If you attend seminars or speak to many vendors in the course of your job, you may share this pet peeve with me. If someone can explain it, I'd be grateful... can't imagine they teach you this in public speaking school. Here's the situation:
Dude is presenting... "blah blah blah"
Attendee (who has only been paying attention the last 2 minutes because previously he has been too engaged with his crackberry, thereby missing the fact that this question was just answered 5 minutes ago, but that's beside the point) asks... "If the device is not physically present on the network at the time of the attack, how does your software capture the intrusion?"
Dude responds... "So... what our software does is...blah blah blah"
My question is, why do sales people and presenters feel the urge to begin an answer with the word "so"? Seldom, if ever, does it really fit and it makes the answer sound "so" canned.
One event where I could overlook this public speaking guffaw is here:
It's the CIO Summit hosted at the Ritz Carlton, Half Moon Bay, California. I've applied for the event, which includes free lodging, food, and golf (on the Pacific ocean! yeeeaaah!) for 4 days/3 nights, and am eagerly awaiting a response to see if I'm approved for this hoity-toity event. It's based on your company's demographics, so they may not want my kind there. But it is coincidentally enough occuring the first 4 days of our vacation to Cali which is all too convenient.
Anyhoo, I'm excited at the possibility.
Moving on... it was way too long ago that I last posted, and there have been a few things that have happened since. Let's see... Becci gave birth to offspring #2, codenamed Kasey Jade in October. So, she's 6 months old and makes noises and sits up and stuff. She smiles and laughs, too, which is fun. And she loves her big sister (who reciprocates the love... for now).
What else, what else. Work is good, family is good, friends are mostly good, except for Josh who's going through cancer treatments. Not really my place to give out his updates, but we're thankful to God that the treatments are progressing well.
Oh, and my bro has a girlfriend. Go, Alan! And, I get to bust down some walls tomorrow morning at the office. Little remodeling job. Love me some demolition! So... yeah, well, I guess that about sums up the last 6 months. See you in the fall.
This morning we got to visit our local fire station during their annual open house. It was pretty cool, and actually the first time I had been there since I attended elementary school. To Katelyn's dismay, there were no trains there as it is not a "train" station; and, also no "fires" even though it is called a fire station. But, she enjoyed it anyway, especially her snowcone. :)
Hey BJ!! This is Lana (Burleson) Williams from FC......how are you?? I am so excited I found you and Becci on here......your little girl is such a cutie!!
My bro Alan is racing his new late model race car on Saturday October 13. If anyone's interested in riding down for the race, let me know. I'm proud of the little guy... he's been racing (and winning) in go karts for several years, now he's in the 450hp big-time.
A pic of him in the car. He's got some other pics on his page (link above).
So, have you ever tried to explain war to a 2 year old? It sounds amazingly pathetic. Katelyn has a friend at church whose dad is leaving for Iraq this week. We were trying to explain to her that Mr. David wouldn't be back for a while. Oh, and by the way, she's entered the "Why?" phase, so that question immediately followed.
"Well, he's going to another country to protect the things that we have here." was the first thing that came to mind, since I hadn't really thought that I would actually have to explain this.
"What does Mr. David have?" A logical question to my poor comment on the armed service.
"Well, it's not what he has that he's protecting... it's our freedom." At this point, I basically gave up. It would just have to be enough that he is leaving for a very long time and his family wouldn't get to see him.
"So, that will be sad for his family?" was her next question. I thought this to be a pretty good question from a 2 year old mind.
"Yes! It will be very sad for them. He's doing a very good thing by going, but it's just sad because he won't see his family for a long time."
We thank David and the thousands of others for their service and hope it will all peacefully end soon.
So, "they" finally convinced me that I needed to be a part of this whole blog craze. I put it off for months thinking how sad it would be that I might post and no one would be there to read it... but, my wife joined and had tons of responses in the first 24 hours so I decided to give it a shot.
My picture right now is of me and Katelyn when we (and Becci, of course) went to Dinsey a couple of months ago. Amazing how different an experience can be when viewed through the eyes of a 2 yr old. It was a fun day, despite the 140 degree weather. She definitely takes after me, though... about 6 o clock we took a break and while we were sitting on a bench she put her arm around my neck and said, "Daddy, we should go... it's getting late." What?! I confirmed, "it's getting late?" "Yeah, it'll be my bed time soon... see... (pointing to the sky), it's getting late."
Wow... what kid cuts their day at Disney short cause they're ready for bed? She did want Mickey to come to her house, though... and much to my surprise, she actually asked him to when she got to meet him at the toontown meet-n-greet thingy.
So, where did "slacks" come from, you ask? Got that nickname from our ski trip last year... apparently you can dress "too nice" for a snow-ski vacation with the guys. Didn't realize that wearing a belt would be too dressy. But, hey, as far as nicknames go, it's definitely one I can live with! :)
Working on some home improvement projects this week... redoing my home office turning it into a pseudo-guest room as we've remade our existing guestroom into a nursery for the new baby (due first part of November... another little girl, very excited!). Built some bookcases to hang on the wall, and then need to restain my desk I built a few years ago to match the bookcases. Will post some pics when I get done.
A pic of him in the car. He's got some other pics on his page (link above). 