Whoa…where has the summer gone, *ahem* and the updates to this site?
Last week my boss found we were heading for Nashville this year… things
will be interesting over the next couple weeks, it seems she has had it
out for me for awhile now… Both of the phone interviews lead to on-site
interviews… I already got my rejection from one of the companies and am
still waiting and hoping on the other job. We went to the bookstore to
pick up a GRE prep book for me, not sure if I see myself going back to
school, but it is something I have been thinking a lot about lately.
So far our summer has been pretty un-exciting (could be the reason for
lack of posts on here?) We had planned to go up north to stay with Susan’s
folks for the weekend of the fourth. Unfortunately I was unable to go. The
Friday beforehand I was told I needed to get a bunch of stuff done for our
client out in California. Not wanting to get sent on site again, I stayed
down and worked through the weekend. Susan took the dog and found out he
isn’t really fond of the water.

As you can see on the gym page, I’ve been able to do quite a few races
this year. My times seem to be getting better overall, but my best times
are when it’s raining out… who said running in the sun was fun? I’m
still trying to get my training in for my triathlon in September, it’s
getting closer, and I’m getting more excited. I’m getting a lot better in
the water and am pretty sure I won’t drown during the event. There’s been
talk of doing a 1/2 marathon in Nashville next year, whether we sign up is
yet to be determined.

All the extra work I put in to getting our client live, I was still sent
on site a couple weeks ago (whatever happened to restricted travel?)
Things went a lot better this time, most likely because I wasn’t sent by
myself… They actually bought lunch for us a couple times and took us out
to dinner! We went to a few different places, including a Mediterranean
cafe, an Indian restaurant, and a seafood place. It was all really good,
especially the seafood place. Our customer is finally seeing what it is to
deal with the third party company in the project and I think they realize
it’s not us that’s the problem… hopefully we will get them running our
new software soon with no problems (or I’ll have another job 😀 ).

It was our annual users group last week, and I had to give a
presentation Monday. Luckily I got there early, as my boss said her laptop
was set, but she never tested the software. I spent a good 45 minutes
getting everything set up so I would have something to show during the
demo of the software I had been working on. I spent some time talking to
one of the video vendors later in the week, and the things they are doing
was pretty slick. They were excited about the video software I had created
(…if only they were located in Tennessee!)

Things are quite busy in the Jeske household as of late. Susan found out
about a job opportunity, with Corning, in Clarksville, TN. So, my job hunt
focus will now be going south (quite literally). I’ve applied for a dozen
or so jobs and have had two phone interviews already! Hopefully, I’ll hear
something back this week. Once I land a job down there, it’s two weeks at
DICE and I’ll be heading to Tennessee. Susan still has a few more months
left to finish her MBA and will probably move at the end of this year…

Scout’s become more adventurous towards Waldo, although she doesn’t
really care for him much. She will come down stairs nowadays, usually
begging for food. Most of her time is locked away in the dark on her
“throne”. We decided to scrape the toilet training, Scout seems set in her
ways and things weren’t progressing well. Waldo has gotten a lot bigger
(probably close to 50 lbs) and has lost a lot of fur… We took him in for
a haircut and he got shaved down… he actually doesn’t look quite so bad
anymore, maybe I’ll get a picture of him up soon.

We’ve had a couple races since the last time I posted… Susan’s still
doing good, finishing in the top of her age division. I managed to improve
my time a little bit in May, but for some reason the race earlier this
month was a tough one. The Pinconning CheeseTown challenge is coming this
weekend and I’m hoping to improve my pace time (even though it is a 5 mile
race 🙂 ). I’ve officially started my triathlon training last week… I’ve
already paid, so it’s too late to back out now! If you head over to the
gym page you can see my goals for each week in the three different sports,
so far, so bad… I didn’t quite make my goals last week… by the end,
there should be a lot of green on that table! 😀

Wanting to get the most out of my bike, we went to the bike store last
Thursday to pick up some clip-less pedals. For those not familiar clip-less
pedals are actually pedals you clip into (makes sense, doesn’t it?) You
wear these really spiffy looking shoes, that aren’t very much fun to walk
in, and become one with the bike. After installing the pedals, I tested
clipping in and out in the driveway and in front of the house… I was
ready, or so I thought… We hit the trails and the first stop we come to
I un-clip the right side and somehow started leaning to the left. Luckily,
I was able to get my left foot out in time before I hit the pavement… I
wasn’t so lucky last night. We were just about done with our ride and one
of the last stops, I really was one with the bike, all the way down to the
ground. I caught myself and didn’t really scrape my knee too bad… I
guess I must not have hurt myself that bad, as when Susan asked if I was
ok, she just kept going… I got back on my bike, only thing that really
was hurt was my pride. 😉

Job update… I had a phone screening with Dow for a DB Administrator
position! They sounded pretty interested in me on the phone, so who knows
maybe I’ll get a call back for an interview… although they said they
were considering a large number of candidates for the position (keep your
fingers crossed 🙂 ). This past weekend was quite the busy one. Saturday
Susan and I went to the gym together. She wanted to break in her new
Reebok fit shoes, and I was itching to get on the racquetball courts. As I
start putting my gym clothes on in the locker room, I noticed I forgot to
pack a pair of shorts. I ran over to Dunham’s, but by the time I got back,
my fellow racquetball players were gone, oh well there’s always Monday…

I managed to get the lawn mower out and as I was finishing up the
backyard… yes… it was snowing… lightly, but noticeable. Later that
night, we went to the Midland Center for the Arts for an orchestra
concert. It was… interesting… The first half was solar system themed,
and they had a couple narrators read a passage at the beginning of the
pieces. In the backdrop they had a large projection of various stars and
planets, which for some reason stuttered a lot… The second half, a huge
choir came out and in my opinion was more enjoyable.

