Reflections of the year 2008

Hello all,

I've been working on this entry for a few days now, and it is finally coming together. The year 2008 has been a very tumultuous time for my family. It started out with the absence of Steve Brown at Embarq. His retirement left a big hole for me. I missed his constant presence for the past 10 years. He was always there to say "Good Morning" to me when I would stroll into the office. I missed the words "coffee coffee" coming over the partition wall. I never knew where the conversation would head during those technical discussions, but they were always entertaining and educational. Chris and continued to make trips to the coffee pot, but they were never the same to me without Steve. Soon Amy Krohn took a new position at Embarq and Sterling McCullough was our new supervisor. That was the writing on the wall for me at Embarq. They were determined to make choices that were not sound. They were always reacting a day late and a dollar short. So I decided to leave and pursue a life as a software contractor with eVergance.

Evergance was a good learning experience. I now know what I never want to do again. I am not built to be a contractor. There is far too much stress and no time to learn what they want you to do. I'm sure if given enough time, I could have made it work there, but it was good to get out of there with the lessons learned and my sanity.

With every door that closes, another one opens. DST had always interested me while I was at Embarq. I left eVergance on a Friday and had accepted a position with DST before leaving on vacation the following week. Now all I needed to do was learn everything I could about a new industry and the framework which they built their application on. Simple enough really. If I could learn how to make a C application fork a telnet process to talk to a computer built in 1973 and turn on dial tone for Ma Smith in Virginia, I could learn how to invoke a transaction to sell 100 shares of company X for a broker in New York. I am looking forward to what is coming my way at DST.

As for the family, it has been a great year. Zac started Kindergarten at Oakwood Manor. His vocabulary has grown so much! He loves to count and do addition and subtraction. He still wants either mom or I to read to him. He is getting much better at recognizing small words and sounding them out while I am reading. That is very impressive for him. He did not show any interest in doing this before he started school. Zac is officially 4' 3" tall at six years old. He is one of the tallest in his class.

Alexandria is growing more into the little girl every day. She is 4' 7" tall and looking forward to her first basketball practice in January. She loves 2nd grade and more importantly loves spelling, math and science. Ali likes to be challenged to reason out more complex math problems and enjoys the praise that she receives from Jen and I when she gets the answer correct. Her favorite things are Hanna Montana and High School Musical. I doubt I even remember what those are in 10 years, but I'll put them down now for good measure.

Jennifer and I celebrated ten years together in October. We didn't go anywhere special on our anniversary. We agreed to go on a cruise sometime in 2009 to celebrate. In December Jennifer was promoted to Customer Service Supervisor at Unimed. She is still planning on taking her GRE in the Spring and starting her teaching certification. I'll keep you posted on that as the event nears.

And finally, this is Dad's birthday. My dad would have been 66 today. Happy Birthday Dad! I hope you are enjoying a warm day in Heaven and playing a round of golf. I want you to know that you are in Ali and Zac's prayers. They really miss you. We all miss you and wish that you were not taken from us so soon.

-Andy