rand(Andy Trommer) » General

Casino Royale

atrommer — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 08:42:05 +0000

Pics from the UNTHSC Casino Night held at the Fort Worth Zoo are below.

We had an excellent time blowing our fake cash on roulette. Why roulette? Because it was freaking impossible to find an open seat at the Blackjack tables, and the guy running Craps couldn’t count a 7 or an 11, making the game rather fruitless.

After gambling it all on red, we decided to leave. Of course, we couldn’t just walk out of the Zoo. No, we had to wait 20 minutes to ride the kiddie train back to the entrance. We rode a fancified (stretch, according to Donald) golf cart on our way into the park. This was far too uncool for us to use to exit the park, though.

After getting off the fridged train, we attempted to leave. We potentially may have dropped a torch on the ground, and possibly might have set off an alarm in the Primate house (note to Fort Worth Zoo, don’t leave buildings unattended with a bunch of eager grad students around), but we survived and made it back to the car without any casualties.

After bumming around a bit at Ten, we wandered back to Ethan and Donald’s to watch portions of Dark Knight.

I’m now quite tired and ready for sleep to eat pizza and then sleep. Yay pizza. Basically anything cheese related == goodness in my mind.

Domo has invaded Target

atrommer — Sat, 13 Sep 2008 19:49:34 +0000

Domo has invaded Target, originally uploaded by andytrommer.

3 (or 4) day weekend

atrommer — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 01:52:47 +0000

Lately, Angela and I have been toying around with the idea of going back to school. It seems like a good time to do it, but it leads to more questions than we have time to answer – namely, what to get our masters in, and where to do it.

We don’t have any intention of moving or changing our work situations, which unfortunately severely limits what programs we can take part in.

At work, we got to skip out have an offsite meeting Friday with a vendor at Tour 18. Very nice course, even though I had some healthy challenges getting a small white ball to travel not only in the right direction but with the right distance.

Cathy came down to join us Saturday, and she’ll be here for just about 2 weeks. It’s always fun having her around. We went out that evening, and had Ethan and Donald over to our place Sunday night for games and adult beverages. Angela, of course, documented the whole affair.

New MacBook and the old PowerBook

I also was a lucky boy and got a new laptop to replace my aging and very broken 12″ Powerbook. Apple has a back to school special going on so we decided on a new white MacBook. Nothing fancy, but it’s such a nice change over the Powerbook. Just the fact that the battery works (and works well) is a huge improvement, let alone the zippiness. And just in case anyone is wondering, yes, of course this is a “family” laptop. Why, Angela even has her own account on it (although she has yet to touch it).

Today was a successful exercise in relaxation. Not so much for those folks in LA with Gustav bearing down. Looks like we might see some rain later in the week, but nothing like what New Orleans saw. My Dad pointed me to Storm Pulse, a very functional storm tracking page with a clean UI.

This week promises to be hectic as we’re doing some transition activities in the team as well as coming up on some major deadlines for deciding the direction of one of the projects I’m on. Angela gets to go back to a “normal” 8-hour day week AND she gets Friday off. Hope she manages to survive!

AHHHH! I’m afraid of the coffee!

atrommer — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 00:49:30 +0000

AHHHH! I’m afraid of the coffee!, originally uploaded by andytrommer.

Almost attacked by a turkey at work.

atrommer — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 22:33:11 +0000

Almost attacked by a turkey at work., originally uploaded by andytrommer.

Camouflage fail.

atrommer — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 17:27:14 +0000

Camouflage fail., originally uploaded by andytrommer.

Poor mr. Stickey hiding in plain sight.

As seen at b&n

atrommer — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 00:51:03 +0000

As seen at b&n, originally uploaded by andytrommer.

Three Days of Birthday

atrommer — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 04:24:21 +0000

Angela really overdid it. Honestly. In the end, I’ve had a wonderful three days of being spoiled.

On Thursday night, Erin dropped by on her trek to KC. This led to some good Isis/Jabber time and also let Erin and I catch up over some tasty BBQ. She also introduced me to a fun new game called Alhambra. Good times, although I must say that I enjoy Settlers better.

On Friday, Angela treated me to baseball, beer, brats, and blowing things up, all in the same event! We went to a Fort Worth Cats minor league game. Their logo, no kidding, is FTW, and boy did they, 9-3. We even made friends with a completely wasted old man with a net loss of teeth. It’s always fun to carry on conversations with people who might as well have a mouthful of marbles. I like it because I can invent in my head whatever I want them to say and the conversation carries on just about the same.

I was really surprised on Saturday. Angela took me out to get a massage which nearly put me to sleep the rest of the afternoon. Thankfully I came to, because after that we went to Truluck for an amazing dinner. I had the sesame tuna this time and Angela tried the mahi-mahi. Both were fantastic. We finished the night watching Wall*E. I found it very cute and incredibly human, which is funny considering it’s a movie about two robots on Earth with only a couple lines of dialog between them.

Today, my actual birthday, I largely spent in bed being lazy. This evening, after some grocery shopping (and cake-buying!!) we met up with Griff and Courtney to watch Wanted at Movie Tavern. I really enjoyed the film, and it was a great end to the weekend.

Sadly we all head back to work tomorrow. Thankfully, Angela and I will be meeting up with my folks in two weeks to spend a short 3 day vacation on the coast. Time to start looking forward to that.

Reunions

atrommer — Thu, 29 May 2008 04:40:02 +0000

The past two weekends have been jam-packed with excitement.

Two weeks back, we went up to KC for Cathy’s graduation, Mom Chao’s birthday, and to catch up with the gang. Angela, of course, documented the whole occasion in a timely manner, so I’ll spare you the play-by-play. However, I had a great time with Katie, CC, Scott, and Shernuk. I love how, no matter the time that has passed, we can fall right back into old times.

Scott, Andy and I watched Iron Man and I was happily surprised at how fun it was.

Last weekend, Brandon came in town to (hopefully) get some much needed relaxation in. We ate out at BLT Steak Friday night. It was decent, but the flavors were a bit too raw for me. With that said, they had amazing gruyere popovers.

