#region Coad's Code : Personal

Wedding & Honeymoon Photos

coad — Tue, 26 Jul 2005 05:50:00 GMT

They're here! The much requested photos from our Texas Wedding & Maui Honeymoon. Just click the links to see the full online photo album. Here are two sneak preview pics.

Just married!

Enjoing Maui to the fullest!

I'm giving this MSN Spaces thing a try since it was quick and easy to create the online photo album. When I get my new website up and running, I'll be able to add a lot more photos.

Previous wedding related blog posts:
Getting Married Today!, Countdown to My Wedding, 14 Days to I Do & Engaged to an Angel

New Living Room w Couches

coad — Fri, 15 Jul 2005 19:02:00 GMT

For the last several years, I've dreamt of having a real leather couch! My living room at my Redmond (Seattle) apartment has been completely bare since I moved in (a year ago) with the occasional influx of moving boxes (from when I moved in then Dawn moved up). Occasionally I'd just sit on the floor in the middle of the completely bare living room dreaming of the day I'd be able to come home to a comfy couch, have guests over, and making it feel like a real home.

Now that I'm married (to the wonderful Dawn Coad) I'm out of the college / bachelor scene (Ikea like furniture) and have entered the realm of 'real' furniture. Dawn and my first big purchase as a married couple, one month after getting married, was a couch, love seat, chair, ottoman, coffee table, and end table from Mor Furniture.

We've waited a long six weeks for delivery and as of last night, it all arrived! It is very exciting! What am I doing this weekend? Hanging out in my living room!

Before - Just an empty living room for the last year.
Imagine me just sitting here on the floor Indian style, yup, sad.

After - A whole new experience! Now it actually looks like a home,
a place to hang and invite friends over.

For those of you that blog, have you noticed how much easier and faster it is to get a blog post out when you're excited about a new thing? That's what this is, I'm excited, here working at Microsoft on a Friday wishing I was hanging out on my couches, so what do I do? Blog about them!

Getting Married Today!

coad — Sat, 30 Apr 2005 15:32:00 GMT

In just three hours I'll be waiting for my beautiful blushing bride at the alter!!

I'm in the hotel with my Best Man with half a tux on getting ready to head over to the church. Friends and family are pouring in from around Texas and even the nation for this special occasion. I can hardly wait!

At 3am my Best Man and I dropped off a "Happy 0th Anniversary" card and long stem rose in front of Dawn's parent's house for her to find this morning. That's it, I'm trademarking the "0th Anniversary" theme, very appropriate since the start of arrays is usually a 0 index (defiantly in C#), and this is the start of our new life together.

Other "Getting Married" Posts:
Countdown to My Wedding, 14 Days to I Do & Engaged to an Angel

Countdown to My Wedding

coad — Sun, 24 Apr 2005 09:40:00 GMT

My wedding is rapidly approaching! Here is how much time is left until my wedding on Saturday April 30th 2005 @ 1:30 PM CST. If it is after that date, the time is counting how long I've been married.

Here are two other posts about my upcoming wedding.
14 Days to I Do & Engaged to an Angel

Note: RSS Bandit, other RSS feed viewers, and some browsers will not display the timer. Please view this blog post in IE for best results.

14 Days to I Do

coad — Sun, 17 Apr 2005 02:21:00 GMT

In just two weeks from today, I'll be waiting at the alter for my fiance to walk down the isle to receive her hand in marriage. I'm very excited!

Dawn is aggresively packing up her appartment in Bryan, TX to be moved out by next week. Next week is also her last week teaching orchestra for two middle schools in Bryan ISD. We are both working fast & furious on finishing up wedding details.

The wedding is Saturday, April 30th in Houston, Texas @ Lakewood United Methodist Church, our reception is being hosted at Raveneaux Country Club, and we are headed to Maui, Hawaii for our honeymoon. We both have large families so it is going to be a big event!

We have a Wedding Site and here is my post about getting Engaged to an Angel.

Our 'official' engagement photo (from a scanned proof).

Dawn recieves her engagement ring at Chritopher's World Grill (August 2004).

On the Victoria Clipper on our way to Victoria B.C. Canada.
We had a wonderful time in beautiful Victoria!

Exploring Ice Caves

coad — Thu, 17 Feb 2005 12:26:00 GMT

This past weekend my friend Vito and I went out backpacking in the Mt Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest. We left Vitos birthday party Saturday night @ 2am, started hiking @ 3:30am, hiked over snow covered rocks in the dark (w/ headlamps) till 8am, pitched a tent and slept for a few hours, then went on a beautiful trail to some ice caves. It was an adventure!

Vito Sabella and I inside the ice cave.

I'm standing by a beautiful, large, cold, mountain snow waterfall.

A view from inside the ice cave to the world outside.

Lego PDA Digital Photo Frame

coad — Thu, 17 Feb 2005 12:06:00 GMT

One of the little gadgets I've wanted ever since getting a digital camera is an LCD Digital Photo Display. This is a unit that sits on the desk and cycles through photos. They typically cost a pretty penny, so using my PDA as the display unit, I built a little adjustable stand out of spare Legos to make my own! The gear on the back adjusts the display angle. The HP comes with photo viewing software that runs a slideshow of pics of my fiance. :)

The stand holds the PDA on its side at a good viewing angle.

The gear knob adjusts the viewing angle. These are Technic Legos.

