.: bistan.net :.

Two weeks ago, we spent almost a week in Philadelphia.  I had a work-related conference across the river in Camden, New Jersey so I brought the family along to see a new city. We flew to Philadelphia, but decided to try something new (or old) and take Amtrak back to Atlanta.  It was a great experience.  If you ever get the chance to travel by train, take it!  It forces you to relax and enjoy the scenery.

Since I’m so far behind on blogging, I’ve decided to just post photos from the recent trip.

This morning, after running a quick 7:30AM 5K, we met some of my colleagues for a trip down the Ocmulgee.  We went with Ocmulgee Expeditions, which is one of the best kept secrets here in town.

They put us in the river at Water Works Park and we paddled/drifted for about 4 miles to the Riverwalk.  The kids loved it.  It was amazing how we were right in the middle of town, but it seemed like we were out in the middle of nowhere.  Even when we passed by the trails, you couldn’t see anyone because we were so low in the river.

I highly recommend taking a trip sometime soon!

This morning, I had the opportunity to climb the clocktower at work to shoot some photos.

The clock is not currently functional.  In fact, it’s always 12:00.  That may change soon.

There are small household lightbulbs which illuminate the clock at night.  These could easily be changed out with some colored party bulbs to really add some awesomeness to the Macon skyline.

The old wooden ladder below is used to service the clock.  When my boss traversed up the ladder, you could hear it cracking.  I let him snap the first picture above.

When you are up that high, you have to walk out onto the balcony and check out the marble accents and the view of downtown Macon.  It is the highest point in town.  I usually take fellow staff members (and sometimes friends) to the roof, seen in the bottom left below.  The roof is an easy climb, the clocktower however, is much higher.

There are actually two levels above this.  This diagonal metal ladder takes you another 30 or so feet to another level with a balcony and then a vertical ladder takes you another 20 or so feet to the top.

Here is the entire clocktower.  You can see how much higher you can go than simply inside the clock face.  I wouldn’t want to be in there during a thunderstorm!

The balcony I went out on is actually in the bottom left.  It doesn’t look so high now!

I had the priviledge of accompanying Tristan’s kindergarten class yesterday on their annual field trip to Dauset Trails. I was initially hesitant about going becuase I’m swamped at work, but I decided that being at my desk for those four hours wasn’t really going to put a dent in the mountain of work anyway. There’s more to life that technology. Right?

If you noticed in the pictures, Tristan is the star student for his class again!

That’s enough about Tristan for this week.  I promise that the next blog post will not be about him!

I snapped this photo this morning from the roof of the law school.  It is one of the highest points in central Georgia and it is always fun to go exploring on the roof or up in the clocktower. 

The face is permanently “stuck” at noon (or midnight).  Of course, we are going to try to “fix” that this summer.

Here we go again. I blog about how I resolve to blog more. Then I make about 3 blog posts. Then you don’t hear from me for a few weeks. Then I make an excuse about why I haven’t been blogging and then I resolve to blog more.

I guess that means this is the excuse post. Let’s see . . . I’m swamped at work, swamped with class, and swamped in my personal life.

Work: I won’t bore you with the work stuff.  I doubt you care about Windows 7 imaging and Drupal modules anyway.

School: It was stupid to commit to doing this masters degree in the first place. My first masters degree didn’t get me anywhere, yet I sign up for another one. My classes this semester are Object Oriented Programming II and Advanced Graphic Design. “Advanced Graphic Design” is what Mercer calls a video game programming class when they want employers to pay for it.  Since my language of choice for the program is C#, I’m developing a game in XNA Game Studio 3.1.  I have a project in OOP2 due next week on secure code and wikis and a project in the game class due the following week on 2D game programming.  My game is pretty sweet and when I compile it, I’ll publish it here and you can download and play it too!

Running: My heel is still freaking killing me.  I can barely walk when I get out of bed in the mornings. I only ran 7 miles this week, but I need to knock out at least 5 tomorrow to exceed 70 miles for the month.

Personal life: We signed Tristan up for T-ball.  That should be interesting. I’m not particularly looking to spend 3 nights a week at a ballpark, but we want to get him involved in something.  Kimberlie is now up to 60 – 70 hour weeks so I have the kids by myself in the evenings for a while.  She works with two other Occupational Therapists.  One is in Africa for a month and the other just went out of maternity leave.  And then on Monday, as if we didn’t have enough going on, her mother died.  After this week, we are both certainly looking forward to a new week.