Saturday was shopping and a BBQ where we got a chance to meet Eric’s fun girlfriend, Brittany, as well as meet up with David and Anni. I made ridiculously large burgers. I believe some even referred to them as “hockey pucks”. Either way, no complaints, and no food poisoning. Angela made her mom’s potato salad (tasty!) and a fruit salad.

Sunday, we met back up with David and Anni for lunch at Central Market (note to self, we frequent CM way too much for lunches, but it’s so good!). We then split up, guys and girls, with Anni and Angela off to shop for clothes while Brandon, David, and I went to Modia for my home theatre gear.

After getting lucky on some prices, I was able to get the exact set I wanted. I ended up with the Rotel RSX-1057 paired with 2 B&W 685′s. They sound amazing, especially considering that I only had the built-in speakers in my TV to compare to! It still pains me that I spent that much on speaker cable, though.

This week will wrap up my 4 weeks of 4-day-weeks, and I’m certainly going to miss it. Angela and I don’t have any time off planned until July, and work is looking to be very hectic over the next month, so I’ll be sure to use my new speakers for some relaxing music.

This weekend, Angela and I are planning on seeing the Sunday Concert in the Garden, and I suppose I should finally mow the yard.

Pickle cicles. Not kidding.

atrommer — Sun, 11 May 2008 17:38:58 +0000

Pickle cicles. Not kidding., originally uploaded by andytrommer.

Found there in central market and it made me shudder.

Time to Breathe

atrommer — Sat, 12 Apr 2008 23:56:27 +0000

The past month has been so hectic that I’ve neglected this blog. Angela has been keeping things documented so well over on her site that I haven’t been pressured into posting.

Last month we took a short but exciting trip to LA to see friends and family. Angela’s relatives recently moved there and it was really great to see them. We hadn’t really had time to see them since our trip to Taiwan in 2004.

Since then I have been busy at work, and so has Angela. Jabber is as goofy as ever.

I picked up work on a new project in my free time, eXPlainPMT. We use the tool internally at work, and it’s giving me a good codebase to play with Rails again. In fact, I just put up a demo environment for people to explore on.

After getting frustrated with not having proper inputs in my car for my iPod, I finally replaced my stock deck with a new Pioneer. It sounds good and has a dedicated USB input that actually handles my 13000+ song library on my iPod very well. It does, however, rely too much on the remote for navigation, so I’m not looking forward to the inevitable day that I lose it.

In the garage, we finally cleaned out our old crap left over from the move in 2006 and I put some shelving up. I think we gained a good 2′ of extra garage space on each side.

Inside the house, I got around to painting the kitchen nook. It looks much nicer now, and since the paint has set in it no longer looks like the old Kraft Mac and Cheese nuclear waste orange. I quite enjoy it.

I’m rambling, I know, but it’s been so long. Last weekend we had everyone over for the KU-UNC game, and it was a great win for the Jayhawks. On Monday I met up with Ethan, Donald, and Jeromy to watch the championship. Amazing game, and I’m still in shock over Mario’s last second 3.

Alright, it’s time to actually get some work done.

View from office

atrommer — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 18:33:34 +0000

View from office, originally uploaded by andytrommer.

The snow is blowing in!

Still Life

atrommer — Sun, 03 Feb 2008 20:00:58 +0000

Last night, Eric and I saw Cloverfield. I left the theatre quite indifferent to it, but after letting it all soak in I’m a fan. Yes, the handicam cinematography got old in the middle of the film, but they always stayed true to that POV, which ended up working well towards the end. I didn’t want closure when the title credits ran, but I did want… something.

I haven’t seen the first ep of Lost for this season yet since Angela has been working nights. That means I can’t even sign into Google Reader until then, since most of the feeds I read probably mentioned all sorts of details that I’d rather hear organically.

In the mean time, I found this great short, Still Life. It’s about 8 minutes long, but it’s very worthwhile. Enjoy!

AtomFilms.com: Funny Videos | Funny Cartoons | Comedy Central

Evolution of note taking

atrommer — Sun, 20 Jan 2008 06:16:31 +0000

I have horrible handwriting as anyone who has worked with or received a note from me can attest. When we are young we are taught how to write uniform characters at about 1″ heights. To this day, this is the only legible writing you’ll find from me. Cursive was worse because my mangled script could be slurred together into unintelligible scribbles with errant dots and crosses thrown in for good measure.

My dad worked for IBM, so all throughout my childhood we had access to a computer and a fancy typewriter. As much as I could, I typed everything.

Fast forward to high school. In-class essays quickly ensured lots of face-time with the teacher as I would be asked to read large portions of my writing. Teachers weren’t amused.

This little bit of background was hopefully a nice segue into what has become an odd circle of note taking.

K-11th grade: Ahh yes, the spiral notebook. These were always impossibly unreadable – including by me

12th grade: My Handspring Visor! I had to really convince my parents that I could spend my money on this at the time. I scratched down notes, made TODO lists, even set due dates for my assignments in the calendar. In the end, all I really did is play Infrared chess and Pong with Kent Thompson.

12th grade – Freshman: The IBM Crosspad was, I believe, meant for fancy pants businessmen and lawyers. Leave it to me to ask for it for Christmas. Handwriting? Really? But it gets better! This device captures the pages and will do magic writing-to-text conversion. The downside, of course, is that it failed on every conversion with my handwriting, even with the laborious 100 page training guide. I made pretty graphs and emailed physics notes to Brandon once. Not too useful. I took this with me to KU and attempted to use it freshman year during the rare moment that I was awake. I ended up setting the alarm off in the libraries more often than actually using it.

College – Freshman and Sophomore years: And I wonder why I wasn’t big with the ladies freshman year! I grabbed my Visor and added the Stowaway keyboard (full size, take that, laptops!) and actually took really good, outline-format notes. This was very handy, required 2 AA batteries, lasted for months, and was 100% reliable. Why change it up, right?

