Still going to Orioles games..

Since I'm now in town on a regular basis, I can actually attend the Orioles games that I paid for. This past week, two games were scheduled. The first game was Tuesday against the Toronto Blue Jays. The O's lost that one, 6-4.
The next game was Friday, 5/25 against the Oakland A's. This game was tight all the way through, but alas, the O's lost 3-2. We stayed to the very end when we were both tired. There were fireworks after the game, but the Fireworks at Camden Yards are kind of crappy. We left after the game. You can tell when the Orioles play on Fridays at home, they wear black jerseys.

Concerts for the Summer of 2007

It's time to start getting back out there and hit some shows. There isn't any HUGE band that I MUST see, but the summer is starting to fill up. In order of appearance:

June 23: RUSH at the Nissan Pavilion. The Donk got tickets and Chris wants to hop on the ride down to the show with us. Chris will probably end up with better tickets and pay well under face.


As I labeled this in an e-mail: GEEZ-FEST!
Yes, finally the Geezer show that you have been waiting for! These bands wouldn’t sell out a state fair alone, but they will be all together for one BIG NIGHT! Saturday, July 21, 2007 at the

Baltimore Arena (1^st Mariner Arena, Civic Center, whatever you want to call it) get down with JACK-FM as the ‘JACK-Fest’ comes to Baltimore! It's JACK FEST-- featuring ZZ TOP...REO SPEEDWAGON...THE PRETENDERS...and THE STRAY CATS!

Assuming I recover from the Geez-Fest, the next day it is off to Wilmington, DE for the opening night of the Counting Crows show on July 22.


If it was just the Counting Crows, I wouldn't go through much trouble, but this is a 3 band lineup. Along with the Crows, Live and Collective Soul will also be on the bill. I will actually take in a couple more Crows shows on this tour. On August 14 and 15 they will be playing a couple of other minor league ball parks in Aberdeen and Frederick, MD. This should also be interesting too since I will probably train it to the shows right after work.

Last September, I bought tickets and had all intentions of going to the Virgin Fest show. Unfortunately, my appendix gave out earlier in the week and I didn't make it. But this year, I am on for the August 4 show.


Austin City Limits Music Festival - I really want to go to this show. I probably won't pick up tickets until I get there (or shortly before) and I will need to get things straight with stuff at work. But of all of the show, this is the one that I would like to see the most!

Garden details

So you don’t have to squint, the vegetables are, from left to right, bottom to top:

Cabbage, Broccoli, Kale, Onions, Carrots, Radishes, Beets, Watermelons, Cantaloupes, several varieties of Cucumbers, Tiny Tim Tomatoes, Okra, Bell Peppers, Yellow Squash, Zucchini Squash, White Squash, Giant Belgium Tomatoes, Better Boy Tomatoes, more Tiny Tim Tomatoes, and a bunch of Roma Tomatoes. There is another bed that is past the top of the garden that I’ve planted 8 Better Boy Tomatoes. These will actually be the first tomatoes that will be harvested.

An interesting point about the White Squash; the first garden that was planted in 2005 I planted White Squash. Some had grown too large or were bad and were discarded in the garden. Last Spring, these squash seeds sprouted and we grew our squash from them. This year, same thing happen. The squash have been in the garden since 2005.

The reason for all of the tomatoes: First off, I don’t actually like raw tomatoes. But tomatoes do grow great in this area and I’ve been growing tomatoes since I was a kid, so I know how to do it. Last summer Teri and I canned a bunch of tomatoes and used them throughout the winter to make noodle soup. We really enjoyed the process of canning and it’s nice to have something from the garden when it’s long gone. So this year we went a little crazy. We will probably have more tomatoes then we can ever use. We will can the whole tomatoes again, but maybe try to make sauces or something. I think we should try to make our own baby food. I know the baby won’t be eating until it is over 6 months old, but the veggies that we can may help to make a healthier child.

