It’s a baby.

So, I haven’t been exactly present in the last while. While I totally don’t have any excuse for being gone as long as I have been gone (other than it being busy season and I really have been pretty exhausted every day when I get home), I will provide an incredible post for those of you who haven’t seen our the Facebook update from me or my wifey, I’ll show you a picture:

Meet the peach. The peach growing inside of my wife’s uterus. That’s right, I’m going to be a father. Some little baby is going to have to think I know what the heck I’m talking about and is going to listen to me (for awhile, at least.). We are incredibly excited/nervous/thrilled/frightened/joyous to have this great blessing come into our lives. We aren’t sure what the gender is yet (That’s for January) but we do know that he’ll be joining the Gamblin clan around the month of June in the year 2010.

Obviously, there will be plenty of updates regarding our ever-growing peach in the near future. For the meantime, here’s a few more morsels of information:

• We’re moving tomorrow. We’ll be moving to a new apartment here in San Jose, just a little further south. It’s a much larger 2-bedroom home that will help us get ready for the little one.
• I’ve been working a lot recently, but things are going well. I’m excited to see that busy season is going to be over in a few days.
• I’ll be heading to Christmas vacation on Wednesday of next week, and I’ll get to escape until January 4th. It’ll be a great break.
• We recently travelled to SF for a great meal at Scoma’s and to celebrate my wife’s grandparents’ 50th anniversary. It was nifty. And Lindsay made the most amazing German Chocolate cake with a custom magnolia flower. Hopefully she’ll blog it soon. It was delicious and beautiful.
• We also celebrated our anniversary with a fantastic trip to the Sonoma coast. We got some gorgeous pictures. I’ll show a few here. It’s been an amazing year, and I have to say that I picked the perfect person to share my life with!

We are seriously blessed and I’m so excited to be a daddy. Look for more continuous updates here soon.

Leave your message after the break.

Guest Post ... Starring The Trophy Wife!

Hey everyone. I know I took about a month off. Bad choice. My mom recently was telling me that she needed me to post. Therefore, she offered to do a guest post. As most of you know, my mom has her own personal blog where she shares her unique perspective on everything in the world. Seriously, it's a good blog. She posts daily and it's a very recommended read.

I promise I'll come back ... I promise. In the meantime, however, enjoy the mind of my mom. And please, continue to read her blog. I promise you won't regret it. Here goes!

So, here’s the deal. Matthew Gamblin thinks his life is boring. That’s probably true, but that is no excuse for his lack of posts as of late. Matt needs to understand that blogging is not about excitement. No. Blogging is a state of mind.

My mind, usually.

Hence, the guest post idea is born.

As Matt’s mother, I have some unique and most importantly, correct, insights into how Matt Gamblin became the man he is today. I would like to share some of those early occasions when, I knew without a doubt, that this child was destined for great things. In no particular order, let us begin:

Matt was thrown from a horse when he was two, requiring a visit to the emergency room. Never mind that the horse in question was red and required a quarter to be placed in its slot before the incident occurred. Those details don’t really matter. The point is: Matt handled it well. Actually, he had to be sedated and placed in a papoose-straightjacket-thingy.

Note: Okay, that wasn’t the best example. Let us continue.

One beautiful summer day at Lake Shasta, the family boat exploded. Seriously. The engine starts, sputtering noises are made, flames roar and dudes in fancy noisy ski boats skid around the now-sad family boat, dousing the flames with their hot-dogging. Matt remembers every moment of this frightening day. He swears he remembers. Except, however, for the small fact that it happened before he was born. The point is: I apologize. There is no point.

I went to the Homecoming Dance with Matt. Now, before you get all weirded out, I wasn’t his date, thank you very much. I was his State-of-California-Can’t-Drive-Without-An-Adult in the car Whatnot. Fear not, however. I was discreet. I lay down on the backseat floor of the Firebird (which, I believe, was still purple at the time) and he picked up his date and drove to the dance. Quiet as a little mouse, I was. Then I drove home and returned later, parking the car in the same spot and hiding on the floorboard. Discreetly. Again.

Note: I admit that I may have peeked out the window when he walked his date to the front door. Maybe.

But that’s not the point. The point is: Best obey the law, Dude.

Matt loved the A’s, back in the powerhouse, juiced-up Bash Brother good-old-days. It is 1989. Matt sits through a four-hour game and the A’s are throttling whomever and it’s like 27-5. Or something. Seriously. The game is rebroadcast two hours later. Matt watches it again, doing a play-by-play. Matt, it’s time for dinner, I say. Not now, Mom, he answers, Walt Weiss is going to hit a homerun in a minute! The point: You may choose the point. Either a) Matt is a genius with an amazing memory or b) Matt is a little on the obsessive side.

