Anyhow, the mix is too big for email (28 MB .aif file) so I’m posting it here so they (or anyone else for that matter) can download.

Here it is: Roger and Judy’s Reception Dance Mix

Yesterday, Judge Folsom finally made his ruling in our long-standing patent litigation case against Echostar. When I joined TiVo nearly 4-1/2 years ago, this case had already begun, and it was one of the main reasons I was so optimistic about TiVo’s future. Well, the wheels of justice turn a lot slower than I had expected, but they do turn, and fortunately the outcome is as I had hoped.

Who knows what shenanigans Charlie Ergen (Echostar’s CEO) has planned next, but this ruling is very significant and most analysts seem to agree that ol’ Charlie has just about run out of options. The market seems to agree with TiVo stock up nearly 50%.

You know things aren’t good when you can’t even lift an empty glass mug without feeling a shooting pain. With climbing injuries, I’ve learned the hard way that the best course of action is to entirely cease all climbing and to just let things heal. So I did the right thing and put my climbing gym membership on hold which meant no climbing for at least a month. Much to my dismay, the nature of the injury also meant no volleyball either since the act of passing or bumping the ball would hurt my arm (although strangely enough, it didn’t really hurt when hitting).

Despite depriving myself of climbing and volleyball, the healing process was aggravatingly slow. I ended up having to extend the hold on my climbing membership to two months. By mid-January, however, my arm was finally feeling better and I was optimistic that I would be back in action soon.

January marks the beginning of snowboarding season and I was happy that my climber’s elbow wouldn’t affect my ability to snowboard. Well, as (bad) luck would have it, I ended up spraining the MCL on my left knee during my very first snowboarding trip of the year. So just as my arm was almost healed, I screw up another part of my body.

A knee injury is actually much more annoying than an arm injury because it really limits your activity. In addition to not being able to climb or play volleyball, now I couldn’t snowboard, bike, or do almost any kind of cardio. @#$%’in A, dude! The only exercise that I could really do now was to lift weights.

Many people find lifting weights to be quite boring, but when healthy, I actually enjoy it, probably because I only do it once or twice a week amidst other activities. However, as I soon learned, when weight lifting is the only activity that I am doing, I quickly grow tired of it.

I soon began dreading going to the gym, and as a result began looking into alternative types of workouts. At Planet Granite, they have gymnastics rings set up. The rings are on adjustable length straps so you can vary how high or low the rings are to the ground. I started doing some basic exercises on the rings and was amazed at how much better of a workout it was.

Doing push-ups on rings is quite a bit harder than doing push-ups on the ground. It engages a whole bunch of stabilizing muscles including, much to my surprise, your abs. In fact, my abs were quite sore the day after doing ring push-ups. And dips? They’re way harder on rings.

One ring exercise that I was particularly attracted to was the “muscle-up” – yes, I know, I’m finally getting to the subject of this post. While it’s a very basic move for ring gymnasts, it’s something that most people, even athletes, have a hard time performing.

The first few times I tried it, it felt quite difficult – I couldn’t even come close to doing one! I became determined to do a muscle-up and decided to set a goal for myself to do one before summer (which in my mind was June). As it turns out, it didn’t take nearly that long as less than two weeks later I was able to do my first muscle-up. Proper technique is key, particularly the “false grip”, and it definitely helps to have the plethora of instructional vids on the web to refer to.

While I am now able to do a single muscle-up, I’m still not able to do multiple ones in a row. That’s my next goal. Eventually, I hope to work up to what these bad-ass chicks can do.

Mike recently graduated from SJSU with an Industrial Design degree so the group threw him a little celebration party. Photos courtesy of Charles.

For our wedding reception “first dance”, Judy and I decided to do something a bit different. Rather than the typical ballroom dance set to a mushy love song, we decided to inject some fun and liveliness into our first dance.

We decided to come up with our own routine set to an original music mix (GarageBand totally rocks!). Not being anything close to professional dancers, we scoured the internet for fun (and funny!) dance moves that weren’t too hard to do.

Judy is a huge Friends fan (she TiVos multiple episodes everyday) and we both thought Ross and Monica’s dance in “The Routine” episode was absolutely hilarious. If you haven’t seen it before, you really should. Here’s a clip on YouTube. We definitely wanted to incorporate elements from their dance into our routine.

YouTube turned out to be a great resource. We found great inspiration from Judson Laipply’s ‘Evolution of Dance‘ as well as this couple’s non-traditional wedding dance. We also pulled a few moves from the movie Hitch, particularly the scene where Albert (Kevin James) shows Hitch (Will Smith) his “dance moves”. Since we both grew up in the 80’s, we simply had to have some moves from Michael Jackson and M.C. Hammer. Thanks once again to YouTube, we had ready access to videos from both these artists.

Coming up with a routine, especially if you’re not a dancer, can be pretty hard, but what’s even harder is coming up with the music to match the routine. You’ve got to find the right music with the right beat, properly adjust fades and transitions, snip and clip songs to the right durations, and at times, add your own sounds and sound effects. Let me tell you, it can be quite time-consuming! Good thing I can be a bit OCD when it comes to creative pursuits.

