blog.circusgeek

a personal blog with nerdy bits thrown in

Category: Work

  • Health, Work, and Max turns ONE!

    Been a long time (again) but figured I’d post an update on the goings on of the past 3 months.

    First up, I’ve managed to get my diabetes under control. Having lost 50+ pounds and maintained a relatively strict regimen of diet and exercise, the last A1C test I had put me into borderline diabetic territory. Next test isn’t until February but I’m hopeful I’ll be at a place where I’ll be able to stop taking my meds. Been a rough ride, but it was probably the kick in the butt I needed to start being more healthy. I’ve even had to buy new clothes. Twice. I hate buying clothes.

    Big news on the work front. The company I’ve often referred to over the past 5+ years as “SuperSweetCo“, actually known as Jive Software, went public on December 13th (symbol: JIVE)! This was a really big and important step for Jive and it’s future. It’s been very exciting, and a number of Jive peeps were at the NASDAQ to ‘ring the bell’ and open trading that day (watch the opening ceremony). Pretty big stuff.

    But more important to me personally was that today, December 26th at 8:12 AM, Max turned ONE YEAR OLD!

    He’s doing really awesome. He’s on the verge of walking freely (will take a few steps at a time before toppling over, but taking more and more steps every day), eating loads, and growing like a weed. It’s really crazy to think that a year ago, right about now, we found out he’d have to have surgery on our newborn. You can read up on the entire history starting here (navigate to the next post in the series at the end of each one), or by using the linked tag “Max” at the end of this post to find them.

    It’s weird to think that it’s only been a year. That all the heartache of Max having to have surgery when he was only 3 days old and not being able to come home for 4 weeks, it all feels like decades ago. It feels foreign, like it didn’t really happen. I’m happy to feel this way now. Because at the time it was horrible and felt like it would go on forever. And aside from a scar (that’s fading more and more every month) Max is a perfectly healthy and happy little man, chasing our poor (but evil) cat around the house saying “act” instead of “cat” and generally being awesome.

    Happy birthday Might Max!

  • Max is 6 months old!

    It’s been a while since my last post. It’s been since we brought Max home from the hospital a little over 5 months ago. That’s a long time. And yet it’s gone by very quickly. Now be prepared, this is going to be a heavily Max-focused post. Sorry. It’s kind of a big deal.

    Max is now (or will be on the 26th) 6 months old. Crazy right? He’s doing really well. It already seems like another life ago that he was in the NICU at Legacy Emanuel. Over the past 5 months he’s grown a lot, is weighing in at about 16 pounds, has some teeth starting to poke through (making him extra cranky), has been rolling over onto his stomach, and is on the verge of crawling. He’s smiling and laughing and is generally a very calm and happy infant. And he’s (if I do say so myself) a very handsome little man (clearly he gets his good looks from his mom).

    Best of all has been the transition from the somewhat confusing and stunned period of him first being in our lives to where we are now. It now seems weird and somewhat foreign to think of a time when Max wasn’t here with us. It’s strange how that happens. I’d been told it happens, but it really is amazing the way it does. I know that he wasn’t in the world a year ago. But it just seems weird that he wasn’t.

    Other news:

    I’ve been at SuperSweetCo (aka Jive Software) for 5 years as of this month, and things continue to grow, change, and challenge me every day. When I started the company had just shy of 30 employees and it’s now pushing 400, with offices in Palo Alto, Boulder, New York, and now overseas. Crazy times. Just Crazy.

    Kelly has retired from the Oregon Symphony to do the most important job ever, raising Max, and amazes me every day. She’s a fantastic Mom. Not that anyone would be surprised.

    I’ve discovered another favorite spot in town: Prost. It’s a German-focused spot that serves sausages, sauerkraut, big soft pretzels, and one of my favorite German beers (Hofbrau lager).

    My kegerator has Stella Artois on tap.

    It’s my first Father’s Day today.

    I redesigned my blog a bit over the weekend. I’m still such a nerd. Who blogs anymore anyway?

    Portland’s crappy weather has continued to be crappy. It’s June. Sheesh!

    That’s it for now. Will try to write again before Christmas. We’ll see.

  • Winter solstice (hooray) and more important stuff

    Winter solstice is finally upon us (the end is nigh for these lame early nights/short days) and since it’s been such a long time between posts, here’s an update of what’s been going on the past few months.

