Archive for January, 2009

• Halfway through my books and halfway through my study time

  Date: 2009.01.25 | Category: Life as we know it, Series of tubes | Response: 0

  Jessica and I have been busy as of late with the limited wedding planning that we can do at the moment. Yes, if you didn’t read my previous post and follow the included link you would have missed the fact that I proposed. Today we went to golf course and checked it out after an exhaustive search of the internet. As soon as we get the cash we’re going to put a deposit on the place and lock the date down. The event is tentatively planned for 7-17-2010.

  I’m still spending a few hours each night studying and damn this crap is boring. Oh well, this is the only way that I’m going to get a pay raise so I’d better keep my nose to the grindstone.

  I wish I had something else but that’s about it.

• My better half said it best

  Date: 2009.01.18 | Category: Life as we know it | Response: 1

  Jessica wrote a post that everyone should read.

  That is all.

• Numbers

  Date: 2009.01.18 | Category: I was too lazy to organize these | Response: 3

  663- The number of days it’s been since John and I started dating

  1 – The number of Carats of the perfect solitaire engagement ring John gave me

  545 – The number of days until we take the vow to spend the rest of our lives together

  Last night John decided that we should go to dinner at Salty’s ( which is my favorite) so he went ahead and made reservations. We got ready and had some time to kill so we went up early so we could go for a walk down Alki.  It was dark but you could see the reflection of the lights from the city and it was beautiful.  I turned around to see where John was and when I looked he was down on one knee.  He asked me if I could do him a favor and spend the rest of my life with him. Well, duh, I said yes. He then gave me my amazingly beautiful diamond solitaire and there was nothing I could say. I was speechless and well for me not having anything to say is a big deal. We then went in and had our dinner in shock. It was really a good surprise.

  This morning came picked a date July 17th, 2010. We have about a year and a half to get things ready. I’m sure we’ll keep you updated on the details as they come through 

  

  

• 40 days

  Date: 2009.01.10 | Category: Life as we know it | Response: 2

  I’ve got 40 days to become the ultimate know it all. The test has been looming over my head for a year and I’ve got to buckle down, stop goofing around on the internet, stop goofing around watching TV, and stop goofing around writing useless blog posts (for the most part) so I can dedicate all of my time and energy to studying for that next rank. The test is hard – extremely hard – but the good news is that I can get a lower score this year and still get the rank. The bad news is that I need to score 68% on each test. Yes, 68% in most cases is failing but on our promotion tests that pretty damn good.

  Think of it this way – could you answer 70% of the technical questions about your career field (that happens to be spread across nine functional areas) off the top of your head? If you could – you’ve probably already been promoted.

  The bad news is that even though I test in 40 days I won’t find out the results until July. I’m sure that if I did make it this year I wouldn’t even get to wear the rank until the following May or June because of my short time in service. Last time I made rank I earned the stripe in August and was allowed to sew it on the following August (the maximum wait time).

  Well – see you in 40 days – hopefully – I’ve got to stay on task.

• We’re trapped – sorta

  Date: 2009.01.08 | Category: Life as we know it | Response: 2

  All of the mountain passes to the east are closed due to avalanches. All of the highways to the south are flooded. We’ve had constant rain for the past few days and almost everything is flooded. The ground is completely saturated and there is nowhere for the water to go. Its odd – the water can’t get out here either.

  We were hoping to head to Roslyn this weekend but I don’t know if we’re going to make it. I think the only way to get to the other side of the mountain would be to drive 5 hours out of our way – I don’t think its going to happen. Our only hope is that Zeus lays off of the NW for a few days. If he doesn’t, we’re going to watch the price of gas and everything else that we import continue to rise.

  Crap – how lame am I? posting about the weather? oh well

• Mistakes

  Date: 2009.01.06 | Category: rants | Response: 0

  Holy f’ing hell.

  I care deeply about my work quality and what I do. I have been known to rush through a job to try and get everything done. Once in a while I make a mistake that can be easily fixed – a typo, a count error etc. I normally catch these mistakes before anyone knows about it.

  I find mistakes that have been made by other people. I try to fix them if possible and let the other individual know that there was a problem. If I can’t fix the problem I will let other people know that can fix the problem. Apparently, calling attention to our weaknesses and mistakes is not a quality that they want me to have. I came back from deployment in May to find our Maintenance bay had problems. I don’t know why the problems existed nor where they came from. I simply knew that something was wrong and that it needed to be corrected. I fixed the problem.

  What I learned today is that they don’t want problem solvers. They expect things to go without error and they have no resolution in mind when a problem appears. If you are the one calling attention to a problem you must be a problem. What they want is for me to sit quietly when something goes wrong and ignore the issue. I can do that – but I don’t want to.

  I’m going try and not let this get to me because I do care about my work. Its a shame they don’t.

• Changes to the place

  Date: 2009.01.03 | Category: Life as we know it, Series of tubes, photos | Response: 0

  For years I’ve hosted my own gallery on this server but it’s grown too large for the software that serves the pages. It took me a few hours to dig through all of the previous posts and remove any erroneous links but I’ve done so. I still have a gallery but I’ve moved it to a Google hosted service – Picasa.

  The software at their site is far superior and has all sorts of neat goodies – geo-tags, facial recognition and tagging, and mobile support. Feel free to check out some of my favorite photos at my Picasa gallery.

  Jessica had a few photos hosted at the gallery and they are gone. She will need to fix her blog at some point to fix the errors.