Jeff Billimek’s Journal

This morning Jen and I worked a little on the wedding invitations. Yesterday she spent almost all day working on the invitations - they look great.

We drove over to Costco and bought a lot of stuff. We got some groceries including a big container of garden salad, a pallet of mangos (for Mango Margaritas), bananas, salmon, & other things. In all we got a lot of stuff and took it back to Jen’s house.

Once at Jen’s house we dropped off the cold items and quickly made a batch of the very tasty cheese box stuff. We packed up some things and then headed over to her parent’s house.

A lot of people were already there. Today they were having a large celebration for Jen’s grandmothers 90th birthday. We had food and drink and it was a good time. Jen’s dad gave me some authentic ginger ale. It was pretty strong and tasted a bit spicy. I liked it.

Most of the younger crowd sat & ate outside. We talked and had a pretty good time.

It was an absolutely beautiful day today. The sky was completely clear and the air was crisp with a bright deep blue sky overhead. I love days like today.

The afternoon wore into evening and some people eventually left. After a while, Jen told me that some of us were going out to some stores for some reception supply shopping.

Jen, her sister, her Mom, her cousin, aunt, and I went out in two cars. We first went to Old Time Pottery. This turned out to be quite an adventure. We were there a couple of hours and ended up with _FIVE_ shopping carts full of stuff. We bought about sixty plates, salad bowls, goblets, and wine glasses. We also got several other things. Jen’s mom paid for all of it.

The idea is that it is only slightly more expensive to buy all of the items than it is to rent them. I’m not sure why this is.

We still were not done. Next we went over to Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart on a Saturday night is a scary thing. We didn’t find anything to help out on the quest. While we were there I saw two weird sights.

Sitting in the middle of an aisle was a large remote-controlled car. It was a $100 escalade complete with the gold trim, large wheels and actual working spinners!

Next was a g.i. joe sized army toy army four-wheeler type thing. It was covered in huge guns and missile and looked quite menacing. Just below the huge gun turret (which was labeled something like ‘destroyer’ was a large sticker on the side of the vehicle which read “WORLD PEACE IS OUR MISSION!“. I found that contrast quite funny. Their mission is world piece but they are equipped to cause anything but peace. I guess it’s like those nuclear missiles codenamed ‘peacekeeper’.

After this we went to some Thai place near Jen’s house. They were about to close so we ordered food to go. Jen’s cousin, Brian, picked up the tab for the food for all six of us. We went back to Jen’s house and ate around Jen’s large dining-room table. It was getting late.

Scott came over and joined us. He’s staying at Jen’s house while he’s in town from Japan. Jen and I packed up and drove back down to my house and went to bed.

I was pretty busy this week and didn’t get around to keeping up with my journal. I had more work done in my townhouse yesterday which was nice. It’s getting close to being all fixed.

Earlier this week I downloaded the beta client for World of Warcraft. They finally opened up the beta for anyone to sign up for. A lot of people I know have been talking about how wonderful it is (the ones who were in the closed beta).

It took me about a day and a half to download the 2GB client, but it was worth it. I only spent a few hours this week playing the game but it was really fun. I think Blizzard did a great job with this MMORPG. They always seem to do a great job when they make a game.

Little things like the advancement bonus relative to how long you have been away make the game much more friendly to casual players who don’t play all day long every day. They seemed to take aspects from all other MMORPGS and improve on them. I’m pretty stoked and will purchase a copy when it comes out Monday after next.

Jen had off from work today and went out with her Mom & Aunt to look at china. I coordinated with Travis to have him come over at 3:30pm to finish up the work on my house. I made sure Jen would be around to let them in.

Work was pretty quick today. It felt a lot like one of those ’senior days’ in High School where we didn’t really do anything but got to go home early. Today had a bit of a festive atmosphere to it which makes things fun.

At 11am we all headed down to the 10 East conference room where we had our directorship ‘all-hands meeting’. It was scheduled to last about three hours. Management provided lunch, which was catered from a local Mexican restaurant. The food was fair. A lot of people showed up as Alonzo has a much large group ever since he took over PRA.