After checking the forecast for the hundredth time, we were almost ready
for the 6K race in Midland on Sunday (it was gonna be a bit chilly 🙁 ).
Before the race, we headed over to the Verizon store to get our phone bill
discount squared away and decided to stop into Quizno’s for a bite to eat.
No… Quizno’s wasn’t my idea nor my ideal choice for a pre-race meal, but
alas that is where we went. After picking up our packets and catching up
with Susan’s sorority sister and fiance, the race was about to start. We
headed over to the start line (runners in front, walkers in back…
runners in front, walkers in back… runners in front, walkers in back…
ok I think we get it…) Carl Lewis was there and told us the MOST
important part of the race was to not go out too fast (pssh, fun, what’s
fun?) The start seemed to come really quick… “Runners on your
markBANG”… yeah there was no pause or “Get Ready” or anything… Even
though it was my fastest pace and would have been my fastest 5K and my
first 5K under 30 minutes I was told I needed to try harder… (fun,
what?) Susan got second place in her age division, beaten once again by
her sorority sister… maybe someone else needs to try harder. 😉
Well… I finally did it, I am now committed to doing a Sprint Triathlon
up in Tawas on Sept. 11. I’m hoping to get some updates to the Gym section
so you can see how my training is going. If all goes well, who knows maybe
I’ll switch to the Olympic length. 😀

I hit the two year mark at DICE a couple weeks ago, things are going
pretty good. I’m still working on my video application that is really
starting to take off. I guess it helps when the only other company that
produces a similar product is going out of business… Although, I did
take a personal day last Wednesday to take a trip down to Detroit. It
wasn’t a sight-seeing kind of day, although I went to parts I hadn’t seen
before. I was at the federal building for a few hours taking the FBI Phase
I exam. I found out recently I failed that exam, but I can take it again
in six months if I want. I’m not sure if I’m going to take it again, IF I
do pass I need to pass the physical fitness test with at least a 16 (12 is
the FBI minimum, but the Detroit office requires a 16) in order to go to
the next phase. I’ll probably take it if I’m able to pass the PFT by then
(it’s pretty tough… you can check out the requirements on the FBI’s
website…)

Waldo’s been home for a few weeks now, he seems to be getting bigger and
bigger every day. As of lately he hasn’t been having a lot of accidents in
the house (which is a good thing 🙂 ). Scout and Waldo are pretty much
mortal enemies. We ended up moving all of Scout’s stuff to the upstairs
bathroom (she wouldn’t use the litter box because that would require going
past the dog…) She pretty much spends all her time in there now, which
she seems happy… maybe they will get along some day. We are training her
to use the toilet instead of a litter box, it started off pretty rocky,
but since the upstairs move, she is actually starting to do a lot
better… We bought a Litter Kwitter, which basically is a litter box that
sits on the toilet. As the cat gets more used to the idea, you can put
different trays in with bigger and bigger holes. Right now, Scout is at
the no-hole phase and actually using the Litter Kwitter while it’s on the
toilet (something she wouldn’t do before).

St. Patrick’s day came and went and the Sunday after we were in Bay City
for the annual St. Patrick’s day race! I ran the 5K while Susan did the 5K
walk. I managed to beat my best time ever… Susan also did really good,
she got third place in her age division… and beat my super-competitive
boss! Susan also did a 4 mile walk the next Saturday and got second place
in her age division (beaten only by one of her sorority sisters she signed
up with).

Mexico

If you haven’t heard, Susan and I took a little trip down to Mexico in
January. One of Susan’s sorority sisters had a destination wedding, and we
thought this was the perfect excuse to get out of cold, snowy, Michigan.
Our trip started off pretty early (before the sun was up) as we made our
way down to Detroit. We took Susan’s car, so that meant I got to ride
shotgun. As most of you know, a good “avigator” gets the directions and
plots a route to make it easier on the driver. Since we’ve been to Detroit
Metro before, I figured it would be easy enough to wing it… As we were
getting into Detroit we managed to time it just right to hit rush hour
traffic (glad I wasn’t driving 😉 ). Whether it was early morning or
stress from so many cars around, Susan doubted I knew where we were going.
I told her to watch for the big sign that had “Detroit Metro Airport” on
it. Susan knew Detroit Metro wasn’t actually in Detroit, and expected not
to see such a helpful sign. Just as we rounded a corner, sure enough there
was a big blue sign that told us where to go… had it in the bag all
along. 🙂 We managed to get our bags checked and through security and
still had plenty of time to sit and wait for our flight…

The flight out of Detroit was on time and went smoothly, our connection
out of Chicago on the other hand was not so much. We boarded on time, but
had to wait on passengers from connecting flights. After at least 30
minutes with no one getting on, the pilot comes over the speaker to tell us
there was a problem with a light bulb. This particular light bulb was for
when the plane lost power, the pilot’s would still be able to navigate
using the control panel (probably important…) Finally, the connecting
passenger’s boarded and we were hopeful to take off soon, but it was
at leastan hour before we pulled away from the gate. Since it was pretty
cold out, we needed to get de-iced, well we waited in line for the de-icer
and that took a good 30 to 40 minutes. We started taxi-ing and before you
knew it, we were off, a couple hours later than expected.

We landed in Mexico and it was a nice change to see the sun shining.
Normally I don’t have problems flying, but I had a head cold this time and
my left ear was plugged up pretty bad… I couldn’t hear much over the next
couple days. The line to get into Mexico was crazy long and we spent quite
some time waiting with foreigners that had no personal space bubble
issues. Once through customs, we were ready to get to our resort. We found
our shuttle (the guys with the sexy flower shirts) and were soon on our
way. There were a few others on the shuttle and I think we were the second
to last ones off (which meant we didn’t get to the resort until late
evening). The resort we stayed at was really nice and we were happy to
finally be in Mexico, where the sun is always shining (or so we thought).

