Updates: Battles won and lost
So it's been a really long time between posts, death knell for
a blog but I've never been great at it.

Loss: Figured I'd speed past the loss so I could talk about the victories. So I didn't keep up with the gym like I wanted. I did get myself back onto some rec teams (Softball, Flag football and dodgeball) which was fun and gave me some exercise but I'm building myself up in the next couple weeks to embark on a new goal of exercise and diet. More on that to come if I can keep up with the journaling, the blog may give me a more "public" commitment which would probably be helpful for me as privately journaling didn't do much good the couple times I tried . . .

Victory: Baby boy is great, just past 9 months old and going strong, such a joy. His older sisters are also doing quite well. Grandfather is still doing well, all cancer was removed and he's gotten through another check. We finally got our home on the market so we're hoping to get it sold so we can get into a larger place with something more than closets for storage and more than a balcony for a yard. I mentioned I passed the CISSP exam although I haven't done much with it other than add it to my business cards, I need to get on top of making sure I don't lose it due to in-activity. I made Manager within the firm and have really enjoyed some of the new perks.

I hope you've been treated as well as I have over the last six months

~ Tim

Today is a new day.
I finally got out of bed "early" (and if you know me you know that's a pretty large feat in and of itself), got into a gym and, albeit just for 30 minutes, worked out before going into work. I haven't been to a gym since college . . .

I'm fairly self-conscious so I don't like the crowded popular gyms which in northern Virginia it seems from talking to folks all the gyms are busy all the time. (when do those people work? ;) ) Having joined a new project in a new location just a couple weeks ago I decided to take advantage of the small gym in my new office building.

I didn't get up as early as I wanted but went anyway and found that there was NOONE there. And there wasn't anyone there almost the entire time and even then the only person coming through was maintenance staff. My plan is to do this MWF for a couple weeks and then ramp it up if I'm feeling pretty good about it and getting into a routine. I haven't done so yet but I'm thinking I should probably keep a log of my progress starting tonight, I'm sure the experts suggest something of the sort . . .

Today is a new day. :)

Just got the word yesterday that I passed the CISSP exam! Still don't have a role at work but I'm not sweating that too much, I've got a couple leads and a couple weeks on the bench is almost a mini vacation. The new credentials won't mean too much with my company but it was something I wanted to do since I've been doing IT security type roles the last 4 years. I do get to put it on my business cards though which is cool since right now it's pretty generic.

Feeling for the last month - Limbo Rollar-coaster
So basically almost every facet of my life is in or has been in limbo the last month.

Personal life: Expecting baby, six days late. When he's finally born he spends seven days in NICU not knowing when we're able to get him home or even what was wrong. (still don't know what was wrong, just that the numbers improved). Grandfather goes in for a routine check and they find a tumor growing into his skull, has to see a specialist, still waiting to find out more.

Professional Life: Finish three years on a project and find myself on the bench searching for a security or SAP role (my two areas of experience) and my company wants to ship me out to Michigan or Connecticut (they had me traveling right after the birth of my second child as well, thankfully I've learned a lot since then) . . . like there are NO jobs for someone with that kind of experience looking to make manager this fall in the WASHINGTON DC area . . .

Professional Growth: Just spent the last few weeks (with everything else going on) preparing for the CISSP certification exam. I took the exam this past Sunday which everyone talked about being such a relief to get done with it BUT the thing is you're NOT done with it until you KNOW you've passed . . .

so here I sit in a limbo rollar-coaster . . .

Ugh. So I just finished a week of cramming 10+ hours a day for my CISSP exam. I'm definitely taking a bit of a break tomorrow.

I keep bouncing between feeling really ready and panicing about the networking security, the subject I feel is my weakest. I took a full practice exam last night with a study group and felt like I was getting all but a handful of answers right but how close are any practice tests to the real thing . . .

This Sunday in Tysons-Corner we'll find out I guess. :) Right now I'm feeling pretty confident, not that the test will be easy but that I know a lot of my stuff.

