2 Years at Kronos: Message to My Co-Workers

Today marked my second year of employment at Kronos.

What a busy year it has been on the home front! Naomi Nichelle (NaNi) was born in October, 2003. I lost my father in December—which was very sad—but I will see him again one day. Peter Jackson fulfilled our dreams with The Return of the King (and restored the Huorn in The Two Towers extended edition). We (finally) sold our house in Brockton, and moved to Nashua in January, 2004, shortening my commute by over 2 hours per day, and greatly improving our family life. I reveled in buying cool geek swag for NaNi from thinkgeek.com, and my wife Nichelle gave me the “Holy Grail of Lego” (the Star Destroyer model) for our anniversary.

Work this year has brought many changes. I've had three managers, one of whom endured me only for a couple of weeks. I've tried to forget the HTML UI Framework v1, and concentrate on building v3 (despite the occasional, discourteous reminders of v1 via the PAR system). I've had the opportunity to learn Struts, dramatically improve my Java skills, start studying for Sun Java certification, and achieve victory (with the help of a great team) in building the Lego guy at the tech summit. Along the way came immersive learning in ADP-ization, Czech localization, and AccuRev. Now that Larry Krakauer has retired, I may even have a shot (albeit a long one) at becoming the alpha geek—someday.

The constant support and genuine caring my co-workers provide has made this year pass quickly and pleasantly. More than ever, I am grateful for the blessing of working at Kronos—such an excellent company—among such excellent company. Thank you for your part in making this past year such a great one!

Good moring. Ugh.

It’s 8:45 a.m. (funny that Mark Sohmer hasn’t noticed that the BLOG postings are all on Pacific Time), and I’m waiting for my co-workers to come in (especially “JavaDoug” Ross and Pankaj Verma) after Ravi Gopalan and I pulled an all-nighter at Kronos. Our team is very well-managed, and this is the first deadline crunch that has caused more than a minor annoyance.

Trying to write while being sleep-deprived is an interesting experiment. I’ve had to rewrite portions of the first paragraph four times because they didn’t make sense. Of course, they still might not make sense.

Today is the last day of school for the year for John and Isaac, tomorrow is a birthday party for John, who will be 16 on Tuesday. It’s shaping up to be a busy summer.

Suspected Half-Life Thieves Nabbed!
Gamers actually helped catch these guys. Also in the ZDNet article is the information that all the source code had been stolen, but I thought previous reports had said only part of the code was. I hope they sentence the jerks, whose theft has delayed the release of Half Life 2 by at least six months, to be thrown into the crowd at a gaming convention. Check out the article and comments at Planet Half Life.

Pankaj has arrived, so I may get to hand the torch off and get some sleep soon.

Nichelle’s Notes from May

Naomi will be 7 mos. old on 5/13…the time goes so fast. She is now mobile. At 5 mos. she started to creep, but realized rolling where she wanted to go was much faster until a week and a half ago. One day last month she was on my bed w/ me playing with some toys and a doll that was mine when I was either 4 or 5. Things were great until David came in with his sword and shield and she left the doll and played with the shield. LOL. So now on occasion she'll have a sword in hand, or mouth (check out the picture—it’s quite cute).

Isaac and David play w/ her and she grabs their hair. Now mind you, they do scream or say “ouch,” but they keep giving their hair back to her to pull, it's pretty funny. John too, does the hair thing, but doesn't scream, which is good.

Nearly 6 mos. of residency here in Nashua, amazing. We love it here! As Doug is home so much earlier now, a huge blessing. We do miss our friends in Ma., we'll be down again, really, but many times over we see why God brought us here—Particularly for the 24-hour Wal*Mart in Amherst (just outside of Nashua) or the one in Hudson (a few minutes away) that’s open to midnight everyday ;-)!! :: drool, drool :: Alright, maybe not just for those, but it's a perk. I will have to admit shopping after midnight can get a bit wacky, as my sister-in-law, Joyce, came to see. We said, we'd never do that again.

Two weeks ago now, I joined the choir and work in the nursery once a month. Doug has been going out on visitation weekly now and John too has gone a couple of times. As for other ministries we're still praying for God's leading on that. It's wonderful seeing the kids excited about Sunday school and junior church and also their classes on Wednesday night. One of David's friends in his class is named David and was born two days before him. They'll be in K5 together in September.

Isaac turned 9 a couple of weeks ago,and we had a party for him at the house. He had a great time w/ his new friends and even Nda came up for the event. Nda has been up here a few times and we've so enjoyed his visits and the visits of our other friends and family as well. Hope we'll see more of you, too.

A couple of months ago, I started watching a little girl named Mikayla (4 days/wk). She's a sweetie. She and David get along very well. Mikayla will be starting K4 in September.

