Monday, December 23, 2002

Snowing
Its snowing here... which has everyone excited because now we'll have a white Christmas.

Not to be a Scrooge or anything... but I'm not always sure I see the thrill in it. Yeah, it is cool to have snow at Christmas... it does kind of make it feel more like Christmas. The whole "I'm dreaming of a white Christmas" thing. But... you have to shovel snow, the kids are driving in so Tina is worried about them, I'm out driving around and there are accidents - cause it hasn't snowed much this year so people have forgotten how to drive in it. I've still got last minute shopping to do (both food and presents). Personally, I don't think it is Christmas if I'm not out shopping on Christmas eve, or at the very latest the day before that! So... accidents, slow driving, etc. Is this really worth getting excited about?

Well I guess the grin on Jaime's face makes it worth it. :-) She just loves the snow at Christmas time!
The kids
The kids (Tif and Brian) come in tonight! They are here for a week. It will be so great to see them!
Little Drummer Boy
Worship Sunday was a blast. Some people were out for Christmas vacations, etc. In addition to that, Teresa wanted to do something special. Some of the youth background singers joined in as part of the choir, Steve was playing accoustic, and I played percussion. We did Little Drummer Boy, the Jars of Clay version. Very cool. In addition to the band, I was playing my big drum (still have to figure out the real name for that), there were 3 teens playing other percussion instruments, and then about 4 or 5 other signers playing percussion as well. Very cool stuff. It was very fun, and as always, Church not as usual
K-logs
Another blog entry on K-logs. (Knowledge logs). It is starting to pop up quite a bit in stuff that I read. Obviously has been around for a while, but I'm just starting to see it. This is a good article because he points to other articles as well. Basically the question is, "How do we share more knowledge across and organization/company" and the answer is via blogging.

Thursday, December 19, 2002

Worship w/ the imago dei 2002 band
The Imago Dei 2002 band is getting together at NCF on the 31st to do worship for an all night event. This should rock. I am so looking foward to playing with everyone again! John called me about a week ago and I've been seeing if it will work out (prior committments, etc.) and as of this morning its a go. I'm so psyched!
  • 9 PM - start, food, hang out, etc.
  • 11 PM - worship for 2 hours. YEAH!
  • 1:00 AM - games, etc.
  • 8:00 AM - everyone goes home
I'm thinking I'll be breaking down at 1:00, loading up and heading home... but you never know. Probably not going to do the whole "hang out all night thing", but I'll probably be taking Jaime and maybe some other teens from Fusion, so it just depends on what they want to do.

Like I said... this should ROCK.

Tuesday, December 17, 2002

Joel
Was reading Evhead today and decided to follow a few links. I thought Joel on Software had some interesting comments. I'll add him to my links.

As a side note, kind of interesting to see that there are a community of bloggers, all who have links to each other. So, no matter where you go, you can end up getting to Joel, b-may, etc. I guess the individual lists (like mine) just show what they find interesting.
Yeah, I drive like that
I thought this was pretty good. This is exactly why I don't drive the recommended distance behind someone, on I-25.
Freedom
Up at 2:30... laying there, thinking, can't go back to sleep.
OK... this isn't working, might as well get up
Was thinking about heading in early, stopping at church and working on the Missions deposit, but then I'd missing seeing Tina in the morning.
Hey, I could head over to church now and get it done.
Get up, throw on some close, put in the contacts, and throw on a bandana. Into the car, stop for gas, get a Bear-Claw and a Diet Mt-Dew. (Hey... can you really do books at 3:30 AM w/o Mt-Dew?)
Get to church, do 3 Mission deposits.
Only 4:30... still have some time
Reconcile the main account, generate the copier report, head out.
Listening to Delerious? Mostly History Maker and Deeper
Drop the deposit, head home. Driving down Powers with the rest of the earlier risers.
Cars flowing along in the darkness, like fish swimming down a blacktop stream. Street lights like swarms of mesquitoes along the banks.
Back home at 5:15. Read some essays from LSA.
Might as well "start work". Log on, doing some blogging and then start the day.

Will work for a bit. Get "ready for work" when Tina gets up. Roust Jaime out of bed as we head out, tell her Bye!
Stop at Sam's and check Dishwasher prices. Yeah, that burning smell was it going out. Drag.
Head in to work and "finish" the day.
Probably cut out "early" and check a few more places for dishwashers.

How can anyone work 9:00 - 5:00. 8 hours in a row. How bizzare.

Monday, December 16, 2002

She's cute
Had the Church Staff Christmas party yesterday. Last two years Brent and Leslie have had it at their house and I've helped cook. So, rather than actually being down chatting with folks, etc., I'm usually cooking. Which is cool with me. Its always very fun. Leslie has some great recipes. Anyway, been a long week at the church and Tina was really looking forward to this. She is downstairs laughing and having a good time. Jaime has been running food down to everyone, but I figured I'd take a plate down, just to say hi to folks. I'm about to head back upstairs and Tina says:

Her: What are you eating under there?
Me: What? That made no sense... but I've been having some trouble hearing, must have heard it wrong.
Her: What are you eating under there?
Me: WHAT? That makes no sense...
Her: What... are... you... eating under there?
Me: What am I eating UNDER WHERE?
Everyone cracks up, and she starts giggiling.

