// July 23rd, 2009 // No Comments » // Life
I’m too tired to write a lot but this can’t go without mention…
White Sox’s Buehrle tosses 18th perfect game in history vs. Rays
Totally awesome. Wish I could have watched it in person.
Congratulations Mark.
// July 22nd, 2009 // No Comments » // Life
Because my wife once again proved her deep affection for me by bequeathing a coupon for a free Chick-Fil-A sandwich. The simple act of completing their fairly short survey by telephone is worth approximately $2.76 of savings. The minor inconvenience of answering their survey only pales in comparison to the 40-odd question phone survey I had to take to earn my free Route 44 drink from Sonic, which, when combined with my Chick-Fil-A coupon, will produce a completely free lunch tomorrow.
As a family, we enjoy a collective addiction to “Chick-if-A” or “Filet Box” – as our kids called it when they were younger – that rivals only my personal dependence on Chipotle burritos. My Chipotle obsession has progressed to the point where I quantify other purchases in terms of the number of burritos it would buy and then must contemplate whether the exchange should proceed.
So, despite the fact that I ate a long-awaited burrito today, tomorrow should indeed be better because I actually had to pay for the burrito.
WooHoo!
// July 21st, 2009 // No Comments » // Life
We spent 14 hours on the road with the kids last weekend traveling to visit family. I’ve said it before and will say it again…
Portable DVD players are worth their weight in gold, as are Nintendo DSes and for that matter my IPhone amazes me almost every day and I’m still on my 8GB 1st generation-er without the GPS and the latest gizmos. They provide just enough distraction for the kids to make the long journey not only survivable, but enjoyable. They’re so cheap the kids don’t even have to share, so there’s another set of battles never fought.
There are those that would say it’s keeping the kids from “interacting” or “looking out the window at the beauty of nature”. Anyone with more than one kid will tell you all that “interacting” usually digress into “fighting” within 30 minutes, and there’s only so much “scenery” to be taken in on 420 miles of interstate.
The kids love it, the adults can actually have conversations that last more than 10 seconds, and we hear laughing from the backseat instead of yelling. I see no downside here.
// July 14th, 2009 // No Comments » // Technology
We’re currently using Eventum, which I really, really like. The only issues I’ve had so far with it are there seems to be no way I can find for unregistered users to check the status of tickets they submitted (e.g., simple public report) and internal notes get routed to everyone on the notification list (would be nice if it routed only to registered users with a certain role on the project). Otherwise it has pretty much everything I could want. I may end up writing reports to solve my status-checking woes and making a simple PHP form where requestors can enter there email address and it will return all the tickets they submitted or are on the notification list for and info about those tickets. But I’m wondering if there’s not something better out there.
I spent 7 years using Request Tracker, which was nice in many ways. Biggest drawback with it was poor handling of attachments and lack of reporting (maybe I was using an old version…). I’ve tried FogBugz for a few months, and it was good, but again not happy with reporting and depth of features. Looked at Trac (nice but light on features), Lighthouse (very feature-light), Mantis (lightweight), Bugzilla (you’re kidding, right?). JIRA totally rocks but I’ve owned houses that cost less than what it’d take to use JIRA at my company. Looked at Redmine (promising but can’t determine if it’s better than Eventum).
Here’s what I’m looking for:
Anyone want to offer suggestions / feedback?
// July 11th, 2009 // No Comments » // Life
… and cold beer on a … Saturday … night …
Today is special not for the lawn I have to mow, the weeds I have to pull, or the weekday work that inevitably spills into the weekend, but for a dinner at my Dad and Step-Moms and her world famous fried chicken.
I resolve to fast today in preparation for consuming mass-quantities of it this evening.
She’s always been an amazing cook and it’s my favorite dish that she makes. I’ve loved it since I was 11 in 1984 when they first got married 25 years ago this year. Can’t wait.
WooHoo!