The next day, we met up with Susan’s sirority sisters on the beach. We
sat in the sun (and partial overcast) and relaxed, until the wedding party
left to go get ready for the wedding. We took this oppurtunity to explore
the resort and go monkey hunting (apparently the resort had monkeys that
came to the grounds, though we didn’t actually see any…) The wedding
was nice, although the armed guards roaming the beach in the background
was an interesting sight. There was a mariacchi band and drinks on the
beach after the ceremony. Someone got a pretty strong mojito and must have
been feeling pretty good before dinner. 😉

The resort was pretty big (it was technically two resorts in one) and
had four different restaurants you could go to (Italian, Mexican,
Japanese, and American Steakhouse). Dinner was at the American Steakhouse.
After dinner, we went to the beach, where a small hut serving drinks was
open for us. Apparently if you’re Greek, that means you need to drink a
lot… Susan was looking kind of tipsy, but the night wasn’t over yet. We
headed over to the DiscoTeca… where there was a dance floor, and of
course more liquid refreshments. It was getting pretty late, Susan and I
called it a night, but the rest of the crew stayed until they closed it
down.

The next day was a day of recovering, *ahem* for some of us… It wasn’t
particularly nice out… overcast and a bit chilly. We were invited on an
excursion with the rest of the group, but we had made plans for an
excursion the next day. This actually turned out in our favor, we found
out it was rainy and they didn’t really have a good time. We hung out in
the resort, read our books, and tried to find those darn monkeys.

Our excursion was quite the trip… we signed up for Tulum Extreme. This
included seeing the Mayan ruins and some extreme sports, zip-lining,
repelling, and snorkeling. We got up early and waited for our shuttle to
show up. Any where you go in Mexico, it seemed you needed to go through a
security checkpoint (atleast at the touristy places). After a half-dozen
checkpoints picking up the rest of the group from various resorts, we were
on our way. We headed off on what seemed to be a highway until we started
slowing down and turned onto a dirt road… no signs, no nothing. A couple
miles down this road, we pull off onto a two rut road with a gate. The
driver gets out, unlocks the gate, pulls through and locks the gate behind
us. As we’re traveling down this “road” through the jungle, we started to
wonder what we had gotten ourselves into.

We finally pulled into an area with other shuttles… and people, whew!
After putting our bags in lockers, we were fitted with harnesses and given
some instructions on our first activity… zip-lining. The climb up the
tower was interesting, they were pretty high up and the stairs weren’t
really level or the same size. Although the shortest, I think the first
line was the most exciting, mostly because I hadn’t done anything like
this before… There were three runs and it was really a lot of fun! After
zip-lining, we got to do repelling. Another short lesson before we started
and up the tower we went. I thought it would be down a rockface or wall or
something, but it was actually a free-fall repel. It was pretty thrilling
to walk backwards over the step at the top of the tower… and after I got
my picture taken, I went down… fast! 🙂 Susan was a little unsure of
repelling, but she was happy she did it.

It wasn’t a really hot day (like we thought Mexico would be), so we were
kind of anxious about the snorkeling part. We headed down to the cenota
(kind of like a cave with water in it) and put our snorkeling gear on. As
we got in the water, I was pretty surprised, it didn’t feel at all cold to
me… one of the couples commented it was warmer than the outside pool at
their resort. Our guide look pretty chilled, but he got in the water and
lead us through anyway. After drying off and changing clothes, it was
lunch time. The cooks at that place were awesome, we had some of the best
grilled chicken I had ever had. Once we got back on the shuttle, it was
time to go to the Mayan ruins… Unfortunately we weren’t actually allowed
to climb the stairs or touch the ruins, but it was still really neat to
see.

We got back to the resort later in the afternoon and hung out with
Susan’s sorority sisters until dinner… we had made reservations at the
Japanese restaurant. You get to sit around a hibachi grill and the cook
comes out and does a performance while he cooks your meal. Even though I
didn’t catch the shrimp in my mouth, after the cook flung it at me, the
food was great and we had a really good time.

The next day was our last day, and it was beautiful out… figures…
Once we got to the airport, we needed to check our bags and get our
boarding pass… no easy task. The line for our airline was big… almost
as bad as getting into Mexico… We finally get to the counter at least an
hour later and had our boarding passes in hand. We were pretty hungry, so
we got a quick bite to eat… heading the warning of a co-worker to stay
away from the nachos… Our flight started boarding shortly after we
finished eating. Once our group was finally called, we had to go through a
security inspection. Little did I know, Susan was going to try to hi-jack
the plane (ok… not really). She had a thumb drive on her (don’t ask me
why =P ) that the end retracted on and security didn’t know what it was. I
had gone through with ease and was wondering what the heck was going on…
After going through EVERYTHING in Susan’s carry-ons, including opening
perscriptions, she got the OK to board… The flight back was pretty
uneventful after that.

Although a short trip, it was a fun one, maybe we’ll go back some day!
😀

Work

Work has not be fun lately… my new motto is “They keep paying me, so I
keep showing up…” We’ve been told to work a set number of hours for the
past couple of months that has been well over the typical 40. I’m still
waiting for them to give us a requirement less than 40 (hah, like that’ll
ever happen). If you recall (or you can check out pretty much the only
blog for last year) I had a business trip from hell. Well, I didn’t
realize it, but that trip actually seemed pretty good compared to the one
I went on last December. I’ve been working on a video viewer application
and I was to deploy it on site. What I was told was not what the client
was expecting (yay communication!) I was in Ontario, CA (about an hour
south of L.A.) for about a week. The first day I got in late afternoon and
was a short day. I talked with their IT guy and the project lead about
what I was told and what they wanted, needless to say they were a little
disappointed and definitely upset.

