Hi All

Made a "Christmas Break" album to hold all the fun filled pics from the holidays.

Christmas Break in a nutshell:
+ Had two Christmas dinners back to back. One @ 6 (Donna Sue and Pete's place) and the other one @ 11 (Mama's
house).
+ Both dinners were super-tasty!
+ Matt stopped by one night. We bowled the night away, and got some ice cream afterwards.
+ Saw the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame with Carl and Mama S.

It was good to relax with friends and family.
Enjoy the pics.
-Garvin (^_^)

It's that time of the year again. Time to hang out with our friends and family and.... stuff our faces with lots and lots of tasty
food. Given everybody's busy schedules, we decided to have a light family dinner. Funny thing is that I didn't expect more
than 2 people to show up, but then everybody's schedules cleared up. Soooo we went and had a quick BBQ for everybody
(a lot less prep time). Everybody had a good time. Later, Mike and Sofiya stopped over to hang out.

Enjoy the tasty pics
-Garvin (^_^)

p.s. This may be the last winter BAOMTALOFEOTY dinner. Might be easier to do something in the summer. Mmmm BBQ!
Start thinking of what to add to the new menu.

So much for the daily updates... hehehee oh well. Highlights listed below.

+ Tom doing his Flavor Flav impersonation
+ Giordano's DEEP dish pizza
+ Running around during tear down
+ Fun with everyone at Codonics
+ Too much meat at Fogo de Chao (Yes I hit ALL the meats)
+ Saw a +100 inch plasma screen
+ Running to a different terminal to catch an earlier flight with Glenn

enjoy the pics
-Garvin (^_^)

Still in Chicago.... soooo mini-micro-updates for the week.

First day of RSNA setup. Fun fun. Got to wake up at 5am this morning. Setup went by fast. We got everything done by 5.
Then we got really good seafood at Catch ThirtyFive.

Enjoy the pics.
-Garvin (^_^)

Mini-Update to Digidreamerz. In Chicago for work now.

Thanksgiving was fun and filling.... as usual. Morning dimsum at Li-Wah was mad crazy. We (Becka, Leah, and I) also
watch Bolt (two thumbs up.). The dinner was good. Tons of Fam and food. This year we had the dinner at Aunt Sally
and Uncle CK's new house.

Enjoy the tasty pics
-Garvin (^_^)

p.s. The mashed potatoes and pumpkin pies were great.

GO VOTE!
-Garvin (^_^)

p.s. Becka and I already did... w007!

We had a great time surprising Gary this weekend. Teresa got the ball rolling in it. The road trip started off on a good note.
The cheapest gas was $1.96/gallon. That's AWESOME! Becka and I drove to C-Bus and we carpooled it with Joe and Lisa
to Cincinnati. We tried to surprise Gary with Tom-Tom at the front door... only to find that Teresa opened the door and Gary
was sleeping HAHAHAA. He had tons of fun celebrating Gary and Teresa's BDays. We played Boggle and other board
games. And what Seto gather doesn't have TONS of food. We went to great tapas place for dinner. I still haven't stopped
thinking about the ox tail with foie gras. Gary had to roll to Jacksonville Sunday afternoon, so we had to call it short after
brunch.

We mad sure to stop off at the outlet mall on the way back home. The Coach store was BANANAS! There were soooooo
many people. Almost everything was 50% off. The best deal were the polo shirts @ Aeropostale for 99 cents!?!?!

Enjoy the fun and tasty pics
-Garvin (^_^)

3 Years and still no trick or treaters (Y_Y)... booooo! Oh well... maybe next year. Codonics was a hoot. A couple people
came dressed up. I had my Stitch hat and gloves. Becka had a witch Hello Kitty shirt and a black cat hoodie. The top
costume prize goes to Glenn. He and Zara worked on a cool wizard costume.

Enjoy the fun pics. Happy Birthday Gary!
-Garvin (^_^)

Oh WOW! What an Awesome concert! Definitely in my top 3! Sofiya and I got our gangsta-on and kicked it at the Obama
rally, which was a Jay-Z concert hosted by Lebron James. Mama Seto was able to score some tix to the event. The place
was PACKED! Jay did sets from almost every album he was on.

Enjoy the crunk pics and videos!
-Garvin (^_^)

p.s. Jay-Z uses a mac (evidence provided below).

What's better than one birthday??? TWO! of course. Yay! we celebrated Pete and Becka's BDay. We had a tasty dinner
at Sam and Dave's. And later we did presents and had chocolate cake... yum. Pete's presents were StarTrek themed,
as evident by the card

Enjoy the pics.
-Garvin (^_^)

Yay! Happy Birthday Becka! We FINALLY made it to Melt Bar and Grilled (plug) last night. Wow! they had really really
good food. Total comfort food! Everybody had a good time stuffing their faces with cheesy sandwiches. To top it off, we
split even got a fried twinkie. Afterwards, we watched Enchanted and had grasshopper pie (Becka's favorite).

Happy Birthday Becka! Enjoy the pics!
-Garvin (^_^)

Yay! Good Road trip. A part of Becka's birthday present was that I surprised her with a mystery road trip. It took her a bit
to figure out where we were. The present was to go to Washington DC and see the new Ocean Hall in the Smithsonian,
that just opened a month ago. The Smithsonian is my favorite thing about DC. You can nerd out there and spend DAYS
in each museum.

The running theme for the trip was "winging it", since it was hard to judge just how much time we would be spending at
each place. We left for DC on Friday around 10pm and rolled into the hotel around 4am-ish. We spent pretty much the
entire Saturday geeking around the Smithsonian Natural History Museum. The newly added Ocean Hall was AMAZING.
They did a real good job with it. We also made sure to check out the Hope Diamond too. After they kicked us out of the
Smithsonian, we hiked it to the Washington Monument and then the Lincoln Memorial.

In keeping with our theme, we walked back to the hotel looking for a good place to eat. We found McCormick & Schmick,
which oddly enough was a place I was going to make a reservation for. Dinner was great! The food was super-tastey and
we had an awesome waiter. He was definitely not B-Team... in fact... not even A-Team... more like All-Star-Hall-of-Fame
Team. Later out waiter found outit was Becka's birthday and didn't charge us for dessert.

Sunday was fun too. The day before, I had found out that twice a year the White House opens it's garden to the public.
After we got pass security we got to see all the trees that the presidents planted. We made sure to grab some pics by the
rose garden. It was pretty cool to get sooo close to the White House. After the garden tour, we zipped through a few more
museums to check out there gift stores. We made sure to shove off in the afternoon, so that we didn't get back too late.

On the way back home, we stopped off at a Prime Outlets, did some quick shopping, and grabbed some grub. When we
dropped Bill off in PA, his dad got the jump on us in a hairy-ghouly costume.

Happy Birthday Becka! Enjoy the pics.
-Garvin (^_^)

p.s. Will definitely need to go back for the Cherry Blossom Festival.
p.p.s. A special thanks goes out to Starbucks for keeping me awake.

I surprised Becka with a little Sweetest Day present while we were on out DC trip.

Enjoy
-Garvin (^_^)

p.s. Yes I know Sweetest Day is a made up holiday.... but the way I see it... is there's 2 sets of Guys... One set of guys does
Sweetest Day and the other hears about it over and over and over again.

Yay! for family time! We headed to Patterson's fruit farm to pick apples. Becka's never been apple picking. It's been since
high school since I've been there. We had tons of fun. The weather was sooo nice. We picked a ton of apples and run
around like little kids... good things Jackie and Kelvin was with us

Enjoy the fun pics.
-Garvin (^_^)

p.s. Their apple cider was A-M-A-Z-I-N-G!

Off by a couple months.... ok... ok... 4 months to be exact. I've been pretty swamped at work. With the end of the year
looming, we had to make our yearly trek. I finally had a free weekend to do a quick road trip.... Sooooo Becka and I
quickly booked it to Pittsburgh before something else came up. It was a good road trip. Only one hiccup... where 4
lanes got squeezed down to 1, which added 30 minutes to the trip. Lucky, we left super-early.

The food of course was AWESOME! Becka had ahi tuna sashimi style. I had a jumbo tiger prawn, stuffed with lobster,
and wrapped in bacon! Mmmmmmm! And to top it off they had StarBucks coffee.

Happy Anniversary!
-Garvin (^_^)

Yay! Another friend in the 27 Club! We all had a good time eating at Cheesecake Factory and drinking fun drinks! After
we were stuffed, we headed over to The Fox and Hound to burn some of it off with some pool.

Happy Birthday Sofiya! Enjoy the pics.
-Garvin (^_^)

Wahooo! OCTOBER is HERE! This means LOTS and LOTS of birthdays. The first of them being Glenn. We had a great
time at Glenn's place. Codonics peeps + pizza bagels = good times. Glenn took the day off and chilled (GREAT IDEA),
should try that next year

Happy Birthday Glenn! Enjoy the pics.
-Garvin (^_^)

Mama Shaffer stopped up for the weekend. Below is a quick recap... Sorry only had the digi-cam for Put-in-Bay (PIB).
Will get some pics off Alicia or Mama S. laters.

Friday: Stuffed our faces at Bucca de Beppo with Bill, Alicia, and the Purchasing Mommies.
Saturday: Pho with Seto Family, then off to PIB to relax.
Sunday: @ PIB, boated around and ate lots of food.
Monday: Mama S. leaves 10am... She'll be back soon.

Enjoy the pics.
-Garvin (^_^)

Continuing our jam-crammed-weekend... Becka and I headed down Columbus for a rib cook off. We hooked up with Lisa
and Joe. The cook off was super-tasty. The good thing about this rib cook off is 1) they take cash... yes no rib tickets. 2) the
have tons of other foods than ribs.... Mmmmm peach cobbler and desserts. Man we were soooo stuffed on the drive back.

Enjoy
-Garvin (^_^)

Got some tix from Melinda to goto to Cedar Point, so Beck, Leah, and I hit the Soak City. The park was fun. Leah and I did
most of the water slides. Wahooo! After we were soaked out we cleaned up and dropped off Leah to goto Put-in-Bay.
Since we had two tix to Cedar Point, we went back to the main park to hit Snoopy on Ice, and play games. Snoopy was
AWESOME! They did a really good job with the show.... two thumbs up.

Enjoy the fun pics.
-Garvin (^_^)

It was SUPER-FUN, but it's good to be back in the STATES! Gary and I had tons of fun running around and taking in the
sites. We pretty much covered everything. Below is a quick outline of what we did and what what we ate. You'll notice we
did a lot of eating... which is another thing both Gary and I are good at too lol. Speaking about food throughout the
outline, I'll tag items with "[FOOD]", seeing how it was a big theme this weekend. Overall Gary and I got a small tasting of
what London as to offer. We hit all the big places pretty quickly. Some of the places you could easily spend more than a
day at.

Enjoy... or what they say in London CHEERS!
-Garvin (^_^)

Friday/Saturday:
We did a LOT of walking today. We walk every where. Gary and I bumped into each other in the immigration line. Thank
goodness... cause my cell phone didn't work there. We did some the big touristy attractions.

+ 8 hr flight flight.
+ Met gary in the immigratin line and hit the ground running.
+ Took the Gatwick Express to Victoria Station... kinda like Times Sq. Station in NYC, where you get get too a lot of trains.
Lots of good food to be eaten there (Explained further below).
+ Checked into St. George's Hotel. A little hotel, but it served it's purposes. One bed, one shower, and a tv... what more
can you ask for (notice I did not say air conditioning).
+ [FOOD] @ Cafe Panini. I got a waffle with maple syrup and Gary got a panini sandwich.
+ Buckingham Palace was nice. We tried to stay for the "Changing of the Gaurd", but it got rained out. There was a
torrential downpour, and it seemed like Gary and I were the only ones that didn't bring and umbrella-el-la-el-al (Yeah
listening to Rihanna right now). Getting rained on sure works up and appetite (Oh man that was a good segue).
+ [FOOD] While getting lost (Hey it happens when you wingin it... Especially in a country that you've never been in). We
passed a sushi shop called Wasabi. We each picked up a rice triangle snack with spicy chicken. Mmmm these are the
same ones that I hoard up on when I go in Japan for Codonics.
+ V and A (Victoria and Albert) Museum: In short it's like of the Smithsonian, but with TONS of ART. The place was very
cool and free. You can easily spend more than a full day there, just looking at the pieces that you wanted to see.
+ [FOOD] The cafeteria to the V and A, was equally spectacular. We had Honey salmon, chips and coke. Sidenote: Looks
like Coka-Cola owns all of London.
+ Harrods was Nordstroms, but for very very rich people. OMG! All the super name brands that you read about (for those
who read fashion mags) are all out and displayed like in a regular mall. We saw A pair of socks that was $30 (US).
+ [FOOD] Of course rich people get hungry too. They had a AMAZING food market. Typically, travel books will show the
market, because it's so lavish. Gary and I bought some tastey food curry samosas, and a duck srping roll. Sidenote:
Need to tell Dad about our findings. Mmmm-Good.
+ Walked to Hyde Park: Saw the Princess Dian Memorial fountain. The fountain was cool. It was a circular ring of water that
flowed down hill.
+ [FOOD] Apple juice and OJ was needed from all the walking... looking back at it we should have prolly had water as well.
+ Big Ben: Not much, but a large clock tower. We heard it chime.
+ British Airways Millennium Eye: loooooong line for it, so we fast passed it (Disney-style). And by fast pass, I mean we
paid double to jump the line. Paying twice as much for everything became an obvious for the week. Some part was
due to the fact the US dollar is getting its butt kicked.
+ McDonald's has fish sticks here oooooooo.
+ [FOOD] The Pasty Shop: After much searching for din din , we settled for some meat pies around Victoria Station. They
were extra tasty.
+ [FOOD] Still a bit hungry after our gigantic meat pies, we went to Wasabi in Victoria Station to get individually wrapped sushi.

Sunday:
We hit the markets today. We saw a lot of cool stuff and did a lot of shopping.

