Molly joins the employed!

Well, I had a "coming to Jesus" talk with Molly here a couple of days ago about how she doesn't have a job yet, and how we would have a tough time making it without here at least having *some* job. She was upset about it... who could blame her? I know I wouldn't want to take some pizza delivery job at this point in my life/career. So yesterday she started applying to various jobs around town... the temp agency, papa john's, Kohls, a couple of grocery stores, Hollywood Video, etc. About halfway through the day, she got a call. Yep... right after we give up hope, she gets a call from the Lake Oswego school district. I don't know all of the details, but apparently one of their teachers backed out at the last possible second, leaving a 1st-2nd grade split class without a teacher. I'm betting that Molly is one of the few highly qualified teachers left in the area that could have taken that posistion. They interviewed 3 people (molly's interview was yesterday), and they offered her the job this morning, which she immediately accepted. Right now she is headed to her new school to look at her new classroom. Later today is the "benefits fair" and the "new teacher orientation".... yeah, like I said, last minute.

Nice thing is, Lake Oswego is the "Blue Valley" of Portland. It is a small district, but pretty elite, and it pays better than just about any other district here. So we got a little bump up. Nice! I don't know how Molly will like working with this population of students. Maybe she'll hate it, but she may love it, too.

At least she has a job. I may try to convince her to get the Papa John's job anyway :)

Sigh...

I'm working tonight. Yep, its 7:30 pacific, so 9:30 central. These friday night deployments are a killer. We could have started the deployment this morning, but we just didn't... you know how busy you get when there are people around to distract you. It makes it almost impossible to get anything done in a timely manner. The result is that I'm here, working at 7:30 on a friday night, while Molly and her friends are enjoying the weather outside, drinking beer and wine, eating brats and fresh corn on the cob.

Nice thing is I got some more side work... about 10 hours total, which will most likely turn into 12-13 hours when its all done. Nice little bit of extra cash. I can use it too, with Molly still out of a job.

I'll post again real soon... Thanks for the great gluttony day photos!

Shhh....

I've secretly taken some photos of the house. Molly is in bed asleep, so she didn't know I was doing it. She wants to wait until the house is "done" before we upload photos.

See them at by clicking here:

Updated house photos

Hope you all enjoy!

So we came home this evening after picking up a bottle from the local wine store. Yes, that is Truckasaurus, and yes... he is in the box for our new iron. Something tells me that he will be terrible at getting wrinkles out of anything, especially considering how well he wrinkles everything that isn't put into a drawer. Oh... and the box is on the table (where he knows that he isn't supposed to be). He didn't even bother to jump off when we caught him. It's as if he knew he was bending the rule, but not quite breaking it.
"Ha ha... I'm in the box, not on the table". (as if we are to only assume that he teleported there)

Fun weekend

Molly, me, Lindz and Josh celebrated Lindz's birthday this last weekend. It ended up being very fun. It's going to continue to amaze me how many festivals and community events exist here during the summer.

So Saturday we went to "Bones and Brew" which is sponsored by the Rogue brewing company in downtown Portland. Its basically a BBQ and beer festival. There were only like 6-7 BBQ stands and only one beer stand. The one beer stand did have about 10-12 different beers. Molly made me try "Watermelon Wheat" which can only be described as watermelon ass. It was some nasty, funky shit. The other beer was just the wonderful stuff that has come to be a standard in Oregon. The BBQ was crap. BBQ is the one thing that KC just does better than anywhere else.

After that we drove up to a mansion on top of one of the many hills in Portland. It offers one of the best views of the city that you can get from anywhere. They also serve wine. :)

The rest of the evening consisted of watching Borne Identity/Supremacy and drinking margaritas and eating enchiladas. Yum.

Sunday we drove to the wine country where they had the "Walk in the Park" event... featuring a car show, wine tasting from 20 different wineries, food from 10-12 different gourmet eateries, and arts and crap. We enjoyed all it had to offer and then visited a couple of the local wineries afterward. We then came home, ate some pizza for dinner, rented "Zodiac" and had some birthday-carrot cake. Good times!

Friday at last

What a week.

First, let me tell you, working from home is pretty darn sweet. I thought I would hate it, and maybe I will in 2 months, but right now, it is everything I could have hoped for.

But Josh, what about the social aspects of being in an office?

Fuck that. This way nobody peers over my shoulder, and if somebody needs help or something needs to get done, they really have to formulate their request very well. If anything, I'm (personally) more productive now than I have ever been. Sure I miss seeing my friends every day, but the benefits far outweigh the downfalls right now.

Josh! Don't you feel that you are getting out of touch with your company this way?

Not if senior developers keep quitting like they have been. Man, I have to tell you, we've gone through 3 senior developers in 2 years... plus 2 junior developers, an ADM, an IT director and an intern. The longer I stay, the more valuable commodity I am. My company ensures that they do everything possible to maintain our relationship (for the time being, anyway).

But doesn't take a lot of self-discipline to work unsupervised like that? There's now WAY I could do that!

When it comes to programming (one of my greatest passions) I'm all-in. I have always loved getting up in the morning knowing that I'm going to do something amazing today. It really doesn't take much discipline at all to do what you love.

So, do you like, work in your underwear?

Mind your own damn business... Suffice it to say that I don't own a webcam for a reason.

Sorry, I have to go... somebody is at the door, and I need to go put on some pants.