Junior Year: During the summer between sophomore and junior year, I picked up a Toshiba laptop. At the time it was awesome. I ended up using MS Word to do my note taking in class. This worked out fine as all I was doing is taking down outline format notes with the occasional figure that could be recreated on the fly using wonderful Word Art. I also had a few professors that had Powerpoint lectures, so I could save myself the trouble of printing crappy PPTs and use their outlines. This laptop died a horrible death (I hate you, Toshiba, your laptops to this day have the same crappy, heat-damaging designs), which leads to…

Senior Year: I had my internship summer of 2004 and stashed away enough cash to get myself a 12″ Powerbook. I was the only guy with a Mac in any of my CIS courses and was chided daily by several professors, but I didn’t care. I used OmniOutliner to take my notes. It was really intuitive, which is saying something since it is replacing functionality that I had done before in notebooks, PDAs, and the ubiquitous MS Word. It had custom flags you could put on items, categories, fast searching, and a pretty UI.

Today: I eventually entered the working world and migrated my way to a decent job. The fun years of OS X were replaced by the same horrible Windows XP that I left behind in 2002, on an updated but equally troublesome business-grade Toshiba laptop. I had to adapt. That’s when I started using OneNote. I really like it and still use it today. It has it’s quirks and usability issues, but it’s stable enough to document out just about everything. I also put most of my sharable notes back into our team Wiki. Unfortunately, even in a company that is predominantly IT, there is a stigma against laptops in some meetings. I also find myself watching Explorer lock up through good portions of my day, so I need a backup datasource.

Enter my Moleskin. I have the smallish gridpaper one. It has a band to keep it closed, quality paper, a bookmark, and a pocket in the back. I still can’t read my handwriting consistently, but I have an intricate system of checkboxes and symbols to at least have a gist of what I was talking about. I can also scan these notes directly into Onenote for consolidation.

So, I still can’t write, but I’ve gone full circle in my note taking habits.

What does this really mean? Why haven’t we got to the paperless world we have been promised? Even today pulling out a notebook is more reliable and faster than grabbing a laptop. With the new laptops having more instant-on functionality with more impressive battery life, we’re getting closer. The big device that I’m looking for is an ultraportable with a tablet’s screen. 5+ hours of battery and a full-size keyboard would be even better. I guess I can hope that the Air will get an upgrade to make the screen have pen-recognition, right?

Spooky sync

atrommer — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 01:06:33 +0000

I’m sitting here at 7:45, still in the office, waiting for an implementation to finish. It’s largely moving data from a legacy system (that we’re sunsetting) to our new system, so as the progress bar of my synchronization gets closer to 100% I get more excited, only to validate the data and then start the next part of the sync.

Last time I checked it was in fact Halloween. What really sucks is that the pumpkins I worked so hard on are sitting, unlit, on our front porch. Angela says she left some candy outside – last year we had a total of 5 trick-or-treaters so I doubt there will be a mad rush this year.

I got home late last night as well and only had time to say ‘Hi’ to the puppy before Angela came home off her evening shift. Monday, however, I got home and watched this week’s ep of Top Gear. Brilliant ep, and I died laughing when Jeromy said ‘I bet you’d get a lot of badge’ during his Lambo ‘b for v’ section. Watch it and you’ll see what I mean.

Okay, I’m at 100%, time to doubleclick like a madman!!!!!!

Conference Fun

atrommer — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 03:02:07 +0000

If you’re wondering why it’s been so long since my last post, I blame work. We are just a couple weeks outside the end of the 2 year project I’m on and we’re tying up all the loose ends, finishing our testing, and making sure our customers are on board.

Last week we sneaked away to our vendor’s annual conference. This year it was in Orlando, and it was my first year to go. After some flight antics which I won’t bore you with we made it into Orlando and checked into our hotel, the Swan in Disney World.

The conference itself was a blast and we got to work directly with the vendor on many topics. I even presented some of the work we’ve done in our current project.We made it back safely late Wednesday night and were beyond tired. In addition to being at the conference, we had to keep things running back in Southlake, which meant very long days on top of the already packed conference schedule. I ended up sleeping through my alarm Thursday morning which was actually really nice. Hey, if you’re going to be late for work, you might as well be more rested!

This weekend we had a fun party with Annie, David, and Ethan. We debated which toxin was top (botulinum won), played Wii Sports, and enjoyed some tasty food. Today, Angela and I worked in the yard, finally cleaning up some old flowers that kept rising from the dead. We replaced them with some blue and purple ones, and I’m sure Angela has covered this better than me over at her blog.

We wanted to finish the evening up at our favorite local bar, Dublin Square (aka Beef O’Brady’s), but we were shocked to find that it had abruptly closed down! Vendor invoices were taped to the door, someone had hastily scratched the name from the sign, and everything inside was still intact. Tragedy ensued. We managed to pick up the pieces of our lives and head down the road to a just-as-tasty place (Chapps, for references), but we (a) cannot walk there and (b) it doesn’t serve alcohol. Sigh.

Angela and I decided to end the evening listening to the Thoroughly Modern Millie original cast recording. When I was at Starlight we opened the National Tour. I love that show! We also worked on blogging and watching America’s Most Smartest Model.

If anyone has tickets to this Friday’s New Pornographers/Spoon show, call me. I’m the only one in my group that actually got tickets early so I’m flying solo.

Angela and jabber relaxing in the bedroom

atrommer — Sun, 30 Sep 2007 19:26:57 +0000

Angela and jabber relaxing in the bedroom, originally uploaded by andytrommer.

Griff and Dad Wii Boxing

atrommer — Sun, 02 Sep 2007 23:19:22 +0000

More to come, but here’s a preview of the weekend Wii fun.

On the exit door

atrommer — Sat, 11 Aug 2007 23:49:58 +0000

On the exit door, originally uploaded by andytrommer.

As we were leaving we saw this.

Angela and me at the show

atrommer — Sun, 01 Jul 2007 06:08:05 +0000

Angela and me at the show, originally uploaded by andytrommer.

Isn’t she cute, and aren’t i un-shaven?

Pre show from house center

atrommer — Sun, 01 Jul 2007 00:40:15 +0000

Pre show from house center, originally uploaded by andytrommer.

Lasers!

atrommer — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 07:20:46 +0000

Lasers!, originally uploaded by andytrommer.

From the concert during the star wars super fun time!

Crepes for U

atrommer — Wed, 13 Jun 2007 05:41:47 +0000

This is from my phone when we were at the Chinese grocery in Frisco. This is the source of my “crepeman does everything with a purpose” line. Good times!

053007_20181.jpg, originally uploaded by andytrommer.

