Going to be a busy week

Both my freelance projects have deadlines this week, and RMS is supposed to roll out with at least the Calendar and Messaging pieces. I also have to get an import done to bring in all the people from their old system. I am using an open source project for the messaging, which supports roles and such, so I won't have to create role system from scratch, just have to integrate my stuff into it. This is definitely going to be a 1.0 release. Hopefully once it's out I'll have time to go back and do it correctly (heard that a million times). I'm probably going to have to tho, since we are going to be selling the pieces of the system.

My dad's 57th birthday is on Halloween, said he doesn't want presents "We're too old for presents". I'll probably get him at least something small anyway. Also going to talk to Niki about getting me a deal on a car. The metro doesn't like Afton all that much, esp. only running on 2 out of 3 cylinders. Going to try to get something nice for under 3Gs, then I can work on the metro and see if I can fix it, or really break it.

Tried to call the people down the road that own the strip of land between where we are going to build and the road to talk more about buying it, but whoever answered said I had the wrong number. I think he just didn't understand me, cuz it sounded like the guy I had talked to before. I'll try again tonight. I was going to talk about price initially, but I think now I just want to make sure they're still interested in selling and get the process started on surveying it and having the lawyer draw up papers or whatever. Need to get moving on the house, tired of living in a basement.

Met with the guys from BigOak last night on the RMS stuff, they seemed happy with the direction I was heading. I think Shell was a bit concerned about the calendar, as I hadn't really started on it yet, and he thinks that is one of the pieces they really want. Trying to get in touch with Rick to see if the calender he did for CMax was in .Net, if so I'll see if he'll "donate" it to me.

Back Home

Ugh, I think that was the worst vacation I can remember. I was sick most of the week, and at least 2 of the kids were sick at any given time. Riley and Eryn were finally getting over the worst of it at the end of the week. I am over it just in time to get back to work, whooopee.

I ended up not getting squat done for the business during the week, but oh well. I have till Nov. 1 to finish up the RMS intranet, I should be able to get it done, there's not that much left. Just have to put an admin front-end on an open soure forum piece that I am using for their messaging system, and finish up the admin for building custom web pages. The hardest part will probably be managing images they want to upload.

My parents kept Savannah for us while we were on vacation, and offered to keep her now until we have our house build. I took them up on it, I hate having to keep her on a chain. They are probably going to spoil her and make her an inside dog, but at least she will be able to run around all she wants.

Email when I got back to work wasn't bad. I think that's because not many people really know me here yet. That should change soon. I am going to be in the on-call rotation I think starting this week. I guess that depends on how much is left before we can actually let people start testing on the system.

Vacation

We actually left on time Sunday, a first I think for us. Deanna packed a lot less stuff than last year, we didn't pack as many toys and books and stuff for the kids as usual, as they don't end up using them anyway. Sunday went pretty well, Eryn and Riley did very well in the car for 4 hours. We stopped once for lunch at about 1:00, and to let Debra feed the baby. Riley was starting with a cold when we left.

Monday we went to the pool at the rec center, which is right across the street from the house, a nice plus on location there. We stayed about an hour, the little kids pool feels like it's 10 degrees colder than the big pool. Figure that one out. The kids loved it anyway. It took Riley and Eryn a little while to warm up to the pool, but once they did, they didn't want to leave. They ate a good lunch after we bot back, swimming always makes them hungry. After the twins had their nap, we went down to the beach for 45 minutes or so. They played in the sand, collected shells, and chased some seagulls. Eryn went down to the water once, and as I didn't want them getting their clothes wet, I tried to pick her up and almost dropped her back in the surf. I think I scared her a bit doing that, as she didn't go back near the water after that. She'll get over it tho, she loves water. I think the waves put her off a bit too.

