Notable URLs on 2007-06-29

• FastStone Capture: a powerful, flexible and intuitive screen-capture utility. It allows you to capture anything on the screen including windows, objects, full screen, rectangle regions, freehand-selected regions and scrolling windows/web pages.
  ( Software Win32 Utilities )

Posted by ben at 11:59 PM

The Graduate

Thanks to some prompting by friends, we hosted a Grad BBQ for Tedd today. So many of our friends played big (HUGE!) roles in Tedd's life -- we wanted to give everyone an opportunity to say "congrats" to the big graduate. That, or we wanted the BBQ grub, soda and beers.

Many thanks to all our family friends and Tedd's friends who came out and enjoyed the gorgeous summer afternoon by the pool. We had a great time and were thankful so many could take a break from their own busy lives and help us celebrate Tedd's accomplishment.

Posted by ben at 07:00 PM

The Police (in The OC)

After years and years of threats, The Police finally staged a "reunion" tour. As one of my most favorite bands of all time, I'd followed the threats for years, but stopped paying any attention. I almost didn't believe the tour was on... They announced the date for LA as 6/20 (hrrm... that date seems familiar and important. hint: see previous post.).

Well, we just couldn't find a way to break away from our previous engagement (we'd only had it on the calendar for 12 years!) and thought the chance had gone. Thanks to Phil's persistence and hawk like awareness of concert ticket sales, he was ready and waiting for another show to open up and it did. He snagged four sweet tickets only a few rows from the stage (behind it).

Really great to hear this band together -- good energy, plenty of good material (nothing new, but that's just fine with me). I really hope they do a live album of the concert series (I'm sure they'll do something -- plenty of video equipment on hand, so perhaps a DVD). My only complaint is that the sound setup in the arena was poorly tuned and not of the quality I'd hope for... that and I'm getting old. Even w/ ear plugs it was too loud for me.

Although I'm still looking for a boot of the show we saw, I did find one from the concert series when it was in Vancouver, BC. I've been listening to this recording, hoping for a professionally produced copy to emerge soon. Also interesting, a few videos (from phones, I guess?) have appeared on Google YouTube -- Here's King of Pain:

Posted by ben at 11:59 PM

Class of 2007

Tedd participated in his final high school activity this afternoon -- Graduation. After 12 years of good, bad and ugly teachers, many friends, and hours upon hours of homework, he received his diploma and couldn't stop smiling. Who could blame him? A big congratulations to Tedd and a big thanks to the many, many friends and family that helped him and us along the way. It takes a village!

After listening to about 300 other graduate's names, Tedd surprised and pleased everyone -- the graduates get to pick the name by which they are announced. After a few humorous So-and-so "grizzly" Smith and Blah Blah the 14th's, Tedd was called as "Robert Tedd Scheall Johnson Mehling". Everyone was grinning -- he'd fit his WHOLE family into the celebration. We're so proud of you Tedd -- great job!

Posted by ben at 10:30 PM

15th WorldVistA Conference

Returned last night from the 15th WorldVistA conference, held in Seattle this year. About 50+ interested parties came to three days of workshops, presentations and panel discussions. I haven't attended since 2002 when Medsphere hosted. It was nice to see a number of old comrades and also meet some new folks. I was lucky enough to be given the opportunity to present the OpenVista Appliance with a couple of experts on the subject. This also gave me a chance to briefly show off CIS. While at the conference we also took the opportunity to update our GTK installers, CIS and Appliance releases.

Many thanks to the hard working volunteers at WorldVistA for their hours and hours of dedication and hard work.

Since summer has already begun for Hol, she traveled with me and got to spend some time in downtown Seattle. Her dad even came over for the day. We stayed off of Queen Anne St., at the very funky MarQueen hotel (built in 1918 to house the blacksmiths for the engineering school!) -- if you're in this area the restaurant (Peso's Kitchen and Lounge) just across the street had good atmosphere and food (and art)! This is only my second time to Seattle, but it's a very cool town -- extremely mellow and architecturally interesting.

Posted by ben at 12:00 PM

Notable URLs on 2007-06-15

• Student loan agency faces new scrutiny / Collection fees, other charges overwhelming those in default: EdFund is a state-sponsored agency few college students want to hear from after graduation.
  ( Finance Loans Education )

Posted by ben at 11:59 PM

Notable URLs on 2007-06-13

• SourceForge.net: HL7 Inspector: The HL7 Inspector is a usefull hl7 tool for integration the HL7 in a health care enviromental. It will help you to minimize the time for tuning the HL7 communication between systems such as HIS and RIS by analyzing and validating HL7 messages.H
  ( HL7 *MSC Software Win32 )

Posted by ben at 11:59 PM

Notable URLs on 2007-06-08

• JungleDisk - Reliable online storage powered by Amazon S3 ™ - Jungle Disk: Jungle Disk is an application that lets you store files and backup data securely to Amazon.com's S3 ™ Storage Service.
  ( Storage Software MacOSX Win32 Linux Backups )
• Google Reader Theme // journal // hicksdesign: I’ve been using Flickr as a bit of testbed for a new site theme I’ve been working on for Google Reader. C’mon after the Bloglines thing, I bet you saw it coming didn’t you?!
  ( Theme Firefox Extensions gReader )

Posted by ben at 11:59 PM

Julian, Ca.

Because Hol and I made the awesome decision to get married on a holiday weekend, our honeymoon was spent planning our time around traffic patterns and crowds. So it follows that our anniversaries are the same deal. (I suggest you don't do this to yourself.)

So it follows that this year we waited until well past when we should have to book a get away. Lucky for us we could go the following weekend.

We decided to try Julian, Ca. We were looking for something quiet. The Eagle's Nest BnB we stayed at was wonderful, the owners were exceptionally dedicated and friendly (and great cooks).

Since we were really only staying for one full day (w/ half days on either side), we spent Saturday exploring the local hiking trails at Cuyamaca State Park. We had just enough time to do the Azalea Glen Loop before heading to our next appointment. The whole area was recently (well, couple years ago) swept by fires, so most of the ground vegetation had returned, but most the trees were standing firewood. There was a ton of other trails in this park and several other parks in the same area.

After our hike we headed off to our afternoon appointment at the California Wolf Center. This is a small facility tucked away in the hills just south of Julian. They provide education, research and rehab for various wolf related projects. After a short lecture they walked out to see the Denali pack in their enclosure (they have other wolves on the grounds, however they are meant to be returned to the wild and thus have limited human contact). The Denali pack is used for research into wolf behavior. They were beautiful animals and thanks to the cloud cover came out on a couple different occasions to greet us. They are big animals -- large males can reach four feet at the shoulder! I would definitely recommend this tour (make reservations in advance) if you're in the area during cooler months.

Although Mr. Tedd would have been fine on his own, our personal and quite exclusive Aupair was on hand to spoil him, then have a quick bite with us before heading back up to Calabasas. Thanks Mom.

Posted by ben at 10:00 PM