The greatest collection of words. Ever.

I found these words, dangerously close together when looking for activities close to the bed and breakfast.

Without further ado:

I challenge anyone else to find such a wonderful collection of words occuring naturally in the wilderness so close together.

I'm itching for a new camera. For the Honeymoon... yeah... that's the ticket.

Look at this. This beautiful piece of gadgetry *sniff*. It's almost too beautiful.

I haven't really had the opportunity to take any pics over the last few months. I've been busy and the weather and scenery hasn't been anything worth breaking out the camera. Taylor did get some use out of the camera on his trip to Washington a few weeks ago, though. He's offered to buy the camera from me when/if I upgrade.

Anywho, Katie and I are finalizing the honeymoon. We're gonna try to take 3 days off (since I've got the new job and she doesn't have a full year in at her work either) and head to the smoky mountains in Tennessee. There's a bed and breakfast over there called Berry Springs Lodge or some such business... It met all our requirements.

Let's go over them, shall we?

1. Far away
2. Mountenaiety Mountaineousness Big Rocks
3. Bed and Breakfast
4. Fairly Inexpensive
5. Hot Chicks Room (Edited For Personal Safety)

We believe all the requirements have been met and greatly exceeded. The bed and breakfast is nestled in the Smoky Mountains and is close to the Great Smoky Mountain National Park. It's also close to Gatlinburg, where Katie and I went in high school for a youth convention.

This picture sold me.

It's the view from their porch, supposedly.

As you can see, this trip necessitates the purchase of a high price, shiny new gadget. I can't use a mac mini in the mountains, and a plasma screen tv would be bulky for Katie to carry through the woods, so I'm selling the idea of a digital SLR currently. More specifically, the Nikon D50.

Hopefully, my tax refund will go a long way to bank rolling this latest craving. Additionally, I hope to make this purchase before Katie is legally allowed to punch me in the mouth for buying gadgets. Godspeed to you, IRS.

Hard drive crashes make Seagate look golden

I've had pretty good luck with hard drives. In the past few years of building and upgrading my own computers I haven't lost any data to hard drive failures. Considering that during this period I've had four, maybe 5, hard drives in the rotation, I think that's pretty good. Probability was waiting to stick its pointy nose into my streak of happiness.

In the past few weeks two of my hard drives have gone to the big computer in the sky. My 160 gig western digital gave up the ghost a little over a week ago, taking with it my windows partition and my copy of recent holiday digital pictures. Yesterday afternoon, my 40 gig media drive jumped the sawhorse. It was the oldest of all my drives, and the smallest, but by far the most valuable.

Luckily, the media drive would work periodically. I found this after placing it in an external enclosure and hooking it up to a laptop. I was able to transfer my mp3's, what digital pics I had on that drive, and a few other oddities I'd been storing for a few years to the laptop, then back to another 160 gig drive. So, my data is safe (for now).

The only warranty I have left is on the 160 gig drive. So, I'll be returning that drive shortly. This means I'll be forced into having another WD (western digital) hard drive. In years past WD had my allegiance. However, now, with the longevity of hard drives decreasing I don't really see any sense in sticking by WD when Seagate is now offering a 5 year warranty. Western Digital now carries a miniscule 1 year warranty. I bite my thumb at 1 year warranties.

I don't really care whether the hard drives seagate makes are better than WD. It wouldn't concern me if their drives made a little more noise than a western digital. I just want to buy a product from a company that is willing to support their product. Simply put, hard drives should last more than a year. If they crash in a year and a half (under normal conditions) they should be supported without having to pay for an "extended warranty".

BTW, I just made up that jumping the sawhorse phrase. Did it sound like it could be real?

My window at work

At my previous job, I had a whole wall of windows in my office. The view was nice, though sometimes distracting. I could look out on the right side of the window and see the backside of a drug rehab education type center. Three times a day or so the druggies would swarm out of the building and smoke their cigarettes and gather in their groups by race. On the left side of the window Tango trucking employees would come out on their smoke breaks and chat with each other or talk on their cell phones. That's how I entertained myself when my mind wandered.

At the new job, I have no outside window. The two windows I have point inward. The first looks into the office on my right, which is now inhabited by a person about my age who is the latest hire. Directly in front of my desk is another window that shows the open area surrounded by all the programmer offices. I don't really have much to look at... but I managed to find a little something to entertain myself for a few seconds when I find my mind wandering.

The window that faces the inner area of our building has a slight bend to it. Toward the bottom of the glass, if you look at it just right, you can see that it's slightly curved. This means that when I peer around my monitor, I see a reflection of myself. Head, normal size. Neck, fairly normal. Anything below neckline... ginormous!

