Ladd Photos

Aliciana went down to San Diego for a bridal shower thrown by her mom. She left Saturday morning early and only stayed in town for about 36 hours. Below are some photos taken before the shower.

Before leaving town Aliciana had Jenny’s mom do I trial run on her hair. She will be doing Aliciana’s hair the morning of the wedding. I think it turned out very beautiful… I was blown away when I saw her later on in the day in person. Jenny’s mom is very talented!

A few days ago Nokia and several Gnome Project related companies announced the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet. The device is only 5.5 x 3.1 inches in dimension and 0.75 inches thick, making it about the size of your typical PDA. It includes a 800×480 touch screen in full color, 802.11 b/g WIFI, and a nice brushed metal case. But, the best part about this device, is that it runs Linux and Gnome!!! Nokia has even completely open sourced all the software on the device and is supporting it as a community project called maemo.

The device is expected to go on sale within the next few months and cost $350. Anyone want to buy me one so I can start hacking on it? With such an open platform, the possibilities for this device are limitless. Lots more information about this device can be found on Nokia’s web site.

We spent all weekend in San Luis Obispo celebrating Nick and Jessie’s graduation from Cal Poly. Below are my pathetic attempts to take photos from the nose bleed section of the gym their ceremony was held in. The organization of the ceremony seemed pretty bad considering there wasn’t even enough chairs on the court for all the graduates to have a seat. I guess architects leave implementation details like that to us engineers 😉

Today was my first day of work at my new job as a Web Systems Analyst at The Bakersfield Californian. I will be working on web related projects and doing other software development as needed. Everyone at the paper has been great and the work environment is awesome. Everyone is really open to my ideas and my suggestions seem to be genuinely valued. There is no shortage of interesting ideas being kicked around as future projects, so I am really looking forward to the coming opportunities to apply my skills. I also get to run Linux at work, which is a big plus!

On the way to my Aunt Susie’s house for some great barbecue and a fireworks show we decided to stop by our future home to record the progress. It is completely trenched and the builders should be pouring the foundation any day now. It really is starting to feel like we are getting a house now that I can walk on the lot and see actual progress.

Aliciana, my brother Nick, his girlfriend Jessie, and I went to the circus today. I don’t know about it being “The Greatest Show On Earth” but it was definitely entertaining. I would have to say the highlight of the show for me were the elephants who would stand on each other’s backs. It is amazing to see such large animals in action.

The foundation to our dream house has been laid! The frame is next, which the workers have started to piece together. We are going to try to chronical the whole building process and make an album about the birth of our house.

My “bachelor party” started in the morning with a trip to Sea World. We all had a good time and we all managed to not get sun burnt right before the wedding. The party continued on that evening with a trip to Dave and Buster’s which is an arcade down in San Diego (and elsewhere). I didn’t have a traditional “bachelor’s party”, my future wife was there, along with various other female friends. There was no strippers or debauchery. In other words, everyone had a great time, which is exactly what I wanted.

We lived through the wedding and everything seemed to turn out great. There was a few chaotic moments but what wedding with 150 guests doesn’t have those? Lots of people we talked to said the ceremony was beautiful and that they had tons of fun at the reception. And, at the end of the day, I had the most beautiful bride in the whole world. What more could I ask for?

We had all of Sunday to lay around and recover before leaving on our honeymoon. Once we got going we spent much of the day opening wedding presents at my new in-laws’ house.

After assuring the Department of Homeland Security we weren’t terrorists several times they finally let us on the boat. Waiting for us in our room was the first of several towel animals. Aliciana ends up hiding them everyday in the closet so she can study their construction before the steward has a chance to take them.

Catalina is absolutely beautiful! After boarding a small boat that ferries us to the island, we set off to explore the waterfront. Next, we decide to take a tour bus around the entire town of Avalon. This tour was about 1 hour long and gave us some great views of the island.

After a tour we had lunch at a fish house on the bay and then played a round of miniature golf. After all our excitement, we had to get back to the boat because it set off for Ensenada at 4:30pm. I would have loved to stay during the night so I could have taken Aliciana to see the flying fish… they are such weird animals. I guess that will give us something to do next time we go to the island.

We left the boat in the late morning to explore this little part of Mexico. The downtown area was filled with the type of junk shops you would expect for a tourist trap. The only two memorable things about Ensenada was the huge Mexican flag flying at the local park and the amazing amount of pollution in it’s bay. The water was a dark brown color and reeked horribly. We spent the rest of the day on the boat relaxing and trying to ignore the smell of the bay. The difference between the beauty of Catalina and the squaller of Ensenada was pretty amazing and sad.

Nothing to do out at sea but relax, read, and enjoy the company of each other and our towel animals. The sunset was stunning, as you can see from the photos below.