+ [FOOD] B-fast of champs Latte with a croissant.
+ Spitalfields Market and other un-named-shady markets: On our way to Spitalfields Market, we ran into another market.
This had a lot of cheap knock off stuff. Did some good souvenir shopping there Once we got to Spitalfailds, we saw a
lot of cools stuff. It was exactly how our books described it. It is an open Market with a lot of designers selling one of a
kind kick-nacks and wheres.
+ Bricklane and even more of a shadier market: Right after Spatalfields we went to Bricklane, which was know for all their
street vendors. The shady part comes from when we went towards the end it became obvious that these people were
selling stolen stuff, for example, a guy was not only selling a suit case and clothes, but even the shampoo and soap.
+ [FOOD] Canteen: A high recommended place from our books, and now we know why. The food was fresh and really
really good. We had roast duck, and fish and chips and roast duck.
+ [FOOD] BIG meat on a stick. On our way to one of the markets, we saw a long (4.5 feet) skewer that was roasting a hug
pig. When I took a picture of the of it, they gave us a sampler for our interest.
+ [FOOD] Kansars Indian Food: We had to have curry, considering that Lodon is known to have a huge Indian population.
We ate curry chicken, curry samosas, garlic nan and rice. Of course it was good.
+ Tower of London: We did a quick walk around. I like the Traitor's Gate. Next time we might go inside of it
+ Tower Bridge: What we see in more London postcards.
+ London Bridge: not as cool as the Tower Bridge, as Gary called it "Disappointment #2". Sidenote: Disappointment #1
was something that happened when he was on business.
+ Chinatown: More shopping of course. There is a lot of food to be eaten there. Chinatown is right smack in the middle of
London's theater district. We ended up finding a multi-story arcade..... of course in Chinatown Got played to Mario cart.
We found a Royal Dragon in London. Sidenote: Royal Dragon was the name of one our parents restaurants.
+ [FOOD] Random Chinese restaurant (sorry don't remember the name): We had shark fin soup with crab meat, peking
duck, sweet and sour sour ribs (which Gary ordered in Chinese... insta-street-cred), and fried eel with chili and salt. Yum!

Monday:
+ [FOOD] Starbucks b-fast. We had a lot of writing ahead of us.
+ Post Office: We sent over 20 postcards. The ones that I wrote are prolly ALL illegible.
+ Tate Museum: Was interesting... Gary and I started at the wrong exhibit. Instead of working up to the weird-borderline-
masochistic stuff we walked right into the hardcore stuff. I've seen some hard stuff before, but that stuff took the cake. Of
course, Gary and I ran outta that exhibit real quick. The other exhibits were really cool. The had some pieces that I've only
seen in books before.
+ [FOOD] Vanilla and honey smoothe
+ St. Paul Cathedral: Very decked out. Did a quick walk by for it.
+ [FOOD] Moshi Moshi Sushi: This was a conveyor-belt sushi joint. Seeing how Gary and I missed a conveyor-belt place in
Japan, We had to do it. It was fun collecting up all the dishes.
+ Comic book store: What do nerds do on vacation... you guessed it go to the comic book store. lol. We ran into it on
accident on the way to the British Museum. The good thing was they had a comic that I've been trying to find for the pass 2
months. Yay London.
+ British Museum: The building was cool but very confusing. It's easy to get lost in the building. Gary and I hit some of the
bigger highlights, like the Rosetta Stone.
+ [FOOD]: Water and chocolate mousse.
+ Hamleys: It's a huge toy store, much like FAO Shwartz in NYC.
+ [FOOD]: Went to McDonald's to plan our next move, so we had a cheese burger and an apple pie. Apparently in Europe,
McDonald's deep fries their apple pies. This makes it more crispity and tasty, than what we do in the STATES.
+ [FOOD]: Dog and Duck: We had to hit up a pub while in London. This was on a list of top 10 pubs to visit.
+ Now what do 2 Chinese kids do after a pub... you guessed it back to the huge arcade in China town to lay down some
records on machines. We played some super-fun arcade games. There's one where you need to pound on the screen with
a hammer.... great stress reliever. In the hammer game, we got some #1 rankings in some of the sub-games. Over all we
got 2nd place.
+ Crystal Rooms: Not done with spending money we hit the casino... conveniently located very close to Chinatown.
+ [FOOD] Pig's Ear: Yet another pub, but with really really good food. The book recommends reservations. We came late,
but luckily they gave us a table. Gary had Beef belly salad, and the rib eye. I had a spicy crab salad, and pork tenderloin.
For desert, we had some ice cream. Should have took more pics, but it was too dark and I didn't want the flash to be going
off. Oh well, next time.
+ Pack like crazy and try to get 4-5 hours of sleep.

Tuesday:
Woke up at 6am (London-time... which was 1am EST). Checked out super quickly and headed for the Gatwick Express.
Gary's Delta line was nuts. Didn't know that Delta was huge in London. Luckily for Gary he's a Silver/Maroon member, so
he got to check in the business elite section. If Gary didn't he would have come close to missing his flight. My check in was
super easy. They even made it super easy for me cause I was flying business class. We ate at a place called "Eat.". We
had English muffins stuffed with scrambled eggs, bacon, and sausage. After I walked Gary to his gate, I headed off to my
gate. Of course they had to search me. I felt a bit bad for the guy, cause my bag was super messy. I must have had +10
cables crammed in my rolly bag. I did get to board first because of business class, which was nice. It was nice to have
enough leg room to stretch out. The next to me was free, so I sprawled my tech across to first class seats. The food was
good. I made sure to take pics of the menu. They even had a dessert sunday. Mmmmm. 'm working on this blog as I fly
back to Cleveland. It'll be interesting to see if I can make my 3 o'clock meeting. Yes, I'm going in to work today.

Off I go. Can't wait to get there.
Posting Tuesday night.
-Garvin (^_^)

A vacation is what the doctor ordered. It was great just relaxing and running around like a big kid. If I blogged about
everything we did I wouldn't be able to update the site in a timely manner, sooo below is a quick summary of each day.

Vacation Summary:
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Sat: Woke up super-early to catch our flight. After we landed, we hit the town and went shopping for supplies (juice, cereal,
sun block, ...). We chilled the night away at Downtown Disney, while Teresa and Gary went to a wedding.
Sun: Went to Animal Kingdom. They actually added a lot of stuff there. You could spend an entire day there now. The big
things were, the Nemo Musical, Ants 4-d movie, and Everest. Boma was pretty good, for a buffet.
Mon: Monday was super-fun. Epcot is my favorite park. you can nerd out there. We got our own dinners from around the
world. Never had enough time to hit everything. The fireworks show was good.
Tues: Free-day #001 We all opted to visit Coco Beach to chill out. Teresa, Gary, Becka, and I signed up for some surfing
lessons from Ron Jon's. In the process, we lost my new Garvin-Proof camera to the ocean. R.I.P. new digi-cam. The kick
in the pants was that I didn't even pull off the pics yet... soo we're missing pics from Sat. to Tues. oh well that's life. Teresa
and Gary left early to go swimming with dolphins. While we stayed later and Leah met up with a friend. We met up to hit the
clubs at Downtown Disney.
Wed: Free-day #002 We decided to try to knock somethings off at Magic Kingdom on out second free day. We didn't think
we could finish off everything in just one day. We left early to go get dressed up for our fancy din-din at the Contemporary
hotel. The hotel was amazing. They even had a balcony were people could see the fireworks. They even took it a step
further and synced the music from the park and played it in the restaurant. The food was very very TASTEY!
Thurs: Thursday was the marathon day. Funny-side story... I won a Disney Magic Moment Trivia certificate for answering a
question in a gift store. Jenna helped out by mentioned something about the pig in Toy Story being called ham. The
challenge was they girl asked me for his full name.. and I luckily guessed HAMptom. We were hopping that I had won a
DREAM, but no. I'll explain the DREAM later. We finished Magic kingdom in the afternoon and headed to Epcot for dinner.
The fish and chips from England were Super-Tastey. We headed back to Magic to catch the special July 4th fireworks and
the Light show parade.
Fri: Happy Independence Day! 4th of July... Hollywood Studios (AKA MGM Studios) was crazy. There was a new ride, Toy
Story Mania, that ALL the fast passes were sold out before noon and the line to wait was longer than 90 minutes. The new
ride just opened 3 weeks ago. The new show "Lights, Motors, Action", was awesome. Matt said they burn through a set of
tires in 2 shows and they have special custom cars with 4 gears for reverse for some of their stunts. We still had tons of fun.
The animation studio was great. We did it twice in a row. FINALLY WON A DREAM! What is a DREAM you may ask... well
Disney is running a sweepstakes called "A Year of a Million Dreams", where they giveaway a million random prizes
throughout the year. We've been watching people win DREAMS all week. They range from cruises to fast passes. It was
our goal the entire week to win a dream. We had no suck luck the entire week. As we cut across Hollywood Studios talking
about where it would be best to watch the fireworks, I noticed a a couple Disney workers were walking our direction so I said
really loudly "I wish we could ask someone about that." Of course, they bit and wanted to help out. Not only did they help
out, but GAVE us a DREAM by giving us a hand full of fast passes to the Rockin' Roller Coaster. Wahoo we got to check
that off our list. It wasn't a cruise or a shopping extravaganza, but we still got a DREAM. After using our DREAM we noticed
that people were camping out 3 hours in advance for the Fantasmic show. There were people sleeping at the gates ot the
theater. We had decided to camp out between the main street and the theater. The Independence Day fireworks were the
best fire works that I've seen. WOW!
Sat: We were Super-fortunate to be able to cross almost everything off out list even the DREAM, except for riding the Toy
Story Mania ride All the guys woke up early to go stand in line before Hollywood Studios to opened. This would
guaranteed us a spot to ride/play Toy Story Mania. We showed up almost an hour early and there were people already
there. Apparently we weren't the only ones with that plan. There were a few people in the very front waiting to sprint to Toy
Story Mania. The ride was AMAZING! It was a mix between, a 4-d movie, and an arcade shooter. We played it and
busted out. When we left the ride, the queue was already full... OMG! We had din din at the airport and said our good
byes. Adios Disney (Y_Y)...

Enjoy ALL the pics. At last count there are over 600 pics. Can't wait for next time.
-Garvin (^_^)

We had a surprise birthday party for Jenna. While Jenna and Becka were upstairs playing a game, Bill and I decorated
downstair, per our dastardly plan. As soon as Alicia got to the house, we surprised Jenna and shoved off to Long John
Silver's. Once we stuffed our faces with deep-fried-goodness, it was time for cake and presents! Since I had finished all
my work for the weekend on Saturday morning, we could take an impromptu trip to Hershey World. Yes... we would spend
more time driving than in Hershey, but why not?

Hershey was AMAZING. The drive was around 5 hours and 30 minutes. Chocolate was in the air and the lamp posts had
kisses on them. We did the tour and a chocolate taste testing.

Happy Birthday Jenna!
-Garvin (^_^)

Blurry iPhone pics. Sorry for the blurry pics, but it's the best I could scrounge up before our (Becka and Me) big date. The
Sony digi cam is STILL missing right now (Y_Y).

Anyways... Becka made a res at Pier W, a nice seafood restaurant with a great view of the city and the lake. The food was
amazing.

What we ate...
Appetizers:
+ Lobster Sushi Roll
+ Steak Carpaccio
+ Lobster Bisque
+ Oysters

Main Course:
+ Alaskan King Crab
+ Filet
+ Ahi Tuna
+ Garlic Spinach
+ Mash Potatoes

Dessert:
+ Chocolate Peanut Butter Bomb

This was a great time to give Becka her anniversary present, seeing how we've been finding it next to impossible to get to
Pittsburgh to celebrate our anniversary properly. We had a great time people watching and looking at all the trophy wives.
We even next to a Cleveland Browns player.

Will definitely need to go back again.
-Garvin (^_^)

Bill picked up his Kawasaki Ninja today. It new, shiny, blue, and it can go fast, what more can any one ask for from a toy.
Bill practiced on the parking lot behind Ohio Motocycles to get used to the new bike. Then we (Becka and I) followed Bill
back to his house. From there Becka and I jetted to out date.

Sorry no pics yet, but I'll update the site as soon as i get my hands on them.
-Garvin (^_^)

p.s. As a cheap filler I did manage to find a Blue Kawasaki Ninja 250r off of google. Just picture Bill on top riding it.

Joe's actually graduated. Who knew? Joe graduation was fun. Nothing like sitting in a hot stadium for a few hours. We
bumped into Lisa and Joe's family while we were looking for seats, talk about a small world. After the graduation, we all
headed over to Joe's house for some food and gaming, of course... how else would you picture a Joe graduation.
Everybody had a good time eating Chinese food (Joe's personal request), and playing Rock Band. The time went by too
fast and Becka and I were soon on the road again.

Enjoy the.... oh wait I can't find my digi cam... sooo you'll need to wait for the pics. I'll do a post, when I find the camera.
For the time being, just imaging Joe with a diploma and stuffing his face full of Chinese food.
-Garvin (^_^)

Wow what a day this turned out to be. What was supposed to be a get together and watch the Pens game, turned out to
be a chill-drink-beer-in-front-of-the-house-pray-for-electricity-bbq. Sooo to start our day the power went out we Alicia and
Bill came over. Since we had plenty of time, we all decided to run errands and get some food to bbq. Bill and I eventually
split up with the girls to head back home and hoped that electricity would come back on before the game. On the way
home, we picked up some beer and cheetos just in case we needed something to tide us over before the girls brought
back food to grill. Well when we got home, not only was the power still out, but through some mix up Becka had my house
keys. Bill and I were locked out of the house... sooo what'd we do??? Kicked back some beer, ate Cheetos, and pray for
electricity, so we could watch the game and get in the house. Sooo we shot the breeze and chiseled away at a big bag of
Cheetos. One minute after the game started, I heard sump pump flush out some water and I knew we had electricity.
Wahoo we were in.

The girls eventually made it back to the house with some grillin food. We made hotdogs, sausage, and hamburgers...
Mmm a well rounded diet if you ask me. Everybody had a good time, too bad the Pens lost.

Enjoy the tasey pics
-Garvin (^_^)

Memorial Day weekend was jam packed full of food, as usually. Just this time around I think we ate too much... yes that's
right you read correctly "TOO MUCH FOOD" ?!?!? read on. The weekend started off easy we had Ali's graduation party.

