Well, off to a great start. It's been 2 days and I already forgot that I had one of these things.

Our Germany trip plan has changed again and we're going to be driving a lot more than we'd wanted to. I'm starting to fear that we'll have spent all this money and time planning our trip and it's just going to fall apart on us. I'm imagining something like European Vacation or The Out of Towners. I can see us now, robbed blind, dripping wet and trying to get a room with a reservation for a hotel that doesn't exist. I sure hope I start feeling better about this soon.

Don't worry dear, we'll pack some raw potatoes in our bag in Munich.

Lisa

My very first blog! I don't know which is more appealing, the way the word sounds or the fact that I have one - even if it is a shared one with Doug.

Everybody that will read this already knows me. So I'll try to give you some interesting tidbits you might not know.

Did you know that...
1. I lived on the island of Nevis for a year in high school?

2. My favorite food is Italian?

3. I hate spiders to a debilitating degree, but I am getting better?

4. Sometimes I talk to myself in the mirror and pretend I'm on a job interview? (I always get the job)

5. I often get interrupted on the computer by my children crying...

I enjoy my job. Currently I'm running training...which is truely boring. It requires so much repetition that I just want to die. The good thing is that we're training a new trainer, so a few more kill-me moments and I'll be done with training for a nice long while. I'm writing this while in training...sometimes I fall alseep.

Lisa and I are planning our European vacation in more detail. Maybe this is when being in the travel industry pays off. I know some german agents that will try to get us some cheap hotel rates in nice hotels...BWAHAHAHA.
We've starting purchasing travel-related supplies even though we haven't gotten our tax refund yet. This weekend we bought a super wide-angle lens (19-38mm equiv) to make sure we can capture the interiors and landscapes of Germany. We'll be taking 2 camera bodies, renting a lens, buying another lens, and buying some other photography stuff. Hopefully we get some wall-quality pictures of Germany.


Doug

Well, 3 years and no posts. Proof that blogger keeps accounts around forever.

I suppose I should write some catch-you-up type post here, but who am I kidding? The only people reading this knew me 3 years ago and know exactly what's be happening in my life. So instead I'm going to pretend like I never stopped and casually mention to people to checkout my blog.

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Last week I had a few moles removed that were bothering Lisa (I can only assume they were mocking her, poking her in the middle of the night, etc). Two of them were fine, but one came back as "irregular" so now I get to go back for another round of deep digging to remove more of it. They said it's not cancer, but "irregular" doesn't sound like normal skin, so it's somewhere between normal and cancer. I call this place "canmal".

Doug

Well I'm moving hosting sometime soon...and that means opportunity for this site. I'm going to move to a provider that supports ASP.NET and gives me SQL server access. What this mean is that I'll be able to custom-code my site with cool stuff (eg: comments, pictures, whaterver the hell I want :-). Currently I'd have to install perl scripts to do anything...and that just doesn't interest me at all, but ASP.NET is what I do at work so it should be breazy to put something dynamic up. Of course I've started a project for my Multi-User blogging SystEm (MUSE, it's random, yet playful). It'll take me forever to finish and I'll probably give up 1/2 way through, but I love designing new projects (I just don't love grunt-coding them :-). [Notice to Kolb] This has also changed my plans for the picture site generator I was thinking about since I'll have a DB to store info in.

Work is crazy again. The code-freeze is over, and NBTA went over well...lots of good demos and people chomping to be a part of our customer beta. Apparently the product was considered alpha...so now we head toward beta. We have 4 weeks of coding until Beta code-freeze...then 2 weeks of QA...then official beta (tuesday after labor day). So this means that I'll be coding like a mad-man...fun.

I had a good 4th of July weekend...lots of family time, huge fireworks, and 2 trips to the emergancy room. My mom ripped a tendon in her foot when she tripped on a step and Leah had horrible intestinal pain yesterday...both are fine now.

The house has progressed minimally...we get to have our pre-building meeting sometime soon. Then the real crazy stuff starts.

Work is going well, though I'm beginning to want my own team again....start a new project design, etc. We're in a code-freeze so we can only do critical bug fixes...last week we did 1...yeah. I don't really like maintenance cycles...debugging for 2 months, waiting for QA for a month, then more debugging is not my idea of fun. I'll definately try to get onto a new product after a 2.0 release (currently 1.0beta).

I haven't talked to my old friends in a long time...it's beginning to worry me. The fact that I call them "old friends" is distressing enough, but we don't hang out anymore. That's not to say Lisa won't let me hang out, I hang out with my brother all the time. I'm thinking we're just not trying. I don't call them to make plans, they don't call me and slowly but surely we'll slip away into work, other friends, and family. Maybe this week will be different...

I have a tendancy to ramble...but you knew that already.

Lisa and I are buying a house. It's in McKinney...one of many neighborhoods inside the Stone Bridge area.

We're actually having the house built by Pulte homes...they're supposed to be good (I've heard from many reliable sources). We've chosen a floor plan and lot so now we have to pick colors, brick, etc etc etc, you get the idea...Lisa's heaven. The payments are going to be higher than our apartment (duh), but not too unreasonable while Lisa's working. The home is worth every penny they're asking for it...but it's still a scary proposition.

2100 sqft, 4 bedroom, 2 bath, 2 living areas...it's a nice house that we can stay in for a while. Lisa and I are both excited...