| Quick update |
[21 Jul 2008|11:11am] |
Been really busy since I got back from vacation, and only mostly because of work. Ashley got me Guitar Hero III for the Nintendo Wii for our anniversary. Got to say: IT ROCKS!.
So do the new Samsung Instinct cell phones that we both got a little over a week ago. Sprint did a pretty good job of reworking their cell phone plans recently. Two phone plan with 1500 shared anytime minutes and unlimited everything else (text/picture/phone messaging, web, email, GPS, Sprint radio/TV, etc.) for $130/mo. with a 2 year contract agreement. I like Apple, but I don't like or trust AT&T, so the Instinct was my best choice for an all in one phone at the moment. And I personally think it holds up really well to the IPhone from both what I have seen and read. (And it doesn't hurt that I get a 25% plan discount from Sprint for being an IBM employee, which I don't believe we get with AT&T.)
Well, back to work... and playing guitar... and playing with my new cell phone... :)
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| Haven't posted in awhile... |
[25 Jun 2008|07:40pm] |
I realized today that it has been over two months since I posted anything. Strangely enough, it is about two months ago that I got extremely busy at work and started working 60-70 hour weeks... Funny how they correlate like that. :)
In other news, I leave on vacation tomorrow. Gone for just about a week and a half (Thursday, June 26th to Sunday, July 6th). It is our yearly jaunt to our timeshare condo down in Gulf Shores, AL. Should be fun. Nearly all of Ashley's side of the family will be there again this year. So since I haven't posted in a long time and probably won't get a chance to while away, I figured today was a good day to say "Goodbye for a week and a half!" :)
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| I wouldn't have done that before Toshiba dropped HD-DVD... |
[05 Mar 2008|01:46pm] |
So, I ended up spending $275 on a bunch of movies from Amazon last night. I've been keeping an eye on HD-DVD prices ever since Toshiba officially announced that they were going to drop the HD-DVD standard last month, and the fire sales have apparently begun. I got a ton of movies all in the $10 - $15 range. In some of these cases, I don't think I could have found a standard DVD for that price.
The funny thing is that I doubt I would have spent that much money all at once on HD-DVD movies if Toshiba was still in the format war. My plan was to slowly aquire new releases that I wanted in HD-DVD format as they came out. And I typically don't buy many movies these days (aside from movies for the kids which I have no intention of purchasing in high def anytime soon - need to be able to play them in the standard def player downstairs, in the van, etc.). But when looking at having an HD-DVD player and looking at the liklihood that not many new titles will come out in HD-DVD format anymore by later this year, I figured I might as well make good on my investment by maximizing the number of moves that I can play on the thing. And it helps that the rest of my standard def library will also play on this player as well (the Toshiba HD-A3 does a very nice job of up-converting standard def DVDs).
Wouldn't it be ironic if HD-DVD sales surpass Blu-Ray sales in the month immediately after Toshiba drops the format and everyone declares Sony the winner? :)
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| Quote of the Day |
[27 Feb 2008|08:40pm] |
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The problem with "trail blazing" is that you are the first person to crash headlong into the dung heap...
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| Mental Note |
[22 Jan 2008|04:21pm] |
Time for a mental note, since I'm not likely to remember this later:
Working until 2am one day and then getting up at 6am to go back into work for another full day does NOT work!
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| Birthday wishes |
[22 Dec 2007|12:44am] |
Happy birthday, ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) qedrakmar! Even though this post will be dated after midnight on Dec 22, I still say that I am not late in well wishing you. Why, you may ask? Because I have yet to stop working! I think I started sometime around 6am this morning (well technically yesterday morning I guess...), and I haven't stopped yet. I'm about to take a break for about 2 hours and then start again! Whoo hoo! Yay me..... NOT.
At least I get to roll some unused vacation over to next year and take the entire first week of January off. Well, enough of my griping. Back to work. Happy birthday and Happy Solstice to those celebrating!
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| Whoohoo! |
[08 Nov 2007|09:25pm] |
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Whoohoo! I'm so excited! Why? Because for the first time in as long as I can remember, I have no work to speak of that has to get done tonight. Aside from sending an email or two, I was actually done with work at 5:15pm tonight, instead of logging back onto work after the kids are in bed around 9pm and working until 11:30 or midnight.
And now that I think about it, this is actually sort of bad. I'm excited because I don't have to work any OT tonight, for the first time in ages? I mean, I know that I am a work-a-holic. But this is bad even for me. I have got to stop working so much. And now, instead of being excited, I am kinda sad... and tired. So very, very tired...
