Three-Letter Acronyms & Four-Letter Words

Jeremy and I are at the office squaring away a few things for a minor upgrade that is happening in the morning.

Some disk space is being added to a server, but we are taking the opportunity to test a fail-over to the redundant box.

We will be leaving soon.

Thanks to John for letting the dogs out earlier.

Gina is doing well, she walked into the office the today. Apparently her hotel and the office she is working from in the Philippines is not far away, I think she said 15 minutes. But she apparently got turned around at one point (she was on the phone with me at the time, not sure if it was my fault, but it was a little disconcerting to her hear talk about how she was lost and that she would call me back).

She didn't call me back, but she did send me an email and some IMs to let me know that she had made it to the office successfully.

Laterz

I've had my headphones on for the better part of every day for the last couple of months, drawing strength and focus from my eclectic taste in music.

The other day on the drive into work (not with headphones on), Counting Crows managed to find it's way into heavy rotation on the Nano's shuffle.

And that is when it came blasting through the speakers of my beloved Corolla...

"I guess the winter makes you laugh a little slower,
Makes you talk a little lower about the things you could not show her
And its been a long December and theres reason to believe
Maybe this year will be better than the last"

The particular part of the verse, is the 'Long December, and Maybe this year will be better than the last".

2007 was not a BAD year, not at all.

But 2008 is looking to be a better year. We are getting quite a bit done at work, rocking and rolling.

However, it was most definitely a LONG December. Because of deadlines and customer meetings, I had to stay down in Texas, while Gina enjoyed the cold, cold weather of Michigan. But December was definitely full of long days and nights.

January, is turning out to be about as busy. I had been hoping to take some time off towards the end of the month, but it is looking like mid February is the earliest I will be able to take any real time off.

I definitely want to get a short break from work before March.

Jaduka will be exhibiting at ETech, SXSW, and EComm, these shows are basically all back-to-back, starting on March 3rd and running through the 14th. I am not sure If I will be attending EComm, I would definitely like to as this is the replacement show that was organized in an amazingly short amount of time to replace ETel.

I really enjoyed ETel last year, too bad it got cancelled.

SXSW will be a good show, I really enjoyed attending it last year. And because of the fact that it is held here in Austin, it isn't quite like a regular tradeshow, seeing as I get to sleep in my own bed. Of course, that can sometimes be a bad thing, having to drive home tends to put a damper on an open bar at the various trade show parties.

We will also be exhibiting at the Web 2.0 Expo, in April.

I had the pleasure of attending the Web 2.0 Expo last year as an actual attendee vs an exhibitor. The difference may seem subtle, but for anyone who has ever worked a trade show booth before, you know the difference.

I found the conference sessions at the Web 2.0 Expo extremely informational and useful.

Well, it is late I wanted to get a quick blog post in before I took off from the office.

Oh yeah, did I forget to mention that I was still at the office.

(I ran home and let out the dogs around 5:30, but I need to get home and feed them.)

Laterz

Just letting everyone out there know that I am still alive, just busy.

Been getting to bed at a reasonable time, for the most part. However, the last couple of nights I have been up a bit later than I would like and that has resulted in me being the LATE one.

Not this morning, I beat Jeremy into the office.

I was exhausted this weekend and spent a good chunk of it napping. Gina had a cold a few days ago, I think I might have caught that bug too. I tend to get wiped out when I have a cold. But a weekend of rest seemed to help immensely.

Well, I have a packed day of conference calls and meetings.

So I best get back to finishing up this paperwork before others start pouring into the office.

Laterz

Well, not like medieval times or anything, more like high school.

The Jaduka crew is pulling extra hours the last couple of weeks to help make sure we make our deadlines.

I have been getting into the office pretty consistently at 7:20 or so in the morning and not leaving until almost 7:00 at night. I have also, been working through lunch.

"So why does this feel like high school?", You might be wondering.

