Accident Hot Spot

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Every morning, I take the same route to work.  It never fails that at least once a week (though often more then once) there is an accident on I-410 West-bound on the bridge over Bandera Rd.  What is it about this location that causes so many accidents?  I don’t get it!  It’s ALWAYS in the same spot!  It jams traffic up for miles.  You would think that with the thousands of cars that pass by those accidents each week that the people who frequent that route would learn.  I wish I knew what it was about this particular spot that caused people to ram into each other.  Here is the spot in case you would like to avoid it:

Bandera & I-410W

J

The Twins’ Heartbeats

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So, last week I rented a Fetal Doppler Heartbeat Monitor so that Laura and I could hear the heartbeats coming from the twins.  It was delivered yesterday, and we gave it a try.  Here are two MP3s that I made of the heartbeats.  In the second one, you can hear Andi saying that she thinks it sounds like a dog.  I think she was referring to the sound of a dog panting.  :-)

Baby One:

Get the Flash Player to see the wordTube Media Player.

Baby Two:

Get the Flash Player to see the wordTube Media Player.

J

Check out my new monitor!

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As a reward for some work that I did with my job, I was given a brand new 24″ Dell 2408WFP UltraSharp monitor.  It is now running as my main display off of my MacBook Pro.  I also have a 19″ Dell E196FP monitor connected to the MacBook Pro over USB via an IOGear GUC2015V External Video Card.  That’s right, count them…THREE displays running off of one MacBook Pro!  Jealous?

Want to know more about it?  Click here to be taken to the Flickr website where you can see the notes that I attached to the picture.

My new monitor setup

J

I am now a PUBLISHED photographer!

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An online city guide website (Schmap)  has used one of my pictures in the 2009 edition of their Vienna, Austria city guide!  They found a picture that I took of the Hotel Sacher in my Flickr gallery.  The picture was taken during my recent trip to Vienna and the Czech Republic.

If you’d like to see the actual image, you can view it at the following link:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/landofthegargoyle/3288772419/in/set-72157614006588509/

J

My dog, Belle, is weird.

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My dog, Belle, is weird.

Originally uploaded by gargoyle_1175

Belle is the best dog I’ve ever had. She is very gentle. She’s the only dog I have ever had that didn’t nearly bite my hand off when I handed her food or treats. She only barks when there is a stranger outside. She listens to your commands, and she is potty trained. All without ANY formal training.

She is kind of weird though. This is a picture of depicting how she normally relaxes. She LOVES to lay down like this. She’s a strange one….

J

Biggest Sewer Rat EVER!!!

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So, I was in New York City on Thursday and Friday of last week (2/26-2/27). I went to the Omni Berkshire on 52nd street to meet up with some co-workers, and there I saw NYC’s BIGGEST sewer rat EVER!

NYC's Biggest Sewer Rat EVER!!!

I’m not sure what they were protesting. Something about construction at The Pratt Institute. It was pretty cool! I wanted to join in on the fun!

J

Cloud Files Test

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A few months back the company that I work for, Rackspace Hosting, began offering a product called “Cloud Files” through one of our subsidiaries, Rackspace Cloud.  It’s a CDN method for distributing files via the Internet.  You upload your files to the “Cloud Files Container” (I’m using Cyberduck to accomplish this), and it gets propagated into Limelight Network’s CDN.

A lot of my customers are asking questions about using Cloud Files, so I figured I’d give it a try and see how it works!  A few minutes ago, I uploaded my very first file to the Cloud.  It’s a 1.1MB high-resolution satellite image of Washington D.C. taken during President Obama’s inauguration.

(Clicking on the above thumbnail will open the high-resolution image in a new window.)

J