    Kelly and I went to the coast again in late October with a group of friends (split the rent on an awesome house in Lincoln City near Roads End State Park that Aymie found, thanks again Aymie!) and had a blast, despite the stormy weather that weekend.

    Around the same time, I turned 36. Hooray or whatever. The big news from this was that I finally took the plunge (with a big, helpful push from Kelly and the rest of my family) and got an iPhone (4). No more cheap, crappy Virgin Mobile ‘pay as you go’ phone for me. Now I can retire my iPod Touch and post inane crap to Twitter anytime I want without having to hunt for a WiFi signal. Yay for everyone!

    In late November I had an awning installed on my back patio (pic here), which will be nice come spring when it’s rainy but warm-ish again. Kelly and I also painted the dining room and several other rooms in the house (keep reading).

    Work has been extra hectic the past few months, which is one reason I haven’t written in a while. I’m off work for a few weeks though, for reasons that will become apparent shortly.

    Last night was a lunar eclipse, which we couldn’t see due to the cloud cover and rain.

    Today we got hardwoods installed in the dining room, and they look awesome (pic here). If you’re in the market, Floor Factors does excellent work.

    Another big reason I’m finally writing after such a long gap, Kelly and I are expecting our first child (a boy!) to be born any moment. Due date is/was today! So far the little man has remained content in Kelly’s tummy and isn’t in a hurry to join us in the world. I can’t blame him to be honest. It’s probably very nice in the womb, all warm and squishy. However, Kelly (and I) are getting ready for him to come out and say hello.

    Over the past few months we’ve got his room cleared out, painted and decorated, and got the crib and co-sleeper set up. Also, due to the extreme generosity of friends and family, we’ve received a load of clothes, diapers, toys, a rocker chair for Kelly to nurse with, two strollers and an infant car seat which we barely we squeezed into our Scion xA. We’re ready to go!

    Any day now (hopefully before Christmas) he’ll decide he’s fully cooked. Otherwise we go in to start the induction process at midnight on December 26th.

    I’ll be writing again soon. Stay tuned!

  • Long week, short weekend

    After a long week getting up to speed on work for the next software release (including many, many meetings), the weather started to drastically improve here in Portland Friday a friend of mine came by for some BBQ and beers. Had a really fun night, followed by a slightly painful yesterday.

    I got up and watched several episodes of Top Gear before Kelly and I went to the Blue Olive for dinner, followed by checking out the Oregon Symphony perform Beethoven. The performance was fantastic, though the dinner had me feeling a bit too full and sleepy. After the show we dropped by the Back Stage Bar for our friend B’s birthday. Didn’t stay long though. Sleepy. Happy birthday B! We suck.

    After an early night and many hours of sleep I was able to get some serious yard work done today, mainly cleaning up the pile of debris that sat to one side/corner of the house. It was the spot where two years of Christmas trees/wreaths, many years of potting soil and planters, and general yard junk had been dumped. Hacking, sawing, digging, and barkdust re-spreading. It looks, well, not trashy now. After all that, I’ve been able to sit out on the front porch with a couple beers and, well, write this post. Hooray for spring!

  • Tahoe, and server surgery

    Last week I was sent to South Lake Tahoe for a work ‘summit’, where several peeps from SuperSweetCo were sent to plan the next release (and beyond) of the app. It was quite the adventure, and an exhausting few days that taxed both my ability to focus on 12+ hour work sessions, and to deal with the elevation (I suffered from symptoms similar to altitude sickness, the headaches were pretty nasty). Despite the cold nighttime temperatures, it was beautiful up there.

    I arrived back in Portland Thursday afternoon, and spent Friday working until ~3am trying get caught up and fix bugs in my queue that had built up over the week.

    Over the weekend, after doing some yard work, I had to perform some emergency Linux server surgery (for circusgeek.com). The server had been acting up over the past few months, but nothing specific had gone wrong. Over the weekend I rebooted a few times and every few cycles it wouldn’t boot up. After taking the case apart, I heard a ‘hissing’ whiny sound. After some part replacement (including the power supply) I discovered it was the motherboard that must have had a faulty capacitor. Fortunately I had a ‘spare parts’ machine in the garage I wasn’t using so I was able to replace the innards and boot it back up with everything intact. Linux has come a long way; I remember when I couldn’t swap out much hardware w/o a kernel rebuild. Long story short, the server was back up in a couple hours (with a slightly faster processor) and all is well. Crisis averted. And, it means I can continue to serve up this little-read blog. Hooray!

