Hana Zen

Last night we enjoyed a great dinner at Hana Zen’s. The service was very authentic as patrons were not offered traditional western utensils. We split an order of Hana Zen Dinner. It consisted of salad, soup, sushi, and tempura. It was all very good.

This morning we took a cable car ride to California street where we transferred to the California line. We rode it to the end in the financial district. We took the bus back via Market. We stopped for lunch at Macy’s Marketplace which is a food court. We ate at Boudin’s. Jaime had clam chowder and roast beef sandwich and I had beef chili in a bread bowl. Food was great!

After lunch, we sat for a while in Union Square. The sunshine was warm and the sky blue. A perfect day for chillin’ in the park!

Tonight we are going to eat at the Grand Caf? French Bistro. I’ll make the report on our return.

We’re Baaa-aaack!

Dinner tonight was really great. Plus, we didn’t have to pay a lot. We ate the Grand Caf?. We sat in the bar, ordering from the bar menu. Jaime ordered skirt steak with mashed potatoes and fresh saut?ed veggies. I had a pepperoni pizza. Jaime’s steak was delicious and very tender. Mine was covered in cheese and lots of pepperoni. We had a real value for $28. total. We are taking a trip to Monterey tomorrow. This blog won’t post until tomorrow afternoon.

Trip to the Ocean

This morning we picked up the rental car for a drive to Monterey. We picked up the Nissan Sentra at 7:30 and head out Geary for the Pacific ocean. The waves were absolutely huge! We stopped at the Pacifica pier. Waves were crashing into the boardwalk. We took some good video.

We drove on south passing Half Moon Bay. We stayed 3 days at the Ritz-Charlton here in 2001. Driving through Santa Cruz, we reached Monterey about noon. We had planned to see the Aquarium, but the line was very long and it took us longer to reach Monterey than we had anticipated.

We eat lunch at Charlie Moss’s in Moss’s Crossing. I had an open faced burger topped with bacon and mushrooms and served with Asian slaw and Jaime had a whole steamed artichoke.

We came back via the interstate. We arrive in San Francisco at 4:30.

Dec 26, 8 pm

We are back at the Powell Hotel. It’s been a long day and we’ll be going to bed soon.

After leaving Ghiraradelli’s we caught the cable car back to the hotel. We decided to go to a nearby restaurant for dinner since there was a threat of rain in the area. There are two restaurants on our recommended list (Frommer’s from $70 a day), Hana Zen and Puccini & Pinetti. I picked the Italian.

We went about 6:00 to beat the rush. We were seated at the Expo Kitchen. This area is designed for guests to both eat and view the chefs working. We ordered Antipasti, tray of cold meats, fresh and marinated vegetables, and goat cheese. We were also served freshly baked bread and an olive oil and vinegar dip. We ordered two glasses of house merlot.

The food was very good but watching the chefs’ work was the treat. We identified several prep stations. The two chefs directly in front of us prepared saut?ed and steamed foods. They worked at break-neck speeds.

After dinner we returned to the Powell.

Dec 27, 5 pm

We got a 9:00 start this morning. Forecast for the area is for rain and wind as a storm is moving in from the Pacific. Since we have a 7 day pass on the cable car, we decide to ride and maybe find a place for breakfast. We rode to the end of the line and back to Sear’s World Famous Pancakes. Sear’s was only 4 blocks from the hotel. A little wait at 10:00 but worth it. I had pancakes (silver dollar size) at $.50 each! Jaime had two eggs (apparently golden) $9. Breakfast was good.

On the walk back to the hotel, I decided to stop at Borders and Jaime went shopping at Petite Sophisticates. We were to meet back at the hotel in a couple of hours.

Looking for an afternoon activity and with the treat of rain, we opted for a movie. We went 4 blocks to the Lowes theatre located in the Metreon. This was high tech, gaming version of the Hollywood Connection in Columbus. Lots of unusual food court options, also. We saw The Family Stone which was very funny and a little sad at the end.

On the walk back to the hotel, we stopped at the Apple Store. It had a very techie d?cor with many hands-on computer displays within the 2 story store. The 30” Cinematic screen is on my wish list.

