Trick or Treat?

Where are all the kids? It's 7:45PM and we have pounds of candy left over. I must have the wrong idea of what trick or treating was like when I was a child. This is my first Halloween living in my own home and the experience is completely new to me. I live in a friendly suburb with houses all around me and we are giving candy away by the shovel-full... I don't get it.

Babbysitting responsiblites complete

What a fun weekend it was to practice as a parent. I changed diapers, installed a carseat, pushed a stroller - what more can a guy ask for? We had a fantastic time at the zoo. It was "Boo at the Zoo" so the place was decorated in all sorts of Halloween-like ways with staff members in costumes and kids wearing all sorts of cute ditties. The weather was great, but forecasters must have scared people off; the place was nearly empty. Parking was a breeze and there was not a single wait for anything - food, bathroom, attractions. I need to go more often at this time of the year.

The moral of this story is that my neice left in one piece and was a joy to be around for 48 hours.

Baby sitting

Night two is under way. So far so good as we round the home stretch babysiting for my neice. She's a well-mannered 23-month old...

Nextel Two-Way Message

Testing Nextel.

I have a future in voice-over

I work for a very large company. I used to work for a very small IT consulting firm. Both have their advantages. My current place of employment is in the notifications industry (voice, e-mail, text, fax [yes, people still use fax]) where we make phone calls for many clients; I manage the production operations side of the house (servers, networks, applications, etc).

One such client wants to send out a blast call to alert customers in SoCal that their homes are on fire and they won't be getting their prescriptions as previously thought because the entire earth is ablaze and UPS/FedEx/DHL cannot deliver to a slab of concrete.

I've been tapped to voice the call that will ultimately touch the lives of, oh, about 15-75 people. To be completely honest, I've only been asked because the female voice talent that did the last call happens to have a vacation day today. In case you don't know, female voices are more sought-after than male voices. When was the last time you went through an automated voice prompting menu and it was a male voice? I digress. We'll see how it goes.

Multimedia message

Testing MMS from my BlackBerry...

Origins of "The Bun Maker" moniker

So I went Halloween costume shopping. I'm not that into Halloween, not sure why. I've decided to give it a go (have to show up to company party with costume - "highly recommend"). So I'm at a mega store (some old bookstore in a strip mall that went under) and I am desperate for something that impresses. I'm not interested in ghouls and gobblins, etc. and this is my third store looking for something interesting. I thought about being "Neo" from the Matrix, but it just didn't seem right...

Until I found the one that really hit home - "The Bun Maker". It's a simple costume, really. It has an apron and a chef's hat (the big, puffy, white kind). On the apron, it reads "The Bun Maker". On the package it reads, "Goes well with 'Bun in the Oven' lady's costume". My wife is prego and could deliver our first child any day now.

She's currently home on a Dr.-ordered leisure lifestyle which means she needs to try to do very little and stay horizontal. A dream, right? Wrong. Give it some thought and it's really like a death sentence. Sure, you get to stay home, but do what? She cannot cook, clean, go for a walk, clean house, shop, etc. You get my point. Anyway, back to the costume.

I really clicked with the silly $30 costume and bought it. I hope the folks at work *get* it. And that's how I came up with my blog name.