A quick note on what is happening to me.

Wow, it has been almost a year since the last post so I thought I would just check in and update things a bit. What has been happening...

Well, in line with my name, I went to see Rush in Atlanta for the opening night of the Snakes and Arrows tour. For this who do not know, Rush is a progressive rock band that has been around for some 33 years now. They have about 20 studio albums and lots of live albums, and DVDs, most of which just finally came out on DVD in the last year. The trip to Atlanta was great and I went to the show with my brother, his girlfriend and a few of his friends. Seeing Rush on opening night is quite an experience. You do not know the set list yet, and they still have not ironed out all of the bugs. Lots of fun!

On the job end, I have been wrestling with a new T1, a new version of Asterisk on a new server and a phone consultant who has been learning as much from me as I have from him. I do have to say that I do not think I will be at my current position for all that much longer. I have gotten hints from the (new) CEO that downsizing is likely this summer and if that happens I will be asked to step down my hours. Ah well, if that happens there are always plenty of jobs out there.

As for the kids, they are both doing well and are both in the fencing summer nationals in Miami. My son will be fencing foil in the Y10 division and my daughter will be fencing sabre in the U14, U16, U19, Div II I, Div II and team U19 divisions. She also qualified in the open team and Div 1A divisions, but needs some time to rest between events. We leave next Wednesday for the nice long drive down to Miami.

In the "cool new toys" category, a JVC hard-drive (and SD)-based camcorder is the latest. My wife shot some footage with it last weekend and I was able to author it directly to a DVD - no transcoding or anything. Right into the authoring program! The only minor glitch is that it does not seem to mark the resulting files properly as 16:9, so I had to use IFOEdit on the resulting IFO files to change the aspect ratio. Not a big deal.

That's it for now. Catch everyone again in a few weeks (months? years?)

RT