Its begining to look a lot like Hallo-ween

Boooooo



If you could't guess, last night Em and I carved our pumpkin. I think it turned out really good given its been many a year since I have carved one and it was a more classic design. The really great thing was how orange our pumpkin has gotten over the past week or so. When we got it (you can see in past post pictures) it was orange on one side and almost all green on the other. We didn't mind at the time, but sitting on our balcony it got orange everywhere. :)

** The poll has closed on the "What should I do with my $25 gift card" without a definitive winnner. Cast-iron skillet and B&D laser level were the leaders with 2 votes each, while the silicone bowl set, pasta machine, indiana jones dvds and batteries all had a single vote (stupid poll widget lets you let people either enter a single or multiple votes, but does its result percentages assuming you just vote for one, ie wrong).

I am currently leaning toward the batteries, indiana jones dvd, skillet or laser level. I would have just picked on by now but the other day I got an email from my work's 401K provider asking people to be part of a focus group for their website and the reimbursement for your hour's worth of time is another $25 gift card to Amazon.com! So I am going to wait and see if I get into it and find out what I can get for $50 or get my top two choices.

Nothing much going on other than that .... waiting to hear the official results from my promotion review board meeting, working, and anticipating this weekend when I finally get to join in on the Wallach Family Apple Butter Making Extravaganza!

$25 Amazon Gift Certificate

I have narrowed my list of possible uses for my $25 Amazon gift certificate to those found on my Amazon wish list (found here).

Anyone have any suggestions/thoughts on what I should get?

If your interested, I will try and setup a poll on the side bar so you can suggest what I should get. You will have to use the wish list link, however, to see the items.

[EDIT] The poll has been added. Stupid thing allows you to click a link and add more entries, but if you add any more than one, it only saves the first "new" one. It took me several tries to get them all to show up.

Also, a couple of them are much cheaper than $25 and are meant to pad any that are under $25 so that I can get free shipping and use the whole gift card.

"en fuego"

I would like to think I was "en fuego" in my Promotiono Review Board meeting this afternoon, but we will have to wait and see about that (official announcements coming in the next week or so, but I thought it went really well).

...

In a much less figurative sense and more of a "holy crap the apartment is going to burn down" kind of way .... last night Em and I had a minor kitchen fire. Everyone is ok, so don't worry. From the experience I have come up with two good life lessons:

1) If you are going to put something in the oven that could at some point melt or burn, your responsible for making sure it doesn't

2) If you turn on the oven, your responsible for anything is was already in it, put into it, or maybe put in it in the future so long as it is hot.


The night before last I put a plate (happened to be plastic) in the oven with several pieces of bread on it so that the bread would dry out by the next day so that I could make apple-bread-pudding last night. I then forgot about the bread (BROKE RULE #1).

Last night Em was making dinner and turned on the oven to preheat so that she could make bisquits and didn't think to check to see if anything was in there (BROKE RULE #2).

We were equally at fault with regard to the events that transpired .... several minutes into preheating Em noticed a horrible smell coming from the oven and opened it to find a small fire in the bottom of the oven (coming from the pool of now molten plate) and a cloud of fumes. She yelled for me and I ran in, grabbed our fire extinguisher (EVERYONE SHOULD HAVE ONE) and put it out. We turned off everything, turned on every fan/vent we could find and went out onto our deck to wait out the fumes and cloud of fire extinguisher dust. Fun.

The rest of the night involved cleaning up the fire extinguisher dust from everything, letting the apartment air out and trying to peel/scrape/pull/tear/etc the now hard again plastic from the oven. As you can see from the picture above ... it was quite the abstract art piece. The bread got slightly toasted and bonded along with the paper towel to the plate and the rack.

...

Other than battling fires and preparing for my review things have been pretty normal around here. Last weekend Em and I spent Friday helping her grandparents move and unpack things at their new place.


Saturday we went to an area farm to pick apples, but after I was laughed at by a worker for suggesting that apples were still in season, we ended up picking a great pumpkin instead and picked up several nice apples that were destined for the apple-bread-pudding but which will now be eaten by themselves.

On our way home we drove through Colinsville and saw the worlds larget Catsup bottle. It made me hungry for some fries! (Its a water tower made by the catsup company)


Sunday we went out to Bable state park and hiked a few miles on its trails which was fun and relaxing.

