Jenny and I played a fun new game this weekend called Rock Band. It’s like Guitar Hero but takes the experience even further by adding other instruments and vocals to create, well, a rock band. Each person has an electronic “instrument”, either a guitar, drum kit, or microphone. You choose a song together from over 60 available songs. Then you “play” it by hitting the buttons on the guitar while strumming, hitting the drum pads, or singing as directed by the scrolling musical “score” on the screen. It’s fun to watch, even more fun to play, and highly addictive, especially when you invite your friends and family over and take turns on the different parts. For example, I played drums on the Beastie Boys’ “Sabotage”, guitar on The Clash’s “Should I Stay or Should I Go,” and sang vocals on Sweet’s “Ballroom Blitz”. You can also add a second guitar for the bass part. It’s an absolute blast! Unfortunately, the Rock Band set were were using belongs to Jenny’s department and will be used for events, so we have to give it back. We brought it home to unlock as many songs as we could before the first event. We hope to get our own set later. When we do, you need to come over and rock out with us!
Monthly Archives: June 2008
Retirement for Jenny
As expected, the larger Brenden gets, the less comfortable Jenny becomes. With less than 6 weeks left until his due date, it’s getting harder and harder for her to sleep at night and then get up in the morning for work. She has all her significant projects wrapped up, and she has trained her partner on the specifics of her job. With all of this in mind, she has decided to make July 3 her last day at SWA.
I am extremely proud that my wife not only works for SWA, but has done such an outstanding job. In less than 5 years, she’s gotten 2 promotions. She processed mountains of paperwork, decorated cubes, scheduled pilot interviews and welcomed the candidates when they arrived, interviewed potential employees, traveled all over the country, organized a variety of highly successful events for new hires including the Luv at First Bite luncheons and the Duck Derby, displayed crazy Microsoft Office skills, enriched the culture of the People department and the entire company, and shared her LUV, joy, and creativity with literally hundreds if not thousands of people. Even after Brenden started getting bigger and making it hard for her to sleep, she dealt with it and successfully completed her final big project, the Duck Derby. She has many, many friends at Southwest who will miss her greatly and plan to make her come back often with Brenden in tow.
If she chose, she could easily spend her entire career at SWA and do fantastic things for decades to come. But instead she’s going to stay home, at least for a while, for the important work of raising our son to be a healthy, well-balanced, and Godly little man. We’re both grateful that her staying home is an option and both willing to sacrifice as needed to make it possible. It’s not the right answer for everyone, but it’s what we want, and I am confident that we’ll be happy with this choice.
Congratulations on a job well done, love! You are awesome!
2009 Bid Results
We just finished bidding for our Feb 2009-Jan 2010 schedules at work. My first choice of shift was 11:00pm, which handles departures from the western half of the U.S. I’m happy to say that I got my wish. That start time allows me to spend my evenings with family and friends and gives me and Jenny extra time alone after Brenden goes to bed. In general, the weather is better on that shift as well. We have a saying in the office: “West is Best”. I didn’t get Christmas off, but that’s to be expected for someone as far down the seniority list as I am (110/146). The fact that I have Christmas off this year is highly unusual. We’ll bid for our vacation time over the next couple of months.
New Poll
The results from Brenden’s bday poll are in: Aug 3-9 was the most popular choice with 7 votes, followed by July 13-19 with 5 votes. You can view the results here. I have arranged to be off work from July 27-Aug 9, so I hope he shows up somewhere in that window. It won’t be long now!
I posted a new poll that asks a simple question: how often do you visit my site? If everyone visits on a daily basis, I’ll feel much more guilty when I wait several days between updates. =)
If you have any ideas for my next poll, send them in!
Hypermiling Update
I’ve been trying some hypermiling driving techniques and seeing improvement in my mileage so far. It takes a lot more concentration than traditional driving, but it seems to work. My current goal is to break 300 miles on one tank, which I haven’t done in months. The essence of the driving technique is to coast as much as possible and apply the gas or brakes as little as possible. For example:
- As soon as you know you’ll have to stop ahead at a stopsign or light, take your foot off the gas and coast. Your tachometer might still show greater than idle RPMs, but the fuel flow will be idle fuel only.
- When approaching a hill, speed up gently at the bottom and coast up the hill.
- Coast downhill when possible.
- If you don’t have much traffic nearby, “pulse and glide”. Pick a target speed, accelerate gently to slightly over your target, and then coast until your speed drops a bit below your target. Make sure no one is behind you because this is highly annoying to other drivers.
- When you accelerate, pay attention to how hard your engine is working by watching the tachometer, listening to your engine, and noticing how much torque you feel. If you’re pressed back in your seat and approaching redline on the tach, you’re having fun but wasting tons of gas. I try to keep my engine below 2500 rpm.
- Time your lights. Stopping and starting burns more fuel than maintaining a constant speed, and it’s annoying!
Good luck!
In the Nick of Time
I’ve never really understood that phrase. Anyway, Sunday was our first water volleyball event. Having never owned a pool or set up a water volleyball net, I wasn’t quite familiar with the technique or the net that we had borrowed from a friend. I didn’t even know if I’d bought the right kind of ball. Wanting to set up the net before anyone was at the pool, I stopped there after work that morning to get started. I was tired, really tired, after getting up early on Saturday afternoon for another CARES event and then working Saturday night. All I wanted to do was crawl into bed, but first I had to outsmart the net.
Unfortunately, it was a lot more difficult than I thought. Our community pool is much wider than our friends’ pool and didn’t have good posts to which I could attach the net. I would have to stretch rope between the net and the side poles and somehow attach the poles to something sturdy. I also know embarrassingly little about knots. I can tie a bow and a double knot, but that’s it. I wandered back and forth and thought and thought. Suddenly I noticed a resident opening the gate to the pool area and walking over. In my mind a beam of light from heaven appeared over him and angels sang, but I think I just made that part up. He had finished his workout and was walking home when he noticed me floundering beside the pool and offered to help. I can’t fully explain how thankful I was to have his help. He had set up nets like this before and used to have his own pool, and he did most of the engineering work for me. It seemed like God had pity on me and sent this guy just when I needed help most. Thanks to him, I was in bed by 9:00, and the water volleyball event was a success.