I went back to the hotel… and for some reason I got the company’s
worst laptop and my programming environment wouldn’t compile anything. I
had grabbed the installation discs before I left and tried installing and
re-installing to no end. Finally, I decided to download a free
environment, which took quite a few hours on the hotel’s slow internet
connection. I finally got my laptop set up and was ready to code the next
day (or so I thought…)

I wasn’t given an entry code or fob to enter the building, so I had to
rely on someone being there when I got there. I knocked on the door and
rang the bell (which I found out before I left was broken…) No one let
me in. I jumped in my rental car, pulled my laptop out and starting
programming. The project lead showed up, but must have missed me as she
looked like she was in a hurry… I tried packing up my laptop and jumping
out, but I was a little too slow. This time I noticed a number in the
window. Gave that a call, managed to get a hold of the IT guy and he let
me in. This day was a long day, but I did manage to fix some bugs in our
software. The video portion wasn’t working quite to their liking… I
tried my best to replicate what their old software did, but it wasn’t
going well. I was in contact with my co-workers, but they couldn’t really
help me. I left this day feeling a little optimistic tomorrow had to be
better (hah!)

After I got back to my room, I decided to take a walk and went to the
mall not far from the hotel. It was one of the biggest malls I had ever
been in and was pretty impressive. After clearing my head, I went back to
the hotel room and started programming. It was getting late and I hadn’t
made much progress, but I thought I was on to something. The next day I
was stuck outside the central for only a few minutes, as someone actually
heard me knocking on the door this time. This day was by far the worst and
by late afternoon I was pretty stressed out. While I was working, people
would come in and talk to me and I would explain what I was doing (or
trying to do). Apparently the central owner came in (I wasn’t introduced,
but I guess that’s no excuse) and I told him I don’t know why it’s not
working or when it would be done, but I was trying my best. He seemed
pretty irate and stormed off. About 15 minutes later, the IT guy comes in
and tells me that I shouldn’t tell the owner I know jack-shit about a
project and that I should just go home. Yeah that was pretty nice, so I
packed my stuff up and went back to the hotel…

Another late night of coding and a call to Susan for moral support, I
was glad I had only one more day left on my travel. I actually made some
significant progress that day, I was able to demonstrate how the software
would work… eventually… but the project lead and IT guy weren’t too
impressed and wanted nothing to do with it until it was finished.
I’m not sure how I got stuck with my return flight, but it was not very
much fun. I returned my car, and got to the airport around 5 pm pacific
time. My flight out of California was at 7, and I landed in Phoenix an
hour later. I started walking around the airport, but couldn’t seem to
find my connecting flight. I must have looked lost, because one of those
cart driver guys asked if I needed help. I told him I was looking for a
Delta flight and he said hop on. There wasn’t hardly anyone in this
section of the airport, so we were cruising along pretty good when he
asked if I was sure I was looking for a Delta flight. I pulled out my
itinerary and it said Delta, even though my boarding pass had a different
airline on it (because I printed it from their kiosk). He brought me to an
exit and told me I had to go to a different terminal. Afterwards he
mentioned he didn’t work on tips, but if I wanted to tip him I could. I
gave him a couple bucks, reconfirmed how to get to the terminal and I was
off.

I ended up leaving security and had to go through it once again when I
got to the new terminal. I’ve been on quite a few flights lately and I
never had to take my shaving kit out of my carry-on. Well, as I was
pushing my bag into the x-ray machine, the operator clearly indicates to
remove all liquid items from your bags. I tried grabbing my bag, but it
was too late… oops! The operator than announces to remove all liquid
items from your bag and proceeded to list all the contents of my shaving
kit in an unfriendly manner. My bag was ran again and I had to have
someone inspect the contents of my shaving kit, including a chemical test
on my bottle of contact solution.

I got to my gate and had a few hours to wait, I was flying on the red
eye that left just after midnight. I must have been tired, because I don’t
remember much of that flight. I got in Atlanta around 6 am eastern time,
my flight here left at 9. If you’re thinking this flight plan wasn’t a lot
of fun, your right it wasn’t. I landed in Detroit a little after noon and
FINALLY made it home around 2:30.

I somehow managed to rack up 80 hours of work time in five days…

Winter Carnival and Puppies

We went up to Winter Carnival this year and even though the snow statues
weren’t AS impressive as they normally are, it was still a lot of fun. We
drove up Friday night and stayed the night in Michigamme. The next day we
headed up to Houghton and met up with a couple we knew. They had already
seen the statues, so we went out on our own. It was sunny and a little
chilly, but a nice day nonetheless. We had dinner reservations at the
restaurant on the top floor of the hotel downtown (the restaurant name
always seems to be changing). We had a window table and were able to see
the ski-torch parade and fireworks. That was a lot of fun.

After dinner, we headed back to our friends house. They had recently
gotten a cockapoo and she was really cute. We had been talking about
getting a puppy… a flyer had gone around at Corning for labradoodles…
and I think when we saw that cockapoo, it sealed the deal. We had gone to
see them before their eyes were open and they were pretty cute than. We
went back later to pick one out, and Waldo will be coming home next week
(not sure how Scout is going to like that, but it should be interesting 🙂
).

