Pulp Free

With fold out chairs and brownies, we enjoyed a third year of fireworks at Chesterfield Mall. While better than last year (but not quite as good as our first year) - our new Casio EX-S10 digital camera not only took pretty decent fireworks pictures… It made a pretty decent video of the finally as well! So in my first ever YouTube upload, I’ll let you enjoy the fireworks as well!

(Next year I’ll add music…)

Now that I’ve started my new job with HP, on average, my driving habits have reduced my travel by 1/4th… Of course, I work from home now and when I do travel - it’s usually regional by plane. So perhaps a tank of gas for Buddy might last me 3-4 weeks if I’m mindful. There’s not a lot of gasoline consumption when I merely walk across the hallway from the bedroom for work.

So today I figured I’d make an entry for the historical preservation of my $71 gasoline fill up this afternoon… Essentially my first over $70 fill-up ever. (And oddly enough, it actually clicked off at exactly $71 - I didn’t squeeze extra in to round it off…)

Granted - I know many of you have already experienced the joys of such transactions. Perhaps $10 at a time instead of $70… (I actually typed $5 at first - but that only gets you a gallon or so any more!!! I mean - it used to fill up enough for a week!!) But this incredible milestone really left me a little jilted.

I do actually get decent mileage… On the highway I just pulled in 26 MPG (Saint Louis to Kansas City) and usually average 22 in my mixed driving. (I will admit, I get a rush flooring those 300 HP more often than I probably should). But with a noticeable difference in performance between regular and premium, I’ll take the extra 30 cents per gallon overhead. Even at that, it doesn’t scratch the surface when having to pay more than $4 a gallon. (The octane difference has cost me the same whether its $1.50 a gallon or $4.00 a gallon…)

So I’m hoping somebody can start figuring out if it’s a supply and demand “thing” or a market speculation “thing” and just get it fixed back to a lower cost for all of our sakes.

(And as a side note, don’t wait until you have 1/3 of a gallon left in the tank… Buddy mentioned that I only had 1 mile to empty when I pulled into the gas station… He lied… I probably had 5 miles left! Knock on wood - haven’t run out of gas yet!)

Pretty dramatic title for such a quick post, right? That’s because for the first time in two weeks, I was exposed to the 15 minutes of Guiding Light that C can’t live without each morning. It seems to cause me a little bit of extraneous drama that I don’t normally have in my life… Anyway…

At 4:37 (ish) - I had the delightful realization that our house was shaking. Of course, I was sleeping - but it woke me enough to enjoy the last 5 seconds of it. Being rather sleepy, I got up to look around. As if I’d be able to “see” something outside. (If you want to really enjoy yourself, wake me up in the middle of the night and ask me some questions… the answers will truly amaze you…)

Not seeing anything of particular outside (like a large ogre, a bulldozer, maybe some pissed off squirrels) - I went back to bed wondering “what could it have been?” Did an earthquake cross my mind? No…

Did I mention that I’m a certified genius?

So this morning I said to C - “Did you feel that house shake this morning?” - she said she was sleeping. But flipped the news on and said, quite matter-o-factly - “it was an earthquake this morning.”

I actually like San Francisco - I’ve even been to San Jose. I think I’d probably do okay in California - because this morning’s 5.2 earthquake didn’t really seem to bother me. It was… well - interesting. Thankfully we didn’t have any damage - and it looks like it didn’t impact much of the region. I just wonder what it was like in West Salem, Illinois where the earthquake was centered. They probably had a better ride…

I’m almost a week into my new job with HP and it’s been going pretty good so far. Mostly getting organized, filling out paperwork, getting my training scheduled and underway… You know - the normal points of a new hire. (I will say, I’ve been overly impressed with how easy everything has gone including a working laptop and VPN on my first day of employment…)

One of the other items I’ve been wrapping up this week if figuring out my home office needs. Since I’m essentially a telecommuter in the full time sense, having an efficient and organized home office was needed. I was already “sharing” one of our bedrooms as a project music studio - slash - wrapping station - but with being now being stationed at home, the bedroom is now officially an office.

Scouring the Web for some insight into SOHO requirements, I’ve now settled into essentially modular furniture. It’s sturdy, easy to assemble, can be shipped and brought upstairs easily, and is actually pretty cost effective. Granted - I’ve dreamed of having a large bookcase-lined office made of mahogany with an executive desk right in the middle. The thought of engineered fiberboard with laminate tops doesn’t necessarily scream HGTV style, but I’m okay with being practical for now. Actually - I’m pretty excited since my new furniture from Office Depot is arriving tomorrow!

Now even though I ended up ordering my furniture from Office Depot, Staples actually has a very cool Web site called Master Plan Office Simulator that lets you “design” your furniture layouts with a simple CAD type flash application. After putting in my room dimensions, windows & doors - I just moved some furniture pieces around and came up with these pretty cool designs:

I know it’s only furniture - but I’ve been in an 8×6 foot cubical for the last 9 years. It was time to spread out a little bit with some extra storage and desk space. It should make for an extended assembly weekend for sure. I’ll get some real pictures up after everything is put together… What was on my list?

• 361821 - Bush Components Bow-Front Desk Shell
• WC24461 - Bush Components 60″ Credenza
• WC24424 - Bush Components Return Bridge
• WC24462 - Bush Components 60″ Hutch
• WC24412 - Bush Components Open Single Bookcase
• WC24453 - Bush Components 3-Drawer Pedestal
• 456040 - Bush Universal Utility Drawer
• 362451 - Bush Universal Keyboard Shelf
• 883108 - Bush Light Pack

You can peruse the Bush Web site for little thumbnails… Fun little guys huh?

Too bad those little pieces of furniture don’t look like my Heart Attack Grill girls…

It was bound to happen… But this one wasn’t really planned. After 9 years working for Citi (Citicorp Mortgage, then CitiMortgage, then Citigroup, and then Citi… If you can keep them all straight!) - I’ve decided to change directions and take on a new opportunity with Hewlett-Packard (you can call them HP if you want…)

For my time at Citi I really did have a great job starting out doing Web support (dare I saw it… Technical Webmaster) - a few years of UNIX Engineering (I’ll always love you first, AIX) - developed a great Enterprise Applications Management team (long live WebSphere) and the last several years as their Infrastructure Architect & Engineer. I’m really going to miss the 4 years of running Precise the most! (We’ll see how that looks in a few months…)

However - on Monday I’ll be starting as a Solutions Architect for HP and I’m sure to have new opportunities to enjoy. What is a Solutions Architect? A quick search of Google will lead you to a few Web sites… Some really funny guys on the Web say that “they don’t do much!” - I have to laugh at that… But I think in reality you can say that there are a lot of people out there that “not doing much” can be applied to. Me - I’m really looking forward to just absorbing a lot of new enterprise software technology, getting my hands dirty with new hardware platforms and other corporate cultures and just helping my team deliver value. (Is this job interview over yet?! LOL)

In all seriousness, though… it’s going to be a great challenge. I couldn’t have gotten here without a lot of great people. I’m expecting plenty more of that at HP - making working there just as rewarding…