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....

Roller-coaster

Its been a roller coaster couple weeks.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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).

Grab Bag and Insurance

Lots of little things have been going on lately

• I won my companies Cardinals tickets again (almost missed out b/c I thought they were for the following week) and went with Em and my parents. It was good time even if they lost.
• Our car is back to normal (and has been since the repairs). No lasting ill effects I am happy to report
• Work has been all over the place: hard at work developing one week, a week of documentation and writing installers for our code, and this week has been waiting on the client and helping out another group while we wait.
• I have been able to muster a small amount of time for some personal tech projects lately (some notes about them and work on my tech blog here)
• Last weekend Em, myself and several members of Em's family partisipated in charity walk at a local park for brain cancer research (a relative of Em's died from it) which was a good time and a great cause.
• I got 3 or 4 recruiters messaging me on LinkedIn in the past two weeks including one from someone who works for LinkedIn about a new team they are starting. Its always good to know you could get a new job if you needed to (and its even better to know you love your current one :-) )
  

I am sure there are other things I am forgetting.

Other than that the only big thing to report is that I have been looking into homeowner's insurance which I will probably be deciding upon tomorrow. Luckily it looks like the company we have our auto insurance through has some decent deals so that will work out well. Its amazing how complex the stuff is, how many options you have, and how its just one more thing to pay for when getting a house :-p

Once I decide I will post some details of what we got, or at least why I got/didn't get things.

Fun stuff!

Emily got the job!

Yesterday Em was told she got the job!



** She has been working in a 1 year position to fill in for a woman who was on maternity leave. When the woman put in her resignation, the position opened up "for real" and Em applied just like any other candidate. She was unlike other candidates in that she was already working in the position and everyone loves her. Oh, and she rocks. So after going through the whole applying/waiting/interviewing/waiting process, she finally got her job and can now enjoy the relaxation that comes with not having to look for another job. **

I am so proud of her

All over the place

I am tired!

Partially b/c while my generic Zertec has been working well, its not fool proof.
Partially b/c its been a busy couple weeks.

Up until today it was all good stuff.

A couple weekends ago we went to Louisville for Nate's wedding. Its always great seeing the gang and hanging out, plus weddings are tons of fun (especially when your not worrying about anything). Surprisingly, I didn't take too many photos (I haven't been taking many lately anywhere) but here are a few of my favorites:

Captions and a few more pics after the jump...

Last Saturday Em had a very busy day involving detention (administering, not sentenced), going out with some of her Truman friends to Bailey's Chocolate Bar (she said it was amazing) and found time in between to play beautifully at church.

Well, church is an understatement. My aunt is a nun and a member of the School Sister's of Notre Dame. This past weekend was a large mass and celebration of their 175th year of existence as an order, and their 150th year in the St. Louis area. 150 years ago a small group came from Germany and started teaching in downtown St. Louis at the then St. John's church. Today, the Shrine of St. Joseph is a huge and remarkably restored church. Last weekend several members of the family and I took in mass with a whole gaggle (I am not sure what the term for a group of nuns is ;-) ) of nuns at St. Josephs where Emily played with the orchestra and decently sized choir and heard mass from Arch Bishop Raymond Burke. It was very interesting and inspiring sitting through mass with that many people who all REALLY believe and love their calling.

To round out the good stuff, Em finally had her official interview for the counseling position she is currently working in (she filled in for a woman on maternity leave this year) and from all accounts it went very well. I am confident and she is nervous. I bet I win out ;-)

Oh and we won our softball game!

Now for the bad ......

It took me 4 hours to get to work this morning b/c of car trouble. Actually, it wasn't really car trouble so much as it acted a little funny as I was leaving for work and the check engine light came on. I took it to Auto Zone but they couldn't read the diagnostic code so I drove out to the nearest dealership and waited 2 hours (1 before they could see it, 1 to diagnose) to ultimately find out that my fuel pump had a bad seal and that they would be ordering me a new one an fixing under warranty (thank God). So then after waiting for Enterprise to pick me up (yay free rental), waiting for my car and then driving clear across town to get to work, I finally got there 4 hours later. So for the time being I have a Mazda 6 and need to call in the morning to find out when my Sonata will be fixed (first problem of any kind).