Fitness

As you might have noticed, there will be a new section to my website.
I’m going to try to keep track of my progress of 5Ks and my workout time.
Mostly for me so I can update it anywhere, but feel free to check it out.
😉 I have been playing a lot of racquetball recently and have more wins
than losses in my league. I really wish another one started up for the
summer. I’ve actually been debating upgrading my racquet, so I headed over
to a couple of sites online and signed up for the demo program. The first
racquet I got was the most expensive of the three, but it was really nice
and I’m tempted to get it… I’m still waiting for the other two to come,
but from reading online, I’m still leaning towards that first one I got.
I’m still trying to get in shape and am still running those 5Ks. I
already ran my first one for the year, in Montrose. Seeing as how I ran
this one last year, I figured I’d be able to find it pretty easily. I
printed off a handful of directions and left with plenty of time to get
there. Well, I guess I should have brought my avigator with me, as the
directions weren’t quite accurate and I somehow got turned around in
Saginaw. After retracing my steps, and getting on the correct road south,
I finally saw some familiar sites and new I was almost there… which was
a good thing, because the race was starting soon… I got to the school,
found a spot to park and headed to registration. They couldn’t find my
name to give me my packet… luckily I had looked the day before and knew
my number… sure enough my name was on that package. I tossed the shirt
in my car, quickly put my number on and headed to the start line. It was
probably less than 30 seconds and the race had begun (…no sense in
cutting it close or anything…) The sun was shining, the wind wasn’t
blowing, and I was packing some handwarmers. I wasn’t as cold this year as
last year, and had a lot of fun. I didn’t stick around long and headed
back home (the right way) with a 5K under my belt to start the year.

Playstation

I must have been a good boy last year, because Santa brought me a PS3
for Christams. I know I was promoting the Wii… and for good reason (it’s
still topping the sales charts), but the need for an upgrade was there. We
have an HDTV and having a video game console that could play blu-rays
seemed to make sense. 🙂 After getting everything set up, we watched our
first blu-ray, The Dark Knight, and I was hooked… and not sure if we
could go back to watching standard definition. 😉 I signed up for a
Gamefly account, which is kind of like Netflix but for games (…and a lot
slower…) and have been fighting for TV time ever since. We also have a
streaming disc that allows watching things off our Netflix account
instantly to our TV which is pretty cool… I was surprised how flawless
it looked, it was like watching a DVD, but over the internet…

Class

As some of you may know, I took an accounting class last fall. Before
our final, we had a chance to earn some extra credit by taking a ten
problem exam during class. Each question was pretty detailed and it was an
all or nothing kind of thing, and each worth ten points. Silly me, I had
forgotten to grab my calculator before I left for work. I get to class and
found out I wasn’t the only one who forgot one. The professor did have an
extra one, but I was the second to ask… I told him I had a basic
calculator on my cellphone and he said it was alright to use. After
getting through the first couple of problems, my phone starts vibrating…
it was a call from one of the guys I was to play racquetball with that
week. So, I hit the button to ignore it and continued with the exam. Sure
enough, ten minutes later, I get another call… I bet that didn’t look
suspicious… at all… I must have done decent on the exam, I think I got
7 out of 10, which meant a whopping 70 points of extra credit… I didn’t
necessarily have to take the final, but I did and ended up with a 98% in
the class! 🙂

Eyes

It was that time of the year when I had to get my eyes checked and
contacts ordered. I signed up for an appointment at Lenscrafters and
intended to get the contact brand I’ve been using for quite a few years
now. During my appointment, they kept asking if I wanted a scan of my eye
and were surprised to hear I had a previous eye injury (even though I
mentioned this before…) After getting my prescription and telling the
sales associate what brand of contacts I wanted, she outright told me they
would be more expensive then this other brand. I told her I’ve tried other
brands before and they didn’t work out for me. She said these were
different… so I said fine I’ll try them. I ordered two boxes (they had
two in the store) and was told I could take them back if I didn’t like
them.

One week later, I was back and said I didn’t like them and wanted to
order the brand I liked and didn’t care if they were more expensive.
WELL… it turns out the brand I wanted was 35 bucks a box and the brand
she wanted to sell me were 50 bucks a box… Yes, that’s right what I
wanted was less expensive then what she sold me. After returning the four
boxes I had and ordering the other brand, the price “magically” ended up
being the same. I had gotten a discount on the brand that cost 50 bucks a
box, but it was still nine dollars more than what I should have paid. I
wasn’t really worried about the nine dollars and was happy to just have
the contacts I wanted. I decided right then I would not be going back to
Lenscrafters… ever…

Funny thing is I got this thing in the mail the other day from them,
thanking me for going back to Lenscrafters. Well, there was an online
survey I got to take and I told them exactly what I thought of their
services…

So, we finally decided to build us a deck! What started to be a simple
project of a deck with an octagon (stop sign for all of you who forgot
your geometry 😉 ) in it, pretty much became the deck project from hell.
We hired a construction company to pour the posts and frame the deck in.
Once they had their part done, I ordered the decking material. Little did
I know we wouldn’t have quite enough material to finish the deck (mostly
Home Depot’s fault), but at this point I was getting pretty excited! The
material was in at Home Depot, so I called my dad and told him he should
come up the next weekend to help get this thing done. The decking came, my
dad was here, we were ready to begin, well almost, we had to of course hit
Pat’s on a beer run.

