Grandma cookies

Cookies:
1 cup butter
1/2 cup sugar
1 beaten egg
2 tsp vanilla
3 cups flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/8 tsp salt

Cream butter, sugar until fluffy.  Add beaten egg, vanilla – mix.
Sift together flour, baking powder and salt.  Gradually stir into
creamed mixture.  Roll dough 1/8 in think on lightly floured board and
cut.  Bake at 350 for 10 min.

frosting:
1/3 cup butter
1 1/2 tsp vanilla
1 pound powdered sugar (3 1/2 cups)
1/4 cup milk

Cream butter, vanilla and part sugar, then alternate mike and sugar.
Add food coloring if you want different colors.

Whoa. Where does the time go?

I continue, apparently, my attempt to be the world’s least reliable blogger.  In my defense, 2010 has been one of the busiest years I’ve had.  Let’s see – I sold my house, bought a house, put the project I was working on into user acceptance testing, took Zoe in for ear tubes…  Still to come this year: buying a car and having unnamed Gwinn Baby #2.

Right.  It turns out you can actually conceive and (almost) have a baby in the time between my blog posts.  Our second child is due in October.

Not an easy picture to explain.

 

In the event of loss of cabin pressure, always put on your own mask before helping an infant.

The promised update (part 1)

People keep asking me “Chris, where are you working now?”  And I realize that I never actually posted my follow-up about the new job.

I’m at Intertech now.  Intertech is a consulting and training company in the Twin Cities that does both .NET and Java work.  I’m (probably obviously) on the .NET side of house, doing consulting work.

Being part of a company with such a strong emphasis on training is exciting – they’re serious about providing training to their employees.  I’ll be taking their WPF training this year, finally breaking out of the server-side and web focus I’ve been in for nearly a decade now.  There may also be a chance for me to be on the other side of the classroom occasionally – Intertech has a program where their consultants do guest presentations in the classroom.  And the instructors here are good – I’ve taken classes from Intertech before, and Andrew Troelsen’s book helped me when I was first learning C#.

So far, I’m liking it.  The people are great, and there’s a good variety of work.  There are, however, some problems with baked goods.  Since there are always snacks for the students, there aren’t a lot of good opportunities for me to bring in donuts or bagels.  There are worse problems to have.

The whole job search thing has also changed my mind about the value of networking.  Rick McGuire put me in touch with Tom Salonek fairly early in my job search, and I ended up in a good opportunity I likely would not have found on my own.

Where’s Chris?

In Minnesota, where it is very cold and he is very busy.

Not like I ever updated this blog much, but I’m really updating rarely now.  And I’ve largely stopped visiting many of the various internet communities I spent time in.  No real reason, I think I just burned out on being engaged with people on the internet during the election and now I need to take a break.

But let’s say you actually want to know what’s up with me or interact with me in some way…  Which you might,  since you’re reading my blog.

I’m on facebook.  Farily regularly, actually, since it’s a nice way for me to get my socialization in very lazy ways. I’ll pretty much accept friend invites from anyone, but if I can’t figure out who you are from the name, I might not.

I’m on LinkedIn, mostly for work/job things.  So if you’ve worked with me before, drop my an invite.

When I’m actually reading things on the internet, you can see what I find interesting by looking at my google reader shared items.

I’m on XBox Live as MNGwinn.  Sometimes, anyway.  On the PC, I’m on Steam.

Now, hopefully my facebook integration works and sucks this post into there as well.

Looking for holiday charity opportunities?

The economy is bad.  We all know that – hell, I just got laid off.

What you may not know is that local arts organiztions are getting hit hard.  Intermedia Arts and In the Heart of the Beast  Puppet and Mask Theater have both shut down temporarily, laying off all their staff.  Both organizations are Minneapolis institutions, having been around since the 1970s.

HotB does the annual May Day parade, which is one of my very favorite Minneapolis traditions.  In addition to the parade and their shows, they do all sorts of community workshops, parades, etc.  If you live in South Minneapolis, you’ve almost certainly seen their puppets.

Intermedia Arts, just down the street from me, does all sorts of crazy stuff.  The Aquatennial Art Car parade?  That’s them.  Minneapolis female hip-hop festivals?  Minnebar?  Yup.

These aren’t organizations like the Walker or the MPR.  They don’t have big endownments, and if they go away, they’re gone.  We already lost Theatre de la Jeune Lune this year.  Let’s try and make sure it doesn’t get worse.  Give what you can.

Oh yeah

Found a job. So that’s done. More updates later, along with all the random pictures and things I’ve been sitting on.

A brief summary?

Surly Darkness, Fallout 3, Parenting – all good.

-20 below weather and dodging ice-induced crashes while driving through god-awful traffic, bad.

Three things I’m fond of, in one shirt.

There’s a lot going on.  Some good, some bad, some I can’t get to until the good and bad stuff calms down a bit.  More later.

Until then, behold the best t-shirt design I’ve seen in forever.  I’m buying one as soon as I accept a job offer.

Don’t do that

I’d never seen anyone literally cry over spilled milk before.  After we stopped laughing, we attempted to teach  the required lesson.

Laid off

Some combination of the credit crunch, the usual startup risks and some less successful than hoped business initiatives has led my current employer to cut roughly a third of the company and cease most new development.  I’m employed through the end of the month, then I get roughly a month’s worth of severance and accrued vacation.

Things are currently vacillating between freakout and feeling pretty good about the whole thing.

If you know anyone looking to hire development/architecture people in the Twin Cities, please let me know.