Big Updates - Big Changes - Big News

It has been a crazy couple weeks. Crazy.

I have been putting in a ton of hours at work trying to get all of my work done for the end of the sprint. The demo was today and I am happy to say that I got 98% of it all done and besides a few minor hiccups right before the demo and during (a last minute redeploy of one of our app's failed b/c the server's logs had filled the virtual HD and the files couldn't be extracted ;) ) everything went really well. All the business people and the really high ups were pleased and I heard that they are taking our team out to a Reds game in a few weeks as a thank you. :)

If there hasn't been enough stress, I also had a rather impromptu meeting last Thursday with a guy from security, my boss, my boss' boss, and his boss. My boss' first words were, "So, Ben, you understand this stuff better than I do and put together the document, why don't you explain it." Needless to say it was unexpected but luckily everything went ok and I knew my stuff.

Finally, to make it all just a bit more exciting ... I took off this past Friday so that Em and I could go back to St. Louis for the weekend. That meant putting in my weeks+ worth of work in 4 days which was a blast let me tell you! Oh, and on Friday, one of our sales staff met with my boss at the client to inform them that I would be transferring in July. Yep, its all official now. I have a 90% sure date in mid July as my end date for my current client. Granted, between now and them I have 2 development sprints worth of work to do, will need to help both the client and my company interview people to fill my position and then train the new person for the last few weeks before I leave. I am stoked. Everything is falling into place.

Why then, did we go back to the good old STL this past weekend? Well for many reasons. Firstly, it was Mother's day and we had some surprises lined up. Em had had the idea to get a new dishwasher for her mom for Mother's day a while back and after finding out that her bro/sis and grandparents wanted to chip in ... we decided to go forward with it. We ended up picking a great Maytag dishwasher for a really good price (Home Depot has WAY better prices on installation than the other major places, plus they had a perfectly timed applicances sale) and had it installed before she got home from work on Friday. We semi-surprised my mom in our coming into town and ended up taking her and my dad out to eat to her favorite restaurant which was super delicious as always.

We also came into town so that I could meet with the VP of the St. Louis office, get some information about the transfer, the climate of the STL office and their clients, etc. The meeting went really well. The VP seems like a great guy who has some good plans on how to grow the office and seemingly the constitution to bring them to fruition. The office (by personnel) is smaller than I was thinking, closer to what the Sark Cinci office was. The VP was especially interested in learning how Sark had done its college recruiting which could be a good opportunity for me. They are primarily a Java shop which is great (I was told most all clients in the area want Java work done, and they just can't find people fast enough). I was impressed with what I heard and he said they were happy to have me whenever I became available ... so that was sweet.

Finally, we were in town to look at apartments. We had done this on our last time out, and had found some decent places and a lot of good info, but nothing perfect yet. Our main problem was finding a good place that was a decent price but as close as possible to the areas of town where most large businesses are (ie our clients). After running around town Friday and Saturday, we actually ended up deciding on a place in a great location for a good price and with some real nice amenities. Its a lot closer to the areas of town where my clients will be than the other places, close to both our families, its actually a fair bit cheaper than our current place (way cheaper than what it was going up to), comes with ceiling fans in all the rooms, new appliances, washer/dryer in the unit, a nice balcony and a nice apt area. We found some other places that were bigger or cheaper but were way far out or a lot older. Very nice.

So yeah ... as of right now, Em will be moving back in the beginning of July and I will be following a few weeks later. Things are happening fast and its pretty crazy, but they are going how we wanted and that is great.

---------------------------

Other than the above crazy happenings, Em and I have been trying to spend time together the best we can (lots of work, meetings, class, etc is hurting that), I am trying to find time to work out but its not happening, the Kroger that used to be right next to our apt complex is no longer and they are working 7 days a week (loudly) to get the new one setup, now that I am riding the bus I have lots more time to read so I have finished a book on JUnit testing and one on Hibernate. Next up is the Pragmatic Programmer (one I have always heard is a must read) and a few on design patterns and design issues. Other than that, just more work, darts Thursday, big unit meeting tomorrow, dodge ball this weekend and hopefully riding our bikes at some point.

....pics are from our Mother's day dinner,
flowers from my parent's house, the Kroger parking lot,
and a flower at the park a few weekend ago,
in no particular order, other pics can be seen here....