10-24 to 10-26-2014 Gathering of Eric's Family in Nashville, TN

It's kind of amazing how this whole trip happened so organically, and we were happy to just go and enjoy the company.  Eric's brother, Dan, and his wife, Stephanie, flew in from L.A.  His other brother, Greg, flew in from Mississippi, where he had been working.  Greg's wife, Katy, and Eric's mother, Nancy, drove over from southern Indiana with our niece and nephew, Jenna and Jake.  There were also several other friends of the family that joined in for part or all of the adventure in Nashville, Tennessee.  It was a whirlwind, but a total blast!

Greg arrived at the exact same time we did, so we went to dinner at Demos', then headed over to Broadway.  This is the side
patio at Swingin' Doors (just off the main drag).  We were here when Dan and Stephanie arrived and joined us.

Greg, Eric, Stephanie, Dan and Cara at Swingin' Doors

Nashville Crossroads

Saturday morning we met up Nancy, Katy and the kids and walked downtown.  This was our
first view of Union Station.

We met up with Dan, Stephanie, and friend, Lynn, at Flying Saucer, which is inside a part of Union Station.

Beautiful bar and main dining area of Flying Saucer

Awesome indoor/outdoor seating area of Flying Saucer - the left wall is all garage doors that
can be raised in nice weather.

Sometime when we're in Nashville Cara does want to check out this museum...

Approaching downtown

This is the south end of the main drag on South Broadway ("SoBro").

As we were finishing our drinks in the first bar we heard a ruckus outside.  We stepped outside to see a solid stream of bikers.
We learned it was a "Toy Run" for children.  Several bikers were dressed as Santa Claus.  The police had closed down
Broadway, and it was probably a solid 5-10 minutes of bikers going by.

Jenna with one of the many horse statues at Wildhorse Saloon

Wildhorse Saloon is huge!

Three floors of fun at Wildhorse Saloon

Horses at the bar on the second floor of Wildhorse Saloon

Nice game area on the third floor of Wildhorse Saloon

What a venue to watch a band!

More horses...

Dan (looking western) with friend Conrad and his daughter

There are loads of people doing their schtick out on the street.

Legends Corner - one of many bars we checked out

Most people left early on Sunday morning, but Dan and Stephanie had an evening flight so we met up with them for lunch and to watch the football games before heading home.

After a great weekend the drive home was a bit of a bummer - due to construction on I-65 what should have been a 4.5 hour drive took 6 hours.

10-21-2014 Smartups meeting at the Speakeasy

The Speakeasy is a place where small tech companies can have some place to work that allows them to interact with like minded people.  Sometimes they hold events there.

This meetup focused on how to optimize a web form. 

Volunteers put up their forms so that the crowd and experts could critique it



The speakeasy has a really cool recycled look.  It really looks great by using recycled pallets and fixtures and mismatched chairs

10-17 to 10-19-2014 Hayride to Hell

Every October some friends of ours put on the best Halloween Party ever, called Hayride to Hell.  It's a weekend camping event out in the Brown County countryside (gorgeous!), and it's always a blast.  We went down Friday night and stayed until early evening on Sunday, catching up with all our friends that we haven't seen in months.

Warning: Some pictures of Cara's costume and costume preparations may be offensive.  Cara agrees it looks gross (but the blood is fake and Cara finds it extremely funny).

At night there is a huge bonfire in the center where the smoke is.

Indeed, there are hayrides at Hayride to Hell!

A cute snack perfect for Halloween

The start of our group costume preparations.

Have you guessed what the costume is yet?

Yes, those are what you think, but remember, the blood is fake.

Bitchy, Crampy, Sleepy, Bloody, Clutzy, Bingey, Moody, Bloated - we were "Shark Week"!  (No, it has nothing to do with
the Discovery Channel - just think about it for a minute.)

Friends Susie the Fortune Teller, and Tom (aka John Denver)

Our friend Mark always has a great costume.  This year he appropriately was a shark hunter.

Art the Robot - another friend who always has a great costume

Lady Juliana and Lillian (as the creepy Annabelle doll)

Entries into the Pumpkin Carving Contest

The winner - the "apple" pumpkin!

Princesses Gabrielle and Sophie

Hehehe - one last shark picture

Saturday was rainy during the day, but Sunday turned out GORGEOUS!

Cara went for a walk with several girlfriends down to the lake.

The trees were all turning beautiful colors

The lake is incredible this time of year, and these ladies (Cheryl, Annette, Susie and Erin) only add to the beauty!

Valerie, our friend and hair guru.  (This picture inspired the next one.)

Left to back to front: Cheryl, Susie, Valerie, JoEllen, Annette, and Cara.
(We missed having the rest of the ladies in this picture.)

Cara couldn't help but snap picture after picture on this beautiful walk.

Why couldn't Saturday have been like this?

Our friends are so lucky to have this awesome property in their family!

Panzer watching over his owner's stuff.

One last Gator ride...

Valerie's car battery was dead.  :(   And it took about 30 minutes, a jump box, 3 sets of jumper cables, and 5 guys to get it
going.  (Who would have guessed the jump box didn't have enough power, and 2 sets of jumper cables were bad - one even
started smoking!)

Fun with packing wrap!  (Cole actually volunteered for this.)

The end to another awesome Hayride to Hell - can't wait until next year!

10-16-2014 Techpoint tech thursday at Angies List

Every city we go to we look at www.eventbrite.com, www.meetup.com, www.yelp.com, and whatever calendars that may be specialized in the city.  For Indy that is www.nuvo.com and www.do317.com

We go to all of the tech events they have.  That is only about 3 per month in Indianapolis.  One of these is called Tech Thursday and that is held usually on the third Thursday of the month.

This one was pretty fascinating.  Everybody has heard of Angie's list and they employee 2,000 people and are hiring 1,000 more.  They have been a paid reviews company and now they are moving into products.

Robert Wiseman gave the bulk of the presentation and he is the chief financial officer for Angies list. 

Angie's List is now going to offer you the ability to take a picture of what you want to have done and then this will get bid out and people will come and fix it.  They are only 1/4 of the way done on this project, but they want to make home repair to be like buying an airline ticket.

Angie's list is going to be able to infinitely scale transactions by securing computing on demand in the cloud