Al Gore Can Kiss My Ass!

Global Warming? What is this "Global Warming" you speak of? Maybe you need to leave Tennessee for a while and visit, oh, I don't know, WISCONSIN! Holy Crap!

They Get It!

They get it, my new company "gets it". Granted, I have only been here a couple of days, but that has proven to be enough time to determine that Quest has a much better understanding of "correct" software development than most of the companies I have worked for in the past, especially recent past. The code that I have been reviewing is pretty darn good, has comments, is formatted consistently, and has unit and functional tests written for it. The style is not my own of course, but it is consitent and easy to read and follow.

My manager, like me, very much believes in Test Driven Development. That is developing code using this simple principle to create much less buggy software, giving the end-user a much better experience with the program. It takes a little bit longer initially to create the code, but the end result is high quality code that ultimately took less time to write because it was bug-free to begin with. It is nice to have a manager that see's things this way, instead of one that I have to do constant battle with because he doesn't "get it".

I am just getting going here, but it appears I will soon be able to contribute a lot to the team and add significant value to the product. And the best part is, I don't have to do any web development, ever! I am perfectly fine not creating boring old web pages and "web applications". Give me the low-level grunt code any day and I will be happy.

On the personal front, it's been a while since I have written about finances. I have just been so busy lately, my little hobbies tend to take a back seat. Missy and I did find a nice little gem on the Internet last night, a site called CreditKarma. It allows you to see your credit score and has a FICO simulator. It is not perfect, but it is still a very nice tool. The price is right too, 100% free, paid for my targetted advertising on the site. I highly recommend it.

We are hoping to refinance our house. Yes, already. The rates are nearly 2% lower now than when we purchased the home in July, and we can lower our payments by $250 every month! We are submitting the paperwork tonight and hopefully will have this wrapped up the first part of February, which would give us 2 months without a house payment!

The credit cards are, once again, completely paid off. I know I have said this before, but we (all of us) need to stop using them. However, CreditKarma also did some research that showed people that used 10-19% of their available credit had up to 60 point higher credit scores than people that had 0 credit utilization, literally the difference between a 720 FICO score and 660, which is huge. I think that should be illegal, but it appears that that is exactly how the credit scoring system works. So what is more evil here, having 0 credit card debt and a lower FICO score, or a little credit card debt and feeding those monsters? I don't have an answer, though the new iMac and iLife suite from Apple is looking very appealing! :-) 

Home Remodeling Update

We have been working real hard the last week on completing some of our home remodeling tasks, mostly painting, but also some electrical changes and replacing the old patio drapes with new vertical blinds. So here, in no particular order, is some of what we have been doing.

The Old Dining Room Ceiling Fan. Also note the off-white EVERYTHING paint.



The New Dining Room Fixture and Tan Paint with White Ceiling


We started by painting the ceilings a much better white. The painting project had its "moments". I had just finished painting the hall gray and was half way through the family room when Missy yelled "STOP. It's Purple!" She was right, the "gray" paint was drying purple. Do over...

Purple Hall


Purple Family Room


The purple had to go, so we made a trip to our local hardware store and bought "Papala", a brown-tan color. The results were much better!

Tan Hall


Tan Family Room


We watch a little too much HGTV and TLC, so we had to add an accent wall!






The Kitchen is Now Blue. Missy added stickers to the existing tile to spruce it up.






The New Microwave


So that is what we have been up to. Here are a few more random shots of how it all came together.

Dining Room


Foyer. We don't think the original "green" paint we chose works any longer. That will be a near future project to repaint it and the stairs going down to the basement.


The Old Foyer Fixture and Hideous Wallpaper!


The New Foyer Fixture and Green Paint. It will have to be changed now.


New Hall Fixture Too