The View From Ohio

Thursday January 10, 2008 at 11:54am travel, work, flying, weather, dogs Comments (4) »

So I'm currently sitting in our company office in downtown Lebanon, OH. It's kinda cool, actually. On the second floor; has a nice set of windows overlooking the old downtown area. I like the buildings around here - they've got character.

Matt, Barb, Addie and I have been having a good time (Kedrick/Warren has mostly been gone or on the phone in the other room). Lots of random, funny, sometimes work-related conversations. It's been fun to be all in the same room and I've enjoyed getting to know them in person. It actually reminds me a lot of hanging out with my friends much more than being in an "office". Still, we've managed to accomplish quite a bit, I think. I got to go over my system with them (which was the point of this journey) and they understood it all pretty well. They'd been doing a good job already though. I think we make a pretty great group of coworkers.

I'll admit working from home is a little lonely sometimes... ...though I enjoy having Ally around. And I miss working from my Mac. I should also point out that the office here is in dire need of some audio enhancement - preferably in the form of some nice speakers and good coding music. True it might make phone calls a little more difficult, but still, there's two rooms. Work it out.

The plane ride up here was... ...alright. A little nerve-wracking. I don't care much for flying. I'd been on planes twice before - all with groups of familiar people in large planes in and out of major airports about 10 years ago. Much. Different. I'm figuring Tri-Cities doesn't see too many 727's and the plane I rode out on was actually a prop aircraft. Yeah, *lots* of vibration on those things. Kinda freaky. The jet i took from Charlotte the rest of the way was much smoother and more like i remembered (though still small) - that is, after it got off the ground. It was delayed for about 1.5 hours. I say the flight was smooth - yes. The descent into Dayton, however was quite rough as there was some incoming nasty weather. Also kind of freaky. I'm at least a little familiar with flying now though - and that's nice. I didn't want to bring my camera on the trip because i didn't know what to expect in terms of the flying arrangements. I'm still thinking leaving it was for the best, though i'm sure it would have been ok and I do wish I had it.

On the way to Kedrick & Addie's house (where i've been staying), we drove through a bit of a monsoon. It was crazy. Oh sure, it rains like that in TN too. About twice year. For 15 seconds. Total.

Kedrick & Addie's house is pretty cool. I've even had my own room and bathroom for this trip. They have two dogs - a huge golden retriever (and i mean huge. Like, "i've-never-seen-a-golden-retriever-this-big" huge...) who *loves* me (mostly because they love everyone), and a tiny little terrier-like dog who i've yet to get to come anywhere near me.

It has been weird being away from home by myself. I miss Sheri and Ally. Still, it's been a pretty good trip so far.

~PS

A lot about not much

Friday November 9, 2007 at 10:15am busy, family, gaming, church, photography, friends, dogs Comments (0) »

So i guess when my dad points out that i haven't put up a blog post in about two weeks, I must be slacking a little. We were talking on the phone last night about another possible web project, but I'll talk more on that later when/if it pans out.

We've been fairly busy the last couple of weeks, but there's really not much to talk about.

We did go to our church's 'Trunk or Treat' thing on halloween (think: give candy out from trunks of cars in the church parking lot), which was pretty amusing. I think the best costume I saw was this little girl dressed up as Raggedy Anne. Followed closely by this boy as a pirate - complete with mustache the hung down to his chest. Those two were very well done outfits amongst the majority of walmart suits. Alas that I was unable to get pictures of them - partly because i felt a little odd taking pictures of other people's kids, and partly due to the limitations of our camera (recycle time & low-light capability (I hate flash). Talking of which, I've been looking at a lot of digital SLR's and lenses lately and reading a lot about what's good and what's not and learning a bit more about photography in general. Pretty fascinating. But, I digress...). After that, we went over to Ginger's place an hung out with some friends there for a while - which is always fun.

Apart from that, we've done some gaming (though not on "world-wide d&d day" - which was last saturday. a friend of mine was running some stuff at a local comic shop, but i didn't make it out. Other things going on. It was coolest a few years ago on the 30th anniversary anyway... but i digress again...), hung out a little at Ginger's church's coffeehouse, managed to remember the time change from DST and went to our church thanksgiving dinner. I think that pretty much brings us up to speed.

As far as upcoming events, I have 2-3(!) games this weekend (running 2, maybe playing 1), possibly swinging by Edie's birthday party, church's oh-so-exciting committee & board meetings on monday, planning to (finally) have Bart & Sarah Price (youth minister & his wife) over for dinner on tuesday, celebrating Ginger's birthday (a bit early) on wednesday and probably running another game on thursday. Keeping busy.

