Happy Birthday Em!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY BABE!

Thank you for always being supportive and putting up with me ;-). I love you.

California Here I Come, car getting fixed

Its official. The first two weeks in December will be the beginning of my time on a new project for work which will take me to California off and on for the next few months.

Crazy

I will be part of an ongoing project to provide Agile mentoring and coaching to a large health care company's software development teams. I will be traveling back and forth between STL and the greater San Francisco Bay area for the next several months into the spring. Its going to be pretty crazy around here adapting to the traveling and a new kind of work that I haven't done before, but I am completely excited.

** I also have to commend my wife for being SUPER supportive of me taking on this project. I wouldn't be able to handle the travel let alone the stress if it wasn't for her :-) **

At the same time that I am very excited about the project, the work, California in the winter vs. St. Louis weather, the people, and the opportunity ... I have to admit I am a fair bit nervous. While I have worked on agile teams before (one consulting client doing a very simple version of Scrum and XP here at Asynchrony) and feel comfortable doing it on a daily basis ... this work is going to be something different. My purpose will be to work with one or more existing development teams, helping them identify areas where they are missing the mark when it comes to agile adoption and good development practices, and to guide them to better work practices, better communication, better productivity and better moral. This isn't something I have ever done officially before and its left me a fair bit anxious.

Luckily, I have 3 weeks to prepare. My last project is inbetween SOWs so we have been doing some maintenance and cleanup work which should leave me with time to study up on my agile processes, remember the differences between Scrum and XP, and talk things over with various people at work.

Wish me luck.

On the car front ... its currently being fixed. The estimate came back at > $4k which was actually lower than what I expected. It won't be fixed until the 19th, so, thanks to my rental coverage on my insurance, I have a rental for the next week or so. Initially they gave me a Kia Sorento, but it was very dirty so I returned it. Good and bad for me, the only thing they had to replace it with was a '07 Chrysler 300M. Its a very nice car, what with the leather and hugeness, but I would never buy one. I feel like I am driving a bus!

In regards to who was "officially" at fault ... thats in a holding pattern. I have given recorded statements to both mine and the other driver's insurance companies ... but since there were no witnesses we now have to wait for the police report to see who can blame who for the accident. Stupid, but what can you do. :-/

HIT!

On my way home tonight I got in an accident.

Well, it might be more appropriate to say that an accident got me.

OR, it might be more accurate to say that a college student ran a red light and smacked the front drivers side of my car with the back passenger side of his car.

yeah, that one is the best (and worst).

Don't worry, I appear to be as healthy and crazy a I always was ... but poor Sigmund the Sonata has seen better days. He is currently at the body shop associated with a local Hyundai dealer and I am waiting until tomorrow to hear from my insurance company and to contact theirs.

Fun stuff. And by "fun stuff", I mean Crappy Mc'Crappy (Koozism alert)

The longer you wait

The more you need to post, and the more you have to post, but the less you want to sit down and post. :-/ ;-)

Here is a long needed update going back to the beginning of October:

Josh's Wedding

From josh-wedding

Since most everyone who reads this was there, I will leave out the details and mainly say that Em and I both had a blast. Its always great seeing the old gang together and we will definitely need to find an excuse to do it again real soon. The wedding and reception were great (gotta appreciate all of the hard work Josh and Amanda did). Both Em and I were honored to be in the wedding and be able to celebrate with you guys. You guys are going to do well for eachother.

Regarding the decorating of Josh's car. I think, overall, it went over very well. However, it was over-engineered and under-delivered. I blame myself. Despite our best laid plans (much of which can be found here, and in numerous emails) as well as a random Yahoo Answers post by yours truly ... it didn't quite live up to what I had in my head. Still, as Josh agreed, we get points for using helium (thanks Kevin) and for being different than years past.

From josh-wedding

Oh and thanks to Kevin and Sarah for having us over to their new house and Chaz for driving us around.







Em's Cousin's Wedding

From stl

From stl

This wedding, while not nearly as fun for me, was a good time and by FAR the most over-the-top wedding I have ever been to. Being a family afair rather than a college roomate's lends itself a different dynamic, but they made up for it by far in extravagance.

The wedding took place at the St. Louis Cathedral Bascillica, the largest church in town which is insanely gorgeous. To go along with the beautifully huge church, the wedding party was equally huge and the music was excelent (violinist from the STL Symphony, pro singers, organ, harp).

From stl

The reception that followed that evening was at the StarLight room at the Chase Park Plaza overlooking downtown STL and Forest park. Cocktails and hore-devers were servered prior out on the balcony including a featured drink of the night (mojito) and monogramed napkins. Dinner was high-end (although I actually think I liked Josh's better food wise), great cake, some interesting toasts and a great live band (2 main singers, backup, real DJ, 1/2 guitarists and a drummer). All in all it was pretty crazy and a good time.








Apple Butter

Last weekend we made Apple Butter in our backyard as part of a continuing tradition in Em's family. You can read more about it and see pictures at my food blog.

From stl

From AppleButter2008

Semi-related ... Em and I went to Eckerts the other weekend to pick fresh apples (Fuji) and got ourselves two nice pumpkins from the field.

Jolie

From stl

Jolie is doing well. She was "sick" for a week or two in there but is fine once again. Since we had gotten her, she had developed a bad tendency to pull on our walks (still doing 3-ish miles a day) which we weren't helping. In an attempt to reduce this we considered buying a stronger "harness" collar for her so that she wouldn't hurt herself but on the great advice of one of her friends, didn't. She said that a harness would just allow her to pull harder without knowing it and suggested we get the Gentle Leader instead. Basically its a type of collar that fits a different way, moving the point of attachement to the front under the nose. This means that when she goes too far forward, her head is pulled around. While its not perfect it has made a HUGE difference and I would recommend one to everyone who is having a similar problem.

