Not Entirely Sure

I'm not really sure what I want to write about today even if I really shouldn't feel the need to write about anything in particular as this is my blog after all, but I want to write about something, so I think I may just ramble for a little while and see where things go.

This morning I sent of my resume and portfolio to yet another potential employer. Yesterday I followed up on other jobs that I had either applied for or saw new listings for and all of them had been "filled" so I went my merry way towards the next ones on the list. This particular job is actually here on campus in the mechanical engineering department. They are looking for what seems to be a junior-ish web developer to help with the department website. I took a look at the website and can't really see why they need someone but I'm not going to complain.

I called up the contact within the department to ask if they were still looking for someone and they said that they were, so I got a few more details and sent off my information. According to the job listing the only real requirement is that you have a proficient knowledge in at least one of the following programming languages: HTML, CSS, Javascript, PHP, or mySQL. Lucky for me they weren't another employer looking for Flash and .NET programmers, and also lucky for me that I think I could consider myself at least proficient in three or four of the languages asked for.

Seems like I fit the bill, at least at first glance. The contact in the department told me that they would review my resume and portfolio and then most likely call me to set up a preliminary interview. It's a waiting game now I guess.

I'm cruising right along in my efforts to re-read the entire Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan before the next book comes out on November 3rd. I'm almost finished with the third book (my favorite) and will be trying to finish at least 2 per month for the next couple of months. I may want to try and cram as much in before the start of school as I can if possible because I've got a couple of literature classes, but we'll see how things turn out. There are also a lot of other things happening this summer that take up time too.

Conquer Club Trivia is doing as well as can be expected. I still haven't found a lot of time to stock the system with questions (there are only about 300 or so right now), but Russell was kind enough (and much more tolerant with me than I probably deserve) to help me find a bug in the system that was allowing repeat questions when it shouldn't have been. It turns out that I had made another what we now call "Caleb Mistake" in an entirely different place that was backing things up wrong. It's now fixed though, so that is good.

The first day the site was live I had 96 unique visitors, and the next day I had 156, but that has been the record so far. Since then things have tapered off rather dramatically and it seems there are about 25 to 30 visitors a day, which is respectable for something that only fits such a small audience anyways. If I can get more questions in I think it will help a bit, but like I've said before, I don't expect it to be anything that is wildly popular, especially since I'm not making any money off of it in the long run.

I finally broke down and asked my first every question on the BYU 100 Hour Board this week, something I've always refrained from doing on some sort of strange principle before, but I had a fun question after going to dinner with Holly the other day and figured since we personally know one of the board writers I could address it to them personally and have a little fun with it. Now I just have to wait and see how long it takes for them to find the answer I guess.

Which leads me to another thought. The BYU 100 Hour Board is old, like really, really ancient, and as far as I can tell hasn't had a proper face lift in quite some time. It has the appearance of a website built in the late 90s in my opinion and doesn't seem to function all that well according to the writer that I know. Obviously given my current area of interest this has me pondering and considering the idea of making a website with a similar approach, but in a much more aesthetically pleasing way. We'll see if anything substantial comes of the thought down the line, but it's at least something to think about.

Jack is crawling, but that certainly seems like old news at this point. He now stands up next to the furniture with only one hand and steps to the side so he is barely holding on. He also has learned to push boxes against walls and use them as step stools to get to drawer and cupboard handles that he has been a long time in pursuing. Even yesterday I found him unexpectedly hanging onto the cross-bars on the back of our kitchen chairs with both feet off the floor and on the cross-bar between the chair legs. No fear, that's my son it seems.

He is also getting a bit better at sleeping through the night. Sometimes he still wakes himself up, but now he doesn't necessarily need to be fed in order to get back to sleep. Many times I can just rock him in the rocking chair for a few minutes and he's out cold again. If he does eat, he doesn't chow down on six or eight ounces of formula like before, he's lucky if he makes it through two before nodding off. I take it as a slow and steady move towards not eating at all during the night and sleeping more soundly because of his heavily increased physical activity during the day.

Solid food have been an interesting endeavor to say the least. He loves his rice cereal, but basically refuses any sort of "baby food" that we've tried. We have gone with peas, applesauce, peaches, pears, squash, and a couple others, but his reaction is to spit it back out, clamp his mouth shut and give us a look of, "Are you seriously trying to feed me that?" So, we eat a lot of rice cereal, share Daddy's mashed potatoes from time to time, and luckily we've added oatmeal to the list of things we'll eat as well. I'm thinking he is just going to go straight from the rice cereal to the real people food, sort of like Cymbre did back in the day.

