tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-61218922010-03-20T14:39:29.684-04:00The lifes of the Braeken's in bits and bytesRichard Braekenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08948765696518944676noreply@blogger.comBlogger534125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6121892.post-70293291022890050932010-03-20T14:39:00.001-04:002010-03-20T14:39:29.766-04:00

This blog is now located at http://blog.braeken.com/. You will be automatically redirected in 30 seconds, or you may click here. For feed subscribers, please update your feed subscriptions to http://blog.braeken.com/feeds/posts/default.

Richard Braekenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08948765696518944676noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6121892.post-76446394202332151142010-03-07T15:35:00.001-05:002010-03-07T15:36:37.882-05:00

Happy birthday Kaylee

Richard Braekenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08948765696518944676noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6121892.post-65881178363417692852010-01-27T19:27:00.002-05:002010-01-27T20:52:36.710-05:00

So we now know what Apple released. The main items for me: * iPad. A crappy name. There is a reason why iPeriod and iTampon were trending topics on Twitter.* It's basically an iPod Touch Plus. Sadly, not much more. Somehow I had expected that you were able to run multiple applications at the same time. And I am a multitasker. * The price is strongest point. The share price of Apple had been

Richard Braekenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08948765696518944676noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6121892.post-44898309889390786982010-01-27T15:30:00.003-05:002010-01-27T15:35:31.348-05:00

Not often one of my pictures gets used on other blogs but this week the same one was used on 2 big local sites:http://torontoist.com/2010/01/the_daily_photoist_january_27_2010.phphttp://www.blogto.com/city/2010/01/saturday_brew_12th_pedestrian_death_reservation_frustration_more_zzzzzs_on_the_ttc_use_your_temporary_adult_tickets_soon_michael_bryant_a_no-show/

Richard Braekenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08948765696518944676noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6121892.post-4633461567174229652010-01-27T09:07:00.002-05:002010-01-27T09:10:37.273-05:00

Everybody is doing it: Applet Tablet Predictions. So here are mine:/Prediction%2520Score%2520Card.pdfOriginal: http://unweary.com/2010/01/prediction-score-card.html

Richard Braekenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08948765696518944676noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6121892.post-18920048028163193722010-01-06T20:45:00.003-05:002010-01-06T21:09:35.498-05:00

A little bit late but nevertheless: a very happy and healthy 2010 from our family to yours. Those 2 holiday weeks flew buy. Christmas brought a lot of gifts to the family... of course. My collection of empty Speculoos jars will increase over the next couple of months since Catherine, eh I mean Santa, gave me 12 full ones. So all is good. Pictures of Christmas can be found here: http://braeken.com

Richard Braekenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08948765696518944676noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6121892.post-88434417376287324952009-12-18T15:13:00.006-05:002009-12-18T15:18:59.899-05:00

The following organizational changes effective January 4th 2010, are being made to align and consolidate best practices, processes, tools and controls in the area of software configuration management/release management. ...Richard Braeken has accepted a new role as the Head of Centre Of Excellence for Release Management. Richard has been leading Release Management for Corporate Services

Richard Braekenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08948765696518944676noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6121892.post-1891621602753275252009-12-12T16:12:00.003-05:002009-12-12T18:16:19.448-05:00

Technically we celebrated it a day late but it doesn't really matter. I am talking about Saint Nicolaas or simply Sinterklaas, basically the Dutch version of Santa Claus although the story is Santa Claus is based on Sinterklaas.The girls put their shoes in front of the chimney Saturday evening. And yes, the next morning the found something in it. Then we drove off to Toronto where Sinterklaas and

Richard Braekenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08948765696518944676noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6121892.post-65140360573323039682009-10-31T23:47:00.000-04:002009-11-02T20:52:23.493-05:00

Halloween 2009. And we had a giraffe and an elephant in the house. Two animals who were quiet exited about all the candy and chocolates they were getting. It was fun. Mariska had her well-known spaced-out look when the door would get opened and became very talkative once we were back on the side walk. Kaylee thanked every house for the 'gifts'. And papa and mama thank the kids for the chocolates

Richard Braekenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08948765696518944676noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6121892.post-46672601900091425992009-10-29T20:55:00.002-04:002009-10-29T21:05:34.158-04:00

It's been a weird soccer season. In my 2nd game of the season I broke my toe and I was out for 2 months. We won the first game I got back but it would take almost 2 months before we won the next one. Was it me? (you are not supposed to answer this!!) We finished 5th out of 8th. Then the play-offs came and our first game we won 7-0. The next game was against the champions and we won 1-0. As a

Richard Braekenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08948765696518944676noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6121892.post-13022294078038743742009-10-14T19:34:00.003-04:002009-10-14T21:15:16.109-04:00

We had 2 visitors in town for the past 3.5 weeks: my parents. I have to say we had a good time together. Besides spending time with the kids and us, my parents were also busy with doing all kind of jobs around the house. There are too many to mention but the biggest jobs were paint jobs. The garage doors and most importantly our basement and the stairway to the basement. Catherine and I took

Richard Braekenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08948765696518944676noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6121892.post-27559976330030862452009-09-29T20:38:00.004-04:002009-09-29T20:47:18.542-04:00

It seems to be that I am blogging less and less. Maybe I am spending to much time on facebook and flickr... But yes, I am still alive and all is well. August came and went and a few weeks ago we saw U2 in concert which was pretty cool. At the moment my parents are here again which is making our lives easier. They take care of the kids in the morning and they also picked them up. Plus they do all