We are now at the hotel writing this blog. We plan to go the internet caf?, post the blog, and get dinner at Hana Zen.

Afternoon, Dec 26th

We’re currently relaxing on a bench at the Ghirardell Chocolate Factory near the end of Columbus Avenue. It’s near mid-afternoon, temperature is about 58, and there is a harmonica blowing guitar picker entertaining the folks here in the courtyard. People are beginning to put up their umbrellas. Not a good sign.

After leaving the internet caf? this morning, we went by our trusty car rental agency (we’ve used them a couple time before) and reserved a car for Thursday. The forecast for Thursday is good so we are planning a day trip. The destination is yet to be decided. Monterey is the likely choice.

We then hopped on the cable car to Chinatown. I took some good video on the way. I had a great standing position in the front of the car. We tried two recommended restaurants (Italian) that were closed. Nearby on the edge of Chinatown was the House of Nanking which Richard Hyatt had recommended to me. He told me that you should look for the man with salt and pepper hair and then tell him “I’m hungry”. You don’t have to order anything specific. They’ll just start bringing you food. Well, we weren’t that hungry so we just asked the waiter for a recommendation. He had salt and pepper so we think he was the same person referenced in Richard’s story. He asked us which meat we preferred. We chose chicken and asked about a pancake that we had seen on an adjacent table. The waiter told us that was called “Mu shu”.

It sounded good to us. We also ordered hot tea. The tea came out first. Jaime says that it was the best she had ever had. It was made with green tea leaves and flowers (among other things).

As we waited for our meal, I looked around the restaurant which was very small. The walls were covered in white ceramic tiles. Both side walls displayed framed newspaper and magazine reviews of NanKing.

We were quickly served the Mu shu Chicken. The server actually spooned the chicken mixture into the paper thin pancake, wrapped the it, and then served them to us.

It was really good. The chicken was quite spicy, but in a way that we had not experienced.

We spent just a little money. The bill was less than $16.

After leaving Nanking’s we walked back to the cablecar line and returned to the hotel for a little while before departing again by cablecar for Ghirardelli’s.

Ghirardelli treats everyone to free chocolate samples as we are herded into the small gift shop. Jaime made a small purchase. I went over to the ice cream shop for a cone. After waiting in line I slowly moved close enough to the ordering station to see that a one scope cone was $4. I quickly left the line, not will to part with my $4 for a single scope!

First Full day in San Francisco

We arrived in San Francisco about 3:30 local time. We managed to miss our plane in Atlanta and had to catch a later flight. We rode the BART train from the airport to the Powell Street station. The weather on arrival was rainy. We really didn't get wet accept to get from our terminal to the Airtran which is the train transportation within the airport. If we knew our way around the airport, we might have avoided this rain. Our hotel, the Powell is the best location for us in San Francisco. It is next to the Powell street station. It is also at the end of the cablecar line. It is also a block off of Union Square.

We are still planning a "chill" vacation. We don't have firm plans to do anything. We can do this without feeling too guilty about missing attactions because we have seen almost everything on prior trips. The weather forcast isn't very encouraging. This morning is beautiful but rain is forcast for this afternoon.

We ate at Tad's steakhouse last night. It was the only thing open on Christmas. It was very good. We just had a burger and ham sandwich.

Coffee this morning was at Starbuck's. The prices were the same as the Barnes and Noble in Columbus!

More on Figleaf Training

The Figleaf is a 3-day course. The following are scheduled to be covered:

Advanced Data Structures
XML
XSL
XPath
XSLT
Flash Forms
XML Forms
Application.CFC
Advanced Caching
Performance Monitoring
Leveraging Java
Custom Tags
Components
Error Handling Frameworks
Web Services
Code Structuring
and more!

Atlanta ColdFusion Users Group

Last night I attended the Atlanta ColdFusion Users Group meeting. The meetings are held at the Macquarium on Peachtree Street. This meeting was very informative as are most. The speaker entitled "Advanced ColdFusion 7" and presented by Steve Drucker. Steve is one of the princials in the web consultancy, training and sales company known as Figleaf. The firm has offices in Atlanta and the D.C. area.

