Lonely. I am so lonely.

Well goodbye to all my people heading off to Sr. High camp for a week — including my wife and son. Hope you have a great time… I’ll just be here… working!
Fortunately, the Preston boys are gonna be here tonite to keep me company, enroute from Ontario to Boston, with a stop at the baseball hall of fame along the way. It’s always great to have company from home — even though I’m sure our home is much less entertaining to visit without Benjamin crawling around it.
Have I mentioned how much I hate this month? It’s like purgatory — just sitting around waiting for something to happen…

Weekend summary in as few words as possible

Dinner Theater: Cute, but why are all our dinner theater experiences always affected by flamboyantly gay people?
Hotel: Very rustic and homey, but cozy and comfortable.
Latern-lit Chasm Tour: Closed, but man would it have been cool if it were open.
Ed Young: FANTASTIC! Just… awesome.
Stomach: A constant source of discomfort all weekend.

It's always helpful to learn from your mistakes because then your mistakes seem worthwhile.

Yesterday, after a 2 hour meeting where I had to do most of the talking, I handed off part one of the project I’ve essentially been working toward since I started to QA. Although officially the project didn’t take off until about February, the idea has existed in one iteration or another for quite some time, finally finding a home in the next version of my teams primary product. It’s been my personal crusade to get this done, and although its still months away from shipping, this is a major milestone.
To celebrate that, among other things — like our birthdays and anniversary (which actually isn’t until August, but we’ll be on a missions trip, so won’t get to celebrate then) — Nicole and I are taking the weekend off. Starting today.
slugs.jpgLast night we had our posse of students over for a movie night. We watched Flushed Away, which turned out to be hilarious (when the 2 slugs go to high-five each other, and then their faces fall with disappointment as they realise they have no arms, we all cracked up), and prayed together, and it was a really nice evening. We haven’t actually had the crew together since the start of June and we really missed them!
Today is a day for bumming around and odd jobs that I’ve been ignoring in the race to the Alpha release. Tomorrow we ditch Benjamin with the first of a string of babysitters and start heading north. We have a dinner theater for lunch in Lake George, a hotel in Pottersville, and a Lantern-lit cave tour in Plattsburgh lined up, but I’m sure we’ll find other places to relax along the way.
A couple other items worth mentioning before we drop off the ‘Net for the weekend:
Some of our friends from our church at home in Canada are off to Jamaica tomorrow for a 2 week long missions trip. Aside from being a little jealous (our missions trip is to Staten Island — not quite as exotic as theirs) we’re really proud of them, and really excited for the things God’s going to teach them (and the people staying behind) on this trip.
Ed Young is going to be at Northway Church this weekend (and I don’t have to run a single service! w00t!) and if you’re in the area you need to check him out at one of the services. We’ll be at the Malta 11:30 service (sitting in the congregation for a change), and I’m looking forward to finding out what all the fuss is about. I’ve never heard him speak before, but his church is one of the biggest and most respected in the States, and everyone on staff is really pumped to have him here.
More news is brewing, but that’s all for now. You’ll just have to stay tuned to find out what’s next! Meanwhile, there’s some new pics coming in the sidebar for you to check out. Have a great weekend everyone!

I am such a geek

My keyboard is…
– connected to a Windows PC over USB
– then connected to a Mac over Synergy
– then connected to a PC over a virtual USB port in a hosted Virtual Machine
– then connected to another PC over a remote desktop connection
No wonder my key mappings aren’t working properly. Just for kicks, I should try VNCing from that last PC in the chain to my Mac at home…

Just Keeps Getting Cuter…

This past week Benjamin’s made some huge leaps in development. From the painful looking frog-hop/belly flop, he’s figured out how to put one hand in front of the other and do a real, honest-to-goodness crawl. He still only does it about half the time — when the road gets difficult, he’ll switch back to the belly hop, but he can do it if he wants to.
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He also shares his daddy’s passion for electronic gadgets, and especially likes to put shiny things like iPods and cameras into this mouth. He loves to bang on the keyboard to help daddy with his programming.  In fact, he frequently says “DADADADADADA” while he does it!
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And finally, this evening, he pulled himself up to a standing position using the couch… then fell flat on his face. Right now he’s crawling back and forth between me in the bedroom and mommy in the kitchen, looking for someone to feed him.
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Building Wealth?

Don’t try doing it in the States right now.
When we moved here, it seemed like a good gamble. We could make 20% more on our Canadian dollar, just by working in the States. Now it seems the tables have turned — the sad little CAN$ is now worth slightly more than the US$. Which means we’re now losing money, on top of the service changes, by sending our funds back home.
We’re seriously considering moving our savings to a British Pound account. Anyone have any thoughts/experience/advice on this?

It's Demo Day!

Today is the alpha release of phase 1 of my project. Thursday it gets handed off to QA for intense testing — which will undoubtedly uncover some bugs. Nonetheless, this is the result of a lot of work by me, and two other team mates who’s creative solutions to the problems I pose are doing a great job of making me look smart today. It’s been a long haul — in many ways, much longer than it needed to be — but it feels good to have things where they’re at… finally.

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My job frequently gets the short end of my stick when it comes to passion and enthusiasm, but I work for a good company, and our family enjoys a lot of benefits from it. I’m proud of what I’m releasing today, and of the things I’ve learned while I got here. Hopefully our customers are as enthused as I am!