Monday, May 29
Guess what? We spent Memorial Day unpacking. I've actually pretty much unpacked everything, just don't have everything organized. But----we have a mailbox, we have a powder room mirror, I know where things are. So I can live with the rest of the boxes.
Sunday, May 28
We haven't unpacked as much this weekend as we'd planned. We've had to make a few trips to buy things, and yesterday Ed's friends Bob and Linda came over to grill steaks (which meant we had to scramble to find which box the grill was in!). We had fun, and they spent the night because they live about 35 miles away. This morning we all went to a cafe six blocks away, then went antiquing. We went to buy a vacuum and some other things, then unpacked a little. Then we decided to ride our bikes around the neighborhood. That was really nice, because we could see people's gardens and window treatments.
I just went through a few boxes, and found my machete, at least, so I'm all set if I need to bushwack. Which reminds me that bushwack is another of my favorite words (along with frigate).
Thursday, May 25
I was so tired today I felt sick, so came home early. I've been spending a lot of time at work. I was supposed to give a presentation and demo of my application today, but it was cancelled. So suddenly most of the pressure lifted. Tomorrow I can spend time on aesthetics...images and layout and so forth. The programming is done up to the point I could do it....the rest of the project is still undefined. My boss asked me today if the network rep getting credit for an order could get automatic e-mail notification when the order was placed, and it turns out they can! (I did know that, but didn't know if I could do it. It turns out it's easy). By the way, for those unclear about what I'm doing, it's this. I do the whole thing...the web application including HTML, SQL Server programming and administration, Javascript (for form validation) and Active Server Pages. Also, I'll doing some graphics just because everybody either steals them from each other or makes their own. I'm really learning a lot, but my brain might be full.
Cool panorama links, Linda!
Wednesday, May 24
I'm exhausted. Good night.
Tuesday, May 23
I started a journal for Mom and Dad, but didn't get to do any real design work on it. If you get a chance to send another update, I'll add it to this!
My e-mail while at Williams is susan.batterman(at)wilcom.com. Obviously put a real at sign in! I don't know if it really works, but I sent stuff home today and it got here.
By the way, porch furniture poll standings are here. It looks like Ed must have figured out how to vote.
Well, back to unpacking and also doing some work. If anybody was wondering, it's hot here. I meant to mention that a couple of months ago. But the crape myrtles are blooming, and I always wondered what they look like. In fact, we have a few of them out in front of our house. Ours need to be cut back.
Monday, May 22
We're still living out of coolers, but should have a refrigerator this weekend. And a washer and dryer by next week. Now we're looking for a mailbox. It's easier when you just take what you get.
Everything here is a mess...we moved from our apartment yesterday, and that just made things worse. It will take awhile to get things sorted out. Not having a basement makes things hard.
I have my own monitor now, and have my computer set up in the family room for now.
Porch swing vote: (vote early, vote often).
Sunday, May 21
I'm back. Sorry we were incommunicado; we had our phone service switched to the new house, but the wiring wasn't finished here yet. I'll try to catch up on this over the next couple of weeks.
We've unpacked a lot of things, but have a long ways to go. We're enjoying the new house. It's quiet! Last night I heard the carillon from a church a couple of blocks away. That will be nice. Friday night we had seven inches of rain (one nearby area had seventeen inches in four hours!). Ed and I sat out on the front porch to watch it. I want to get a porch swing, but he doesn't. Everyone else thinks the porch was made for a swing. I'll have to take a vote.
It looks like everything got here in good shape. It's fun opening the boxes. We had bought some things at Fallingwater just before we left and forgotten about them (they hadn't even been unwrapped yet). That was like Christmas!
We still don't have a refrigerator, washer or dryer. Good thing we have coolers!
I'll write a little more later.
Tuesday, May 16
I had a nice birthday...I met Ed at our new house, and opened my presents from him there. He gave me a drill and a Dremel tool...things some women wouldn't appreciate, but I can't wait to use them. Then we came back to the apartment and I opened my other presents, including the coconut bra. Thank you! Then we went to dinner at Fogo de Chao, a new Brazilian restaurant here. You get a great salad bar with unusual things, then you are served by dozens of waiters running around with big hunks of grilled meat on skewers. When you turn your little token green side up, they'll come and offer you a slice of their meat, and when you need a break, you turn it red side up. Um, I guess it's hard to explain. But it was very good.