Also today we got a letter stating that the funds from a check we deposited in JANUARY has in a round-about way, been un-deposited b/c of a banking error. From the little we could gather its b/c of a probably typo either when the check was issued or when it was processed but in either case we are left with a annoying mess to straighten out without anyone easily to blame, 4 months of interest in limbo and an account missing a decent chunk of $$$ that was there yesterday .... and through no fault of our own. Good thing is is that it won't effect us in any immediate financial way (it came out of our emergency fund) and won't effect the house buying, but its still a huge hassle.

Oh and it has rained a ton the last two days and I have tons of work to do. Interesting and fun work, but still work. Bring on the weekend!

Apraisal, long week, sore arm

We got news today that our house was appraised for 5% more than what we paid which is very nice because A) it means we didn't pay too much for it, B) instant "return" on investment :-p, and C) thats 5% less we have to go toward 20%. :-)

I forgot to mention in my last post that I ended up deciding to go with the "normal" PMI route after all. After a ton of excel-spread-sheet-ing and going back and forth I decided that given the fact that we intend to pay a bit extra each month, it was more likely we would live in our house longer than the break-even points (I did the math was 10%/12.5%/15% and extra month payments ranging from $0 to $300). Now with the added "free" equity we get on the house with the numbers went even lower so I am guess-timating that the break-even point is around 4.6 years which should be much less than our stay in the home.

This week is shaping up to be a long but interesting one. This weekend Em and I are traveling to Louisville for a college roomate's wedding (90% of my 15 readers will be there) which should be a great time. In order to take off Friday and not have to use vacation hours (I don't have that many saved up since I started the new job) I am working extra each day this week. The good thing is that the work is really interesting right now and we are making some real progress on our current project.

Also, tomorrow night we have our first softball game of the season. It is going to be interesting to see how the league and the team plays (slightly different rules than what we had in Cinci) and I have heard we finished aprox. second last year which is promising. A few guys and I went out at lunch and threw a couple balls around for 30 minutes and many my arm is tired already. At least I know I haven't lost everything since the last time I played.

Speaking of games with balls and bats .... last week I was the winner of the company's Cards tickets so Em and I went with my cousin and his wife (we had a blast). The seats were real nice and we saw a great game which is always the most important part.

Oh, and today I finally broke down and wore shorts to work. ;-) I know, poor me. Its funny how you get used to wearing "real" clothes to work and how it still makes me feel weird going to work in shorts, tennis shoes and a polo. Nice, but weird.

The Earth Done Quaketh, and stuff

-- thank you Lewis Black

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Freaked Out! We put an offer on a house!

Let me back track a bit .... It has been a crazy week or two and things have been moving too fast for me to blog about. The very condensed version is below ....

As you should know by now, if you know who I am and read this blog, Em and I have been planning on buying a house this spring since before we even moved back. Over the past few months we have gone out on numerous occasions looking at houses and areas of town. Over that time we got a pretty good feel for what we wanted, what we could afford in different parts of town, what we hated, etc. The only things left to do were to start the formal process. (Note: I had visions of this process taking a fair bit longer and me having more control of things .. and while they haven't gone that way, so far I am happy with how everything has gone)

Early last week we met with Em's aunt who is a loan officer with Wells Fargo and we discussed our financials, what we were looking for in a house, our budget, what price range we were thinking, various costs and fees, the home financing process, etc. To be honest, I was a bit leary of keeping it within the family b/c if things ever didn't go well, it could leave us in a bad situation ... but I have been very impressed so far. Wells Fargo's rates (family discount? ;-) ) are very competitive and its really nice having someone to email/call whenever you have a question. As it turns out Em and I are on the "conservative" side of things and got pre-approved for easily more than we ever wanted to spend. With a couple Good Faith Estimates in hand (for various price points to compare) we called the Realtor that her aunt suggested and who has helped out a few other family members.

We spoke over the phone and via email several times with the Realtor during the rest of last week and met with her on Saturday for our first fun filled day of official house hunting. We paired a list of 10-15 down and ended up seeing 6 or 7 homes that first day in a couple different possible areas. Of the first wave, one stood out as being at a good point in our price range, having all of things on our "NEED" list and most of the "WANT"s. The only downside was that it needed a small amount of updating and/or minor work (replacing interior doors, maybe widening a door way, etc. We left things there until last night.

