was GREAT. I’ve really enjoyed my new office environment - nice atmosphere, surroundings, pleasant people, clear direction… it’s just all a breath of fresh air! Had a chance to meet several new folks and also to learn more about the print side of the business. Got to go to 2 “press checks” where the designer reviews a print at the press prior to running a job. That way, there’s on last review to make sure the printed result matches what the designer intended. The 4-color press I looked at was quite an impressive piece of machinery. The print people I met were VERY helpful, offering tips to make both our lives easier. Very cool.

Got the email situation on the way to being fixed. Swapped our domain and email service over to another host. Hopefully, the DNS changes I made will go into effect in the next few hours making our transition complete. We’ll see.

For lunch today, I met up with Sarah at The Brick. Had a good time catching up on the latest with her. Going to be heading back there tonight to check out Gulliver with some friends and co-workers. It’s also nice to once again be developing a social life. Ahhhh… Normalcy.

Last night, I met up with another friend at Simp McGhee’s for a DELICIOUS meal. Going to have to do that again soon!

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Today was my first day at my new office. The first order of business was to get some photos made of me and the other new employees at the agency for the company website. Later, Michael (one of the designers) and I headed over to the newspaper office for some press release photos as well. Before lunch we had a staff meeting with the goal of getting everyone up to speed on the current business.

Worked on a Macintosh today for the first time in a VERY long time. That’s going to take some getting used to. Luckily, it’s a temporary situation as I’ll soon be ordering a PC as my regular workstation. Ugh… our email situation is in need of help. I could never sucessfully email myself today. Our webhosting partner is implementing some type of spam control system and they’re saying it could be the end of August or September before they are done with the implementation!?! I’m going to look into that more in depth tomorrow to see if I can rectify that sistuation. It’s unacceptable.

Email issues aside, everything else is pretty nice. I can actually say I had a nice day at work today. That’s something I haven’t been able to say for quite some time now. It feels good to be able to say it, that’s for sure.

After work, I met up with the crew at the Guad. All the usuals were there plus Dabney. Her sister joined us later for our walk down the mall. Headed home after that.

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I was a little bored tonight so I thought I’d Google my old high school’s name back in Knoxville to see if there was any good info out there to peruse. One of the first hits I got was the above link for MTV’s Johnny Knoxville’s bio. I thought, “what the heck” and read through it. To my surprise… Johnny was a buddy and classmate of mine! I was a senior and he was a freshman but we hung around some of the same circles. I yanked out my senior yearbook and sure enough, there he was. What a small world. I went to school with “THE” Jackass. That’s hilarious.

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My last day at Intergraph was yesterday. YA-HOOOOOOOOO!!!!!

I showed up for work around 10 but it looks like I could have waited until after lunch just in time for my exit interview. Oh well. It gave me some additonal time to finalize packing my things and being sure I got everything. I did a secure delete on all my files so that the next person to get my PC can start with a fresh slate.

Headed over to HR for my exit meeting and talked things over with Annette before I hit the road. It was an amazing feeling, the weight of a job where there was no light at the end of the tunnel has been lifted off my shoulders (and unfortunately has been put on someone else). My former director called me on my cell as I was out and about needing more information about what I did…. sigh.

Me and A#2 headed to HSV to catch The Bourne Supremacy since the only theater in Decatur that was showing it was Tetanus Cinemas. That’s my new name for the Carmike here since it’s a dump. You need to wear old clothes and shoes since you’ll get crap on you AND your shoes will stick to the floor. Hopefully some bulldozers will drive around that place soon.

Movie was great. Some of the camera work left a little something to be desired but it was enjoyable, much more so than the previous one.

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Tomorrow is my last day at the ‘graph. While I’m sad that I’ll no longer see some of my friends on a daily basis, I’m excited about the new ones I’ll be getting to know. I swung by my new office last night on the way home and checked on things over there. Got a brief run down on their server and backup system. It’s a straightforward setup, nothing complicated. One of the first things I’m going to do when I get over there is evaluate their current IT environment and see what, if anything needs to be changed or upgraded for better performance. Wheeee!

