Traffic school...they have it on computers now!!

A couple of Sundays ago I was driving my family back to Mesa from the West Valley after a lovely evening at Shannon's sister's house. Though I have driven that stretch of road countless times I never before realized that the speed limit drops from 65 to 55 in the tunnel area through downtown Phoenix. A nice highway patrolman was nice enough to stop me and help me realize the folly of my ways, along with a written notice so that I would never forget. In other words, I got a ticket.

Fortunately, I have not had a ticket in many years (since before Shannon and I got married) so I was able to go to traffic school and get it wiped off the books. I was pleasantly surprised to see that they have traffic school online now. It was a much more enjoyable experience to take it from the comfort of my own home rather than sitting in some dirty hotel room with a bunch of people I don't want to get to know and don't want to be there anymore that I do.

The way it works is you have to be logged in for four hours and spend about 3-5 minutes on each page reading the material. You cannot click the Next button until the timer says you can (as a former software tester I tried countless ways of beating the system, it is pretty locked down though). The best thing, besides being at home, is that you can log in and out as much as you want. I did an hour on Friday night, an hour Sat morning then did some yard work and then finished off later that morning. After you finish the coursework you go to a testing center (any FedEx Kinko's store will do) and they take a look at your ID to make sure you are you and log you in to take the test.

There is one thing in particular that I took away from the class that I would like to share with you. It stated that 25% of all railroad accidents are from cars driving into the side of trains. Yep, it is not a train driving into a car stuck on a track but the opposite where a train has already moved started through the intersection and some yahoo comes along and doesn't notice that a train is there and drives right into it. I paid over $100 to get that info, for you it is free!

Sam would like to introduce you to our new DOGS!!

Yes, you have read that right. BJ finally let Sam and I get TWO new dogs. The secret was to go and pick them up while Daddy was at work! Here are a couple of pictures of them. They may look like fish but Sam corrects us every time and tells us that they are dogs. The red one is Bruno and the red and white one is Spot.

I just have to toot my own horn.

I was working on a baby book that I am making for Sam and I just worked on this picture of when he was first born and had to share it. I just think it turned out really cool. Here is the whole layout.



After previewing this blog entry I noticed that you couldn't see the detail of the picture, here is the picture without the layout. Notice how Sam's in color and in focus and everything else is only tinted and out of focus. Wow, how did I do that?! I love Photoshop and the magic of layering.







Here is the picture without any effects.

We have been spending the holiday weekend in Pine, AZ. It has been so nice to be in the cool weather. Sam has even gone to bed pretty well for the most part. Last night BJ and I got brave and decided that Sam needed a hair cut and with Aunt Jen in Georgia we were going to cut his hair ourselves. It's nothing fancy all we could manage was buzzing it with a number 4. The problem was that one of the things Sam does for comfort is run his fingers through his hair. We grossly underestimated how much comfort this gives him. It took him an hour to get to sleep last night and then woke up about 1:30 am and we couldn't get him back to sleep until about 4am. BJ and I took turns sleeping while the other one held Sam. He would reach his little had into our hair to run his fingers through it. We can't recall that Sam has ever had a night that rough. Even when he was a newborn he would wake up in the middle of the night but it was pretty easy to get him to sleep. Needless to say, we won't be cutting Sam's hair that short for a very long time. We haven't taken a picture of him yet or I would include it. We hope everyone had a great holiday!

List of life goals...check one off

I did it. I am very happy to report that I completed my MBA last week. It has been a goal of mine to get an MBA since high school and although life has taken a little different direction for me career wise than I started out with, I completed one of my life goals. I highly reccomend it, it feels good.

Thanks to my sweet wife who was very patient while I stepped out of many family activities for a while in order to complete this.

Shout outs all around

So I was perusing the blog that I setup a few months back and noticed it has become a lot more feminine. Thank you to my lovely wife who has added some nice color and layout coordination, and especially the great pics of our little Sam. So, here is a shout out to her and her mad design skills!

I also would like to send a shout out to big Sam (no, that isn't a fat joke). When I lived in Utah I had this wacky roommate named Sam. Turned out we became the best of friends. In fact, according to his grandma neither of us got married until a little later in life because we were having too much fun "partying". Nonetheless, Sam is now older, wiser and engaged to a wonderful girl named Heather. I want to give a shout out to Sam and Heather and wish them the best. The picture above is of big and little Sam together last Halloween.