After our first day we decided to go see a few more (3) on Tuesday (yesterday) and some more this upcoming Saturday. The Realtor setup the appointments (its great having someone else do it for you) and we left shortly after work. Of the three we saw, one was very nice with great features but at the very top of our price range and still needed some updating, and the other was decent on the main level, but had the craziest "barn/old-west" inspired basement that quickly pushed it to the NO list.

The middle one we saw .... we loved. It was at a great point of our price range, in a good area of town (in the middle between where I work and Em works and not too far from the family), has a ton of great features and needs little to NO work or updating. The house is a brick ranch with 2+1 bedrooms, 2 full baths, hardwood floor throughout, new windows, a formal dining room, a nice backyard w/ big trees, 2 car garage, updated kitchen, and a finished basement (one bath and the +1 bedroom are down there along with a large family room, work shop and laundry room).

... here area a couple pics I swiped from the listing ....

The house just came on the market and given how much work they had put into it, it was already getting some decent attention. Since we couldn't find a single thing wrong with it we setup another walk through for tomorrow and ended up putting in a contract tonight! We offered a few thousand less than asking + 2k toward closing and a home warranty ... they have until noon tomorrow to get back to us.

You may be wondering how things happened so fast and why/how we put in an offer only seeing it once. Well things started moving much faster b/c we didn't have any idea how long it might take and we wanted to be able to close aprox. a month prior to our lease ending so that we could clean, fix up anything, paint, and move without being rushed (plus giving the timing, or first payment will be still after our last month of rent so no double dipping).

Also, in the contract we signed tonight, we made it contingent on tomorrow's walk through. So, if for some reason either of us or one of our parent's finds something wrong tomorrow, we can still back out and get back our earnest money (1% paid tonight). Assuming they accept, we have 10 days to get our inspections done and if they find anything we don't like, the sellers won't agree to any fixes/credits we want, or for any other reason we can back out then too.

We haven't finalized our financing situation yet. We are preapproved for more than we offered and have our estimates on monthly amounts and closing costs but haven't decided exactly how much we are going to put down (somewhere between 10% and 15%) and/or if we are going to do normal PMI or take advantage of a special Wells Fargo is offering at the moment. The special basically boils down to the fact that you don't have to pay PMI with <20% style="font-size:85%;">6.125% instead of 5.75%). I am still crunching the numbers (or will tomorrow) but some rough estimates I did this evening make it seem like we would be better off with the "financed PMI" plan until we have lived in the house for aprox. 12 years. After that it would be more expensive to the tune of ~$40/month .... but until then you are ahead of the PMI solution (estimating that it would take us just over 7 years to get to 20% if we put 10% down and didn't pay anything extra each month .... which we probably will).

So thats where we are at. I will post updates when I find out more and photos after tomorrow's walk through. I am totally excited and freaking out at the same time. Its amazing that we might soon be "home owners" (more exactly mortgage owners) and its also scary to think that we just pledged to pay more money than either of us has made cumulatively in either of our lives and to pay it out over a time period longer than I have been on this earth. Craziness!!!

...... in case anyone is interested, other than all this house mess, we have been very busy with work stuff, taking in the brief gorgeous weather last weekend by going to Lone Elk park to see the buffalo and elk, batting cages to get ready for the softball season, etc.

Work, Trivia, [bad] Movies

This past week flew by. 3 days of TDD training at work + 2 days helping out a team working on changes for www.sothebyshomes.com. All in all work is going well. The softball team is going to start playing sometime in April and we have a company lunch in a few weeks. Oh, and I finally got to try the massage chairs (iJoys?) which rock! 10 minutes on one of those is a great way to end a day sitting at a computer.

Last night we went to a trivia night with my parents put on by the Kidney Foundation. Our table tied for 8th with 83 points (winning was 89) so we did pretty good. The announcer went too fast, but the questions were a good mix and there were some interesting categories.

Between last weekend and this I also saw two movies: I am Legend and The Mist. My thoughts and maybe some spoilers below.

Some people suggested I am Legend (the book) a while back so I was interested in seeing the movie when I had the chance. While not what I expected, and not for everyone, I thought it was a decent movie with an interesting plot. I was expected and would have liked some more back story about what had happened or how things got the way they did, but it was decent.

