Vacation

Less than a week till we leave for vacation, which of course means... packing! Ok... so I tried to be excited, but as many know, packing is probably my least favorite thing to do. It'll be worth the effort, because i think it's going to be a pretty nice trip, but... this is going to be a long week.

On to the good stuff... We're leaving friday for a week at hilton head with my family. Should be a fun trip, and at the very least it will be nice to spend time with family.

Moved in

The move went pretty smoothly, and we're excited to be at the new house. There are still a few more things that need to be done (but that will always be the case).

We were able to get a second coat of paint on the laundry room last week, that helped a lot. While on the topic of paint, we had decided to go with Behr paint, which was slightly more expensive than some others, but I think it was well worth the cost... only one room needed a full second coat, but we're pretty sure it only had the base coat from the builders 10 years ago... We did have to go over small areas a second time in most rooms, but even then it didn't take much work and the final results look great.

Also, we got our new washer and dryer hooked up. We had initially wanted to get a front loading set, but we realized that they are several inches deeper than a top load, and we didn't have much extra space. After looking around a bit more, we found the Fisher&Paykel top loading set (top loading washer and top loading dryer). Although it wasn't what we had originally been thinking, it now seems like a much better choice, and even if we had more space, I think we'd still prefer them.

Overall, it was a great weekend, productive, but also a lot of fun.

Moving

We're finally moving into the new house this weekend, after spending the last few weeks getting stuff cleaned up and painted. We're just about done painting, just one more coat on the laundry room and we're good to go. At this point we've already cleaned the house a bit, painted 3 bathrooms, a bedroom, the kitchen, and put one coat on the laundry room.

We've also been able to move quite a bit of the smaller stuff over, so this weekend we just need to take the furniture and the last of the small stuff. I'm really excited to be moving in, but I also really hate packing, so this is going to be a tough week, but it should be completely worth the work.

At work I've finished my big project, (after about 7-8 months work) and I'm able to start working on something new, which is great because now I have more than one thing to work on (I'm still maintaining the last project), and it's always nice to have a bit of change.

We found a house!

After looking for awhile for a house, and seeing about 40 different
places, we found one we love.
A week or so ago we saw it and made an offer, and they accepted it!

We're still waiting for the results of the inspection yesterday, but everything seemed pretty good as we went through, so I'm not expecting any major issues.

been a busy month

Well... It's been a while, so I'll just do a quick summary.
1. We're house-hunting.
2. I joined twitter.
3. Busy at work.


1. We decided to start looking a few weeks ago and have narrowed down the search quite a bit already. Also, it has (and will continue to be) a learning process. Although I had a basic understanding of how it all works, there is a lot that you don't know until you really start spending time.

2. I had heard about twitter a few years ago, but I never really felt like it would be all that useful. Recently though I decided that it would be worth having even if I don't personally share much, so I took the plunge. I probably won't tweet much... but here's my profile chills42

3. I've been working on a project for a few months now, and I'm getting pretty close to finishing up the current portion. As such, there is a little more pressure/motivation to finish it up. Not only would it be nice to have it done and be able to move on, it would also look good for my team. Hopefully I'll be able to finish it up pretty soon.

Redesign

The website redesign is finally finished. There's still more changes in the works, but it's nice to have all the major changes done. If you'd like to see the new design (as well as a few pictures) here's a link http://www.chills42.com

Delays

I had originally hoped that I could get the site redesign finished by New Years... but that didn't happen. While I'm very close to having it ready, it's not quite there yet.

I have finished the basics though:
- The new style is nearly finished.
- My blog has been redesigned.
- The site has been moved to the new host (http://nearlyfreespeech.net)
- The domain transfer is complete.

Which leaves me with:
- Finishing the new style.
- Moving Amy's blog to the site.
- Updating content (this is partially finished).

Chicago

This has been a pretty good day.
My mom's Christmas present was a trip to Chicago to see the Phantom of
the Opera! I've always liked the music, but it's a lot better
watching it live.

Also, thanks to everyone who sent birthday cards/text messages! I had
a good time yesterday spending time with family.

