Pbur's Adventures

The life and times of Patrick Burleson

Author Archives: Patrick

Hand Camp 2012

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Last weekend, the kids and I made our way back to Hand Camp for our second year (you can read about last year here). We almost didn’t get to go this year as we were initially wait listed. On Tuesday of last week, we got a call from the people who organize the camp that […]

The Joy of Books

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What an amazingly crafted video. (via Jim Dovey)

The worst kind of Spam

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Shawn Blanc posted about companies that spam their own customers. This is a terrible practice and it pains me when a company I’m already doing business with does it to me. The worst offender for me is Time Warner Cable. Over the summer I switched to their high speed cable internet service because it offered […]

What Brown Can’t Do For You

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TL;DR: Shipping something via a UPS Store location means only that location can call UPS about any issues with your shipment. You’re stuck talking through a middleman. Nowhere in their store or on their receipts do they mention this. From now on, I’m shipping only via USPS or FedEx. The sordid tale: A few weeks […]

We have a kindergartner

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Back in September, Brenden went to his first day of kindergarten. It seems just like yesterday we were bringing him home from the hospital. I can’t believe how quickly he is growing up. He’s working on writing, reading and math. He’s enjoying it and we work on homework throughout the week. Here are some pictures […]

Steve Jobs: 1955-2011

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Yesterday one of my heroes, Steve Jobs, died. For reasons I’m still trying to understand, when I learned of his death, I immediately had tears in my eyes. Tears for a man I had never met. Steve’s vision and his company’s products are the reason I have a career at all. From programming on my […]

Pixar Followup

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A quick followup to my last post about my Pixar visit. While at the company store, I picked up a couple of toys I couldn’t fit with me back on the plane, so I had to have them shipped. They were a Lots-o’-Huggin’ Bear and the iconic Pixar ball (as seen in my photo here). […]

Pixar Visit

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This past week I was out at Apple’s World Wide Developer Conference in San Francisco. Due to some fantastic circumstances, I was able to go on a tour of Pixar Animation Studios. It’s not open to the public, I was lucky enough to be invited by an employee I know for a tour. All I […]

links for 2011-05-24

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Hoptoad: The app error app (tags: iOS Development Crash_Reports)

Something Odd

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I discovered something odd about my thinking the other day. Some of you may not know this, but my mom died in 1984 when I was 6. The thing I discovered is how deeply this affects my thinking about other people and their parents. If someone older than me mentions that they are doing something […]

Hand Camp 2011

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This weekend we took the family to Hand Camp at Camp John Marc put on by the Texas Scottish Rite Hospital For Children. This is a camp for children with a limb difference between the ages of 4 and 9 and their families. We’ve been waiting to get to go to this camp since Brenden […]

I got a Kindle: Or, how I started reading novels again

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I’ve always been a reader. I started reading when I was around 3 or 4. I really picked up the pace in high school. I read all my assigned reading, plus most of what Michael Crichton and Stephen King had written up till that point. As an adult, that started slowing down as work, school […]

Every Horror Film Should Be Rated R

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A couple of nights ago I saw Insidious, a very creepy and excellent horror movie even though it was rated PG-13. I highly recommend you see if it you like scary movies. The TL;DR of what comes next is: Every horror film should be rated R. That night’s theater experience was somewhat ruined by the […]

Opening Day B-52 Flyover

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Since 2005, I’ve been attending the Texas Rangers Opening Day game. I’m not a huge baseball fan, but I do enjoy going to games and Opening Day is the best day to go. So much optimism of what can be when a season starts. One of the cool things they do during the National Anthem […]

What a rush!

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It started with a phone call. I was standing in line at Target when I got a call from my wife. She was nearly in tears and said to me “My passport is expired”. This was at 1:55 PM. The major problem: we were supposed to be on a flight to the UK at 5:40 […]

Little Drummer Girl

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I love this video my wife took of Emily drumming in the house. Especially the little “flourish” at around the 35 second mark.

Frozen creek

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The past couple of days have been quite cold for around North Texas. We will have been under freezing for over 36 hours in the morning. Yeah, yeah, I know, no big deal to the Midwest and other locales, but we certainly don’t see that kind of extended cold very often. That also means we […]

Snow!

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Last year, it snowed a lot for around here. We even had a White Christmas. This year, Brenden was so looking forward to snow on Christmas, but we had to explain to him that it doesn’t always do that. It didn’t snow this year for Christmas, but today it did snow and Brenden was very […]

Happy Birthday Emily!

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Today, my beautiful little girl turns two! Happy birthday sweetie! Here’s a recent picture of her playing with just about everything she loves.

Battling Being Overweight and My Plan

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Before I get into the meat of this post, let me show you three pictures.   2004 2005 2010   I have been overweight for as long as I can remember. In 2004, I weighed 280 pounds. The picture above was taken in May of that year at Caprock Canyon in west Texas. A couple […]