Everyone I know starts their week on Monday, where Saturday and Sunday are considered the end of the week or weekend.  There is another tribe of believers out there, however, that think the week should begin on Sunday and go to Saturday.  I guess, technically, the two days are at the “ends” of the week and could still be considered the weekend.  I don’t know – and really don’t care.  For the purposes of this article, however, the week will start on Sunday.

Yesterday, Sunday, the “first day of the week”, my wife, my son, and I joined our good friends, Brian, Lisa, and their son, Logan, on a trip to North Carolina.

– Wait.  Let me back up.

Saturday night - “Last Week” – Joyce, Daniel, and I attended a Christmas party.  There were lots of kids there and we stayed as long as we thought Daniel could stand it.  His hair was drenched in sweat from running around with all the other kids.  When we got home, he collapsed and went straight to sleep.  Just before leaving for the party, Daniel, informed us of his severely loose tooth.  Though we wiggled and pulled, it was not quite ready to come out.

Sunday morning – yesterday – the first thing that Daniel did was wake up and show us his newly extracted tooth.  Apparently, the tooth only needed a good night sleep before coming out.  So that marks the first Big thing in Daniel’s week.  Daniel lost his first tooth!  He was so proud.  He carried it around in his hand at least five minutes before he surrendered it to the “tooth fairy box”.

Next we got ready for our trip to North Carolina.  This was not just an ordinary trip.  This was a trip to the Polar Express.  We were going to drive three hours to Bryson City to board the famous train.  Daniel and Logan were ecstatic.

The trip went smoothly.  The boys only asked if we were there yet about 5 times each.  Completely tolerable for a 3+ hour drive.  Logan watched Cars, the Movie and Daniel, of course, watched Star Wars Clone Wars.  He watched the movie, then he watched several episodes, then we watched the movie again.

When we arrived, we got our tickets, grabbed a bite to eat and then changed the boys into their pajamas. 

The train ride was great.  Daniel and Logan were very excited about the many activities that went on during the trip.  We were served hot chocolate to the song Hot Chocolate from the movie.  The conductor stopped at every seat and punched each child’s ticket.  He didn’t have the skill of Tom Hanks, so he only punched each ticket with one “very special” hole.  Then we all sang Christmas carols as the trip progressed.  Finally, we reached the destination – The North Pole, where Santa and an elf were waiting to board the train.

The North Pole was a little skimpy, I must admit, but the kids didn’t care.  Santa boarded the train and greeted each kid individually during the return trip.  We rounded out the train ride with more caroling.  Both Daniel and Logan enjoyed the ride thoroughly.  It was a great time.

That marks the second Big item in Daniel’s week.  While today is only Monday, clearly, the week has another big day – Christmas.  But for Daniel, there will be another Big item before Thursday.

Wednesday, Christmas Eve, is also Daniel’s sixth birthday.  So this time of year is always a big deal for Daniel.  He tends to get a lot of presents as no one wants to be “that guy” who gave Daniel one present for both occasions.  In fact, he probably gets too many presents, but it’s his birthday and Christmas – what are you gonna do?

So we will have a small party for Daniel’s birthday on Christmas Eve, before our company (Brian, Lisa, and Logan) arrive for Christmas Eve dinner.  We will have a full blown party for him in January.

He’s a good kid and I love him very much.

Happy week, son.

TESTiCO is a drug and product testing company.  Every week they run tests on their employees.

We get the privilege of having a view into the lives of two of their guinea pigs - Ron and Peter.  Ron and Peter are roommates and have been friends since they were kids.  They are both unattractive, mildly unintelligent, and besides dealing with drug side-effects and other occupational hazards, their time is spent playing video games.  There are a few people that they might consider their friends, but most would not.