Well, as part of the drama group, when we were getting into the final stretches of putting together a show (be it the spring musical or the fall play), we would end up going from what one might consider light after hours working on the show into "Night Rehearsals".

This meant that immediately after school we would begin working on the show and I don't think we left until about 9pm or so. (The memory is a bit fuzzy on that part.)

Parents would bring in dinner for us during night rehearsals so that we wouldn't lose time going out and grabbing food.

The whole drama group came together to bring the show around, usually the sets were looking pretty much like the sets during night rehearsals, there would be some painting and construction left, but it wasn't a bare stage.

Anyway, lately I kind of feel like I am back there.

Back to the grind.

Laterz

The last few times I have used my home desktop computer, the UPS (un-interruptible power supply) has beeped at me for no reason. And the other morning when I was up early using the computer (playing a quick game of Civ4) the damn thing beeped at me and then just shutdown.

I believe it has reached the end of it's life.

Luckily, during last year's holiday season they had the same model on sale, so I bought an extra. At the time I thought I was going to be running some extra "servers" here in the old home office and it is just such a pain to have a server reboot because of a "bounce" in power.

I just finished changing the UPS units around, so we will see what how this works out.

This past week was a whirlwind. There was the three days in Dallas. Which originally was going to be two days in Dallas and three days in Longview. However, the meeting in Longview on Weds, was moved back to Dallas and I went home to Austin on Wednesday night.

From now until the end of the year, we have several different deadlines and deliverables. I will be rolling up the proverbial sleeves (and likely the literal ones too) and putting my nose to the grindstone to make sure we make the deadlines we have.

Next week is going to be a lot of planning and writing. I already expect that I will be requesting additional help. However, without the written plan, it is hard to make that request and even harder to coordinate after the request has been answered.

Well, I am going to catch up on some email.

Laterz.

The nice folks over at Austin Vision Associates put up with me calling them once (or several times) a day about where my glasses were the last couple of days.

In my defense the day that I called them three times was yesterday and that was because I was told the day before that they would be in on Thursday. So I called around like 10 I think and then again around 1pm. However, they accidentally hung-up on me, then my boss called so I called them back around 2pm.

Anyway, I would have appreciated if they could have said "Your glasses will be ready on Friday." that way I would be have set my expectations. But on the same note, they told me they thought they would have been ready earlier as well.

I am very glad to have my glasses back. When she called and told me that they were ready, she jokingly said "Now, please make sure to get a spare pair of glasses in the within the next three to six months."

I said that I will and I am due for brand new glasses (frames and lenses) at the beginning of the year. So trust me I will be getting new glasses.

In my defense, I have always kept my last pair of glasses around for as an emergency pair. Except, after getting this pair. I almost immediately proceeded to lose the pair from just before this pair. I mean, I dropped them off to have the anti-reflective coating redone (apparently there had actually been a recall, as it was scratching up real bad). I got them back and about a day or two later, gone.

Who knows what happened to them. Sucks too, they were titanium frames, so the frame could bend quite a bit without having to worry about ruining them.

Anyway, I can see again. Which is good, because last night at the office here, I couldn't bear wearing my old sunglasses anymore, so I pulled the monitor to within about 10 inches of my face so that I could read the screen without having to hunch over the desk.

Well, it is officially Labor day weekend and I am still at the office. I need to pack it up and go.

Laterz

Once again I am faced with the fact that I have neglected my blogging. Course, I am not the only one

Work has been busier and busier, so I haven't had the opportunities that I usually do to log during lunch. I mean, if I managed my lunch hour a little bit better I could watch clips of The Daily Show, eat my sandwich and blog. Maybe I will try that tomorrow, course I still haven't quite learned to chew bubblegum and walk at the same time.

Jeremy is back in town.

He picked up a copy of Halo2 the other day at Fry's. We saw some videos on YouTube on some pretty impressive Lego Mindstorms the other day, so yesterday we went to Toy's R Us to see if they had any kits. Well, as with most sought after items Toys R Us was found to be lacking what we wanted.

