Washington DC Trip - LAX, Jill & Aruba

Well, I'm back with a working computer. I was a little too trusting in a class last week... I opened a firewall on my computer and allowed a student to download a file he needed for class... and he nonchalantly mentioned he 'left me a present' on my computer. The next time I rebooted I found he had left an insidious nasty evil spyware/trojan that systematically crashed my computer drivers. Luckily I was able to backup all my important files before the machine gave up the ghost. (nice student eh?)
On the the week in Washington DC/Virginia/Maryland. I spent the first part of the week taking a class on Aruba wireless network controllers - as part of a path to add some additional training gigs in my future. Starting after the first of the year I'll be doing one week a month teaching for Aruba.
Late Wednesday night (actually Thursday morning - after there was a death on her plane) I picked up Jill from the Dulles airport. Thursday around noon we took off for a long (5-hour) drive down the beautiful Shenandoah Valley to Virginia Tech University to watch the BYU Lacrosse team play (and win) - it was quite a nice drive - great game - and then four hours back to DC for class on Friday morning. Then on Saturday we drove up to a small town north of Baltimore for the Lacrosse for Leukemia games - Brent got to play in both the Villanova and Washington College games. Both Jill and I really like watching the BYU Lacrosse... College-level Lacrosse is wicked-fast and an entire step above what we're used to at the High School level. By the way - Brent is number '47'
Then down to have dinner at the waterfront (Inner Harbor) of Baltimore at Cheesecake Factory with Jim and Margo Ferrin before driving back down to Dulles for flights back home on Sunday Morning. Jill to SLC and me to Denver for a WLSAT Course. Brent stayed and played another game against VMI on Monday before flying home on Tuesday.
I spent three days at a Holiday Inn by the Denver International Airport - teaching WLSAT to five students. One unique thing was we had someone steal an entire WLSAT student kit from a locked storage area. Ryan shipped a student's kit arriving on Saturday... signed for, locked in a room. Then on Monday morning when the guy delivered the box - it was already open and the computer/software/equipment was all missing! Now I get to fight with all the hassles of working with the Hotel's insurance and risk management. What a pain! (Ryan did a great job in getting a replacement sent overnight!)

broken computer - going thru withdrawl

Arrgggh!

Books Read - 10/6 - 10/14

Sometimes it's nice to have a little vacation to catch up on some reading/listening to story tapes on the drive to/from Las Vegas.

Here's my 'catch' for the week.

I really enjoyed the 1776 non-fiction about the start of the Revolutionary War - David McCullough does a great job making history come alive. This was a nice 'book on tape'.

Empire Rising was a good sequel to last week's first book by Sam Barone - this guy is pretty good. A 'Bernard Cornwell' type with lots of details and human intrigue concerning a special place/time in history.

The two Blog books were to help me learn how to do this 'blog' thang a bit better. I'd like to start up another blog specifically for my students where I can spend more time on subjects and make it relevant to those who want to learn Wireless LAN stuff - so I thought a couple of books to learn from would be a good idea.

Vegas Vacation - Part II

So on Saturday, after lounging around Karrissa & Joe's house for awhile, we took the entire family to see the 'Bodies' exhibition at the Tropicana. I had previously seen the exhibition when I was in NYC earlier this year and loved it. So we got to see the 'insides' of all sorts of bodies. (If you have a chance you really need to see this)

We walked over to the MGM for some lunch at the Rain Forest Cafe - I think Karrissa liked to color more than McKinley. Then Karrissa wanted to go to the M&M store...
After some naps in the afternoon - Jill and I read our books... Joe and I headed over to the Sam Boyd stadium - on the total opposite side of Las Vegas... to watch the BYU vs. UNLV Football game. It was quite enjoyable, and the Cougars easily handled the Rebels - actually the score could have been much higher.


Jill, the girls and Ryan went shopping - go figure... shopping, football, shopping, football... I chose Football with Joe.

Las Vegas - Family Vacation - Day 1

I had a couple of minutes while everyone is napping... so I thought I'd upload some stuff.

This weekend the family all came down to Las Vegas to be together for the 'Fall Break' in Alpine School district. (This used to be called UEA) - Well, all but Brent. He has a BYU Lacrosse game on Saturday.

So today we went to a couple of exhibits (Joe was in Dental School) - First was the 'Shark Reef' at the Mandalay Bay hotel. We were able to see lots of aquarium stuff. McKinley can 'sign' for fish and enjoyed watching the fish behind the glass.
Then after some lunch at the food court - we headed down to the Mirage to see another animal exhibit. This time it was the Dolphins (and the sad White Tigers and old White Lions)

Then after a long day of walking around - returned to Karrissa's house to rest up for a nice dinner out tonight at the Cheesecake Factory (the entire reason Ryan came with us ;-) )

Tomorrow - More fun planned - Stay tuned for more Family Fun.

Books Read Last Couple of Weeks

My Sister Janet posted her books... so here's mine. Actually, I think this is a good idea to capture, share, and archive a list of books as I read them.

Here goes my first attempt at a 'Table' in Blogging.

Date	Title	Author		Price	Notes
14-Sep	Nikon D40 - Magic Lantern	Simon Stafford		$19.95	Beyond Nikon's instruction Manual
16-Sep	iPhone - The Missing Manual	David Pogue		$19.99	How to use the iPhone
16-Sep	The Nikon D40 User's Guide	Ken Rockwell		N/A	PDF Download - nice instructions
23-Sep	Bolo Brigade	Keith Laumer		$7.99	Two old Bolos
24-Sep	Old Soldiers	David Weber		$7.99	The 'final' story of Bolos
26-Sep	Bolo!	David Weber		$7.99	Four Bolo stories
28-Sep	The Rough Guide to iPhone	Peter Buckley		$10.99	More iPhone Usage
12-Sep	Dawn of Empire	Sam Barone		$7.99	Great epic - ala Bernard Cornwell - river Tigris - BUY Sequel!
5-Oct	The Unconquerable	Keith Laumer		$7.99	Bolos - Book 2
30-Sep	Honor of the Regiment	Keith Laumer		$7.99	Bolos - Book 1

The table worked, well kind of, but the cover art didn't come across so here are the covers.