Life is one big continual lie

It has been a week since I blogged. Alot has happened in that week, but, alot of it I cannot blog about. That is why I haven't really had any updates. As far as what I can say.... this is what went down over the last week:

My wife and I are going on the cruise. We have booked it and are in the room next to our friends. I am still a little curious how it will be, but, I think it will be fun. It has to be better than my last vacation, but, that is not setting the bar very high.

I have been back at work for a full week now. It is good to be back in the grind and things are going really well at work. My boss seems to be very pleased with me and I am getting positive feedback from people outside my group even. While this won't translate into any real financial gain, it is nice to know that you are appreciated and are doing a good job.

The boss has added to my list of responsibilities at work the title of HP Blade Expert. Thus he is sending me to Columbia, MD for 3 days of training next week. It will be nice to be back in the learning world for a few days instead of the teaching world. I have been messing around with a couple blade chassis we have at work, so I should be fairly up to speed for next week's class.

I have ridden the Ninja three times in the last two weeks. Maybe the weather is starting to make a turn and we will see some warmer weather soon.

Speaking of warmer weather... I signed up for hockey again this summer. I thought long and hard about not doing it. But, I really do enjoy it and the team I play on is a group of good guys. So, I am signed up for another season.

I am off today to attend a couple EMBA classes at GMU. I am still leaning towards the Masters in Technology Management. But, who could turn down a chance for a couple free classes in a graduate program? I think it is only fair to give each program as much consideration as possible anyway. Today should also do a good job of shoring up my decision.

OK. I better go get ready. When I have some free time I will try to get a rant in on how f-ed up the concept of a democracy is. Have a good day and enjoy the weather.

Kinda... sorta... maybe...

Today was a a snow day in some sense of the concept. I went to work on an hour delay. The drive was awful, but, I took it slow and made it there. The reward for going to work today was that liberal leave was available. So, that meant there were only 5 people in my department today. This meant I was able to get done all of the things I had needed quiet concentration to complete. Then about 11AM I got the best news of the day! The college had canceled all classes for the day AND evening. Which meant I didn't have to teach! woo hoo!

It isn't that I don't want to teach. It just gives me some time to continue to get ahead in developing my presentations. Since I am making the curriculum up as the class goes along I can be flexible with what we need to complete to finish the course. I can move a bit around and cut some material out and still hit my stated course objectives in the syllabus. So, a day off here or there is great. I won't tell my students that I liked the day off. I want them to keep focused and moving forward. ;)

I also finished grading my first quiz and it looks like we are on track. The results were:
9 - A's
7 - B's
2 - C's
2 - D's
1 - F (Didn't show up, so they fail the quiz)

It looks like my distribution is reasonable and the majority are at least sort of on track. We start to get into the real hands-on portion starting next week. So, I think that should really start to separate the group out. We will see how they handle working with the CLI.

I also picked up a Chinese Coach for my DS today. I have been trying to learn some basic Chinese for a while. I have a good book I practice in for writing characters, but, I don't have anything for help with pronunciation. Hopefully this will help on that front.

To close this evening... I would like to give a shout out to all my old co-workers at AOL. I know that the news today wasn't exactly uplifting. But, I still think there are alot of good things going on there and it is a great group of people. 10% isn't as bad as it could be. Besides, most every person I have worked with there is a pretty smart cookie and would do well in just about any position in any company. I wish you all the best of luck and I will keep my fingers crossed that the ones who want to stay, get to. And the ones who want a change in their career will get the opportunity with a nice severance. :)

Not how I wanted to get here... but...

I mentioned a few days back about how I accidentally scanned a large portion of our network. Well, it has finally played out and strangely enough... in my favor! I gave a presentation today to several muckity-mucks at work on what we did and how the tool works and they are very interested in using it on purpose for good. I now have a nice high-profile assignment at work and it is a very interesting one. So, things are looking good on the job front. Not exactly the route I wanted to take to get there (Last week was pure hell), but, I will take it.

The weather today was awful. I left on very icy/snowy roads and it took about 2 hours to get to work. On the way home the road off the mountain was fine and all of the roads to the top of my valley were fine. But, as soon as I started into the national forest it started to sleet hard and the road was completely untreated all the way home. So, it was slow going getting back to the house. Now I am just waiting to see if my work is delayed or canceled tomorrow. The college is already on a delay till noon. So, there is hope that my class tomorrow will be canceled and I can use the extra time to work on getting further ahead of my class as far as presentations go.

We also started a bet at work. (We gamble on anything and everything at work) We all put $20 a piece in this morning and then weighed in on a scale in the warehouse. We are competing for one month to see who can lose the most percentage of weight. This came about because we decided we should bet on something healthy for once. The pool is somewhere between $200-300, so this should be interesting! I had a piece of baked chicken and steamed veggies for lunch. I had a salad with some pork on top of it tonight with 0 calorie dressing. So, day one is complete!

Well, sled riding and hiking in the snow this evening sorta wiped me out. So, I think I am off to bed.

Oh! And the wife finished my "Jayne Hat" today! I am soooo stoked!