Archive for October, 2007

I got up with plenty of time in the morning to get a better grip on what was going down for my test.

I figured out that somehow, I got registered for two practice exams, one at Kelly Business school, and one at U of I. I was glad that I was registered for U of I, because as of last night I thought I was going to have to travel downtown, which is in general, that much more of headache when planning for time.

I reviewed what was on the test, one section I hadn’t gotten to yet in my practice book, so I just glanced through that information and headed on out.

The test is grueling to say the least, staying focused, watching your time, looking critically at the problems and weeding out the incorrect answers. I did just a touch better than I thought I would, in unfavorable conditions with people walking in late, lots of noise, etc.

It was about 12:15 when I got back, and everyone was about ready to go. The plan was to bike the great Indianapolis Monan Trail, it was surprising that we hadn’t taken my parents on it before now. We had some lunch, packed the bikes, and headed downtown. We found out regular spot, pumped up the bikes and away we went. It was a gorgeous day, great sunshine, warm but not hot, I couldn’t have asked for a more picturesque setting.

We went at a leisurely pace, but we still did nearly 30 miles, biking farther north on the Monan than Sarah and I had earlier in the year with Dave. We went all the way up to Carmel. The trip back wasn’t as smooth, there was quite a bit of wind. But I had a great time biking with dad, side by side, and talking about life.

Everyone was hungry when we got back, so we quickly made a decision on where to go to dinner. We chose a place just up the road, Madison Grill on Madison and Troy. It ended up being less than stellar. Everyone but me got the ribeye special, and it didn’t look good, and the deserts we got were a way below average. Mom and Dad took us out, so I feel bad saying that, but at least Mom felt that way too that overall, it wasn’t the best place to eat and I doubt we will eat there again.

When we got back we sat down and watched the University of Michigan game against Illinois. The Boston game was going on too, so we flipped back and forth to see who was winning. Michigan ended up winning their game and so did Boston. Good news for Michigan, they need to recover from a terrible start, and with a win Boston has now forced a game seven on Sunday night.

I got a little bit of play in on the Jr. Pac-man before we all went to bed.

Right after work I got over to the gym and met up with Dave. Today was Sarah’s last day of her fall break, and she was spending it with Kim, being a great friend and helping her make it to the mall to take care of some things, including the baby announcements.

I picked up a meat stuffed pizza from Papa Murphy’s and headed home. Sarah got home soon after, and we had just enough time to do some cleaning up and such before Wes and Kate got there. Kate and Sarah rode together over to Sarah’s for a girls night, Wes and I hung out and did the guy thing. Tonight, the guy thing consisted of pizza, drinks, and playing a ton of Jr. Pac-man. I had wanted to do some work on some things in the garage with Wes’ help, but that didn’t work out. Just as well, we had a great time talking and hanging out.

My parents arrived at about 8:45, so we entertained, helped unload, etc. until the girls got back. Then everyone headed downstairs for some more Jr. and Ms. Pac-man playing.

After Wes and Kate left, we all played a round of Euker before I got to bed at a decent hour. Saturday is my practice exam, and although I didn’t get to study tonight, I am as prepared as I should be. The test is supposed to find my weak areas to help me study more, not to pass with flying colors. (Although that would be nice.)

Somewhere in the middle of studying this week, I managed to take some quick dimensions for my Pac-man kickplate. These are the dimensions I got, and will work from when designing the custom “Glob” kickplate with all of the character artwork I vectorized.

~Note / Update: The measurements I took for the bottom portion range anywhere from 18 & 5/16″ to 18 & 8/16″. I actually measured 18.375, but the total top to bottom measurement I took didn’t agree with the total added measurement of all of the objects.

For this case, I think that fraction of an inch won’t make a difference, I won’t put important artwork at the bottom. But for your own uses you might want to keep that in mind, especially if you would build your own Midway cab.

I got my new Epson scanner (birthday present) last night, so I finished scanning in the Jr. Pac-man oversize marquee to start vectoring. I was missing a slice down the middle where my makeshift printer scanner was not cutting it.