[Round 1 Ali's Grad Party]
There was a lot of good food there, filled up on lasagna, sausage, and cookies. It was a nice warm up to stretch the belly
for the TWO yes TWO rib cook offs we were going to later that weekend. Ali's party was nice, lots of family and babies running
around.

[Round 2 Cleveland American Rib Cookoff]
It turned out to be a really nice day. The sun was out and the smell of ribs was in the air. We hit most of the rib stands. I
think we only missed 3 of them. The clear winner of the day was North Carolina Rib King (Note-to-self: will need to visit
Matt ). I also got to introduce Leah and Becka to beef ribs. Some stands this year brought some beef ribs to sell. Not the
little ones that you might have seen in the stores, but the huge ones they use for big BBQs Mmmmmm. One beef rib was a
pound, look for the pic. If you've never seen one before, it the huge hunk of meat. Of course we had to top off the day with a
waffle ice cream sandwich. KUDOs on having running water, so people can wash their hands.

[Round 3 Berea Rib Cookoff]
Feeling a bit winded from yesterday's bout, we still headed to the Berea Rib Cookoff. The nice part about the Berea one is
that you can just give the vendors cash and not have to go get rib tickets. Seems like a trend that people are bringing out
the beef ribs this years. There were a couple of stands that had beef ribs at Berea too. I hope the trend continues. Of
course we tried the beef ribs too.

By the end of the weekend I could not look at any more meat. It felt like we ate the whole cow.
Enjoy the pics.... be forewarned... you WILL get hungry looking at the pics.
-Garvin (^_^)

Wahoo! Leah graduated! Tons of running around + tons of family and friends + tons of packing = tons of pics. Everybody
had a good time at Leah's graduation. Becka and I even got a workout out of it too. We managed to fit everything in the
Jimmy and store the rest of Leah's stuff at her boss's house. We had to fill the Jimmy up 3 times to get all of Leah's stuff to
her house. One of the times, we utilized some cable TV cable to secure a mattress on top of the Jimmy. Leah and I also
rolled down the window to use our arms to hold on to the mattress.... yep it looked pretty ghetto, but it got the job done.

The graduation was nice. There were tons of people. Afterwards there was a nice reception with some tasty cookies. As
soon as we took all the grad pics, we booked it to Tailgaters, a sport bar, to watch the Cavs and Celtics Game. We got
them to put the game on three screens in front of our table. We ordered a ton of junk food and munch on them as we
watched the Cavs loose... oh well there's always next season. What was funny was that on the other side of the wall at
Tailgaters was a bar with Boston Celtics fans watchin the game too. It got to the point where they would cheer and we
would boo. And they would cuss out the tv and we would cheer. hahahaa it was a fun time.

Enjoy ALL the pics.
-Garvin (^_^)

Birthday Cake for Mother's Day who can complain. We had two reasons to celebrate this Sunday. We were doing
Mother's Day and then celebrating Tony's Birthday, hence the birthday cake for Mothers Day.

Enjoy the pics.
-Garvin (^_^)

In hindsight, I should have just created one big album for ALL the Cavs playoff games. Who knew we would win the lottery
so many times... oh well. Wahoo! The Cavs won. They needed to win this game. There were down 2-0 in the series.
Lebron is still struggling a bit on the offensive-side of things, but he making it up with assists and blocks. The place was
crazy loud and everyone had a great time. Game 3 was also Ali's Graduation present from Becka and me.

Enjoy the fun filled pics.
-Garvin (^_^)

p.s. Oh yeah that's me kissing Becka, while she was in the Lebron cut out.

The Cavs just needed one more win to go to the next round of the playoffs, but they couldn't pull it off tonight. Oh well, hope
they do better in Game 6. At least Becka and I got to drown our sorrows with 31 cents ice cream with Alicia after the game.

Enjoy the Tasty pics... Go Cavs.
-Garvin (^_^)

Dartmouth was once again a HUGE SUCCESS! Ross and I headed up to Dartmouth to install the the very first Integrity.
Once again we used our super move... i.e. we brought dunkin donuts The install went super-smooth. We did a lot of
prep work before we got there (special thanks to Mike for the assist). It was pretty much plug and play. We didn't even
have to sprint through the airport this time.

Enjoy the pics. Go Codonics! Another product done.
-Garvin (^_^)

p.s. I really didn't smooch the Integrity my head is really 2 feet away from the box.

Round 1/Game 2 of the playoff... We got tickets, but I didn't go. WHAT?!?! How could this be? Had to go to Dartmouth for
work (Reference next blog about the Dartmouth trip). Bill, Emily, Stephen, and Becka had a fun time. The Cavs
dominated! I got to listen to the last quarter on the radio in the car to Dartmouth.

Enjoy the pics.
-Garvin (^_^)

p.s. Thanks to Bill for taking the pics.

Another new product another product. Instead of a house party, I found bowling alley Codonics could have a party at. We
all had a fun time. Gary K. even stopped by to show us how it's done. Yes there are vid of his greatness. To top of the
festivities, Ross got everybody pizza, pop, and a Integrity cake from Baskin Robbins.. Mmmmm.

Enjoy the fin pics.
-Garvin (^_^)

p.s. Yes, that's me giving Gary bunny ears

p.p.s. The Gary bowling vids are in the "Theater" section.

For the last regular Cavs game, the Q planed a "Fan Appreciation" day to celebrate the the playoffs. They have over a
million dollars in give-a-aways. Becka and I didn't win anything, but we had a great time.

Enjoy the pics
-Garvin (^_^)

Bill BDay = PA Birthday Weekend. We hit the road to celebrate Bill's special day. Bill and Alicia hit PA on Friday night and
Becka and I headed up on Saturday morning. Saturday was jam-crammed for stuff. As soon as we got to Casa De Lutz,
we shoved off to Eant'nPark with Bill's crew to grab a hearty breakfast. The place was cool. They have smiley faces on
everything, even Becka waffle that she got. We go all the waitress to sing happy birthday to Bill (yes there's a movie in the
theater section). Then it was off to Baldinger's Market to buy some penny candy. The short story is that the penny candy
store was over 75 years old and that they were closing their doors this summer. The good news saw that they we be now
just relocating to some where else. Baldinger's was pretty cool. They had all sorts of candy and treats, yum!

Once we loaded up on sugar, it was time to run around like kids in the name of science. Yep you guessed it, we went to the
Carnegie Science Center. We got to play with robots, water and all sorts of fun stuff. The crowning achievement was
building Super-Tall-Super-Cool-Water-TOWER! Bill and I tapped the three water sources together to build up enough water
pressure to shoot the water into the big tube. Bill and I got soaked. I got lucky, just my pants were wet. Bill was drenched
from head to toe. The sports center was fun too. We got to do even more running around. We then had dinner at a place
that put fries in their sandwiches.... Mmmmm. We topped the night with cake back at homebase. The cake was cool it had
Optimus Prime driving on it.

Day two was fun filled to. Keeping in with the PA theme, we hit up Brighton Hot Dog Shoppe in Elwood City. Their chili hot
dogs and wedding soup were super-tastey. We hung out at the Lutz house for a bit and then went to Forbush for ice cream.
When Bill's dad got off from work, he made us a steak dinner, which we really good. At dinner, we started talking about
Cleland Rocka nd McConnell's Mill, so we did a quick impromptu road trip up to those places. The Cleland Rock rocked
(hahahaa couldn't help myself). You could see a ton of stuff from their. McConnell's Mill was cool too. We even had a
stick race.

That pretty much wraps it up. We definitely kept with the theme of PA all weekend. There are tons of pics (that I split up
into two albums) and movies (in the theater section). Enjoy. Happy Birthday Bill.
-Garvin (^_^)

What?!?! Surprise surprise... this is not another BDay post... who knew. Well the title pretty much sums it up. 5 days of
straight ran was coming and Bill had suggested a cook out somewhere. 24 hours later we were cookin it up at my house.
Some Codonics peeps made a guest appearance too. After we stuffed our faces with Nathan's hotdogs and brats, we
gamed it up with Scene It on the Xbox360.

Good times... Enjoy the new Album
-Garvin (^_^)

p.s. There are some bonus Codonics pics too.

Yes. If you''re keeping track we've celebrated THREE birthdays in less than one week. Uggg. Dare I say I'm too stuffed
with birthday cake. We all had a good time this morning. Nothing like starting the day off with cake and presents.
Mmmmm ice cream cake for breakfast YUM! Jackie got a whole bunch of Hanna Montana stuff. After we stuffed our faces
with cake we booked it to Cheesecake Factory.

Happy Birthday Jackie.
Enjoy the pics
-Garvin (^_^)

p.s. Yay! for a new 2k8 April Album.
p.p.s. Next week is Bill's BDay... well I guess I've got more room for cake

Yay! We gave Gary a surprise birthday with a custom Keefe-a-nator cake. MMMmmmm.

Happy 49th Birthday Gary! Enjoy the pics in the Codonics Album.
-Garvin (^_^)

Mini-weekend in Rochester for Leah's Birthday. We hit the road right after Chinese school on Saturday. On the way there,
I found an Old Country Buffet in Erie PA. They were packed, of course, so we'll need to go back next time. We met with
Leah and her peeps that night and went to a dessert place called Phillips European. After we stuffed our faces with with
tasty treats, we bought snacks and sushi (yeah I some weird craving for it that night.. don't know why) at Wegmans. After
that, we packed up Leah's stuff and had a mini-slumber party at the hotel. Sunday, we hit Mario's brunch buffet. We were
soooo stuffed. I think we each had 4 platefuls of food. After brunch, we hit the road for home.

Happy Birthday Leah!... Enjoy the pics
-Garvin (^_^)

Happy Easter! Yay for Easter. Sooo Becka and I decided to hang on the East-side for the weekend, to avoid the early
Sunday drive to Mama's house. Saturday night Becka stuffed Easter eggs and we hid them through out the first floor of
Mama's house. The plan kinda back fired when Kelvin woke up early and he got more eggs than Jackie. Mass was
PACKED! I made sure to leave for church super-early. I got one of the last spot in the parking lot. When I was coming in,
I noticed that a few people were making their own parking spots, by parking on top of the snow piles. We had Starbucks
and Dim Sum to wrap up the day.

Happy Easter! Mmmm Chocolate Bunnies
-Garvin (^_^)

p.s. If you can't tell I just picked up a new Halo toy

Becka and I decided to drive down Lorain Rd. and look for some corned beef to celebrate St. Patty's Day. Of course! Cafe
Stratos had a corned beef dinner that day. Man I LOVE that place!

Enjoy the tasty pics.
-Garvin (^_^)

Wahooo! What a fun time! Bill and Alicia threw a surprise birthday party for their parents, which ended up a surprise party
for their dad, because Mama Lutz found out. Becka couldn't make it She was in Yuma with with Leah visiting their Mama.
The drive to Ellwood City, PA, was pretty uneventful. I did get to leave work early, which allowed me enough time to find
Vinny's Pizza. I think over 60 people showed up for the party. When Papa Lutz came in the restaurant , everyone yelled
surprise and sang happy birthday (vid in theater... check it out). Papa Lutz's eyes lit up when he saw the 32 lbs. Malley's
Billy the Bunny sitting next to the cake.

Of course there was tons of tasty food.... errrr well everybody else said it was tasty. I started to pile on all my food. First I
scooped up some chicken and mushrooms, then on to the pasta and meatballs (my kryptonite), and then a got to the fish.
That's when I said, "OH CRAP!" today is Friday, which equals NO MEAT. So I had to put away the plate and get a non-
meat-Catholic-approved plate. The night whizzed by soo fast. Mama and Papa Lutz had a good time opening all the
presents. Becka and I got them popcorn, ammo, gun money, Swarovski crystal flower, Alaska travel book, and huge Card
(which took along time to draw on the cover). There weren't as many haha-you're-really-really-old gag gifts. Most of the
presents were really thoughtful.

I spent the night at Lutz house. I slept like a baby. It was also the first time I could remember that I slept in passed 9:00am.
Mama Lutz made some tasty sunny-side eggs and ham for B-fast. Too bad Becka miss all the festivities. She would have
had a blast. Oh well I took a lot of pictures. I did manage to fill up Bill's camera with pics.

Happy Birthday Cecelia and Bill Lutz!
-Garvin (^_^)

p.s. Becka made the center pieces for the tables.

p.p.s. Yes that is a Choco cat pillow on Bill's bed

To be filled in by Becka.
(^_^)

So we left an extra hour earlier than it would to have taken regularly and we made it right on time. The wedding went
smooth. Kelvin of course brought his A-game of cuteness. He had his little suit and a little red pillow for the rings. The
mass was really good. The priest even added the blizzard to the mix, a true sign he was really really good. Everybody
had a good time. It was touching, moving, an full of love. Tony will prolly get mad, but for the record he was the first person
to cry. Just kidding, I've NEVER seen Tony mad before. After the wedding, Melinda, Tony and the rest of their party went
off to the Cleveland Court House in their stretched Hummer to take pictures. As they trucked it to Cleveland, we all worried
that they wouldn't make it make in time for the reception, due to the fact that the FREAK blizzard was still coming down.
Little did we know, we should have been worrying about ourselves. Since we had a few hours to burn, we decided to head
home for and hour and grab a little snack.

When we got to Mama's home, the driveway was covered. We couldn't even get in the driveway... even with the huge
Envoy. We tried to hunt down a snow plow and bribe him to plow the house... little did we know Mama had already flagged
down someone and he was already plowing the driveway when we got back. We had some tasty ramen noodles and
booked it to the reception and there is where the fun begins... and by fun... I mean the sweaty-cardio-push-heavy-objects-
through-snow kind.

Just as soon as the Seto convoy (3 cars... Envoy, Jimmy, and a CR-V) left the station, we hit a road block. The Tam's CR-V
got stuck in the snow 5 feet from the house. Pretty much as soon as we pushed it out we got stuck again. To make things
worse, a snow plow was stuck in front of us and blocked BOTH lanes of the road. By this time two of our neighbors had come
out to help us. We split up, so we could move the snow plow out of the way and dig out the CR-V. Once we moved the snow
plow, we could focus on the CR-V. We had to get it unstuck a hand full of times, before we made it half way down the street.
Eventually, we drove the Envoy in front of the CR-V to essentially lay down some tracks for the it to drive over. After a couple
more good rounds of getting stuck and pushing, we got things moving. Boy was I tired. Once, we made it to the main road
we were pretty much good to go. There were a couple scary moments, but we all made it... 45 minutes into the cocktail hour,
but we made it! WAHOOO!

