We finally got the wedding photos back!

The photographer gave us permission to have anybody print as many copies of anything as they want, so feel free to get your own prints done at Wal-Mart or Walgreens or wherever… Enjoy!

(Clicking on the “O” under available sizes of a picture will give you the full-size image that should be good for printing pictures up to 8×10.)

I went out to see the fireworks display in Gardner last night and got some photos while I was there. I’m pretty happy with the way that most of them turned out, but it would have been a lot easier with a tripod (maybe next year)! Enjoy the fireworks photos!

I made it over to the house and took some pictures with my real (non-phone) camera. You can see them starting towards the bottom of page 2 of the 785 N Spruce photo album. This photo is the first one from that album that I took today.

It looks like they’re making pretty good progress, and the superintendent says we’re definitely on schedule to close on the scheduled date (July 19). That’s especially good news since have to move everything out of Vanessa’s and my apartments by July 21 because our leases are expiring.

Note: I went pretty picture-crazy when I was there. There’s a purpose for all of the photos, but there’s a good chance that a lot of them will be uninteresting to anyone but me (and possible Vanessa). Sorry!

I’m pretty excited about this all since it means that the house should be finishing very close to on schedule (the second half of July). Pictures of the new home are here.

No exciting news to report on the house… they still haven’t done anything on it. At this point the soonest it’s supposed to be done is mid-August (which is after the wedding). At the rate that they’ve been going, it should be finished right around never. At least I’m living in Gardner now, so I should be able to regularly harass them in person. I’m anxious to get some answers since my emails were usually answered rather tersely.

Before leaving Gardner on Saturday, we made an offer for a build-job on a house that should be completed in mid-July. Monday we heard back that the builder had accepted the offer, so I guess we’re off to the races… I’ll keep posting updates here as we find out more and as we take pictures of the progress on the house.

Vanessa, my dad, and I took a trip to Gardner this Saturday to look at model houses in a few different developments around the area. Aside from a few “technical difficulties” (one model opened an hour later than advertised, and another development that we found didn’t end up having model homes any longer) the trip was a success. We found one home that we really liked and a couple of others that were nice.

We’ll be taking another trip soon to meet with the builder and discuss pricing on modifications that we’d like made if we go ahead and build a house. We’ll also need to confirm that the house would be completed by mid-July to make sure that we’re not homeless when we’re married.

I’ll post any updates to the blog, but feel free to check out some photos of the model home in the meantime.

I completed all of my fall-semester classes and received acceptable grades for them… kind of. I currently have two incomplete grades for the semester. One of them is from a year-long software engineering project class that everybody gets an “I” in until they complete the 2nd semester.

The other one is for my text widget for eXene that I’m working on under Dr. Stoughton. Initially, I’d thought this project would be less than a semester and that I’d have the opportunity to work on other parts of eXene during the spring semester…. I was wrong.

For those that don’t know, the wedding date has been moved to August 11, 2007. K-State’s education department decided that Vanessa’s program would no longer be able to student teach in the Kansas City area, so she will be attending KU starting in Fall 2007. She was going to be doing her masters work at KU anyway, so this really isn’t a horrible thing — just unexpected.

I’ll be headed to work at Garmin in Olathe after this semester ends, and it’s not entirely clear where I’ll be living. I’m on the wait list for the Dunes at St Andrews, but I’m also looking at houses in the Gardner area. We’ll just have to wait and see how everything plays out, I suppose.

Lastly, I’ve created a photo album of my current apartment if anybody’s interested in having a look.

This is the point where I needed to rationalize my decision to purchase a set of headphones with a mic builtin. Well, Travis had mentioned at one point that some of the guys he plays World of Warcraft with use Ventrilo to communicate while playing WoW. The perfect excuse to (1) justify my headphone purchase and (2) start playing WoW.

I’d been holding out on WoW for quite some time because I know that I’ll enjoy the game — probably too much. I’ve had a habit in the past of using online games like WoW as a time filler when I didn’t want to be doing things that I should be doing (like, say, homework or dishes). I’m also not to keen on the prospect of paying $15/month to play a game, but if it’s something that I’ll get to do with my buddies and interact with them at the same time, it’s not so bad.

I just submitted an order on amazon.com for WoW which should arrive sometime in the next couple of weeks. I plan on waiting until all of my homework for this semester is done before I start playing, which should be roughly 1 month from now… we’ll see if I have the willpower to last that long.

Suggestions for a race/class of a first character are welcome from anybody that plays WoW.