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....

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. :-)

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.

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 :-)

Baptisms, Buy.Com, Books, Brainz, and Good Bye

This past weekend was my cousin's twin's baptism. It was the first time I had ever been to one and was a very nice ceremony. The only problem was that my cousin asked me to film the ceremony with their camcorder (a nice Sony model, I would love to get one before a large trip or we have a kid), and thats a fair bit of pressure to be sprung on someone. Oh crap, is the thing on? Is it recording? How can I get a decent shot of babies from where I am sitting? Did I just say that out loud and now its on the tape? Etc. But I digress, it wasn't about me. It was a nice ceremony and it was good to see the family all together.

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Last Friday afternoon I ordered a new monitor for a family member from Buy.com. Sunday night I got an email saying they had "shipped" the item meaning they had informed FedEx to pick it up. Tuesday morning it was delivered. Not too shabby at all. Especially not shabby considering we had done the free bulk-rate shipping option and the original estimates said 1-2 days for processing and 7-9 days for delivery.

In addition to the very fast delivery I have to promote Buy.com and Google Checkout. This is the second time I have ordered something off Buy.com and both times the prices were very good. Both times the shipping was fast. Both times Google Checkout gave me discounts: $10 my first order for signing up with Google Checkout ... and $20 off this order b/c it was my "first order over $100 for select members". Who knew I was a select member, but fast shipping, good prices and $30 off without me having to do anything are all great!

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I have been reading a lot more lately than I did in the past few years and in an effort to keep track of what I have read, what I am reading, and things I want to read in the future ... I have put up this temporary solution. I am still looking for a better solution to help maintain the many lists I have these days (things to read, things to learn, to-do's, gift ideas, project ideas, etc) but this site is working well for the time being.

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A few weeks ago I stumbed upon this article from TUAW about the iEatBrainz application. The MusicBrainz service is a centralized place for people to access and store digital music information. The iEatBrainz application is a great little app that produces a digital "fingerprint" of a song in iTunes and compares the result against the MusicBrainz database. It then presents you with a list of probably matches, sorted by probability, of tag information for your song. With just a couple clicks, you can have the app search thousands of songs in your iTunes library ... find their tag info, and then with another click, go off and update them all. Admittedly, it takes a while to update thousands of songs and isn't perfect (it was very good though, some it couldn't find and other songs that were on multiple albums, it chose a different one than I wanted) but for those of you with iTunes libraries with many missing tags (maybe b/c the mp3's were gathered in a unusual manor ;-) ) it is a great resource. Warning ... the original article says that the service will be going down at some point, so check it out early or not at all.

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This is my last week at my current client and the last week working for my consulting company. On Monday I start work with my new company. Honestly, I am extremely excited and very anxious to see what it is going to be like. Its been hard wrapping up my current work but it will be nice to start on some new things.

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I have new posts at my other blogs as well.

New Ear Buds

I forgot to mention in last night's post that I my new ear buds were finally delivered yesterday also.

What new ear buds you might ask? I have wanted a nicer set for a long time now (I, along with many others, never found the ones that came with my iPod very good or comfortable, but wasn't willing to plop down a lot of money for a "better" pair without trying them first) but could never decide on a new pair or felt comfortable paying more than $10-$20 for them (which wouldn't have gotten me a very good pair). Luckily Em's brother got a nice pair from Costco on sale for Christmas and he let me try his and they worked really well. I tried to get a pair right after Christmas but they were sold out. Lucky again, he happened to find the same deal on Amazon.com the next day, so I ordered them.

What did I get? Ultimate Ears' Super.fi 3 in black.

Verdict? Granted I have very little to compare them to, but the sound is good/better than the old ones, the comfort is much better (although the way you put them on/in is a bit tricky at first) and the noise reduction is really nice (especially compared to the ZERO noise reduction that the iPod ones had)

Noise Reduction was one of my main conditions, since I most often wear them at work while listening to music and HATE having to listen to the conversations of anyone and everyone in a cube near me. At the moment I am wearing them and can't hear my keyboard or anything else around me. The only problem I am finding right now is two fold - they are so quiet that I have to turn my iPod down pretty much all the way or it sound really "loud" compared to anything else (not actually a problem) and that when/if someone wants to get my attention they are going to have to touch me on the sholder b/c there is no way I will hear them (probably scare the crap out of me :-p )

You can't beat that considering I purchased them with gift money :)

Parties and Parks

This past weekend was packed full of stuff.

Friday night Em and I went out to dinner and the Funnybone w/ my cousin and his wife. We saw Tim Northern who was decent (although not great). The people in the audience were actually funnier than the comedian for some of the show. This reminded me of when Em and I saw Ian Bagg in Cinci with Sark (b/c we saw him at the Funnybone there, not b/c he was bad, he was Hillarious!). I wonder if he has any CDs ... not sure if they would be the same compared to seeing him live.

Saturday we ran errands, helped move some furniture, put our bikes into winter storage and spent some time enjoying the mild November weather at Laurmier Sculpture Park. Its a nice park here in town where they have large outside art exhibits and sculptures along with a couple short trails and a lot of green space. I will post pictures once they get uploaded to the computer.

