Jeff Billimek’s Journal

Last night I didn’t sleep very well. I tossed and turned a lot and woke up many times throughout the night. I had trouble falling asleep. I think I was nervous about the contract signing today. I don’t know why I would be nervous about that though - everything is in order and there should be no problems.

We found out today that our Senior Vice President, Mike Childress, is leaving Delta Technology to take a job with EDS in Texas. It should be interesting to see what sort of upper-management shuffle takes place in light of this event.

We examined the results of the server swing from yesterday. The results weren’t that stunning. We’re now trying to figure out where the bottleneck went, as it doesn’t look like the tuxedo servers are at 100% CPU utilization anymore. Maybe its DB2 CPU usage or I/O somewhere - we’ll find it hopefully.

I went to the 10am core team leadership meeting this morning. In that meeting Alonzo talked about the updated schedule for our 1.3 release. It looks like everything has been pushed back a couple of weeks.

For lunch today about six of us went to a new café style place next to the new burrito place we went to yesterday. I had the meatloaf with macaroni & cheese, and mashed potatoes. It was ok.

Mom called today to find out about the townhome. I told her that I’m going to be signing a contract for it today at 4pm. She asked if she could swing by to see it while I was there.

At 2pm I went across the street for the First and Final requirements review meeting. Not everyone showed up yet so I waited with Keith and Sarah (both from Accenture). Sarah told me about the funny Quizno’s commercial with the dancing hamster-like creatures. I remember Jen telling me about that too but don’t remember the commercial.

Steve C. never showed up so we didn’t have the meeting after all. I went back to the A3 building and worked for another hour before leaving at 3:30pm.

I went straight to the townhome place. Laura was already there in Bernie’s office. We sat and talked for a few minutes and then Mom showed up. Bernie gave me the key and I took Mom and Laura over to the townhome to look at it again. Mom really liked it and was excited about the whole prospect.

We went back to the sales office and went though the thick stack of paperwork for me to read and sign. We were there for almost two hours. I signed a ton of papers and handed over a check for $2,000 in ‘earnest money’.

This was a big step for me. The wheels are in motion and unless something bad happens, I should be a homeowner soon. I’m happy with my decision.

The next step is for them to send me a copy of the contract and then I’ll give a copy to my lender. From there we schedule a date for closing - probably April 29th or 30th.

Afterwards Mom asked if I wanted to get some dinner. We went over to Papacitos off of Windy Hill road. I had a crown & coke and the cheese enchiladas. It was pretty good.

When I got back to my apartment, I wrote a couple of entries in my journal. I also watched some queued-up TiVo shows. On ‘The Screen Savers‘ from TechTV, they had a cool recipe and demonstration for liquid nitrogen ice Cream. With the liquid nitrogen, you can make ice cream instantaneously.

Liquid nitrogen ice cream:

1. Mix 1 liter or 1 quart each of half-and-half and heavy whipping cream in a bowl.

2. Add a cup of granulated sugar, three eggs, four or five teaspoons of vanilla, and a pound of preserves (strawberry or peach work well).

3. After whisking for two to three minutes, add 1 liter of liquid nitrogen directly and stir with a wooden spoon until the mix becomes solid.

4. Allow excess liquid nitrogen to boil off and serve.

Jen called me shortly before I went to bed. We talked for a little while on the phone which was nice because we haven’t talked on the phone a great deal - it’s usually be online or in person (and there’s nothing wrong with that).