    Also this weekend Kelly cooked up a delicious dinner out at my folks place for Mother’s Day. I also got to help my dad cut up some wood for an upcoming hunting trip of his, and play with my nephews (even the wee one, who’s just old enough now to play with in between pooping and crying sessions).

  • Fancypants Fri, work Sat, yard Sun

    Friday after work I joined Kelly for an Oregon Symphony event called ‘Party of Note‘ where people can hear small ensembles/quartets of Oregon Symphony performers play in a more relaxed setting. The one on Friday was held at a house in Portland’s west hills (where the upper echelon live) and this house was insane. It was like walking into an Italian-inspired palace, complete with columns, tapestries, wood-paneled dining rooms, chandeliers, and fancy furniture. It reminded me of visiting some of the palaces in Europe, only smaller. I was clearly out of place, having come from work in my usual jeans and shirt outfit, everyone else were dressed to the nines, sipping wine and nibbling hors d’oeurves. It was a bizarre experience, but the string quartet that played some Mozart and Hayden was great. Even Kelly said that the previous one she attended was much more casual, so hopefully (if I go again) it won’t be so stuffy. That said, I got to see how the other 1% live.

    Yesterday I got up around 8am and spent the whole day and most of the night working, trying to put the finishing touches on some features I’m on the hook for. Kelly got me away long enough to take a nearly 5 mile walk though, so that was good. She also got me out to Moon & Sixpence for a couple pints of Kilkenny. Mmm.

    Today I relaxed a bit, watched several episodes of this British comedy The Inbetweeners, and then got out and mowed my lawn (first time for the year), aerated the front and threw & watered a bunch of grass seed (in an attempt to revive the sad little strip of mostly mud).

  • Recap: work, movies, games, etc

    Returning to work after 2 weeks of time off always means a lot of catching up to do. That means, as always, I fail to post. Sheesh. So here we go with more recappy goodness of the past couple weeks…

    Kelly and I have watched a few decent films; the animated film 9, Charlie Wilson’s War, and just this evening, Michael Clayton. We’ve also continued to hang out from time to time at a recently discovered bar a few blocks from my house, NePo 42. They’ve got a decent beer selection, good grub, and free pool on a table in the back. The only downside are game nights when the Portland Trailblazers are playing (the place fills up with dudes that get drunk and like to loudly holler at the TV).

    And today I freed up enough hard drive space on my PC to finally pick up Call of Duty: World at War off of Steam. Since I refuse to buy Modern Warfare 2 (no dedicated servers, no lean, etc – read more if you care), and I enjoyed the demo of World at War, I dropped my $39 on it and am currently gobbling up my bandwidth waiting for it to download and install. Game on!

  • OMG it’s 2010

    OK, so, I gave up for the past 3 months. Guess I lost the love. It’s not that I don’t love the 3 or 4 of you who actually read my blog, but I just lost the love for spewing out nonsense for no particular reason. It affected my Twitter-ing too. I just felt no need for it. I could barely keep up with consuming everything coming my way (outside of my work-related duties), and just didn’t care to add the burden to myself or anyone else.

    But I’m back, baby. (for now)

    Here’s a recap since my last post (when I was happily relaxed on the Big Island).

    At the end of October I had a birthday, and I turned 25 (again), and had the good fortune of having friends and family over to celebrate. I had a great time (I think, can’t quite remember since it was so long ago). Looking at the photographic evidence there was a lot of time spent bowling on the Wii, drinking beers, and eating fondu and other delicious treats that Kelly (and others) had made. Again, let me reiterate, I turned 25. Not 35. Nosirree. Nope.

    Around mid-November, my company sent the Engineering team down to Napa Valley and San Francisco for a day/night to celebrate the latest release of our software. Had a fun time, despite the fact that I don’t have any love for wine. However, some awesome coworkers had my back, and picked up some cans of Guinness and Boddingtons for me to gulp while on the bus. Thanks guys!

    Shortly after the trip to Napa, I got sick with what I can only assume to be the dreaded pigmanflu (given the fever, aches, etc). It wasn’t much fun.

    Guinness is back on tap on the Kegerator (yay!).

