All,

Im retiring this site and moving over to blogspot like everyone else.  I used flyerwebdesign.com in college as a starting point for a web development side business. Then after college i kept it upbecause i was able to check my email from it even while working for progressive. Now i find myself not needing it anymore. I have gmail at work for my own email and can get anything on my phone if needed so over the next couple weeks i will retire FWD.com entirley. Maybe in the future ill invest in another site for it but i just have no need for it at the moment.

You can find my new blog at joshschramm.blogspot.com (yes im using my real name oh well)

Also my email from now forward is my gmail account. Ill send a note to everyone shortly with the new info but just a note.

Thanks all.

P.S. im trying to find a way to move the posts from here to blogspot before i delete it but i fear that isnt possible.

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I started a fire yesterday. It was a small one but it freaked me the hell out. Here’s the story for those who havent yet heard.

I decided it would be a good idea to make steak and mac and cheese. It was a nice day and well, steak is the perfect meal for a nice day. So i look up recipes online on how to make it sans grill without using the george. A year or so ago i made pan seared steak in a cast iron skillet and it rocked so i was trying to find out how to do that again.

So. i find directions that call for the following steps in order.

1) Season steak
2) Heat cast iron pan super hot in oven or on stove
3) Put olive oil in hot pan (here is where the problem happens)
4) Put steak in pan
5) Sear for 3 min on ea side, then place in oven at 500 degrees.

I never got to step 4.

About 30 seconds after putting oil in the pan, while getting the steak ready, the oil ignited. Flames shot up to the hood above my stove (thank god i HAVE a hood or my cabinents would have been fucked.)

It turns out i actually did the right thing for this situation. I got amanda to find me a lid and i covered the pan with the lid, then moved it off the heat source and turned off the stove. Problem is my cast iron skillet didnt come with a lid so none of the lids i have are perfect fits. The lid we used was a bit too big so the result was a contained but still burning fire. Flames were shooting in circles around the edge of the lid and now im a bit more freaked cause i know if i take the lid off oxygen rushes in and it ignites again, potentially bigger. If i left the lid on i wasnt sure if it would go out. I waited about a min and called 911.

In the meantime the smoke had filled out apartment and the hallway so the fire alarm went off.

So 911 redirects me to willowick who sends willowick fire and rescue. The fire alarm company automatically calls eastlake police, fire and rescue. So within like 5 mins we had 2 fire trucks, an ambulance and 2 police cars in the parking lot.

All of that and when the firemen got there the fire had finally gone out. I still didnt wanna take the lid off (i let them do that) but  all they had to do was vent the smoke out of the building. I have to admit they did a damn good job of that.

So that’s how i managed to evacuate the entire apartment complex and probably add even more hatred of me to my neighbors repitoire. Yay. Oh well least i didnt burn down their apartments.

FYI the steaks were delicious, i ended up cooking them on the george foreman

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Well it’s been a while since i posted and a lot has happened.

 First off i started my new job a bit under two weeks ago. So far I’m loving it. I’m getting to do so much more than i ever got to do at Progressive and for the most part nothing is redundant. I started off doing an estimate on a system that involved auto-recognizing and decrypting thumb drives… theres a lot of detail but let’s just say it was cool and I got to write prototypes to identify when a thumb drive is plugged into a computer. I then worked on a make shift monitoring application for some servers we were having issues with. Now im working on debugging and cleaning up a web app and a corresponding windows app. Programming is programming but its amazing how much more compelling it is to be working on things that arent all the same cookie cutter code. Plus ive learned more “real” .NET in the past 2 weeks that i arguably learned in all of working at Progressive.

A few things that proved to me this job is completley different than working in a 20,000 person company.

1) When i walked in i was handed a stack of cds, an msdn username/pass, and pointed to a computer and told to install whatever i needed
2) With the exception of the project estimate i did i havent done much planning/tasking/estimating/timekeeping/etc on anything. Yes i enter hours for what i work on but the amount of paperwork is remarkably less.
3) I have yet to have something i would consider a real “meeting.” The closest I came to it was sitting in the sales guys office while he asked me about my experience with some technologies.
4) For the first 3-4 days my job was to learn ASP.NET AJAX, SSIS, SSRS, Sharepoint, Office Tools for Visual Studio, and a number of other techs that i never would have touched at progressive.
5) There is both red bull and vodka in the fridge. At work.
6) Im drinking free diet coke and eating free cheese its right now.

So if your wondering why this post is so delayed it is simple. I posted at Progressive when i was bored. I have yet to be bored here. Im posting now cause my brain hurts from trying to fix some code that honest to god looks like today’s post on The Daily WTF.