When we got to Embassy Suite, we learned that Melinda and Tony had no problem cutting through the blizzard in the
stretched Hummer. They actually got back on time. One of the groom's men said that Cleveland was completely shut down.
There were tons of cars stuck on the highway. Hmmm may need to buy one of those. Melinda and Tony's entrance was
GREAT! The DJ laid down some smoke at the entrance, and Tony busted in with his fireman outfit carrying Melinda.
Everybody laughed. The food of course was super-tasty and the wedding cake was from Little Italy, yeah no brainer...
considering how many cakes we've gotten cakes from Corbo's. We partied the night away, until they had to kick us out.
Thank goodness I was on Vegas time. It made it easy to hit midnight hahahaa.

Enjoy ALL the pics
-Garvin (^_^)

p.s. Cleveland got more than 15 inches of SNOW!
p.p.s. Apparently it's lucky to get married in the winter for Chinese, so I guess Melinda and Tony got extra lucky, because of the blizzard.
p.p.p.s. I try will get all the pics (over 2 GBs) to the download center this weekend.
p.p.p.p.s. Since our blizzard feast (not the good kind from Dairy Queen), I've re-thought my stance on big cars. I love huge
GMC trucks (Jimmy, Envoy). I might go check out the GMC Acadia... now that's a snow beast.

A quick follow up to the last post. Thanks goodness I took the red eye the day before instead of coming back on Friday.
That flight got canceled... thanks Gary

Since I was back a day early, I was able to the wedding rehearsal and the rehearsal dinner. Everybody made it. Dad was
there too. He was going to give away Melinda during the wedding. The rehearsal went pretty smooth, but Kevlin's part
might not go as smoothly as planed. I think this was the first time he actually went inside the church. All the other times he
just cried and never went in.

After the Rehearsal, we went off to din din. The snow had been coming down pretty hard by now. It took a little more than
twice as long to get to the Willoughby Brewing Company. We all had a good time eating and chilling out with the the whole
fam. After we were full, we went off to Mama's house to rest up for tomorrow's big day.

Enjoy all the pics
-Garvin (^_^)

Man the last two hours were a blur. Once Gary and I decided I should take the red-eye back tonight to avoid the big storm.
I had to get new tickets, pack, check out, head to the airport, grab some din din (Wolfgang Express @ the airport). And just
when I got used to the pacific time zone, I need to fly back. I'm going to be sooo tired tomorrow. I land Friday 6:15am. Still
debating whether or not I go into work. I do still need to bone up for the Halo3 tourney starting Tuesday hahahaa

just chillin @ the airport.
-Garvin (^_^)

p.s. Yes, this is the last [Live Vegas Blog]

If you've been living under a rock, there's a HUGE winter storm coming up from Texas tonight (Reference nasty picture below)
and it's going to hit Ohio HARD. I think I'm going to punt the rest of the dev con and try to truck it back super-early TONIGHT.
Seeing how Melinda's wedding is on Saturday... I NEED to make it back by Friday. That's right kiddies Garvin's coming home.
Now whether or not I go to work tomorrow is another thing. I leave 1130pm (Vegas time) and arrive 6:30am (EST).

So on the way to cash out my fat ticket (reference +$500 imaage in the album) from roulette, I decided to burn all my singles
($7) on roulette again. I bet $5 on red and essesntaill $.50 on 16, 18,19,21. And guess what hit, 21! Hahahaa... It might be
a good things I'm truckin home. I might have lost all my money tonight

::Excerpt from Weather.com::
BY THE TIME THE SNOW TAPERS OFF SATURDAY NIGHT...AN AVERAGE OF 8 TO 14 INCHES IS POSSIBLE...

REMEMBER...A WINTER STORM WATCH IS ISSUED FOR THE POSSIBILITY OF SEVERE WINTER WEATHER. LATER
DEVELOPMENTS... SUCH AS THE EXACT PATH OF THE STORM... WILL DETERMINE IF...WHEN...AND WHERE A
WARNING WILL BE ISSUED. STAY TUNED TO WEATHER RADIO OR OTHER RADIO AND TV STATIONS FOR FURTHER
DETAILS OR UPDATES.
::End Excerpt::

Hope things go well.. see ya soon.
-Garvin (^_^)

Earning Summary:
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Earnings since last blog: $27
Total Earnings: $483.20

Boo Mike left today. Well, it was fun when he was here. Don't really know what I'll do tonight... but anywho... Today was
chalk full of nerd-ing out. Lots of session to goto. Mike and I hit Noodle Asia @ The Venetian. Mmmm good food.

After lunch was the big Steve Ballmer (CEO of Microsoft) keynote. It was fairly decent. It was less formal and more of a
Q&A format where a lot of developers were able to poke and prod Steve. Walking around the con, they have a place
called "The Pit" (reference to a Halo 3 map). Man my brian is mush, nothing like a full day of running around
(8:00am-8:00pm). Sooo after I got all my Qs answered, I went and packed all my junk up.

Enjoy the pics
-Garvin (^_^)

Earning Summary:
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Earnings since last blog: $0
Total Earnings: $456.20

Notes from the Sessions today (boring part):
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
+ Creating Better User Experiences: Design Strategies
Ehh... it was ok. A lot of engineers booked it when there was class participation.
+ Creating Rich Dynamic User Interfaces with Silverlight 2
Definitely more technical than the last session. Will need to d/l Karen's code and poke around with it.
+ Touch Me: Where are Interfaces Going?
Ok. It was a comitee of people who were developing new UI of the future. It was cool they had a guy who was in charge of the
effects in the Minority Report.
+ Creating Better User Experiences: Design Methods
More group work.

Well today was the day to run around too all the sessions and nerding-out. The keynote was pretty good. It was completely
packed. They had to close the doors and send extra people to another meeting room, where they played a live feed. They
had some pretty impressive demos, now we'll see if anybody bites and starts using it. Microsoft is doing a lot of things right.
They debuted IE8 for the first time ever and also show the Silverlight sight for the NBC Olympics. It was like Tivo on steroids.
After the keynote, I met up with might at Cravings at the Mirage. Cravings is my favorite buffet, and you can't got o Vegas
without going to a buffet.

After we stuffed our faces with food, I went and played some roulette. I won enough to get some show tickets tonight.
Reference the +$180 in my "Earnings Summary" below. I actually won the $180 by accident. I won $90 bucks and instead
of hitting the cash out button, I hit the re-bet button. Wow! was I sooooo nervous when the ball was bouncing around.
Luckly, I won and tripled my money.

Then off to the the labs and sessions. Reference the Notes section for all the nitty-gritty-boring details.

Tonight, Mike and I went to Wolfgang Puck's Spago and had some tasty fancy food. I of course had the peking duck, and
Mike had the surf and turf. Desert was also amazing too. After din din we had to book it to the Rio to catch Penn & Teller.
The show was SUPER-COOL and we got to meet them after the show.

Enjoy the pics
-Garvin (^_^)

Earning Summary:
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Earnings since last blog: $180
Total Earnings: $456.20

Notes from the Sessions today (boring part):
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
+ The Human Brain Relationship: Advanced and Adaptive User Interfaces
The room are completely packed. I had to stand then entire time. The guy was really good an made great points.
Some examples posted on nextgui.com

+ Building Rich Internet Applications Using Microsoft Silverlight part1
+ Building Rich Internet Applications Using Microsoft Silverlight part2 with Mike Harsh
The "Deep Zoom" demo was nice. Will need to make and app for Codonics. Examples are on Mike Harsh's blog
(blogs.msdn.com/mharsh). I even got enough guts to step up to the mic and ask a question.

Wahoo! Mike came in tonight. We headed over to Ceasar's to grab a bite to eat (Mmmm BBQ) and walk around. We went
through the forums and saw the Bellagio fountain show. FYI: Elvis is still ALIVE... apparently he chills out with Marilyn
Monroe by the fountain.

enjoy the pics.
-Garvin (^_^)

p.s. Yes, I will try to blog @ the keynote.

After winning big, I walked around and shopped. I did see the Master Chief wax statue @ Madame Tussaudos Wax
Museum from afar. I was tempted to pay full price just to take a picture next to it, but $24 is too much. For lunch, I went to
went to my favorate asain place, Noodle Asia. You know it's good, because when you look around most the people that
eat there are asian. I moved out of old room and they upgraded me to a deluxe room. Nothing too special, but it's above
the casino and not by the garage.

Today was registration and lab time for Mix08. It took a while to figure out where I needed to go. The Venetian is HUGE!
I did register and got my shwag bag (Referece below of all the shwag goodness). I camped out @ a lab computer and
hammered through 2 labs. The labs were pretty good, but my mind was all mush after the second one. I walked around
to check things out. Microsoft has reserved 2 floors of meeting rooms, for everybody to geek out in. It was cool, they set
up a Rock Band stage for a tournament. One REALLY REALLY cool thing was that they had two live demo models of the
Microsoft Surface. MS really out did themselves with the Surface. It's very Apple-ish, but more organic looking.... very
very slick. I will definitely play with it more this week I took a quick movie and will upload to laters.

enjoy all the pics
-Garvin (^_^)

p.s. oops forgot to teh upbate the album from the lst post... oh well even more pics to post now

Earning Summary:
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Today's Earnings: $9.45
Total Earnings: $276.20

Shwag Bag Contents:
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
+ S/W lots of S/W
+ Microsoft boomerang
+ Microsoft pen
+ Mix08 Notebook
+ Silverlight book

Of course, I'm on east coast time, so I woke up extra early today. I first hit the local games at the Imperial Palace. I won a
couple bucks on the wheel of fortune. Honestly, I just wanted to spin the wheel hehehee. Starbucks was packed, so I
headed to Mirage to play some roulette. My second bet, I hit 23 and all the side bets around it. The pics shows my bet
and how much I won. I booked it outta there as soon I cashed out. For my victory b-fast, I went back to Starbucks.

enjoy the pics
-Garvin (^_^)

Summary:
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Today's Earnings: $286.75
Total Earnings: $286.75

Will try to live blog from Vegas. I'm sure I'll end up in a boring lab or two. The flight was pretty uneventful. They played
"August Rush". Boy! am I glad Becka and I aren't flying every other week to see each other still. 3 hours seem a lot longer
now hahaha. Will need to register tomorrow and collect all the shwag.

Enjoy the 2 pics for now
-Garvin (^_^)

Summary:
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Today's Earnings: $0
Total Earnings: $0

Oooo we saw tons of SHINY cars. Yay for toys! We got to check out potential cars that Alicia and Becka may buy.
Nothing like having all the cars under one roof to sit in and play around with. We got to see 2 of Lebron's pimped out
rides.

Enjoy the shiny pics.
-Garvin (^_^)

p.s. Lesson Learned: I don't make enough money.... HAHAAAA JUST KIDDING
p.p.s. Will update the album when I get Bill's pics

Happy BirthDay Joe! Technically it's on March 2nd, but today was the best time to all get together. We had a great time at
the Hof Brau Haus in Kentucky. After the German bar he booked it over to GameWorks to geek out for a bit. I did manage
to win a couple stuffed animal in the grabby claw game. Joe enjoyed his present, that we (Gary, Teresa, Becka, and I) got
him. It was a beer making kit! Hopefully, Joe doesn't hurt anybody with this present (Reference to Donut-Death-Machine
of Christmas-Past).

On the way back home I forgot my laptops, so we (Becka and I) had to turn back. This made us super late for Chinese class,
so we just joined up with Gary and Teresa for b-fast @ the Original Pancake House. Mmmmm it was tasty.

Happy BDay Joe!
-Garvin (^_^)

Another Codonics road show/ming-beta install, but this time we (Ross and I) went to New York Presbyterian. Wow what a
roller coaster trip. Again I can't say too many specific of the trip. As soon as we landed in Newark, we booked it to New
York Presbyterian (NYP). NYP is located in New York City... fun fun. We pretty much crash and burned on Wednesday.
What made it worse was that I didn't eat anything all day, except a bowl of cereal (picture in the album). I was super light
headed in the afternoon, which made it very hard to concentrate and fix everything. Man was I bummed. We crashed hard
enough to contemplate whether or not we should just go home and not burn another day @ NYP. We opted for having a
good dinner and giving it another shot on Thursday.

We had some AMAZING Thai food. Mental_Note: Go back next time I'm in NYC. The duck was great and the sweet curry
was just right. It definitely took the edge off of Wednesday festivities.

Thursday, round 2. We were armed and ready for giving it a second go around. I mean it's not like we could have done
worse hahahaa sooo just kidding. Once again we brought Dunkin Donuts for everybody. This time things went a lot better.
We got lucky and ALL the right people that we needed just happen to show up in the office we were in today. We got down
too all the problems that we were having yesterday and fixed EVERYTHING! It was more than they expected. We definitely
earned their respect and business. As soon as we debugged a Virtua problem, we booked it back to Newark, NJ to try to
catch the earlier flight. We made it just in time.

There's definitely themes to our trips. 1) Fixing virtua problems 2)Running and 3)Dunkin Donuts.

Enjoy the pics
-Garvin (^_^)

P.S. For those who are following, our Track Record is 3-0.

Yay! for surprise birthday parties. Everybody threw a surprise birthday party for me today. I knew something was up when
I saw Sofiya's car in the garage, but didn't figure things out until I was greeted by an Optimus Prime blanket at the door and
saw all the decorations. The theme of the night was "Games". We played Candy Land and Apples to Apples. I got my butt
handed to me in Candy Land. Grrrr the "Ginger Man" card... Grrrr I say. Of course there was tasty ice cream cake for all...
Mmmmmmm. Yes. Yes. we played Halo 3 at night

Yay for friends! Enjoy the pics (Updated Garvin BDay).
-Garvin (^_^)

p.s. Cake count: 3

p.p.s. I also updated the Theater 2k8 section too. Becka and Alicia snuck in some vids.

