Date:	Wednesday, 10/26/2005, 7:56 PM
Subject:	Anyone for a whirlwind?
Security:	Public
Mood:	drained

Sorry this entry is late. It's all my fault - you can blame me. The weekend wore me out, but I still don't feel fully recovered. I wonder if I might be coming down with something...

As stated previously, Saturday was the Museum of Science Gala for the new Star Wars: When Science Meets Imagination exhibit.  Friday evening, one of the guys in the 501st reserved 2 tables at a pool hall in Cambridge and about 20-30 people showed up for several hours. There was a lot of socializing and a little bit of pool playing. Two guys showed up in armor - have you ever seen a stormtrooper playing pool? The sad part was that the one wearing his helmet shot better than the one who had removed his helmet. The rest of us showed up in plain-clothes - there is actually a limit to some of our dorkiness. Despite the fact that we're all a bunch of geeks, it is a very fun group to hang around with.

On Saturday, we arrived at the museum at 10 am, met up with a lot more 501st and Rebel Legion people (some from as far away as Florida and Ohio), and got into the exhibit until noon.  The exhibit is great!!  Costumes, lots of props, and a full sized, actual landspeeder!  I took lots of photos, and they're posted in the Star Wars Chicks photo gallery.  After seeing the exhibit we had a walk-thru regarding our duties for the evening, broke for lunch (we walked over to the Galleria mall), and then began suiting up around 3:30, to be ready by 5.  We were on the floor of the museum, which had been totally transformed into a huge cocktail hour, by 5:10.  All together, there were over 80 of us dressed up in costume, including Stormtroopers (about 30), Biker Scouts, TIE pilots, X-wing pilots, Jedi, Imperial Officers, Royal Guards, Han, Leia, Chewie (his costume was totally hand-made and he stood 8 feet tall), Boba Fett, Darth Vader, a Jawa, and various others.

There were 2 levels of guests at the Gala, which was a black-tie affair: Jedi Masters, who paid $10k per table, and Stormtroopers at $7500 a table.  There was a photo shoot with Han, Leia, Chewie, Boba Fett, and old Obi-Wan in the Jedi Masters cocktail reception, which began at 5:30.  Stormtrooper patrons had the full Cantina theme going and an entranceway lined with Troops.  As Officers, Stephen and I were assigned to the main lobby of the museum, coordinating helmeted troopers and Royal Guards.  We basically spent most of the evening moving troopers around so they didn't pass out from standing in one place for 2 hours.  Or trying to, at least.  It was fun being in charge, and I have to say, we had the most comfortable costumes by far.

At 7:00 they began shuttling guests over to a nearby community college for dinner.  The museum isn't large enough to host a seated black-tie banquet for 650 guests.  Unfortunately, it rained all day and evening - not surprising since it's been raining in Boston for the last 2 and a half weeks.  So, to get guests to the shuttle buses, the Empire took over the museum and provided guests safe passage for a limited amount of time (a la Cloud City from ESB).  THAT was fun!  We got to arrest all the Rebels and hold them hostage.  Sometimes it's fun to be the bad guys!  This is when we got our brush with fame - George Lucas came out to the lobby just around 7, and stood about 10 feet from us for at least 10 minutes.  I tried really hard not to just stand there and stare at him the whole time, but I don't think I was all that successful.  He was so close, just surrounded by his entourage; it was as if I were watching any one of his television or DVD interviews, except for the fact that if I could have walked over and touched him. (And gotten arrested, I'm sure.) Eventually the reporters that had been following him around all evening got him to pose for more pictures.  We were not in any of them, though he did pose with Jen, who was dressed as Aurra Sing, at some point.  Apparently Aurra Sing was his creation, and he loved her costume.  Anthony Daniels was also in attendance, and we saw him briefly.  He posed with the photo group in the Jedi Masters lounge though, and actually signed a copy of the photo for each of them.  He was in rare form and was apparently very pleasant all evening.  About 20 troopers and Lori's hubby Scott, also an Officer, went over to dinner on the shuttle buses with the guests.  The rest of us went up to our green room/staging area for dinner and several hours of downtime.  My poor feet were very happy to let me sit down.  Riding boots were not designed for walking. 

Guests began returning to the museum around 11, so some of us went back downstairs to pass out parting swag - a copy of the companion book.  Unfortunately, the museum did not feel flush enough to give us volunteers a copy also.

Stephen and I hung around until about midnight, waiting for Lori to get back from dinner....   *drum roll*  As the most influential and hardest working employee the museum had in regard to this exhibit, they surprised her with a ticket to the gala, at none other than Mr. Lucas's table.  She had a great time, and she did get introduced to him, but she was placed across the table from him and as such did not get much in the way of dinner conversation with him.  Stephen and I got home around 1, after agreeing to come back in the morning at 8:30 to help out with the Member's Preview event.  90% of Lori's volunteers said they wouldn't be in until around noon, which just wasn't very nice to all the die hard fans who had tickets to see the exhibit beginning at 9 am on Sunday.  We showered, fell into bed, and got up 5 hours later.

Sunday was very low key, and I'm glad we agreed to help out, because it ended up being 3 officers (Stephen, Lori and I), an Imperial Gunner/Stormtrooper (same guy, two costumes), and a Biker Scout.  We wandered the two lobbies and the connecting hallway between them, interacting with kids and adults, and really had a blast.  I worked with the biker scout for the first 2 hours, and she was awesome with the kids.  If they were afraid of her, she'd put her hands over her mask and "hide" from them, and it was a lot of fun.  I swear, she was better than the costumed characters at Disneyland. (She didn't speak much - people get surprised when they find out the biker scout or stormtrooper is a girl!) I have NEVER had my picture taken so many times before in my life.  The good news is that I will most likely never have to see a single one of those pictures.  LOL  The bad news is that Stephen and I don't have any photos of us in costume to share. Sorry! By noon or 1, half a dozen more people showed up, so we left and went home and crashed.  We woke up in time for dinner, and then watched a movie to try and unwind.

Unfortunately, Lori did not finish our hats for us, like she had promised, and she did not let us know this until Saturday afternoon.  We found one hat to borrow, because she didn't let us know early enough to either a) try and make them ourselves or b) ask the rest of the 501st with officer's uniforms who were going as other characters to bring hats for us to borrow.  So Stephen went hatless all weekend.  Not a big deal, but at some point we need to make us both hats and then get him officially into the 501st. (Which simply consists of sending in a photo of you in a costume and having your costume approved.)

As for pictures of the gala, we were not allowed to have cameras on the floor while in costume.  There are some photos on the 501st and Rebel Legion sites though.  You can find those at: http://501neg.com/photos/index.php?cat=4&page=1 and http://alderaanbase.com/photos/index.php?cat=2 ; Again, my exhibit photos are posted at Star Wars Chicks. 

In other related news, Larissa, a classmate, got accepted into the Rebel Legion as Mara Jade Skywalker.  She made the green outfit from the cover of Vision of the Future.  She plans on attending a local convention with us next month, so Stephen and I can introduce her to people.

Speaking of costumes, I got my Arwen gown yesterday!!  It looks amazing, and is absolutely gorgeous.  However...  It's too short, there are two rather obvious repairs to the fabric that I've found so far, and it has a couple of snags.  I am not pleased with the quality of my rather expensive dress.  I'm 5'8", but that does not mean a dress that had 6 inches of fabric dragging on the floor for Liv Tyler should be 3 inches off the floor on me.  I don't want to send it back, because I love it and have been waiting forever for it...  But for something that costs that much, it shouldn't have so many obvious flaws.  I guess I need to contact their customer service, but their phone reps are always so clueless.  I'm not sure what to do about the length, either.  I'm wondering if maybe I didn't just get an odd one out, and maybe they hoped I'd be short and wouldn't mind, but I really have no idea.  *sigh*

This is a rather long post, and anything else we may have done last week, which wasn't much, will pale in comparison, so anyone mind if I stop here? Oh, yes, I was supposed to mention that wedding plans are progressing... We need to take a closer look at the guest list so we can finally settle on a location. We are most likely going to go with a location in the US Virgin Islands, possibly early this summer.

Stephen's mom also asked a couple of questions about the Guild website he designed. He'd probably answer better, but basically it was a fun, creative project, mostly made for ourselves. The links are quite useful, and we use them often, so it was nice to gather them all into one spot. It certainly helps us keep track of them! The rest of it is to keep in touch with the other members of the guild (though there aren't very many of them yet!), and if we happen to recruit new members through the website, we won't complain.

~ Tia

Date:	Monday, 10/17/2005, 8:34 PM
Subject:	Slipped a bit there, but you can survive a day!
Security:	Public
Mood:	tired
Music:	Whatever the iPod dreams up

So I slipped up a bit yesterday and didn't get this posted, but here I am, and it is only Monday night! Half points on the first bounce? (Obscure references, gotta love it!)

Monday Tia and I both had off for Columbus Day (very funny Foxtrot by the way). She spent most of the day preparing for the discussion she had to lead in class on Tuesday, and I worked on various projects throughout the day, but I think most of the time was spent ripping CDs.

