X-mas Party

Here's a picture from my work christmas party at the Wrigley Mansion.

We had a great dinner/drinks, meet some new people, had a gift exchange, and enjoyed the views of the city.

Happy Birthday Matt!

Happy Birthday Matt! Sorry I couldn't be there. Here are some pictures posted by Jason Piccoli.

8 Weeks Old

Yeah!!! Liz & I had our first visit to the doctors this week. As you can see, we have a little baby on the left. These are our actual pictures from the doctor at about 8 weeks along. At this stage the baby is only about 3/4 of an inch in diameter.

We got all good news from the Dr. and our baby is due July 22, 2007.

A few more pictures here

Married & have a little one on the way ...

Well, I have some big news! I'm married and Liz is pregnant!

Liz and I were originally planning on getting married in Mexico next March. However, because it is almost impossible to get married in Mexico our plan was to just get married here in Phoenix the week before we leave to Mexico. Then I got a new job and Liz lost the health insurance plan we had at Blackboard through the domestic partner agreement since my new company doesn't have it. So we decided it would be best to just get married now.

We got married on November 3rd with our parents and grandparents at a small courthouse in Phoenix. This was the first time that our parents had meet and we all went to dinner afterwards. The judge "Rebecca MacBeth" married us and did a wonderful job. We honestly were expecting to walk in, sign some papers, and walk out. But this judge read a Shakespeare sonnet, did our vows, and then read this Apache Wedding Chant at the end that was really cool. It was a wonderful night!

So after this, our plan was to still go to Mexico for our ceremony and celebration. Then on November 17th, we found out that Liz is pregnant. While this wasn't expected, we are both very very excited. We weren't really going to try for kids until sometime next year... But this is something that we both have always wanted and can't wait. Right now it's very early in the process since Liz is only 6 weeks along. Once we see a doctor in December we'll know more about our plans and will sent out invitations to our reception.

Now that we know we're going to have a baby we think our trip to Mexico will be cancelled. We think that it's the best decision for the safety and health of our new little one. We'll probably just have a reception here in Phoenix and another party in Maryland for Liz's family.

Anyways, if anyone has any questions or just wants to chat then please give us a call!

Google goodness!

The Google Web toolkit (GWT) now has a friend to help him along.

GWT's friend is a GUI editing plugin for eclipse that allows one to quickly create web applications that act more like desktop applications. The plugin is called GWT Designer by instantiations.

Have fun hacking away!

New pictures posted!

Adrian & Matt's trip to Amsterdam

Jackie & Kenny's wedding

A gay picture of Adrian & Matt on camelback mountain.

My first day

Today was my first day at my new job "Test Advantage". It was a pretty typical day of meeting people, reading through documentation, and getting my computer up and running.

I must say that it has been a bit of a culture shock going to such a small company though. Everyone is so quiet and when I say everyone, I mean like 6 people. The company only has about 35 or so total.

I'm confident that things will get better, but it does suck changing jobs! Hopefully I will get to start working on some of the technologies that interest me like JBoss, EJB, and Java Server Faces. I'm excited to start working with these so I can make my mark at my company.

Chad Vader: Episode 4 (official version)

My last day leading to my next step

Well, I've completed my last day of work at Blackboard. I learned a lot at Blackboard and meet many new friends in the process. I spent about 2 1/2 years at Blackboard before I decided that I was bored and needed to find a job that was more challenging.

I start on Monday, October 16th at my new company Test Advantage. This company is very small in comparison with my past 2 employers since they only have around 35 employees. Test Advantage develops software & hardward for testing of semiconductors at factories like Freescale, ST, IBM, etc...

I'll have to let you know later how things are going after my first few days.

It's the end of the world!

Go check this funny flash video out!

The End

-

Skinner strikes again !

So I'm at this wedding last weekend.... "Anyone see Adrian Skinner?", I ask

The typical answer I got, "Ummm... No, he's been gone for at least an hour."

Later Adrian returns to the wedding reception with his hair a little messed up, his tie missing and some grass on the coat of his suit...

Hmmm.... Does anyone wonder if he was getting freaky on the grass golf course down at Wildhorse Pass? Or at least a nice round of suck face!

Way to go Red Devil!

Weddings Weddings Weddings

So I've been too a few weddings recently...

