Anxiously anticipating the American Idol finale
I cannot wait until tonight. I am actually really interested to see how this season ends.
I know it sounds weird but I am almost torn between Cookie and Archie. While I think Cookie overall had a better season, I think he wore himself out and did not have all to give last night.
On the other hand, Archie never really takes chances so he had everything to give last night.
Seriously though, why do I even care? I'm not sure. I am just anxious to find out who won.
Maybe I am anxious because as soon as I know I will be able to sleep.
No Goliath to slay for these Davids
I waited on making this post until after American Idol because I wanted to try to capture something from the finale. Going into the show tonight I thought it would be a great show. I think I was pretty spot on.
Both Davids kicked butt tonight. Both of them showed great originality, great range, great vocals. Both of them sang very well.
And while I think that David Cook (Cookie, as I'll call him from here on out) is an all around better performer, a la Ruben Studdard, tonight I think the singing went to David Archuleta (Archie as he will herein be known).
Cookie tore things up. But his singing I think sounded a little strained. That might be because of how hard he sings and the fact that all of his songs vary so much in style that he will almost always be using his voice. Whatever the cause, his voice sounded a little tired.
Archie sang his normal soft voiced love song type songs. But he sang them very well. Better than Cookie. And I think that might make the difference.
We'll see tonight. I think it will be close like the Ruben / Clay finale of season 2. Regardless, I think we were treated to a great American Idol season. Thanks to the contestants for really bringing it this year.
Good luck to you David. Both Cookie and Archie.
A bit of irony in the PHP world
According to an article today by TechCrunch, Zend Technologies, The PHP company, is cutting 25% of their PHP developer staff, perhaps with an eye towards selling the company.
Israeli startup Zend Technologies has fired 25 percent of its R&D team (at least ten people), as well as others across the company, in an attempt to become cash flow positive, says a source close to the company. A spokesperson from the company’s PR firm says: “Yes, I can confirm that Zend made the layoffs, but we cannot comment on the numbers or reasons for the action.”
Read the complete TechCrunch article here.
As I read the brief article I began to think that this is not really anything that should be too newsworthy. Many companies in the USA, and around the world in general, are feeling the pinch of a down economy. Companies have to do what they can to reduce cost while maintaining competitive prices for goods and services. What Zend is doing is not really that out of the ordinary.
And I am not sure that Zend, as a company, is really worth a huge amount of money like the Sun Microsystems acquisition of MySQL was. It might be tasty to some of the players in the industry right now like Oracle, IBM or even a Sun. But really, other than the Zend engine and the Zend IDE what exactly does Zend have to offer?
Whatever happens to Zend from all of this one thing is very important to remember. Many a PHP developer now has the opportunity to seek gainful employment from other companies that are seeking, heavily, PHP talent. Many Silicon Valley companies, including many companies in the social networking space, are looking for top tier PHP talent right now. Companies like Ning, Digg, Facebook, Technorati, Yahoo and Google are constantly hiring PHP developers.
Times are good for being a PHP developer. Maybe not so much if you worked for Zend. Nonetheless, now is a great time to know a great deal about PHP.
Belle notti di musica di pianoforte
This entire weekend, starting from this past Thursday, has been a blur. It was busier than any weekend should be and was more entertaining that many have been.
The real entertainment started on Friday night when the kids performed some of their piano pieces at the LINKS home school talent show. It started with Sarah and Rebekah coming together to perform the song "Part of your world" from the movie "The Little Mermaid".
My daughters can sing pretty well. In fact, musically, they can do a lot of things very well. But I have never seen them do this before. I was pleased by their ability to work together to perform.
After their team performance, later on in the show, Sarah was allowed to perform a few more songs. Rebekah did not want to perform anymore so Sarah finished things up.
Saturday... well, Saturday was entirely too involved to repeat here. But today was a nice little respite (not really, but I am not going in to that right now) and it ended with a great little music recital for all of the students of my daughters' piano instructor.
So that is how the day went. With a little extra time taken for Costco runs, food preparation, kid playing, eating, driving and server messing around with. But for the most part, I can say...
THANK GOD THIS WEEKEND IS OVER.
Livin’ la vida soccer mom
Today was a day to end all days of soccer momming, driving, taxiing and shuttling. Wow. Did I ever drive today!
It started out not driving, but still having some responsibility to get things done for the kids. Blueberry pancakes was the order of the day and as is usually the case when pancakes are called for it falls on daddy to do. So I did. And they were you-uh-me. Or so I was told.
There was not enough blueberries for a full batch of pancakes to be made with blueberries. In fact, I was only able to make half the pancakes with blueberries. So I did. 22 total pancakes, 11 of which has the little blue orbs of goodness and juiciness that is the blueberry.