It's great. If I hold my hand at chest level and make a fist, it looks like the hulk's hand. I could smash an evil-doer in with one mighty blow. If I stretch, my biceps and arms become huge (albeit with tiny fists since they're higher up in the reflection). I'm lucky I don't grip my coffee mug harder... the mug might shatter, sending pieces flying into my normal sized eyes.

It's a little strange, I know, but it makes the dull moments bearable.

Templates and Me ... and bobby mcgee

The wonders never cease at work. Today I managed to write 5 programs (albeit simple), each complete with GUI and 4 stored procedures handling database manipulation. In Java (without templates, I suppose) I estimate that this would have taken two or three days. It may sound like an exaggeration, but Java Layouts and I never really got along, and copying and pasting 20 different stored procedures for 5 different tables would have taken time regardless of how well I knew the table definitions.

The only reason I was able to get this done was the fact that at work someone has come up with two different templates. The first handles business objects (for handling business logic) and another for generating stored procedures based on table definitions (i.e. you feed it a table, and which generic methods you want and it produces the stored procedure). This tool in hand, I cranked out programs quickly and efficiently. The only part I had to take time with creating was the GUI (form/window you see on the screen) layout and mapping screen events to business logic.

It's amazing the things you find when you work with people who are allowed to expirement with efficient methods/tools for programmers. Have I mentioned I'm glad to be where I am...?

Remakes of old songs (AKA cover songs)

I've been extremely surprised lately at the number of songs that have been remade. Now, I'm not talking about the remakes that have been coming out here in the last few years. I could care less if Jessica Simpson tramples on the soul of music and remakes songs. I'm talking about people like Eric Clapton, Otis Redding... people of their caliber.

I guess the thing that caught my attention was the fact that Crossroads, one of my favorite Eric Clapton/Cream songs, is an old blues song. I knew that a huge number of early rock songs were remakes (is that even the right word?) of old blues songs. Somewhere I heard that the Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, The Yardbirds, etc. were all inspired by American blues.

Some famous songs that are actually remakes:

• Jimi Hendrix - All Along The Watchtower - Originally Bob Dylan (who hasn't redone a dylan song)
• Aretha Franklin - Respect - Originally Otis Redding
• Black Crowes - Hard to Handle - Originally Otis Redding
• Eric Clapton/Cream - Crossroads - Originally Robert Johnson
• Madonna - Don't Tell Me - Originally Joe Henry & Originally crappy
• Nirvana - Where did you sleep last night -Originally LeadBelly
• Elvis Presley - Blue Suede Shoes - Originally Carl Perkins

After a bit of looking I found the Covers Project. It's an extremely large list of artists, showing what songs they've covered and their songs which were covered by other artists. Keep in mind though, that most of the cover songs are probably obscure. It's still interesting to find those songs which you've known well that were either cross-over hits (like rocks songs with a country remake) or such a drastic change from the original that you didn't recognize them.

GoDaddy.com commercials

I was reading an article about the NFL, ABC and GoDaddy.com trying to find common ground on an acceptable commercial for this year's Super Bowl when I came across a link for some of their previous commercials. It seems that this year they have submitted 10 possible commercials and had them all rejected.

I made it through a week without getting fired

My first week of work at the new job is over with. I didn't get fired, which means I have accomplished my first goal.

It's a really strange place, especially when compared to my last job. Just a month ago I ran the risk of being called a "Baby Diaper Programmer", answered phone calls most of the day, and programmed in an inefficient (though workable) system for the rest of the day. Here I am, in a quiet workplace with intelligent people and what seems to be an extremely efficient system for designing, coding and testing applications.

Today I learned about the existence of templates, hereafter accompanied in my head with a chorus of hallellujah. These templates were revealed to me by a 120 year old Indian man named Ishtar... well, ok, by the guy who's training me. I learned that we use a program that generates basic templates (there it went again) for forms based on a specific database layout. It was amazing. Instead of repeating the creation of the same code by hand (copying and pasting old code, but replacing the database names, field names, etc.) this program applies the template to the table you select and generates the VB code. It was splendiforous.

I'm learning about CVS (Code Versioning Systems), stored procedures, differences between Visual Studio 2003 & 2005, and picking up a new software package. It's been great.

I really hope my new employers are as impressed with me as I am with the way they work. On a related note, the people in other parts of the "campus" call the floor where I work "the promised land"... which makes Kristina Moses. I think it may actually be the land of milk and honey. There are hardly any phone calls, and those phone calls that do make it through are usually from other departments or programmers. We're pretty much left to do what we went to school for - code and design. It's really amazing the level of freedom and respect that the company gives their employees.

