Here are some pictures to help sort out which name belongs to which kid, how they are related to each other, and ultimately how they are related to me. I suggest you keep this email handy so that when you read the others you can easily refer back to it and sort out who is who.

We celebrated Beth’s 12^th Birthday last Saturday! I’ve uploaded the pictures from the party to the H57 Photo Album, and you can see them here: Beth’s 12^th Birthday Party.

	Samantha She’s 14, in the 8th grade, loves to sing (Honors Chorus at school, Adult Choir at church) makes good grades, and is an all around Good Kid ™!
	Bethany She’s 12, in the 6th grade, loves to play her Trombone (she’s first chair!), is perhaps more full of fun and joy than any two other people in the house, and is our resident Fashion Diva™.
	Collin He is 3, in daycare, loves to be either Spiderman or Batman, beats up more bad guy’s before breakfast than most people do all day long, and is our resident Monkey Get In Trouble Too™.
	Abby She is 2, in daycare, loves all manner of beauty products, brushes her hair and changes her outfit before breakfast more times than most people do all week, and is our resident Drama Queen™.
	Ethan He is 1 (the one holding the green sippy cup!), in daycare, eats almost as much as I do (I’m seriously considering starting a savings fund now just to feed this kid as he gets older) loves to hug and give slobbery kisses (teeth coming in) that make the dog cringe! He is our resident Monkey Boy™.
	Daniel He is 4, in pre-school, and loves Power Rangers, Super Hero’s, and Playstation 2! Seriously, this kid rocks on the PS2, I hope he goes Pro when he gets older. He is our resident Monkey Do™. NOTE: This is Scott & Mary Ann Hines’ oldest son. Mine and Tracey’s nephew.
	Luke He is 1, stay’s home with mom (and dad), loves …. Mom (and dad), and has one of the most beautiful smiles you will ever run across. He has recently started walking and is our resident Cuddle Monkey™. NOTE: This is Scott & Mary Ann Hines’ youngest son. Mine and Tracey’s nephew.

Remember the link I provided a few days ago (Lawyer: Ripping MP3s Illegal, Grounds for Lawsuit) regarding MP3 Shredding? Well, apparently I was passing around some rather poor journalism – according the this blog on c|netNews.com titled RIAA shreds Washington Post story in debate – now this comic seems appropriate.

So, I do apologize for spreading panic and malcontent! You can safely burn your CD’s to MP3’s again … as long as you don’t share them with anyone else!

On the other hand, my favorite Candidate (Mike Huckabee – http://www.mikehuckabee.com/) won the Iowa Caucus! With 95 percent of Republican precincts reporting, Huckabee, former governor of Arkansas, had the support of 34 percent of voters, compared to 25 percent for Romney. Fred Thompson had 13 percent, McCain had 13 percent and Ron Paul had 10 percent. Whoot!

You can read the CNN Article here, some fun Endoresments here, and see some cool videos here.

I have come to appreciate O’REILLY books for their practicality – and this book in particular is a stunning example of pragmatism and practicality. You should read it if for no other reason than that!

The author (Steve Souders of Yahoo!) shares fourteen easy steps that any front-end web designer can take to optimize performance. He give a general nod to the fact that most people expect that the back-end is where all the optimization can and should take place, and goes on to demonstrate with stunning clarity that “In reality, for most web pages, less than 10-20% of the end user response time is spent getting the HTML Document from the web server to the browser.”

He provides hard numbers on tracking a Web Pages performance and will provide you with all the tools necessary in order for you to evaluate your own pages. As he states, “In any optimization effort, it’s critical to profile current performance to identify where you can achieve the greatest improvements.”

After convincing you of the fact that the front end needs to be tweaked to get the best performance, he goes on to propose 14 elegant rules for optimizing a page. Some seem relatively straight forward, others seem bizarre upon first glance, and some others seem downright contrary on first glance.

However, with a systematic ease he goes on to demonstrate the logic as well as the potential benefits associated with each one. You will find that not all are necessarily appropriate to all projects, but that you will want to print out the list of 14 rules and stick on the wall next to you so that you can ask yourself which are appropriate for the current project.

All in all, it was a very fast read, well organized, imminently applicable, and in some way’s eye opening. I thoroughly enjoyed reading it and I believe that you will to.

ISBN-10 #: 0-596-52930-9

ISBN-13 #: 978-0-596-52930-7

Recommended?: Yes

Another awe inspiring read from O’REILLY – I mean really, it’s stuff like this that makes you wonder what sort of penny pincher is keeping us from having a Corporate Safari Online Bookshelf!

This book looks at application architecture, development practices, technologies, Unicode, and general infrastructure work, and the Author (Cal Henderson) nails it! Cal draws on his experience designing and developing for www.flickr.com which belongs to Yahoo! Inc. and it appears that experience is extensive.

He also has a fun and disarming writing style, which makes what could be relatively dry technical information far more fun and engaging. A real page turner, I actually stayed up late one night reading in bed simply because I couldn’t put it down and wanted to know what he would say next … for three chapters! I finally passed out from pure exhaustion.

I can’t stress enough that every developer should read this, but it is (in my opinion) required reading for anyone building web applications, performing any sort of architectural or design role, and associated in anyway with anything that calls itself “Enterprise” or “Global”.

Buy this book and read it now. If I had the money and time, I’d buy the book for you and then read it out loud to you!

ISBN-10 #: 0-596-10235-6

ISBN-13 #: 978-0-596-10235-7

Recommended?: Yes