For the month of July our church offers a day camp for grades 1 to 10. I'm really looking forward to that. The program sounds awesome!

Today (5/6), I was asked to watch a little boy of about 15 mos. old named Ethan. I'll only be doing this two days a week-which is great. I start tomorrow.

Wow, it's already the 31 of May … Yesterday my cap on the radiator went once I arrived at church for choir practice. The car is now in the shop. We were planning to visit Cindy, but obviously that had to change. It's alright for it gives us an extra day to get things cleaned out downstairs.

Naomi had a full bath in the tub today…which she loved. She's been creeping for several weeks now,and two days ago started pulling her legs under her to get ready to crawl. Naomi also was able to pull herself up on the stairs in the family room.

John wanted to visit his friends in Mass. and Doug took him and the kids to Lowell and road the train w/ him part way (to North Station) and then sent him on the way. John made it to Brockton, with only a minor problem due to someone giving him the wrong information about what track the Middleboro/Lakeville train was on. Well, he made it back to Lowell Sunday afternoon so we could leave for Cindy's after church. With that trip being cancelled due to the car problem, John hopped back on the train to head to his friend Ryan's party. Can't believe his 16th birthday is a few weeks away…need to get planning. Actually, he needs to get planning!

Naomi and Mom

As I go through the pictures, I don't find many pictures of me w/ Naomi due to the fact that I'm always taking the pictures. Anyway, it is nice to see some w/ me in them too…


Naomi and Her Dad

Ah, Naomi and her Dad…it’s taken her no time at all to be up on her Dad’s shoulders just like her brothers. It’s very sweet. Actually, she’s rough-housing already.

The King Returned—at Midnight

Last night I went beyond mere fandom, and decided that I would head out to our nearby 24-hour Wal*Mart superstore around midnight to pick up the long-awaited Return of the King DVD. As a bonus, Wal*Mart was giving away a small photoframe magnet for those who picked up the DVD between midnight and 6:00 this morning. Both are pictured above.

While I wouldn’t travel very far to do this, and definitely wouldn’t camp out awaiting such a release, there was a certain thrill to owning the DVD almost before anyone else in my area, especially at only $14-something.

We still await word on what will be in the extended edition, due out in the “Holiday Season” of 2004. I keep checking The Digital Bits Web site, and the official Lord of the Rings Web site, but no news has been released yet.

My First Spam in Hebrew!

I’m so glad that the Internet allows such rapid intercontinental communication. Imagine a world where one’s inbox would not be regularly populated by the decades-old and now primarily e-mail based Nigerian Money Scam, and the like. Horrible!

Why God Gives Children Mothers

[doug]I don’t think I’m a bad parent, but recent experience has shown me that, without mothers, most children would never live to see their third birthday. Let me explain a couple of incidents that happened with NaNi this week:

Incident 1: I took all the kids, including Naomi (NaNi), Mother’s Day shopping at Wal*Mart Saturday night. The trip actually went pretty well, and the boys’ behavior was not-as-bad-as-usual-while-shopping. On the way out to the car, we started down a small incline, and NaNi’s car seat (with her inside), flipped off of the shopping cart, and she landed face-down (but without a scratch, because she was securely fastened in a 5-point safety harness) on the mulch in an island we were adjacent to.

In the moment afterward, the entire cart flipped over, dumping David, who was riding it, and our merchandise to the ground. No one was harmed, although NaNi cried for about 60 seconds.

Now, I was certain that I had attached NaNi’s seat to the shopping cart—but Nichelle (a Mom), wouldn’t have stopped there: She would have attached the seat, listened for the click of the latch attaching, tried to pull the seat off to verify it was secured, asked 3 people to try the same, and probably avoided the slightest incline when navigating back to the car.

Incident 2: Last night, I was watching the kids while Nichelle went to ladies’ Bible study and then grocery shopping. When Nichelle got home, NaNi spit up, and Nichelle asked me, “How is it that NaNi was eating brown paper?” (Oddly enough, I didn’t get “The Look,” which husbands and children everywhere fear.) Somehow the little weaselette had torn a 1-inch long piece of cardboard off a big box David was playing with, and swallowed it. She did this while being watched by me, and in the presence of both David and Isaac!

You may now go about the process of organizing the lynch mob …

88 Miles Per Hour!

My yaar Mark Sohmer sent me this link. The link went down for a while, but is now back up. I’ve been trying to convince Kevin “Doc Brown” Ilsen to buy this, since he is one of the few people I know who can afford it, and knowing someone who owns one of these is probably the closest I’m ever going to get to owning one, but I don’t think he’s very willing enough to waste money on such an effort.

Naomi’s First BLOG Entry

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