The bed is killing my back, and Riley gave me the cold. We gave Riley some cold medicine last night so she could sleep. Deanna ended up getting a migrane during the night, I don't think the bed is agreeing with her either, but she always has trouble sleeping. She took some Maxalt, but that didn't help much. I don't think it turned out to be a migraine, and she took some ibuprofin later and that was helping. Today she is taking Sarah out, along with Debra, Joe, and Elyssa. She is going to take each of the older 3 out by themselves 1 day during the week to shop and spend some time alone with them. I took some cold medicine this morning also, and gave Riley some as well, we were both dragging when we got up. I'm going to try to take the kids to the rec center and let Meagan and Brenna play some arcade games, if Meagan can ever finish her homework. We may go down to walk on the beach after lunch, as I don't expect Deanna back until after that.

I have to get some work done for RMS during the week. The guys at Big Oak are looking to set up a meeting. That will have to be next week, tho I don't know when. I don't get home til 4:30, and it will take me about 30 mins to get over to the Innsbrook area to meet them. I have the messaging part going, and a good part of the classroom web pages set up, just have to finish up the management of them, and the user management. I should be able to get it done before the week is up.

Well, yesterday didn't go too badly as far as working time goes. I did manage to get 8 hours in for nTelos. Meagan had a good time at Jamestown, they saw all the ususal stuff, glass blowing, the old houses, a Native American village, that kind of stuff. She bought a couple of things, an indian charm, a fan that didn't work when she bought it (I advised her to make sure stuff works in the future before she buys it), and she got a piece of glass from the glass blowing area.

Meagan and Brenna both have Odyssey of the Mind tonight. Deanna is a coach for Brenna's team, so I have to go home early to watch the twins and get Sarah off the bus. Don't know what my Mom has planned for them tonight, probably going to dinner with the rest of the family.

Tomorrow is going to be busy, Deanna is going grocery shopping (as normal), and we have a RN coming over to do physical on both of us for the life insurance we just got through MetLife. We bought a Term policy until we deceide who to buy the Universal one through, though it will probably be MetLife.

Our 11th anniversary is also tomorrow. We're not doing anything tomorrow because we will be getting ready for vacation and such, we'll probably go out to dinner Monday or Tuesday night while we're at the beach.

I'll try to post some from the beach, but I don't know if I will have a dial-up line by then. I think DirecWay provides us with an 800 number, but I have to find out what that is. I probably have to go through Joe, because he's the only one that knows his DirecWay login.

More Scheduling fun

Turns out my day gets even more fun. Joe's first flight home was late, so he missed his connecting flight, so He won't be there this afternoon. Deanna has to be at school at 4:00 to pick Meagan up from her field trip, so I have to be home at 3:30, which means I have to leave work at 2:30. So I will be missing about 2 hours away from work (I did work from home about 30 minutes this morning, so I will have about 90 minutes to make up tonight). I was hoping to be able to work from home tomorrow, but I think I need to come in and get some stuff done and make sure I have synchronized everything before I leave on vacation. I have to leave early on Fridays anyway because Meagan and Breanna have Odyssey of the Mind after school, and Deanna is one of the coaches for that. nTelos support people still haven't figured out why my VPN connection isn't working, so I don't know how effective any work I do Friday night/Saturday morning would be, since I wouldn't be able to check it in until after vacation. I'm going to try calling the guy who keeps ignoring my emails about it this afternoon when I get home to try and troubleshoot the thing. Also have to get some stuff done for The Lock Up, and Concourse is having issues with one of their servers so I can't get to their reports. Bleck what a day. The intermediary guy for concourse (the one who writes my checks) is having some kind of email problems, his emails to me seem to be falling into a black hole somewhere, so I'm not getting any information from him. He needs to work that out, it is becoming a real issue. I dunno what the problem is, I have 4 different email accounts, and his stuff isn't getting to any of them. Did I mention I'm really looking forward to vacation?

Well, today will be an interesting day schedule-wise. Debra had to leave at 6 this morning, and my wife has to take my oldest to school early for a field trip. She has to take the Debra's baby with her, because I will have to get the kids ready for school and on the bus. I'll probably be getting to work about 8 this morning, so I will be doing some work from home before and after. Haven't had much time for overtime this week yet, so I am going to try to get a lot of time in today. We'll see what happens, as it's bath night for the kids, and vacation coming up Sunday, blah blah blah. This week hasn't been condusive to getting a lot of work done. I also have to work on Richmond Montessori's intranet, and hopefully my SQL Reporting Server client has provided my with the queries he needs run instead of my trying to guess what they are from data. Also got some new web site work to do for The Lock Up, so it will be a busy end of the week.