KISS ME, I’M sure that my indistinct european heritage makes me at least partially IRISH!!!!

atrommer — Sun, 18 Mar 2007 04:04:13 +0000

Happy St. Paddy’s day, all. Today we celebrate a saint who drunkenly ran snakes out of Ireland. Some would argue that Ireland had no snakes at that time, and others would question why people aren’t just drinking more.Much has happened since my last post (Nov, ’06). I’m not even going to pretend that I’ll keep this blog updated correctly.

A couple weeks back, Dave and Mary made an excellent trip down to DFW to visit. We had German food, bbqd, and had an otherwise brilliant time.

The week after that, my folks came up from Georgetown. Dad and I built a workbench for the garage. Since Dad designed it, I’m fairly certain it could support several tons.

Since then, Angela and I have been dilligently working on our yard. We have planted flowers, put down fresh mulch, and are even about to plan a tree and some bushes in the back yard. Sorry, Jabber, your territory is in jeopardy.

Angela and I, as well as Miss Ashley Smith, are heading out for a tour of China in April. We’ll keep everyone posted, I’ll actually keep a log so I can post, and of course, many many photos. We are so so excited.

That’s all for now. If you want more frequent updates, check Angela’s blog. If you want (maybe) quarterly snippets, well, that’s about all I seem to be able to get out these days.

Mutiny Afoot!

atrommer — Tue, 14 Nov 2006 03:39:15 +0000

Friends, family: I come to you under grave circumstances. It appears that those whom I’ve trusted as true friends have mounted an attack on this very forum. Admittedly, there has been no new content since…oh, the week before the wedding. Some of you more scholarly folks might note that the wedding was, indeed, over a month ago. Others might also go further in stating that, of all events to blog about, the latest Weird Al CD should probably at least be sunset by the wedding, the honeymoon, and the new puppy.

I’ve heard your cries and your comparisons to my better half. I understand your frustration. More importantly, without this blog, I have no idea what is going on in my life and often have to refer back to Angela’s page just to recall the previous week.

With that said, and to keep those who wish to burn down this site (an ironic twist considering that it also hosts Angela’s) at bey, I am committing to you that, at the very least, major life events will be documented over commentary on quirky parody musicians.

Wedding Countdown

atrommer — Wed, 27 Sep 2006 16:53:45 +0000

We are coming up on 1 week!!

Things are hectic here as we wrap up the final touches and finish out our jobs for our two weeks off. The sad truth is that we can’t decide if we’re more excited abou the wedding…or the two weeks off of work. Really, I think it comes down to the time off from work. Oh sure, marriage, but what about vacation?

Anyway, I just wanted to make a quick post to profess my further admiration of Weird Al. If you want to see what I mean, watch this.

Quarterly Update

atrommer — Fri, 18 Aug 2006 02:19:17 +0000

Wow, this is getting sad. I’m, evidently, very bad at updating this blog. Much fun has occured since my last post.

Scotty Mo came down and we had a blast. It was great to see him and blow off some packing stress by playing large amounts of 360. We also ventured out to a Rangers/Yankees game (Rangers lost the game and the series). The Ballpark at Arlington (aka, Ameriquest Field (bad name change!)) is beautiful and everyone (hint hint, Robbie) should make a point of visiting it.

After that, we had mass packing and our house closing, followed up with the move. Let’s sum it up by saying that, if given the chance, NEVER move in the summer in Texas. 100+F isn’t fun to drive in, let alone work in.

Jordan and I went to U-Haul to pick up my truck. We ended up with a 1985 Ford diesel beast. The accelerator was more or less binary, and when you did accelerate, thick black smoke poured out the back. It was awesome.

The week after move in, Angela’s parents came down to visit. It was really a good visit, and I feel like I’m getting to know Mr. Chao much better. They helped us restock on some chinese food, and we all loaded up on delicious sushi.

Last weekend, Angela and I flew up to KC for Dave Brown’s wedding. It, too, was much fun. It’s been a while since I’ve seen Kent, TA, Alan, and Dave. We played a round of scramble Saturday morning…. at 7a…. and we were fortunate to have Adam on our team. Kent and I ended up more or less destroying the golf cart. We found a way to force it into neutral and do neutral drops, I ejected Kent from the cart while spinning around trying to pick up a ball (while driving, of course), we did sliding stops – I’ll be surprised if OP doesn’t have our photos up on a board.

The wedding was beautiful, and the reception was very well done. Good food, lots to drink, including a beer Mrs. Thompson recommended that was very nice.

Well, that about catches things up. I’ll do better, don’t fire me yet!!

This weekend, my parents are coming up to see the house and us (more the house) and I can’t wait to see them. Next weekend, Kat and Josh are coming up for some Medievel Times and Six Flags.

Griff moved into his apartment tonight – I need to see how that’s going. Also, Kareem got his Peace Corps assignment – Morocco as a small business developer. In other words, he’s going to get the village rug makers to upsell their wares to Wal-Mart :). Just kidding, K.

If you’re wondering where the photos are, I left my camera in KC at Blank’s place. Sorry, Blank!

Alright, more to come…

Long time, no post

atrommer — Mon, 19 Jun 2006 22:30:40 +0000

Things have been very hectic, but in a good way. A couple weeks back, Ashley Smith came in for a visit. It was great for Angela to have some “girl time” as I’m guessing she gets a tad bit tired of being surrounded by 4-6 game-playing guys all the time.

The house is coming along great, we have drywall up and the seams are taped, pictures to follow. We should have brick up this week!

Wedding stuff is really getting busy, but we have our invitations now and they turned out really well. For those of you planning on getting married, or who just like stocking up on wedding supplies “just in case”, I really suggest Costco. Good prices, excellent quality on our invites. We’ll be up in KC for the 1st-4th, so if anyone is going to be around, we should meet up. I will warn, though, that most of the days will be filled with wedding meetings and the like. Woooo for pre-marital counseling!

Baseball and Frames

atrommer — Sat, 13 May 2006 22:23:23 +0000

I’ve had an interesting week at work. On Tuesday, we had our 1st quarter meeting in the morning, followed up by a headquarters bbq in the afternoon. The bbq was great, hundreds of people were there, and best of all, free booze.