Tuesday we were lazy and just ordered pizza for dinner. We've finally found a place out here that consistently delivers good pizza, so it's nice to go back to them each time. I don't know if it measures up to Sam's or Duneland, but it's good stuff. We then played Guild Wars with our normal Tuesday night group.

Wednesday night was exciting grocery shopping. Beyond that, I don't remember much.

Thursday was apparently non-memorable... Tia spent a lot of the evenings working on my Imperial Officer's uniform for the Museum of Science Gala on this coming Saturday, so she probably spent time on that. Even looking at my planner doesn't help much...

Friday it was finally Friday :) Tia worked from home, and I remember having a much crazier day at work than I expected (I remember being very happy to get home in the evening). Tia started chicken while I drove home, so a little after I got home we had a nice hot dinner come out of the oven. If I remember right, we put all projects aside for the evening and just relaxed.

Saturday, as most of you know by now, I spent most of the day on our Guild Wars guild's website. I have to admit, I'm very proud about how it came out. It's been a long time since I've had a good reason to do a fancy website, and while this one is subtle in its fanciness, I still think it's cool. Tia worked on and off on homework, often getting distracted by my work (probably didn't help that every half hour I asked for an opinion on something!). She also worked on more on my uniform -- getting into crunch time now.

Sunday we spent most of the afternoon running errands. A run to Michael's Arts and Crafts, followed by Lowes, and finally the grocery store took some time, but we got through all of it. Then after everything was put away, Tia worked on homework while I did work on my computer, mostly relating to the music server. I think I've finally found a disc that will foil almost all digital extraction techniques... Tia has a really old disc of space movie soundtracks that has a really bad last track -- every program I ran against it complained of timing errors and various other things that produce clicking and popping. Oh well. I'll probably fight it a little more before I give up. We ate a little bit of a late dinner and spent the evening on random stuff.

This is going to be a busy week building up to the Gala. Tia is working on my uniform as I write, and once that is done there are a lot of small details we need to finish up to get it ready for show on Saturday. We've also been working on wedding arrangements, and holiday vacation planning. So lots to do, little time as always.

Hope everyone has a good week, hopefully we'll be back on Sunday to share all the news.

- Stephen

Date:	Sunday, 10/9/2005, 10:46 PM
Subject:	Happy Birthday, Dad!
Security:	Public
Mood:	cheerful
Music:	Santana and Dido - Feels Like Fire

Don't look now, but I think I'm posting a journal update, and it's only been a week since the last one! I hope no one dies from the shock.

There isn't really much to report... Let's see here. Monday I had class in the morning as usual, and then spent the afternoon reading for class this week. I am in charge of leading our discussion in Tuesday's class this week. Class is on Tuesday because Monday is a holiday, classes are canceled, and Tuesday follows Monday's schedule. (East coast schools are odd like that) So not only do I need to do all the assigned reading, but there was a LOT for this topic (Unconscious Thought), plus I needed to find and read additional material to become an "expert on the topic" (yeah, right!). Luckily for me, there are only 7 of us in the class, myself included.

My Tuesday class was canceled because Tuesday was Rosh Hoshana, and my professor is Jewish. I spent the day doing more reading, and also worked on Stephen's Star Wars Imperial Officer's uniform. It's a modified Civil War uniform costume pattern, and it's not exactly the easiest project I've ever worked on. I'm quite the amateur seamstress and have only made a few things. I have Grandma's sewing machine though, which is very, very nice, and I learned a the basics in Home Ec in 7th grade. As Stephen mentioned in the last post, Lori helped me sew mine, so I at least have that to use as a guide as I do Stephen's all on my own. As he also mentioned, we're volunteering as costumed guests at a big $750 a plate benefit gala at the Museum of Science to celebrate and raise money for the new Science of Star Wars exhibit.

Stephen's Squeezebox also arrived on Tuesday, but as we always play Guild Wars with friends on Tuesdays, he had to wait until Wednesday after we both got home from work to set it up. Unfortunately, it took most of the evening, and included a server and hardware upgrade to get it to work properly with the security measures we have set up on the wireless network. He did get it working finally, and it sounds and is great! We've been listening to a lot of music since then and really enjoying the new receiver and speakers.

Thursday evening I attempted to attach the first sleeve to the officer's uniform and failed miserably, finally got frustrated, and gave up after I realized I'd sewn it inside out and mismatched the stupid darts. If I ever find the genius who decided that sleeves should be cut several inches larger than the armhole they're supposed to be sewn into, I think I just might deck them.

Friday evening after Stephen got home from work (I work from home on Fridays) we played Guild Wars for a little while, trying to get our secondary characters past a major mission area in the game. Unfortunately, we got most of the way and got flattened by a couple of nasty dwarves... After that, we went to Applebee's for dinner and ran some errands at Wal-Mart. Stephen needed a digital cable for the Squeezebox, and we picked up the Revenge of the Sith soundtrack and I got JoDee Messina's Greatest Hits album.

Saturday it poured all day, but we ran up to New Hampshire, just across the state line, to a saddle shop and found Stephen a pair of PVC riding boots to go with his Officer's Uniform. His were actually cheaper than mine, plus no tax, so it was a good find. After that, I attempted the sleeve again, and finally got it attached, and it doesn't look too shabby. It's better than the ones on mine, at least. That evening, since it was still pouring, we met up with our Guild Wars friends online and played for a few hours, after finally picked out capes for our guild members (well, for the characters).

Today we went over to the mall in Danvers for lunch, saw Serenity and got a routine inspection done on my ring. Serenity was really very good, though it had a few minor issues we thought they could have done better. A lot of the cast was nothing more than supporting members, while the Firefly episodes (we've seen several, but not all of them) were always very character driven. For instance, poor Kaylee didn't come across very well in the movie, especially if you'd never seen any Firefly episodes... But it was very action packed, with plenty of humor, and it was a nice way to spend a cool, cloudy afternoon. Stephen spent a large portion of the rest of the day converting more CDs to FLAC format so they can be uploaded to the music server, and I managed to get the second sleeve attached!

There. Now you know why we don't update very often. Nothing interesting to share! :-p

Date:	Sunday, 10/2/2005, 3:50 PM
Subject:	The Life and Times of Juniper... I mean... Tia and Stephen
Security:	Public
Mood:	accomplished
Music:	Washing machine

Okay, summer in Boston in thirty seconds, here goes... We saw most of my family over the Fourth of July at my Grandmother's in Hamilton, NY. Since my planner for this year starts in July, that's as far back as I'm going to go. July was a pretty quiet month, with only a botched Six Flags trip and Tia's mother's visit to break up the pristine white calendar. We were scheduled to go to Six Flags with friends from work at the end of the month, but when I got to the rendesvous point with no tickets, Tia and I decided it just wasn't meant to be (as I remember it had been a few stressful weeks for various reasons), and just went home to relax for the day. The next day Tia's mom showed up for a long weekend in Boston. Most of our activities are now escaping me, but Saturday we went out to Gloucester for a fun whale watching trip.

Ah, as I now flip through the individual days of July I see that we also had our new TV delivered and new stereo all set up. It is very nice, though we haven't upgraded to HDTV cable yet. We're having plenty of fun with all our DVDs and video games before we worry about another $40-50 in cable a month. Also I see Tia had a business trip to NYC in the middle of the month, so that was a fun new experience for her.

Finally another flip of the page brings me to August... Wow, there's a lot of black on that page... So what happened? At the beginning of the month we went out with some of my coworkers to see Revenge of the Sith for our third time because apparently a large contingent of my coworkers had managed to not see the movie all summer. The theater we ended up in was pretty horrible (this one I can easily say the home theater is MUCH better), but everyone had a good time. The next weekend we went to a brand new Sci Fi/Fantasy convention over in Danvers called Cauldron Con. It was their first year, and it showed, but we did get to see one of the more entertaining actresses from Babylon 5 speak, and John Rys-Davies (Gimli among other things). It was also a nice opportunity to spend the day with Lori and Scott. The next week I invited Marta and Kevin, two of my coworkers, over for a Friday night dinner and Disney movie marathon. Poor Marta had a childhood deprived of Disney movies, and when she found out Tia had a large collection of them, she was very excited to get to see several. We ended up watching parts of Fantasia 2000 (just to acquaint her with the concept), Robin Hood, and Sleeping Beauty. As to be expected, it was a fun night. The next day we headed down to Lori and Scott's place in Quincy for a costume work day. Lori had volunteered to help Tia put together an imperial officer's uniform from Star Wars. The major motivation is to help out with the Museum of Science's big premier of their Star Wars exhibit, but the uniform comes in handy for lots of other stuff too. So we spent all day buying material and getting started on things, but Tia ended up having to make the pants at home that week and we headed back down to Lori's the following Saturday to finish up the jacket.

And in amongst all that costuming stuff is when things really got crazy. The Sunday after our first costume workshop Tia flew back to Indiana to see her grandfather. She had a very good visit and was happy to see him before the end. She flew back to Boston on Tuesday. Then her grandfather died, so following the second costume workshop, that Sunday we both flew to Indiana for the funeral. We got to see almost her entire family, which was nice, and things went smoothly. We need to thank Doug and Kim for sending flowers, they were much appreciated, and also thank Marybeth for the card we received when we got home. We had hoped to get official thank-yous out, but with all the traveling, it kinda got forgotten... Sorry! So the funeral was Tuesday, Wednesday morning we flew back to Boston. We did laundry, repacked, and on Thursday we flew down to Atlanta for Dragon*Con. It was a fun weekend, and Tia is attempting to find time to put together a review of the con for Star Wars Chicks, so maybe we can share that when all is said and done. We got to know several people a lot better (some from the Boston area, a lot from other places), and I think really got to enjoy the atmosphere much more than the last two years when various things interfered.

