Personal

Last Monday (June 9th) my wife and I added two children to our family making the running total: 3 bio kids and 3 adopted. Raising our first three was sooo much fun we thought we'd do it again with other people's offspring. Hopefully this

On May 19th some of us from Appirio are doing Tough Mudder in Jacksonville as part of "Team Ruiz" to raise money for a couple of reasons. I've given a lot to the Salesforce developer community so I'm hoping in turn I

I just got a call from my elder son, Scott, that he just raised his hand and joined the US Navy. It has taken him about 6 months to get all of his paperwork in order but he finally enlisted today as an Aviation

Over the weekend I moved my blog from a shared server to a dedicated one. I apologize for anyone that tried to visit but found the site inaccessible. I'm starting to get 2K-3K page views a day and the shared server was starting suffer

I'm heading off to Costa Rica with my much better half for a long weekend. No kids, no computer and no work. If I'm not back by Tuesday then wait longer. I should return.

November is National Adoption month and I would strongly encourage anyone that has ever been thinking about adoption to seriously consider it. My wife and I have been doing foster care for over 11 years (80+ kids to date) and never intended to adopt

No, unfortunately I am not the Canadian actor named Jeff Douglas that starred in the Molson beer commercials.

My wife and I have been foster parents for over 11 years and have taken care of 75+ children for varying amounts of time. Roughly 5 years ago my wife quit her job and started doing full-time medical foster care. In addition to our

Our family spent most of last week at Ft. Sill, OK as our youngest son graduated from Army Basic Training. Tyler has played soccer since age 5 and lifted weights in high school but we didn't realize how physically fit he was. Out of

[caption id="attachment_471" align="alignleft" width="348" caption="Billy Marcus & Tyler Douglas"][/caption] My son, Tyler, leaves for the Army in a couple of months so I decided to take him down to Texas

37F - Psychological Operations Specialist (Psyop) My son Tyler joined the Army yesterday so everyone can relax now as the world will soon be a safer place. He decided he was done with school for right now and wanted something different. Luckily I talked

Gen. Colin Powell last weekend on "Meet the Press" regarding an American soldier  who was killed in Iraq. This is one of my favorite photos and sums up alot for me regarding the good in this country.

After 2+ long years, Kira's adoption is finally complete! We had the ceremony at the court house today and about 20+ family and friends showed up (except for Scott as he couldn't make it from Gainesville). During the ceremony the judge let us take

I spent most of last night and early morning at the Distillery in Bradenton with the B Foundation, one of my favorite bands. Cathy and I hung around after their set, bought them shots (multiple) and generally partied till the wee hours. Work is

The new "Post 9/11 GI Bill" will soon be heading for the President's desk. This new benefit will give servicemembers and veterans who have served on active-duty since Sept. 11, 2001, a new education benefits package worth up to roughly $3,

This is one of my favorite videos!!

We've done some offshore development work with UBICS and they just posted my quote on their home page: "I have used UBICS offshore outsourcing solution, with great success. They are efficient, cost effective, professional and easy to work with. I would recommend them

The UT Connections newsletter just arrived and they put a blurb in there about our 2007 CIO Award. It's a very interesting quote and I don't remember talking with them about the article nor did I know it was coming out. Not sure if