Attic Insulation

Our house inspector warned us that the insulation in our attic was a little light and that we might want to add some before winter. So, once the cold started to kick in I finally got around to calling a contractor Em's aunt recommended to get an estimate. After taking a look around he said that while he would love the work, that the cost of blowing in another 6" of insulation wouldn't be worth the amount of time it would take to recoup the costs. He said we were indeed a little low but that it would take 7-10 years to recoup the costs. So, we will wait it out and see if the heating is bad or not and then decide ... either way I really appreciated his honesty.

FYI ... his estimates (which I didn't compare to anyone else) were roughly $1k to blow 6" of cellulose covering an 1200 square foot attice given that we have joists 16" off center and a very low roof line (hard to move around in). Rough estimates done by myself at lowes suggested materials by themselves would cost $400 (30+ bags and free blower rental), plus I would need to borrow a ladder and get safety equipment ... AND there would be no telling if I could have blown it in consistently or how long it would have taken me.

Work

Work has been interesting. I finished my brief stint on a large government enterprise architecture project and have moved back to working on a .Net web application with one of my friends.

Last week we had a production push to move ~3 months of work to the live site which resulted in a very long night. We were set to start at 10:30 pm but didn't until closer to 11:30 b/c the other guy's car was over heating on the way downtown. The actual push took a couple hours b/c of a couple stupid issues that were eventually resolved and then the same coworker had car trouble leaving (borrowed car with what turned out to be a bad battery). Nothing to get upshook about, but it resulted in me not getting home until around 2:30. On a bright note, Jolie sounds like one huge pissed off dog at 2am when you wake her up by coming in the front door. Good Dog!

On an interesting and very cool note ... there is a good chance I will be traveling a good amount for work in the next few months. Our company is going to be starting a new phase of a project with a large health care company in California doing Agile mentoring and coaching. Myself and one other guy are the leading candidates for the last spot on the team. It would be 2 weeks a month ~35 minutes outside San Fransico for 6 months (through the begining of the summer). I would be coaching one or more teams, working with their PMs and Scrum Masters to support their agile adoption, provide guidance, help to identify problem areas and work with their developers to do better agile and solid OO work on a dialy basis without feeling the need to have numerous meetings for every little task.

To be honest, I am a fair bit anxious about the idea of being put into such a "coaching" role and of the large amounts of travel .. but I am lucky enough to have a wife who is nothing but supportive and am super excited about the opportunity.

To go along with my normal work, I also gave a Lunch-n-Learn talk a while back on a Ruby GUI tookit called Shoes and have posted a few articles on my tech blog about the LnL, some misc scripts that helped me at work, user acceptance testing with Selenium, and a new side project of mine (List-It).

Thats all for now....

Fantasy Sports

I enjoy sports and I enjoy statistics about sports but I have never really gotten into Fantasy Sports. The idea always appealed to me but I guess I always felt like I didn't know enough about enough of the players and games to make good choices.

My only attempt until recently was back in college when some friends from high school got me into a free NFL fantasy league. After trying my best during the automated draft and the first couple weeks I lost interest/forgot/was busy and didn't update my team or even really look at it again until the playoffs at which time I was very surprised I had somehow beaten a couple of people despite my RB being hurt after the first game and still starting on my team ;-) :-/

Work sponsors paid leagues for MLB and NFL but I didn't participate this year ... however I am trying out my hand at two simplified version.

A coworker writes for Fungoes.net, the local SABR chapter blog, and put together a playoff fantasy league where each person picked players at each position before the playoffs started and will ride them to the end of the World Series at which time whoever's players have the largest combined Runs Created stats wins. Through the first round your's truly is in last place! :-D (Crunchers) Hopefully I will do better in the LCS.

See my post on my other blog for baseball statistic fun related to the playoffs.

Another guy at work started a simple NFL contest where everyone picks a team each week. If they win, you move on and can't pick that team again. If they lose, your out. Last week all but one of the survivors were elimenated so they started up again this week fresh. With the help of the tons of stats that OddsShark has online I picked Tampa over Seattle. Wish me luck :-)

Roller-coaster

Its been a roller coaster couple weeks.

Two weeks ago Em's grandfather passed away. It has been a hard time since then but luckily Em's family was able to all be together and through telling some crazy stories and finding tons of old photos were able to celebrate Peter's life instead of just mourning his death.

............

On some more cheerful notes, Em and I were able to spend a lot of time with her family and ate WAY too much food (if you order food for 50, only 30 end up being there, and the food could have fed 70, you have leftovers).

While Em's brother was in town he was the straw that broke the camel carrying the big screen TV's back ... meaning I finally broke down and got a really nice TV to go with our nice furniture downstairs. Circuit City had a great deal on a 46" Toshiba which when added to their 3-years free financing offer meant I almost had to buy :-). So far I love it and just need to figure out which HD service I am going to get now.

This past week I started work on a new project at Asychrony. We are working on designing and developing a large government organization's "to-be" Enterprise Architecture. I will admit its not work I ever thought I would be doing and I was a fair bit apprehensive at first since its no coding but the project has grown on me a bit. Its an amazing amount of work that our company is doing and will be changing a lot of things. Since me and another guy will only be helping out for about 4 weeks, we have been tasked with designing the metrics with which the next phase of work will evaluated. Not the normal stuff I do day to day and not something I want to make a career of but an interesting month of work.

Yesterday Em and I went out to the St. Louis Art Fair with some friends and had a good time taking in the art work and food from all around St. Louis and the country. Some of the artwork was downright amazing (and equally priced) and others made scratch my head. Unfortunately we didn't pick up anything but I did get re-inspired to do more photography ... if only I could find the time.

Tonight we ate well again. Yesterday we took Em's parents and grandma out to the newest Whole Foods Market and picked up a few things for tonight's dinner. You can read the details of the $31/lb cheese and Dill Marinated Lamb Shish-Kabobs over at my other blog.