Don't think i've given any update/info on this point either: Ally has so far been inside for a little over two weeks. Thus far, there have been only one two "accidents" (that were probably my fault) and one case of negligible property damage (when she accidentally pulled my trackball off my desk and one of the buttons cracked. Still works though.). She seems a lot happier and less frantic (except at breakfast time) in here. Plus she keeps me company while Sheri's at work.

~PS

Tasty Food, etc

Wednesday October 24, 2007 at 3:23pm food, friends, dogs Comments (1) »

Last night Sheri and I went to Rucht & Mckenna's place for the evening. Specifically, we went there because they invited us for Thai food, along with several other people including the Helms and some people Sheri and Mckenna knew from the Chorale.

Rucht made some awesome cashew chicken along with some other stuff that I can't pronounce, but that was very tasty. Another guy who comes from Korea by way of Germany made some Korean beef stuff that was also really good and went very well with Rucht's Thai food. For desert, we had some German Chocolate candies.


In unrelated news, Rucht & Mckenna also gave us a pet crate that had as an extra. It's currently outside with Ally's bed (and Ally herself) in it. We're trying to get her used to it because we're wanting to try to crate and house train her so that she can be in here with us instead of outside by herself.

~PS

Good Times.

Tuesday October 2, 2007 at 11:56am work, coffeehouse, dogs, gaming, church, family, golf Comments (2) »

I've had quite a bit of fun the last few days.

On friday I built the framework for a sort of work side-project. I'm pretty excited about this one - it'll be really cool, I think. Yes, this counts as "fun". I'm a geek like that.

On friday night we went to the coffeehouse at Ginger's church. Not much was going on, but it was cool just to hang out and talk to people. I watched some friends play Go. Interesting little board game. Some of them were also talking about the world traveling they'd done. I kinda wish I had been / could go to some cool places like that...

On saturday our dog Ally got the bath she needed. She wasn't such a fan, but she's a good little beagle and so it wasn't a terribly difficult task - even by myself. After that Sheri and I walked her around the backyard for a bit and sat in the shade (of our neighbor's tree) for a while. It was a beautiful afternoon.

On saturday night we continued and wrapped up a d&d game I'd been running for a few sessions. I think it went pretty well. I've now started some work on the two new games I'm starting. With the Liimar game and Robb's Exalted (see below), this makes 4 rpg's I'm in or running. I think I'm insane. It's a fun insane, but still...

On sunday, we went to church in Erwin as usual. I'm very glad that we have a wireless net connection at the church now - since we're kinda stuck there all day. I spent most of sunday afternoon working on putting the finishing touches on the project I mentioned working on on friday. Very excited about that. Sheri was working on choir stuff. We did go outside and play a couple of games of Kubb (which happened to be in the jeep), however.

Sunday night was also the 'all-sing' - where the area churches get together and sing together and for each other. It's not my favorite thing in the world, but Sheri's choir sounded pretty good. Plus we got to hang out with people and have snacks after.

On sunday night my mom came back through from visiting my sister in SC. I'm always glad to see family. Don't see them much since they're all quite far away.

On monday morning, mom and I went out and played 9 holes at Pine Oaks Golf Course. That was lots of fun. Beautiful morning. I played better than I think I ever have - which was pretty impressive considering it had been almost exactly 4 months since I'd played - and I played terribly that day. As it turns out, I think my grip was most of the problem. A simple tip that mom happened to mention that she saw on her video completely transformed my game. I've never had a piece of technique make such a difference. I birdied a hole for the first time ever, and I par'd the 8th and 9th. Total score for the round was 48. I could have dropped a couple strokes if i hadn't made a few chipping/putting mistakes. More than that though, my shots just felt better - more solid. Of course now I'm setting myself up to do terribly next time, since I'll be expecting much more than I was yesterday...

I also thought about how lucky I was that I have a job where I can just kinda take time off to hang out with my family if they happen to come through.

On monday (last) night, we finally got to play Robb's Exalted game. I had a lot of fun. It's a pretty interesting premise and system. Plus I get to play a shapeshifter. I have a soft spot for shapeshifters. Also, there are some people in that group that I haven't gamed with in years. I'm looking forward to continuing this one.

So yeah... ...the rest of my week looks pretty boring compared to the last several days...

~PS

Vet'd

Friday August 31, 2007 at 11:45am dogs, family, vet, health Comments (1) »

Well, as of wednesday, Ally has had her vet checkup and shots - she seems to be in great health. We did get some preventative and just-in-case medicine for her and some flea medication.

The vet also said she doesn't think Ally's pregnant - which is something we were concerned about since she's gained some weight lately (which really isn't a bad thing considering how thin she was).

