Clever

It was Travis' b-day yesterday, so we went out with his parents for dinner.  Then we went out to see Les Miserables at the 5th Avenue Theatre.  I had seen it before on Broadway with the last cast performing there.  This was pretty comparable, with a lot of the same sets and even the same actor playing Jean Valjean.  It was an excellent show and my only real complaint is that I didnt feel Fontine had a powerful enough voice for the part.  She seemed to back off on some of the parts.  Cossette was pretty hot.  Eponine, my favorite character, was cute and she sang the part well, but I wasnt in love with her as I was her Broadway counterpart.

 

It is a very good show though and if you have any chance of seeing it while it is in Seattle I suggest you do.

I had a great weekend.  On Friday, I played some poker.  Lost forty bucks, but then came back to lose only five.  Five bucks for four hours of fun is not bad.

 

Went to the Folk Life festival with Aaron on Saturday.  Pretty cool festival, not overrun by hippies as I thought it would be.  Sure the hippies were out in force, but the mainstream folks where just as strong.  I really dug the different sounds, especially the bluegrass and zydeco stuff.  Nothing like seeing a band steel guitar, a mandolin, a washboard, and a bass instrument made out of a wash basin, a stick, and some cord.  Also the guy kinda sounded like Jack Johnson.  Lots of kids playing too, and while some seemed to be pimped out for their cuteness, some were just really into it and were excellent young musicians. 

 

Aaron and I raided the Zone tent to get free zone bars, and then we hit the drum circle and rocked out for awhile.  We had to feed the parking meter, then we hit happy hour at the Queen Anne McMennamin's.  After drinking some beers (and Aaron tried some very potent Barley wine that he was enthralled with), we decided to go to Portland the next day just out of the blue.  We hit folk life some more and then picked up Eric's brother and hit another neighborhood bar, Sully's, which has good beer prices and great food (try the grilled cheese!)

 

Next day we were off to Portland.  There we went on a McMennamin's tour, hitting four different bars, all cool.  My fav was the White Eagle Rock n' Roll hotel and bar.  They had open mike night and there was a lot of good music, mostly acoustic, but with some techno and folk.  Every Sunday is Open Mike night, so if you get a chance, head over there.

 

Next day we hit the Old Town Pizza which is supposed to be haunted.  While we didnt find any ghosts the atmosphere is cool.  We also hit the Portland Art Museum (PAM) which is huge.  We then walked around the city and headed home, making sure to hit one more McMennamin's in Centralia on our way out. 

 

My weekend was spent drinking lots of beer, basically, and thus totally rocked.

yes, I am posting about my lunch.  My friends from suggested it as a joke, well why not follow through.  I had the Stuffed Baked Chicken at the Coho Cafe today.  Freakin' awesome.  I was sad when it was all done.  Highly recommended.

My hero passed away Sunday night.  I am going back to Vegas to be with my family.  My grandfather was the most wonderful person I have ever met.

 

 

Well I have successfully put out a beta of the long delayed Code Review Tool.  For months I have been working on this, porting it over to .Net 2.0, as well as our shared code framework.

 

I am pretty proud of the result, even if it is late.  It shows off new tech like WinForms 2.0 and ClickOnce.  A lot of things are easier in the new WinForms, like DataBinding, MenuStrip and ToolStrips, SplitContainers, Applicaiton setting (User settings, yay!), WebBrowser control, and GridView.  Except for some strong naming issues ClickOnce is a breeze.  That coupled with the general sweetness that is Visual Studio made this a fun project (when I could find time to work on it).

 

But I have to admit there is much room for improvement.  For instance the new ContextMenuStrip is very hard to work with if the target is ambiguous, like in a TreeControl.  If you need to know which node they right clicked on, you have to figure that out yourself (like handling the MouseClick event, testing for right mouse button, and storing the selected node for later, which is not guaranteed if something happens between storing the node and context menu item being clicked) or by creating individual menus for every node (a waste of memory).  Same goes with the tab control.  I can add a strip to the TabPage, but then it only works if that page is the Selected page.  I can add it to the tab control itself but then I dont know what tab they selected.  Finally I had to do a funky workaround looping through all tabs, and seeing if the left x, y point is contained in GetTabRect.  Is there an easier way that I just didnt stumble across?

 

Another complaint is with the tab control.  Why was this not updated?  The styles are very old school, I can't dock on any side but the top and have it look right, I cant change the font for just the tab part without affecting all the tab pages contents, cant do a nifty little x on the right side or drop down to indicate tabs that are not shown.  Basically I want it to look like VS.  Sure I can write a custom control but who wants to do that?  When will we learn that we should not release a new version of VS without at least updating ALL the controls to at least look as good as the old VS or Word or whatever style is en vogue.  We did this with the MenuStrip and ToolStrip, why not the rest?

 

How did I arrive here?  Those people that knew me back in Vegas would not recognize me now.  Back then I would roll out of bed around 1 or 2 in the afternoon, head to work as soon as I showered and grabbed some food, and worked till like 4 or 5 at night. 

 

Some nights, if I felt work was going fine, I would go see a movie and come back.  Or just go out drinking instead...  point is that I normally averaged 50-60 hours a week, but everything was pretty laid back.

 

My friends and family thought I would fail at Microsoft.  Not because I wasnt talented enough, but because they thought I couldnt handle getting up before noon every morning.  Turns out that is not too big of a deal for me.  But I find myself working 80-100 hours a week, and not getting everything I promised done and still falling behind.  Some of it is because we really dont have a PM for our current project, and I am doing that job too for the most part.  The other part is that after the Fuji project I was just plain burnt out for 2-3 months.  During that time I didnt work on my commitment because I just didnt have the energy for them, which dug me a nice little hole. 

 

I try to manage my commitments and drop stuff, but I get sucked into other things.  And when I am not working, I feel guilty as there is more work to do.

 

My question is, how did I get here?

Well, it looks like Senior Travis is moving out.  He put an offer on a place down the road and it was accepted.  So now I have to decide what to do with the condo.

 

My options are many:

 

1.  Sell my condo

 

It looks like I might do pretty well if I sell it.  The unit below me just went for 480K and doesnt have a view.  I have a pretty nice view so I think I could get between 550-600 for my place.  Maybe more if I invest in some improvements.

 

But then what to do with the money?  Do I buy another place in Seattle, preferable cheaper this time? Do I rent a place in Seattle (move in with Travis in his new place or get an appartment of my own), and buy a place down in Vegas, where the market is doing really well?  If I do that I can get my sister as a renter and not pay a mortgage really, but I would be throwing away my rent money and probably have to pay a capital gains tax.

 

2.  Keep my condo

 

To do this I would have to refinance, as I have an interest only loan at the end of my ARM.  Also, I would probably have to find a new roommate (preferably female ;-).  The place has appreciated pretty well, so if I refinanced I might do ok.  I really like my condo, it is comfortable and I have a nice view, and plenty of space. 

 

Problem with all this is that my credit is not great for various reasons so that limits my options a bit.

 

Anyways, I dont want to do any of this until my project settles down in May. Thoughts and ideas?

Not sure if I have told this guy enough that he is my hero, and how he embodies every good thing I want to be when I grow up...