Busy Busy Busy

Well, the next couple of days are going to busy for work. Have deadlines coming up at nTelos while I'm on vacation, so I need to be done with all my stuff before that. I am trying to work at least an hour extra a night from home, I may try to put in 2 the rest of this week. Most of it is done, so I don't think it will be a problem. We are having one of the users take a preliminary look at it today, so I guess it depends on what they think.

Back to work

My wife got home about 10 last night, had some interesting things to tell me about the people at the wake and funeral. The wife of one of her grandfathers children had the nerve to complain about the fact that the woman who had been taking care of the grandfather for the past several years had his house in her name. This was at the wake! She had taken care of him for several years, he has either been getting alzheimers or dementia, something where he can't remember recent events, but can remember things that happened a while back. He gave the woman power of attorney for him when he first realized he was going downhill, about 4 years ago, and signed his house over to her. After the wake, one of his grandchildren (the child of the woman who wanted the house) wanted to get his mason's ring and some pins. This man had worn said ring for over 50 years and never taken it off. None of his descendants were masons, so they had no use for it, and he was complaining that he wanted the ring to remember him by, when everyone else wanted him buried in it. He proceeded to throw a fit and leave, so they deceided to bury him with the ring. My wife said she was ashamed to be related to them. Some people are just beyond belief.

Sarah has a cold now, the last of the kids to get it. Hopefully no one will pick up anything else before vacation. Joe had to leave for Ohio this week, but he was a big help with the kids while the wife was gone, watching the twins while I was out at the bus stop with the 3 older ones. Really looking forwared to vacation next week, I haven't been anywhere since last year about this time.

Anyway, back to work today after being at home 4 days strait. Deadlines deadlines. I have lots to do before vacation coming up next week, so I'm off to it, just wanted to take a minute to comment on the goings on.

Jobs

Greetings, I figured I'd start using a real blog instead of where I was posting. I got away from my job at Philip Morris, where I was supposed to be designing a system for them, but ended up doing user requirements gathering and write-ups. Ugh. I am now working at nTelos, with a group of people that know what they are doing! We are writing a sales automation web app, using Microsoft's UIP application block (an implementation of MVC pattern), and several other frameworks. The first place I have worked (and I have a history) to actually reuse code instead of rewriting everything over and over. I am actually enjoying doing the work. I am signed on as 6 month contract to hire, but they may be going through a change of ownership near the end of that, so I may want to extend the contract so I don't end up working tons of overtime for a conversion and not getting paid for it.
I talked with a guy from the Darden graduate school of business at UVa on Friday about doing some part time work for them. I'm not sure I will have the time at this point, as nTelos has deadlines coming up, and I am going on vacation next week. That and they can only pay about half what I charge, but there is the possiblity of getting some good exposure there, so that might make up for the pay. I probably won't be able to work on this project, but the guy said he liked my qualifications, and even if we couldn't work something out on this one, he would definitely like to have me come in on future projects.

I have been slacking on getting the building of my house started. I need to get the ball rolling on purchasing a small piece of land from our neighbors that will sit between our land and the road so we can put our driveway in. Hopefully once that is done we will have the house done in 6 months or so. It will be good to get into our own house again. We have been living with my sister-in-law for the past year so we could save up some money for the house, and while it's not been too bad, I am ready to get back into my own place, and I'm sure the kids are as well (if you don't know, I have 5 girls, age 2-9).

My wife's grandfather passed away this Friday, so she went to WV yesterday and today to go to the funeral. He was 94. I didn't know him all that well, but he was pretty nice from what I did know of him, although he seemed a bit rigid in scheduling of his day (he had to have dinner at 6:00, or he wasn't happy). He was a chemist for someone when he worked, I can't remember who right now. I was also doing a little chemistry work for Albright & Wilson when they were in Ashland before I got my real job :)

Anyway, that's it for now.