*Words of Wisdom From The Elder

A few weeks ago Ellen and I had to go to Jackson for the weekend to a piano contest she was judging. Since we had to leave for two nights we needed someone to watch our dogs while we were away. Two of Ellen’s students, Carlena and Shea, agreed to watch the dogs for us but we had to have game night at our house to reward their services. Tonight was game night. Everyone gets together and we have a meal then we break out all of the board games. We started by cooking some burgers and hot dogs on the grill and then played a few hands of Texas Hold ‘Em since they girls had never played. Then another student of Ellen’s named Nathan showed up and we started playing Mad Gab and then moved onto Taboo. The night is still young, who knows what we’ll break out next. Maybe Operation?

If you have been reading any type of technology news lately you should have stumbled across some Microsoft news recently about Windows Vista, Sparkle, Windows Workflow Foundation, Windows Mobile 5 (Treo 700w), etc. Most all of this news, except the Treo 700, was released during PDC. Or Microsoft week as a lot of writers call it. Two co-workers, Dan and Brad, along with myself got to go to PDC in Los Angeles. Instead of writing about what we did and saw, I put Brad in charge of my camera and had him document the trip. I’ve uploaded all 184 pictures to the site for your viewing pleasure. Here are a few things to help guide you along as you go through the slides:

• We were at the keynote where Bill Gates talked about Windows Vista
• The video with Bill Gates and Napolean Dynamite was hilarious
• You’ll see some eye candy screen shots of the new Windows Vista operating system
• Us playing around in the main vendor room
• Microsoft bought out Universal Studios on Wednesday night so we all went there
• Friday we headed to the beach and ate supper in Malibu!
• I took Brad to Fry’s Electronics (the weird pictures of the aliens and spiders, etc)

Enjoy the pics!

Imagine you are sitting in your money making cube at work one day and an email comes into your inbox that reads: “Do you want to go to Vegas for 4 days and stay at the Paris Hotel? If so, reply and let us know.” Crazy I know but we aren’t the 12th best company to work for in the nation for nothing you know! So on May 19th at about 7:00 in the morning, 175 team members and myself from Quicken Loans jumped on the Fun Jet and headed to Vegas. When the plane landed charter buses were waiting to take us to the hotel. As soon as we got off the charter bus, DWal(pronounced D-Wall, in the orange shirt in the pic, also my roommate for the trip) and myself were looking for some food so we hit “Le Cafe” in the Paris with about eight other team members for some breakfast. After eating, about 4 of us wanted to go hit the tables. Let the games begin!