I had a good dinner with Trey and Chris last night. I got to hear some interesting stories from Trey's life, but it was just good to see both of them. It is interesting how they are both very different people, with different value systems, interests and ambitions and yet we all get along so well. Trey is way too busy, yet very effective in the wide load he takes on. Chris said that Trey might be the most competent person he had ever met. I have no doubt Trey will have a tremendous impact on wherever he chooses to focus his efforts, and I'm excited to see what that will be.

Chris gives a strong compliment, and a type of comment that I would strongly hesitatate to give in general. I feel like I always have to qualify before I could say something like that. I strongly dislike it when people say things they don't really mean, like someone who might tell ten people they are the best at XYZ. Thus when I give a compliment I really mean it. If I say someone is a really good XYZ, it's not off the cuff - it is something I have really considered. But I think due to all the exagerrated flattery out there that my compliments may not take as serious of an effect.

It is an interesting look at human nature - I would say I am just as susceptable to attemps at flattery as the normal person, despite my efforts to restrain from flattery myself. But in general I do think I along with society in general should offer more compliments to those around us. I think everyone tends to remember the criticisms far more than the compliments they receive. I will take that as a reminder to myself.

Return of the cheap parking...

The lot closest to my office is $5 a day and is close, but $25 a week just for parking is too much for my thrifty self. I have found a $1.50 lot six blocks away, so I take that as a minimal attempt at daily excercise that also saves me money. Unfortunately parking downtown is heavily affected by local conventions in town, so my lot was raised to $5 a day. Even though I had to drive over to the other lot, I wanted to avoid it to send the clear message that I will not continue to park there for $5, so you must keep your rates LOW.

Harry Potter 3 was very good yesterday, but it was my least favorite of the three Potter movies thus far - which is funny since it was my favorite book of the first four that I have read. I don't mind the director, but I felt the first two movies really brought the book to life while this I felt cut the story more to what the director wanted.

We went over to Kent's afterwards to see his new place which was nice. He complains about it being small, but his appartment bathroom is more than double the size of our tiny master bathroom.

We talked about the Potter movie, and how we didn't like the differences and parts left out from the book. I know if Carter was there he would have ranted about how they are different artistic creations, but I disagree. You can't take a well loved story and change key aspects of it to suit your taste. That has caused me to strongly dislike several films - the John Nash one first comes to mind. But I digress...

The weekend has been quiet and uneventful. Usually when I come in for the weekend, Chrissy is interested in getting a lot done over the weekend. I think she has had such a busy week that she is willing to relax a little bit more. And that's ok with me. Chrissy went to flag football practice, while I did a few things around the house. I went out and mowed the lawn, removed the dead weeds I sprayed, and planted seed with fertilizer in the bare spots. I know it's not the ideal time to do it, but we were not ready to get sod this late in the season. So that's the lawn update. :-)

Chrissy won a scholarship, and there was an award dinner last night for the organization. She is quite a smartie. We were hoping for dinner and dancing, but the "band" that kept getting mentioned by the organizers was actually a one man band. Dean of "Memory Dean", a good Georgia local band was playing. While I've heard Memory Dean is good, it was still a dissappointment because it was more one man background acoustic music when Chrissy and I were hoping there might be some dancing. We looked for a swing band playing downtown that night, but alas, none was found.

Off to Harry Potter...

Met up with Carter tonight, who it seemed I hadn't seen in quite a while. We went to Jason's Deli which I had never done before, and it was very good. Last time Carter took me to a Deli he raved about, Mike's NJ Subs or something like that I was not at all impressed, but this place had a ton of stuff I would like to eat, and good choice of breads. Also any place with complimentary soft serve ice cream is going to score massive bonus points.

We played the final game of Settlers at his appartment before his big move, and I heard all about his new weekly activities from choir to trivia. It was good to catch up. I tried to stay away from politics, but it did come up for a little Swift boat banter.

I am looking forward to the weekend - I only talked with Chrissy briefly because she was going out with friends. Almost there. I'll have to leave early on Friday... working late last Friday cannot become a habit.