I'm loading up my car to drive stuff over to the house tonight. The movers come at 8AM tomorrow, so I won't have a chance to write much.
Work is going well, I'm learning a lot and hopefully will have everything error-free and pretty by Monday, when I have to have a demo to show the group this application is for.
Sunday, May 14
Since Ed has been away the last two weekends, we decided to take the whole day to ride the motorcyle around and sightsee. We went to Surfside, which is on a little island south of Galveston, then road up the coast into Galveston. There were a lot of surfers out today. The surfing isn't great...I think it's too choppy, but the water must be pretty warm because nobody was wearing wetsuits.
In Galveston we drove around and looked at the Victorian houses, then had a Tex-Mex lunch, then headed home. On the way we stopped at the San Jacinto Battleground and Monument, which commerates the last battle in the war for Texas' independence. The monument had a very interesting Art Deco design. Joe Manhart had told me (and I've since confirmed) that when they built that monument, they first checked the height of the Washington Monument, then made sure they built this one a few feet higher. A very Texan thing to do! Nearby was a really interesting looking new bridge called the Hartman Bridge. We didn't take that, but rather a short free ferry to get back across the ship channel. I got to see a lot of oil refineries and some oil wells, which surprisingly I hadn't seen since arriving here. Unfortunately those industries have despoiled much of the Texas coastline, but there are some pretty spots here and there.
Happy Mother's Day! Here is my really bad Mother's Day poem. Note: wait until the message loads at the beginning (the stuff that moves). I just noticed that comes in after the enter button.
Saturday, May 13
I have a feeling my updates to this page will drop for the next couple of weeks, what with moving and working. Sorry! And Linda, I started to work on your style sheet but didn't finish it, so I haven't posted that yet.
We went shopping for appliances today, but are having trouble finding a refrigerator that will fit. They're either too deep or two wide, and we need both narrow (standard width) and shallow (counter depth or slightly bigger). Hopefully one exists. We did decide pretty quickly on a washer and dryer, though.
Anyway, I'll try to take pictures of the house next week (although it will be a mess), so that I can post them within the next couple of weeks.
Thursday, May 11
My first day of work went well. I have a lot of learning to do, but like development. The building I'm in has a walkway over to the Galleria, the big swanky mall of Houston. I hadn't even seen it before yesterday.
Wednesday, May 10
Well, I'm employed. Starting tomorrow, I'm working as an intranet consultant at Williams Communications. It's contract work, which pays well but has no benefits until after six months. I could be at Williams for as little as six weeks, but they generally just come up with new projects for people after the current one ends. The project is an ASP orders and contact management application, so uses SQL Server 7, active server pages, Javascript and HTML. The guy that began the project a few weeks ago is leaving Friday, so I have a lot to learn in the next two days. They know I haven't done a lot of ASP, but they had me over today to talk about the project and get my input (and see how quickly I could pick things up) before deciding to hire me. They even paid me for the two hours I was there. I think it will be great experience, but very hard because it's different than anything I've done before. But I wanted to do something with web applications rather than just straight database administration (which is not very creative), so this is a great opportunity to get experience in that (or fail wildly: the project deadline is in about four weeks, the project isn't that well defined yet, and I'll be the only one working on it.). It's in my favorite building in all of Houston, too. It's not downtown, but not far from it, either. It has a revolving lighthouse-style light at the top that you can see from everywhere.
I went with my friend Ellie to a climbing class at the indoor wall near here. It was very good. I'm pretty tired now, so I'd better get to bed since I want to get up early and read up on some things before heading over to start data modeling.
Tuesday, May 9
Happy birthday, Aidan! (sorry so off-key).
Monday, May 8
This is a website for a conference that Tiffany was a part of in February. I'm linking to it because it has a picture of her (she has red hair now). She plans to start her own magazine now that hers has closed, starting with a website that will be launched next fall. She hopes to fill a gap in British journalism, with a non-Tory but non-Blairite stance.