First it was the De Queljoe's wedding in San Diego. I went to San Diego 1 day early for the rehersal dinner and to hang out with the guys the night before the wedding. The 2nd day the piccoli's and my fiancee Liz drove up together. The wedding was very beautiful and the reception was a lot of fun. I especially like the Cow bell song with Jason's friend Brian jumping on stage to play with the band.

Then we went to another wedding the following weekend for Kenny & Jackie Ortiz. They had there wedding at the Wildhorse Pass golf club down near Maricopa. It might have been the quickest ceremony I've attended, but I think it was just perfect, less then 10 minutes. Liz was put to work from the start as she started having flash backs to her wedding planning days... I think she got a friendly reminder of why she doesn't like that job.

Now I have to go to a wedding on October 29th for my cousin in San Francisco. Then next year I have the most important wedding (MINE!!!). Followed by Liz's sister Jen in June. I'm not sure if Ron & Moo will make it in next year as well, but if they do and if I'm invited then I'm sure I have another one to add to the list.

I guess the next step for everyone is kids.... any takers?

Vegas!

I was in Vegas last weekend.  Sorry, that's all I can say...

Sick and wrong

Go to this URL to watch a funny video.

spoof

Super Nerd !!!

Check out my new cellphone. This XV6700 Verizon Pocket PC has everything you need to be the ultimate nerd...

This device has Bluetooth, 802.11b wi-fi, EVDO, miniSD slot, and much much more...

I can record video, take 1.3 mega pixel pictures.

I can listen to mp3 and play video games.

I can SSH into any Linux/Unix/Solaris terminal.

I can remote desktop to any windows machine.

I can VPN into my work or client network.

I can send email and/or text messages.

I can send MMS messages containing video/pictures.

All of this while my phone stays synchronized with my work email system. Unfortunatley my work isn't on the exchange 2003 so I can synchronize directly. I'll have to wait for this feature.

One of the coolest things about this phone is that there are tons of hacks out on the web that you can do to improve functionality and/or customize it to your needs.

And since I'm a developer it's the perfect phone for writing my own java programs and uploading them to my phone. See midlets for an intro to java applets for your phone using the Java Micro Edition.

Anyways, look forward to some blogs coming your way directly from my new phone. 

Our wedding Date and location has changed ...

I'm sure it will probably change a few more times so don't rely on this yet, but we're now thinking about March 10 (Spring break for some) at some resort south of cancun Mexico. It's some all inclusive resort that's suppose to be really nice...

Look at me, I picked crabs too!

 

I'm engaged!

For those of you who don't already know, I got engaged to my favorite person in the whole world, Elizabeth, while on vacation in Maryland.

I've been planning this for sometime and it was a lot of work keeping it a secret from Liz while traveling together. Trying to pick up the ring, get through security, and asking permission from her dad made it a challenge.

The story ...

Monday July 24th was the big day. I never really had a day planned out for this... I only knew that by the time I got back to Arizona that I would be engaged. I was waiting for the right time to strike and I wanted to allow enough time to celebrate while we're on vacation.

After leaving the beach around 4PM I asked Liz if she wanted to go out to dinner with just her and I. I had to keep the dinner pretty casual so she wouldn't suspect anything so we went to dinner at this place in Rehoboth beach Delaware called Nicolas Pizza. They're famous for these things called Nic-o-boli's (close to a stromboli). After dinner we decided to go for a walk down the boardwalk of the beach. We stopped at a couple of fun play lands where Liz hung out as a little girl. The sun was starting to set so I suggested that we go for a walk on the beach...

While standing out near the ocean I asked Liz, "Do you know what I really want for my birthday?" (My birthday was coming up on July 27)

Liz was thinking at the time that I wanted a computer monitor or something and wasn't even really paying attention to what I asked. While Liz turned away for a minute I quickly grabbed the ring and got down on 1 knee in the sand of Rehoboth beach and said, "Will you marry me?"

Liz, with a confused look on her face, gazed at the ring in ahhhh. She began crying with excitement and continued looking at the ring. After several seconds had passed, I asked her, "Do you want to try it on?" Liz was so excited she cried the entire way home and couldn't believe that I asked her.

We then headed home to break the news to the rest of the family. We stopped to pick up some champagne on the way back to the beach house. Liz's mom Anne was the first to find out since she was the only person at home. Then a few minutes later Liz's cousin Meeghan arrived and she seemed to somehow know that I was going to ask. When she arrived she immediately ran in and looked at Liz's hand for the ring and then began jumping up and down screaming with excitement. It was a great reaction!

