I have downloaded Google Maps for my BlackBerry… AWESOME APPLICATION!!!  It is so cool that I have GPS capable maps available wherever I go, for free!  Turn-by-turn directions even in India.  Google Maps now has a feature called Latitude.  It allows you to publish your real-time location to your friends.  I tried Loopt before but no one wanted to sign up and share their location with me.  So I uninstalled it from my BlackBerry and a couple of weeks later the Latitude feature appeared.  Again… the problem is most of my friends and family don’t want to be ‘tracked’.  So I have this really great feature on my phone, unfortunately I already know where I am and it will only be fun if my friends and family sign up.

I also installed this application called Qik.  It allows me to stream almost-live video from my BlackBerry.  I can record video and then Qik automatically uploads it to the web and the video is available to see. 

WOW!  I forgot to post photos and an update from my trip to India in January.  I guess I was updating Facebook along the way and then tax season got into high gear AND… I am not sure I am a blogger.  But, I do like posting photos and updates of my travels so that my family knows what I am up to.

I started off my trip in Delhi.  It was foggy and dark the entire time I was there.  So I didn’t get to see much of the city and it didn’t help that I was working U.S. hours so I was only out at night.  One day Diki took me to see the Taj Mahal.  It was incredibly impressive.  It took 22 years to complete and is an architectural marvel.  I have seen a lot of great things in my travels; the pyramids in Giza, the Great Wall of China, Jerusalem… but the Taj Mahal was the biggest surprise.  It is was MUCH bigger than I thought it was going to be.  It is massive.  It also has a lot of hidden architectural touches that I would have never known about unless Diki had arranged for a guide.

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The next day Julia Roberts visited the Taj.  Missed her by one day!

After Delhi, I went to southern India.  I stayed in Chennai, this is where I went during my first trip to India, but I had never really had a chance to get out and see the sights.  Lenny, Hari, and Durai convinced me that I should take the day (mind you… we work at night so it made for a really long day) and go out to the beach.  We got to see some great temples and statues all carved out of rock right along the coast. 

I have been trying to find the right settings on my BlackBerry to take the best photos.  It is clear to me that I need to have a lot of light and absolutely no movement. :-)  Here are some of the photos I have taken with my phone and I used Windows Live Photo Gallery to stitch them together to make panoramic pictures.  Check them out.

Pictures from our balcony at the Grand Californian during our Disneyland vacation.  It was a nice view of the California Adventure park.

View from my room in Chennai, India.  Not much to see right outside the hotel.

This is American Falls and in the background you can see Niagara Falls.  This was from my recent trip to Rochester, NY.

The “stitch” on this picture is a bit off but it is still pretty good for a BlackBerry camera.  These Mesquite trees lost about 3/4 of their leaves about four weeks ago.  All of these leaves are new within the last week.  Mesquite trees grow like weeds do in Washington state.  FAST!  I have to prune them back three or four times during the summer.  I know I should trim them back a lot right now but we love the shade that they provide to our front yard and the front of our house.

We had yet another great Christmas in the Laird household.  We spent the morning opening presents under the tree.  LOTS of screaming involved.  We then had the Roberts and Carolyn and Larry over for ‘second Christmas’.  Everyone made out like bandits!

Emma and I got some really great pictures at the Pima Air and Space Museum.  The other times that I have been out there was when it was 100+ degrees out.  Today the weather was in the sixties and the sun was out.  It was a great time to be out walking around and not feeling the need to retreat to the air conditioned hangars.  Here are some of my favorite pictures.  (Click on the pictures for a larger view.)

I have been asked to fill an interim role at work, which is a great opportunity for me, but is also means a lot of stressful work.  I get to do something that I really love to do, organizational design.  Looking at the work that is being done, determining the work that needs to be done in the future, and designing the organization that supports the work to be done. 

Emma and I went to the Pima Air and Space Museum today and walked around taking a couple hundred pictures of the airplanes they have out there.  In one building they had a bunch of plane engines and in another, a bunch of planes that have the folding wings.  These really complex machines needed a lot of design and are really quite impressive.  Here are some of them…

I think that some of the things that I saw today helped inspire me in the work that I am doing right now.  I will let you all know how it turns out.

The kids took their gold belt test last night and all three of them passed.  The moved from white belts to gold. 

We took the new car up to Mt. Lemmon on Saturday.  Mt. Lemmon is just 25 miles north of Tucson and 8,000 ft. above sea level.  Their slogan up there is, “30 Miles Away and 30 Degrees Cooler.”  It was 78 degrees and beautiful.  We all had a great time on the drive and at the top of the mountain we took the ski lift up to 9,000 ft.  It was beautiful, clear weather and the mountain flowers were in bloom.  We had a lot of fun.

UPDATE – Adding a slide show of our photos.

Today I got my bonus and took a vacation day and after dropping the kids off at school, Laura and I headed down to the Auto Mall in Tucson (where a lot of the car dealers are) to look for a new car.  We went to look at the Mazda dealership and there were no sales people there and no cars on the lot.  Everyone was at the convention center for a big, annual sale.  We were going to go to Carmax (the no hassle used car mega-mart) but they don’t open until 11 AM.  Note to Carmax.... if you want to sell more cars you might want to keep the same hours of your competitors.

We went downtown to the convention center and went inside.  It was quite a thing to see.  Since we got there pretty early, we were one of the first customers to show and there were about 50 car salesmen sitting in a little area, huddled around a TV.

We got Frank... a really funny, older Hispanic man.  Since I had already done my research he took us to the selection of Mazda 3's he had.  Well... it didn't take long to find the one that we wanted, took it for a test drive, and spend the next few hours sitting around doing paperwork.

If you ever need someone to help you make a deal on a car, take my wife.  She is really good at it.  She saved us an entire percent in interest rate AND got three, count em, three free gifts when we were only entitled to one.  Here is the new car...

Here are the boys looking through their new binoculars.  These are a couple of the free gifts Laura got for us.

This evening we went for a nice drive and saw some great views in the desert around our neighborhood.

Adam was in a singing mood tonight.