I finally saw Kill Bill Volume One tonight. It was interesting, but it is not something I would recommend to others. It is not surprisingly a dark film, but I feel it may have been too much over the top. The opening scene with the bloody bride was definitely over the top, as was her in a coma. I also enjoyed the movie less after watching the "Making of" where they were talking about how that was their starting concept for the movie, and from that they based the whole story. It is lame to me that you would base a whole movie on cheap shock value. That being said, I am curious to see what happens next, and I think I could like this movie more after seeing it within the context of the whole series.

In an unrelated note, 10 days until Georgia Tech kicks off against Samford. I love football season for the games, seeing everyone, and just feeling that team spirit again. I have my season tickets and I am ready to go! Go jackets!

I was having a discussion today about politics today, and I am always suprised at how intelligent people can be so uninformed. I was in a discussion with a Tech professor who was talking about Georgia's negative perception nationally. I would agree with that somewhat due to our low ranking in test scores or the perception of Georgia as He surprised me by saying, "it doesn't help that this Governor was elected on the basis of the confederate flag". I knew the guy was a liberal, but to simplify the whole election on that basis (as he probably picked up from some of the national media, as I have seen it there too) is incredulous. No discussion of Roy Barnes awful education bill. Even Carter, a very liberal guy that almost never votes Republican, strongly disliked Roy due to his education problems. Carter does not care about the Flag at all, and he said he planned to vote for Sonny.

It's funny to me, because Sonny gets attacked from both sides. He gets attacked that he is supporting bigotry and "backwardness" because he pledged to allow the people to vote on the Georgia state flag. Then he gets attacked by the Confederate Flag loving crowd because after the vote (which was more of a poll to make a recommendation), the State adopts a neutral flag that is unoffensive to everyone except those who insist on a confederate flag. Governor Perdue wanted to right where Barnes has just booted the old flag without any voter involvement, and I believe the new flag is liked much better than the old confederate version, Roy Barnes hidiously ugly but PC version.

Personally I wasn't offended by the old Georgia flag, and I think some people are overly sensitive about it. But I do agree that some ignorant and hate-filled people do try use the confederate flag as their sign of hatred for black people which is stupid. I like the new Georgia flag MUCH better than the Roy version, but still my favorite is the Texas state flag.

Yesterday was a fun, long day.

First let me say Friday that Topher lost on Stump the Schwab. He was the second one eliminated, making him the #3 player overall. Not bad, but the #1 and #2 guys were awesome. I was very impressed. He still should have pulled that Georgia Tech was one of the top 20 ranked NCAA football programs in the terms of overall wins.

The day at the lake yesterday was great, except for the fact that Chrissy couldn't make it due to work. Rob puts on this awesome party "Lakefest" every year at his parents' house on Lake Lanier. They have an amazing house, and always go all out for social events. They had just put in an awesome pool that week, that the entire inside was covered with smooth pebbles. It felt really nice, and didn't tear up your feet at all. They also had catered Barbeque from Harold's, with quite possibly my favorite Southern side: Brunswick Stew. They always throw a great party.

We went and watched Spiderman 2 last night, which I really liked. The few things I didn't like - I didn't think Spiderman losing his powers was fully explained, and didn't make logical sense with the first story. Also at the end, why did the Green Goblin's son hear the laughter of the Green Goblin, and see his father talking to him in the mirror. The only reason that happend to his father was due to the experiment that made him go crazy. I also don't know how the next movie will go with so many people knowing Spiderman's true identity. So neither of those made sense, but overall the movie was a lot of fun. I'd highly recommend it, particuarly on the big screen.

Chrissy started back at school yesterday, so it was good hearing about her first day last night. But it is also dissappointing that we were going to be seperated again. But we are meeting tonight, so that's good.

My friend Topher is on Stump the Schwab again tonight on ESPN, since he won the last time and advanced to the next round. So that's pretty cool. A quote from his mass email, "I hope that this narcissistic note finds you well. As those of you with basic cable and too much time on your hands may know, I was, thanks to an extremely fortuitous draw, lucky enough to eke my way through the first episode and to make the finals of ESPN's Stump the Schwab."