Things have been pretty normal otherwise. Jolie is doing well although she is developing a cute/annoying habit of moving random peices of our clothing around the house when we are gone all day. Most of the time its just a sock one of us left out and she carried over to where she was. However, the other day it was a sandle and then a pair of shorts. None are chewed or torn, just moved. Also, and I will admit this is completely my fault, she is getting a little to comfortable on the couch with us. Yes, I am a big softy and let her up on the couch with me which she completely enjoyed. :-)

Static Maps, Euler, and Synergy

I have posted three entries on my tech blog
in the past few weeks.
Check them out here.

Ludo - Love Me Dead

I have had this stuck in my head ALL night. Hopefully, if I watch it enough times it will go away ... that or make me go nuts ... lets hope for the first one.

Ludo - "Love Me Dead"
(youtube video)

Food Post

I also posted on my food blog
(wouldn't it be great if I could get myself to consistently do this instead of in big spurts? ;-) )

Lots of stuff

Em has been bugging me for a week or so now to post ..... ;-)

Since the last post we have been keeping busy.

On the bad side, several members of both of our families have had medical issues in the past few weeks. As it stands right now everyone is ok or doing better which is a good thing.

Even Jolie wasn't able to get past the last few weeks without seeing a doctor ....she has had three seperate "minor/treatable" issues since we got her. First was an ear infection (lab + shar pei ears = problem area). Next was a cut on her lip where she bit herself chasing a squirel. Finally, she is currently having some gland issues which we are treating. :-(

As far as the good stuff ....

Em started up at work again and has had some good, unussual and terrible parents to deal with. I have been plugging away at work also; this is the last week of our current project so we are trying to clean up all of the loose ends. In a call this past week with our client, we were informed that a new listing had gone up on their site that we had to check out. This place is CRAZY. If it weren't for the fact that its listed at 5.5 million, I would so think about buying it just to check it out. Who needs drugs if you live in a place like this?

A week or so ago I had to call Charter (or cable company) up to dispute some charges on our bill and while I was on the phone I mentioned a very random ad I saw on the TV a few days prior saying that if new or current customers called up they could get HBO+Cinemax / Showtime + XXX / some other premium channel free until the end of hte year. Well, it worked and now we have HBO and Cinemax free until next August (the ad said until Jan, but the women told me 12 months, so I didn't complain). I would never pay extra for the channels, but for free they are great!

A while back Em finally found Mariokart at a Target while she was picking up some other stuff so she bought it for me. I will post/send my friend code out if anyone who reads this still plays. Its a pretty cool game and I am enjoying working my way through all of the levels. Toad for the win!

Last week was Em's and my 3 year aniversary. Wow, I still can't believe its been that long already. To celebrate we went out to a nice dinner at the Top of the Riverfront. Its a local restaurant downtown at the very top of the Millenium hotel. The main feature is that the restaurant is circular and the whole thing rotates slowly so you get some amazing views. The views were great and the food was good. Plus, they were having a special that week with 24 other restaurants downtown where you could get a 3 course meal at any of them for $25. :-)

Finally, my father in law pointed me to a piece of legislation I had missed in the last few months. It seems that will one of the economic/housing bills passed this year to attempt to shore up the economy, was a provision for a federal "tax-credit" for first time home buyers who purchase their first home between April of this year and sometime in the spring/summer of next year. I still haven't fully researched it, but from what I have read, it isn't so much a tax-credit as an interest free tax-loan. Basically if you purchased your home this year you can get up to 10% of your home's purchase price up to $7500 as a tax credit on your '08 taxes (below the line, meaning straight savings). The catch is that you have to pay this money back. Thats right, no free ride here. Basically, a year after you get the credit you start paying it back in the form of $500 extra on your taxes each year for the next 15 years. If you sell your house before hand, you pay all of it back that year out of your procedes. If you die, its forgiven. So, basically its an interest free loan with really slow pay-back terms. Will this help the economy? I don't know. Will I gladly accept the money and use it to either A) make the final push past 20% on the house so that I don't pay PMI any more or B) buy a TV and laptop. I haven't decided but either way it should be good. :-)

Great baseball seats

Last night Em and I took in the Cards game with some of the best seats I have ever had for a professional sports match. A relative of Em's owns his own small company and occasionally gets box seats for people at work and clients. Somehow, I never got the exact story, he won through a raffle luxury box seats for last nights game on short notice and invited Em and I along with a couple other family members and coworkers to the game.

Despite them losing in extra-innings and us leaving just before the end b/c Jolie was home alone and we wanted to let her out .... they were great seats.

Private box behind home plate, air conditioned with a small bar (stocked fridge of beer, some liqueur, soda, etc), private bathroom, couches, flat panel TV, hot dog/chicken/snack/nacho buffet, dessert cart including 10+ types of cakes and pie, plus two rows of cushioned outdoor seats w/ another tv outside and tables. Not too shabby. :-)

** Jolie is doing well. No problems to report, just a happy dog that is loving chasing the squirrels around the yard and who somehow (according to Em) managed to launch herself up onto the retaining wall which is about 2.5 times her height cleanly. :-)

Removed pests, painted room, and A DOG!

First the "less" exciting stuff ....

This past week Em took it upon herself to paint our office "Harvest Gold" and it looks great. The racing flags (it was a nursery before) and offwhite color just weren't doing it for us. Now the place looks great in a golden color that complements the furniture and looks very nice (great job babe).

original paint job


primed


new color making the windows and the molding stand out

Two great finds while getting supplies were the roller that had an extend-able handle that was only 1 dollar more than the one that didn't and the paint tray with the teflon coating ($1-$2 more) was great b/c there was no cleanup. Just let it dry until the next day and peal the paint right off in one big chunk.

