today was a good day

::insert hip hop tune::
ok, so it was yesterday since i'm just now writing about it, but whatever.

i finished the big project i've been working on for 3 weeks or so!! sure, it's just a large phase of a larger segment of work of a huge project, but it was a big milestone! afterwards, me and my team leader / mentor sat down and looked at the schedule for the rest of the segment. this group of tasks will last til the end of the year. we made up target dates for each of the six tasks and now i have a nice plan of action for the project. in january, after all these tasks, they send a team to china to put some stuff together and there's a slight possibility they may send me too. crazy and exciting!

weekend

let's make some quick notes on the weekend:

on friday night, we didn't feel like staying in so we went and split a big plate of pad thai and some appetizers (spring rolls, fried wontons, wonton soup). while we were out, we found an ihop that we didn't know existed. as far as we knew, there wasn't an ihop in lexington. so saturday morning, lindsay works out and we get ready and we finally get to ihop around 10:50 and everyone and their brother is there. apparently, this is the first weekend ihop had even been open. so we wait nearly an hour (and do a little window shopping in the mean time) and eat a good but ordinary breakfast and we are finally back in the car at around 12:30pm.

we drove the hour and a half over to louisville to putter around some of the day and we went over to the rehab place where my grandmother is still staying. it was great to see her and even more fun to surprise her. my aunt patsy was there and had e.mailed me some questions about her computer so after spending some time with mam-maw, we just went over to her house and i got her squared away.

we got back onto the trail to lexington and when we got into town we ran into the exiting keeneland traffic. it wasn't terrible, but by the time we got to the house, our company had already gotten there. thad from my last work and matt from small group (along with his son aaron) came over to watch ut vs. south carolina. jake and aaron played most of the evening while matt sadly then happily then sadly rooted for his home team of south carolina. thad, lindsay, jake, and i were happy to root for ut all night :-) great back and forth game!

on sunday, we went to church and then all of our church went over to boyd's orchard to partake in all their fall fun fest stuff. they have a big craft and goodies store, a playground with hay and slides, a hayride, a cornmaze (i was the first one done of our group, it could've been better), a petting zoo (jake's not fond of those), and, of course, their huge orchard of mainly apples. it was a fun time and a beautiful day to be outside. we went home and rested before dinner and then our sunday evening shows. i looked at the week and i think i only really watch tv on sundays and thursdays right now. the tivo catches poker for me, but it's not really 'destination viewing' for me like it once was. anyways, tonight is small group, i have classes on tuesday and wednesday, and then the week will be half over before i know it!

clocks changed

for the past month, i arrived at work in the dark (after 7am, but still dark). this morning, it was almost completely light outside so i felt like i was really late for work but it was only 7:15. weird.

election 2006

couldn't think of much else to write about so how about this upcoming election? go vote!!

here's a fun little website (click either image). in high school, i was as far right as possible; i found out what republicans believed and took that position. through college, i swung to the middle. while living in northern virginia, i swung pretty far to the left and was even listening to air america radio during the day in the run-up to the 2004 election. now i'm back in the middle and am proud to be a centrist (although i currently identify a lot more with lefties than righties). a phrase that i have on myspace: "progessive politics on a balanced budget."

shake it up

new topic - i've gotten some new albums recently:

the killers - sam's town
some people say they don't like it because it sounds totally different. i don't think it sounds totally different, but i actually like it a little bit better than the first album because it sounds a little less 80's. now if it only had more than 10 actual songs, i'd be more pleased.

weird al yankovic - straight outta lynwood
i've been a weird al fan for a long time and i'll probably snag any album he puts out. the single "white and nerdy" is a parody of "ridin' " and it's his best song in at least a decade (in my book, it barely surpasses "all about the pentiums" because it is fresher). however, the rest of the album was a sad disappointment for me. on my itunes phone, i have five songs from each of his last two albums (basically the parodies and the polka). i only have three songs from this album and that was being nice. however, i guess "pitiful", a parody of "beautiful" by james blunt, counts since al wasn't allowed to put it on this album. that'd still only be 3 or 4 keepers.

audioslave - revelations
if you knew me in high school or college, you probably know that i love/loved rage against the machine. i love that whole rap/rock crossover genre. well, the band minus their lead singer and plus the lead singer from soundgarden became audioslave. revelations is their third album in a continuing evolution of their sound. their resemblance to rage has decreased and they are now more of a straight up good rock band. this album has a few more mellow songs, but they resonate well with me and don't distract from the harder rock songs. their sound now more closely resembles my other fave band in high school: aerosmith.

good morning to ya

not much going on. i really like how my weeks are structured:

small group on monday night, class on tuesday night, class on wednesday afternoon. by the time i get home on wednesday, it's practically thursday and the week is nearly over!

so, the world series is going on. as always, go national league! i think the kenny rogers pine tar debacle kind of ruined whatever good vibe the tigers had going. hopefully nlcs mvp suppan can give the cards a 3-1 lead tonight. it would be great to see future hall of famer pujols go ahead and get a ring after three straight years of getting to the nlcs or better.