Here's hoping for another week without getting fired...

Supposed Mensa Test

I found a simple little brain exercise when surfing tonight. At Mensa-Test.com someone has put up some kind of supposed MENSA test script which auto-validates answers as you type. I don't know if someone just made these questions up and put a bunch of crap on the page about mensa, but whoever made the script went to a lot of effort to make sure you can't just download the javascript and check the answers:).

I do have to say that the only reason I tried to download the answers was because of number 6... to me it should be 52 cards in a pack (With jokers). However, this doesn't work. I was just gonna check my answers out... I swear.

Anywho, I got 19, which is the "genius" level... so I stopped. I think the test's reference to MENSA and the genius level at 19 is a load of hooey. I watch cartoons and think the word poo is hilarious. I got 1,2,4,7,9,11,12,13,15,18,19,21-27,32. If someone can find the others, post a comment. I'm interested to know what the answers are.

Askaninja.com

I stumbled across AskANinja while trying to find some new podcasts. There haven't been very many episodes as of yet, but they are excellent. Short, and very funny. The way nature intended.

On a seperate, but silmilar note. I've never gotten as much value from a gadget as my ipod mini. If you have a job where you're free to listen to your own music during work hours, or you've got a long commute, or you just enjoy having your music with you at odd moments - the ipod is worth every penny.

If anyone has any good podcast recommendations, please let me know. I'm looking for some non-musical content to add to my rotation.

Random thoughts...

For some reason Weird Al lyrics have been popping into my head lately. I may be going insane. This morning when I first woke up I thought about the lyrics to the song "When I was your Age"... a great song, BTW. More specifically, the part in the song where he says "My dad would whoop us every night till a quarter after twelve Then he'd get too tired and he'd make us whoop ourselves". I chuckled about that for a good 15 minutes this morning.

I'm learning VB .NET slowly, but surely at work. I've got a senior developer showing me the ropes via phone (he gets to work remotely from Tampa). The Visual Studio IDE is pretty amazing... not really for code editing, but for the GUI layout components. The one thing I dreaded about Java was having to fight with Layouts and code by hand, compile, test, re-code slightly, compile, test... always having to fight with some strange behavior that I just needed to tweak a little bit. So far, working with forms in VB has proven pretty simple and that's ultimately what I want from a layout designer. I'm sure things will get more complex, but I'm excited to be working with a new (and maybe improved) set of tools.

Lastly, I think Katie and I are going to head to Dallas this weekend for a shopping trip... and I asked HER to go. my wrist suddenly feels limp.. what's... happening.. to me... everything is FABULOUS!!!

I actually just need some more clothes for work. Since the new el jobbo seems to be more professional, I figure a few more pairs of khaki's and some polo merchandise is in order. They have a great outlet mall in Allen, TX where I usually get to go insane and get a few polos without paying the $85 premium that's attached at Dillard's. We'll see how that goes though.

Another day, another grey hair

As Katie pointed out tonight, we've got exactly three months until we're married. I, in turn, pointed out that she smelled like cabbage. It was an emotional night.

The day was much better though.

This morning Katie and I headed off to church as usual. Katie got a call from her brother (Patrick) though, saying that his new jeep had just caught fire. He was driving down the road when his jeep filled with smoke. He pulled over and yanked the dashboard off the passenger side, where the smoke was pouring out and tried to put the fire out with a towel, but was unable to do so. I believe the fire stopped only after he disconnected the battery.

After the fire incident, we went to church then went to lunch at katie's sha-sha's house in the country. We also got to watch most of the Pittsburgh/Indianapolis playoff game. It was a great game.

Katie and I came home to eat my Mom's first attempt at Moussaka (greek lasagna type dish). This wasn't the highlight of the evening of course, since Katie was just killing time until Desperate Housewives and her new favorite show, Grey's Anatomy.

She just left a few minutes ago, and I'm just writing to remember the day later... Oh, and preparing myself for my first day of work at my new job. I hope everyone's doing well. Leave some comments, people. I haven't heard from many people lately... except for the people who drop by the blog just to say how I suck - I publish their comments regardless.

Honeymoon planning

Katie's been great about all this wedding business. She's handled pretty much everything with her family, and hasn't asked me to do all that much. That's not to say that I don't want to be involved, just that she's taken it upon herself to do most everything, and I realize that's a big burden. While Katie has been running around like General Patton - cigar in mouth, barking out expletive filled orders to photographers, caterers, etc. - I was put on honeymoon duty.

