I figured it was time to tidy up the resume and make sure it was up-to-date with the latest and greatest information. My latest resume can be downloaded from here: http://www.andresbecerra.com/AndresBecerraResume.doc.

Yesterday was the 3rd Annual Asian Pacific American Heritage Month Celebration at Franklin Square Park in Philadelphia. The DeStolfos Premier Martial Arts Demo Team supported the event by performing our 2009 martial arts demonstration routines and received a great response from the crowd. Video will be digitized this evening and will be on youtube and facebook soon. For now, use the link below to view some pictures of the events from my facebook page.

Asian American Demo Pictures

Thanks to everyone for coming out and supporting us!

Update 5/31/2009 10:26 PM:
The video is now online!
If you want more info on the school we train at see the DeStolfos.com website.

Hey strangers!

So about 2 months ago my primary hard drive in my Windows PC at home died. I have good backups so it wasn't too big of a deal other than the inconvenience of reinstalling everything. I need to get myself a RAID setup so its super easy to swap in a new drive if another one dies.

In any event, it wasn't until this past Friday that I reinstalled all my development stuff on my PC. Things have just been too busy with work and once I get home I pretty much don't care about coding unless I have to remote into my work PC and continue working.

Couple all that with the fact that I got myself on facebook and have been able to stay in touch with people much easier that way and you'll understand why I haven't done anything to this site in a while. The main purpose of this website as of late was to provide family members an easy way to keep track of how I'm doing and how my wife and son are doing. Now a lot of my family is on facebook so I didn't find the need to update my site... plus I can access facebook from my iPhone too. I've been thinking of a way to have my website and my facebook stuff stay in sync though... so at least those people accessing this site without a facebook can see what is going on without me having to constantly double post on both sites.

I'll get to it eventually. Anyway, Happy Easter!

Update 10:13 PM
I setup http://iphone.andresbecerra.com/ which simply points back to the main site for now... but my thinking is to have an iPhone friendly version of the website. I might use my website as a testbed for creating iPhone apps as well. I really have to get moving on learning iPhone app development.

I've been due for a new laptop for quite some time now and for the past few months I knew I wanted to get a MacBook, if anything, for iPhone app development. I waited patiently for the new Mac Books to come out and settle in, and this past Friday I bit the bullet and went to the Apple Store and came home with my brand new Mac Book Pro 15" beautie. I love this thing... it is so sleek and awesome. I'm quickly getting used to navigating around OSX and also have the ability to remote desktop to my PC upstairs for all my Windows development work. Best of both worlds if you ask me. I got Becki a MacBook Air as well for xmas, which will be arriving in 2 weeks or so. I'm such an awesome husband.

This past weekend was the Amerikick International Karate Championships NASKA AAA tourney, the last NASKA world circuit tournament of the year. We had a team of 6 compete in the various divisions and I actually entered 2 individual divisions on Saturday as well. Overall it was a fantastic tournament and we had a lot of fun. Amerikick, formerly known as American Karate Studios, is where Jess and I used to train in American Kenpo starting in the mid to late 80s. Back then, there was only 1 location on Cottman Ave in NE Philly. Nowadays they are known as Amerikick and having a lot of schools in many states. Jess and I got to see A LOT of old friends that we haven't seen in a long time.

The results and pics/vids are below. WHEEE!!!

• Eddie Eason
  • 2nd place 12-13 Boys Extreme Weapons
  • 6th place 12-13 Boys Extreme Forms
• Evan Burgess
  • 3rd place 16-17 Boys Extreme Weapons
  • 2nd place 16-17 Boys Extreme Forms
• Sam Tat
  • 1st place 10-11 Advanced Creative Forms
• Andres Becerra
  • 1st place 30-39 Mens Creative Forms Video
  • 3rd place 30-39 Mens Traditional Forms Video
• Jessica Becerra
  • 2nd place 18-29 Womens Traditional Forms Video
  • 3rd place 18-29 Womens SL Point Fighting
• Sam Tat
  • 1st place 10-11 Creative Forms
• Team Becerra (Andres and Jess)
  • 7th place Team Sync Forms Video
• Team DeStolfo (Andres, Jess, Andrew, Evan, Eddie & Sam)
  • 4th place Demo Team division Video

Its also Halloween so we have Sito's costume all ready to go too!

And here is a video of him walking in his DRAGON costume at the Trump Marina in Atlantic City this past weekend :-) (oops, forgot to rotate the video.. Sorry!)

…so people can finally STFU. Both sides. I'm sick of both democrats and republicans. Both sides just regurjitating the same stupid catch phrases. "8 years of failed policies of George Bush", "McCain is running for Bush's 3rd term", "Obama wants to spread the wealth around", "Maverick", blah blah blah. Its bad enough hearing the candidates say them, but i've been hearing countless lemmings repeating and using the same stupid catch phrases as "debate" fodder without really knowing the depth of each candidate. Its pathetic.

If you haven't seen the synchronized presidential debating video, you will probably find it quite interesting.

This is the only worthwhile video to come out of this election.

After some light encouragement tonight, Sito gained enough confidence to let go of our hands and walk by himself. He started off with just 3 or 4 steps and after a few minutes we had him up to several more steps. A little bit later we had him walking downstairs where we would sit further apart and he would take 8-10 steps. He is so excited about his new found freedom! Lord help us!

I've been meaning to post this video for awhile but just never got around to it until now.

Today is the big day. 8 of us are heading to NY to compete in the Twin Towers NASKA AAA tourney. We're all excited and have been working pretty hard. The big highlights are the team sync entries and the demo team entry. A few of us are also entering individual divisions as well. The tournament is both Friday and Saturday so I'll post results as they happen. I can do it on the tourney floor using my spiffy new iPhone :-D

Update: 9/7/08 10:03pm
Here are all the results. I will be posting links to the youtube videos as we get them online.

• Eddie Eason
  • 5th place 12-13 extreme form
  • 5th place 12-13 extreme weapons Video
  • 5th place 12-13 Creative Forms Video
• Andrew Kibe
  • 4th place 18+ musical forms Video
  • 7th place 18-29 Creative Weapons Video
  • 6th place 18-29 Creative Forms Video
• Evan Burgess
  • 3rd place 16-17 musical forms Video
  • 6th place 16-17 Traditional Forms
• Gianna Chinappi
  • 4th place 14-15 Creative Weapons Video
• Sam Tat
  • 2nd place 10-11 Creative Forms Video
• Team Strike First (Andrew and Tommy)
  • 6th place Team Sync Forms Video
• Team Becerra (Andres and Jess)
  • 4th place Team Sync Forms Video
• Team DeStolfo (Andres, Jess, Andrew, Evan, Tommy, Eddie, Gianna & Sam)
  • 1st place Demo Team division and Grand Champions Friday Eliminations, Saturday Night Time Finals