    Christmas time! Kelly and I got a nice tree this year from a daycare up the street from our house (proceeds go to help the daycare, so that makes it extra festive). Our evil cat Arthur Guinness took to climbing it repeatedly. Stupid cat. We went out to my folks place on Christmas day (as is tradition) and ate too much and opened gifts. A couple days later we went to my aunts and exchanged white elephant gifts and again ate a bit too much, and got to hang out with some of my cousins.

    A couple days later I got sick again, this time with a more common cold (I blame this on Kelly, since she had it first). Sniffles, cough, bleh.

    The other day, out of nowhere, it snowed a bit in PDX. And this one was unexpected and caught everyone off guard. It started around 2pm or so, and by 5pm, there was a little over 2 inches of snow in our neighborhood. Watching the news of the rush-hour traffic, the roads were a mess, especially since nobody was prepared for the conditions and loads of people got stuck trying to get in or out of town. People, including my brother, spent 8 hours or more trying to get from point A to B.

    That same night, Kelly and I attended a Squirrel Nut Zippers concert in Southeast Portland (at the Aladdin Theater) which she had bought for me as a Christmas gift. We weren’t sure if we were going to bother going out or not up until an hour before the show, however I’m glad we braved the roads because it was a really fun show. We hadn’t seen them in about 5 years (since their hiatus), and they put on a really good show, putting some stylistic twists some of their old songs, and performing them all with all the fun that I expected from a SNZ show.

    Tonight we celebrated New Years at our good friends T & S’s place (who fortunately live just over a mile away from us) which meant for the first time in many years we didn’t host the party. This was good primarily since both Kelly and I are still recovering from our illnesses. However we came home pretty quickly after midnight, and here I am.

    Here’s to hoping that 2010 will be a better year all around than 2009.

    And for some Way Back Machine-ing, here’s a quote from the Counting Crows song ‘A Long December‘ (watch the video for a younger Courteney Cox, back when she dated Adam Duritz in 1997):

    And it’s been a long December and there’s reason to believe
    Maybe this year will be better than the last

    Happy New Years all!

  • Family weekends done & an afternoon at the Zoo

    Last weekend was a relatively relaxed weekend, sandwiched between some very busy weeks of work, and we continue to plan for our upcoming trip to Hawaii. I even picked up a waterproof camera (the Canon PowerShot D10, waterproof to 33 ft! Pretty happy with the test shots so far).

    This past weekend (starting Thursday) we had some of Kelly’s family in town (her Father and his new ladyfriend who stayed at a nearby hotel, and an Aunt and Cousin who stayed with us). As a result, it was a hectic few days, not only disrupting our usual routines, but also trying to keep them all entertained while here.

    Today, after the family left, we went to the Oregon Zoo for my work’s summer (or end of summer) picnic. I hadn’t been to the zoo in many years, and had a pretty fun time wandering around seeing all the animals. The highlights for me were seeing Samudra (the baby elephant),  and the big cats (lions and cheetahs) at the Predators of the Sarengeti exhibit. Also, the company picnic was good fun, had a nice late-lunch/early dinner, a beer, and a chat with coworkers before Kelly and I continued our tour of the Zoo.

    See the photos from the Zoo here.

  • August recap & we’re going to Hawaii

    Yup, another month, and despite all my hopes to write more frequently, I keep using Twitter to spout my nonsense, rather than writing to my blog.

    To keep it quick:

    • Early August Kelly and I joined our friends in Eagle Crest (photos)
    • Worked a ton (late nights and weekends)
    • The weather has gone from stupid hot to cold to hot again
    • Had the mother-in-law in town from Arizona
    • Continued yardwork action, trying to keep the place in order
    • Planned a trip to Hawaii

    The last bullet is the important one. Kelly and I are going to Hawaii at the end of the month, and I’m really excited about it. We’re renting an oceanfront house south of Kona on the big island for 6 nights. Since 2001, all our travels have been to Europe, which I love, but that means a lot of cathedrals, museums, pubs, and big cities. I’m looking forward to spending a few days swimming in the ocean, and doing (hopefully) not too much in a tropical environment.

    The house we’re renting has WiFi, so I expect to be blogging and posting photos while there. Doubt I’ll write too much more between now and then since we have have more family visiting next weekend, and I have even more work to do. So for the 2 of you who follow my blog (I assume it’s down to two, since my posts have been so infrequent), expect more at the end of the month.