489 result(s) found in 0.90s.
Jump to another tag:
- Wednesday, September 18, 2024:
Memory Day: Snapshots
This picture was taken 33 years ago, in January 1991 .
It was a moderately warm winter and I was in Huntley Meadows Park with my dad, knocking out the requirements for my Photography merit badge. I'm wearing British Knights tennis shoes and the giant shark's tooth I found at Calvert Cliffs park. As a mid-seventh grader, I had not yet realized that my vision was poor enough to warrant glasses (those would come in 1992).
- Wednesday, August 28, 2024:
Finale Day
The music composition world (which I am barely even an honorary member of anymore) is up in arms about sudden end of Finale, the music software which I used to craft all of my MIDI recordings and scores during my music career. The president of the software company posted this letter on Monday:
The end of Finale
35 years ago, Coda Music Technologies, now MakeMusic, released the first version of Finale, a groundbreaking and user-centered approach to notation software. For over four decades, our engineers and product teams have passionately crafted what would quickly become the gold standard for music notation.
Four decades is a very long time in the software industry. Tech...
- Wednesday, August 21, 2024:
Stuff In My Drawers Day: When Band Auditions Go Awry
This is an email I wrote to the band director of the Marching Virginians 25 years ago, offering specific, detailed evidence for why someone was cut from the 63-member trumpet section. The reason? That person's dad was threatening to sue the band over the cut! I thought helicopter parenting didn't become a thing until the mid-aughts, so perhaps this was one of the first.
Names have been changed to protect the embarrassed.
Mon, 23 Aug 1999 19:02:23 -0400 (EDT)
To: bobbo, dlinden, rpereira, stpeter3, drew-dogg, dshiplet, etaylor, buri, pabrown3
From: "Brian Uri!" <llamaboy@vt.edu>
Hey guys,
I talked some with Dave today about cuts and the heat he's t...
- Wednesday, August 07, 2024:
Memory Day: Science and Energy Camp Journal Entries
excerpts from the journal I kept at a Boy Scout Camp 30 years ago, August 7 - 14, 1994
Sunday The three people from our Troop who went to camp were Tom, Chris, and myself. The bus ride took forever and I sat next to Chris. He's a nice kid but by about Tuesday, he really got on my nerves. We got to Goshen around four o'clock or so. The head guys divided the 43 Science and Energy guys into 4 different campsites. Dave and Ian were the Junior Staff guys who got paid 75 dollars to help out. They got into just as much trouble as the rest of us.
Monday In the Energy class, we saw a stupid movie.
 ...
- Wednesday, July 17, 2024:
Memory Day: Snapshots
This picture was taken in the summer of 1983 in our backyard, when I was 3 years old (maybe 6 months older than Ian is now).
Clearly, finishing my Slurpee was more important than looking at the camera.
The wagon eventually rusted away, but it was often used to drag both kids down the Holmes Run bike trail to the nearest supermarket on Duke Street, called Magruder's. We'd tie it to a bike rack out front and do some quick grocery shopping. One time, we came out in the nick of time to find another family wandering away with the wagon, claiming it had been abandoned!
- Wednesday, July 10, 2024:
Memory Day: Snapshots
This picture was taken 7 years ago today, on July 10, 2017 .
Maia was 4 days old, having just come home from the hospital one day earlier. She had eating troubles that necessitated this "syringe taped to my index finger" approach until she could regain her birth weight (6 pounds exactly).
- Wednesday, July 03, 2024:
Memory Day: Snapshots
This picture was taken 15 years ago today, on July 3, 2009 .
We were at a Nags Head beach house called the "Shore Thing" and participated in what may have been the dumbest form of cooking conceived by man, the Low Country Boil. This involved boiling random junk in a pot and then dumping it on top of a trash bag for consumption.
- Wednesday, June 26, 2024:
Memory Day: Snapshots
This picture was taken 9 years ago, on June 27, 2015 .
Ben and Anna were in town briefly with baby Isaac so we met them for dinner at the Herndon Mellow Mushroom (which sadly closed up shop in early 2023).
After dinner, Sydney the cat (who we were hosting for a year while Ben and Anna found a new house) got to meet the baby. I brought up the big round table from the basement for a poker game that also included Larry, Annie, and Mike (of Mike and Chompy). Mike came in 1st, Ben 2nd, and Larry 3rd. There was no chocolate pie, but we ate Rebecca's birthday cake and some chocolate eclairs instead.
- Wednesday, June 19, 2024:
Anniversary Day
Happy 20th Anniversary to my sister, Ellen, and her husband, Dan!
Here is the family looking fly at the Barboursville Winery, in spite of the mandated tuxedo whose collar board looks like a tiny origami pterodactyl trying to crawl out of my chest.
- Wednesday, May 29, 2024:
Memory Day: Snapshots
This picture was taken thirty years ago, on August 16, 1994 .
This was the summer between 10th and 11th grade (my sister was about to head off to UVa for college). We were at Universal Studios Florida and you can tell from my beautific expression how I felt about being on a family vacation as a high schooler and having to take pictures in front of all of the props.
- Wednesday, April 24, 2024:
Time-lapsed Blogography Day: Thirty-Four Years Ago Today
Thirty-four years ago today, on April 24, 1990 , I was a 10-year-old sixth grader on my first overnight field trip.
