As a former judoka who has not practiced Judo for ten years, I still have a love of the sport.  I was very disappointed to find out that NBC has chosen not to give Judo any airtime this year.  However, I have found the complete schedule of online Judo coverage.

Interestingly, NBC is using Silverlight for their online Olympics coverage.  Could this be the tipping point for Silverlight adoption?

It's a true story.  Slightly embellished by the editors, but the important facts are intact.

Update:  It made the front page of Fark.com!

My three year old (and oldest) son, Connor, had a very rough time as an infant and toddler when we tried to transition him to his own crib.  It terrified him, and my wife and I didn't see a need to traumatize the poor kid, so we let him sleep with us in our bed.  We always figured it'd be easier to transition him to his own bed later with a carrot-and-stick approach, e.g. "Now Connor, if you want to borrow the car this weekend, you need to sleep in your own bed."  :)  Seriously though, our approach to parenting has largely been one of watching our kids for signals that they're ready to try new things and encouraging that development as it happens.

Sure enough, a few weeks ago Connor flat-out asked us for his own bed.  We were floored.  We moved his toddler bed from his room into the nursery (which is right across the hall from our room) and got a new toddler bed for our younger son, Cade.  We set up both beds next to each other.  We also installed a wall-mounted TV.  I realize that may be controversial, as a lot of people have a problem with exposing kids to TV at a young age.  Nevertheless, watching a Disney movie or some Blues Clues on DVD has been something he can focus on to relax in bed and dose off, and we still read to our kids frequently.  Their TV doesn't have a satellite receiver and we only use it for watching their favorite DVDs.  (Side note:  Eventually, I plan on getting a digital media player for their room so we don't need to mess with DVDs anymore.  We've already eliminated DVDs in the den and living room.)

Tonight, as I was tucking him into his bed, he asked me to read him a story.  On his mom's suggestion, he selected The Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle.  After I finished reading it to him, he asked me to read him another book.  I asked him what he wanted, and he replied, "Star Wars."  I grabbed the Golden Books rendition of the Battle of Hoth and started reading it to him as he pointed out characters like Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader.

After I read to him the story of Luke Skywalker almost being eaten by a wampa, and Darth Vader and his army of snowtroopers storming Echo Base, I asked him if he was ready for me to put on a movie for him.  "Watch a movie!" he exclaimed in the affirmative.  "What movie?" I asked, expecting Cars or Toy Story. 

"Star Wars!" came the reply.  I asked if "Return of the Jedi Star Wars" was a good choice.  "Watch Jedi Star Wars," he replied.  So I put on Return of the Jedi, kissed him goodnight, and closed the door.

I've never been so proud.  :)

I've got a grab-bag of information to talk about, but none of the topics is enough to justify a full post.  So I'll just rapid-fire these tidbits of news in a single post...

• I've had my mid-year review at Corillian.  It was a positive experience, and I'm feeling much more comfortable in my role with the company.  Between this review and a fruitful meeting with a client, I'm really excited about the opportunities I have to accomplish some really cool things.  And telecommuting is getting easier, too.  I daresay I'm more productive than I've ever been.
  
  
• I picked up a Garmin nüvi 200 GPS.  For an entry-level GPS geared toward car navigation, I couldn't be happier with it.  My only complaint is it seems to make some weird route suggestions occasionally.  For example, I'll be driving to San Antonio later this spring.  Google Maps says the quickest route is I-35 all the way from KC to San Antonio, which seems pretty reasonable to me.  The nüvi disagrees, and has me taking a route that, while technically shorter in distance, is also an hour longer in terms of time according to Google Maps.  Meh, it'd still get me there eventually.  That's the most important part, I think.  I drove to Omaha, NE for business last week, and it performed beautifully in getting me to the hotel, around town, and then back home.
  
  
• I'm an ergonomics nut.  I love ergonomic keyboards and mice.  My current keyboard is the Microsoft Natural Keyboard 4000, which I think is the best MS Natural Keyboard since the original (which I still have in my closet).  I was using a Microsoft Wireless Laser Mouse 6000, which was mostly comfortable but was causing some  minor discomfort in my first and middle knuckles and my wrist.  When I was in Omaha last week, a colleague introduced me to the Microsoft Wireless Laser Natural Mouse 6000.  I ordered one for myself immediately.  While not as alien as a vertical mouse, your hand is elevated and rotated in a position that, while extremely natural and comfortable, is a little weird at first.  Give it a day and you'll never turn back.  I cannot recommend this mouse enough.
  