Yesterday, with Em doing most of the work, we managed to remove all of the poison ivy we could find in our back yard. After wo days of spraying it with Roundup Heavy Brush Remover, I soaked down the area heavily to loosen the soil and then Em, fully clothed despite the heat and wearing double layers of gloves pulled it up along with the other ivy we don't like and cleaned the place up. So far no itching and now we can more easily manage the problem if it comes back (anything coming over the fence gets sprayed).

.....

Now for the big news ... we got a DOG! :-) Her name is Jolie (her original name, think Angelina) and she is an almost 3 year-old fawn shar-pei and labrador mix. Em had seen her online and this morning we went to the MO Humane Society and picked her up. She has a great temperment (hasn't barked, niped or groweled yet) and while the other dogs were bouncing all around she was fairly calm and is affectionate to anyone who is willing to pet her. I have been trying to do all of the tips that I have read online and seen on The Dog Wisperer and things are going well. She is still getting adjusted to the house but no problems yet. Only semi-problem so far is that she isn't seeming too hungry, but that will change in time.

The previous owners had adopted her but didn't have any time to spend with her. On their form they put that she wasn't totally house trained b/c she had a few accidents ... but it also said that she was in a crate for most of most days .. :-(. The guy who was taking care of her at the shelter said that she was his favorite and had never had an accident. [crossing our fingers]

I will post more pics when I get some better ones but these will have to do for now. :-)

A fixed doorbell and an unwanted guest

First the good news ... I fixed our doorbell. When we moved in we noticed that the doorbell button was cracked and so one of our first weekend in the new place I went out and bought a new button. Simple thing with two mounting screws and two screws to tighten the wires around. Not even two minutes of work and the things were switched. Great!

Or so I thought.

Our doorbell (the actual "bell" part) is a two tone thing (e.g. diiiiiing doooooong) but after I switched the buttons it was more of a dingg do.......zzzzgnzazx. To the untrained ears, I assumed that the problem was that the power wasn't being supplied long enough for it to complete the "bell" and that there must be some reason for the new button only applying the juice for a second when the old one did it longer.

A few weeks past and I finally got around to googling the problem and after a bit of searching found out that it was my fault. On the back of the original button was a small electrical "thingy" attached to the two poles without any obvious use and which didn't seem to have come with the button. When the new button didn't work I had tried putting it on the new button, but nothing changed so I pitched it with the old button figuring it didn't matter. Well I was wrong.

Evidently it was a diode thats is somehow important to having the power supplied correctly to the "bell" and which I needed to fix my button. After a bit more reading I found this site and several more like it which confirmed this so tonight I was off to Radio Shack. Thanks to the sites helpful hints I found it (part numbers were right on) and installed it. Viola! Now it works like a champ.

One place I read about diodes said they were polar (ie aren't symectrical and have a "flow" to them) so its possible that I had just tried it the wrong way and it would have worked the other way. But either way, its fixed now, I know I need one, I don't know any more about diodes other than that you can pick up a pack of 2 at Radio Shack for 99 cents. :-)

Now the bad news....

My uncle noticed when he was touring the house during the party that in one corner of our backyard on our retaining wall near the fence is several poison ivy plants. GRRRRRR. This is quite a problem in a multitude of ways first and foremost being that I (and my dad) are VERY alergic to poison ivy (e.g. when I was a young lad and in the boy scouts I got it a couple times, the last resulting in bad blisters, horrible bumps all over and my face swelling to the point where I couldn't really open my eyes). Secondly, we really want to get a dog this weekend and we can't have that around if its going to be sniffing around the backyard and coming inside.....

So this week we are going to try and get rid of it. And by we I mean me for moral support and Em doing the work very carefully b/c so far she has never had a reaction to it and we are hoping won't start now.

What I have read so far (aprox 15 minutes of googling) is that we will talkt our neighbor about it and given her consent, proceed to purchase and use a "large" amount of a good herbicide to kill the any and all plants we can find while trying to kill as little of the plants around them. Several people have suggested using Roundup (or other with gyphosate?) which gets absorbed and kills down to the root and then a day or two later soaking the whole area with tons of water to loosen the soil and then wearing protective gear which can be thrown away, pulling out all of the plants, putting them in plastic bags to be thrown away and washing every one and thing after.

So, that should be interesting. If anyone has any suggestions please let me know. :-(

Good Party and thinking about a dog

The party was a success with 35+ family and friends stopping by and enjoying a burger/hotdog and a drink while getting to see the new house. More people than we expected were able to make it and we appreciated everyone stopping by. It was a nice time being able to throw a party like that in our own home with a good amount of space. When it wasn't raining we even got in a few games of cornhole in the backyard.

Sometime between now and next weekend Em and I may be getting a dog. We have pretty much decided that we want to get one now and just need to do a few things and find one. We will probably be getting one from the Missouri Humane Society since they have a ton right now. We are planning on getting a "smaller" medium sized dog that ideally would have hair on the shorter side ... but we might just end up getting whatever wags its tail at us first :-) Em found these two great looking dogs on their website (Sadie and Chance). :-D

Oh, and I found this link today ... chess and boxing? I was picturing something closer to "wizard chess" but with real people but this seems just as strange.

Checking in, happy belated 4th!

Not too much is going on.

Big party this weekend at our house (anyone who reads this and wants to come is invited). Should be a nice time with friends and family and food. BYOB but we will have some, plus hot dogs, burgers, snacks, soda, cornhole, music, etc

Brined and stuff pork chops tonight .... mmm mmm good.

Been doing a lot of yard work this past week(end). Weed-B-Gone works wonders but the bottle you need to be careful with the bottle with the hose attachment. There isn't a good way to tell how much your applying or how fast you should be working across the lawn. FYI if you put ~50% more than what is suggested on your lawn ... the tips of your grass will turn yellow too. But damned if it doesn't kill the weeds.

