I'm pleased to see that my second go at blogging has been more successful than my first try. And what I mean by success is that after four months, I'm still posting entries at fairly regular intervals. This is actually my 22nd entry since the beginning of the year, and my 26th overall. I don't know what kind of readership I've acquired the last few months, but I do see that I get hits and views and I appreciate that people do take some time in their day to see what I have to say. I'm glad I've started blogging again and that I have a forum to express my opinions and to share whatever interests me. And I hope that others find my musings interesting too.

This past weekend, I realized that there's a lot I want to blog about this coming week:

• Major League Baseball season starts
• Concerts update - 3 recent concerts to talk about
• Movie update - of course
• Project Blackbox comes to San Diego on Thursday, April 5
• I'm an HD doofus - an HDTV update
• Add more Sun-related entries to my blog....and what I've been doing at Sun

So stay tuned for these upcoming entries that I really hope to post this week.

When I set out to start blogging again, I didn't know what I was going to blog about, but I knew I was motivated to do it again. And 20 entries later I've noticed most of my posts are movie-related, which I'm really glad I do. The rest of my blogs are a sprinkle of other personal interests. But I noticed a major absence in my blog is that I don't have much Sun-related entries, and this is a Sun Blog....hmmm....Yes, I did post the LDoms Early Access release but that's pretty much it. I missed the window for my previous projects. Of my current projects, LDoms is the only one I can talk about because the others are still in development. I know I can post topics that I haven't worked on, and I've also started getting involved in other things related to the company, so I'll be working on posts related to that. Let's see how that goes and thanks for reading my blog!

Two weeks ago, last Monday, I had laser vision correction done. I'm not a good candidate for LASIK so I had the PRK procedure done instead.

I couldn't work at all last week because my eyes were healing and my vision was blurry and fluctuating daily. I couldn't even watch TV, go on my computer or do anything that involved my eyes. So I did a lot of laying on my recliner listening to XM Radio and sleeping. It was quite nice actually. I was getting a little restless at times but I tried to appreciate the time off as much as possible. I even put some DVD movies on and listened to the commentary instead of watching. I also listened to a book on CD, Don Quixote. A couple post-op appointments brought me out of the house and that changed the pace of things a bit too.

So my healing is going well. I had the band-aid contact lens removed last Friday and by the evening I was comfortable enough to go to the movies. And Sunday was my first real "clear" day, in time to be able to watch the Super Bowl. At my post-op this week, the doctor said my eyes are slightly over-corrected, but its considered a good thing because my vision will slide back the next few weeks. So right now I'm slightly far-sighted (+1). My vision is worlds better than before it was corrected and I'm enjoying this new change in my life. Things are still a little blurry and I do have a little difficulty reading, but its clear enough for me to do work and get back to my blog. I try to take breaks every hour and I'm on a eye drop regimen to help and promote the healing process.

All in all, I'm very pleased with the results thus far. I can't wait for my vision to stabilize and become clear again. I'm so glad I did it. And thanks to TLC Vision in La Jolla, its facility and staff are first-rate.

Thanks to Dilly, I have joined the "I've been tagged" Club. I have no idea where/how it started or how long its been going around, but I've definitely been entertained by it and learning about others. So I will participate in this game and also keep it going by tagging 5 others.