The meeting was pretty good. Bob M. did a great job with a fun trivia game where we had to identify a person or place for each picture he flashed up on the PowerPoint presentation. Much fun was had by all.

Basically the meeting was a chance for all of Alonzo’s managers to present what they are working on. That part is a little boring.

After the meeting I went back to my desk and fielded a call from Craig as well as Jen. Carole gave us all the rest of the afternoon off.

A few of us went down to the East Point tavern to play some pool. It ended up being Carole, me, Casey, James, Jeff C., Jegan, and Sameer. I had a drink and participated in a few games of pool. It was a good time.

I departed around 5:45pm as I was missing Jen and wanted to spend some quality time with her. I planned on taking her out to dinner somewhere nice where we could relax and take a break from all of the hectic wedding planning.

On my way home I got a call from Travis. He informed me that they were finishing up the painting work now and some cleaning people should be coming by shortly to clean up. He also told me that as per a conversation with Jennifer, the hardwood flooring guys will be by tomorrow morning between 10am and 11am to install the step. After that, everything should be done.

When I got home, Jen was in the living room and the painters were still working in the dining room. Jen told me that we had previously made dinner plans with Ethan and Ellen tonight. That blew my original dinner plans with Jen, but this sounded like fun.

We were supposed to meet them around 8pm or so. Jen was also getting a little stir-crazy from being inside all day. The painters were still around for another hour or two. They did a great job and I was pretty impressed. As soon as they left, Jen and I headed out too.

I drove us up to where Jen lives. On the way we stopped at Bath & Body Works because Jen had a coupon. We bought two candles. I picked one out and Jen picked another out. She got a red ‘candy spice’ scented candle and I got a cool-looking ‘pine tree’ scented one with bits of pine tree needles and cones embedded in the wax. They were around $10 each - pretty expensive for some wax!

We headed over to the wonderful Mexican restaurant next to Jen’s house. Ethan & Ellen showed up after about five minutes. We had to wait about ten minutes to get seated. While we waited, huddled, near the front of the restaurant we saw a kid walk up to the old Ms. Pacman arcade game with a dollar bill in hand. He looked confused at the coin slot and left. I guess he was used to most vending machines taking bills.

The four of us had a nice dinner together. Ethan and I had a lot to talk about as he just recently modded his xbox with the Xecuter3 modchip. We talked about this as well as the wonders of XBMC. Like me, Ethan doesn’t like first-person-shooters on the xbox due to the unwieldiness of the controller. We talked about the recently-available peripheral which allows one to run the xbox with a mouse and keyboard. This would be a lifesaver for FPS games.

I vaguely remember waking up around 5am because Jen was up and out of bed. She quietly left the room. An hour later she came back to bed.

When I woke up later, around 8am, Jen was still asleep. I went downstairs and did some morning reading on my laptop. My old high school friend, Jordan Jethwa, sent me an email. Like others, he looked me up on google and found my website. I sent him a reply email getting him up to speed on everything I’ve been up to since 1995.

Jen came downstairs and I inquired about her early morning absence. She couldn’t sleep so she came downstairs to do some yoga. She seemed to be in good spirits and quite rested.

(Jen using her laptop)

Jen had a bowl of cereal and then we both planted pansies in the planters outside in the front. It was pretty cold outside while we worked on the planters but by the time we were done it looked great.

I left for about twenty minutes to go get the propane tank filled up. After I got back Jen unloaded my car while I worked outside cleaning the grill and hooking up the filled propane tank.

Jen and I had a salad and sandwiches for lunch. We sat outside in the sunshine while we ate. It was such a beautiful day outside today - I love it when the sun is shining, it always makes me happy.

Jen began work on the upstairs closet. We’re moving a shelf down and installing a new shelf above it to provide more room. While Jen worked on this, I started work on the garage.

I moved the car out of the garage and then used a broom to sweep out all of the dust and debris. Next I hooked up the hose and sprayed down the garage floor to get it cleaner. I then used some rags and dried the floor. This took a while.