Sunday my Mom and I put together a surprise birthday party for my dad. Yes, his birthday was last weekend but some scheduling problems resulted in it being this weekend (which made it all the more surprising!). Mom was able to get a fair number of his friends, family and coworkers to show up. We had it at a nearby bowling alley that had a separate lounge area you could reserve. Fun, food, and pie were had by all.

....

This week is a short one. I would normally get Thursday and Friday off from my company, but since my client also gets off Wednesday and our office is closed, its forced vacation time for your's truly. Not that paid time off is the worst thing in the world. :-) So the rest of today and tomorrow will be the extent of my week. I have a fairly large list of to-do items I want to check off this week so wish me luck with that. Also, I have to start my shopping for the upcoming holidays and Em's bday.

I will probably either post a ton or not at all over the next few days depending on what I end up doing. If you crave more to read, check out the puzzle blog myself and a few of my college roommates are contributing to. I will probably get rid of my "food blog" in the next few days and try to resurrect the never quite alive professional/tech blog I started. I am envious of how Kev can find the time/energy to post his thoughts in an interesting manor. I have a ton of ideas I would like to talk about but can never seem to actually write them up.

Long week and an active birthday weekend

Last week was a long week full of work, meetings, and more work. Two notable meetings I had were the first Java/Oracle/Open Source "channel or practice" meeting on Monday or last week, and a meeting with our head of operations on Tuesday.

The "channel" meeting was interesting. Sogeti has their business model broken down into a number of "practices" which as far as I understand them are the main client services we provide. Similar, but not the same, are the internal "channels" of which each Sogeti is a member of (1:1 relationship here). Sark, depending on the given office in question, had a healthy mix of Java, .NET, and other services to provide our clients. Sogeti on the other hand was primarially a .NET, ERP, and other business solutions provider. Thus, a new group was formed around those consultants working with Java, Oracle, and Open Source technologies. This meeting was to get those people together, discuss what we want to get from the "channel" and to start working on ways to get what we want done, done.

The fact that there currently isn't a "practice" around the Java work we do is appearing to be both a good and bad situation. Bad: lack of seniority in the Java world coming from Sogeti, all business examples you hear first are all .NET related, etc.... Good: it presents a nice opportunity for us Java folks to step up and show the company what we can do, and hopefully in the process I will be able to help lead that work. Time will tell, but I am actually a fair bit excited about that.

My other meeting also went well. While I still don't have any definite dates yet, all things are moving forward. My client will be contacted hopefully this week or next as well as the receiving office in St. Louis. Barring any major problems I should be able to know a definite date in the next few weeks. In either case, Em and I are confident in how its going and are looking to move forward with planning out move back. Next up is looking into some more apartments, figuring out what all we need to do to move, scheduling, etc. Things are looking up!

I threw darts on Thursday ... despite having a sub who had never thrown in a real match before we pulled off the victory 9-6!

This past weekend was a whirlwind of a birthday weekend (if/for anyone who read the post's title or that last sentence and is scratching their head right now and realizing they forgot or didn't know it was my bday ... don't worry about it. If you know me well enough to feel that way you should know that I put very little stock into celebrating my own birthday and have zero hard feelings ;) )

Friday after work Em and went out and got Quiznos, went walking at Sharron Woods for a while (its nice to see some green coming back) and went out to a few stores.

Saturday we got up, did some things around the apt and drove over to Winton Woods. We spent a couple hours there walking around and watching the turtles try and get back on a log in the middle of the lake. When we got back we ate a quick late lunch and went off to the local rec-plex. I had a dodgeball game (we, the Sark team, played the Sogeti team ... I think we lost but it was close, it was a blast yet again) and Em worked out. After that we drove back home, took showers and headed out to Ando for a great Sushi dinner (Em got seaweed salad, miso soup, a California roll and a futomaki roll ... I got one of their Sushi dinners which included soup, salad, and the following sushi: sea bass, flounder, yellow-tail, tuna, salmon, crab, shrimp, a tuna roll and salmon roe) The food was excellent as always.

Sunday we got up, Em went to the store while I fixed up the bikes and around lunch time we headed out to Miami Whitewater Forest. The ~8 mile main trail was nothing on our bikes. After the main trail we chilled by the lake for a bit watching people try to catch fish off the dock (I admit a couple did, but none looked to professional ;) ) and watched ahuge 3-month-old Saint Bernard puppy sniff the world. Finally we "hiked" the Badlands trail on foot and headed home for dinner (grilled hamburgers, homemade coleslaw with dried cranberries and baked beans).

Thats pretty much it. This week is looking to be another long one (lots of work to do, our current sprint is a shorter one) and trying to get stuff cleaned and organized around the apt.

[The pictures are from the park and my dodgeball game, if you couldn't have guessed. The strange looking bag of worms was from a tree we walked by full of hatching bag-caterpillars. In the dodgeball pic, I am the one on the far left throwing so HARD you can barely see the ball ;)]

If you can dodge a wrench, you can dodge a ball!

Played my first dodgeball game since gradeschool today. Yep dodgeball. And as you may have expected ... it rocked!

