• Bedroom doors without handles
  
• Toilet Seats split in half
  
• Hot tub that never worked
  
• Phone service (which we were supposed to have in our contract unlimited loca+long distance) which was turned off
  
• DVD Players without cables. Remotes without batteries.
  
• An oven door that doesn't shut (great for kids, eh?)
  
• Lack of playground and tennis courts prominently listed on their site. Two guards at the gate confirmed this.
  
• Broken dining room chairs

The place was once beautiful - its a shame this management team is running it because its falling apart.

Food: We ate in a lot - but had some yummy food out...
Kojay's cafe in Blowing Rock - Loved it and ate lunch there twice. The coffee, however, was not a hit.
Higher Grounds in Boone - Best Coffee. Heather complains about other lattes now after having theirs.
Dan'l Boone Inn in Boone - Great southern all you can eat family style breakfast. We had 14 people which they accommodated in about 20 minutes and it was a blast.
Kilwin's in Blowing Rock - best ice cream.

Things to Do: We kept it low key and were there in November when some things like Tweetsie were closed..but there were things we loved.
Grandfather Mountain. Its a zoo and a scenic getaway all in one, what's not to love? They do push the fudge a bit much though :-)
Playground in Boone - this was the most incredible playground we have ever been to. See the pictures on Heather's blog.

Finally, I'll say this...even if the place you stay in isn't meeting your expectations - when you wake up to this its wonderful:

Petco and Natural Balance Dog food

I know I haven't blogged in a couple of months so I plan to do a mini-blog series on what's been going on in our lives. The first thing to mention is that sometimes us common folks know more than doctors and veterinarians...or at very least the latter. We have had our mutt Cassie for 6.5 years. When we got her, she had mange and she basically never stopped itching since then. Two vets have told us that our dog Cassie has dry skin - the latest told us to try fish oil in her diet. Fish oil can be real expensive, so we went to Petco to see if they had foods with fish oil. The employee there told us that sometimes the dogs keep itching because of allergies (we should have thought of this but never had) and recommended this (expensive) organic food, Natural Balance, with no wheat in it. Since Cassie went on it she has stopped itching...or at least itches very infrequently like a normal dog.

Just so you realize how bad it was..we found out 2 weeks ago that Cassie had a staph infection because she scratched herself bad enough. Now, she doesn't itch/scratch and her infection is practically gone. Thank you Petco for being more knowledgeable than our veterinarian!

My media stand

One of my projects this weekend was to create a media stand. We just switched from Time Warner Cable to DirecTV this Friday and that left my receiver sitting on top of my blu-ray player which I didn't like. In general - its a bad idea to stack AV equipment on top of one another because they all generate heat and heat is bad for electronics. So, I needed to create some space between them but our Pier 1 entertainment center only had one shelf..and they don't sell it or the extra shelf for it any longer. So, I decided to make a simple stand for the receiver...

I started by getting a 4 ft long dowel rod from home depot that was 1" in diameter. This cost $3.35. Next, I reused a piece of particle board I had in the garage that used to be shelves in our garage when we bought the house.

That particle board was perfect, just less than 1 ft wide. I cut that board to the right length, 20", and the dowel rods for legs at 7.5" high. I attached the dowel rods with some wood screws I had around the house and used some plywood left over from when we refinished our kitchen to create a small DVD shelf on the front 2 legs of the stand. Then I used a cheap $1 can of flat black spray paint to paint it so that it would be unnoticeable in the cabinet.

It is very stabile and fits perfectly. I am going to enjoy being able to look at that stand and think I put it all together for less than $5...while people that don't read this will never notice it :-)

With a light shining on it:


Normal view with the speaker above:

Saving for college

Reading this Sunday's Wall Street Journal article on saving for college, one might view our children's future ability to have a debt free education as hopeless. In the article, there were some important facts:

For the 2008-2009 school year, the average cost of attending a four-year public school for in-state residents -- including tuition and room and board -- rose 5.7% to $14,333, according to the College Board. The cost was up 5.6% to $34,132 for a private university. (These numbers aren't adjusted for inflation.)

Well, if you round up to $15,000 for public school and 6% per year, in 12 years that will double to $30,000 per year. If you have younger kids you might have a couple of extra years but let's assume those last few years won't get much interest as you pull the money out into conservative investments. It would mean that you have 12 years to save $120,000 per child. This is amazing to me and I can't even fathom at this point being able to save $10,000 per child per year. But, you have interest on your side, right?

Using an investment calculator, I figured that if you could save $430 per child per month for 12 years at 10% return per year, we could save our $120,000 in those 12 years. If you assume 12% return, you only need $375 saved per child per month. At 8% return, you need $500 per child per month. And that's just for an average public school!

