Busy Busy

So here I sit back at work after a much needed Thanksgiving break. I have been staying busy since my last post, so hopefully that will suffice as an excuse for my lack of entries. Currently myself and one of my co-workers are working on a project that is just stuffed full of technologies that neither one of us have ever heard of or have ever used. We are building an application used for keeping and managing inventory of livestock. Basically it consists of two pieces: a PC application and a PDA application. They communicate with a RFID reading device that uses bluetooth to transmit RFID numbers which we get and then use to create or manage inventory. It doesn't sound thata bad from the overview, however here's the catch, we have to build it in two weeks and we have to use a language that we don't know...

We're building it in JAVA, which neither of us has ever used professionally. We are using two base libraries in the language: J2ME and SWT. So really we have to learn two versions of the JAVA language, as if one wasn't enough. After that, we also have to learn a number of different plug-ins and libraries that we use to supplement the application, this would include things such as BlueCove (a bluetooth library), Derby (an application integrated JAVA database engine), Subclipse (a source management tool), Eclipse (a free IDE FOR JAVA), and Subversion (the source control tool that Subclipse attaches to). It's been pretty hectic here and there have been some long nights. We've managed to push the deadline back once and it looks like we'll have to do it again. For what it's worth I really am enjoying the work. It is challenging and I'm learning a lot of new things, I just wish we could get rid of this pressure. I want the project to succeed. We need it to badly here at work. We're small and we're struggling financially currently and a few successes under our belt could really help out. They sure are asking for a lot here though. I guess we'll see what happens, nothing I can do but work hard.

We were allowed a break in the long work days for the Thanksgiving holiday, and that was nice. Marty and Molli came to town from Texas and we got to spend most of the break with them. On Thanksgiving we went to Amanda's parents house for a family dinner. I got lucky in terms of in-laws. We sat around and ate and watched a little football, then went home. Marty and Molli came the next day to stay with us. We have an extra bedroom and so they came to stay the next two days with us. The girls spent most of their time shopping and setting up Christmas decorations while Marty and I watched nearly every episode of season 2 of Battlestar Galactica. We stopped once to put up some Christmas lights, but other than that we were just constantly watching Battlestar. It was a lot of fun to re watch the episodes while someone else was watching them for the first time. I enjoyed watching his reactions to the big surprises.

We went to two parties over the break. The first one was at Autumn's where the herd all ate breakfast and semi decorated for Christmas. The breakfast foods theme was a great idea, we had a feast of scrambled eggs, waffles, sausage balls, quiche, and all other manner of breakfast foods. Yum! After a little decorating the karaoke machine came out to play and a good time was had.

The next night everyone went over to my parents house in Weiner for a Thanksgiving celebration. It was mainly classic Thanksgiving food: dressing, mashed potatoes, turkey, etc. After dinner we played Rock Band and Quelf.

Marty and Molli left yesterday morning to visit their family a bit more and to go home. We were sad to see them go but they will be back for Christmas. Hopefully this project at work will be gone by then and I can have a good time without stressing over work related things.

Until next time...