And with the close Dragon*Con, fall unofficially started! We got home at a semi-reasonable hour on Monday, did various chores around the house, and fell into bed. Tuesday Tia had her first day of class, and obviously, I was back to work for the first day in what seemed like a very long time. The first half of September then was fairly quiet. On the 16th my old group had their annual outing (employee appreciation perhaps?), and invited us "alumni" along. It was a kinda dismal day, but we all had a lot of fun with lunch and mini-golf. I won both rounds of golf, so I came home happy.

The next week I had my first experience with jury duty. Massachusetts was apparently the first state to adopt the "One Day/One Trial" system, so I only had to report on Wednesday. Since the courthouse I was assigned to is about three blocks from Tia's office, we decided to drive in together, park at the IBM office, and then we walked over to the courthouse. I got "lucky" and only got called for impaneling once, around noon. A lot of hurry up and wait later, I was too far down the list for the jury size they needed (only 6 + 2 alternates), so at that point the officers knew they were pretty much done for the day and let those of us who had actually gone up to the courtroom go for the day (if you're really interested in the inner workings of jury selection in MA, we can talk at great length some other time!). So about 1 I was free for the rest of the day, so I called Tia, and we went to the mall right next to her building for lunch and then headed home. The next day was the division (next level up from group) employee appreciation picnic. It was a beautiful day, and I was starting to get used to this idea of not working...

Alright, I think that brings us to this week... It's been an entertaining week for me. People suddenly decided I still worked for the lab, and started asking me questions and stuff... So I had a lot to keep me busy at work. Also Friday was my new group's outing (surprisingly ended up at the same place!), so I got to enjoy that, but since I don't know as many people in the new group (starting to do work for them, but still not much), I don't think it was as much fun. Yesterday Tia and I went to King Richard's Faire, and we managed to convince one of her school-mates and three of my coworkers and their significant others to tag along with us. We went down for the whole day, but the second car didn't make it until after lunch (the message I got was the respective significant others weren't crazy about spending all day at the faire), but we still got to meet up with them and spend time together. It was a very enjoyable day, and while dinner took a while for 8 people (we at least got a table at the second restaraunt we tried, the first didn't have anything larger than 7), it was nice end to the day. Tia was working on getting pictures up in a new service, so feel free to check out those here.

Today has been a various chore day, but we've gotten a lot done. Unfortunately the Pats just lost to the Chargers, but we can't complain too much because Drew Brees had an outstanding day. Still need to catch a Bears game so we can see Orton in professional action.

Other news that doesn't fall on a calendar... I ordered my SqueezeBox2 last week and it is scheduled to arrive on Wednesday. Before going to Indiana and Georgia, Tia and I spent a LOT of time ripping CDs for music for our iPods, which now that I remember, I haven't mentioned. So yes, we bought iPods for our various trips in August. Tia got a Mini while I got the new full sized color screen version. Her student discount allows for one of each size, so once you factor in the AC adapter that comes with the full size one, it was cheaper to buy the more expensive full size for me than another mini. So back to what I was saying, we ripped like crazy and now have about 70 albums in FLAC format (no, this is NOT for sharing). When the SB2 arrives, it will beam music wirelessly from the music server (Tia's old Gateway PII-300) to the stereo out in the living room. We're looking forward to the geeky fun that will arise from the new toy. Also, one of my coworkers is mumbling about starting a Dungeons and Dragons game, so we picked up the rule books for that and had fun reading through those (also finally broke down and got a B&N membership). We're also still charging along in out weekly game of Guild Wars, so if anyone gets interested, feel free to buy a copy and join in the fun!

Finally, on a side note, I'm supposed to mention the Almond-Swiss cheese to make Linda jealous!

I think that's it, but Tia is going to read this soon and probably tell me to add stuff :) We will try to be better about getting news out, but obviously, I can't promise anything!

- Stephen

Date:	Friday, 8/26/2005, 6:16 PM
Subject:	August update
Security:	Public
Mood:	stressed

Sorry we haven't been keeping up with the journal lately. It's been a busy summer.

Most of you are aware of this by now, but my grandfather (Mom's dad) just passed away last night. He was suffering from the final stages of Parkinson's, and had been going downhill quickly for the last couple of weeks. He passed away in his sleep last night. Stephen and I will be going to Indiana for the funeral, which is on Tuesday, at White-Love funeral home.

We'll return to Boston on Wednesday, and then will be flying to Atlanta for Dragon*Con on Thursday. I start school on Tuesday, 9/6, but I am still going to be working part-time at IBM this fall, since I'm only taking 2 classes. And hopefully working on a thesis...

We'll try to get a real update up when we get back. *crosses fingers* If you need us, we'll periodically check email, but cell phones are the best way to go.

~Tia

Date:	Sunday, 6/19/2005, 5:58 PM
Subject:	Hey look - an update!
Security:	Public
Mood:	okay
Music:	Creed, followed by Evanesence

Happy Father's Day!

The biggest news to share is that I have a new job for the summer. I am interning at IBM, in Cambridge. Last Tuesday (6/14) was my first day - it took them several weeks to get me my official offer. I'm working on the Web Standards team for their internal internet (intranet). The team is responsible for writing standards to be followed by IBM employees and departments who create websites for their internal web. Standards are necessary so that all of the internal websites have the same look and feel, which is great for worker productivity - if they know how one website works, they can find their way around every other site. While most of the standards have been written already, I am helping revise current standards and research develop new standards. It's pretty technical, but it's web design, which I really enjoy. It is also more advanced web design than I am used to working with, which means I'm learning lots of cool stuff as well.

For those of you unfamiliar with the area, Cambridge is almost downtown Boston - it's just on the north side of the Charles River. My office building is about 3 blocks from the Museum of Science, and maybe about 6 from MIT. The commute actually isn't as bad as I'd thought it would be. Rather than drive and spend an hour or more sitting in rush hour traffic, I'm taking the Commuter Rail into town. We have a station in Wilmington, so Stephen drops me off in the morning, I pick up the train, and half an hour later I'm at North Station in Boston, which is beneath the Fleet Center (where the Celtics and Bruins play). I then have the option of taking a free (company covered fare) shuttle to the office, or when it isn't raining it's a very nice 20 minute walk along the Charles, past the Museum, and around the canal inlet by the mall.


Aside from work, I have been keeping quite busy working with StarWarsChicks. The site itself hasn't been updated technology-wise in about 3 or 4 years, and it is in major need of an overhaul. Using my new-found and ever increasing knowledge of web design, I've been working on a major redesign of the site. It is progressing well, though much, much more slowly than I'd expected it to. I am also still taking and filling orders for pins.

We were also incredibly popular during the month of May. Lori (my friend who originally founded the site 6 years ago and who works at the aforementioned Museum of Science) was interviewed 3 times for the local newspapers, appeared on TV twice, and talked me into appearing with her on a local radio station's morning show the Monday morning after Revenge of the Sith came out in theaters. It was a 15 minute spot, and while I was really too shy to say much of anything, it went well. Lori likes to talk, and is just great at that kind of stuff. :-)

In addition to the media publicity, our website experienced an unprecedented amount of internet visitors. Prior to April of this year, StarWarsChicks.com was receiving an average of 800 to 1000 unique visitors each day. That in and of itself is almost incomprehensible. However, for the month of April we received an average of 1977 visitors every day (which is really cool, because Star Wars came out in 1977!). But last month (May), we averaged 5000 unique visitors each day!! We got a lot of email from all sorts of different sources and interests related to Star Wars - it really kept us on our toes!

Oh, and the other day I finally submitted the paperwork to the State of Massachusetts to incorporate SWC, Inc. as a registered non-profit organization. As soon as I get approval from the Secretary of State I'll have to submit the paperwork to obtain our Federal Tax-ID number, and we'll be completely official. That will allow people donating to us to use us as a tax write-off, and we can also obtain income through affiliate sites such as Amazon.com.


My father came out and visited us 2 weeks ago - the weekend before I began working at IBM. He drove out and arrived on Thursday morning after stopping in Ohio to see his sister and family (my Aunt Lori) and then in Penn. for a bike ride. Friday he and I went to Salem, MA. Stephen had already been to Salem for a work luncheon outing, but I'd never been there before. It's only about a 30 minute drive, and we found it without too much trouble. There actually weren't very many tourists in town that day, and the weather was absolutely gorgeous all weekend long. We went to the Salem Witch Museum and saw an informative, if somewhat cheesy, animatronic presentation on the witch trials, and then wandered over to the Witch Dungeon, hoping to see a live performance of the witch trials. After a 5 minute, 2 actor dialog set (which was well done), we got led down to a dark, damp, freaky dungeon replica of the original dungeon. We couldn't get out of there fast enough!

