Recent Happenings

Blogging has been sporadic at best since the beginning of the year. Mostly because work is super busy and school. But at the end of this semester I'll have a masters. I'm pretty excited about that.

Anyway here's some happenings:

- I ended the bowling season with 186 average in my Tuesday night league and 182 in my Wednesday night league. I started bowling early in the second half of my Wednesday night league so I had already worked out a lot of the kinks by then. I got an email showing my dad's average is 185 which is outstanding at 70.

- We decided to leave Hayley with the grandparents while we're in FL. Nick is going to hold down the fort at home. Hopefully we don't miss her to much.

- Easter went great. We visited my brother and his family and my sister and her family. We made it home around 1:30ish am. I'd like to thank Lisa for cooking an outstanding meal. I think they were pretty impressed with the progress Hayley has made.

- School is going good. It's a lot of busy work this semester but the work isn't to challenging.

Spring

This winter was one of the warmest on record and definently the warmest that I remember. There was hardly any snow too. I got to use my snow blower twice. But even though it was such a warm winter the average temperature was still in the 20's which is still to cold to spend a lot of time outside with Hayley. Going to visit Jen today at work with short sleeves on got me thinking about last year in FL and how it was so nice to go outside everyday of the year without a coat. I think our families need to move there so we don't have to worry about not seeing them if we move there.

Vacation dilemma

What to do? Jen and I are planning a vacation to FL at the end of April. The problem we're dealing with is Hayley. Do we leave her with her grandparents for 10 days or bring her with. I'm kind of nervous about leaving her with anyone for a night so 10 days is another story. I know it's a super big chore to bring her with but I'd feel a lot more comfortable with her with us. That way I know she's safe and I won't miss her. A guy at work said "You'll enjoy your vacation for 3 days then you'll spend the rest of the time wishing she was there". I can totally see his point. Maybe we need to cut our vacations down to 2-3 day sprints. That'd be nice if flying was cheap.

And for those of you keeping track I bowled my 3rd 600 series in a row today. Let's see if I can keep it up tomorrow. Soon I'll be on the PBA and you'll be able to watch me on TV. ha!!

Another 600

I bowled another 600 series on Wednesday. I got 5 200 games in a row going counting Tuesdays scores. I ended the night with a 181, 2 pins above my average. It was a decend night and our team is in 5th place so we should move up.

This weekend we're planning on child proofing the house with Hayley crawling. I got the Exploder running but I think it's just about at the end of it's life. I give it gas and it slows down. Kind of weird. I'm thinking it either needs spark plugs or the fuel filter is clogged. Or it's junk and needs to be replaced by a Mazda 3. Who knows.

600 Series

Last night I bowled my first 600 series in a sanctioned league. In the past I've been able to put together 2 good games and then I'd bomb on the third game. Last night was different, I improved every game. It took the edge of the losses by the T-Wolves and the Wild. Now I only need like 1000 more 600 series to catch my dad.

Kirbyyyyyyyyyyy Pucket

Today is an extremely sad day. Kirby was by far my favorite sports figure in any sport ever!! I drove from Willmar to the dome on many occasion and sat in the outfield so I could see him play. And who could forget the greatest introduction of all time "And batting 3rd your center fielder KIRBYYYYYYYYYYYYYY PUCKET". Only Bob Casey, another Twins legend could pull it off. The crowd would go nuts. No other hitter since then has received that kind of ovation every time they step to the plate. Since the time Kirby retired there's been a void in every Twins fans heart. The World Series in '87 was one of the greatest moments in Minnesota history only to be out done by the '91 series. We'll miss you Kirby.

New Hutch

Jens neighbor is retired and he does some wood working on the side. Jens dad had him build us a hutch to store all of Jens Precious Moments. I think it turned out pretty good, however, I could not resist the chance to tease Jen about it. You know the usual, "the computer I could buy with the money we're spending on this" or "I think it would look better on that wall". I think after three days Jen has finally cooled off. :) I tried to work out a deal with Jens parents that in exchange for holding Hayley they should buy us the hutch. I thought they were getting a pretty good deal but they didn't think so. Well I'm off to watch the T-Wolves lose another one. Man being a Minnesota sports fan this year bites.


