Update on the week

Well, the week is going well so far. I just got back from doing our Fox Valley JUG Presentation and everything went really well.

Monica has a seminar to attend for work tomorrow so she went and signed the papers tonight on the mortgage! So, barring some crazy setback I'll be signing off tomorrow 10AM followed by getting the move started!

Rob, Mike and Jon Fox are coming over during the day tomorrow to help out. Brandon and Jesse are coming over later and Mike Gengler and Burg are on standby. I bet we get everything moved tomorrow. Really as long as we get all the big things though (things that don't fit in our car) it will be a huge success! We're obviously really excited!

Kevin caught you a delicious bass

You may recall that a few weeks ago I went on a L.Michigan fishing trip courtesy of Mr. Michael Gengler? I didn't have my camera with me so the pictures weren't available right away but here's one of Kevin and I. As you can see by the expression on our faces... Kevin is a little happier with his catch than I am with mine.

Another Great Weekend

We just got done with a very fun weekend in Milwaukee.

Things got kicked off with Nate and Ericka's wedding on Friday. They had perfect weather (especially considering that the rest of the weekend it was either a thunderstorm or 150 degrees) for an outdoor wedding. The War Memorial was a great setting, right on Lake Michigan. They even had fireworks courtesy of Festa Italiana right down the road there! I think everyone had a great time! I don't have any pictures of the wedding but hope to have some at some point - our camera has been behaving poorly but I think Carissa has some that she'll be able to send me (?).

After a late night Friday, Saturday was pretty much a recovery day. We had planned on heading to Festa that evening but ended up with thunderstorms. Actually, that was alright though as we were all feeling pretty lazy. Instead, Monnie, her parents, brother Thomas, and I played a few rounds of Scattergories and ordered some pizza. Sheila, Claire, and Mike came over to work on the wedding programs and Mike put on a hoola hoop exhibition that's definitely worth checking out.

Sunday was another good day. We started making our first calls to get some answers on missing wedding RSVPs. The seating chart is getting put together and we're working towards our "final number". Later we had a 'couples wedding shower', mostly for Monica's side of the family (except my parents and Sheila/Claire) and some friends. I admit that I was somewhat worried about exactly what would go on but it was a great time. Uncle Ric made some awesome Mexican food (I got to request the genre) and everyone really enjoyed staying in the house and away from the incredible heat. I think that's going to have to be the hottest day of the year... it was CRAZY out there. Anyway, we're quite appreciative of all the gifts and it was great to see some people that I hadn't seen in a while. I don't have any pictures of the shower but Sheila has some posted already - check em out!

Big week ahead here: Presentation Thursday and closing Friday!

Or if you're more interested in this planet.

For those of you who checked out the Keyhole project from Google a bit back, this isn't radically new. For those of you who haven't... definitely go check this out: Google Earth. It's free and is a really cool way to cruise around the planet.

One small step for Google

More fun stuff from Google. Check out where the Apollo missions have landed. Unfortunately, driving directions are not yet available.

and make sure to zoom in real close...

http://moon.google.com/

So little time!

Quite the week going on over here!

Monnie and I got to have dinner with Mom and Dad tonight over in Sun Prairie. Man will it be nice when we don't have to drive to get to the East side! We grilled out, threw some dice, and even had a mini fashion show!

After dinner we got quite a bit of work done on the packing. Hard to believe that 10 days from now we'll have a mortgage! We're doing pretty well on the packing (most of the credit thus far goes to Monica) and will have everything all boxed up and ready in time for the movers (aka friends). We're planning on moving most of our things on Friday and then finishing up on Saturday. Saturday and Sunday are probably going to have a pretty high number of hours spent on the extremely fun task of cleaning... can't wait for that!

Speaking of things that are coming up incredibly fast, the wedding is suddenly one month away! We're obviously really looking forward to it - it's going to be a great time. I am multi-tasking right now and am also printing wedding programs. It took a bit to figure out exactly how to feed the printer to facilitate printing correctly on both sides of the pages but now it's all pretty much in cruise control. All of this planning is really starting to come together!

The other topic on the agenda tonight (which I am currently hiding from behind this blog and the program printing) is the pending Ajax presentation for the Fox Valley Java User Group (Fox Valley JUG). We're making some pretty large changes in our presentation in preperation for the No Fluff Just Stuff presentation in September and it's kind of led to some awkward timing for this smaller presentation next week. I really think we'll be able to pull of a very good presentation though and teach them quite a bit, even if we are kind of being caught in an interim stage.

Our good friends Nate and Ericka will be wed this Friday at the War Memorial, in Milwaukee. We're really looking forward to it! I had a great time at Nate's bachelor party last weekend which included several flybys from the Blue Angels who were in town for a show. We quite enjoyed watching them and, in our festive moods, didn't give much thought to much but the visual display at the time.

that's about all that I have going on.

Billions of women's lives ruined!

War? Famine? What could this blog post possibly be about? Why, of course, the removal of softball and baseball from the Olympics!

