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November 28, 2007

sick, school, q4

I was going to jot down yesterday that I was finally recovered from Thanksgiving week, but then I woke up with a porcupine in my throat this morning. I'm going to head for home after a 2 p.m. meeting and take some NyQuil in an effort to nip this thing pretty quick.

The semester is coming to a head, with a major paper due in a few weeks, and an econ presentation that is due next Thursday. I'm more nervous about the econ thing because I have a much more tenuous grasp on what we're supposed to be doing in that class. That said, I have a feeling it's going to end up being one of those situations where procrastination pays off, as our professor will likely give us more details on the project tomorrow night.

I'm wrapping up development on our big Q4 software release, which has gone pretty well. I've learned some good lessons about project management and planning, and I think that will help me in our next set of releases. This also will mark one year of us doing quarterly releases, which shows how far we've come as a company. I'm pretty happy with our progress.

I'm actually getting Christmas shopping done in a reasonable timeframe this year. A lot of the gifts are already purchased, and I know more or less exactly what stuff is left to buy.

Posted by Mark at 11:50 AM | Comments (1)

November 26, 2007

holiday, corks, presents

I think I'm mostly recovered from the whirlwind of Thanksgiving. Neither of us did anything yesterday beyond ordering pizza, watching TV and playing video games.

Well, except, I did finish up the bulletin board in the hallway, courtesy of a garbage-bag filled with corks, courtesy of the Margoles family. I'm going to be making a lot of cork-themed gifts in the coming months.

We went out for Robin's 30th on Saturday night and met up with MJP at Lir for a couple drinks, which was fun. He's setting a moving date for coming up here, so Hank Freightliner will be coming out of retirement for the midnight Manhattan-Boston run in January.

I got some Christmas shopping done, and the family liked their fake-Christmas presents...we decided that, since we would be out of town for the holiday, we would give them a couple of their presents early. We gave Mike a carved-wood puzzle box that opens only if you slide the pieces apart in the right order, and Matt got a grill branding iron with letters you can put in order to personalize your burgers or steaks or whatever. Dad got a sharpening steel, and Mom got a brownie pan shaped like Hershey's kisses.

We in turn got a beer bread mix (packaged with a bottle opener in a glass beer bottle) and a really cool wireless indoor-outdoor thermometer. You mount the thermometer outside, and it wirelessly broadcasts the temperature to you inside the house.

This week seems like it will start out slow and build up towards the end, which is fine by me so far. Kara is in Rockport tonight for her mum's birthday, and I have class, after which I'll continue trying to clean up the house.

Posted by Mark at 03:25 PM | Comments (0)

November 21, 2007

drive, hdtv, 300

Made it to PA with no problems...I'm blogging from what would in most households be considered the "family" computer, but given that all Dalius's have their own, this is Dad's computer. Hit some real pea-soup fog through CT/NY, but otherwise fine. Got here just before 2 a.m.

There is a very nice new 47" HDTV in the family room. It is bigger than the entire entertainment center for the old 27" or whatever it is. I guess with most of the birds out of the nest, somebody's disposable income has increased somewhat.

The cat was here to greet us, and there is a lot of her to love. It makes me that much more excited about adopting a cat nearer to January.

Should be a very relaxing next few days.

Oh, and happy 300th blog entry!

Posted by Mark at 07:41 AM | Comments (0)

November 20, 2007

thanksgiving

The condo association meeting that was scheduled for tonight was cancelled, so we're going to be able to get on the road a little earlier than anticipated...probably around 6 or so, I'm hoping. That puts us in PA around 1 in the morning, which is better than I expected.

This week at work is always a struggle, because I have a fair amount of stuff that I'm trying to get accomplished in enough time before Christmas that we can get it properly tested and deployed, but my mind tells me "vacation!" and so I don't feel particularly driven. I guess the end result is going to be a very busy week after Thanksgiving.

Matt will be back from his Beerotrip, and I'm excited to see pictures and hear stories from that. It will be nice to see the rest of the family and get caught up.

Posted by Mark at 09:46 AM | Comments (0)

November 19, 2007

100,000

The Jetta rolled over 100,000 miles yesterday, just outside the Boston Garden, on the way back from our annual North Conway weekend. I never would have thought, after buying the car brand-new in a one-week period just before my first real job, my first real apartment, my first real everything, that I'd be flipping the odometer in Boston, on my way back to my condo, with my fiancee and a friend in the car, listening to Simple Minds "Don't You Forget About Me" on the stereo, working on my MBA, parking next to a motorcycle, almost 30, pretty happy with the last 7 years.

The car is running great, and after having some seals replaced around the fuel line, no longer seems to occasionally smell like gasoline. I don't know if I'll get another 100,000 out of it, but I have a feeling the engine could definitely go that long. Maybe I'll give it to Mike as a graduation present when I buy a bigger car for a family in a few years.

North Conway was good this year, although we are getting older and bedtimes get a little bit earlier. We had lots of beef stick, Chex Mix, salsa, and some homemade jerky. I finally got around to making jerky at home this past week, and it turned out excellently. It does take about 6 hours to make, since I'm drying it in the oven at about 150 degrees, but it's worth it. I think so, anyway...Kara may disagree, as it does tend to make the house smell like meat.

I'm in the office today and tomorrow, then heading to PA in the wee hours of Tuesday/Wednesday. We'll do Thanksgiving, we're meeting up with the Margoles family for drinks on Friday, and then we'll leave early on Saturday to head back up here for Robin's official 30th birthday dinner. Not as much time to spend in PA as I would like, but we're going to take a trip down in January/February to make up for it. On Friday, if I haven't been able to find some nice antique wooden crates for beer storage, I'm going to take the truck down to Wood Mode and grab some pallets to break up for the rough-cut lumber, and build my own.