Sark/Sogeti is sponsoring a team at our local rec-plex (2 actually). Last Sat. was our first games but with the holiday, I was unable to make it. Let me throw two observations out there to get this post started: 1) its kinda like the movie in that its dodgeball, but the rules and play is way different and 2) playing for 2 hours will make you HELLUVA tired!

The rules are basic rules we all remember (you get hit, your out, you catch a ball before it hits the ground the other guy is out, no going across the center line, etc....) but there is not 2-person swing when you catch a ball. Once you are out you are out for the entire game. That may sound a bit harsh until I tell you that games last only a max of 8 minutes, normally are only a minute or 2, and we play as many games as we can in 50 minutes! Which results in anywhere between low teens to 20+ games in one match. I ended up playing in both matches ... thus I am WAY tired and am gonna not be able to get up tomorrow. ;)

Games were really fast, but really fun. The first team we played was full of younger guys (from late highschool to college ... the league is 16+) and they kicked our butts. The second team was full of a wider range of guys and girls, and we ended up rocking them somewhere around 15 games to 4. Matches are decided by who wins more games, but points are really more important (if you win with 2 people left, you get +2 and they get -2 ... etc etc).

Just a couple more things about the games .... the balls are foam and WAY light which makes them pretty hard to throw well (I got decent by the end but was also tired) .... one of our guys from Sogeti pitched in the minor leagues (his throws were SUPER hard and had some great curves) .... another Sogeti guy didn't have one of his hands. Thats right, one normal arm, one that ended at the wrist. And he was REALLY good. I felt bad losing our final game of the night for us, but I felt WAY WORSE for some people on the other team who got "out" but a guy without and hand catching their ball. He only had one hand!

Some non-dodgeball related stuff that happened recent:

• Early this week Em and I watched The Incredibles which was really funny and really entertaining. I would definitely recommend it.
• My team at work had our big end of spring demo this past week (finally after numerous dry-runs) and it went really well. Everything got done and looked good. We made a lot of good progress. That would have been enough, but after the demo I found out some info that I wish I had known prior. Each demo is in front of various business people who have a stake in the project (business owner, head of billing, head of accounting, etc). But it turns out that our business owner is actually an Assist. VP (I didn't realize he was that high up), and that two of the other people we my boss' boss, and the CFO of GAIC!!!!!! Yep, the CFO. Good thing the demo went well ;)
• Next week I have several work meetings including one with our head of operation about the possible transfer. Hopefully I will have some news on that front later next week.
• Sunday is the premier for the new Fox show Drive which stars the same lead from Firefly and Sereniti .... haven't seend much other than a breif teaser but I will prob check it out.
  

Tomorrow, making some good food, studying web services, and seeing how sore I am ;)

Happy Easter

• weekend / easter update
• this past weekend, Em and I traveled back to STL for Easter. Left Friday to snow flurries (not exactly your normal April weather), but the drive was OK.

• Saturday we got up early and spent the majority of the day looking at apartments in the area. Given that nothing about our possible move is still official, we mainly just wanted to start getting a feel for prices in various areas of town and see what kind of place we can get for our money in each area. I foresee it being a bit of a pain trying to figure out what place will be best for us given price, amenities, location (to family, everyday places, and our works which we don't know about yet), etc. But I am up to the task. We actually looked at 11 places on Sunday (talked with people at most, but not all) and got some good ideas. Obviously, certain areas are more expensive than others, and getting a place a bit out of town means a ton more for your money .... still looking
• Saturday night we went to a fun surprise birthday party for my cousin's husband. Good times, food, and drink were had by all.
• Sunday was Easter, and we started the day by going to mass with Em's family. Funnily, Em asked me later in the day if I knew that I didn't have to go with her .... funny ;). Actually I really enjoy it. Granted the formalities and the rituals can get to be a bit much for someone who is a heathen, but I really do enjoy taking part, and listening to the preacher preach. I actually wondered at a particularly loud part (many children crying, etc) how many people there were really listening to the priest and thinking about what he was saying and how it applied to their lives. My guess is less than would be ideal. Oh, one other note about church ... a guy in the row in front of us fainted or had a small seizer during mass. Luckily his family seemed like it wasn't the first time and he seemed to be ok after a few moments, but it was pretty strange to see.
• Later we had brunch (and tons of yummy food) at Em's parent's house and later a great second lunch and family time out at my aunts.
• Monday we made our way back to Cinci (good weather, just cold) and I was greated by Cinci's air when we got here (my allergies are always WAY worse in STL. I am not sure which allergen is more abundant there than here, but man they were bad!)
  
• GAIM name change - http://pidgin.im/
• I saw a link about this today ... I knew they had had issues in the past, but was still surprised to see them change their name to something so different. Great tool.
  
