Year in Review

It's funny how easy it is to forget what you've done in the past year. As I first sat down to write this entry I thought to myself, "Hmm..., I really didn't do anything noteworthy this year". However, upon further reflection, it began to occur to me that this has actually been a fairly full and exciting year.

Starting in January, I was awarded "Employee of the Year" at Novell. OK, so the award was actually for the previous year but since it didn't actually get awarded until January, I'm counting it :) I've been with Novell for 3 and 1/2 years now and am still working as a Software Engineer on the GroupWise team.

On most days (i.e. excluding the days just prior to a release deadline) I will tell you that I really enjoy my job at Novell. It's fun, challenging and the work is varied enough that things are never boring. In the past year I've worked on such diverse projects as a Java/JNI client for Linux, a cross platform C++, .NET and Mono API, and I've wrapped up the year working on a MAPI provider and COM Add-In for Outlook on Windows.

In February I was able to meet one of my financial goals for the year: I made the final payment on my Harley-Davidson motorcycle. The Harley is really what motivates me to get up and go to work every day. I'm not just working for the sake of working; I'm working so that I can spend my summer's touring the country on my bike.

Also in February, I went on a snowmobiling mini-vacation in West Yellowstone, Montana with my friends Dale and Bethany. The trip was a blast. We rented two sleds for a couple of days and spent all day exploring the back country of Yellowstone. At night, we returned to our cabin and relaxed in front of the fireplace and roasted Marshmallows on makeshift skewers (a couple of chopsticks lashed together with twine).

Skipping forward a month to April, I bought a new house. Well, it was new to me anyway. It's a three bedroom, two bath and full basement in Spanish Fork, UT built in 2001. The full basement was really the selling point for me. It allowed me to get something that I've always wanted: a pool table. My basement and pool table have now become the weekly meeting place for "Guys Night Out". Of course, being single, every night is "Guys Night Out" for me. However, some of my married friends are not so fortunate :)

In May, just a couple of weeks after settling into my new house, I had my two good friends from Wisconsin, Chris and Shannon, come to visit. We took a week off and toured several of the National Parks in Southern Utah. We saw Bryce, Zions, Arches and then concluded the trip with a day of river rafting on the Colorado River. I always have such a good time when Chris and Shannon come to visit. It's too bad that they don't live a little closer.

The summer months of July and August were marked by a lot of touring on the Harley. A typical weekend consisted of bungee'ing a tent and sleeping bag to the back of the bike and heading off into the middle of nowhere. My sojourns this past summer took me to the Grand Canyon, Zion, Bryce, Cedar Breaks, Capitol Reef, Glen Canyon, Kodachrome, Escalante Grand Staircase, Natural Bridges, Canyonlands, Dead Horse Point, Arches, Great Basin and Craters of the Moon.

My big trip on the Harley this year was in September. I took a week off of work starting with Labor Day weekend and went touring throughout the Western United States. In the course of 9 days, I hit 7 states (Utah, Nevada, California, Oregon, Washington, Idaho and Montana), 4 National Parks (Lassen Volcanic, Redwood, Crater Laker and Glacier) , 1 National Monument (Oregon Caves) and 3350 spectacular miles.

October brought me some company from Wisconsin. One of my friends from Wisconsin, Owen Swerkstrom, was offerred a job at Novell working for GroupWise. He was hired onto the API team, where originally we didn't have a whole lot of direct interaction. However, several weeks after he started, I was loaned out to API team to work on a special project and now we work quite closely.

November marked a first for me. I tried my hand at cooking Thanksgiving dinner for the family. Other than my timing (The bird was late coming out of the oven), everything turned out well and no one died from food poisoning. I guess that's something to be thankful for :)

That brings us to the current month of December. The biggest news this month is that I received a generous bonus and raise from Novell. The additional money should help me meet some of my financial goals for 2005.

Biking in December

I was out on my Harley today. Granted, I didn't go very far, but it still amuses me to be able to ride my Harley in the middle of December. With temperatures in the high 40's and low 50's I couldn't pass up the opportunity. So, clad in several layers of clothing and a full face helmet that I only wear when riding without it would give me frostbite, I headed out on a ride to Village Inn for breakfast.

Over breakfast there was a guy sitting behind me who was apparently just passing through the state of Utah. He sounded like he had an east coast accent. He was telling the person that he was speaking much too loudly on his cell phone with, what a dump Provo, Utah was. He made a particular comment about how the manager of the hotel that he was staying at was very classy and stylishly dressed and how she stood out like a sore thumb amongst all of us regular "Provo people".

I was tempted to turn around and tell the guy that he was welcome to leave Provo at any time if he didn't like it here. However, I figured that wouldn't improve his opinion of people here. As I got up to leave after eating breakfast I turned around to get a peek at this guy who was speaking so rudely. I was half expecting to see a couple of wise-guys from New York City dressed in $1000 dollar suits. I turn around and see two guys eating their breakfast in a pair of Dockers and a pair of Levis. It was hardly the epitome of style and sophistication. Minus the accent, they could have easily passed for a couple of regular "Provo People".

Disappointment

I am an unlikely fan of the TV show "Joan of Arcadia". I wouldn't imagine that a very large percentage of the demographic for that TV show consider themselves to be an atheist as I do. But, for some reason, I find the idea of God presenting him/herself to a confused teenager to be rather amusing. The show comes on at 7PM on Friday nights and for the last several months has been a core part of my Friday routine.

I am usually just getting home from work at about 7PM on Friday. In addition to being a source of entertainment the show serves as the line of demarcation between my work week and weekend. It was with disappointment tonight that I discovered that in the stead of my regularly scheduled "Joan of Arcadia" was the severely outdated and substantially less entertaining holiday special, "Frosty the Snowman". We've just barley crossed into December and already they are showing Christmas specials! What the Hell?

5 more minutes...

Late night at work today. I made the mistake of starting to debug a problem in the MAPI provider at 5:30 PM. The bug was teasing me. I kept thinking to myself, 5 more minutes and I should have this problem licked. Well, about 4 hours worth of 5 minutes later, I finally gave up and went home. At least I have something to look forward to in the morning :)

Hero

Tonight was Pool night. It's supposed to be the night several guys from work come over to shoot pool in my basement. Dale couldn't make it because he's been sick and wanted to turn in early. Owen couldn't make it because he was also not feeling well (hope that this is not related to him eating some of my leftover cooking for lunch). So, it ended up just being Scott and I.

We decided that instead of playing Pool that we would watch "Hero" on DVD. It was supposed to be like "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon". I wasn't all that impressed. The action scenes weren't as intense or engaging as "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" and there seemed to be a lot of filler in the movie.

The format of the movie was kind of strange. It reminded me of "Clue". You were told one version of the story and just when you thought you understood what was going on, you got the equivalent of, "... or it could have happened like this".