The rest of the week left plenty of time for celebration as we told the remaining 25 people in Liz's family that came to the beach. Liz's parents held an engagement party for us and Jen & Matt (Jen is Liz's sister). Jen & Matt will be married on June 16, 2007. The party was great and we had a good time playing 90's trivial pursuit!

As of the time of this Blog our date for the wedding is May 26, 2007 and will be in the Bahama's on the beach.

See more pictures from out trip here 

To the Beach!

Liz and I are off to Ocean city Maryland for 10 days. We'll be at a
beach house that her family gets every year so look for an exciting
update once I return...

brentryan.com Outage!

I must apologize to all my brentryan.com fans. My site was down for
the logest time in like 5 years. The site outage was because I needed
the network jack to my cable modem so that I could rebuild my moms
computer. She had a bunch of viruses on her system and since I'm her
family computer support, I was stuck with the task of fixing it.

Anyways, everything is back so enjoy!

My Cubicle

Here's a link to one of the funniest songs ever.

My Cubicle Song

Kenny's Bachelor Party

Day 1

Matt, Adrian, & Brent drive to Vegas to meet the rest of the crew. We
missed a turn off in kingman and wound up taking a 45 minute detour
around the hoover damn.

We arrive, get ready for the night and immediately hit up the craps
table at Barbary Coast. I did pretty well this night so I was feeling
pretty good.

We then decided to hit up one of the hottest clubs in Vegas called Tao
inside the venetian. There was like a 2 hour wait and none of us are
patient enough to wait around so Adrian checks with the security to
see what it will cost for us all to get in right now. The bouncer
says "$300 bones". So we're like, cool, Lets do this! We all role in
like we own the place and we probably looked like a big group of dorks
entering the club for the first time.

It was a pretty decent club, very big, very dark inside, but very very
expensive. About $10 per drink.

Day 1 ends at about 4 AM for me and like 6-7 AM for almost everyone else...

Day 2

Everybody gets up about 10-11 and heads down to the mens spa at
Bally's. This is where the boyz regenerate for the next night of fun.
Some of do a light work out, except for the roid monkey "ADRIAN"
who's always looking to hit the weights hard.

We then go back to the sauna, steam room and Jacuzzi and enjoy Ron
prancing around butt ass naked waving his dong in our face. That was
a site I don't care to remember and will probably be scarred for life.
Anyways, we showered, shaved, and got ready pretty much for the day.
Next we hit up Ichi Ban for some grub on our way out to gamble....

From this point forward I pretty much lost everything I gambled so
that pretty much sucked.

For dinner, we went to a very nice steakhouse in Bally's before we
went out to club Pure in caesars palace. Ron hooked us up on the
guest list here so we didn't have any wait once the club opened.
Inside the club we enjoyed a show that the pussy cat dolls put on.
Yah, this was a group of 6 gorgous girls with almost no clothes on.

Day 2 ends at about 4-5 AM and about 10:30 AM for Matt. Go Matt, Go!

Day 3

So this is the day we all head home. Matt still doesn't have any
sleep and we head out to my car to drive home at about 1PM. When we
get to my car we find that my rear tire was slashed. BUMMER! It's
about 112 degrees out and we have to change a tire to some crappy
donut tire.... Then we drive down to pepboys and sit there for about
2 hours while they replace my tire. We get on the road about 4 PM and
don't wind up getting home until just after 9.

Overall it was a great trip and we all had a blast. The end of the
last day sucked, but I'm sure it sucked worse for Matt since he didn't
have any sleep.

Off to San Francisco

I'm heading out to SF, Cali tomorrow. I'll be there through Thursday,
then I'm heading to Las Vegas with the guys for a bachelor party.

As always, that's going to rock!

peace out1

A Day to remember

Today was a very exciting day for me personally at work today. I know most of you are probably saying, "Work, exciting.... I don't think so". Anyways, so today I had a huge oppotunity to present a major presentation to executive management at BB. There was several different levels of management involvement in this meeting from support, Product Development, product management all the way up the chain to the big daddy executive levels.

So, what was this presentation about? I was asked by my management team to present on the ADI (Advanced Data Integration) projects I've worked on in the past 2 years. They wanted me to pin point out all of the struggles we've had as a team in a project by project review. Our struggles are with the software application that BB Product development and the direction our sales team is positioning this product to solve all our clients integration needs.