Anyway, off and on over the last few days we have been playing Halo 2 after work, I have been lucky enough to beat him more often than not. However, he is getting better, while I am more or less just staying at the same skill level. However, neither of us are anywhere near being what one would probably call "Good".

I bought Stratego a few weeks back. We played a couple of games of it last night, I won them both. I hadn't played that game in probably 15 years or so.

We played a game of Scrabble after that, Jeremy beat me.

I brought my laptop home tonight and decided that I would boot up and blog a little while I am on the couch. Unfortunately, I am fairly I cannot bring myself to work on the specs that I should work tonight. I have been writing up specs for the last two days. While not overly, overly detailed specs it has taken a toll on the old mind. Especially since I have been fielding other requests here and there, interruption while writing specs or documentation tends to be more of a drain than one would usually think.

Anyway, I brought the laptop home thinking I would work a little bit, but that doesn't look like it is going to be the case.

I bought "Babylon 5: The Lost Tales" the other day. I had seen that there was a new Bablyon 5 DVD a few weeks ago and had spent the last few trips to Target and Wal-Mart looking for it. I finally found it at Best Buy, otherwise I was going to have to buy it online.

I have it on the TV right now. So far the storyline of the first lost tale is building, nothing critical has happened yet. I am not sure how the tale is going to play out just yet.

Anyway. Let me tell y'all a little bit about what happeneed this past weekend.

I dragged Gina out of the house on Saturday. (Pretty literally.)

The original idea was to drag her out of the house grab breakfast and maybe see SuperBad. However, that isn't how it played out.

We ended up going to The Salt Lick for lunch. Now, going to the Salt Lick from our place up here in Cedar Park is like an all day adventure, particularly since we didn't leave until about 10:30 almost 11:00. We had a good time at Salt Lick, we stopped on the way to pick up some Beer and Wine Coolers, since the Salt Lick is BYOB.

On the way out of the Salt Lick I saw that they had a small easel setup with these little maps to some wineries around there.

One of the little maps had something interesting on it "High Quality Olive Oil".

Gina and I have had some great olive oil from this place up north, a Spanish olive oil. (I can't spell the name of the place, but it is like Fugarelli's.)

So, we decided that we should follow the map and see where the adventure leads us. We ended up at this little ranch where they make their own olive oil, cold press, right there on the premises. They even grow most of their own olives. It is a working cattle ranch that also grows olives and grapes (for wine), they make their own wine on-site as well.

The olive oil was fantastic. I mean it is hard to describe, but as cheap as I am let me tell you I had no problem paying $19.99 for a bottle of olive oil that is probably about 1/8 the amount of olive oil that I get from CostCo for $10 or $12.

Anyway, they had some very interesting boutique type stuff too, mustards, jellies. However, the interesting thing was the balsamic vinegar, they infuse it with pears or lemons. We bought the one with pears. We also bought a couple of bottles of wine, a bottle of Sangria and a bottle of Tejanti.

It was a fun time, we made it home at about 5:30.

Well, I am getting sleepy, so best that I call it quits on the blogging for tonight.

Till tomorrow, while I blog, eat and watch The Daily Show.

Laterz

I park in about the same spot in the garage almost everyday. And a lot of the time, I park next to this blue Honda sedan (I think it is a Honda) that has the license plate "GLOBBY". I have often wondered what "GLOBBY" stood for.

Today, I got my answer.

"'Glow Baby', except Texas only allows six letters."

While I was getting my stuff out of the car, the owner of the blue sedan was getting her stuff out of her trunk. I seized the opportunity to quench the idle curiosity that has been smoldering in the back of my mind for about the last year or so that we have been in this office building.

