It's already the middle of January but I've been thinking about this blog post for the past couple of weeks. Last year was an incredible year. Most people will probably remember it as a year full of financial meltdowns, layoffs, economic recession, and dwindling home equity. However, I will remember 2008 quite differently. Getting laid off is the beginning of the story, but it ends with two trips to California, a trip to Washington, two trips to Canada, two trips to Texas, and a honeymoon in Mexico!

It all started in March. One day, everyone at work stopped working. There were rumors in the halls: "30%", then "50%", then "they will keep some people". It ended at 100%. Just two weeks later, everything was official. The entire team of 350+ was out of a job. By the time the official announcement was made, many had already mastered the ins-and-outs of the severance program and were anxious to see what their package would look like. There was one sticky point though.

Just a few weeks prior, HR announced changes in the severance program that would take effect on June 1. Those cut after June 1 would get a parting gift of about half the size of those that were cut before June 1.

Thanks to the law in this fine country, a layoff of this size requires 60 days notice. The leadership was kind enough to align things so that everyone's last day on the payroll would be May 30th, qualifying them under the older (more generous) severance program. It was the least they could do. Looking back, I realize how fortunate we were at the time. Plus, we had two months of work left with no work to do. That made for some interesting days in the office.

Maybe it was intuition or maybe just coincidence, but I had already scheduled a job interview the first week of April. The timing could not have been better. The job seemed like a perfect fit and I was confident - maybe too confident. A week later I got a call telling me that I was not what they were looking for. What!? How could this be?

What could have amounted to a 2 month paid vacation turned out to be the most stressful part of the year for me. How could they reject me? Clearly I was awesome... right? I got pissed. I set up back-to-back interviews with all the major players - both local and out of state. During that two months I traveled to Seattle, San Jose, and San Diego for job interviews. I landed offers for 8 positions at 5 different companies.

Looking back, I don't need to say that things could not have turned out any better. It's amazing how much the job market can deteriorate in 6 months. And the cuts continue. I started my new job June 2 and I never skipped a beat.

In August, I got the opportunity to visit Canada and check out Niagara. We took the time to walk across the bridge from Canada back into the U.S. to view the falls from both sides of the border. It costs 50 cents to get out of Canada on foot. Getting out of the U.S. is free.

Also in August, Shea finished up her OT studies and graduated from Keiser U!

In October, the Texas weather was perfect. Plans that were set into motion over a year earlier finally culminated in the awesomest wedding ever. It was preceded by a dinner followed by a bonfire, and followed by two weeks of honeymoon bliss in Manzanillo Mexico. Shea and I have all our great friends and family to thank for helping us make the event a success.

Speaking of thanks, November brought a Thanksgiving trip to Ozona where Shea and I had the special privilege of hanging out in the monkey cage at the primate sanctuary!




In December, I went back to Canada. It was about 25 degrees for the entire week that I was there. I preferred the August weather.







For our first Christmas together, Shea and I decided to spend the day at home, alone with each other. We set up a Shea's first REAL Christmas tree and started our ornament collection. Although we missed the company of our families, it was a great end to an adventurous year. Although not true for those that already bought, the greatest gift from 2008 to Shea and I might be plunging home prices and a ripening buyers market.


We'll see what happens in 2009!

Wade arrived in Costa Rica on Sunday. He'll be spending the next few months there hanging out, learning Spanish, and living the life. If we're lucky, he'll keep us in the loop via his blog.

I picked up a copy of Coldplay's latest album "Viva La Vida" and I've played it through about 3 times so far. The title track is the only one that is sticking in my head but that's probably from the commercial. I was working while listening so I can't say I gave it my best attention. However, based on the feedback of my brothers, the album rocks and you should get it too.

I spent the Memorial Day weekend in Texas visiting with the family since I had a little time to spare. My parents had a cookout and invited some folks over for great food, fun, and horseshoes. The day ended with a trip to Dad's garden to harvest 400 pounds of potatoes.

<--- Here's Billy wheeling part of this year's haul.


