New Riiide

So, I got a new car about a week ago. Yes, I used to drive an Acura Integra, and it was old. It was slick, though.. low rider, hugged the ground and could really get up and go. Had a very zippy 140 hp, and I loved driving it.

After about 10 years of owning it, I was about ready for something else. I'd never had a NEW car before, so I'd decided I wanted a new car, not a used one. I figure, I'm still childless, most of the money that I make goes to eating out anyway, so why not treat myself to a nice new car while I still can?

I'd looked around for a while, but I wanted something bigger! I certainly didn't want a full size SUV or anything, but just something bigger than what I had. Also, after last winter's snow, I figured it'd be nice to have a 4wd around the house too. Laura's car did OK in the snow, but certainly not great.

SO, after much (ok, not that much) deliberation, I went with a shiny new Toyota Rav4. Like I said, I figured since I was getting something, I may as well treat myself. It's a V6 269hp 4WD Limited Edition Rav4 (Black Forest Pearl.. sparkly) with mostly all the fixins. It's got a 9 speaker JBL sound system, dual automatic climate control, heated leather seats, backup cam.. the whole nine yards. I love it so far.. it's hard to keep clean, but worth it when it's nice and shiny.

Surprisingly, it's about as much fun to drive (so far, anyway) as the Integra was. It certainly can't zip through the traffic like the ol' Ac could, but it can get up and go when it needs to, and it's no slouch going around the corners either. So, if you see me go by you on the road, just know that I'm still having a good time with the new car, and wave hello. :P

Programming muscles!

I've had a great last few weeks at work, I've been working on a new project. I've got an old application written in VB.NET for the old 1.1 framework. While it's a decent application, has a good handful of users, and accomplishes what it's set out to do, it's somewhat clunky, has many 'add-ons' that don't exactly tie in perfectly, and is becoming "too big for it's britches" as my mom would say.

SO, I'm getting to re-write it using the Entity framework in C#. C# is certainly not my strong point -- I took a single class in college that used it. I'm learning it, though. I've always felt that if you have a good programming base and understand one object oriented language (I'm much better in VB and Java), then it's easy to pick up the others.

So, I'm learning all kinds of new things, getting to use technologies that I haven't used before, and getting to really "flex my programming muscles." As work goes, it's been a really good couple of weeks.