  
• If you have multiple IM clients running, you owe it to yourself to try a unified client.  I use Pidgin (nee Gaim) to log onto my Windows Live and Google Talk accounts, as well as CheckFree's internal Sametime server.  Very handy.
  
  
• My brother-in-law (and close friend), Bruce (aka Unknown Echo), started Basic Military Training for the US Air Force a couple weeks ago.  He's a remarkable young man, and we're all very proud of him.
  
  
• I wish my old friends at Commerce would quit blowing off my lunch invitations.  I'm looking at you, Joel.

I took this picture at the intersection of MO-169 and 188th St. in Smithville, Missouri, not too far from my house.  Somebody lost control in an ice storm and took out the stop sign.  The county (or would this be city or state?) replaced the sign quickly.

Perhaps a little too quickly.

My mom and her husband run their own business as artisans.  They sell glass and copper pieces, mostly hummingbird feeders.  It's really beautiful stuff.

My mom surprised me a few weeks ago by announcing to me that they'd started a blog.  She wanted to know what words of wisdom I had to offer, so I sent her to Scott Hanselman's 32 Ways to Keep your Blog from Sucking.

So, now I'm confused about the nature of blogging.  Does it mean that blogging is no longer cool when your mom starts to do it?  :)

Seriously, though.  If you're shopping for a unique gift or you just like hummingbirds, please do check out my mom and step-dad's shop and blog.

Well, not really.  The folks at Infusion have posted their "trailer" for their upcoming video recap of Sleepless in New York.  Get it here.

I've got a decent amount of screen time in the trailer.   Before you ask, no, I wasn't really worried about hidden microphones.  It was about one in the morning, they were conducting personal interviews of all attendees, and I was punch drunk.  So for every question, I kept coming up with the most off-the-wall answers I could think of.  They did three takes of my interview, and I never answered any questions the same way twice.

Hopefully some of the funnier answers of my interview will be available in the future.

Today I'm 1D in hexadecimal, which I prefer because it makes me look like I'm still a teenager.  Or 11101 if you prefer binary.  Let's just not talk about how old I am in decimal, okay?

Alright, I'll put it this way...  The hippie adage is "Never trust anyone over 30."  Which means you can only trust me for another 366 days.

I just got my first greenlit article on the social news site, Fark.com.  For those of you unfamiliar with Fark, what this means is I submitted a link to a news article, including a self-written funny headline, and the users of the pay version of the site (TotalFark) gave it sufficient votes to have it show on the front page of Fark.

I guess you'd have to be there to appreciate it.

Yay, me.

As much fun as it was, it's very good to be home.  My kids were both happy to see me, and the wife didn't complain too much.  Now that I've had some time to reflect on what I learned at Tech·Ed, I need to get my conclusions down before I lose track of them all.

Certification:  A lot of people don't put a lot of weight in certifications, citing examples of "paper" MCSD's (I've known a few myself).  That said, I'm really proud I got my MCSD at Tech·Ed this year.  I've wanted my MCSD since I was 13 years old, but I never made it a priority.  I had time and opportunity at Tech·Ed this year, so I took advantage of it.   My goal for next year is to complete the two upgrade exams to get my MCPD in Enterprise Applications.

Technology:  Admittedly, I saw fewer sessions than I wanted to.  I had a hard time adjusting to east coast time (being a late riser on central time to begin with), and I ended up oversleeping every morning.  That said, I saw a few technologies that got me really excited.  Among these are Acropolis, WCF, WF, LINQ, and a few others that don't immediately spring to mind.  Due to a relatively busy workload at Commerce, I'm a little behind the times on getting to play with these things (particularly WCF, WF, and LINQ, which I already knew about, but hadn't actually seen in practice), but that also highlights some need for me to do some deep thought on my career direction.  More on that later.

Community Involvement:  On an earlier post, I mentioned that I got to meet a bunch of my personal heroes.  I have a very deep desire to emulate these people and make the level of community contribution that they have.  I want to have something valuable to say, and I want to be able to present it so that people to want to hear it.  It occurs to me, looking at other people who have done it, I need to be more active in the community.  I have a blog with maybe 10 regular readers, which is all well and good, but I'm not providing anything valuable enough to merit any serious attention.  I need to start spending some time in newsgroups, forums, and the local .NET users group, getting down in the thick of the community and participating like I know I'm capable of.

