Tradition

For me tradition is something important. It probably has a lot to do with my up bringing where we had family "traditions" that we did every year. Or maybe it's just my more conservative nature. Not sure.

But for me tradition is just something that you do. It's a way to help connect to the past, remember good days gone by, family members you never knew, etc. This doesn't mean that just because you did something at one point you have to always keep doing it for eternity. You carry on a tradition because you want to. The event starts to take on a life of it's own and helps to keep it going. If it doesn't then it becomes just an event and isn't as important in your life. It looses it's "tradition" status and then may eventually go away. This isn't a bad thing. It's just nature. If traditions never went away we'd all have special events and/or holidays 365 days a year!!

For me the definite tradition time is Thanksgiving. I actually wrote a post about it last thanksgiving and it dealt with... wait for it.... Tradition.

So how's that work. I finally get around to posting a new entry, and it turns out to be something I already wrote. Well, I don't care. I'm counting this as another entry. Read the link above if you want to see the whole deal about my thoughts. They turned out to still be true. Even more so as it's one more year for the tradition to dig in further.

So everyone out there have a wonderful, safe, Happy Thanksgiving.

-Kent

"Thank-You for Smoking" - Review

This will be a pretty quick review, but I did want to get it out there as this movie is wonderful. Maybe I'll update it a bit in the future, but for now this is it.



First of all Thank-you for Smoking is a smart comedy. It's not slapstick, it's not frat house humor, it's smart comedy. If you pay attention to the subtleties you won't be disappointed.

Also this movie classifies as the Number 2 sales training movie of all time. (Tommy Boy still holds a special place in my heart.)



Some of the stuff that the main character says may upset some, but if you honestly stop and think about them they make sense in a weird sort of way. Plus they are really funny, so it's worth it.

So give it a watch and just enjoy the great performances by William H Macy, Robert Duval, and others. The M.O.D. (Ministry of Death) is just great!! Enjoy and do remember that smoking IS bad for you!!

Cool band to check out....

I've been listening to this band called "And Then I Turned Seven" for a about a year now. I don't remember how I found them on the web, but through the magic of the internet I did. On their website and the related links to their My Space page and their Pure Volume page I was able to find a few MP3's to listen too.

They have a great sound for a young independent band. Their song "Goodbye (I'm Sorry)" deals with suicide and is just incredible. Has a great sound and a very good message.

I finally decided to up and buy their entire album called "Broken Summer" and I got it today in the mail. Was not disappointed.

They have atleast one more album that I'll probably end up picking up, but I highly recommend atleast checking out their free downloads from their sites.

Good luck guys.

Tabblo Wedding Collage....

Well, this is a cool new site called Tabblo that lets you make all kinds of collages with digital photos.
Only negative I have of the site so far is that I can't figure out how to save the collage I make as a nice digital picture. Should be able to do that. Atleast for some kind of nominal fee.
Oh, well. Atleast you can view it online.

See my Tabblo>

More & better wedding pics.....

I got some more of our wedding pictures uploaded to Picasa finally. I've only gone through about half of them from our photographer so far, but I have them all up until the reception. Some great shots in there. Allie did a wonderful job.

Wedding Pics from Allie

Please go on over and I'll update this when I finally get the rest of them up there.

As usual, if anyone wants any particular shots in a higher resolution just let me know.

What a beautfiful fall day!!!

Well it's the 14th of October and what a perfect day in New Hampshire. So easily this time of year it could be cold, rainy, miserable, and just horrible. But as we hoped, it's turned into a perfect fall day in New England.

I did a little leaf blowing this morning to try to at least stay caught up to the falling leaves. One thing that I just can't get used to. Growing up in Maine we just didn't have trees right around our house and so we never worried about it. Now we are in a house that is practically cut right into the woods and so we are surrounded by falling leaves. While just gorgeous this time of year, it does add a little bit of work. But that's cool.

Right around lunch time we went down to the new wine store that opened in town and checked it out. Could be serious trouble for us. Lots of really good wines from all over the world, and great cheese to go with it!! We got a few bottles of things to try out and look forward to that. They have wine tastings every Thursday night, so I guess I know what Xan and I will be doing for the next few Thursdays!!!

We were supposed to go to a local winery this afternoon with some friends, but they all got busy doing normal stuff and so we decided to postpone for another weekend. Just as good since we have lots of things we should be doing too!!

Xan has run off to Walmart to get some pictures developed to include in the Thank-You cards to people for our wedding presents. We're a little behind on those, but I'm not honestly going to lose sleep over it. If you haven't gotten yours yet, you will.

Well I should get going and get caught up on a little more correspondence with people. Talk to you all soon!!

Website Updated

Just a quick note to let people know that I got a couple of things updated on my website.

Still lots to do on it, but boy, time just flies by.

-Kent

Our favorite pic from the wedding....

This is our favorite picture from the wedding. Our photographer, Allie, had us do this shot and we both thought it was a little strange at the time. Are we glad now that we did it!!

She then worked up the text on top of this and it just seems perfect.