The reason for the Tiny Tim Tomatoes (these are cherry type tomatoes by the way) at the end of the okra row is because a few weeks ago when I bought the okra (mine didn’t come up for some reason); they gave me 4 cherry tomato plants. I planted them at the end of the row. We’ll see how they do.

Garden Layout..

This week and this weekend I continue to work in the garden. It's coming along great and have started harvesting the early greens (kale and broccoli). It occurred to me that if you are reading this blog, you may not know the layout of this garden. This picture is the general layout of things. This is not to scale, but you will get an idea of how things are setup. You may have to zoom in on the picture to make out the labels (just click on it).

Building a PC together...

On the weekend of May 5-6, I got together with a bunch of folk at the Chesapeake PC Users Group and helped build some PCs. These were mid-high end systems (I wrote about it previously). You can see from the pictures that things went pretty well. Overall it turned out to be a really good weekend, and folks learned a lot about building their own computers. In many of the pictures all you see is the top of my head, this is to illustrate that I am not going bald at this point in my life.
The one picture is with the motherboard with the heatsink attached before it goes into the case. As you can see, this heatsink is HUGE! The people who used this particular heatsink had to remove on the ducts inside of their case.

CJ and Tyler's B-Day

Today is my brother Chuck (CJ)'s 52nd Birthday! Two days ago it was my nephew Tyler's 9th Birthday! Today the family got together and held a dual party at Severna Park Bowling Lanes. Most people in the family were there (except my sister Cindy). And it was a good time had by all.
Today started kind of weird. Teri and I were kind of tiered last night and watch the end of the O's game from the bedroom. Then fell asleep. I woke up about 4:30 and couldn't get back to sleep. So I got up, caught up on TiVo, and worked in the garden until it started raining. I laid down inside and took a nap for a couple of hours. This got me caught up. I finished a couple of things in the garden, came in, showered and changed, and off to the birthday party. Other then that, it was a normal day.
Chris will be coming over tonight to catch up on the Sopranos and it's back for my second week at GAO. I think it's going great there.

First week at GAO...

Things wrapped up very well this week at GAO. I would say things turned out very well! Today I finally did some 'real' work. Nothing super technical, just loaded up about a dozen servers with the GAO Windows image. I didn't think too much of it but the guys at the GAO seemed very impressed that I was able to take the bull by the horns and get the job done. The day ended on a good note and everything looks good for next week.
With being home, I am able to do more stuff like a normal person. When I get home, I get out to the garden. Here are a couple of pictures of the garden to this point. These are pictures of the raised bed with tomatoes and the full garden (with Teri walking away from the camera). I know it's kind of boring, but the therapy is great! We are starting to pick a couple of early fruit. Radishes and strawberries are coming on. In the next week or so I will probably cut some kale.

More baby pix (it looks human!)

So Monday Teri had a major doctors appointment. Unfortunately, that is the same day that I started at GAO. The baby is progressing very well as you can see from the picture, the head and body are visible now and she tells me that you can see the hands and feet when it flips in the right position. I added some labels so you can tell what you are looking at. We are now through the first trimester and now things are kind of out of the woods.
And speaking of things growing, the garden is starting to come along well. Everything except the melons are in the ground and doing pretty decent. The melons will go in this weekend, there is suppose the be a little cool snap over the next couple days, so we'll hold off. I'll take some pictures on a clear day to show progress.

One last trip...

