Three-Letter Acronyms & Four-Letter Words

Plane touched down around 5:40 or so, if memory serves. (on Friday night)

I had to stop and get some food for dinner on the way home, for both me and the dogs.

Walked in the door about 7 pm or so and was greeted by the same tiny terriers that are always happy to see me, whether I have been gone a week or just five minutes.

We stayed up late Friday night and slept in on Saturday morning.

The dogs and I are having a good time.

For those of you who don't know, Gina, my wife is in Manila (Philippines). She will be there the rest of the week, then she is likely to be heading off to Dubai (that plan is still in the air apparently.)

I spoke with her on Saturday and Sunday night. She called me using her VoIP phone that she got from NetworkIP, one of the many cool projects that NetworkIP has to offer.

She is having a good time so far. I can't wait to hear the tales about what the Italian joint, one of five restaurants in the hotel, had to offer. I'm curious if it is a traditional Italian, or some sort of Asian fusion or something.

I have to admit, I am a bit envious. I haven't had any really exciting travel for work in quite a while. However, I did have the opportunity to spend a week in both Taipei and in Paris. I hope she has a great time, takes lots of pictures, and brings me back something cool!

I will keep ya posted on news from the far east.

Back to the grind,
Laterz

She made it back from her first trip to California.

Not just her first trip to California for NetworkIP, I mean her first trip to CA, ever.

Course, now that I think of it I have never been to CA for just fun, only business (with a little fun mixed in).

In general I don't like to travel. But when I do travel for business I like it better when I get a chance to take at least 1 day and see the sites.

Well, I really need to go and pass out now.

Laterz

At the NetworkIP's xmas party there is a raffle with fabulous prizes. It is called the Angle Tree raffle. You buy tickets and give the money goes to help needy families in Longview. A good cause. I try to buy about $100 in tickets every year. The more tickets I buy the better chance of Gina and I winning a prize right?

Well, This year the Angel tree prizes were pretty good. However, the big prize on the Angel Tree was a stainless steel grill (we already have one, thanks to my Pops, as a wedding gift), needless to say not something we need. One year it was a Lazy Boy, now that is something I can use.

The CEO and Managing Partner also tend to help out the 4H kids, by purchasing livestock at the annual auction. One year they did cows and another it was cows and chickens I think. This year, Pete, CEO, decided to go with a "Grand Champion Hog". And in doing so, he had lots of extra meat. So as a bit of a gag prize, you could win 50 lbs of pork. Roasts, Ribs, Sausage and Chops.

Well, I won 50 lbs of pork on the Angel Tree. Given that the average price of pork is about $2. I broke even on the raffle. Well, I got some good looking chops and Pete was kind enough to throw into my bundle 2 racks of ribs (they feel like baby back ribs) and quite a number of chops. So all in all I likely got about $120 worth of meat.

However, the raffle isn't all about the fabulous prizes. Course, it sucks to win nothing at all. That has happened. But in the end I still get that wonderful feeling of giving money to a good cause.

We also "won" $150 in toys r' us gift cards. However, we don't have much of a use for those really. So we traded them and some cash to a co-worker who had a $500 home depot gift card. Which, obviously we can always use.

The game last year was sort of like "White Elephant" which is where you get a gift, but you can then play the game and take the gift of the person before you or keep yours. This year, it was "Deal or no Deal". It looked fun. However, it took quite a while for a game to be played.

Back to the point of this post. The Pork!

Word got out that I won some meat. I had plans already to smoke some of it this weekend for dinner for Gina, John and I. However, since word got out and Eryn (graphic artist) had enjoyed it when I smoked pork for the Dallas office, for the Jaduka Launch, she asked if I was going to bring some in.

This request sort of snowballed from left overs into a potluck luncheon.

Unfortunately, I didn't take the pork out of the deep freeze in time for it to thaw out. This meant a trip to Cost Co. I am sort of kicking myself though, I should have checked the ads. HEB had pork shoulder (Also known as Boston Butt) on sale. I could have saved $0.20/lb. Which would have been about $3.50 or so. None the less.

The smoking is just about done. I am going to wrap it in foil and put it into the oven in a few minutes. The temp outside is making it a little bit more troublesome to keep the smoker at a constant temperature. I might have to revive the plan to build a brick smoker. Be easier to trap the heat in a brick one vs a metal one.

Anyway.

The x-mas party was a great time. I enjoyed meeting a few new people and seeing some coworkers that I don't see as often these days. The drive to Longview is a bit of a pain, but getting together for some food and fun is always a good thing.

Laterz.

After the NetworkIP golf outing, I think I might now be a golfer.

