2 sites

recent work:

a small one for the Steel Man (how could you NOT elect him?)

and a bigger one if you want to buy a pool table. kudos to Jacob for doing the bulk of the work of translating our old ecommerce stuff to snazzy new .NET ecommerce. no easy task. and of course hooray for Mateo on making a very cool looking site.

HSA - we're cutting edge!

the day after the prez talked up Healthcare Savings Accounts ("We will strengthen Health Savings Accounts – by making sure individuals and small business employees can buy insurance with the same advantages that people working for big businesses now get"), we started our very own HSA here at work. one of the many great things about working here is that the guys put a premium on good health coverage (pun only somewhat intended) and I dont pay anything monthly for it.

but of course traditional high-end coverage is getting dang expensive these days, especially considering all the kids we've all been cranking out. so the HSA thing seems like a good idea, and with the good folks at Huffaker on our side, it's hard to go wrong. at the very least, it'll save the company a ton of money, which is good for everyone. if you dont know much about HSAs, there's a pretty good rundown here.

the coolest part of the HSA for us right now is that we can use it to pay bills from previous medical stuff. we can use it for pretty much anything somewhat medical, which is cool, but the down side is that not everything counts toward the deductable for the high-deductable backup account. so the trick is using it toward stuff that counts toward the deductable, or otherwise hoping for the best down the road if we use it for other stuff.

so we'll see how this goes for us. ideally, it will be a big score, as we now have an asset that's in our name to use as we see fit. hopefully we wont have to use it much at all, being relatively young. but as a whole, we're not relatively healthy, as the wife has fibromyalgia, so I'm a little nervous about how it will all work out. if we can hold off having another baby or getting in a car wreck for a while, we'll hopefully have our account built up for whatever we need.

free office desks

Our office is getting some new desks and getting rid of the old. We've got 5 full-sized desks, most of them steel-case, one made of pressboard-type stuff. They are 60" x 30". They're in working order, but they're getting a little old. If you're interested, they will be available for pickup this this afternoon at 4:30 or tomorrow morning downtown at our office at 408C Broad Street. Here are some rather poor pictures, but you get the idea (please excuse our mess -- we'll be cleaning up shortly). First come, first served. Call 266-5626 x18 or just ring the 3HD buzzer at the door.

thanksgiving card, new site

here's a Thanksgiving greeting from us here at work. I'm pleased to report that I contributed to the voice talent. enjoy.

in other work news, we just launched a new site for which we're quite thankful, as it combines 2 of our favorite things: flooring simulation and ecommerce. so go make and buy your very own custom area rug.

geek day, baby night

it's been a full day. (the next paragraph is relatively geeky. skip down if you're more interested in baby/family stuff).

early this morning Ed and I headed to an all-day geek event for work, namely a Microsoft TechEvent and MSDN thing. being Microsoft developers we get to take in these free presentations now and then. we have a good streak of bringing home decent door prizes (I won a PDA last time, which went strait to eBay), and there are always t-shirts and other schwag. the content of the actual presentations is usually somewhat pertinent to our work, although often it's either over my head or doesnt apply to what we do, or both. but today was very good for us, as it addressed the new versions of our database software (SQL 2005) as well as our programming platform (ASP.NET 2.0). for the first time at one of these, I knew exactly what they were talking about, could see the benefit of the upgrades, and even could ask some relatively intelligent questions. so we're looking forward to the new versions, and as Ed marveled, some of the features of the new stuff may be the first time we'll use a Microsoft product as it's intended (without bending over backwards with workarounds for our purposes). we shall see. oh and Ed won a nice laptop bag.

when I got home the fun began. Michelle had a get-together here tonight (which happened to be almost exclusively the wives of Coptix). so she was busy getting stuff ready, and I was on baby duty as well as trying to help with the dishes and whatnot. but there was also an event this evening for work that we needed as many work folks as possible to attend. so instead of going myself, I volunteered to watch Fuller so his parents could go. double baby duty!

it was actually a lot of fun so see the boys interact, and to marvel how different they are. then again it's not that surprising, because the boys' dads personalities are pretty different too. then Jaron showed up with his mom, so he joined in on the fun too. having 2 kids to tend to was eye-opening for what we're about to experience, but chasing after 3 kids isn't easy. I have new respect for the Wells. thankfully these boys are all low-maintenance, at least until bedtime fussiness kicks in. but after playing and whatnot, I got Fuller and Caleb put to bed, and handed off Jaron to his mama.

then I retired to the backyard to hang out with the dog and pluck on the banjo a little while the girls had fun together.

making the web a better place

the new site isnt quite ready yet, but the fact that the old one is gone makes me very happy. it's days like this that make it all worth while.

work news

a few tidbits from the work front:

congrats to Matt (our half of the amazing design duo known as the Cooley brothers) and Andrea on the birth of their daughter Remie Camille. we love babies around here. lots of babies. and we're next.

congrats to fellow chattablogger Mike, who will be our new project manager. most of us have known Mike for a while. I'm not sure if this is good thing or not, but I'm pretty sure he'll be a good fit around here, as long as he can put up with our quirks. his predecessor Andrea (and her husband) will soon be going with Action Ministries to Zambia to help with HIV/AIDS ministry. they're still raising support, so leave a comment if you would like more info.

