Author Archives: Randy Peterman

Home Again, Home Again, Jiggety-jig

I’m back in Aurora, CO with my family. What a great trip to Texas! I got to meet my co-contractor Steve’s kids, I got to hang out with pretty much everyone at the office. I think that all is moving forward to quite the amazing release cycle early-ish next year. And with that: I’ve got to get some serious work done. I’ll post more later when there’s time.

Texas: Day 3

Wow, this morning I woke up to a freezing cold blizzard. I could not believe the volume of snow we had this morning. I had looked at the weather forecast and things were predicted to get down to 43 degrees, not 3 degrees. The Texas heat must be on vacation.

Just kidding. This is Texas it never gets that cold and it never gets that much snow. However, I’m enjoying myself… and the company is nice. Arvel’s place is great, they’ve got it in ship shape and I think that I want to cook in their kitchen some time if they’ll let me 🙂

Texas No. 4

I believe this is my fourth trip to Texas this year. I’ll be headed down this morning and be hanging out with meetings at work and work when I’m not in meetings 🙂 Saturday is the big company ‘Holiday Party.’ I’m saddened that we can’t say ‘Christmas Party’ but with a multi-cultural, diverse company you just have to celebrate that you all celebrate. I’m celebrating 5.25 years with Alt-N, which is pretty awesome to me, it means I’ve been with the company or worked as a contractor for the company for over half of its lifetime. Wow.

Y’all take care as blogging may be particularly light in the upcoming days.

Instantiate the Holidays Already

Well, Thanksgiving is over, we had 5 visitors staying with us and Linda was at my parents and they came over for Thanksgiving as well. It was great and I can strongly recommend the Alton Brown Turky Brining recipe! What a moist, tasty turkey. That said I just dropped the Peers off, and this morning I dropped off Amanda, Jessica’s cousin, at 5:40 or so. Wow.

I’m pooped simply because of all of the activity. We unfortunately got only one game of Risk in, which is sad, but we did play some Yahtzee and Scrabble. I think I’m ready for a break. Except that we’re continuing on in the busy season as Wednesday I fly to Texas for some meetings until Sunday the 4th, and then after that I come home and 10 days later we fly to Washington to start the Christmas festivities. Dang. The holidays are instantiated but I’ve been so busy hosting that the participative part hasn’t settled in yet.

It was nice to get some time with various folks this last week but I didn’t get enough time with my father-in-law, father or mother. I figure that I’ll never have enough time, but I’ll try!

Eating Humble Pie, Er Sandwich

Yesterday at lunch I regurgitated some food trivia about the Sandwich. This simple staple was named after the Earl of Sandwich who would not quit playing cards to eat. He ordered his servant to bring him so meat between two pieces of bread. Thus he could hold his cards in one hand and his food in the other. This idea caught on with the other players who wanted what ‘Sandwich’ was having. Thus, the term was born. I told this brief story and got some funky looks from my sister-in-laws. What use was this bit of trivia?

About 32 hours later it became quite handy as the Cranium game we were playing asked about just this thing. The oposing team won and the girls learned that the trivia I store in my brain, spew out of my mouth, and make them listen to… can be useful for something. If I hadn’t have told that story the other team would most likely have gotten it, but since I had already shared it they were certain. Drat!

Worship the Turkey

I just read in an email: “Happy Turkey Day!” Which is like saying, “Happy Mashed Potatoes Day!” We’re not worshipping the turkey, are we? Where are you putting the focus? I’m here to be thankful to God for what He’s provided me with. Its not a day about turkeys is it? Even if you remove the current culture’s rather agnostic/atheistic views from the picture verses my radical Christianity** and go back in history the people were grateful for surviving and they were grateful, together, for what they had. Saying happy turkey day is useless… especially if you’re a vegetarian. Or worse yet: A Hindu. That’s like saying, “Happy We’re Going to Be Eating Your Great-Great-Grandma Day!”

Happy Thanksgiving folks, from the bottom of my un-PC heart.

**that’s supposed to be a joke, I consider myself radical, but not the way some people define radical

A Fine Car Indeed

Last night I went to pick up the Peer family from the airport. We own a green Honda Civic 4 door. It seats five. Five small people. Five small anorexic people. Five small anorexic people who do not have luggage. Five small anorexic people without five pieces of large luggage and some backpacks.

Our Honda civic is too small for carrying that many people. We had luggage on laps, I think we were dragging something off the bumper as well. I think we’re going to go get ourselves into debt for a mini van on Black Friday 😉 Just kidding. However, our fine car gets great gas mileage. It gets the good gas mileage through the use of a special turbo charged lawn mower engine. I’m pretty sure that’s what’s in there because if it was any less powerful with 5 anorexic small people with no luggage it would not go.

This is in no way a complaint about Hondas. They’re great cars. But you have to use the car for the right purpose. But you know what they say: When you’re a Hammer everything looks like a Vanilla Ice.

Confession: I Was/Am A Heartless Pig

I was just chatting with my friend Robin and I told her a story that I thought, “I had better blog this,” about. WhyI am a heartless pig will become quite obvious in a moment. You see, I was telling her about how we never had a pet dog growing up. I was telling her how not having a pet dog while growing up had allowed me to become quite callused. I had been involved with the death of numberless fish, some birds and I don’t know about how many other critters that made their way through the Peterman household. I had told Robin about how I was a heartless pig because though I had killed lots of animals [thank the Lord for Grace. I really mean that, if I was Hindu I would probably now be suicidal] when I went over to a friend’s house his family was in tears because they had just had their family dog put down.

I thought their crying was rather wimpy. I am scum for this. Really.

Does that not make me a callus, heartless, pig? To quote John Cleese, “Well, that’s the sort of blinkered, Philistine pig-ignorance I expect from you non-creative garbage.”

Happy Anniversary Mom & Dad!

My Mom and Dad have been married 32 years as of today. I’ve been allive for 28 of those and I can say that through the think and thin they’ve been madly in love and its been a great example. Of course they also have their faults, too: like not buying me a recording studio ;)**

** that’s a joke, just in case you didn’t get that.