Today, Ole sent me a Top 5 Things You Wanted to Know About Me meme. So here we go…

1. What was I doing 10 years ago? Let’s see, that was 1998… I was living in Gwinnett I think. I had just started working at Cox that year. I was driving an Acura Integra - the first car I bought with my own money. I had no clue what HTML was. I think I was already going to the Art Institute of Atlanta, but I’m not certain. Oh, that was the year that I got my dog, Reo.

2. What are 5 things on my to-do list today? Right now I’m working on my group’s website. My website is kind of like an asset management database, but tailored specifically to datacenters. In this website you can see all equipment racked in our datacenter. You can view all the connections from a device to everything it connects to (PDU’s, server switches, other servers, etc). The code I’m working on will allow me to query the port status on the server switch that the device is connected to (via SNMP). Other things on my ToDo list include working on some PHP code for a Drupal module I’m working on for TenTonHammer.com. This will allow me to migrate from an old image Gallery system to the new and improved version we just implemented. I also have to work on a media guide for TTH, create some blog banners, and finally figure out some charting for a custom app we are working on. Non-work related, I have to go to the doctor’s, call an AC guy, call a money guy, get a will made, and research term life insurance (any tips?)… so I have a lot to do.

3. Snacks I Enjoy: Salted cashews. mmmm.

4. Places I’ve Lived: Miami, Cumming, Atlanta, Hinesville, Gainesville, Statesboro, Milledgeville, Duluth, Sandy Springs, Canton. I think that’s all.

5. Things I would do if I were a billionaire: Quit working this job. Donate a ton of it to my church. Buy a few of the cars I’ve always wanted. Upgrade the living snot out of my computer. It’s fast enough now, but with money, it could be a LOT faster. I suppose I’d have to buy Jenny a new car too. More seriously, Jenny and I would travel to all the places we’ve wanted to go. We’d hire personal trainers and chef’s and get in Movie Star shape. Really, I could type about eight pages of things to do with that kind of money…

So there it is. I’m supposed to “Tag” 5 people to do this as well, but the truth is I only know of 2 that would do it or even know what the heck a meme is.

1. Jenny
2. Phil

We ordered baby furniture last week and it arrived on our doorstep earlier this week. We got lucky too; Target had just discontinued the pieces we bought. Jenny could probably explain it all better than me, but here goes: it’s a crib with a front bar that goes up and down (so she doesn’t break her back lifting Baby Jack (aka Thing 1)) outta the crib. But it also turns into a toddler bed, and then a single - so we can use it for awhile. Sounds good to me! We also got a dresser that the changing table will go on top of. We just put it all together last night, and we’re pretty sure we did it right! hah! Those two things alone have pretty much filled up our baby room… there’s enough room for a rocker, but that’s about it.

We’re getting more and more excited every week. We’re starting to grow a collection of baby clothes, books, bottles, stuffed animals, etc… its all so TINY!!! Jenny keeps our other site updated, so be sure to check it out at http://www.jennyandsean.com.

Until next time…

That night we went to the Ritz (where I lost my cellphone…) and everyone was calling us Mr and Mrs Williams - it was kind of weird to hear it. The next morning we woke up and got on a plane to St Lucia. We were there for 5 gloriously sunny and breezy days. We stayed at the Sandals Regency and loved it. The food wasn’t as good as we hoped, but everything else made up for it.

While we were there we went on a rain forest gondola ride - pretty neato - but the coolest thing was a helicopter tour of the island. I can’t even begin to describe how amazing that was. I’m going to try and get a video up on YouTube to show some of it. Once I do, I’ll link to them from here.

So, we’re back in the cold now. Back at work now. Back to the regular, everyday tasks. But we’re married!

Want pictures? My friends took a TON of pictures at the wedding… view those here. Take a look at a few of the honeymoon pictures here.

Christmas was great for Jenny and I. We spent the weekend before Christmas at her parent’s place in NC. We had a bear of a time getting up there since it rained the whole way, but we made it in one frazzled piece. We came back Christmas eve and spent Christmas morning together opening presents (I got some good loots!), then went to my Dad’s for the morning. That evening we went to her Brother’s place and spent the evening with him and her parents (they drove down from NC to spend some time with family here around Atlanta). We still have one more Christmas visit to make with my Mom and that side of the family, but that won’t happen until next Sunday.

The biggest news, of course, is that there’s only 36 days left before the wedding. Wow… it really feels like it was just last week that Jenny and I were amazed that we had 87 days left. Now here we are with barely a month to go. These last few weeks are going to speed past even faster than expected though. We looked at our plans over the holidays and we don’t have a SINGLE day available on the weekends without plans. Wedding showers, birthday celebrations, bachelor/bachelorette parties/trips, college bowl games, new years parties… yikes.

