After yesterday's nauseating start with Space Mountain. I thought I would be much wiser this morning. So on our way to the Animal Kingdom, I take my dramamine on the way inside the park. My little IPhone app is telling me there is already a 30 minute wait on the Everest Expedition, so I figure I have plenty of time for the dramamine to kick in. We get to Everest and they're reporting a 10 minute wait. No problem, I think to myself. It's an open air roller coaster and I'm sure it won't bother me as much as Space Mountain did yesterday because Space Mountain is all in the dark and Everest is an outdoor coaster.

So even though it's only been about 20 minutes since I've taken the dramamine, I figure everything is hunky dorry and I'll be good to go. We start off up the hill and go around a couple of corners and come to a dead end where the track has been torn up. We stop and I figure that the torn up track will lift out of the way and we'll continue down the hill. Wrong. We stop and then all of a sudden, we take off backwards through a tunnel in total blackness. Okay, so this is like Space Mountain only there is no light and we're going backwards.

My entire system goes into immediate overload as I try and orient myself in the darkness. Lily is screaming in utter joy besides me and I'm screaming in terror praying I don't throw up all over her. I slam my eyes shut, hoping that somehow the wind will help my body gain its balance. No use. All I can do now is hang on until the ride's merciful ending. Luckily, once again I don't throw up but I am out of commission for the next couple of hours. We take a nice gentle ride on the Kali Rapids but I refuse to go on the Everest Expedition after that.

Maybe tomorrow we can play miniture golf .

We got to Disney on Sunday around 8:00pm. Surprisingly enough we got up early on monday (for us) and made it to the Magic Kingdom a little after 9:00. I was excited to be there and ride the rides this year with Lily. Here's how the morning mapped out:

9:15 - arrive at the Magic Kingdom's front gate

9:25 - entrance to Space Mountain

9:28 - board the Space Mountain coaster

9:28:30 - disembark for ride

9:29 - coaster goes down the first hill

9:29:15 - breakfast starts to come up

9:30 - Closed eyes and legs braced against the side

9:31 - Praying commences, "Please god, don't let me get sick".

9:33 - Sweat pours off my body as my inner ear engages every system to determine what horizontal is.

9;34 - Ride over and prayers answered. No throwing up.

So much for my new found attitude on riding the rides. Luckily, I found some dramamine at one of the park's stores (they hide it behind the counter, not on display). I took some and felt much better after lunch. I rode Thunder Mountain and had a great time. Maybe today, I'll take the dramamine before going to the park.

So about a year ago, I decided I was going to learn a new Microsoft web application framework - ASP.NET MVC. I started reading a bunch of articles and found out not only did I need to understand a Model View Controller architecture but I also should find out about the new .Net stuff that I hadn't learned quite yet - things like generics, lambda expressions, and Language Integrated Query (LINQ). LINQ led me to LINQ to SQL (ouch) and onto the ADO.NET Entities Framework and LINQ to Entities.

Because the MVC framework is much more HTML oriented and because I've always wanted to do a better job on the HTML/CSS/Javascript/AJAX on this site, I had to brush up on CSS. Brushing up on CSS made me want to brush up on Javascript which led me to discover JQuery, a great Javascript Library. JQuery lets me do thing much more easily with AJAX.

I also wanted to get a better blog entry editor. So I started looking around and found tinyMCE.

So what started off as a nice little side project to learn something new, turned into this much bigger learning experience. I've learned a lot technically, but it was also a great way to dive right into how applications are being developed for the web. The experience has really lessened my pre-existing bias against open source projects. JQuery and tinyMCE are great products/projects/applications which I am happy to integrate into my development cycle.

There's still alot of work to do on the site:

• Get photos and photo galleries working 
• Integrate Twitter and Facebook
• Get videos working
• Allow for clean RSS feeds of content
• Integrate AJAX into photo slide shows and blog where appropriate
• Provide a great IPhone/mobile experience

But overall, this has been a great learning experience.

I think for this year, I'm going to take on IPhone development.

See ya later!

We got back to Seattle and Lily had Choir Camp, Drama Camp, Soccer Camp, and Puppy Camp. I think her favorite was Puppy Camp (surprise, surprise) followed by Drama Camp.

We took a great car trip around Oregon in August. We stopped at Cannon Beach, Florence, Crater Lake, and Sun River. They were all pretty awesome. Crater Lake was particularly striking in its beauty. On the way back from Oregon, we stopped north of Portland and picked up a new dog - Ginger. Ginger is a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel and a real lap dog. So far, I've not been impressed by her house training skills.

Last night we had dinner out at the Cheesecake Factory. Today we saw Ponyo. It was pretty good but probably targeted at a younger audience than Lily. She seemed to have liked it. All three of us really liked the drawing and the color palette.

Today was the last day of the summer. We had a great time this summer. On the day after school ended, we flew to Atlanta and visited with my mom and two brothers. My mom seems to be doing well but her memory and concentration don't seem to be as sharp as they were at one point. I believe it's related to the stress and depression she's experienced since my father's death. But my brother Mark seems to be doing great. He has partnered with two ex-IBMers to start-up a consulting company focused on social networking. My brother David continues to have work woes related to working for Michaels. His boss seems like a real piece of work. David might not help the situation - going to corporate to complain about him.

After Atlanta we went to Cape Cod and had a nice visit with Emily's family. Everything went pretty smoothly. The weather was the coolest I remember it being which made it a bit nippy. But it really cut down on the bugs. Probably, the one rough spot was the discussion about my recently purchased IPhone. Seems my brother-in-law doesn't like the the IPhone, or AT&T wireless, or data plans. I was going to try and convince him it's not about the phone but about all the applications for it, but he didn't want to hear it. Made me feel pretty uncomfortable about the whole subject. But I loved the IPhone and ran with it everyday, listening to Democracy Now or Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me, or my tunes. Plus, I kept current on all the news because of the internet access. Speaking of internet access, Dot and Dana got a high speed cable modem installed while we were there and it made things very pleasant.

I watched Nixon/Frost, the Wrestler, and He's Just not that in to You on the flights back and forth. I liked Nixon/Frost the best.