Life Stuff
Just a bunch or random (and totally generic) stuff from day-to-day living.
Carli and I bought a house this past summer - yeah, yeah, I’ve not written much about it yet, but I will, promise! Anyhow, seeing as this is our first Christmas in the new house we thought it would be nice to have a real live tree too.
Our tree
So with some help from friend, Timmy & Julie, we went out and chopped down our own tree at a real Christmas Tree Farm. Yes, we actually cut the tree down with our own hands... well, our hands and a saw.
Anyhow, that big green bush-looking-thing to the left is our tree. Well, technically that’s an ornament with a picture or our tree, on our tree. :) Nice, right?
Lighting the tree
Carli had planned to decorate the tree with some really nice LED lights we bough, and some garland and classy looking ornaments. But much to her surprise my buddies, Bryan and Timmy, and I took it upon ourselves to decorate it while she was out with her girlfriends.
As you might imagine, my buddies and I have a different sense of style than Carli. I think PBR, Budweiser, and Old Milwaukee cans are perfectly fine decorations, aren’t they?
Don’t worry, the next morning I realized we weren’t in college anymore so I took the beer cans off the tree.
Now we just need some gifts to fill the void under the tree and we’ll be all set.
Today was the 28th Annual Columbus Marathon and 1/2 Marathon, and it was a packed house course with a full 10,000 runners participating in the race. Despite living in Columbus for the past eight years, this year was the first time I’ve ever watched the event.
Watched a marathon?
This year’s race course brought the runners right to our doorstep, quite literally. Even though the race didn’t actually start until 7:00am, the pre-race activities started early with the race volunteers setting up a water station in our front yard around 6:00.
I was on the porch, relaxing with some coffee, in time to see the race leaders cruise by our place, which sits right around the 11.5 mile mark. Amidst the nine thousand plus runners that followed I also caught a glimpse of a few friends during their trek.
It was cool to see the runners swerve over and grab a quick drink of water and/or Gatorade. I also heard more than a few runners ask for a Budweiser. Perhaps next year Carli and I will set up a beer stand! :)
More pics
During the three-plus hours that runners were shuffling past our house I was able to snap a bunch of pictures and uploaded them to Flickr. Go check 'em and out and see if you recognize any of the runners.
On this day, some 9,490 days ago, the world was forever changed... Carli was born and suddenly the Sun had some competition for being the center of the universe*.
Everyone please join me in wishing her a happy 26th birthday, and many more to follow!
Oh, and for anyone interested (and in town) we are going to Lindey's this evening to celebrate with some drinks on the patio. Feel free to drop by to wish the B-day girl a good one and stay for a drink... or the entire evening if you like.
* - Yes, I realize that the Sun is in fact not the center of the universe, but rather the center of our solar system... but that just didn't have the same ring to it. Artistic license, look into it.
OK, so it’s not like I made it on HeadlineNews or something... but it still feels good to see your name in the headline for a news item. And it feels even better when the news is coming from your employer - VelocIT Hires Steve Harman.
Admittedly, this is somewhat old news, but I just noticed the announcement yesterday so it’s exciting (to me)! Besides, I’ve been meaning to blog about this transition for a while now and this gives me an excuse.
The story
As the news items says, I was introduced to VelocIT (pronounced: vuh-los-ĭ-tee) by company co-founder Phil Haack. Phil is also the founder and self-proclaimed benevolent dictator of Subtext - the open source blog engine. I joined the Subtext team in mid 2005 and apparently my work was well received. In mid 2006 I was approached by three guys in trench coats and they made an offer I couldn’t refuse.
Ok, so the three guys were Micah, Phil, and Jon... and they weren’t wearing trench coats - but the offer was pretty sweet:
- work from home
- work on exciting projects
- work with cool technologies
- work with some fun and super talented folks
- work for a young and driven company
What’s not to like about that? The answer is... nothing!
Joining in on the fun
In August 2006 I decided it was time to join in on all of the fun the VelocIT team was having, so I left my position at JPMorgan Chase and went solo. I started off my work with VelocIT as an external contractor but after a few months I was brought into the fold as a first-class employee - and I’ve not looked back since.
I think the environment here at VelocIT, and the great experience I’ve had thus far can be summed up by a comment that Phil made to me a few weeks ago:
By the way, we have to talk sometime about how this day job of yours is intruding on your OS contributions.
Funny how backwards we are. I’m not worried about your extra curricular activities interfering with your work. I’m worried about your work interfering with your extra curricular activities.
Now how awesome is that?
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Those of you who know me probably know that I'm not big sweet foods. I usually avoid things like icing, cake, chocolate (except some of the dark varieties), doughnuts, and such like the plague. Actually I often avoid all snacks come to think of it - save for the occasional bag of Andy Capp's Hot Fries.
Anyhow... I've recently rediscovered a long lost favorite snack food from my childhood. Milk and cookies. But not just any cookies - Oreo cookies!
A hand full of Oreo's and a short glass of icy-cold milk were essential to my homework/studying habits... right along with a ruler, box of Crayons, and bottle of Elmer's glue.
You might notice that I said short glass of milk. As any Oreo aficionado will tell you, it's all about dunking your Oreo in the milk. My method was (and still is) to drop the cookie into the milk and then let it slowly sink. The key to the technique is to let the Oreo soak in the milk until it is completely saturated, and then grab it just before it sinks all the way to the bottom of the glass.
Now, if your timing is off and you have a tall glass the cookie will sink all the way to the bottom and then you'll have to fetch it out with a spoon - or wait until you're done with all of you other cookies, drink the milk, and then find a mushy pile of Oreo-goop. But with a short glass you can easily recover the cookie. See, some method to my madness.
It's funny that something I loved so much as a kid can still bring so much joy. And I even noticed how at home my glass of milk and stack of Oreo's look on my grown up and geeked out desk... especially next to my sweet Victoria's Secret mouse pad. Oh yeah!
So what about you... any childhood snacks that you've come back to in your adult life?
This isn't a full blog post. I just wanted to share a link to another post that I just made on my other blog.
To sum it up, I got pulled into the latest Internet meme and the post covers the Five things you don't know about me. Since the post is in no way a technically focused one, I thought you all might enjoy it.
So, go enjoy it already!
As riveting as my posts about topics like the latest version of Subtext and custom output caching in ASP.NET might be... I've come the realization that the majority of my (non-techie) friends and family just don't care. I know... WTF, right?
Taking a page from Phil's book, I decided I was going to start a new blog (this one) that was much less focused on technical topics and more centered around the other aspects and happening in my life. I even asked you to help me come up with a URL for the new blog.
Many thanks to all whom offered suggestions - be they sincere or cynical.
I sure am glad we decided to keep (and improve the) multi-blog support in Subtext... b/c I can host my techie and non-techie blogs on the same installation, and with the same database! The best part was that it took all of 5 minutes to get the new blog up and running - 4 of which I spent obsessing over the blog Title and Subtitle. I'm still not sure I like them, but I can always change that later!
What to expect on the new blog
While I don't plan to post every-little-mundane thing, you can be sure that I'll be putting up plenty of pictures and stories about evenings out with friends, events, outing, travels, and the occasional rant.
The picture above (or is it to the left?) is a good example of some of the fun stuff you can expect to see. And for the record, no I don't wear glasses. They belong to my buddy Brian and just putting them on made me half drunk - the Bass Ale finished the job!
I'll probably be tweaking the skin in the coming weeks, but the blog is up and running right now - so enjoy!