The meeting offered a taste of a new course offering called "Advanced ColdFusion 7". Steve did a very good job of interesting me in attending his course. I've checked the calendar and am trying to figure the best times to attend this 3-day course.

Owen is in San Francisco

I have recently found my old friend Owen Smith. He's living in San Francisco. I've google on Owen's name from time to time over the past few years, but no luck. I was recently talking to another old friend, Cliff Davenport, and the where abouts of Owen Smith came up in our conversation. Cliff was at his computer and checked cdbaby.com. Sure enough, there he was. Owen is marketing a cd of his classical guitar performances on this web site. The site even supplied an email link to Owen. I tried it out and had a reply in a couple of days. I was hoping to see Owen in San Francisco in December. Jaime and I are planning a trip there. Unfortunately, Owen is planning a skiing trip at the same time. Maybe next time.

I still have an epic amount of catching up to do with Owen. There has been so much water under the bridge that I hardly know where to start. I expect I'll start by refering Owen to this blog.

George is Employed!

My youngest son, George, has recently gained employment at TSYS. He's working as a Business Analysis. I called at work during lunch of his first day on the job. I have never heard him so excited. He finishing his second week. Earlier this week, he was still very excited. I believe that he will do well. George has a gift for getting along well with people.

It's Been a Long Time

I been taking a break posting to my blog. No reason. In fact, it's hard to believe that it was June 6 that I posted last. Time to post more regularly.

I've been busy weekends composing music contained in my great-grandmother's poetry book named "Songs of Praise and Victory". My great-grandmother was also a musician and the composer of "The AP&L Polka". As far as I know, she never wrote music for these words.

At the end 2004, I made a pledge to myself to try and compose music for one of her poems. I never would have expected that I could have composed music for 25 poems before November. In fact, I didn't compose the first one until May. So I have actually been completing about one poem each week. Most of the work on this is done on Saturday and Sunday mornings.

In addition to writing the music, I also have completed scoring and performing the required instruments. All of this work is being done on the Apple Mac G5 running Garageband software.

For the vocal performance, I have been renting studio time from Ben Morgan. Ben has done the engineering. I have been spending about $50 per song for a demo vocal. Though I have been very pleased with the instrumental arrangements and performances, the vocal performances are very weak. This is primarily due to the fact that I am not a singer and secondarily to the shortness of time that I have been able to afford at Ben's studio.

I have hopefully solved the studio time issue by purchasing a Studio Project C1 microphone and a Tascam 122 analog to digital converter. I have assembled the parts and will install the Tascam software on my G5 on Friday. Hopefully, if all goes well, I'll be recording vocals on Saturday morning.

Are You Podcasting?

What is podcasting?

Have You Tried Goowy Mail?

I recently signed up for the new email service from Goowy (www.goowy.com). The application is in beta. If you like a rich interface (Flash), you should take a look at this one. It also offers features like group, sort, and search. You can change skins to create your own look. If you have a handle that is no longer available from gmail or yahoo, you try goowy.

New Tropical Storm Arlene

Arlene is forming in the Caribbean and is expected to make landfall on Saturday. This is the first named topical storm of the season with began a couple of weeks ago. Hopefully, this storm will be far enough to our west to prevent huge amounts of rainfall locally. We'll keep an eye on her.

Apple Announces New Deal with Intel

On Monday, Apple announced that its next generation of computers would be powered by an Intel chip. This breaks a decade long arrangement will IBM. One report I read said that this announcement was like a computer version of Al Gore endorsing George Bush. Concerns that Apple developers would be miffed with this new arrangement were dispelled. Apple has special software that will enable older applications to run on the new chips. New models will not appear until Summer of 06, maybe later.

Star Wars Rates High

The Revenge of the Sith was released last week. I saw it with Sam and George on Thursday night (10 p.m. showing). We stood in line with Darth Vader. The movie managed to meet high expectations. I found that it was almost as good as episode IV and much better than I or II. I was surprised at the number of parents with very young children attending the Saturday showing ( I saw the noon showing also). The movie contains material not suitable for young children. More on this post to come...

Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith

Today is the long awaited release date of the final Star Wars pre-quel, Revenge of the Sith. I have tickets for the 10:00 p.m. showing at Carmike 15. Sam III and George will be going with me. It is hard to believe that the first Star Wars movie premiered 28 years ago - the year Sam III was born. We plan to meet at the theatre at 9:15, about 45 minutes before the movie starts. I bought the tickets several days ago. I doubt if it is a sellout, but I expect it to be very crowded.

I read a number of reviews of the movie. Most find that the dialog is horrid. Most also agree that the action is spectacular. I'll find out for myself in about an hour.

Winning The CSS Battle

I recently completed a complex page layout using CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) to accomplish the presentation. I was assigned the task of creating an XHTML and CSS version of a comp that had been worked up by the staff at Southern Living magazine for the Encyclopedia of Alabama. I have spent quite a lot of time over the past few months reading many books on CSS and Web Standards. I have read several authors including Eric Meyer, Dan Shea, Molly Holzschlag. Web Standards is so the way to create web pages today. The code can be so efficient and eloquent. CSS can be frustrating at first, but web sites like www.csszengarden.com continue to insire me to learn more. Thanks to the CSS community for the many helpful techniques that have been developed and publicized over the past couple of years.

George Will Graduate From Columbus State University

Youngest son George will graduate on Saturday from Columbus State University. He will be receiving a bachelor of Business Administration degree with a major in Computer Information Systems. I am so proud of George because he has worked long and hard to earn this degree. I hope that he will use it to help him reach the career goals to which he aspires. I will be watching the graduation from the Fine Arts buildings since tickets are in short supply. I will be so happy to see this wonderful young man in his cap and gown!

TSYS Is Now The Largest

The Columbus Ledger-Enquirer reported this morning that the local credit card processor, TSYS has reached an agreement to add 50 million accounts from Capital One to its portfolio. This will bring the total to about 420 million which is a few million larger than the second largest processor, First Data. Go TSYS!

Plum Is Just Peachy!

I've spent some time over the past week working with the new ColdFusion Methodology, IDE, Framework, and all around Wizard. This free (with a small ad) software can be downloaded at www.productivityenhancement.com. The software is written by the father/son team of Adam and David Churvis. These guys have put together over the past several years, a labor of love for the ColdFusion community. Can you imagine having a working application up and running in a matter of hours rather than weeks? It can be done in Plum. Plum creates all of the add, edit, search, list, and delete forms that your application will use in a matter of minutes. Add to this, client and server-side validation with no additional work! Plum also handles authentication and authorization with a custom tag called . The Plum feature list is huge! I found that I could easily modify the header.cfm and footer.cfm files along with the baseline stylesheet to create completely different look and feels with no problem. The custom tags that makeup the product encapsulates code so that you can just add a couple of lines of code that will call 50 lines of code. This product is a real timesaver. Thanks to Adam and David!

Shuffle at Microsoft

I read today on www.wired.com that Microsoft management is becoming a little miffed at the number of corporate staffers sporting the telltale white ear phones of Shuffle and IPod. The Apple products seem to be in use by up to sixty percent of the Redmond, WA based software company. Though Microsoft creates products for Apple, (and has for more than twenty years) the companies remain great rivals. Bill Gates has never had much respect for Steven Jobs, a non-programmer. Jobs, on the over hand, is not a Bill Gates fan.

Adobe to Purchase Macromedia

Yesterday, Adobe announced that they would purchase Macromedia. Adobe is the maker of Acrobat Reader, Photoshop, InDesign, Premiere and a number of other publishing tools. Macromedia makes the web site design tool, Dreamweaver and Flash, the animation tool.
As a user of a number of these tools, I have a great deal of interest in the ultimate outcome of this purchase. I have used Dreamweaver since version 3 and ColdFusion since version 4.5.
Your guess is as good as mine as to the success of this purchase from a financial perspective. Adobe paid 3.4 billion dollars for Macromedia.
I'm hoping that Adobe will continue developing Fireworks. I have used it since version 3 and find that its intergration with Dreamweaver really saves me time.
I'm also hoping that Adobe will promote ColdFusion even more than has Macromedia. Macromedia purchased ColdFusion from Allaire back about 2002. Under Macromedia's ownership, ColdFusion has been re-written in Java and recently release version 7. The more I learn about .NET, the more I appreciate the ease in which web applications can be written with ColdFusion.

