What HAS Rod Been Working on at Xbox??

(Julia & what she referred to sweetly as her baby slug!)

Many of you have asked about what Rod's working on at Xbox. For those of you who don't game, it's a division of Microsoft :D Well, this week was a big week in our house because WE finally found out what Dad's top secret project that he's been working on at work is.... It's called Project Natal.

From what I understand, it's a voice, facial and gesture recognition camera that works as a controller - and will be used to play video games on the 360. Rod's the DevKit guy for Project Natal (Development Kit) - which means a lot and then not so much. He was so excited to finally be able to tell us!!

Branden, a friend of ours, co-worker of Rod's, got to go to E3 - a big electronics conference in California - and was one of the guys in charge of putting on the live demo with all of the big names - and it appeared to come off seamlessly. I watched the demo online and it was exciting to realize that Branden was backstage putting it on!! Woot! Woot!

This week also hails the end of another quarter at Skagit Valley College for Rod. He's supposed to have one more quarter where he will be taking Adobe Flash, Adobe InDesign and Advanced Webpage Design. The webpage design might get swapped out for another class - but probably not.

I am just feeling like it's a good end of week for our family. Finally Rod can tell us what he's been up to and since it's the end of a quarter, we'll be getting our evenings back with Dad!

The two webpages that he's been working on for his MIT classes are:

Our photography: http://www.herronpoint.webs.com

Our cakes: http://www.bluevaser.webs.com (this isn't even alllll of our cakes! I didn't realize we'd done SO many until I had to dig up pictures for this site for his class!!)

If we decide to actually use these sites, we'll probably change them over to their own named sites, for class they wanted us to use a freebie host. We will also probably make quite a few changes after the class has been finalized - and then much more after he's worked on the Adobe Flash. You can do some fantastic stuff with flash. These sites are basic, supposed to show, what he's learned in his books...

What A Nice Surprise!

We have the kid's school pictures taken every year. We started when Josiah was K/1st grade & have been doing it ever since. This year, we had pictures taken in the Fall - at Friday School. First Class Skagit County has had Lifetouch come in for the last few years to do school pictures/student id cards. This year - we were just going to get the most basic plan because Rod was on unemployment. Turned out that the photographer put our info in wrong - so I said I'd order them over the phone.

Here, MONTHS later, in April I ended up ordering them. Easy enough to order them over the phone. I ordered the packages I was planning on getting last Fall. When they arrived, I realized that I ordered the package that I wanted when we were on unemployment, not the package that we could afford since Rod's working... So, I had Rod (yah, I know, I give him some of those kinds of things & he's such a good sport about it!) call them & get it fixed.

They were more than happy to help us out. We realized that if we paid $9 more than we originally paid per kid, that we could get the CDR's with reprint & viewing licences. So, we paid the extra $9.00. I was kinda frustrated in figuring out the CD's & downloading each of the photos - but each of the kid's picutres came in Color, Black & White as well as Sepia.

I went ahead and uploaded the pics to Costco - to see if they would print correctly. And they did! So, I have photos that look like they came from Lifetouch at a fraction of the cost! Woohoo! I was a very good girl and took in the licence agreement - which basically says I can use the photos for whatever I would like... within reason.

Awhile ago, when Julia was 9 months old or something, we had Sears pictures done, and they gave us 10X13 Sepias for cheap or free with package. We bought frames & put them on the wall. So when I saw that I could update the wall photos - at that size for $3.00 a kid - I ordered them from Costco. Now my beautiful 10x13 frames are updated with current photos! I never thought I'd be able to update those because of their size - so that was such a nice surprise!!! I would also not ever thought to actually order a package with reprint/display rights - but i'm thinking that I like them well enough, I could do it again next year!!!

One thing that was memorable about photos this year, was that the photographer took like 10 shots of Julia to get the right one. The last one (above) was best. Her shot was 1162 or something. Then the boys, in succession Jaden, Jedediah and Josiah each took ONE shot to get the above photos - uh, that's uheard of! And what great shots - on the first try! So their shot numbers I think were 1162, 1163, 1164 and 1165 - in order! That made reordering very easy! (Photos: 2008-2009 School Pictures by Lifetouch)