401k 2005 Results

Personal Rate of Return for the year: 10.7%

Not too bad all in all relative to key market indices.

Uncle Bob has fun with Yuki

During Christmas, Uncle Bob had fun playing with Yuki. Is it safe to say that Yuki is a smiling happy hound?

Emerald Bowl

was embarassing for Georgia Tech and also succeeded in making Utah look like the 2nd coming of Texas Tech. The bowl was fun but definitely kind of a low budget affair. Check out the cups...



Notice they didn't print new cups for the game but just chose to reuse the Navy - New Mexico cheap ass cups from last year...

They obviously chose to spend their budget on the half-time event of which I captured a nice snap. You may need to click on the photo to really appreciate the quality of the show.


It was put on by a corporation called Bowl Games of America which basically gets kids to pay to come put on a half-time show at bowl games. No - I'm not kidding.

Cockpit

Nope, it's not a view from the captain's chair of the space shuttle. It's the view from the driver's seat of the new Civic with TomTom GPS nav featuring my new super velcro mount. And nope, I wasn't going 107 MPH. Sometimes I like to go metric and roll KPH!

Huskers Roll

The Huskers take the Alamo Bowl just squeaking by Stef's highly favored Michigan Wolverines! It's a great win for the Huskers with a crazy finish. The best news...I bet $10 on the Huskers to win! I'm looking at a nice $10 profit!!!

IT'S ALL ABOUT THE HAMILTONS BABY!

Yo reach in my pocket, pull out some dough.
The girl acted like she'd never seen a ten before.
It's all about the Hamiltons baby.
Throw the snacks in the bag and I'm Ghost like Swayze.

Roll up to the theater. Ticket buying what we're handling.
You can call us Aaron Burr from the way we're dropping Hamiltons.

Jayhawks Roll

The football Jayhawks beat the tar out of Houston in the Fort Worth Bowl. Is that one of the BCS games? I can't remember. Anyway, the shirt is now available. Here's what she looks like:

Walk The Line

Rick, Dermot and I went to see the Johnny Cash movie "Walk the Line" yesterday. Enjoyable movie. Afterwards we went to Best Buy and snapped up some Johnny Cash Albums. Already owning a compilation and his last album (which I picked up when Bill bought the 50 Cent album in North Carolina) I snapped up "Johnny Cash at San Quentin" recorded in 1969. It's good. Lots of pictures coming from the trip...

Christmas Day

We had fun opening presents and Yuki chewed some paper.

Made it to Michigan

It's pretty cold. Mid-30s with lots of snow on the ground. It's supposed to begin snowing tomorrow and snow on Christmas as well. Will see if we can post photos later.

It was fun going through Atlanta - snapped up the Journal-Constitution and reading about GT. More later...

Made it to Arkansas

It took awhile but Yuki and I made to AR tonight from NE. I'll post a few pics from the journey later. You'll have to wait for fancy photo of "The Ravenden Raven" plus others!
More later!

iTunes Top Songs Played in 2005

These are the Top 20 songs played on our computer or iPods in 2005 as tracked by the Playcount feature:

Song Title / Artist / Plays
Aftermath / R.E.M. / 25
Breathe / Erasure / 17
Over My Head (Cable Cars) / The Fray / 16
Precious / Depeche Mode / 15
Starry Eyed Surprise / Paul Oakenfold / 15
Bad Day / R.E.M. / 14
Don't Say You Love Me / Erasure / 13
Chains of Love / Erasure / 13
Leaving New York / R.E.M. / 13
The Outsiders / R.E.M. / 13
My Favourite Game / The Cardigans / 12
World's on Fire / Erasure / 12
Krafty / New Order / 12
The Boy in the Well / R.E.M. / 12
Out is Through / Alanis Morissette / 11
Hey Man *Now Your Really Living) / The Eels / 10

Bowl Game Ranking

28) New Orleans (Dec. 20): Arkansas State (6-5) vs. Southern Miss (6-5). Due to the damage caused by Hurricane Katrina, this year's game had to be moved to Lafayette, La. It's the best thing to happen to the city of New Orleans in months.

There are 28 bowls in total.

ASU Bowl Details

It's official - ASU's opponent at the 2005 New Orleans Bowl on Dec. 20 will be the Golden Eagles of Southern Mississippi.

You won't want to miss this game! Just click for the details on the New Orleans Bowl Schedule of Events, Travel Opportunities and Watch Parties.

If you can't make it to Lafayette, why not organize a watch party in your area - it's easy and a great way to have fun watching the game with other ASU fans. For information on how you can be part of the excitement by organizing a watch party, e-mail Molly Phillips at mphillip@astate.edu

Members of the ASU Alumni Association received the details for the New Orleans Bowl last week and are already making plans! To get up-to-the minute information on this and other exciting ASU events all year long, join the ASU Alumni Association now.

Please forward this message to your friends who are fellow ASU alumni and help spread the word. See you at the game! Go Tribe!

Package Sent To AR

The box was sent to Arkansas today via UPS. It will arrive at Dad's address on Thursday afternoon and should be opened promptly. Don't wait until Christmas. There are three bags of stuffers that should not be opened unless someone not named on the bag is going to load the stuff into a stocking. Bill will need to carry some stuff over to Mom's place. Tracking number can be determined as follows. Subtract 2.25 from the square of 9697.5 - Then go to the UPS website and click on the Track by Reference Number piece and enter the result in.

Arkansas Update

2005 Honda VTX 1300

Walnut instrument panel shows time and temperature

Another view. The bags are from Yahama.

The Parthenon in a stunning night view.

