Truck Blues

The truck is still broke. Ford quoted $850 or so to fix it. So it ain't going to get fixed by Ford. That's total crazy talk. That's like me asking $100 for each line of code I write. Oh wait, I think my employer charges the government close to that for each line of code I write. Now if only I saw even a small percentage of that I could afford to pay Ford to fix my truck. Man I should have left it dead when we found it on the road. Good thing I got inlaws that go out of their way to fix stuff. At least I can repay them with some Hayley time.

Turn your back for 2 seconds

Hayley loves playing in the spice cabinet so while she was playing in it I made a sandwich for lunch. When I went to the fridge for milk I looked down and I had a green daughter. She'd got into the food coloring. I was in shock for a while afterward. I couldn't believe it. So I spent the next 1/2 trying to get her clean. Good thing the stuff comes off pretty easy. Although she ended up with a green mouth and tongue for a few hours. 

Graduation

Yep it's finally over. I went to the ceremony last Saturday and I thought it was actually kind of cool. All the professors lined up and gave an ovation as we walked into the gym. Our degree program was the last out of 450 students to walk across the stage so that took some time and I was 4th from the last overall to walk across. One thing I didn't know until graduation is that Master graduates get caped. Something a little different then undergrad. Now I can push for a promotion at work. We'll see how that goes. 

Minor Cross Roads

I made the decision yesterday to move to a new project. I was working on a legacy system, which basically means the software has been completed and I was working on minor enhancements. My new project will give me the opportunity to work on new development and I'll have the opportunity to refresh my design skills again. It's been a while since I've worked on a new development so it should be fun. The software I'll be working on is a UAV ground station platform. So it should also be interesting.

On another note, I've finished grad school and I'll be attending the ceremony on Saturday night. It's been mentioned in my blog about 10 times now so I'll leave it at that.

Sunday a Mike, Scott and I are heading off to Milwaukee to attend a Twins - Brewers game. It should be fun as long as the 5 hour drive doesn't wear us out. Monday we're going to try and get a tour of the Miller brewery. We'll see how that goes. We're pretty unorganized right now so we'll be playing things as they go.

The Short Bus

I joined a different crowd to lunch today and as we were walking to our vehicles I was shocked to see someone drove a bus to work. It was friggen hilarious. We all hoped on and headed out to lunch. I guess it's not as funny blogging it as it was in person but oh well, not everyone can say they get bus service to lunch.

One Final Left

After going down in a blaze of fire yesterday during our presentation I can take comfort in knowing that I have one final left and I'll have a masters. I figure if I look back on this five years from now I'll have no clue what happend during this presentation. From misspellings on the powerpoint slides to running over our time limit. But whatever, so now I need to get a 80 on the final instead of a 70 to get an A. I'll add another 20 minutes to my study time.

I really don't know what to think of it since I assumed getting a masters would be a lot harder than this was. But I don't feel to bad since taking classes at Stevens University wasn't anymore challenging. Maybe school comes a lot easier when you only take 1 or 2 courses at a time. All I know is that being done will free up another night so I can play more golf and spend my time with Hayley and Jen.

#1 Programmer on the Planet

When I graduated from college I used to think I was the best programmer on the planet. I was the tech lead on all my college teams and I had an actual programming job so I was heads ahead of the other BCIS students that I knew in experience. All this non-sense came crashing down after I met Ben. He made me realize I had to settle for the 2nd best programmer in the world. (I'm actually down to about 25th best now, Dam LM for hiring smart people) **sarcasm people**

Well Ben is leaving LM for a lesser known company called Microsoft. Ben made this announcement a long time ago but I just finally got a chance to blog so I'm writing about it know. I have no clue why he'd want to the leave the world leader in technical prowl for a MS. If you're interested in why he's leaving you can read about on his blog I'm kind of happy now cuz when my MS apps crash I can call someone to complain about and actually get results. Although with Ben on board, MS will produce the best quality software ever.

I am left with knowing that I gave Ben on good idea to use a Hashtable in his code. He only gave me about 300 ideas.

Well best of luck to ya Ben. Say hi to the last of my 7 prom dates for me while you're there. I think you know her since she's a regular commenter on your blog.