Well Its Been A While

So its been quite a while since I blogged. I have not done much lately other than work. Been pulling lots of OT lately - about 7-10hrs each week. Hopefully we will finish the design stage soon so we can get back to coding. I enjoyed the design stuff to begin with but of course coding is there its at.

Had to buy some tools lately. My car would not start a few weeks ago and I ran the battery dead trying to start it. Borrowed a charger and extension cord from Mark and got it cranked no problem. Then promptly went and bought both of my own. Sears had a nice sale on the charger and Walmart had a 25ft heavy duty extension cord. Then last Monday I had a flat on my truck when I went to leave for work - took the GTO instead. Borrowed a air compressor from Mark to pump it up enough to get to the tire shop. Ended up being a bad tire valve. Due to all that I went and bought a air compressor of my own today from Sears. Its a nice 5 gallon 125psi model that included the basic hose and a few tire tools and was on sale for $169. I like it so far and all seems to work fine. It did take a few tries to get it an air tight connection on one end of the hose but all is fine now.

Happy New Year!

Well another year has come and gone. Hope everyone had a good New Year!

More Tires and Work Like Most

Well I just got back from getting new front tires on my GTO. They were in BAD shape. After seeing them off I was kinda surprised at how bad they really were. One had a bulge that was 6" long, 4" wide or larger and came out of the tire a few inches. It was so deformed that I thought the new tires were larger overall then the old. But new tires fixed the problem and she runs great now. Next step is to get the throttle cable replaced and the emergency brake worked on.

Other than that all I do is work - like everybody else. On the weekends I relax or maybe do something with Mark and Bren. We have started a little thing on Thurs so its Picklefish Thursday without the Pickelfish. Nice place with good food and drink specials.

Well its about time for the Bama game so I'm going to watch that. ROLL TIDE!!

Tires and Drought?

Well I moved down on the 15th. The trip was far from uneventful. It is normally about an 8 hour drive but the trip down was far far longer. We had 3 tires blow on the trailer that was hauling my car. The first before we hit the FL state line. The second about 30 minutes outside Crestview, FL and the final a few miles outside of Crestview. The first tire shredded completely but we were back up in a few minutes thanks to the spare. When the second one went we caught it before it completely shredded but had lost the tread. It took about an hour and a half to get 3 new tires (2 of which were mounted). The third one lost its tread just outside Crestview so we went back to the same tire shop and had the 3rd tire mounted. After 3 new tires we hod no other complications down. It just cost of several hours overall.

Once down here I found out that the garage for my car wasn't going to be avaliable for another day so it had to sit in the parking lot overnight. No probs thankfully. My furnature didn't arrive till Monday instead of on Sat as we had planned. But it finally arrived and the apartment is finally set up.

Then by Monday afternoon the rains began. It had been a drought down here but I think that the ~19 inches of rain fixed that problem. Roads down here are still underwater in some places. The lake in our apt complex rose by about 4 feet and the parking lot next door was under about 1.5 feet of water. No flooding problems in our complex though. Mark and Brenda's house was fine as well but the streets in their neighborhood was under a few feet. His boss' house had 6 inches of water inside.

The rains did let me know that my truck windshield was leaking so Safelite is coming out to fix that this afternoon.

I start work on Monday so I'm looking forward to that. Till the next post...

Done Done

Well IT is completely complete. No almost, just about, basically, etc complete. The IT of course is my thesis. I turned in all of my manuscript copies with all but two signatures on Friday and got the final two (from the same person) today.

In case people do not know the cost of printing and binding, I will break it down. At a minimum, you will need 7 copies (one of which must be on 100% cotton paper) to cover what the Graduate School and School of CIS require. This number is also with a bare minimum number of committee members - 3. You must then tack on however many personal copies you want.

The cheapest place around for printing was Staples at $0.065 per black and white sheet on 24lb paper. All other places (Office Max, Office Depot, Kinko's) only printed on 20lb paper and charged extra for "premium" paper. The 100% cotton printing at Staples was $0.16 a sheet with the paper included. (USA Bookstore sells the same paper for ~$11 for 100 sheets.) Overall my cost for printing was ~$70. (I had 10 copies total)

Then we get to the binding fees. $10 per copy unless you want/have to have a CD in it and then its $12. The microfilm copy is not bound but does cost $50 to be put on microfilm. Overall my cost for binding was $158.

I plan on using the slim jewel cases with Light Scribe CDs (makes a nice cover) for my CDs that overall will cost me ~$12.

Thus, overall the cost of my thesis was $240 just to print and bind it.

But it will be well worth it in the long run and I'm so glad its done. Now I have a life again.

Why Flying Somtimes Sucks

Well, I am currently sitting in the Melbourne airport with Aaron. Our flight is at 4:17 pm eastern time but thanks to rain in ATL it seems to be 2.5 hrs late and this will leave at 6:45 pm. Our plane is grounded in ATL and who knows when it will come in here. The really crappy thing about flying through ATL is that any problem effects every later flight.

Our connecting flight in ATL leaves at 7:16 pm eastern time. Thus, we might miss that flight and who knows if/when we will make it back to Pensacola. At times like this it really sucks to fly even with the nice (normal) quick times.

On the way here, our flight from ATL to Melbourne was delayed by 40 mins causing about us to get here about an hour later.

In other better news, we did find a place to live - the Legacy at Hibicus Park. We have a 3 bed/2 bath apartment with a garage for my car. They are newer and a bit more expensive than the other places but it's centrally located for both mine and Aaron's commute to work. The kitchen is fairly large with a lot of counter and cabinet space. It has a microwave, dishwasher, fridge, stove, pantry, and they added a free washer/dryer for our lease duration. Other amenities include a pool, sauna, tanning area, front door trash pickup, and free printing at the business center. Its all on the 2nd floor (as soon as you come in the private door you go up stairs) and has a great view of the lake between the buildings. (Not the best lake but nice nonetheless.

Hopefully I will make it home today.

Master

Well its all over but the red tape. I defended my thesis yesterday. I thought everything went well and my committee also thought everything went well - the latter was very important. Did a little celebration with Julie, Doug, Casey, and BJD last night. Much fun indeed.

I have the next week to get the document ready for the First Submission Deadline. So within a month I should be completely free of all thesis work. WOOOO!!!!