After that we decided it was lunch time. (We didn't leave for Salem until almost 10 in the morning, to avoid morning rush hour traffic) Dad had heard that the best food was down at Pickering Wharf, so we meandered across town and finally found our way to the wharf. There was a Victoria Station restaurant (also in Burlington) with patio seating looking out over Salem Harbor, so we had a nice lunch in the beautiful weather. We later found out that it was the same restaurant Stephen and his co-workers had eaten during their outing to Salem! After lunch we wandered through some very interesting shops, and then spent about an hour in the Peabody Essex Museum. The PEM is a large museum that sponsors a lot of theater and public broadcasting events, and they have a very large, very beautiful museum, but the art is very... cultural and contemporary. To the point where we walked into the special exhibition room, saw a large display in the center of the room that was two moats in the shape of a cross filled with water, with sand filling in the 4 quadrants of the display, and old, random, tattered shoes covering the sand - and we turned around and high-tailed it out of there. It was a little too modern and contemporary for us. We got home a little before Stephen did, and then the three of us headed over to try the new Cheesecake Factory at the mall in Burlington. Unfortunately, they were mobbed, so we ate at Rainforest Cafe instead, since Dad had never been to one before.

Saturday we had tickets to the Pops, and dinner reservations beforehand in the North End. We tried a new restaurant this time, and dinner was very good, and again, the weather was perfect, if not a little warm for the guys. The show was Celtic Odyssey, and they had a guest singer who is a local yet well-known Irish vocalist. Our seats could have been a little better, but mostly because Dad had some annoying guy hanging over the balcony next to him so that Dad couldn't see through him. Luckily the point wasn't so much to see as to hear, and it sounded great. We'd also only purchased the tickets the week before, so all things considered, it was a very nice experience.

Sunday we relaxed a bit and drove down South of Boston to see Revenge of the Sith for the second time. Stephen and I had met Lori there on Thursday, May 19th for the noon showing, because it is one of only 2 digital theaters in Boston. (The other is downtown on the Common, and sold out too early) Dad had seen it once as well, but if you get a chance to see it on a digital screen, you have to take it. It's magnificent. The movie's pretty good, too. ;-) Dad then returned to Indiana on Monday morning.


The last piece of big news is actually quite large - 50 inches, to be exact. IBM is paying me a really pretty penny this summer, and Best Buy had a 2 years no interest financing deal on top of a sale last week, and after lots of research, we splurged on a Samsung 50" DLP rear-projection, widescreen HDTV yesterday. The HLR-5067W model, for the techies in the crowd. Unfortunately, due to the fact that they just came out last month and are extremely popular, it is backordered and won't be delivered until July 9th. The first bill won't get here for a month and a half though, so by then I might actually have the money for the first payment. :-)


Stephen has been busy with work, but unfortunately nothing too exciting. He still hasn't officially switched to the Air Defense group yet, though a few weeks ago they put him through a bit of a scare. The new group has been stuck in an older building, and they tried to cram 9 employees into a small, two-room trailer. Luckily for Stephen, his desk was the one arranged in front of the emergency exit. Once that flag was raised, he "unfortunately" had no where to move, so he's still in his original office for now. He is working on handing his current projects off to new owners though, so hopefully soon he'll have some fun new projects to work on.

At home he has finally had success in the digital music server area! He is in the process of converting our CDs to digital FLAC files (Free Lossless Audio Codec) which is a way to compress audio files digitally without losing any sound quality from them. He found a free, open-source project online who provides the software for playing these files, and also sells a server that can connect to your receiver, thus allowing you to play your digital music files in the living room, or through your computer. The server is on his wishlist, along with a new receiver and speakers to go with our new TV. But I believe they (or some form of each) have been on his wishlist ever since he first made a wishlist... So maybe one of these days. :-)


That is most of our news, I think. We'll be spending the 4th in Hamilton, NY with Stephen's extended family to celebrate his parent's anniversary. We still don't have any wedding plans, because I've been both too busy and too frustrated. I've never been very good at planning parties... And in this case there are too many options, and they all cost an arm and a leg. *sigh*

Well, that's all the news I can think of. It isn't much for over a month's worth of time, but it's more than enough for one journal post.

Date:	Sunday, 5/8/2005, 9:33 PM
Subject:	So about those updates...
Security:	Public
Mood:	relaxed
Music:	Not-So-Random Classical (Sony, meet Fisher-Yates!)

Alrighty then... I've got a lot to cover I guess, two weeks since the last entry, and several more since I talked about anything... Doh!

Okay, going back a ways... After getting back from Colorado I had two weeks before heading off to DC. Upon returning home, I found out I had been invited to give a talk on Thursday of that week, following directly on the heels of a program review (that I had known about). Luckily, the talk they wanted had been given by my officemate last fall, so he was willing to help out. I did sit in on the talk and help out, but at least I didn't have to prepare two briefs for the week!

Week after that was quiet (whew!). On the 9th there was an unofficial office BBQ (just about everyone was there... Very impressive for an unofficial function!), and on the 10th I flew to D.C. in the late afternoon. I met Marybeth and Bob at my hotel before going to dinner and having a nice chat with them. The conference was a good learning experience (once they realized someone had filed my security paperwork under Rash rather than Bash! That was a headache Monday morning). I got to spend a lot of time with upper management (you really do learn more over lunch than sitting through the presentations!), and get a very different perspective on the industry. But I was happy on Thursday night to change my flight from Friday and get home to see Tia :)

We got to enjoy some nice weather in April, but we did get our share of showers. Obviously both Tia and I have been busy, but things haven't been so crazy to cause problems. I'll second Tia's planner remark, there's a lot more black on there than I think there should be...

This week was very busy... Tia was finishing up classes, and working on getting an internship with IBM (second interview tomorrow!). Um... I was working... It seems to take up a lot of time, yet not be much to talk about :) Actually we finally have some structure related to me transitioning to my new group (at least I'm working with others on one of my projects to get things handed over), but still no obvious schedule. There's a rumor we might actually move offices sometime soon, but I need to hunt down people to validate those rumors.

Not in work is probably when the week got busiest. Tuesday night Tia and I tried out the new online game Guild Wars. It's similar to Everquest and World of Warcraft, but they are taking a radical direction and not charging for online play! So Tia and I can spend as much or as little time as we want playing, and we don't lose any money beyond the initial investment in the game. If anyone is interested, we do have a guild set up, the First Echelon of Andudintir (cookies to the first person who can actually translate that, and no, Google won't help!), which we plan on limiting membership to friends and family (so feel free to join up!). We had some fun last night taking pictures, and we've met up with some of Tia's friends from school online, so it looks like it will be a fun game (now the trick is not spending TOO much time online! But then again, I've got enough projects, I'm not sure that is going to be a problem...).

Wednesday night was Phantom night. Tia and I got all dressed up, went out to dinner, then headed downtown to the Boston Opera House to see the traveling rendition of Phantom of the Opera. It was a very good show, and I would wager it was better than when I saw it in Toronto (but when I saw it in Toronto, it was a week after Raoul and the Phantom had decided to swap parts for fun...). I think it started out a little rough (the director had an interesting take on the first couple scenes), but after the actors got into it, it went really well. All of them had outstanding voices (not going to find Michael Crawford here, but still VERY good), unfortunately the sound system needed a little tweaking, so some times it sounded a little over-processed. *shrug* It was a good time, but a late night.

Thursday night we were invited over to a coworker's place to celebrate Cinco de Mayo. Now, I don't think we had a Mexican in the bunch, but it was fun anyway. We arrived as dinner was being prepared, but sat and chatted as people arrived and food cooked. The cooks did a great job, but neither Tia nor I are really into the style... We did find some good stuff though, which is a testament to the cooks' skills... Since Tia had an exam on Friday we left a little early (my officemate said we missed a good time... oh well).

Friday Tia had an exam, and of course I was working. That evening we just relaxed. Saturday was a rainy nasty day (I think the term "gale" was thrown around by a few weathermen...), so we stayed inside and played Guild Wars most of the afternoon. That night we caught Young Guns on TV as we sat down to dinner, and since Tia had never seen it, we ended up watching all of it. Tia particularly liked the Wild West shootout with 80s background music... But it's a fun movie anyway! Today was errand day, we got up, I organized finances (think we're finally over the ski trip hump and back on savings schedule!), and then we ate lunch, went grocery shopping, printed up some digital pictures at CVS (good setup they have there for those of you without multi-million dollar photo printers...), and called Moms for Mother's Day. HAPPY MOTHERS DAY MOMS!!! Finally after some other random work on computers, we made dinner and watched Simpsons and Family Guy (a horrible habit we got sucked into by the Cartoon Network which shows Family Guy right before we go to bed) -- but it's fun!