Now lets talk about The Mist. First things first: WTF? After seeing trailers for the movie I was expecting a plot that revolved around a group of people who are trapped and scarred out of their minds by some "super natural" situation that none of them understands ... and a movie about how they dealt with fear, leadership, understanding, personal beliefs, finding help, etc.

Check and check ... but then they showed what was in the "mist" = huge scary monsters with large tentacles, big bugs, etc. OK ... I would have left it a mystery, but whatever. The acting was ok and I was still watching but then the ENDING was just screwed up. I will give it to the director/writers that I didn't see it coming and an ending that isn't "happy" is ok in many movies ... but come on. They took it a bit far. At least for what I was expecting and hoping to get from it. Leaving me thinking WTF outloud made me remember watching Pi and Requiem For a Dream in the same night in college .... but at least those crazy plots were at least different.

Dunno about that one. :-(

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.

I Quit!

I did. I quit my job.

Well, sorta. Yesterday I officially turned in my resignation and what amounts to ~3.5 week notice. Surprised? Don't worry, I have another one ready.

As some, but not many, of my short list of readers know ... over the past few months I have been spending a lot of time reevaluating my current situation, where I am right now from a career and personal development point of view, and where I want to be in the near future. After a ton of thinking, I decided that staff augmentation consulting with my current company wasn't going to get me where I wanted to be.

Just before, and mainly after the holidays, I started looking around and tried to get a feel for the local market, how in demand my skills were, and what kind of time frame I could get things done. After talking with a few companies and doing a bit of research, I ended up interviewing and was offered a new job. W00t for me! :-D It has been a stressful few weeks of negotiating, trying to keep various organizations ignorant to my actions, and keeping up with my normal everyday work. But now it is over.

[A special and big thanks goes out to those of you who I bugged for advice, vented to, or just bounced ideas off of. Thank you.]

So, why am I leaving? For the past 3 years I have been doing client-site consulting work for large corporations (world's largest aircraft engine manufacturer, a big insurance company, and the world's largest genetically modified seed and herbicide producer). Its been really good work, I have met a ton of great people, and had way more experiences than I would have had working for any one of the companies. I am glad I did it. However, going forward I wanted more stability from a management and a project perspective. Also, I want the ability to branch out, technologically speaking, and work in some areas I wouldn't be able to with my current job. Basically, I had a good job, but wanted a better one.

And, where am I going? I have accepted a position with a small software development company here in town: Asynchrony Solutions. They do all internal custom application development for a wide range of national clients and government agencies. They are very much focused on quality and agile methodologies from their project management practices (Scrum, XP), to their development methodologies (pair programming), to their testing (TDD). They seem like a close knit group that works and plays hard together (daily Halo 3 games during lunch, softball team, jeans & t-shirts, etc). Also, since their projects are somewhat shorter on average and they are focused on team building, there will be a lot of opportunities for me to work in new technological areas and learn new things (RoR, .NET, SOA, mobile, etc).

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I will post some more details over the coming weeks and after I officially start ... but thats the story for right now. The next few weeks will have my trying to focus on finishing up my current project work and hopefully training a replacement. Wish me luck. :-) If anyone is curious for more details, just drop me a line.

2007 And Beyond!

Well, the holidays (and 2007) are almost over and it seems like a decent enough point to post about 2007, what I have been up to the past week or so, and about the new year.

2007

2007 was a pretty big year for Em and I between changing clients for the first time in a year and a half , looking or thinking about looking for new jobs, having my company get bought out of the blue and trying to find out about who is signing my paycheck now, pushing through a transfer to STL, Em graduating with her Masters, finding an apt in STL and moving, me living in Cinci without Em for a month and finishing up work at my last client there, flying to STL for a day of interviews and flying back, staring work in STL, Em finding a job here and then finding a really great opportunity for an "real" job too, adjusting to life MUCH closer to our family, missing our friends back in Cinci and me adjusting to not living in Ohio like I had for the previous 6+ years, weddings all over, getting a promotion, beginning to look for a house .....

It was busy.

Holidays 2007

These were a whirlwind of activity. I feel like I have been going nonstop for over a week now. I should learn that my lofty goals for time off never come true and I should resolve myself to the fact that if I get anything done, its a win.