Career Direction:  The more I think about it, the more I think I've been standing still for too long.  I'm very proud of what we've done at Commerce, and it's a good company I'm happy to be a part of, but the reality is that it's primarily a J2EE shop, and I'm living (happily) in a .NET world.  When you consider that online banking is a rather narrow customer-facing interface to our broader J2EE enterprise, I really begin to wonder if I shouldn't be thinking in larger terms.  Whether those larger opportunities are within or outside of Commerce is a question that I'll have to put some thought into.  I know there are shops out there who are into the bleeding edge .NET stuff that would be awesome, but I'd be remiss if I didn't mention I went to two Birds of a Feather sessions at Tech·Ed that really got me thinking;  One was "Thriving and Surviving as an Independent Consultant," and the other was "Starting and Running your own Software Business."  The thought I keep coming back to:  If all these people could do it, why couldn't I?  Wow, I've got a lot to sort out in this category.

Friends:  I made a lot of new contacts I'm looking forward to keeping in touch with.  I certainly hope a few of them are reading this and will also keep the lines of communication open.

Fun:  I went to a session on programming games in XNA.  I totally need to do that.  And hopefully sell the games I write.  :)

Wow, I saw/did so much cool stuff today, it's hard for me to keep it all straight.

First and foremost, I ended up taking my 70-300 (Analysis and Architecture) exam early, and I passed!  I'm now a Microsoft Certified Solution Developer.  I'm rather pleased with this.  :)

I hung out with Patrick Cauldwell for an hour or so, talking about life, family, business, regional weather patterns, and food.  That guy is seriously fun to chat with, and I look forward to speaking with him again.

Speaking of dudes from Corillian, I wandered by the DevExpress booth again, where Mark Miller was again demoing the product, and I noticed Stuart Celerier hanging out.  I said, "Stuart, I know you already use CodeRush, so what are you doing here?"  His response:  "I just enjoy hearing Mark present it."  So at least I'm not the only creepy Mark Miller stalker.

Speaking of hearing Mark Miller speak, I caught two rounds of Speaker Idol today at the Virtual Tech·Ed stage.  Several of the presentations were really good, but the one that I enjoyed the most was by Steven Smith.  He demonstrated something he called micro-caching in ASP.NET.  Basically, the premise is that when you've got a data-driven page displaying real-time data, you can still use ASP.NET caching to remove the database bottleneck while still maintaining at least a semblance of real-time.  In his example, he had a page that displayed a simple bound datagrid.  He started load testing it with Application Center Test, and it had a throughput of about 150 requests per second.  Then he enabled page-level caching with a cache timeout of only 1 second, and his throughput jumped to over 600 requests per second.  That was freakin' cool. 

During my latest round of stalking Mark Miller at the DevX booth, I noticed Miguel Castro lounging around on a bean bag chair.  I learned the other day that Miguel and I have a common bond, so I started a conversation with him.  He and I actually had a lot to talk about.

Finally, I closed out the day hearing Caleb Sima give a talk on threat models impacting Ajax applications.  Most of it was pretty common knowledge to anyone who understands how Ajax works and how ASP.NET security plays into it.  The session was still great though, as Caleb is an awesome speaker with an awesome background - Pretty amazing for a dude who's only a year younger than me.

It's only the first official day at Tech·Ed, but I've already got a bunch to write about.

Yesterday, I registered, got the awesome handout backpack/laptop carrier that they give you at registration, and went to hear Ron Jacobs' pre-conference Architecture seminar (the one that was going to be co-presented by Scott Hanselman).  I enjoyed Ron's presentation immensely, though.

Then I went to the Party with Palermo.  That was a blast, and the pictures prove it. 

• Here I am in front of the Glo Lounge, hanging out with the awesome Alan Stevens of the East Tennessee .NET Users Group.  He and I were the first to show up, yet we ended up around 20th in line.  Fortunately, we were early enough to have caught an eyeful of the four very young and very naughty-looking Russian girls who tried to invite themselves to the party.  Trust me, there's no way they were Tech·Ed attendees, but Alan and I both thought they should be allowed in anyway.
• I'm in the background here chatting up Stuart Celerier of Corillian (his back is to the camera).
• Stuart and I were asked to strike a pose.