Also, Ben managed to take out a pesky squirrel that kept cleaning out the bird feeder. -->

It's been over 3 years since I first posted my text messaging application known as GoText. I haven't spent much time on the application lately, and in fact, there's only been one release in the past two years. With the other things I've been working on and the withering list of supported carriers, I haven't found much reason to continue to develop the application (except when people start complaining that something is broken)!

Having said that, the GoText community has marched on. Just this week, the total number of messages sent via GoText has topped 1,000,000! Looking back at my blog from two years ago, usage has definitely accelerated at time has gone on. I think that is pretty cool.

As I mentioned 6 weeks ago, I had some redesign work to do on my site before I could make a dent in the ever-growing pile of pictures that I want to post here. Well, I've finished the redesign work and I've posted some old pics from Good Friday dinner at Kelly's, the Rush concert, a trip to Key West, and a Naples weekend.

I started working on a stock charting idea 6 or 8 months ago and I finally have something cool to show for it. And most importantly, I learned some stuff along the way.

This is a stock chart. Yeah that's right - it's the price of a stock plotted over time. What makes is special is that I fabricated the entire thing out of thin air. Well, not exactly. I did have a little help from libpng.

What you see here is an image that is completely generated on the fly by my web server whenever this page is loaded. The charting engine is written in C++ and is driven by a PHP script whenever a chart request is made. The script invokes the chart engine which renders the image, and then passes it straight back to your web browser. To make it fast, I maintain a database of historical stock price information for over 6000 securities on the NYSE, Nasdaq, and American Stock Exchanges.

Eager for more stock charts? Check out my demo page.

Try getting directions with "Yosemite" as the end address. The word Yosemite is not specific enough, so you'll get the familiar "Did you mean" prompt. One of the suggestions should be "Yosemite National Park". Click on it.

When I first did this a couple of days ago, the link actually led to another "Did you mean" message. Now, it just leads to a message saying "We could not calculate driving directions".

The trick is to change the input from the suggested "Yosemite National Park, United States" to "Yosemite National Park, CA".

I found it interesting that the system suggested search terms that didn't actually yield any results.

Here's another fun one: directions to "nowhere" will lead you to the middle of Oklahoma. At least they got that one right!

Recently I've been working on a few projects in my spare time, but maintaining this site hasn't been one of them. I've got a lot of pictures to add and I suppose that I'll start blogging more as I will most likely have a few upcoming events to talk about.

My next goal is to redesign my picture-posting website so that I can accelerate the posting of a vast number of new pics. The current design works well but it is not portable because it requires a local Coldfusion server and installation of ImageMagick, among other things. Once I get that taken care of, I'll be back in the picture posting business.

In the mean time, here's a website that I recently finished: NoelIndustries.com

Yep, I put some chips and cheese in the oven tonight and forgot about it for a little while. They ended up nice and crispy and the house started to smell kinda like burned popcorn.

I've got a handful of pictures to post and I'm going to try to do it all in the next week or two. It's about time I update this thing.

I just spent an hour playing the online crane game. This is an excellent way to pass a little time from the comfort of your easy chair. Go to SuperClaw.com to play a real crane machine via remote-control from your web browser.

You can choose from several games and multiple viewing angles. Go check it out now and play for free! A friend of mine at work said his kids practiced on superclaw.com, and then went to the local arcade and won several items using their newly honed skills. What more motivation do you need?

Shea bought me a tent and planned a camping trip a couple weeks ago for my birthday. Wade, Mike, and Meridith went with us down to Flamingo Campground in the Everglades National Park for a couple of nights. It was a great trip, even though it turned out to be two of the coldest nights of the year!

Last weekend Shea and I drove up to Ft. Meade to spend some time at the Florida FlyWheelers show. The FlyWheelers is an antique engine club whose members restore antique automobiles, tractors, steam engines, and more. While it may not sound like much, this show is huge! The only real way to see everything is to ride around the place on a golf cart - which many people do. There was even a helicopter flying around all day giving aerial tours of flywheeler park.