Some More Pics

The promised and requested picture of the fiance

One more of Ella, this time playing with a toy mouse

Not much else to add...the eye infection on Ella is getting much better, and we're going to talk to wedding photographers tonight. Should be fun (and expensive as hell).

New Addition To The Family

As mentioned before, we have yet another addition to the family, but this one is a little closer to home. Two weeks ago, Jenn and I picked up a little kitten, promptly named Ella, at the humane society. She started out a little ill, but now that she's healthy again, she's turned into quite the ball of energy.

Right after we got her, all she did was sleep for the first week.

A little more perky during week two.

Not much else to add on the home front for now. Still doing a lot of prep work for the wedding, seeing a few photographers this upcoming week, so hopefully we'll iron that out soon enough.

On a work front, it looks like I'll be heading off to London (again) for a week or so in September. It'll be my first time there in the fall, as all other trips to the UK have been in the spring/summer, so it'll be a nice change. I'm also staying on the east side of London (probably), which again is a little different from where I've normally stayed.

It's shaping up to be a busy fall for the company in terms of travel, but now that we finally have all 3 TAMs back in the office, hopefully I'll be at home more than I'm on the road. With luck it won't be much more than 2-3 trips this fall.

Beantown

Not much to post about my trip to Boston...it was over before it began. Wednesday was another early start, getting up at 3:45am to be at the airport for 5am. The joys of a 6am flight. I ended up getting to the airport a bit late, and thanks to the ever so speedy Gold service at the Air Canada desk, it took a lot longer than it should have to get checked in. Thankfully I made the flight on time (walked up to the gate just as they started boarding).

The flight itself wasn't too bad, but I forgot my back roll to help out with my posture. Needless to say, I was a bit sore when I came off the plane. Then it was off to Dollar for the rental, and to stand in another line. 20 minutes later and I'm finally on the road in the middle of a thunderstorm, so my original time line for getting to the customer site is now officially out the window.

Once I got to the customers office (albeit 30 minutes late), I spent most of the morning writing up some documentation, and reviewing the process to change languages in our product. For those familiar with our product, it takes 1 line of code, so there wasn't too much to review. The afternoon was much the same, with a quick review of the process in the doc, and then trying to help figure out a bug in their app. After sending off a quick email to our office in Ottawa, I was off to find my hotel.

Checking in was a breeze, but I got stuck across the hall from the ice machine, which was pretty damn noisy. Not good, but the air conditioner (set at 60!) overpowered the sound once I closed the door. I swear, Bostonians must be allergic to sweat or something...everywhere I went I had to put a sweater on as the A/C was just cranked. Anywho, I ended up at a mall for dinner, trying a nice little Italian place. Nothing like Italy, of course, but it was pretty good.

Thursday morning I was up, checked out, and off to the customer. Training was the order of the morning, after a company wide meeting at 10 am...had I known this, I could have gotten more sleep :( Then it was lunch with the software team, and more bug fixing in the afternoon. We did a bit of a code review to try to figure out what might be causing the bug, and like I had originally suspected, it was their code and a character array that was too short for the string they were using. A quick fix, and everything was working again.

The day wrapped up around 5pm, when it was back off to the airport, trying to find something to eat for dinner (I ended up eating mozzarella sticks, blech), and heading home. All in all, a long day, but it felt so good to be in my own bed that night...the joy of being home. As nice as it would have been to see a bit more than just the highway between the airport and the customer, I'll take being home most any day.

Luskville

Just a quick update on the weekend of drag racing. A lot of fun was had by all, sunburn not withstanding. Unfortunately both Jenn and I left the cameras off for the day, but here's a nice shot from her uncle Bernie. I'm the guy in the red hat in the background.



I'll post some more about Boston in a couple of days, as well as some more news about additions to the family (it's not what you're thinking Brian).

Time For A Tea Party

I'm off to the Boston area for business next week. It's not much of a trip, though, as I'm only in town for, oh, 37 hours or so, at least 16 of which will be at our customer's office, another 2 hours driving out there, an hour or two in airports. So all in all, I get about 15 hours, including sleep, this time around. Talk about fun. The sad part is, 15 hours sounds like more time than I expect to have. The best part is, with my back still out of whack, the plane ride might kill me. My physiotherapist suggested that I walk around the plane as much as I can. Anyone over 6 feet tall try to stand on a regional jet? It's just not possible, especially if you're supposed to keep your back straight and stand tall.

On a more immediate note, Jenn and I will be heading to Luskville in Quebec this weekend for some drag racing fun. If only we owned a drag car, instead of being in the stands with a camera :( Oh well, something to work for. I'm sure I'll have some pics to post next week (or whenever I get off my butt).

And I'll post more on the Boston trip next week too, if I can find time in my ever so busy schedule.