What were we thinking having 2 kids only 1 school year apart? I can hope that we are able start saving $1000/mo within a couple of years for the kids but it can't be easy. I can also hope that we, as a society, get control of these college expenses and don't continue to let them grow at such a high rate assuming our children can bear the brunt of it through student loans. Until then - this is something to think about for sure..

2 years of exercise with the last 6 months of frustration

I have spent a lot of time thinking about this month and the one special thing it means to me. See, as of this month i have been working out consistently for 2 years. I have never worked out for 2 years straight without a break of at least 2 weeks. I always slacked off at some point and going into this, I unfortunately expected to do the same. In the last 2 years though, I haven't slacked off. It started at 4-5 days a week and has grown to 6 days a week with a couple of exceptions for vacation and business trips. Even on vacation and during business trips, I try to squeeze in workouts every time I can. When I went to the Venetian in Las Vegas last Spring, I knew I wasn't willing to pay the outrageous amount they were asking for their gym...so I brought my Perfect Pushups and did those plus some in place cardio and ab workouts.

People often ask about results and I am pretty happy with mine. You have to first understand that my primary goal when I began was not to lose weight. I had started and failed at that goal way too often. I didn't want to go on a special diet that I would eventually fall off the bandwagon. Instead, my goal was to be able to be active with my family again. You might remember when I wrote extensively about this goal in January of 2008 when it seemed to be working. I didn't want to have to hesitate when doing something active with my girls. I didn't want to make an excuse when asked to help a friend and I thought I was too out of shape to help them. I wanted my daughters to grow up in a physically active and healthy environment.

Within one year of having a normal exercise routine, I was comfortable doing whatever. I wrote extensively about that last October. I was able to do whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted at the time. In that first year I had lost 40 lbs without going on a diet and I felt great.

One might expect similar success this past year. But in the past 6 months, I have had to deal with a lot of frustration. From that October timeframe til April, I gained about 15 lbs back, theoretically all muscle. Then, in May, I went to Las Vegas for a business trip...the one I mentioned above. Two of my good friends went with me and we were supposed to go indoor skydiving. The indoor skydiving place put us on a scale when signing in and I weighed too much to do it. I had been looking forward to it for weeks and I couldn't do it because my weight. This was the first time since I was back in shape I couldn't do something I wanted to do because of my body. It wasn't that I wasn't in shape...it was just I weighed too much.

Since that point I have had nothing but frustration with myself. I have been pretty hard on myself as my wife would probably attest. My goal is and has been to be in good enough shape to do whatever I want to do. But it wasn't about physical fitness, it was about weight. Unfortunately I don't have the answer to my frustration. I know how I can lose weight, either by focussing on pure cardio and not building muscle or by going on a diet.

Until I find an answer I will make my primary goal to stay in healthy enough shape to do whatever I want. I do have a secondary goal to lose enough weight to do the indoor skydiving I missed out on last next May when i am back in Las Vegas. However, I don't plan on altering my diet or exercise routine, so I don't know if this is feasible. However, since May i have lost another 5 lbs.

For now, I will be bouncing in inflatable toys with my girls - something I wouldn't have felt as comfortable doing two years ago:

What's driving, priorities or life?

I'm not particularly old but I have lately been in a position where more and more people are asking my advice. At least, I have found this one piece of advice seems very relevant for my generation. That advice is very simple, let your priorities run your life and do not let life run your priorities. I won't make this a conversation about what are the appropriate life priorities but am willing to have that conversation with anyone who wants to know my opinion...but instead, I want to talk about keeping your priorities first and let them run your life.

How does that work? I think so much of my generation hasn't set priorities and often thinks this is something "old" people do. But flying by the seat of your pants leads to one thing, life dictating your priorities. Some examples I have seen are people claim they can't do what they want (pay off debt, go on vacation, stay at home with their child, work less hours, have family dinners, eat healthy, exercise, etc etc) because they don't have the time or money. More often than not though its a decision they make to not make the sacrifices necessary to do what they say they want to do. Yes, you may have to eat beans and rice for dinner more often to pay off debt for go on vacation. Yes, you may have to move to a smaller house than you'd like to stay at home with a child or have a less stressful job. Yes, you may have to sacrifice career advancement or even get a job that pays less to spend more time with your family. And yes, you might have to sacrifice watching TV (even DVRed TV) to get more exercise! :-)

From my limited life experience I have found that when I can follow this advice above (and I fail consistently and am far from perfect) my life goes particularly well. My children are happier, my wife is happier, my focus is better, and the results of my work are even better. When I don't follow it, there is more stress at home, more fights between my wife, less happy children, less fulfilling and rewarding times at work, and overall I fail at life.