• google reader
• So yeah, I am a RSS convert and totally sucked into the world of the RSS reader. Until now, I was never fully converted. I knew the theoretical benefits and heard the hype, but never really used anything that used them, nor had I seen the benefit. Well, a coworker uses google's reader tool, and upon setting it up with all the sites I try and read reguarally .... I am converted. Yeah there are plenty of other tools that do this (and have for some time), but this is the first I have really given a chance and I like it. Intuitive interface, fast, auto-updating, easy to manage, and easy to make nice taged lists which can be public or private. Everyone who reads a fair number of sites a day should check it out. And those of you who read this and have blogs without a RSS feed should really get one ;) (cough Kooz cough) ;) Also, as you have probably noticed, I have added a list of my shared links to the site, we shall see how that works out.
  
• lots of work, big demo tomorrow
• last week resulted in lots of work, this week should be more of the same. Tomorrow is our big end of sprint demo so thats fun. Spent the last couple weeks getting ready for it. Thursday is almost all day meetings to plan the next one. At least it makes the days go by really fast
• Today I played around with changing the blog's template (I would like to modify a few things, make it liquid, and easier to read ...) but Google doesn't give you many stretch-abled templates and the good looking ones I find online are all designed for 800x600 still for some reason. Bummer, guess its staying the same for now.

Thats about it for now .... I want to throw some info about our apt search onto a google-my-maps-map but haven't yet and am not sure how much info I want to put online ... either way I played around with it a bit today and its pretty cool. Very simple interface.
(The last pic is our "Frank-en-koosh" guy on the dash of my car, watching us drive home)

Early-Weekend-Update

• Over the past couple weeks or so, I have lost several hours of my life to flash games such as this, this, this, and another that was on Digg the other day. They are pretty darn complex and interesting little puzzles. With a coworker, we figured out the Crimson Room, I couldn't figure out the Veridian Room without cheating (there is just no way, without sacrificing a good week of your life, to figure those damn things out), but I did figure out by myself the White Chamber and the one on Digg (they were much more puzzle oriented and less click wildly until something happens, which I liked). If anyone else checks them out, let me know what you think.
• Last Thursday, Starbucks gave away free coffee to anyone who showed up between 10am and noon. Since there is one in the plaza level of our building, we had to check it out. It was quite the spectacle ... they could hardly keep up with the line of people forming. Although, I guess, if they can get just a few more addicts for each location its worth it. Its amazing the caffeine addiction some people have! Friday was a "tenant appreciation day" for our building, so they had free cookies and drinks downstairs. Yay for free stuff!
• Friday, I went out to lunch with some guys I work with and we headed to a place in the next block called Rise and Shine. I don't know exactly how to describe it. Its a small restaurant downtown where the outside looks pretty normal, the inside kinda reminded us of a Bob Evans, and the menu consisted of breakfast food, normal American fare (burgers, etc) and Thai food. Yep, Thai food. It is very strange, but pretty good. Me and another guy actually ended up getting the buffet (all Thai food) and they just handed us empty containers and we piled in as much as we could fit. The quality was just ok, but they made up for it in quantity.
• Last night, Em and I partook in the Hartzell Methodist Church Fish Fry which is near our apt in Kenwood. I have to say, it is by far the best run fish fry I have ever been to. Their prices are good, they are very efficient (after you buy your tickets for what you want, they have people wait briefly in the chapel while an old lady plays some great piano. Every couple minutes they figure out how many people have left the dining hall and let that many new in, it works great), the fish and side items were very good, they offer unlimited seconds on fish, there aren't a million little kids yelling or running around, drink is included, and they have home made desserts which are included in your meal. Hurray for homemade cherry pie!!!!!
• After we left the fish fry, Em needed new dress shoes to go with her suit so we went into the Kenwood mall area and got her a pair along with a new pair of brown dress shoes for me (given that I have worn my current pair pretty much everyday since starting work w/ Sark-Sogeti, I think I deserve a new pair ;) ). After that we checked out the new market that just opened up near there. Its a The Fresh Market, and its a cross between Trader Joes and Dorothy Lane Market. Great looking food, nice layout, not too big, and OK prices (you actually get what you pay for). I am debating on going back today or tomorrow to pick up some things to eat this week .... maybe a nice salmon fillet since Em doesn't like it. So many choices
• I will be fending for myself this week b/c Em is on her way to STL as I write this. She will be there till mid next week visiting with her family, who will all be there, and attending a school career fair. Hopefully she will have a good/safe time :).
• Other than that, not a whole lot is new or exciting. I am planning on trying to get a lot of work done over the next few days, catch up on studying for the SCDJWS exam, and working on my various programming projects. Yep, it shaping up to be one hell of a nerdy weekend.

300 Review

I really liked the movie. It had everything I wanted from an action/gladiator/war/guy movie. The plot was simple, but not bad (assuming you don't think of it as a history lesson). It was a fair bit gory at times (but what do you expect from a war movie). Having never seen the graphic novel that it was based on, I can't say how close it was to it, but I have to say, between the way they did the graphics, lighting, audio, and camera angles .... it had a really cool comic book feel to it that didn't take away from the movie but added to it. Oh, and while I am on the subject of the graphics, THEY ROCKED. Best single part of the movie, by far. They were the perfect for the film type (gritty at times when it helped, hi-contrast, dramatic, moving graphics). It was pretty cool to see. Overall, I thought it was prefect for the genre, but obviously not for everyone (Em had her eyes closed through some of the crazier battle scenes). Also, I am not sure if I am just getting old, but the movie was damn loud in some spots. During battle scenes it was fine, but it was a little loud for some of the more subdued scene.


