Hauling a cabinet.

Work was throwing out an old metal cabinet that the door fell off of. So, I helped them throw it out to my place.

Now that it's home, I am going to fix the broken door with half a dozen rivets, rivet up the non-broken side as well, and I now have a nice, tired, scratched, dented, and banged up metal cabinet.

IMTS

Today was the first day of the biggest trade show my company is part of. IMTS - International Manufacturing Technology Show.

My gosh is it a big show. I got a chance to wander around half of the hall we are in. It would take all week to see everything in all the halls.

I went there to be on site to make sure that the automatic lead routing stuff I have been working on for the last 6 months worked ok.

I never got a chance to try it.

One of the computers went down, and so I spent half a day trying to get that working again. I gave up. Not sure what's wrong with it. It's under warranty. The manufacturer can figure it out.

I spent the other half of the day customizing the stuff I wrote for this show so that it's more useful to the people who end up following up on the leads. First, I had to turn all on sorts of extra security so that my work with the server is 100% encrypted. I don't want some bored 16 year old sitting on the lakefront sniffing the wifi packets and getting access to my stuff.

I am laying here in bed, getting ready to work on it some more tonight. We found a bunch of little stuff as I was tweaking it for the show today. I want to get some of this stuff ticked off the list while it's quite and 29 people aren't coming through the door every minute.

It's going to be a long night.

Restless Feet.

A rolling stone gathers no moss.

Well, in-case you haven't heard, I am moving.

I took a new job with a company called Hexagon Metrology. The quick description of what they do is "make robots that measure things". My job is going to be webmaster for http://www.hexagonmetrology.us/ and related websites.

My last day with iMapp was on Friday, the 7th. It was very tough to leave them. They where such wonderful people.

I am moving back north. Not quite to Wisconsin, but close. I will be moving to Elgin Illinois. If you look at the satellite map, going out from Chicago, Elgin is the last town before you get to cornfields. I am hoping to get myself a bit of cornfield by the end of the year. Elgin is also on I90 which means it's a basically a straight shot to my folks place. 370 miles, I would need to get 25 miles per gallon to make it there on 1 tank of gas. I think this is doable, as I am getting 23 miles per gallon in mixed driving on my 1 hour commute to work for iMapp.

View Larger Map

The last month I have been busy starting to pack, figuring out HOW I am going to move 2 cats and 2 fish tanks 1200 miles in the winter. I am thinking of doing separate blog posts on that.

My current schedule is fly to Elgin for next week. Finish packing, load a UHaul, and move over the Easter Weekend.

Wish me luck!

Bad Weather

  A bit of bad weather at the office on July 16th. It took me a while to get the photo and the video off my phone. Ohhps...

The sky is that nasty sickly green that I remember seeing when there where tornadoes in the area. I don't remember hearing about one after this storm, so that is good.

Crazy 2 weeks!

Well, I haven't blogged in 2 weeks now. I started my new job. I love it. It is very challenging and rewarding!


 I went fishing with Eric again this Friday. We didn't catch anything, had a couple of bites, but it's just a fishing story if you can't take pictures.


 I scratched my truck. I leaned a couple of fishing poles up against the truck, and when I closed the back, they slid down. I got the paint good. Anybody have any suggestions on how to fix this? I picked up a scuff by the gas cap today when I was at Lowes too. I guess it isn't new anymore. I have over a thousand miles on it already too! Crazy!


  The air and sea show was this weekend. This is the bearest piece of beach I could find.


 I like the difference in planes as they got more advanced. I think this photo captures the progression quite nicely.

Last day at work

Today was my last at work today. I guess Friday the 13th is as good of a day as anything.

Two and a half years of doing the same website - well, over half a dozen of them. Of Having my website on the back of city buses. Of a 100,000 unique visits a month. Of really great people.


My friends from work had a going away party for me today. They pooled together and got me a really great going away present, but they couldn't agree on what it was going to be, so I got a gift card for a lot of money! They ordered pizza from my favorite pizza shop.


Thank you everybody!



I just about left without getting my stuff off the walls.

I will miss everybody there at RAGFL! You all have my email address and this website! Keep in touch.

Working from home

I had the day off from my old job today, and tried to work from home for my new job. Working from home was so hard. I am not really set up for that. My desk isn't big enough to hold anything after the 2 19" are on it. I don't have anywhere to put anything. The whole corner is just ready to cave in on me.

 I can pick up either this bookshelf or bakers rack for $100 at Target. I am thinking for half the money, can make something a little simpler that would work just as well for me.


 I think I am going to wander over to Lowes tomorrow and see what there is to see.


I just gotta do something with my space if I am going to be spending any time working from home.

2 weeks notice.

So, 2 weeks ago today, I gave my 2 weeks notice at work. My last day is April 15th (so the 13th really).

Confused Yet?

From the announcement email that went out to staff from the CEO.

