MrAndrewBradley

It's been a busy week, but it was packed with lots of fun and of course family.  The family (minus me) started off together on the eve of Christmas Eve at my grandma's house for some home made noodles (they're amazing, I had some of the leftovers), then we all met at Bayside to experience one of their 15 Christmas Eve candlelight services .  Not only was the lighting and music (led by Lincoln Brewster ) spectacular as always, but the message and stories shared were uplifting and truly explained the "reason for the season" in a way that perhaps only Ray Johnston can do. We then headed to Fort Bradley (aka my house) for some Crab Cioppino , our traditional Christmas Eve dinner and then drove to Camp Bradley (aka my parents house) for dessert and Catch Phrase . Christmas Day was spent at my parents house, where my two nephews got lots of great gifts, including Luke and Levi's favorites, a snow train and remote control boat.  After a prime rib dinner (another ...

What happens when one company and a group of individuals are willing to make a difference? Families are helped. People are served. The hungry are fed. Children smile. My company, Augustine Ideas , decided to make a difference for our community this year. Instead of sending each of our clients and vendors an expensive holiday gift, we sent them a treasure chest with a simple letter that a child had written to Santa .  Simply put, we gave our clients gifts to children who otherwise wouldn't have been able to experience Christmas. This year we adopted 10 families with nearly 40 children and wrapped hundreds of gifts for all of them. Putting gifts under the tree is just one way we were able to help.  Augustine Ideas also took an afternoon and evening to cook two meals each for 25 families .  Luckily for us, one of our staff members also runs a catering business , so we were able to make some great, tasty meals (lasagna, caesar salad w/ homemade croutons, rice pilaf, chick...

Tonight was supposed to be a memorable night for 500 to 1,000 people at the Roseville Galleria .  The idea, break out into song in the Food Court in an effort to spread some holiday cheer and perhaps break a flashmob world record.  The result however was an estimated crowd of 5,000 and as Westfield put it "The enthusiasm for the Hallelujah event tonight was far greater than anticipated by organizers," as the floor began to creak under the weight of the crowd the Roseville Fire Department was called in and the mall began to evacuate for the second time in two months (check out video of the crowd booing the announcement ). Social media takeaways: - @scannerboy02 and @sacnews were the first "media outlets" (they supply video to most local TV stations) to report the news, a full 10+ minutes before any other representative from other major Sacramento news outlets (note this is only based on the reporters, assignment editors, producers and outlets I follow, which ...

When I worked for the Muscular Dystrophy Association , about $65 ( now it's up to $74 ) would fund one minute hour of medical research. In doing more research for this post I found that in one minute the international space station travels 289 miles and 21,000 pizzas are put in the oven to bake.  If all that can be done in a minute, than surely my parents and I could accomplish a lot in one hour right?  Well we most certainly did.  We headed up to the Bradley Lodge with a trailer full of firewood (all that wood that we cut down and split over the last few years won't be ready to burn until next year), unloaded the wood, put a ton of stuff into our storage areas that had been at my brother's house, set my new laptop on on the wireless network and of course made sure everything was ready for when renters come up at Christmas and New Years. After our quick trip, which didn't even involve turning on the water (we have to turn it off during the winter, otherwise the p...

After about six years it was time for a new laptop.  I had quadrupled the amount of RAM and the hard drive, purchased a new power cord and the monitor had issues (as in didn't always want to work), so it was time to go shopping.  First I purchased a laptop from Fry's , but kept it sealed so I could return it.  Next I went to Sam's Club , where for a little bit less, I got a better laptop that includes a blu-ray player, webcam and finger print scanner among many other cool features. So from here on out (at least for the next few years), this will be the laptop that I use on a near daily basis and of course, blog from.  I took the desktop image last year during a snowshoe hike through Big Trees State Park .