Thursday, October 30, 2008

DTV

Important information about the DTV transition!

Friday, October 24, 2008

Let's get analytical!

I should cook more often.. my last post generated the most unique visits ever on my blog-
There must be a lot of vegetable pasta fans out there!

You may be wondering- how did I get this data?

I will tell you how!

I am a big analytical nerd. It's half of what I do at my job and it's a lot of fun (the other half is marketing, also a lot of fun). So naturally, I would discover the cool tool that is
Google Analytics. It is free and as the name would suggest, it lets you analyze your blog. Without this, I wouldn't know that I have received 81 visitors who came here from my Mom's blog. Thanks Mom! Another cool feature is a map that lets you see where everyone is coming from...Most of my visitors are from the U.S. of course, but it was neat to see I have visits from Spain, Greece, Argentina, Columbia, China, England, and Chile. Maybe one of those people will buy me a ticket to come visit their country and cook them some vegetable pasta. :)

As if that was not cool enough, you can click the country to view further detail..
then you can click on the state to view even FURTHER detail! This is where it gets really cool. Google really thinks of everything. You can click on the city to get a street by street interactive map of who visits your website. After clicking on the street name you can get even more detail about your individual visitors, like this...









Ok, so that last part was made up, but Google Analytics is really cool.

Tuesday, October 21, 2008

Hey, I can cook!

Growing up, my dad was always the master of breakfast before we headed off to school. I took it for granted that *every* kid probably had a plate of eggs, bacon and toast before heading out for the day. Or maybe pancakes (with smiley faces of course) and sausage. And if the syrup should "accidentally" get on the sausage, all the better. Heaven forbid if we just had "dog food" (his word for cereal). Mom usually handled dinner and on the rare occasion she was not there, Dad's supper time stylings were either breakfast foods (no problem there) or something that involved pan fried potatoes sliced like fries. No problem with fries, but after a few times you realize it's not quite the gamut of Mom on the dinner side of things. Luckily, I like to think I inherited the breakfast food skill. My wife is quite the chef, so I was thrilled when I made scrambled eggs one day and she was trying to figure out how I made them so nice and fluffy. I thought adding a little shot of milk to the mix was common knowledge, but it was new to her. I think this is the sole culinary technique I have been able to share with her, so I was quite happy.No, I can't take credit for that bread. When I got home yesterday I could tell my wife was exhausted. She had spent the day making TONS of delicious apple cinnamon bread and didn't feel up to making dinner (uh oh). Excluding breakfast food, my expertise in cooking consists of spreading tortilla chips on a plate, putting shredded cheese on top, and microwaving for about 30 seconds (Dad really has me beat with his fried potatoes). So I asked what she had planned to cook before volunteering my cooking skills. "Vegetable Pasta" she said. Luckily, this one was pretty simple. I just boiled some water...... and put in the noodles. Then I chopped up some mushrooms, squash, zucchini, onions, and tomatoes. I put this in the skillet after melting about half a stick of butter, let it simmer, then added salt and pepper and garlic of course.
I admit I was nervous as she spooned it up, but it turned out delicious! Plus, it's hard to screw up, especially when you coat the end result in half a can of Parmesan cheese. :)

Thursday, October 9, 2008

The Lightning Strikers Are Undefeated!


That's right, the Lightning Strikers are undefeated! Who are the Lightning Strikers? My fantasy football team of course! I have the coolest wife ever. How cool? I asked where she wanted to go out for our seven year anniversary Monday and she just looked at me with a dissappointed face and asked if I really thought she would rather go out and miss Monday Night Football. Anyways, she is the one who created our fantasy league two years ago. How did my team get a crazy name like the Lightning Strikers? Well, when we are not engaging in such cool activities as fantasy football, we often enjoy a rousing game of Trivial Pursuit on the weekends (we are really wild party people I know). My dear wife usually kicks my rear with her amazing knowledge, but I have a rather mean tactic to stay in the game. On the final space of the game the opponent gets to pick the question from any of the categories on the card. So, since she is usually in the final space way ahead of me, I always choose the hardest question on the card so I can catch up. Usually the most obscure sports questions about golf, tennis, or soccer. One night after literally about 5 hours of a mind numbing Trivial Pursuit standoff, the question I picked was regarding the name of some foreign soccer team that nearly no one on earth would know. Feeling particularly evil, I wouldn't let her just say that she didn't know and I pressed her for the name of the team. Finally she blurted out, "I don't know... THE LIGHTNING STRIKERS!??!". We burst out laughing for the longest time because we are huge nerds. So now I proudly use the name for my team. Man, that was the geekiest post ever. Also, kudos to my brother-in-law for the least creative team name this season. :)

Thursday, October 2, 2008

Say hello to my little friend...

This is one of the fun parts of my job. Our veterinary hospital is also a drop off location for the local wildlife rescue center. We get lots of injured birds, but usually just the garden variety sparrows and what not. But today this little guy came in! I think he is a Tennessee Warbler. He even posed for the camera!