It is with a sense of deep regret that I have accepted effective April 15th, 2007 the resignation of Mike Creuzer, Webmaster. Mike has been an influential member of our RAGFL staff and we wish him the very best in his new endeavor in Tampa as a software programmer for iMapp. Mike has agreed to do his best on the projects he has started and we are grateful for the contribution he has made in making www.R-World.com the "go to" resource for our members. Please join me in wishing him the best of luck on his journey. Thank you Mike for all that you have done.

I am going to work for iMapp in Tampa as the email says. They are a vendor for RAGFL (The Realtor Association of Greater Fort Laduerdale), so it was kinda a touchy situation, a company hiring one of their larger client's employees. That is part of my extra long notice. I will be in Fort Lauderdale for probably another 2 months working on and learning one of the products that iMapp sells. And then it's packing my bags and finding a new place to make a mess of in Tampa.

I am going to be doing primarily programming, which I have slowly drifted towards really liking in my time at RAGFL. I should be able to take my knowledge and experience from RAGFL and bring a lot of insight and skill to iMapp. I am excited about the new opportunities!

My new job is significantly closer to Katie, my girlfriend. I will only be 25 miles away from here she lives. She works halfway between where she lives and where I will live, so that will be a lot more convenient. I must say, I had never had a relationship that turned into a long distance relationship work out. I am really hoping that this long distance relationship holds together once it isn't long distance anymore. Another bonus with the new job is that, well... Lets just say I will be able to dig myself out of the hole a whole heck of a lot faster.

It is really tough though. Staying focused at my old job when I really want to get started with the new one. I am working on some pretty cool stuff, so that hopefully if I get it all done the way I want it to be, I go out with a bang.

On the RAGFL Staff Page I am slowly fading out... Hey, I had to do SOME sort of mischief, right?

Chihuly - Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden

Tonight I went with some of the gals from work to the Dale Chihuly exhibition at the Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden. It was really interesting. We got there about an hour after we wanted to because of Miami traffic, but we still had a good time. Right away, they all sat down with some other people we ran into (members from work) to feed themselves and I wandered around taking a few photos while it was still light out. By the time I wandered back, they had eaten their fill and fed the rest to me - the food was much better then the service!

I was hoping to be there in time to see the Amorphophallus titanum bloom, but alas, a dollar short and a day late - well actually $30 short, and 13 days late. It was all shrivled up and brown, and looked like a dead dog - about that size too!

This is called Niijima Floats, and was found in the Benjamin Rush Sibly Victoris Amaxonica Pool.

Here is the White Tower, found in the Baily Palm Glade Pool.

I liked the way the light played off the Tumbleweeds onto the ceiling of the Whitman Tropical Fruit Pavilion.

The Carnival Boat was really interesting at night, located in Pandanus Lake. 

Broward County Convention Center

Here is a photo of the Water Sculpture in front of the Broward County Convention Center where our REALTOR Rally was held on Friday. 

RAGFL Realtor Rally 2006

Today was a LOOOOOOooooonnnnnnggggggg day. We had our annual tradeshow today. I was "invited" to attend - read PUT TO WORK.

I am happy though, I was given a radio this year. I only had to walk from one end to the other 3 or 4 times as opposed to the 9 or 10 times that I did last year. Last year I was chasing moving targets blind. This year I knew when they where looking for me and could hide more effectivly **grin**. Actualy, the only time that they called for me and I didn't jump right on it was when I was eating my lunch.

I spent half the day printing up name-badges. I had suggested that we bring a laptop and a printer this year as last year we didn't have an introduction for one of our speakers. last year and it was a big deal to get it. The big boss lady pooh-poohed the idea when I brought it up earlier this week. One of the other "big" people thought it was a good idea. So we brought one along. I also went around yesterday and gathered up digital copies of everything people had printed to bring along and put it on my USB drive. Guess what, we needed something printed off again. YAY me. Too bad the big boss man or the big boss lady won't recognize it. so, that disaster averted, I ended up spending half the day printing out namebadges for the vendors that just showed up. Next year, I am bringing a paper cutter too. Better yet, we need to do a better job of getting vendor names before hand. I would swear that there where as many vendors as attendees judging from the number of extra badges I needed to print up.

My feet are threatening secession if the rest of me doesn't go to bed soon. That would make wandering around the Fort Lauderale Air and Sea show difficult tomorrow. 

My Mess at work.

This week has been a tough one. First, my boss got offered an awesome job that sounds like it comes with a hefty pay raise from another company. Half my friends at work have moved on now. I am going to really miss her.

Tomorrow is our annual Tradeshow, so we have been working like mad to try and make that go well.

This weekend is the Air and Sea show. The Blue Angels where buzzing around town all day today. Pretty cool. I am going to the show on Saturday with Chris and a few of his friends it sounds like.

I haven't been sleeping well again lately, I was up at 3am programming in my head last night. I am migrating the websites to a new server, and some of the code is behaving badly.

At home it seems like I have been so busy, but I haven't gotten anything done. I can't even tell you what I have been doing. No playing UO, no reading of books, no nothing.

I got my hair cut tonight. Hopefully he got the lazy hairs....