Wednesday, as part of our BU’s team building, we went to play Putt Putt, drive go carts, and then to the Rangers/Twins game. The Rangers lost 4-3, but I’ll take a loss in the park to a day in the office anytime.

On my way home Wednesday, I stopped by the house and saw that we had a foundation put in!! I was without my camera, though.

Today, however, we drove down with Kareem, Sean, and Tina. After some lunch (bbq, saddles on the walls), we came upon our house, and we have framing!

I’ve put all the construction photos in one gallery, so check back at the link above for all the updates as they come in…

Voodoo Flowers

atrommer — Sat, 13 May 2006 22:09:50 +0000

Last weekend, Angela and I went down to Georgetown to visit Mom and Dad as well as see the Big Bad Voodoo Daddies concert with Kat and Josh. Mom, Dad, Angela and I went to the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center in South Austin on Saturday, and while the weather was a bit stuffy, we had a lot of fun.

That night, we met up with Kat and Josh to see the Big Bad Voodoo Daddies. The concert was great, even though Palmer isn’t the best environment for live orchestras. I remember the old Palmer:

Now it is basically another convention hall – not as cool, but a prettier building. The band was excellent, and we all had a great time. Angela and I even tried our hand out dancing, and despite our lessons, we found we are quite horrible.

After that, we went to Chez Zee, a great restaurant that Kat knows, for dessert. We all had some tasty adult beverages with our cake.

I’ve posted all of the photos here.

New Digs

atrommer — Sat, 08 Apr 2006 04:09:31 +0000

Well, I suppose I should update everyone on my new jorb. Things have been crazy-busy over the last 3 weeks, but I’m finally feelings settled in.
I started on the 20th and since then we’ve delt with end-of-month and end-of-quarter craziness, creating a ton of reports, and moving offices…again.
We’re now back up in Building A, and I’m exactly 3 cubes down from where I was as an intern.
However, I’m never at my desk. Since we’re still basically in implementation, we work out of a War Room. In our old building, Solana, it was a fairly spacious conference room with a large window. As of today, we’re in about half the space with no windows. We’ve resorted to drawing on the white boards what we believe outdoors to be so that we don’t lose track of it.
In case I haven’t explained my new position, I’m a systems analyst for our enterprise-wide project management software. I’ve had to learn a whole hell of a lot more over the past couple weeks about projects, billing, and labor than any sane person should have to witness.

In other news, our house should start being built in the next week or so. Also, as you might have noticed, I migrated my site and Angela’s over to WordPress because even Google can’t make Blogger worthwhile. I’ve been on blogger since ~ 2001 and back then a blog was just text with a simple input frontend. Now people want to upload images, and blogger is just plain broke when it comes to uploading and formatting simple images inline with text. It doesn’t pass the girlfriend test one bit. So far, so good with WordPress, install took ~ 10 seconds, plus 3 minutes to import my old blogger posts. Okay, time to update Angela’s site with the new tools.

Christmas 2005

atrommer — Sun, 05 Mar 2006 05:15:53 +0000

DSC01424.JPG
Originally uploaded by andytrommer.

Woot, I can post to blogger from flickr…

Big News!

atrommer — Sun, 05 Mar 2006 04:55:00 +0000

Well, I got a new job! I start up back at Sabre Holdings on the 20th of March as a Business Systems Analyst. Whoo! Also, Angela and I walked straight into 30 years of debt by buying a house!! Whoo!
Oh yeah, on a slightly not-as-cool-note, I opened a Flickr account. Not sure how long this will last as I noticed I’m limited on bandwidth (for posting files) and I’m not quite used to that. If I can find a decent php photo package that is fast and has some drag-and-drop-ability for Angela to be able to post, too, then we’ll go with that.
Here’s the link to my site: http://www.flickr.com/photos/andytrommer/ and here are the Christmas 2005 photos! (sorry Aunt Sally)

Cold and Wet

atrommer — Mon, 20 Feb 2006 18:11:00 +0000

I managed to catch the early flight back on friday which saved me an hour – excellent! The downside to this was the fact that an arctic front blew in with 20F temps and freezing rain. This prevented Kat and Josh from making the drive up.
Blank’s flight made it in just fine (and freaking early) Saturday morning. We spent the day bumming around in the cold, first going to La Madeleine for breakfast, then Audio Concepts, then to the apartment. That afternoon, we hit up Fry’s and dinner at Smith & Wollensky. All in all a good day. Blank went to bed and Angela, Jord, Ben, Kareem and I jammed out on Guitar Hero until we realized that it was 3am.
Sunday we took it easy and spent the morning sleeping before going to Ikea. Angela and I picked up some magazine racks, Blank picked up some lamps and knives.
Blank and I left this morning at 6:30 (after having left-over Ikea rolls).

Off to Burnet

atrommer — Thu, 16 Feb 2006 04:36:00 +0000

I’m in Burnet county Thursday and Friday this week doing some work in their jail, which is great because Burnet is only ~1hr drive from my parent’s house. Look who is raking in the per diem!
Angela found the link to my ring – we couldn’t find it the other day.

Blank is coming down this weekend, which should be a blast. And, it looks like Kat and Josh will be, too.

Oh yeah, and my Guitar Hero addiction has become much worse. I dream of the damned notes flying towards me, 80′s hair band rock is stuck in my head and I can’t get the “plink” of a bad note from ringing in my ears. Needless to say, I’m a bit sad I won’t be playing it tonight.

More than meets the eye

atrommer — Sun, 12 Feb 2006 22:19:00 +0000

Rock On

atrommer — Sun, 12 Feb 2006 07:50:00 +0000

Today was quite interesting. We started off the day with plans for a simple trip into Dallas for an oil change and some shopping. It ended with a 911 call, a wedding band, and some serious(ly virtual) guitar playing.

We were driving down I-35 and we saw this guy swerving all over the road – at 3pm! I called into 911 and they asked me to follow him into town, updating the dispatcher of my crossstreet, as they set up a trap with Lewisville police. As we got closer, the driver sped up to well over 90 mph. The officer pulled him over on an exit ramp and I was instructed to pull in behind the officer. As the officer stepped out of his vehicle, the driver gunned it, swerved across the exiting traffic, across the grass divider, and into 70mph cross-traffic. When he hit the pavement, he did a 360. In one of the fastest reaction times i’ve ever seen, the officer was already in his car and directly behind the driver before we even blinked. It was awesome. The dumbass driving eventually crashed out into a barricade with ~ 5 officers in pursuit.