Warning: these pictures are very high resolution
and may damage your monitor if you zoom in too closely.

Arkansas Update

Shelby Tangeman and Gretchen Golden with the jelly-bean moose.

My nephew Richard Tangeman with Janice Dayton.
Guests at party celebrating Gretchen Golden's doctoral commencement.
Richard's daughter Shelby runs the trains.
Gretchen, Will Hansard, and the host at the party.
Will and Gretchen.
The Smiths and Ed hammerand party down.

King Kong

I saw King Kong tonight. It's good. Great special effects. You feel sad when Kong gets it in the end. Runs a little long perhaps...3 hours. Worth checking out. Tomorrow is my office xmas party. Yipper skipper.

ASU Bowl Bound Graphic

Pretty weak all in all eh?

Shhhh

The blog is pretty quiet lately. Dad must have forgotten how to log on again!

I saw a recent ASU basketball score. They beat a team I had never heard of...ever.


Arkansas St. 91, Freed-Hardeman 77

Anyone else heard of Freed-Hardeman?

Back in the USA

The trip home was largely uneventful and somewhat shorter thanks to the nice tailwinds across the Pacific. Here are a few notes from the return flight:

Highest Altitude Recorded: 11277m or 37K feet
Coldest Temperature Recorded: -62 degrees Celsius
Top Speed Recorded: 1031km/hour or ~640 miles/hour

Some of the cities will flew close to include Kuantan, Toaman, Kota Kinabulu, Manila, Kaohsing, Okinawa and Nagoya.

The Singapore airport is a nice airport to have a few extra hours in as there is free internet (though people kind of hog the stations) and very nice shopping.



Good to be back home though where the primary goal shifts to completing Christmas shopping. :)

New Projector

Here's my new projector in action. Yuki shown for scale. This is about 6 feet from the wall and the biggest it gets from that distance. Obviously if you back it up the size increases rapidly to be as big as the wall!

It's a good thing Dave Thomas is dead

I just ate at Wendy's. I've been eating their small chili a lot lately, it's only $1.19 and tasty (I've gotten over the fact that there was a mouse head discoverd in Wendy's chili in 1996).
It was about 4:00PM so the place was dead. In fact, I was the only customer in the store. I was sitting in the dining room eating my chili as two employees were wiping tables. I overheard a conversation between the two. One asked the other if "cleaning the dining room" meant picking up garbage off the floor or whether it just meant wiping off the tables. The other responded that she had always thought it just meant wiping the tables. The floor was covered with straw wrappers, crumbs, and drink lids. They just left them. Nutty!

Chronicles of Narnia movie review

I saw Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. I loved the books as a kid and read them several times. The movie was visually awesome, but I found something missing. It moved through all the plot points, but never really explained anything and I never really understood the characters motivations very well.

The Miami Herald gets it right when they say:
"There's little warmth or depth to the characters who, for the most part, trudge through the film with little wonder at the magical journey they're making."

Worth checking out for the amazing scenery and special effects (mostly the animals). Plus, Aslan the Lion is nifty. I give it so-so marks.

Busy Day in Malaysia

Today was quite busy. We started by heading across to the mainland to visit one of our subcontractors. The only way across, aside from a boat, is the famed Penang Bridge. It is 13.5Km long and among the longest bridges in the world.



We then came back to Penang for lunch in one of the Intel cafes. It was cheap but not that great in my opinion. My meal was loaded down with bones of sorts. Judging by the way most folks cleaned their plates my opinion is likely in the minority. We then took a fairly extensive tour of one of Intel's assembly-test operations which was quite interesting.

The day concluded with one of our co-workers dropping us off in Georgetown - the Capital of Penang where we walked, shopped and enjoyed a Starbuck's Frap - at a location Winter has likely not been to:

Prangin Mall
No 33-G-1A,
Prangin Mall - Komtar,
Jalan Dr. Lim Chwee Leong,
10100 Pulau Piang

Anyway - we concluded with a nice boneless meal at McDonalds :) The double cheeseburger was tasty.

Malaysia!

I've finally made it to my hotel in Malaysia. The flight from Singapore was pretty short - just over an hour I think. The hotel I'm at is called the Shangri-La and it is one the North side of the island on the beach. The cab ride from the airport took about an hour.



Penang itself is a very small island off the Northeast portion of the mainland. Back to the hotel - it is pretty much a resort which is cool. The downfall is that it is on the other side of the island from Intel so we'll have about a hour cab ride each way. Here's a snap of the Shangri-La.

18 Hours Later...Singapore!

After an 18 hour flight that took me North to Alaska and then back down through Russia and China I'm now milling around in the Singapore airport waiting for my flight to Penang, Malaysia...Lots of shops in the airport. Next update in a day or two when I'm not stooped over a free internet station that is hard to use.

Crazy car swap

Well, the Mini is no more. I found out that it may have been wrecked before but got everything fixed in Denver. Then a month ago I was experiencing overheating and there was a belt rubbing against the radiator hose causing the leak. Got her fixed. Then last week, it was raining and it was streaming in like buckets on my head!!!! I'd had enough. I've learned my lesson about buying used from someone you don't know. For my Mini and a paltry $4000 I moved to MotorTrend's 2006 car of the year! A Honda Civic Coupe EX. It's fantastic and no leaks!!! Seriously this car is way cool. I'm going to love it until next month when I get another new car!!! HA HA HA AH AH AH A HA HA HAH AHA HA HA.

Asia Bound

I'm off to my first trip to Asia tomorrow. I leave on Friday and arrive on Sunday and will essentially completely miss Saturday. There is a 16 hour difference in time... Will post updates along the way as allowable.