My time with Layne is soon ending...

I've learned a great deal and enjoyed working with this fine company but all good things must come to an end.  Layne is moving their headquarters to Houston, TX and while I was graciously invited and even offered an attractive compensation for moving... alas my family and my wife's family are here in Kansas City and I couldn't bring myself to go.  I trust I will find another Kansas City based company to call home.  I don't really have a firm end date though so I am in a bit of a nebulous situation what with the desire to start job hunting and at the same time the potential that I might be here until the end of the year.  My retention agreement says December 31st OR whenever my manager releases me... that could be August or October or Dec 31.  I will say that the entire company for the most part should be in Houston by early September (many will be there by the end of June actually including my manager) so the odds of them needing a remote Sys Admin, especially after they've replaced me with a Houstonian doppelganger seem at best, small.

I've been polishing up the old resume though so I will be ready to hit the streets as soon as I get an official last day notification (assuming it is other than December 31).  If I get a whiff of said notification, I think I will jump the gun and get some start or other without waiting for a letter.

Oh yeah, a week from tomorrow the wife, the kids and I are all flying to El Salvador for a week long missions trip through our church!  It will be a fantastic experience for the kids (DeAnna and I have been to Colombia as well as Costa Rica on similar trips although we also are obviously quite excited) as they have never even been on a plane before much less out of the country.  I'll be sure to post plenty of pics and document the trip here.

On that note... the CIO just told us we could all head out early for Memorial Day weekend so I'm taking the offer.  Adios!

Fire at will...

silver versus dollars

Working at a remote office this week...

Lakeland, FL: This office is a fabrication plant that makes all kinds of cool stuff. Right now they are working on some gigantic reverse osmosis systems that can pump over a million gallons of purified water per day!

It is fun seeing the different remote offices and what they do even though the actual network migrations (the reason for my trips) can be a bit a stressful. The fact that the temperature here is 79 degrees with low humidity, sunny with a nice breeze doesn't hurt either.

Fall gardening 2011

Well so far so good. This is my first attempt at growing cool weather crops... in cool weather. Planted everything the third weekend in August and everything seems to be coming up pretty strong. Since I had good luck over the Summer with sugar snap peas and since my family uniformly LOVES to eat them, I dedicated the two small beds entirely to peas. The larger bed I split three ways into carrots, lettuce and spinach (all considered cool weather crops).

Thank you neighbor's pine tree for the free mulch.

I used a legume innoculant on the snap peas which is supposed to produce a steady stream of nitrogen throughout the growth cycle... seems to be doing its job!

A young carrot top... before his career tanked!


A baby lettuce... the lettuce and spinach both have been somewhat frustrating in that even though I planted the seeds all at the same time, the sprouts just came up haphazardly over the course of a few weeks, so I have plants in varying stages of development.

Spinach... my favorite salad.

One of the larger lettuce plants (still only half grown)

The big uprights are from my tomatoes... just never took them down.

The sugar snap pea vines are looking very good and I hope we have a bumper crop (the peas freeze well so we'll get stocked up for the winter).

A sea of carrots! I made sure to use phosphorus this time and NO extra nitrogen... last year my carrots were giant bushes of green with pathetic little orange lumps the size of grapes under the surface.

I will report again when I have something to harvest.

Political Spectrum quiz

My Political Views

Right: 5.97, Libertarian: 6.11

Political Spectrum Quiz

I've considered the possibility that my Ron Paul posts on facebook irritate more people than enlighten...

SO just for my own edification I shall post the new ad here in my personal space...