I hope that everyone had a good Christmas. They say that this is the time of year we get together with friends and family. However, most of my friends out of state, getting together can be difficult.

To celebrate our eighth wedding anniversary, my wife and I went to see Wicked at Playhouse Square. Both of us had read "Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West" (which parallels "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz"). The story follows the Wicked Witch of the West (Elphaba), her sister, the Wicked Witch of the East (Nessarose), and the Good Witch of the North (Galinda/Glinda). The story also shows how the Cowardly Lion, the Tin Man, and the Scarecrow came to be.

I know that I should post more often. Heck, I completely missed the month of September. Maybe it has been because I have been using Twitter to do status updates. At some point, I want to write an application that will update all of my social networks. However, as I would be probably be the only user, I have not been too motivated to create such an app.

Besides, I spend a good chunk of my day writing web apps now at work. I think it takes the fun out of it if I did the same after work. It is funny that before I landed a job a Tri-C, I had turned down another web development job. At first, I thought it was because I did not want to do web development full time. Over time, I have come to the realization that I just did not want to work for that company.

Recently, my wife and I were rudely awoken by a phone call at two in the morning. I sat in bed listing to half of an urgent phone conversation. It was something about my brother-in-law's vehicle. They found the car, but could not get a hold of Matthew (my brother-in-law). Huh? Was he okay?

For those who have not been following me, I have recently become the Senior Programmer / Analyst in the Office of eLearning & Innovation (eLi) at Cuyahoga Community College (Tri-C). Two weeks ago, I went on my first business trip for the college. It was to Blackboard World (BbWorld) 2009 as well as the Developers Conference (DevCon). Since I have a few colleges as well as Blackboard users following me, I figured I would write a blog entry.

For the past four years, we have been doing the ADA's Tour de Cure. We lost Rachel's father, Ken, a few years to diabetes. In addition, Rachel and a number of family and friends have diabetes. Therefore, we like to support the ADA when we can.

As Rachel and I do not normally ride our bikes, we are in poor shape for this event; had it been a walk, we would have an easier time. Additionally, even with the liberal application of sunscreen, we still become sunburned. However, we still enjoy doing the ride.

I keep kidding my wife by telling her she does not need to generate situations for me to write about; I have enough stuff happen to me as it is. :) Anyway, I am overdue for an update:

We finally had our garage sale. Anything we could not sell was donated to Goodwill and the local library. It is nice to park (at least one vehicle) in the garage again. Now, if we could only get the garage door open to work.

I am now within mere months of completing my Bachelors in Computer Science. I was able to submit an experiential learning portfolio that gave me credit for five classes. Moreover, while I am excited to be so close to reaching this next plateau, I am having difficulty getting motivated. Maybe I need a relaxing vacation. I have not had a good vacation in a couple of years now. While I have been able to get away for a few days at a time, I have not been able to detach myself mentally from normal life.

I am driving to work, as I normally do, when I get caught behind a school bus. When the bus stopped at a railroad crossing, I had to stop too. It was not because I wanted to stop. Rather, it was because my vehicle died. I quickly restarted the engine. But, the Check Engine light came on. In addition, it was sputtering to the point of nearly stalling out again. I pulled off the road and let the vehicle sit for a few minutes. I checked my gas cap (as that that can cause the engine light to come on). However, it still continued to sputter.

Whew! Things have been crazy here. My main computer at home had problems a few weeks ago. I ultimately had to wipe the hard drive and start over. I did not lose any data; I have good backups. However, it took quite a long time to get up back up and in a usable condition. I still do not have all the software reinstalled. But, my current classes are coming to a close. I needed to catch up on all my homework. I am nearly caught up now.