March is almost over … How did that happen? It’s almost the March Madness, the best time of the year in sports - Brendan and agree, we can’t both be wrong! More on that later and something really exciting related to that later in this post!

For now, here are some pics from the past few weeks…

We celebrated my dad’s birthday in Chappell Hill … Brendan was kid-free for the weekend and on a whim decided to come up and crash the party!

We had fun hanging out with Maura — an old family friend and our former babysitter!

We all imbibed a few too many bottles of champagne - after having a wine tasting! We had a pretty good time and probably finally crashed around 1 or 2, which didn’t work so well for me since I had to be up at 8am to get on the road for my game!

Note that there is video from the birthday party and I will be sure to post shortly!

Carrie and I enjoyed a visit from Granny Rita. Kelli came up and we all went to dinner together — it’s a rare treat to enjoy the company of three Colbert women at once!

We went to Fellowship for their Easter service and then to brunch at the Marriott afterwards. Both were awesome!

This past weekend Carrie and I headed to Reliant to watch the Longhorns in the NCAA South Regional. Friday night was Texas vs Stanford, which Texas won fairly easily. We also stayed for the first half of the Memphis vs Michigan State game, leaving early after Memphis established a 50-20 lead!

With about forty thousand in attendance, there was a ton of burnt orange everywhere!

We had some sweet seats — 20th row!!

JFLO decided to join us at the last minute — he had just flown in from a work trip. He has a ton of photos from the games posted here and here.

OK, so enough photos and on to the exciting news…

This Friday evening, the day before the Final Four, I’m going to be working the DiGiorno College All-Star Game in San Antonio! The All-Star game is two teams made of seniors from across the country. For the first time this year the event is going to be played on the Final Four court at the Alamodome and will be free and open to the public! Cool!!!

I’m really looking forward to this game. It should be a fun and relaxing atmosphere. Carrie and I went to the San Antonio regional five years ago and I had been one time before that — both times were amazing. I’m sure the Final Four atmosphere will be even more intense! Hopefully we’ll have a good crowd come out for Friday night’s game!

So, I suppose my season will finally end this Friday, even though I have not worked the last couple of weeks! Hopefully down the road I will be working this late in the season in the actual tournament … along with my friends Brendan, JFLO, and others…

Filed under: Officiating, Personal
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This is why Apple rules …. Bought a 1TB (that’s “Terrabyte” for the uninformed — as in 1000GB) Time Capsule — which is basically a wireless network hub along with a hard drive. The cool thing is that this completely integrates with Time Machine, Apple’s answer to backing up your computer. With a single device you can wirelessly backup all of the computers in your house. Sweet!

You don’t have to configure a driver, or know anything about networks or computers … You just plug it in and it works.

This is why Apple is changing the technology game. Personally I do know how to configure networks, PCs, and all that stuff — I just don’t want to waste my time doing that crap! I want to plug something in and have it work.

Time Machine worked like a champ — I setup the Capsule and then started up Time Machine and chose the Time Capsule as the drive to backup to. It started the backup process and over the course of the night (the first backup can take a while depending on how much stuff you have on your computer) it backed up everything. It backs up incrementally after that — every hour, then daily, then weekly. So, not only do you have a copy of something if you delete it, you have the different versions of documents if you have made changes to them but then later realize that you have screwed up.

Excuse the geek post, but I was getting called out for not posting recently … I have other things to post on, but have to upload photos / video / etc. so that will come in a few days!

Filed under: Technology
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I was just about to put this bag away until November … or at least for a few months until camp.

Brendan and I just worked out last regular season college game this past Tuesday — and we worked it together! Cool! We actually received quite a few assignments together this season and I was grateful for it — our road trips are always fun!! However, on Thursday I received a call from our college coordinator and received my first college post-season assignment. Sweet!!!

I’m working at Kilgore College on Saturday afternoon … so it will be an early morning for me on Saturday, especially since my Dad’s birthday party is tomorrow night! Guess I will not be able to party it up too much in Chappell Hill!

Filed under: Officiating
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I didn’t know who Randy Pausch was until recently, as he has been making the rounds of the interwebs. More specifically, his lecture on Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams has been watched millions of times online!

Ralph is a tenured professor at Carnegie Mellon, where he received his doctorate. He is a pioneer in visual reality technology, among other things, and all-in-all a pretty interesting guy with a solid message.

Take an hour out of your day (or week) to listen to his “Last Lecture”. There is an abbreviated 10-minute version that he did on Oprah, but it really doesn’t do it justice, so watch the entire thing below…

Filed under: Personal
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