Hi everyone.

Not much going on in this neck of the woods over the last couple days - just work. The weather has turned cold again (well, not awful, but today was below feezing for a while) so that has put a quick halt to our work outside. Although, I think Liz and I might make a run to Home Depot tonight to pick up a few things for the yard (fertilizier, stuff to keep the rabbits away from Liz's tulips, etc.).

Liz and I are planning a trip home to Clintonville this weekend. Next weekend, we'll be in Sheboygan for Easter but, as Mom has this week off, we figured we'd visit my family a week early for Easter. So, with that in mind, we've been getting ready to haul out of here for the weekend. It'll be nice to be home and see everyone again.

I got the Mustang out yesterday. :-) It hasn't seen much action yet with the weather getting cold again, but I got the oil changed in it so she's all ready to roll. It was certainly fun to drive it again - I can't wait for the weather to get a little bit nicer.

Yeah, like I said, there just isn't a lot going on right now outside of work so I guess this is going to be an awfully short post.

Catch y'all soon.

Corey

Hi there,

Sorry that it has been so long since my last update. Work has been very hectic - we're gearing up for our next backfile conversion project and it's a pretty large project. We've slated about 3 months to do all of the work. Now that we've got it pretty well set up, we need to get some people to actually do the work. It's not hard work - it's a lot of pulling staples and straightening papers and then running them through a scanner. It's actually a very manual task. We actually had some people from a company called PossAbilities come in on Friday to take a look at our operation. PossAbilities finds work for those that are developmentally disabled and this line of work might be right up their alley. They seemed pretty excited about it, anyway.

Anyway, that's what's been going on at work. Liz and I have been staying quite busy here on the homefront, as well. With the nice weather finally arriving, we've been getting some work done outside the house. Liz raked the yard to get rid of the leaves and brush and what-not from the lawn. Meanwhile, I spent my afternoons digging up the flower garden in the back-yard. It's all been overgrown with wild daisies and lustrife in the past and I think we're going to just start over. I'm hoping my digging managed to kill a lot of what was there. We'll probably line the bed with brick (much like we did in the front of the house) and plant all new flowers in there.

In addition to the work we've been doing outside, Liz threw a baby shower for some friends of our here in Rochester. Dawn and Eric just had a baby (Owen Reid) the week before the super bowl. I know, it's kinda late, but Liz threw Dawn a shower this weekend. So, while the ladies did their thing upstairs, the guys took over the basement and played games all afternoon yesterday. It was fun, as usual, but it's a lot of work getting everything ready for a bunch of people.

So, that's been about it for my life over the last few days. I've been trying to keep up with my "professional" blog as I've been pleasently surprised by the amount of interest it has received.

As a side note, the Badgers' hockey season is over. :-( They beat Ohio State 1-0 in overtime Friday night and then had to take on Maine last night to make it into the Frozen Four. The Badgers lost 2-1 in overtime to Maine so Maine will advance to the Frozen Four. Of course, with how young the Badgers are, I'm looking forward to another good season from them next season.

Well, I guess that's about it for this morning. I'll sign off and let you get back to your lives.

Cheers,
Corey

A study was done some time ago in which 5 gorillas are put into a holding pen. In the middle of that pen, there is a ladder that leads to a bunch of bananas that are suspended from the ceiling.

Eventually, one of the gorillas begins to climb the ladder to reach the bananas. As soon as he does so, all five of the gorillas are hit with cold water from a fire hose. After a few more attempts at the bananas and a few more hose-downs, none of the gorillas will approach the ladder.

Now, we replace one of the gorillas with a new gorilla. After a little time in the holding pen, that new gorilla begins climbing the ladder to reach the bananas. To the new gorilla's horror, he's attacked by the other gorillas the minute he begins going up the ladder in order to keep themselves from being hosed down yet again. After another attempt or two at the bananas and another couple attacks from the other gorillas, the new gorilla refuses to head toward the ladder.

Next, we replace yet another of the original gorillas with a new gorilla and we find that the same thing occurs. When the new gorilla approaches the ladder, all of the other gorillas attack, including the one that had been previously introudced.