Ok, here are some of my thoughts on the movie that include spoilers or specific plot points, click on the following link to view:

• Opening sequence about when the King was a kid was very graphic given that its only the first 2-3 minutes of the movie. At this point I was a little worried that the whole movie was going to be constant gore, but it evened out which was nice.
  
• The actor who played the King was really good. The setting helps, but he was super dramatic and felt like a king.
  
• The scenes with the crazy old priests and the Oracle were a little unsettling.
  
• The mix of humor and action was entertaining but a little abrupt. The scenes where the guys laugh about fighting in the shade and with the apple were pretty darn funny though.
  
• All the different Persian armies were pretty cool looking, poor elephants.
  
• Watching a movie with that many guys who are uber buff could make the strongest guy feel week.
  
• The parallels between this movie and parts of the Lord of the Rings trilogy (including the one actor) were comical. No idea if they were intentional, but the hodgpodge army attacking the outnumbered good guys with crazy animals, and Gollum showing up in the form of the misshapen Spartan guy was funny.
  
• The scenes where they blot out the sun with arrows were well done.
  
• I got all confused when the king kneeled down before the Persian god/king, I assumed he was just screwing with him, but the drew it out long enough that I was a little worried.
  
  

300

Just got back from seeing 300 with Em (yep, she loves me enough to go out to a gory war movie :) ).

I have to say, it was extremely entertaining and I would recommend it. I will post details tomorrow of what Em and I thought, but for now, its past my bed time. Night all!

ps, here are some links about it if you can't wait until tomorrow. ;)

Everything Update For Josh

• Parallels - I installed Parallels the other day on my iMac and I have to say, its a really impressive product. Very fast, clean interface, works great. I have XP running in it for Quicken and eventually .NET development, and its working great. The image files aren't too big either. My only complaint so far is that there isn't an easy way via the interface to create a snapshot of a virtual machine (ie a copy of its current state for backup purposes). I eventually made one by hand by copying the image files but a nice interface would have been nice. My only other glitch, and this is very minor, is that with dual monitors, the transition effects when switching between OSs blinks a bit and isn't smooth. All well ;). Oh, and once you install the Parallels tools in XP, you can move your mouse straight into it and out without clicking or anything and it will send the signals correctly. That plus clipboard integration is pretty nice.
  
• Quicken - I installed this as I said above. Works well, I am still trying to get all my accounts setup correctly but I am happy. It did crash the first time I ran it (being the first program installed in XP, i had to laugh) but it has worked fine since.
  
• SuperDuper - My final installation of the past weekend, this backup software is working out well. I broke down and paid for the "full" version since I really liked it and it unlocked the "smart updates" for your backup partition and in-app scheduling. Now I have it setup to make a smart backup once a week thats fully bootable. A nice bit of insurance.
  
• Game Night - wed night was a Sark Game Night, we played Call of Duty at the Sark office. Fun times. I am pretty sure I was #1 (or 2) in every game so that was cool. With this, plus last week's Sark stuff and some large meetings this week I have gotten several lunches and dinners paid for recently. :-D
  
• Moms weekend - this past weekend my mom and Em's mom made their way into town to visit. Other than some freak snow showers and a whirlwinds weekend, I think everyone had a great time. Some of the highlights were showing the moms JungleJims (they were both pretty much awe struck by the time they made it to the bakery, which is less than half the store), a good but not quite what we expected dinner at the Glendale Pub, some good relaxing and talking, and a great breakfast at the Original Pancake House. I had some GREAT sourdough pancakes BTW.
  
• Em Test - Em took the Praxis this past weekend and thinks she did well. Not much left besides graduation!
  
• Taxes - This weekend I gotta finish up our taxes. While I wouldn't suggest it just for the tax break, spending a ton of money on tuition results in a nice tax credit. Lots of debt, but a nice tax credit.
  
• Broomball double header - Last two weeks we have had broomball double headers. First time we won both games, second time we lost both. 2/4 ain't too bad! :) Another game at 4 this week. Wish me luck.
  
• work - work has been kinda crazy this week. Without going into too much detail, we ended our previous "Sprint" last week and had a large demo of our current progress on Monday that went very well. On Tuesday I had meetings pretty much all day to discuss the things that went well/wrong in the last sprint, figure out what we want to do this sprint and plan for those things. The rest of the week had me working to understand my new integration point (integrating the billing system with the system that stores policy information, which happened to be installed before I was born ;) ) and hashing out the basic design of my parts in conjunction with a coworker. This is looking to be a work filled sprint, but at the end we will have the majority of the system in place which is exciting. Also, we are working to get end-t0-end testing in place for our integration points which may mean I will be able to actually call up the a voice response system and test my code from last sprint which would be cool.
  
• sark conf call - The Sark/Sogeti buyout officially happened on March 1st, so technically I now work for Sogeti US. I have been getting bits and pieces of information and details as they become available but still don't have a complete picture of what this will mean for the future. If I hear anything crazy I will post, don't worry :) We had a national conf. call on wed that was a lot of biz jargon and fluff, but at least gave us some names and the idea that things were moving forward. I should be getting benefit and policy info in the mail sometime this week....hopefully.
  