2007 for the nats looks to be about as bad as 2006 unless they really get crazy and creative for some actual pitching. it will be our weak point until they go for the gusto. 2008 in the new park and 2009 especially look hopeful. i'm more than tentatively planning on going back to spring training for a long weekend next year. should be a good time.

so that external hard drive enclosure thing is pretty rad. for some reason my mac is only recognizing it as read only, but i can at least snag any data i need from it. i figure it would be read/write-able if i formatted the disk, but i'm not ready to do that just yet.... anyone have any thoughts on how to write and delete to the drive?

r.i.p. laptop

i don't remember what i've said about my laptop, but basically for the last month or two i've had to firmly hold in the power cord so that the battery can charge.

for the first while, i could jiggle it and it would connect. then, it would only charge when it was pressed in. it has now ceased to charge and the battery has drained. my mother-in-law has practically the same computer so i'm hoping to swap batteries and do any final cleanup. yesterday, i went to best buy and found a hard drive enclosure kit so i'll have my data, but i've really become dependent on the laptop. there's a lot of freedom in being abl e to type notes in class and surf the internet from the couch. i've got a plan to replace with a macbook (they can run windows natively now as well) once the new processors come out (supposedly this holiday season), but first a friend from small group is going to try to help me fix the power connector on the main board. he does micro-soldering with work/school and we may be able to reconnect the power connector. who knows...

weekend - dad visits

good weekend with dad. he tried to leave directly after teaching school, but he wound up in both nashville and bowling green's rush hour traffic - yuck!

we just watched some tv and played with jake friday night. on saturday, we didn't want to just sit around so lindsay busted out the ky guide books and found us an adventure. we made our way downtown and visited the lexington children's museum (explorium?). it was small compared to the cumberland science museum in nashville (does that have a new name?), but it was a lot of fun for jake and us. he learned some stuff about horses (in lexington? who knew?!), the heart and other parts of the body, an airplane cockpit, bubbles and the peoples of southeast asia (the hmong people group). afterwards, i drove everyone by my office and then we went to a good mexican restaurant near my work - jalapeno's.

we came home and rested up for a short bit before the big ut / alabama game started. we watched the whole exciting game, but i was the only one who cared round about the 3rd and (early) 4th quarter. we were all excited for ut to pull out the big win, but it definitely put us out late to dinner. we drove around and were rebuffed by one to two hour wait times until we decided to try ted's montana grill. right before we left virginia, they were putting one of these in crystal city and one had also just opened near the new patent office location. we hadn't tried it yet, but we always noticed it smelled really good when we drove by. it didn't disappoint. we didn't finish dinner until nearly 10pm, but our steaks (prime rib for me, filets for dad and lindsay) were scrumptious and the sides were equally delish (mine: garlic mashed potatoes and creamed spinach). on the way home, we swung by wal-mart, picked up yahtzee, and ended up staying up til nearly 1 am.

sunday was church, a yummy roast, naptime, homework/study time, and tv time. we still watch desperate housewives every week and the new show brothers & sisters has been a very welcome surprise. a great large cast and great acting. after that, i watched the end of game 2 of the world series (go national league!!) and then i floated away to dreamland.

quick hits

wow, nothing in October yet. let's make some quick notes.

classes are going really well - i really really like them all and i'm soaking up a lot of stuff. the speech class has been especially helpful as it has started off as basically a writing class and for the last three weeks people have read their essays for the week aloud in class (from our desks, not like a 'speech'). in church planting, i've been getting a ton of ideas for both our current church and whatever happens in the future. for mentored ministry, i've been having lunch with my pastor once a week and that's a great time to discuss stuff that i don't get to talk about much :-) Also for the class, we've been hosting a small group at our house and it's been going delightfully well. We all make dinner together and then eat together and then spend 30-45 minutes in the next chapter of richard foster's celebration of discipline. a new couple that we've been praying for came this week and i think they'll coming from now on. yay!

my grandmother (mom's mom) fell and her hip replacement had to be redone. we went to see her in the rehab place one saturday recently (the day of the ut memphis game) and she's starting to do better i believe. they are working on a timeline for her release, but she'll need 24 hour care after that.

lindsay had her tonsils removed, was pretty out of it for a few days, but seems to be doing pretty good now (a little over two weeks later). she went to knoxville the past two weekends for special events. i went the first weekend, but i stayed home last weekend and had a splendid time catching up on my reading and watching movies. i went to see little miss sunshine (delightful!) and the departed (oscar-caliber all around, stunning) in the theater (and hung out in the nearby bookstore for a while friday night and xmen3 (fun!) and thank you for smoking (satirically funny) via netflix. i had planned on watching alien for the first time ever, but netflix took forever to get it to me.

work is going great! my first project just took about a week, but i was able to learn a lot about the systems, projects, and the way we do things around here. my second project was much bigger and right when i got to the end of it, they gave me my third project. this project is the first step in what i'll be working on for about two years. it's fun and i've made a lot of headway this week. i'll revisit the second project when i can, but i think i'm done with everything we've defined on that project. we were going to add some more stability later, but i'm really close.