Hodgepodge

Main Entry: hodgepodge
Part of Speech: noun
Definition: mixture
Synonyms: collection, combination, goulash*, hash, jumble, medley, mess, miscellany, mishmash*, mixed
bag, mélange, patchwork, potpourri
>> Taken from Thesaurus.com

In continuing with my companies Employee Appreciation Week I have received the following things:

• Sogeti Frisbee
• Sogeti Mug
• Sogeti Keychain
• Sogeti Monitor-Picture-Frame-Thing
• Sogeti Badge Holder
• Lunch (x2)
• $25 Amazon Gift Card
• CEO talk/webcast w/ information on Sogeti's new employee incentive program starting next year and our YTD fiscals.
• Option to buy/sell PTO - Not going to, but its a nice option. Gotta keep my 21 days for vacations.

:-D All in all, not some bad swag over a few days. Especially the gift card (granted it can't buy you too much, but it buys exactly $25 more than a bag of rocks). The new incentive program is fairly complicated but boils down to a yearly point system where at the end of the year you are ranked against your peers of the same job level and the various top XX% get bonuses. The bonus amounts are pretty reasonable. My only problem would be that I should be promoted in the next few weeks which would mean I would be compared to others who have been in the higher position much longer. But all well, those are the breaks. I have scheduled my meeting with the Promotion Review Board for next week so wish me luck ;-).

One thing I forgot to mention about the NFJS conference from a few weekends ago was that I was lucky enough to win a brand new iPod Nano (new fat video kind). I was hoping for the iPhone but was very happy with the new Nano. It is truly amazing how far they have come in producing these things. My last one was a 2G or 3G 4GB iPod without color or anything and at the time it was amazing. My new on is half as thick (if not more), half the height, holds 4GB of music/video/photos on flash memory and has an exceptional color screen.

This morning I went over to a testing place a took the Sun Certified Enterprise Architect (SCEA) exam. No I didn't pass, nor did I expect to. A corworker found that Sun was beta testing the new exam for free so we signed up. It was interesting to take it without the preasure of passing and without studying. I was happy to find that the areas I hadn't work in I didn't know and the areas I had, I did. I have to wait ~6 weeks for the results but it was a worthwile hour and a half (they give you 4.5!).

On the food related front ... yesterday I had to get 2 fillings from the dentist. Em and I have been making the rounds at the doctors/dentists/optomitrists since we have moved. Getting the novacain from a huge needle wasn't pleasent but wasn't too bad. What was worse was how dry my mouth had to be during the procedure and the 5+ hours half my face was numb afterward.

Also, we were just sent emails about a charity Chili cookoff being held here at Monsanto in a few weeks. $3 for a bottomless bowl and free entry if you want to try and win the prizes. I may just have to make up a batch ;-)

Finally, a few of my college roomates (who also make up >60% of this blog's readers) and I have started up a new blog/website devoted to programming, logic, and math puzzles to keep our brains awake during work. Any and all are encouraged to participate. Check it out here.

When your blog ... (Finances)

... no longer shows up in your history ... you need to post. In an attempt to NOT have just one really long "month+ recap" post, I am going to do individual posts for various topics and whats been going on in my life. That way, no post seems too big to do and I will actually post them. Pictures to follow.

Finances

Em and I are trying to decide how best to use our new found income. Various plans/ideas we have been tossing around including paying off a good chunk of her student loans, socking the money away to go toward a house next spring/summer, investing it, or blowing it all on an amazing trip to either Alaska or Hawaii. ;-) Unfortunately, paying off debt and saving for the house are the most likely candidates.

The trip is a real idea, for next year or the following one at least. I have mentioned before that we starting initial planning of a trip to Glacier National Park and Yellowstone but we will probably put that on hold until the following summer so that we can focus on getting the house and won't have to worry about reservations, dates, cash, etc.

I am also begining work on trying to hammer out some more concrete numbers for a house budget. Our goal is to figure out our best guess at how much the house could cost us and to start working toward saving that extra money each month starting now. Its a lofty goal, I will admit, but it will make things so much easier when we don't have to change any of our spending habits later ... just cancel the automatic savings and write out a check instead.