We started hauling the decking into the backyard. The guy who delivered
it was a pro fork-lift operator, but didn’t want to cut across the
neighbors lawn on the backside (come on… wuss). We started cutting the
boards at what we thought was the right angle to fit the octagon. After a
few cuts, many screws (who the hell invented a square-headed screw, that
was a bad idea!) we found out the boards weren’t landing on the octagon at
the right angle. Out comes the measuring tape, only to find out one side
of the octagon was a few inches shorter than the other sides. Even the
non-math types can tell you this is probably a bad thing. It was getting
late so we decided to pick up in the morning. The next day went a little
better, we ran to the hardware store and home depot about a dozen times,
got some boards down and compensated for the short-sided octagon.
Then, we ran into a design flaw in the plans where some boards weren’t
supported, so we had to put supports in… that slowed us down quite a
bit… After getting a few non-octagon boards down, we figured it be a
good idea to see how parallel the outside is to the house… We found out
it was off by an inch… that’s right 2.54 cm, 1/12 foot, 1/36 yard… an
inch off!? Luckily we were pro deck builders and compensated for such an
error, you can’t even tell the end doesn’t run parallel to the house.
Our next biggest issue was the sixteen foot board that ran next to the
house, that needed to be ripped and etched out for the back door. After
giving one board a shot on the table saw that was sitting on the ground,
we didn’t think it be possible to actually do that. Seeing as how there
was a board with a notch in the one side (see deck pictures), we thought
we’d try to rip that one. Somehow, we got that board cut, etched, and in
place, and it doesn’t just look good, it looks really good! We made a lot
of progress this day, even though we spent a couple hours at the shop
getting my dad’s truck to start. The mechanics were awfully chatty,
especially the tow-truck guy who stuck around to talk… er.. see if the
truck would start once the battery terminals were cleaned up.

After meeting up with my dad’s cousin after church, we were back on the
deck for a twelve hour day. We nearly finished the board laying part, and
decided to call it a day. There were only a couple boards to put down, and
I called in to tell my boss I’d be late for work. She told me to take a
personal day (a nice gesture until I found out what she had in store for
me later that week). We managed to get the octagon done along with the
rest of the boarding and it looked really good.

We (and when I say “we” I really mean Susan and Maria the Home Depot
deck consultant) decided it would be easier if we got railing kits, well I
tell you what, those railing kits are not fun to put in. We got one up and
it was pretty wobbly, until we thought we’d try two brackets for each 4×4
post. It added a little bit of stability to it, but not quite as much as I
would have liked to see. At this point it was getting dark again and we
didn’t have quite enough brackets anyway. The next day I had to go into
work, but when I got home we tried to put in an angled railing (that
didn’t go so well). With two railings up and half of a third one, I had to
leave the deck unfinished as I was “lucky” enough to get sent on a
business trip.

I thought the deck project was a project from hell… well that doesn’t
even compare to the fun I had in Alabama. We got onsite and started
getting ready to load our new phone system/software. We ran into issues,
and didn’t leave the central station until 1:00 AM CST. The next day
didn’t go much better, but we were running off the new stuff. To make
matters worse, the central station manager tried transferring files to a
server and one of the files were corrupt that was needed by the system. If
that wasn’t bad enough, Thursday early morning the station actually went
offline. That was bad, very bad! People’s lives depend on that station to
be up and running, any downtime could mean life or death. We found out, it
wasn’t anything to do with our new software (good for us), but it was a
LOT of long hours and little doing anything else. We also had to be on
site to see if something from our software would crash/error out.
At one point I was actually watching the central by myself (the shift
supervisor had left, my co-worker had left to get some sleep, it was me
and the operators). From what I observed over the past couple days, I was
actually able to answer the operators questions and help them through some
stuff, until the next shift supervisor finally showed up. The operators
were pretty nice (one of them even made me a pepperoni hot pockets and
gave me some chips, yeah my eating schedule was thrown completely out of
whack this week…) After trying to optimize his program as much as he
could, we determined the problems we were having was a networking issue
and managed to get it resolved (two IPs, one card, windows server, bad
idea in my opinion). Saturday night was the first night I actually got to
relax this week, and it felt kind of nice. I ended up hitting the jacuzzi
to make it even better before I have to go home and face the project I
left behind and my loving wife (who was none too happy when we had to stay
a couple extra days to get this crap working… maybe a blog entry will
put a smile on her face, a few days later than expected 🙂 )

So it’s been a couple days… er… months since I last wrote, I figured
I’d break this blog up into sections. Grab a cool beverage, put your feet
up and get reading!

The Lawn

Okay, I last left you off thinking our lawn was about to become the “It”
spot in Falcon Crest. People would come from far and wide to see how
beautiful a lawn could really be… Unfortunately things didn’t work out
this way. A day or two after my last blog entry (first week of June), a
funny thing happened… it rained… and when it rains it pours… We
ended up having a stretch of three or four days with severe thunderstorms
and showers… you can just guess what happened, all our seed washed away!
We learned two important things from this… firstly – never seed before
heavy rains and secondly – always know where your gutters downspouts
drain. Not sure exactly what the builders were thinking, but they decided
to have one of the downspouts go under the sidewalk that leads to the side
door of our garage. This is all and well, except they didn’t have any
where for the water to go. We got so much rain, it created a small hole
were water was coming up out of the ground. I’m glad to say this problem
is fixed. Our lawn guy put in what he called a “pop-up”. It’s a little
green thing in the ground that raises when the water fills up the
downspout, and settles back down once it stops raining. For a small fee,
he redid all our downspouts this way, which is really cool as I don’t have
to move them when I’m mowing the grass (once we get grass…) and we don’t
have to worry about them blowing away, which has happened in the past!

I bet right about now, you’re wondering when we’ll actually have a nice,
lush, soft, green lawn… I’m thinking the same thing myself. After the
seed washed away, we started getting a little growth. Some of it was good
grass, while most of it was weeds… Not wanting to spray over the weeds,
the lawn guy came out and killed off the lawn (for the second time now…)
A few days went by, then weeks, then finally he came out again to kill off
some more growth that had occurred (third time…). Finally, this past
weekend, he brought his tiller and broke the crust that had formed,
re-raked the yard, and sprayed it once more (four times… man weeds can
be tough =P). Right now the lawn looks really good compared to what it did
a few days ago, it’s just missing that green stuff on top… you know…
grass! Looks like rain is in the forecast, so maybe he’s putting off
spraying for a couple days. Boy, I’m glad I’m saving all this gas money
not having to run my lawnmower =/.