Shuffle - Really Cool Technology!

I've mulling over the purchase of an Ipod for several months now. After Christmas the Shuffle became available. The 512 MB model can store up to 128 songs and runs many hours on a charge in your USB port. The Shuffle comes with ear pieces and lanyard. I decided that the larger models were not what I needed because 128 songs a day is enough. I can reload each night when I charge the device. Besides, the 512 MB model is only $99.

I check with the University Bookstore and they have received only 4 since January. I placed my order hoping for a Shuffle before April.

Surprise! It came in yesterday.

This device is really a technical marvel! It's only about the size of a pack of gum and weighs next to nothing. After some initial problems loading the required software, I was able to charge the device and load 170 songs on it from my iTunes Library.

I was literally rockin' all day today. An was I productive? Yes! I got lots accomplished without any distractions.

If you don't have one of these music machines, you are missing out!

Last day in Paris

Last night we had a great dinner at La Maison en Hiver. The proprietor, Claude and our waiter Sergi gave us wonderful Parisian service. We were seated in a warm corner next to a lady from Holland. Jaime and I had vegetable soup and steak. After dinner it was back to Julie's apartment where Rick played D.J., entertaining us into the night with his large collection of music.

This morning we awoke early and were on the ERE bound for the Musee Rodin by noon. We walked by the Invalides where the tomb of Napoleon is located. Musee Rodin is just down the street on Rue de Varenne. Part of the gardens were closed due to ice, but the building was open. The building was constructed as a residence and was the finest of its day (circa 1800).

For lunch today, we grabbed a quick BLT from a cafe on the way to our next stop.

After seeing Rodin, we walked along the Boulevard Saint Germain to the Pont Neuf where we took a river boat ride on the Seine. This trip lasted about an hour. The various points of interest were broadcast by a narrator. The river ride took us by many sites we had previously seen and some new ones, too. We had a great view of Notre Dame and Julie's apartment. We yelled to Julie from the top of the boat as we passed, but she was out for lunch.

After the boat ride was over, we walked past the Conciergerie back to Notre Dame. We went inside Notre Dame for a few minutes to watch mass. The Cathedral is quite spectacular inside as well. It is a huge space.

I was impressed that this 800 year old cathedral was equipment with 60 inch plasma screens so that those standing in the wings could see the proceedings!

We then walked back to Julie's. Tonight, we are taking Rick and Julie to dinner and then Julie has reservations to take us to the Crazy Horse. The evening should be lots of fun!

Tomorrow we plan to leave by ERE for Charles de Gaulle about 10:30 a.m. It is starting to snow again. I believe that we have had snow everyday while in Paris.

That's it for the blog. Stay tuned and I'll have some photos next week.

Au revoir,
Sam

il neige

Well, we awakened early this morning (about 9:00 a.m.) for a train ride to the Eiffel Tower. To our surprise, it is still snowing and snowing hard. Still we Singers are a determined lot and decided no problem. We got dressed and headed out to the train station with our directions. No sooner than we were on the sidewalk, we knew there was a problem. Right, the snow had turned to ice and many areas were very slick. Regretfully, we decided to wait until after lunch for a thaw before departing.

We had lunch nearby at Le Parvis Restaurant. Julie says that it has great cheeseburgers. Jaime and I have vegetable soup, a salad and I had creme brulee. After the delicious lunch, we decided that the ice age was subsiding and that with only two remaining days in Paris, we must make a try for the Tower. Jaime and I found RER C line and boarded the limited stop train for the Eifeel Tower. I managed to miss the Champ de Mars stop for the Tower, but we were able to get off at the next stop. Just a few blocks to walk back to the Eiffel Tower.

We arrive at the tower to find that it was closed due to bad weather! Well, we still made photos before leaving.

We stopped at the Le Castel for coffee and hot chocolate. The train ride back to Notre Dame ended very successfully.

It is about 6:30 now and we plan to have dinner at the restaurant we ate at on Sunday night. Tomorrow will be our last full day as our plane will leave after lunch on Saturday.

I will post to the blog again on Friday for the final installment.