• go carts, happy hour - last week we had our yearly Sark monthly meeting at the indoor competition racing place. 30+ MPH go-karts == fun even if my side hurt all the next two days from one bad turn into a wall. I did great, except for 4 penalties. But one wasn't my fault I swear! I though I had gotten one so I went into the pit area behind another guy, but when the guy saw me he just looked at me strange and told me to go ahead. Then on my next lap a diff official-guy gave me a penalty for going in the pit without a reason! You believe that crap!? ;)
  
• seega - this project has stalled after its initial momentum, but I am hoping to work on it some this weekend. I have been just too buzy at work. plus...
  
• photessera - I have been working some on this project. I came up with what I think is a more efficient design to keep the memory footprint down, but its hinges on my ability to find/make a PNG encoder that can create a file via streaming input (so that the entire original image need not be in memory). I have been reading the PNG spec and about the DEFLATE algorithm but fear that I will need 2 passes over the data to create the file. I MAY be able to get away with a single pass but I will have to do some creative sampling prior or concede that the compression won't be at its best. I am really considering throwing something together this weekend so that I can run some tests on the tradeoffs of time/memory footprint/number and amount of HD read & writes/complexity/resulting compression. Its actually a very interesting problem.
  
• root beer - I got a new kind of root beer from JJs when we went last weekend. I will post a review whenever I get a chance to upload the pics
• SCDJWS - my studying has been stalled with the above, but its moving along. Actually I have having to pick up a number of the secondary technologies in my current project which should be helpful.
• Pics - I took some decent pics the other day, but haven't put them on the web yet. When I do there will be a post.
• Noah's Arc in our backyard - the other morning I was getting ready and was looking out the window at our porch at the various birds which were enjoying the fresh birdseed I had put out. Your normal bunch of misc small birds flying around. Then I saw our resident squirrel come by, but with a friend, and got to watch him try his best to reach the location of our bird feeder (he eventually did get it, he is quite the acrobat). To go along with the pair of squirrels, we currently have a pair of Red Bellied Woodpeckers, Cardinals, and Blue Jays flying around. I actually got to see all 4 pairs in a half hour time span the other day. It was pretty cool.
  

GRGLE GRGLE GRGLE

(in case your wondering, thats the sound my stomach just made)

My current hunger is prompting a post about food. I have a few food related tid bits I thought I would share for those of you who might care or at least read this on a dare but just to be fair you gotta share. (I have no idea where that rhyming came from. I may need some coffee):

1) Berghoff's Root Beer
This past weekend Em and I went to JungleJims looking for some decent produce and all the entertainment that comes along with the spectacle that is JJ's. We found what we were looking for and spent the next hour or so walking around looking at all the food stuffs we would try if we had the time, money, or any clue what the packaging said. :)

Anyway, as we were heading toward the exit I had the hankering for some unusual soda. As I was perusing the strange and exotic sodas from around the world, I saw a couple of bottles of Berghoff's Root Beer. Now, I consider myself to be a big fan of root beer, but after moving to Cincinnati I have gotten to know two people who are pushing the fan-atic end of the spectrum. One of them has often cited Berghoff's as one of their favorites. Well, I am happy to say, it is now one of mine. Smooth, clean, with a fair amount of bite. Very good. It also made a dandy root-beer-float.

Sadly, I am unhappy to report that the restaurant that the root beer gets its name from seems to have closed in the past year. No idea how this might effect the supply of the drink, but considering it can only be found locally at JJ's, it probably isn't a good thing.

2) Easy Yummy Rice Noodle Stir Fry
Last night I made up some Rice Noodles with veggies and a Hoisin-Peanut-Lime sauce which Em and I thought was very good considering how easy it really was to make. All I did was put the rice noodles in warm water to soak, microwave the frozen veggies most of the way, make the sauce, toss the veggies and the soaked noodles in a pan with the sauce and a little water, put the lid on and wait a couple minutes. Pretty simple.

However, here are a few pointers for the boys and girls who may want to try something similar at home:

• Don't believe the rice noodle package. It said 3-5 minutes in warm water would be enough if you were going to also fry them. This only works if you are going to fry them for a while with moisture in the pan. 7-10 minutes is what it really took
• We were looking to get your normal assorted frozen veggies but Em wanted baby corn and I didn't want mushrooms so we didn't choose the Kroger brand ones. We ended up with another "name" brand which I can't remember which was on sale. I don't have anything against name brands, but normally the Kroger is just as good or at least plenty good given the price difference. The ones we got, however, were in some sort of special pouch which you could microwave right in and supposedly they would be perfectly done. Well I have to say it works. Very well in fact. Took them out of the freezer, popped in the microwave for 4.5 minutes. Perfectly done. I am not sure that convenience is worth about $3 (sale for $2) compared to the Kroger $1 which I can easily toss in a pan to cook, but damn its nice not having to think once in a while.
• Decent sauces aren't nearly as hard to make as I was thinking it might be. I just tossed a couple tablespoons of hoisin sauce with a couple tables spoons of peanut butter, some lime juice, a couple chopped cloves of garlic, some soy sauce, red pepper flakes and a little water in the food processor and took it for a spin. Done and done and yummy.