Running

If you haven’t heard we’ve done quite a few races already this summer.
There was the Loons Pennant Race I had mentioned in a blog earlier, the
Pinconning Cheese Fest Fun Run, the Dow Run/Walk, and the Cheasning
Riverboat run. The Dow one was really nice, it started off at the Midland
Community Center and looped through various streets of Midland. It would
have been nice if the water they handed out along the way was colder, but
it was a fun race. I signed up to do the 5K run and managed to finish just
over 37 minutes. Susan did the walk and was a little disappointed she
didn’t beat her time from the Pennant race. We also learned never to
forget your safety pins, but a quick run to Walgreen’s never hurts! The
Cheese Fest run was two miles and everyone that entered got a small block
of cheese, well almost everyone… Susan didn’t… It was a warm day and I
really wanted to run the whole thing ( well as least the first mile anyway
;)), but I was overcoming a cold and was only able to run part of it. When
I crossed the finish line, the clock said “21:25”, but to get our
“official” time we had to hand in our numbers. The only problem with this
is there was a bunch of kids that cut in front of me, I managed to get my
position back, but unfortunately Susan wasn’t able to and got a slightly
worse time then she actually finished… oh well… I ran the Cheasning
race and beat my previous time… I finished in 33:03. Susan also ran in
this race and almost got her time put down as a walker, which would have
given her a really good walk time, but she told them she signed up to run.

Scout

Scout’s doing well, even if she hasn’t reached her recommended weight
yet (she might be gaining =/). We got her back on the old food which
probably doesn’t help things much, but we had so much left over we thought
we’d better use it. She still begs for food and gets really annoying until
we feed her… It’s been pretty warm lately and Scout’s been losing quite
a bit of fur. To help with this problem we usually brush her, but one day
we (and when I say “we” I really mean Susan) thought it would be a good
idea to give her a bath. Out came the small tub we use to bath the cat in
and the struggle began. Scout’s big enough now that should could spread all
four legs across the lip of the tub and not get wet. After quite a bit of
struggle, we (both of us now) got her feet wet. She wasn’t too happy about
this and managed to dig one of her back claws pretty deep into my palm.
I’ve never seen Scout’s tail so big… it was super-puffed out. After she
scratched me I gave up on the whole bath thing. Susan tried to get her in
the water again, but Scout was helping things and managed to avoid getting
a bath. I think if we (Susan) try this again, we’ll be getting a bigger
tub! If you haven’t seen the latest pictures of her, head on over to the
pictures of the week!

Racquetball

I played the infamous child star in the area. He’s 16 and if he doesn’t
win the Michigan championship, he’s in second! I was able to get 5 points
against him, while everyone else that tried, couldn’t get more then 2!
He’s been playing since he was 5 and is extremely talented. Even though I
got banged up the other night (took a racquet to the face, hit myself in
the leg with my racquet and got drilled just below the rib cage on a
serve that was long anyway =/), I still try to get down to the courts to
play once or twice a week. I even got to play doubles a couple times…
which at first seems like there’s a lot of people on the court, but it’s
actuallypretty fun. I’m really excited for the ladder season to start up,
sounds like Mittag will be doing it too!

Work

Work’s been going great, I’m getting a lot done and my boss says I’m
doing a good job. I’ll be a full time employee (for real this time) on
September 15th and am pretty excited for that! Susan’s job has been kind
of hectic lately… she started up a new process not too long ago and was
on call for the DeHate family camp out… She thinks she may have found a
lead on solving a problem she’s been working on for awhile now.

Once we get the data converted properly, we’ll be deploying our software to a
client for beta testing. It was suppose to happen this week, but some
issues needed to be fixed before we could go… maybe next week… The
company picnic is this weekend, it sounds like it’ll be a lot of fun!

DeHate Campout

Even though Susan couldn’t go, I went out to the camp out for the day.
Instead of a canoe trip, this year we had the DeHate Olympic Games. We all
drew from a hat to pick teams. The I’s and H’s looked pretty similar and
we had to figure who was on which team. We *cough* rigged *cough* it so my
mom and I were on the same team. We also had another team mate who was
pretty young (and pretty annoying…) There was horseshoes, mini-golf
(from hell), water balloon toss, bocche ball, cornhole, mini-basketball,
and ladder ball. Each station you met up with another team and played the
game together except for cornhole. Depending on how well you did, you got
a gold, silver, or bronze (aka pink) star. The team with the most gold and
silver stars was the winner. Our first event was the mini-golf, and man
that was tough, it was one hole at the bottom of an eight foot incline
with all kinds of roots growing out of the ground… we got the bronze
star on this one. We did pretty good on the other events, and when we got
to cornhole, we ripped it up. Not having played the game before, we
managed to get quite a few in the hole… “CORNHOLE!!!” yeah you have to
say it for it to count! 😉 The food was really good, especially Susan’s
Pizza Pasta, and pretty soon it was time to go. Next year, we’ll be
camping (hopefully… if someone isn’t on call.)