I guess that is enough rambling for one day, I'll try to get some new pictures of Jack up sometime soon for everyone who likes to see those. Maybe some from our recent trip to the zoo or something.

Summertime Plans

This summer will prove to be interesting for many reasons. The foremost of which is the fact that little Jack is around and he'll be learning some great new tricks in the next 3 or 4 months such as crawling, sitting up, eating solid foods, and perhaps even a smidgen of standing up or possibly walking. All of that is sure to keep me busy, but several other things will as well.

Holly is taking a jaunt back to Redlands for basically the majority of the month of June to see Carlie graduate and then spend some time showing Jack off to family and friends. I'll be staying home to work, which means I'll have a couple of weeks to myself, not a common occurance and likely time that can be spent to do some great projects of my own.

I'm not taking any classes this spring or summer so I can concentrate on earning some money to put away towards our second child due this fall, and because I can only take so much school in a row before I start to get far too stressed out and everything begins to blur together for some reason.

Some things I'm hoping to accomplish in the summer months include:

1. Finish Conquer Club Trivia
2. Finish Writers Camp
3. Upgrade Wants & Wishes
4. Redesign otissito.com
5. Read the Wheel of Time books
6. Learn Javascript
7. Read some programming books
8. Finish off my Conquer Club tournaments
9. Organize the kitchen cupboards
10. Organize the storage closet
11. See some great movies
12. Find a new project to start

Jack's New Playmate

I know that most of the people who read this blog already are privy to this information, but I just realized that I had not blogged about it yet, so today is the day to do so it appears.

Holly is pregnant.

Three words is all it takes to really open your eyes sometimes. Was it planned? Nope. Was it even close to planned? Once again, nope. Does God have a curious sense of humor? I'm convinced of it now. I always suspected, but now I'm 100% convinced.

According to what I've been told by Holly she is due on approximately November 22, 2009. For those of you who don't remember, Jack doesn't turn 1 until December 15, 2009....... think on that for a little bit.

All in all, I can't do much but say to myself, "Looks like there is some sort of plan you weren't entirely informed of. It can't be that bad, so let's just roll with it," and so that is what I'm doing. I do however think it quite awesome that Jack will never be able to remember a time in his life that he didn't have a sidekick.

Decluttering My Life, Step 1: Deactivate My Facebook Account

Yep, I did it. I deactivated my Facebook account a couple of days ago because the concept behind that site has officially becoming boring to me. There is never anything all that exciting going on with Facebook except for the poorly designed layout changes from time to time, and the site has grown far to big for its britches if you ask me.

It was one thing when Facebook was only available to university students. At that point it held a certain mysterious appeal for me, knowing that a bunch of hormone induced teenagers wouldn't be cluttering my wall space with their absurd speech patterns was quite comforting to say the least.

Then Facebook sold out. They opened the doors to everyone and their MySpace crew, and things went downhill fast. Then was the introduction of "applications" and I knew my time was growing short.

I hung on for a while longer, knowing that my wife enjoys seeing the activities of my friends almost more than I do from time to time, but in the end, it was a waste of my time, a waste of society's time, and overall a waste of time in general.

I've got so many things on my plate right now that I'm looking for ways to simplify, adjust, and come to grips with the most important things to occupy my attention. Watching constant "someone saw someone and it made that someone so happy the other someone wanted to smile at someone" statuses is the epitome of inane in my mind. Thanks, but no thanks.

Ask yourself this: If Facebook has grown to the point where you are now considered a rebel to not be on Facebook, don't you think that tells you something about the world nowadays?

Conquer Club Volunteer Coordinator

Well, remember that job I was talking about a week or so ago? It's finally been announced to the public and so now I can inform everyone that I have taken a job with my favorite website (Conquer Club) to be the Volunteer Coordinator.

The position is an "admin" position, which means my name is now red on the forums, and I have to work closely with the other admin, including the website owner, to help Conquer Club improve and grow moving forward.

My specific job responsibilities include the following:

• Conduct moderator team meetings
• Train new moderators
• Develop new policies as needed
• Organize and implement various site projects
• Manage forum permissions and forum settings
• Support site moderators in their work
• Perform quality checks on moderation team

On top of that, I will be working on any other stuff that the owner decides to throw my way. There is a lot of work to do that has been on hold for a long time. I've been working for about a week now and am loving every minute of it. The job allows me to enjoy the site I love while being paid, and it also lets me use my talents for organization and project management.