This morning I caught another of Ron Jacobs' architecture talks (a much shorter one), and I went to a lunch seminar on getting your technical book published (I don't have any plans, I was just interested in the process).  Then I looked at my schedule for the rest of the afternoon and realized that nothing really struck my fancy too much, so I went to the certification and testing area of the conference, where I took (and passed) 70-340, Implementing Security for Applications with Microsoft Visual C#.NET. Passing that test, in combination with previous tests I've passed, means I am now an Microsoft Certified Application Developer. 

But then it gets better.  Now that I was an MCAD, I was only two tests away from Microsoft Certified Solution Developer (MCSD).  With a study hall full of training material and practice tests at my disposal, there's no time like the present, right?  About two hours later, I passed 70-316 (Windows Applications with C#).  And I'm scheduled to take 70-300 (Requirements and Architecture) on Friday.

Then I went and schmoozed on the expo floor for a while, before finally retiring back to my hotel.

Personal Heroes of Mine to whom I have Introduced Myself and Shook Hands

• Carl Franklin (Ambushed him at the bar at the Party with Palermo)
• Richard Campbell (Same as with Carl)
• Mark Miller (I actually stood at the DevExpress booth and heard him demo CodeRush for about 20 minutes before he asked me if I was interested, to which I replied, "No, I already use CodeRush.  I'm just a Mark Miller fan."  Which he seemed to think was kind of creepy...)
• Rockford Lhotka (He wandered up to the DevExpress booth when Mark was demoing CodeRush)
• Miguel Castro (He was at the Party with Palermo)

I'm looking forward to meeting/greeting/schmoozing even more than I'm looking forward to the seminars and labs.  Over the past few years I've built an admiration for a lot of bloggers in the .NET community, and I imagine hanging out with them will be as educational as Tech·Ed itself.

Hopefully I'll see you there!

A coworker sent me a link from lifehack.org talking about the possible obsolescence of the hard drive and software.

Personally, that school of thought was what made me finally settle on Gmail, Google Reader, Google Personalized Homepage, and Google Calendar.  I haven’t yet made the leap to Google Docs & Spreadsheets (and, if rumors are to be believed, Presently).  Reason being, the only time I use a word processor at home is when I’m writing a snail-mail letter, usually to complain about something.  While Google Docs has an “export to PDF” feature that provides an otherwise decent printable copy, they don’t (yet) give you any customization options on the print format (portrait v. landscape, margins, etc.).  If Google Docs would give me that, my home office software suite would be completely online.  Until then, I’ll keep using OpenOffice.org.

And where's my online version of Quicken or MS Money?  I like my personal finance manager, but I have yet to see a compelling online replacement.  Sure, there's Mvelopes, but I tried it and didn't like it.  Get me a good online PFM that integrates with all the OFX-based data sources Quicken can, and offers integrated online bill-pay with balance forecasting, and I'm there.  Charge me $5 a month if you want.  I'll pay it.

Even if I were to move all of my day-to-day tasks online, I'd still never be able to call the hard drive obsolete.  I've got way too much digital music, video, and photos that I'm not willing to share with the world, nor am I willing to wait for it to upload/download in huge chunks.  No, I'll keep buying more and more storage for these things, and I'll keep paying Mozy $5 a month to back them up.  Digital media will continue to drive me to buy more storage, even in a world where you could, at least theoretically, offload it online somewhere.

Then there are development tools.  If you're a .NET developer, you're pretty well tied in to Visual Studio, or perhaps SharpDevelop.  I don't see either of these tools going web-based anytime soon.

So I can't move my whole life online, but can I at least carry a large part of it with me?  Lately, I’ve been toying a lot with the notion of carrying my life on a USB drive.  Of course, the obvious solution is the PortableApps suite, but that doesn't get me anything the Google App suite doesn't already.  MojoPac (a virtual desktop that leverages the host Windows OS as its own OS) sounds closer to ideal, but there are application compatibility concerns.  Can I be sure it'll work with all my apps?  So far, the most appealing option is to get a big-ass USB drive and build a VHD with everything I need, and then run the VHD in Virtual PC on whatever system I'm using.  The downside to that, assuming the owner of the PC will let me install Virtual PC, is performance, although it's less of an issue these days thanks to Moore's Law.

But then again, when I've got Remote Desktop Connection, does it really matter?

(Side note: Scott Hanselman did a podcast with Gina Trapani of LifeHacker.com a few months ago.  If you dig life hacking, it's worth a listen!)

