Another Nice Day...
Well, it's another nice day today. It's in the mid-70s here in Columbus, OH—which is pretty darn rare for mid-November around here. Anyway, with the nice weather I decided to spend my lunch hour at the park w/Maddie (whom by the way just turned 1 on 11/1.) Anyway, Monica and Nicholas decided to join us since the weather was so nice. I got some cute pictures of Nicholas on the swing set.
I also got around to updating my photoalbum today with the pictures from Salt Fork, Trick-or-Treat, Maddie's Birthday and of course from the Park today..
Harley's New Look...
While this probably isn't groundbreaking news to any of you motorcycle enthusiasts out there, I saw one of these on the road for the first time coming home from Salt Fork last weekend. This picture doesn't do the bike justice—this bike looks really sweet in person. I was really enamored when it passed Jenn and I on the road. I had to catch up with it just to get a couple of more good looks at it.
I really like what Harley-Davidson has done with this model. I'm sure some Harley purists out there won't like it, but I think the design is fresh, slick, gorgeous and yet it keeps the Harley feel. Kudos to the designers on this model!!!
Trick-or-Treat, Smell My Feet; I'm Going On A Cruise!
Well, Thursday night was "Beggar's Night" (aka "Trick or Treat Night") here in Hilliard. A decent turn out, but I think less than last year. It was real busy from like 6:15 to 6:45, but pretty did the rest of the time (5:30pm to 7:30pm.) I still have way too much candy left over. Around 6:45 I was telling kids to take handfuls of it (instead of keeping things to a couple of pieces per child.)
Anyway, Monica brought Nicholas by for in his little "Dino" outfit. That kids is down right adorable. He knew where the candy was supposed to go—he'd take some candy from the bowl and place it in his bag. He also spent a good deal of the time passing out candy between Monica, Jenn and me. At one point Monica had taken his shoes and socks off (so he'd be more comfortable,) we all made a that's stinky face and sound and he got a big kick out of it. So periodically he'd balance carefully on one foot and stick the other in the air and we'd all make a big fuss about his stinky feet—he would just laugh and laugh. Kids can be great fun at times.
While, Jenn and I both made arrangements to go on our first cruise (together) today. My parent's were able to get a special deal through a conference they're attending and we went ahead and booked the cabin next to them. It's a 7 day (from Jan 11-18) Western Caribbean cruise that starts in Tampa Bay and hits Grand Cayman, Costa Maya, Cozumel and Belize. We'll be on a Carnival Inspiration "Fun Ship." It should be a blast. I've always wanted to go on a cruise, so that's one more thing off my "to-do" list. I also would love to go on an Alaskan cruise some day. Anyway, Jenn and I are extremely excited about this trip.
Weekend at Salt Fork State Park
Jenn and I spent the weekend at Salt Fork outside of Cambridge, OH this weekend. Her parents were there camping in their new R/V and we stayed at a cabin in the park. The weather was overall excellent—it was pretty cold Friday night and rained all day Sunday—but the weather Friday and Saturday was really nice. The skies were extrodinarily clear Friday night—I really enjoyed sitting around the fire telling stories.
We saw lots of deer out Friday night. I'll post the pictures to my photoalbum soon.
The Times They Are A-Changin'
Well, I'm sitting here at my desk on my last day. As always, it feels to odd to be leaving a place you've spent a number of years working at. I suppose I'd feel better if I was leaving on my own will, but the fact that we just moved buildings and am now in a little cubicle, makes leaving a little less painful. I'm actually a little excited and nervous about the future. I've been fortunate enough to build a number of contacts over the past 8-9 years while doing web development for/with different companies, so I'm hoping some of those contacts will pay off while contracting.
I have many good memories of my time with my soon to be ex-employer, but the last 12-18 months haven't been a cakewalk. It's really gone down hill here, so from that aspect I'm glad to get out of the environment. There's not many people I know left who want to stay—everyone is trying to get out of here as quickly as possible. I've said many times in the past 3 months that Joel (my other co-worker who was kept onboard to help shut down the all the services) that in many regards we were lucky. Unlike most people who get laid off, we had a good amount of time to try to prepare ourselves financially and we at least know what our future holds. The people who are left are all very worried about their jobs. No one feels that their jobs will be around much longer—and unfortunately their probably right. Even before the second round of layoffs, I told people here that our parent organization would slowly dissolve our company into theirs and they'd drop our name all together. We're already starting to see obvious signs of this merger—from them moving their employees to our payroll budget and them combining all of our HR resources to the fact that new literature is starting to show up with their name on it. Reminds me quite a bit of MCI/WorldCom or AOL/TimeWarner (both of which are now dropping part of their names—for obvious reasons.)
Anyway, there are still people who work here that I respect and call friends (and I few whom I am glad I don't have to work with again.) A group of us "old timers" (current and past employees) got together last night to celebrate our new stages in life. The group of us meet occasionally and we're trying to make it a regular event.
New Siding & Trip To Hocking Hills
The last several days have been very busy. The siding for my house finally came in Wednesday of last week. They were able to get the lower half of the house down on Thursday, but due to poor weather on Friday, they didn't get to finish up the siding until Saturday morning. (They started promptly at 7:30am on Saturday morning.) The outside of the house looks really good, but we noticed some of the puddy that was applied to the dry wall inside was knocked off (which chipped the paint.) They're supposed to come out to take a look at the damage and see what they can do to patch things.