Em's Aunt's dog George tired out after too much holiday excitement

Being in town for more than just a few days meant that we could attend all of the traditional family events plus others and ended up getting to spend a lot of great time with family and friends. I can think of at least 6 different extended family functions we attended over the past week or so, plus numerous smaller get-togethers, meals, and interactions.

As far as Christmas goes, Santa was very good to Em and I once again. I won't go into too much detail of what we each got, but some of the highlights included: several new Wii games, tons of pants for me, a Pujols jersey for Em, the complete work of Calvin and Hobbes, a necklace for Em, new books, 2 1GB USB sicks for $10 via a great Buy.com deal and $10 off your first order w/ Google Checkout, and two sets of Tangram pieces and books for me. Thanks Santa!

Other than family and friend get-togethers, Em and I also took in two cultural events. The first was Wicked on the 23rd. Em and I went with her mom and siblings and everyone had seen the show once before except me and her brother. It was amazing (and according to Em, better than the first). After listening to Em play the soundtrack over and over after she saw it the first time I wanted to go, but man it doesn't do it justice. It really is amazing to see people perform live compared to any type of recording. Also, we saw the performance at the really cool Fox Theater. The place is pretty big and EVERYTHING is extremely ornate and decorated to the max. Its a really cool place to see a show.

I got one picture of the ceiling before the Usher got too close

Next up was Body Worlds 3 at the St. Louis Science Center. My Dad's company is one of the primary sponsors and he was able to get us some vouchers to go see it with Em's brother and sister. All I can saw is WOW and it was INTENSE. I wasn't sure I could handle it, but I was interested and am extremely glad I went. Its such an amazing process and well done. In talking with other people about the exhibit some people are too squeamish to go, others disinterested, and others feel like it goes against there moral/ethical ideals. I think all points are valid, but I found the exhibit to be very tastefully done with respect to those individuals to volunteered to donate there bodies to science. I felt like it showed just how beautiful the human form is and how amazing our bodies are beyond what we can see on the outside. The way everything inside of us works together to give us almost limitless abilities is inspiring. And how disease or poor decisions can wreak havoc on our bodies is frightening.

I have also posted some of my thoughts about the food I ate over the holidays, a new programming project I have stared, and have contributed to and thought about a number of puzzles.

2008

If you know me, then you know I love lists, I have tons of ideas, and while I get many things done, there are countless other tasks and ideas that never quite get off the ground with me. So, in keeping with tradition, I have put together a rather lofty list of goals for myself in 2008 and intend to post them here as a public reminder of what I wanted to do. Rather than extremely abstract "resolutions" I am going to try and come up with S.M.A.R.T. goals which I have a good chance to achieve and which I can formulate a plan to accomplish.

They are, in no particular order:

• Read 6 novels by different authors (books in a series don't count, but are a good thing)
• Read 4 non-fiction, non-technical books (can be on any subject, but not computers)
• Learn 2 new programming languages
  
• Play chess with my Dad at least once a month
• Spend 1 hour each week taking photographs of something, find the best 1 and get rid of all of the rest (the goal being to take more pictures and to try and make the decision process as hard as possible for myself by taking better pictures)
  
• Cook something new that I have never cooked before each month
• Attend a JUG meeting
• Keep up with my "tech blog" and post about something new/interesting at least once a month.
  
• Bike/Hike 200 miles
• Average 2+ workout/physical activities a week for the year
• Buy our first house
• Finish the Spedini Project
  

Some of these goals may seem hard to reach (and probably will be) and others might seem easy to accomplish, but these are what I want to try and do. If I fail to meet one of them, I won't count the year as a failure, but if I don't try, I might.

[EDIT February 10, 2008]

• I have read Foundation Forward and am currently working on the first book along with Harry PotterInspecting A House: A guide for buyers, owners, and renovators.
• I have completed a project with Python and am still reading about it and trying things out
• My dad and I have played chess a few times and I am trying to keep up with it.
• I have cooked a number of new things.
• 2 JUG meetings down, more to go.
  
• I have a ton more stuff to post on tech-related subjects, but am doing ok.
• I have NOT been working out twice a week, but have gone a few times which is better than nothing.
• No house yet, and project Spedini is on hold.