Anyone not reading this website from behind a content filter (I'm looking at you, Commerce employees) has probably noticed my Google AdSense ads.  I added them when I started this blog because I figured it's free and it surely couldn't hurt.  To date, I've made exactly $1.84.  And who says bloggers aren't real writers? (BTW, why don't you take this opportunity to click on some ads?  Go ahead, I'll wait.)

Today, I noticed this ad on my site.  Apparently, geeks who read my site would be likely to watch Superman Returns and buy virtualization products.  Or maybe watch a movie about Superman running a Virtal Machine farm.  Or something like that.

I'm back!

I think the issue had something to do with Google Sitemaps, the fact that I signed up for said Sitemaps, and I didn't actually have a sitemap deployed.

After chatting with Scott Hanselman about it, as soon as I get a a few extra hours, I'm going to build a Sitemap handler for dasBlog.

You know, it's times like this when I realize why I love the Internet.  (SFW)

Man, I haven't posted any good technical articles in a while.  Here I've got a blog called "The Net Guru," a title given to me by my friend and coworker Misfit, and I'm not doing any guruing.  How lame.

Well, since I'm on a streak, why stop now?  I'm writing a ton of code on multiple projects at the moment, and there's sure to be something good coming out of that, but in the meantime, let me flaunt my geekiness with this freaking hilarious Darth Vader movie.

I'm still not showing up in Google's index.  According to this guy, you can send an email and request re-inclusion.

I wonder if my hosting provider (actually, my friend Sean's hosting provider, since Sean was the one who gave me a subdomain to his hireageek.net domain) was down when Googlebot came calling.

Update:  No dice.  I sent them a message and got the following reply: 

Thank you for writing to Google. We'd like to assist you, but we only respond to messages submitted through our online contact form. Please visit http://www.google.com/support/ to submit your message, and we'll get back to you soon. We apologize for any inconvenience, and we look forward to hearing from you.

Regards,
The Google Team

If you can find the online form they mention, you've got more patience than I do.

Somehow, I've disappeared from Google's index.  WTF?  I know I was there at one time.

I guess Googlebot is pissed off at me or something.  MSNBot still likes me.  Maybe Googlebot got jealous.

Slashdot ran this story about a couple whose hard drive, which had been supposedly destroyed by Best Buy, turned up at a flea market.  The implications are, of course, a little scary.

It amazes me how blazé people are with their data.  It's just not a lot of effort to keep your data secure.  Here are the measures that I take: 

1. Password-protect your user account.  My wife an I run as local admin, which is a bad idea, and I strongly recommend that you do NOT do that unless you are very confident in your ability to protect your system from malware.  That said, it is ALWAYS a good idea to password-protect your user account.  My wife and I have separate logons on all of our systems, and we use Fast User Switching to log on/off.  Password protecting your accounts ensures that anyone in your house using your system is going to be logged on as the guest account, and will only have the rights you grant them.
   
   
2. The directory tree on our network that we store all of our stuff in is set up with proper ACLs to deny access to anyone that isn't me or my wife.  This is lets us comfortably allow a guest to login to our desktop system without worrying that they'll get into our files.
   
   
3. The really sensitive stuff (financial records, images of our birth certificates and SSN cards, medical records, certain pictures) is kept in a TrueCrypt drive.  This way, if the machine is stolen, and an adversary bypasses the ACLs (easy enough to do - reinstall the OS), the sensitive stuff is still safe.  The TrueCrypt drive also has ACLs to deny guests access if we leave the drive mounted while they log on via Fast User Switching.
   
   
4. Sensitive information is never sent to anyone via email.  I've got my mom and wife using PGP to encrypt plain-text messages and binary files for email transmission.  The basic functionality will always be free, thanks to the efforts of Phil Zimmerman (a true hero, in my mind).  My wife is a power user, but my mom is a more "typical" user, and she caught on very quickly.  If my mom can pick it up, how hard can it be?  (Sorry, Mom...)
   
   
5. Backup your stuff, but take the same measures to protect your data.  I use the cheap-o cheezy Backup app that's built into Windows to backup all my directories and TrueCrypt drives to an external drive, but I maintain the same ACLs on the backup media as I do on the "production" media.
   
   
6. If you're going to be selling/throwing away/giving away a drive, please, for the love of Pete, at least format the stupid thing first.  A better option would be Darik's Boot and Nuke, but a regular format will take care of most adversaries.
   
