Jewl Of The Lotus

the sound that strengthens compassion in all enlightened beings. om mani padme hum.

 

Cuisine Theme Week No. 10: Greek

The Complete Bookof Greek Cooking Man, this month’s cuisine week was pretty hard to keep going – more on that in my next blog post – but everything ended up really excellent. The recipes were all pretty basic, using a lot of fresh and flavorful ingredients. It was the perfect refreshing cuisine for the...

 

grandomizr – a jQuery group randomizer

Some of you might recall my last open source project – SlickQuiz. Well, I’m at it again. I’ve recently released my second open source project – grandomizr, through my company Quicken Loans. Quicken Loans launched an open source initiative just a few months ago which has been steadily picking up steam. I get bragging...

 

Drink of the Day: Juliet & Romeo

I’m going to pretend that this is the beginning of a new segment of my blog, but who knows, maybe this will be the one and only post. In any case, this cocktail is far too fabulous NOT to share with the world! The Juliet & Romeo. It’s light, refreshing, and deceptively strong. Similar...

 

Cuisine Theme Week No. 9: Ethiopian

Ethiopian CookbookA Beginner’s Guide This year’s cuisine weeks are half way over, but still going strong! This month’s theme was Ethiopian, a cuisine I’ve never even tried until now, and that turned out pretty tasty. A lot of the dishes are hearty and very stew-like. Many of these stews are supposed to be served...

 

10 Years Ago, Today: A Story From My Life

My Dad There’s something about my life that many of you do not know. Something that I’ve not been very open about. I’m not even sure how to talk about it now, because I never really have. But… it’s been 10 years, so now seems like a good time to start. My dad killed...

 

SlickQuiz WordPress Plugin is Live!

Hey all! A few months ago, you might remember that I released my SlickQuiz jQuery plugin into the wild – and so far, I’d say it’s been pretty successful! It’s had several pull requests on github, tons of great feature requests, and it even helped spur the open source movement at my company, Quicken...

 

Spring Awakening Music Festival in Chicago

Wow! What an utterly crazy fun weekend! Without even seeing any numbers, I think it’s safe to say that the first ever Spring Awakening Music Festival (SAMF) in Chicago was a HUGE success. I didn’t hear anything negative about the festival while I was there (except maybe re: the high price of water) and...

 

Future Insights Live in Vegas

Julie’s Vegas Flickr Set Vegas. What else needs to be said? It’s been a few weeks since I returned and life is finally starting to get back to normal (ish). Future Insights Live was an amazing conference – there were great talks, great people, great insight, great parties ;), and, of course, great Vegas....

 

Cuisine Theme Week No. 8: Jamaican

Lucinda’s AuthenticJamaican Kitchen Cuisine Week for the month of May officially ended last night with a stellar BBQ, certainly the highlight of Jamaican Week! Overall, I was somewhat disappointed with Jamaican Week. I was expecting much bolder flavors and vibrant dishes, but maybe the lack of those has more to do with my choice...

 

Cuisine Theme Week No. 7: Indian

My Indian Kitchen It’s that time again – another Cuisine Week in the can! This month’s cuisine was Indian – which I haven’t had too often in the past – but what I have had was really good. In practice, this week had it’s highs and lows. A few of the dishes were absolutely...

 

Cuisine Theme Week No. 6: Irish

My Irish Cookbok Of course, with March being the month of St. Patrick’s Day, I felt it only proper to dedicate this month’s Cuisine Week to the Irish. There is a rumor in my family that one of our ancestors was Irish – I haven’t found that ancestor yet – but perhaps they, whoever...

 

Cuisine Theme Week No. 5: French

Well, February’s Cuisine Week was scheduled for last week, but due to sickness I decided to push it back a week. That was a great decision because as it turns out, every main course out of Mastering the Art of French Cooking takes about three hours to make, so I needed to be at...

 

RootsTech 2012 Recap

Well once again, RootsTech was a huge success. With registrations up over 30% from last year, we had over 4000 genealogists and developers in attendance. And if I had to guess, there were probably twice as many developers as last year. Maybe it’s because I’ve been up since 5am, have a cold, and generally...

 

I Won the Ancestry.com 15 Days of Discovery Grand Prize!

Wow. So, who knew those online contests where you can win trips and meet celebrities ever paid off?!?! It turns out, the grand prize is not a lie. Because I won it!! No joke. Each day for two weeks, I submitted my basic contact information to the Ancestry.com 15 Days of Discovery sweepstakes hoping...

