Kendall’s blog

Broken at school on 9/3/09.

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Had a good time, talked to several people, and the food was decent.  The music was a too loud most of the time, but that's just me.  I hate trying to shout a conversation to someone standing right next to me.  Bryan McClannahan cracked me up as usual.  That guy was getting two text messages a minute, I swear.  He was my bud on a motorcycle ride from Iowa to Florida back in 1993.  He ended up staying in Florida, so I had to ride back alone.  It was a good reason though, a woman, so it's all good.  Hey, Bryan, the name of city in Ohio we stopped in was Athens.  I'll never forget that baked potato pizza, my motorcycle breaking down in Raleigh and the chiggers we suffered after using the tent that once.

I missed seeing Liz Rubin (now Peck).  I wanted to apologize for how rude I was in 5th grade.  She and I passed notes in 4th grade and I was too immature to handle it I guess and blew her off in 5th.  Screwing that up taught me a life lesson.  I always felt a pang of guilt around Liz through middle and high school.  I should have just been a better friend than that.  Sorry Liz.  Thanks for being my facebook friend now.  When I met Jen (now my wife) we were best friends for a year before dating.  I give Liz credit for teaching me that friendship is the foundation.

I didn't get to chat with Chris Mur much, just said hi.  Here's the story I remember about Chris.  I don't know what year, but it was before high school.  Chris was a catcher on some baseball team and he told me that he loved the song "Another one bites the dust".  For some reason he confided in my that he'd tap out the rhythm of that song on his athletic cup during the games.  Why did you saddle me with that image, Chris?  Now you are a tv and movie star, so I forgive you :)

It was great to see David, Crystal, Michaela, Dan, Amy, Tom, Melanie, Kristin, Todd, Christian, Bill, Scott, Jay, Jason, Jennifer and all the rest.

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Invented this recipe myself, and it turned out to be very good.

2 eggs
3/4 C. sugar
1 C. Whipping cream
2 C. Half and Half
1 tsp. Vanilla
1 oz. unsweetened baking chocolate
1 oz. semi sweet baking chocolate
2 *heaping* teaspoons cocoa powder.
1-2 heaping teaspoons of peanut butter.

Melt baking chocolate in a double boiler.  Add 1 C. of Half and Half and mix well.  Add the cocoa and continue to stir over heat.  Add 1 to 2 heaping tsp. of creamy peanut butter and stir until melted in.  When smooth, remove from heat and let stand.  Whisk the eggs well.  Add the sugar to the eggs and whisk fast for a couple minutes.  Add the cream to the eggs and stir.  Add the vanilla and 1 C. of Half and Half.  Stir some more.  Finally, once the chocolate is cooled somewhat, stir that in and whisk well.  Chill the mixture in the refrigerator 3+ hours.   Freeze in an ice cream machine per instructions.  It takes mine about 25 minutes to firm up.  Eat some out of the middle of the freezer right away.  Scrape the remainder (should be fairly stiff) into a container, cover and freeze for later.  Mmmm Mmmm.  Everyone here liked it.  We'll probably polish off the rest after the kids hit the sack.

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What great weather.  What a great day!  Woke up and rode down to Grays lake on my bicycle.  Tried to pop in at my Sister's house but she was out picking blueberries.  Can't blame her...  Anyone inside on such a day is daft.  Went to Whitmer park and hit some fly balls with Zach and Jen later, then walked up to Snookies for ice cream.  Next, dropped Jeremy with his Grandparents for the night.  He loves spending the night there because they spoil him and he knows it.  Zach wanted more baseball fun so we went to the diamond at Greenbelt park in Clive and hit some more.  Finally, Jason's deli for dinner and watched Rocky Balboa on FX.

Weather looks good for today too.  Wonder what we'll do...

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I received an invite to Google Voice last night. I always like shiny
new tech toys, so I have been playing with it a bit. I'll try to
embed a widget here that lets you call my voice mail and leave me a
message.
 

 
I don't think I'll tell everyone to use the new phone number just yet.
 Best to see how it works.

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My employer, like many others, mandated a 1 week furlough this year.
So we decided to take a vacation to MN and relax for a week. The kids
stayed with their aunt and uncle for a couple nights, which was nice
for Jen and I. We found some nature/hiking areas around the twin
cities while sans kids.
 
I wanted to get some boating time in, but alas my family unit is not
so interested in that sort of thing. Maybe next time.
 
It's back to work tomorrow. I'm happy to have a job to return to,
that's for sure. There's lots to keep me busy these days.

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I just finished the last book in the "Ender's Game" series. Highly
recommended. I read the first many years ago, and then looked at the
others now but always passed them over. Don't judge these by the
covers! I think I've read most of Card's work, and I'm never
disappointed.

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Seems like a really easy way to handle a blog. Just email the content
and they post it and push updates to twitter, facebook, etc... Maybe
not as pretty as some other blog software, but I favor simplicity over
beauty I guess.

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I subscribe to several OR blogs in Google Reader. One of them has an
interesting post
http://research-reflections.blogspot.com/2009/06/model-formulation-vehicle-routing.html
 
Not so much in the article itself, but the comment on Drools-solver
more so. I've done some work with meta-heuristics
and CP, and the reading I've done on Drools-solver sounds eerily
similar.
 
http://java.dzone.com/articles/solving-planning-problems-intr
http://downloads.jboss.com/drools/docs/5.0.1.26597.FINAL/drools-solver/html/index.html

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