The vet out here at the Good News clinic is really good and really nice - and she and all the techs *loved* Ally - who put up with everything they did with nothing more than a squeak. She also very much enjoyed the cookies they gave her - which she'd never had as far as we know.

She even made a friend - the vet's dog was wandering around the place and tried to play with Ally some while we were getting ready to leave. At first she seemed to be confused by this concept of "play", but she caught on after a bit.

Ally seemed to be in good spirits when we left the vet and was also excited to be home.

Later, Sheri & I went to Petsmart and got her a new collar (the old one was getting ratty), a name tag with our phone number (which was about time) and a brush to get some of the loose fur off of her - which we noticed when we gave her a bath on tuesday.

So I think she should be all set. :-)

~PS

On The Summer

Sunday August 12, 2007 at 6:05pm summer, gaming, music, recording, yard work, work, dogs Comments (2) »

...which is almost over. Doesn't seem like it should be this late already.

So the summer has been pretty good. Pretty busy in places. Schedules of people have tended to be less than predictable as well. I mean more than usual.

Not enough gaming went on this summer - perhaps the slowest on record since graduation - i'm not sure. We've got a couple few sessions together, but nothing major. I have been working on quite a bit of gaming stuff, however.

I've also been continuing work on my recording project again recently - which tends to go in spurts. Before this last week I hadn't touched it in at least a month, maybe more. I'm kinda stuck on the words to the song I'm working on atm.

I am further convinced we need a riding mower. That grass just gets too tall too fast for my poor little push mower. It's not so much the pushing I don't like, it's the must-stop-every-five-feet-to-keep-the-mower-from-dying that annoys me. I suppose I could merely upgrade the pushmower to something a bit more heavy duty, but i'm not sure what i'd need or how much of a help it would actually be.

Sheri starts her new job at Milligan this week. :-) That'll be great. She'll actually be able to do stuff in the evenings now instead of working 2-11pm (the 'no life' shift).

My job is going pretty well - though we're about to be very busy. Getting a couple few large projects, though I am happy the boss-man turned one of them down. It would have been quite a bit of money for the business, but it would have been very difficult and resource consuming. He decided it just wasn't worth it, and I agree.

Also on the subject of work, Andy's doing a great job with us. I've been really impressed with his graphic work. I mean, he went to school for that, but he seems to have a lot of innate talent as well.

We've also had a couple of cool family visits this summer. Speaking of, Jamie sent me an email a while back saying she might be able to come visit this month, but I haven't heard from her since... ...that would be cool. She even promised to give Ally a bath. heh.

~PS

Say hi to Ally, etc

Monday May 21, 2007 at 12:23pm dogs, movies, yard work, Comments (1) »

Well, eventually we broke down. It was sort of bound to happen. I think we just felt a little too sorry for the poor little doggie. If we'd have found a no-kill shelter or something right away, that might have been one thing - but we didn't want to just turn her over to the pound. I guess we would have felt a little guilty. Also, I have to admit that, after she'd been around for a week, I'd kinda miss her if we gave her away.

So yeah, in case that wasn't clear enough, we've decided to keep the her. We've decided to call her "Ally" , which is short for "Allegro" - a musical term that means something like "fast", "lively" or "happy". It seems to suit both her and us.

Now we get to go about taking her to vet, etc.

In other random news, I finally got to see Pan's Labyrinth. I consider it to be a very good movie, but it's not one I could watch a lot I don't think. Its pretty graphically violent, and is very, very sad. It made me tear up at the end. (Actually, a fair number of stories do that to me.) Also, it's in spanish with english subtitles - which is perfectly fine by me, but it makes it a poor 'background noise' movie (which is how I usually watch movies - i don't often have the attention span to sit through entire movies).

I other, other random news: I have got the weed eater out and cleared out our side ditch. Our yard is about as well kept as it can get at this point. You all should come see it sometime in the next week - 'cause I'm sure after that it will be overgrowing again.

~PS

Random Encounters of the Doggy Kind

Tuesday May 15, 2007 at 11:46am dogs, random encounters Comments (9) »

So we're currently in possession of a small beagle. It seems that Ginger, Tony and Justin found it on sunday afternoon wandering Sycamore Shoals, where it had apparently been left. They then asked if they could leave it here for a couple days. I think the plan is to take it to one of the shelters around here.

She looked like she hadn't eaten for days, and was very, very thin. I think she has about eaten her weight in dog food since she's been here. She also seems to be quite lonely and tends to beg for attention whenever anyone goes outside.

She is really sweet, and if I thought she was healthy or we had enough money to spend on her right now, we might consider keeping her. Then again, that's a whole lot more work and I'm not known for being overly responsible like that.

Anyone want a doggy?

~PS