Josh's Mission Call

Here is a little gem I found while cleaning my digital shelves. Be warned, if your not a family member it could be a complete waste of time.

Touch Me

I know, the title has you somewhere between "What The" and "Pervert". I would have hoped to get the same reaction from some of the employees here at work, unfortunately, I did not.

I've been working on a new company/website that requires me to be able to control a printer from a networked computer. It doesn't sound all that difficult, but this all needs to happen without anyone touching a mouse. Just the computer and the printer working together in autonomous harmony.

If you need to talk to someone, or something, you first need to learn their language. Hand gestures only go so far. I realize this from my sad attempts to talk to the lady that cleans my office each day.

After feeling confident in my newly acquired language skills,... I had to put them to the test. I wrote a program that hacks into the laser printers here at work and changes the message on the LCD displays. This happens each day at 10:00 am and randomly picks a message like: TOUCH ME, SET TO STUN, GO AWAY, POUR ME A DRINK, NICE SHIRT, NO PRINT FOR YOU, RADIATION LEAK, TAKE ME HOME, INSERT DISK, COME CLOSER, INSERT COIN, etc.

I guess this could serve as a social experiment as to how many people actually pay attention to things at work. After two weeks of no response what so ever, I had to start making comments like "have you noticed the printers are acting a little strange lately?" A few people are now aware of it, but don't seem to think it's as funny as I do.

WALL•E the Piñata

Before getting into the subject of this post, I must convey I neither support or condone the dangerous practice of the piñata. Teaching small children to beat things with bats can be extremely dangerous as the following testimonial shows.

We lost our beloved parrot, Polly, to pinata violence. A neighbor boy came by after a Pinata party and convinced our son Jon that Polly was filled with starburst candy. Jon beat poor Polly to death with a bat.
-Brenda Edelbrock

That being said, many of my memories of the "Brewer Christmas Party" revolve around the piñata. As children, my brothers and I dialed in our techniques to achieve maximum candy uptake. We would stay low to the ground (this also helps avoid getting a bat to the face as you dive in), slide on our stomaches, arms stretched as far as they would go, and scoop the candy into a pile. We would then transfer the pile to our ziplock bags as fast as possible. Another technique involved tucking your shirt in at the bottom and scooping the candy down it as you were sliding. This took a bit of practice to get just right.

This year, Goose and I had the assignment to build the piñata. We wanted to build something that would take the traditional newspaper piñata to the next level. Dan and I talked about adding some small explosives in strategic places. We could then detonate different parts of the piñata on demand. I guess this idea was vetoed by our better judgement.

WALL•E was born in my basement over the period of 2 weeks. This is no regular piñata as you can see. It took some serious design preparation and planning to get everything just right. The finishing touches were applied by hand to give him the worn and distressed look.

It seemed the kids were more excited to take home a piece of WALL•E than they were the candy. Here is a picture of the proud new owner of a robotic finger.

Yes, it was bitter sweet to see such a beautiful work of art come to an end.

Sponsor Review 08'

I'm at work right now to excited to get anything accomplished. Let me explain.

This morning, we had our annual review and budget meeting with MonaVie, our team sponsors. Each year, I create a document that lists some of our highlights and accomplishments as the MonaVie XTeam (with the help of Marie, my personal editing genius). We then sit down with the MonaVie executives and jot down numbers and goals for next year. We must be doing things right based on the fact they more than doubled our budget for 09'. This will allow our team to take things well beyond the next level. I'm really excited to see what lies ahead.

Here is our MonaVie XTeam 2008 Year in Review document. Click here to check it out.

Results Are In. It's a...

Much could be said about passing on ones chromosomal material. Without giving myself to much credit, the following is a quote from our baby doctor. 

Well there's no mistaking that one. It's a BOY!

Laura's intuition was right all along. I'm excited to get a partner in crime for the numerous shenanagens that will take place in the years to come.

Is it already Fall?

We have received a number of comments on the length of time our "Spring has Sprung" post has stared at our readers without any new insight as to what is going on in the Brewer's life. Truth is... nothing new really has happened. Laura is pregnant, I shattered my big toe skydiving (showing off), we went on a cruise with Brighton (who is also pregnant) and Boggz, celebrated our one year anniversary, all while eating fresh fruit and veggies from our garden. Yea, nothing much.

Let's take it in sections. First off, our baby! We are not sure if it's a boy or a girl yet. We'll find out on Oct 13th. Seeing our current posting trend, you will find out after our child's first birthday.

I have often told people that I was born with a laptop. Pay close attention to our baby's first ultrasound. Like father like (son/daughter).


This was taken at twelve weeks. Laura is now fourteen weeks, due April 4th (one month to the day after Brighton's due date).

Number two, my busted big toe. Sadly, I do not have any pictures or an x-ray of the tragedy. Just imagine pushing the end bone in your big toe straight through your second bone. It split like a bamboo reed. I accomplished this feat a mere 5 hours before we left on our cruise.

Third, the cruise. Leave it to us to book a cruise at the peak of hurricane season. It was the perfect adventure we were in need of. We had planned to visit the Western Caribbean. Turns out, hurricane Gustav had the same plan. We ended up seeing the Eastern Caribbean. It was beautiful! I put together a little Photatobug of our adventures. Click HERE to check it out.

Today is our one year anniversary. I can't believe Laura has been able to cope with me for an entire YEAR. We just returned home from our retreat. We stayed in a Swiss/German cottage in midway called the Blue Boar Inn. It was quaint, personal, and all around beautiful. Our dinner the night before was hard to beat. If you have never been to the "Snake Creek Grill", take this time to jot it down on your list of things to do before you die. It was fantastic. You can gather that Laura didn't hold back with her order when our waitress walked by and muttered "Wow, you really went for it". I'm glad she did because the full rack of ribs she ordered was incredible.

Spring has Sprung

After the countless posts of hate mail, we have entered back into the light and are blogging once again. Sorry for the stagnant blog. We just had TONS of things going on. One of them in particular... our garden. Don't be fooled. These pictures were not scanned from a "Better Home's and Garden" magazine. They are of the Brewer square foot garden (new and improved).

(These pictures were taken three weeks ago. You should see it now!)

We added a full automated drip system (Not sure if this was driven by innovation or laziness). Each box now has custom drip heads that give each and every plant just the right amount of water. This is not only much less maintenance, but also conserves water by applying it right to the base of the plants and not giving it a chance to evaporate on the surface.

Laura planted all our crops this year. We are growing: three types of tomatoes, onions, numerous different types of peppers, eggplant, cucumbers, squash, zucchini, white pumpkins, raspberries, strawberries, and almost every herb you can think of.

I may quit my day job and start a garden consulting business with my brother Goose, and brother-in-law, Joe (I haven't pitched the idea to them yet). We have all jumped onto the garden train the last year or two.