Christmas break

I always enjoy the Christmas season, and it's even better when you can
take time to relax and enjoy the company of family.

Today I was able to spend the day catching up with family that I don't
see very often. I hope that everyone is able to take time to enjoy
those people in your life that are truely important this holiday season.

Vacation

Well... Today's my last day before vacation. We're leaving tonight
after work to go up to south bend and michigan for the holidays.

Happy holidays and safe travel!

Changes

So... quite a bit of change currently in progress, first of all, I am in the process of updating the (badly out of date) website, and as a part of that change, moving to a new web host. 2mhost.com has been good for the past few years, but I've decided to move to nearlyfreespeech.net. Although there's been a lot of changes in the last year (wedding, graduation, new job, moving), the site hasn't really had it's fair share of change, so the goal is to have it updated, moved, and live with all the latest news by the end of the year.

This seems like a fairly good goal, which is on schedule so far, and should work out well assuming that the domain transfer goes smoothly...

It's been a while...

So, yet again, coming back for a long overdue update.

The job is going fairly well, and I'm looking forward to a nice holiday break coming up here in a few weeks, otherwise, there's not a lot going on.

I got to watch the Colts game last night, which turned out to be a pretty bad game (the Ravens didn't have a chance). Even though the game wasn't that good, it was nice to watch. Also, Amy and I did christmas presents early this year (new iphones). They're pretty amazing phones... I've been pretty impressed. They do have their shortcomings (crippled bluetooth and lack of a hard disk mode being the most annoying), but overall they're easy to use, and do just about everything you'd expect.

That's it for now, but hopefully I'll be updating this a little more often now.

Recent events

All around... things have been pretty good lately. Not spectacular by any means, but good.
Last week we went to the local library and got our library cards, so now we've got a good supply of free books and movies! Other than that, last week was actually a bit dull. We spent labor day at Amy's parents house with her family, which was cool, and I got to meet her cousin(I think), so the weekend was much better. So far this week has been ok, but I haven't been sleeping well... I'm sure after a few days like this though I'll have a good nights sleep... I'll definitely be tired!

As far as work goes, I'm still enjoying it, there are times (like when I'm looking through log files) that I don't enjoy, but overall it's been good so far!

Weather

The weather in Indy has been pretty awful for the past week or so, really really hot and muggy, but today it cooled down quite a bit. I'm sure the rain last evening helped. It's still fairly hot, but much nicer than it has been.

Spy Bill

I usually am not too interested in politics, but the recent "Spy Bill" has me interested, simply because I am not sure that such a bill is even constitutional. It seems to me that if it was illegal to spy on US Citizens before, that even if there is a way to pass a bill that allows such action, that bill is probably unethical, and is most likely unconstitutional.

Work

It has taken a few weeks, but I really feel like I'm starting to do some real, useful work now, which makes me even happier about this job. I've felt like it's a good choice from the beginning, but not I am really starting to enjoy what I'm doing. I still wonder sometimes whether this will be something that will last, or if I'll eventually get bored with it, but as for now I love my job and am looking forward to gettting more involved!

change

This past week or two has just been crazy, between graduation, moving, and starting a new job, I've been really busy. It's great though to be done with school, and I love the job so far (although it's only day 2).

HD-DVD

This week has been pretty interesting, especially on digg. It is amazing how much controversy there can be over a single hex-code. It's also really interesting to see the number of hits on google for the code to rise from about 250,000 to about 802,000 in just a few days. Obviously the cease and desist letters didn't work in this case.

link:
http://blog.digg.com/?p=74

College

Well... It's been a while, but I am finally posting again. For those who don't know, this is a pretty crazy time for me, I just finished my last finals this week! Graduation is Saturday, then next week we're making the move to Indy, where I'll be starting my new job.

Anyway, lots of things are changing, and I'm keeping pretty busy. For now I'm just enjoying my time and finishing up work in Muncie.

300

We went to see 300 yesterday, and it was pretty amazing. Even though it wasn't completely historically accurate, it was still one of the best movies I've seen in a while. They did a great job of showing the emotions of men that were born to be soldiers. Not a good movie for kids though... between the nudity and violence. All in all, I enjoyed it a lot though.