Next time painting duty arrives and you need to keep paint from sipping under the blue tape keep this in mind.

Paint with the color that is underneath the tape first. This color will seep under the edges and create a seal. When it dries, then paint with the wall color. (link)

Sunday night is upon us and we are getting ready for the week ahead by watching the Academy Awards – great to see Martin Scorsese finally win his Oscar!

I finally took some time this weekend to do a couple of technology upgrades around the house. Saturday afternoon I upgraded the operating system in my Powerbook from Panther (10.3) to Tiger (10.4) and I am well aware of the fact that I am over a year late to this party. However, until recently I really never had the need to make the upgrade despite having the disk sitting in my cabinet for a few months now. What changed? well, I have noticed more and more applications required 10.4 as the host operating system and I also wanted the benefits of Safari 2 and the new Mail.app.

The upgrade went without a problem and I chose to do a simple upgrade over my current OS despite recommendations to follow the archive & installation method. I never had any problems with the previous version so I chose to use the simplest method to upgrade and things appear to be working just fine.

I also changed the wireless router for our home network since my parent’s gave me a new one for my birthday. We are moving up the wireless spectrum and have made the change to a 802.11g/b router from Linksys, the WRTSL54GS to be more specific. My powerbook can now benefit from the higher speeds available on the 802.11g mode, while still supporting our older laptop and the tivo through the 802.11b mode.

The best part about this router is the ability to share USB-attached storage throughout the network. So we can finally have a shared-folder without having to share it through a specific PC. I will have to write more this feature later on since I didn’t have a spare hard-drive to connect to the router. I am planning on moving our iTunes library and photo collections to this drive so we can access them all of our computers around the house.

I actually spent time away from the pc over the weekend in case you were wondering. We were invited to dinner by our neighbors upstairs and we had a great evening with them, specially after three bottles of red wine!. Today, we made the best of the cool weather and went hiking around Pinnacle Peak park but not before having a great breakfast at home which was a great surprise to wake up to.

Emails have been sent and the news have circulated to the point that I can actually write on the topic on this site. Effective Feb 5th, I became the Interim Director of our department. It is a great opportunity and a challenge that I am very happy to take.

We have a great office and plenty of opportunities for a successful future, two factors that make it a lot easier to accept this opportunity. My responsibilities will continue to include the technical infrastructure of our organization and continue the integration of our processes into the campus-wide enterprise applications. In addition, I will also support our staff through the day-to-day operations and make sure we all succeed.

Yesterday started early with a 7am conference call and I was running late, fortunately traffic was pretty light and I was able to make it just on time. From that point forward it was business as usual and for treated myself to FatBurger for lunch.

I headed home to meet Sarah and open up a couple of presents. I got a great gift from Linda/Dwight/Janessa, a framed painting of the 1824 Alamo flag. I’ll have to get the full story from them but it is very cool. I also now have a grown-up watch, courtesy of Sarah and Swiss Army and a shirt that I have been searching for God-knows how long. My parents helped with the technology upgrade around our house and kicked in a new router which should come online next week and will give me yet something else to blog about.

We highlight of the evening was dinner with Sarah. She looked amazing and our meal at Drinkwater’s City Hall was out of this world. For desert we went for gelato and a cappuccino from Olive & Ivy. She has been to it before and I have been wanting to check it out so this was a very good opportunity.

Thanks to everyone for the good wishes, I am sorry for those calls that I could not take during dinner but I appreciate your call and texts. So we are now officially living the 30s and thus far I would say it is going to be a-ok!

Tonight marks a new phase in Mexican and American soccer, when both teams face each other here in Arizona. It is a new phase due to the coaching changes both teams made after the World Cup, but also because it is the start for a new generation of players to make their presence known in their country’s National team.

The game is at University of Phoenix Stadium here in Glendale. I have not been able to see the stadium first hand although I have seen just about every tv show made about it. We are going with several guys from our soccer team, even getting a little early to do some tailgating before the game kicks off. Univision and ESPN2 are both television the game which has been sold out for a few days now.

update: the final score does not really reflect what went on inside the field. Both teams seemed a little unsettled, playing the game with more strength than skill and letting scoring opportunities go (especially Mexico!). We had great seats, just a few rows up from the pitch. There were a lot more American supporters than one would’ve imagined for a Mexico game on the west coast, overall there were about 63,000 in attendance supporting their colors.

So Mexico did not look all that great and once again the speed of the American’s was a factor, especially up front with Donovan creating dangerous opportunities with his runs. Mexico created a lot of opportunities and once would say they dominated the game. However, possession time does not win games and the US put away the chances they had — by the way, what a great assist by the ref on the second goal. We’ll see what Hugo brings to the table once his teaching/learning process starts to sit in with the players. For now, it was great to be able to watch these two teams in our backyard.