We continue to substitute gorilla after gorilla until all of the original gorillas have been replaced. Now that we have 5 new gorillas, we shut off the cold water and walk away. However, by the next morning, the bananas are still hanging from the ceiling. No gorilla will approach the ladder to go after the bananas in fear of attack. Why do they attack? They don't really know - they've never been hit with cold water, but that's just the way it's always been.

Hence, we have corporate policy - we just do it that way because that's the way it's always been. :)

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What a beautiful day we had here today. The highs today were nearly 70 degrees! I had to turn the AC on in the truck and Liz and I even did some yard work tonight. I checked out the weather forecast for the next week and it's supposed to stay like this for some time - it just doesn't get any better than this.

I doubt any of you know it, but I started another blog elsewhere on the net shortly after I started this one. Unlike this one, which is really just a way for me to keep in touch with friends and family, my other blog is professional - it's all about Java, Java Certification, to be precise. It's hosted by JavaRanch, which is a forum site that I volunteer to help moderate, which covers almost anything and everything related to Java. However, even though my professional blog is still very young, I was surprised to find that it has made its way all over the Internet already. I doubt any of you would find it interesting, but my professional blog can be found here, but I was surprised to see links to it cropping up on sites such as java.blogs and others. I'm sure it seems like a small deal, but I think it's rather neat that there are other professionals out there that have the ability to and gain some benefit from reading what I have to say.

Anyway, enough about all that - what else is going on...

Nate's family just made it into the Clintonville paper last week. They were selected by FVTC as one of a handful of farms in the area to feature and give tours of. Chatting briefly with Nate, he mentioned that they had over 400 people tour the farm yesterday. I only knew because my loving mother cut the article out of the paper and mailed it to me. :)

Liz's folks just made it back from vacation, this weekend, as well. They spent a week down in Puerto Vallarta soaking up the Sun and learning Spanish. :) I haven't heard much about the trip but I'm sure they had a good time...although I have heard some rumors of cigars and tattoos...I'll have to look into that. ;)

Well, I think I'm going to sign off as my wife wants me to play video games with her now. (I sure have a rough life, don't I?) Cheers, everyone - catch ya soon!

Not a real exciting weekend at my house. Like I said, Liz made it back from Austin, but we had a pretty low key weekend just relaxing and hanging out around the house. Liz had been pressing some flowers and ferns for some homemade artwork to put in our bathroom and she was working on that this weekend a bit. The flowers pressed very nicely and they actually look good in my homemade frames. I wish the joints had turned out a bit more smooth, but it'll do, I guess. Regardless, Liz seemed pretty happy with the results.

I spent a good chunck of my day on Sunday on the phone with Nate. He got his new computer up and running, but not without its problems. :( It always seems to go that way when you build a new computer - mine even had a similar problem. First of all, he was having problems running video games online, but he tracked that back to a problem in which the video card was sharing an IRQ with his network card. He got that fixed, but he's still experiencing some degree of instability - when he runs games, they'll run for a bit and then bomb with a system check expection - from that, I would expect it has something to do with memory, but I can't be sure.

When I put my computer together, I was having a similar problem. Any application that I'd run that were graphic intensive (3-D Gaming, Flash, Photoshop, etc.), the system would run fine for a while and then just bomb out. To try to fix it, I tried changing video card drivers, running at different setting and even flashing my BIOS (which is not a lot of fun, let me tell you). In the end, my fix was to "underclock" my processor. Right now, I have a 1.2 GHz processor running at 900 MHz because I changed the clock ratio in my BIOS settings. That fixed it for me, so I'm wondering if Nate is experiencing something similar.

We tried reducing the bus speed on his system and have even gone as far as flashing his BIOS, but, last I heard, we hadn't made any real progress. He was planning on working on it some more last night, but I haven't heard from him yet as to how it is working. I'll probably check in with him again tonight, though.

If none of that made any sense to you, don't sweat it. In short, Nate's computer isn't working and we can't figure out what's wrong. That's about all it boils down to.

