The Hampton Times

Went to Fairmount park around 4pm today with the family for a bike ride around the park. As soon as we got there and parked, Dillon said to me, "There's a car in the water!" A minute later, he said, "Someone is inside!" It was the craziest thing I've ever witnessed. Thank God someone was there with a tire iron and a few guys swam out and busted the back window open!  One of the guys said he was her husband (he said this as he walked right past me).  We all felt completely helpless. I wanted to jump in and do something but I had nothing to break glass with. One witness said she saw the car accelerate into the river...  We just don't know if it was intentional. Crazy Easter!

Philadelphia!! Adrian and Cameron in the city...

Boy Scout camping trip to Bass River State Park. This was near the end of our 7.6 mile hike. That is Lake Absegami in the background. That's Dillon, Jason, and Adrian.

Well, it took much longer than I expected, but the Star Wars puzzle was completed today! One thousand pieces came together to make this awesome picture. Now... On to troubleshoot my son's laptop which refuses to boot into Windows for some reason.

The Hampton/Doyle families got together for the 11th annual Valentine's Day Dinner.  This year it was our turn to host the meal, so we kept it fairly simple with some spaghetti & meatballs, and some cresent rolls.  The kids played video games and hung out in the basement while we chatted at the dining room table and got caught up.  Always a fun evening! Here is a collage of some photos we snapped... <<-Mark-->>

We're working on a new 1,000-piece puzzle called, "You're all clear, kid." It's a Star Wars puzzle that prominently features the Millennium Falcon, Darth Vader, the Death Star, and all the primary characters from "A New Hope." It's been a difficult one so far because of the number of black pieces with "stars" on them, along with the number of white Falcon pieces. But we are starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel! Here is a picture of where we are now...

It's official. The minivan sold today! A very nice older couple bought it. The husband is a carpenter and plans to take the back seats out of the van and turn it into a work vehicle. Hopefully it will serve him well for years to come.

Cameron won this cool sweatshirt when his team was the second-place finisher in the 3-on-3 basketball tournament today!

Two or three players are missing, of course.

Back in November of 2003, we welcomed our first children to the world, our twins Dillon and Jason.  Within a couple of months we realized that loading two car seats in and out of our sedans was a pain in the butt.  Angie wanted an SUV, but we figured that it made more practical sense to go for the minivan.  So after a month or so of research and test drives, we purchased a Chrysler Town & Country in March 2004.  The van has served us well for almost 15 years.  We have had minimal issues with it, and it has taken us to places as far away as Orlando, FL.  It welcomed our next two sons into its cabin as well, Adrian and Cameron.  It also got us safely to the Outer Banks in North Carolina, the Jersey shore, New York City, Washington D.C., Maryland, Busch Gardens in Virginia, Colonial Williamsburg, in Virginia, and more. But after all of those trips and many years of service, we have decided to part ways.  Angie finally got her dream car: a Che...

Dennis Snow was the keynote speaker at this morning's Welcome General Session at the IPI Expo in Nashville. He is an ex-Disney executive who got his first job at Walt Disney World in 1979 driving the submarines at the 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea ride. Fast forward a few years and he is a top exec at the happiest company on Earth. I thought his speech was very entertaining and informative. He focused on customer service and its importance in any business. He started off by asking the room full of hundreds of people to shout out their answers to this: "What stands out to you about your trip to Disney World? What does Disney World do well?" First answer? "It's very clean." Next? "Very organized." "They call you by your first name." After a few minutes he said, "Notice that no one said 'the rides'?! Even though that is kind of the point of Disney World." All these little things that the employees do for you while you are ...

In Nashville, TN this week for the IPI Convention (International Parking Institute). Took off from Philly at 10:05 A.M. and landed in Nashville at 11 A.M. I was in my hotel eating a burger by 11:45.  Not too bad. Met with a vendor and attended two educational sessions already. Heading out to an event tonight, and then tomorrow morning is the key note speaker (who hasn't been revealed). I'm waiting in my hotel room to Facetime the twins so I can help them with some math prep for a test tomorrow. Angie says they need some extra guidance to make sure they "get it." We shall see. They should be calling soon...

Last year (July 2014) I took the PCI Professional online course and passed the exam at a Pearson VUE testing center in Mt. Laurel, NJ.  This year I had to take the PCI-Internal Security Assessor course because it became a requirement at my place of employment.  This past Friday I passed the exam at Pearson VUE so I am now a certified PCI-ISA, and I still hold my PCI Professional title as well.  The PCI-ISA certification lasts only one year, so I'll have to re-certify each year, but the PCI-P certification lasts three years. I felt that these two tests had a lot of overlap, so if you already have the PCI-P certification I would highly recommend going for the PCI-ISA certification if your company is a PCI participating organization and will sponsor you.  The PCI-ISA certification is only valid as long as you work for the sponsoring company.  So if I quit tomorrow or get laid off, I lose the PCI-ISA cert. If you are taking the PCI-ISA course now and are getting...