And I think that catches us up... We really do mean to be better about writing! If anyone is interested in Guild Wars, let us know (play as much or as little as you like, high-speed internet helps, along with a GOOD graphics card). And we'll talk to you all soon :)

- Stephen

Date:	Friday, 4/22/2005, 5:59 PM
Subject:	April Update - Parte Uno
Security:	Public
Mood:	busy
Music:	Moulin Rouge - Come What May

Tia says:

We really haven't forgotten about the journal. Honest! We didn't get a chance to update before our trip to Steamboat in March, and were immediately buried under work the instant we got back. At least, that's my excuse. And if you don't believe me, I'll fax you a copy of my planner as evidence. :-p

So, I guess I'll start with Spring Break, which we spent in Steamboat Springs, CO, with Stephen's family (Mom, Dad, Michael, Marybeth, Bob, and the kids - Meghan and Robbie). Photos are on webshots. My photos are here and some photos from Dad and Michael are here. We had gorgeous weather most of the days, with lots of new snow. Everyone had a lot of fun and got some good skiing in. I went from a Level 2 to about a level 4 or 5, which I think is pretty impressive improvement in 4 days worth of skiing for someone who's only been on skis 3 times before in her life. I fell down a lot, got a little frustrated, but ended up having fun in the long run. :-) And I skied Blue runs on the last day! Stephen should probably talk more about Steamboat - he's much more knowledgeable regarding the subject.

It's sad - I really don't have anything very interesting to say, despite not having updated this in almost 2 months. Most of you took my survey for the Electronic Medial Records Information System project for my Product Design class. I had an interim report due for that just before we left for Steamboat. Upon returning from Steamboat, I had a homework assignment on task analysis for that class due on Wednesday, a group assignment for my Human Computer Interaction class due the same day, a statistics assignment due Thursday, a questionnaire to write up and distribute by the next week, a pin assembling party that Sunday (which I can talk more about in a moment), questionnaire data to analyze and turn into a report by the next Wednesday, a presentation over the EMRIS project that same Wednesday, another statistics assignment due Thursday, a graduate research paper on Human Computer Interactions due the next Tuesday (as in 4 days ago) and another statistics assignment due Tuesday. I'm sure I've forgotten something, but that catches you up to this week.

Classes end in a little over a week. I have a homework assignment for Product Design consisting of designing a prototype and doing usability testing on it, due May 2. We have to do the same thing for our EMRIS project, plus put everything together into a final report, but that isn't due until May 11. I have one more stat assignment, but I finished it today. We have one more HCI assignment, but that's mostly finished. I have a final in HCI Tuesday, and statistics final on May 6.

Now, back to that pin party - I decided I wanted to sell more pins for Star Wars Chicks again. The hardest part about the pins was assembling them. The pins come in little baggies that are stapled shut. We needed to open the baggies, attach the pin to a printed card (which had to be folded), and insert the combo into a little ziplock bag. Lori (who helps me run Star Wars Chicks), her hubby, their friend, two of Stephen's co-workers, and a friend of mine from school and her boyfriend came over to help us out. It was a very productive afternoon, and I don't think we made anyone work TOO hard... They did get fed though, so I don't think anyone minded helping out too much. :-) I finally managed to get the pins for sale online the week after, and have sold about 75 of them so far. They are available at http://starwarschicks.com/fightforthecure/ It is going much nicer this time, since all I have to do for each order is put the pin in a bubble mailer, slap a printed address label, return address label, and stamp on it, and pop it into the mailbox (unless it's going to another country, then I have to run it to the post office). Lori is currently at Star Wars Celebration III, the huge convention in Indy this weekend, and she has lots of pins with her. I imagine she should be returning with a lot less than she had going out.

I am currently pursuing leads for summer employment/thesis work. I've spoken with one of my professors, who works for the Department of Transportation and is working on two Human Factors projects currently. One deals with railroad signs and signals, the other with task analysis for flight traffic controllers (probably at Logan). He'd prefer to hire me in order to have me do my thesis work with him, but he wasn't sure if he had enough money in the budget for me or not. I am waiting to hear on that. In the mean time, I learned of an internship at IBM (in Cambridge) that I was perfectly qualified for, so I applied. It is dealing with standards, usability, and user interface design for their internal web. The recruiter contacted me and wants to talk to me, but I'm waiting to hear back from her regarding when.

I can't think of anything else to say, so I'll leave it at this, and let Stephen add his two cents when he gets home from work.

Date:	Monday, 2/28/2005, 6:50 PM
Subject:	So what was that about time flying?
Security:	Public
Mood:	accomplished
Music:	Mahler's 7th Symphony (yes, in the computer room!)

Hello everyone :) We are still alive (as a speaker at the lab said, no one has created a reliable "I am dead" message, so everyone just has to send the "I am alive" message time to time), and while we would say we have nothing to talk about, we have been busy. This is going to be somewhat of a high level overview of the last two weeks, with few details... Sorry!

First, it is all but official now (the phone lists have changed, but the memo hasn't gone out), I will be transferring to the air defense techniques group. I, along with 6 of my fellow lab mates, will be following our fearless leader, Dave, to the new group to help jump-start the an effort in combat ID. Basically the lab sees all the great work being done in BMD for discrimination (telling the lethal object from the non-lethal), and it doesn't take long to realize the rest of the military could use similar technology (one Airbus shot down is enough). It is technically a horizontal move for me, but in all change there is opportunity (I'm sure I read that somewhere). I will try to keep my head up to leverage where I can to get some vertical momentum out of the transition. The eight of us are supposed to form the brain-trust in combat ID, so hopefully we can get something really cool started and become big names in the business :) (We'll just have to see about all that though, I am tempering my expectations with the realization that it could be a complete bust).

As Tia mentioned in the last post, I've been working very hard on my presentation for the AIAA conference in April (Marybeth and Bob, I'll be in town sometime between the 11th and the 15th of April -- dinner in the city sound good?). The deadline to send slides to MDA was the 18th of February... But with people coming and going on business and pleasure, my slides didn't really get finalized until almost a week after the deadline. Oh well... I was told that it wasn't a problem, my job was just to get the slides done and done well, the rest would be taken care of by higher powers... I think everything worked out in the end, and the presentation is better for it. There are some small details that need to be tweaked (this picture instead of that one, etc.), but mostly between now and the conference I get to practice (not to mention make another presentation for the same topic). It's a busy spring...

Not much has changed for Tia, homework, papers, busy as usual :) I think she's doing some cool stuff in her classes (hey, it impresses me at least), but it is real work after all. We've gotten pretty used to the four late nights a week, being able to get dinner on the table in a reasonably short order after she gets home so it doesn't feel like the whole evening disappears. She got her first assignment (really first in a long project) back in her Product Design class, and her team was the only one to receive a "you guys look all set" (or something equivalent) from the professor, everyone else had a myriad of comments and corrections that took the whole class period to discuss... Must be nice to bust the curve huh? :)

And finally, on the technical front, I now have a prototype CD Controller/Streaming Server up and running. Using Tia's "old" Gateway PII-300, both of us can now control the CD player (in the living room) from the computer room, and stream the audio across the network to our PCs so we can listen to music while "working". While the stereo is a whopping 15 feet from my computer as the crow flies, the room configuration makes it impossible to hear music in the computer room. So this has been a concept I've been playing with for a while (5/6 years maybe) that I'm finally realizing. Right now I'm working on the Java code to put a nice front end on the whole thing (including fun stuff like writing C code to be called from Java via JNI to get file streams to block in the correct manner and such). It's a pretty fun software design and hardware integration project. At some point in the future a database will be roped in (probably through J2EE and JBoss or Tomcat -- haven't decided if I want to use MySQL or XML-Native database, i.e. Exist) to provide track names and playlist creation capability ("I want all the instrumental discs in blocks 1, 2, and 6 by composers Williams, Zimmer, and Mahler"). (I'm not having fun or anything...) It's pretty cool, and if anyone ends up with Sony hardware in their home entertainment system, I can help them get it set up too :)

Ah yes, and I should mention (as I look around the computer room), Tia and I are finally getting organized :) We've been looking at our closets for the past several months thinking we needed to do something about all the old boxes. Well, yesterday we finally bit the bullet and started with the computer stuff. We pulled out all the boxes that have old parts, spares, drive covers, cooling solutions, etc, went to Target, got a couple of Rubbermaid tubs, and we're now reorganizing. I managed to clean out 6 or 8 boxes last night into one tub, and things are starting to look up. At Target we also found a nice "tool chest" (really just a chest of drawers made by Sterilite) that when we're feeling flush we'll probably pick up to put tools and other miscellaneous stuff in -- basically clean out the other closet, put stuff in the drawers, and then have a nice flat surface to stack stuff on. Perhaps someday soon we won't look like college students ready to move two days in the future :)

So that is the highlights of the last two weeks for us... We're currently looking at getting equipment arranged for the trip to Colorado, and other little details for life. Hope everyone is doing well, and we'll talk to you all again soon.

- Stephen

Date:	Tuesday, 2/15/2005, 10:52 AM
Subject:	Time flies when you're having... fun?
Security:	Public
Mood:	busy

My goodness. Has it really been two weeks since we last updated? Where does the time go?

I don't think I can remember a single thing that we've done in the last two weeks. At least nothing that's note-worthy... Let me pull out my planner and see if that helps... Hmm... Homework, homework, reading assignments, and more homework. Well, that explains that.

My classes have been keeping me pretty busy for the last couple of weeks. I've had statistics homework, writing assignments for human-computer interaction class, and reading and written proposals for design projects for my Human Factors design course. Not really anything stressful, but its been keeping me busy.

