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Monday will be my first day with my new company. Few details here, for reasons of NDAs and just generally enjoying waiting to see this thing hit the scene. But it’s an exciting, unexpected jump to a startup. A chance to refresh my Java skills, build a very scalable site, be associated with something I expect will get household name recognition (as opposed to my current contract management system for the federal gov’t project) and help sheperd a new product to a successful launch. The first ad that I see in a big box circular, I’ll link in here. Heck, I’ll be hawking it here, snagging beta-testers, and folks to add some buzz. If you’ve got kids, specifically in the realm of, say, 8-12, keep an eye out here.

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My Grandma’s birthday is coming up, and, apparently like all Grandmas, mine’s notoriously hard to purchase buy a gift for. But I saw an ad for something called a Scooba: it’s a robot that washes your floors. Hmmmmm…. a bit pricey. But it’s older brother*, the Roomba, has been out for a while, and surely Grandma would even more appreciate a vacuuming robot. [Sorry, Grandma, still out of my price range.]

Like lots of consumers, I did my price-checking on Amazon. A search for ‘iRobot’ included these gems: Roor the Tiger, and Mooba the Cow. They’re costumes for your Roomba, both put out by a company called myRoombud. There’re also frog, pig, zebra, and leopard costumes available.

From the features description of Mooba:

If you own a Roomba, you know what I am talking about. Have you ever:
1) named your Roomba? 2) talked to your Roomba?
3) spent more time watching your Roomba than it would take you to vacuum the room(ba)?
4) bought a second Roomba so your first would not be lonely?
If you answered yes to any of the above, you are a prime candidate for an original RoomBud Roomba costume!

If you answered yes to any of the above, you’re a prime candidate for your own room with padded walls. Note that your Roomba will successfully navigate said room, and keep you company while keeping your floors clean.

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I’m in that geographical range that the Weather Channel has been warning about a nor’easter for. We woke up this morning to what looks to be 6-9 inches of snow. The weatherman says our area got, on average, a foot. Doesn’t look quite that tall to me, but haven’t been out as yet.

Lest you tag me as lazy, the reason I haven’t been out is I’ve been dealing with a system issue for my client, interacting with the network admin team down in Texas, testing the deployed patch, and then waiting around for the go-ahead to deploy into Production. Now I have the go-ahead, and am waiting for the admin team to call back so that we can actually get this done. Grrrrrrr…. up since 6:30 am (and I’m not an early bird) and still not done with dealing it at 12:30. And still don’t have my walk shoveled.

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I’m working on a survey application here at work. Nothing amazing, but it’s been interesting to start with something of a clean slate. You realize just how many things you do just because you’re used to doing them that way.

Things that have occurred to me to try, or to investigate on this thing:
– Should this really be a web application? Would it make sense to have it show up as a form in Outlook, such that the user never even leaves the email that requests them to fill out a survey?
– Would it make sense to use some of the Enterprise Library Blocks for security, caching, data access, etc, from Microsoft’s patterns and practices area, rather than custom-writing authentication and authorization code for this simple application?
– What about setting a template project so that Chris can hand it to his development team and say, here: out of the box security, logging, etc.?
– What about using an ORM tool, like NHibernate, rather than hand-coding a bunch of data-access layer code? If you do that with the data access block, though, you’d have two different data access idioms in use in the app: probably problematic for someone else to have to maintain. Probably the NHibernate thing itself would be problematic, in terms of other developers later maintaining…

All things to play with, though probably less than I’d like. Just need to get a basic survey app up and running – nothing too key here. But still would be nice to evaluate these other things and make recommendations for use here….

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I’m taking a class called ‘Analysis and Decision-Making’ this semester at Loyola as part of my MBA. I knew I had learned something in the class as I sat pondering what to do about my take-home exam last night. I analyzed and decided that I should take the prof up on her offer to extend the deadline for the exam. This let me go to bed at 1 am last night, and be reasonably patient with my kids today. Score an ‘A’ in the dual degree of MBA/mommy-hood!

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The CD player is shuffling between Bonnie Raitt, David Wilcox, and 4 Runner. A pleasant sense of expectation with each song transition, wondering what’s coming up next. That, and a few coffee and Kahluas, are making an evening spent working on a take-home exam much more pleasurable.

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I’m on something of a sabbatical from work, courtesy of the government procurement cycle. As in, hurry up and get it done. Oh, wait, you mean we need to give you a task order to allow you to keep working? Those familiar with the situation would recognize that now is a great time to take that use-or-lose leave that’s accumulated during the year, due in large part to the “hurry up and get it done” part of the cycle.

It’s only been a few days, and it’s already interesting to see what it is exactly that my girls do while I’m at work. Jason blogged a bit about
what it is that they think I do. Definitely interesting to see it from the other side.

What I’ve observed so far:
(1) the pace of things changes very quickly
(2) … unless Mommy or Daddy wants the pace to change very quickly
(3) the amount of fun being had directly correlates to the amount of noise being made
(4) there is no such thing as a neatnik toddler
(5) … except where their own personal hygiene is concerned: sticky hands or a shirt that has a drop of something on it must be corrected IMMEDIATELY
(6) the greatest chefs in the world have either a drive-through window or a carry-out phone number
(7) sleep is for those who’ve given up on the day, and is to be battled at all costs

It’s my own anthropology adventure – more insights likely over the course of the next few weeks. I’ll be observing them in their natural habitat this week as Daddy takes a well-earned reprieve and visits family, sans species of schedule interruptus. As I prayed in church this morning as they wiggled/squirmed/caused other church members to offer to assist me: “God help me have the patience not to kill ’em”.

Note that I’m waiting for the kisses and snuggles of bedtime to readjust my attitude. It always happens… they know when my tank is near empty, and then fill it back up with snuggles or a hug or snack which they had to save half of for Mommy. Or a “I’ve got to put the bugs away” comment.

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It’s snowing the first “real” snow of the year. Not that 1-3 inches is that big a deal, but it’s better than the dusting we got earlier. The whole point of this wonderful post is to direct you to a WashingtonPost article that was wonderful… To give you a hint (and a taste, in case you read this after they’ve taken down the article), the title is: “The Wipe Stuff
Milk & Bread Are Staples of the Storm, But Toilet Paper Brings Up the Rear”. Turns out the whole MBTP (nice acronym: milk, bread, toilet paper) run thing is a myth. We all have plenty of the white papery stuff in stock to deal with being snowbound as the white fluffy stuff falls from the sky. Wonder if the MBTP index is just a victim of BJ’s.