Entries Tagged as 'personal'

A new start..

So yesterday, 10/31/09 was my last day as an Apex 2000 employee. I thought it would be a sad day when I finally leave Apex, but I am actually very excited and relieved. Mind, it wasn’t my choice to leave, but I believe it is going to be a good thing for me. Luckily (?) Taryn got an internship and trasnferred from student teaching so now she is getting paid.

What this means is that I will have a few months to try and get my own projects working. Yes. I will finally be able to start building my own client list and project list. I have close to a dozen projects I’m wanting to work on that hold a lot of potential, and am excited that I am being pushed to work on these.

New month..new life…new hope

No excuse for not blogging

except that i’ve been working…

Taryn started her student teaching and I have been at home playing stay-at-home dad. I take care of Caleb during the day, try and get some work done when he naps or get distracted by his toys long enough, and then, when Taryn gets home, I start working more. I’m not too crazy about the whole situation, but it’s what is needed right now, so I do it.

Don’t get me wrong, I do like hanging out with the little guy, but staying home and taking care of kids just isn’t for me. I miss the office and going to work. Maybe if I’d been able to get my own office together and actually had a place to retreat to it would be different. Maybe I’ll need to work on that once the next change happens (more on that later).

Taryn also did get a position teaching Kindergarten which is awesome. That means she will have some money coming in (finally) that will help out a lot.

Just wanted to get a post up so I can gripe at others for not posting. :)

xbox + netflix = cool

Last night I got the stuff to get my xbox hooked up to the internet as an early birthday / father’s day gift (as well as a super cool nifty laptop bag and lap desk) and, after I download the updates, installed the netflix app. I then proceeded to start watching movies in my queue. Very cool and works great. I wish it would show all the streamable movies in my queue, or, better yet, browse the entire library, but still, it worked very well and I am excited to have that feature. I’m going to be working on a media storage pc connecting to it to stream our music and other media. I am very excited about this new ability. Oh ya, and now we can buy games through it too.

One of the items I ran across was the Natal video. I loaded it up to show Taryn this interface and discovered that it was not the hyped unrealistic looking commercials i’ve seen everywhere , but the actual E3 on-stage demo of the product. It works. It seems to work very well. I can now see it augmenting their existing controllers in a way that would help immerse the gamer and offer more control of the character.

I can’t find a video of the actual E3 demo. If I can I’ll post it up here.

I was wondering why sony, during their motion sensitive controller demonstration, kept mentioning that they needed a controller because it didn’t feel right without it. Now we know. Unfortunately, Microsoft’s tech could work with the existing controller or really any shape or style of controller. That would be something, I’d think, because sony is right that some things just don’t feel right without a button.

update on life

well, here’s the update on life. As you can see, Caleb is progressing along nicely (due Jan 4th). Taryn is graduating in December with Latin honors, and I’m working hard at turning things around here.

On the Caleb front, we’ve been working around the house as we have money and time. My shoulder started hurting extremely bad a few weeks ago, went to the doc, and found I have a bone spur that has made my rotator cuff extremely unhappy. The doc doesn’t think damage has been done, and prescribed some med and physical therapy for it. So I’ve been doing that for a week and i think it’s getting better. I’m thinking, though, that I will have to eventually wind up getting surgery. I just need to get things done around the house, though, then I can take a break.

On the work front, things are progressing slowly. I get a bit irritated at how slowly some major companies move when trying to work with you *cough*AT&T*cough*. Besides that, I think we are doing good. I’ve got one project walking, getting ready to run, a couple more starting to twitch a bit, and many more in my mind, waiting for life. If I can get enough of these going, we should be in pretty good shape.

Now to get caught up with kamakaze.org again!

Caleb

We had the opportunity to have another ultrasound on Monday, and this time we got to get some 3-d images of him. It’s a pretty cool technology. Pics are below. Sorry for the size - but enjoy!

Caleb Scan 1

view all pics here

a new life…

Not for me, though. Ok, for me too. For us.

Today we may be finding out the gender of our first baby. It’s exciting, but also a bit daunting. We will be introduced, if not formally, to our child.

Just a bit of awe right now. Not much else to say.