It's been far too long since I've written an article. Several pretty big things have happened in the last couple of weeks though that sucked up a lot of my time. I've also continued to work overtime every week as there isn't enough time for everything I need to get done. I also took several trips, one work related, and one for fun. I'll discuss those below.

Trip to Rocky Point

As I mentioned in the last article, I was preparing for a volleyball tournament in Rocky Point, Mexico. The format of the tournament was co-ed sand fours. I was heading down with several people, namely my good friends Emy, Nolan, and Krista. Krista was just going down to enjoy a weekend in Mexico. The fourth player on our team was driving to Mexico by himself. There was serious concern about whether he would be prepared, but we trusted that it would all work out.

We had an uneventful drive to Mexico, and got settled in at the resort hotel we were staying at. I had never been to this particular beachside resort before, and I was blown away. They had more rooms than they could ever hope to fill, and each one was filled nice decorations and comfortable furniture. Walking out to the deck led to a huge spa and pool, and a little further, the beach (and a bar right above the sand). I knew we were going to have a great weekend. We got some food that night at the pre-tournament dinner gathering, where a huge number of players came in costume. A live band also played later in the night. Nolan and I were pretty serious about playing though, so we headed back a little early and got some good rest.

The next day, we headed to the beach completely prepared to play. Adam never showed up, and didn't call us. We still hoped that he would show up, even if he was a little late. As time kept ticking, and we approached the start of the tournament, we got less and less optimistic about his appearance. Even with three though, we played incredible. Emy played solid defense, I gave Nolan killer sets, and he put every ball away with style. We were beating the best teams out there with only 3, and it felt great. By the end pool play, we were 1st place out of around 16 teams, and we were definitely drawing attention. Our only concern was if Nolan could keep up his tempo.

By the time we started tournament play, we had given up on Adam showing up. I would only learn later that he had forgotten his birth certificate, so he was turned away at the border (poor guy). We started out the tournament playing fairly well and won our first game. In the second game, we played the only team we had lost to in pool play, and once again, they proved to be too much for us. We started climbing the loser's bracket, but Nolan started cramping up, and I knew we were done for. We wound up getting something like 8th or 10th place, which wasn't too shabby for three people. The best part of the trip was just chilling on the beach, enjoying the perfect weather, surrounded by great people (and beautiful women ).

Microsoft Developer Conference

This past week, I was given the opportunity to go to the Microsoft Developer Conference. It was a really cool experience (from a software developer's perspective). Microsoft is introducing some new software that has the potentially to do great things for the web, including Azure for cloud computing, and their new Silverlight. Their new IDE, Visual Studio 2010, looks like it could really be a winner. The best about the conference was that they gave us free laptops! Every attendee was given an Acer 1420P. Talk about an amazing surprise. The laptop has a touchscreen and supports multi-touch. It has windows 7 installed on it, as well as some of Microsoft's newest software. It's my new best friend

Aside from the trips I've taken, and work, I've been using my free time to play a lot of piano, as well as League of Legends and Left for Dead 2. I wish I had more time to continue recording and writing music, but things have just been too crazy lately.

As a side note, I've been experiencing some lower back/hip pain for the last couple months ever since my trip to Japan. It just kept getting worse and worse, probably because I never iced the muscle or let it recover properly. I'm now paying the price. Doctors have been absolutely no help, of course, but I was convinced to visit an acupuncturist who really gave me great information. He helped show me which muscle was pulled (it's deep in the hip and not obvious), and told me that he could take care of it in a couple of weeks. In the meantime, he showed me some extra stretches I could perform to help. In conjunction with that, I got a stretching video from a chiropractor who I trust and respect. For the last several weeks, I stretch every morning and night, and let me tell you, it makes a huge difference. It's also really rewarding - you watch your flexibility increase by huge amounts, and your muscles feel tremendous afterward. I'm almost to the point now where I can bend straight over with locked legs, and put my palms on the ground in front of me. I've never been quite this flexible before, so I'm gonna stick with it. I think everyone should give this a try, especially if they have a desk job, as it will help keep you healthier longer (stretching throughout the day isn't a bad idea either...)

Anyways, I will try not to wait so long to write another article. Next time perhaps I can cover some of the really interesting movies I've watched, or some of the new music cds I've picked. Until then!