So without further adieu, here are the video clips of the dance. Big thanks go out to Derek who captured the dance on video. Several others took video as well, but I think this is the best one since it is from straight on. I’m trying to acquire the other video clips and will post them when I get them.

Roger & Judy’s 1st Dance (medium quality, 39 MB)
Due to its reasonable file size, this one’s recommended for most people.

Roger & Judy’s 1st Dance (higher quality, 153 MB)
This file’s huge so it’s only recommended for those with super-fast internet connections.

UPDATE: I’ve added details of the music used in our dance as well as the accompanying dance moves.

Here’s a guide to all of our dance moves and the accompanying songs and sound effects:

Mirda Rock by Reggie Griffin & Technofunk
- Computer voice intro (“I am a computer, I have been programmed to dance”)

Clip from ‘It’s a Sin’ by The Pet Shop Boys
- The Robot

GarageBand sound effect
- Robot Rewind

Clip from ‘It’s a Sin’ by The Pet Shop Boys
- The Robot

Clip from ‘Another Part of Me’ by Michael Jackson
- Judy goes through hoop (my arms)

GarageBand sound effect
- Me as a puppet-master lifting up Judy’s arms

GarageBand thunder sound effect
- Me striking down Judy

‘Looking for the Perfect Beat’ by Afrika Bambaataa & The Soul Sonic Force
- Judy: The Running Man
- Me: Rollin’ the pizza dough and the Q-Tip
- Judy: The Lawnmower (starting the lawnmower) and Goin’ Shoppin’ (taking things off the shelf and putting them in the cart)
- Me: Diggin’
- Egyptian arms
- Head slide
- The Sprinkler
- V-Eyes
- Judy tries to escape while I hop on my horse and swing the lasso.
- I lasso Judy and reel her in.

‘U Can’t Touch This’ by MC Hammer
- MC Hammer dance moves

‘Billie Jean’ by Michael Jackson
- Michael Jackson dance moves

‘Thriller’ by Michael Jackson
- Michael Jackson dance moves

‘Trouble with Boys’ by Loretta
Here, we just reproduced the entire Ross & Monica dance from the Friends episode ‘The Routine’. It was a bit of a pain because the actual released song differs from the version in the Friends episode. I had to splice various portions of the song to line up with Ross & Monica’s routine. I even had to add a unique sound effect – the two beats where we “hip bump” each other (towards the end of the routine) is actually a GarageBand sound effect.

Here’s the slideshow we put together for the wedding. It shows pics from Judy’s childhood, my childhood, us with various family and friends, and finally pics of just the two of us. It ends with a pretty cool effect in which a snapshot is taken from a short video clip.

Unfortunately, these slideshows are huge files. I made extensive use of the Ken Burns Effect which essentially makes the slideshow one big video file instead of just a collection of photos.

Reception Slideshow (medium quality, 113 MB)
This one’s recommended for most people. It’s still a pretty big file so if you don’t have a fast connection, you may have to wait a while for it to load.

Reception Slideshow (higher quality, 399 MB)
This file’s really huge so it’s only recommended for those with super-fast internet connections.

We definitely used up a bunch of 1s and 0s during our reception – there’s quite a few photos, so many that I didn’t bother to go through and filter them.

You can click on the pic above (or here) to get to the general reception photo album or use one of the more direct links below.

Pics from Judy’s life, some of which were used in the slideshow.

Pics from my life, some of which were used in the slideshow.

Pics of Judy pre-reception taken by Judy’s Uncle Lyon.

Pics of the reception by Accolade Photography, the professional photographers we hired for the job.

Pics of the reception by Judy’s Uncle Lyon.

For reasons unknown, Judy’s mom was super excited to have a wedding dress made for Latte. At times, it seemed that she was more excited about Latte’s dress than our actual wedding.

Here’s some pics of Latte in her custom made dress. I don’t think Latte cared too much for the outfit.

We got a knock on our front door this afternoon and when Judy answered, the guy at the door informed us that he was here to deliver a piano. Huh? You must have the wrong address because we didn’t buy a piano. Well, we (Judy and I) didn’t buy a piano, but it turns out that Judy’s parents did. As part of a wedding gift, Judy’s mom and dad got us a beautiful Kawai baby grand piano. Wow!

About two years ago, Judy decided to sell our baby grand, primarily because the place we were living in at the time was too small. Now that we’re living in a much larger place, we easily have enough room to fit it. The new piano is nearly identical to our old one, and it plays and sounds just as good.

Here’s some pics of our new piano. Thanks mom and dad!

08.08.08. Looks like China decided to start the Olympics on the same day as our wedding. We decided to just do a quick and simple ceremony at the Santa Clara County Courthouse. Unfortunately, the photos all came out pretty bad, likely due to the poor lighting. Nevertheless, since they’re the only photos of our wedding, we kept most of them for posterity’s sake.