The Earth Done Quaketh, and stuff

-- thank you Lewis Black

Yep, the other morning (as anyone who has seen/heard the knews in the past 3 days should know) there was an earthquake centered in south eastern Illinoise. While not real close to us in STL, any amount of close when talking about the earth moving violently up and down, is too close. The shaking didn't last long, but did last long enough to wake Em and I from our sleep. I only woke up enough to convince myself that whatever was making the noise wasn't my concern and to tell Em that "no, its not an earthquake, its probably just a train, go back to bed" .... evidently my brain functions when half asleep, just in the completely wrong way.

Other than being the first earthquake I have actually felt ... it wasn't a big deal. Many people I talked to sleep through it. This included my grandma who slept through it but thought she was going crazy when she found her china cabinet and grandfather clock doors open the next morning. She didn't immediately believe a friend she talked to on the phone, but while she was talking we got the first aftershock which quickly opened up her china cabinet doors again ... mystery solved.

The only thing new on the house front to report is that the sellers sent back our inspection report with what they were agreeing to have fixed. They agreed to everything except two things: 1) the plumber they talked to said that the downstairs bath was properly vented to code and would give us a signed letter stating it (fine by me), and 2) they aren't going to pay to have a new circuit run into the garage for the garage door opener (I wish they would, but not a big deal). Since they agreed to have everything else fixed, we went ahead and agreed and sent everything back. Oh, also we locked in our interest rate and got our final "correct" good faith estimate which was less than what we were expecting (yay) but a slight increase on the rate (changes every day, we ended up with 5 and 7/8%). Nothing to do now but secure home owner's insurance (or a letter stating that we CAN be insured), look at more appliances and furniture and start planning the move.

Work has been busy as ever. We finally got a signed SOW for our work with the National Sex Offender Registry so we have started on that (should be aprox a 6 week effort for two of us concluding with installation of web services at two states (TBD) and possibly presenting at a national conference in Baltimore). Its getting exciting, if not scary. I had to remember everything I knew about Java web services and learn a whole bunch of new stuff in a single day.

Also, we had our work's quarterly meeting on Friday (nice lunch and presentation) this past week. It was really nice. They discussed the financials (we are doing well and given the economy, very well over the past 2 years), recently awarded contracts, work in the pipeline, upcoming events, etc. Its amazing how much more ownership and connection you feel in a smaller company and how much you realize your actions actually effect the bottom line when compared to working as a contractor to a large international company. Plus its crazy and cool to find out that of the ~100 employees, we have 5 or 6 PHDs, a MD, the ex-CTO of NASA, and a 3-star General all working for us in various ways.

Last night Em took me out for a early birthday dinner to a Japanese/Asian Fusion restaurant we had never been to before and we had a great dinner (ordered way too much food, but thats an ok problem to have) and tonight she baked me a wonderful pineapple-upside-down cake and had our parents over for gifts (I got a new iPod-FM transmitter, a book on herb gardens, some clothes, and a large enamel-coated cast iron stock pot. ;-) )

Oh, and I went and hit some golf balls today for the first time in a few years. Happily I wasn't as bad as I thought I would be. Sadly, I was still very bad.