I had my worst fantasy football week ever. Somehow I still escaped with one win though. I think the majority of my problems are due to the fact that I didn’t mess with my lineup after Wednesday, because of the road trip. Priest Holmes went out for the season, which I expected after talking with some guys at hockey, but he was still in my lineup. It was one of those weeks. Current record: 19-11 with at least one easy win over Kim this week. :)

I really wish that I had more exciting things to write about, but this is all you get today. If I hadn’t worked last night and this morning (before getting into the office) then maybe I would have something more exciting to report. We are having an office meeting today (with free lunch!) so maybe something exciting will happen then, I doubt it though.

I did sell the iPod mini that I won through the gym survey. It sold over the weekend for $215! I’ve also got another iPod shuffle that I might want to sell as well. I’ve been on a big luck streak recently.

This weeks fantasy football results were a bit of a disappointment. I only won one game and lost the other two. One of the losses was in the league with Kim, my brother, Doni, etc. There were a couple of catastrophic events that really hurt my team this week. First Deuce McAllister getting put on the injured reserve was a blow, but the other backs I have on my team have picked it up. Marc Bulger then got injured last night, which also was bad news for Torry Holt, who is also on my team. Overall, it didn’t lose by too many points, and my opponent had the highest point total this week in the entire league.

As for my other loss, I’m not sure this team can recover. My receivers scored zero points combined, including the two who are on my bench. Houshmandzadeh’s injury has been hurting me for a couple of weeks, so I had to find some other options. The best I can find in the league are Brandon Lloyd and Chris Henry, Houshmandzadeh’s replacement. Lloyd was on a bye week and Henry “hung a fantasy doughnut on the board with only one catch for five yards,” as Yahoo put it. The final blow involved the lone receiver I thought I could count on, Randy Moss. In case you didn’t know, he got injured this weekend and missed most of the game and maybe more. The rest of my team did really well, but I am in serious trouble if I don’t find a receiver fast.

Oh yeah, this takes my FF record to 13-5, which is still pretty good.

Last night was the first time that I worked from home. Let me tell you how exciting it was. So far it looks like I didn’t mess anything up, so that’s always a plus. I cannot wait for next Monday, when I get to do this again.

Nothing terribly exciting to add today. I was stuck actually doing work last night. I went over to my boss’ house so that we could update one of our clients together. We have to do this after normal hours so that everyone is off of the system. I am going to start doing some of these updates on my own, so Steve wanted me to do a couple of them with him first. I guess this is also a way to motivate me to figure out how we can use an installation script to do our updates for us or have the clients do it themselves. Honestly, who wants to do work at night from their home, I know I don’t. An install script is one of my projects to work on in my free time, now we just need to hire more people so I can actually work on my projects and not spend all of my time testing bug fixes.

O.A.R. is going to be on Leno tonight, be sure to tune in if you can. I’ll likely have a link to a downloadable version up on oarsa.org later tonight or very early tomorrow morning.

We ran five miles this morning! It went alright, I was able to finish the whole thing without stopping (well besides when we had to wait for cars to pass). I’m gonna try to run again sometime this week, but Kim is leaving town and I often lack motivation. According to our training schedule we should get a six mile run in this Sunday, so that’s something to look forward to once Kim is back from Cincinnati. Maybe I will be able to finish this race…

Today I get to move my desk. I know it doesn’t sound like much fun, but I am getting my own little office! I think I mentioned before how we expanded our space in our building. Well our team is all moving to the new side, and we each get an office. I can’t wait!

Work has been crazy once again. Margaret is out of the office either doing some training or vacationing, so that leaves Steve and I to do all of the testing. Luckily we have been able to pull in some help from other groups otherwise I could be here all night. One of our largest clients is not happy with our product right now and we need to fix it within the next couple of weeks. Lots of things to test, little time to do so. Especially with my half day tomorrow!

I have not started to pack so that will need to be done tonight. We also have to make a trip out to the airport to pick up Amy. She is coming into town to entertain Kim while I am in Chicago for Everfine. I’m sure they will find all kinds of things to keep busy.

This weekend should be great for me though. I get into Chicago toward the end of the afternoon. From there we are having dinner at Flat Top which I am really looking forward to. After that we’ll catch a show featuring Greensteet and a few others. Saturday of course is the festival, so we’ll likely spend a good chunk of the day right near the lake. Not sure what Sunday morning and afternoon have in store, but I’m sure I’ll come back with some stories. Wait, I still have another day before I leave, better get back to work…

Dang, work has been busy lately. Speaking of which, my boss came in today to tell me about his proposition. He is thinking that I should continue on with my test automation project but also take on what he is called a version control project as well. Those two items together would eat up most of my time, so I would then have little time for testing the application. That isn’t a bad thing though.

The test automation stuff I’m doing now involves scripts that are setup to run through different parts of our application and to make sure that the functionality is still the same. This can be used all the time to make sure what we are doing now doesn’t break things that used to work. I haven’t been doing too much with it recently, we have way too much to test and way too few testers.

The version control project would involve maintaining our own copy of the latest development code and all previously released versions of the product. I would also have part in updating our clients to newer versions when applicable, which is mostly an after hours task currently. This leads to the next task which would be to create an installation script that we could use instead of having to do the work ourselves later in the night.

