Here’s a 4-minute highlight video of the 2008 Civil War football game between my beloved Oregon Ducks and the Oregon State Beavers. It was one of the most satisfying football games I’ve ever watched as a diehard Duck fan. Highlights in the video include “More Than A Feeling” by Boston as the soundtrack, and many shots of dejected Beaver fans realizing they aren’t headed to the Rose Bowl.
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Our family welcomed a new member on February 12th as my wife gave birth to Caiden James McCarthy. Everything went smooth and the whole family has been enjoying the past week together playing with him and adjusting to having five of us in the house now.

I can already tell it’s good having some more testosterone in the house, and I’ve already noticed some subtle and not-so-subtle differences between having a baby boy after having two baby girls before. It’s also amazing how quickly you fall in love with your own kids, it’s instant. Such a fascinating thing, but it also makes sense.
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Picture: The Garstkas

December is normally a crazy month due to the holidays, but this may be my busiest ever with the combination of that and various travel. Normally my travel is very work-based, but this month already featured a weekend trip to Laguna Beach for my best friend and coworker Brad Nelson’s wedding. It was a fantastic time with long time friends that will be a great memory to look back on.
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Yesterday was my 31st birthday. As you can see above, my kids decided a great present for me would be to get a new kitten. I’m not sure if the gift was for me or for them, but so far “Jonesy” the kitten has been a fun addition around the house.

Having a birthday around Thanksgiving is both good and bad. It’s bad because Thanksgiving isn’t my favorite holiday because I don’t really like the standard Thanksgiving food, I don’t like eating dinner early in the afternoon, and having Thanksgiving leftovers isn’t a bonus for me since I didn’t like the food in the first place. However, it’s good because there’s usually family and friends in town, it’s a holiday weekend so people have time off from work and school, there’s lots of sports to watch live or on TV, and it’s a good time to reflect on things in which we are thankful.

I must say as I’ve hit 31 I’m extremely thankful for so many things in my life. I’ve reached most of the goals I sort of mentally set for myself in my early 20s both personally, professionally, and financially. My family is just amazing, as every day feels like a gift when I’m with them. I have a great set of friends who constantly make me laugh, and a job that is challenging but also rewarding. I also am just glad to have made it this far on this round rock of life, and am happy to be working in the web industry which I truly believe is changing the world for the better.

So while most people wait for the New Year’s resolutions, I like to set some goals at my birthday since it’s close enough anyway. Here goes for the 31st year of my life:

• Be a supportive husband and father as my wife is due to have our third child in February. That means a good portion of my year will be carrying around a newborn, which is an amazing experience.
• Teach my girls more. It’s hard to realize how fast they’re growing up, and I think they’re ready to try more things and learn more than I sometimes realize. I’ve erred on the side of caution in being pushy and letting them choose the things they’re interested in pursuing.
• Eat healthier. I’ve made strides here, but can continue to get better. Damn that Dr. Pepper addiction.
• Continue to excel professionally. There are constantly new challenges, skills to learn, smart people to learn from, and learning how to be a better manager and coworker.
• Give more time and money to worthy causes. I’ve been doing more of this as I grow older, but I want to do more as I’ve realized giving time, money, and support to the right causes can be a rewarding experience. I’d especially like to give more time, but that seems to be the hardest thing to come by these days.
• Learn to play the guitar. I’ve dabbled on and off in short bursts over the years, but have never truly dedicated myself to “learning” how to play well.

That seems like it’s enough for now. That’s a lot to accomplish, and some of those are hard to measure, but those are the focuses for now. It seems like most bloggers would set some blogging related goal, but I’ve learned to relax about blogging. At one point I felt a lot of internal pressure to constantly post, but now I’ve realized it suits me best to blog on my own time when I have something to say. Maybe I should set a goal to have more to say in the next year? Sure, as long as it doesn’t get in the way of my other goals!

A few weeks ago my car window was bashed in during the middle of the night parked in front of my house and my stereo and sunglasses were stolen. Beyond it just being annoying that it’s against the law and to have your stuff stolen, I also had to spend time and money to get the window replaced and get a new stereo.

Then today our other car was left unlocked outside for a little while in front of my wife’s parents house in a decent neighborhood during the middle of the day while they were home, and we arrive and find out to find about 20 kids DVDs were stolen out of the car. Luckily the DVDs were all that were stolen, but it’s still really irritating. I know far greater travesties are occurring all over the world every day, but it was just another close to home reminder that human behavior is not as good as I normally think it is.

While I love the fact that my wife and I have already been so lucky to have two wonderful girls, we found out today that we’ll be having a boy sometime this February. While I would have been very happy with another girl as well, it’s going to be a great experience to raise a boy and have a son. My wife and our girls seem very excited, but let’s just hope he’s not as much of a web nerd as I am.

My wife informed me today that she’s pregnant with our third child! Great news, and I really feel more excited than the previous times we learned she was pregnant. I think I’m just so comfortable as a dad now and understand how great my kids are and I can’t wait to have another one. Now it’s time for the wait to see if it’ll be our third girl, which I’d love, or our first boy, which I’d also love.
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I haven’t been posting much over the last week, and that’s mainly because my time at home on the computer is being spent moving from my old machine to a new Dell Dimension Desktop with Vista as the operating system.

First let me say that Vista is nice. It feels smoother, looks better, and has some nice features. However, I’ve still spent five nights moving data, installing new applications, reconfiguring applications, troubleshooting, rebooting, and more. In this day and age can’t we make it any easier to upgrade from one operating system to the other?