Evan Agee: Live from Richmond Indiana

Well, we got back from our trip without a hitch and it was a great time. We spent most of our time taking trips to a nearby, larger town that contained just about everything we wanted to do. We went to the movies 2 or 3 times, took a trip to the mall, went to Best Buy a couple of times and ate lots of good food.

One of the things I bought with my Christmas money was a Nintendo Game Cube. They had a sale at Best Buy where you got the Game Cube and 4 of the Zelda games with it for $99. So, we bought that and a few other games as well. We’re having a lot of fun with that! I also utilized a deal that Blockbuster video had, which was buy two used movies (or games) and get one free. So, I ended up with about 6 new DVDs as well.

Here are the movies we saw (along with my rating):

• Bad Santa (1/10)
• Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (9/10)
• Minority Report (8/10)
• Elf (5/10)

We had a small delay coming back because our co-pilot got sick, but we still ended up getting back in time. After finally getting back to our house at around 4:00a.m. we were beat. We’re still trying to recover.

I’m back at work now and trying to get back in the swing o things.

Well, this has to be some kind of record for me… I’ve written 3 days in a row. Let’s hope I keep this up.

Well, we had our gift exchange with Kristen’s parents last night and it was a blast. I got some wonderful gifts (including a printer/copier/scanner) and I’ve been excited about them all day today. I couldn’t believe that they bought be that nice of a printer, it was almost perfect. However, it didn’t do the borderless printing that I needed so I took it and exchanged it for the one that did do the prints I needed. I got it setup last night and I’ve been in designer heaven ever since. It makes production quality prints and it scans at the highest quality I’ve ever seen.
So today is my last day of work before our trip and I have to say that I’m very excited. Warm weather, all-day-movie-days and other fun items are on our vaction-to-do list. There will be lots of great food and plenty of fun to be had as we spend Christmas with my dad, step-mom, half-brother, my dad’s 3 brothers and my grandmother. It’s going to be a vacation to remember.

Well, I think that’s actually it for now. I’ll try and post an update from Arizona.

A view of my workspace at Summersault. Yes, it’s a Mac, not a Windows PC. Windows sucks, no matter what 70% of the market share says…

Well, this is a strange occurrence indeed, but I was in the mood to write two days in a row! Today I’m going to focus more on giving an update on my career and office status. So here goes…

Here at Summersault things have been going well. We’ve recently adopted a new productivity model that allows us to better accommodate changes in large projects and also helps us to have more bug-free code from the early stages of development. Part of this paradigm involves working together two people at a time. So, we’ve moved our office around to better facilitate this (see photo on the right).

It’s been an interesting switch because we are all very quite and all you usually here is the pecking of 3 (and sometimes 4) Macintosh keyboards. So, whenever we’re not working together on a project it usually dead silent in our office (which is nice).

Another team-building exercise we’ve been working on is a Skyrail marble track. It’s quite an amazing little toy. It involves lots of plastic pieces as well as cables for suspending the track pieces. The idea (or at least the goal we have) is to create a perpetual motion track that will just keep going. We have a few pulleys and motors we can add-on to the package to make it more possible, but right now we’re just working on a few of the in-box track setups to get familiar with the contraption. Below are a few pictures of the first couple of track iterations we’ve completed. The top row was the first design and the bottom row was our second design. We’re now working on a 3rd design that will feature perpetual motion. Hopefully… Click on the thumbnails for a larger version that you can actually see.

It’s been a very fun way to get your brain going at those points when you really don’t feel like thinking.

We’re also talking a little about an office band. It’s mostly joking, but we’re all somewhat interested in trying to play a song together. We’re talking about making a video about Summersault using a new, very nice digital video camera that Chris bought recently. In the video we’re thinking of showing us playing a song together. Probably not a good idea since only two out of the five of us are musicians… lol.

Another bit of news is our 2003 Christmas display. Each year since I’ve been employed here we’ve made it a tradition to decorate the front window displays to have a wintery Christmas theme and this year was no exception. Partially motivated by the annual window decorating contest that Main Street Richmond holds each year, this year we went all out and the display has turned out better than ever.

As in the past, this year both windows are decorated differently. One side is an indoor theme and the other side is an outdoor, winter-wonderland theme. We’ve got an elf browsing through tech pamphlets in front of his Mac gear on one side and a group of young elves having snowball fights in the other. Overall we’ve been very happy with the turn out and from the amount of people stopping to take a look, the public is pretty happy about them too.

Who knows what we’ll come up with for next year???

I believe that’s about it for now. More on Summersault later.

Well, Christmas time is here and the weather is showing it! Take a look at some photos I took last night while out and about (click on the thumbnail to view the larger version). I love the snow when it first comes, but I hate it when February rolls around and there’s still tons of nasty brown snow.

Kristen and I are getting very excited about our trip and even more excited about going to warm weather for a week. It has been in the mid to upper 70s this month and it’s supposed to be about that warm when we get there. It will be nice. Every time we’ve gone there it’s been kind of a tradition to take walks around their neighborhood and talk. My dad also has a dog now (which he didn’t have before) so Kristen and I are going to walk him every day with us.

Kristen and I went over to Granny and Grampy’s last night to spend some time with them before going on our trip. It was a lot of fun and a couple of the pictures on the right were taken at their house. They live out on a large farm and the view is wonderful. We had a great meal with them and then sat talking for the remainder of the evening.

I also found out something interesting and exciting about our Arizona trip, and that is that one of my other uncles is going to be arriving in time for Christmas as well. This means that my grandmother will get to spend Christmas with all of her children and that we’ll all be together for about a week. I’m very excited about this and I think that it will be great fun having so many people there and so much stuff to do.

Speaking of stuff to do, I’ve been trying to think of activities we could plan for while we’re there. There are a few things already planned: a trip to Arizona Mills Mall (a large outlet mall), A small privately owned movie store where you can buy DVDs for cheap, a good meal at a local chinese restaurant, a “date” for Kristen and I at least once. Outside of that two of my uncles want to take a trip one day into Phoenix to find something else to do. We’ll see what happens.

Well, I think that’s it for now. It’s possible that I’ll post an update from Arizona (hopefully with photos) to let everyone know what’s up. Talk to you soon!

Well, believe it or not there’s not a whle lot new going on… I’m trying to go to open houses every Sunday so I can get a sense of how much houses cost. Hopefully when we’re ready to buy that will help us find a good place and make sure that we don’t get “taken” in the process. I’ve only been to a couple of open houses so far because of scheduling conflicts, but I plan on going to a few this weekend.

One bit of news is that I’m working on a new personal project that I think will be very useful and enjoyable for our family members. I’m working on an online community of sorts for all of mine and Kristen’s families to use to interact with eachother and keep up on what everyone’s up to. The main thing that separates it from most packages like this is that it will be made with useability in mind. So, hopefully my and Kristen’s grandparents will be able to use it without understanding complex software. It’s going to take a while to complete, and I’ll have more on it later.

Kristen and I are gearing up for our trip to Arizona on the 19th of Dec. and I can’t tell you how excited I am to get to that warm weather. There are 5 people going, me, Kristen, my two uncles and my grandmother. It’s going to be a great time!

One other bit of news: The 1st annual youth group gift wrap is getting ready to happen. This is a fundraiser we’re doing to try and raise money for a mission trip we’re taking next summer with the youth group. Basically we’ll wrap your presents for you for a small amount of money. It’s going to be very cheap so we’re expecting a huge turnout.

That’s it for now, I’ll post more when I know it.