Welcome!
This page is a work in progress and will contain thoughts and
ramblings that I deem as neat, interesting, or maybe even stupid.
Basically just snapshots of my life...
Life as a John...
2007.02.22 - 22:55
Generally Tamara and I don't get each other gifts for each of the
holidays. Well, this Valentines day she broke from tradition and got me
a Wii. I was a little taken back by this because I really didn't expect
anything, plus I didn't get her anything... DOH ...
Yeah, way to give the John a guilt trip and make him feel bad about
providing for his spousal unit. Needless to say, a nice lady is
supposed to come to the house tomorrow to measure the kitchen for new
granite counter tops. Yep, that'll teach me to show up with more than a
card and a kiss. LOL
But
back to the Wii,
if you haven't played with one of these things, you've gotta find one.
This is really one of the most amazing things I've ever messed with.
The motion sensitivity of the controllers is just amazing and it makes
playing the games an absolute blast. Some of the games, like boxing,
turn into more of a workout than a game. I looked at the clock one
night after I had been playing with it, and realized that I had been
boxing for several hours, let's just say I woke up the next morning and
was barely able to raise my arms above my shoulders. People that I
would never have expected to play a video game, will pick up the
"wiimote" and get totally immersed in the gameplay. It's just as much
fun to watch people play this darn thing as it is to play it yourself.
Like I said, if you haven't played with one of these, even if you don't
care for video games, find one and TRY it. It really is revolutionary.
It's a new year ... and thank heavens for it. 2006 for me is going to be a year to forget. Life lessons are things you learn the hard way. They generally cannot be taught by anything but life itself, and trust me, life can be cruel about it. I learned more than my share of lessons over the past year. I'd lay these lessons out for you to learn from, but frankly, these are things you have to learn for yourself. You can be told a million times, "don't do this" and "don't do that", but you'll do it anyway. It's taken me the pretty much the entire year to figure out where I went wrong, and how I got into the predicament I did, and what things that were completely out of my control happened to set those life lessons in concrete for me. I wish I had insight into why some people acted the way they did to bring everything crashing down, but it will probably forever elude me. It was a perfect storm of events, but I'm probably a different person now because of it.
I'm ready for 2007, let's just hope it's ready for me...
2006.10.06 - 20:41
Ever watched a trainwreck as it happened? You knew what was coming, and
that the end result was going to be bad, but you had to watch anyway.
Yeah, my life not too long ago... too bad I wasn't blogging then ...
this stuff is going to seem down-right boring in comparison. I'll take
boring for a while, I'll probably live a lot longer for it.
The Daily Grind
2007.05.02 - 19:20
I'm neck deep in .NET 3.0 at this point. I've been busy trying to
replace the DCOM mess we have today with some C# based communications
services. I really like the new developer technologies that are coming
out of Redmond now. With the limited resources we have going on around
here, these new technologies are a god-send in some respect. The
communications and presentation services are really ground breaking. I
was taken aback by the workflow foundation that they have created, it's
got a depth to it that's very scary, especially after working with the
knowledge engine last year. Some incredible products are going to come
out of this stuff. Now if MS could just figure out how to write an
operating system worth crap, they might be on to something.
2007.01.13 - 21:10
Well hopefully 2007 will be more productive than 2006. Nothing like a
year of spinning your wheels to make you question your profession...
Late last year I started embedding an AI system into our product
unbeknownst to the product managers. The preliminary work I've done is
downright scary, I can see where I can take a decade old product and
jump start it into this century in a big way. Now I've just got to
flush out some details and sell it to the right people. This should
actually be fun for once.
2006.10.06 - 20:30
I work at Teltronics, it's a Telecommunication industry player, with a
nice niche market. We do some neat things with VOIP, phone switches,
E911 services, and Remote Maintenance services. But like many companies
in the telecom biz, it's had it's share of struggles, have you seen our
stock price lately... I should have bought a boatload at 10 cents a
share.
My opinion is here somewhere...
2007.06.03 - 21:45
One of these day I'll actually step on a soapbox and spew something
meaningful. I've just been too busy to keep one topic on mind long
enough to get it in writing.
2006.10.06 - 20:30
I have an opinion about something???
The Fam-damily
2007.05.31 - 01:07
Well Tamara is done as a bartender for now. She was really starting to
miss seeing us, as she was gone every evening, plus they were having
scheduling issues because of the lack of bartenders. She learned a lot
from the situation and made some friends. So in that respect it was
worth the trouble that is sometimes caused. I'm proud of her for
sticking with it even when she didn't want to go in any more. But one
thing that I can certainly relate to, if you don't like the environment
you work in, it's just not worth being miserable and then taken those
feelings home with you. If a workplace treats you decently, then it
makes it sooo much easier to put up with the daily crap than when you
feel taken advantage of or unrespected. Life is just too short to put
up with that mess.
2007.01.13 - 20:45
Well, Tamara is in her 6th month of being a bartender. I'm just
incredibly impressed with her for sticking it out despite the less than
wonderful pay and the crappy hours. Sucks to be one of the low worker
bees on the totem pole. Every now and then she has a good night and it
makes me happy to see her with a smile on her face. The experience she
has gotten has been wonderful and she is, by far, the best one at the
restaurant, so if anything, it's something she can go anywhere and work
a few hours to get out of the house and earn some extra spending money.
She's met some really nice people, which is
great as it gives her someone to go out with for a few hours after
work. She hasn't been able to do that in a long time and it's good to
see her getting out again. It's definitely a different crowd than she
used to, but I think the variety will be good for her at this point,
probably a lot of fun too.
2006.10.06 - 20:30
I love my family, there just seems to be an over-abundance of estrogen
at times...
