Partager via

Just Life, and what's up.

  • Article

It's been a hectic two years for me :), and as I sit here and write this post, I'm listening to the pre-master version of my next CD Sidetracks - Volume 3 - Ambient Highways, and contemplating where I've been, what I've done, and where I'm going :).

I started a 4 week Parental Care Leave from work about a week ago after finalizing an adoption my wife and I finished up in June. We adopted one of my nieces (Faith, seen here in this video btw Broadband (640x480))

She came to live with us in December of 2003, and that just happened to be at the time when I started getting busier than I ever had been at work, and now at nearly 2 years later...I'm finally getting some much needed time off, to get my personal matters all back in order :).

So, here are the biggest things I can remember that have occurred to me and my family over the past couple of years

  1. Faith came to live with us on December 4th, 2003

    I know it was December 4th, as I started an on call rotation at work on December 6th

     

  2. The on call rotation started December 6th, and it was one of the busiest ever. 

    I was receiving about 3 calls per night, and most of them were pretty lousy (Server downs, disaster recoveries, Exchange mailflow problems, Portal Server connectivity issues, lions tigers and bears, oh my). Back then, there were not that many Escalation Engineers for Portal, so we were busy all the time. I was also supporting Exchange Server, so I remember MANY weeks of little sleep during that time.

     

  3. It was shortly before then as well, where I started writing SPUserUtil.(The 1.0 version that is)

    Boy did it ever take off!

     

  4. My oldest daughter (Kathryn) Graduated from High School, and is now off to College

    She's the Kat in my CD Princess Kat and the Great Wall of China. :) We dropped her off at college last Thursday at Wayland Baptist University where she will be taking some pre-nursing classes as she decides if she's going to go with a full nursing program, or perhaps get into Political Science.

    She came down with a really bad virus a week ago, and could not keep anything down. We were not even going to make the long drive to the college to drop her off, till this week, but she insisted on wanting to go, to attend all the pre-semester activities on campus. By that time, she was pretty much over the virus, but since she did not get too much food (next to nothing) over the week, she's on a long road to recovery. We've debated packing up the car and heading back up there, but we're trying to be strong parents and let the young bird fly :).

     

  5. We finalized the adoption for Faith.

    This all happened at the same time as Kats' Graduation.

     

  6. Work has not ceased to keep me busy (Well, except for the past week since I left :))

My honey do list consists of the following over the next three weeks before I go back to work.

  1. Clean out office, and organize. Man...What a mess it is !
  2. Spend lots of time with new kiddo.
  3. Give the wife a break :)

My personal "Stuff I want to do list" :)

  1. Finish some more music (Doin' it!)
  2. Do some more video work (See https://wss.indieopolis.net/artists/keithrichie )
  3. Drink some beer
  4. Do some fishin'
  5. Quit Smoking

And then, when parental leave is all over here is my personal "Stuff I want to get done at work" list

  1. Finish SharePoint User migration training using SPUserUtil
  2. Update SPSiteManager (It shipped in the latest release of the SharePoint Utility Suite, up to 7200 downloads as of this writing on 08-23-2005!!)
  3. Gotta take some MCSE or MCSD exams and get my certifications up to speed.
  4. Catch up on a TON of email :)

I know there's a heck of a lot more stuff to do, that I can't even think of right now, but I'm sure my wife will remind me.

 - Keith

Comments