Ryan

It seems like every time I see Jett I end up with some really good pictures.

Tonight, Mom dropped him by for a few hours while she ran some errands.  We had some good fun playing chess/horseys, catch with a baseball, soccer, racing, playing tigers, playing dead, playing rabbits, playing Tiger vs. Crocodile, speaking Chinese and Spanish, eating Cheez-Its, trying on my helmet, talking on the phone, being crazy, reading books, trying to catch a frog, sleeping, having fork fights, and watching an elephant jump on a trampoline.

I seriously can’t remember the last time I did so many things in such a short amount of time.

I’ve just “finished” my first real program in a while.  It’s a simple little Facebook app that allows a person to upload files from their desktop by dragging them to the application.

You can see an example of the application to the left in the screenshot.

The primary advantage of this application, currently, over the default web-based Facebook upload is the fact that it supports a drag-and-drop operation (actually, this is the only means of getting the files uploaded in my app).

It is by no means done - I plan to add caption and title support from the EXIF data directly to Facebook.  I’d also like to expand it so I can upload to SmugMug in a single click as well (maybe as a separate app).  Keep watching this space for updates and let me know what you’d like to see.

Download: FacebookUploader.zip (380 kb)

View the Facebook Application page.

We just got home from a great weekend in Minneapolis.  We went down for Elliot and Amanda’s wedding, primarily, but we got to squeeze a bunch of other goodness as well.

The wedding was late on Saturday afternoon so we went down Friday just after lunch and reached the Cities in time to stop at Ridgedale mall.  The weather was poor but it was close enough to freezing that the roads were just wet, not icy.

Saturday morning we took a quick hop to MOA and spent more than we should have.  I got a new pair of shoes and Jes bought a few things.  As soon as we got home I jumped in the car to go over to Air Assault Paintball.  I hadn’t played airball in quite a while but it was a great time.  The place was packed (they said it was because this was a holiday weekend) and so by 2:00 I could hardly get anymore games in but it was a good time.  I just wish there was a place around here that I could play at on a lazy Saturday instead of having to drive to the cities.  I was playing with some novice rec players but even still I was surprised that I could still keep up.  I think I shot more people than I was shot so that’s a win, right?

The wedding was really nice - it was so interesting to take in a wedding after having just had our own.  This was the first one that Jessica and I have been to since ours.  I took quite a few pictures and you can see some in the gallery.

Tim, Char, Zach, and Ty were in town for the Final Five (Go Gophers!) as well so we had a lovely lunch (alliteration) with them today.  The roads were clear and dry and the sky was sunny for our trip back.

-31° F (before windchill).  That is officially “bitterly cold” according to the Weather Channel.  And that was the temperature here in Fargo Wednesday morning as I went to work.  For all of you not in North Dakota - enjoy your warm weather.

I was in Seattle for TechReady (pictures are available) and it was somewhere between 40-50° F.  Most people were cold and I was having to explain that that was 70° warmer than it was where I had come from.

In other news, I had a chance to see a GHL hockey game while Jes and I were in Grand Forks for the get-together that wasn’t.  I took some pictures and they’re posted in the gallery.

I need to write shorter entries more frequently, I do think.

…Or nearly, in any case.  We’re down at the Nelson’s with Becca for a few days.  It’s been mighty relaxing after all of the stress last week.  I had a bunch of stuff going on at work plus trying to get ready for the Holiday Wine & Cheese at work.  I was one of only 5 live acts so I felt like there was quite a bit of pressure to do well.  The ratio worked out to be only about one act per hour so if you flopped people had quite a bit of time to think about it.

I was also the only solo performer and it was my very first HWC.  :-P  On the plus side I have done quite a bit of performing on stage and as a ventriloquist so I was fairly comfortable on that front.  Really, the only thing that was making me nervous was the fact that I wasn’t sure if I had my material (which was constantly changing) memorized.  We were cutting up through an hour before performance time which is not really what I wanted but we did end up with a pretty tight script that flowed well.

The performance went well and I got quite a few laughs.  In the end I tied with a video for “Best Sketch” but they graciously allowed me to take the trophy as I was a live act.  I did a scattering from the “Let me tell a joke” script and accepted the trophy.  I put a lot of work into it and it was nice to see that people enjoyed it - winning was a nice bonus.

I’m headed to Nashville on Wednesday to visit a customer and then we’re going down to the South Dakota grandparents on Saturday just for the day.  All in all, I’ll put in a day and a half at the office this week and then get another four-day weekend.  I should be able to go back to work refreshed.  I really think I needed this.

Also - we’re looking forward to visiting Sarah in Ireland and have briefly started planning our trip for late May/early June.  I do enjoy traveling. 

I beat Call of Duty 4 recently.  I must say, it was a bit too short but it was great while it lasted.  I’ve started to play multiplayer, something I don’t do often with games, but I’m having a great time so far.  I’m outclasses so far but I can see light at the end of the tunnel.

Naveed, Ankur, and I are currently hanging out in the airport waiting for our airplane.  We’re headed to Seattle for our MACH graduation and a career development workshop.  Ankur and Naveed are trying to finish theirs right now.  Shhhhh.

The real big news is that I become Northwest Elite this trip.  ;-)  Woot.

Ok, they’re boarding now.