Au revoir,
Sam

Mercredi

To Betsy and Jessica: I'm glad that you were able to update the class schedule in php as I have no way to do that from here!

To everyone:

Well, this will be the second time that I have written this post today, the first having bombed out the computer. I have saved, checked this page, and everything seems to be working fine now.

I woke up this morning around 11:30 Paris (5:30 a.m. at home). I was up last night until around 2:00 a.m. After a wonderful dinner of baked chicken and baked beans at Julie and Rick's, I got a great video of Julie and Jaime standing in the snow on the balcony overlooking the Seine while singing some Rolling Stones song!

It snowed almost an inch last night, but it failed to stick. We joined Julie's friend Noel for lunch on Saint Louis for lunch at a Mexican restaurant called Tapas. We ate nachos, burritos, and drank wine, margaritas, and had shooters (compliments of Julie's friend, the restaurant manager)! After a long lunch (still snowing) it was time for some shopping.

Lots of great shopping on this island... but we need dinner. The original plan was for pork tenderloin, but we ended up with lasagna(ok, the spell checker on this blog is terrible).

After shopping, we needed to stop for a rest at La Chaumiei c'en L'Ile. This is a little wine bar and the home of the "fair priced scotch". In Paris, spirits are expensive. After sampling some vin rouge, we headed home with dinner.

After a short stop at Natalie's (the wine shop), for wine for the night, I have stumbled(it is icy and snowing) over to the Left bank to the Internet cafe where I am updating this blog. It is located about a block from Notre Dame. I'll walk back to Julie's apartment which is only about 5 minutes away.

I'll write again tomorrow.

Bonsoir,
Sam

Jour Deux

Bonjour!
Yesterday, day 2, was lots of fun. I mentioned in the earlier entry some of the events of the day. To elaborate some, we grabbed coffee ole at the tobacco shop down the street. The cigarettes that I bought for Jaime cost 5 euros! We had lunch with Julie's friend from college, Noel. Lunch was at Maharjah's(Indian cuisine). We had Murgh Tikka (chicken) which we enjoyed in a very formal (white table cloth) restaurant. We then walked into the Latin quarter and back to the Notre Dame area for a visit at Shakespeare's bookstore. We then enjoyed wine and cheese at the Cafe Panes. Here we met Julie's friend Oliver who lives near Julie and works as piano teacher. Julie knows everyone.
We picked up wine at a wine shop called Natalie's and operated by her friend Christian.

When Rick arrived home from work about 9:00 last night, (no he doesn't work that long, as he doesn't leave for work until 10 a.m.). We went out to dinner at Au Viex Paris. We were served by Julie's friend, Fred. The restaurant was located in a fourteenth century building. We ate goose pate, escargots, salad, and steak. Everything was delicious!

We have been trying to walk in the sun as it is very cold in the shade.

Rick has a great collection of rock 'n roll and blues, etc. which we have totally enjoyed. Last night Julie and Jaime had a run-in with some Polish vodka that contained a stem of grass inside the bottle.

The heat system in the apartment is a closed hot water system, fired by a gas burner. The system supplies heat through a radiator and hot water is abundant being stored in the radiators.

We experienced a two-dog night last night sleeping with Slinky and Bertha. No, not dogs, but the names of two of Julie's quilts!

Today, we will take in the Place de la Concord, which has an Egyptian oblique and walk the Champselysees. We will take the Metro and maybe a boat ride if the weather is ok. Also Tueillers Garden and the Louvre.

Au revoir,
Sam

First Day

We departed Atlanta on Saturday evening. After checking in early at the Delta gate, the airline announced that if anyone had flexible travel plans that they would pay $400 in travel vouchers for taking a later flight. I quickly multiplied 400 times 2, got $800, and determined that I indeed had flexible travel plans. We were 2 hours late arriving in Paris, but with enough travel credits for a trip to California!

Jaime and I met Rick and Julie at the appointed cafe near Notre Dame. Of course, they had waited the extra 2 hours at the cafe (consuming a couple of bottles of wine).

Julie and Rick's apartment overlooks the Hotel de Ville and the Seine River. The weather last night was bitter, but we went across the Seine for dinner. Jaime was lagged so I brought her back some pizza.