Mind you I didn't ask what "Glow Baby" stood for. That I guess will smolder in the back of my mind until I run into the owner of the blue sedan again. Which, could be forever, but I'm getting ahead of the story a little bit.

After answering my question about her license plate, the lady asked me "So are you're a Spartan fan, did you go to MSU?"

I told her that I attended MSU for a little bit then came down here to Texas. She informed me that she grew up in Ann Arbor, I told her that I grew up in Lansing. She told me that I didn't have to worry about a University of Michigan rivalry, that she went to Notre Dame. To which, I of course brought out the fact that MSU had trounced Notre Dame for quite a while. We did have a pretty good winning streak there for a bit.

She has been in Texas for 8 years, oddly enough she didn't think she was going to be in the Lone Star state for this long. I remember that I originally thought I was only going to be down here for 6-12 months.

On the way into the building, we briefly chatted about the fact that Michigan has no real software industry and that neither of us have or want anything to do with the car industry.

The reason that I may never know what "Glow Baby" means, apparently whatever firm she works for (I am guessing Convio, as she got off on the 2nd floor), is moving to the Dominion office space, which has just opened up a bunch of offices. She said that they have been growing so fast that they have just filled up the office space here in the building.

It was an interesting chance meeting that satisfied some idle curiosity and at the same tame further reinforced that Michigan's greatest export is People.

Back to the grind.

Laterz

Well, I'm feeling way better than I have in the last week.

However, I am still not 100%. I'm guessing that will come tomorrow or Monday morning. I still have some nasal congestion and a bit of a sinus headache.

Gina has been doing laundry all day. I on the other hand have been sleeping a good portion of the day away, but being sick and all that is probably a good thing.

She still has a wicked cough. However, I think that is mostly related to the dry air and her being allergic to Texas. Yes, I said it the whole state of Texas.

I have to get a couple of hours of work done tonight before I retire back to bed. To help me accomplish this I have put in one of my favorite DVDs, High Fidelity.

I know what some of you might be asking. "How can he work and watch a DVD?"

I can't. However, I am not actually watching the movie. I'm more or less just listening to it. Normally, I have my headphones on and listen to music while I work (at work). At home, I crank up the speakers and listen to MP3s off the computer. However, right now I feel more like listening to a movie that I already know.

I have found that if I am listening to new music or trying to listen to a movie I don't know, I end up getting distracted. If I listen to music or movies that I have heard or watched enough to know it almost completely by heart, then I can ignore it.

I don't like silence. Unless it is out in the country, you know like camping, that is different. But silence in the home, it is just unnerving.

I picked High Fidelity because I wanted to watch it the other day and Gina wasn't feeling like it. For some reason I have had "Top 5 Lists" on my mind lately.

Well, I best get back to working, so that I can get a good night's sleep tonight.

Laterz

That is right, I said the funk (again).

Gina was feeling pretty decent yesterday evening and in comparison to the last three days, extremely good this morning.

Not the case for me. I stayed home from work, instead putting my desk to some productive use that didn't involve taking over the galaxy.

It hit me last night while I was watching Rome. I mean I had felt a general blah set over me for the last couple of days, but I didn't feel really sick until about 8:30 - 9:00 last night.

All of a sudden my head felt stuffy and heavy and I had the sudden urge to sleep.

Gina had been fairly sick since Thursday. She kept getting worse, so she went to the doctor. The diagnosis was that Gina had an ear infection and a sinus infection. They gave her a prescription for some antibiotics and set her on her way.

I don't think I will need those. However, I think I am going to be turning in early tonight, probably around 9pm or so.

I was fairly productive today. However, not as productive as I would have liked. Thus, I am going to spend the next couple of hours trying to rectify that.

I am drinking my tea (and plenty of water). Hopefully I can kick the funk before tomorrow night rolls around. I am supposed to go to an Austin PHP Meetup at 7pm. Not to mention that I am also supposed to go to Dallas on Thursday.

Ok, I best get back to it.

Laterz.