A request

As you can tell, Mario has added his own flavor to our family blog. Our third post for today will be a request. If possible, please keep Mario's mother (Teresa) in your prayers as they test and learn more about 3 tumors they have found in her body. Thank you.

My second post

Now, I'm on a roll.

Tricia mentioned that we recently lost many of our pictures due to a hard drive failure.

While frustrating, it is a minor thing to deal with. The most frustrating part is how easy it would have been to avoid. We have now done two things to help protect our data - and would highly, highly recommend others to do so as well.

First - back up your data online. We are using mozy.com. It is $5/month and has unlimited backup. This is a great way to save all precious data online. There are other services as well that I am sure all work perfectly fine (I chose mozy after recommendations from some more techie friends than I). $5/month is well worth backing up your picture memories, emails, music, or other important documents.

If you have not clicked on the link yet - DO IT NOW.

Second - we bought a HP MediaSmart Server. For those who are more technical, it is a type of NAS - or "Network Attached Storage". It allows us to automatically backup the files on our PC to another device in our house. It is very easy to set up. It also uses a variant of RAID. In plain-speak - when you put data on it, it saves it on two different hard drives. So if one breaks, the other drive still has the data. Cool,huh? It also allows for other features, like sharing files between PCs, and we're finding it very helpful in our multi-PC environment. But it is very expensive, particularly when compared with mozy.

So, go now and subscribe to mozy and get your data backed up. It takes 15 minutes to download and setup. It then runs on its own and you don't have to worry about it - unless something happens to your PC - then you can just log in and retrieve your data.

Seriously, go sign up now. You will thank me later.

My first post

I know Tricia is always posting on here, but I thought I'd share an article I read today.

My work brings me across many organizations that need help. For a variety of reasons, they are just not good at running a business.

This article touches on a big reason. It is astonishing how difficult it is to find people who can fill entry-level jobs. The type of jobs he's referring to are typically a step up from working in retail. The hours are typically 40hrs/week. The pay is around $20-30k and the benefits will be good. If someone shows initiative, they will likely quickly become a supervisor and have a chance to move up the ranks.

There are just very few people who will take jobs like this in the US.


AT&T CEO says hard to find US Skilled Workers

SAN ANTONIO, Texas (Reuters) - The head of the top U.S. phone company AT&T Inc (T.N) said on Wednesday it was having trouble finding enough skilled workers to fill all the 5,000 customer service jobs it promised to return to the United States from India.

"We're having trouble finding the numbers that we need with the skills that are required to do these jobs," AT&T Chief Executive Randall Stephenson told a business group in San Antonio, where the company's headquarters is located.

So far, only around 1,400 jobs have been returned to the United States of 5,000, a target it set in 2006, the company said, adding that it maintains the target.

Stephenson said he is especially distressed that in some U.S. communities and among certain groups, the high school dropout rate is as high as 50 percent.

"If I had a business that half the product we turned out was defective or you couldn't put into the marketplace, I would shut that business down," he said.

Gone are the days when AT&T and other U.S. companies had to hire locally, he said.

"We're able to do new product engineering in Bangalore as easily as we're able to do it in Austin, Texas," he said, referring to the Indian city where many international companies have "outsourced" technical and customer support workers.

"I know you don't like hearing that, but that's the way it is," he said.

Stephenson said neither he nor most Americans liked the situation, and the solution was a stronger U.S. focus on education and keeping jobs. Business needed to help, such as AT&T's repatriation of service positions and education grants, he added.

Click here for link

Sad morning

My trip to Best Buy this morning brought sad news that the data on our hard drive was unretrievable. On the bright side, we didn't have to spend $1500+ to get it fixed. I'm trying to become more comfortable with the fact that we didn't really lose that much. The drive only contained pictures (as was the way Mario divided things up). This type of crash is VERY rare, and obviously, if even the Geek Squad can't fix it, a pretty nasty thing. The good news is, some of our pictures were not on that drive and we still have them now. Also, I officially backed up all pictures and videos from our camera from 2003 (when we first went digital) up until June 2007. So, we're just missing the months from July 07- Feb 08. But, of those months, I have 3 months on my lap top (probably only part of the months, but it's something). I tried to see how many pictures I could get back on my own. I checked Walmart online photo center, this blog, and emails I sent with pictures attached, and for July 2007, I was able to get back 80 of the 240 or so pictures we took.