The weather is much better today. Jaime and I went out early this morning (10:30) in search of coffee and cigarettes. By the way, Jaime's 2 cartons of cigarettes that she brought from the states is still in the large bag that didn't make it to Paris with us. The airline says we'll have it sometime today. We found coffee and cigarettes. Coffee is about $3 a cup and cigarettes are $10 a pack! If I had known this, I would have brought an additional suitcase filled with both and sold them on the street corner.

We met Julie's friend Noel for lunch at an Indian cafe. We've wandered about a bit this afternoon seeing the Luxembourg Park, the Senate, parts of the Latin quarter and more. Julie's apartment is in the 4th Adronisement. By the way, if you are expecting to see these French names and terms spelled correctly, you will be disappointed. I am writing this from an internet cafe were the rates are 3 euro per half hour, so if the spell check can't fix it, neither can I.

I have taken a number of photos, but I doubt that I will post them until later in the week if at all. I will post them when I get back.

That's it for now, folks.

Your friend in Paris,
Sam

Today is the Day

Well, it's finally arrived. The day we leave for Paris. We'll be leaving Atlanta about 6:30 tonight. Arrive in Paris 9:30 Sunday morning. We can't wait to see Julie and Rick. It has been a long time since we had an extended visit. Julie says to expect cold weather. In fact, Paris had snow earlier in the week. Snow in Paris is unusual she says. We managed to pack in only 2 suitcases! Three cheers to Jaime for packing light! Jessica and Talley will take us to the airport.

Plum

My friends Adam and David Churvis have recently released their latest gift the the ColdFusion world. It's a tool called Plum that allows developers to rapidly develop ColdFusion applications. This software features a number of modules that the developer may use to create large chunks of code that then may be tweeked as required. Within just a few minutes, a develper could show a client a working web site. Shrini and I are afraid that if we start using this product that we will forget how to code in ColdFusion!

Rotary International's 100th Birthday

Today, Rotary is celebrating 100 years since Paul Harris gathered 4 friends in his Chicago law office for what became the birth of the world's largest service organization. Rotary is truely world-wide with clubs in most countries. Our club, Muscogee Rotary Club, is now designated as a 100% Paul Harris Fellow Club. This means that all of our members have given $1000 or more to the Rotary Foundation to help to the work of Rotary. This is a great distinction for a club!

Cliff Davenport

I saw my old friend Cliff Davenport on Wednesday for lunch. He seems to be doing fine. I mentioned to him that our class reunion will be held later this year. I don't know the exact date yet. It should be a lot of fun. Cliff mentioned that his son, Malcom, was working in Huntsville in technical sales. I think that George should look into this. Technical sales careers have the potential for higher earnings than a technical position.

Countdown to Paris. Two Days Until Blast Off

Well, I can't believe that our departure date is almost here. We'll be leaving on Saturday. I also can't believe that I have not packed a thing! Neither has Jaime. I could be Saturday morning before I pack, but it will happen.

I check the weather forecast for Paris on Yahoo Weather and it seems that it is currently snowing! We should see highs in the mid 30s and lows in the high teens. I guess that means I should pack very warm clothing.

Julie and Rick

Three more days before Jaime and I depart the USA. We're bound for gay Paris. We'll be spending a few days with cousin Julie and Rick. This is Julie, Rick, and Keeper in the photo.

Mid-term Test Day

Today is mid-term test day in my BUS105 and BUS202 courses that I teach at Columbus Tech. The pressure is on to make a good grade on "Mr. Singer's" test. Well I hope that everyone does well. Good luck, relax, take a deep breath and begin.

Countdown to Paris

Yes, only 17 more days until Jaime and I depart for Paris. We are going to visit cousin Julie and her boyfriend Rick. Leaving on Delta and scheduled to arrive about 9:30 Paris time at CDG airport. We are really looking forward to a long visit with Julie. We have seen her very little in the six years she has been in France. We plan to take in some museums and sample Parisian fare. We expect to be posting to our blogs daily while in Paris. Julie says that there are many internet cafes.

