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Horrible picture, but here we are at Steve and Carrie’s house, watching the SuperBowl, and eating amazing food (my favorite food was Steve’s pulled pork…wowzer).

We tried our hand at Thai food this week and it actually came out REALLY good. Next time I’ll use a little less fish sauce tho. This was Hot Beef & Coconut Curry and it was darn good.

Tuesday I drove to MI to cover for my business partner, and as the day wore on I could tell I was getting sick. I drove home that evening, and felt the cold take over my body as I sat on the couch watching TV. These pictures were taken from where I lay the next 2.5 days in bed. I could barely get up to use the restroom. Turned out good tho, I lost 3 pounds this week without even working out!

Friday Natalie worked til 9pm, and I was finally starting to feel better, so I did a little cooking! We’re doing Tapas this next Tuesday, and I wanted to test one of the dishes I’m doing, so I did it up. This picture is of Andouille sausage, fried, then tossed with EVOO, a little fried garlic, and lots of Thai basil. It was absolutely fab and will be perfect for Tuesday.

Saturday we went out for a late breakfast at Macadoo’s, the Biscuit & Gravy Depot, which is about 20min from our house and right before you get to downtown Mishawaka. Breakfast was great, portions were just right (not too big like lots of places), and it only cost us $12 (plus a $5 tip).

Thats it for this week. I’m happy to report my coworkers dad is out of the hospital and doing better, I’m back on my feet (in fact I just got back from the gym), and I’m really looking forward to kicking some butt this week at work! Here’s to health! Cheers.

My latest hobby is baking bread! Here I am making several loaves for Natalie and I to give to coworkers.

I drove past this rest stop 5 times this week and stopped once.

One night I had at home Nat and I were too tired to cook, we had just sprayed the house with flea killer, so we had a late dinner at Outback in Mishawaka, thanks to a gift card from my business partner. This bread wasn’t helping with our new resolution to get healthy by eating better and working out.

This is the room Sam and Ashley let me use when I stay in Hillsdale. I took 9 pictures and stitched them together. I think it looks pretty cool.

Saturday Natalie and I were able to head to South Bend and the farmers market. We had breakfast/lunch at the little short order style restaurant in the farmers market.

Saturday night our friend from the neighborhood, Loa, threw a little “elegant” party. Everyone was dressed up and there was great food and drinks. In the first picture you can see Natalie has her arm around our next door neighbor Barb. In the second picture you can see Loa on the right.

Well, its almost time for the SuperBowl, Go Colts!!!

The Problem: Our tech’s (including myself) forget to read thru the description and then ticket entries (work done) when we’re adding our own work. Things sometimes don’t get documented correctly and in the worst case, things get missed.

The Solution? This is my first attempt at reinventing the ticket user interface. Its not drastic, but hopefully gets our eyes back on the important text, and isn’t as painful on the eyes. Here is a little video showing off the old and then new interfaces.

I haven’t heard from my team what they like/dislike about the new design yet, but I eagerly await their input. Which brings me to my next question, what do you think?

I’ve started baking bread. My first attempt was horrible, but since then I’ve had great success! So far I’ve only really tackled Italian bread, but this loaf was special because it was stuffed with roasted garlic! So yummy I can’t explain, except to say Nat’s coworkers have all placed orders, lol.

Here I’m showing off the Cambodian Thai restaurant in downtown SouthBend Indiana. We love the Drunken Noodle (padthai with wide noodles, and whole basil leaves thrown in for extra flavor) and Panang curry. I forgot to take pictures of the actual food because we were so hungry.

The moon was at its fullest the other night, and I was fortunate enough to see it rise in the east while I drove back from South Bend one night, and then saw it again the next morning as I was driving to the toll road to go to Michigan. Once again my camera doesn’t do it justice.

I like to cook on my own once or twice a week and we both appreciated this meal.

With salad’s to boot!

Saturday night Natalie planned on having a nice little get together, but only one of her coworkers showed, and I invited our neighbor, so the four of us had a cozy little party.

Bailey quite enjoyed having people over, this is his excited face, lol…

Sunday it warmed up quite a bit, so I took the dogs for a nice long walk, something we’d been missing, A LOT. Good times, good times.

First stop on Saturday mornings? DC Meats, our favorite local butcher. The meat isn’t super cheap, but its REALLY REALLY good. We love everything from the jerky to the bacon to the chicken wings.