After that craziness, we went to the Galleria and I got my wedding band. We then celebrated Valentine’s day early at The Plano Tavern and it was excellent.

We came home to find that Jordan and Eric had ran off to Best Buy to get Guitar Hero – and it freakin’ rocks. Seriously. We all stayed up till ~ 2:30a playing it without realizing how quickly the night went by.

Well, with that said, i’m off to bed. Night.

life in /dev/null

atrommer — Mon, 06 Feb 2006 20:01:00 +0000

Working is an interesting thing.

Everything is focused on the mere concept of “Friday”:

Monday and Tuesday, people lament time till next Friday
Wednesday and Thursday, people only talk about how it is “almost Friday”
On Friday, all hell breaks loose. “How are you?” “Well, it’s Friday!” Friday becomes an emotional state just below winning the lotto

Grocery Sales are easy to recognize:

At noon, the latest frozen dinner sale will be evident as 10-20 people rush towards the breakroom, ready to heat the exact same meal. What will it be next week? Will it be the green of Healthy Choice or the white of Lean Cuisine? Who knows???

Email is useless:

In school, we only had spam to worry about. Unlike spam, company emails are hard to filter
I have ~ 20 Rules Wizards to do my thinking for me. Many of these simply move certain emails to the trash

This is only a small list, feel free to contribute your own additions.

I’M GETTING MARRIED

atrommer — Mon, 07 Nov 2005 04:23:00 +0000

Woops, in all the excitement of this news and lots of crazy working-ness-ocity, i’ve completely forgotten to post the info!
I’ll spare everyone the backstory leading up to the event, but we were back up in OP over October 21st and I whisked Angela down to the Plaza for a nice dinner and a surprise proposal. The only down side was that the JC Nichols Fountain was closed at the time!! Oh well, things went on as planned and we are happily engaged! We are planning on October 7th, 2006 for our wedding date, so stay posted here for updates.

We had a great time in OP, and we can’t thank our friends enough for their warm hospitality and support.

What? Blog?

atrommer — Thu, 08 Sep 2005 17:54:00 +0000

So yeah… Things have been crazy busy, but I guess that’s how this whole “real world” thing is suppose to be….right?
Scotty Mo came in town a couple weeks back… I posted the images at the time, however I never linked to it off the main page. I’m such a bad friend. It was great having him come in town, we caught some decent minor league baseball, went to the cow girl museum, hung out in a giant rusting piece of metal… Good times. Except for the cow girl museum. Here’s a tip: if you want to experience the fun of the museum do the following:

Gather $6
Buy/steal piece of blank printer paper
Buy/steal crayons (colors are up to you)
Draw a “cowboy/girl” costume.

That basically sums it up. Oh sure, there are exhibits, too, but all in all the coloring was the highpoint of the day.

Hmm, so….since then.. Griff (brother) has moved into Kerr Hall at UNT for his first semester, Dad has been laid off and rehired to an old job, Angela and I are about to celebrate our 3 year anniversary, and I’ll be out of town next week in Gregg County for some training (on our anniversary, sorry Angela!!).

Hope everyone is doing well!

New Car!!

atrommer — Fri, 15 Jul 2005 05:18:00 +0000

Okay, so I finally got the images up from last weekend’s trip to Georgetown. It was excellent getting to spend time with the family, and we even got to head to a Round Rock Express game. While AAA ball isn’t the most glamorous, it’s still a lot of fun. However, it’s not the most, how shall I say, fast-paced game of baseball you can watch, as well as quite warm. But, we got to meet up with Kat during the game which was a nice surprise. It’s been too long since we’ve really got to hang out, so hopefully with Josh and her now living in Austin we’ll have to meet up more often.

Additionally, I got a new car! Whoo! 2005 Corolla S with some nice body mods done by the dealer. The photos I’ve posted also show some bad-ass 18′s – those don’t get to stay. They wanted around $4k for them, and since I purchased after the service dept had closed, they let me drive off with them. As you can see from the night shots, it’s a very good thing that they are swapping back to stock on the wheels. I can’t STAND those goofy LEDs in the wheels. These even strobe. Yay ghetto-ness. Anyway, I love it, it’s an excellent color, and it has some good low-end pep that makes it fun to drive. We’ll see how it runs over time. Now I just need to get my tolltag and parking sticker back in my new car.

23

atrommer — Mon, 11 Jul 2005 05:15:00 +0000

Last wednesday was my birthday and now I officially feel old. Last weekend for the 4th Angela’s parents came down and visited – and I got my first real intro to sushi and sashemi. Wow is that good stuff. We went to this place in Addison called Tokyo One, and while expensive, was well worth it (especially since Angela’s parents treated us!). They had SO much food, and it was set up as an all-you-can-eat buffet.

Okay, it’s really late and i’ll post more updates tomorrow, i just wanted to get the photo of Schnitzel up. I’ll explain later.

weddings, moving, crashes, and heat

atrommer — Mon, 20 Jun 2005 05:45:00 +0000

So, a lot has happened since I started my job. Angela and I have been busy every weekend since we started working, and it looks like we won’t have our first “free” weekend till the middle of July. To recap, last weekend we were in Cedar Rapids for Lucas and Cari’s wedding, will post pictures of that later. This weekend has been insanity as we moved everything haphazardly in 100F heat. It was a mess. We’re still working on getting clothes and whatnot over to the new place, but with the heat and the massive amount of stuff we had to move it is going slower than we had planned. Jordan came down for the weekend, and we got some great help from Eric.
Next weekend is Robbie’s big day, and I can’t wait to fly out there. The big downside is the fact that it’s still looking like Angela won’t be able to come with to VA. I head out on Thursday, fly back Sunday, then swap cars with Angela and head out for Wood County, TX for business. I’ll be there till Wed.
Which brings me to my point….
Angela was rear-ended last week and the girl she was in the wreck with:

had expired insurance
gave Angela a disconnected phone number
has disappeared to mankind.