And now I believe its Oatmeal time. :-)


3) [Late Addition] I did believe it was Oatmeal time when I wrote the above line, however it turns out that my watch was wrong. It was in fact Free Food in the Hallway b/c of Mardi Gras time.

Yummy dinner and free entertainment

Last night Em and I ate our Valentine's day dinner at Palomino which describes itself as "the upbeat city restaurant and bar famous for its rich and stylish ambiance". We had a great meal (if not a bit too filling) and were able to even catch some broomball being played (with an announcer) on the Fountain Square ice rink. Dinner and entertainment? What a deal! :)

We started with Beef Souvlaki Lettuce Cups and a Chop Chop Salad. The beef lettuce cups were very good and tender with marinated cucumber and various toppings. The salad was a lot given what else we ordered but was very good. Em ordered a Mango Mojito breeze (a throwback to our trip to San Diego) and I had an excellent bourbon Manhattan. For our main course Em ordered one of the specials which was 5 large diver sea scallops pan seared with a wild mushroom risotto and pepper relish-ish-stuff. Very good. I had the rotisserie lamb with mascarpone polenta. The lamb was delicious and cooked very well (even if Em didn't think so). Despite our better judgment, we ordered the "special valentine's day brownie for 2" which wasn't so much for 2 as for 4-10. Two huge hazelnut brownies covered in hot fudge, whip cream and amaretto cream!

Yeah, we ate way too much, but it was all VERY yummy.

Back to work today, trying to make up hours for yesterday and planning the rest of this week and next so that I can take off Monday morning while our family will be in town. Good stuff.

So Sleepy ...

So very sleepy ... I am not sure why, but the last couple nights I have woken up very tired and yet I am sleeping through the night.

This morning's commute wasn't nearly as bad as I thought it might be. The roads were pretty good and since so many places were off today, the roads were pretty much empty. It was actually harder to walk from the parking garage to work than it was to drive downtown. Hopefully the drive home will be the same.

Last Friday Em and I went out to dinner to a place called Wild Ginger in the Hyde Park area. It was really great. I had yellow curry with potatoes, onions and beef; Em had the pad thai. We split a seaweed salad and a couple spring roles for appetizers. Overall the place had great food, nice wait staff and a cool interior. We will definitely be back.

This weekend was a rather low key weekend until Sunday when we had a Sark outing to PerfectNorth for snow tubing. We both had a great time (those things go a lot faster than you would think) but after a while the place was almost too packed to get in more than 2 runs an hour. After that I had broomball which we tied. Normally that would be a very good thing since the score was 2-2 ... but it was a goal I let up that tied the game so I was a little bummed.

This week is looking to be pretty average depending on how the weather decides to act. This weekend (also depending on the weather) Em's and my moms may be coming to Cinci to visit so that should be a good time.

Updates-a-plenty

- Work -

Today we had our "Sprint" #3 kickoff meeting for most of the day. GAIC is using the Scrum as its agile project management methodology. Basically, in order to enable the project team to adapt to changing requirements the project is divided into many "sprints". Prior to each sprint set tasks are picked to be completed in that sprint, and their efforts estimated. During the sprint a "scrum" meeting is held each day where everyone gives a 2 minute description of what they did, what they are doing, and what impediments they have.

From the few meetings we have already had, it seems like a good plan in theory .... we will have to wait and see how well it works out, but I have heard good things. It is definitely a better plan than a monolithic waterfall model, but it really depends on the PM and how well the team can follow the guidelines. Only time will tell. ;)

This new sprint I have been tasked with writing up a new set of web services that will expose the billing system's account information and policy information to users who request it via the IVR system (Interactive Voice Response). I am psyched that I will be getting to do some real development and development with new things. I have no idea if my estimates for the work will be anywhere near correct, but we will see.

- Life -

The other night I made some really good risotto. I sauteed some chicken with peppers and then made up some risotto with various herbs, chicken broth, white wine, onions and garlic. At the end I added a stick of goat cheese, some parmesan, and the chicken and peppers. It was very yummy.

Not a whole lot has been going on other than work, working out (which I am glad to say I have been doing a decent amount of), sleeping, and trying to help Em study. Em found a flier at the rec. center saying they were going to have dodgeball leagues in April. I let our "activity committee" know and we may be doing that instead of indoor soccer for the spring. :-D

Yesterday I found this link (can't remember from where). Its from the Instructables.com website which I read every once in a while. It has some great tutorials on it for really out-there projects. I would love to make a set of invisible book shelves for our apt even if I have no idea where to put them. Maybe some day when we have our own house. Either way they are pretty cool.