So, how do you get started? Make a list of your priorities in life. Check them daily as to what you, in reality, made your priorities. Try your best to correct it in your current life without drastic changes. If you find something just isn't working like you can't work less for fear of getting fired and you need that drastic change...make a 2-5 year plan to change the course of your life. I am not suggesting you just quit and hope that everything will work out. But a multi year plan could include downsizing your house, paying off debt, and changing to a job that fits within your priorities. If its to get out of debt or you can't save for a vacation, check out Dave Ramsey's Financial Peace University to learn how to get out of debt and live your life without debt.

And because everyone needs a plan mapped out.. :-)

Step 1: Set your priorities
e.g. God, Family, Friends, Health and Exercise, Work, Play

Step 2: Keep a log of where your time is spent and where your focus is during your "downtimes"
e.g. 60 hours of work, ate family with dinner 2 out of 7 times this week, spent 2 nights in a recreational sports league, watched 8 hours of TV

Step 3: Analyze how to reorganize your time and investments in order to meet your priorities.
e.g. 2 less nights in sports league would allow for 2 more nights at home.

Step 4: Look for hard to solve problems and decide how to approach them.
e.g. Does work each week have to be 60 hours? Can you spend less time away at work, work your email instead of watching TV, or do you need a new job?

Repeat :-)

On social media and personal websites

One of the interesting things I have noticed these days is a lot of software developers in my generation (early Gen Y, late Gen X) have their own websites and spend as much time publicly marketing themselves as the companies and products they work on. In these positions, these people often blur the lines of their professional and personal lives.

When I joined twitter, I debated heavily whether twitter would be personal or professional for me. I had been trying to take a hard(er) line on Facebook and LinkedIn, much like my colleague Billy Newport stated here, where Facebook is for friends and family and LinkedIn is for professional contacts. I got enough Facebook invites from colleagues eventually that I made the rule that I would accept those who I would seek out to have a beer with if in town. I thought that was a good qualification...but I realized that this line was getting hard to maintain. And that is about the time I was joining twitter.

Well, when I joined twitter I decided this would be my first experimentation at having one point of contact that was both personal and professional. So far, I have no idea how it is working. Most of the people that I regularly communicate with on twitter are those that I would also gladly be Facebook friends with and some of them I am Facebook friends with. If I had to declare what is happening one way or another I would declare that twitter is more personal and less professional for me because it is personal at all. I think once I let my personal life bleed into it, it was mostly personal. But, I still have regular professional postings and there is a chance that my microblogs on twitter have some professional followers.

I come back to the original reason I began this blog post. Do I need a website? In this new day and age, is it more important for me to market myself? Years ago it wasn't needed because of corporate loyalty. These days it seems more common and in my age group corporate loyalty is not the norm. I don't know if I have a public enough presence to switch companies in a heartbeat or to be recruited by the top software engineering firms on a regular basis...but I am also not sure that is what I want. For now, this is something I heavily debate and try to make a decision on.

And, since I blurred the lines with this post on my personal blog...I thought I would also show off the cool stuff I have been designing as part of my product. Here is a recent video (only 1 min long) I made to show off the user experience we created with the function I designed:

Localvore challenge complete...

So, we finished the localvore challenge. We had tacos last night on our last localvore day and made some corn salsa with fresh off the ear corn. The ground beef was from Angus Acre as I had written before. Here is what we learned:

1) We don't know what is in season anymore. I am not sure if this is a generation Y thing or it spans generation X as well. But, growing up I remember my mother always knew what the seasons for various fruits and vegetables are. I have no idea but need to learn. I think this chart from the NC Dept of Agriculture will help. but I hope to raise children that are knowledgeable of their surrounding farming...which leads me to the second point.

2) Its obvious that my suburban life has positioned us too far away from those that have the very important job of growing our food so that we are out of touch. One thing I hope to do is visit more farms with the kids and one of the primary ones on the list is Homeland Creamery where we get our milk from. As milk is one of the words Madelyn knows and can say, I think that this is something she can more readily understand.

3) We need to continue to look for local replacements for things we missed this week. Whether it be yogurt (our favorite is made in CA), food bars, tortillas or bread, if a local replacement is available we should try to shift towards it. Likewise, we need to reconsider how often we eat bananas and apples which seem to all be from far away.

4) We enjoyed the beef, thought the chicken was not so great, were indifferent on the eggs (farmers free range vs our normal Egglands best free range.), and always like fresh seafood. The vegatables were all great and Heather is sick of cantaloupe :-) In the end, we may keep trying to eggs and expect we will try to get the large quantities of beef like 15 or 30 lbs batches.

It was a fun experiment in which I learned a lot. If we do it next year, it may be a challenge for dinners only as it seems more reasonable and maybe would encourage more participation.