A Monday of New Releases

Monday marked a day of new releases in the CFer world. Macromedia released ColdFusion 7 to the world and across the country in Atlanta, Adam Churvis and son David release Plum. Well, I had a hard time deciding which product to download first. Sorry Adam and David, but I had to have CF7 first. Download was easy. I had to change my site definitions to find CF7. No other problems. I then downloaded Plum. I still have the ad version, but will upgrade to the non-ad version as soon as I can get Wiebke to approve the purchase.

Super Bowl Report

My cat, Maggie Mae, has been working out for Super Bowl Sunday. With just one day until the big day, she is handling a snap from the shotgun position with uncanny consistancy (for a cat). I've been filling in for her regular snapper, who is in Jacksonville. I'll have a photo of Maggie taking snaps on-line latter this afternoon.

Who Else is M & M?

Who else is M&M? The Mars candy named for the Mars brothers? The rap singer Eminem? No, I'm thinking of my cat Maggie Mae who is named for the character in the Beatle's tune by the same name. M & M is a very talented cat. As most of my friends and family already know, M & M retrieves fabric mice that I throw across the living room. Well last night she would retrieve, but she keep demanding that I throw more mice. I threw all of her old ones. She chased down each, but retrieved none. So the living room is now littered with the bodies of unretrieved mice. I didn't throw her new ones because she has started eating the tails off of them. Takes her all of one minute to gobble up a tail. I imagine that when I get home tonight she will have hidden all of the carcarses. Talented cat. Smart kitty!

Boom Boom Bass

I've the G5 with the Gateway speakers cranked up. Boom boom boom! Beach Boys. Help Me, Rhonda! Man! This is great music. Richard, hope you are enjoying this downstairs as well. Say what Richard? I can't hear you! Help help help help me Rhonda!

Sixteen and Counting

Tomorrow, Jaime and I will have been married for 16 years. Seems like yesterday and also like forever. Either way it has been with the most wonderful woman in the world. No man could ask for a more loving wife. I am truly blessed!

MAC is a rockin' machine!

My G5 is now loaded with almost every cd I own. It took me the better part of a Sunday to add all of the titles. I'm using iTunes. All of the iLife suite is so easy to use. It really invites its user to participate to the fullest. Son Matt has passed to me his old Gateway powered speaker system. I connected the cables last night and this MAC rocks! Downstairs neighbor Richard probably thinks his reclinder has grown a vibrator! I'm sure that it rocks his unit. All I need now is my iPod. (I imagine that it's coming soon!)

Where is Security?

Well, I need paper. Seems like every Tuesday and Thursday nights, it's the same sad story...no paper in the laser printer. Now what good is this fine HP printer without paper? Nothing! Absolutely nothing!

So, time to go looking for paper. First choice involves the fewest number of steps. I'll go next door to the Business Education office. But, I find it locked. No problem. I'll try copier in the faculty lounge. No luck. It's empty, too. OK, now I need to find security to open the Business Education Office. I wander down the hall to the Security Office. Anyone home? No. I wait. Five minutes. Ten minutes. Fifteen minutes. This is too much. I wonder if housekeeping can contact security. What is there was a real emergency? I read a sign outside the security office door... defibrulator inside. Well I can't get to it! What if someone was having a heart attack? I talk with housekeeping. She has the phone number of Bob the Security guy. I phone him. Bob, can you let me into the Business Education office? Well, he is busy across the street in the Administration building testing the fire alarms. Well, what if there was a fire over here? There is no one to report an emergency to. Bob says that he will be back in fifteen minutes and will meet me in my classroom. After forty-five minutes, he shows. Now I can get paper and find out what the printer is for.

What is Concatenate?

Betsy wants to add @auburn.edu to the end of serveral thousand user names. I searched Excel help (user names are in an Excel file) and found concatenate. This is a pretty cool function. To concatenate the contents of two or more cells (or text) would look something like this:
=contatenate(A1,"@auburn.edu"). The user name contents of cell A1 would then be concatenated to @auburn.edu in the cell where the function appears. The function could easily be copied down the page. Try it, you'll like it!

First Post in A Day in the Life

This is my first post on the Google blog site called Blogger. Of course the name of the blog comes from the Lennon/McCartney tune by the same name. So as this day in the life goes, life is good. I am currently employed in the best job of my life.