Daycare Bugs

Hayley has been in daycare for just over a month now and she's been sick twice from it. She really never got sick until she was in daycare. Hopefully it's a good thing that she gets sick now and not so much later on in life. Although all the colds I caught when I was younger doesn't seem to help me fend these stupid bugs off as Hayley has spread it to me as well. Although my cold is not nearly as bad as Jens. She can hardly talk today.

Professor setty??

Well I signed my contract with St Thomas officially making me an adjunct professor. If you've known me for any amount of time while I was going to school you would've no doubt heard me bashing the teaching habits of the professors. Well we'll see how I do in this role. I have it easier then most professors though since I only have to teach for 1/3 of the semester. However, the topic I'm covering really takes a full semester to teach so it's going to be challenging.

The Biggest Loser

Yep I'm a fatty. Even though I haven't always been a fatty somehow these fat cells seem to absorb more and more fat making crap. I'm constantly playing the yo yo game... weight up .. weight down and every time it seems the weight gets a little higher. (Dam ice cream) Basically the cycle has been 2 months of dieting and 4 months of being a slob and eating. Now that grad school is done there's no more excuses.

Hanging out at guys weekend the last weekend Green-O and I decided to put a bet on who could lose the most weight (percentage wise) by guys weekend next summer. We'll see how it goes. If I lose 100lbs and still lose I'll still be happy I guess. It's only $50. Our starting weight is Green-O 213lbs Kyle 249lbs. (that's close to 100lbs heavier then I weighed at high school graduation)

Finally Walking

It's been 6 months since she crawled. We figured she'd be walking by 8-9 months. A couple times in the last month she's taken a few steps between me and Jen but with grandma here the last couple days she's off and walking a lot on her own. It's kind of cool to see. She still falls a lot and she's working on getting up on her own now. But she can get across the room pretty easy now. Now if we could get her to stop eating everything.

The Season

Tonight was pretty much our season in softball. We started out 2-4 so our chances at winning the division were not that good. We've turned the season around with a 6 game winning streak so our record is 8-4. This league has no playoffs so there is no chance at winning the league since the first place team was undefeated. The last two weeks we've been waiting on this game. If we can't win the division at least we can beat the undefeated team. It was close tonight, after 6 innings we were down one and up to bat in the top of the seventh. We eecked out three runs so all we needed to do was hold them in the bottom of the seventh. I walked the first batter (my first walk all game). The next batter hit a lazy fly that was caught. The next guy hit a shot back to me and I basically looked at my glove in disbelief that I caught it. Then got my wits and threw the guy out at first for a double play. Exciting stuff even though it's slow pitch softball. I think after this game we should have second wrapped up with two games to play.

Big Win's

This week has been a good week in Golf and Softball with both events coming down to the final hole/inning. During my golf match I was up 2 with 3 to go only to choke 2 away on 7 and 8. So now I'm tied on the 9th hole and he hits a good shot in the middle of the fairway staying well short of the 3 bunkers that surround the green. The hole is only 258 yds and we had a slight wind against us. This guy was a lot better then me around the green so I figured my only shot was to try and drive the green so I put my all into the shot and it landed in the front bunker. He hit his next shot just over the green and I hit mine on but I had a 20 foot putt. He chipped 4 feet to the hole. So I'm thinking just to tie I need to 2 putt and I hit my first putt 8 feet left of the hole and I'm thinking I'm a major choker. Then after a couple minutes of sizing and practice strokes I bang the ball so hard that had it not hit the hole it would've went 8 feet past. But luck was on my side. He barely missed so I won the hole and the match. Our team is in first now. With a good shot to win the first half.

Our softball team was playing the second place team and we blow a 6 run lead in the bottom of the 5th with a horrid error streak giving up 9 runs. We came back and scored 3 to tie and held them scoreless in the bottom of the 6th. The 7th and 8th inning were scoreless as well. So in the 9th, the second extra inning, we scored 2. There first batter hit a ball and our right fielder tried diving for it and missed giving up a homer. The next batter got a signal and things weren't looking good for us. But the next batter hit to SS and we got the force at 2nd. The next batter flew out to center. So they're down to their last out. Seebs moves in at LC and they totally hit it over his head but our RC cheated over and made a nice running catch to end the game. So we leap frogged them in the standings. We play the first place team next game but they're undefeated so there's no chance of catching them.

In all it was a good week of softball.

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.

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.