Ug... gettin older and older by the second. The BIG 2-7 today... wahooo. Bill, Becka, and I were going to hit up a casino,
so I could spin a wheel of prizes. Things fell through, because of work... oh wel;, still have a great time on my B-Day!
What was supposed to be a small, low-key B-Day din din turned out to be a larger 9 party dinner @ J Alexanders...
Mmmmmm. We all had a good time, too bad they had to split the tables up. Everybody had a good time and we all
walked away stuffed. Becka did make me wear "Birthday Boy" pin.. that was fun.

Fun-SideNote: Someone at work got me a cake... Mmmmm Good stuff and a HUGE surprise! Becka and I attacked it!

It's almost time for my mid-life crisis.. YES! can't wait

Enjoy the pics
-Garvin (^_^)

Don't get the wrong impression from the pictures... this was definitely a Girl's Only Bridal Shower... plus Kelvin. Tasty
food, pretty decorations, cake, prizes, and presents for the Bride. It was fun!!

-Becka ^^

Lost of Family + Lots of food = Yay! Second Chinese New Year dinner. This is the post Chinese New Year dinner. Part 1 was the pre Chinese New Year Dinner. We had tons of food... more than last time. Man, I'm getting good at packin up my stuff and setting up a temporary work center. I grabbed a mahjong table and set up shop. I gave one more crack at gettin the panorama of the dinner table, and this time it turned out better. The 2nd and 3rd image matched up. The 1st and 2nd not so much...oh well.

enjoy the pics
-Garvin (^_^)

Back to Dartmouth. They liked what they saw last time, so we've come back to install a beta unit at their hospital. The trip
was fun, exciting, and breath taking. Literally, Ross and I were winded even before we got to Dartmouth. The quick
itinerary of our travels to Dartmouth:
2:30 - Leave Codonics for airport.
3:00 to 6:10 - Wait for SUPER-DELAYED plane and pray we make our connection in Baltimore.
6:15 - Herded like cattle in to SouthWest airplane
8:10 - Land in Baltimore and sprint to next concourse.
8:12 - Catch 2nd flight to Manchester, NH
9:35 - Land in Manchester and kiss the ground.... yeah we flew through a nasty storm while landing.
10:00 to 11:30 - Get rent-a-van and drive north to Dartmouth.
Total Travel Time: 9 hours.

Yeah that was fun. Eh... we made it to the hotel, so it's all good. The demo went super smooth. I can't really say too much
about it, but it was a GREAT SUCCESS to say the least. On our last day we did bring in some Dunkin' Donuts The trip
back was pretty uneventful, which was good. I've got a lot of work this weekend.

Enjoy the pics
-Garvin (^_^)

Yes this is one day earlier. We needed to celebrate tonight. I am flying to New Hampshire tomorrow afternoon. Oh well,
at least there's less traffic going to dinner not on Valentine's Day. We had sushi @ DaiShin... Mmmmm. Then went home
for presents and for me to work/pack for my flight tomorrow. Becka got a super-cool Optimus Prime card with monkey
stickers, a couple Snoopy Valentine's Day books, and special t-shirts. What's sooo special about these t-shirts you might
ask. Well they are cool nerdy t-shirts, that have your old school Zelda health bar hearts on the front of them. Now the real
magic happens when you bring them close together(~2meters) the each health bar increments from 2 and a half hearts to
a full 6 hearts. It's really cool! Will need to rock them one night... perhaps next time we go bowling We will definitely rock
them tomorrow. The people @ Codonics will be blow away HAHAHAAA. Becka made me a cool Tom Tom card and I got
a Choco Cat tea cup, Stitch pen, and a heart monster.

Smooch! Smooch! Happy Valentine's Day!
-Garvin (^_^) xoxo

p.s. enjoy the cool dry easer board art I left @ Codonics.
p.p.s. Mad props to thinkgeek.com for the shirts and transmitter packs

The Home and Garden Show was super fun today. We did a lot of walking today. The CTS was fully packed with Mama
Lutz, Alicia, Bill, Becka and me. Thank goodness I had comfy shoes on today. We did a whole lotta walking. There was
a lot of things to see and do. Becka and Alicia had a good time hanging out at the playground. I did get to drop some
knowledge about journey earrings. Who knew no one knew what they were and represented. Haggling with the diamond
ladies was interesting, I had to play the Cash-only card, which tipped the scales in our favor . The show's theme was
"Bella Italia - A Tribute to Italy", soooo keeping with the theme we ate at Macaroni Grille. Yep. Yesterday was Chinese
day and today was Italian, definitely a Multi-Cultural weekend.

Enjoy the pics
-Garvin (^_^)

Happy New Year! Again. Yes yes I know Chinese New Year was on Thursday, but today was the day the entire Chinese
school celebrated it. As of last week there were more than +900 people coming to the show, that's not even including the
+400 kids that are part of the school. Needless to say this would be the LARGEST group we have done anything in front
of ::GULP!::. It was cool to see what all the other classes were up to. It was hard to follow most of the show, because they
cut out the English translation parts to save time. Watching little kids mess up and running kept it fun. Our performance
went pretty smoothly, considering we had a technical glitch.

Keeping things Chinese, we headed over to Ho-Wah for din din. Yes... of course dinner wouldn't be complete unless we
hustled it over to Mally's for dessert. The good thing about trekking back to Olmsted was that it gave me time to digest.
Man was I stuffed. No worries I made sure to take a lot of pictures and movies.

Enjoy.
-Garvin (^_^)

p.s. Will update with Bill's pic when I get them.

Happy Chinese New Year! Yay for the year of the Rat!
-Garvin (^_^)

Ugg too full to sleep.

Oh boy am I stuffed! As usual, we didn't eat dinner until really late @ night (need to wait for Dad and Uncle to get off work).
What didn't help things was I ate lunch super early today, before a meeting. I was dying to eat @ 6, but dinner wasn't until
9-ish. The way I got around the hunger pains was just to take a nap when I got home-home (Mama's house)... and wait for
someone to wake me up when it was time to chow down.

Some background info: This dinner is really the pre New Year dinner. You're supposed to have one before the New Year
and one after.

Tonight's Dinner Menu:
+ Shark Fin Soup
+ Steamed Chicken
+ White Rice (Of course)
+ Lettuce Wraps
+ Fried Shrimp with a Cream Sauce
+ Pig's Feet
+ Crunchy Skin Pork
+ Abalone
+ Lobster
+ Talapia (It's a kind of a fish)
+ Seaweed Soup

I tried to make a little panorama of the aftermath with all the food. It kinda-almost-sorta worked.

Ug... time to roll my fat butt to bed... enjoy the pics and panorama.
-Garvin (^_^)

p.s. The second dinner will be on Feb. 16th, so look for the album to be updated around then.

Wahoo! It's time to welcome someone new to the family... Alicia's new 46inch Sony XBR! It's new and shiny (@_@)

Can't wait to watch movies on it and bask in all it's bright glory.
-Garvin (^_^)

p.s. I heart blogger.com That's how I wrote this post.

Yeah... Definitely a fun filled-emotional-roller coaster ride... and that wasn't even the skiing parts. Bill and I hit the road
around 10am this morning. We made sure to fill our bellies with Mcdonalds goodness. Mmmmm toasty hash browns.
Yum! The first "Twist and Turn" was when we blew past our exit for route 86 and proceeded on 90 until we reached New
York. Luckily, Bill whipped out his Q and rerouted us, so we wouldn't have to backtrack all the way. Yes... so if you are
keeping score right now we went from PA to NY back to PA and back into NY a different way. Just when we thought
everything as smooth sailing, about a couple hours into skiing I realized I didn't have the car keys anymore. Yeah...
No Car Keys + 3.5 hours away from home = SCAMBLE-PANIC-MODE. Once again Lady luck (casino reference... to be
explained later) was on our side, someone had found the keys on a hill and had just returned them. I was soooo ecstatic
that they had the keys and we were able to go home.

Ok now that the drama part is outta the way I can talk about fun stuff that doesn't require SCAMBLE-PANIC-MODE (I get to
do that at Codonics enough hahahaa jk). Anywho Holiday Valley was great. The weather turned out to be pretty mild, so
just went with the Under Armor and the Beckham jersey. The powder was nice and soft, good far carving out nice turns.
There were a few icy patches, but no big falls... we still have all of our fingers. I did manage to get in a tree slaloming
run in one of the glades. It was a little rough, there were a lot of roots poking out, so it was like skiing and bumpy ice. I was
able to get it all out of my system until next time Mardi Gras was as good as I remembered it. Nice, long, and fast. I
noticed they've upgraded their lifts too. In celebration for finding the keys... and to rest out tired old legs, I treated my self to
a waffle at the Waffle Cabin... Yum! The scenic runs always make it worth the trip up to NY. Holiday Valley was fun to ski
and it's still my #2 on my top Ski Places list.

On a sidenote, I resisted the urge to stop off at the casino on the way back. Apparently, they built a brand-spankin-new-shiny
Casino in Seneca. And we all know how i like the shiny stuff hahahaa. Oh well next time when we have more family there
we'll stop and put 20 on red.

Ug... goin feel old in the morning.
-Garvin (^_^)

p.s. More fun ski pics to come as soon as Bill hooks me up. Yes.. Bill got a pic of the guy at the lost and found

LOL! We made it to the big show. Today we had to do our Chinese Animal song for some people. Those people would
then determine if we were good enough to perform for Chinese New Year in front of the entire school (+400 kids).
Everything went off without a hitch.... excluding we were missing the dragon and the dog, but we improvised and everything
worked out. We did feel old when we were too old to go to the "Teen Party" hahaa. We'll need to have a "Middle-Aged
Party" for all the adults

Chinese New Year Party Info:
When: 02-09-2008 3:00pm
Where: Solon High School
Admission; $3 kids

Word on the street is that there'll be chicken nuggets... SCORE!
-Garvin (^_^)

Birthdays are fun and filling. As usual, we ate a lot and there were a lot of treats. Ok... where to start? Well the theme was the letter 'M', which stemmed from a convo Alicia and Becka had a while ago. Obviously Malley's was a MUST. Becka and I decorated the night before with pink streamers and a happy birthday banner. We had dinner @ Macaroni Grille, where they gave us a huge Birthday Brownie and sang Happy Birthday in Italian. Then off to Malley's to continue eating more desserts. Sidenote: They had the B-team on staff that night. Oh well the ice cream was still good. The Movie for the night was "My Mad Greek Wedding". But! What! There's More! More what? More Dessert. To top it all off we had a My little Pony chocolate ice cream cake. Wow what a night of desserts and presents.

Enjoy the pics... Happy Birthday Alicia.
-Garvin (^_^)

Nothing like the night before our Chinese animal hats are due to start them hehehee It's just like college all over again.
We are learning an animal song to sing for Chinese New Year, but an added twist is that we make/wear a hat with one of
12 animals from the Chinese zodiac. I got the chicken. Becka needs to make a pig hat. Bill needs to make a snake hat.
The chicken hat came together pretty easily. Bill's idea to use the hard felt worked out Great! We took a shortcut with
Becka's hat and bought a stuffed pig at ToysRUs.

Enjoy the pics
-Garvin (^_^)

p.s. Will up date the album with Bill's snake hat tomorrow... need to remember the camera

All winter breaks come to an end. Leah starts school tomorrow soooo you know what that means...
Rochester Road Trip! Nothing like a round trip to Rochester on Sunday Man after packin up everything
in the CTS we barely had enough room for all three of us. hehehee The trip was fun. The only speed bump
we hit was that Leah forgot her dorm keys in Ohio . Oh well... we still got in her room any who. Surprisingly,
there weren't that many cars out today. We had enough time to pick up Leah's room, and go to the grocery
store.

Enjoy the pics
-Garvin (^_^)

REM: Send Leah her dorm keys.

p.s. Oh yeah... you'll notice this blog entry wasn't done a month after the fact We'll see how long I can keep
this New Year's Resolution.

Alan and flew up to Dartmouth for the day to do some alpha testing on our new product. Dartmouth is a very
important site for us. It renowned for being a very good teaching hospital. Can't really talk about the demo
too much, but everything went very well... even more than what we expected. Where is Dartmouth you ask?
It is in Lebenon, New Hampshire. We flew into Manchester and drove north for an hour and some change.
New Hampshire is a beautiful state. Will need to go back and vacay there one time.

Enjoy the pics.
-Garvin (^_^)

p.s. The hotel was real nice too.
p.p.s. Yes, I brought maple syrup back for Leah and Becka

Ok so Becka's Aunt SCORED THE BEST SEATS POSSIBLE for the Cavs vs. Sonics game. We sat ON the
court right. Did you hear me "ON" the court. It was our seats and then the court.. Nobody in front of us but
just the players. No Nosebleed seats this time. It was sooooo COOL! I couldn't even guess how much
these would cost (prolly 4 figures). You could hear Lebron talkin to all the players. All the players are larger
than life. They just tower over everybody. One thing that caught me off guard, was that I expected more
trash talking. I wish I remembered to bring my camera. Thank goodness Leah brought her's. They had a
special lounge (Mercedes-Benz Platinum Lounge) for all the people who had floor seats and a personal
waitress to get you food during the game... Yeah WOW! The morning after, we got to watch ourselves on
ESPN SportCenter. Since we were on the floor all the highlights had us in them . That was weird to watch
us hehee.

Enjoy pics.
-Garvin (^_^)

p.s. Yes I was tempted to tap Lebron on the back and say hi... but I resisted.
p.p.s. Usher wasn't there.

New Years Eve... What to do? What to do? Mike, Sofiya, Gary, Teresa, Jenna, Alicia, and Tom were all over
to join in the festivities. We made mini pizzas (Good idea Mike ) and got our drink on. Dick Clark was one
TV celebrating his 100th New Years... hahahaa not really, but it's up there. By the end of the night, it was
good to just pass out.

Enjoy the pics... See you next year...
-Garvin (^_^)

5TH!?!? You better believe it. Half a decade. Friends + Food + games + more food... Mmmm. We had tons
of tons of food and everybody had a great time.

Here's to another 5 more years. Yay for friends!
-Garvin (^_^)

Family + Presents + No work email... what more could I ask for. Wow what a fun filled Christmas. I think there's a direct correlation to the amount of pictures taken and the fun-ness had by all. There's over 300 pics.

Enjoy all the pics
-Garvin (^_^)

Wahoo... Winter break. I remember the day when I had winter break Leah's on Winter break and family is
coming up from Alabama, sooo you know what this means... PARTYYYY! The first thing we was go to the
Cavs vs. Lakers games. That was fun. Kobe and Lebron under one roof (@_@).