The objective was to provide information to our executives that will demonstrate the need for us to greatly improve our integration products. I had to spend 1 - 2 hours going over these projects and demonstrate all of our product issues to the management team. In doing so I made it completely obvious that our current integration product was not meeting our needs in the services organization and is not meeting our client needs.

So you say... Who cares, right? Well, in doing this I was able to get some much needed exposure on what my capabilities are as a developer and how I could solve this problem. I've already been called into other meetings because of this and went to dinner tonight to discuss this more.

I think that I may have created a huge project for myself in product development that will allow me to hire some more developers to complete a new product line for BB. I've been asked to create some more slides to describe how I'd go about doing this in a non-techincal manner so that we can get this pushed through the approval chain.

Now the easy part, I just gotta put my tech skills to work and make this happen!

Shoulder Recovery

So I've had some ups and downs with my shoulder recovery ...

At first, I felt like crap for the first 4 days after surgery. I
couldn't sleep or get comfortable at all. I was only sleeping like an
hour every once in a while. Imagine trying to sleep with your
shoulder dislocated from its socket. Yah, that wouldn't feel to good.
Well, that's pretty much what it felt like for the first few days
after surgery.

Anyways, On the 5th day I thought things were going pretty well. I
went in to the office at work and then came home at lunch for the day.
In the afternoon I started breaking out with a slight rash down my
right arm. This is the same arm I had my surgery on. I started
feeling sick and nasty so we called the doctor for fear of an
infection starting. After taking some benedryl and going to sleep
that night I woke up the next day feeling fine.

So I felt fine today, the 6th day and have felt fine ever since. The
dr. thinks that it might have been an allergic reaction to the arm
sling I was using. Wierd huh? Well, I feel much better today and I
can already start to use my arm again so Woo hoo!!!

Shoulder Surgery

Well, I had shoulder on my surgery yesterday. Everything went really well and I'm now just relaxing on the couch reading fun books like "JBoss at work". I've had shoulder problems ever since I was about 20 when I dislocated it playing tennis. Since then I've been able to dislocate it fairly easily so I decided to get some MRI's done over the past couple of years to see what the issue was. After my last MRI in January it was determined that I had a tear in my right labrum.

The doctor did a scope of my shoulder to repair my torn labrum and I'm hoping that I can eventually get back into shape once this gets rehabilitated. The doctore did say that it was torn pretty bad and that surgery would have been my only option so I'm glad I did what I did... Right now I'm pretty soar, but it's not too bad so we'll see how I feel in a couple days.

More Italy pictures ...

Go here for some more pictures of Jason and Allie's trip to Italy.

Pics from Italy

I just posted some pictures from Kelley, Allie, & Jason's trip in Italy. Go here to check them out.

Mom's in town!

So Liz's mom is in town this week.  She's staying in one of our guest rooms through next Thursday.  She's very cool and is helping Liz out with decorating my house.  Yah, so next time any of you see my house, it will probably look a little different.  I have color on my walls now so they are no longer white and I have foo foo crap all over the place.  I think I need some guys to come over and play some xbox, drink some beer, and eat pizza!  Just to make sure that it's still manly enough...  Any takers?

Next week I'll be having surgery on my shoulder so that should be interesting. I can't wait to get that over with so I can get back into shape.  I really feel like a blob right now.

So there, 2 blog entries in 1 night!

So I'm a slacker ...

Now I know I'm a slacker as well with this whole blog thing, but I'm sorry... I hardly have time for myself with how much I've been working and taking care of 2 houses.

Return from UPenn

So I just got back from my trip at UPenn and let me say that life over there seems so much different then here in AZ.  I mean really, there are trees over there... 

Anyways, it was a very productive trip and I was able to complete majority of my implementation while on site.  I was probably putting in about 12 hours a day.  Besides the work part it was a lot of fun using their public transportation system.  Another thing that we don't have in AZ.  I took this trolley from UPenn to my hotel and I took the train from Upenn back to the airport when I left.  Very cool for someone who's never done that type of stuff before...  Saves you a lot of time.

And I really love the Philly Cheese steaks from the street trucks.  Yummy!

Well, back to regular life for now...