 
 

Nothing Happening

Life has been pretty routine this winter. Since I don't really like cold weather I just hang out indoors for the most. I day dream about the nice weather they're having in FL and I wish I was there to play golf or just hang out outdoors. I think I've worn a nice path in our carpet from walking Hayley back and forth. It would be really nice to take her for walks outside. Oh well. Hayley does a great job entertaining us. She's just a blast to be around. Right now I can hear her banging her feet against the crib. Which is a sign that she's awake and ready to tackle a couple more hours of the day. So I'm cutting this entry short.

Joel's Plethora of Ideas

Joel has been waiting for his college to remove his autobiography from the web for over a year now. I recently checked to see if it was still there or not and it was gone. So I did a Google search for it and I found the site cached but the image was missing. So I'm recreating the page here (with a slightly modified image) on my blog so this will never go away and Joel will have to live with it forever. Man the kids will love it.



My name is Joel. I am a hardworking, focused college senior. I am thoroughly convinced that I was born a mechanical engineer. From earliest memories I have been building things just to see if they will work. This is why I majored in mechanical engineering, and why I am convinced that I will love a career in the field. My current design projects include a wood burning hot tub, a lightweight gas-powered scooter, and a linkage mechanism for an adjustable kitchen countertop. My brain is a plethora of solutions to design problems. I constantly analyze everything around me, thinking about how things could be designed better or how new designs could be implemented with new materials or mechanisms, always keeping in mind factors like cost and life. Although I have been thinking critically for as long as I can remember, my education has taught me to implement acceptable solutions, and effectively communicate my ideas to others in a viable way.

The majority of my days are spent studying and working. Throughout my college career I have held a job. I feel a sense of pride for working longer and harder than other students. Most would see having an extra job as a disadvantage; I think that it teaches a person how to be organized, self-disciplined, and literally, how to work hard. During school when I am able to have a day off of work I feel like I have abundance of extra time. My homework is done early, and I am left to idleness. In reality this is how other students, or as I see it competitors for future employment, live on a daily bases. This rigorous schedule prepares me beyond the scope of anything I will see in future employment, and I think my employers have, and will, recognize this potential. 

Rolling and Jumping

It's amazing that it's been only 5 months and Hayley is rolling over both ways and she has figured out her jonnie jumpup. She jumps like crazy and when she's out of it she tries to jump anyway. It's so entertaining. This weekend we're getting baptized. The weather has taken a turn from the 30-40's we've had to barley 0. (I won't even mention how nice it is in FL) But it supposed to warm up a bit by Sunday so it shouldn't be so bad.

And a big thanks to Green-O for finishing the dishwasher before all the company comes.

Working 60 hours a week

If you're wondering why there hasn't been any posts in a while it's because our project is working 60 hours a week. It's short term so it's not to bad plus the OT is nice.

Hayley is doing great. She's been rolling over to her stomach in her crib and sleeping like that. But I think she get's frustrated cuz she can't roll back and she'll start fussing. We have nothing to complain about, she's just an awesome baby.

I start my last class Monday. After this semester I'll have a Masters. Cool ey? It will be nice to get that out of the way. Not that I mind taking one class a semester. Well I'm off to work again.

What's up?

Keeping up with the blog? Well not lately. I've been to busy, with what, I don't know.

Anyway, some recent happenings: I did get another ticket. This one for not moving my truck during a snow emergency. I was fortunate enough to see the tow truck pulling up to my truck so I was able to run out and move it before the guy could tow it away. I was happy to pay the ticket rather then have to deal with our truck getting towed. If we were in FL I wouldn't have to worry about stupid snow emergency's.

Ticket Outcome

I took the day off yesterday to fight my ticket in Litchfield. When I got there the clerk had me fill out some forms. I asked how it worked and she said:

a. You can plead not guilty and we'll set up a court date.
b. Pay your ticket.
c. Talk to the Prosecuting attorney and try to negotiate a better deal.

Although I think I could've won the case I choose to talk to the Prosecuting attorney cuz I didn't want to take another day off from work and drive the 1.5 hours it takes to get there.

First the Procecuter said he'd drop the ticket after six months if I didn't get another ticket and I pay the fine. I asked if he could lower the fine, which was $140. He asked what happened and I told him my version of the story and he kind of shrugged and said he'd dismiss the ticket if I didn't get a ticket within 6 months and pay a $100 court fee. Even though the $100 still hurts I settled for it.

No I just need to not get a ticket for six months.

10" of Snow

Now that we got our first big storm out of the way. I'm going to need to fire up the snow blower. Keep in mind this is a very old snow blower with only a pull start. I'm thinking it isn't going to start. It hasn't run in two years. So I'm going to be stuck shoveling. You know there's no shoveling snow in FL. Which reminds me of a professor I had in my undergrad. He used to live down south somewhere. His wife wanted to move to MN to be closer to her family. He made a deal with her. If they move to MN then she'd have to take care of the snow removal. I think this is a good idea. Since Jen wants to live in MN so bad she should be put in charge of removing the snow. She'll definitly want to move back to FL then.

And in other news I got an 85% on my final last night. I was thinking that it wasn't to shabby until I saw the class average of 92.5%. Crap, maybe I should've studied. I guess I'll have to settle for a B in the class. Dam those "All of the Above" trick questions.

Final Today

I have a final today in my Information Retrieval class (The class was basically the nuts and bolts of how Google works). Of which I did absolutely no studying for. I don't know why, I guess time just flew by so fast that I didn't get a chance to study. I'm teetering on an A so I'm thinking after this test I'll be at a B. Which sucks cuz I created a web search engine from scratch for my class project. When I told my professor what I was doing for my project he was like "Do you want to try and continue what another student started last semester" cuz he thought it would be too difficult to implement. Well I finished the project in a weekend.

I found out what some of the other projects were and this project totally kicks arse over these other projects. One girl was touting her spider, (A spider is an automated means of collecting links on a page). It took me all of five minutes to include a spider on the indexer portion of my search engine.

But whatever, I'm just against tests that one can study for and forget everything the next day. I think my project should count for 75% of my grade and not 25%. The experience I gained from my project far outweighs the knowledge I'd gain from trying to study for a test.

Did I mention that I hate tests. I'm also a whinner.

Sleep is inconsistent

Hayley slept almost 12 hours yesterday. Last night she slept about 6 hours. No biggy though since Jen has overnight duties. I get a chuckle out of it cuz Hayley will start cooing but once in a while she'll fall back asleep, but for the most part the cooing is a warning that someone should come get her before she starts crying. I can feel a huge uuhhhhh if Hayley starts crying instead of falling back asleep. Then Jen is stumbling around trying to find her glasses and then trying to find her way around. But it's not to funny cuz I generally have overnight duties on the weekends.

I'm Junk

Now and then I send myself emails from my home email to my work email. Well I just realized for some reason I haven't been getting them. So I was checking out my junk email and all my emails from home were in there. I guess I'm considered junk.

Below Zero Today

I believe today was our first below zero temperature of the season. My Exploder almost didn't want to start today and when I put it into drive it took a while before the transmission to engage. But the Exploder is still holding out. Hopefully it will last until I become rich. Which will probably be never.

This reminds me. Norm took us to lunch in his new mini van. It's loaded, dvd player built in, auto opening doors, quick configuration changing and we can't forget OnStar. It was a pretty awesome ride. However, fitting 7 fatties was still a little tight.

Back to my weather whine. I checked Clearwaters weather and it's in the 70's. Man I could really go for roller-blading on the causeway to Honeymoon island.

And then there was one or two

Congrates to Ryan who proposed to Kris this weekend. Judging from all the activity around my cube neighbors I think she said yes. I'm thinking her productivity today will be between 0 and well 0. It's kind of funny to see the difference in reaction between the two. Ryan sent out a one like email "the waiting is over" and Kris is running around spreading the news. Of the gang here at Eagan there were two left to get married. Now there's just one. That would be Matt. Well if you consider Ben maybe that's two. If Ben gets married it may be the shocker of a lifetime. What would happen if he had to spend his money on a wedding and kids instead of electronics? That could get ugly.

Weekend Happenings

Finally we have a dishwasher. After contemplating getting a portable and then remodeling our kitchen we decided to install the dishwasher we had in the middle of our kitchen and just build and enclosure around it. Green-O is handling the labor so I got to give him a big thanks for getting this done. I don't think he expected the inlaws to be there critiquing his every last move. But it turned out OK. The wife and I are so happy that we don't have to manually wash dishes.

After working on the dishwasher we had some Turkey for Thanksgiving with the inlaws. Then it was off to the Monster Truck Show. Jens dad, who recently stopped milking cows, was able to go so that was pretty cool.

Sunday we just hung out with family. I TiVo'd the Vikings so the inlaws wouldn't have to watch them. When I finally got around to watching them I think it took less then an hour after skipping all the commercials and half-time show.

And that was pretty much my weekend.