We had a tree service come today (actually they came out of the blue today, we had asked them to come out but they couldn't tell us when they would be available). They too two limbs off the tree closer to the house. The tree has some other problems which are stressing it out, but at least this way it will be a little more symmetrical and less prone to fall on the house ... and fill the gutters with leaves..

Em and I went to see WALL-E this past weekend and it was pretty great. Not quite as good as Finding Nemo or The Incredibles but a very good movie none the less (highly recommend). The plot is a bit more "kid-ish" but there are plenty of more adult jokes that the kids miss and plenty of just plain good fun. Oh, and Disney is evidently coming out with some HORRIBLE looking movie about chihauhuas in Hollywood. I will NEVER get that 2 minutes back.

Other than that, just work and softball. This week I am working on an internal Rails project and spent several hours this weekend getting some stuff setup on my home machine to try and learn about it before this week ... well the setup took longer than expected but I learned a ton. Hopefully I will post about it soon.

Em and I joined the local municipal recreation/fitness/aquatic center. Its actually a very nice facility and very cheap compared to other gym memberships. Em got the fitness + pool b/c she will use it and I just got the fitness center and will pay the local resident rate when I go with her. I don't like sitting out like she does, but the aquatic center has a full lap pool, water slide, kids area and lazy river. I do the lazy river.

On the topic of working out I am once again trying to get back(for the first time) into the swing of things. To that end I am trying out several online tools to track your workouts, progress, etc. I am hoping to post a review shortly after I have tried them out for a couple of sessions.

That is all.

PAARI - D

Photos At A Random Interval

Daylilly in front of our new house

My intention is to see if I can capture a photo of all of the letters of the alphabet,
in order, and each from a different place/style/etc. The photos may not always be literal "letters" but something that is associated with the letter.

PAARI - C

Photos At A Random Interval

Cheeks on Madison, my cousin's daughter, being held by Em

My intention is to see if I can capture a photo of all of the letters of the alphabet,
in order, and each from a different place/style/etc. The photos may not always be literal "letters" but something that is associated with the letter.

Busy and work, busy at home, listing to Pandora

It seems like 80% of my posts start with me saying something about being busy.

Well, lets continue the trend.

Its been a busy week[end].

This past week our National Sex Offender Registry project started back up after a new statement of work was signed so we have been hard at work implementing a couple of additional features to our original application. Its nice to be moving forward with this again and nearing the finish line. Good projects are always a good thing, but if you don't ever finish and hand if off "done" to somone else, there isn't the closure that should be there. However, trying to jump back into a project after a few weeks of working on completely different stuff in a different language leaves you with a few hours where you feel like your running around with your head cut off trying to figure out where things are :)

Also this week we finished up some work on an internal application and found out that another project I am supposed to be helping out with (.Net realty website) will be starting soon so I will have to try and juggle some work for both for the next couple weeks. Should be fun and make for some really short and some really long days.

This weekend was a packed one. We cleaned our apartment for the last time and turned in the keys. It was a good apartment and served our needs well but I found that I didn't really miss it. Leaving Cinci was definitely harder (leaving jobs, friends, etc) but this time it just seemed like an upgrade which is a good thing I guess.

Along with cleaning we purchased and put together (took forever) a couple of nice bookcases for the office, fixed the drain to the washer (and it doesn't leak ;-) ), got fertalizer and fertalized and sprayed some weed stuff on the lawn, unpacked more and had a nice cookout tonight with some of my family and enjoyed the unseasonably cool weather.

This week .... work, Em works a day, softball, cleaning the gutters and hopefully finding some time to relax. Oh and since Em's parents are going out of town for a day and half ... Harry their lab is coming to stay with us for a two nights. It will be cool having a dog here but interesting to see how he deals with all of the hardwood floors and the new environment. Wish us luck :) It should be a good trial run for getting a new dog (next on our list of things to do).

Oh, and I have been listening to Pandora a ton this weekend. I remember reading about it a long time ago but never really checked it out. Its pretty impressive. Give it a few seeds of songs/artists you like and it plays really good music for the most part, online, and free. Can't beat that.

Officially Moved

With the help of friends and family, yesterday, Em and I officially moved all of our stuff from our apt to our new house. :-D

Firstly, a huge thank you to everyone who helped. Everything went much smoother and faster than I had anticipated.

That being said, the move went well. The only small hiccups were when we found that a piece of furniture we were picking up from Em's grandparents wouldn't fit in our moving truck standing up, when I found out that the moving-pads I had requested weren't in the truck, and when we got done so fast that my parents had to wait at the apt to give my aunt the couch we were giving her. All in all very minor things.

The house still looks big, but less big now that all of our stuff is in it. We did some minor unpacking the rest of the day but will still be doing it for the next week or so. Last night was our first night in the house and it was really nice waking up there. :-)

I will be sending out an email to those of you who read this and aren't family shortly with the new address.

..............

In other news, this past Friday our company had an all-employee all-day set of meetings off site. As scary as that sounds, the whole thing ended up being very good. Along with the normal status of the company information, sales pipeline presentations, etc, there was a focus on making the company better (however it might be). To that end, two separate sessions of Open Spaces groups were setup, each with arpox 10 simultaneous talks going on where the topics focused on ways we can make hte company better (e.g. ways we can improve our working environments, ways to deliver better software to our clients, ways to document what we feel our core skill sets are and ensure that all of our developers are at certain levels across the board, etc). I sat in on discussions about the core developer skills and training as well as on an idea for a company wide cross-project Testing-festival-day. After that there were several presentations/talks on business and tech topics. It was pretty amazing seeing ~100 people all discussing how they do their jobs and making real efforts to find ways to do them better. It was a long day, but a productive one.