Sibling rivalry: I beat Linda, and Nico beats Aidan.
I finally have my Texas license plates. I like them better than the Pennsylvania plates. Like everything else here, though, they're red, white and blue with a star. Even the specialty plates are all variations on that theme.
Sunday, May 7
I'm back! I had a great time seeing Karen, Kim and Donna. Karen lives in a great new house north of Dallas. It's 7200 square feet on two acres, with three pools (one's really a hot tub), a weight room, a bar, a pond and a creek. Yet somehow, it doesn't seem ostentatious and neither do Karen and her husband. They just wanted to build a house that they didn't mind spending all their time in, since they have three little boys. I think I'll just go there for vacation from now on. McKinney, the town they live in, is an old frontier town with a 125-year-old jail that was just converted into a restaurant. We had dinner there last night, right in an old cell. Frank James (brother of Jesse) spent a few nights there. And the food was wonderful. It's owned by a couple of Harley riders, so they had an outdoor bar with a live blues band.
Oh, I forgot to mention the home theater. When I arrived, Kim and Donna said that they wanted to rent movies to watch in the home theater. I saw a big screen TV, and thought that's what they meant, but the house actually has a theater room with a projection system, surround sound, and six leather chairs that recline. It was great! Karen's husband has been involved in a few startups, currently a dot com company, so they've been pretty lucky.
I ended up driving to Dallas, and was glad I did because the drive was easy, 4 1/2 hours on one highway. I saw lots of wildflowers, and the huge statue of Sam Houston which stands by the freeway. I wasn't expecting it - it's right in the middle of nowhere. One minute there's nothing but forest, the next there's an enormous white man right next to the road. Only in Texas!
Friday, May 5
I'm off to Dallas, so I won't be updating this until Sunday night.
Thursday, May 4
How many cubic feet do I need for a dryer? 5.9? 6.5? 7.0? We have to pick out a washer, dryer and refrigerator, adding to all of the other decisions (so far the only fun one has been the cabinet hardware).
The 5k Contest for web design got a lot of attention when it was announced earlier this spring. The winners were announced this week. The idea was that all web sites entered must be under 5k in size - including pages, graphics, and external files. This is probably more of interest to Linda than Mom and Dad, but they're pretty clever nevertheless. If you look at the source code you can see how people shaved space - using one letter variables for Javascript and DHTML, for example. By the way, the prize money was 5k cents - $51.20.
I haven't received the iloveyou virus yet. I had an interview this morning, and as soon as I got into the first interviewer's office, someone announced over the PA that no one was to access office, AOL, or home e-mail, as they had already had hundreds of instances of the virus that morning. I thought that I would come home to find it in my in-box, but so far, no. Luckily Uniscribe has good virus software...that's where I would get it from.
Wednesday, May 3
By the way, I saw the movie Return to Me last weekend. Don't bother. If I'd known what it was about, I would have known it couldn't be good. I guess I'm too cynical.
Yes, I know the countdown to my birthday is annoying, but really, how else will you remember? And for those who want to see my Amazon wish list, here it is. There is only one book on it, even though it would be easy to add to it.
Tuesday, May 2
A new satire piece by Tiffany. Update: I was reading another web site (American) this afternoon, which mentioned The Guardian's weblog. I followed the link to it, and was surprised to see it highlighted Tiffany's article yesterday. Small world!
Monday, May 1
My resume views on Monster.com are up to 494. When they get to 500 (tomorrow), I'll disable it. There are too many recruiters in Houston. I also realized that this site attracts people like this (note: this is a long page pasted from four e-mails I received over the last week, but I found it amusing and pathetic).
I archived April. And changed the link to Linda's page to her new page.
Thought for the day (from my friend Cliff in Pittsburgh):
The World is so empty if one thinks only of Mountains, Rivers and Cities, but to know someone here and there who thinks and feels with us, and who, though distant, is close to us in Spirit, this makes the earth for us an inhabited Garden. --Goethe
Cliff's always philosophizing.
