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 :-)