Well, it's now the last day of 2007. Wow, what a year. Here's to a happy, healthy, prosperous new year for you and yours. Later today, Terri and I hit the road to Fort Erie, Ontario. No actual New Year's Eve plans, but on Tuesday, we'll be here. You can watch for us, but I don't know if we'll be distinguishable from the other 72,998 people. Hopefully the weather will hold and we'll be ok. So, if we don't talk to you, Happy New Year. I do hear that there's a nice fireworks display over the Falls, so maybe we'll catch that. Again, I'm sure the next post will include a rundown of the game and some resolutions, etc.

A Rebirth?!?

Alright, alright. Yes, it's been about 260 days since my last post. And, if I went into detail about all that had happened since, it'd be another 260 days before I finished this one. So, basically here's the condensed spiel we sent in our holiday cards.

Change was in the works for us in 2007. We left the house we'd been in for 6 years, got pregnant with a second kid, I got promoted again, etc. etc.

The house story would take days and days in and of itself to plunk down in a post and anyone who actually still visits this blog has either heard about it, been there in person, or can call for updates.

As for the child, well it's still too early to tell if it's a boy or girl, but Mommy and baby are healthy and happy (when Mommy's not throwing up that is). Gage is excited about the prospect of being a big brother and for a long time was set on having a baby brother because he's a boy and that would work out. Then he changed his mind and wanted a little sister. Then he got the idea that if we had one of each, Mommy could play with the little sister, he could play with the little brother and then they could switch. Apparently I wasn't included in that master plan. Once the doctor confirms that we're having a boy (since no girls are allowed in my family), then we'll be able to give Gage more concrete details to assimilate. He'll eventually have a name and a nursery will take shape. That won't happen til late January, early February, though.

Promotion is a promotion. Nothing interesting there.

The first half of the holidays were nice. Gage got his zamboni from Santa Claus so his Christmas was made. New Year's Day will find Terri and I outside in Buffalo watching the Winter Classic between the Pittsburgh Penguins and the Buffalo Sabres. I'm sure given the chance most people head for the beach and we're driving to Buffalo, to sit outside. Maybe the doctor can examine our heads when they do the sonogram.

Ok, I don't want to be too wordy on my first day back. I'm sure there will be the requisite resolution type things for the coming year shortly to follow with the first one being started today...namely, posting here a lot more often than once every 260 days. Hope the rest of your holiday season goes well.

Tonight I will do something that I have not done for 6 years. I will go home, grab a cold cider, lean back in my recliner and watch the Pittsburgh Penguins play playoff hockey. Game 1 is against Ottawa.

I know I haven't posted in a long long time and there are myriad reasons, but I wanted to post tonight to get my hockey picks on record to see how I do. This season, I'm picking more heart than head, but stranger things have happened.

Oh, and Lord Stanley will be home in a few months, be sure to stop by and visit.

East

Buffalo (1)
Islanders (8)

Buffalo in 6

New Jersey (2)
Tampa Bay (7)

New Jersey in 7

Atlanta (3)
Rangers (6)

Atlanta in 7

Ottawa (4)
Pittsburgh (5)

Pittsburgh in 6

West

Detroit (1)
Calgary (8)

Detroit in 5

Anaheim (2)
Minnesota (7)

Anaheim in 6

Vancouver (3)
Dallas (6)

Dallas in 7

Nashville (4)
San Jose (5)

San Jose in 7

Ok, there you go, better or worse. Though I hope Buffalo, New Jersey, and Detroit prove me wrong.

"It's a great day for hockey!"

Grrr. Circumstances conspired to make it seem like I was every other paranoid Western Pennsylvania jackass scared that I'm going to be buried in my house for months before anyone discovers me. This past weekend, I realized that I need gas in my car, but of course, waited until the last possible minute. Which meant that I had to wait in line to get a freakin' tank of gas. And of course we ran out of eggs and milk this weekend too. A loaf of bread and a package of toilet paper and I could have been just like everyone else at the freakin' grocery store.

I don't think "Thank you" is quite what I should express to Victoria, but I guess once I get everything set up, I probably should. What am I talking about? Well, I was catching up on my blog reading and noticed a new addition to the side of her blog. It was entitled "Random Books from my Library" and had a link to this site. It'll be a big sink hole for time at some point in the future, and I'm sure I'll attempt to install the same blog links that she has, but I'm positive it's going to become as invaluable to me for my book collection as the dvdaf site is for my dvds. Now I just need a site for my music and I'm all set.