Cedar Point

We have been making good use of our season passes so far. We even got to
be chaperones for one trip. That was kind of fun, except for the annoying
bus driver. Dow Corning treated all their interns to a trip to the park
and Susan signed us up to be chaperones (even though technically I should
have been a guest 🙂 ). The plan was to leave early on a Saturday morning,
the only problem with this was sometimes plans don’t go according to the
plan… We headed over to the meeting spot for the two buses, only problem
was, there was a total of four people there… yup the buses were in the
wrong spot (or 50 interns were, you pick =P). So after getting to the
right spot, the day snacks were no where to be found (oh yeah, we got
fed!) So we waited around for the food to arrive, packed up the buses, and
were off, about an hour later then the plan. The bus driver told the same
story over a few times, but it was a good trip. We got to watch movies,
got to go to the park for free, got to eat for free, and didn’t have to
pay for gas, can’t hardly beat that!

Our last trip wasn’t as much fun as the others though… Someone said it
wasn’t suppose to rain, someone was wrong… We got to our camp site (same
place as last time and probably will be the last time there…) and it was
incredibly muggy out… and the bugs were out. After getting the tent set
up, I was pretty dang sweaty, and hopped in the shower, while Susan
attended to all her bug bites… The next day we went to the park, and it
was pretty cloudy. It rained a little, and a lot of the rides shutdown.
Then, near the end of the day it started to rain a little harder, we
decided to go, hoping Sunday would be clear… it wasn’t, we packed up our
went tent and came home… almost without getting lost. We were coming
back and past an exited I thought we should have taken. Well being
adventurous, I decided to stay on the road we were on – that’s the way the
bus driver did it afterall. All was good and well until we got to Toledo,
I missed another exit I should have taken… after driving around and
circling back, I managed to find that exit again and was able to get back
into Michigan, from there it was easy and all while my avigator was
sleeping… Halloween weekends start in September and you better believe
we’ll be there as much as we can!

Okay, so maybe you didn’t need a cold beverage to get through this blog,
but atleast you won’t be thirsty now!

Lately I’ve been playing a lot of Zelda for the Wii (Twilight Princess). Which is a very cool (and frustrating) game. I had preordered it about a month ago selecting the cheapest (and slowest) shipping, because I knew I was going to be in Missouri last week and wasn’t in a hurry to get it. When we got back I noticed a note on the door left by the UPS driver (ended up getting bumped to 3 day select for only 2.99 =) ). The note said a delivery attempt was made on 11/22/06 and the package was left at the office. So after work on Monday I decided I’d go pick it up. Well the lady there was like I don’t have your package, and after searching the office and still no luck, I started thinking ok maybe Susan picked it up. I stopped by the mailbox and thought why would she get the package and not the mail. After getting the mail I headed back to our apartment. Well, Susan wasn’t home yet so I was like, ok where’s my package. I went to the UPS website and tracked my package. It said the package was delivered on the 22nd and that someone from the office signed it. I printed this off and grabbed the note left by the driver and went back to the office. The lady still didn’t believe me the package was delivered… Finally she looked around the office and managed to spot it on top a shelf (even though it wasn’t suppose to be there…) At last I had Zelda in hand and man I’m glad they opted out of cel-shaded cuteness.

I forgot to mention yesterday at the brewery they had flavored beer, and I’m not talking something somewhat normal like lime (though they did have that). You can get these energy-like additives to your beer. They had hot chocolate, melon, lime, and something else pretty random. None of us were brave enough to try one of these specialty flavored beers. However, as you walked through the cafeteria you would see these green or pink glasses of beer and you could definitely smell them as you passed by! I also failed to mention how excited our kitty was to see we were home. She purred louder than any other cat I’ve heard and was rubbing up against us for two whole days. We left a ton of food for her and she managed to gobble most of it up (and probably gained another half a pound in the process). We plan on getting her kitty paws until her de-clawing in January. That should be exciting, gluing plastic things to her claws so she doesn’t scratch up (ruin) the furniture (maybe I’ll get a couple pictures of the process…) Work is pretty slow, I’ve got all my tasks at hand done… still waiting on my co-workers before I can get any more work done. I just got a rejection letter from the place I interviewed at… oh well maybe I’ll start the job hunt again…

Well the PS3 hit the markets this week, so me and Susan decided to see how many fanboys were waiting in line to get one. Wal-mart seemed like a good choice as it was releasing a minute after midnight and it was all nice and warm inside. Too bad they made the line outside, anyway they were projecting getting 10 units (if that even came in), but we didn’t see anyone in line. Our next stop, the local Best Buy store, at this point Susan was like “no one’s going to camp out for the PS3”. Well, to her contridiction, there was a line up around the corner at Best Buy at 8 pm (and I don’t think they had a midnight release). Someone had actually brought a tent out to stay the night. We won’t bust our tent out, but we’ll be hitting Wal-mart tonight to pick up a Wii (probably get there about 3-4 hours early and at 12:01 am hopefully I’ll have one in my hands). Other news this week, I finished my Dowtran class and my group was the first one to get our project finished (we almost set a record, woohoo!) My officemate, who has been dealing with Dowtran since he started, and was working on the project during class fell second to our group, of course I had to hassle him about that!

Day number two of the Dowtran Development Class and boy is it exciting. I’ve got three more days and a project due at the end of the week. At least they give us free food! Other than taking this course, my job’s going pretty good. I’m making a big impact on validation of a system we’re adding onto. This weekend I got to try something new, me and Susan went to a wine tasting party. We got to test a few different wines (even though I don’t care for wine, pass the sparkling grape juice for me please!) Susan’s co-workers put it on and they made a ton of hors d’voers, so that was good for me (I ate most of the sesame crackers and sampled a variety of cheeses). Unfortunately the Lions (those stupid, stupid Lions) couldn’t manage to increase their win record to three… typical Jon Kitna, down in the 4th with a chance to win, let’s throw an interception… On a happy note, I just picked up a couple tickets for the Bears-Lions game on December 24th, section 129 row 6, about the 15 yard line (look for us on the TV, even if Susan may have a Bears jersery on… traitor!)