With the garage floor now nice and clean I popped open the can of concrete paint (battleship gray) and painted a border around the garage with a 4″ brush. I then used the brush to paint over the worn area where the tires normally rest - that way it will get two coats when I paint with the roller.

I used the roller and liberally applied paint to the floor. It took about an hour total to get it all done. I was pretty happy with the results. Even though it was still wet, I could tell that it was more even and thicker than the first coat of white paint I put down months ago.

Jen was pretty much finished with the closet by this time too. She needed the new shelf we bought yesterday to be trimmed more. Jen wanted to use the table saw downstairs. She made the first of four cuts but it didn’t sound so good. I suggested that I cut it by hand with the hacksaw as I think the saw & blade she was using is more suited for wood.

I took the shelf out on the deck and used the hacksaw to make four cuts. That completed the closet work with the exception of installing some clamps to hold the last piece to the wall. We planned on getting those supplies from Home Depot later today.

We took a shower, packed up the car, and loaded my large old ‘rooms to go’ blue sofa in the back of my Explorer. I had to leave the rear gate open as it was too long to close with the sofa inside. I used several bungee cords to secure it and secure the hatch closed over the sofa.

I drove to Jen’s house by going the back way long South Cobb Drive and then highway 5. It didn’t take too long to get there. We unloaded the sofa and then had some cereal because we were hungry. Jen had some frozen berries that we added to the cereal. It was pretty good!

We drove over to Jen’s parent’s house and dropped off six boxes of sixty wine glasses for her Mom to return to Old Time Pottery. We also picked up a fax from a caterer with an estimate. The estimate was in line with our budget so we are now planning on using a caterer instead of doing the food ourselves.

Back we go to Jen’s house. Along the way we stopped at Home Depot to pick up those clamps. We loaded up her sofa (we basically swapped out mine with hers) and drove back down to my house and unloaded the sofa.

On the drive back to my house Craig called. He was pretty excited about World of Warcraft. He hopes that we can play together on the same server once it goes retail. I hope we can too - that would be fun.

I made dinner while Jen worked on the closet. We had dinner together downstairs at the dining room table. After we ate, we moved the table back into the dining room. Now the place is starting to get back to normal after the four-month-long ordeal with the water leaks.

We went upstairs and organized the now completed closet. I helped a little but also sat in a corner and worked on my laptop, but kept Jen company.

Jen and I had cookies for desert. We also had wine. Wine and cookies isn’t as bad as it sounds. We cleaned up downstairs and then went to bed. We both did a lot today.

We spent the night at Jen’s house last night - probably one of the last times we’ll sleep there since almost everything of hers is moved out now. I left for work super early in order to beat the tough traffic.

Partly because I got into work early, I ended up getting a tremendous amount of stuff done today. I actually really enjoy it when I’m both pretty busy and I get things done. Being busy with little to show for it isn’t fun, and it’s also not nice to be bored with nothing to do. I got a lot done today and was in a good mood because of it.

In between doing all of my work today, I was also busy with the integration testing effort.

Scott, Melissa, Jegan, and I went up to RuSan’s for lunch today. I’ve been looking forward to this sushi buffet ever since we planned on it last week. It was great. I ate so much it hurt. I certainly do enjoy sushi.

The rest of the afternoon was related to work with data repair and integration testing. I left work around 4:30pm.

Jen ended up staying home today because she felt a little sick. When I got home, she was unpacking kitchen stuff. We went up to the town center mall area to meet up with Katie to look at the tuxedos again. On the way there we stopped at Steak & Shake and each got a milkshake.

Before meeting Katie, we stopped at the mall and went into the first jewelry store we came across. This was our chance to get a first-hand look at wedding bands in person. Platinum sure is expensive!

Next we went to after hours formalwear and looked at the tuxes again. We didn’t make any changes. This didn’t take long and afterwards we went to Jen’s house to pack up the loveseat.