What would a Winter break be with out some skiing!?!? We hit the slopes when The Tam Fam came up.
Alex and Christina decided to mix it up this time and go snowboarding. So I taught Leah skiing while I
gave Alex and Christina snowboarding lessons. Fun fun. The kiddies had a few bumps from some fall,
but everybody was OK.

Enjoy the fun-filled pics
-Garvin (^_^)

Wahoo! I took a break from studying for the Chinese final today and cranked out a quick
download theater page. Yes... yes... I know I have finished the theater since moving to the
new web site yet, but hey! this is a start Winking

Enjoy
-Garvin (^_^)

p.s. No worries the movies are actually off of SetoVault.com, so things should be zipped.

Leah's Senior Recital is kinda equivalent to Senior Thesis in engineering college... or the bar exam in
lawyer terms... ehhh or the Showcase Showdown in The Price is Right... so it' it's a pretty deal. Both
Becka and I called off work from Codonics and packed it up for an extended weekend. Mama Shaffer
came in from AZ on friday and we rolled out Saturday morning. There was still a lot to do when we got
to Rochester. The night before (Thursday), I cranked out a cool poster, which we made 35 copies of top
hang up around the school (Reference: check out the P.S.).

Sunday, we ran around getting all the stuff together for the reception after the recital, so you'll find a
couple grocery pics in the new album. We got a couple nice party trays of subs and wraps. Saturday
night, we got together with everybody to have a nice din din. The Mmmmm-good kind, that almost
cost as much as a Apple Laptop kind hahahaa. It rare that Becka, Leah, Peter, and Mama S. are all
in the same place, so you've gotta go all out.

Monday was the big show. Nothing like last minute trips to Rite-Aid and the Grocery store. Becka and
I had to wake up early to go pick up the party trays and any last minutes items. The reception step up
when smoothly, thanks to Beth and Ed.

Leah's recital was AMAZING. Everybody loved her performance. Her teachers had nothing, but praise
for her performance. For those who missed it (Uncle Robert ), I got everything on video. Over 3.5 GB of
data. I actually filled up my 4GB memory stick on my camera.

It will take me a bit to up load vids and put them in the theater. For now enjoy the fun filled-family pics.
-Garvin (^_^)





p.s. Check out the cool poster I made for Leah's recital (Click_Me). It came out pretty good.

p.p.s. We missed Uncle Robert. (Y_Y) He almost made it.

p.p.p.s. To all the kiddies out there... Becka and I do not condone excessive drinking.

Happy December! Bill and I got to get our shop on (he beat me by a stupid penny... yes yes we made
sure to take a pick of the receipts). The girls got to get their jam on with Guitar Hero 3. Becka synced
Bill's guitar all by herself. WOW!!! We did try to watch Miss Congeniality,but only Bill and I made
through it. Granted it was around 3am-ish so who could blame the girls for fallin asleep.

Enjoy the Rockin pics.
-Garvin (^_^)

Full steam ahead. It always comes a LOT sooner than you expect. Especially this year, with all our
super-last minute changes. There was a lot of running around and eating very good food. RSNA went
really well. All the new stuff went over really well. A lot of people are psyched about Codonics this year.
You know what that means lots and lots of work for 2k8.

Enjoy the fun filled pics.
-Garvin (^_^)

Mmmmm Thanksgiving! Lots of Family and food. Would you believe I didn't do any Codonics work on
Thanksgiving?!?!?! Granted I worked till 4:30am that day, but I was intent on not working on
Thanksgiving.

Gooble Gooble. Enjoy the mouth-watering-super-tastey pics.
-Garvin (^_^)

Side-Note: Believe it or not I was packed early for RSNA!

Wahoo! Stephen from Codnoics turns 25 today. It's all down hill from here. I know from experience. Hahahaa

enjoy the Codonics Album update
-Garvin (^_^)

Note to self: Stephen is 25 now

Off to the airport. I'll see everybody soon. Will make a quick stop in Houston and pick up some tastey
BBQ, then back to lovely C-town.

Part of me is sad to leave such a beautiful country with very very nice people, and tastey food. But the
other part of me will be happy sleeping in my own bed, getting ready for Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Peace out... See you when I see you
-Garvin (^_^)

[Japanese Lesson] sayonara ::good bye::

Yep that's right I threw up a pop quiz in the title today For those who failed... I'm flying solo today.
Steve went home on Friday.

Thankfully, everything worked out. We got a lot of useful data and they were quite impressed/worried
(looong story). After I banged-out my last wrap up email from Japan, Hirozawa-san took me out to
dinner. We went Lawry's Prime Rib. The food was tasty. It should last me alll the way back to the States.

Will grab a quick nap before my late meeting tonight. Kickoff is @ 11pm and sould last till 2am (Japan
time). Eh... at least this will make going to sleep on the plane that much easier.

See you real soon
-Garvin (^_^)

[Japanese Lesson] Oyasumi nasai ::Good Night::

Well... I've got a lot of change to burn off before I leave to Japan... soooo off to Akihabara to shop and play
video games. I Got to play a lot of new games that we'll never see in the States. One cool thing is that they
have table top collectible card video games. So the machine has a table and you put your cards on the
table and it'll read what cards you have and where they are on the field. When the game starts, you need
move around you cards to do certain tasks and attacks. It's really cool.

I dropped off the loot and walked to Chiyoda (yes yes "Yoda"). It is were the Imperial Palace. Never been
there before so I figured I would be cool to go. On the way there I ran into a flee market thingy, which was
pretty cool. By the time I got to the park it was pretty much dark. Hopefully all the pics aren't too blurry.

I figured I would take it easy tomorrow. I should be well rested for tomorrow's connectivity test. Hopefully,
we get a lot of useful data. At last count, I need to write +20 postcards, so I might as well take a chip out of
it tonight.

Enjoy the pics
-Garvin

[Japanese Lesson] Pasupoto ::Passport::

Ahhh it's the weekend. Nothing like taking it easy. Saturday was great. Got to sleep in for an extra hour,
then off to Asakusa to get my shop on and chill. Asakusa is my favorite place in Japan... yes even better
than Akihabara There's little tents selling all kinds of nicknacks and snacks. My brother Gary and I
found this place the first time we came here and I always make it a point to come every time I'm on this
side of the globe. Too bad Steve and I didn't have time go here when he was here.

After I dropped off all my loot from Asakusa, I had a tasty lunch at the hotel. Next on the agenda was to
camp out at the CJ (Codonics Japan) office and catch up on emails and poke around with the Virtua.
Soon it was dark and I decided to walk back to my hotel so I can check out the Harley Davidson shop.
Wow apparently everything in there was all Tokyo exclusive items... so everything was extra expensive.

When I got back to my hotel room I found the CAVS game on. Wahoo! I caught the last quarter and
worked on the web site. Next I grabbed some spicy curry chicken and hiked it to Roppongi. It is known
for being the new hip area with a lot of American clubs and such. Of course I didn't go to any clubs, but
I did find my way in to an arcade where I can start getting rid of all my change. My accomplishment for
the day was getting the stuffed Stich from the claw machines. A lot of Japanese arcades are half video
games and the other half are claw games. Most of the prizes from the claw games are collectible things.
Well that pretty much sums up today in a nut shell. Boy are my legs pooped... did a lot of walking today.

Jam-Packed Day... Lots of stuff crossed off my list.
-Garvin (^_^)

[Japanese Lesson] Tomare! ::Stop it!::

Wahoo! Both the mini-demo and Keio demo went smooth today. The LOVED everything @ Tokyo Metro
and want to test the final product ASAP. Round 2 of Keio was good too. Hayama-san and I went to Keio
this time around and we got everything to work. We also found a glitch in the GE pacs that had. The GE
field engineer fixed it in a couple hours.

To celebrate, Hayama-san took me out to Chinese food. We had tons of food. Surprisingly, it was real
Chinese food with a hint of some Japanese influence. Yum! I had a good time.

Sidenote: The CJ office LOVES Chinese food. When ever they get the opportunity to go they'll go.

Wahoo! the weekend is coming.
-Garvin (^_^)

[Japanese Lesson] Fire! ::Kaji da!::

Well... what do you know the same applies for the CJ office. I now have a CJ office key, so I can get in
and do work on the weekend. Ehhh.... at least I won't be running around all over the place like on the
week days and I'll be able to wear my snap pants and Lebron jersey hehehee.

Can't wait to go home and sleep.
-Garvin (^_^)

[Japanese Lesson] Hospital ::byoin::

Yep yep... the theme for the trip strikes again. Last minute demo for Tokyo Metro, right before Steve,
Mike, and Gary E. leave.

Gotta run
-Garvin (^_^)

[Japanese Lesson] Eigo no menyu arimasu ka? :o you have an English menu?::

Mmmmm I heart food. The Korean BBQ rocked. I'm may come back by myself this weekend if I've got
time. We got 5 plates of different raw meat and cooked it up. Our corner of the restaurant was all smokey.
You'll notice all the smoke when you see the pics. We even got to put on bids so we mess up our clothes.
Of course I broke mine half way through. hahahaa but I did manage to keep pretty clean.

Can't wait for the weekend so I can take a breather and catch up on my other work. Note to self: will need
a Virtua in my hotel room again (ahhh flashbacks from last year). Friday should be go smooth assume the
Keio thing goes better.

Enjoy the smokey pictures.
-Garvin (^_^)

[Japanese Lesson] Kore wa doyatte tabemasu ka? ::How do I eat this?::

Uggg... It stinks when things don't go according to plan.

Quick Summary:
+ The demo didn't work completely.
+ Gary bled on my notes.
+ Was standing on a hard server room floor for over 3 hours.. and boy were my back and feet feeling it.

Any who... going to go back tomorrow without Gary and see if we can do it right next time around. Steve
and I were beat and hungry, so we went to go get some sushi. Mizukami-san took us to a place that had
one of those sushi conveyer-belts. It was awesome, just how I've dreamed of it. For those who aren't in
the know, you just grab the plates as the pass by. Anything you like just take it. The pricing is done per
plate based on the color. Once you're done the waitress will and count up your plates. The unagi (eel)
was very very good. mmmmmmm.

After a long day a good lunch goes a long way
-Garvin (^_^)

[Japanese Lesson] Tasukete ::Help!::

Sooo... I woke up today and decided to take it easy, because we weren't leaving till 9PM. So I when to
breakfast in my running pants and my Keefe-a-nator shirt. That's until I met Gary K. in the morning for
breakfast. The first words out of his mouth "Change of plans..." which is apparently been the theme of
the Japan trip (referencing all the times we changes flights and hotel reservations). He pretty much said
he was busting out as soon as he finishes breakfast. Sooo I pretty much stuffed all my food in my mouth
and ran outta there. I had to shave and change at the same time. I even put on my tie while riding the
elevator. Gary likes to keep you on your toes.

mini-demo time...
-Garvin (^_^)

[Japanese Lesson] Gomen-nasai ::I'm sorry::

Oh boy did we eat yesterday. I'm still full from last night (@_@) We went to a place called Gonpachi.
It's pretty much a Japanese tapas restaurant, where they make their own soba noodles (Mmmmm). You
order a lot of little dishes.

Time for some sleep... mini-demo tomorrow.
-Garvin (^_^)

[Japanese Lesson] oishii ::delicious::

WOW! I almost passed out during the demo. Everything went according to plan. Our dry run this
morning was a bit shaky, but when it was time to put up or shut up we brought it home. Hayama-san
did a GREAT! job at driving the demo. The meeting was supposed to go for only one hour, but the main
Fuji guy liked it so much he stayed for 2 hours.

Dinner will be good. 1) Hayama-san and I didn't eat lunch... too busy running around. 2) The restaurant
is supposed to have really really good food. 3) They filmed the big fight scene from Kill Bill there.

It should be much easier with the demo out of the way. Can't wait for the weekend to take a breather,
and to hit up the arcades I'm taking a lot of pictures now. The album will be brimming with tons O
pics.

Follow-up meeting time
-Garvin (^_^)

p.s. Yes. It does hurt to look this good. Hahahaa jk.

[Japanese Lesson] i-meru ::e-mail::

Was too tired yesterday to put up this post when we got back, but now is better than never.

Steve and I decided to bust over to Akihabara and check out all the cool gadgets and gizmos. I've been
there before, but didn't remember just exactly how I got there. The fun part was we did what I usually do...
wonder aimlessly until I get there. Armed with a 4 year old map that I used when I vacationed here a long
time ago, Steve and I were able to ride the subway to the JR train, and then take the JR train to Akihabara.
I still think there's a quicker more direct way, but I'll fool around with that over the weekend, where I have
tons of time to get lost.

Wednesday morning will be our first/last live run of the demo tomorrow with Gary K. Then we'll need to box
everything and head off to Fuji. Ok going for a quick run to relax.

Game-Time Yo! Keep your fingers crossed.
-Garvin (^_^);

Pump-up theme song for today: Eye of the tiger.

[Japanese Lesson] Amerika jin desu ::I'm American::
[Japanese Pronunciation Key] (Should have put that on the first post... hehehee)
Japanese vowel sounds:
a = ah as in “father”
i = ee as in “feed”
u = oo as in “goose”
e = eh as in “let” or ay in “say”
o = o as in “gold”

Last full day before the Fuji demo ::GULP:: Everything is going well. Hayama-san has been drilling
through the test cases over and over. He'll definitely be ready to bring it home tomorrow.

Hirozowa-san decided to test my Japanese today with "Tonkatsu". I passed with flying colors I think I
caught him off guard too hahaa. See below Japanese lesson for the answer. We had very tasty tonkatsu.

It rained all night yesterday so the weather has been cool and crisp. It made for todays morning run
very very nice. No pics from the run, I figure I would go light today. Believe it or not the Browns made
headlines in Japan?!?!?! I thought I was hallucinating after my run when I say the article. Steven and I
were successful ordering @ Starbucks this morning.

