Our first niece was born yesterday to my sister Amy and hubby Josh. Congratulations!

We got some snow here last night, perhaps one inch total. Almost needless to say, most schools are cancelled with a few on two-hour delay. IBM has normal business hours, but I'm working from home a bit to beat the traffic (gridlock as far as the eye can see). The dogs really enjoyed their little romp in the snow this morning - thank goodness Scout was not afraid of it!

This time filled with lasagna, Halo, Lego Star Wars, and the Cary dog park!

Over for us anyway! We came out very flat, perhaps because we missed Captain Joe, and ended up losing 5-0 in a game that was never close. I fooled the other team a couple of times by coming out of the goal all the way to midfield as a fourth defender, which was kinda fun :-) All the Eagles fans out there, say it with me:

Better luck next year!

I found out today that I passed my Sun Certified Java Developer exam! I got 364 out of a possible 400 points, and 320 was the passing score.

General Construction: 88/100
Documentation: 70/70
Object-Oriented Design: 30/30
Graphical User Interface: 26/40
Locking: 80/80 (the hardest part of the project)
Data Store: 40/40
Network Server: 30/40 (wonder what I missed here?)

Our friends from Penn State, Rob and Katie, came down to Cary for the weekend. We had a good time socializing, eating, and watching movies. Rob and I even got to play football with some people from IBM. During the game I jammed my pinky finger on an incoming football, which caused the skin under the top pinky joint to split wide open, requiring five stitches. At least I had medically-minded friends in town!

Yesterday I was attempting to run up the stairs in my socks, when I unintentionally kicked the wood frame of the stairs. Ouch!!! My pinky toe is now approximately twice its normal size.

The co-ed playoffs started last night, with our #6-seeded team squaring off against the #3 seed. They scored early in the first half on a long distance chip shot over our goalie Carlos. Jen responded with a goal late in the first half, giving us a 1-1 tie going into halftime. I switched with Carlos to play goalie and started dictating the pace, as we predictably let up after halftime. After an offensive barrage by the other team, they gave up a breakaway late in the half and we scored. They became desperate and pressed harder, and gave up two more breakaways very late in the game for two more goals. The game was much closer than the final 4-1 margin. Now we're on to the semifinals!

Will it blend? These are great videos about common products being put into a high-strength blender.

At 6pm, we had our men's semifinal playoff game against the top team in the league. Regular blog readers could probably write this entry for me: we had a 1-0 lead at halftime, and then we fell apart early in the second half with two goals against. A hard-played 2-1 loss. Has anyone heard that story before? The other story of the game was that it was our captain Joe's last game before he moves to Indiana this weekend. We'll miss you Joe!

At 9pm, we had our final game of the co-ed regular season, against the top team in the league. Regular blog readers could probably write this entry for me: we had a 1-0 lead at halftime, and then we fell apart early in the second half with three goals against. A hard-played 3-1 loss. Wait a minute -- did I copy and paste the entry for the second game? Are you saying there is a consistent theme among the teams? This game was a little disappointing due to some poor sportsmanship, including some flagrant taunting on a breakaway goal as time expired. It was cold and very windy at the game.... it's about time to stop playing soccer and start building snowmen!