Since this is the only thing I really have to do, apart from showing up and agreeing with all her decisions about colors, guests, and what type of table settings we should have, I can't screw up. After we got some great advice from Johnny and Tash about what to see/do in Austin this summer, I figured I'd ask again.

The only guidelines I received were to find something relaxing (bed & breakfast type), duration two or three days. These instructions self-destructed after I read them.

I'm looking at Colorado, Arkansas, and anywhere else Katie and I might be able to get a mountainous, green view.

My first job out of college - done.

Monday, I start work with a new company in town developing a clerk of court application. For just under a year (15 days or so I think), I've been working for a company in Shreveport developing administrative software for school boards in Louisiana.

My last job provided me with a great opportunity right out of college. It was in my home town, the company used Java as it's programming language (which I picked up through my job in college), and the pay was much, much better than what I was getting working as a research associate at Louisiana Tech.

However, a few months after beginning work there I realized that the business would better serve me if it were more of a stepping stone. I was providing phone support, programming and providing instruction to users on how to use the software. While all this is valuable experience, it's extremely stressful to be under development deadlines and have to support all kinds of questions from users in the same timeline (with a lack of understanding in moving those deadlines back).

I also saw 5 programmers and 2 secretaries leave, while we gained 4 programmers and 3 secretaries (at different times of course). In a company of 15 people this turnover tooks its toll on all the employees. It was an extreme turnover that wasn't explained in detail (read: skirted) when I asked about the turnover in my interview.

While the turnover was bothersome, the real issue that caused my realization that I needed to get out was the career opportunity provided there. Of the few employees that were around for over 5 year, all of them were doing the exact same thing as they were 5-10 years ago. Answering calls, programming and going to user meetings periodically, with pay that I was close to making after only a year. That's something that I can't understand.

Don't get me wrong, I'm extremely grateful to have had the opportunity that I did. It was a very good first job and I think I've improved myself and learned a good deal about programming and about life in general (i.e. the business, financial, and personal side of being an adult). I'm just glad to be moving on with a new opportunity that sounds like a dream compared to my previous job.

I don't like that I left all my co-workers behind. They all seemed happy for me though. A few of my friends from work went out with Katie and I last night to celebrate and we had a great time... We ate at Macaroni Grill, talked about jobs and such, went to play some pool, then ended up back at Katie's apartment to play some Xbox 360.

...I'm getting off topic though. I'm extremely excited about starting a new job, glad that everyone was good to me at my last job, and I hope that everything works out for my old workmates.

My view from work

I recently decided to raise the blinds in my office at work to let in a little more light. It may correspond with my mood now that I'm almost out of shawshank, but I'm not much for symbolism. I had to take a picture of my first office out of college though, since I plan to never intentionally think of the job again after leaving. Here it is in all it's glory.

Apple's MacBook Pro

Mac's notebooks will always be a luxury item in my eyes. As with all luxury items, though, I can dream.

Apple announced their new intel-based MacBook Pro today. Since engadget has been covering the MacWorld expo so well, I'll just let their post about the macbook (with shiny pics) do all the splaining.

In addition, the new intel-based macs will all be able to dual boot with windows. Now that's just plain amazing.

Slate

I'd heard of slate.com before, but never actually read it. Today, however, I stumbled across an article there about blockbuster (the video store) that was pretty dern interesting. They had a chance to seal a pretty sweet deal with the movie studios regarding DVD's, but chose not to. Hasn't worked out so well for them.

It's an interesting read.

The best picture Katie's ever taken

Originally, I thought I'd taken this picture. It turns out that the Katie took it. Shortly after we came back from our Austin trip, we paid a visit to Billy and Emme to see their new baby boy, Liam. With a bit of prodding, Katie whipped out the camera and started snapping pics of Liam while her Sha-Sha (Grandma) held him.

Free photo prints

I know I've mentioned fatwallet.com on this blog a few times, but I have to mention them again.

Taylor recently went on a ski trip to Washington and upon returning managed to get his digital pictures developed for free. Fatwallet.com provided the means for him to do so.

This page (actually a thread on their forums) lists a large group of different promotions in which you can get free prints as a new customer (no obligation to buy first in all cases that I've seen so far).

So, enjoy. Take advantage of these promotions if you've got a bunch of digital pics waiting around to be printed.

We done registered.

It's getting close to wedding day, which means we're on high alert ultra - zero hour around here. This weekend we were to register for our wedding gifts... or die. Well, maybe it wasn't quite that serious, but I knew I would at least face some kind of mild torture.