Of course he crushed all competition - I do not know how the people in the other rounds did to see if he got a "lucky draw".

Time for a fun weekend - going to Lake Lanier and hope to get to do a little water skiing. Should be fun! Adios...

Waking up this morning was incredibly painful. That first day back to work is always rough. Even though I had woken up at 6am on the day we were driving back it was nowhere near as hard as this morning.

I forgot to mention that while on vacation I got a call from a friend who had left Deloitte. He has gone to independent consulting, and he wanted to offer me a spot doing the same and double my salary. He had a technical position that although I don't know, but I could pick up. It was a 2-3 year gig, which is a long time for an independent contract. Doubling your salary is nice, but I wasn't interested. I knew in 2-3 years I would not be well positioned for the future because I wasn't interested in the particular business area, and I knew I would not enjoy the 2-3 years. Also I think he wanted me to oversell my technical experience in the area, but then ramp myself up. I knew I could do it, but considering the factors mentioned already plus the pressure of having overly high expectations and a lot of learning of something I was totally uninterested would be too much.

So even though it was an option that I wasn't interested in, it's nice to have options like that.

I did get my new salarly, and find out my new counselor today even though both are totally seperate. My old counselor is going to MBA school at Kellogg. But it was lots of interesting news.

Also, the type of work I will do for the next week is a particularly uninteresting and unrewarding side project I've been dragged into. I can't wait to get back into the meat of my real project.

The Prodigal Son

When I was leaving from my last post it was because I was going to pick up my sister Claire. She has returned home from Slovenia, and she arrived in the middle of the work day and both my parents were at work. She had a buddy pass ticket, and decided to come in early, so she had only let my parents know she was flying in at 3:30am this morning.

She had a fantastic trip, and really wanted Mexican by the time she got back. I know from experience that Mexican is not big in Eastern Europe, but I am proud that I went to possibly the only Mexican restaraunt in St. Petersburg. :-) Beautiful city, but the food was not to my liking.

She told us about her work, her boss, her boyfriend Ivek, and the fun she had meeting up with JR and travelling to Croatia. Her description of Croatia makes me want to really go there. Very cheap cost of living and very beautiful terrain.

Also, my email inbox was full. My 2MB had been filled by a few big attachments, and I hate losing messanges. I am continuing to direct more and more messages to my gmail account with their 1000MB of space. Very nice. I do like coming into a loaded email inbox though. I feel like I'm being so productive, and like to see all the suprises my email has brought.

If I am addicted to anything in this world (other than ice cream) it may be high speed internet access.

Fun in the Sun

Chrissy and I got back from my vacation, and despite it not being very exciting that was a very good thing. There is nothing like the beach a few days of rest. The only exciting part was that we avoided Hurricane Charley when driving through Orlando by about four hours. So that was interesting. We saw about 200 emergency tree trimmer - power line repair trucks on our way down. When we arrived at the beach we were getting some strong winds, maybe 40-50 mph. We just put down the storm windows and we were fine, but would occassionally open them to watch the waves or the sand.

The place we stayed was awesome. David's parents had really made the place nice. It was the top floor of the building and the place was huge, and was the nicest beach condo in which I had ever stayed. To make the NASA folk jealous, their awesome view, in addition to the ocean also had a perfect view of Cape Canavaral, and they can watch the shuttles take off from their balcony. Nice.

A relaxing week no doubt. We watched a lot of Olympics - a little too much for my taste. The fencing seemed neat, but I really wanted to see some Tae Kwon Do that I missed. Gynastics is neat, but they spent a lot of time on that. Greece is really lame for not selling all of their tickets.

We went to Orlando one day for outlet shopping, there were no good deals, but we got to see the damage. The neatest thing was a road side billboard with three large metal beams that was bent to the ground. That is some strong wind! There were some highly damaged roofs, and fire escapes that were ripped off the side of a hotel. At least radio was dramatizing everything though. They said, "Please call us if you find any places in Orlando selling gas." We drove by four or five gas stations all serving customers left and right with no problems. It's like in Georgia when they have "Storm Watch" at the prediction of a half inch of snow flurries. They have the reporter in the store who is reporting live from a local Kroger saying, "Milk and bread are going fast...". It's like he's trying to saw, "Panic, panic!!!" to the public. Have I mentioned I don't like local TV news?