Since our city had a junior high school instead of a middle school, sixth grade was the highest grade in elementary school. Someone at Polk School decided it would be a good idea to trust the sixth grade class with a stay at Hemlock Overlook Regional Park. A surprising number of students from the 3 classes attended, although I believe there were still few enough people to fit in a large whitewashed double-roomed cabin (boys and girls separated).
We did the usual assortment of nature activities, like 300 reminders about what poison ivy looked like and what kind of tracks ...
- Wednesday, April 17, 2024:
Memory Day: Snapshots
This picture was taken 25 years ago today, on April 17, 1999 .
I was at Busch Gardens with my band friends: Rosie & Jason (not pictured), Doug & Becky, Jen, and myself. This picture was taken with one of the very first Canon Powershot digital cameras, which my dad had given me the day before.
1999 was the final year in my 20th century style: 1/4" buzzcut, glasses too big for my face, a Members Only jacket, and a Casio wristwatch.
- Wednesday, April 03, 2024:
Memory Day: Snapshots
This picture was taken 10 years ago today, on April 3, 2014 .
I received a $1000 gift certificate to the Greenbrier Resort for my 10th work anniversary and we finally used it 9 months later. This picture was taken in our room, while I was trying to blend in with the scenery.
We did not fit in at all at this place, which had an air of "used to be fancy but isn't so much anymore". I wore my 14-year-old pair of khakis and a button-up shirt whenever I was outside of our hotel room.
- Wednesday, March 06, 2024:
Memory Day: Snapshots
This picture was taken 9 years ago today, on March 6, 2015 .
Fresh off an extended weekend spent working overnight to analyze Weblogic memory crashes, and nonstop studying for my very first AWS cloud certification, Rebecca and I headed out of town for the weekend to Hopkins Ordinary B&B in Sperryville. We stayed in the smallest room ("Oregano") and enjoyed complimentary beers from the basement brewery. The next day, we hiked White Oak Canyon because recent snow had made an Old Rag hike untenable.
We enjoyed our experience so much that we went back 3 more times in the next 10 months, and then twice more in the coming years (once with Maia during the very first weeks of the pandemic).&n...
- Wednesday, February 14, 2024:
House Day
Celebrating 20 years as a Sterling resident!
People who have lived in this house since I bought it:
Me (2004 - 2024)
Anna A. (2004 - 2005)
Eric B. (2004 - 2005)
Ben A. (2005)
Kathy S. (2005)
Rebecca U. (2009 - 2024)
Abby W. (2013 - 2014)
Maia U. (2017 - 2024)
Ian U. (2021 - 2024)
Animals who have stayed in this house since I bought it:
Booty
Kitty
Amber
Sydney
Leia
Oliver
Titan
Lake
Abby
- Wednesday, February 07, 2024:
Memory Day: Snapshots
This picture was taken 14 years ago today, on February 7, 2010 .
It was the day after a massive snowstorm that dropped 23" of wet snow on us, the shoveling of which destroying my back and gave me a cold that caused me to miss two simultaneous Super Bowl parties. Between our own shoveling and the industrial tractor that drove down our street, we had a bulwark 4 feet high along our curb, protecting us from infidels and common decency.
Rebecca still worked for a T-shirt company at the time, and was always wearing cast-off returns or clothes with printing errors on them. This storm was big enough that the company had to embrace telework for a couple days and Rebecca got to sit at home wit...
- Wednesday, January 17, 2024:
Time-lapsed Blogography Day: Twenty Years Ago Today
Twenty years ago today, on January 17, 2004 , I was traveling across the region in search of a new house. I had picked out 4 houses to view with my realtor, Marion White, in the coming week and on the 17th, I drove around by myself to get a feel for the neighbourhoods.
The first house (shown on the left) was in south Reston, which has since become "the Green Line of living in Reston", with all of the high Reston Association fees and none of the lack of crime you'd get from living north of the toll road. I liked this house although I had always been negative about ground-level basement windows ever since someone tried to break my childhood home in the 80s.
The second house was in a nice ne...
- Wednesday, January 10, 2024:
Math Teacher Day
My high school calculus teacher, Lou Kokonis, recently passed away at 91 after 64 years of teaching in the Alexandria City Public School system.
Mr. Kokonis was not the most personable teacher -- he would quietly slip into the school with his head down and make his way to the classroom where he'd immediately begin writing the day's formulas on the chalkboard. His hands and glasses were perpetually caked in chalk dust. He had trouble remembering people's names so when someone was acting up in class, we'd hear, "Uh, Nate, I mean, John, I mean Derek, please stop talking when I'm teaching".
I think his dedication to math was stronger than his dedication to being a teacher, as he didn...
- Wednesday, November 22, 2023:
Thanksgiving Retrospective
pictures from Thanksgivings past
Since we apparently vanished from 2017 - 2020, here is a bonus picture.
- Wednesday, October 18, 2023:
Memory Day: Snapshots
This picture was taken 9 years ago today, on October 18, 2014 .
It was our first night in Seattle. The host of our B&B (11th Avenue B&B in Capitol Hill) welcomed us by giving us a map with all of the neighbourhoods that "got wild at night" circled. We ended up having dinner at Elysian Brewery amongst the hippies and hipsters and Rebecca got an entree that was at least 108% cous-cous.
After dinner and beer flights, we started walking back to our B&B when, just as prophesized, it got wild at night! These bottles of beer ran up to Rebecca danced around her for several minutes, then disappeared down the street.