Almost game time.
-Garvin (^_^)

[Japanese Lesson] tonkatsu ::fried pork cutlet::

Well, today was pretty positive. Ran into a couple speed bump, but Steve and I got over them. We tore
into the main conference room, and set up base camp. We had 3 latops, 2 disc importers, 2 large lcd
screens, and 1 Virtua XR. I think we have the warm and fuzzy we need for the Fuji demo, now that we got
over the speed bumps. Now what's left is to Hayama-san drill over and over the demo until he has the
whole thing memorized.

Wahoo! Go Codonics!
-Garvin (^_^)

[Japanese Lesson] biru ::beer::

Usually I like to run in morning when I'm in a different city, just to situated and figure out where everything
is. Not much has changed since last year. I did notice a new Starbucks and they redid a park.

So what's up with the pics with the fingers pointing in a specific direction, you may ask. Well I took pics of
landmarks when I ran so I wouldn't get lost this time. Hahaaa. I still don't think Alan knows I got lost in
Japan for an hour last year and barely made it back to the hotel to meet up with him.

Ok time to shower and get ready.
-Garvin (^_^)

p.s. Got to bust out "Starbucks wa doko des ka?"... if you don't know what that means you haven't been
paying attention to your Japanese lessons.

[Japanese Lesson] Kore wa ikura des ka? ::How much is this?::

The time diff between Ohio and Japan is 14 hours. It's 11:50PM in Tokyo and I can't sleep... doh. I
passed out @ 5PM Japan-time (3AM Ohio-time) and I might have slept through Steve M. knocking at my
door. Oopsies. I was supposed to wake up @ 7PM to grab a little snack, but I just passed out and woke
up know. Hope he's not starving.

Sooo any who... getting here was a trip (pun intended).
4AM-Saturday (Ohio time) Wake up. Get everything together.
6AM (OH) Leave for Newark.
11:10AM (OH) Leave for Tokyo-Narita
2:20PM-Sunday (Tokyo Japan time) Arrive
3:10PM (JP) Catch bus to Tokyo Prince Hotel
5:00PM (JP) Check into hotel
5:10PM (JP) Passout
Grand Total of traveling 23 hours and some change... Thanks goodness I love to travel. hahaha

Ok... going for a walk to burn off some energy
-Garvin (^_^)

p.s. I ending up beating the computer in Chess before we landed.. BOO-YAH! (^_^)

[Japanese Lesson] Sumimasen ::Sorry:: (oh yeah goin to use this puppy a LOT)

Ok. 45% there. Around Alaska. I've watched Transformers two and a half times now (Sidenote: It's
WAY better on HD-DVD than a 5 inch screen). The cool thing is that the plane is fairly new so each
headrest has a little screen and a remote control that doubles over as a joystick for video games. The
games aren't that cool. I think I wrote better stuff back in high school with my ti-82 (that's right I brought it
there). the only game that requires thought is Chess, which I'm getting owned

The only bad part so far is they tell you how much time is left on your flight. What's bad about it, is that
when I think an hour or so has passed... it's only been 20 minutes. Still trying to pass the time as best I
can. Will need to buy a new toy for the trip back... hmmmm I wonder if I could expense it? hahahaa jk

ok 8 more hours to go.
-Garvin (^_^)

[Japanese_Lesson] Watashi no namae wa Garvin des. ::My name is Garvin.::

Codonics Invades Japan...Wahoo! We'll see how the live blogging goes. I'll try to update at least every
other day (assuming I have internet and time).

I was all packed up a week ago Now I'm just chilling in the Newark-Liberty International Airport right
now. I'm waiting for hook up with Steve M. @ our gate. The flight from Cleveland was pretty tame. It
was quite and I slept after I finished the sudoko puzzle in the Continental magazine. I may need to hit
up Starbucks before we shove off.

The flight to Tokyo will be a little more interesting... and by interesting I mean crammed-into-a-jumbo-
jet-for-over-13-hours-the-seats-are-too-small kind of interesting. Some of us don't have the luxury of
First class (::Cough Cough:: Gary Keefe). This will be my 3rd time going to Japan, so I'm used to the
flight now. Can't wait for them to wake us up for our Cup-o-Noodle... mmmmmm.

Oh.. yeah. I didn't get time to tell everybody, but my stay got extended by a couple of days. Now I'm
staying from Saturday Nov. 3rd to Tuesday the 13th. Wed Yeah I'll be missing 2 Chinese classes,
hopefully Becka, Bill, and Mama take really good notes.

Ok. powering down... enjoy the pics. and see you when I get back.
-Garvin (^_^)

p.s. The pics are not in 2k7_Photo_Album -> Codonics
They are in 2k7_Photo_Album -> November -> Codonics Japan Trip

[Japanese_Lesson] Starbucks wa doko des ka? ::Where is Starbucks?::

Codnics Invades Japan again. I hope Gary remembers his passport again. I've created the album and
will try to drop new pictures in it while I'm in Japan.

Wish me luck... Peace out.
-Garvin (^_^)

p.s. Yes. I know... I posted this earlier than the 2nd

Wahoo Happy Halloween! Man was it a crappy day to go trick or treating. It was in the low 50s and
rainy. I think Bill ending up with a grand total of 16 trick or treaters. We topped of the night with
Transformers in HD-DVD of course

Enjoy
-Garvin (^_^)
p.s. This is a partial album. Will need to get the pics from Bill.
p.p.s Man Bill's Mama's cake was good. The cherry dessert was to "die" for.... get it.. "to die for"... Halloween joke. LOL.
p.p.p.s. Just got Bills pics... so it's a complete album now.

Mmmm-Ug. More cake. Becka's birthday bash lasted two days. The first night we had a nice din din @
Wild Mango. Then on the second day we carved pumpkins and made pumpkin seeds. This was
Becka's first time making a Jack-O-Lantern. It turned out pretty good. My Master Chief Jack-O-Lantern
turned out pretty good. It was recognizable at least. I'll have to send it in to Joystiq contest (link).

Enjoy
-Garvin (^_^)
p.s. Update... A trick or treater @ Bill's house recognized it as Master Chief. Wahoo! Success!

Been spending a lot of time @ Codonics, so when I need a little break I'll doodle on people's white boards.

Hehehee... enjoy
-Garvin (^_^)

Even more cake. Yay! Mike came over to celebrate Sofiya's birthday. We had a nice dinner @ Blake's
Seafood in Crocker Park and then we kept it real will some cosmic bowling (Yes. we had white russians
to make it a true family bowling outing). We barely had enough room to eat some carmel latte birthday
cheesecake.

Mmmm enjoy the tasty pics.
-Garvin (^_^)

We welcomed our new bundle of joy to the Seto House. It's a New Baby Halo 3 Xbox360!

Yeah... I'm addicted to Halo3 jk.
-Garvin (^_^)

Wahoo! Caitlin and Leah came over for their Fall break. Lots of fun and food. We road tripped it to
Cedar Point. Boy did it turn out to me a nice day. There was sunny (a bit hot... which is odd for
OCTOBER) and a clear sky. No visit would be complete without a visit to Mallies. Yum!

Enjoy the Scary pics.
-Garvin (^_^)

p.s. R.I.P. Xbox tear for the red ring picture (Y_Y)

Man did I feel conflicted and confused. Hahahaa. It turned out to be a good game. It was refreshing to
be at a Indians vs. Yankees and hear more Indians fans then Yankees ones. Becka and I had a great
time even though we had to stand for over 4 horus. Man did we feel old after the game.

Enjoy
-Garvin (^_^)

p.s. The preview sums it all up

Mmmm... October is right around the corner. You know what that means... CAKES... lots and lots of cakes.
Melinda's birthday marks the beginning of the barrage.

enjoy the pics.
-Garvin (^_^)

Yes... Bill and I took Tuesday off to play Halo 3. I believe vacation day well worth spent. We
(Becka, Bill, and I) got our Burger King Halo 3 meal and were good to go for the midnight launch.
The GameStop we were @ had over 100 preorders and the was pretty decent. It was DWARFED
by the mammoth crowd around the corner @ the other GameStop (Go fig. two GameStops in the
same mall). They had over 400 pre orders. We made sure to stop off @ the grocery store to stock
up on the snack-age. Bill and I gamed from midnight till 4-something P.M.

We came... We Saw... We Conquered...

We mowed down Halo 3 on Legendary (the hardest level) in 15 hours... and boo were we tired
afterwards.

enjoy the fun-filled-super-nerdy-pics
-Garvin (^_^)

p.s. I also had spread the Halo love buy drawing Master Chief saying something positive for
the kiddies.
p.p.s. Yes Becka and I rocked the Halo 3 gear @ Codonics before the Midnight launch.

HUH?!?! No you don't have double vision. This is the second trip to Rochester this month.
Zooooooom. We had a fun filled time, even though it was shorter than usual cause
of Chinese school. Bowling and Target was super-fun as usual.

enjoy the pics
-Garvin (^_^)

Loooong weekend of driving... eating... moving... eating... moving... and more driving. As
usual our road trips include lots and lots of good food. You'll notice a lot of pics of us eating
To ensure this move-in is successful I have assembled an elite team of experts.

Special Team's Roster
+ Leah: the Movee
+ Becka: the Sleeper/ Organizer
+ Bill: the Extra Back
+ Me: Project Manager/Driver/Bank

Saturday:
We crammed everything in the car and had just enough space for 4 people. But before we
could hit the road hard, we needed to make a special stop. Yep you guessed it, we needed
McDonalds! Mmmmm hash-browns and juice the breakfast of champions. Along the way
we decided to see how many different license plates we can see on the road (Reference
below: List O Plates). It was fun and prevented me from speeding away. We hit the ground
running when we got to Eastman. We moved everything from the car to her room and had
time to goto Target Twice before dinner @ Dino's. Mmmm Dinosaur BBQ is a must @
Rochester. After dinner, we just made it back to pick up Morris and Leah's stuff from long
term storage. Then we unpacked and organized the night away.

Sunday/Monday(am):
The morning started off good with Lindsay Lohan in "Just My Luck" We first went to The
Spot (FYI: it was a Chevy dealership before it became coffee shop) to get some b-fast. Yum
a Mike Sandwich hit the spot (no pun intended). After we filled our bellies, we were ready
for more shopping @ Target, Parkleigh, and Wegmans. Bill and I had a fun time building
the shelves and organizer we just got from Target. We got everything done before dinner @
P.F. Changs. P.F.'s was fun. And yes... we conquered the Great Wall of Chocolate Since
we got some beer @ Wegmens earlier, we had to pick up a bottle opener at Target. This
brought the Target trip counter to 4, which is on par for typical move-ins. The trip home was
pretty uneventful. Everybody passed out towards the later legs of the trip. We made it home
safe and sound around 1:40am-ish... and yes Bill drove home after that... ug.

No speeding tickets Wahoo! SUCCESS!

List O Plates:
1) Ohio (Duh)
2) Pennsylvania
3) New York
4) Arizona
5) Utah
6) Nevada
7) New Hampshire
8) Florida
9) Ketucky
10) Illinois
11) Ontario
12) Texas
13) Indiana
14) Maryland
15) Missouri
16) Michigan
17) Oklahoma*
18) Massachusetts
19) Virginia
20) Connecticut*
21) West Virginia*
22) New Jersey
23) South Carolina*
24) Arkansas*
25) Wisconsin
26) North Carolina
28) California
29) Maine
30) Rhode Island
31) Vermont*
32) Alabama
33) Tenesee
*- denotes that those plates were seen in a parking lot and not on the road.

We miss Leah (Y_Y)
-Garvin (^_^)

So it's Leah's last day in C-Town and what do we do??? Play games of course. To Dave and
Busters we go. Wahooooo! Leah partied out on skee-ball. Becka was glued to Wheel of
fortune. Bill won the Tower of Tickets game. And I got to play basketball After Dave and
Busters, we came back where Leah had to dig through a box of pretzels to find her surprise
presents. Ooooo presents are good. <<Insert drum roll>> Leah was super-surprised to find
a new DS lite (Brain Age Edition). Need some sleep road trippin this weekend.

Yay for presents... Boo for pick packing
-Garvin (^_^)

Wow what a vacation. We had a great time going to strip clubs, getting tattoos, losing tons of $$$,
and totaling expensive exotic cars... and that was only the first night. Hahahaa! Just kidding... kinda.
We'll need to take everybody back next time. I sense a family vacation in the works The Mama
and Pop Pop had a fun time as well. It's been a while since we've gone on a vacation as a family.
We should do it more often.

Quick Highlights:
+ Gary was the biggest winner of the week $$$ (^_^). We all expect really really good Christmas presents this year. lol. jk I heart my Wii.
+ Saw the Cirque du Soleil "O" show. It was fun. Now I have 2 of the 6 shows crossed off
+ Blowing and undisclosed amount of money on a max betting on a certain crappy $5 slot (Max bet 1$5) machine.
+ Roulette was fun as usual.
+ Ate @ buffets every day.
+ The Eiffel Tower Restaurant was cool.
+ Becka and Teresa got to relax by the pool.
+ Everybody rode the gondola ride @ the Venetian.
+ Taking pictures with the Haagen Dazs mascot.
+ Hanging out with mom and dad.

What happens in Vegas Stays in Vegas!
enjoy das pics
-Garvin (^_^)

p.s. I'll post Gary and Teresa's pics as soon as I get them.
p.p.s. The theater will be up soon. Need to up load vids of scantily clad girls dancing for Bill and Matt.

Sooo I've got a break from packing for Vegas to post a little blog before I leave. The goal as usual is to win enough to pay for the whole trip. My mom and dad want to have a contest on who wins the most. I have created a VegasStats wiki page that I will live blog my winnings (and potential losses) every night. We'll see how I do with the live blogging Ok more pick packing.

Peace out... and come on Lucky 7s
-Garvin (^_^)

What a weekend. Had lots of fun running around Put-in-Bay. There was tasty seafood and BBQ. We got turned onto "Entourage" too (note to self: buy dvds).

Enjoy
-Garvin (^_^)

The Feast! Mmmmm Great Food time. I was quite proud of my Italian costume. Yes, I wore a Mario Bros. t-shirt to fit in (^_^) Hahahaa! (Thank you Joe for the T-Shirt.) We all had fun stuffing our faces with Mmm-Good Italian food and gambling. weeeeeee.

Enjoy the pics
-Garvin (^_^)

p.s. Oh yeah same day blog. Boo-Yah!

