Blackmans on the Web (log)

Alex was inducted into the National Honor Society tonight. It was a nice ceremony with our mayor, Mike Simpson, as the guest speaker. One hundred and twenty seven kids were inducted into this years class. More photos are available by clicking on the image below.

Just returned from the 2005 Oracle OpenWorld conference in San Francisco. OpenWorld was totally packed this year. Over 40,000 people. Way too big for my taste. Made it kind of tough to get to sessions and do any kind of meaningful networking.

The closing night party was a big event held at Fishermans Wharf Pier 31. The location was right at the base of the Bay Bridge. It was a nice night. Temperature was a little chilly, but nice compared to the 100 degrees in Dallas! While the whole 40,000 attendees weren’t at the party, there was a huge crowd none-the-less. The line for libations was too long to justfiy standing in line for 20 minutes only to get a 6 oz. cup for beer.

There were several bands slated to play including Fountains of Wayne (famous for “Stacy’s Mom”), Berlin, Bow Wow Wow and the Motels. The featured band was Counting Crows.

The Crows put on a great show (in my opinion). Train played at the PeopleSoft Conference last year and – while not bad – only played for about an hour or so. The Crows played a nearly full set and were on stage for almost two hours.

Bought a new Sigma lens for my Canon 350XT and got some great shots. Kind of grainy because I had the camera set at ISO 1600, but still nice. You can check’em out here

Just returned from our Wisconsin vacation. Ann’s nephew, Peter, and his fiance, Amy, were married on June 12. It was a beautiful wedding on an unusually hot Wisconsin Sunday.In addition, there was a Wambach family reunion on Saturday. It had been 4 years since we’d all been to Wisconsin, 12 years since the last “official” Wambach reunion.Finally, our soon to be (too soon for my taste) college bound son Alex had a chance to take a nice tour of the University of Wisconsin at Madison with his high school senior cousin Andy Simon-Wambach. “It was cool!” said the boy. He even got stopped by a “hippie” on State St. Imagine that. And in Madison of all places!

Back home again in Indiana! Even though I haven’t lived there in 25 years, it still feels like home. It’s great to have all those elementary, junior high and high school memories come flowing back as we get reaquainted with old (and I do mean OLD!) friends from the past. Hats off to the Steve and Angie Hornak for hosting a great event at their beautiful Richmond home (estate!). It was a perfect location for all of us to gather and we thank you for opening up your home to all of us. Hope it wasn’t trashed too bad by the time everyone cleared out.This years celebration was quite a bit smaller than our 20th, but it was a nice change of pace. The smaller turn out allowed us to all have more time to really catch up. It was nice to have relaxed conversation to catch up on families, careers and life in general.