From there we went back to the barrett parkway area to Taco Mac. We missed the last two Thursday’s so it was nice to get out on Thursday again tonight. The whole gang showed up this time: Lisa, Alan, Lynne, Tom, and Terry. We had a pretty good time hanging out with everyone.

Jen and I left first and went back to my place. Actually this whole evening wasn’t very good and I hope there aren’t many days like this one anymore.

This morning I sat at the dining-room table and ordered a new 250GB SATA HD from newegg.com. I’ll use this to rebuild freeside. I also got a couple of other things as well. I’d like to get an LCD monitor (17 or 19 inch) as well as a new video card for the computer downstairs.

We played, for the firs time, Halo 2 for about an hour. We played in cooperative mode and it was pretty fun. I had a really tough time with the controls and spent half of my time looking up at the ceiling or down at the floor like a complete newbie. I really need to get the keyboard & mouse adapter and I can really kick some butt in that game.

Jen and I left my place around 11am. We raced over to ‘On the Border‘ to meet Mom and Jim for lunch. The four of us had a nice lunch together. Restaurants give you so much to eat it’s hard to eat everything they put in front of you.

After lunch we followed Mom & Jim over to a local jewelry store that they recommend. Jen and I are looking for wedding bands. John, the owner, showed us his wares.

Jen found a ring that she liked. It’s a platinum band with a bit of a pattern on the edges, and it looks nice with her engagement ring. I’m interested in a simple rounded platinum band. I can’t get much into the fancy designs as I like the simple ‘classic’ look better - much to Jen’s chagrin!

I like platinum because I like the ’silver’ look to it (who likes yellow gold these days?). I also like platinum over white gold because it’s heavier. For whatever reason I like the denser feel to a run than the relatively ‘lightness’ of gold. Of course gold is such a great conductor of electricity that a gold ring might have better survival applications in case I was stranded somewhere and needed to use it in a pinch for a conductivity-device, but how often does that happen?

John also showed me some non-precious metal rings in his stock. He had some titanium rings which I didn’t care for mainly due to the color and design, but also that they are super light. They feel like plastic rings they are so light. He explained that some people like lighter rings for some reason.

The other alloy-rings he had in stock were made out of tungsten carbide. The name sounded really familiar and then I remembered that I saw an advertisement for rings made out of that material in one of Jen’s bridal magazines. The ad showed some dude ice-climbing in an extreme environment and explained that tungsten carbide is so strong that nothing can scratch it. At first I thought it was silly, but it stuck with me.

He only had two of these rings and they were of an unusual style in which the ring itself was a bit concave. It also seemed to me that they were slightly bluish in color compared to the other ’silver’ colors of platinum and white gold. Despite these things, I noticed that the tungsten carbide rings were heavy like platinum which I like.

We inquired about prices. He is going to give us a good deal (basically whatever his ‘cost’ is, but platinum is still plenty expensive. The simple rounded ring that I like (6mm) is about $1000 for my size (that’s with the phat discount). That’s pretty crazy just for a simple ring. Jen’s would be much less expensive even though it’s platinum because there is much less material given that it’s a woman’s ring.

I asked him to check on the tungsten carbide to see if they have any other styles. He’s going to call me early next week with more info.

After this, Jen and I parted ways with Mom and Jim. We went over to the tuxedo place (After Hours formal wear) to look at the tux again. Jen had a sample of the material used in her dress to make sure it matches the ivory short correctly. It did, so we didn’t change the shirt. We changed the tie from a black tie to an ascot.

Once we finished up there, we went next-door to Starbucks. Jen ordered a great-tasting holiday peppermint mocha. I ordered what I thought was iced tea that I like so much. Apparently they stop serving cold tea in the winter even if it’s hot outside, so instead they decided that I wanted hot tea instead. That wasn’t so fun. Jen, who must have been feeling sympathetic, let me trade my tea with her.

From Starbucks we went back across I75 to American Signature Home furniture and bought that chocolate coffee table we looked at last weekend. It’ll be available for pickup on Friday.