There are many more instances to share. Oh yes. It takes decades to produce a twenty-six year old. Two and half, to be exact. And as The Mother, I can assure you that the point is: Sons don’t get any better than this one.

Note: But then again, I only have one son, so it’s hard to be sure.

Time for some fun!

So, my life isn’t all that incredibly fascinating. Aside from the work, my wife’s amazing treats; doing some graphic design for my wife’s site; planning stuff for my mom’s site, which will hopefully soon be launching completely on diannegamblin.com (more on that to come in the future); going out shopping with my wife; and taking pictures with my brand new camera my life has been pretty chock full of entertainment. So I just want to provide a little insight into my life:

• I went to the emergency room at the Kaiser Santa Clara Homestead facility in Santa Clara, CA on Wednesday morning at 3 a.m. I woke up to an extreme pain in my lower right side of my abdomen, and finally went to the ER at about 3. It turned out to be my 3rd kidney stone in the last few years. I got some wonderful pain killers, a CT scan, an EKG and 2.5 hours in the ER. I got pain killers very quickly (from what my wife told me) and was treated right away. All this for a small co pay. I do love my health insurance. Note: I am now the number one producer of kidney stones in my complete extended family. I have another 3 in there, according to my CT scan. So get ready for some more kidney-related fun!
• I will be going to Salt Lake City, Utah on Monday for an engagement for work. I’ll be there for 4 days and get to spend some time with my sister and possibly catch a haunted forest or house or something fun like that. My sister and I are the only ones willing to go check those out these days.
• We love our camera. Check out some pictures.

    

I do love picture taking. I found this quote from Elliott Erwin on a website:

“To me, photography is an art of observation. It's about finding something interesting in an ordinary place... I've found it has little to do with the things you see and everything to do with the way you see them.”

You can also check out my wife’s blog for some more pictures. I do all of her food pics!

I hope everyone is doing wonderfully out in the blog world. Remember to leave me a comment and let me know you were here! Until next time.

I Finally Got It!

What is it? It is the Canon Rebel T1i, or 500D for those in the UK (though I don’t have any readers across the pond). It’s my birthday present, and something I’ve been waiting on for some time. I’m so excited to have the camera and look forward to using it to take many different pictures. I also got the Canon EF-S 55-200 mm IS telephoto zoom lens to go with it. I additionally got a great camera bag to go with it. Both the lens and the bag came from my parents. It’s so exciting to me to have the camera and be able to take some great pictures. I’m a nerd, as those who read this site are fully aware, and that extends to things beyond just computers. I really do enjoy photography, as some might have noticed, and I am so grateful to have something that can grow with me and help to take even more fantastic photos. It’s amazing. I’ll share some examples here, but first let me give you a quick review of the camera.

Note: All photos of the body and buttons are from DPReview. It’s the BEST camera review site. However, all sample photos were taken by me!

Handling

The camera is a large camera, as most are aware. The dSLR systems are typically larger, and feature large screens on the back and weight significantly more than any point and shoot that you can purchase. That’s why the gadget bag was so important for me.

However, handling is about how it feels in the hands, and how the  buttons are laid out. The camera has a fantastic screen on the back which is where you primarily find the details of the settings and the potential to review your photos after being taken. The buttons are satisfying, and within reach. Also, my hands aren’t huge and  therefore it fits nicely in my hands.

Features

Getting top billing on this camera is the inclusion of a HD video mode. It includes 720p video capture at 30fps, or frames per second, (which is about half of what the human eye sees, but what a smooth video typically will run at) and 1080p video at 24fps. It makes the 1080p video mode a little less attractive, as some choppiness is evident. Also, the autofocus in the video mode is slow. Therefore, it’s not quite as amazing as it sounds. However, it looks FANTASTIC when shooting video. You you just have to focus before you start taking the video, pan slowly, and not have something moving back and forth toward the camera. Otherwise it’s great.

Additionally, it features 3.5 frames per second shooting with unlimited frames shooting in jpg mode, great color reproduction, 15.1 megapixels, RAW capable, DIGIC 4 processor, and support for high capacity SD cards. It’s really a wonderful feature set, and more than worth the entry cost.

Picture Quality

After all, it’s all about the pictures in the end. The picture quality is seriously amazing. Stepping up from a point-and-shoot camera, the detail and color reproduction is outstanding. Being able to focus close in, blur backgrounds, open my shutter speed and do all kinds of other amazing things that simply can’t be done with other cameras blows my mind. If you don’t believe me, check out the photos:

There are plenty more photos coming later, but that’s just a smattering of some of my favorites. Check out my Facebook page or a new page that I’ll be making on Flickr. I’ll update that later.

