Wish List

Okay, dokey, my Amazon Wish List has been updated! Feel free to buy everything for me; it's okay. I won't mind!

How to Fold a Shirt

How cool is this?

Hey Ya!

This cartoon fits disturbingly well.

Why do I have to listen to this daily?

I'm sick. Help me. And of course, the hoody is calling my name.

Best Advice

Best advice ever.

The Priest's Anthem

Oh my, I haven't laughed this hard at a song in a very long time.

How to Survive a Long Fall

Who comes up with this?

Fixed

Okay dokey. So, that Flickr strip over there on the right side of my blog was just randomly selecting any of my photos and displaying them which kind of defeated the purpose of me taking photos while I'm out and about. So, I've now fixed it so that it only shows the photos of my recent whereabouts. Enjoy!

Long time no blog

The last 2 months have been a whirlwind. I have many stories to tell, but I’m finding myself with little energy at the end of the day, which doesn’t lend itself to good blogging (this of course assumes that anything I’ve ever written here can be considered “good blogging").

I do have somewhat of a solution for my faithful readers. Both of you.

I have my cell phone setup to send photos directly to my Flickr account (that’s that little strip of photos on the side of the page). As I’m out and about, I’m going to take a picture here and there and then send it to the Flickr for your consumption. And don’t say I never got you anything.

This week is going to be incredibly busy. The first 2 days spent in Torrance, California, while the remainder of the week will be in Peoria, Illinois. The next several weeks are full of exciting things like a trip to Nashville and a sport fishing weekend with some colleagues. I’ll do my best to keep up here at the blog!

4th and inches

This is a interesting article about how most football coaches make the wrong call on 4th down. Leave it to the math geeks to pick a fight with the jocks. ;)

The Worst Is Over

I hope.

This has probably been one of the roughest rollouts I’ve been involved with. Mainly, it’s been related around system security and what I consider a bug in the vendor’s software.

Of course, when asking for support, the advice I got was to reinstall the web server software which is a major undertaking in this day and age of Sarbanes-Oxley compliance. After struggling with the software all morning, I finally figured out a way to get the application in business again, without reinstalling server software.

The frustrating part of this is that our customers will look at this as a failure on our team’s part. In a way, it is. This should have been caught in unit testing, but there wasn’t simply enough time to test the security model which is very basic and we had already deployed for the manufacturing arm of the company.

In any event, the system appears to be stable and tonight is the first night in weeks where I’m taking a well earned break from working. Back into the frying pan tomorrow morning.

Launch Eve

I’ve diligently been working on a project for the last 9 months and tomorrow morning it will be unveiled and be put to the test. I can’t count how many times I’ve been through this before and it is always nerve wracking. Despite constant checking, rechecking and then checking again, sometimes something can slip through the cracks which will cause a crisis. The good news is that everything is fixable; it’s just preferable to have caught any of those problem before hand.

In any event, wish me and my colleagues luck. It certainly can’t hurt!

Snow?

Last weekend when I went hiking the temperature topped out around 90 degrees. In contrast, it's been downright cold the past couple of days with today being really chilly (and yes, I'm talking about 'really chilly' with a Southern California scale). Taking a quick glance at weather.com confirms my hopes: we may wake up tomorrow with a blanket of snow around the house.

Last year's snow day

This happened last year during our bizarre winter and I about fell out of bed trying to get my head wrapped around all the white stuff on the ground and what the heck it was doing in Beaumont. The kids weren't at my home last time, so I'm really hoping they get to see that tomorrow!

Lost Palms

IMG_2544
Originally uploaded by Rob Thomas.

I went on a 7 1/2 mile hike on Sunday in Joshua Tree (although it felt like 10 miles, at least).

There isn't much to say about the hike since I took a bunch of photos along the way. So, go look at 'em.

This is the first post that I've created where you actually post from a flickr photo. I'm interested in seeing how this actually looks when it hits the blog.

The Bad Place

I’ve gone to the Bad Place. I’ve really tried to avoid The Bad Place but it doesn’t seem possible anymore. One of my good friends is Mayor of The Bad Place, as demonstrated by his constant pecking at his Blackberry while we were on vacation at Disney World in December. I even made fun of him. Now I’m being punished.

We’re entering the final stretch of a project that I’ve been working on since July of last year. We’re also hitting more than our fair share of snags which is causing a communication blitz on all fronts. Now, I’ve used my Blackberry in the past just to make sure that nothing requires my immediate attention and can wait until the next day. Of course, that was all Before Bad Place or BBP.

Pure evil

It’s bad enough that I’m watching episodes of Lost and The Office while working out on the elliptical machine. Now my official entry to The Bad Place occurred when I had the bright idea to bring my Blackberry to the elliptical machine. Yes, there I was, huffing and puffing and burning all of those calories while pecking little e-mails away to all of my colleagues.

30 minutes elapsed and I had cleared my inbox and by default, challenged my friend to a mayoral runoff for The Bad Place. The upside? Time spent in The Bad Place is billable. ;)

Chez Thomas

Offering the finest fair in all of Beaumont isn’t exactly a difficult achievement, but we here at Chez Thomas are proud of our creations none the less. Last night, I invited my very best friends (also known as guinea pigs) over for a dinner party to try out a couple of new dishes I had been itching to try.

I’ve been holding off on buying a Dutch Oven for years. The good ones are just so expensive. There’s just so many uses for them, and since my main course called for cooking in a Dutch Oven; I splurged. I’m now the proud owner of a 7 quart Le Creuset in flame orange and red. And yes, it’s very wrong that I’m this happy about a cooking vessel. I’m okay with that.

My new pride and joy!

The main course was Coq au Vin, which I had never prepared before. True to its reputation, creating this dish requires some serious planning. Although I have to hand it to Alton Brown for creating a recipe that allows you to do most of the cooking and cleanup days in advance. All that remains on the day of service is to roast the dish for a few hours and then to prepare the sauce. Which means the cook can partake in the conversation and the wine without worrying too much about the cooking!

The lucky diners...

I have to say that the Coq au Vin turned out just perfect. The meat was extremely tender and very flavorful and the wine sauce was absolutely delicious. My only regret was not being able to make more servings! Next time around, I’m gong to have a white roux standing by to help thicken the sauce. Try as I might with the suggestion of mixing flour with butter then adding it to the sauce; it still was too thin.

Dessert was a Crème Brulee Tart, recipe courtesy of Wolfgang Puck. Wow. Just wow. The Crème Brulee turned out absolutely perfect, although I had problems getting the tart shells just right. I did not have a blow torch on hand, so I used the oven broiler, which turned out to be a mistake since it turned the Crème Brulee into soup. Delicious soup, but not the consistency I was going for. And what’s the deal with a vanilla bean costing as much as $12 at the store? That’s the only downside to this recipe.

Plenty of champagne and wine!

As always, the night was full of conversation, wine and great friends becoming even greater. It’s difficult to get everyone’s schedules together so that we can spend an evening together, but when it happens, it’s nothing short of magical! I’m already looking forward to next time!

Living a Movie

I am literally living "Office Space" at the moment. That's why there hasn't been any posts recently. Perhaps when things calm down, but that doesn't seem to be in the near future.