It's a boy. So we had our first boy earlier this month after our two precious girls. Nine pounds and is now safely home. He spent a week in NICU but thankfully the numbers from his blood tests finally cleared up. Because I never do anything halfway, I'm currently also changing projects at work and am readying myself for a 6 hour CISSP exam . . . It's almost always feast or famine around here, I wonder why that is. Middle of the road would suit me just fine sometimes.

Tomorrow's the wife's due date so one would imagine that this weekend we'd have our new arrival. :) Its exciting but with all the craziness at work and the other two little ones I feel like I'm not as involved as I've been in the past. For the other two I was at almost every appointment by my wife's side, in for the ultrasound, etc. This go round I've been at home watching the kids (which has been fun, I don't spend half the time with them that I'd like to) and for the ultrasound my youngest did NOT like seeing mommy on a table so she and I went out to the playroom.

Anyway, point being this due date completely crept up to me. I know we've been "in the red zone" so-to-speak for a little while now but I feel compeltely disconnected for some reason. It'll be nice to have a little one in my arms again though.

So with the new baby due any day now I've been doing a lot of things to spruce up the condo to sell it and make a move to a bigger place sometime this summer.

What we've done so far...
- I mentioned the chandelier my brother-in-law and I hung.
- I put some closet doors in front of the washer/dryer unit which had just been open.
- Replaced the closet door for the coat closet. The track was all messed up b/c it wasn't installed right by the previous owners.
- Put up new lighting fixtures in the master bath. Required me to move our medicine cabinet down a few inches.

We still need/plan to do a lot though.
- Put up the matching lighting fixture in the guest bath. Which will have me move the cabinet down again.
- Bought some wood flooring for the kitchen at a great price from Home Depot. Will have to have my Dad up to help me install it.
- The previous owners put calk in the showers, INSTEAD of grout, between the tiles. So we'll have to strip that out and put in grout.
- A few places in the wall need to be touched up/evened out and after that...
- Lots of painting.
- During this whole ordeal - packing up, organzing and staging the place while still living there with 3 kids . . . thanksfully my in-laws are moving a little closer so maybe they'll get some quality time with the grandkids while I work on and sell the place . . .

but then there's the task of finding an affordable, spacious new place in Northern Virginia . . . off to zillow I guess.

Archives seem to be down. I'll poke around and see if I can't get them back into the picture.

Edit: Ugh - nothing yet . . . it looks like I may have even lost the archives I could hit directly . . . hmmm
Edit: I at least got the link working again, but still no archive list, have to look at it later.

"He's our oldest, you know." That's the best excuse the guy could come up with for his 12 year old son allegedly commiting over 100 felonies? You've got to be kidding me . . . I'm afraid I DON'T KNOW. I have to assume this child has had some aweful trauma but attributing it to being a first child, as if that's any rougher than any other spot in the line-up. And heck, how many oldest children are raised perfectly normal and don't go on a crime spree at 12 years old . . . He and his family are definitely in my prayers but lame excuses for those kinds of actions - come on.

Cleaned Up a few of my side-bar links. I was sad to see some of the old sites that are no longer up, I couldn't quite bear to take down the names but I took out the broken links. Some of the blogs are still up but haven't been posted to in quite some time, it seems like I wasn't the only one who broke off from blogging when I did.

BTW - If you happen to have updated links for sugarmamma or how appealing please let me know.

Why not

1. What time is it where you are right now? (Include time zone, especially our overseas visitors) : 3:09pm EST

2. What is your earliest memory? Walking home from kindergarten. (who'd let their kids do that now-a-days?)

3. What are you most afraid of? growing old and missing out.

4. What is the most recent movie that you have seen in a theater? James Bond - Casino Royale

5. Where were you born? Virginia

6. Favorite food? Chicken Parmesan

7. What’s your natural hair color? Dark, almost black, brown

8. Ever been to Alaska? No

9. Ever been toilet paper rolling? no

10. Love someone so much it made you cry? Yes

11. Been in a car accident? yes

12. Croutons or bacon bits? bacon bits

13. Favorite day of the week? The one I wake up and the sun shines through the window, the kids are sleeping in and the birds are outside chirping, or Saturday.