Sunday we headed down to Hocking Hills for the day. The leaves are changing color quickly, and it was just a beautiful day for hiking. The weather was perfect—couldn't ask for a better day. Got lots of pictures which are posted over in my photoalbum.
ISP Change...
Well, hopefully you all are starting to show up on the new site. The DNS information is starting to propogate and I've got redirects set up for those of you who are still getting the old DNS information. Hopefully I won't run in to any mail problems. Lucky, I still have a few days to work out any kinks that may occur.
Moving ISPs...
I'm planning on moving my domains over to a new ISP starting tomorrow. If you start seeing automatic re-directs, don't worry about it—it's all part of the plan.
Officially Dating One Year Now...
Well, Jenn and I have been dating exactly a year today. It's hard to believe it's been a year already, but then again so much has happened in the past 12 months that in some regards it seems a lot longer. Anyway...
Happy Anniversary Jenn!
Weekend Update...
Well, I had a busy weekend. We had band practice Friday night. We were supposed to be trying out another drummer, but like the 3 previous tryouts, it didn't end up working out for scheduling reasons. The guys wants to reschedule, he just had to work. It's probably for the best anyway, as it gave Todd, Eric and I another chance to practice. I really need to force myself to practice for at least 30 minutes a night. It just seems like every time I put a ton of time into practicing, we stop playing for a month or more and then I get depressed about not playing. Anyway, I need to buckle down.
Saturday was Justin's bachelor party. We met up at BW3s around 6pm and got Justin pretty liquored up. We then proceeded to another location, but Justin was a bit too inebriated to really enjoy himself there. I ended up hanging outside of the club with Justin and until he was able to compose himself a bit and I was sure he was feeling better. It was a little after midnight, so I just decided to call it a night. About half the guys were headed home, while the other half decided to hang around the club.
Didn't do much of anything Sunday, just took the day off. I did finish Jedi Academy. It's was a cool game, but a little too short. I wish there would have been a few more missions. I liked the relatively short mission length, but another 5 missions or so would have made the game even more enjoyable—especially because the first 5 are pretty boring.
PengoWorks LLC
Well, I got my LLC agreement back from the attorney yesterday. PengoWorks LLC is now an official corporation—instead of just my private consulting business. I'm still waiting on a few things to file with the state, but that stuff should arrive through the mail any day now.
New System Built
Well, I got all my pieces for my new box yesterday (well the pieces that I mail ordered anyway.) I bought the wrong Coolermaster Aero Fan (I read the socket specs wrong on it,) but other than that I got everything I needed. I decided just to put the stock Intel fan on, but I did use the Artic Silver "Ceramique" that I bought. I got Windows XP loaded on it last night and got most of the patches installed before shutting the thing down for the night.
I did wrong in to one snag that I'm still trying to work through. When setting up a Serial ATA (SATA) drive, the system won't recognize it as a boot device unless you map it in the BIOS to one of the IDE channels. At least this is the way it's working on my Giga-byte GA-8KNXP motherboard at the moment. I bought two hard drives: a Western Digital WD) 36GB 10,000 RPM SATA drive (which I'm using as the master) and a WD 200GB 7,000RPM ATA/133 drive I'm planning on using as a storage/game drive.
Anyway, I'm still trying to figure out how to get the 200GB drive to recongnize while plugged in to the first ATA/133 port as IDE1, while the SATA drive is mapped to IDE0. It sounds like I'll have to plug the 200GB drive in the to the third IDE connector into the IDE5 slot.
New PC components on its way!
I bought the components to buy a new PC yesterday—they should be here tomorrow! If I plan on doing consulting, then I want to make sure I have a machine which will really do what I want to do. I've decided I really needed a dual monitor system—that way I can have source code in one monitor and the application in the other. (Plus, Flash development is just a pain without dual monitors.)
I'll post specs and pictures of the boxes when I get everything done.
Work sucks: Office relocation...
Well today was a pretty shitty day. For those of you who don't know, my employer has been planning to move office space locations. They still have the building I was in leased until February, but they decided to go ahead and move everyone today. The move has been in the planning stages for months, the actual move has been delayed several times over the past 8 weeks. Anyway, last Thursday evening we got a company wide e-mail letting us know we were going to move on the 24th.
I can't say I was enthusiastic with the idea of moving locations—especially since my last day is just several weeks away. It seems like a real waste of everyone's time. It also hasn't helped that they originally forget to assign me and my fellow soon-to-be-ex co-worker Joel office space (have they forgotten about us so quickly?!? :) ) but they also jammed us in to small little cubicles—well, I don't know that it fits the definition of cubicle; our desks only have two walls.
Anyway, after setting up my two work PCs—my desktop and my notebook—it pretty much takes up all my desktop space. They also didn't bother cleaning any of the desks. I opened my desk drawer only to find the words "Clean Me" written by some using their finger and dragging it through the dust. Since I'm only going to be there for a few weeks, I don't think I'm even go to bother cleaning up. I'm just going to throw what I have where ever. I'll probably get bored enough to actually clean it, but I sure don't feel like I should have to clean it. The building should have been cleaned up before we moved in.
Funny image, stupid spammers...
Ok, I got this picture in a spam e-mail message today. I have to admit, this picture made me laugh, but you're sure do have to wonder about some people.
On the spam note, who in the world is actually responding to these damn e-mails? Don't people realize that if they stop responding them, eventually the spammers won't be making money from it. It's really disheartening to see the amount of spam I get. Thank god for Cloudmark's SpamNet.