This is probably way more information than any of you needed, but it is helpful for me to put this into perspective. There are far worse tragedies in the world that people have had to suffer.

So my new lessons:
1. Back up computers - we are now doing this is 2 different ways, one that is quite expensive but cool, and the other is cheap but will be our insurance in case of flood/fire/major disastor that could occur in our home.
2. Blogging is great! Since I'm such a ham and like to share pictures of my cuties online, I have most of the best pictures all here.

In following lesson #2 from today...here are some cute pictures of the boys!

more White House

This is MJ before and after the egg roll. I'm not sure how many children can say they launched an egg 15 feet in the air on the South lawn of the White House...but MJ can. In fact, he launched his egg twice. Well, he scooped the egg in the spoon... we'll have to work on that technique.

The theme of the event was about clean waters of the world. So there were lots of animals as a focus. MJ got to touch these clams and mussels... he thought they were pretty neat.

He was also very cute about giving hugs to the characters walking around.

I really need to thank Mario, because without his hard work, we would not have been able to have a day like this. We were sad that he couldn't be with us, but understand the sacrifice he had to make.

White House Easter Egg Roll

We are very lucky to have such good friends in DC who have great connections. Andrea got us tickets to the White House Easter Egg Roll today. The day turned out pretty nice, a little chilly, but not rainy. I think the boys had a great time, and I know we were happy to feel a part of this event that has been going on for over 100 years.

Here's actually the first picture we took for the day.

Andrea scored us a great time slot at 9:15am so we got in just in time to hear President Bush's opening speech for the event. We were standing behind a bunny as maybe you can tell from the big white ear. We also got to see George Bush Sr. and Barbara Bush. Laura, Jenna and Barbara each read a story which we were able to check out.

Andrea has a few more pictures on her camera, but this one will do for now.

Easter according to MJ

So, I'm sad I didn't have some sort of media to record the moment when MJ first described Easter to me. It was last Thursday, we were picking Mario up from the airport and I told MJ about Easter Sunday, and Jesus and the Resurrection, going to church to pray because Jesus loves us, how the Easter bunny will come and bring us chocolate and candy, and how at the end of the day we get to go play at Ms. Tara's house and have dinner. So, then I asked him:

Me: "What is going to happen on Easter MJ? Are we going to go to church to pray to God?"

MJ: "No, we are not going to pray to God. We are going to church and Jesus is going to give us chocolate!"

I tried to correct him but he repeated again.

MJ: "We are going to church and Jesus is going to give us chocolate. Then we are going to Tony's house to eat the chocolate."

Then I overheard him telling this to Joey saying, "Won't that be great, Joey!"

I let him go on believing this just long enough for him to retell the story to my mother and to Mario. Then on the way home from the aiport we corrected him.

A few more Easter pictures

MJ did a great job on this Easter craft.

He's either saying "Alleluia" or, eating only sugar all day is FUN!!!

And this little guy has decided that Mommy is the coolest person in the world. I don't know how this happened, but Joey needs to be near me (correction: on me, carried by me, held by me) most of the day. This is not the normal Joey growing up, and I much would have preferred to carry him around as at 15-20lb infant than the 28+lb toddler he is now. We are trying to let him know that other people in the world are indeed as amazing as myself, but he is hard to convince. One theory is he does not want to be weaned, which I was kind of thinking he was ready for a week ago. Ok, kid, I'll give you your milk...

Easter pictures

I'm sad that our camera took some fuzzy pictures today.

The self-timer is always hit or miss, but this one will do.

Happy Easter

The Easter Bunny came to our house! What a very fun and sweet morning!
MJ and Joey were sharing quite nicely. It's amazing what candy and chocolate can do to children.

Joey got a Winnie the Pooh puzzle and some books. MJ is very happy with his Bob the Builder books.

And here is the "Easter Cake" also known as a half-size of the Suarez chocolate birthday cake. We were supposed to bring this over for our dinner with the Tony and Tara Franzonello family. But Joey realized that it was a holy day and decided someone had to be sick. We aren't sure what's wrong with him. Maybe some sort of stomach bug. But he has a low fever, is clingy, cranky, and won't eat much. So, we're keeping our germs to ourselves tonight. I guess we'll have to eat the whole cake ourselves.