1. I was the Drum Major for the San Pasqual High School band my senior year. I played the flute in 5th through 9th grade. I finally couldn't take the stigma that comes with playing the flute as a guy, so sophomore year(10th) I moved to the alto saxophone. We were also short on sax players and had too many wind instruments anyways. It was a better fit for me and I'm glad I made the switch.
2. I was the first official Sun-employed intern at the San Diego office. I started at Sun as an intern in 1997. That was less than a year after the San Diego office was acquired through the infamous Cray/SGI acquistion. At the time, interns were hired through an agency, like contractors. But when I got hired as an intern, I was the first intern hired as a Sun employee in San Diego. And so when I became full time a year later, I was able to keep my badge number.
3. My second year in college, I went with a friend to one of his mechanical engineering classes, when he had to take a midterm. And I took the midterm too. I wasn't enrolled in the class, so I used a fake name. When the midterms were graded, mine was unclaimed, but my friend was able to pick it up for me. I beat the curve and I got a B. And my "name" was on the board for a few weeks to talk to the professor.
4. In 1998, my girlfriend (now my wife) and I bought tickets to the Primetime Emmy Awards. We walked up to the entrance of the Red Carpet and were allowed in. We actually walked down through the Red Carpet. We even stopped to the side for awhile to watch celebrities walk and pass by us. My wife is a huge fan of Sarah Michelle Gellar and was able to spot her and was able to get a picture taken WITH her. Guess who took the picture? Not me, it was Sarah's date - actor Jerry O'Connell. When we got to the door to enter the Shrine Auditorium, Dawson's Creek stars, Katie Holmes and James Van Der Beek were behind us. We presented our tickets, but were turned down and were told to go in the entrance around the corner of the building. When we turned the corner, there was a line going down the block and around the corner, of people with regular Ticketmaster tickets like ours, waiting to enter from the side entrance. I think we lucked out by getting to the Shrine from the "wrong" side and getting allowed to walk the red carpet.
5. I've caught two foul balls at baseball games. I didn't actually catch the balls, but I was able to retrieve them. They were both Padres games at Qualcomm Stadium and I was sitting on an upper level seat on the first base side. The first time, the ball was flying towards my friend and it bounced off his hands and hit the ground in front of me. I reached down for it with my glove but collided heads with someone else who was going for the ball. The collision knocked him down and I was able to hang on to the ball. The second time, the ball hit the section to our right, and nobody caught it. It started rolling towards us. I was sitting in the 3rd row, and nobody was in front of me. I was eating an ice cream cone at the time, but I decided to jump for the ball anyways. So I jumped over the first two rows of seats and landed in front of the ball. I grabbed the ball and was able to keep my ice cream cone intact. Nice.

Well there you have it. I hope you like what you learned about me.

And who do I tag next? BruceH was already tagged but I haven't seen his list yet, so he gets a double tag. I also tag BruceM, Virtual Ryan, Eric and one of my best friends EJ. Gotcha!

Tomorrow is the first day of San Diego Restaurant Week where 125+ fine restaurants in San Diego offer a special fixed-price 3 or 4 course dinner for $30 or $40 per person.

Its a great opportunity to visit and try out many of the restaurants that you've always wanted to go to, or even go back to your favorites for a great meal. This is the 3rd year of the event, which was inspired by New York's Restaurant Week which is going on 14 years now.

If you're interested in participating, all you need to do is go to a participating restaurant and ask for their Restaurant Week menu. A list of the participating restaurants and their menus are available on the Restaurant Week website. Reservations are recommended, and I strongly recommend using OpenTable.com.

OpenTable.com has been mentioned by Jonathan several times in his speeches and blogs, but I'm proud to say I registered on the site 5 years ago and I've been using it every chance I get. I've used it for restaurant reservations in San Diego, Las Vegas, San Francisco, Chicago and New York without a hitch. Sometimes I get paranoid and I end up contacting the restaurant to confirm my reservation was made. And, as expected, I have my reservation secured. Check OpenTable.com out, if you haven't already. Its really convenient.

I'll let you know if my wife and I participate in Restaurant Week. Last year we went to Jake's Del Mar Restaurant and had a lovely dinner.

Let's give this(blogging) another shot. Its that time of year to start fresh, right?!?
Happy new year to all!

First, I owe a few people a big thanks for motivating me to get started on my blog again, after a 1.5 year hiatus. Yes, I did go to Comic-Con last year, and was planning to blog it, among other events last year, but never got to it. So now I'm making an effort to start again.

I want to thank Linda Skrocki, Lou Ordorica and Jennifer Bohmbach for taking the time to do a "Blogging 101 Training Session" today for my department this morning. It was a nice conference call, along with many slides on introducing everyone to the world of blogging and they evangelized on how interesting, fun, powerful, educational and satisfying it can be to write a blog. This was the ultimate push that got me to start again today. Thank you Linda, Lou and Jennifer.

I'm an avid blog reader and wanted to list a few of my favorite techy/nerdy and Sun blogs that I recommend you follow, in case you haven't come across them already.
First, the people in my Release Engineering group:

• EXOTERIC
• DILBLOG
• Notes Along The Way
• Willard

Other Sun Blogs:

• Jonathan Schwartz's Weblog - Of course!
• Dan's Blog: For What it's worth
• Doth quoth the DaveM
• Level Up - Life in the Video Game Ether

And the following Sun Blogs are must-reads for LDoms, one of the projects I work on

• Virtuality
• Airel Hendel
• Jayakara Kini's Weblog

Other blogs:

• The Dilbert Blog
• Official Google Blog
• Scobleizer - Tech Geek Blogger
• Blog Maverick