nic fouts

the many sides

Insufficient Temptation

“Virtue is often the result of insufficient temptation.”
–Cheers, George

Today I got the opportunity to play a part in a hiring decision at work. I interviewed a guy for one of our new positions and as a result of that I got to decide if he should be considered for the next phase. I agreed to do it because it sounded like a fun way to get to interact with potential new employees early in the process. What I learned is that it is kind of stressful. It just feels a little weird controlling someone’s career future like that. I guess that is a good reason i didn’t go into management and HR.

July 30th, 2010 Posted by nic | Uncategorized | no comments

Too Many Walls

“We build too many walls and not enough bridges.”
–Sir Isaac Newton

I’m writing to you tonight from Gray’s Tied House in Verona. Tonight is one of this week’s euchre nights. It is the just for fun night. Tomorrow is the tournament night. You might ask why I’m writing this post instead of playing. Well, I get the privilege of hosting the event so I get to sit out when there is an odd number of people. I don’t technically host the tournament so I always get to play there. I guess it kind of makes up for tonight.

Things are starting to settle back down at work. We’re pulling in an extra person to help tackle all the lower priority issues so I can focus on the big trouble makers. I just got approval today to try a some new development. It touches a section of the code that I’m not thrilled about messing with, but it could be pretty fun. I actually stayed later to get some of the design work done. I probably would have put a few hours into it but had to come run euchre.

July 28th, 2010 Posted by nic | Uncategorized | no comments

I Am The Inferior

“I am the inferior of any man whose rights I trample underfoot.”
–Horace Greeley

I’m making some sweeping changes around here. For starters I am thinking of transitioning my personal journal to this site. You may ask what prompted this. I would say it has something to do with the fact that I don’t update either often enough anymore. This one has a whopping 3 posts and I don’t think I’ve posted on the other one in a few months.

Another reason might have to do with a recent purchase. I snagged an iPad. I had no intention of getting one when it first came out. Later I told myself I would wait for the 2nd generation models. Then it occurred to me that Apple wasn’t going to drop the price of them with the new models and not much would change so I broke down and bought one last Wednesday. Best Buy didn’t have the model I wanted so I was forced to make a trip to the Apple Store. For reasons I won’t get into right now, I can safely say that I will never be going back there unless the world is ending. Even then, it still wouldn’t be certain.

I can’t truly say that I am a fan of Apple products, but I do like my iPod and I’m starting to enjoy my iPad. Many of you will ask why I don’t like Apple then. I’m just not a fan of the company in general (which means I should own stock in it). I don’t like many of their business practices. Again, I don’t want to get into it right now. Maybe some other day.

That’s probably enough for tonight. I’m going to work on making these updates more regular. Someone needs to hold me to that.

Full disclosure: I wrote this whole thing on my iPad with the WordPress app. Actually pretty nifty.

July 27th, 2010 Posted by nic | Uncategorized | no comments

Back to work

Looks like I finally got back to working on the web site again. I didn’t realize I had so many broken links. I really despise broken links so I worked hard to correct them tonight. In that process I added and updated a lot of content on the About, Services, and Contact pages. So go forth and learn about me.

Something that is mentioned in the About page is my recent move to Epic in Madison, Wisconsin. I moved up here in March and have been enjoying nearly every minute of it.

May 29th, 2009 Posted by nic | Uncategorized | no comments

Short Hiatus

It appears I had a short hiatus from this site.  I suppose that is one of the big problems about how I operate.  I have lots of great ideas and start lots of projects, but then I get wrapped up in the new project and sort of neglect the infantile projects.  The plus side to my operations is that I can quickly pick a project back up and continue where I left off.

One of those new projects began at work.  I launched a concept for an updated product based off of our platform control board.  The control board itself was designed for this very idea.  All that is needed is a new (or modified) program.  It is that very program that has taken most of my time as of late.  I jumped head first into embedded C++ so I’ve had to teach myself a good bit of things before I can produce funtional code.  It’s a nice break from the norm.

September 19th, 2008 Posted by nic | Uncategorized | no comments

Lot of work

I installed WordPress on this site last night.  I’m sure I spent over 2 hours just getting the layout tweaked to match the rest of the site.  I’ve really not found a nice journal program that integrates easily with an existing layout or theme.  Somebody should really get on writing a program like that.  Maybe that can be a project for my spare time.  HAHA.

I’ve also come to realize I really need to brush up on my PHP skills.  WordPress does about everything in PHP and I can tweak what they’ve done but I know I couldn’t write original code to do this anymore.  It really is true, use it or lose it.  Thankfully, code comes pretty naturally to me so I think I can pick it back up quickly.

July 7th, 2008 Posted by nic | Uncategorized | no comments