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In happier news, I did get a new photo of my favorite nephew. I seem to remember sitting in that same stool when I was just a wee lad. :)

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Today at work, I got no real work done. Rather, Todd called me at about 7:30 this morning and told me to wear grungy clothes because we were going to spend the day remodeling. We pulled out the existing ceiling in our office and aer putting in a suspended ceiling. It's actually coming along pretty nicely now. We've got one half of the room done and have a good start on the other half. I'm guessing a half-days work should finish off the ceiling for us. Of course, we worked on it all day today.

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The NCAA basketball tourney turned out to be a big disappointment this weekend. The Badgers played horribly down the stretch against Pitt and coughed up the game (actually, much like they coughed up all those offensive rebounds at the end of the game). So, the Badgers are out and, as if to add insult to injury, my tournament predictions have gone right out the window. After a rather nice 24-8 showing in the first round, I went 8-8 in the second round and Kentucky, who I picked to win the entire tournament, got ousted by UAB. *sigh* Apparently, being a basketball analyst is not my gig.

In the NCAA hockey world, though, the seedings for the tourney were announced yesterday and the Badgers picked up a 3 seed (there are only 4 seed per bracket). They'll be playing #2 seeded Ohio State on Friday. Just for reference, the Big Ten doesn't exist in NCAA hockey so this isn't really a conference game, as you'd expect. Rather, the Badgers are part of the WCHA conference, while Ohio State is part of the CCHA conference. If the Badgers win that game, they'll be playing the winner of the Maine and Harvard game. The winner of that bracket will move on to the Frozen Four, which gets played out the following weekend.

Anyway, that's about all I've got for now. Catch y'all later.

Hey all.

It's a good day in the McGlone household - Liz is home from Texas. It sure is nice to have a wife again. Of course, I ended up being horribly late to pick her up. Apparently, someone decided it was a good idea to paint new lines on the only highway that runs through Rochester at Noon on Saturday. Brilliant! I ended up taking a much slower route. :( Fortunately, I had extra chocolate with me to appease the wife when I picked her up so it's all good. ;)

The Badgers made it through their first round NCAA matchup last night against Richmond, although I'm pretty sure they gave a lot of Badger fans ulcers in the process. Being down by 13 points in the second half, the Bagders finally decided to kick it in gear and, by the end of the game, the score looked more like a Wisconsin blowout than it really was. Hopefully, they'll take some of that momentum into their matchup tomorrow against Oklahoma State.

I'd also like to take a moment to point out that I did beat Nate by 1 game through the first round with our NCAA tournamant predictions. I finished 24-8 with my picks compared to his paltry 23-9. ;) I'm sure he'll beat me by the end, but I'll take what I can get.

Speaking of Tron, he's got the NUGM running. In case you're unfamiliar with the NUGM (and, unless you're Nate, I'm sure you are), the NUGM is "Nate's Ultimate Gaming Machine." As I mentioned earlier, Nate has been working on building his own computer and has now managed to get all of the pieces together. Just last night, he said a little prayer to the computer gods, held his breath, and flipped the switch in hopes that it wouldn't melt before his eyes. To his amusement, it is now up and running and, as he would say, is "hella fast."

He also told me about a new version of Skype that is now available. In case you don't know about Skype, it's a Voice over IP program that allows you to make long distance phone calls for free over the Internet. In order to use it, you need to have a computer and both you and the person you're calling need to have Skype. You can get it at www.skype.com. It's really pretty cool and the quality is quite nice. Nate and I use it all the time to chat with one another while we play games together online. The only downside was that you could only have two people on the line at a time - that was great for me and Nate, but stunk when it was me, Nate, and Dave. The new version, however, supports 5-way conference calls. We haven't yet tried it out, but it sounds promising - should make for some fun gaming sessions.

If you're interested in running Skype, just go to the aforementioned website and download it. It's a quick and easy installation. Of course, you'll need a microphone so that you can talk, but it works remarkably well and, as I said, it's free. It sure is nice to talk to my buddy for 3 hours while we play games for free. :)

Anyway, I'm going to go back to bothering my wife for a while (did I mention it was nice to have her home again). Catch y'all later!

