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Well, I did indeed make it back home... to an exhausted wife and a poor sick-o of a kid. In fact, Ellie's had some major congestion for the past several days, with a nasty drainage-caused cough. Ick.

Sarahlynn's younger sister and fiance came into town this weekend for a visit, so we decided to go to the St. Louis Renaisance Faire out in Wentzville. That's actually the place we bought Ellie's first article of clothing, a little renaisance style jumper with fleur de lis on it, even before she was born. The weather was WAY too hot, though. We really overheated little sick Ellie. When she woke up from her nap, around 4:45, she had a fever of 103!! We quickly encouraged her to drink lots of fluids, and gave her some tylenol to break the feaver. By bedtime, she was fealing great again. And now she's happily up-and-at'em at 5:30 this morning! Arrrrgh - as the pirates at the faire would say.

100th Post

So, unlike my wife, who's probably on her 10,000th post... I'm makeing my 100th post today. So, I'm not as prolific as she. I think it's paid off for her, though!

This 100th post is coming from lovely San Francisco, CA. I'm out on the west coast for a business conference (Informatica World) this week, reluctantly leaving behind my lovely wife and daughter. We decided to trade a trip to San Francisco in May for a trip back to Disney World in September when I'll be presenting at another conference (Teradata Partners). For fun, this week, I've decided to blog my experiences at the Informatica World 2006 conference. So, if you're interested in that kind of thing, feel free to stop by and read/comment.

On other news, my birthday was yesterday. I don't feel any older.... and I don't really think I am. Everyone assumes I'm in my mid 30s, and I'm still not there yet. I guess I should find it envigorating to still be younger that I appear. I'm not quite bald or so gray that it stands out, yet. Once I catch up in age to people's expectations, I guess I'll feel old then.

ASCII Maps

It's taken me a while to really catch on to what the industry means by "Web 2.0," but I think I'm finally getting it.

There's a great blog about different ways that people are using the Google Maps API. Today I saw my favorite use yet: ascii maps! Google map images rendered using ASCII art.