Otherwise, things are quiet. The house is a mess and covered with gifts and other stuff from the weekend, and it is likely to remain that way until next weekend.

I've thought about Christmas stuff some more and updated my list. Really I would be happy this Christmas if I got a DS Lite and a Home Depot gift card, but in the interests of presenting some options, I fleshed the list out a bit.

Posted by Mark at 11:27 AM | Comments (0)

November 15, 2007

christmas list 2007

I started thinking about stuff I'd like for Christmas. I really don't need a lot. But in case anybody wants to get me toys, here it is:

I'll add more stuff as I think of it. It's kind of difficult...mainly what I *need* versus want is to lose more weight, have more money, and have more space to store stuff/get rid of extra junk. And the main things that I want aren't easy to give in gift form, like travel, more time to see friends, and more opportunities to just go out and experience life.

Posted by Mark at 01:58 PM | Comments (0)

November 08, 2007

phases

I go through phases like the moon. Just for example, I've purchased a number of bottles of wine recently because I've been going through a wine-tasting phase. Tonight, I picked up some cranberry juice so I could make Kara a Cosmo and ended up with some creme de menthe and bitters as well...I think a mixed-drink phase may be in the near future. Of course, that is a result of my building a wineglass rack to free up more space for cocktail glasses, but who says that phases must be unrelated? Not I!

I think I may buy a Ryobi biscuit joiner. I'm putting up a couple of bookshelves in my office at work--I've moved up from a cube to a shared office--and I purchased some joining biscuits to fashion an angled shelf. The joinery worked ok, but I think it would have been stronger and more solid had I had the right tools for the job. I have another project in mind for the near future which uses mitred corners, so I think it might not be a bad purchase for my growing tool closet.

Oh, and that's another phase...I'm building stuff like crazy lately. I've got pine boards and tools all over the hallway and living room. Kara has been ok with it so far, because I clean up after myself...hey, at least it keeps me out of the bars.

Posted by Mark at 10:37 PM | Comments (0)

November 04, 2007

wine glass shelf

This is the result of months of browbeating Kara until she would let me do this. She actually likes the results, and it's both stylish and functional:

wine_glass_shelf.jpg

I have seen commercial shelves like this one, which use a wire hanger to suspend the wine glasses. I wanted to build one myself so the design of the shelf would match what we already have in the living room, but I couldn't find the wire wine glass racks any narrower than 10" deep. I didn't want something jutting out that far from the wall, so the only solution was to build it myself.

Unfortunately, I don't have the tools to bend and shape wire, so I had to do the job with wood. I decided that, although I might like to use a thinner wood than the 3/4" pine I use for pretty much everything else, the project would be simplified by just using the same material everywhere.

So I sketched out a rough design, featuring these T-shaped racks. I measured the wine and martini glasses we have around the house and decided that I wanted it to hold two red wine glasses deep by 6 wide...building it to hold martini glasses would have required a deeper shelf, and I was really trying to essentially replace the small shelf we had previously had above the "bar" with something similar in size, just with racks on the bottom of it.

I did a little math (that took way longer than it should have) to figure out how much space I needed between the "pillar" of each T to fit the base of the glass, and how wide the gap between each top of the T needed to be to accept the stem of the glass. I decided that I would use glue and finishing nails to give maximum strength to the design, as I didn't want it to come apart and demolish any glasses later...it's overengineered enough that you could probably hang wine bottles from the rack and you'd be just fine.

As always, I screwed up a couple of measurements and the cuts didn't line up exactly. Plus, the boards I was using were just slightly warped. But all things considered, the end result was pretty good. One of the 6 "channels" is only big enough for white wine glasses, because I probably should have just taken 6 glasses and used them to test the spacing before I glued/nailed everything together, but hindsight is 20/20.

Here's a closer look, where you can see some more detail of how it's put together:

wine_glass_shelf_closeup.jpg

I like it, Kara likes it, and it's on the wall. It gives us a lot more space for other stuff, plus I think it fits our decor. And it was fun and educational to build.

Now, one of these days I'm going to have a workshop and a table saw, and maybe then my cuts will start to line up better.

Or I guess I could stop eyeballing things and get out the tape measure.

Posted by Mark at 09:19 PM | Comments (2)

woodwork, mum, jerky

I'm working on a very cool new piece of woodwork...check back in about 8 hours for a pic, assuming it's all done by then. It should be, if I don't screw up any more measurements.

I know the carpenter's motto is "measure twice, cut once," but I think mine is more like, "eh, you can always sand it to fit, and besides, it's supposed to look rustic."

Kara's mum is staying with us for a few days to get out of Rockport and enjoy the city. It's kind of funny, but when you do live out in the country, sometimes you can get stir-crazy from how quiet it is, just the same way as I sometimes need to get away from it all. She and Kara are in the kitchen baking some sort of pie.

Currently the living room is knee-deep in laundry. Which is fine, because it's clean laundry, and we have an agreement: I make sure the clothes get washed, and Kara folds them.

I picked up a bunch of cheap beef that I'm going to marinate for a couple days to finally use the jerky mix I got probably a year ago. Jerky is delicious and not all that bad for you, but it's expensive to buy it. I think it's actually going to be much cheaper to make it myself.

Posted by Mark at 12:23 PM | Comments (0)