“I feel one person, the president of the IOC, a person from Europe, has taken it upon himself to ruin the lives of millions, actually billions of women.”
- Lisa Fernandez, 3-time softball gold medalist (US)

Whoa! Easy Lisa.
(I really like the "a person from Europe" line being interjected in there too)

I'm sure this is just a tremendous coincidence, but just a week after this announcement was made, Major League Baseball (MLB) announced it's new plan for a "World Cup" style tournament to be held starting next March.

So, baseball was removed from the Olympics - a tournament that MLB hated. And less than a week later, MLB is announcing that they are going to run a new tournament - played in the Spring to jive with their schedule - the drug testing will presumably be inline with the MLB policy - and best of all: it's a heck of a lot more profitable!

It will be interesting to see how the tournament turns out. Actually, as a baseball fan, I bet the tournament will be much better. The level of play will be incredibly better - you can count on much of the play being in the US, etc. As a fan of the Olympics though: it's unfortunate to think that baseball (and softball) won't be there.

Watch what you post?

Raghu sent me an interesting article about people who have gotten in trouble for saying a little too much in their blogs. Mostly it's driving home the point that you really shouldn't be saying anything on the internet that you don't want every person in the universe to know.

One of the most surprising things in there though was this excerpt:
Surveys completed in recent months by the Pew Internet & American Life Project found that nearly a fifth of teens who have access to the Web have their own blogs. And 38 percent of teens say they read other people's blogs.

By comparison, about a tenth of adults have their own blogs and a quarter say they read other people's online journals.

Those numbers do drive home the point of the article: a lot of people have access to your blog. They may not read it... but they have access. And really: what a great idea it would be for employers to make "check for blog" part of their interview process. Have a resume that looks "ok"? Go look at their blog: You'll probably get a much more accurate picture of the person you're looking to hire than the "very good people skills" bullet point on that resume!

Fishing weekend

Friday night and Saturday Mike Gengler took Mike Fox, Kevin Burg, and I out on Lake Michigan to do some fishing. This is the second year that I've been able to get out there and it's been awesome both times.

We ended up catching 3 salmon and a brown trout. The brown trout was much larger than the salmon but was comparatively very easy to land; it put up little fight and basically reeled in itself.

I don't have any pictures yet but a few were taken with a camera that used something called "film". Apparently this is some sort of technology that people used to use to preserve images, but I am not really all that familiar with it. I guess the images aren't immediately available though so I'll have to post them after they get developed...

jimhalberg.com

Today I registered jimhalberg.com. If you go there now you will see something incredibly exciting... this same site.

So, why bother registering? Ah, well it seems like a good idea. Mostly the reason is that now you guys can bookmark jimhalberg.com and then if you don't check back for a while and I switch where the blog is, or maybe get a full website going or something: you would still be able to find me.

Exciting stuff, I know.

Independence Day

Yes, the day that we won our independence from the shed. Today saw the shingles being scored and trimmed to fit the edge of the roof (along with one of my fingers). The door's saw some work but we just didn't quite have time to finish things up. Maybe if we hadn't lost those hours on the 3rd we would have finished... At any rate though, we got it far enough that a couple of these Fox's should be able to polish things off over the next month or so.



The trip home was uneventful (good thing) and the traffic actually wasn't too bad.

It was a very good weekend.

Day3. Roofing, facia, and some door frames.

Today we were really making some good progress. The tar paper was on and the shingles were underway when a storm started rolling in (about 3PM). We had already gotten quite a bit done but we were really hoping to get the roof completely shingled. It wasn't to be though as the rain didn't let up enough to let things dry off. I don't have a picture of where we left off on Day3, but actually this is pretty much how much we had shingled on one side of the roof when we quit (and the other side had nothing done at that point).



It turned out just fine though as we got to climb off that roof and jump in the lake. Swimming in the rain is always a good time.

Sticking with our theme of great meals, tonight we went to Monical's in Minocqua for pizza. The long wait ended up being worth it, although a fight almost broke out when Brunner couldn't get his garlic bread (they were all out).

Day2. The shed really takes shape

Day2 found us resuming work early (or at least it felt early). It was really gorgeous out and the executive decision was made that after a long day of work day1: today we would work until 2PM, then head out on the lake for a few hours. The break really hit the spot - the boss' idea really improved morale.

The end of Day2 saw the shed really coming together. The roof was up and the plywood was up.



Another good dinner tonight as we got some tenderloins going on the grill. A campfire was in order to cap off the day.

A shed is born

I spent my 4th of July extended weekend up at the Fox's cabin. It's up there near St.Germain.

While spending some time on the lake was in the cards, the goal for the weekend was to build a pretty large (12x12) shed.

After arriving Thursday evening, we began Friday morning with the outer perimeter of the shed in place for us.



We worked pretty much solid through the day until early evening, before breaking for an awesome fish fry at the HoneyBear. The HoneyBear's fry, by the way, is a must have if you're looking for some fish in that area.

Another day1 picture. By the way, if you click on these photos you should be taken to the flickr site with all of them...