We chose Bed, Bath and Beyond and Target as the stores and thought we'd be able to take care of both stores yesterday. However, as I have the energy and patience of an 80 year old man, I petered out after about two hours of looking at towels, pillow shams, and doilies. A deal was brokered to get some food (for god's sake) and just go home, then visit target today.

I enjoyed it for the first hour and a half, and enjoyed running around the store pointing the laser at people from around corners doing my best james bond impersonation. After a few run-ins with BB&B security and a lecture from an elderly lady about lasers causing cataracts, I decided to just scan little kids. They put up less of a fight.

Anywho, we registered for all kinds of stuff. Towels, appliances, lamps, pictures frames, and even a spiderman toilet seat lid - just to make sure everyone knew this was our list, not someone elses they'd printed by mistake.

I'm glad that's over with, and glad Katie's happy with the items we registered for. Now, I only have a few items left on my list of wedding to-do's. I need to get fitted for a tux, help my parents plan the rehearsal dinner and pick the honeymoon destination. That's definitely not bad when compared to what Katie has left to do:(.

Web Addiction/Useless surfing time

I've found that after lunch I have a hard time resisting going to my favorite sites. I know I should be dedicated all my energy to working on my current project, and I am dedicated to doing that. I just can't seem to force myself to go without my sites while I'm at work... though I know the deals and entertaining news stories will be there when I get off work.

Tonight Katie had class (that she'd forgotten about), which meant that I was free to do whatever I wanted. I decided (after an hour of Xbox 360 and another two hours of the Ronin DVD) that I should be productive and start looking around for ideas for our honeymoon. I looked around for a few minutes, and my mind began to wander again... and I ended up here, ironically enough. Looking at an article about employing drastic measures to prevent yourself from being able to surf instead of working.

I like the idea of preventing the surfing, but I don't like the idea that I can't just stop going to those sites... that's scary... speaking of scary, as I type Katie is griping at me about keeping the toilet seat down at all times (except while I'm using the restroom). Apparently, it's my job. Anywho, right... I'm addicted to the internet. I don't like it. I'm going to try to fix that, and stay focused at work.

New Year - New Everything

Happy New Year to everyone! I know that's a little belated, but I haven't been able to post much lately... mainly because all the things that were going on, especially relating to work, were hush hush for a while. Today, however, I resigned, so there's no need for the hush hush stuff anymore.

This past Friday, I got a job offer from another software company here in town. So, this morning when I got in to work I handed in my resignation letter, told them I'd be around for two weeks and that was that.

I went through three interviews: a phone interview, a technical interview and another face-to-face behavioral interview.

Two quick notes about the interviews... The technical interview involved an interview and a set of three programming exercises. It turned out that the third question, writing an sql statement to pick duplicate records (check numbers) from an example table of check data, was almost identical to a problem I'd encountered almost a week before at work. Before encountering that problem, I'd never really thought about how I could solve the problem. It's funny how things like that work.

Second note - I didn't think I was going to get the job. The third interview left me with a funny feeling. I was asked to clarify some of the questions I answered in the first interview, which was strange to me to begin with. However, on the last day of the week in which they said I'd be contacted, I heard from them...

I'm extremely excited about the new opportunity. I believe I'll be working on a Clerk of Court software package with the new company. The programming languages over there are all .NET based, which means I'll get to pick up a new language or two. I also get a nice little raise in addition to REAL BENEFITS. That's right, after a job where I PAID $215/mo. to get health insurance I will now have health, dental, life, and a good lump of money to go back to school each year. Life is sweet.

In other news, Katie and I are continuing to work on our wedding plans. We're both ready to be together. This two houses business is just not working very well. We're constantly driving, constantly showing up or leaving at one of the houses... figuring out car situations. It's a hassle. I just want to be under the same roof, with all my stuff close to all her stuff... with some of her stuff making it to salvation army.

I guess the last piece of news involves a little side project I'm excited about at the moment. I had an idea for a web site a little while back and I enlisted Katie to pick a domain name for it. It's a secret for now, first because I'm not sure I'll keep it, but secondly because the title gives it all away. I hope it will drive a little revenue and that I'll be able to stay excited about it before it peters out.

OH, I almost forgot. Katie and I got two more Xbox 360's Saturday night. One to keep and play (I couldn't resist. I'm weak). The other to try to return to amazon.com with the games we still have, in addition to the 2 games I sold which I will have to repurchase. I played it most of the night tonight and it was fantabulous.