If you’re worried about Prism and the NSA, have you ever stopped to think about that device you’re carrying around in your pocket? The government doesn’t have to worry about tracking where you are because you’re doing it for them. At a minimum your cell phone is reporting which cell tower it’s connected to and sometimes it will report GPS location which is more exact. I’m fine with that, but I also feel that if info like this is being collected about me, I want to have the data! This stuff is cool!
This is where an app called Track My Life comes in. It’s available for Android, iPhone and Windows Phone and the basic app is free. It periodically records your GPS location and over time you get some interesting stats. How much time do you spend at work? At home? Somewhere else? How far have you travelled?
I don’t really know what I’ll do with the data yet, but as with most “big data” scenarios, the trick is to start collecting the data now so that when better analysis is available, you have the data to feed into it.
When babies are in the womb, they have quite a noisy environment with all the blood rushing around in addition to the muffled noises from outside the womb. So it makes sense when they are born that it’s comforting to have some white noise playing while they sleep. There are tons of white noise generators on the market, but we picked up an hour long MP3 called “
We’ve been doing quite a lot of grilling over the past year. While Tyla was pregnant, we were extra careful about making sure that the meat was cooked thoroughly. I got in the habit of using an instant read thermometer, but now that Elijah is here, I still find myself using it. Maybe it’s wimpy or geeky, but using that thermometer has saved me numerous times from either over or under cooking the meet. I use this 
This website started 16 years ago and 5 years after that I started writing at least one blog post per week day. The site has never grown huge but it’s a fun way to communicate with friends and family and it’s cool to have a fairly detailed account of my life over this time. Sometimes I wonder what it would be like if any of my ancestors had done something like this. Will Elijah or later descendants read through this mess of posts?
Walking out the door in the morning and saying goodbye to my wife and son isn’t fun. I know Tyla does a lot more work during the day than I could handle, but I feel like I’m missing so much of Elijah’s life! Thankfully Tyla agreed when I brought up the idea of buying a web cam so I could peak in during the day to see my family. 
Logan and I grabbed our temporary badges and headed to the Snoqualmie Valley Rifle Club with Don for our first shots as members. Being a Saturday, I expected it to be swamped with people. There was a hunter safety class between 9 and 3 so we arrived at 3 and found a nearly empty range. In fact, over the 2+ hours that we were there, we had the range to ourselves for a good chunk of it.
If you have an Xbox Live Gold membership, it just got a little sweeter. Microsoft is giving away two free games per month! Make sure you take the opportunity to “buy” them even if you don’t download and play them right away because that way they’ll be attached to your account forever. (Thanks to JimM for sending me this list.)
There’s a small shooting range at the bottom of the hill on 202 leading up to Snoqualmie Falls. You’ve probably driven by it numerous times and never noticed the dirt road leading off into the woods. MikeF took me there as a guest a few months ago and I’ve been trying to find time to join the club ever since.
My music collection is over 70GB. I’ve spent more time than I care to remember curating it. And now I’m coming to the realization that I should probably delete it. There’s very little point to keeping a local music collection anymore with all the various cloud music services that are available. We subscribe to Xbox Music which means that we get unlimited access to play any of the songs on the service from our phones, computers, or Xbox’s. Why bother monkeying around with local files?
Carnation Evaporated Milk
A quick search reveals that the tie between Carnation milk and Carnation, WA is very tight. The original company started a few minutes south of here in Kent, WA but the main farm was built in what is now Carnation, WA. In the early 1900s, the farm was supposed to be a home for contented cows which produced better milk. The farm was located just outside Tolt, WA and the town was renamed Carnation, WA in honor of the company.
In 1985, Nestle acquired the Carnation company. The old farm was later turned into a training center for the company and then in 2008 it became a camp for children with serious and life threatening illnesses.
I’ll never look at that can of Carnation milk the same way again!