Last Sunday (the 6th) we drove down to Rockland, which is the town south of Quincy (which is a southern suburb of Boston) for Walker's 1st birthday party. Scott and Lori held it at their Kung Fu school (yes, Scott owns a Kung Fu school) in Rockland. It was a lot of fun and they had a really good turn out. We were one of the few guests there without kids though. Walker got a TON of presents. We bought him a couple of board books (Goodnight Spot, Goodnight Moon), and a nice hardcover Winnie the Pooh anthology.

Stephen has been busy at work, getting a presentation ready for a conference in D.C. in April. He needs to get foreign release approval on it, so it has to be done way in advance. I have no idea what it's about, other than that it's for one of his computer algorithms, because it's all hush-hush...

Let's see... last week we purchased (online) a DVD burner and a new hard drive. Stephen went to install the hard drive in his computer, flipped off the switch on his power supply (the one inside the computer, not the power strip), and when he flipped the switch back on, nothing happened. So we had to go get him a new power supply for his computer. Luckily that was all it was, so he finally got to install the new hard drive and DVD burner this weekend. This Sunday we went out to Best Buy and the mall, and I spent some of my gift card from my aunt and uncle. We now own The Rescuers, The Rescuers Down Under, and Short Circuit on DVD. We also managed to find both Jedi Outcast and D&D Heroes for Xbox at EB Games - both of which we've been looking for for a long time, and neither of which we've ever seen in stores before. Plus, EB has a new discount card that saves you 10% on games. The card saved us $3.60, and only costs us $5. I'm sure we'll buy a few more than 1 more game at EB in the next year, which makes the card a very nice thing to have!

And last night, Stephen and I exchanged gifts and then went out for dinner. We'd planning on going to Legal Seafoods, but they were closed for renovations! So we ate at Rainforest Cafe instead. The food was really good, and we actually had fantastic service.

I can't think of anything else that anyone would find even remotely interesting, so I think that's about it for now.

Date:	Tuesday, 2/1/2005, 2:53 PM
Subject:	Final Star Wars Chicks Pin Sales numbers
Security:	Public
Mood:	accomplished

As an addendum to Stephen's post from yesterday, I just wanted to share the final numbers from the Star Wars Chicks Lapel Pins I was selling through http://starwarschicks.com. All of the profits were donated to The Breast Cancer Research Foundation.

Today I mailed a check for $8,418.43 to the BCRF.

Here are all of the details for anyone who might be curious. :-)

Total Sales Revenue:	$10,545.33
Less PayPal Costs:	$431.39
Less Supply Costs:	$1,695.51
Total Profit:	$8,418.43
Pins Sold:	920
Avg. Profit/Pin	$9.16

Date:	Monday, 1/31/2005, 6:19 PM
Subject:	This week in Lake Willbegone
Security:	Public
Mood:	okay
Music:	Silence

So it's my turn to update the journal... Well past for that matter :)

So let's see here... Since last week... Well, for one, we picked up tickets to head out to Colorado over Tia's Spring Break. We'll be flying out to Steamboat Springs on Saturday, March 19, and returning exactly one week later, on the 26th. For those of you not in my family, you'll like to know we're meeting my family for a week of skiing. Which reminds me, I still need to plan a weekday outing for some more skiing around here :) Unfortunately, we found out this weekend that the flight conflicts with the Hockey East finals (the division BU/BC/etc are in) which I had bought tickets with my office-mate for from the MIT Activities office. So today I started working on finding other interested parties to take the tickets in our place. Along that same vein, the Celtics are playing the Pistons the Friday before we leave, here in Boston, so we'll probably get tickets for that (again, through the activities office).

Also of note, last weekend Tia and I picked up tickets for Phantom of the Opera when it comes to the Boston Opera house in May (okay, it starts in late March, but our tickets are in May). We're once again in the dress circle (very quickly becoming the only seats we'll pay for! They're great!), but this time we're not quite as optimal as for Lion King. We're in the third (last) row of the dress circle, but considering the person in front of us will be at ankle level, we're not too worried.

So this was Tia's first "full" week of classes. Because of the Blizzard of '05 last weekend (their term, not mine) she had class canceled on Monday. I struggled to work, only to find out that while the Lab was crazy enough to be open, even the air force base had closed. It really seemed like we were the only people at work in Lexington on Monday. Luckily, because of that the traffic wasn't TOO bad. It wasn't quick, but it was manageable. Tuesday on the other hand... That took me an hour (AKA twice as long) to get to work for no real reason (we attributed it to snow-day hang-over). Otherwise Tuesday was a fairly unexciting day. Tia was at class late (4 days out of the week), so I stuck around work, got some stuff done, and came home a little later than usual. We spent the evening contemplating a DVD-R on buy.com. We ended up buying it (it arrived today), only to find out two days later they had lowered the price again! Oh well. With a firmware upgrade, it can do just about everything (yes, even make julienne fries, though you won't like the eye damage that goes with it), so we're happy.

Wednesday was another screwy day... It started out snowing, and was supposed to snow all day... Well, I get to work, e-mail Tia saying it is worse than expected, but still okay. At which point we all go on our merry way for the day until 1:30 when the emergency announcement system at the lab spools up to tell us that they are closing the lab at 2:30 for the day, and all non-essential personnel should vacate. Um, okay... So we all headed home and enjoyed an afternoon off (other than by the time we got out of the traffic jam known as Hanscom, it was almost 4 by the time I got home). Tia decided it was not a good idea to go to class that night, so she had a friend take notes. Nothing memorable happened in the evening... Probably watched an Alias episode or two... We've been working our way through season three these last couple weeks (now on episode three of disc three I think...), and we're slowly catching up to real time... Unfortunately we've already missed the beginning of season 4, so we're going to be at least one more behind.

Thursday and Friday are marked as unremarkable in my planner (and no, that doesn't mean I wrote on them with a permanent marker!). Friday night we relaxed and played some video games, and in general enjoyed the evening. Oh, there was some debate on Friday because a group was heading up to NH to go skiing, and while I didn't really want to spend the night up there (costs and other issues), I did think about driving up for the day (it was really only a little further than Crystal from Midland). Just before the main body left though, Tia and I decided it wasn't really a good idea (if nothing else Tia had a slight fever earlier in the week, so we thought it best not to aggravate the system).

Then Saturday... Um... We went grocery shopping in the afternoon, I looked into multiple options for CD controllers (long story, I'm sure you'll all hear about it at some point), played video games, watched Alias and Battlestar Galactica from the night before (TiVo is a wonderful concept... As is pacific timezone rebroadcast), and miscellaneous other stuff. Yeah, we've been watching the new Galactica... There are a few problems with it. 1) Starbuck is a girl. Yes, a girl. As is Boomer... Sorry people, I just don't see it, but then again, I guess if you want to create a love interest between the younger Adama and Starbuck, the sex change is in order. Oh well. They've been doing a good job of keeping the plot relatively original (every once and a while it strays a little close to cliche, but it's managed to save itself so far), and the acting is actually kinda good (for a SciFi channel series...). So we've decided we'll watch it until it starts getting stupid, and hopefully that will take some time.

Sunday we only really went out to pick up a paper. Then both Tia and I did office work cleaning up the computer room and filing stuff. Tia actually also got her federal tax return done, but may be redoing it if we get a new tax software. I am still waiting on W-2s, but hopefully they'll be here soon and I'll find out I have another sizable refund waiting (I kind of doubt it, but I try to keep the hope alive!).

And now it is Monday. I spent the morning working on my presentation for the AIAA conference in April (due for review on Feb 18. ugh!). It was my first day, so "working on" meant writing an outline and seeing what slides I already had... But it was productive, and I talked with several people about it, so that was helpful. The afternoon I spent wrestling with some code... And at 4:30 I announced to the world that I give up. It isn't going to work the way I want it to, so from now on I'll just let it work the way it does. Oh well. At this point Tia is at school, should be home relatively shortly.

That's about it from here. I'm sure there is plenty more to talk about, but we have to give you guys some reason to keep us around. Have a good week, and we'll talk to you all soon.

- Stephen

Date:	Sunday, 1/23/2005, 4:07 PM
Subject:	Boston Blizzard '05
Security:	Public
Mood:	cold
Music:	laundry tumbling in the dryer

Golly gee, it's cold out there! Logan airport's been shut down solid.  We got about 18 inches (there are 4 foot drifts behind our cars), and Lori got over 2 feet on the south side of Boston.  We've been watching people dig their cars out from under 6 foot drifts all morning.  We got lucky - our cars were parked on the right side of the building, so the 50 mph winds blew the snow over ours and onto the cars behind them.  We still have to go dig them out at some point though, because they plowed us in, and I doubt 4 feet of snow is going to melt overnight.  Our "Blizzard Warning" isn't officially over until 6 pm, either.

Lori had scheduled a birthday party for little Walker today at noon, at Scott's (Daddy) Kung Fu school. Walker turned 1 on January 12th! Boy how time flies! But, with the snow storm, we had to reschedule, so the party has been moved back two weeks, to February 6th. Don't worry, the party's at noon - Lori's a huge football fan, so it will be over in plenty of time for all of us to get to our respective Super Bowl parties!