Along with the budgeting, I am trying to consolidate some of our money into fewer accounts and make sure its not wasting away in low yield accounts when we dont' need it. I had put together a spreadsheet of online savings accounts & CD rates but that was about 2 weeks prior to the interest rate drop by The Fed and soon after everything changed. If/when I start shopping around again, I will post what I find.

Finally, over the past month or so I had a lovely run in with our Health Insurance provider and some rather imcompetent sales people. To try and make a very long story short, over a month ago Em had an eye exam performed and got a pair of new glasses. Over the ensuing weeks I had to battle with the eyecare people to get them to understand the coverage that our Health Insurance people quoted me every time I called, to charge us the rates that they told Em when she was there, to NOT charge us for stuff Em didn't ask for, to teach them how taxes worked, and to convince them that I was NOT going to pay for things they had already submitted claims for and had been paid for. It was a big hassel but after numerous phone calls and me sitting in front of the guy for 45 minutes telling him I wasn't leaving until it was resolved ..... it got straitened out. Stupid Clarkson Eyecare.

When your blog ... (Work)

... no longer shows up in your history ... you need to post. In an attempt to NOT have just one really long "month+ recap" post, I am going to do individual posts for various topics and whats been going on in my life. That way, no post seems too big to do and I will actually post them. Pictures to follow.

Work

[for info related to Em, see the end of the article]

Yesterday Em and I went to a Sogeti picnic up in St. Peters. I was a little worried about it since I wasn't sure how many people would be showing up and how many of those I would know, but it turned out to be a great time. Some of the highlights included trying to setup a large airfilled-bouncing-tent thing for the kids despite none of us knowing how, the persistant posistive urging to play volleyball, the great weather and the food!. It turns out that one of our consultants competes in Barebeque contests and has his own large smoker trailer ... and he made all of the meat. It was SO good. Beef brisket, pulled pork, chicken, bratwurst, baked beans, potato salad ... I was full for hours.

To go along with our picnice, this week is Sogeti's Employee Appreciation Week. I stil haven't figure out what exactly that means but we have several national phone calls and the promise of fun and excitement ;-)

Some interesting stuff has been going on with work (Sogeti and my client). Over the past few weeks I helped out with our office's first try at the wonderful world of college career fairs at SLU. It was a lot of fun, just like the ones at UD, even if the computer related programs there are pretty small. I wasn't able to make it to one in Rolla the next week but our recruiter said it was very good.

Also, a few weekend ago I was lucky enough to attend the No Fluff Just Stuff conference here in town. Basically its a small traveling conference devoted to Java and Open Source technologies with an emphasis on being drivin by pasionate individuals and not corporate sponsors. I was able to go last year on Sark's dime and with a little encouragement to Sogeti, got to spend F/Sat/Sun listening to guys from around the country talk about what they love. Without delving into too much detail, I saw some great talks on Java Memory managment, the Eclipse Rick Client Platform, Java Security frameworks and contributing to Open Source projects. Yeah I am a huge nerd and gave up 24+ hours of my life spread over a weekend to my nerdly-persuits. But it was worth it. :-)

Helping out with the fair and going to NFJS couldn't have come at a better time b/c our annual reviews are starting now. I had to turn in my review paperwork last week and have to fill out some promotion paperwork this week. A big change from what Sark did, Sogeti has a Promotion Review Board which anyone who is seeking a promotion must go before and "state their case". Its not as big of a deal as it sounds but it is definetely different than what I was planning on.

A couple things have also been going on at my client. Not long after my last posts I was finally able to move into a real cube here at work (being my first in 2.5 years of consulting). I am proud to say I have 3.5 walls now and if I turn my chair around I can see a window. :-D The other day I had my second installment of TDD/TFD classes which was a whole day of hands on examples in TDD. It was interesting (even more so in seeing some of the other developers work with IntelliJ and use shortcuts I didn't even know existed) but a bit long given how much I took away from it. Hopefully soon they will start using it on my app or I will be reassigned.