Richard Braekenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08948765696518944676noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6121892.post-3821717146038423972009-08-22T11:45:00.003-04:002009-08-22T11:47:35.230-04:00

Mariska turns 3More pictures: http://braeken.com/tools/gallery/Mariskas3rdbirthday

Richard Braekenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08948765696518944676noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6121892.post-59684313405786726742009-08-10T14:43:00.006-04:002009-08-10T21:31:08.710-04:00

Definitely time for an update since it wasn't a quiet month. In fact we went on vacation twice this month. First we went off to the Smiling Moose again, the cottage close to Parry sound that we have been going to every year with Catherine's family. Unfortunately the weather wasn't great. The first day I spent some time in the water but on most other days it was cloudy or even rainy. So it became

Richard Braekenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08948765696518944676noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6121892.post-22629401272312700952009-07-21T21:26:00.004-04:002009-07-21T22:02:15.738-04:00

Richard Braekenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08948765696518944676noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6121892.post-61936431367348563202009-06-11T16:10:00.002-04:002009-06-11T16:24:19.644-04:00

A comment to my last post said "Good to hear though that you can still fit your soccer in with that big family.".... Well that was ironic since in my 2nd game somebody stood on my foot with his cleat. I didn't think much of it. I continued with game. Kicked the ball several times. Sure, it felt sore when the ball was away but as soon the ball would get close, I didn't notice any pain.

Richard Braekenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08948765696518944676noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6121892.post-77471259688501488472009-05-27T12:29:00.002-04:002009-05-27T13:06:06.377-04:00

It's been awhile so time for an update. Kaylee is now really walking. No walking from couch to chair only. No, she just walks around the house freely. There were some painful consequences though. She feel at the day care and got some big scratches in the face but fortunately most of them have disappeared by now. It looked worse than it was. Mariska has been changing, at least in my opinion. She

Richard Braekenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08948765696518944676noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6121892.post-4655095157559213852009-05-03T15:55:00.003-04:002009-05-03T15:57:35.254-04:00

She has been close for a little while know but Kaylee has finally taken several steps in a row.

Richard Braekenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08948765696518944676noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6121892.post-23691308285915703122009-04-22T20:34:00.003-04:002009-04-22T21:28:34.709-04:00

This last Monday was the start of a whole new in the Braeken household. Catherine returned to work from her maternity leave 2 weeks ago (long live the return of the 2 incomes!!!) but Kaylee was still not going to day care yet. The reason was some rule where they can not have 3 kids under 3 at the day care. Therefore my mother-in-law stayed with us for 2 weeks looking after the young one. For some

Richard Braekenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08948765696518944676noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6121892.post-72478653178530969672009-04-10T11:57:00.002-04:002009-04-10T12:16:07.366-04:00

Lots of celebrations this week. On Tuesday Catherine left her thirties and landed in a new age bracket. And on Thursday we had our 4th anniversary. So we decided to go away for the weekend... without the kids since Grandma was staying at home with them. We went to Niagara-on-the-lake where we stayed 2 nights at the Queen's Landing. On Friday we went to an Irish pub and Saturday morning we had a

Richard Braekenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08948765696518944676noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6121892.post-81283824690508697112009-03-24T18:57:00.002-04:002009-03-24T19:02:59.308-04:00

Making videos is a tedious process. Well maybe I should say that not the making is tedious but all the work that needs to happen before it's ready to 'release'. It's one the reasons why I haven't shot a lot of movies. But I needed to shot some video of Kaylee walking around with her shopping cart, just as I did for Mariska. This way I will have some sweet memories of her at this age because even

Richard Braekenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08948765696518944676noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6121892.post-5850086737243953572009-03-17T20:08:00.008-04:002009-03-17T20:37:28.288-04:00

This was suppose to be a post about 1 day but it turns out to be post about 1 week. On March 8th Kaylee turned 1. Yes, she still has fewer hair than Mariska had on her day 1 but our little lady passed the magical first year mark. And therefore we had her birthday party planned.Problem was that both the girls hadn't been feeling well. Mariska had thrown up a few days earlier and both of them had

Richard Braekenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08948765696518944676noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6121892.post-72811221923071216192009-02-17T21:12:00.013-05:002009-02-22T12:31:16.276-05:00

It had been almost 4 years and my kids hadn't meet almost all of my family yet, so it was time for another trip to the 'father land' aka the Netherlands. On top of that we had another good reason namely the 40th anniversary of my parents.The flight to the Netherlands went pretty well. We were fortunate that the plane wasn't full so Mariska had 2 seats so she could lie down. Catherine and I both

Richard Braekenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08948765696518944676noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6121892.post-46909945573761293172009-01-18T22:29:00.003-05:002009-01-18T22:36:20.658-05:00

The biggest part was done before Christmas but there were still somethings outstanding like the carpet and the baseboard. But they are in now and officially the contractors are done. As the photos show, there is still one thing outstanding and that is painting. But nevertheless, I am happy to show the new basementBefore:After:

Richard Braekenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08948765696518944676noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6121892.post-11114593217310153102009-01-01T13:14:00.002-05:002009-01-01T13:36:07.264-05:00

Happy New Year to you allThings have been well. Christmas came and went and Santa was good to me. My first present I got a week early (for obvious reasons....). It was a small snow blower: a Toro 1800 Power Curve. My back is my wife thankful since it's definitely making the shovel work lighter. On Christmas day I got a huge world map for in the basement. The basement by the way is almost done.

Richard Braekenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08948765696518944676noreply@blogger.com1