Not much to update today. Liz comes home tomorrow around Noon - it'll be nice to have a wife again. ;) I even got her some extra chocolate for her return - I'm sure she'll be happy.

The Badgers take on Richmond tonight at 6:20, so you know where I'll be around that time - sitting in front of my TV to watch the game. Go Badgers!

Happy Day after St. Patrick's Day, everyone! :)

Not much new on this front. I spent most of yesterday on the phone with family and friends just catching up and seeing what everyone was up to.

I've got one good story, although it's pretty sappy. I was talking to my sister last night and she was, of course, taking care of Gavin. At one point, Gavin decided he wanted to look at pictures of himself on the computer (just a slideshow) because he seems to find this particularly amusing. Well, while I was talking to Kara, I heard Gaving yell out "Cowey" (hey, it's close enough to Corey for a 20 month old kid) just as he got to this picture. I just about melted. Amazingly, even though I don't get to see him very often, the kid knows what the back of my head looks like. :)

Anyway, besides that, there isn't a whole lot going on for me. The NCAA tourney starts today so I'll probably watch some basketball tonight.

I suppose I should probably put up the answers for yesterday's trivia questions, as well. If you haven't read them yet and would like to, skip this section to find the questions below. Here are the answers:

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1. What is the capital of Ireland?

Dublin. The capital of Northern Ireland is Belfast.

2. What do the three colors of the Irish Flag represent?

The green represents Catholicism, the orange represents Protestantism, and the white in the middle represents peace between the two.

3. Who was St. Patrick - Why do we celebrate a day in his honor?

Patrick, born Maewyn, was a missionary born in Wales. He took the Christian name Patrick and set about spreading Catholicism throughout Ireland, where he is now considered the Patron Saint. There is a widespread myth that St. Patrick drove all of the snakes from Ireland. Although there are no snakes that are native to Ireland, it is often assumed that this myth is an analogy for his work to convert pagans to Catholicism. St. Patrick died on March 17th, 461 AD and that is the day we celebrate as St. Patrick's Day. You can read more about St. Patrick (and St. Patrick's Day) here.

4. In what year did Arthur Guinness begin his business (Arthur Guinness, of course, brewed Guinness beer)?

1759. In comparison, two of the largest breweries in the US are Miller, founded in 1855 and Budweiser, founded in 1852.

5. Which band sings the songs "Sunday Bloody Sunday," "With or Without You," and "Mysterious Ways?"

U2. The band is, of course, from Ireland.

6. Within 10 years, when was the Irish Potato Famine?

The potato famine ranged from 1845-1850.

7. What is the name for the traditional Irish Wedding Ring?

The Claddagh. This ring depicts two hands holding a heart. I found a bunch of pictures online at this jeweler's site.

8. What vegetable were Jack O'Lanterns originally made of?

Turnips.

The story of the Jack O'Lantern comes from Ireland, where the mythical man is known as Jack of the Lantern, or Jack O'Lantern. As the story goes, Jack, not being able to get into Heaven or Hell, was forced to walk through the darkness awaiting judgement day - to light his way, the Devil threw a hot coal to Jack, which he stuffed into a turnip he was eating.

When the Irish came to America, they brought with them the story of Jack O'Lantern but found that turnips were not as abundant as they were in Ireland. As such, the pumpkni became a nice alternative.

You can find even more information about Jack O'Lanters at Jack-O-Lantern.com

9. What is the significance of the Shamrock to St. Patrick's Day?

St. Patrick used the shamrock and its three leaves to teach the pagans of Ireland about the Holy Trinity, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

10. Ireland is roughly the size of which US State: Kansas, Georgia, Washington, or Indiana?

Ireland is closest in size to Indiana.

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So, there you have it - the answers to all of the trivia. Hopefully, I've managed to fill your brain with some extra useless knowledge - such is my goal in life. :)

Anyway, I'm out for today.