Heartbreak hotel

It has been a slow week, both in the amount of quality work for me to do and in how slow it has passed. I had a friend from work today who is having some personal problems, and I talked to him twice for a total over two hours today. He was having a relationship problem that we had talked about since this time last year, and I feel like we identified some of the root causes. He continued to compliment me on my counseling skills, which may just be flattery, but he seemed sincere.

It is interesting, because overall I don't consider myself a particularly empathetic nor sympathetic person. If someone really does not know the answer to their situation, or what the problem is I am really helpful. But if they had something horribly bad happen in their life, and just want someone to make them feel better I am not as good at that. How can you make someone feel better if a loved one has just died? A friend couldn't make me happy, so I don't know of a way to do that for someone else.

This day is long, but the people will not wrap up this work that I am done. The days grow long as vacation grows near!!! Cocoa Beach, here I come! 30-40% chance of rain the whole time - Hurricanes, stay out of the way! :-)

I had a friend Rishi leaving the company today, so I met up with him. He's moving to a competitor and is having his exit interview, etc. today. He's a nice guy, and he got promoted but is still leaving to go to the competitor before hearing his pay increase. My company is terrible about giving you a promotion or giving you your end of year review and you don't hear for another 6 weeks or so what pay increase goes with that. I think they should speed up that whole process. Also in general I think companies in my industry don't do a good job of retaining current employees and rely too much on consistently hiring new people - sometimes at higher pay than existing employees at the same level, imho.

I have enjoyed this project I'm on for the past seven months, but I am wondering if I should look for another project to get a different experiences. In a dynamic job like mine you have to currently make choices about where you are heading, and just sitting in one place is a decision in itself. So plenty of food for thought for me.

Heading home soon - which is always good.

It's quiet while all the other bloggers are away...

Went to a place called Treehouse tonight for an after work drink to send off a coworker on the project. It's in the Peachtree Hills area. It is a pretty laid back place.

Found out I might be going to see Reba on Saturday at Chastain. That would be fun. I'm not a particularly big Reba fan, but I like most country concerts and it is hard to pass up free tickets.

This morning, a talk radio show that I listen to was moved to another station which is fine. But what was interesting was in place of that the new radio station is playing old Ronald Reagan speeches. That guy was truly a great communicator who was articulate and could clearly explain his opinion complex issues without typical political doubletalk or avoiding the issue. I loved hearing his conservatism.

Also, I heard our speaker of the house talking about totally revamping our tax system. That really gets me excited. The thought of a national sales tax, a flat tax, or even a value added tax. You aren't penalized for making more money, you are just taxed on what you spend. There is no lying about reporting your income, and a great bulk of the IRS goes away. 55,000 pages of existing tax code could be reduced to less than 150 pages in the proposal by Georgia's John Linder. Very, very cool. I would love this to be the centerpiece of the Bush second term, but I doubt he'll campaign on it. It would take Reagan to explain that clearly... ;-)

Kent is in town - and that is always a good time. He came over last night, and we went out to dinner. We checked to see if Doc Chey's was open, but alas it is not. When will "Late Summer" get here? :-) We ate some good Chinese, but never forget that ordering Thai food in a Chinese place is usually not a good idea. We all had particularly good and funny fortunes.

We watched "50 First Dates" which Kent had already seen, but he watches lots of movies that he has already seen. It was good with a balance of romance and comedy that can keep everyone interested even though there are some really stupid parts. I am not a big Drew fan, but she didn't bother me in this one.

Let me also comment that Kent is an incredibly gracious house guest. He always cleans up his dishes, is very polite and laid back, and is never imposing. We had a fun evening, and I know we will both enjoy having Kent around.

Also for the weekly grass report: the combination of the fertilizer and getting our sprinkler going every other day has done wonders for our lawn. It is much greener with only a touch of brown. I am quite pleased.