Finally, but far from least, Em started out at her new job this past week and its going well. Each night over the dinner table I try to unravvle a little bit more of the mystery that is School Counseling. So far I have been able to find out that 3 things: 1) It really takes someone who cares about kids to do, 2) There is NO WAY I could ever do what she does and 3) the fact that I work with software problems every day makes it hard to relate to your everyday office problems. I have a TON of respect for Em in making it this far and for still wanting to try and make a difference. Also, a big second paycheck is going to be great for our personal finances... ;-)

When your blog ... (Play)

... no longer shows up in your history ... you need to post. In an attempt to NOT have just one really long "month+ recap" post, I am going to do individual posts for various topics and whats been going on in my life. That way, no post seems too big to do and I will actually post them. Pictures to follow.

Play

Wii. Yep, we got a Wii.

Em and I had been discussing/planning on getting one for some time now and a while back on the weekend of my cousin's wedding we noted that if we had one then, we could have had a great time playing it with some of our in-town family. Well, that finally pushed us over the edge and after a few calls I was able to determine that Best Buy "should" be getting a shipment of them the following day (Sunday).

The next morning I was at our local Best Buy about 15 minutes prior to it opening and saw a small line had already formed outside. I debated if I wanted to actually be that guy and if I really thought they were all waiting for Wiis. Well they were and I was. Luckily the store was getting a shipment of ~15 and I was around the 10 person there intending to pick one up. 30 minutes of waiting later, I was the proud owner of a brand new Nintendo Wii and Wii Play pack (console comes with one controller but I knew we needed two. A "Wii-mote" costs ~$40 but for $50 you can get a controller plus several small games).

So far, I am really happy we made the purchase. I will admit that the day after we got it I was sore in a few places but it is a blast to play. The games that came with the console (Wii Sports: golf, baseball, tennis, bowling, and boxing) are very simple but easy to pickup and fun to play with other people. The small mini-games that came with Wii Play are decent and well worth the 10 bucks extra.

It really is amazing how sensitive the controllers can be. Just the fact that I can hold the controller like a baseball bat and have it pickup the exact orientation I have it at and time my swing is crazy. Its not 100% perfect, but I don't care. I can't wait until they come out with some more sports games that have had a decent amount of testing time put into them. I have borrowed the Harry Potter game and Zelda from Josh (thanks again) but have really busy the past week or so and haven't gotten very far into them but they are pretty cool.

Other than playing Wii, Em and I went hiking a few weekends ago at a local state park along the Maremec river which was pretty cool. The views from on top of the bluffs were great. Next weekend we are planning on setting aside some serious biking/hiking/Frisbee/pumpkin carving time which should be fun.

Just yesterday we were throwing the Frisbee around at a picnic for ....

When your blog ... (Family & Friends)

... no longer shows up in your history ... you need to post. In an attempt to NOT have just one really long "month+ recap" post, I am going to do individual posts for various topics and whats been going on in my life. That way, no post seems too big to do and I will actually post them. Pictures to follow.

Family & Friends

It seems like a ton of family and friends related stuff has been going on ever since we moved back to St. Louis. Granted, much of it is probably just b/c we are closer to our family and therefore are involved more .... but it has still been a lot.

Em and I have gone to a total of 3 weddings. We both attended my cousin's wedding here in town which was a great smaller wedding in a cool little church. The groom's mother is a semi-professional singer which meant some amazing singing during the ceremony. More recently, I flew to Cleveland for my college roomate's wedding which was a blast. Its always great to get back together with the guys, sing some old songs, have a few drinks, reminisce about old times and end up covering the groom's car in 900+ feet of streamers and ~40 balloons. The only thing that could have made it better would have been if Em could have gone with me. She had a wedding of her own here in town for a sorority sister of hers. From all accounts it was also a great time and she was very happy to be able to see all of her college friends.

Along with the weddings, there have been several family birthdays including the 0-th birthdays of my latest two second cousins. They were born a while back and although still very tiny, are doing well.

Other than that, lots of misc family functions and get togethers. Em's grandparents are moving so a lot of time has been spent helping to plan the move and make sure there new place is setup correctly (note: running a new water line for a 'fridge's ice maker is pretty easy assuming you have the right size drill bits, the drill bit extender fits through the hole, and you can accurately measure distances on multiple levels of a house).

Finally, a fair amount of time has been spent with my family playing our brand new ....