I recently became victim of an Amazon scam that "isn't that uncommon," according to the scammer.  Yes, that's right.  I had an e-mail conversation with the scammer.  More on that later. The first warning came when I received an e-mail from Amazon thanking me for updating my account's e-mail address.  "What?" I thought.  "I didn't make any changes to my e-mail address for my Amazon account.  This must be a spam e-mail or a phishing attempt."  But no, it's not.  Upon examination of the e-mail, I saw that it was a legitimate message from Amazon Customer Support. I immediately got to a computer and logged in to my Amazon account.  I usually have the "Remember Me" setting flagged in my browser at home, so when I opened Amazon.com I was greeted with "Hello, Mark."  "Good," I thought.  "My account is probably safe." But when I clicked on the "Your Account" link to check my e-mail address,...

Yesterday morning Angie called me at work to tell me that the Samsung TV was spewing smoke out of the top of the unit.  She smelled a burning odor, so she unplugged it.  The picture had already gone black and the unit wouldn't power up. So... I'm finally throwing in the towel on this television set.  The Samsung FP-T5084 was top-rated when I purchased it for about $2,200 from Circuit City in March of 2008.  But after 1 1/2 years of usage it began to give us problems.  We had one repair done under warranty, and then after that I replaced the main board and numerous fuses. So long, Samsung FP-T5084.  You're getting kicked to the curb. Life's Good. Yes, we bought an LG 55" TV to replace the old Samsung.  Long live the LG!

Last night, just before dinner, Dillon accidentally knocked a wine bottle into the glass front of our 10-gallon fish tank.  Luckily, the glass held together but enough cracks appeared to cause numerous spouts of water to throw about 8 gallons of water onto the kitchen floor, countertop, and into the rec room!  We had to grab all of our bathroom towels to sop up the water as it fell onto the wood floors, but there was nothing we could do to stop the water from flowing out.  The tank was too heavy to lift with the water in it and various decorative rocks and things, so we had to wait for most of the water to drain out.  I was finally able to lift the tank without the glass breaking all the way through, and carried it out onto the back patio. After the massive clean-up effort, I took Dillon over to PetSmart so we could buy a replacement tank.  Thankfully, we saved the fish by scooping them out and dropping them into a pitcher of water.  So when we got back f...

Recent Observation: I've noticed that my kids yell "Not it!" whenever they don't want to do something.  It can be as simple as me saying, "Hey, who's going to get the first bath/shower tonight?" And inevitably they all yell, almost in unison, "Not it!"  Or maybe I'll hear Angie say, "This morning you're all going downstairs to clean up the play room."  And again, they start yelling, "Not it!" I'd like to try this at work sometime and see if it works...

Disney Photos Click the link above to see photos from our Disney World Vacation 2011. It has been three years since we were last in Disney World (October 2008), and prior to that we were last there in December 2005.  We seem to be on a three-year rotation with Disney for some reason.  (Although Angie and I made a pit stop in Disneyland, California a few years back because I was attending a convention out in Hollywood at the time.) We drove down in 2005 and stayed in a house rental with Angie's family (and we only had the twins, who were two), flew down in 2008 with my parents (along with the twins, 5, and Adrian, 1 1/2), and drove down again two weeks ago (with the twins, now 8, and Adrian, now 4 1/2).  Cameron, 1, stayed behind with Mom Mom and Pop Pop and had a great time. We left on Friday morning, Dec. 2nd, around 9am from Maple Shade, stopped in Virginia for lunch at the Virginia Welcome Center, and then stopped in Darien, Georgia around 10:30pm at a Hampton I...

Our driver's side power sliding door has been acting up over the past year or so.  When you press the button inside the van or use the remote key chain fob to open the door, it will usually only open a few inches and then quit.  When it first started happening it would open pretty far and then quit, so I squirted some WD-40 inside the tracks thinking that something was blocking it.  That actually seemed to buy us some time because it started working again after that.  Over the past few months, though, the door was basically not powered anymore.  It would occasionally open about 2 inches and then stop.  Once open, it wouldn't even attempt to close when you pressed the button.  And if you manually closed the door, you really had to slam it because the motor wasn't taking over to close it all the way (you'll know what I'm talking about if you have one of these). A side effect of this problem was that our power door locks also stopped working within the ...