As I mentioned, I started working at GAO on 5/14. But I still had a final trip to do. This was the Arkansas - West district, that is located in Fort Smith, AR. Its on alright little town as little towns go. This was the smallest site that I have worked and it was myself and one installer, Seth. Seth is a 23 year old kid, just got out of the Marines. Its funny to listen to what a 23 year old sounds like. They say the stupidest things. I can only image the stupid things that I said when I was his age. As things went, everything turned out well with the installation.
It wasn't until 5/9 that I was able to speak to my manager at US Resources and explain why I was leaving and that I could stay on through the install in AZ. I thought this was what he would want me to do. But as things turned out, he kind of copped an attitude and told me I could leave at the end of the week. This seemed kind of weird, and I confirmed this with him. After I finished this call, I called Prism and told them I could start 5/14.
Later in the day, I contacted my manager of the project. He heard that I was leaving and that he wanted to know if I could stay on through the next deployment. I called back Prism, but they had already locked into starting on 5/14. The whole thing wasn't the greatest situation, but that was the fault of my US Resources manager.
On my last night of the trip, I went across the border in Oklahoma and played some poker in their casino. It was fun. All in all, I did enjoy my time on the US Attorney project, I'm sorry it ended like it did. But I'm home every night, and this is important. It takes a lot of pressure off of Teri and Gram, and all parties around here.

Downtime...(NOT)

Columbia wrapped up earlier than expected which gave me a week (4/30-5/4) of downtime...or so I thought. I setup interviews over the course of the previous week. Going into the week I had interviews Monday morning, Tuesday afternoon, and Thursday morning. The interview Monday morning was with a company in Rockville. From the job description it seemed like a pretty good gig and I was kind of excited. As it turned out, a total waste of time! More like a fishing trip where the recruiter wanted to meet me, but didn't have a firm job description. A total waste of time!
On the way out I got a call from another consulting company, this company had an opening at the Navy Yard that they needed filled. This were moving fast with this position, and they asked me if I could schedule an interview that afternoon. Why not? I was in my suit and so I went. The interview went well but at the end, the guy asked about my degree. I pointed out the 15+ years of experience. As things turned out, I didn't hear back from them, so again, more wasted time...
On Tuesday I have me interview scheduled at IDX which is about a 7 minute drive. This time the interview is with the corporate IT Manager. We had a good meeting, lasting about an hour. I hear back from them the next day that they want me to come in on Friday for an assessment test. I do. This takes a while! I was in there over 3 hours! The series of tests took 2.5 hours alone. Then I interviewed with the General Manager. Finally I was left with instructions to call another person for another phone interview. I have never interviewed so much for a company in my life.
On Thursday I had a second interview at GAO (Government Accountability Office). This was nearly a sure thing for this position. As things have turned out, Prism (the sub-contractor that actually hired me on a temp-perm basis) made an offer on Friday 5/4. There were a couple of issues in that I needed to start in a perm role sooner then 6 months. They had to work this out as the 6 month period is the standard practice between Prism and the primary, Nortel (who I may eventually be working for). To cut to the chase, I started working at GAO on Monday, 5/14.
A little out of order, I had a computer users group meeting 5/2. This went very well! The magazine publisher, SmartComputing came out and gave a demo, and everyone seemed to enjoy it.
And Thursday afternoon Heather and I went out for our first fishing adventure of the season. She caught the sole fish (a catfish) but I screwed up taking the picture of it with her holding it. Better luck next time. Hopefully we'll be able to get out a few more times over the summer.

Music in Columbia

It's been a little while since I left Columbia, SC, but here is how things wrapped up.
A few nights I went to eat in this area known as 5 Points. Its' the tourist area and pretty nice. The picture is of a fountain that is the center of this area.
Basically everything turned out very well with the installation. On the last night (4/25), I hung out in the downtown area (Vista) a little while, as oppose to just eating and running back the the NAC. The weather was nice and warm and it was just a relief to be finished.
I eat at a Cajun restaurant. The food was okay, but there was a bunch of people playing folk music. I always like live music, so I hung around for a couple hours. It wasn't so much of a band and just regulars and visitors coming into the place with their various instruments. There were about 14-15 people from time to time with a core of 7-8. On the way back to the bus, I stopped by this bar that a guy was playing some tunes on an acoustic guitar, that bas pretty good too. I stayed a little long, and just barely caught my bus. Overall a very good evening.
The next day I got a call from the Systems Manager about a problem system. I went and fixed it and he was happy. All of this combined to give me a very good review! No more money, but they like me.