Yes, I know it's been forever since I've posted, but it's been an insanely busy month!! But we shipped the robot for FIRST!!! :) :) I'd put a picture up, but the design is still semi-confidential until we publicly release some pictures, so it'll have to wait a few days! But I must say it's a pretty impressive design even if it is a little flimsy if hit the wrong way. It should be a fun season of competitions this year!!

Speaking of which, I'm missing the first 2 days of Detroit :( I'll be out in San Francisco again for the next two weeks so I won't be able to get out there until Saturday!! But my friend Susan and I are taking a little road trip out there at 4am, so it'll be all good! For those of you in chicago, come out for the regional at Northwester on the 26th or 27th of March!! It should be a good time, and we'll have had some practice in Detroit, so we should be pretty good by then!!

Other than FIRST, I have just been working a TON lately!! I've got a bunch of different projects that I'm working on and even had more goals than our little performance management system could handle for the year, so it looks like those problems of being bored at work won't be coming back any time soon!! And I just found out last week that I'm getting a promotion!!! So I'm super excited about that as well!!! :)

Oh!!! And I bought an iPod yesterday before heading over to the WildStang ship party at dan's. It is the coolest thing ever!! I got one of the mini ones and it's so great to go running with. It comes with this arm band that makes it really easy to change songs or adjust the volume while you're running. And of course it uses metadata and searching, so obviously I'm interested from a geeky point of view as well :) It was almost 60 degrees outside today so I got my first outdoor run of the year in which was so great! I really love evanston and being able to run along the lakefront with the city in the background and nothing but water to my left.

Well, that's about all that's new around here!! I'm off to San Francisco for another two weeks and will be visiting my aunt and cousins down in LA next weekend. So if any of you are there, you should let me know so we can hang out!! :)

Hi!! I'm actually home at a reasonable hour tonight!! What a first! :) And I got to go to FIRST today! It was great to get to go after about two weeks away. Not a lot else is new around here. I was at work until after 1am on Monday, but these next few weeks should be a lot nicer! All my code is checked in and everyone is happy with it. :)

Last night was fun too! I hung out with some people that I worked with last year down in the city at this pretty cool bar in the south loop. It was nice to have an evening to relax and get out!

And we also found out that there's a class project at Berkeley that is almost exactly like what we've been up to this year at work! :( Oh well. I guess it goes to show that we were thinking about the right things! But the class was partly sponsored by Nokia, our biggest competitor! :(

So I'm safely home from San Francisco! It was an amazing weekend and I was able to go hiking up in the mountains and watch the sunset from a rock in the ocean and ride a cable car hanging onto the outside! :) And that was all yesterday! It was definitely a great ending to a very busy week! The next few days should be pretty busy as well, but then hopefully it'll get a little bit less hectic after that. :)

I really love the bay area! (As if you guys didn't know that already!) It's just amazing how nice the people are over there and just how friendly and environmentally aware and just overall laid back and accepting everyone is out there. And you've just gotta love when you can go hiking in february in a sweatshirt! :)

It looks like we're going to have to put off that Too Much Light trip until next week or so. I'm going out to dinner with my parents on Friday for my mom's birthday. How about a week from Friday? Does that work for people? Let me know!

Howdy from beautiful Mountain View, California :) It's so wonderful to be ou here!! The weather is amazing and the people are just so wonderful! Everytime I come out here, I can't believe how amazingly nice everyone is. I mean, I'm from the Midwest where people are supposed to be really nice...and I come out here and it's a world of difference. Seriously...I mean I held the door open for these two people at PF Chang's (mmmm...lettuce wraps!) tonight and they were like...Oh, thank you so very much! Woah...for holding open a door for 5 seconds. And I got into this whole long conversation with the checkout girl at whole foods. It was very cool.

Anyway, I've got a TON of work to do tonight and just spent a long time talking to a friend on the phone, so I've gotta run and do work. I hope everyone is having a good week!!

Oh, and if you're around Chicago and want to see Too Much Light Makes the Baby go Blind on February 13th (yes, it's a Friday) let me know! I think I'm getting a bunch of people together for it!!