a little while ago we finally launched a new site for Tuftco. dig the retro. who would have thought carpet machines and stuff could look so cool? Matt's awesome.

and speaking of carpet, we finally redid the site for FloorSim, which is our nifty carpet simulation stuff. and very soon we'll officially launch the latest site we did using FloorSim technology, which kept us all busy for a while. if you're into commercial carpet (and who isnt?), it's pretty nice. in short, Ed rocks, and I get to help.

and our old friend, co-worker, and now telecommuter Jacob is coming into town for a while next week, so it'll be good to catch up and hang out, epecially at next week's Nightfall show, featuring the Be Good Tanyas. and we finally get to see what his kids look like these days! you'd think he'd do a photoblog or something (hint, hint)

2 more

for quite a while here at work, I've been the guy who does most of the work on our standard websites. so it's amazing to me that we could launch a site without me even touching it a bit. ahh, the beauty of having 2 summer interns who have caught on quickly and really know their stuff. I suppose I shouldnt get used to it, but it's been nice having not one but two guys eager to do pretty much anything I ask them to. so a shout-out to JD in particular right now, who recently launched a small site for a chattanooga law firm. (matt's site should launch soon, and it's a doozie, complete with 21st century CSS). and we've finally launched an extensive site for chattanooga's air pollution control bureau. this was a family affair, as michelle worked to move the content over from their old site and such. both of these clients had sub-par sites before (to say it kindly), so it's always nice to clean up the web a little.

more new sites!

we've been quite busy at work for a while, but it seems like we've had little to show for it. for various reasons, a lot of the sites I've been building have been delayed for quite a while. sometimes it's bureaucracy on their end. sometimes they're just too busy to return our calls or send us that last bit of text for the site. sometimes there's too many chefs in the virtual kitchen, or sometimes the head chef takes off for another job, leaving the kitchen in disarray. and yes, even sometimes it's a problem on our end.

but suddenly everyone is into launching their sites. like the one for "amplified telephones, notification systems, assistive listening devices" (full ecommerce coming as soon as a few more ducks get in the row) and a simple site for a local "independent investment management firm." (yes, these links are to help google a bit).

two long-outstanding sites launched in one day! and we have (count em) 6 more on the cusp (which of course could be delayed for who-knows-how-long for who-knows-what, but at least my part is done). this definitely calls for a beer. or two.

new site

it's been far too long, but we've finally got a new site up for work. this is easily the best site we've had, with actual content and such. and as a bonus, we beat the other guys. hehe.

new compy

our new computers just came in at work. I'm installing the myriad of ms patches even now.

it's been a while since we upgraded, so we got 4 matching small form factor aluminum little cute compys. althlon 2800, dvd-rw, radeon 9200, 512 RAM, 80 gb drives. I'm not one to get all excited about snazzy new hardware, but it's pretty cool stuff. now the joys of installing all the software I need.

it's the little things

back when I signed on here at 3HD, there were lots of cool little perks. most all of them went away in the lean years, but as I was thankful for having a job at all then, I didn't complain. well now we got one cool perk again: free carmike movie tickets! in the past we simply had discount tickets, but now they're on the house (4 a month). sometimes it's the little things that keep me happy. well a paycheck helps too. and health benefits are nice.

in other 3HD news, some of our prayers have been answered and we've landed a rather large job with a carpet company in Dalton. basically we're doing something similar to what we did for mannington a few years ago. very cool.

work

things are looking up here at work.

the coolest news for me is that I'm somewhat of an award-winner. we entered five different things in the Chattanooga Addys this year, and we won 4, two for which I did all the programming: cbslawfirm.com and mytennisstore.com. (the other two were rockcreek.com and a print piece for CB&S). we don't yet know if we've won "silver" or "gold" awards (or perhaps "judge's choice"), but I'm pretty excited either way. kudos especially to Ben Horner, who designed all that stuff (and the awards are almost exclusively for the design).

In other work news, since the aforementioned Ben has left for Europe, we hired another great designer. Many more good things to come from 3HD in the design department. Matt is the brother of Mark, who works here, and who also happens to go to church with most of us.

and we're finally getting the hang of the new programming stuff (which is microsoft asp.net for anyone who might care). Ed is a programming genius, and I do my best to keep up. I even went to a local .net meeting at provident last night. a whole roomful of geeks. I learned a little, but I was mostly there for the pizza and doorprizes. last month Ed won some nice software (that went straight to eBay for $150). this time I won a deck of microsoft playing cards. hooray. now I can play solitare w/o the computer.

.net humility

I'm finally getting around to programming with ASP.NET. It was bound to happen some time.

After more than 3 years of getting by with regular old ASP, I am being humbled by this newfangled technology. Of course I don't like all the "let me do that for you" that MS does for every little thing, but there are some cool and powerful things going on here. But I'm not quite sure what they are yet. It took me a full workday to figure out a simple database insert from a form (that would take 30 minutes to do the "old" way). Hopefully this will get easier.