Meat and Potatoes Man

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Originally uploaded by jduty.

Sunday night Kerry and I gave Joshua rice cereal for the first time. He seemed very interested and gulped down every spoonful Kerry offered. Of course we learned that it is better to do this right before bath time, since one will require the other.

Welcome Drew Christopher Dazey

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Originally uploaded by jduty.

Drew Christopher Dazey was born on Sunday, November 12 weighing in at 8lbs,9oz and 22 inches long. Congrads to Kevin and Crissy on a great job and we can’t wait for Drew and Joshua to meet (this picture actually shows their first meeting, but I’m pretty sure Drew won’t remember it).

Moving day

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Originally uploaded by jduty.

As you can tell from this photo, I’ve been replaced in Kerry’s life. Just another lazy Sunday at the Duty house.

The 411

A bunch of people have been asking how we are doing so I thought I would post a quick update:

My new job at PTC is going great. I’m slowing moving from the “I’m new and don’t know anything” to the “I’m not as new and can begin to start contributing, but still know very little.” luckily they are at the end of a development cycle and doing QA to get a release out so its a great time to learn the surrounding code. The people here are really great and they seem to really know how to create enterprise-level software. My boss is really cool also and with his million responsibilities regarding the upcoming release is very willing to take the time and help me learn.

The product I work on is highly XML based and some employees were actually on the W3C board that created and manages the XML spec. I’ve worked with XML pretty much since I got into technology but I have to admit, I was just skimming the surface. There are so many awesome features that I didn’t know about but wish I did. Obviously with the amount of technology out there its impossible to stay on top of everything. But every once and a while you learn something that, if you had known earlier, would have changed the design decisions you had made in several of your previous projects. I would recommend to any developer, working in any languages, to go pickup a book on XML and learn it. I would also challenge any universities and training organizations to cover it pretty well. Just like knowing data-structures or algorithms, a good foundation in XML can benefit several areas in software development. A lot of the problems I have solved in the past and seen colleagues solve were already handled by some of the features in XML.

Ok, enough shop stuff…

Joshua is doing wonderful. Kerry and I are amazed how much he has changed and his personality has grown. He can almost stay sitting up on his own and has found a whole new octive in his voice. We think is first took is beginning to come in (upper right) so we are a little nervous about that. By far his new favorite activities are playing in his exer-saucer and tearing up any magazine we get in the mail. He just celebrated his first Halloween and I’m proud to say he pulled off the lobster costume with flying colors. Those pictures will definitly be coming out when he brings home his first girlfriend.

My weekends have been busy with a big, manly project. A neighbor and I have been building a deck on the back of my house. Its been a great learning experience, especially since my neighbor knows what he is doing and I have no clue. Its a 12×16 foot deck and I decided to go with the trex synthetic lumber. Its a substancial amount more but I really think you save time and money in the long run (you never have to sand, stain, or refinish it). You can cut, nail and drill it just like regular wood but since it is composite you never have to worry about splitting or warping. If anyone is looking to build a deck I would highly recommend it, either pay now or later.

The big news is that Kerry, Joshua, and I will be down in Texas with my family over Christmas. With the geographical seperation my family is all in the same room so seldom so this will be a great treat! Of course I’m sure Joshua will be spoiled rotten by everyone and who knows, maybe Santa will make an appearance. Luckily my parents have a mac so look for pictures almost daily.

Well, thats about it here.

the legs are working

I don’t think Joshua’s legs have any problems. I’m trying out the famous YouTube video site, but I still may post the standard Quicktime format also. Enjoy!