Later,
Corey

Well, Happy St. Patty's Day to y'all!

I've actually had a busy week thus far. Lizzy's down in Texas where the weather is around 70 degrees - I can guarantee you that she's loving it. Meanwhile, her folks are vacationing in Puerto Vallarta, where Liz and I went on our honeymoon, so I'm sure they're enjoying some nice, sunny weather, as well. For me - it snowed last night. 8/ Such is life.

Anyway, my busy week...

With Lizzy out of town, I've been working a lot so far this week. I put in about 10 hours on Monday and about 12 yesterday. We're gearing up for a new backfile conversion project this week so there's been a lot to do. Besides what I've normally got on my plate, Todd and I were at work until about 8 last night rearranging the office to make room for some new people we're going to have to bring on for this project. Most likely, those folks will be temp employees or part-timers to help with this project, so it's not a big deal, but we did hire on a woman yesterday that is a full-time employee - she'll be doing sales work. So, hopefully, that will work out well and we'll start making some more money.

I know I said I've had a busy week, but that's been about all for me - just a lot of work right now. In the little time that I have been home, I spend my time cleaning the house and playing video games - you can guess which one I do the most of. ;) Lately, it's been Neverwinter Nights - a nice little RPG that's been around for quite a while. It's based on the old Dungeons and Dragons games and is put together quite nicely, in my opinion. I believe I mentioned earlier that we get a new laptop for Liz - yeah, she's hooked on the game now, too. Last Saturday, we sat around playing the game for hours - me on one computer and her on the other. Yup, that's right, we're geeky and boring. :)

I talked to Liz for quite a while last night - things are going well down in Texas. She didn't say a ton about what was going on, but it sounds like things are progressing nicely. Hopefully, all goes well and she'll be home on Saturday, as planned.

As this is the St. Patrick's Day edition of my Blog, here are a few bits of Irish trivia for all of you out there...

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1. What is the capital of Ireland?

2. What do the three colors of the Irish Flag represent?

3. Who was St. Patrick - Why do we celebrate a day in his honor?

4. In what year did Arthur Guinness begin his business (Arthus Guinness, of course, brewed Guinness beer)?

5. Which band sings the songs "Sunday Bloody Sunday," "With or Without You," and "Mysterious Ways?"

6. Within 10 years, when was the Irish Potato Famine?

7. What is the name for the traditional Irish Wedding Ring?

8. What vegetable were Jack O'Lanterns originally made of?

9. What is the significance of the Shamrock to St. Patrick's Day?

10. Ireland is roughly the size of which US State: Kansas, Georgia, Washington, or Indiana?

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You can e-mail me your answers if you'd like - otherwise, tune in over the next couple days for the answers. :)

May the luck o' the Irish be with ya!

Yeah, so it was a rather up and down weekend for Wisconsin Badgers sports...

The Basketball Badgers mounted a nice comback against the Michigan State Spartans to win their semifinals matchup and then beat the snot out of the Big Ten champs, the Fighting Illini. Of course, all of that simply led to Wisconsin, the number 10 ranked team in the nation and winner of the Big Ten Tournament being socked with a #6 seed in the NCAA tourney. What total garbage! Even Illinois got a better seeding!

Meanwhile, the hockey Badgers fared even worse. After sweeping the regular season against Alaska-Anchorage 2-0-0, the Badgers laid an egg this weekend and lost 2 games to 1 in their best of 3 series. So, it's an early exit for the Badgers from the WCHA tourney. *sigh*

And then there are the "mighty" Pens - after a tie against Philly this weekend, their record over their last 10 games is 6-2-2. Perhaps if they had played like this all season, they wouldn't have been the first team eliminated from the playoffs. Again...*sigh*

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Anyway, outside the world of sports, I'm going to be playing bachelor this week. I dropped Lizzy off at the airport this morning as she's off to Austin, Texas to work at the IBM lab down there. Right now, she's probably at O'Hare waiting for her next plane to leave. She'll be home again on Saturday...I guess it's going to be a good week for the frozen pizza companies. Yet again...*sigh*

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My buddy, Nate (from here-on referred to as Tron, Big Daddy, Big Daddy Tron, or Butthead), is building himself a new computer from scratch. It's been ages since I've done that (I built my current box while I was still in college), but he's been asking for my help a lot lately. I do what I can, but I'm not really all that knowledgeable about it - I've only built 1 computer in my lifetime and I had some help doing that. Regardless, he seems to be having fun so it's all good.