	Peter is best friends with Ron.  He doesn’t and probably hasn’t ever had a girlfriend.  He hides a little pony that he sings the songs he wrote for in secret.  He looks as if they just drug him out of a dumpster.  He isn’t very loyal to TESTiCO, but he remains an employee because of his friendship with Ron and his need of money.  Peter often begs for the placebo because he is convinced that Ron always gets it.
	Ron is best friends with Peter.  He doesn’t do well with women, but has more success than Peter.  He’s more pragmatic than his buddy, which means he is slightly less paranoid.  He tries to look out for his buddy unless, of course, he can benefit by not doing so.  All-in-all, Ron is a pretty simple guy who usually has his head on straight.
	Nugget, besides having one of the best nicknames known to man, is Peter and Ron’s “neighbor”.  I use the term loosely as he is really homeless and has been squatting in an empty apartment down the hall for years.
	Larry is the senior most employee at TESTiCO.  He prides himself in his testing abilities and considers himself somewhat of a ladies man.  He is pretty disgusting and overbearingly hits on any woman he finds attractive.
	Kate is the owner and bartender of the bar in Peter and Ron’s building.  We are not sure if she is still alive - after Peter gained the courage and kissed her, her peanut allergy kicked in and we haven’t seen her since.

Testees is one of the most stupid, irreverent, envelope-busting shows I have ever seen - no wonder I love it.  Check out this clip where Peter and Ron lose their memories (one of those hazards of the occupation) and Nugget convinces them that they are homosexual life partners.

And there you have it. - Joe

As a professional technologist, I spend more time than the average person working with new technologies.  As a passionate technologist, I spend more personal time than the average technologist learning about new technologies.

One of the podcasts I listen to is Scott Hanselman’s “HanselMinutes“.  One fo the episodes I was recently listening to had a discussion between Scott, the host, and Rod Conery, the guest host, about Domain Driven Design (DDD).  Apparently, Rod does not know DDD, and is doing research in order to learn it.  In this podcast, both guests describe their openness to learning.  What I mean by that is that they are very open with the public, via their blogs and/or other mediums, to what they don’t know.  More importantly, they are very open about the way they go about learning new things and invite others to join them in their learning process so more can benefit from their experiences.  This was very inspiring to me.

I have had a great time blogging this year.  It started out this time last year as a New Year’s resolution.  I had started blogs several times in the past, only to have them fizzle and die.  I think I have been successful in my resolution as it is the end of the year and I am still blogging.  There were a few rough spots during the summer, but I bounced back and am now stronger than ever.

Now I am turning the corner.  I have decided to take on three blogs next year.  I will continue josephdecarlo.com with similar content, but will add two new blogs: one I will be launching today and one that I will save to talk about in a later post.  The new blog I will be launching today is my vision of open learning that Scott and Rod practice.

This will be a very technical blog.  On this blog, my technology articles are about technology subjects, but are not, themselves, technical in nature.  My new blog, located at http://www.technicalmatriculate.com will be completely technical in subjects and content.

My first topic I will be learning and, thus, covering with a series of posts, will be Microsoft’s Windows Workflow Foundation (WF).  This is a topic that I have needed to wrap my head around for a long time, but have never made the time for it.

Hopefully, contrary to the title of this article, my new blog will not feather my reader base, but provide more content rather than act as a substitution for this site.  So techheads, please join me, on my new site (Technical Matriculate), as I learn about WF.  And to everyone, techheads and otherwise normal people alike, please continue to visit this site.  I will continue to post new articles here regularly.

thanks for your support.

Joe.

If you don’t know me personally, then you don’t know that my wife, Joyce, is an early childhood educator.  One way this affects my family is that we have massive amounts of children’s books.  I mean book shelveS (plural) full of nothing but those thin paperback and barely-bound hardback kids books! 

One of the not-so-little hardcovers that Joyce brought home is called the Elf on the Shelf - A Christmas Tradition.  It is a book that explains to kids how Santa knows their Christmas wishes and who’s been naughty or nice.  He sends out scout elves to observe the children.  Each elf watches from a high post in the house during the day, and then flies back to the North Pole each night to report their findings directly to Santa.  After which, they return to their assigned child’s home and take a new post within the house to start a new day of spying—I mean observing.  The book comes complete with an elf that you name with your child.

There are keys to making this reality for your child.  One - you have to be able to explain why the elf is toy-like and not an animated creature.  We explained to our son that the elves only come to life at night right before they fly back to see Santa, just like the toys in the movie Toy Story.  Having seen the movie, this made complete sense to Daniel.  Another key is your child mustn’t touch the elf.  Actually handling the elf allows it to become a “toy” for your child.  There needs to be a distance kept, an abstraction in your kid’s mind to keep this real for them.  If the elves “loose their magic” if touched by human hands, then that reduces the temptation for your child to touch and play with them.  This has worked so well with Daniel, that he once got sad because he knew he would never be able to hug his elf.