So that’s the job. I love it and i hope i keep loving it. Im probably going to be going to a 3 month client engagement doing an externally accessable web services API for this GPS company somewhere in cleveland. Anyway it sounds cool and even if it’s not, it’s different.

So other news.

Wedding related - Amanda found a dress, we picked out the tuxes and the store, and we found a place for the rehersal dinner. So for those of you requiring tuxes we have two options. 1) We can do what kim and kooz did and invite everyone up here when she has her shower. The gentlemen can head to the tux place and the bar and the ladies to the shower. That’s up to ya’ll and if you think you’d want to drive to Cleveland. Anyone NOT requiring a tux would of course be not only welcome but encouraged to come. I’ll offer as a prize to the first person to cleveland a coupon for 30% off their tux. If the first person doesn’t need a tux then ill offer a free drink. 2) You can go get measured wherever and phone them into the tux place. Ill contact those needing this info soon but if your bored and happen to be next door to a tux place we need outseam measurements.

The rehersal will be at this little italian place like 10 feet from the church. Basically we are renting out the entire restaurant because it only seats 65 and we have 50 ish for the rehersal. Amanda and i ate there last night and enjoyed it.

My goal for later this week is to book a limo and call at least 1 photographer. Then next week we get to pay the rest of the 50% down for the reception (yay no more money.)

Next topic.

I got a new phone. A very fancy phone. You see my Razr died after just over a year and a half of use. It would turn off randomly and drop calls when doing so. I tried taking it to verizon but they were worthless and it isn’t under warranty so no go. My options were to either get a new verizon phone for free (i qualified for a new one) extending my contract for 2 more years, to buy a new phone with no contract (cheapest was like 300), to buy an ebay phone or borrow someones old one (prolly the most intelligent option), or to do what i wanted to do, cancel my verizon plan and buy an iPhone. Can anyone guess what i did?? hehe. I love this fucking thing. Sitting on the couch talking on aim on meebo.com, checking email, reading digg, all in a device that fits in my hand. In typical apple style it keeps doing cool shit i didnt even know it did. For example today i discovered that clicking the microphone on my headphones pauses iTunes and accepts incoming calls. I downloaded an iTunes song yesterday just to see how it worked, and it was quite nice.

On the political landscape i highly encourage all to checkout Obama’s speech from yesterday “A more perfect union.” Quite a stirring set of words.

This weekend an old high school friend i don’t see nearly enough is coming to cleveland for a couple hours, so that will be nice.

Other than that, that’s about it.

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it’s march 4th. you should be voting.

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Recently ben posted about how he was leaving his current company for a new gig. The interesting thing is while he was telling me about his new place, i was telling him about mine.

 This morning I put in my 2 weeks (actually 9 business days) notice at Progressive. I will be moving on to Paragon Consulting and will be a Systems Consultant for them. The new job represents a small pay bump but mostly at this point in my career im interested in getting exposure to a more vast array of technologies, something this will afford me the opportunity to do.

Progressive has been great to me, i don’t regret working here 1 second but its time to move on in favor of my long term career goals.

On a side note, Ben is leaving a consulting company to work for an in house software shop. Im leaving an in house IT department to work in a consulting shop. Odd, yes.

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I couldn’t think of a good title, so that will have to do. It’ll be explained shortly.

 I havent posted much about life type stuff in a while. Mainly cause not a lot of going on. After i got out of the hospital Amanda and I did some serious wedding planning stuff. We have all of our paper stuff already, our guest list, our wedding bands, we know who the DJ and hall will be. We don’t have a photographer yet.

This coming weekend we have Pre-Canna which is apparently a day full of catholic goodness. Im oh so thrilled.

This past weekend we decided to head back to toledo. Amanda had to work friday so saturday morning we drove out. For the first time we brought the puppy along on a long car ride. It was interesting. She was kinda insane up to the point where we took dead mans curb in downtown cleveland. When we did that we drove over about 10 rumble strips and it freaked her out. She literally just laid on amanda’s lap the rest of the trip and pretty much every min we spent in the car from that point on. In all reality i felt bad for her at first but it turned out kind of nice.

 Saturday we visited my sister first and saw her and julia and jeff, austin was MIA down at a friends. Then we stopped at my grandma’s because I never do that and i never called her when we got engaged, so I wanted to kinda make up for that a bit. After that we went to my dads. We didn’t do much that day. Went to Tony Packo’s then downtown maumee and had a drink at the Village idiot which also happens to be my grandfathers old bar. Sat night we met up with Joe and Jamie and had some drinks at Mutz. Then, honestly, Amanda and i crashed. We watched tv for like an hour and fell asleep.

Sunday we went to my moms to see her and talk abotu wedding stuff. After that we headed back.