Once again this year, I’m not making “resolutions”.  I do have several goals for the new year.

Fitness Related:

Run a half-marathon in less than 2 hours. (Let’s hope this happens on January 9!)

Reduce my 5K PR to 22 minutes.

Run 1000 miles in 2010.

Restart and actually complete hundredpushups.com.

Commit to and begin training to run (not run/walk) an entire marathon.

Drop my weight down to 160.

Eat out no more than once per week.

Finance Related:

Eat out no more than once per week (this falls under both).

Be completely debt free by 2011.

Work/School Related:

Take two masters degree classes each semester and stay on top of them.

Stop passing up greener pastures.

Home Related:

Spend more time teaching my kids things.

Get rid of more junk.

Computer Related:

Tweet more.

Blog more.

Facebook less.

I think that’s enough for now. I’ll try to revisit this post every few months to see how I’m doing.

Mackenzie went on her first field trip yesterday to see Santa at “The Fish Store”, better known as Bass Pro Shops.  Due to a light day at work, I was able to flex my lunch break around and meet them there.  Of course, I took the law school’s 50D with me.  When folks see you show up with a camera like that, you end up becoming the offical photographer.  I did photos of all of the children individually with Santa and class photos with Santa . . . all on a lunch break!

I created a photoshop template of a 5 x 7  Christmas card and included for each child their individual print, class print, and school name, teacher name, and date. I also did 8 x 10 class prints for the teachers.  Sam’s printed them for about 40 cents each and I just donated them to the preschool.  In hindsight, I should have printed photo packages to sell to parents at next week’s Christmas Open House.  Preschool parents will pay anything for Christmas photos.  Oh well, I’ll get them next year!

Below are a few of Mackenzie:

Stay tuned . . . Tristan’s kindergarten class is making Christmas cookies tomorrow and the D50 will be there to capture the action!

We have a voluntary listserv at work called “Email shop”.  It’s basically an online yard sale.  You email the list to let them know what junk is in your trunk and what you want for it.  I’ve actually sold a doghouse, a camcorder, and a treadmill (before I started running — big mistake) on it.

Here are some samples of things that have come across today . . .

First:

“I bought my 2 ½ year old son a pair of cowboy boots at Circle M Western Store this past Saturday for his cowboy Halloween outfit, but later during the day found him a pair he liked better at another store. I went to take the boots back to Circle M but they would not refund my money, only give me a store credit that can only be used for 6 months. I have no need for these boots and they literally have never been worn and are still in the box/wrapping paper. All I am trying to do is get my money back, which is $45. Again, the boots are size 7/8 and they are really cute:  brown with stars on them and can be worn by a boy or a girl. Let me know if you are interested.

Thanks,

<name redacted>
Associate Director of Financial Planning
Mercer University”

Now there are several problems with this first message:

Her first mistake was spending $45 for a pair of boots for a Halloween outfit.  Her 2^nd mistake was letting a 2 1/2 year old son pick out another pair he liked better.  Mercer’s mistake was to let someone who spends $45 on a pair of boots for a Halloween outfit be the associate director of financial planning.  Tristan has never even had a pair of $45 shoes and would trick-or-treat barefoot before I would buy him a pair.  The shoes I’m wearing didn’t even cost that much.  Perhaps I could have made her some out of duct-tape.

Second post:

“Boy’s Chocolate Brown UGG boots Size 1 (excellent condition, paid $120 for them) – $50”

Size 1 – $120!  Do you know how fast a baby’s foot grows?  We have some really thrifty folks working at Mercer – they must make a lot more than I do!

5 - AM wake up
9.1 – miles of running
15.5 – times around the block to make 9.1 miles
80 – minutes it took
4 – minute shower because running made me late
3 – times Tristan was told to not get a warning at school today
13 – mile drive to work
350 – suite number
5 – servers rebooted after 8AM because running made me late
1 – poptart
2 – bottles of water
2 – missed calls
1 – voicemail
4 – napkins to clean up Fred’s spilled coffee
5 – day weekend coming up
79 – messages stuck in the exchange queue because Microsoft sucks
25 – dollars to Amazon for completing a vendor survey
51 – videos encoded and uploaded
7 – sent emails trying to clear up email issues
1000 – things I would rather be doing