Leaving on a jet plane

Well today is the day for me. I get to hop on a plane and set sail for a new job in a new town in a new state with some old friends. If I didn't see you, sorry. Wish me luck.

Oh. Good luck Ish.

Some more farewells

Yesterday, my parents invited over some of the family and friendds to bid me off. It was awesome. I never complain about seeing family. Long ago, moving away would have been difficult, but with fast communication, it not nearly as bad. I will miss seeing them, but I will still be able to hear them.

So I have been collecting email addresses of folks around here that I know so I at least have that as a means of keeping in the loop. Grabbed one of Fish Store Don. I know that isn't his primary job but did it to keep his tanks stocked, but I would visit with him just about Sunday until he left the fish store when he became the president of the local FOP. And since I wasn't able to get his contact information before, I got it now.

So yesterday we had a cookout. Good old burgers and dogs. Love that stuff. Although in Seattle I will probably have to go with salmon burgers and salmon dogs. :)

Move status

Things yet to do:

1. Finish cleaning
2. Take care of fish and tanks
3. Finalize realtor stuff
4. Get car move finalized
5. Get stuff move finalized
6. Pack our necessary stuff
7. Move

So there we have it. I am sure I am missing stuff. Really feels like a lot to do. Cleaning will take a couple more days. We through out a lot of stuff so now it is just moving to locations so that the realtor can come in and get photos and final appraisal. From what he said, the market here right now is very, very slow. So it really depends on how I work the budget as to it we can wait out a better market. But I have concerns that the market may not get better. Got in my last xbox live for a while so that was fun. I ended up quitting early as my broadband was sucking. Tried to join Matches, but he was playing new maps that I had not downloaded yet. When I got back on, he was not there.

House sales: Scrub-a-dub-dub

So I have spent the last few days cleaning up my house as best as I can to make it presentable for a realtor and "guests". Let me tell you, more to do than I thought possible. We have filled 5.5 cubic yards of dumpster to date with junk that doesn't work and with empty boxes and other crap. If we could give it away to goodwill or other places, we have done so, but there is always junk that you collection.

Did you know that I had 2 dot-matrix printers? They may work, but I wasn't going to futz with them. Into the trash they go. 2 dead ink jets went in the trash as well. Soon I will cut down my keyboard collection from 12 to 5. Just so much stuff that makes no sense to keep.

Today was another boss's last day. Again, like my last boss, I have a ton of respect for and know that they will succeed in the things they do. Hopefully I can live up to the experiences they have both provided me. My other ex-boss hasn't been fired yet, so cheers!

So I decided to tell a story at my current boss's exit coffee, which covered the time that he came back from vacation and took the whole department down with an illness. Sometimes it is hard to judge the content of the story to be told as the audience is not reacting to much. But all in all, best of luck Jay! Don't let Sara beat you up too much.

Earlier proof of my half-fro 

Proof that at one time I did in fact have hair! 

The Start of Something Big

Well, I can finally mention some news of note. I put in my two week notice at Whirlpool Corporation on Friday. I have been working there for about 5.5 years permanently, but I had interned there as well since Feb of 1996. So after almost 10 years, I decided it was time to experience something different.

I would not stop anyone from working for Whirlpool. From what I saw in the time I was there, was most of their employees were treated well. And the experiences you gain are wonderful.

So, now I am moving to Seattle to work for Amazon.com. I am very excited and very nervous. I definitely have a concern that I am getting in over my head, going from a web developer in research at a manufacturer to working as a software developer for production systems at the largest online retailer with some of the brightest minds in the business. This is my first real test and I look forward to acing it.

To be honest, the biggest worry for me right now is selling the house. But that is mostly out of my control. I have done what I could in the last 3 years to make changes in the house for the better. But we shall see.

Fireworks and video games

St. Joseph's July 4th Fireworks

So another July 4th. It was pretty crowded at the beach last night. Sometime when things aren't crowded I should like to take my tripod and try to get some good fireworks shots. Basically I set the exposure to maximum and set the lighting for sunset of my Minolta E500.

So lately I have been playing a couple of new games. First off I picked up Guild Wars. Now I haven't had much time to play, but from what I have, it is a darn fun game. Haven't had much human interaction time, but the quests are interesting and the world is absolutely beautiful. A recommended pickup.

The other will likely bring some ridicule. Battlefield 2. You see, I picked it up and thought I might be able to run it. By the look of the requirements on the box, I was cutting it pretty close. So I went home and checked into my system (in the old days I would have known what every part on the machine was) and it looked like I wouldn't be able to run it due to a inadequate video card. So I bitched and moaned to my friends and coworkers who bought the game with me. Well, after a couple of days, I decided to install it, just to see how bad it would be. It runs. Not great, but it does run. I am running maximum res for my LCD panel, but lowest graphic settings and it runs smooth as glass. But again, haven't done much playing but man is it fun! Ah future addictions...

Death of a water heater

So I have had the last few days off of work. One for holiday and the other to take care of removing a dead water heater. Which I decided to hire done versus having to remove it myself. Would have been able to but it would have taken all day. So I now have a new high efficiency water heater to go with all the other things I have upgraded on the house. Also removed the dead garbage disposal and put in a straight pipe. All this in the name of selling the house soon.

Also I have been trying to get grass to grow where the tree in my front yard used to be. Well low and behold, this morning I have little grass sprouts. I thought I was going to lose that battle as I have tried to grow it for about a week with nothing to show till this morning. Also the other project I tackled was repainting the trim in the front of the house. Thank Lowes and wonder of color matching to make a darn close match to what was there.

Oh yeah. The dead water heater technically still ran, it was just the puddle on my floor that made me upset. It had a leak in the bottom of the tank.

So do you know of anyone who wants to buy a house in southwest michigan? Or do you know someone who wants a fish tank or 5?