They’ve always wanted someone do something like this, but Steve thinks it would be easier for me to do this than for them to find someone to do it. He can then hire someone else to become a tester since that should be much easier to find and train. He said to think about it for a couple of days and get back to him. I’m almost 100% sure that I’m going to say that I’ll do it. I think I would much rather be in some sort of coding than testing the application all day. Now if only this came with some sort of raise…

It is so loud in here that it is very hard to concentrate on anything. Let’s see if I can make it through a blog entry without getting distracted. The reason for the loudness is that they have knocked out the back wall of our break room so that they can expand it. They are also currently working on our office expansion into another quarter of the third floor. Currently we have one quarter of the floor, with a psychiatrist office occupying another quarter. That leaves half of the floor empty and we have signed on to occupy half of that giving us almost double the space we have now. The downside is that we keep losing employees and don’t really need the added space.

I snuck into the expansion area after work yesterday along with another guy I work with. He showed me where the new conference room is going to be and then I counted at least eleven new offices that are going to be over there. We don’t even have eleven people right now in the cubicle alley, so I’m guessing that we’ll have more offices than people once this is done. That is unless they start hiring some people, but we all know that it is a long process for them to hire anyone here. With all of that being said, I better get my own office. I don’t mind sharing with Margaret at all. In fact, I don’t know if there is another person here that I would rather share with. Wouldn’t it be nice to have my own room though? I think so.

With all of the noise I’ve been forced to listen to some loud music. This reminded me that I have not added a song of the moment in quite some time. That is until now, feel free to download a new Pomeroy track that I’ve been listening to a whole bunch lately titled “Soundtrack.”

After work on Friday we quickly packed up the car and were on our way to “the lake.” Doni and Phil were already there when we arrived and before too long we were firing up the grills and making a fire in the pit. The first night we had grilled chicken and fish along with potatoes and asparagus. Afterward we drank a few beers around the fire and even roasted some marshmallows.

Saturday we all woke up pretty early to get a head start on the day. Doni’s mom and dad stopped by for a bit to check out our setup. Todd came down just as they were leaving. Soon after it was time to pick up our pontoon boat. I wasn’t feeling all that well so I stayed behind with Phil and Gabe (the doggie). I think I was suffering from a combination of the returned humidity, my allergies and maybe a slight cold. I wasn’t going to let that stop me from having fun though. And besides we had to sneak the dog onto the pontoon after the girls picked it up. The Martins met up with us in their boat and we headed off to a couple of different coves in the lake. It’s almost like Lake Cumberland on a smaller scale. My family used to go to Lake Cumberland yearly, but we haven’t been back for a couple of years now. We floated around in the water for a few hours, relaxing with a few beers. It was really nice! For dinner we headed back to camp and while I took a little nap some fajitas were cooked up on the fire pit. The Martins and The Schmidts (co-owners of the boat) also joined in for the fireside activity.

Sunday was another early morning. It started off with some crappy weather, but that eventually gave way to another great day. Besides Todd, the same group as before all piled onto the SS Schmartin (Phil’s name for the boat). We headed back to “party cove” which was not as crowded as the day before. We soon realized it was because we were just a little too early, and before we knew it there were boats all around. We pretty much followed the same itinerary as the day before, float in the lake with a beer in hand. That was until I was attacked by one of the local fish. At first I thought it was someone in the water messing with me, but the second time the fish bit me I saw it. Guess where I was bitten? No, not my toes. Right on the nipple! The little sucker got me good enough to draw a couple drops of blood. From that point on, the water was avoided or at least we would wear protection when using the facilities if you know what I mean. As another storm began rolling in, we decided it best to call it a day. We spent the rest of the night inside the RV as the storms got worse and worse.

The weather never really got any better, so Kim and I left the lake area fairly early on Monday. It did seem like the weather cleared up later in the afternoon, but by that point we were clean and mostly unpacked. We spent the rest of the day at the driving range then at the grocery store. Finally we ended up on the roof over at Mike’s place with Amanda and Christie (one of the new trainees at Kim’s office) to watch any fireworks in the area. If only we were a few stories higher we could have seen it all but still not a bad place to watch from, especially without driving anywhere. Speaking of trainees, Christie and Ashley both started work today. It was just brought to my attention that Ashley knows some of the hockey guys a few grades below me, including my brother. It’s a small world. I’m just happy that we will have even more people to play cornhole and euchre with!

As I mentioned earlier, my boss is on vacation for the rest of this week and Raji is gone. They are already throwing some stuff my way to get done asap, so I better get busy on that…

Sorry for the lack of content, but not much has been going on. A summary of my last couple of days:

Work. It has been really busy for a number of reasons. I’m not sure if I’ve ever talked about Raji before, but she has been working for our group since sometime late last year. Well she left a couple of weeks ago for vacation and was going to use all of her vacation days. She was supposed to be back to work last Thursday and as of right now she is still gone. An entire week later, and she still isn’t back to work. Sounds to me like we are going to be short staffed until another person is hired. She mostly tested the easier things for us, but still that all adds up. Another reason is that my boss is going to be gone all of next week. If you remember the last time he was gone I was super busy doing both my normal job and his. Typically there is a calm before the storm, well not in this case. We are trying to get everything ready so that I won’t have to do his job next week and I can just do mine. Anyway, it’s been busy around here…

We stuck it out in the office yesterday and I’m happy to report that it is no longer 100+ degrees in here. In fact it is almost on the chilly level that it typically is. I need a weather person in the office so they can tell me how I should dress for the day at work.

Last night we finally got to see Todd’s new apartment on the plaza. He is much closer to us than he was before, but it took us like two months to finally see the inside. Cool place with a nice view of the plaza. Mike came along for the trip as did a new friend of ours named Christie. She is one of the new trainees that will be starting work at Kim’s office in the next month or so. She is from northern Kentucky so she already knows the ways of euchre and cornhole. In fact I’m hoping to get a game of either of those in before she leaves town, maybe even both!