Conclusion: An AMAZING camera for an entry level photographer. It’s expensive, but ever so worth it. If you love photography and want to step up, it’s a great value proposition and won’t let you down.

What do you guys think? Know of any good photography spots around San Jose? And hey, I’m willing to take pictures for anyone that would like some pictures!

Birthday Commentary

Hello out there.

Sorry I've been neglecting the blog recently. I've been in Austin, TX For the last three weeks. That's right, almost a month sitting out there in Texas for an audit. It was a good experience. Worked with a lot of great people, learned a lot about the audit process, and feel better. However, after a 3.5 hour wait sitting on the plane which was sitting on the tarmac, a sprint to make my connection, and a 3 hour flight home, I now can blog from the comfort of my living room and sleep in my own bed. It's so nice to be home, and I'm glad that I have the chance to be in California. Texas was not a bad place, but it just isn't for me. Crazy thunderstorms including rain out of nowhere; 70 days over 100 degrees with 75% humidity and plenty of more features make me happy to be in San Jose, CA.

Anyway, it's been a good day so far. I woke up early (I'm still on Texas time) and turned on the A's game. It's been good. I know my wife has plenty more planned for the rest of the day, and I'm looking forward to it. I don't know what's going on, but that makes it all the more exciting.

I know that my birthday present is the Canon T1i. I don't know how many of you know, but I'm an avid photographer. I love taking pictures. It's really just a good outlet for the creativity that I have flowing through my blood. I'm not an artsy person, but I have a prett good eye for photos. So, I'm super excited to get my DSLR and learn how to take even better pictures. I can't wait to take food pictures for my wife, who has a new blog, and help to make her a famous goody-making woman. Trust me, her treats are well worth it. And I look forward to taking pictures of people, scenery, and all kinds of other things. It's exciting to me to be able to afford something like the camera and enjoy it. I can't wait ... but I have to wait a few more days.

Other than that, I don't know much, but I'm excited to find out.

Anyway, I'll leave you all with some fantastic photos of my trip to Austin, and hope that everyone is doing well. I have some tech news to run over soon. Lots of stuff has been happening, and I'd like to opine. So, sorry, but you get some tech posts coming soon!

Here are some pics:

Lindsay's b-day dinner at The Melting Pot in Austin, TX.

Our dessert at The Melting Pot.
My wife at the Lyndon B. Johnson Memorial Museum at the University of Texas. We had lots of fun.
Museum Again. Just taking a pic together.

A picture my wife took at the Texas State Capital.

My wife amazed at the huge McKinney Falls at McKinney State Park. Yes, that's supposed to be a waterfall. I guess there's a drought. Sad.

Just about to drop my wife off at the airport so she can head home. Yes, I do look terrible.

Drop me a line and let me know you were here. See you all soon.

WE'RE GOING TO WICKED TOMORROW!

We're super, super excited.

That is all.

Children ...

Hello fond blogging world.

I know that I have launched a particularly long absence on my poor reading public recently. While that may be a very small minority of individuals in this world, I have been getting a few requests to get something out there to provide a few minutes of entertainment to those who happen to occupy some work moments with reading my little blog. So, here I am. Saturday night. Looking over some stuff on my wife's computer and looking at the house. The house has three little specialty beds set up in various parts of the living room. We have cupcakes in the oven. I'm a touch sunburned from being outside at the park today. I'm exhausted, but not because I've been doing anything particularly strenuous. Nope. I'm just babysitting. Now, some of you may not take pity on my lovely wife and me for a simple matter like babysitting. Some may scoff and think that it can't possibly be that tiring. You, my dear reader, would be wrong. Going from no children to 3 overnight is nothing to laugh at. Obtaining children that are 8, 7 and 5 overnight ... that is a lot harder than it might sound.

So we've spent the day at the park, trying to pick out a game at Target, and watching more episodes of The Legend of Zelda TV show than I ever thought I would see in my life. I ate frozen french fries and chicken nuggets last night, something I haven't done since my days as a college bachelor. Our life has been flipped on its head, as we go to bed at 9:00, beat from the day of keeping siblings from attacking and punishing each other for being on their side of the seat in the car. We've averted near disastrous cheating at hide-and-go-seek, and managed to entertain and impress with our small, but useful 1-bedroom living space.

It's been a crazy weekend so far, and there are still two more days to go.

I think we might have found the best form of birth control.