Also along those lines is that the job is online, which means it is far closer to my career of choice than sitting in a department office on campus answering the phone each day. I don't do any web development with this position, but there is potential for it down the road, and it is the type of job that helps build a lot of contacts for things in the future. Who knows, if the site continues to grow perhaps it could turn into a career all of its own.

Holly just shook her head when she found out I had gotten the job because way back when I first started playing games on CC I told her something along the lines of, "If I ever get the chance to work for this place and actually get paid I'm going to take the job without even asking you first, even if it means we have to move to Canada." She laughed then, but now she enjoys the fact that I can work my shifts from home and help out with Jack if she needs me to out of the blue.

I'm thrilled, and I don't know how many people can truly appreciate that, but I'm thrilled nonetheless.

For Your Information

Anyone using the email addresses listed below to contact me should be advised that none of them work anymore. I have finally condensed myself down to two addresses, one for my Google accounts and applications, and one for more professional work uses.

These ones no longer work:

cg.flanagan@live.com
caleb.flanagan@hotmail.com
tournamusprime@hotmail.com
tournamusprime@yahoo.com
tournamusprime@aim.com

If you want to get ahold of me use either of the following two addresses:

cg.flan@gmail.com
calebflanagan@otissito.com

Also, some of you may wish to know the proper way to contact me via instant messaging services. Another post will follow shortly outlining those details. Thanks.

Moving In

As many of you already know, Holly and I decided to move back to Wymount last weekend. The decision was based on a variety of reasons that I'm not going to expound upon, but it should suffice to say that having our own place is a benefit to us in both the short and long term.

The move went pretty successfully. Holly and I had everything packed by Friday afternoon and then I rented a U-Haul for Saturday morning and had a few guys from the Wymount ward help me load it and then unload it. All in all it took about 3 hours to get it done from start to finish.

We moved back into an apartment that has the same floor plan as our very first one, which meant unpacking took very little time at all. We knew where to put everything off the top of our heads and didn't have to sit and wonder where things should go. Along with that, we got rid of a ton of stuff, which means we have a lot more "growing space" for Jack as he gets older and starts accumulating some of his own stuff.

There are still a few things left at Grandma Chatfield's house, like the crib which I'm going to go and take apart to move over this evening, and some of our pictures that we will certainly want to hang up over here at the new place, but we are almost entirely settled. I know that Holly is liking having her friends around again, and I feel like being closer to campus is going to be better for us in that I have more of a chance to come home if I need to some days between classes.

I'm sure I'll post some pictures soon once we officially have everything over here.

Busy Week

Most of you know by now that Holly and I are moving back to Wymount this coming weekend, which means that we've been spending a lot of time packing and trying to plan things out properly. Holly packs several boxes each day, and then we take them over to the new place each evening when I get home from work. The goal is to get all of the small stuff over there without having to get a massive truck to do it. So far it is working out nicely.

On Saturday morning I'll get the smallest U-Haul available and have a few guys from the ward help me move the big furniture like the bed, couch, and crib, and then we should be mostly done. Thankfully if there are a few straggling items, Grandma Chatfield isn't going to care if we have to come back for them over a couple of days next week. That takes the edge off the stress of getting everything done right at once.

The weather has picked back up, which means I'm back on the Federation of Joy every day, which pleases me to no end. I like being able to feel like Holly has the ability to go somewhere if she needs to, and do things with her sisters or someone without needing to wait for me to get back from campus. The other plus is that by living in Wymount again I can come home for lunch if I have time between classes because the scooter makes parking next to the buildings I need to be in so convenient.

Also been working on a massive project for my CHum 489R class this past week or so. Russell is my technical advisor and has been very patient with me as I worked through a few hurdles. However, the past two days I've managed to clear the hurdles myself as I am finally understanding how a while() loop is supposed to work, and the proper ways to refer to objects and join database tables together. It is nice to feel like I'm learning something and having it stick, even if it seems like it is always a small piece each time.

I have to give a presentation on this project tomorrow morning and I'm hoping that I have enough done to keep myself from looking like a slacker/fool. Russell seems to think that I'll be much further along than anyone else, but until I see that I'm still a little bit worried. The core of the project site is working now, but I'm hoping to tack on a couple of "bells and whistles" before the presentation tomorrow to try and make it a little more complete. I do like the style that I've applied to the site though, I'm quite proud of that. It looks very modern and sleek. Once I have it up on an actual server (curse you slow BYU people) I'll post a link so people can see what it looks like so far.