Yesterday we managed to get out to Border's Books and Music before the storm hit, and made a pretty good haul. I found The Last Unicorn on DVD for $10, and a copy of the February Vanity Fair magazine that has a huge cover article on Star Wars in it. Stephen finally found a copy of The Lord of the Rings board game that he had wanted for Christmas (after I made a ton of phone calls and scoured the web!) Borders was nice enough to hold their last copy for us! It is a very cool strategy game where you work cooperatively with the other players to defeat the forces of Mordor and destroy the One Ring.  It has been very hard to find because it isn't produced by New Line or based on the movies.  So, since we're snowed in, we played two games last night.  No, we didn't defeat the forces of Mordor.  I didn't say it was an EASY game...  Oh, and he found a Car and Driver day-by-day desk calendar today too, which he's been looking for, for $4.  So we scored big time on the shopping trip yesterday.  :-)

I started classes on Thursday, which went well. I am taking the second semester of Statistics, a course on Human-Computer Interaction, and a course on Human Factors Product Design. I had statistics on Thursday and Friday, with the same teacher as before, so I have a good feeling about this semester. We are supposed to learn how to apply the stats we learned last semester to real-world research, which is where I need the most help. :-) My Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) course is with the same professor I had for the computer course last semester, and I had that Thursday evening. I think it will be a good course as well. He's not the best teacher, but I will probably end up doing my Master's Thesis with him, because HCI is his specialty. I have not had the Product Design course yet. That one is Monday and Wednesday evenings (5:30-6:45). It is with a new professor that I haven't met yet, but I've heard good things about him. And Product Design is one of my main areas of interest, so I am looking forward to the class. He isn't technically a faculty member at Tufts (he works for Volpe Transportation Center, which is some kind of research center, I believe), but I may be able to find a thesis project through him too. We'll have to see, and I'll keep you posted.

Last weekend was MLK Jr. Day, so Stephen was off on Monday, and had a 3 day weekend, which was very nice. Saturday we got invited to one of Stephen's co-worker's places for an authentic Italian dinner and strategy games. It was a lot of fun, and very good food too! Sunday we went shopping, and bought a new bookcase for the computer room. We assembled that on Sunday, but waited until Monday to rearrange furniture in the computer room and put the books on it. It was quite an involved project, but we got all of the books off the floor, and even have room for more now!

And finally, on Tuesday, Stephen took the day off and we went skiing! We went to a local hill because we were mostly testing out his boots and skis, and getting me a little practice and a lesson. I haven't been on skis in about 8 years, and I have only been on skis twice before Tuesday. So that should give you some idea of my ability. I actually lucked out and got a private group lesson because they had too many instructors on call and there was NO one at the resort on Tuesday. The instructor was pretty nice, but he started me out working on turns, and I was a little uncoordinated, and the snow wasn't all that great (extremely hard-packed)... And I said hello to the hillside more times than I'd like to admit. :-p Stephen went off and skied the normal hills while I had my lesson, then he met up with me and we went into the lodge and warmed up for a little bit, since it was all of about 4 degrees out! My boots ended up being extremely uncomfortable and did a nice job of bruising my shins, but I sucked it up and Stephen convinced me to go back out for a little while. He took me back to the bunny hill and worked with me for at least another hour, until my shins (and hands - rope tows are the worst invention ever!) went on strike. So we went inside for a late lunch, and then I thawed out while Stephen went back out. Unfortunately, starting around lunchtime, the population at the hill started to increase drastically - they are apparently a very popular school destination. We left around 3:30, after we could barely walk from point A to point B without tripping over a munchkin.

We hope to get out a few more times in the next month or so, but will probably visit a different ski area. We're also looking into tickets to join Stephen's family in Colorado over Spring Break, but flights directly to Colorado Springs are a little too pricey, and we're not sure how to get around that.

And that's the news from here. For now.

Date:	Wednesday, 1/12/2005, 2:29 PM
Subject:	Happy New Year!
Security:	Public
Mood:	working
Music:	Billy Joel - Only The Good Die Young

Resolution Number 1: Update the journal more often.

Well, we are obviously back from our trip to Indiana now. We got home on New Year's Eve Eve, aka Thursday evening. The trip was great, it was very nice to see my family, and Stephen and I made out like bandits in the gifts department, so thank you everyone!

Weather during the trip was decent. We avoided the snow storms, though the temperature in Upstate NY was -6 degrees on our way west. And that wasn't the wind chill. We managed to make it to West Lafayette for a day trip on the 28th for my friends' wedding (Natalie and Cory from bell choir). The wedding was very nice, Natalie looked beautiful, and it was great to get to see my choir friends again. We left the next morning for home, and as I said, got here on Thursday evening. We did manage to catch Stephen's parents at his Grandma's house in NY on the way home though, which was very nice. Unfortunately, we just missed his brother Michael, who flew back to Chicago that morning.

So what have we been doing so far this year? That's a good question. Um....

Stephen went back to work on January 3rd. He had a bit of a rough week, having been gone for two weeks, and then he got a snow day on Thursday, I think it was, when we got hit by a big snow storm. He's working on a project that he'll be talking about at a big conference in D.C. in April, and this week he's also reinstalling Linux on his work computer because he got a great system working at home and he wants to use it at work too.

I've been working on a couple of different projects, trying to get as much done as I can before I have to go back to school, yet also trying to relax and enjoy my time off before another stressful semester sets in. I'm teaching myself PHP and MySQL to learn how to build a web searchable database. I'm rearranging furniture in our apartment, because we need to purchase a new bookcase for all of our new books, plus I finally found a nice 5 foot set of shelves for knick-knacks that I need to find room for. I'm also finishing up the Star Wars Chicks pin drive. I have a handful of pins left to sell, and then I need to contact The Breast Cancer Research Foundation and give them the money we've raised.

I start school next Thursday, the 20th. I'm sort of looking forward to it, but I am enjoying my time off - otherwise known as freedom. :-) Oh, on a happy note, I found out my final grades in two of my three classes from last semester. We all received incompletes for my research methods class, because the projects were too long and difficult for anyone to finish on time. Mine has been turned in, but the professor won't grade them until she has all of them, so I won't know how I did in that class for a while. However, I got an A+ in the computer class (Object Oriented Graphical User Interface programming), and an A in statistics. Yay!

I'm drawing a complete blank on anything else we've been up to for the last several weeks. I think my brain is too deeply engulfed by my random projects I'm working on at the moment. I'll have to let Stephen update you on anything I may have forgotten.

Until then, stay warm!

~Tia

Just a quick update before we leave:

We're spending Christmas in Chesterton with my family this year. If you'd like to get in touch with us, please call! Mom's phone number is still 926-1286, or if you have our cell numbers, those will both work.

And if that fails, just email! tianoel or scbash AT comcast DOT net.

Merry Christmas, everyone!

-Tia

Date:	Wednesday, 12/15/2004, 11:47 AM
Subject:	An IE Christmas tale
Security:	Public
Mood:	thoughtful

An IE Christmas tale
------------------------------------
By Tamara Wilhite

Yes, Virginia, I’m an engineer.
No, I don’t drive the trains near here
I design all the toys you hold dear,
Just like the computer sitting here
I can make the digital camera go click
And I know what makes it tick
I design the little things that go inside
Where all the data goes to hide

I make the parts that make your toys beep
Just as my friends designed your brother’s Jeep
Some special engineers know a bit more
Both how to make it and to get it to the store
Someone must piece each piece together
Someone must tell them how to do it better

That person, not average engineer,
Is someone special -- just like Daddy here
An industrial engineer
Which I am, too, dear.
I do not just assemble the toys Santa gives
I advise his building them up where he lives

Anyone can ask dear old Santa for a gift
IEs will give him a nice mechanized lift.
So he doesn't slide down chimneys without care,
Won't risk back injuries, won't dare.
IEs help Santa get his toys built fast
Designing so they'll last and last and last.
They’ll help him plan his route to every home
It’s faster than if we let him randomly roam
That’s how Santa makes the toys each year
And gets them to the kids like you right here.
Isn't that nice for Daddy and me to do?
Now go to bed, for I have work to do.

Well everyone, we've been missing for a while... We came back from Thanksgiving to a mountain of work for both of us. Things are going well though, Tia has finished up her CS class (with a very cool game btw, we may package it up in a distributable form so people can see -- and play -- it). She is currently working on finishing up her research methods final project, which has stretched even my understanding of spectral analysis, but we're working through it (and while it may not have come up in previous discussions, yes, I do a lot of spectral analysis at work -- what is radar but a modulated sine wave?).

Okay, first thing... NYC pictures are online: http://www.starwarschicks.com/misc/NYCtrip/. The pictures ended up being slightly more than what Comcast would allow us to store, so Tia put them on the SWC server (which being recently upgraded as lots of free space). Enjoy! We'll try to get a story line to go along with the pictures sometime soon, but I can't promise anything.