For quite some time my clubs have just hung on the wall in the garage. I took them out to the driving range from time to time. I never really had any times for a lesson. And since I had no lessons and never played before, I usually didn't get invited to play.

So the outing was fun. I learned a few things from my partner, Chad, a co-workers husband. Most important thing is to keep your head down. Don't look up, keep it down.

I hit the driving range across the street in an effort not to completely suck before actually going out onto the field. I wanted to try out the different clubs and figure out which ones I should use. Conclusion, Irons 4 - 9, avoid the 3 & 5 wood and the driver. The 5 & 6 were my favorites during the game of golf.

I turned out to be a half decent putter. Putt-Putt rules!!!

We were playing a two-man scramble, that was until one of opponents on the other team had to leave. His wife is pregnant and wasn't feeling well, so he had to run home and take care of her. So we turned into a three-man scramble. This means that all team members tee-off and then you play your next swing from the best ball position. You keep that up until you finish off the hole.

We took 2nd Place I think, shooting like a 72 (might have been a 74). I would likely have shot a 100-110 if it was just me. (70 is par)

I look forward to going out and playing another round.

Oh yeah, except for the fact that it got freezing about 3/4 of the way through the game. I mean it was getting to be nice like mid 50s. Then the clouds rolled in and it dropped like 5-10 degrees and the wind picked up. It made playing kind of not fun.

Well back to the grind.

Laterz

Gina and I are in Longview, TX. We came up a day early, tomorrow is the company x-mas party. Since Gina works for the company this makes it a bit easier for us to come up a day early, as she doesn't have to take time off. We both just worked from the Longview office.

Tomorrow morning is the 1st annual NetworkIP golf outing.

I bought some clubs a few years ago. However, I have never played a 'round' of golf. I've been the driving range before and did ok. I can hit the ball but not extremely far.

I offered to participate if they needed people to fill the slots. Apparently, they had slots to fill, thus I will be playing my first round of golf tomorrow.

Should be interesting. I hope I don't completely suck.

And since there is an unusual cold front that has come through town, I made sure to bring my thermal underwear. I didn't want to wear my leather coat, I am pretty sure it would mess up my swing.

I hope to make it to the driving range before the games start at 9am. So I best hit the sack.

Laterz.

I just can't seem to shake this feeling of being tired.

I normally try to get to bed around 10 or 11. This was easy when I was sticking to the schedule of no caffeine after the noon hour.

That hasn't been the case lately. With the deadline for the launch of Jaduka coming up, I have been burning the midnight oil the last few days. I crawled into bed close to 2am last night.

I got the blog software installed on our shiny, speedy new web servers that our IT group put together in a miraculously short time.

"Once more into the breach, dear friends..." is how I feel lately.

I will be in Dallas all next week for the launch of Jaduka. So what does Shakespeare have to do with Dallas & Jaduka? Not a whole lot. But I remember back in high school when we were getting close to opening day for the musical or play. We would hunker down, focus on what needed to be completed, got a little more serious about it all. We would start to have night rehearsals. Parents would bring in food (potluck style) for us so that we could eat dinner and get back to learning lines, sewing costumes, constructing sets.

It has been about 14 years since my first round of night rehersals and 10 years since my last. I don't remember everything, but I remember that it was usualy about 2 weeks before the opening night, maybe 3. I remember that the various teams really came together during night rehearsals. Comradery between everyone grew, rivalries more often than not would be cast aside in the interest of the common goal.

So I am looking forward to spending some time with the Jaduka team in Dallas. Not sure if my mom will be able to drop off casserole though, maybe she could overnight one. From what I hear we are going to try play some a running game of Monopoly (or two). I look forward to taking all the monopoly money away from my co-workers.

It should be an interesting week. Our company is fairly distributed between the three corporate offices of NetworkIP. Two graphic artists and myself are down here in Austin. The President, VP of Marketing, Director of Marketing, Director of Sales, and Market Development Manager are all in Dallas. And we have an Account Executive in Longview, TX.

The bulk of the call processing and API development staff for NetworkIP is down here in Austin. The Dallas office is primarily Sales and Marketing. The Longview office is the headquarters and houses the bulk of the staff. Support, Operations, Accounting, IT, and application/web development lives in Longview, TX.

It makes for an interesting triangle setup when you look at it on a map. Dallas is 180 miles from Austin and 120 miles from Longview. Austin is about 260-300 miles, depending upon which way you got to get there, 260 straight shot, 300 if you go to Dallas and hang a right.

Well, I best get back to the grind.

"Once more into the breach, dear friends..."

laterz