And with five kids in my house, two of whom are blueberry fanatics, you can imagine that 11 blueberry pancakes do not get very good mileage. So I had the regular ones.
After that it was time to start working on some technical stuff I needed to do for my clients. I was able to spend all of five minutes on that if I remember correctly. From there it was time to get the kids ready for their events of the day.
My two oldest daughters had a party in San Jose they were invited to. And I had to get them there by 1:00 just after stopping by the pharmacy for some meds for mom. I was a little late.
My two younger daughters had a party at 2:00 that they were invited to. Lucky for me I was a little earlier for that one. I dropped the two girls off and headed home by way of McDonald's.
This is the part of the show where things get a little interesting. I had about four weeks of work to do today. My wife had a few hours of sleep to catch up and some preparing to do for a party she was going to tonight. My son was supposed to have slept during this time so both my wife and I could get done what we needed to get done (and no, we didn't "do" that).
AJ decided to sleep earlier in the afternoon so the plans we had were shot straight to heck. But neither my wife nor I ever talked about what we were really planning on doing. To that end she decided to put AJ in the bedroom with me while I worked so she could go sleep on the couch. Except I did know she was sleeping on the couch. So I kicked AJ out of our room. Sandi called me out loudly and I knew it was time to leave.
I grabbed AJ and we headed out the door. I didn't know where we were going to go but I knew Sandi needed sleep so I left. We ended up hitting up Big 5 and playing with boy toys for a little while. Then we left to go get the two younger girls whose party ended at 5:00.
Luckily we got home in time for the three youngest kids to say goodbye and goodnight to mom. She left a few minutes after we got home (looking hotter than ever I might add 
).
It was just a few moments of quiet then it was time to head out to get the older girls from their party. It was about 7:20 when we left San Jose and one of the girls mentioned she was hungry. After a quick vote we decided that it was time to hit up Claim Jumper.
The events that unfolded at dinner tonight are totally for another post at another time. In fact, this is a great place to end this days recap since it only gets worse from here.
I will say that I had an awesome day with my kids today. It was busier than crud, but still awesome. Plus they got to get out of the house and see some friends. And I got to spend some boy time with my son.
Yep, everything today was awesome.
Testing out posts on a new server
I just recently moved from one server to another and am testing out whether the blog conversion worked or not.
If it worked then this post should appear without issue. If it didn't, well then you probably would not even see this post at all.
So here's to keeping our fingers crossed.
And the flames of hell poured down upon them
Ok, I thought this morning was bad. And it was. But this evening was craptacular.
I left work at about 6:00 PM. When I left work the thermometer read 98 degrees. It very quickly registered 101 degrees. Then even quicker it hit 103 degrees.
And it stayed that way for about 20 miles.
As I got closer to home it started to go down and by 6:45 PM, when I got off the freeway, it was registering a smooth and cool 93 degrees.
Knowing what I know about my house, our insulation and the complete lack of proper ventilation, I have to say that my home is going to be a nightmare tonight. All night.
I can only hope that the weather tomorrow will be cooler.
Until then, thank God for 93 degree evenings. They are so much nicer than 103 degree afternoons. 
I might just make it as a ZCE
Today I took a sample Zend Certified Engineer test. I have wanted, for some time now, to get my ZCE and as part of an ongoing educational track set up at work, I was able to take the ZCE training course offered by PHP|Architect.
Part of the training course that I bought into was 10 free sample exams that I could take at me leisure prior to taking the actual exam. Wanting to move a little closer to being certified, I agreed with my coworker who decided it was time to take our first practice test.
The results?
Not too bad, eh? I am planning on taking several more of these (if not all 10) before taking the exam. I would say that I should be a ZCE before the end of summer. More than likely though I will be certified by the end of spring.
Let's just see. And let's hope that I don't get too full of myself and end up borking the test altogether.
Hotter than a branding iron made of lava
This morning I left the house at 7:45 AM. It was 76 degrees. Not that this was unexpected. The weather folks (meteorologists for those with large vocabularies) have been telling us for a few days that the temperature would be rising pretty high over these next few days. But 76뫬degrees this early in the morning is a little extreme.
Not to be outdone, however, was the local weather where I work. Indeed, it took the challenge personally and delivered a striking 89 degrees at 8:45 AM when I got to work. That sucked. Big time.
I am wondering what this day will end up as since these temperatures have historically been associated with the fires of Mordor in the late summer months coupled with the fires of the all seeing eye of Sauran after eating south Texas chili.
I hope I have nothing going on outside today because I may just end up melting. Here's hoping that I make it out of today in one big, fat Robert sized piece.