After all of this we drove up to Jen’s parent’s house and dropped off two of those cool black office chairs with the movable platform. While we were there, her Dad insisted that we go look at a couple of new houses that they are building in the neighborhood just to get an idea for future home buying activities.

The house was huge. The main level was all hardwood floor with tons of rooms, a large screened-in deck, and a three-car garage. It sat on a large lot and the kitchen was all decked out with granite countertops and all stainless-steel appliances. It was $450k. The next house was similar but a little more.

We went back to my house. Jen dropped me off and immediately left again. She made plans to go show shopping with her friend Kristen.

I planned on working in my journal while watching Survivor. I did end up watching the Tivoed episodes of Survivor, Enterprise, and Air Emergency. But at the same time I spent literally the whole time researching tungsten carbide rings. I found out a lot of fascinating info on the material and decided that I want to go with tungsten after all.

Jen came back around 6pm. She called on her way to my place and informed me that we are having a dinner party at 8:30pm. We didn’t have much time so we went to Publix and got some stuff for tonight.

Once we got back to my place I scrambled to clean everything up, as it was a bit of a mess. While I was rushing to do this, Jen started prepping the food. We ended up making bruschetta, mashed potatoes, green beans, grilled salmon, and peppermint ice cream for desert.

Lynne came over first. She came straight from work and brought a bag of cheetos. I tried to get some music via the XBMC but because the fileserver downstairs is offline, I tried to host the music from my laptop. I don’t know why, but the music was skipping a lot. I think XBMC was having problems since I just upgraded to the latest version this morning.

Lisa and Alan came over next. They brought two party-sized bottles of wine. I made some mojitos but realized that we didn’t have enough rum so there was only enough for three small drinks. Lisa and I had the mojitos while Jen and Lynne had wine.

Alan was in a talkative mood and we talked about home theater stuff as well as video games. He and I talked outside while I worked the grill.

The five of us ate dinner in the dining room. It was a nice atmosphere and it was fun to entertain again. Jen and I seem to do a good job at hosting small parties.

After dinner we cleaned up a little and then sat down to watch ‘Elf‘ (Lisa and Alan brought it over). Jen and I were pretty tired and both of us started to fall asleep as we watched the movie. We put the movie on hold and had desert. The peppermint ice cream pie was absolutely wonderful. Jen made it in an Oreo cookie crust.

This rush of sugar woke me up. With our newfound energy, we all decided to play Halo 2 (that was actually the reason for this dinner party). Lisa sat out and the remaining four of us played the ’slayer’ mode deathmatch. I knew that Jen was going to wipe us all because of her extensive Halo experience.

The four-person game was a lot of fun. It was a bit tough to play split-screen on my small 27″ TV, but we managed. It sure would be nice to have a large 42″ plasma display mounted above the fireplace.

We needed up playing for quite a while. It was a lot fun and I actually started to tie Jen on most of the games. The best fun was when I found a hovercraft-type ship called a ‘ghost’. It had a gun and I could shoot people as I flew around. This was by far the best part of the evening. Lynne and Alan didn’t fare as well and I think they got a bit frustrated.

Eventually around 1am we stopped and everyone went home. It was a very busy day and I had a great time with the spontaneous dinner party.

I accidentally left the pager downstairs last night and vaguely heard it chirp around 1:30am. I got out of bed and went downstairs to check on it. I had missed the first page and they were now paging a second time. I opened up the laptop and logged into work to see what the problem was.

While I was logging in, I got a page from Carole. They paged her when they didn’t hear back from me. I regretted that Carole had to be woken up over this. I paged her back assuring her that I was working on it.

Like with all of the other pages I got this past weekend, it was the stupid timeout exception informational messages that they always paged about. I checked the system to make sure there were no problems, just to be safe. When I was satisfied that everything was ok, I called them back to have the ticket closed.

Before going to bed, I composed an email to the TCC requesting that they only page about those timeout exceptions when we have more than 200 in a thirty-minute window. I tried to explain the details behind the error so the request made sense.

