Towards the end of dinner tonight out with my wife and her family, I took notice of a man that had been sitting across and to the left of our table for a while. He was in the middle of eating his ribs when I took special notice of what was odd about his table. There was an untouched glass of water sitting across him and his glass. He stared deeply into his wristwatch, wrinkled brow, with an expression that I can only describe as partly worried, partly anxious, and partly angry.

I pointed him out to my wife and her mother. They thought that the papers that laid next to him might be why he was expecting a partner. They included some mailed letters and he was not necessarily dressed for a nighttime business meeting at a southern BBQ restaurant and bar. Was he there with divorce papers? That certainly seemed a likely situation to get stood up for.

He finished his meal (looking at his watch a few more times, maybe willing it to call forth the expected second participant) and watched the table behind ours as they sang Happy Birthday to the little girl at the table. He wiped his eye. Maybe he was remembering time spent with family that would never be the same. Maybe he just had something in his eye.

I suppose that the point of this post is to express my feelings of gratitude about my current life situation. I’m not sure if the stranger at the table tonight had to sit through a lonely dinner that was supposed to be about formalizing a divorce, but the thought made me appreciate my comparably short, but extremely fulfilled and happy relationship with my friend and wife, Stephanie. I hope that I can look back on potentially frustrating moments and remember how much love I feel for her, my family, and my life.

Related Note: I understand that this might sound like some sort of boasting, but it’s not intended as so. Sometimes I feel extremely humbled. I don’t realize how I can overlook how fortunate we truly are when focusing on seemingly minor issues and complaints. Also, I’m not entirely sure on how to end this post or what note to end it on.

Belated Note: Gah! Talk about piss-poor writing. Should I go back to freshman English?

So the new look and feel for my current place of work is up. I’m pretty pleased at how smoothly the transition went. I still think it needs to continually be improved (I’m already ready for an overhaul to the look! Oh how fickle…), but I’m happy with myself and the organization’s treatment of the project.

AAPT Redesign - Nov 2009

It was an important to the American Association of Physics Teachers (my employer) and myself that the project was done right and made it to completion. With the assistance of a great web developer and friend (and the crew that were testers and stakeholders), we were able to push it out in just under a year of my arrival. While it’s not as polished or as feature-rich as I’d like, I still think that’s impressive considering I was tackling day-to-day activities at the same time.

I’m just happy it’s “done” for now. I’ve been definitely taking a “breather” (the holidays coming up) after such an intense year. I’ll be having two Thanksgiving dinners (Wednesday is my fiancee’s mom’s place, Thursday is my parents’ place). Maybe next year we’ll host it at our house.

Thoughts? What did you do after the last big project you completed for work?

PS – Left 4 Dead 2 and Torchlight are GREAT post-redesign-launch relaxation games

That’s right. I now owe the state some of my refund (which I spent, like any red-blooded American) plus interest. Why? I didn’t let them get their greedy fingers on my federal tax deduction for the tuition I paid out of my own pocket.

Here’s the deal: You have to mark all of the deduction (that is, the tuition you ALREADY PAID) as “additional income” on the Maryland tax return. This meant that my refund was cut by around $230. How much did I gain on my federal return because of the tuition deduction? I doubt it was much more than $230.

Now I was told I owe them that plus interest on the money from my 2007 tax return. They told me that they don’t waive the interest because it’s “so low” ($30 is not low for something that I could’ve avoided if this ridiculous clause were pointed out).

Not only that, but they had the gall to inform me that they automatically audit individuals that claim tuition deductions on their federal returns. What does this mean? It means that you knew nearly immediately that I needed a correction, but waited until a year later to tell me, with interest? This screams to me that this is simply a way for the state to make money, just like their ridiculous speed cameras.

I wish I could express how angry I am that this law even exists, but I’m almost more angry that this is something that I can’t seem to find via Google. Where are the complaints against this ludicrous practice? I know I’m going to find as many politicians to voice my feelings to as possible.

Summary:

Live in Maryland and want to attend school? Screw you, we don’t have incentives here for that. You want a tax refund? You think you don’t owe us if you broke even? HAH! Think again. Oh, and tell the IRS thanks for the extra dough that we can spend on ineffective legislation like banning texting in cars!!

Sincerely,
The State of Maryland

It’s Sunday and I’m partially recovered from a short, fun day trip up to NYC with Stephanie, her mom, and her sister. I’m not sure how I survived, as I’ve spent the last week catching up on a semester project I had somewhat neglected in favor of other priorities. That’s OK, though, because it marks the end of the semester for me. I have a single course left before I’m eligible to get my Master’s at UMBC. Hooray!

On another related front: I took up a new position as a web designer at a local non-profit organization. It’s been great so far and their site does need a lot of help (lots of room and opportunities to prove myself). The people there are amiable and vibrant, probably thanks to the web team being nearly entirely new. Yes, that sounds like a bad omen, but I can see the situation being very stable. The new web developer came in after me, and he’s a bright guy. We’ll be collaborating some big projects to get the site into shape. I truly believe this was the move that I needed, even if I’m no longer at an office and have to sit in a cubicle-like station. I even got lots of compliments for the Christmas lights I set up around it. Fantastic!

Finally, it truly looks like Valve’s Steam (a downloadable games service) is going to be facing true competition. While Steam is, in my opinion, an amazing service with great deals, it can only be good for the consumer that things like Good Old Games, Direct2Drive, and now Impulse Driven are cropping up with competitive pricing. Impulse Driven comes from Stardock, who makes all kinds of games (Galactic Civilizations) and software (Object Desktop). I particularly like GOG, because not only are they updating classics to play on the latest operating systems (Windows XP, Vista), but they are cheap and DRM-Free. You hear that Ubisoft and EA? Follow these guys and stop blaming poor software sales on terrible games on piracy.

Sidenote about NYC: A great place to look for design inspiration, from the ads to the architecture to the subway signs.

There’s not much I can say besides the fact that I’m glad that I stayed up to watch his speech. It was really amazing and I truly think the next four years are going to make a huge difference to this country. Now I know what it feels like to experience something like the moon landing or the fall of the Berlin wall.

Also, the people going crazy makes me smile and laugh at how silly with joy they look. I’m proud to be an American tonight.

It’s been a while since I updated this, I admit. I’m not dead (or at least someone posing as me is not!).

Anyway, as most of my friends, family, and Facebook network are aware: I asked Stephanie to marry me on Sunday. It was on the beach at sunrise in Ocean City and she was completely surprised, so she claims.

She said, “yes!”

We don’t have a date or many plans right now. That seems to be everyone’s question when I proudly pronounce that I had the cajones to pull it off. We’re just enjoying it for now. We can actually refer to each other with the same term: fianceé. Cheesy, yes. Also: I can’t spell it, apparently.

Pictures and more details are in my Facebook album.

Update note: It helps to proof-read even your own blog posts. This version is improved from the one posted on my old blog– minus the snotty tone I seem to write with unless I check it over.

Well, WordPress 2.6 is very nice. I like the improvements. Very “Web 2.0″ I suppose. The interface is definitely cleaner, more streamlined, and we’ve got tags now.

After struggling to get the older install in line with the new site design and subsequently blowing away some database users I should kept my hands off of, I have gotten a brand new install up. Unfortunately, my very few posts have been blown away, so I’m going to try to restore them with the new dates (probably meaning I will have to do some manual database manipulation). Oh well!