You probably seen this floating around the internets the past few days.  If you haven’t watched it, you should take the time to do so, it will put a real smile on your face.

Susan Boyle, a contestant on ‘Britain’s Got Talent’

It only took five months but I finally got all of our honeymoon pictures up.  For a recap:

Zagreb

Split

Trogir

Dubrovnik

Mljet

While we were in Dubrovnik, we took a day trip out to Mljet, an island in the Adriatic.  It was the kind of lazy, laid back place that could eat up a couple of years of your life before you even knew what had hit you.  In fact, legend has it that very thing happened to Odysseus.  According to Homer, Odysseus was ship wrecked off the coast of Mljet and there he met the nymph Calypso, daughter of Poseidon, and he ended up spending seven years there, captured by the tranquility of the island.   According to another legend, St Paul was also shipwrecked on Mljet and spent 3 months there preaching the gospel as is written in the Acts of the Apostles 27 – 32.

Pictures from Mljet

The final leg of our honeymoon took us to Dubrovnik.

We caught a bus out of Split and headed southeast down the Adriatic Highway.  It was a beautiful, albeit hair-raising, five hour ride down the coast.  Each bend in the road gave us a new view that was even more beautiful than the one before.

Arriving in Dubrovnik, we found an apartment in the suburb of Lapad, about five miles outside of town.  It was a great little place atop a hill overlooking a small bay and cost around $80.00 a night.  It even had a trellis full of fresh grapes that you could snack on whenever the urge hit you.

Dubrovnik itself was about 10 minutes away by bus.  Even after reading account after account of it’s unique beauty, the first view of the city takes your breath away.  The entire city center is enclosed within protective walls and the architecture is exquisite.

We spent several days exploring the various sights about town.  It’s a small city, easily walkable and there are no lack of places to stop for a glass of wine to do some people watching.

One of the highlights is a walk around the city walls.  It costs around $5.00 and takes about 2 hours but is well worth it.  Not only do you get magnificant view after magnificant view, you also quickly figure out that while beautiful, the walls were built with protection in mind, with well placed cannons, towers and crossbow/arrow slits.

It was an excellent trip and then, to top it all off, on the last night, we stopped at a small restaurant we had walked by everyday while we were there and I had the best pesto I have ever had.  I think I would go back just for the Pesto.

Here are our pictures on Picasa.

Still impressive, 200+ years into this crazy experiment.

A cover of Michael Jackson’s Bille Jean.

…..on account of Facebook. I resisted joining for over a year and now that I am on, I’m spending a lot of time surfing around, finding friends from all about.  It’s a real hoot.

Henry Nichols is the founder of Broadcom, the integrated circuits manufacturer.  He is currently on the list list of Forbes richest 200 Americans with a fortune estimated to be over $2 Billion.

He’s a tough on crime kinda guy, donating millions to California ballot initiatives that attempt to strengthen the laws in the state.

Among other things, he’s also currently under indictment for felony drug distribution, conspiracy and securities fraud.

Recently, he’s been trying to keep a specific email he sent to his wife from being used as evidence.  And you know what? I don’t blame him.  If there was ever an email to fight for, it’s this one.

Now kids, if old Uncle Chuckling Monkey can just pass on one small bit of advice, it would be: DON’T SEND ANYTHING IN AN EMAIL THAT YOU WOULD NOT WANT TO BE SHOWN TO A ROOMFUL OF PEOPLE ON AN OVERHEAD PROJECTOR. In my current line of work, deep in the jungle, I see emails on a daily basis that astonish me.  Things that never should have been seen by anyone other that the author (and often not even them!) now exist in a hundred different places with attorneys drooling over the settlements they’ll bring.

(h/t to BoingBoing)

It hasn’t been the best year for my adopted home (I wonder if they ever got the paperwork?).  Everyone is taking their licks, but the Emerald City seems to have stumbled across a particularly nasty strain of the current downturn.

Sonics leave town

Mariners break record for most losses

Seahawks go 4 – 12

Huskies lay a huge egg

Washington Mutual goes under

Snowstorm paralyzes city

Massive Floods

and now

The Seattle PI is (likely) going to close down

It guess it could be worse.  We could be Detroit.

Wow.

What an eventful year.

The Boston Globe has posted 120 pictures to commemorate 2008.  The photos are posted in three different parts.  Some are funny, some are sad and most all of them will give you something to think about.  They do a great job of capturing some of the stories from the past year.  Almost all of them are spectacular, with only a few that don’t meet the high standards of the rest.

Along with the links, I’m going to post my favorite picture from each set.  I’m not 100% sure on the laws/internet guidelines on posting pictures from other sites but I think it’s all good as long as you include a link to the site.

Take a few moments to check these out.  It is well worth it.

Part one of three is here.

The Space Shuttle Discovery lifts off on 5/31/2008

Part two of three is here.

Ireland's Gabriel Shelly and his coach celebrate a bronze medal win in the Paralympics

Part three of three is here.

A boy plays soccer in the La Boca neighborhood in Buenos Aires, Argentina.