Trying out a new theme for my blog.  Let me know what you think…

Rained out of our camping trip to Douthat State Park, my in-laws and I met up with the Coopers down in Charlottesville for dinner & game night.  There weren’t many complaints about missing out on the camping and we even played a full game of Trivial Pursuit, boys vs. girls.  Quick: What are the eastern-most and western-most states?  The ladies missed that one though they gave us a pretty good game overall.  There were several out-of-thin-air answers from them that kept the game close.  Our victory was aided by a distraction in the form of Fred…

Fred in baseball uniform

We got home fairly early on Sunday and Christina squeezed in as much anxious worrying as she could — Today was her first day at her new job.  On a day when the economy blew up, it’s quite reassuring to have two incomes again!

Dreams are funny things.  Every guy knows that all girls do when having sleepovers is have pillow fights but somehow, when I’m there to see it, it doesn’t seem quite as exciting as I thought it would be.  Granted, in my case, this is almost certainly due to the fact that 1/2 the girls are feline.  That’s right, Argo and Christina are at it again.  Argo has rekindled her love for Christina’s pillow and each night consists of Argo gradually pushing Christina off her pillow until she has the whole pillow and Christina is left with her head hanging off the side of the bed.  It would be funny except that Christina doesn’t seem to find it so very funny and that means I get to deal with the resultant grumpy Christina.  Somehow, I thought these pillow fights had a happier ending…

As the primary developer for a software package used by a growing number of schools, my work load has grown exponentially over the past few years.  By primary developer, I of course mean the only developer.  I also do customer support, general IT, database administration, and pretty much any other role that needs to be filled.  The trials of working for a tiny software company.  There is only one other person who is involved with the school software and that would be the marketing/customer point-of-contact person.

This morning, we were reviewing some voicemails from customers and received a “funny” call from a parent she had been speaking with about a problem with one of the schools.  This particular parent had encountered a weird browser error message that I’m working on resolving.  The parent left the message to thank us for our help and not to worry, she had some sort of issue with every other online system from each school she’d applied to.  Then she proceeded to list off all of the schools she had issues with.  This was actually quite informative… we lost our first client recently and one of the schools she mentioned having issues with was that schools “replacement” software.  Good for us.  However, the next school she mentioned was another school we wrote the software for… whoops!

You always yank the band-aid off.  If you try and do it slow and steady, it just makes it more painful and last longer.  Forest fires, while devastating, kill off unhealthy plants, nourish the soil, and let the forest grow back stronger and healthier.  I could come up with a hundred analogies but the point is - The same is true of the economy.  If you don’t remove the issues that caused the pain and instead prop up the bad business decisions with a handout of money without regulatory oversight to fix the issues, you’re rewarding bad business for causing the problems in the first place.  Nearly every economist who has any idea what’s going on in the business world — other than those in charge of the companies, of course — is against the idea of bailing out these companies.  Yet, the popular notion is to prop up these companies to “protect” the economy.

I’m not an economist… but I am married to one and I’m also one of those “elitists” that reads the excellent Economist.  Plus, I stayed at a Holiday Inn awhile ago.

Update: A few more links about the bailout.

• 7 Questions about the $700 billion dollar bailout
• Why Paulson is wrong
• Fed’s bailout plan met with skepticism out West

Like many urban localities, Fairfax County requires dog owners to cleanup after their dog in public areas. When you have a lot of dog owners in close proximity, you almost have to have a statute about cleaning up or otherwise it would be a minefield out there. Bagging their dogs poop isn’t exactly how most people envision dog ownership but it’s a small price to pay for the general good. Unless of course, you are one of my neighbors who bags it up… and then leaves the bags on the ground!

I guess if you wrap them in plastic, it really turns them into little dog presents for the neighbors to walk on.  In addition to completely missing the point about keeping the public areas clear, my neighbor is now helping destroy the environment by leaving plastic bags out.  Well done!

This weekend, I helped my sister Amye move down in Richmond.  She moved into a good-sized house though she seemed to have enough furniture for 3 or 4 houses.  I pity her for having to get it all straight.  We didn’t get it all unloaded until about 9pm Saturday night and, by that point, no one was particularly interested in helping to get it organized.  I have a feeling her boyfriend is going to be sore for several days (as I am) and my 8-month pregnant sister probably isn’t going to be moving too much furniture for awhile.

I was supposed to repeat the process next month to help my other sister but unfortunately, Erin moved up her move out date to one of my otherwise busy weekends.  My mom is about to have whiplash as she goes from a house of 5.5 girls to just herself in just 2 weeks.

While there seems to be a Starbucks on every corner, there hadn’t been one on my immediate route to work until a few weeks ago.  This particular Starbucks is one of the in-grocery store stores but unlike the majority of these mini-Starbucks, this one has consistently created a quality White Chocolate Mocha.  Perhaps a bit too good as I got “busted” when I went in one morning with Christina and the barrista girls called me out: “Hey! How have you been?  You haven’t been here in a few days?  White Chocolate Mocha, right?”  After getting a wry grin from Christina, I explained to her that stopping here was perfect as I can also do a little grocery shopping for my day-to-day office groceries.  It’s certainly better than running across the street from my office to the overpriced 7-11.

Another Safeway nearby has a gas station attached to it that provides a discount for the “club-card” holders.  If I can get my on-the-commute Safeway to install a gas station as well, it would be the perfect grocery store.  As Christina told me this morning, I’ve turned into a Safeway groupie.

Ran over to Chipotle for lunch today.  Chipotle has been expanding all over the place and I have a feeling it’s starting to have a detrimental effect on their business.  I used to joke that I moved to Reston Town Center just because I could walk to the nearby Chipotle.  The food is good, service is fast, and the price is right.  That said, soon after I moved into my current house in Fairfax, they put a new Chipotle in nearby… but not, unfortunately, close enough to walk.  For whatever reason, the service at my new Chipotle is markedly slower than any other Chipotle I’ve ever visited.  I’ve spent 45 minutes waiting in what the same line would have taken 10-15 minutes max at the Reston Chipotle.  This doesn’t seem to be an isolated  aberration as they recently also put one across the street from my office — the one I went to this afternoon.  Unfortunately, the staff at this Chipotle seem to come from the same vein as the ones from my Fairfax Chipotle as the line moves at a snails pace.  I’m starting to suspect that there are a limited number of Chipotle people and they’ve now had to resort to the “B” teams to staff their new locations.

… Or so NCAA Football ‘09 tells me when I start up a game as the Fresno State Bulldogs.  With the release of the Madden & NCAA Football games for the current year, my friends have all been setting up various online seasons and dynasties with each other.  Though I tend not to play too many sports game — they really are pretty much the same year-to-year and get rather repetitive — I decided to pick up NCAA 09 after hearing people talking about the dynasty they setup.  With a little coercion, I managed to get them to restart the league and now 5 of us are playing through a multiple season dynasty with one another.  We tried to find a conference/division where we’d all play each other and have more or less equal teams.  Enter the WAC and my team, Fresno State.  It should be interesting as my record in practice games is 1-8.  These Bulldogs are about to get humbled.