Well, I think that's about enough for me for now. I imagine I should probably get something done today. ;)

Later,
Corey

Well, I took a bit of flak from my sister for putting such an "awful" picture of her on the Internet - perhaps she doesn't realize that the only people that know about this blog are our family...I think we all know what you look like, already, sis. :) Anyway, I've accepted the fact that my sister tried to bribe me with more pictures of my nephew and taken that picture down. You can find brand new pictures of the little guy here and here.

So I'm reeling a bit from the 3-2 loss last night by the Badgers hockey team - now they need to win two in a row against Alaska-Anchorage tonight and tomorrow. Certainly possible, but it makes the road a little harder to travel. And, as we sit right now, the Badgers basketball team isn't shooting so well and trail the Michigan State Spartans by 5 at the half. I guess we need to hope for some comebacks all around.

Liz and I did a bit of shopping today. She's headed off to Austin, Texas next week for work and she's been in need of a new pair of jeans for a while now. With her trip coming up, she wanted to get some this weekend. Well, about half a dozen stores and an hour later, she found what she was looking for.

Now, we're settling in for a nice, subdued night. Watch the Badger game, play some video games, have some dinner - nothing special. Just a little time to relax.

Anyway - I'm out.

Update from the sporting world...

UW Badgers beat the Minnesota Gophers in the Big Ten Conference Quarterfinals, 66-52...

The Pens, coming off their record breaking losing streak, have now won 4 straight (including last night's 3-2 win over Toronto) and gone 6-2-1 over their last 9 games.

And, of course, the UW Badgers hockey team starts off the WCHA tournament tonight against Alaska-Anchorage.

Well, folks - it's been around for quite a while, but I've never tried blogging. I figure it's about time I gave it a shot so here goes. I'm hoping that this will turn into a nice way for those that care to keep up with what's going on in my life especially now that I'm so far from home. Unfortunately, I'm afraid this is simply doomed to become yet another abandoned blog on the Internet. We'll just see how it goes, now won't we?

In the spirit of the blog - here's a little bit about what's been going on in this neck of the woods.

My work has been going well, lately. I recently made it to the 1 year mark with my company and had my first annual review. The best part of that meeting was that my job is being restructured somewhat. Actually, I think it's been this way for a while, but now it's down on paper. The guys I work for realize that I enjoy developing new applications and I'm sure they could see in my work that I'd naturally migrate toward those types of projects. Now, my job description focuses me on that task and since that meeting, I've definitely noticed a greater degree of my work has been in the area of application development, which makes me happy.

Liz is busy as can be at work now that her project has moved into "pseudo-production." IBM is generating prototypes of the chip she's been working on and they're busy testing these prototypes. As always seems to be the case in the world of computers - when things go to production, nothing goes as smoothly as you'd hope. So, with all that's going on, Liz is staying very busy and might have to travel to Texas for a while next week to do some testing in a lab IBM has there.

We got a new computer this week - well, Liz got a new computer this week. :) We got a new laptop from Dell a couple days ago and Liz is happy as can be playnig around with it - that is, of course, except for the time she spends yelling at the games she plays. ;) We picked up a wireless router so she can wander around wherever she pleases and still connect to the Internet. I must say, I've been pretty happy with the performance of our wireless network. Granted, we seldom take the laptop out of the room that the router is in, but it's still nice.

Mom finally sent me some more pictures of Gavin yesterday. He's growing fast. I went ahead and put them up on my website for the time being. You can find them here and here. You know, I can always use more pictures. :)

Anyway, I think that's about enough for one day so I'll sign off from my first Blog entry. If all goes well, I'll see you all tomorrow. ;)