So, next week while I’m gone she’ll hopefully be getting her car fixed for the crazy price of $2500. Oh well, that’s life, I guess.
Okay, it’s way to late for me, I have to get up in a couple hours.
I promise more frequent update…..really…..

photos to come….

First Day Melodramatic

atrommer — Tue, 24 May 2005 05:04:00 +0000

Yay! Not only am I gainfully employed, but I can prove such through my first day of work. The day went pretty well for a 3-day orientation. It looks like Wednesday we’ll travel to the Denton County Jail to observe how they use the software.
On a sad note, though, Widget has passed away.

This is a photo of him being his normal, lazy butt self. He’s old and his health was deteriorating quickly over the last month, but he hung in there for for 2 years, 6 months. We’ll all miss you and your big nose, Widget!

Legion of the Damned

atrommer — Fri, 20 May 2005 21:37:00 +0000

So, I love my Mac. Really, I do. OS X is an amazing mix of Unix power and desktop usability. My 12″ PB is sleek, has decent power, excellent battery life, and is light.
I, however, hate Mac users. Case in point: There is a freaking tech doc on how to move your computer……..
Oh…my….god….
If you are so abstracted from computing that you need a tech doc on how to move your computer, yet are computer literate enough to go up on the docs.apple.com site looking for direction, please send your new shiny iMac G5 to me. I’ll even pay for shipping. And yes, I’ll move it properly…

RotS

atrommer — Thu, 19 May 2005 23:36:00 +0000

Jordan, Ben, Eric and I went to the midnight release of Revenge of the Sith last night (technically this morning). All I can say is see it. I felt empty watching Episode I, and Clones was outright disappointing. However, Sith is a whole different movie.
The kiddie parts have gone, there is ZERO Binks dialogue, and the transformation of Anakin cleared up much in my mind on how he went from posterboy of the Jedi Knights to Darth Vader. All in all, a good watch.

Okay, I’m off to buy some brats. It’s grilling time!

It’s Over!

atrommer — Tue, 17 May 2005 21:15:00 +0000

Well, school is over! Finally.
I’ve signed with The Software Group and I start next Monday, the 23rd. I’ve posted all the photos from graduation to the newly deployed Gallery. It was nice to have everyone up to visit, it’s just too bad the whole ceremony lasted so long. It’s kind of ironic: I’ve been waiting for graduation for the last 5 years, and yet when the day came I didn’t feel excited. I was excited to have my family and Angela there for it, but the actual event itself seemed like more of a formality rather than such a momentous occasion. Oh well.
Okay, so real life begins soon… I’ve resigned here in Denton with my current roommate and Angela for a 3-bed townhome. Those photos are on their way up. I have my nifty TollTag, and I’m looking for a new car (desperately!). The Corolla LE looks nice and cheap with good gas mileage. Sorry, Brandon.

Large Black and Orange Cat

atrommer — Sat, 30 Apr 2005 00:52:00 +0000

Tiger is out! I got my copy yesterday somehow, but I’m not going to complain! Basically, it rocks. Dashboard is pretty sweet, there isn’t any noticeable slowdown with the new eyecandy, quite the opposite. My PB1.33 is running faster than ever. One thing that still drives me nuts, though, is the fact that Safari still doesn’t support a whitelist on popups.
Other than that, spotlight is pretty neat, but it needs more connectors to 3rd-party documents. I don’t want to upgrade to the newest version of Omniforms just for the spotlight searching – it’s XML, spotlight should be able to handle that.
The Dashboard widgets (not my hamster) are pretty slick, but I hated that the mapping for the Phone Book pointed to mapquest. Why? Google Maps is so nice. So, I used my 1337 javascript abilities (read: searching for www.mapquest.com in the widget package) and modified it to correctly point to maps.google.com. Phone Book, now with scrolling goodness! I’ve posted this to the site here. It’s not licensed for redistribution, so… ahem… I didn’t give it to you. Right. (insert LGPL comments here).

Interviews

atrommer — Tue, 12 Apr 2005 00:20:00 +0000

I can’t believe how fast the semester is ending! I finally had a free afternoon, so I got fitted for my tux for Robbie and Jessica’s wedding and worked ahead on some homework. The weather has been amazing the last few weeks, but the heat is on its way.

I took this picture of Widget a week back and forgot to post it. Wow does he look unhappy! Too bad, buddy, too bad. Image goes to the fullsize, 2Mb jpeg.

Other than that, just about every one of my friends are heading off to law school. Not me, though. My interviews are going quite well, but I’m still hanging in the balance more than I’d like at two places. Angela is getting hit hard on trying to find good work down here in DFW, but I’m sure something will come up soon.

Okay, I’m off to finish some reading and apply for some more jobs.

Sin City

atrommer — Sat, 02 Apr 2005 06:23:00 +0000

Just got back from watching Sin City. Wow, freaking cool is all I can say about it. The only bad thing that I could come up with is the cool music that played in Trailer 2 isn’t in the movie. Everything else is great, but gory as all hell. The cinematography is beautiful throughout. The way color is used works out so well, you just have to watch it.
Other than that, another week down, only six left before real life.
Angela comes in tomorrow, so I’ll be unreachable till Tuesday.
Hope everyone has a great weekend!

Dueling Birthdays

atrommer — Mon, 28 Mar 2005 06:51:00 +0000

So, I got my router up and running, the Cisco 831 is very awesome.
I’ve been studying like mad for Chinese – that will be over with tomorrow. The photos are up from this weekend, although there aren’t many – it was cold and raining, and I was only home for a day. Hope everyone had a good day!

Georgetown for the day

atrommer — Sat, 26 Mar 2005 20:08:00 +0000

Well, Rick Perry shut down all state offices at noon yesterday, postponing my Chinese midterm till Monday. This is good and bad! It definitely gives me less goofing around time come Sunday, as now I have more review. The good thing is, well, I have SO much more review to do, so the extra time is nice.
I’m back in Georgetown for today. Griffin’s birthday is Monday, and Caitlin’s was on the 20th, so we’re having a combo celebration this afternoon. It was very raining, but now is clearing up and sunny, so hopefully we’ll be able to barbeque on a grill instead of a Forman!
I’m heading back up tonight since I have work nice and early tomorrow, and then back to the Chinese!
I’ll get some photos up from the bbq tonight, assuming it keeps clearing up.

