Well, I guess I will give everyone an update about our house. Recently, we decided to build a house in the same development as and similar to the one we were looking at previously. We will get the house we want and have it exactly how we want it. So far, everything is in order and good to go. Therefore, we are exited. They recently started work on the house. Kara and I went out there with her mother as she was in town. I snapped a few shots for everyone’s enjoyment. Accordingly, I have created an album in our gallery dedicated to the topic. This album will hold all future pictorial updates on the progress of the house. So, go have a look (the gallery has been performing slowly lately, so be patient if it is slow; I’m going to have to see what the problem is one of these days).
I used my birthday money to buy a Nintendo Wii, which came in on Wednesday. It took me a while to acquire as I first attempted to find one in a normal retail store. Suffice it to say that they are hard to find in stores. I was getting impatient, so I resorted to looking at eBay. The reason why they aren’t in stores is that people on eBay are selling pallets of these things at a nice markup, thus running the tight supply dry. I (ahem…actually Kara) found a pretty good deal though. We found one guy that offered it as a Buy It Now for not too bad a price. The Wii sells for $249.99 when you can find one in a store. I paid $305, which when you consider I didn’t have to pay tax it’s not a terrible deal. As you can see in the image, I have started to hone my bowling skills.
I haven’t blogged in a while, so I found a good excuse to blog about something when I read this comic the other day (it’s a comic called xkcd). I figure that since most of my blog readers aren’t geeks they wouldn’t have already read this comic. Unfortunately, I am afraid that also means I might be one of the only ones that fully appreciates the humor of it. Enjoy.
This evening I made a subtle change to the blog. I decreased the font slightly to better match the rest of the site. When I migrated the entire site to the new template, I made the blog text larger than the rest of the site so the blog would look as much like the previous blog layout. I have finally decided that it looks better with a smaller font. It is still larger than the rest of the site, but only slightly. Therefore, the difference is less noticeable. All I had to do was change two characters in my CSS template. CSS make things so much easier. For those of you who don’t have a clue what I am talking about, I have one centralized style sheet that each page on the site references. So, when I wanted to make a style change, I changed the central file and the deed was done (much better than changing each page).
Anyway, I’ll stop babbling on about that. The past week or so Kara was in Havelock, NC visiting her sister who recently had another child. She was excited to see another baby. I am, however, glad she is back. There is a lot to look forward to for the rest of the year. This weekend we will be busy singing the Messiah, which is always fun. It just doesn’t feel like the holidays if that isn’t going on. Most importantly, I am taking vacation from the 20th through New Year’s. That is going to feel great to take that time off and not have to worry about anything. During that time we will take a trip up to Maryville to visit Kara’s mom and come back home for Christmas. I can’t wait.
This album includes general shots around Toronto. One interesting shot I got was of Eaton Centre, a huge mall in Toronto. I made a panorama of nine pictures of the inside of the mall. It looks like it was taken with a fish eye lens.
The CN tower was really cool. I took an over 270 degree panorama of the view from the tower. It is made up of 12 pictures that took Autostitch over 3 minutes to stitch together.
Niagara Falls is one of those places that everyone should see at some point in their life. It was neat. I was able to create a panorama of both the Horseshoe and American Falls.
Casa Loma is a small castle in Toronto built in 1914. I was able to get a pretty good shot of the front of the building. One of the funnier shots in the set is the panorama I took of the library. Since Kara was walking through the library while I was taking these shots, there are more than one of her in the resulting panorama. Notice the “ghostly Kara” to the right of her.
I was talking with Mom yesterday and she mentioned that I have been lax in my blogging lately, which is true. I have been quite busy in the past few months. Let’s see here…since I last blogged (two months ago), I’ve been to Philadelphia, back to Chicago, and now I am in Toronto. Work has been busy when I wasn’t off traveling.
Anyway, enough excuses. As I mentioned, I have been in Toronto since the 4th. Kara arrived on the 9th. It has been nice to have her here with me to share in the fun. I was excited when I arrived and went through Canadian customs, because I finally got a stamp on my passport. I was perturbed that I never had gotten a stamp on my passport while on my mission. For some reason when I arrived in Berlin we didn’t go through customs at all. I do still have my (long since expired) German Visa in my passport but I hadn’t had a stamp. Well, now I do.
Kara and I have done some sightseeing, which has been fun. On Saturday, we went to the castle Casa Loma(built in 1914). It was pretty cool. Then we hopped on the subway and went to the CN Tower, which if you don’t know is the second tallest free standing structure on earth (1,815 feet). It was the tallest until this last September when the Burj Dubai surpassed the CN Tower. It was really cool. In order to compare the size of this thing, I have created a graphic and inserted it into this post.