Once I got home, I warmed up on my drums for a while then packed up my stuff for band practice. That went well and went fast. The usual group (the b’s, the a’s + Sharon - Stacey’s sister) mounged it over to O’ Charleys for some Irish food. Had a fun time there! My food was decent for the 2nd time in a row so things look to be be improving there for sure.

Oh, in other news Kailyn and I had an “incident” the other night as I was babysitting… I was teaching her how to say “My name is Kailyn” when I noticed that my legs suddenly felt damp under where she was sitting. Lifted her up and found that both legs of my jeans were soaked with pee. Nice. Brought her downstairs to her mom. There was a ladies get together thing going on in the kitchen and when they saw me and what happened, everyone was rolling. I think someone asked if I was okay or needed another pair of jeans to which I replied, “No problem, it’s just urine”. I don’t think I ever envisioned myself saying that. My jeans remained slightly mounge for the rest of the night.

Ok, I know you might be wondering what “mounge” is. Sharon, who is from Minnesota, was inventing words last night. “Mounge” was the first one which quickly turned into things like:

Mounge chair
Teacher’s Mounge
Mounge-tain range
Look’s like your dog has mounge
My mounge is acting up again, etc.

Something also happened with the mis-use of the word “contents” but I can’t recall exactly how we made fun of that. Maybe Kevin can elaborate in his blog.

In other travesties of the English language, my manager’s manager came in and asked me how to spell “solemn” yesterday. I spelled it for her and she went back to her office. I followed her there and when I walked in, she looked at me and said “it still doesn’t look right”. “It doesn’t look right to you because you didn’t know how to spell it in the first place” (heh). I took her to www.websters.com to show her that my spelling was correct. I think I rolled my eyes at this point.

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The past weekend was lots of fun. As I had planned on Saturday, me and the Burns’ headed to HSV for some fine lunchtime dining at Macaroni Grill. I had one of my favorites, the grilled salmon on a bed of spinach and orzo pasta (looks like rice). After that, we trotted down to Toys-R-Us for some gift-age for Kailyn. There’s a LOT of toys out these days. Holy crap. After I picked up what I wanted to get her, I went next door to the bookstore to pass the time with some magazines on cars and music.

Next stop was the Nissan dealership. George, the guy who helped me before was there and he had me sign some papers and then me and the crew could go driving by ourselves in whatever I was interested in. Went riding in the Armada first. I’ve pretty much come to the conclusion that the Armada’s a little too big for me. It’s really a lot like a Japanese Humvee… The Maxima fit me much better. Nice engine in it too. Plenty of power. Anyways, I’m not sure what I’m going to do yet. I’m really adverse to getting a new car and taking that initial depreciation hit. Since I’m in no rush, I’ll be doing some checking into used vehicles before making any kind of decision.

Church was great Sunday. I was off drumming duties so I was out in the crowd. I got Kerry to move out of the Baptist back row and get up in the front. Music was great! I especially dug the mandolin playing by Steven. Nice touch.

Had to make a quick run by Wal-Mart afterwards and get some supplies. Dropped stuff off at home then headed over to the pool for Kailyn’s birthday party. Had a great crowd there! Jack resurrected the party favorite of all insurance agents… pool surfing. The surfboard is made of 2 floats, one on top of the other. The bottom one is your standard “I don’t wanna be white anymore” tanning float while the top is a thick foam rubber one that gives you a somewhat firm surface to stand on. Someone centers the float in front of the diving board then the surfer takes a run down the board, lands on the float and tries to stay up as long as possible. It’s a good time for everyone. See pictures of the actions below.

Made a quick run home to get cleaned up and changed then headed back to the Burn’s for our group get-together. Big crowd there again! Had a good time talkign about ministry and church in general then a fun time grilling, eating and reading trivial pursuit cards. We are all like a brain trust of odd knowledge. You wouldn’t believe some of the junk we know about. It’s scary for sure.

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The Cake

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The birthday girl!

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Presents!

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Jack showing good form on the pool surfing.

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