Sorry. I'm moving. Moving to blogger. Am I bad? Probably.

Here's my link:
http://annmhendrickson.blogspot.com/

Here's my rss feed:
http://annmhendrickson.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default

Kyle and I went to visit MIT last week. My oh, my I did like it there. We rushed off last week to NYC to meet our new little niece, took the train up to Boston to tour MIT and Harvard, and then dashed up to Whistler for a lovely snowboarding trip. We are exhausted and glad to be home!

The work they are doing in the MIT Media Lab is MIND BLOWING! I tagged along on a fabulous tour that included demos of many of their functioning prototypes. I also got to sit through a terrific workshop put on for middle school children through the Life Long Kindergarten group. Here are two of the projects that I found most interesting:

Ambient Intelligence's Moving Portrait is aware of whether or not someone is looking at it and will start interacting with the viewer based on the portrait's personality.

Life Long Kindergarten's main project is Scratch a simplified media editing program for children.

Kyle and I will be moving in the fall. Location, TBA. In the mean while we've been thinking about spurucing up the old condo before we sell. (Yes, we're planning on selling.) Previously we had Sears come by and do an in home estmiate. Yiye!!! Sooo expensive! We were so upset, thinking all our home improvement plans were going down the drain. We talked about doing the work ourselves, but then flashbacks to our tile project came to mind. In a last attempt to realize our vision and at the suggestion of a coworker we had a local kitchen specialist come in and he did the same estimate for half the price. Yes! We'll keep you posted!

Tile Project

These days I have been working on workflow. What is workflow? Basically I define processes that customers want their peeps to adhere to and create an application that enforces the process. This means automated email notification, reports, dashboards, etc.

Why the woe, you might be asking. Simply that implementing workflow usually means integrating with other applications at some point. This means that I'm constantly flopping between applications, never getting a proper introduction and never getting to enjoy my success in learning the apps. The WOE today is Microsoft Dynanamics AX, a product I have always sworn that I would NEVER touch. Argh. I just found out that as soon as I return from vacation I'm flying to Cali to integrate a workflow tool with AX. Boooooo....

It's time to visit Boston to check out MIT and Harvard. I have meetings packed into Monday and Tuesday at the Media Lab and Kyle will be checking out Harvard and MIT bschools.



Better yet, we're kicking off the weekend by heading to NYC to visit Alan, Mari, Ilsa, and baby Clara. Should be a busy, grand couple of days... will keep you posted.

Check them out!

We're going to Palo Alto to tour Stanford tomorrow. Hopefully we like it. Kyle is going to sit through some bschool classes and I'm going to check out the design school.

Check out how itty bitty the housing is. Boo.

Dear Friends - Hap hap happy Valentine's Day!

My gift to you? The best sugar cookie recipe in the world!

Sugar Cookies

Valentine's Day wouldn’t be complete without pink sugar cookies.

I'm a kitchen aid stand mixer fanatic, so when I say mix, I mean lazy stand mixer style.

Makes 2 ½ to 3 ½ dozen cookies
Prep Time: 35 minutes
Waiting Time: 35 minutes
Baking Time: 7 minutes

Ingredients:

1/2 pound (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
2/3 cup sugar
1 large egg
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/8 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla
2 1/3 cups all-purpose flour


In a bowl, combine softened butter and sugar and mix until light and fluffy.

Add the egg, baking powder, salt, and vanilla. Mix, mix, mix.

Add flour and mix until nice and smooth.

In order to make cutting the cookies out even easier, I split the dough into two chunks. Put each chunk in between two pieces of wax paper or saran wrap. Roll out each ball between the two pieces of paper until it's ready to cut out. Then put on a tray. Repeat with the second piece of dough and stack on top of the first. Toss into the freezer for 30 minutes, but don't let it get too hard. You want the dough to stiffen up so it's nice and easy to work with. Otherwise the dough will get gloppy and hard to handle.

Preheat the oven to 350*F. Grease cookie sheets.

Pull dough from freezer. Cut out cookies and put on cookie sheets. Use all dough.

Bake 1 sheet at a time for 6 to 9 minutes.

If desired, decorate with icing. Put extras in the freezer, frosted or not!