Thanks Allie!! 

Some more wedding pics....

Just a quick post to say I've got some more wedding pics up on the Picasa web album.

Pictures from disposable cameras...

Sep 11, 2006 - 108 Photos

These were the ones from the disposable cameras that we put around, so the quality isn't great, but there are some fun pics in there. Worth checking out soon as I'll probably pull them down in a while to make space for better quality pics once I get a chance to go through those.

If you want a full size image on any of these just let me know which one. I'd be glad to send it along. These have been scaled down some to save space.

Some photos from wedding

OK. We haven't gotten all of the photos put together from the wedding yet, but I know all of you out there that read my blog (all two of you!!) are dying to see some pics. So here is a link to the web album of the pics that Xan's Uncle Dave did of the ceremony.

Xan and Kent Wedding - Uncle Dave Pics

Sep 2, 2006 - 13 Photos

We should be getting more of the pics put together over the next week and I'll post links to those here as well.

We Finally Did It!!!!

We got married!!!

Took over seven years, but we finally did it on September 2nd, 2006 at my parents house up in Maine.

More to come later, but had to get that part out atleast!!

-Kent 

12 days to go....

So it's now August 21st and by my little Google Desktop Gadget I've got just 12 days left until my wedding.

I've got to tell you that all the stuff that people say about a wedding being crazy to plan and such is completely true. Xan and I have been pretty lucky with all the support that we've gotten from our families and from the hotel where we are having the reception, but there is still a thousand things to do.

But that's all part of what makes it such a special day. It's the work that we put into it making it our special day (not somebody elses) that allows us to have so much fun and be able to hold onto memories of a wonderful day for the next 50 plus years.

I'm so looking forward to the wedding simply because I know it's all going to come together (some stuff may get screwed up at the end, but that's us so it's cool) and everyone is going to have a wonderful time.

So I don't know how many updates I'll do to this over the next few weeks, but since I haven't been updating it for a while now I guess there isn't any huge problem there.

-Kent

Team Dynamics

The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable by Patrick M. Lencioni

This is just a great book for any person. We all are members of teams in our lives, whether that's in business, family, sports, whatever.

The book is geared toward a business situation and that's where it shows the most relevance. It's written as a novel for most of the book and that was an interesting approach. The author does a great job of doing this and making his points understood very well by the different characters. You are instantly able to relate your life to the situation by picturing the different characters as the good, and bad, people on the teams in your life.

A valuable, although at times difficult, part of reading this book for me was seeing how I often do a lot of things wrong in the teams that I'm part of. After reading this book I'm much more aware of things that I do and have started to watch for those in order to put the team first. A very enlightening experience.

I highly recommend this book to anyone who leads a team, or is part of one that is looking to make improvements.

Orb DVR

I just ran across this on the trusty Gizmodo feed. I was pretty skeptical about it as I've seen some stuff like this in the past and they just didn't work all that well.

I loaded it onto my computer and gave it a shot. A little strange to setup, but certainly doable. I setup my laptop in the same room and gave it a shot. Seems to work pretty well. I've got a couple of things to work out, but so far so good.

Orb DVR Everywhere: Take That TiVo With You: "If you have TiVoToGo and a TiVo Series 2 DVR, Orb DVR Everywhere will let you stream programs from that TiVo to any Web-enabled mobile device, PDA, or PC. It will also let you access music, photos, or video from your PC.

And, if your PC has a TV tuner, you can watch live or recorded TV from that, too. It's a free add-on to the company's Orb software for Windows XP.
-Gizmodo Blog Entry

So if you're interested check it out at www.orb.com.

Google Reader learns to share

Google Reader learns to share

This is an interesting feature that Google has now added to their RSS Reader program. I've decided to give it a ty here on my Blog so that everyone can see what I'm recently marking off as "stared" items. Keep in mind that I don't "star" a lot of things currently, but what I do I find honestly interesting. Take a look on the sidebar and see what I'm finding interesting in the wonderful web.

Mom always taught us to share and now we know why: it's fun. Google Reader, which keeps track of websites you like to read regularly, just added the ability to share what you like to read with your friends.

Smart Playlists suggestions

This was a blog entry that I ran across through Lifehacker. It shows some pretty good ideas on how to create custom smart playlists in iTunes so that you can get a good mix of stuff you really like, stuff you haven't listened to in a while, and not get over run with the same old stuff.

Be smart about your Smart Playlists:

Blogger Andy Budd has posted a tutorial detailing how he sets up his iTunes Smart Playlists in order to get the most out his music library.

I currently have 3476 songs in iTunes which works out at around 12.4 days worth of music. This may seem a lot, but considering how much time I spend on the computer, I burn through tracks with surprising ease.

One of the problems with this is keeping your music collection interesting.... The way to achieve this is by utilising smart playlists, however it can be quite difficult getting the right balance.

For the rest see Andy's blog.


Update: 9-APR-06 -- I've been using this new playlist idea for a while now and just LOVE it. I highly recommend doing something similar if you have a large music collection to help you find some of those missing favorites out there.