Next up is the Farmers Market in South Bend. We buy all of our produce, spices, cheese, and eggs here.

Last stop before home is Meijer for the rest of our grocery list.

Back at home we spent most of the afternoon cleaning and doing prep for our dinner/football party. I cleaned and cut all the chicken wings, chopped onions, tomatoes, and more for the nachos while Natalie cleaned the fridge, cabinets, and planted our herbs in the window pots.

At around 7:45pm the rest of our company arrived and we had a great time watching the Colts beat the Ravens while we chowed down on nachos with guacamole, sour cream, and salsa, and chicken wings tossed with 4 different kinds of Buffalo Wild Wings sauces. My fav? The Mango Habanero of course!

Today we won’t do much. We’re making bread, watching the Vikings beat the Cowboys, and then preparing dinner for my cousins and possibly my aunt and uncle as well. Leo says hi…

First, I’m not sure if they do this every year, but for the 2010 CES, if you signed up before October, you could get in for free (provided you are in some industry that uses electronics). Second, if you shop around, and are willing to stay at one of the lower end hotel/casino’s, you get get your plane and hotel stay for around $450. We stayed at the Stratosphere, and to be honest we really enjoyed our stay there. The rooms were clean and the beds were comfy. They had a bar that has live bands every Thursday thru Saturday, and a dueling piano bar, which was fun. Third, everything in Vegas is expensive. Yes you can find cheap buffet’s, but if you are a foodie like me, you won’t be able to eat lunch for less that $20 and dinner for less than $50. The one really great meal we had, at Gallagher’s (in NY NY), cost around $160 with a bottle of wine.

The Show

The Consumer Electronics Show, held at the Las Vegas Convention Center, had over 2500 vendors and 120,000 attendees. The convention center is split into three halls, the North, Center, and South halls, all of which were packed to the brim with booths. In the North hall, a third of the floor was small booths, most of which had Chinese names, so we took to calling that end Chinatown. While we were still in the North hall we also swung by the Griffin booth, which I’m now convinced makes the best auto/audio/electronics adapters. I bought a Griffin adapter for my car/iPhone a week before CES, so we’ll how it holds up. A bit further in the North hall was the Ford booth, and I stopped to ask them about the new Ford Sync stuff, now called My Ford. Some really exciting stuff coming out of Ford, exciting vehicles, and exciting technology. Last note on the North hall, there were a ton of iPhone/iPod case vendors, at least 40.

The Central hall was HUGE. Most of the major tv vendors were there, and 3D is all the rave for 2010. Its the same technology they use in the theater for 3D, just brought to your living room. I’m not sure if they are all supporting the same storage format, or if its going to be another hddvd/bluray style battle for who’s 3D format gets wide spread adoption. All I know is, you still have to wear special glasses, and none of the vendors were showing off clip-on’s. Microsoft had a huge presence in the Central hall, showing off their OS on lots of different machines, and their Microsoft Auto stuff as well. I’m thinking they are going to be partnering with more than just Ford quite soon. While in the Central hall I saw some some booths about home automation, which started getting me thinking. Home automation ended up being the thing I kept seeking out as I travelled around CES, learning as much as I could. Again, there were TONS of iPhone/iPod case vendors, over 100 in Central hall, enough to really get annoying.

Day 2 at CES I walked the South hall, which ended up being two stories, so another couple miles of walking. There were some neat vendors there, including a lot of home automation stuff, networking equipment vendors, and of course, iPhone/iPod case vendors. Control4 had a giant booth, and an affiliates booth, and their take on home automation was really cool. If you are interested in the next wave of technology coming to regular consumers, check out http://control4.com/. Home automation and control has been in higher end homes for 10+ years now, but with electronics prices going down, and more focus on energy efficiency (and green initiatives), we’re about to see some really cool tech in everyone’s home. Also in the South hall was my tech pundit hero Leo Laporte and his TWIT (This Week in Tech) crew. I got to watch a little bit of their live recording, but didn’t get to meet Leo.

The Conclusion

CES was great, it was fun seeing all the cool gadgets and it was fun to see what the big trends are going to be for the next year. However, Vegas was expensive and I can’t imagine going once a year for the show. Too many lights, too many sounds (stinkin slot machines), and too many guys peddling cards for “dancers”. While I now personally despise iPhone/iPod cases, I’m glad the vendors were there because Natalie loved looking at all of them. Should you go to CES? I’ll try almost anything at least once, so I say yeah, go geek out and have some fun!