I am thinking about getting into paintball. I have some friends from church that play (same ones I play Halo 2 w/ online). I have played in the past, but it was quite some time ago (high school age). "Back then" it was pretty expensive, I remember paying like $20 for 200 balls and I had to rent the gun. Now days it seems like things can be a bit cheaper.

Today they announced my new position at our staff meeting: "Manager of Interactive and Operations Business Systems". Which basically means I am a day-to-day manager of software development for business units in those categories. I have 5 people that report to me (same team I was working with as a Lead Developer). I've known about the change for several months now.. Glad it is finally out of the bag.

The weekend was pretty busy. My parents came up to see the granddaughter and help me install the garage door openers. It took my dad and I about 6 hours total- which included a trip to Anderson's to get some angle brackets to hang them. There wasn't anything overly difficult about doing it- but it took a while. I did most of the wiring while my Dad assembled them. Worked out pretty well.. We got them both up without screwing up anything major.

Here are the snake pics as promised (see my last JE if you missed the story).

Welcome to the jungle... err, maybe the country...

Amazing how we are only 5 months away from the end of 2005. Looking back on this year so far and I can say time has flown by, and I'm about where I was hoping to be (house, family, church, career). I'll probably post another JE about that in the near future.

I have a credit card with a 0% interest rate until March. I generally don't like using credit cards (especially when carrying a balance), but if you're responsible they can be pretty useful- especially when you're building and money is flying out the window :).

Had a pretty good weekend. Got to go to the Ann Arbor Art Fair. We looked around at a lot of booths but didn't find anything that we wanted to get for the house (well, at least nothing we could afford!). It was a pretty hot day. In my least favorite section (where all the non-profit groups are) of particular interest were some JW's (wearing ties and white shirts in 100 ' weather) and a guy at the nudist booth was overly friendly (while I was walking by, he piped up with an emphatic "HI!")

Pics from the last week of building have been posted in case you are interested. Check here.

Cable co came out a little late tonight, but I am now up and running. Things are running quite well, and the upload speed is now 368K so it's a bit kicked up from what I had before.

Moving is going pretty well. As of this weekend, we have everything moved to our new house. Unfortunately we don't have everything unpacked, and I can hardly walk through the garage right now :) I'm guessing it will be a good week or two before we get things cleared out enough to feel moved in. It will probably be a good month or so before everything is really moved in. I still need to install the garage door openers, but can't do that until the garage is somewhat cleared

We have started moving into the house this week and what an adventure it has been! I am totally whipped right now. I last wrote a journal when we closed on the house, which was this past Friday. A lot has transpired since then. I'll list a few of the more noteworthy ones.

1. Monday- grading people did a great job- moved the pile 'o dirt in the front, and now we are ready to do some grass seed. I'm planning on meeting with the landscaper soon.

Believe it or not we actually closed on the house tonight. The inspection passed, the occupancy letter was faxed to the bank and the money was wired to my builder by 4:30pm. We drove out to the office and signed some paperwork. They wrote me out a decent check for my allowances and a small credit we had.

Got some really cool stuff today in the mail from Microsoft for our upcoming user group. Talk about SWAG! Virtual Server, VS.NET 2003, Halo 2, Project Gotham Racing, and a buttload of books. We're going to have some great prizes at our next meeting.. Come if you are in the area!! (TL, that includes you!)

Went out to the house last night. They have been pretty busy and finished up a lot of things, including the *microwave hood (microhood) and the electrical. Except the microhood was the wrong one, and they didn't put any of the cover plates on the switches where we added dimmers (about 6) and one of the flourecent bulbs for the under cabinet lighting was bad. I decided to bypass the bull- ran to Anderson's (kind of like a walmart) and plunked down $10 and went back to the house and did it my

July 4th weekend went pretty well. Got to go to visit my parents and we checked out the fireworks in a town called Grandville, which is about 30 minutes east of where my parents live. It is also the city where Denison University is. We opted to go there instead of contending with the 400,000+ people that were going to the Columbus fireworks (Red White & Boom). The fireworks in Grandville were actually quite nice. As an added bonus there was a carnival going on and my daughter and grand