We had a great time today, despite the warnings of un-Florida-like weather. It was a little cold when you weren’t in the sun or had the wind blowing, but it still felt great. Tomorrow’s forecast is for much warmer and windier, so I may break out the shorts if it looks promising.

Today we started out at EPCOT, right when they opened at 9am. After making reservations for lunch, we headed straight to Test Track to get Fast Passes. They weren’t necessary all day–the crowds (and lines) were non-existent. We walked right up to the front and rode it twice. After that, we walked over to the Land pavilion and went on the Listen to the Land boat ride and the new Soarin’ attraction that they copied from Disney’s California Adventure.

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We leave today to visit my brother and his wife in Orlando, Florida for a few days. The timing is great–it’s forecast to be the coldest week of the year in Minnesota. Orlando hasn’t been the warmest lately (lows near freezing), but it’s supposed to get back to normal by the end of the week.

I’m especially excited to ride the new Expedition Everest ride at Animal Kingdom. No golf planned, but I’m sure we’ll do a lot of walking the next few days. Watch for pictures and stories later this week…

UPDATE: Wireless access rocks. First photos uploaded to the private area of the photo page.

Today I decided to tackle the four tax returns I need to complete this year (two S-corp returns and two personal). The corporate returns for 7 Minute Miles were pretty easy, as the company was dormant all year and was officially dissolved on December 31, 2006. Our personal federal return was much harder. I’m still missing a mortgage interest statement, but I decided to run through the whole process once using what I have so far. The initial refund outlook is good, but we’ll see on Monday what the final numbers look like.

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Today I visited a restaurant in south Minneapolis that my wife loves. Hot Plate (5204 Bloomington Ave S, 612-824-4794) is a fun neighborhood diner with a great atmosphere and fun menu items. We just had to order the bacon-wrapped tater tots with BBQ sauce appetizer, which I’m pretty sure I’ve never seen anywhere else. My chicken club with melted cheddar cheese and applewood smoked bacon and a side of Barbette-like fries was very good. Lots of other items on the menu I wanted to try–and the breakfast menu sounded good too…

This guy paid me a visit today on my thirty-eighth birthday. I’m not sure what kind of woodpecker it is, but this one was much larger than the downeys we’ve had recently.

I spent most of the day goofing off and it felt great:

• Visited the Target, CompUSA and Best Buy video game, HDTV and computer departments.
• Played a bit with Windows Vista and will write some more thoughts about that soon.
• Answered just a couple work-related phone calls and emails.
• Got a haircut, had lunch at Zantigo and dinner at Fuddruckers with my parents.
• Received lots of great presents, phone calls, cards and emails–thanks to all of you!

Now I just need the Wild to hold on and beat the Blackhawks tonight…

Lunch yesterday was at a new restaurant in Excelsior, Jake O’Connor’s, located on the corner of Water and 2nd Streets. It’s an Irish pub and restaurant with an authentic atmosphere, which I was told was brought over from Ireland piece by piece. I had fish and chips, which despite having Americanized chips, was very good. The other orders in our group included a BLT, various pot pies and several pints of Irish beer.

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That would be the Wild player in the middle (with the broken nose).

Today I had lunch with several former members of the Northwest Airlines fuel department. Pictured above (left to right): Jack Van Der Wege, Doug Podolak, Jack Skoglund, Dan Redpath and myself). It was great seeing everyone and catching up on the latest gossip. Special thanks to Doug for buying us lunch.

More on the restaurant to follow in a separate post later tonight…

Lame. That’s how my daughter summed up last night’s game against the Oilers. The penalty against Burns was lame. The Oilers first goal was lame. The non-stop injuries of the first period were lame. The performance of Shawn Belle was lame. 0-for-6 on the power play was lame. Out-shooting the Oilers 2-1 for most of the game and still losing was lame. A three-game home losing streak is lame.

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Just picked this up at Cheapo’s the other day–The Jayhawks Live from the Women’s Club. I love it when I find new stuff by my favorite bands that I either forgot about or didn’t know was released.

This album is full of great live versions recorded at a really interesting venue (we saw the British Advertising Awards there a few years ago when the Walker was being remodeled). And even better–there is also a volume two.

I’ve seen the Jayhawks live several times at First Avenue and it’s nice to have an “official bootleg” in my iTunes library.

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Last night we had around eight inches of snow–just our second plowable snowfall of the season. Tonight the temperatures are supposed to fall to -9 F, but I have to admit that the sight of fresh snow in bright sunlight makes me forget how much I truly hate winter in Minnesota.

This weekend was the start of several weeks of birthdays in our family. My youngest had a frog theme for her “friends” party and my wife made these great froggy cupcakes. My 38th is coming up on Friday, then my oldest has hers a few weeks later. Pictures from this weekend are up in the private photo area.

It’s been a long time coming, but I finally found the time to research my validation errors and have resolved them all. So now I’m proud to add the W3C logo to the sidebar:

It’s a nerd thing, but web standards are a good thing. Happy to finally join the club…

Now that the freshness of the iPhone announcement has settled down, I’ve decided that it’s not really what I want. The more that comes out about it, the less I like it. No third party apps because they don’t want a rogue app to take down Cingular’s west coast network? Are you kidding? And the more I read about the differences between the various wireless data networks, the less comfortable I am with the choice of EDGE. But perhaps the thing that makes me dread it most is the total cost of ownership–a high upfront cost and what appears will be an expensive voice/data package that will last 24 months. It still looks beautiful and fun to use, but I’m not sure the value is there.

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Another MacWorld in San Francisco that I didn’t attend, but until WWDC moves somewhere else, I’m OK with that. After watching the rumor sites post the play-by-play today and reading some of the media feedback, my initial thought was that this must be one boring MacWorld show floor. With only two iPhone prototypes on display in the Apple booth (under glass no less) and only two other hardware announcements from Apple (the Apple TV and a new Airport Express base station), there really wouldn’t be much new to see. Microsoft pre-announced Office 2008 for the second half of the year, but I’m not sure if they are showing anything at the show. Still, there are lots of things to talk about.

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Bit of a let-down yesterday after that dominating victory against Atlanta earlier in the week. Martin St. Louis is such a small guy–I wish someone would have hit him a few times. The effort at the end of the game was impressive, but time just wasn’t on our side. All of those pipe ringings didn’t help much either.

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Last night my daughter and I went to see Kim Johnsson and Todd White of the Minnesota Wild at Hockey Unplugged. This edition was held at Joe Senser’s in Bloomington and was well attended by the Wild faithful. This is the second Hockey Unplugged event we’ve seen and continues the great community relations tradition of the Wild. Johnsson was especially friendly and I have two more “To DK” photos to add to the wall in the office.

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Following a meme passed to me by Chuck Goolsbee (and following the instructions here), I present my Mini at Mount Rushmore.

Happy 2007 everyone! I have a good vibe about the upcoming year and I’ve been working a lot on planning and strategy to get things off to a good start. We have a lot of exciting things coming up and I’m anxious to hit some of the lofty goals we’ve set (more on that in a later post).

All of this planning made me think about the movie Run Lola Run, where fate leads the main character to three different outcomes based on slightly different breakpoints in each storyline. I have experienced several major breakpoints in my life and have often wondered how things would be different:

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