Saturday, along with having our patio set finally delivered late (for a second time) in the middle of a freak rain storm, was the company picnic. They put together a pretty nice one including games, tons of catered food (including cotton candy and snowcones) as well as games and events for the kids. Also, as Em pointed out, you can really tell that the average age of the company is fairly young by the shear number of young children that were running around. Good times.

This week, its unpacking, getting our furniture delivered tomorrow, and finding out where Em unpacked stuff when I wasn't around.

Firefox Download Day (a little late)

Its today until ~1pm CST.
Get out there and start downloading if you haven't already!

Bye Bye Money, moving, and a new-new mower

Its been a busy few days with the new house. We closed last Thursday and have spent good parts of each day over at the house cleaning/fixing/gardening/packing/unpacking/etc. Em has been a huge help in moving tons of the smaller stuff over there the past few days and will be there most of the week as delivery people start bringing stuff.

Empty dining room from the living room and kitchen minus fridge


Living room facing backyard and backyard from kitchen


Our out front living room windows

Some of the highlights of the last few days and of the next few are below:

• We are hoping to have almost all of our smaller items (things that will fit in a car) moved before this weekend.
• We bought our washer and dryer last week from Lowes. We decided on the pair we really liked despite the fact that the dryer was too big for the doorway. Saturday Em's dad and I knocked out one side of the frame to make room. Easier than expected.
• We bought a refrigerator from a local retailer also last week. We were on the fence between and expensive one and a more expensive one (we got it for a good deal under list price luckily) ... and decided to go all the way b/c it something that should last 10+ years and while the amount more wasn't nothing, given the nicer features it was worth it.
  
• Note: when purchasing ANY appliances or things that are bigger than you can carry in your arms ... verify that it will fit where you want it before you buy ... and verify that it will fit through every room/door way between your front porch and where you want it before you buy (we realized that our fridge will only fit INTO the kitchen without the doors, which they said wouldn't be a problem for the delivery people) .... also, if your spending 1k+ at a store, you should be able to get free delivery if you push them for it.
• We bought our furniture last week too (yeah, it was a helluva week for the our wallets). We got a really nice looking bedroom set and couch+love seat from Ashley furniture. They had the living room stuff in stock, but had to order the bedroom set so we won't get either for ~3 weeks. We wanted it earlier, but were willing to wait.
• We are contemplating re-sealing our hardwood since right now is the best time we will ever have to do it before we move everything in and eventually get a dog ... still not decided though.
• Its still amazing how much stuff you have and even more amazing that it could all fit into a rental truck (or our new living room) if so motivated.
  
• I rented a truck this past week for Sunday from BudgetTruck.com. While I was checking out I noticed their promo code box and figured I would try for one last time one of the random web catalogs for those kinds of things. Well, for the first time I found one that worked and RetailMeNot.com came through with a 20% discount!
  
• Its also amazing how big a house feels without anything in it and how much you need to buy to feel like its full
• We dropped a few bills at Home Depot this weekend getting stuff for the yard/outside/house. Some of the highlights were caulk which Em used in the bath to seal a tile, an electric trimmer, hoses, rakes, hardware, a couple tools, and a mower.
• Em has spent a good deal of time cleaning up the landscaping and has made some excellent progress.
  
• The mower. Initially I was contemplating a cordless electric mower and joking that it would be funny to try a manual push mower .... I ended up purchasing a self-propelled gas mower. :-) I went this route b/c there was a deal at Home Depot for a really nice one which should serve me well for many years and with the hill in our front I didn't want to push a heavier (b/c of the batteries) electric mower up it ..... but wait theres more.
• The mower is a Toro with a Briggs and Straton engine. Setup consisted of unfolding the handle, clicking it into place, adding the included oil, and filling the gas tank. Simple. The thing started on the first pull and ran really smooth .... HOWEVER the handle bar that initiates the self propelled feature was installed wrong and I can't get it to go. I can push it ... but I didn't pay the amount I did to have to push anything. So I call around: Toro customer service says to bring it into a service center to be fixed under warranty. Home depot says to bring it back to get a new mower (I opted for this). Today I convince my father in law to bring his van by, we load it up and take it to the store (not far), bring it in and the guy at the return desk says this:
  
  "Sure we can exchange that .... oh, does it have gas in it?"
  To which I say, "Yes, of course, I just filled it up".
  "Oh, well I can't take it back if it has gas in it. You have to take it somewhere else and drain it or run it dry before you can return it"
  
  A bit or arguing, talking to a manager, and watching the father in law make a guy look stupid later ... I had to go buy another gas can and go in the parking lot to drain the mower. Its not like a gas can costs a lot .. but when you buy something that expensive and heavy/awkward and it turns out to have a manufacturing defect ... the last thing you want to be told is that you have to drop another $4 just to return the damn thing. 10 minutes later I had a new mower.
  
  First let me say that while I understand the policy (fire hazard), it still doesn't make it right from a customer's perspective. What is the first thing you do with a mower ... fill it up! I understand you don't want to be responsible for random customer's gas coming into your store ... but you sell gasoline engines for pete sake ... have some policy and/or procedure in place beyond "we can't do it, take it somewhere and bring it back empty".
  