 Really nothing terribly exciting. i tried to be a handy man on sunday night and failed miserably. All i was doing was putting in a towel rack in the bathroom. Unfortunatley the place the old rack is in was patch with something the consistancy of paper machee and the studs in the wall arent the right distance. So i need some drywall mount things. Those plastic pieces you stick in the wall to support the weight.

We did manage to get curtains up in the living room though. three more windows to go.

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Well super tuesday was yesterday and the results are, we know nothing. Ok well we know McCain is likley going to win the republican nomination. I’m happy about that. He’s the best option of the republican field, although im not too fond of him overall anymore.

So let’s talk about what tends to be my party of choice, the democrats.

As many of you know I’m an obama supporter. I’ve mentioned why, he inspires me, he seems capable of bringing people together both here at home and abroad. He has the chance to be the John F Kennedy of our era. No he isnt as experienced as his competition but in today’s day we need a new perspective, not an alligance to old world thinking.

So if you live in Ohio, are registered to vote, and count yourself among the 6 people who read this blog i STRONGLY encourage you to vote for Senator Obama. You don’t have to stay democrat in the general election. It’s likley Sen. McCain will do well without you’re vote but if you want to go into the presidental election with the choice between two individuals qualified (albiet for different reasons) to lead this nation then vote democratic and vote for Obama.

 Want more information check out this post by Lawrence Lessig who sums up why one should choose Obama over Clinton much better that I could ever do. http://lessig.org/blog/2008/02/20_minutes_or_so_on_why_i_am_4.html

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http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1708570,00.html

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So I’m sitting here in Euclid Hospital bored out of my mind. Here’s the story in a nutshell.

Wednesday morning I woke up several times while sleeping hacking and coughing. I was super dizzy, sick to my stomach, and my body ached. Looking at my left leg i had one hell of a bad rash. So i mentioned this to Amanda in the morning and she immediately thought it was something called Cellulitis. Looking through WebMD i concurred. Unfortunately i’m not a doctor and can’t give myself IV antibiotics (damn you WebMD what good are you if i can’t treat myself.) So i had to go to the hospital. Upon arrival they stuck me in an ER room and started an IV. The doc then sent me on my way with some pills, pain killers, etc. I went home, took my first dose and ran Setthek Halls with Joe.

Amanda got back from work around 11. She looked at my leg and was certain the problem had spread. The problem is the discharge notes specifically said to go back if it spread after I started the antibiotics. So that we did. We got back to the hospital at about 1130 and by 1 i was on another IV.  At about 2 they decided to admit me into the hospital and thus here i am.

Ive done 3 IVs now, i think. And my doctor says ill prolly get out Sat. morning.  So i’m stuck here for a 3 day 3 night stay.

So now some notes.

1) The doctors and nurses here are very nice, attentitive, and helpful. The one thing that seems to be a delima at this point is no one has brought me food or asked for an order (they took orders of the guy next to me.) but id rather have Amanda bring me good food than eat hospital meat loaf anyway.

2) They have free Wifi which is how im posting this. Unfortunatley some stuff (myspace, facebook, aim, wow, basically anything not port 80) is blocked.  This includes my email.

3) Amanda’s maid of honor’s mom and uncle both work here. Her uncle is a big shot (chief of surgery) so if they weren’t going well by me we would have some recourse. But again, they are.

4) I have a “roommate” which sucks. Nothing against him but i would prefer to be solo in a hospital. He seems to have bad pheumonia and i hope to god nothing contagious (ill be pissed if they put me who is not contagious into a room with someone who is.) Hes an older black man and seems kinda amusing but it’s not like we are chatting it up. The funniest things so far was him telling the nurse his wife made him come  to the hospital (i can testify that Amanda made me too (love ya babe).) Another thing was they came to get his dinner order they asked what he wanted to drink and said “ginger ale, juice, tea, coffee, cola” hes like “brandy and cola?”

- Ok that last one wasn’t that amusing in writing.

Anyway that’s my week. Im a bit nervous cause im running out of vacation time ill desperately need in October but oh well.

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First off I direct you back to the Picture Page to see pictures of our new puppy Lola. We got her off Craigslist on Sunday and she is awesome.

That said some wedding updates.

 We officially set a date of October 4th 2008. We also confirmed our reception hall which will be LaMalfa. We have been told the wedding party rate will be $99.99 or $109.99 for the attached hotel depending on if you want a kitchenette or not. Don’t call yet though, we don’t get the official package price till we put a deposit on the hall which will be in a couple weeks. For now they are simply holding the date while they put together the paperwork.

We have a meeting with the priest at Amanda’s church next week I think. So i might catch fire walking in, not sure yet. We then have pre-canna all day on a Sat end of February. I have to go to confession during that so I’m not looking forward to it.

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