   
7. Whenever I connect to my network remotely, it's all done via SSH.  The only inbound port on my network is SSH, and I use PuTTY to set up a secure tunnel for any connectivity I need from work or on the road.
   

When I first started this blog, I wrote in the introduction that the primary purpose of this blog was technical and gaming.  However, I warned that their might be an occassional picture of my son, Connor.  Well, it's time I made good on that.  Here's a shot Michelle took of Connor and me bumming around on the weekend enjoying an episode of the Wiggles together.

Holy cow, it's been a month since my last post.  Funny how time flies when you're boning up for MCP exams, huh?  On that note, I've completed two MCPs, I'm almost ready for a third (making me an MCAD) and then I'll be two tests from MCSD.  I'm hoping to have my MCSD by the end of April, at which time I'll start working on my upgrade exams to become an MCPD in Enterprise Applications.  Good times!

So Scott Hanselman posted again on something near and dear to my heart, Outlook Inbox organization.  He's apparently a big advocate of the Getting Things Done method, making use of a concept called Zero Email Bounce.  I freely admit, I don't know much about Getting Things Done, never having read it, but it sounds too focused to be something I'd make work.  I revel in a certain degree of chaos.  As I commented on Scott's blog, I actually drew some inspriration from Gmail in my Outlook Inbox handling routine.

As each message comes in, I make a decision: Action item or not an action item. If it's an action item, it (and its ensuing conversation thread, since I sort my Inbox by conversation rather than date) stays in the Inbox until complete.

If it is not an action item, then I have another decision to make: Is the message signal or noise? If it's noise, and of no possible future value, it gets deleted. If it's signal, then it gets moved into an "Archive" folder in my Exchange message store. I wrote an Outlook macro and assigned it to a toolbar button so I can archive the message with one click (again, ala Gmail). As action items are completed, they are assumed to be non-action signal items, and are archived.

Our organization has a ridiculously tight 85 MB mailbox limit, so I've got my auto-archive settings for the "Archive" folder set at a relatively short two weeks. If there is a "signal" item that I need to stay in my Exchange message store (so it's easily available on both my laptop in offline mode as well as my desktop), I drag it to a "Do Not Archive" folder until it can be moved to "Archive." An example of this is travel itineraries.

To keep my auto-archive file from consuming too much space on my tiny 40 GB workstation hard drive, I have it set to auto-delete after a year. I figure that's enough time for most items to lose relevance, and a year's worth of messages only consumes about 1.5 GB.

To find items, I use Windows Desktop Search (MSN Toolbar and Desktop Search without the toolbar). I really prefer Google Desktop, but it had trouble with my short auto-archive window, often expecting an item to be in my inbox when it was, in fact, in the auto-archive PST. Windows Desktop seems to handle that better.

I've seen this on both Fark and Slashdot today.  I wonder how it tastes?  Mmmm...  Green bacon.

This is my latest attempt at a blog.  My previous attempts were of lower quality than what I had envisioned, so I'm taking another whack at it.  Ideally, I'm trying to model myself as a one-man Slashdot, bringing forth news and articles most important to me, and hopefully, you, the reader.

So what does "most important to me" mean?  This means that what you'll read will include:

• Hardcore geek stuff, like C# code samples.
• Articles culled from IT news sources, such as Slashdot.
• Articles of interest (or humor) from other general sources, like Fark.
• Reviews of software and gizmos.
  
• More hardcore geek stuff, like Star Wars book reviews.
• Thoughts and comments on video gaming, particularly Xbox and Xbox 360.
  
• Occasional musings on the Kansas City Chiefs.
• Occasional thoughts on fatherhood and family.  Expect to see cute photos of my kid from time to time.
• Maybe, possibly, a very rare comment about Freemasonry (my fraternity) or the Knights Templar.
  

• Anything overly political and/or of an inflammatory religious nature.  Suffice to say, I am basically libertarian in all my beliefs, religious and political, and to me that implies that my beliefs are mine, yours are yours, and it's not my responsibility to bring you to my way of thinking.  I believe in a supreme being and in civil liberty.  That's as far as I'm willing to affirm my faith and politics in the eyes of the public.
• Anything overly critical of Commerce Bank, my employer.  Constructive criticism is one thing.  Openly biting the hand that feeds you is just stupid.  So, from this point forward, pay heed to the disclaimer listed on this blog (the one about how my opinions are not those of my employer).

Without further ado, let the blogging begin.  Thanks for reading!