  That being said ... despite my frustration I ended up a fair bit ahead. Before we left to drain the mower Em's dad said in no nice terms that the manager should go get us a new mower while we did it so that we could leave as soon as we were done. When we got back a new mower was on a cart waiting for us .... and it was the next model higher than the one I had purchased. I noticed right away b/c they have big numbers on them so that you can find them on the floor away from the display models ... but figured either A) the manager had done it on purpose to compensate us for the hassle or B) I wanted it for compensation for my hassle and the guy had grabed the wrong one. I decided to not say anything figuring that the guy ringing up the return would probably catch it and have to get another one or that I would find out he meant to do it. Well there was no mention of why I was getting a #12 and not a #11 but I kept my mouth shut and now am the proud owner of a 6.75 HP mower (instead of 6.5) with self pacing features (you gently push the mower forward and the handle adjusts the speed automatically so that it matches your speed without you doing any work ... instead of a manual lever) and it has an automatic primer instead of a manual one. So all in all I am happy, questing my morals, but happy :-) original .... new hotness
  

Thats about it. Friday I have all day meetings at work at Windows On Washington (the other portion of the same place that we had our wedding reception) and then on Saturday we have our company picnic. Sunday is the big move with the rented truck and should be our first night in our new home! :-D

I thought I had lots that I wanted/needed/should do before. Well, my new To Do list puts the old one to shame.

Closed : Home Owners

Yep ... its official. Em and I are the proud owners of a mortgage! Err... I mean a new house!

We met up for our closing this morning (I took the day off) and after signing and initially what seemed like a mountain of paperwork (more like ~40 pages) we were officially the owners of a mortgage (we also had to run to our bank and get a cashiers check for by far the largest amount I have ever paid and turn that over too).

A few hours of waiting and buying house supplies the sellers had closed and we officially had our house. :-)

The previous owners were great, they were gone well before we got there, had mowed the lawn since the walkthrough, left the window treatments that we liked along with a few small pieces of furniture and a bottle of champagne on ice :-) We spent the rest of the day/evening making plans, doing some minor cleaning, and showing the house to Em's sister and my parents. We capped the evening off by ordering pizza to be delivered to our new house.

Tomorrow, Em is going to spend a good chunk of the day cleaning (everything was in good shape but its the only shot we will have to really clean it before things are moved in) and doing some arranging. This weekend we have a BBQ and a family picnic along with Father's Day festivities. Also, sometime between now and next Wednesday I need to figure out how to take apart a doorframe in our basement so that the washer/dryer set we bought yesterday (yep, we started saying goodbye to our money yesterday) will fit. We ended up only finding one set that would fit throught he doorway and decided we would rather have the hassle of taking it apart and putting it back and have the ones we wanted .... than have ones we didn't like.

Next up is a huge list of cleaning/fixing/setting up/etc things around the house, packing and moving smaller things and gennerally getting things set up. Also we will probably be buying our fridge tomorrow (if we can decide between the expensive one we like and the more expensive one we love) and a bedroom set and living room set soon.

Hurray for debt! Its the American way, right?

So Close I can Taste It

Monday we had our final walkthrough and I am happy to report that everything looked good. Our only concern is if the current owners will be out in time. When we walked through they still had the majority of their stuff there (much of it packed in boxes, but still in every room). Hopefully they took off yesterday and/or today and moved it all ... but we shall see. We close in the morning on Thursday and they close around lunch time, so if all goes as planned, we will be able to go in our new house in the afternoon. :-)

Another concern that turned out to be a non-issue was a small leak the current owners had reported to us via the realtors. It turns out that sometime last week they noticed a small amount of water coming from the wall in the basement ... but on the other side of the house from where they had had problems in the past. This worried us, so we told them to have someone come out and look at it, figure out what it was and hopefully fix it. They did. It turns out that there was a small opening where the gas lines enters the foundation ... and only b/c we had had so much rain recently that a small amount of water made its way through the opening next to the pipe (this is on the side with a hill going away from the house). They had someone out yesterday to fix the opening and that should be that.

So other than trying to pack some more and wondering if they are all moved out, not much is going on until tomorrow. :-)

Oh, and we lost our softball game. We are now 1-1-1-2-4 (win/loss/tie/bye/rain). My hitting was solid (3:3 w/ ~3 RBI and 2 runs) but our defense had some really poor innings (this included me .... I have to remember to not try and barehand hard hit grounders, they don't pan out well).

Google Animal Videos

The following are three random videos I took in the past couple weeks (and one from last year) and happened to load to Google Video. Sorry if the page loads slow, I have know idea what putting 4 video links on the same page will do.

The first is of a curious baby orangutan who picks his nose and ....

Sorry its tilted, I was too lazy to figure out how to rotate it.

The second is of the same baby orangutan and its mom ... but mom's a bit grumpy and they both learn a valuable lesson about what to put in their mouths ....

The next one is of some crazy gold/koi - esque fish in the pond at the nearby park. They just can't figure out how to get the Cheerio in their mouths...

The final one was taken at the Newport Aquarium and shows off their tunnels through the shark tanks and one impressive overbite...

PAARI - B

Photos At A Random Interval

Bear at the St. Louis Zoo

My intention is to see if I can capture a photo of all of the letters of the alphabet,
in order, and each from a different place/style/etc. The photos may not always be literal "letters" but something that is associated with the letter. This is the first of those.
Other PAARI may have nothing to do with this.

Zoo Pics and Excitement

I love the St. Louis Zoo. Not only is it a world class zoo and completely free to the public ... but if you get there when it opens on a Saturday then its pretty much deserted and you can walk right up to the animals who are very playful at 8am.

If you can't figure out what Em and I did this past Saturday, then just look at the pics....

Huge grizzly bear scratching his back on a tree


Baby orangutan


Code Monkeys
Honestly, Em saw the CDs in the cage and thought up the joke, I take no credit


Chimps in silhouette

I have a few videos that I am uploading the Google Video at the moment and will post later.

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

On the house front, the excitement is ramping up. Tomorrow we have our final walkthrough after work. Basically we need to make sure that the house is still in the same state as when we saw it before and note any problems/changes. Also, its our chance to measure several things exactly so that we can purchase appliances and furniture. Thursday is our closing (9am) so God willing, Thursday night we will be ordering pizza to be delivered to our new home. :-)

The only big thing between then and now is we should get the final number from the title company on what we will owe at closing so that we can go to the bank and get our cashiers check made out (by far the biggest check of any kind I will have ever written ... and probably will until our next house). Exciting!