The big news was yesterday was my birthday :) I'm a quarter century now (not that anyone around here believed me, one of the secretaries actually had to check my ID...), but no, I don't feel old :) Last night as Mom found out when she called, Tia and I had some of my coworkers over and we had a good time. The wish list will be updated shortly, as people actually got me a lot that was on my list (and no duplicates... way to go on organization people!). The surprise of the night was my coworkers giving my a new X-Box. They decided it was the only system I was missing at this point, so 10 or 15 of them chipped in at work. Very nice, and very surprising. So I'll have a new category on my list, I have to catch up on some of the older games I missed because they were X-Box exclusives and there are several new ones out that look pretty cool.

On a side note, I also played a little bit of Mom and Dad Bash's gift last night, The Lord of the Rings: The Third Age. For those of you who don't know, The Third Age is an RPG-style game (compared to Two Towers and Return of the King which are very arcade/action based), and for the 15 minutes I played it, it looks pretty cool. Tia loved the fact that in the first scene (in which you get to make one decision... Attack Ringwraith A or Ringwraith B...) the Gondorian guard gets his skin saved by a very assertive female elf. Actually, playing a little further both characters are pretty cool. It's turn based combat, so they spent more time on combat strategy and making the fighting look cool because once you select which character is going to do what, it's hands off for that round.

Think that is about it from here. I'm sure I'm forgetting things, but mostly I wanted to update people quickly and get the pictures out. I hope everyone's December is going well. We'll try to post more sometime soon.

- Stephen

Date:	Sunday, 11/21/2004, 9:00 PM
Subject:	Biweekly anyone?
Security:	Public
Mood:	okay
Music:	Um, yeah, football :)

So we haven't been real good about this once a week thing... But we'll continue to try :)

So first we need to get the business out of the way. Wishlists are posted here and here. The lists tend to be rolling, and we'll be adding stuff as we think of it. We'll try not to remove anything except after my birthday. Speaking of lists, anyone who wants to send us one will have a higher percentage of getting something they like...

Second, we'll be leaving for NYC on Tuesday morning :) Still no solid plans, but we have found that The Daily Show isn't taping, so that's out. Oh well... We will have our phones with us, so we won't be completely out of touch. Our train back is on Saturday afternoon, and current plans are to put up some Christmas decorations on Sunday.

So now for the history part... Two weeks huh? Well, we've seen Purdue win twice, first over OSU, then demolishing IU (that's always fun!). We've seen the Pats win once, but that's because they play tomorrow night... I've had a busy two weeks, getting a presentation ready for a review at work. I was a co-author, and depending on how you see it, I "won" the toss and didn't present (I called tails, it was heads), but that didn't relieve much of the workload. Ended up going off very well on Wednesday of this week. So while I had a couple of late nights (Monday I think was the latest at 9:30 leaving the lab), it wasn't near as bad as it could have been :)

Tia once again had projects due this week, so we spent some time over the weekend and Tuesday night working on her CS project (this time we added explosion sounds...), and she spent Monday and Wednesday working on her research class project. Her team ended up turning out a novel, 40 pages of prose and another 40 pages of appendices. So needless to say, after all that, we've been pretty beat all week.

Ah, and one more future thing. Looks like we'll be spending Christmas in Chesterton. Tia's mom is inviting everyone over to her house for the family Christmas. Also one of Tia's friends is getting married on the 28th, so we'll probably be down in Lafayette after Christmas. New Year's is still in the air though :)

I think that is about it from here... I'm probably forgetting something, but that's why Tia will read this over :) Hope everyone has a good week, and a good Thanksgiving if we don't talk to you beforehand.

- Stephen

Edit by Tia - I only have two comments to add. Stephen got pretty much everything else. First, Thursday evening we went to see The Incredibles as a treat to unwind after the hectic week, and it was AWESOME. You absolutely have to go see it!!! I haven't laughed that hard since Shrek 2, but it was a better type of humor. Honest. :-)

And then he forgot to mention that we spent all of today cleaning up our apartment, and it looks clean again! (With how busy we've been over the past few months, it got pretty darn messy!)

So now that we're beat, it's time for ice cream. :-)

~Tia

P.S. Don't forget to send us your wishlists!

Date:	Sunday, 11/7/2004, 4:08 PM
Subject:	The News from Lake Wilmington
Security:	Public
Mood:	mellow
Music:	Football :) What else?

So I dropped the ball last week, and I'll try to make up a little bit this week... We'll see how this goes.

Tia last updated on the 23rd of October... Looking back at the calendar that was the day of the Michigan/Purdue game. That was painful, and just the beginning of an uncomfortable slide, but such is life sometimes. The defense is quite young, and I think they have some stamina issues. We'll see how the rest of the season goes.

The week following that Tia had a major CS project due, and unfortunately between meetings and classes, she tended not to get home until 7 or later. As such, we did the best we could, and spent most of our "free" time working on her project. I think what little fun time we had was spent on a couple video games. I've been playing NCAA Football quite a bit recently (it is that time of year), and a game we picked up a couple weeks ago called Beyond Good and Evil. I had never heard of it before I read an article online about the 10 Best Hidden Gems (or something like that), and the authors knew what they were talking about, it is an amazing game. If anyone is looking for a good time sometime, look into it (I think it is available for PS2, XBox, PC).

That next Saturday (so that is a week before yesterday...), Tia had a workshop on campus and had to leave here early. I remember I did something in the morning before jumping in the shower, but it is slipping my mind now. I then made lunch while watching the Purdue/Northwestern game (another painful one...). Tia got home just in time for the end of the game, at which point we decided it had been a long week and played video games all afternoon :) Sunday we did some cleaning around the apartment before going grocery shopping. Funny story there was we actually saved over $40 in coupons... I think that is a record for us :) We didn't do anything for Halloween, but from our observations, the complex was pretty dead, so we weren't upsetting any young ones.

This previous week we didn't have any projects to work on and enjoyed relaxing a little bit. Tia was at school until 7 Monday through Wednesday. I worked a little bit late some of those nights, but nothing much beyond 5 or 5:15. I spent some time while Tia was at school learning a new accounting program called GNUCash. I recently switched Linux distributions, and with the new system I'm finding my computer much more pleasant to use, so I'm switching to more Linux-based software. So continuing, of course it worked out that the one day Tia did get home relatively early is the day that I finished up some code at 4:22 and wanted to send it out to people. It then took me half an hour or so to get a package put together and an e-mail written. So with traffic I didn't get home until about 6. *shrug* Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. Oh well.

Friday we had debated going down to Cambridge for a Star Wars event in the evening, but when I got home we decided the weather was nasty enough (and we were tired enough) we stayed home. Spent the evening doing miscellaneous stuff and playing some video games, really just goofing off... Saturday I woke up early for some reason, so picked up the laptop and did some reading on wavelets. At the data review I went to in Huntsville a couple weeks ago, someone had suggested wavelets as a possible alternate solution to a problem I was reporting on. They seem very interesting, but I need to head into the lab library (I really LOVE that library) and pick up some books to build the fundamentals. Tia spent the afternoon working on Star Wars Chicks stuff, and the big news on that front is that she is finally caught up on pin orders. We'd been working on about a week backlog for the last month, and she's enjoying finally getting caught up. I spent the afternoon reformatting and reinstalling the laptop. Tia wants to use it more for school, and some strange behavior was causing her problems. So she ordered Office for OS X the other day and I worked on getting the system cleaned up. Luckily the backup script I wrote a couple months ago worked beautifully, so all I had to do was start up with the restore disc, wipe the hard drive, run the install (which is amazingly fast compared to WinXP), and copy things back from my backup drive on the Linux machine. I spent the rest of the afternoon watching the Purdue/Iowa game and performing system updates. Saturday night we headed out to dinner before renting League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Very funny, enjoyable movie.

Today I spent a lot of time getting information into GNUCash. I've gotten all my paychecks from this year into the system, which subsequently gets the 401k information and taxes cataloged also. GNUCash is based on double-column accounting, rather than the Quicken/Money style of single-column + expense category, and while more work, I'm finding the GNUCash format very nice. Tia has spent the afternoon working on homework (not that she's happy about it, but who would be). Patriot's game is on now, though the Rams just scored... We'll see how this turns out as the evening goes on. Last night when we picked up League, we also picked up Kill Bill Vol. 2, so we might watch that sometime soon. I had picked up Vol. 1 on a night Tia was working last spring just because everyone raved about it so much, Tia ended up watching it the next night, and while not our favorite movie, it definitely had good points. So when Vol 2 got even better reviews (I think it got 4 stars from the Globe), we thought we should check it out also.

This week is going to be a little crazy for me at least. I've got an appointment for an oil change on Tuesday, and I get Thursday off for Veteran's Day... I might get some work done in the middle of all of it :) Hope things are going well for everyone, and please keep Linda in your thoughts this week.

- Stephen

Date:	Sunday, 11/7/2004, 4:06 PM
Subject:	Just a short note
Security:	Public
Mood:	sympathetic

It is Stephen's turn to update the journal, and he will get around to it shortly.

I just wanted to take a moment to let everyone know that Mom's husband Doug passed away early this morning. As I mentioned earlier, he's been in very poor health lately, and he spent the past week in a Hospice in Valpo. From what I understand, his last week wasn't exactly comfortable, given the circumstances, but Mom believes he died in peace, and was content during his last days. Obviously, she's been better, but the hospice was great and she's coping very well, considering. He wanted to be cremated, and there will be no funeral services, as per his wishes.