Star-Spangled Surprise

This January, my company's annual employee appreciation week is going to include an "NI Night at the Ice Bats," Austin's minor league hockey team. As part of this celebration of our awesomeness, an NI employee is going to sing the National Anthem at the opening of the game, or match, or try, or whatever you call a hockey competition.

Since we'd probably never have another chance to sing at the beginning of a sporting event in our lives, Katie and I tried out last week. Neither of us felt very good about how we did, so we were very surprised to find out that we had been selected. Crazy, right? We are a mix of excited and scared to death. Because it is a really cool opportunity, but it's also an opportunity to screw up royally. Let me show you what I mean.

Here are two great examples of the "Star-Spangled Banner" done right. First, Whitney Houston at the 1990-91 Super Bowl:



Chills, right? Here's Marvin Gaye at the 1983 NBA All-Star Game. It's a lesser appreciated rendition, but one that I like quite a bit.



Man, that guy could sing!

Of course, Katie and I are not going to get anywhere near those two famous performances. We just hope to avoid looking like the next three fools that blew their big moment and went down in viral video infamy. We live in Texas, for Pete's sake! People get killed down here for lesser crimes than forgetting the words to the song that Thomas Jefferson and Freedom listened to on the night they slept together to sire the Constitution and the Magna Carta!

I'm going to tattoo the lyrics to the inside of my eyelids!

Katie's a Nurse!!!

After a grueling 12 months in Texas Tech's one-year, second bachelor's degree nursing program, Katie is a full-fledged nurse!!! With over 1000 hours in-hospital, and 20+ credits a semester, I'm so proud of her and all her hard work and dedication. I'm also very excited to get my wife back!

I can't think of another person I'd want taking care of me or my loved ones in the hospital. Katie's love for others and work ethic will set her apart as a fantastic caregiver and make thousands of lives better over the course of her career.

To celebrate, we invited friends to join us at Waterloo Icehouse for lunch this Saturday.

A big thanks to everyone that came out and even bigger thanks to Byron and Tara for getting the ball rolling on this activity.

This is How We Roll

As many of you know, I've recently moved from our company's "Engineering Leadership Program" to our Marketing department, where I work on our most important product: LabVIEW.

What does that mean? Well, ELP was like a halfway house between college and being a grown-up: I worked hard, but I also spent a lot of time playing cubical soccer and watching funny videos. Now that I'm a "big timer" on the 8th floor, I spend my time writing technical documents and launching new LabVIEW versions. That means I've got to bring my A game, which means I need to dress the part. Especially when you consider who I'm working with.

Check out PJ on the left, and Meisel (sorry, no blog single entry for him) on the right. These ballers are gettin' it done on the phone, too busy to even pose for the camera.

Here's Neal, Eli and me laughing at how cool the iPhone is:

And how about my boss:

With a team of this caliber, he's got time to take it easy and look good.

Here are a few more pictures from around the office. It's easy to see why everyone else in Marketing is jealous of us.

Lil' Sis Ties the Knot

My lil' sis Liz got married on December 1st in Portland, Oregon. I've never seen her more beautiful and I'm so happy for her and my new brother-in-law, Scott. Here's a pic of the handsome bloke:

Amazingly, I didn't get a single good picture of the two of them together, but you can read more at Katie's blog and Mom's blog.

I have a lot of great memories of growing up with Liz. We are a little over two years apart, so we spent a lot of time playing after school and in the summers as kids. And we were at college together for several years and shared a lot of mutual friends. There are too many inside jokes and funny stories to share in this post, so I'll just leave you with my two favorite pictures from the wedding, the ones that remind me of the sister I love so much:

Love ya, sista!

I Should Have Been Born in Japan

I love comedy. I love it. I love laughing and I love making people laugh. And ever since Al Gore invented the Internet and people stated putting funny videos on it, I've had a steady stream of material to share with others.

Over time I've learned that I have a pretty random/weird sense of humor. I can usually gauge if the general public will laugh at what I think is funny by running it past my wife. If she laughs, then I'm probably safe to share it with others. But if she gives me that "what-was-I-thinking-when-I-said-'I do?'" look, then I should use caution.

Here's an example of something that got me "the look:"


Pretty funny, right? But also kind of random. So I've seen a couple Japanese videos recently that made me realize that I was born in the wrong country, or that I was adopted (and if that's true, then my parents have a lot of explaining to do. Not to mention the fact that I am a genetic wonder, since one would never deduce my Japanese heritage by looking at me). The Japanese sense of humor, or at least their TV entertainment, perfectly fits my sense of humor.

Take for example any video from this game show. While the English voice-overs completely change the intent, the competitions themselves are hilarious and bizarre, and my kind of funny. And this game show punishes contestants that can't finish tongue-twisters:



What amazes me: the rest of them actually go through with it after the first guy gets nailed. You couldn't pay enough to do that. No way.


The premise of the following video answers one of my long standing inner debates: would the fastest speed walker in the world run instead of walk if attacked. Who hasn't asked themselves this question?



Answer: he runs (and I love when the commentator says, "and he doesn't run very fast" at the 2:24 mark).

Can you imagine being the creative talent behind this show? "Okay, Mrs. Executive Producer, we've got this idea for a sketch, but we're going to need to fly in the world champion speed walker from Ecuador, lie to him, and then attack him with Samurai." And then the producer says "yes!" This would be my dream job!

Or how about being the writers behind these two Fanta commercials? (Credit to Double M for finding them first)




Pure genius! Do you agree? What would be your Japanese game show or commercial idea?