The Jr. Pac-man marquee has pretty complex artwork, I realized last night. Lots of detail and it will take a lot of work. My scan of the marquee artwork is decent, but not great. I hope that the vector artwork turns out better than the scan looks. The Jr. Pac-man marquee scan doesn’t even look good enough to post a copy of it here.

Last night I am in the game / guest room playing my Jr. Pac-man, and Sarah is in the downstairs living room playing with Nokes. All of a sudden she is laughing hysterically.

I ask her what he did, and she said I had to come out and check this out. She told Nokes to stay by me, and then ran to the other side of the couch and called him. He went trotting around to her and I had no idea what the big deal was. Then she ran quickly over to me and he jumped up on the couch back over, face first into the cushions and then down onto the floor. When she ran back, he jumped it again, this time starting out easier on the cushions and over the back down the long drop.

Not a good thing to be teaching him, and not good on his body either, but really cute and hilarious.

He is our lovable chunk. We weighed him for the first time in a long time, not figuring he weighed that much more from when he was 35lbs. Well, he clocked in at 66-67 lbs! We both couldn’t believe it, and are both a little worried. We usually walk him 3-4 times a week on the off gym days so we thought he was getting enough exercise, but apparently not. The weight just seems really high, and affects some other things like…how much we feed him, his flea medication, etc. etc.

Sarah is going to try to get him to the vet in her days off this week to see if he is overweight or what the deal is. He is one heavy puppy

I think I have decided to wait and see what my test score is from the practice exam to guage when to take the real GMAT here in Indianapolis. I am still on the fence about how important it is to push to get into Kelly, and I want to see if I have a good base to start from with my score this weekend, or if I will need to study that much longer to be ready.

If I get a good score, I will hope that there are still test dates open in November. If I score not where I think I should, then I will have to see what my timeframes would be if I would wait to apply officially in April. That would give me time to take the classes necessary to go to Kelly as well for the pass/fair statistics and accounting courses.

The Glob is done. Sounds like Rick is going to let Rich do the color matching either by sample or by photo (I guess he has an uncanny talent for accurately guessing pantone by looking at a photo, I have a hard time understanding how that is even possible…)

I need to find already made measurements (ideal) or take my own and mock up the dimensions of the kickplate of a Pac-man machine. Then I can start laying down the characters, making sure the colors are consistent, and compose some sort of design.

Today was the day for the seminar that I had planning at St. John Lutheran for over a month. This was the last step to educate the new group of people running the website so I can officially step away from day to day maintenance. I was still debating on whether I should get up in front of church after the service ended to remind the congregation about my class, but the service took so long that it ran into the time that I was going to use as setup. So, I didn’t announce anything.

Ron helped me get things situated as best as possible. I had not one content editor for the church website show up, which was rather disappointing but I had a great little crowd show up that I hadn’t planned on. (even thought I knew of a couple that had already said why they couldn’t be there. I also came home to a message from John on my cell, glad to at least hear from him)

The class went well I thought. I was talking to a group of people that wanted to learn more about web design in general and I was talking about web topics related to the Wordpress church website, so I just hope that they got something out of it. We went over a bunch of different stuff, including some HTML tags, so that at least should have been helpful.

The class lasted until 1:30, a little shorter than I had planned, which was great. At the last minute this morning Sarah grabbed snacky food to set out for the class, which made it feel that much more planned out. She is a great compliment to the weaknesses that I have in planning. No one really ate much, but better to have it and not need it then not have it at all.

When we got back, I had freelance stuff to finish up for a couple of hours. I also did a number of other things, played a couple games of Jr. Pac-man, worked on some of the final touches on this blog launch, and got out into the garage to try some things out on the games and take some photos to get some more questions answered.

The rest of the night was the regular Sunday routine. Sarah talked with her parents, I was on the phone with Justin for awhile. By the time we were done with that, Sarah headed to bed, and I watched a couple of Scrubs episodes before hitting the sack.