Now my 5 year-old, Daniel, who turns six on Christmas Eve, was “assigned an elf by Santa” when he was two, almost three.  Daniel has named many things for a five year-old.  Each member of his large stuffed animal collection has a name, but unlike most youngsters, the names are not basic.  Sure, he has a few that have predictable names - Oinky the pig, for example.  Most of the time he is very creative with his names.  We have a monkey named Alphie, a frog named Ravioli, a snake named Sakey Seymour, a horse name Oreo, and a real hamster named Baggio, pronounced Bah-gee-O.  With his creativity in naming, it only made sense that he name our elf.  Our elf is named Fillmore.

There are upsides and downsides to this tradition.  The upsides are numerous.  Every morning  I get to see that Christmas excitement in Daniel’s eyes as he searches for Fillmore.  Also, Daniel believes that Fillmore is real and that he is really at our home to report on his behavior.  This can be leveraged!  If Daniel is pouting…threaten to tell Fillmore.  It is amazing how well this works.  Even this morning when Daniel wouldn’t get out of bed to get ready for school, I told him I was going to find Fillmore by myself and tell him.  Seconds later, Daniel whizzed by me racing to find Fillmore first.  The only real downsides are: 1.  You have to remember that Fillmore must go back to the North Pole every night.  This means he must be at a new post every morning.  It takes discipline remember that nightly for almost a month.  2.  This year, in Kindergarten, Daniel’s teacher read the book and has an elf for the classroom.  This elf has been handled by Daniel’s fellow students.  He reported to me that he won’t touch the elf because he knows it will take away its magic and he won’t be able to get home to the North Pole if it is lost.  The other students apparently ignore the “no touching” rule.  So far, that hasn’t spoiled it for Daniel…we’ll see how long it lasts.

This is the third year that Daniel and I have spent scavenging the house, every morning between Thanksgiving and Christmas, looking for Fillmore’s new post.  It is a great time for our family, and we will continue this tradition for a long time - even after Daniel figures things out.

And there you have it.

Back in October, I posted an entry entitled Commuter’s Shopping List, which listed all the items I thought I would need in order to successfully commute to work regularly.  Now that some time has passed and some purchases have been made, I figured I would write a follow-up entry to share my progress on the matter.  So here goes…in the order of my original post

Bike Rack.  If you remember from my earlier post, I have a Jeep with oversized tires.  This little fact limits the types of bike racks that I can get.  I didn’t buy either of the two racks that I was considering before.  Instead, I bought the Swagman XP: 2.  It has the ability to carry two bikes and has a locking mechanism that secures both bikes.

Cycling Clothes.  I learned a bit here.    I ended up with mostly Pearl Izumi products.   Gloves are important and I was able to find some pretty good ones.  They make thicker ones that are  warmer, and thinner ones that provide more finger dexterity, but the ones that I found are working great.   Pearl Izumi’s Arm and Leg warmers are great for using those summer outfits in the winter.  The ones I got have Therma Fleece which adds a little more warmth the some of the alternatives.  I also got some Calientoes, which are basically toe covers for your bike shoes.  They haven’t tested out too well, though.  They keep my feet warm enough, but they have torn on the bottom and sides. 

Panniers.  I ended up not getting panniers at all.  I decided to get a commuter’s backpack by Novara (REI Brand).  This way I didn’t have to worry about extra weight on  my back tire and how I was going to mount the thing.  The backpack I got is a commuter style.  It sits higher on my back making it easier to ride with it on.  It has a compartment to store a U-Lock and rain fly to keep it dry in wet weather.  I carry my laptop, clothes and shoes, and emergency supplies (spare tube, etc.) in it.  It doesn’t have enough space to add anything else.  That is its only downside.  It is probably the best purchase I have made.

Multi-Toolkit.  I purchased the Crank Brothers Multi 19 Tool.   I still don’t know how to use half of what it has, but I have it for when I need it.

Cycling 101 Class.  I already blogged about this experience.  Check it out here, if you haven’t already.

And there you have it.

Joe.