Today is the 8th anniversary of the day Tammy and I gave our lives to each other. It’s been a long, hard road, with many dips, curves and pot holes, but also a healthy amount of beautiful scenery. (Man, did I stretch that analogy!)

Tammy put together a great blog post on her MySpace blog. Rather than duplicate effort, I’m just going to link to hers.

Clicky!

Yesterday I won for the second time on Blingo. Blingo is essentially Google wrapped in a different interface and run by Publisher’s Clearing House. Every time you perform a search, you have a change to win a prize. The idea is that if you use their search engine, you’ll see preferred links and ads that are paid for. But there are no pop-ups or anything too annoying, so it’s really no pain all gain.

I’ve now won two Fandango movie tickets, so Tammy and I can go see Spidey 3 for free! (Which, from what I’ve heard, may still not be worth the money.)

You can sign up for Blingo by clicking the mini-banner at the bottom of my side-bar.

I don’t do this often, but I do strongly believe in the power of mass prayer.

Jon Carney works a couple offices down from me and he needs our prayers. Last night (5/15) he wrecked his motorcycle. Friends say he was run off the road by a car. The news says speed was the biggest factor. He hit a concrete divider on an exit ramp and fell onto the highway below.

The word is that he will recover and is in good spirits. He suffered a broken back, hip and ankle and lost some teeth.

Please pray for Jon’s recovery, the doctors treating him, peace of mind, and eased pain and suffering.

I really do love my job, but weeks like this are my least favorite part. I’ve been working double-days again trying to get an important project done by Friday. I’ll have to be within walking distance of my PC all weekend, either at work or at home, because some of the project stakeholders will be testing my new code and if they find a bug, I’ll need to fix it right away. The product goes live on Tuesday.

Sorry, Mom. I can’t come to Amarillo. Happy Mother’s Day!

I still don’t have a DVR, but this week, I got one step deeper into entertainment geekdom. I signed up for Netflix. I’ve now reviewed over a hundred movies (just a star rating, no write up) and my queue is up to 50 DVDs (most of those are TV shows, my “poor man’s DVR”). I just learned this morning about the “Friend” feature. Now we can all be Netflix friends and share our ratings and queues! Wheee! (Just don’t ask to borrow any of my clothes. That can ruin a friendship!)

Friend me!

Disclaimer: Keep in mind that Tammy and I are using the same account. “The Sound of Music” is not my favorite all-time movie, but it is hers. Don’t want you to think anything weird about me. I’m learning how to set up separate profiles, but I haven’t got it all straightened out yet.

It’s pretty cool that I got nominated for the Blogger’s Choice Awards (I now have 6 and 3 votes in the two categories, including my votes for myself.) but that’s not nearly as cool as this.

Alt-N Technologies, the company for which I an a senior web developer, has been recognized for a very prestigious award and now stands among the giants.

Alt-N, Bank of America, Bell Canada, Microsoft, PayPal and TRUSTe Honored for Leadership in Online Safety

BOSTON, MA — (MARKET WIRE) — April 19, 2007 — The Authentication and Online Trust Alliance (AOTA) announced the winners of the first annual Online Safety Leadership Awards. The winners, honored in an awards ceremony on the first night of the Authentication and Online Trust Summit, have all demonstrated a commitment to preserving and improving consumer trust in online channels.

The categories and winners include:

• Long term Commitment: Bank of America
• eCommerce: PayPal
• Public Education: Bell Canada
• Technology Innovation: Microsoft Corp.
• Early Adoption: Alt-N
• Non-profit Leadership: TRUSTe

“We are honored that our commitment to rapidly transform online safety concepts into real-world products for the small-to-medium business community has been recognized by AOTA,” said Arvel Hathcock, founder and CEO of Alt-N Technologies. “We will continue to expand our promotion of online safety features to the MDaemon email server user community by deploying additional safety functionality such as backscatter protection and email certification in 2007.”

I’ll link to the press releases as soon as they’re published.

UPDATE:
AOTA press release
Alt-N press release

This is the week before the Spring musical. In other words, it is the week in which I will not see my apartment other than my shower and my pillow.

I’m going to try and bring the same diligence and urgency of the show to my day job and get a lot of stuff done. Cuz, you know, that is what they pay me for.

I tell you this because, if I stick to my guns, this will be the last post I make this week. Nothing personal. It’s not you. It’s me! But we can still be friends!!

I’m typing this entry in Notepad2 because our office’s internet connection is down. This event has lead me to a sad realization. (Trint turn’s on Word Wrap. Grr.)

During my usual work day I have a lot of short delays. Getting latest from source control. Compiling my project. Copying large amounts of files to the live web server. These are just a few of my daily twiddle-thumb events. It’s during these brief bursts of inactivity that I do most of my web surfing. Consuming the web 90 seconds at a time.

But today, with the net inaccessable, I am going nuts. What is wrong with me? Have I become so dependant on a constant stream of input that I can’t sit for two minutes without some stimulation? Seriously. I’m not making this up. Within ten seconds of staring at the little hour-class icon, I start twitching like a crack baby. I think I need to go on a nice long camping trip. I need stimulus-detox.

Okay. My deployment is done now. Hopefully the web will be back up before I have to do another compile!

We got back Friday night, spent Saturday doing laundry and trying to edit three hours of video into something useful. The laundry got done. The video did not. Sunday was back to the usual grind with church and musical rehearsal. Now I’m back at work and trying to get my brain back into programming mode.

I hope to have some pictures and stories later. For now, I’ll just leave it at this: New Orleans is a mess and needs help. It was a hard week, exhausting both physically and emotionally.
It was hard to come home when there was so much more that needs to be done.

Things are picking up around our house. Rehearsals for the spring musical have begun. We’re working hard on a short schedule, meeting four times a week for three hour rehearsals. This year’s musical “A.D.” is very different from previous shows. It’s very… um… abstract. Curious? Come check it out. We’re performing at 6:30 pm on Saturday, April 14th, and in both Sunday morning services on Sunday, April 15th.

Something new this year too. During spring break, March 11th through the 17th, our church is doing a “family mission trip”. So, no particular age group. We’ve got people signed up from age 6 to age 77. We’re taking about 150 folks to New Orleans to do demolition and construction in the 9th ward.

I’m on a team with two other adults (including Tammy) and five teenagers and we are tasked with tearing down two houses (to the frames) in a week. It’s going to be hard, nasty, and potentially dangerous work.

Please pray for both the stage performances and the trip. We’ll need all the help we can get.