- Tech -

Unfortunately I haven't had time or the chance to work on my mosaic project in the past few weeks. I spent some time this past weekend researching various methods of working with very large image files, but haven't gotten any more code hammered out really. This is also due to the fact that the latest code I wrote is sitting on the HD of a machine in Sark's office which I don't have daily access to. Hopefully I will be able to stop by on my way home tomorrow so I can start it back up. I want to rework some of the design and get the code into a new Subversion server on my new Mac so that I can track my changes and various attempts better. Also, if I can come across a free license for Jira I would really like to setup some project stuff and bug tracking for it so that I can keep track of what I am doing between coding sessions. If I can't get a copy of Jira, I may setup Trac or something like it (although I don't really want to have to setup new programming environments just to run the bug/project tracking software).

Last night I finally got around to using SuperDuper to backup my iMac to my external HD. So far I have to say I am fairly impressed. The interface is clean, simple, and straightforward. The initial backup (which is a full 1:1 backup took under 2 hours ... subsequent backups will be "smart" and just do the files and data that has changed). I am still on the fence if I will buy the "pro" version. It gives you some extra features, scheduling, etc. Things I want but I can probably do some other way.

On a somewhat interesting note, yesterday afternoon I was talking to a coworking about if there was a way to sync google calendar with iCal. From what I have found online it looks like you can only do read-only sync's each way assuming you publish your iCal to some WebDav server. However, yesterday we found a program some people are working on called SpanningSync. It allows you to sync both systems read/write and it will sync changes almost immediatly. Only problem was that it is currently in private beta .... well it was when we found it around 4pm. As of 6pm they opened it up for a public beta test ... and took it back down around 10 b/c their servers were maxed out. I didn't find out until this morning. I guess the early bird does catch the worm. After looking into it more and reading that it is probably either subscription based or a lifetime fee to use the end product ... and that it may use an intermediate server to sync the data ... I probably won't use it when its done. But the product is really cool none the less.

Willkommen!

Last night Em and I went out to the Black Forest Restaurant (near West Chester) for dinner. In our new Entertainment Guide (thanks Mom) we had a buy-1-get-1-free coupon and we had seen advertisements for the place for a while so we decided to check it out. Also it turns out there is something called the German Mardi Gras?, which the restaurant was celebrating in full force ... so there was no question, we were there.

The food was really good, the atmosphere was very fun, the live music which was starting up when we were finishing sounded great, and our waitress' outfit was interesting. All in all a good evening. The prices were a little on the high side (if we hadn't gotten Em's dinner for free) but not so much that I wouldn't go back the next time I had a hankering for German food.

We both started with hot slaw (neither of us had had this before, but it was exactly what we imagined and very good). Em had the Chicken Schnitzel Oskar (Breaded, sautéed and topped with crabmeat & asparagus. Served with Hollandaise Sauce and boiled red potatoes) while I had the German Sauerbraten (Marinated eye of the rounds of beef. Then roasted and served with a sweet and sour sauce and buttered spatzles) and we shared a side order of potato pancakes. Everything was cooked perfectly and very yummy. We finished it all off with a slice of hazelnut torte. So good.

...

Tonight I am going to try my hand at making chicken and risotto infused with goat cheese and peppers. Lets all hope for the best. :)

Blogger, so far ...

So far I have been very impressed with the Blogger software. I never used it pre-beta/pre-new version, but I have to say it has a very nice interface that pretty much anyone (who would be interested in a blog) should be able to figure out. They have made the important 80% easy to use and the other 20% decent. Not too shabby.

As I have been posting for a few days and customizing it off and on ... I have run into a couple little snags.

1. it took me several days to find a easy/clean way to add recent comments to the side bar without totally hacking my template (still not perfect, but given how easy the last tutorial I found was, worth it)
2. They have a fair number of good templates to choose from and the colors are for the most part customizable, but the one I am currently using (Rounders 2?) doesn't have a "stretch" version. The skinny post column is starting to get annoying, especially since pretty much no one I know who would read my blog uses 800x600 (and my stats agree with that)
3. Comments are shown on the "blogger" page along with the form to add one, which looks nothing like my blog and the link back to my blog isn't obvious. The comments can be seen along with the original article but only if you click on the article's title to see it by itself.
4. No non-hack-ish way to add sticky posts

That's about it. Anything more and I would be completely nit-picking. So yeah, its a great product and I recommend it.

** I may look into hacking my template to fix #2. If the blog looks like crud at any time over the next couple days, just attribute it to that and not my own personal style. Thank you.

[EDIT 11:17PM] After several hours of tooling around I have the site looking decent again and with a static (but geared toward 1024x768) layout. I tried a few templates I found online but none looked as good as their thumbnail. Most of the time was spent trying to figure out how the template worked (single file of xhtml but a little confusing), figuring out which CSS needed to be changed to make it bigger but keep the right look, and redoing most of all of the images the old template uses for the rounded corners (it was using 2 images per box, top/bottom ... I had to create 3 new ones (for 3 corners individually). The reason the boxes now don't have rounded right-top corners was because I gave up trying to get them to line up correctly and I think it looks almost better with the one sharp corner. Anyway, I am done for now. I like how it turned out. Only thing I wish was that the side bar was a little bigger and closer to the main area... but that would mean reworking the html for the two side areas and redoing 6 more images which I don't care enough to do. Maybe next week. Night all.