We’re in Barnum for Thanksgiving with Jessica’s family. We’re leeching the internet off of the main house while we’re in Grandma’s house next door. We’re currently at one bar of strength with a connection speed of 1 Mbps. Blazing, I tell you. We left this morning at 7 and stopped at Best Buy. They had a deal on a 320 GB hard drive for $60 which when I look back on this in a couple years will no doubt seem ridiculous but trust me, it was a good deal at the time. It was $120 yesterday. I went into the store and grabbed the hard drive and Orange Box, got in line, and proceeded to wait 45 minutes in line. Ridiculous. We then left for the north country and only stopped to get food at McDonalds. Oh, and to buy an FM Transmitter from Best Buy in Brainerd which doesn’t work. Thanks, FCC.

The Sioux play Grand Valley State University tomorrow at 11:30 Central. The game is going to be webcast so I’ll get it hooked up and chill during the game. GVSU has won the national championship 4 out of the last 5 years so I’d be surprised if the Sioux win, especially with all of their injuries. It seems like half of the starters are out for one reason or another. The most damaging loss is Chapel since without him the Sioux are down to their 4th string running back. He was “jogging” on it earlier this week but he’ll most likely not be playing.

Call of Duty 4 is a great game. I’m looking forward to getting home to get a chance to play it again.

Boy, I’ve been busy lately.  Since I last wrote I have:

• Gone on a honeymoon
• Studied for an passed my XP MCSA test
• Shot 4 Sioux football games (vs Augustana, UNO, UMD, and SCSU)
• Started writing my ventriloquism script for the HWC at Microsoft
• Purchased a Canon 40D
• Gone to Hunter convention
• Started a new website
• Gone camping with Jeff and Jess G
• Beta tested the new Zune - it’ll be here on Tuesday!!
• Made 4 house calls to fix computers
• Taken on two new customers at work
• Wrote this blog entry

Crazy, huh?

At least I feel productive.  :-)  Maybe that means I just need to write more often, no?

Well, well, well…how quickly time flies!  I’m married!  Jessica and I are settling into our apartment and growing accustomed to married  life.  We had a great wedding and two wonderful receptions.  It seemed like there was so much going on during the wedding and receptions that we hardly had a chance to catch our breath.

We were worried on the wedding day that the weather wasn’t going to cooperate.  In the morning the forecast was for a 70% chance of rain sometime during the day and we were looking at about 60% chance around 6 o’clock with severe scattered thunderstorms rolling in in the early afternoon - not what we were hoping for.  There were so many last minute things that needed to be taken care of.  Note to anyone else planning a wedding: don’t leave anything until the last minute.  Do it earlier!!  We got to the courtroom about 10 minutes before our appointment.  The Nelson family had already arrived and everything was well documented.  :-)  Our ceremony was conducted by the Cass County Treasurer - a very brisk woman who warmed up to us after a bit.  A tad scary at first though, not going to lie.  We were ushered into a small little courtroom and the ceremony promptly began.  3 minutes later we had exchanged vows and rings (which we almost didn’t bring in), Brandon and Sarah signed the papers, and we were married.

We wore our rings for the rest of the day until we had to take them off for the evening ceremony at the Alumni Center.  It was fun to feel married and to seemingly flaunt the rings to everyone.  We stopped at Taco Bell for our celebratory (or something) lunch as we rushed to the Alumni Center to start preparing.  I didn’t end up eating my meal until a few hours later.  We ran through a quick rehearsal (although we should have gone into more detail and possibly done it twice) then started to get dressed.  Our photographers showed up a little while later and started snapping.  We ended up with about 1400 pictures in our proof book so I’m sure they shot even more than that.

The rain had held off through pictures and we made the decision to go for it outside and hope for the best.  We retired to the upsairs area of the Center to finish getting ready.  Once it hit 6:30 everything happened fast.  Someone told us it was time to go downstairs and as soon as we got downstairs the music started and we were off.  There was a tad bit of confusion over who should sit where but everyone ended up with a seat and in the right places.  The garden and singing and messages were beautiful.  We exchanged vows (our own this time) and rings again.

After the ceremony we had a quick reception line upstairs and then began the supper.  The food was excellent and everything was in its place without us having to say much.  The folks at the Alumni Center took care of everything once we had selected the caterer and food which was a big help to us.  Our cake was from Nicole’s (made by Minda) and was simplistic and gorgeous - just what we had hoped for (delicious too!).  After supper we had an open mic for anyone and people certainly took advantage of the opportunity.

Overall it was a lovely event and we’re glad for all who took the time to come to the wedding as well as our receptions.  We certainly appreciated all of the well wishes and kind words.

You can see pictures from the wedding here: (taken by Jeff G. - Thanks!) http://www.shortyr19.com/gallery/Family/wedding/
Also, our official photographer’s pictures are available online at: http://clients.photomilestones.com/slideshowk.php?path=Nelson (pw: nelson).  You can see more by clicking on the “order prints” link at the bottom.  We were very happy with our pictures and would recommend Milestones to anyone in the FM area.

Our time now is being spent organizing our apartment, writing “Thank You”s, and preparing for our trip to London.  We leave on Friday and are getting very excited.  We have several guidebooks which we’re getting our moneys worth out of.  We’re planning on going to “Mousetrap” which is the world’s longest running play and “Love’s Labour Lost”, a Shakespearean play in the replica Globe Theatre.  We’re going to try to see a “football” match as well as all of the traditional London tourist attractions.  If you have any suggestions or ideas let us know!!  We’ll have a full report and pictures when we return.

We had a beautiful day for the air show on Saturday.  It had been raining all week and things honestly looked bleak but it turned out nice.  We took a bunch of pictures and some video on our new camcorder.  You can see the edited video above.  Please enjoy!  The pictures are here.  Let me know what you think!!