Overdue Post
OK, so I've been neglecting LJ really really bad. Sorry.
I had a great Christmas holiday. I extended my Caterpillar break by one extra week, using up my 4 leftover days, plus my boss (best boss EVER) let me have one extra day off for comp time since I worked a ton of unpaid overtime in December. I ended up being off for 2 and a half weeks!
The first week off was nice and relaxing. I exchanged presents with friends, including bobmanasco who got me nice stuff, including a new digital phone/answering machine, which I made fun of at first cause I knew the main reason he got it was cause he was tired of me not having a functional answering machine. I've since discovered that's it actually really cool since it includes speakerphone built into the cordless handset and you can change the built-in message to French and Spanish! Hee hee, my mom's gonna hate it!
The rest of the week was pretty much spent getting ready for Christmas, watching Christmas movies, and playing Xbox 360. I'm really enjoying my 360. In addition to the games having superb graphics, I also enjoy the Xbox Live Marketplace where you can download game demos and pictures and movie trailers and stuff. Plus, my 360 can connect to my PC via my wireless network and stream MP3s from my computer. That is SO freaking cool.
I went up to Dixon to visit my family and spent a couple of days up there. My family usually exchanges gifts on Christmas Day, but we did it on Christmas Eve this year due to child availability (divorces, second famililies and whatnot). I had a nice team visiting my sister's family on Christmas Day and played King Kong and Perfect Dark Zero with my 12-year-old nephew. We ended up beating PDZ on co-op mode which was cool. I also played my two older brothers in Halo 2. Like usual, they ended up ganging up on me. They call me sneaky bastard cause I enjoy playing with invisibility and hiding in the shadows and stuff like that.
I also went to St. Louis for a couple of days starting on my birthday to visit my good friends and former neighbors Dan & Amy. We had a nice time, played games, hung out, and saw Narnia, which was very good.
After I came back to Peoria, I had just about the best New Year's Eve ever, just hanging out, eating pizza, and watching Serenity with bobmanasco. I hate New Year's Eve, so it was a nice change to have a pleasant one with my good buddy.
Last week pretty much sucked work-wise. I got a bunch of projects dumped on me after closing all my other projects the end of the year. That combined with having ZERO motivation made for an unpleasantly long 4-day week.
This week is going better though. I started my Bradley class "Management for the 21st Century." Oh yeah, I guess I never stated here that I was selected for that class. It's a really big deal. It's basically a mini-MBA program at Bradley University custom designed for Caterpillar management employees. They have a limited number of seats in the program and you have to be selected by your business unit in order to attend. Being selected for the program indicates to me that they have a lot of faith in my abilities and future potential, which is really cool but also a little scary.
Sooooooo, that's about it.
I had a great Christmas holiday. I extended my Caterpillar break by one extra week, using up my 4 leftover days, plus my boss (best boss EVER) let me have one extra day off for comp time since I worked a ton of unpaid overtime in December. I ended up being off for 2 and a half weeks!
The first week off was nice and relaxing. I exchanged presents with friends, including bobmanasco who got me nice stuff, including a new digital phone/answering machine, which I made fun of at first cause I knew the main reason he got it was cause he was tired of me not having a functional answering machine. I've since discovered that's it actually really cool since it includes speakerphone built into the cordless handset and you can change the built-in message to French and Spanish! Hee hee, my mom's gonna hate it!
The rest of the week was pretty much spent getting ready for Christmas, watching Christmas movies, and playing Xbox 360. I'm really enjoying my 360. In addition to the games having superb graphics, I also enjoy the Xbox Live Marketplace where you can download game demos and pictures and movie trailers and stuff. Plus, my 360 can connect to my PC via my wireless network and stream MP3s from my computer. That is SO freaking cool.
I went up to Dixon to visit my family and spent a couple of days up there. My family usually exchanges gifts on Christmas Day, but we did it on Christmas Eve this year due to child availability (divorces, second famililies and whatnot). I had a nice team visiting my sister's family on Christmas Day and played King Kong and Perfect Dark Zero with my 12-year-old nephew. We ended up beating PDZ on co-op mode which was cool. I also played my two older brothers in Halo 2. Like usual, they ended up ganging up on me. They call me sneaky bastard cause I enjoy playing with invisibility and hiding in the shadows and stuff like that.
I also went to St. Louis for a couple of days starting on my birthday to visit my good friends and former neighbors Dan & Amy. We had a nice time, played games, hung out, and saw Narnia, which was very good.
After I came back to Peoria, I had just about the best New Year's Eve ever, just hanging out, eating pizza, and watching Serenity with bobmanasco. I hate New Year's Eve, so it was a nice change to have a pleasant one with my good buddy.
Last week pretty much sucked work-wise. I got a bunch of projects dumped on me after closing all my other projects the end of the year. That combined with having ZERO motivation made for an unpleasantly long 4-day week.
This week is going better though. I started my Bradley class "Management for the 21st Century." Oh yeah, I guess I never stated here that I was selected for that class. It's a really big deal. It's basically a mini-MBA program at Bradley University custom designed for Caterpillar management employees. They have a limited number of seats in the program and you have to be selected by your business unit in order to attend. Being selected for the program indicates to me that they have a lot of faith in my abilities and future potential, which is really cool but also a little scary.
Sooooooo, that's about it.