14. Favorite restaurant? Old Friends, right outside Naples, Italy.

15.Favorite Flower? Rose

16. Favorite sport to watch? football

17. Favorite drink? My mom's sweet tea

18. Favorite ice cream? chocolate

19. Disney or Warner Brothers? Warner

20. Ever been on a ship? Yes, Royal Caribbean's Voyager of the Seas

21. What color is your bedroom carpet? beige

22. How many times did you fail your driver’s test? never

23. From whom did you get your last e-mail? Friend for a NCAA pool.

24. What do you do when you are bored? read, play games, draw, watch tv

25. Bedtime? between 10pm and 2am depending on what's going on

26. Favorite TV show? Heros

27. Last person you went to dinner with? my wife and kids

28. What are your favorite colors? Blue

29. How many tattoos do you have? None

30. How many pets do you have? None, unless you count kids, then 2.9

31. Which came first, the chicken or the egg? Chicken

32. What do you want to do before you die? Live to see my kid's kid's kid's living happily

33. Have you ever been to Hawaii? no

34. Have you been to countries outside the U.S.? Yes, Europe and the Caribbean.

35. Time this survey ended? 3:16

Borrowed from BogieBlog

Lesson Learned
So I've been doing small projects every weekend to make our condo in Northern Virginia a little more appealing. New light fixtures in the bathrooms, we did the faucets a long time ago, new doors to close off our washer/dryer. This weekend I took on what I thought would be a nice easy task and would lead nicely into a couple others that I wanted to take on - a new chandelier in the dining room to replace the outdated ceiling fan. Plans for the future were to include overhead lighting in at least two other rooms with the help of a good electrician friend.

Taking down the fan and wiring the chandelier was easy, then I tried to put up a hook to recenter the fan over where we want our table to be . . . so I take out my Ryobi drill, take a small bit to make a pilot and don't get anywhere. Hmm, that's strange, so I picked up an even smaller bit, nothing. Apparently our ceilings are made of thick concrete. No wonder we don't hear too much out of our up and downstairs neighbors. After making another trip to the local Home Depot to pick up a bit and screws that will work in our ceiling I've decided something else:

I like that free standing lighting we have in the other rooms.

w00t.com
Over Christmas I happened upon this awesome site. One item a day for much less than you can find it almost anywhere else, even eBay. (Unless it's a woot-off at the end of the month where they have a sell-off of items for cheaper than even they've done before.)

Go take a look, it's worth it.

Tom and Jerry and the last plate
Some days/weeks/months feel like that common cartoon scene. You know the one I'm sure, the chase scene through the house which inevitably goes through the kitchen and the huge stack of plates get knocked over.

I see those plates as problems (or challenges as one of my mentors used to say right before making me say "I love a challenge") . Each plate being a separate thing that needs to be taken care of and together make a tall stack that would weigh you down. And then it happens, the proverbial chase scene where they all get tossed up in the air and then their time comes due, they come crashing down.

Somehow I manage to catch the first one, the second one, even the third one but they keep coming down faster, closer together. The past week my plates have been falling and I've been catching them.

The catch is, there's always that last plate. The one that tips the scales in the other direction.

Gotta try and catch every plate . . .

Just when you thought it was safe to live in a small country the size of DC with a neighbor known as non-violent and neutral . . . They mock you by invading with no ammunition knowing you have no army to defend yourself.

Not going to help productivity
but I'm sure loving the 60 degree weather, sunshine and birds singing outside right now. Especially after all the snow and ice we've had here in the DC area recently.

Having newly acquired a window cube after having spend a number of years in a windowless converted conference room with no circulation only to be followed by a move to a windowless trailor ... I feel like I could put my head down in the sunshine and take a long nap.

What kind of coder are you?
http://www.doolwind.com/index.php?page=11
I'm a PHTB

You're a Planner.
You may be slow, but you'll usually find the best solution. If something's worth doing, it's worth doing right.

You like coding at a High level.
The world is made up of objects and components, you should create your programs in the same way.

You work best in a Team.
A good group is better than the sum of it's parts. The only thing better than a genius programmer is a cohesive group of genius programmers.

You are a liBeral programmer.
Programming is a complex task and you should use white space and comments as freely as possible to help simplify the task. We're not writing on paper anymore so we can take up as much room as we need.