PAARI - A

Photos At A Random Interval

I am totally ripping off the POTRTP idea from 86Words.com ... but it just works better than a set time frame.
Hopefully they don't mind. Isn't "Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery?" :-)

Chalk written on a sidewalk in a local park

My intention is to see if I can capture a photo of all of the letters of the alphabet,
in order, and each from a different place/style/etc. This is the first of those.
Other PAARI may have nothing to do with this.

Parks, Hidden Parks, and more

As always, its been a busy few days

This past weekend Em and I took in the few hours of nice weather and went to the Missouri Botanical Gardens (where they had the orchid show a few months ago). Along with all of the really cool plants and gardens that they always have they also are featuring artwork for the Niki collection. The huge and ornate sculptures were pretty amazing.

Em's favorite Niki sculpture


The ever-hungry koi and irises


Another Niki sculpture and some cool glass floating things

Later that night, Em and I went to Bailey Chocolate bar to formally and finally fully celebrate her getting her new job. The place had a great atmosphere and the food/drinks were really good. Em had a couple mojito sorbet martinis to drink while I had a very crisp New Belgium Sunshine Wheat and a Young's Double Chocolate Stout (very intense and filling, but good). To munch on we had a sampling of cheeses (a camembert, a drunken goat cheese and one other) that came with assorted nuts, fruit and breads. For desert we had a delicious banana split that had Baileys ice cream and more chocolate.

Today Em and I both gave blood at our church after work and then, after dinner, we walked over to a local park. We had heard that there was a little park tucked away behind another church within walking distance but hadn't ever seen it or knew exactly how to get to it. Well, tonight we found it and were quite surprised. It was much larger than we anticipted, very close to our apartment, and featured among other things: tennis courts, basketball courts, a large pond with fountain and a bridge, two gazebos, well kept up gardening and a large playground. Not bad for being within a mile of our place. Too bad we just found. To go along with the other things, we also saw a ton of wildlife including a duck with ducklings, tons of large tad poles, tons of small fish, bunnies, and a large deer with one antler.

Twin Oaks Presbyterian through the trees

In house news .... there really isn't much news. We have our final walkthrough a week from today and in 10 days we close! Finally. Tonight I did clear up one thing related to taxes and insurance. Evidently I was actually thinking about it correctly, but thought I wasn't. With our lender, we pay slightly ahead on our taxes each month which are collected into an escrow account until November when they are paid. Rinse and repeat. Insurance is slightly different, however. At closing we will be paying for a whole year of insurance (through summer of '09) and each month we will be paying for the same month 1 year in the future. This is so that the lender makes sure that their collateral is properly insured. It stinks b/c its your money sitting in their account but once you get to 20% equity .... you can stop .... and if if you sell the house or pay it off .... you get your money back.

Not much else to blog about (not that most of this is very interesting to begin with). We did get a letter today saying we would be getting our economic stimulus check by the 6/7th of June .... why they didn't just send the check I will never know ... but at least it should be here soon. Also, since Em doesn't work during the summer she was given the option to get her final two months of pay up front, so this past pay day was a nice one :). Its a shame most of whats in our checking account at the moment will be leaving in 10 days .... but at least we finally get to start moving in :-)

Insured

Well, as of the closing date we are.

After work today I setup our home owner's insurance with USAA (we already have car insurance and some other accounts with them). All in all the process is fairly painless however I found a couple of things while doing it (at least at USAA):

• They mail you the policy info which you should get within 7-10 days and also fax a copy to your loan company for your proof of insurance ... so have a phone number and/or fax number for your loan company before doing this
• Also, the insurer needs to know the loan company's info for you policy (it goes into it somehow) and the info you gives them needs to be specific to your loan. Luckily I happened to find this in our loan documents just before I called or I would have given them the wrong info (there was a page all about what levels you must maintain and what loan company info should be on the policy)
• There are tons of options and things you can change, but the defaults seemed to work for most things for us.
• We will end up getting an additional personal property policy for Em's jewelry (even though it stays in the safety deposit box, b/c its over our limits) but I need to get the apraisal info and descriptions in order first
• I opted for the water damage insurance (10k insurance for any water problems due to sewer backups, sump pumps, etc other than floods) b/c it was a steal and its one of the few likely problems we will have
• Normal coverage doesn't cover floods or earthquakes at all. We don't need flood insurance but we will probably add the basic earthquake insurance on. Also, its more for earthquake insurance if you have a masonry home instead of frame b/c of the possibility of cracked walls due to an earthquake. It was a small amount more to extend your normal coverage (personal property, total loss, etc) for earthquakes but if you want to have your policy cover damage to the structure excluding rebuilding (e.g. repairing a cracked wall) its an extra 150? per year.
• Most other amounts are all based on your homes perceived replacement cost which they calculate using averages for the area along with details you provide (materials used in the home, size, shape, walls, floor coverings, etc). Its important to keep this number in mind when making additions/improvements b/c you want to make sure that in case of a major incident that your covered to actually rebuild your home like it was that day, and not just the way it was 5 years ago.
• We went with the $1k deductible b/c we save $110/year on it versus the $500
• A home burglary/fire/alarm system would knock off another $100+ bucks a year .... but I am undecided. USAA has deals for members with ADT but even then its $300 for installation and $25/month for monitoring. Thats not too expensive for a ton of piece of mind so I might still get it, but I haven't decided.
  

After numerous questions and choices on amounts (e.g. how much personal liability coverage do you want, etc) everything was done and setup to start the day we get the keys. It was actually about $10 cheaper than what Em's aunt had estimated so that was good all the way around and now pretty much everything is set for that week. We have our final walk through the preceding monday and get to sign tons of papers the morning of closing then its all ours! :)