Other Digital Photo Frames

There is a unit I have my eye on, a Ziga 5.6 LCD display. It has a remote control, accepts most medica cards, and can play movies & MP3s. I want this for my office to see 1,000s of my digial pics, save space, look elegant, watch video clips, and listen to music all in one unit.

A relative of mine recommended the Ceiva Digital Photo Reciever (5"x7" LCD) which you just plug power & a phone line into and it will automatically dial a toll-free number and download your pictures from a website each night. This is a great solution for family (his family uses several); just give the Parents/Grandparents the picture frame and when you post a new pic, they'll get it automatically. If several family members use the unit, everyone can see the same pics. The unit is $150 w/ $100/year subscription charge. We plan on trying it out and will post on how it turns out.

Fun Weekend

coad — Mon, 08 Nov 2004 19:10:00 GMT

This was a fun weekend w/ my fiance, Dawn, visiting from Texas! Here is a recap I wrote for a friend in an e-mail...

Yeah, I had a great weekend. The Highlights:

Dawn was in town!! She was visiting all weekend, whoop! This is what gave me inspiration for everything else this weekend.
Wrote three kick-ass little C# apps, each within two dozen lines of code.
- AnagramGetter solves anagram puzzles using a website and using multithreading from the ThreadPool.
- ClearTextSelection, with a single keystroke, removes the annoying text formatting that occurs when trying to copy and paste.
- ExportTasks prints a list (like a directory) of the tasks in Outlook. This allows me to send certain lists to people in e-mail (or the web, etc).
Worked on solving puzzles for prizes for an internal MS MVP advertising campaign. Solved several, well Dawn did, and got more points towards prizes.
Assembled my Darth Vader Legos, then added some of my own electronics to make Vader's eyes actually glow (w/ super-mini LEDs).
Saw a fantastic, side splitting funny performance by the MS Theater group, a sci-fi Shakespearian 50s-60s rock musical comedy, call Return to Forbidden Planet.
Partied w/ Vito Sabella at his pad w/ over a dozen other, relatively new, msftes (Microsoft Full-Time Employees).
Saw The Incredible cartoon (w/ Vito), oh that was funny and entertaining! :)
Oh yeah, and did I mention that Dawn was w/ me?? Yeah, that was the best part. ;)

Engaged to an Angel

coad — Sun, 10 Oct 2004 17:56:00 GMT

The Proposal
On July 23rd, I proposed to the most wonderful young lady I've ever met ... and she agreed to marry me! My fiance, Dawn Heussner, and I have been dating for over three years now and I just can't imagine my life going on without her. She has been a blessing, an inspiration, and a great comfort. I really look forward to having her with me all the time!!

The Plan
So we're getting married in April!! Then my precious will be with me, permenantly. She's still in Texas teaching orchestra at two middle schools while I'm up in Seattle working for the Man. We try to visit eachother every two or three weeks, which gets expensive when you're trying to save for a wedding.

The Pictures
Here are a few pics from a recent wedding we were part of. Awww, don't we look great together!? :)

Back from the Void

coad — Sun, 10 Oct 2004 17:00:00 GMT

In case you haven't noticed, I've dropped out of the blogging scene lately, just so much going on! This doesn't mean I've stopped thinking of blog topics, in fact, I have quite an extensive list of subjects to write on. Well this post is a good indicator that... I'm back! :)

Life @ Microsoft
These past four months I've been working as a Program Manager (okay, see if you can follow this) on Process Guidance Integration, within Enterprise Development and Test (eDT), within Visual Studio Team System (VSTS), within Visual Studio, within Developer Division, within Server Platforms and Tools, within Microsoft. It has been intense, no doubt about that, but a great challenge. It has been a priviledge to get to work with such dynamic people. There is a large learning curve to ramp up on the lingo, culture, and process which is known as 'Microsoft'.

The Tides are Turning
Well those first few months definately swampped me, obviously with friends asking me if I'd dropped off the edge of the Earth from my lack of blogging. My appartment at Jefferson @ Marymoor has been in boxes (~60) until just recently. It is a slow process getting familar with a new area and unpacking an appartment when all you want to do after work is watch some X-Files or Stargate (from Netflix) and get to sleep.

Those that know me back in college, know that I'm a real hands-on (coding, electronics, women, etc) kind of guy, but first like to have my "environment" set up. Well it's starting to happen! Slowly up to now, but it's ramping up. The fact of this blog article was written is a good sign. The office/server farm/guest room/electronics lab/music studio room is coming together nicely. The living room is full of boxes, but it is dwindling (slowly). Due to the high cost of living up here, college loans & credit card, and misc expenses, it may be quite a while before the living room looks at all like a living room (w/ couch, TV, coffe table, etc).

I miss coding. Being a PM is great, but I do miss tweaking the code, discovering new libraries, talking shop, yes, even hunting bugs. I plan on continuing some personal projects, but there has just been so much more going on that needs to be taken care of first (aka "higher priority").

Getting Back in the Groove
So now that I'm feeling more comfortable at work, I'm becoming inspired to get my domain set back up so I can resume my passions here at "home". My #1 passion isn't avalible :(, but will be in April. :) So I'm making the best that I can without her. There's a long list of topics I'd like to blog on, and it may be slow at first, but I do look forward to getting back in the game.

Right now I'll stay with my current blog address since I can make changes to the skins and such and blogs.msdn.com won't let me. So keep on the lookout for good technical content to follow!