If I didn't have a phone at work and had an office where I could shut the door, I could do what currently takes me a week in approximately 12 hours, easy. Interruptions are killer and for someone like me who is only tenously connected to the non-procrastinating motivated working world anyway, it's rough to get back on track. Hell, I just lost 45 minutes catching up on everyone's blogging for the past week or so. First, I must say "Congratulations" to Joe. I've known Joe almost as long as I've known Tom which at this point in our lives is crazy long. I'm happy that he's been sticking with the whole health thing as long as he has. Just keeping track from September til now in and of itself is a big accomplishment to me. I think my personal record is maybe 10 weeks on and off and I've never had what could be considered serious motivation behind it. So, keep it up Joe.
Then, I would say, head over to Tom's blog to watch the Sidney Crosby goal that he saw live. Amazing.

Ah, big two points stolen from the Western Conference. That puts the Penguins all by themselves in the 5th spot in the Eastern Conference one point out of 4th. And, we get to play Philadelphia again on Thursday. That should be a guaranteed two points if the first six games are any indication. I'm looking for Crosby to widen his gap in the scoring race.

Just a couple of links tonight.
This was more disturbing than anything else.
Ok, this was disturbing too.
I also got my annual, "Please give us money call." from the alma mater. I really wish they'd list my major for these poor people. Then they wouldn't start with an amount that just makes me laugh.

It truly irks me how differently professors run internet courses. To me, self-learning on the internet should be just that. If I want to wait until the weekend that all the tests are due and spend 10 hours working on it, that's my call. I don't want to have to log on before Friday of each week to get a weeky participation grade.
Oh, and in case I didn't mention it, I'm done with winter.

Ah, lingering sickness. Got to love it. Slippery slope arguments. Got to love them. Flame wars. Got to love them. Can someone please explain to me how the Cialis commercial with the grandparents being interrupted on the way to the bedroom by the kids and grandkids is appropriate to show on tv? It's just creepy dammit. Now everytime I walk into my parent's house, I'm creeped out. Hell of a weekend for hockey! Hopefully the Pens can keep this trend up and stay in the playoff hunt.

Susie did write a great post about the smoking issue. Head over and check it out if you have time. It's a post or two down by now, but well worth the read down.
It's very interesting to see how different people do the same job. They all have different methods, different theories about what works and what doesn't, different ways of dealing with the madness, and vastly different understanding about how all the moving parts work. No great breakthrough here, just an observation.
My great breakthrough came after 4 out of 6 on a certain project and it pissed me off I didn't think of it sooner.

I had a huge post brewing about how Darryl Worley was becoming the next Lee Greenwood. His newest single, "I Just Came Back From A War" actually had me considering the global feelings over the current situation and obvious and not-so-obvious comparisons to Vietnam. It's very easy to support or not support the situation from my bedroom holding a laptop. I don't think I'd be so glib with an RPG being launched at me. So, I just decided to casually mention the post and leave it alone.
I was also ready to launch into a nice tirade about freedoms and being told how to live after reading a local article about Carnegie Mellon University attempting to become an enforced non-smoking University by 2010. However, Susie's rants were much better, so I'll leave that to her to post or not post.
The reason that the blog has been silent as of late has been because I was knocked on my ass sick. We went shopping after work on Friday. I came home and went to sleep and then couldn't get up on Saturday. Saturday, Sunday, and I called off work on Monday. I was barely awake 8 total hours over those three days. I went into work on Tuesday but against my better judgement. All day long people kept telling me how much I looked like crap. Today was slightly better, I at least completed several thoughts. Hopefully tomorrow will be better.

Hopefully the Pens will pull out the win in Boston tonight. It'll make for a much nicer game on Saturday. Even having shortened work weeks last week and this one hasn't helped the work load. Hopefully I can get a few programs off my desk and get the workload back to a manageable level. I have a lot of stuff around the house that's absolutely begging to be done and this working 10-12-14-16 hours a day just isn't cutting it.

Houston was a good trip. Gage was incredibly well behaved on the plane ride up and back. The stewardess couldn't believe how nice he was. All of Terri's relatives that hadn't previously met Gage loved him as well. The wedding photographers spent more time stalking us than the newly married couple. Gage was hitting on two girls at the wedding. One was a cute little 5 year old in a pretty red dress. The other was a fairly hammered bridesmaid. I must say, he has good taste.
Once we got to the Houston airport, we had to take a shuttle to the rental car center. They talked me into upgrading to a Ford Taurus. Yes, I said, upgrading to a Ford Taurus. The car had about 6,800 miles on it. And it had a cassette deck. No CD player. A cassette deck. Which meant that the CDs I packed were pretty useless. As expected Houston radio has a lot of country. On the way to the hotel we stopped at a Sonic for breakfast. So, I finally got to eat at a Sonic. Then on the same road as the hotel, Half-Price Books baby. So, we had a nice place to kill time. And there was a Jack-in-the-box across from the hotel. We met most of Terri's family for lunch and had some Chinese tasting Mexican food. The rehearsal dinner was a nice down home barbecue. The wedding was nice, the reception was fun and the trip back was uneventful. So, all-in-all a good trip.
Well, I decided to do the 150 movies thing. So far I'm up to 2. My criteria is that I've never seen the movie (or the whole movie) before. So Die Hard wouldn't count at all. Neither does The Last Boy Scout which I'm currently watching. So, the first movie I saw was First Daughter with Michael Keaton and Katie Holmes. Not too bad. The second movie was Ice Princess with Joan Cusack, Michelle Trachtenberg, and Kim Cattrall. It also had a cameo by Brian Boitano.

