When my parents and I brought my wife with us for a trip to Western Mass, I thought to myself, “you can never go back.” But some things do stay the same. My cousins Kim, Bonnie, and Mandy are just as sweet as ever. We watched as the new generation of their family did the whirlpool in their above ground pool that I used to swim in at family reunions. Their dad, uncle Ralph, would start the whirlpool and us kids would all follow and soon the current was pushing the water in one direction so fast that even if you weren’t helping to keep it going, you were enjoying it and swimming with it. Now my cousins’ kids are carrying on the tradition and we’re sitting in lawn chairs, talking. But I’ll have you know I did bring my frisbee and play with the kids. Bonnie’s kids are great at frisbee!

Here’s Kim, Misha, Bonnie, and Mandy. I joked about how my arms were long enough they could stretch out and reach my two outermost cousins at the same time!

Here’s aunt Brenda, uncle Ralph, my dad Ron, and my mom Darleen:

This was one of my favorite days! Thank you family!

Earlier today, my wife, my parents, and I attended our relatives’ annual 4th of July get together in Blandford, MA, just one town over from Russell, where we used to live in the ’70s. Since we were early, we stopped at the ski area that I grew up on, Springfield Ski Club aka Blandford Ski Area.

Here’s the North Chair which is installed over Blandford’s most expert terrain. It looks to be their most recent lift addition.

And finally, the trail map painted on the wall of the most recent lodge:

I really hope to get out this way this coming winter and ski Blandford!

A fairly quiet Core 2 Duo PC (with fanless graphics card that accelerates 1080p video) is hooked up to the HDTV via DVI to HDMI cable and optical digital audio cable for 5.1 surround sound. It’s controlled from the couch with a wireless mouse and occasionally, a keyboard. Here’s what software I use for different media viewing:

Miro for video podcasts like Tekzilla, Chikara, HD Nation, AppJudgement, Pod Surf TV, CommandN, and others

AlbumPlayer for streaming my FLAC music library from my Windows Home Server box
Minilyrics embeds into the interface.

Boxee for playing movie and other video downloads
It does a nice job with multi-channel audio and subtitles for my wife.

MAME for classic arcade games controlled with wireless X Box 360 gamepads

If you have any questions, I’ll be happy to talk more about the HTPC setup.

Taking advantage of my Microsoft Technet subscription, tonight I installed Windows Home Server on a used 2.8 gigahertz P4 that I bought on Craigslist a few weeks ago. It has a 256 gig drive and I added 2 1 TB hard drives from my NAS box. The Bit Torrent add-in is already installed. I might retire and even sell the NAS since WHS is so much more funtional.

I haven’t taken the time to write too many thoughts about my wedding from last September, 2009. Today, I called my sister Teresa and it got me thinking how much I appreciate her. My wedding day was also her wedding anniversary and she came all the way from Georgia to Massachusetts to be with me on her special day. The morning of the wedding, my co-best man, George Wong and I left the hotel together and met with my parents and my sister for a low key breakfast. We didn’t have to rush. It was perfect. George got to meet Teresa and the two of them got to know each other. Thanks to George for taking this photo and for coming all the way from California to be the *best* best man I could ask for. After breakfast, George and I took a different route than my parents took to the wedding site and we got a little lost. GPS wasn’t working too well so we arrived a little later than I would have liked. My wife and her family, who had arrived much earlier and had already done a lot of decorating, were worried! George and I formed a plan and immediately put our energy into setting up the sound system, then changing.

I hope to write more thoughts about the wedding at some point.