Well, we tried and tried and tried, and could not get an itenerary into Greece. What a shame! We realized that it was plan B time. Still, we could not get tickets into ANYWHERE! Paris, Munich, Athens, Madrid... anywhere! This, of course, is us trying to get tickets using our United Rewards Miles.

And then, like a lightbulb going off, I had an idea... What if we flew into Izmir, Turkey. Totally random, quite possibly a bad idea, but what the hey!

So, here we are today with an itenerary into Izmir, Turkey.

We depart June 19 and will be fancy free in Turkey and/or Greece until July 20th. That's right. July. 20. But wait, it gets better! On our return we have a two day layover in Munich.

We have some fabulous planning to do - if you know anyone who has spent time in the lower Agean area in Turkey please let us know! We'd love recommendations.

It's true. The Military has created a Ray Gun that makes you feel like you're on fire! So cool!

Fun Friday Finds:

A toy that saysnaughty words.

A Cake that can't speak Italian.

This fall Kyle and I threw our hats into the grad school ring. Kyle's wanting to do Business School and I want to do stuff.

We heard back yesterday from Harvard and Stanford for Kyle... He got in to Stanford and wait-listed at Harvard. Yes!

So, while we'd love to know what we're doing next year, we still have no clue. We will be moving, but we're not sure where to yet. The kicker is that I applied to the MIT Media Arts and Sciences Masters program and Kyle also applied to bschool there... I sure would love to join Jo Cainster in Boston! But really, who can pass up Cali?!

Wish us luck!

Top ten albums that I listened to this year:

10. Neko Case - Fox Confessor Brings the Flood
9. The Wreckers - Stand Still, Look Pretty
8. Justin Timberlake - Futuresex/Lovesounds
7. Dixie Chicks - Taking the Long Way
6. Busta Rhymes - The Big Bang
5. Nelly Furtado - Loose
4. Brad Paisley - Time Well Wasted

And, in preparation for Bumbershoot 2006...
3. The New Pornographers - All of them!
2. Spoon - All of them!
1. Kanye West - Late Registration

I love Sushi!

I have tendonitis in my right wrist. I've had it for about 3 months. What from? Oh, the standard typing and mousing is my current thought. Although those who don't like the fact that I rock climb swear it has to be that. That's why I haven't been online for a while... took two weeks off to get better and, alas, I am in the same place as I was before. I'm wearing a wacky brace that is like an exoskeleton. It's my robocop cuff.

Indeed, today I interviewed someone for a technical position at my company. I do at least one interview a month these days, so I've seen some interesing folks. Today, however, would have to take the cake for most creative approach.

I walked into the room and kicked it off with a big smile and a hearty hello, to show that I'm not scary. Afterall, the guy looked a little nervous. I asked him how the day has gone so far, me being the third in a series of interviews. His response?

"Much better...

[dramatic pause]

...now that you're here."

After a rousing round of pinochle, where Annie and I got our butts kicked by the boys, it was time for a rematch. The boy's actually claimed that Annie and I "didn't know how to play the game" implying that it wasn't worth their time to play another round with us.

We were handily beating the boys and suddenly Annie's mood went from "havin' fun" to "super sassy."

I knew something was up.

She won the bid for 430 and I crossed my fingers... she must have a plan. Annie named Spades as trump and I frowned. I only had two Spades, a Queen and a 10, so filled out the pass with two Aces of Diamonds and held my breath.

Annie smiled coyly, arranged her card, looked around, and then splayed them out on the table for all to see: Double Pinochle!!!!!

Double Pinochle is worth 1,500 points and is a game buster. Sorry boys!!!

Buildering - the art of climbing a building.
Buildering Community
Buildering.net

It took me way too long to find the Dooce website.

So, Dooce is like the ultimate blog. Not only does the author, Heather B. Armstrong, diligently submit sassy content, but she can support her family through managing this website. Dang! And so I started thinking about how I needed to join the Blog Revolution. Perhaps someone will find me slightly entertaining?

I believe the path was like this:

MIT Media Lab Research
Sociable Media Group
Urban Hermes Project
Urban Hermes Scenario
Dooce