Well as you can gather from my picture of the day page, I am now employed, woohoo! I’ll be a contractor under Kelly IT Resources working for Dow Chemical here in Midland. The exact details are a little fuzzy, my first day isn’t until October 2nd, but the job sounds interesting. I will be a software validator for the systems currently installed in Dow’s plant. Using their own customized programming language, I will create simulations and after testing (much testing probably) I’ll actutally implement the new programs in the real system.

This past weekend was kind of rough… Pepper was brought back to Animal Control due to his problematic behavior. He hissed and growled at me and marked his territory… and his hyper-aggressiveness scared Susan… On a happy note, we did get a new kitten, Scout, who is a female brownish/black calico. She’s been really good and likes to explore (she got stuck in the pull out couch when we first brought her home…)

I finally got my rejection letter from CMT, oh well… I do have an upcoming interview on Monday with Kelly IT Resources (with is a contracting company for Dow Chemical). Job hunting is starting to get old, hopefully something opens up quickly.

I don’t know how many Nintendo fans there are out there, but in New York a press conference was held yesterday to release the launch date and price of the new system, the Wii. I’m defintely gonna get one of these beasts with a price tag of $249.99 with a game included you can’t go wrong (launch date is Nov. 19th). Sony isn’t doing so good this time around, with their explosive laptop batteries and delayed launches and huge price tag (~$600) and limited quantities, I’m not sure how well they’ll compete. Besides the Wii allows for legal downloading of old school games (NES, SNES, N64, Sega Genesis) and has one heck of an innovative controller (yup they got me sold already…)

It was Susan’s birthday on Wednesday and I made her two cakes (well the first one crumbled and fell on the ground), but the second one turned out all right. It was a chocolate-cinnamon cake and tasted pretty good… I also got her some flowers and a James Bond Zip-Zap (micro RC car) that she drove under the couch once she got it together.

Well this weekend started off with a bang (literally)… We were heading up north (da UP) when we blew a tire just before we got to Clare. We gave AAA a call only to find out all the tire shops in Clare were closed, so we had them call a tow-truck company to put the donut on (the tire blown was the driver side front, the heck if we were gonna sit on the side of US-10 to change that!) After waiting an hour and a half, the guy finally showed up. After the donut was in place, we found out leaving the hazard lights on for the whole time kills your battery. So after a jump from the tow truck we were finally on our way back to Midland to get Susan’s car (at a very slow pace might I add).

This rest of the weekend went pretty smoothly, we got to see our nephew, Marcus, be baptizied and enjoyed visiting our families. All our good mojo must have run out because when we got home to see how Pepper was doing (pretty good), we found puddles in our basement… Apparently a combination of using powder detergent and old pipes with clay buildup creates massive blocks in the sewer system, and thus raw sewage in our basement, yay! Our building seems to be the only one affected, lucky us… Though one good thing did come out of this, we don’t have to pay for scratching the paint on the floor (because now they have to repaint it anyway)…

I’ve learned a couple important lessons this past weekend… When in a canoe and trying to soak someone with a water cannon, don’t lean too far over, especially if the person in front of the canoe is leaning the same way… Also, camping in the rain is not a pleasant experience (though we got our tent down just before it started to really rain). If you haven’t guessed it, me and Susan went camping this weekend. It was the 7th Annual Dehate Campout, we even got some fancy orange shirts (pictures to come possibly). If was a lot of fun, minus the whole tipping over in the canoe part, though I did find out my flash drive works after being submerged…

We recently found out our kitten, Pepper, has ringworm so he’s currently in his fortress of solitude in the basement. The vet gave us some shampoo to cure it, which by the way Pepper is not too fond of taking a bath.

As far as the Midland employment hunt goes, I’m still unemployed. Computer Management Technologies (CMT), in Saginaw, should be getting back to me soon with some good news hopefully. I’ve also been in contact with someone at EDS and could get a work-at-home programmer’s position (that would be sweet)…