As you can see (and yes the graphic is to scale), the CN Tower is three Batman Buildings tall! It’s also quite a bit taller than the Signature Tower which began construction not too long ago. Anyway, we went first to the observation deck (1,135 feet), where I got a lot of great pictures. If you’ve looked at any of my mission pics, then you know I like taking pictures from tall buildings. The next stop was a floor lower to the glass floor. It was cool to look through the floor at the ground over a thousand feet below. Kara wasn’t as impressed with the glass floor. After that, we went to the Skypod at 1,464 feet. Obviously, more pictures were taken.
We also checked out Niagara Falls. The shear power of a lot of water is obvious at the outset. We decided to view the falls from the Canadian side (which has a better view) and not bother with crossing back into the US. This was convenient as we drove down (1.5 hours) from Toronto. I took a lot of panoramic shots that I’ll stitch together when we get home. So stay tuned, I’ll post the pictures once they’ve been processed. Now, if I can only keep Kara away from Eaton Centre.
A week and a half ago, Kara and I went to Townsend (near Gatlinburg for those unfamiliar with the area) for a family reunion (her mother’s side). We stayed in some cabins literally 330 feet from the Smoky Mountain National Park. It was a lot of fun. I met a lot of Kara’s family that I had never met before. While we were there, we hiked the Laurel Falls Trail (from the trailhead to Laurel Falls). I finally got around to posting the pictures I took from the trip. I have placed them in the gallery in the album called Townsend, TN 2007.
Anyway, this week I have been in Dallas for some more training for work, which has been fun. It has been interesting to visit different cities and see how different areas of the country are different. I met a guy in my training class that is a referee in the NFL. I thought that was pretty neat. In fact, he refs the upcoming Titans game against Atlanta next month. I’ll have to watch for him.
Yesterday, I arrived at the airport at noon expecting to land in Chicago around 3:30pm. When I checked in, they told me that my 1:30pm flight would be delayed until 4:30pm. Evidently, there was monsoon in Chicago that caused some delays. Therefore, ATC in Chicago wouldn’t allow our flight to take off. Well, while I was waiting, it was delayed again to 4:45pm, then 5:20pm, and then 6:02pm. Anyway, we didn’t end up taking off until around 7:00pm! No surprise that O’Hare is the world’s worst for delays. The plane I was on was a CRJ, which if you don’t know requires that passengers board and deplane outside on the tarmac. In this case outside in the monsoon. Woo hoo….not. Anywho, it’s good not to be in an airport right now.
UPDATE: I forgot to mention that when I landed it was 66 degrees. I am quite proud of that fact. It’s nice having a break from the outrageous heat.
I have to agree with Bryan’s comments; I am ready for summer to be over with. (I am always ready for summer to be over with) I glad to see that everyone has a blog now. That will be fun. Well, I guess I will update on what I have been doing for the past few weeks. Work has been fun lately. The company has been using SAP version 4.6c for a long time at selected locations. A year or so ago, they decided to implement the 5.0 version globally throughout the company. Since I was hired (or re-hired as it were) I have been writing some ABAP programs and reports to facilitate master data loading in the project.
As I said in my previous post, I recently spent 8 days in Atlanta for some SAP training. My hotel was across highway 400 from the two buildings in the picture in this post. I learned that people call these buildings the king and queen towers because of their resemblance to the corresponding chess pieces. It was a lot of fun. It was like all of the good parts of school. You get to learn interesting things (I mean who doesn’t like to learn how to write programs for ERP systems?) without the annoyance of tests or grades. They even feed you a free lunch everyday (which is not half bad I might add). Not to mention that the more official SAP training I get, the more valuable I am as an employee. I had about three years of SAP experience before I took this position, but being able to cite particular SAP course numbers as experience is helpful. Anyway, the near future is going to be busy as I have more training in Chicago later in the month and in Dallas in September. I haven’t flown in a while. That ought to be fun.
In between those two trips, Kara and I are going out to Townsend (near Gatlinburg) for a quasi family reunion with Kara’s Mom’s family on the Labor Day weekend. We’re going to stay in cabins. I never get tired of going out to the Smoky Mountains. I guess it is a good thing because we almost always drive over there when we’re visiting Kara’s mom in Maryville.
Well, I guess I will give everyone an update about our house. Recently, we decided to build a house in the same development as and similar to the one we were looking at previously. We will get the house we want and have it exactly how we want it. So far, everything is in order and good to go. Therefore, we are exited. They recently started work on the house. Kara and I went out there with her mother as she was in town. I snapped a few shots for everyone’s enjoyment. Accordingly, I have created an album in our gallery dedicated to the topic. This album will hold all future pictorial updates on the progress of the house. So, go have a look (the gallery has been performing slowly lately, so be patient if it is slow; I’m going to have to see what the problem is one of these days).
