Well, it’s certainly been a long time since I updated last update here, so here’s a long overdue post. Hopefully I remember to get everything in here and without too many mistakes.
Well, it looks like my last real update was waaaay back on January 30th, I should have a lot to talk about then huh? Well, grab that bag of popcorn and glass of water, and sit down, this will be a while.
Lets start with work. Since my last update I’ve been moved from a full-time to a part-time employee at work. It’s quite the frustrating story. I was working part-time in Customer Service, and part-time in MIS working on our billing system. I would work the first 4 hours of the day in MIS and then finish the day in Customer Service. A few times I’d have to spend all day in MIS to make sure everything gets done. Well, one day at work, the entire data center went dark, we had some plugs go out. Tracy, Director of Customer Relations, wanted everyone to start calling customers from our old lists of circuits that went down, and tell them that we knew we had an issue and we were working on it, since the power was out our entire phone system was out as well. I wouldn’t use my personal phone for work purposes, 1) I didn’t have any minutes left on my phone to waste on WORK related crap, it’s not my fault their fail-over didn’t work like it was supposed to, and 2) my battery was practically dead. Things were ok after that for about a week, then I had to work in MIS to clean up from that mess and work on our big digital voice project out. Well, after a couple week, Mike G., the CFO and my direct boss, asked me if Tracy had talked to me at all. Apparently she had the guts to tell Mike that she didn’t want/need my help anymore, but she couldn’t even mention it to me. So, after all that work, I was put back to part-time only working in MIS because Tracy presumably has a grudge against me and the fact that I wouldn’t use my personal phone for work purposes because their fail-over systems failed, to no fault of mine. So things have been tight, but I’ve been surviving. I don’t like being treated like a little pawn either. I just can’t believe the audacity she had to not be able to tell me to my face that she doesn’t need me. On the other hand, this Digital Voice project is being a pain. I managed to get in over 112 hours the last two weeks of October. It was painful, very painful, but the paycheck is a bit nice 
Moving on…
Nicole and I are doing great! In case you didn’t notice, we got engaged on March, 20th this year. It was a bit of a cold proposal, but it was amazing. It was at the top of 5-Mile hill in Grand Haven. You can see some pictures after the fact here. Things have been great, we’ve got just about everything already figured out for the wedding, and you can keep track of that here. Nicole already has her dress, we’ve got the venue, the menu, wedding party, and I’m working on guys’ attire tomorrow with the groomsmen. So things are going GREAT, I’m so excited. Speaking of this all, we’ve only got five and a half months left until the wedding It will make for an interesting week considering my birthday is the same week, just 3 days before the wedding.
Next!!
Nicole got a dog, Romeo, and then just a few months ago, she got me a dog too!! Her name is Sophie and she’s a mastiff/husky mix. She’s a sweet, beautiful dog, still quite a bit hyper, but very well mannered and lovable. You can see pictures of Sophie here. She’s definitely made things interesting around here, her and Romeo go at it all the time, but it’s quite funny to watch. They are a good form of entertainment for us
And again!
Patch had a litter of kittens, it was her first, only 3 kittens, 1 was stillborn, and the other two were very sweet, but it wasn’t time for a family addition. We found them a great home and they are doing great last we heard, they are getting along great with the kids and they love them to death. That was an interesting experience, as Sophie and patch weren’t quite getting along yet, now they’ll play all day long if Romeo isn’t getting in on it.
Enough about animals…
Life has brought a few other things to the geek world as well Yep, time for me to geek out for a while, you all know that I’m a geek, and sometimes it REALLY shows, you can just ask Nicole. I got a new computer build done, Mom and Dad bought my old one from me so I upgraded, it was time anyways, I needed a bit more power. Here you can see old pics of the setup and old specs of it as well, I’ll have to make a new dedicated update for that and other happenings that I’ll mention here. This PC is really nice and powerful, runs all the games I want and more. Speaking of games, the new Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 comes out next week, Tuesday to be exact. Josh and I and maybe another friend of his are going to have our own “release party” Monday night and spend some time playing after we get our reserved copies. This will be quite fun actually, the game is supposed to be unbelievable. So this will be interesting. I’m way looking forward to it, and honestly, I think Nicole is looking forward to some non-geek time with me not home again On top of that awesome game coming out, the Nokia N900 phone is coming out on the 14th! I’m so very excited, this phone is supposed to be the best phone ever basically. I even have it pre-ordered from Newegg so I should have it either release date (11/14) or the following business day (11/16), so not too much longer on that I really can’t wait, it’s going to be AMAZING!
Hmmm….
I think that just about covers everything. Not a whole lot of elaboration on a lot of things yet, but I needed to update everyone. I hope to update this MUCH more frequently than I have been. I hope you enjoyed this bit of information!
TTFN
-Michael