Flashing back to elementry school, I just shake my head and head back upstairs.

She's so cute. :-)
StarTrek
Saw the movie Friday. I like previews, but the 10 minutes of commercials was a bit of a drag! Anyway... I thought the movie was good. Pretty typical StraTrek movie. I had read that all of Wesley's scenes got cut, but he did show up in the beginning. Some pretty funny lines, then good battle scenes, etc. Don't want to give anything away, so that is all I'll say.

Friday, December 13, 2002

Nemesis
Going to see Star Trek Nemesis, A Generation's Fnial Journey Begins tonight with a group of guys from church. Should be pretty cool! And then Two Towers next week!
Does it really matter?
Got on the elevator today, it stopped on the 2nd floor, and a woman got on. I'm heading out to lunch, in my jeans, t-shirt, sneakers, and have a vest on (since it's about 40 out). She gets on, looks at me, and says:
I love Fridays! You get to wear jeans! I tried sneaking them in once during the week, but my boss IMed me... "Dress..... code.... ?"
I just replied, "Yeah".
I didn't have the heart to tell her that I was wearing shorts and sandals all summer, and that we can wear jeans whenever you want.

You'd think with all that the company is going through, all the scandal, bad moral, layoffs, etc, that some managers would figure out there are more important things than making sure no one wears jeans to work (except on Friday).

That was another great thing about DEC. They understood what was important and what wasn't.

Thursday, December 12, 2002

DEC
Got this link from a friend who I worked with at DEC. DEC... before it became Digital, then Compact, and now HP. I still think VMS was the best OS I ever worked on. DEC was a great company to work for... when I was working backeast on EDGE... before things got tough and Ken left.

I checked the site out a bit. A VAXstation 2000. My first mid-range desktop. It was a cool box. I remember someone telling me, "Well of course you can't have 5 windows up at once, that is too much." But they just didn't want to mess with it. Setting enough sysconfig stuff, I got it working pretty good. I also remember Paul using it for a $5000 clock. Only one app running, the clock, fully maximized. He just didn't want to mess with it and just kept using his VT320. :-)

A trip down memory lane!

Monday, December 09, 2002

A Rose by any other name
I'm a big user of Rational Rose. I've gone to three User's Conferences and spoke at two of those. Although we don't model as much as we used to (because we aren't doing as much development from scratch), we still model quite a bit... and use Rose to generate a good amount of code.

Rational and IBM announced that IBM is accquiring Rational in a "for cash" deal. Ouch... bought some stock at near high... I think about $48 per share (because of a split). The IBM deal means I'll get $10.50. I had been holding on, hoping that some day it will recover. I guess some day will never come. :-(

Maybe it will be a good deal, from a company/software point of view. Kind of hard for me to imagine though. I guess time will tell.
Made me think for a second
So I'm driving to work, not really paying that much attention to things around me, 'cause hey, its only the typical bumper-to-bumper traffic. I notice the van in front of me is going kind of slow, and I'm looking for a way to cut into all the traffice next to me, when I notice the back of the van says, "Caution Blind Man Driving". What!? I'm trying to think how that is possible, when I move around him and notice on the side of the van, "The Blind Man, blinds, shades, shutters."

Saturday, December 07, 2002

Its amazing
I'm constantly amazed at the information you can find on the web. We are refinancing and a friend of mine and I were discussing apprasials. Me mentioned that I could go check a web site that has the public records for housing. You can look up any address (by name, owner's name, etc.) and it will show you the purchase histroy. You can also do a "comparable search", which will list houses that compare to yours, so you can get an idea of what your house is worth.

I'm a software engineer... and one of the people helping drive on the information out there. It just seems kind of weird to me that with a few clicks I can find out this kind of information about people... But it is useful when you are trying to refiance... and it is all public record.
Bye Cheryl
Yeah, yesterday was a hard day. We (my team) was very lucky. We didn't get hit too hard, although a lot of teams did. There were a lot of really good, bright, hard-working people that got let go. Some positions got hit really hard: admin, program managers, business analysts. My team was not hit, which was cool, but it was still hard watching everyone else go. Pretty emotional day.

Cheryl left. She's was in Fraud when I got there. First check-in for Sheriff was 05-May-1996, working Shell 2 with Tim. Kind of seems like the end of an era. The original team continues to shrink.

Good luck Cheryl. Have fun at home with the kids!

Friday, December 06, 2002

Today's the day
500 people getting laid off at WorldCom in the Springs today. Our building is supposed to get hit pretty hard, although we believe our group won't. But we still will get hit. It's just a drag.
FF13 6-7
Yeah, I lost. I was actually doing pretty good early on, but the Dawgs had Tomlinson (RB - SD) who scored 45 points! Final score was 113 to 99. I had the 4th highest score in the league for the week (thanks in part to Portis who got me 30 points), but it just wasn't enough. I'm now one game back, with only one week left in the regular season. In theory we could tie it up, if I beat the Avalance (would have beat them this week, 99 to 93) and the Arsenal beats the Dawgs, but the Arsenal is 2 and 11, so unlikely! Plus, that would just put us at a 3 way tie, and I'm currently 115 points behind the Dawgs. So, looks like my playoff hopes are over.