Todd's Tips

The other evening, the girls convinced me to go sit with them at the little playground behind our house, so that Jaiden could come ... Jasmine is there pretty much every day. Jaiden is really hitting her 2 year old "independent" streak at a full running pace ... especially when it comes to her big sister ... she thinks that anything Jasmine can do, she can do too. Unfortunately, Jasmine is simultaneously hitting her 8 year old "mean big sister" streak. Right now it's about 50/50. 50% of the time, she's still a great kid, and an awesome big sister who's very helpful and kind to Jaiden. However, with increasing frequency, she's also the big sister who will alternately tease and/or ignore her younger sibling. This image above at the park kind of illustrates the situation perfectly ... Jasmine and Jaiden had been playing together nicely, then one of Jasmine's friends showed up. Suddenly, as far as Jas was concerned, Jaiden no longer existed. P

For some reason, my wife is not a huge fan of the big purple guy. As for me, I'm not at all ashamed to admit that I love Barney! ... especially as the parent of a toddler. To say that Jaiden is a "active" little girl, at just under 2 years of age, is a bit of an understatement. Lately it seems like it's gotten to the point where she gets into pretty much everything. So, as you can probably imagine, "watching" her can be pretty much a full time job. And since I've been known to enjoy my "goofing off" time, if I can find a way to keep her quiet, occupied, and out of trouble, I'm all for it. Barney fits the bill perfectly. It comes on PBS every day at 12:30, and you'd better believe we record it on the DVR. Later in the evening, usually while Ana or I is cooking dinner, Jaiden will sit for 30-90 minutes watching (and interacting with) Barney on the TV. She sings along with the songs, dances, and even talks to the characters. And the

Let me start off by saying that I am not an expert on poker bankroll management. There are plenty of good resources out there, for determining exactly how much money you should have available for whatever type/level of game you intend to play. Instead, I'm going to share a few personal mistakes from a "normal" guy who plays relatively low stakes online poker. I strongly suspect that I am not alone in making a few of these errors. So without further ado, let's get to it ... First, a couple of "no brainers". This one actually applies to any type of gambling - Never, ever, ever gamble with money that you actually need for something else (like rent). If you find yourself in this situation, stop playing, and go get help. Now that we've established that we're only going to play with "fun money", the next step is to make sure that you load up enough cash that you can afford to lose, should you hit a run of bad luck. Along those same lines, I&

I love sunsets, and since my house is right in the Honolulu International airport approach path, we constantly have planes overhead. So, it's a natural picture combination. That being said, like any picture, sometimes these sunset airplane shots need a little help to become a bit more interesting. After playing around for a little while with this one, I think it's definitely more interesting, but I'm not too sure that's a flight I'd really want to be on ... Even so, it's today's Hawaii Picture of the Day . Aloha, Todd

Ok, so most mornings as I'm getting ready for work, I throw a couple of cans of soda in a plastic bag, along with various other essential snack material, to get me through the day. Well, apparently one day last week, one of my sodas "escaped" from the bag, and decided to hide underneath the front passenger seat of my car. ... where it sat for the past few days, in 100 degree heat. So then, earlier this afternoon, as I'm driving home for lunch, the Diet Mt Dew can rolled out onto the floor. I saw it, and thought "no big deal" ... until I went around a corner, causing the can to roll at an accelerated pace, and hit something on the bottom of the seat ... at which point it exploded! ... with a "bang" and all. Not really too big of a deal. It scared me for a second, and now I have a bit of a mess to clean up. But otherwise, it actually gave me a good excuse to write a blog post to go along with my project365 picture today. ;-) Todd