Let's see, what else is going on... Oh, I was sick, then Holly was sick, and Jack wound up catching a little bit of it, but nothing too bad. He even learned how to shoot snot out of his eye the other day, which I told him was not a skill that we really needed to practice a whole lot if he didn't mind.

That's all of the big news for now, mostly just trying to get my list of things done each day and help Holly as much as I can when I get home in the evenings.

Christmas Break, Boredom Style

After Holly had Jack on Monday of last week we had to make up our final exams and get things finished for the semester. I took my last final on Saturday afternoon and was officially finished with schoolwork I needed to do until the next semester starts.

The only problem with this is that now I have found myself in sort of a state of limbo with not much to do until school starts again. Sure, I do have Jack to occupy some time, but he sleeps most of the time and can't really go on adventures with me because the doctors don't want him outside in the cold. I could start building a new website, but I have to keep my slate free for when class starts so I don't have too much to do. I could load up on Conquer Club activities, but I'm phasing myself out of that stuff so that I only have a handful of games and nothing else.

It has left me with a bunch of small things I'd like to do but nothing I really want to motivate myself to do. Christmas will be fun with all of the presents and fun things to do, but other than that I don't really have a lot to fill my time with.

Perhaps I'll unwrap something on Thursday that will help.

So, Apparently There is a New President of the United States

I didn't write this post yesterday, the day after the elections were finished because I figured there would be too many people already posting about the election results, but perhaps lots of people will be talking about it today as well, who knows.

Barack Obama is the next President of the United States. I can't say as that I'm extremely pleased with the outcome, but I'm not going to complain either for a variety of reasons. If John McCain had won, I'd be in pretty much the same boat. I don't think either of them will make that great of a president, and after watching the campaigns and seeing the state of the country, I don't know that the alternatives of Hillary Clinton and Mitt Romney would have been all that better in the long run either.

What really gets me entertained however is this prevailing attitude, especially on BYU campus that the end of the world is now near because a black man is president. People, please, get your heads out the the sand and pay attention. He isn't going to bring about the Apocalypse nor the downfall of the United States as a whole. I'm pretty sure all of the fatalistic Obama haters out there are gonna be wishing all they had to deal with was Barack Obama when the Apocalypse shows up someday. Honestly, learn how to think for yourselves for once.

I'm not a big fan of all the ideas that Obama has for changing the country, and I'm pretty sure tha half or more of them won't ever come to fruition, so I'm frankly not all that worried about it. Universal healthcare is a mistake in this country however, that I will say. Everything else... meh, it truly doesn't effect me all that much from what I can see. At the moment I don't make enough money to care about taxes raising or lowering, and I don't own a gun, and so on and so on.

Interestingly, so many people seem to think that their lives are going to go down the crapper because Obama won (although I'm sure it would be the same with an opposite result). Strangely though, people often seem to look past the immediate scope of their lives and how they live to see how it could maybe, possibly, if the stars aligned correctly, and it was a full moon, affect them down the line.

Perhaps I'm the black sheep in the world and nobody else thinks that approach is a bit excessive, but I'm mostly concerned with my immediate future and unless Barack Obama declares martial law and forces me to eat sauerkraut for three meals a day at gunpoint, my current situation, and that of the next 24-36 months is not going to change much. Maybe when the time comes for the 2012 elections I'll be in a life situation where the issues at hand more direclty effect me, but until then, I'd like to have French Toast for dinner.

Intramural Softball

After work last night I went home and took care of a couple things before picking up Joe Hardie from the Museum of Art (he offered to feed me dinner while Holly is gone, so I figured I could offer a ride home from work). We had some delicious baked potatoes and applesauce for dinner and then got changed really quick before going over to the softball field here at Wymount for a bit of practice with our team from the Elder's Quorum.

Normally, I don't feel that I can contribute a whole lot to an intramural team here at BYU because I really am not in very good physical shape, but I do play floor hockey (at least until they discontinued it) because I can play goalie and do an alright job. Football, soccer, and basketball are probably a little to intense for someone like me, but I figured I could probably hack it alright with softball this summer.