 

Cuisine Theme Week No. 4: Vietnamese

It’s 2012!! Wow, did 2011 go by fast!? A big part of what made it such a good and fast year for me was my journey into the world of real cooking. Prior to April, we didn’t stray too far from the norm – Foreman burgers, frozen bagged dinners, pizza, quesodillas – things that...

 

Wow, 2011 Was Pretty Awesome

I can’t believe 2011 is over… seriously… I can’t. Fastest. Year. Ever. 2011 was phenomenal. Insane. Exhilarating. Awesome. Joyful. Busy. Just all around generally incredible. Probably my favorite year in my <27 years of existence. Here’s just a few reasons why: Marriage – Best day of my life. We did it!! And it was...

 

SlickQuiz jQuery Plugin – now on github!

Sweet!! I just released my very first jQuery plugin on github – SlickQuiz! SlickQuiz, simply put, is: A jQuery plugin for creating pretty, dynamic quizzes. I’ll let the demo speak for itself – check it out below!! Check out the github page for all the technical details! Update 6/21/12: We now have a SlickQuiz...

 

Donate: Help My Friend Pay Her Medical Bills

Hello all. A good friend of mine is going through a very rough time and could use some help paying off her medical bills, please help if you can. You can submit your donations to: GoFundMe It would be the best Christmas gift she could ever receive. For more on her story, visit: Living...

 

Cuisine Theme Week No. 3: Mexican

During a visit to the in-laws over Thanksgiving weekend, I had a chance to peruse their sizable collection of cookbooks and picked up Mexican Everyday by Rick Bayless. And so it was decided – Cuisine Theme Week No. 3 would be Mexican! Mexican week was a huge success – just as successful as Middle...

 

Cuisine Theme Week No. 2: Italian

Following the success of Middle Eastern week, I decided to try the theme week again – this time it was Italian! While Italian week didn’t turn out quite as phenomenally as Middle Eastern week, it was still pretty tasty. I think part of the problem with Italian week was the cookbook I used. It...

 

Cuisine Theme Week No. 1: Middle Eastern

Last week I decided to try something different – a whole week of cooking dinners from the same international cuisine. Since I had a Middle Eastern cookbook on lend that I hadn’t yet gotten into – Middle Eastern it was! All in all, Middle Eastern week was wonderfully successful! One dish might have even...

 

One Month Later – A Look Back At Israel

It’s been one month to the day since I’ve returned from Israel… but with as busy as we’ve been with wedding planning and life, it feels like it was forever ago. I think many of us agree that it was probably the best week of our lives, and it sounds like most people are...

 

Weekend Genealogy: Headstone Hunting in Chicagoland

If you’ve been following my blog / twitter / facebook, then you probably know that I recently bought a new car. Well this weekend, I travelled back to the land of Illinois to acquire said car. While there, I took the opportunity to seek out a few ancestors who I knew were in the...

 

Farewell to a Legacy

As many of you know, I’ll soon be saying good-bye to the car that I’ve been driving for almost 10 years now. My 1993 Pontiac Grand Prix. The Prix has seen her share of good days and bad. From road trips to roadsides, I could always count on an exciting time. She’s come quite...

 

Weekend Genealogy: Walerja

Going to try this out and see how long it lasts… This weekend, I discovered my 3rd great grandmother, Walerja. Walerja was born in Polish Germany around 1868 and emigrated to the U.S. in 1886 at the age of 14. She married twice; first, around the age of 20 to my 3rd great grandfather...

 

RootsTech 2011 Wrap Up

Wow – RootsTech 2011 was an absolute blast, indeed, a techie-genealogists dream come true! I almost don’t even know where to begin, there is so much to say (and so I apologize, because this may get long)! I learned so many great genealogy tips, began formulating some great ideas for genea-tech applications, and met...

 

CodeMash 2011 Recap

It’s been one week since CodeMash 2011 ended and I have to say that I’m still feeling a bit of a geek high from the experience of it all. This years CodeMash was my first developer conference ever, so it was pretty interesting to see the whole dev-geek community come together in all of...

 

I’m on WordPress!

Yay! I’ve made the Mephisto-WordPress conversion and now have one less mongrel process eating up resources on my slice :) Lovely theme, eh? It’s called Color Paper and it’s FREE from Smashing Magazine. That is all for now… stay tuned – cool things should start to happen soonish ;)

 

It’s Alive!!

Very nice. Had to save this one :) Get Your Cyborg Name

 

I Admit It…I Suck At Blogging

And it’s taken me a whole week to write a post that says I suck at this… Well, maybe I’ll go for more of a tumble log type setup – that way I can be short, sweet and simple. Then again… how would that be any different from my Twitter account ? Well, maybe...