Soccer mom in the making

Here's a cute conversation with Dova and Adam in the car. We were on our way to Adam's soccer game and I was planning to return something to a store afterwards.

Mom: Darn, I forgot the receipt for the return.

Dova: That's OK, I can help you.

Mom: Thanks Dova, but you can't, you can't drive home and get it.

Dova: When become a mommy, I can drive.

Mom: Yes, when you become a mommy and you have your own car and your own kids.

Mom: How about you Adam, are you going to be a daddy when you grow up?

Adam (with head buried in Gameboy): No way, too much work.

Mom: (LOL) Ah, so you do know how much work you guys are!

Dova: I'm going to be a mommy when I grow up and have lots of kids.

Adam: OK, I guess we'll have kids if Dova wants them.

They are still at the age where they think they will marry each other when they grow up. Adam is so accommodating, like an old married couple. They're shown here during halftime of this game. She absolutely adores her brother.

Thursday Thirteen #1 - Things that happened on my birthday

My very first Thursday Thirteen! This is a mashup of Thursday Thirteen and another birthday meme going around. These are things that happened on January 4th through history:

1. 1493 - Christopher Columbus leaves the New World, ending his first journey.
2. 1643 - Sir Isaac Newton born, English mathematician and natural philosopher (d. 1727)
3. 1785 - Jakob Grimm born, German philologist and folklorist (d. 1863)
4. 1809 - Louis Braille born, French inventor of braille^[1] (d. 1852)
5. 1885 - The first successful appendectomy is performed by Dr. William W. Grant on Mary Gartside.
6. 1896 - Utah is admitted as the 45th U.S. state.
7. 1960 - Albert Camus dies, Algerian-born French philosopher and writer, Nobel laureate (b. 1913)
8. 1961 - Erwin Schrödinger dies, Austrian physicist, Nobel laureate (b. 1887)
9. 1967 - I was born!
10. 1970 - The Beatles record as a band for the last time.
11. 1990 - Doc Edgerton dies, American electrical engineer (b. 1903)
12. 2007 - The 110th United States Congress convenes, electing Nancy Pelosi as the first female Speaker of the House in U.S. history.
13. Every year - Trivia Day and Humiliation Day

Find yours by typing your birth month and day with no year into wikipedia and also check out Holidays for Everyday.

Flinging the door open while driving

How many times have I said "Don't let that sweet face fool you". I remember being around 10 years old, and driving around in the back seat of the car with my parents. No seat belts in those days of course. I used to think, there's no stopping me from just opening that car door and flinging myself out. If we are driving, would the pressure of the wind keep the door shut? I could just reach out and touch the handle - no, don't touch it! I had the crazy thoughts, but never acted on it.

This past weekend while I was driving the kids back from grocery shopping after a soccer game, a rather long afternoon, Dova pulls this one. I stopped briefly at an intersection before making a left turn and I hear Dova fiddling with the right rear car door. Next thing I know, it flings wide open as I go around the turn. Thankfully, she was safely buckled into her booster seat and I was able to pull over immediately. Screaming at the top of my lungs, I ran outside, activated the child lock and slammed the door shut. I blame this stunt on "trusting" Dova to open the car door only when we asked her to, using the Toyota Echo which has a really light door instead of my car which she can't open at all, and the perfect timing of opening the right door during a left turn. I asked her why she did it and she simply replied that she wanted to get out. Both kids were snickering the whole time I was yelling on the way back. She wasn't so happy when she found out that she could no longer open her door when we got home though.

Wordless Wednesday - Adam's soccer kick

Fired and promoted on the same day

It's been two and a half years since I was first told that I was laid off from my last job, but it only recently dawned on me that ironically, I was fired and promoted on the same day. I was on vacation when my boss called me at home. I had no idea that I was about to be laid off, and when he told me the news, I was quite shocked. It was not an instant layoff as they wanted to retain me for 9 months for technology transfer.

It was also review time and I knew I had a promotion coming, so at the end of the call, I also inquired about that. My bosses' tone turned around and he was happy to tell me that I was promoted to "Staff Software Engineer" and got an 9% raise. In addition to that I was going to get a 15% salary increase during the transition period before my termination. So the call to inform me that I was going to be terminated ended up also about a nearly 25% pay increase and a promotion. Only in corporate America.

I hadn't realized the importance of the "Staff" title as I knew lots of engineers that had reached that level at my last company. It was basically the highest level of individual contributor that you could achieve without having to get into the manager grades. At my new company, I learned that "staff" was a special title. Basically, only a handful of top management are staff, and nothing happens unless staff approves. I was not originally allowed to have server access with VPN, because that was reserved for staff. The building doesn't get unlocked unless someone from staff enters (we were locked out all day once because they were off-site and the receptionist had to open the door by hand every time). So even though I'm a manager at my new job, I've been downgraded to Senior Software Engineer and no longer staff. Hard to win at this corporate shell game!