So, off I went to practice with a bunch of guys from the ward. I did alright in the fielding aspect of things, but had to have Gerald Smith remind me of a bunch of the intricate things about where to go with the ball in certain situations. It's been a long time since I played any organized baseball or softball, so I needed a lot of reminding. I got the hang of it by the end of the evening though, and even made a couple of decent plays. As a matter of fact, I came thisclose to turning a double-play, but it was not meant to be. Perhaps next time.

Anyways, I'm a little bit sore, but not as sore as I thought I would be going in, and I feel like I can contribute in the games without being a detriment next week, so we'll see how it goes. I'll have to make sure and have Holly take some pictures at the game that I can post for all to see.

Blast from the Past

With Holly gone for several more days I have been trying to fill my time with things to keep my mind off of being lonely. Today, I decided to go read some of my old blogs from the past and I stumbled across this funny entry:

December 17, 2006 - My Wife Takes Me for a Sedative

Holly has discovered recently that it is easier for her to fall asleep either at night for bed, or in the afternoon for a nap if I am there for her to cuddle with. I think it is pretty cool, what self-respecting husband wouldn't? Honestly. She says that I trick her into lying down for a quick rest and then I get up 45 minutes later to do something and she is down for the count for the next 3-4 hours. So, I mean it when I say that my wife takes me for a sedative. I am the perfect sleeping pill. How cool is that?

A Day with Julie

So, I took the day off of work today to just do my own thing, get some projects wrapped up, clean up the house, and generally do a few things without any other distractions. Of course, that meant I didn't need to set an alarm for this morning, so I slept until I felt like waking up, which was at about 9:00am. I got out of bed, went to the bathroom real quick, and then was about to get a drink of water when I heard a knock on the door. Turns out it was Julie looking for somewhere to hang out while she waited for her apartment to get a new paint job on the walls. Since Julie works so early in the morning she tucked herself into the bed with Gunner and went to sleep until about 2:00pm this afternoon.While she was sleeping I finished the dishes, took turns on CC for Holly, Night Strike, and myself, balanced the checkbook, finished folding all of the laundry, wrote up a massive proposal for Twill about a potential CC blog being added to the site, chatted with Holly for a few minutes on the phone, read a few chapters in my current book, cleaned up a few cupboards, and watched a little bit of Sportscenter. I would say that was a pretty productive day.When Julie woke up she made herself some lunch and since has settled in to watch Transformers. I've been watching bits and pieces of it with her while I do a few other things around the house. We've just been chillin' and taking it easy all afternoon.Hopefully I'll be able to keep up my productive streak going into the evening hours when I've finished everything else. I'm hoping to do tournament updates later this evening, but we'll see how that turns out. I've been having trouble getting to my account on Photobucket for the past two days.

Weekly Wanderings #2

It's that time again, time to sit down and hammer out a recap of the events of the week so that people don't think all I do is sit around and play Conquer Club all day.This week has a few more things going for it than last week. First off, I have developed a bit of a routine at work now so that I don't sit around trying to decide what to do next when none of the graduate instructors need anything. I will do the answering of emails and photocopying first thing when I get to the office in the morning, and then I'll take CC turns, and then I'll cruise around on ESPN for a little while, then and tournament updating that needs done with short reading breaks and such, and then when I have finished all of that I just kind of putter around online looking for web design tutorials and such.I didn't get much done in the way of web design practice done this week, but that is okay I suppose. I did try to work on some of the javascript exercises that Russell sent to me, but it appears my javascript skills are far below what they are supposed to be. I guess my teacher didn't cover it nearly as much as some of the others do, which is helpful for Russell to know in the end.My birthday was this week, as most of you know from the previous post. I'm 24 years old now, which doesn't feel any different from when I was 23, but I guess that isn't really news to anyone. However, by the time I get to be 25 I will have been a dad for almost 6 months, so that should prove to be the difference between 24 and 25 I guess.I also went to see Speed Racer, which was not disappointing, but not mind-blowing either. The way they made the film was certainly visually stimulating, but the races were the best part of the movie hands down. Everything else seemed to be somewhat secondary to that, and the nice part was that there was 1 more race in the movie than I had expected there to be. It was longer than most movies of its kind, but I enjoyed that I think. I don't think that Holly was particularly impressed by Speed Racer, but she did enjoy certain parts of it, so that was good.Finally, American Gladiators made its return for Season 2 this week, and I am thrilled. I loved that show as a kid in England when Dad would sit us all down to watch it, and I love it even more in its modernized version. Bringing that show back was one of the smartest moves EVER by NBC.