Jen and I woke up around 6am and quickly got ready for work. Jen is working regular hours this week and wants to get to work early so she can leave early too.

Work today was pretty slow because a lot of people are out of this office this week on account of Thanksgiving. Carole paged me around 9am asking that I work with a guy in the RPAD group because she’s stuck at a dentist’s office and couldn’t call him.

James, Casey, and I went to blanchards for lunch today. The food wasn’t that good.

I left work around 4:30pm and got home after Jen. This was a first. The weather today was most miserable. It was dark and dreary and raining all day long. I absolutely hate weather like this.

We each had a cup of hot tea (gingerbread flavor) with honey added. It was really good.

Jen and I had plans to meet a baker to talk bout wedding cakes. She came over to our place around 5:45pm and brought some samples. Jen and I looked through some books to show her what design we like best. We also tried the samples to get an idea on what type of icing and filling we want.

Once we finally picked everything we negotiated on the price. Including the hefty delivery charge of $45, the total came out to be around $165.

After she left, Jen and I made a list of things to buy from the grocery store and then drove over to Publix. The rain was awful so I dropped Jen off at the front.

While Jen got some supplies from the produce section, I got lunch meat & cheese for sandwiches. I don’t know why but they had all of the squash in a separate location than the rest of the produce. We got supplies to make the wonderful butternut squash soup.

Once we got home we started on dinner. I worked on peeling and cutting the squash while Jen worked on the rest of the ingredients.

We had a nice dinner together. We sat in the living room on the nice new sofas and ate our soup together. Jen had some white wine. We watched the recent episode of ‘Desperate Housewives’ and it was good.

Jen and I went to bed early. Before I went to bed I worked on sending out some emails.

Whenever I’m in a long meeting I usually make a list of things to do. The longer the list usually means that the meeting was too long. I came out of a 2-hour meeting yesterday with a 20-item list.

These lists are great because it allows me to organize and prioritize things to get done at work. It’s a great way for me to collect my thoughts and I get a lot more done as a result.

About six of us went to ’slice’ for lunch today. I had two slices of pepperoni pizza with onions.

On my way home I stopped at Publix to buy some groceries for dinner tonight. When I got home, I did a few things on the computer and then started to clean up the house in preparation for the dinner tonight.

Jen got home around 6:15pm. The house was mostly cleaned up by the time she arrived and I had lit all of the candles so things looked pretty good.

We started getting dinner ready. I opened a bottle of Malbec wine for us to drink while we prepared dinner. Jen and I really like the taste of Malbec. According to Larry, the family wine expert, ‘malbec & cabernet franc are fine varietals (malbec along with cabernet franc, cab. sauvignon, petit verdot, and merlot are the 5 grapes used in bordeaux)‘

The Rosewill 19″ LCD monitor I bought from newegg arrived at Jen’s office today and she brought it home. With some time before our guests arrived, I took the box downstairs and got it set up and installed.

When I first powered it up, I was pretty disappointed in the picture quality. I couldn’t figure out what was wrong. I made sure I was in the native resolution and the correct refresh rate.

I thought I had a lemon until I realized that the ghosting may be due to the VGA extension cable I use. Once I removed that, the image quality improved and was nice and sharp.

Katie came over around 7:30pm. Jen gave her a tour of the house. Jen’s parent’s came over a little while later. They had not really seen the place before so it was nice to show it off.

I grilled up the sirloin steaks as well as salmon while Jen prepared the mashed potatoes, green beans, and salad. The five of us ate dinner together in the dining room.

Dinner was good. I wasn’t too happy with the steak but I’m a bit picky about beef. After dinner we sat in the living room and talked. Jen, her Mom, and Katie did some wedding planning stuff and I talked with Jen’s dad.

He brought over an old laptop for us to use to play mp3s from. We checked it out and it seems to be a pretty good solution.

Jen made the wonderful peppermint ice cream pie for desert. It came out a lot better than the attempt I made at Thanksgiving.

We went to bed around 11:30pm. I was pretty tired from all of the wine.