University of Pennsylvania

I'm off to Pennsylvania this week to close up a project I've been working on for the past few months.  The project I worked on is a web application that I created that would allow the Penn Card office to quickly pay all of their merchants on campus.  The web application was written in Java and uses the struts framework as well as iBatis for accessing the Oracle database on the backend.  The application is deployed as a WAR file into a Tomcat 5.5 servlet container.  This program does all of the calculations for paying a merchant each month and essentially eliminates the need for an accountant on campus.  Sorry to whoevers job I eliminated... There is also another module to the application that allows UPenn to create their own custom reports using Business Objects XI (Crystal Reports).  Once the report is created they can simply drop the report into the web application and walla, it's on the web for everyone to use that has the appropriate role.

Anyways, I'm sure you're all real excited about my daily fun.  See you all when I get back.

The Kauai Trip

Well we're back from our trip in Kauai. We really had a great time there, but we did run into one big issue...

That issue being the rain... Usually the average rain fall for March in Kauai is about 3 inches. However, this year was quite unusual and they had about 33+ inches of rain in just March alone. There were dam breaks all over the island causing flooding and damaged resorts/roads/houses.... Take a look at some pictures.

Luckily we still had a great time and did catch a few sunny days. The Marriott beach resort was awesome. We got some relax time for just the 2 of us and we got a 50 minute couples massage at the resort. During the rain we still went out and did more sight seeing (waterfalls, canyons, shopping, etc..) When the sun did come out is when we went snorkling and relaxed on the beach.

Overall, I think the trip was great and I'd love to go back when there was a little more sun...

We're off to Hawaii!

Well, I just thought I'd remind everyone that we're leaving for Hawaii
in about 3 hours. I'll post some pictures when we return... That's if
I decide to come back.

Bb World Users Conference

So I recently got back from a users conference for Blackboard in San Diego last week. It was a blast and I'm glad I got to meet many of my customers face to face.

This is picture I had done of myself while attending a client appreciation party on the US Midway aircraft carrier.

The aircraft carrier was awesome. There was all kinds of jets, missles, etc... Go see the Bb World pictures in the photo album (2006). 

Superbowlooza has ended...

 Well, the superbowl party has ended unfortunatley. I'm very glad that almost all of my friends made it out to see my house. Sorry about the long hall everyone. It's too bad my 3 best friends didn't show (Luke, Adam, Nick)... Where were ya? That's ok, I think we all had fun without them.

Thanks everyone for coming!
 

Blackboard Orlando Services Conference

Well, I just got back from my conference in Orlando. It was a lot of
fun meeting new people from the team and sharing our experiences
throughout the year. I also received an award for my accomplishments
for 2005. After dinner one night we all went down to some clubs at
Pleasure Island Orlando. We were all dancing on a revolving dance
floor were I got to see a few people eat it as they entered the dance
floor. It was quite funny, but you had to be there!

Every year the conference really gets me excited to work for a company
like Blackboard!

Rock N Roll Marathon

There she goes... Liz and her friend Carey run by at the 6 mile marker of the Rock N Roll marathon. They maintained a 2 hour pace throughout the race. For more information on the Race and race times go to Race

Is some travel coming?

Yah, so it looks like I have some travel coming up.  I'll be in Orlando for our yearly services conference meeting at the end of this month.  Then I'll be at UPenn for a project closure in late February and then I'll be heading over to San Diego for the Bb World 06 users conference that I'll be presenting at with some of our clients.  So if I'm hard to get a hold of then I'm sorry...  It's going to be a busy few months!

Superbowlooza!

I haven't made a post recently so I thought I'd add a link to the evite for the superbowl party at my place.

http://www.evite.com/pages/invite/viewInvite.jsp?event=WLHFDAQBZZPEFQXPXAFB

I'm sick

Well, unfortunatley I got a cold/allergies or something the last day I was in Maryland so I'm just chilling here all day on my couch... Obviously I'm also playing with this new blog thingy too since I'm bored..

Liz's Backyard

This is just a shot of Liz's backyard back in Maryland. We don't ever see deer in our backyards out here in the valley, but I took this picture from the living room of Liz's house back East. 

Hey, look at me!

Check me out, I just got a present! 

New Years 2006

Well, Liz & I are relaxing in Maryland right now before we travel back to Arizona this evening.
Below is a picture of Liz's family. While we were here we attended several parties. We went out to one restaurant for Anne's (Liz's mom) 60th birthday. We all packed ourselves into a limo and went out for the night. The next night we went to Liz's friends Wedding on New years eve. On new years day Anne cooked a ham dinner for all of us as we watch the Redskins beat up on the Eagles.  

Liz & Brent's Cellphone picture

This is a picture of me and my honey bunny: