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My Stuff

About Me (pics)
Everything you never wanted to know about me.

My Car
I'm a little nuts about my car!

My Family

Mom
The lady who went through to trouble of my gestation. She calls me George for no particular reason.

Dad
The guy who had the fun part of my being in the world.

Carrie
My oldest sister.

Katelyn
My 'lil sister.

Alex
personal blog
Not blood-related, but just as close.

Annie
The lil sister I never had. I actually have one, but still.

Kenna
Surrogate mother.

Bob
Quasi-dad and maker of the greatest ribs in history.

My Friends

Rachel
personal blog
My fiance.

Johnny 5000
My best friend since the sixth grade.

Gortho
My friend and roommate for the past few years.

Niccole
Friend originally through Katelyn.

Fun Kristan
Her name is Fun Kristan, 'nuf said.

Bish
personal website
The Great Bish. The best programmer I know.

Kurt
personal website
The Intern.

Dan
personal website
Co-worker.

Tall Kristen
personal website
Friend through Katelyn.

My Favorite Sites

Slashdot
News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters.

The New York Times
All the News Worth Wrapping in Markup.

Google
I hope no explanation is necessary.

The Jargon File
Dictionary of techy slang.

Fark
A daily collection of all the truly odd news on the net. Very funny stuff.

HowStuffWorks
The most fascinating collection of articles about how things work.

Wikipedia
The best encyclopedia ever written. And it's all free!

My Journal - July 2005

2005-07-24
So it's Sunday morning and I haven't had Swedish pancakes! I didn't even get to sleep in! No pancakes because Rachel is in San Francisco for Melissa and Victor's wedding. I'm incredibly bummed I couldn't go. San Francisco is by far my favorite city I've ever visited and Melissa and Victor are two of my favorite of Rachel's friends. Anyway, my best to the two of them. Of course, I would have also loved to have shared a San Francisco vacation with Rachel, but I'm sure we will some day. :)

The reason I didn't get to sleep in is because I officially have a new dog and she just can't sleep past 8:00 am. That wouldn't be so bad except that she also doesn't like to be awake while I'm sleeping. Long story short, I'm no longer sleeping past eight. We're calling her Chewy...

Chewy trying to take a nap on my bed.

As most of you know, I've wanted to get a dog for a very long time. Now that the Europe trip is done and I don't have any long trips planned in the near future, it seemed like a good time. I got her as a rescued dog from a shelter called Canine Castaways. Of course, no one really knows much about her from before they found her, but she came to them without proper medical attention and very skinny. They gave her shots, got her spaded, implanted a microchip in her back, and found her a home. I've been giving her a little extra food every day to get her up to a better weight. She is already looking better than a few weeks ago. She was also very nervous around new people and other dogs. She's getting better now, though. I've been taking her to the dog park so she can meet other dogs and I try and get her introduced to pretty much every human I know.

Chewy with her favorite toy: Hula Girl. Rachel picked it out. :)

The first few weeks with Chewy wasn't very easy. She had trouble with doing her business indoors, specifically she choose my dining room. She also decided to destroy at least one thing every time I left her alone. Finally I decided to crate-train her. It sounds terrible, but I basically have a crate for her which is big enough for her to stand up and turn around in, but not big enough for her to walk around too much. I put her in the crate every time I leave her at home alone for more than an hour. Amazingly, after a few days she got to almost enjoy going in there. Best of all, she now does her business outside and she hasn't destroyed a single thing, even when I leave her out of the crate for short periods of time. It's really a nice little setup.

Chewy trying to shake the life out of Hula Girl. I haven't had the heart to tell her it's inanimate.

Rachel says the Chewy and I look alike. I'm pretty sure one of the two of us should be offended by that. :)

Work has been absolutely insane. We're going into code freeze in 8 days and somehow there's this push to finish the EUOH project. It's complete insanity if you ask me. There is at least one major piece of functionality that still only exists as a function spec! I'm supposed to write it this week as well as finish up three other sections and fix any bugs found in development testing. On top of that, we'd be able to stage the application next week, but if we find a single "bad" bug in it we couldn't possibly fix it, so we'd be SOL. Either way, there's just no way this thing is getting done. That doesn't seem to stop the business and project management involved. Oh well. The bottom line is, if this thing is in any way a threat to the stability or data integrity of any of the applications it interacts with, I will not give my blessing to move it to production. That probably doesn't have much legal bearing, but certainly should give some weight to the final decision.

So, Chewy and I are off to The Hannay Family Picnic at my grandparents' house. It should be a lot of fun. :)

2005-07-10
Wow, I've had a crazy-busy month since I've been back from Europe. At work we're desperately trying to get a whole bunch of new code into production before we go into a code freeze that starts August 1st. Because of that I've had to put in one really long weekend and a number of really late nights. The good news is I've produced a lot of good code. The bad news is I'm still behind schedule on the last project I need to have done. I should be really worried about it, but honestly, there's no freaking way the other developers on the project are going to finish and even if they do there is no way it's going to get tested and pronounced ready for production in time. Either way, the push is on and I'm really feeling the pressure.

Rachel and Casey at Leigh Anne's b-day party.

The other cool thing at work is the arrival of our new intern! I'm very excited. Our last intern, Kurt, was really great and if our new intern lives up to his interview I have no doubt he'll be able to do a really great job. I really enjoy the whole intern concept. We get a developer who is fresh and ready to apply some of that academic knowledge and we provide invaluable real-world know-how. It's such a win-win I can't believe there are companies that don't do it. Anyway, he's starting tomorrow, so I'll probably spend most of the day walking him around campus showing him where all the bathrooms are and introducing him to all the people he'll be cursing about at happy hour. :)

I've been pretty busy outside of work too. For a few weeks after Europe Rachel and I didn't see much of each other. I guess we both had a lot of stuff to catch up on. Last week and this weekend we did get to spend some good time together, which was nice. We went to Katelyn's concert on Friday. That was a lot of fun. On Saturday we went dog shopping and then went our separate ways for guys' and girls' nights out. Today we went swimming and out to dinner. Our 1 year anniversary is coming up soon!

Casey.

Another exciting thing is that after years of talking about it and it never being the right time, I'm officially getting a dog! As I said earlier, Rachel and I went shopping on Saturday. I really like the idea of getting a dog from a shelter. I know puppies are great and all, but it makes me feel good to have helped a dog that needs it. Besides, there's always a family out there to take a puppy. Some of these abandoned dogs are a tough sell. Anyway, I only have a few requirements for a dog. First, it can't be a dog that sheds a whole ton. There's just something about being covered in dog hair all the time that bugs me. Second, it has to be small enough that I don't feel bad about having him in my townhouse in the city. I would feel absolutely terrible about leaving a lab in my 1,500-square-foot home during the day. Third, it can't be so cute that I am embarrassed to walk it. I don't need (or want) a pit bull, but I don't want something some starlet would keep in her purse either. Anyway, none of the dogs we looked at on Saturday fit those three rules, so no go there. Today I went out online and found a new listing at a shelter for a Border Terrier. This is the perfect dog for me! I talked with the foster family and I've got an appointment to meet her tomorrow. If all goes well I should have a new member of my family in just a few days! I'm really excited and a little nervous too.

I guess that's it for now. This week I *must* finish my part of the EUOH project, get The New Intern all set up and happy, maybe bring a new dog into my life, go to my cousin's b-day party, rollerblade with Fun Kristan, have dinner with Bish, and hopefully get some quality time in with my special lady friend. ;)

Go to entries for June.