Happy Birthday Mama! No Baskin Robbins today (@_@)... We got a cake from Corbo's... Mmmm nothing but the best for Mama. Yay! Gary's home this weekend. Dim sum and cake today. Yum.

Enjoy all birthday pics
-Garvin (^_^)
Cakes Eaten this weekend: 3

p.s. Phew... made it through all the cakes this weekend. Boy do I feel stuffed.

The Weekend of Non-stop cake eating continues today. Alicia passed both her Pharmacy test, so you know that that means... PAAAAARTY! The cake lady at Baskin Robbins out did her self again. All we told her to do was to make Pharmacy cake We had another BBQ today with hot dogs and hamburgers. Mmmmmm. Then surprise cake #2 for the weekend. Later we went to the Indians and Yankees game. Becka and I both represented both team with Yankees caps and Indians T-shirts. Alicia and Leah also sported some Indians gear too.

Quick Notes:
+ Score was 11 to 2 Yankees won... of course
+ Yellow shirt guy sucks
+ Bobby is super cool

Enjoy all the fun pics
-Garvin (^_^)
Cakes Eaten this weekend: 2

The final release of VirtuaXR is over and you know what that means... PARTY! OOO! WAH! OOO! PARTY! Everybody had tons of fun. There was enough food to feed a small army Chris also brought his Harely Brew beer over. It was Great! Still haven't tried all of them yet, but the front runner is the Beerios one. yum. The surprise Disney Cars cake turned really good. Go Baskin Robbins! And just when you think it couldn't get any more funner (yeah I know)... Stephen belts out "It's Raining Men" on the Wii. I swear everybody's eyes were tearing up.

Enjoy all the tasty pictures
-Garvin (^_^)
Cakes Eaten this weekend: 1

p.s. I took tons of movies (2.2 GB worth) and I'll need to update the theater soon.
p.p.s. I will also convert some of the vids to mp3s, so people can set their favorite song as a ring-tone. It's going to be GREAT!

Ohio Road trip... Vroooom! First stop Mansfield. We had some SERIOUSLY tasty at the Amish Door. Yum! Then off to C-Bus (Columbus). Yep you guessed it even more food and out weigh-in. The weigh-in is the official start to the "Loose the most % body fat" contest. It'll be an interesting next two months.

Enjoy
-Garvin

p.s. Joe still needs to upload the C-Bus pics to the familyFTP. (>_<) Expect a mini-update.

Yay! Kelvin is 3! errr well kinda... technically he turns 3 on August 3rd. Any reason for cake I'm sooo there. Kelvin was happy he got tons of Thomas the train toys and a big hug ice cream cake. Mmmmm.

Enjoy that tasty pics
-Garvin (^_^)

Wow another 3BQ. Mmmm more BBQ food yum. With all the Pittsburgh people I was soo tempted to where a Browns jersey... now if I only had Brows gear. The BBQ was great everybody had a great time. Becka even played some volleyball and croquet. oooooo I've got pictures to prove it.

Enjoy the Album
-Garvin (^_^)

p.s. The album will get update with Bill's pics soon.

Wahoo for Art Projects. Just created a Misc Album to hold random pics through out the year. It's been a while since I've done and sculpting, so it'll be quite interesting how the Munny will turn out.

Enjoy the sketches
-Garvin (^_^)

Impromptu Indians Game tonight. Wahoo! No way am I going to turn down hotdogs and nachos. Mmmm. We had a super-fun time, too bad the Indians got blown outta the park (Y_Y)

enjoy the pics
-Garvin (^_^)

Hi Gang

The site will be down for a bit while I fix some bugs. Yes the site has grown so large it makes my mighty mac buckle every time I update.

...
-Grrvin (Y_Y)

Fun Filled Anniversary... Gambling in Detroit and our annual dinner @ Monterey Bay Fish Grotto.

Enjoy the pics.
-Garvin (^_^)

p.s. Yes, I lost my phone @ the casino (Y_Y)... no I am not trying to get an iPhone. (Thanks Bill for callin Becka when the stranger that found my phone called you

The new family FTP site is up.  There is 750GB of backup storage for everybody to use.  Bill and I pretty much hammered it out over the July 4th holiday. Yes those are computer parts twisty-tied to a plastic milk crate. That's right we keep it real ghetto.

Enjoy
-Garvin (^_^)

Over 1000 pics taken since Jenna came to Ohio... need to split into 4 seperate albums.

p.s. will prolly split into more albums when I've got more time.

peace out
-G (^_^)

NYC Rocked! That is when we go there We were delayed for 5 hours. Something was fishy, when we saw tons of cots out. We all had a great time running around NYC.

Activities List:
+ Subway riding
+ Top of the rock
+ Chinatown dim sum and shopping
+ Times Square and shopping
+ 5th Ave. shopping
+ Central Park
+ Grand Central Station
+ Junior's Cheesecake
+ iPhone

Enjoy ALL the pics
-Garvin (^_^)

Today was a jam-crammed day of fun and surprises (the good-kind like price is right good).  We started the day off @ the Codonics picnic.  We got an unlimited pass for putt-putt, bumper boats, and go-karts.  While we (Jenna, Leah, Jackie, Mama Seto, Becka and I) were chillin with the Codonics crew, Alicia and Bill were on a secret covert-ops mission.  They got the cake (Disney Princess cake… of course) and decorated the house.  Becka had planned out a surprise party for Jenna so we can give her a surprise gift.  Alicia and Bill did a GREAT job getting everything together.  The house was all pink-ified with streamers.  We relaxed by the pool while Mama got the grill already for a rib-tastic cookout.  When we got back we stuffed our faces with ribs, wings, lamb, and corn, while we watched Mean Girls.  Apparently Mean Girls to slowly becoming the birthday movie of choice (no complaints over here “I’m a mouse… duh.” hehehee).  The cake lady did an AMAZING job on the Disney Princess cake.  Laughs were had when we played pin the tail on the donkey.  For the record, I won @ pin the tail on the donkey.  Jenna was floored by her surprise gift.  I drew a fake ticket with clues on the envelope.  LOL! Tried to estimate where Mike’s house is in repect to here and NYC.  Hehehee and Yes that was Jenna’s surprise gift.  We’re (Jenna, Bill, Becka, and I) all going to NYC next weekend.  We’ll meet up with Gary and Teresa.  We finished the night of festivities off with some cosmic bowling and fake white russians (aka kahlua and cream).  Congrats go out to Bill who got a turkey with FOUR! STRIKES! WOW! (@_@)
 
Mmm Ice-cream cake.
-Garvin (^_^)
 
p.s. I’ve updated the theater with some fun vids.  Check out Jenna’s super grannie roll.  It’s amazingly accurate  
Side-story pt3: Bill met the ice-cream girl today (^_^) So everything worked out as planned

Bill BBQ was fun Wahoo!.  There was tons of good food and to top it off we made smores 2x Wahoo!   Nothing like playing volleyball and croquet to make you feel old.  Mike was in town too 3x Wahoo!  It was nice to catch up with him for a bit.  We ended the night early.  Everybody was pooped from work.
 
Mmmm BBQ. Enjoy the pics
-Garvin (^_^)

p.s. Also, fixed Bill's fish magnet (hence the pic

To start the day off right, we (Becka and I) bought McDonalds Mighty Kids meals for lunch.  We all (Jenna, Becka, Leah, Alicia, and Me) had a fun time @ Jenna's Birthday dinner.  We pigged out at Buca di Beppo.  Luckily our waiter was super-cool and let Alicia get a drink even though she didn't have her id on her.  We had tons of left over.  (Sidenote: the Chocolate cake is A-M-A-Z-I-N-G! and HUGE!)  Jenna really liked all of her presents... even the naked men (you'll have to check out the pics)
 
Enjoy joy the update to the Jenna album (under 2k7_Album)
ug... I’m stuffed
-Garvin (^_^)
 
Side-story pt2: Got the ice-cream girl to add my house to her route Need to introduce her to Bill

Wahoo!  Super-Nice day out.  You know what that means… POOL-Time!  We all got to chill @ the pool in our association.  There were tons of kids running around.  The coolest thing about this pool was that they let the kids bring in all kinds of toys.  Never been to a pool where they let you do that.  I’ll have to go pick up and inflatable basketball hoop   They make them, I saw a kid with one, lucky bastard.  I did manage to get some work done poolside (reference picture with my towel over my head).  We all had a great time relaxin, gettin some sun, swimming, and reading magazines.
 
Yay for pool-time!
-Garvin (^_^)
 
Side-story pt1:  Met the ice-cream girl and I have her schedule now Wahooo!  She comes every other day.

Yay! HAPPY FATHER'S DAY!

Gary, Teresa, Becka, and me will treat Mama and Papa Seto to a Las Vegas Vacation. Dad hasn't taken a vacation since he took Gary and me to Disney World when I was in 3rd grade.

Can't wait... come on 7s (casino-talk)
-Garvin (^_^)

p.s. Yes, I did draw a fake ticket for dad.

Girls (Jenna, Alicia, and Becka) vs. Guys (Bill and Me).  The girls started strong with two crushing wins against the guys in the "Friends Scene It" game.  Jenna's just too darn good at that game.  Then we kicked it old school and played Bill's grandpa's "Trivial Pursuit" from 1981!, so all the questions are innately history questions to begin with It got late really quickly, but the guys prevented a shutout with a dominating lead of 3 pie slices to 1 pie slice to end the night.  We'll have to finish the game some other night.
 
Enjoy
-Garvin (^_^)
 
p.s. From Trivia Pursuit…
Q: Name the Paris airport?
A: Orly Airport.

Welcome to Cleveland!  Jenna's stayin till July 2nd wahooo!.  We just got Jenna's room all ready and built a little nightstand for her.  Yay! She should be quite cozy in our house.  Made a Jenna_Visit album under 2k7_Ablums, that will be updated regularly with all the mischief that we will undoubtedly get into.
 
Enjoy the pics
-Garvin (^_^)

Cavs' game 2 in 3D HD. What could be better... oh yeah if they won. hehehee jk. We still had a good time with our funky 3d glasses and rise up towels. Becka and Bill did get their hair sprayed with cavs colors. We did find an r2-d2 mail box outside of the Q (Gund) Arena, now if we only had our light sabers to pose by it.

Go Cavs! enjoy the pics.
-Garvin (^_^)

Wahoo! laid down some ground work for a new Digidreamerz tool last week. Bill came over to put some hours in the tool. Of course we ended out code-a-thon with the new Forza 2 game.

code code... zoom zoom...
-Garvin (^_^)

p.s. The cool tool will be ready in the summer. Be prepared for your world to be rocked.

Yay Matt's in town. The day kicked of with some putt putt, skee ball, and go karting @ Swings and Things. Nothing like pass the digicam to Bill as we zoom pass eachother to wake you up. It took two tries and nobody got hurt. The Berea Rib Cookoff was fun. Even better you don't need to get packs of rib tickets to get stuff, only to find that you are one or two tickets off.... grrr rib tickets. Ok enough ranting about rib tickets. We put away 3 slabs of ribs, 4 ears of corn, and a pile of extra-crispy-home-made potato chips. Mmmmm. And finally, a Matt visit wouldn't be complete without bowling and man did we bowl. 5 games (some regular and some cosmic) later we were spent and ready to be tucked it.

Boy were we pooped... enjoy the pics
-Garvin (^_^)

p.s. Guess who got two turkeys? (hint: look at the new album)

Wahoo Alicia's in Ohio. Time for a field trip to Crocker Park.

Go Cavs!
-Garvin (^_^)

CONGRATS! and Welcome to Ohio!

enjoy the pics in Bill's Album
-Garvin (^_^)

enjoy the vid. Matt the one in black with yellow on the rig.
-Garvin (^_^)

Yep yep... Bill gets his own Update-A-Palooza. Wahoo!

Updated Albums:
2k7_Photo_Album -> Bill's Big Move
Bill's Album -> 2k7 Bill House

New Albums:
Bill's Album -> 2k7 Pitts Car Show
Bill's Album -> 2k7 JavaOne

Enjoy the pics
-Garvin (^_^)

What day is today?
Today is Mother's Day!
(What TV show was that from?)

Fun times today... nothing like lots of food and family time.

Enjoy the pics
-Garvin (^_^)

Yeow! (Y_Y)

Nuff Said.
-Garvin (^_^)

Right on the heals of "Bill's Big Move" comes "Leah's Big Move". Wahoooooo! Another Trip to Rochester. This time to move Leah out for the summer. We were armed with our tape gun and tons of boxes. We also got some tastey BBQ to boot. :-p Yum!

Enjoy the pics
-Garvin (^_^)

p.s. yes we were all pooped on the way back

It's ALIVE! It's ALIVE! Wahoo! I finally broke down @ CompUSA and bought the cheapest Vista computer I could get my hands on. CompUSA goes out of business next week so the discounts on everything helped a lot. So to get this PoS system up and running with Windows Media Center (MCE) I had to get a few more toys Yes Becka helped out too.

Parts_List:
+ PoS Acer Aspire Visa Basic pc (15% off... yeah not oo much horse power in this puppy).
+ Vista Ultimate Upgrade (50% off YES!).
+ Win-TV PVR USB2 (20% off... duh need something to convert the video feed so the PoS Acer doesn't need to do the processing).
+ Western Digital My Book Firewire 250GB storage (No discount @ BestBuy... yes due to the PoS-ness of the Acer PC we needed more storage capacity for all those episodes of Gilmore Girls and PIMP my ride
+ 512MB Mem Stick from an old Sony Camera (Again the RAM that came with the Acer was not going to cut it so We utilized Windows Vista ReadyBoost to give it a shot of speed).
+ Buffalo Wireless-G high speed wireless router.

Yes I do realize this sounds like a frankenstein, and quite frankly it is. lol. Once we had everything connected and configured (pretty much all of Saturday night and Sunday morning ... WOW I finally figured out what's been missing in my life... an MCE box. You would swear the design and functionality was was from Apple (minus the iPod white or brush metal interface . Yes that good and that A-M-A-Z-I-N-G! Basically it's a TIVO on Steriods!

Wows of MCE:
+ On screen TV Guide.
+ Record TV. You can record the entire series or the episode you're watching.
+ Live TV pause. Great of those Lakers and Yankees games Yes yes even thos