Anyhow, we’re both super-excited and can’t wait for Feb 3rd to be here. In the meantime we’re looking forward to this weekend. Tomorrow night we’ll be watching the Peach Bowl over at Jeff’s house. New Year’s eve we always gather at Mark’s place to celebrate his birthday and the new year. Tonight, Jenny will be playing catchup with all our wedding tasks and figuring out exactly what we have left to do - that reminds me, I need to verify some reservations.

Speaking of reservations… I had a genius moment a few days ago. I’ve already reserved a seat at a nice restaurant for Valentine’s day. How much do I rock? Lots.

In geek news, I’m about to order some new parts for the computer. It’s been a good year and a half or more since my last upgrade, and with some of the newer games coming out I’m starting to feel the frame rate pains.

Ok, that’s all for this post… that should bring everyone up to speed with what’s going on. I’m planning a future geek post to talk about some cool Firefox tricks/tips I’ve done.

Later!

Now that I’ve made it sound like I don’t like Christmas, allow me to say that this is my favorite time of year. I love the cold, I love the wintery season (not that we’ve had much of it here in GA), I love Christmas trees, Christmas lights, red and green everywhere, etc, etc. And this is my first one with Jenny.

It’s been fun so far. Jenny and I have done a good job at telling each other what we want for Christmas, and she keeps telling me I’m going to love mine… so I’m starting to feel like a kid again. I’m pretty sure Jenny will like her Christmas, but I always get nervous before-hand.

Anyhow, this is a year of a lot of firsts for Jenny and I, so here’s a few pictures I’ve taken to help us remember.

“How are ya? What’s new? How’s life?” The same question any friend asks that you haven’t talked to in a while. After catching up we started talking about our dating lives. It’s always good to have a female friend to go to for advice. She was raving about her experiences on Match.com. Having been on there before I wasn’t to thrilled about the prospect of putting a profile back online. I think it’s a very different experience for men than it is for women. However, after talking to her off and on for a couple weeks, listening to her stories of all her dating experiences, I finally gave in and decided to put my profile up again.
One night after work I was sitting at home in front of the computer. Browsing the internet, paying bills, playing games, whatever… I don’t really remember what I was doing, but my friend Emily started chatting with me.

“How are ya? What’s new? How’s life?” The same question any friend asks that you haven’t talked to in a while. After catching up we started talking about our dating lives. It’s always good to have a female friend to go to for advice. She was raving about her experiences on Match.com. Having been on there before I wasn’t to thrilled about the prospect of putting a profile back online. I think it’s a very different experience for men than it is for women. However, after talking to her off and on for a couple weeks, listening to her stories of all her dating experiences, I finally gave in and decided to put my profile up again.

The good news was that Match still had my profile saved from the last time. I hadn’t changed much, so it didn’t take long to update the profile and add a couple recent pictures. Once that was done, I started browsing. When I say I started browsing, what really happened was this: I clicked search, clicked on the first profile that caught my eye, and I was done.

Seriously! It was this supercute girl standing in front of Sanford stadium that caught my eye. Short brown hair, red shirt, Dawgs fan, cute. All good reasons for me to email her. So I did.

I got a response from her a couple days later. She told me that she’s the type of person to only date one person at a time, and had just committed to

meeting someone else.

“…if you don’t mind, can I keep your profile in my favorites, and email you if this ends up going nowhere?”

I told her I was the same way, so I completely understand and appreciated the honesty.

It may sound a bit strange, but somehow I knew that I’d hear back from her. Just based on what we had written in our profiles, we had a quite a bit in common. Sure enough… three days later she sent me another email.

“So, I’m emailing you 3 days later….. hahaha. Very humorous to you perhaps, but can I just say the dating scene is not my cup of tea this year… hahaha.”

Turns out the dating scene worked out just fine for her! hah! After that we talked on the phone every night for a week. But that wasn’t good enough. After we hung up, we both got online so we could chat some more.

Finally, after what seemed like an eternity - the longest week EVER - we met for dinner, and yes… I cooked.

Cloudland Canyon Panoramic Now, after only four short months, we are as happy as a couple can be. A few saturdays ago, Jenny and I went on a sunrise hike at Cloudland Canyon. After making Jenny walk for about a mile and a half, I asked her to marry me. Surprisingly, she said yes! Hahah! Ok, it wasn’t that surprising…

It’s funny how things work out… I’ve been in a handful of long relationships and a handful of short relationships. None of them ever made me think that I’d believe in “love at first sight” until the day I met Jenny.