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| An end to the Wheel of Time |
[17 Sep 2007|04:54pm] |
To those of you Wheel of Time fans who may not have heard yet:
James Oliver Rigney Jr, author of the long-running fantasy series The Wheel of Time and better known to millions of fans by the pen name Robert Jordan, died on 16 Sept 2007 from cardiac amyloidosis. Jordan announced he had been diagnosed with the disease in March 2006 and vowed to beat the odds, but determination and gumption sometimes just aren't enough in the face of a disease with a median survival time of just over two years. Jordan was in the process of writing the twelfth and final book in the Wheel of Time series, A Memory of Light, but the book was not slated for release until 2009 and is still incomplete. While there is hope that the book will still be finished from Jordan's notes, this is devastating news to all of us who have been reading the series since 1990.
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| New D&D News |
[28 Aug 2007|09:16pm] |
I've seen this posted once or twice on SlashDot, but not anywhere else. So I figured, why not post it here? Apparently Wizards of the Coast will be releasing D&D 4th Edition next May. Yet another set of rulebooks for me to pick up. Joy.
Actually, I will be rather looking forward to this. Maybe this will be the kick in the pants that I have been needing to actually start working on running a game or two again. I always start putting new material together again, but then get busy with other things and stop before I have enough prepared to be able to smoothly start a game.
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| Help! I'm melting! |
[08 Aug 2007|08:17am] |
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Temperature going to be over 100 today... Heat index of 110... Heat index of 115 tomorrow... Must.... not.... move...
Of course, this really just means that I need to stay inside the next few days, which is really business as normal for me anyways. I'm not much of an outside person these days, aside from walking the dog, taking the kids to the pool, yard work, etc. And we won't be doing much of those except for walking the dog these next few days. Simply too hot.
In other news, I realize that it has been an extremely long time since I posted any updates here. All in all, not too much has been going on. We went to the beach at Gulf Shores, AL for the week of July 4th. We have a couple of time shares there, and we met up with both of my sister-in-laws and their families as well as my father-in-law and his wife. We all had a pretty good time.
Ashley went to a wedding for a friend of hers in GA a few weekends ago, leaving me home alone with both kids for a weekend. We survived. And last week Ashley and Nelia went to Birmingham, AL for a few days to visit another family friend. They drove to Atlanta and went to a Braves game while they were there. It was Nelia's first professional baseball game. She had a blast!
Russell has started crawling now, and he is getting into everything! One of his favorite past times right now is trying to catch our dog. The cat has better sense and doesn't go anywhere near him, but the dog doesn't always seem to remember that he can crawl now. We definately need to get a move on and start child proofing the house. Nelia was so mellow that we never had to do much more than put the plugs in the electrical outlets. I think we will need to do a bit more with Russell.
The only other thing going on right now is work. I have been working like a dog lately, but it appears to be beginning to pay off. I have received quite a bit of recognition up to my 3rd level manager now. I am being given high profile, high priority projects to work on. I am also writing technical documents and methodology improvements and getting recognition for them. I even have a patent filing about to go through to the USPTO, which is quite cool. And I will be making a presentation at an IBM conference in Burlington, VT in November. The excessive amounts of work hasn't exactly been the greatest, but it was made a little better last week when my manager presented me with a $1000 bonus. So the money and recognition helps to offset the big workload. All in all, I have to say that I am very happy with the position I am working in right now. It has taken me less than a year to get back to the level of confidence, recognition, and respect that I had in my former position with a completely new organization and management chain.
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| Think before acting, people! |
[14 May 2007|11:50am] |
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While I agree that sadly we need to educate our children in what to do during a school gun attack in this day and age, there is such a thing as going too far... If this had happened to one of my kids, I'd be going balistic right about now.
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| Back from Disney |
[23 Apr 2007|01:30pm] |
So we are now back from Disney World. We actually flew home late Saturday night. We all had a fantastic time, especially Nelia. We rode all the kiddie rides, saw all the animals and stuff, and characters! Holy cow did we see some characters! On our first day there my sister-in-law gave Nelia one of those character autograph books, those books that take most people 2 or maybe even 3 visits to fill up. We left every other page blank, so that we could place a picture of Nelia with the character next to each autograph. She filled all but the last couple of pages! I was a little worried that she would be afraid of all the characters, especially the ones in the huge suits. But she obviously proved my fears unfounded.