Less than 12 hours til "Da plane, da plane." Guess I should probably pack. And yet, I'm still trying to catch up on work.
Why, why, why is Renee Zellweger still able to get acting jobs? Why? I don't understand. She's not overly nice to look at. Not particularly talented. I haven't seen her in anything that made me sit up and say, "Damn, that's good acting." And yet, she's booked for these high profile movies that could be so much better in some one else's hands. Mrs. Potter will be one of those movies without a doubt. And that's a damn shame.
Oddly enough, I'm accomplishing more of Tom's resolutions than I am of my own. I realized scanning through my collection that I can get 20% of the way to 150 movies just by watching the DVD's I already own that I haven't previously seen. I could easily (ok, well not very easily) pick 5 novels from the stacks of books that I haven't read. And, this weekend, I'll be hitting a state I've never been in.

I think I've mentioned this before, but I work in what they call a pod situation. It's basically 4 cubes turned around into a little common-type area. The company is growing and they are talking about re-assigning some of the resources. With the exception of the first 2 1/2 weeks when I was partnered with my buddy Mark, I've worked with the same 3 people for 8 months. We have almost double the amount of clients and with some of the high volume, we have triple the amount of work some other teams have. (I know some of that sounds like exaggeration, but we actually had a count up meeting today to discuss evening the playing field). And, for the most part, we've managed to deliver almost every project without fail. And with the prospect of losing one or more of my team members tomorrow to be replaced with someone new, unfamiliar, and, in my opinion, inferior on a skill level, I can only refer to the words of Larry Gelbart used in the television script "Divided We Fall" in 1973...

"In my short stay here, I have seen textbook examples of neuroses, psychoses. I have seen voyeurism, fetishism, and a few 'isms' I've never even heard of. And let me tell you this, General: These impossible people are in an impossible place doing totally impossible work. They're mad. quite mad, all of them. And the only act I can think of that would be madder still would be breaking them up!" Capt. Hildebrand

Well, once again things are working their way to crazy since I'm trying to take two days off. What's funny is that no one in the office knows that I just took Monday off to rest from the trip. We're actually flying back on Sunday. So, I can always say, "Well, my cell phone wasn't getting a good signal, or I was in the airport."
Hopefully Gage's first plane ride will go well. We don't really have anyone to give us first hand experience of plane travel with kids around Gage's age. Infants, yes. 5 and 6 year olds, yes. Nothing between 2 and 3. That should probably tell us that this is an extremely bad idea, but we're going anyway.

Weekends when Terri has to work kind of screws everyone's schedule. That combined with a Sunday night hockey game is not going to make for a pleasant Monday morning. And considering this entire week will just be a preparation to this weekend's trip, it's going to be a long January. And, since we're trying to break Gage of his parental night-time security blanket, it's really going to be a long January.

This 150 movie thing intrigues me. On the surface it seems very easy. There are 365 days in the year. It breaks down to a movie every 2 1/2 days. Doesn't seem difficult at all. Then I realized just how often I do anything over the span of 2 1/2 days. I don't know if I'd make it. But, I might try. I think I'd make the stipulation that I had not previously seen the movie. With the average movie having a 90 minute link, it would be approximately a 37 minute a day commitment. Then again, I have no idea where I'd come up with 37 minutes a day.

Wow. I cleaned up on the sales at Best Buy today. I ended up with $300.00 worth of DVD's for a fraction of that. Compounded with the gift cards and coupons, plus Reward Zone deals, I made out. I could have come away with a lot more, but I decided to limit it only to series television that I already owned at least 1 season of, and consecutive buys. So, I finished out the entire series of M*A*S*H and the Pretender. I also picked up the entire series of Dead Like Me. Sweet deals.

You Belong in 1974

If you scored... 1970 - 1979: Bold and brash, you take life by the horns. Whether you're partying or protesting, you give it your all!

What Year Do You Belong In?

Ok, so on Thursday when I said that the week was almost over, I basically meant the work week. The rest of the weekend was only heating up. I couldn't mention it here prior to the situation due to the secretive nature, but we attended a surprise graduation party for Matt thrown by his wife Alison. So, on Friday we headed over to the other end of the state. The car ride out wasn't too bad and we arrived in time to be greeted by Alison's family and Gage got to meet Alison and Matt's nephew Connor. More updates on the weekend to come, but this post is to mainly wish everyone a happy and healthy new year and to notch post #1 of this year's 250.