So….Tired….

atrommer — Thu, 24 Mar 2005 07:20:00 +0000

Well, it’s been a couple days. I’ve been studying like crazy for capstone all week, all the while completely neglecting Chinese. Well, capstone went pretty well for me, after three hours of writing. For those of you who don’t know, Capstone is our cumulative class for BCIS, and since we have to have this class to graduate, and figuring in that this exam counts for almost our entire grade for the course, concievably this exam determines whether or not we graduate. I wrote for the solid 3 hours, in pencil, in my tiny, unreadable writing, for 10 pages.
So, I worked tonight, and came home… and wrote… and wrote… and wrote some more in Chinese getting my notes together for Friday. Here are the two pages I wrote on most of the vocab. Page 1 (1mb jpg). Page 2 (1mb jpg).
I’m going to do a quick review with Angela before we both crash out.
Night!

Irony?

atrommer — Tue, 22 Mar 2005 03:40:00 +0000

So, I’m not going to waste a lot of time talking about the Schiavo proceedings because many people much more intelligent than I have already said what I believe much more eloquently than I. Basically, no matter what you think is right in this matter, the Federal government has zero standing to force the Federal courts to look at this case. A case, by the way, that 19 other Florida state courts have ruled in favor of her passing away with dignity.
Anyone else find it ironic that many of the Republicans last night used Thomas Jefferson’s quotes on how a government should never take a life, and these are the same politicians that favor the death penalty? Also, the great lie of R==small gov and D==big gov. Rep Barney Frank (D, Mass.) summed up the issues with this new law better than anyone.

Okay, enough of that.

I got my tickets dismissed, cause I rock like magma.
I have 102 new characters to memorize by Friday for my Chinese midterm. Speaking of random characters, check out Hanzi Smatter. This site takes submissions from people of their tattoos, cars, random clothes, that have hanzi on them and they translate them, usually much to the chagrin of the poor girl carrying around a purse supporting Communism. Anyway, whether you’re interested in Chinese or not, it’s some funny funny stuff.
Okay, that should lighten up the post enough after the Schiavo crap. Hope everyone is doing well, I’m back to the Capstone studying. If I’m feeling adventurous, I might work up to my Chinese…. fat chance of that tonight!

Programming and Parking Craziness

atrommer — Sun, 20 Mar 2005 22:06:00 +0000

So, a couple weeks back, I flew up to DSM to visit Angela. I was running late, and after 10 minutes of driving around Remote North Parking at DFW, I couldn’t find any open spots. Usually when this happens the attendants have us park on the islands, so that’s what I did. I came back the next Tuesday to find a ticket. That wasn’t much fun, but “oh well,” right? I did technically park illegally. Anyway, I went to pay the ticket to find that I had been double-ticketed! Evidently, I was ticketed on Monday as well, but there was no ticket on my Jeep. Also, that would be one hell of a way to make money – ticket a car everyday at an airport in long-term parking. Assholes. So, now I have to head into DFW tomorrow morning before class to contest the first ticket, and hopefully the second as well. Who knows. Crap, I say! The best part of this whole fiasco is that, if I can’t get them to drop the first “phantom” ticket, I will owe ($28*2)*2 == $112, on top of the parking fees I already paid since they double the fine after 15 days.
Right, so programming. I’m almost ready to release 1.1 of ESS, which should be nice. I’ve been fighting with old servers at work to get 1.0 running in the new building. If you think corporate IT moves slowly, check out university IT. A 10 second update to DNS has stalled after a week of trying to get them to move my entry to a new address. So, onward to a new server in a new building with a different dept’s IT staff. Sigh. The only reason it has become troublesome is the fact that the new building’s network is managed by a completely different dept, and their DNS resolves slower than it takes for me to inspect each individual IP and write out names with sharpie by hand! All should be good tomorrow, though. One of the campus labs just got all mac minis, and we’re inheriting their old dual 1.0 G4.
I’ll update tomorrow with the fun results of my “Administrative Hearing” for parking and the prod server move. Wheee.

Movies

atrommer — Sun, 20 Mar 2005 05:46:00 +0000

So, I recently got a blockbuster.com membership. It’s alright, they tend to deliver later than they say, but the selection is nice. So far, I’ve picked up quite a few movies that I’ve missed over the last few years.

Collateral was surprisingly good – much better than the trailers. Michael Mann always amazes me, and Heat is still one of my favorites.
Saw was alright… the movie was pretty weak until the last couple minutes.
I Heart Huckabees was pretty entertaining, but it needed more refinement. Many of the lines that could have killed were downplayed just enough that they were too subdued.
One of the weirdest movies I’ve seen ever was Léon: The Professional. At times, I was amazed. The cinematography was incredible, and you can’t go wrong with unnecessary gore! But wow, Natalie Portman freaked me out. Jean Reno is a great actor, and he did a great job as Léon, but the relationship between him and Portman was ridiculous. I usually go for more of the realistic crime movie and save the avant-garde for other flicks, and this film backed up my beliefs 10-fold. On a huge plus side unrelated to Léon, Reno has been cast as Bezu Fache in the upcoming release of The Da Vinci Code.
Still to come, Following. This is the first film by Christopher Nolan, and it looks promising.

Okay, no more hotlinks to imdb, I promise. I’m tired, I have to work the silly church nonsense tomorrow morning at 8, I’m off to bed. More tomorrow, if I can break away from capstone studying…

What’s old is new again

atrommer — Sun, 20 Mar 2005 01:51:00 +0000

Well, I haven’t posted to a blog since Sept, 2001. Back then, everyone I knew basically lived down the hall from me, so posting to a blog what was just talked about person-to-person seems pointless. Now, however, just about everyone is far far away, and I’ve done a horrible job keeping in touch. May is looming closer and that means new life experiences… like homelessness. This blog should help others see into my inner-ramblings so that they can keep in touch with me via my blog, and I’ll pretend to do the same via theirs.
Seriously, though, this is mainly to help document, for me, the next couple months as I move from college student to (hopefully) full-time employment! McDonalds, here I come!!