Sure is tough coming back to work after being away 3 work days (and a weekend) away. It's nice to be back- especially since more than half the department is currently out. I actually have time to get things done! :)

Quick poll...

What do you plan on doing this week?

A. Last minute shopping- I always wait until a few days before. (PS, did you know the Sat before Christmas is the busiest shopping day of the year for males?)

B. Taking off time from work.

C. Taking advantage of the free food at work (sielwolf option).

D. Tinkering with .NET (Fortknox Option)

E. Taking pictures of kids and getting ready for the next FK contest (Bethanie option)

Last night was the final exam for my Object Oriented Systems Analysis and Design class. Most of it was multiple choice, with a few UML diagrams at the end. It was a piece of cake (and should have been, as I do that for a living...).

While I feel glad that I have finally achieved my MBA after 3 long years (taking classes part time can be a real drag!!), I am also somewhat bummed. I really enjoy the academic environment.

UPS made the delivery attempt today-- fortunately my wife was home to accept it. As I type this I am running on my new SC420 Poweredge! It's running like a champ, and it is REALLY quiet. I never noticed how loud my other system was until I installed this one. Anyway, I got win2003 installed and the bare necessities. I managed to get my web site back up as well, though it's under construction until I can get a decent blog tool set up. The old one

For those of you reading my JE regularly, you'll know that I recently ordered a Dell SC420 server. The day BEFORE Thanksgiving (11/24). IT STILL HASN'T ARRIVED. A friend of mine ordered his on 11/28 and got his last Friday! What's up with that? He orderd the EXACT same thing I did, same shipping, etc. I checked the order status and UPS decided to "reschedule delivery" and kick it out to 11/7 (tomrrow). No reason why, they just did. I don't want to waste time calling to find out why, ei

Took today off from work.. has been nice getting to relax! We had our "pre-construction" meeting today at our builder. It went really well- got to sit down and go over the final prints, all the change orders we've made, give them the permits, and pay for the final changes that were not included in the original quote. There is no turning back now! I plan on putting a few of the prints on my web site in case anyone is interested in what it will look like.

In the spirit of Em, I thought I'd post a poll. For this thanksgiving, I plan to:

A. Eat lots of turkey | duck | quail | tofu and fall into a food coma
B. Watch the lions lose
C. Play halo 2 | halflife 2 | something else
D. Shop (etail or retail)
E. All of the above
F. None of the above
G. Other
H. I'm not thankful for anything, you insensitive clod!

My company is currently looking for an SQL DBA and software developers (ASP.NET, Windows Forms .NET, C++, C# or VB.NET background). The position would be for our Toledo, OH location and full-time. We're really looking for 4 yrs. + experience for either position.

SQL DBA- nuts and bolts DBA, someone who knows the ins and outs of SQL Server, and has experience managing highly scalable sites (2,000 concurrent users from web farms) and large systems.

Just in case the submission gets rejected... (update: it did get rejected)

Bruce Campbell will be returning in another Evil Dead movie (produced by Sam Raimi)!!! Geeks everywhere rejoice!!

What great news to start the weekend.

Building Update....
Things are going pretty well on the new construction front. We now have everything ready, per the builders requirements, so we can have our "pre-construction meeting". This meeting kicks off the construction process. It will then take up to 6 months to complete our building project.

First, Amazon bungled up my order. They decided to wait until Monday (the day it was supposed to ship) to let me know the credit card they had on file was not valid (duh, I cancelled it a while ago.. would have been nice to know before the day it was going to ship). I was in a scramble on Mon to pre-order and most of the places were sold out, so I ended up pre-ordering from Worst Buy. I picked it up yesterday over lunch.

After seeing the front page HALO 2 article, I am tempted to drive to Meijer and pick up a copy of it. (I am within 20 minutes of 3 different Meijers). However, I figure I'm getting a good deal for $36 on Amazon and if I got it today I'd be wasting study time, plus my parents are coming up tomorrow. But wasting study time due to Xbox or PC has always been a tradition... Ugh, what to do??

Apparently today was the last day to pre-order Halo 2 and have it shipped free overnight on Nov 8. Woohoo! I scrounged up a gift certificate for Amazon.com that had been sitting in my inbox for months, and ended up getting it for $36. Not bad. Needless to say I'm goin to be busy next week.

For those of you on XBox Live, let me know if you want to hook up. My handle is "RedHunter". And you better believe all be online Tues.

I've had a really crazy week. Two user group presentations- one on MSMQ .NET services, ASP.NEt, etc., and another on Quizzard and calling web services directly from the browser to make really "snappy" user interfaces. (Useful if you have dropdown A that affects dropdown B and don't want to do a postback to change the values).

A lot has been going on lately! I wrote a JE the other day, but for some reason it never posted. I'm thinking I only hit preview...