So now I am back to the drudgery of work. Got in this morning to about 150 new email messages from last week. Finally got through them, and now I have learned that the project I was busting my butt on for the past couple of months has been put on hold for the next month or so. So I get to go back to filling holes and putting out fires for the next few weeks. Oh joy. Oh well, more later. I'll be putting up tons of pictures from our trip on Nelia and Russell's website sometime soon.
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| Vacation |
[13 Apr 2007|10:32pm] |
Well, we are heading off for our trip to Disney World come Sunday morning. Won't be back until a week from tomorrow. A week without work! What will I do?! Oh, right! Have a wonderful time and party it up!
So not that I have been terribly active lately, but wanted to let people know that I will be nonexistant for the next week or so. Enjoy! I sure will. :)
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| A frightening revelation |
[20 Mar 2007|08:31pm] |
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Nelia had to be picked up early from daycare today because she threw up. Apparently there is a nasty 24 hour vomit, diahhrea virus going around. My first thought was that they were overreacting. Four episodes of vomitting later, I see their point. She will have to stay home tomorrow too, and can hopefully go back on Thursday.
Anyways, since she wasn't feeling well I let her just sit on the loveseat in the den and turned on Noggin for her on digital cable. At 4:30pm EST a show came on that I've seen only a few times before, "The Upside Down Show". After watching a few minutes, and being in the tired state that I was, I came to a startling revelation. This is exactly the type of kids show that I could see qedrakmar creating if he were to make a kids show.
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| Out of action lately |
[16 Mar 2007|12:42pm] |
So, it dawned on me awhile back that I haven't posted recently. That is, for definitions of recently that span back for up to 2 months. There have been a number of reasons, the biggest of which is that I am lazy about things like this. I keep putting off and putting off.
Anyways, my birthday was back on Feb. 14th. It was a pretty good day. Ashley, Nelia, and Russell got me a Nintendo Wii. What is the first thing I learned about the Wii? That you should never say something like this while in mixed company: "Well, I'm off to go play with my Wii now." :)
Talk about addictive! I spent the first several weeks playing nothing but Wii Sports. I'd have to say that my favorites are bowling (surprise, surprise) and tennis, followed closely by golf. I'd rank golf higher, if only it wasn't so damn hard to get the power just right on the swing. Bowling is surprisingly realistic. I "throw" the ball just about the same way I would in real life, and my average is just about what it should be within the game. They did a really good job of manipulating the physics with that one. Another favorite of mine is the Wii Sports Fitness Test. The first time I tried it I was ranked at a relative age of 66! Since then, I've been able to get it down to 35 or so...
We also have a fishing game (which I haven't played much yet), Cars, and Zelda: Twilight Princess. Nelia loves Cars, especially since I taught her how to make the cars jump. She spends more time in the air now than on the ground. :) And Zelda is addictive. It may not be in High Definition, but it is still nice, especially on a 50" DLP screen. And the native widescreen support the Wii has is very nice as well.
I've also been really busy at work lately. The past two nights I have gone home at 5pm like normal, but then logged back on around 8pm and worked until about midnight. Then I get up between 5-6am and start it all over again. I'm taking a much needed few minute break to write this post before I fall asleep at my desk...
What else? Kids are doing well. Nelia is finally getting better at sleeping through the night again, and Russell is developing nicely. At four months, he is already drinking 4 32-oz bottles a day, is just about ready to try some rice cereal, and sleeps 12 hours straight through the night. I'll try to get some new pictures of the kids up on their web site sometime soon.
Well, I guess I should pay a few bills and then find something else to keep me from falling asleep. At some point, maybe I'll even get some work done this afternoon... :)
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| Cheese! |
[22 Jan 2007|08:41am] |
qedrakmar, this one is for you:
Me: "Nelia, what would you like to have for breakfast today?"
A long pause... then
Nelia: "CHEESE!"
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| New Year's Resolutions |
[30 Dec 2006|11:25pm] |
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In 2007,  wabinder resolves to... Learn to play the golf.
Lose ten forgotten realms by March.
Backup my rush regularly.
Go to tolkien every Sunday.
Find a better ravenloft.
Become a better tcl.
Some of these make a sort of sense, in an interesting way. Although I have a feeling that if a realm is "forgotten", then it has already been lost. So I think one of my resolutions has already been taken care of! In which case, I should replace it with another. How about this:
Stop washing sharp knives the "stupid" way. Ouch!
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