BrianReese.com

Will the real Slim Shady please stand up?

Filed under: Personal — Brian Reese @ 10/22/2005 @ 12:37 AM

It seems there are some other Brian Reeses out there. I have been contacted by at least two of them. Apparently I’m giving one in Michigan a bad name. So any of you who know the dude in MI, I’m not the same guy. I don’t live in MI or claim to be a pre-law student.

So, who am I?

Well, if you look through my other posts, you’ll find I believe in God and that he loves his creation. You will find that I believe that from the beginning we as mankind have a sinful nature (we desire to live life our way and get what we want out of it) that separates us from God. I believe God sent Jesus to live a human life and suffer death in our place as a provision for our sinful nature. Because of this, our relationship to God can be restored. The only way our fellowship with God can be restored is if we chose to accept God’s gift of salvation through his Son, Jesus Christ. The following Web site states this a little more clearly: www.greatcom.org

By day, I am an application developer. I’m working on specializing in Web application development. I’ve done a couple ASP.net projects in the past and am working on obtaining a Microsoft certification.

In my spare time, I like to ride my bicycle and am currently training to do several long distance rides in Florida. I also like to take pictures and maintain this little Web site.

If reading about my interests entertains you, then keep coming back. Feel free to post comments too. Otherwise, don’t give all the other guys with my name a hard time, I’m only one person.

Mind reading music

Filed under: Personal — Brian Reese @ 10/09/2005 @ 12:13 AM

I was going to write about what I did today but instead I will leave you with these thoughts.

I was driving in my car today, with a mix disc when some older Third Day music came on. I was listening to the Time album in the car, which is one of my favorite Third Day albums but, now that I’m at the computer, I’m listening to Conspiracy No. 5. I think so far every song that has come one speaks to how I feel about some area of my life.
(more…)

What’s that smell?

Filed under: Personal — Brian Reese @ 09/22/2005 @ 1:46 PM

I was just sitting here reading some friends blogs when I smelled something funny. Then, I realized what it was, I left some pizza in the toaster oven. Well, I will now find out if I like my pizza extra crispy.

In other news, I think I’m going to start targeting Atlanta, GA in my job search. I’m open to other areas as well, but I’m not that well traveled so I’m not sure what other areas I’d like.

Book Baton

Filed under: Personal — Brian Reese @ 08/11/2005 @ 3:29 PM

Jason has thrown the book baton at me. It’s been a few weeks, but I don’t read as much as I used to so it took a while to jog the memory.

Number of Books on the Shelves
About 60 here, who knows how many of my books are in WPB

Last Book Purchased
The Object Oriented Thought Process, Matt Weisfeld

Currently Reading
The Object Oriented Thought Process, Matt Weisfeld

Last 5 Books Read
Food for Fitness, Chris Carmickael
The Five Love Languages for Singles, Gary Chapman
I don’t remember the last 5 books I’ve read, the two above are the most recent.

Meaningful books
The Bible is the most meaningful book I’ve read.

Throwing the Book (Passing it to)
In random order…
germygator
avocadonumber
serein32
karintome
dancingrob

It’s been a while

Filed under: Personal — Brian Reese @ 07/20/2005 @ 9:48 PM

It has definitely been quite a while since my last post here.

I think a lot of changes are happening in my life. I wish I could say more than I will here, but I think it is to personal to post for the world to see. Just keep me in prayer, that I’ll meet the right people to make the right influence.

It’s strange how much of my life has changed in the past two months. I was once loving Orlando and planning to buy a house here, now I’m having second thoughts on whether or not I want to stay here. I have been out of “permanent” employment for about two months now. This is what makes this time the most perplexing. I did a short term contract at a national shipping company for about a month and a half. That was a huge wake up call for me. In the past I’ve been in a comfort zone of sorts, my managers where generally nice people and were not trying to set me up for failure. At this sort term assignment, I felt like I was setup to fail from the beginning, I persevered through the assignment and I think they are happy with the product I left them but I’m not happy with it. I don’t think I can ever be happy with it, but there were factors out of my control that kept me from giving them the best product.

Most of my work since college has been programming. I think I do OK programming, but I don’t find a lot of satisfaction in programming. I’m not totally sure what aspect of MIS I could get the most personal satisfaction from. I think I would like to gather user requirements and draw up an interface for the users to see and test. I don’t mind thinking about the complexities that arise out of programming, but I get frustrated with the syntax. Every language has its own syntax and I find it is nearly impossible to remember everything and find myself spending a lot of time reading the documentation for simple concepts. In analysis and design, I wouldn’t need to be as concerned with the syntax of a programming language; instead I can focus on the logic and business rules that need to be written into the program in some way. I also like to tinker with programs to see what they do, and talk to the users about those programs. In my internship, I documented many changes to an application because of user feedback. I think the job I liked the most was my internship, hopefully I can find something similar but fulltime.

There’s also the problem of having a hard time justifying the end. I’ve written or was a part of writing some applications that do some really cool things, and in the end they might help some people save some money in the process of restoring their life to normalcy after an accident or help a company see that they need to hire more people, but in the end, I don’t think any major life change has occurred. This further leads me to think maybe I should be working for a ministry instead of in the corporate world. In regard to this, I think I need more faith as well as guidance as to where to look or what to expect should I pursue this route.

The above leads into the next concern on my mind, should I look for employment outside Orlando? I renewed our lease at the apartment thinking I’d find something new here but, aside from church and a couple of friends, I really don’t have any ties to Orlando. In theory, I could move to just about anywhere, but I do have some ideas as to where I’d like to live. I think I could live in Atlanta, Ga, or possibly a city in the north east, although I like the idea of being fairly close to the mountains.

So the above is most of what’s going on that I feel comfortable sharing.

Changes

Filed under: Personal — Brian Reese @ 05/31/2005 @ 10:52 AM

Due to some changes in my life, it turns out I will not be able to buy a house. There is more to this story that can be released at a later date, but right now, all that I feel is appropriate to be said in public is that changes are coming up in my life, once some things stabilize, I’ll be able to discuss it more openly.

In the mean time, here’s a neat little thing…

Your Birthdate: May 24
Born on the 24th, you have a greater capacity for responsibility and helping others than your may have realized.

You may also become the mediator and peacemaker in inharmonious situations.

Devoted to family, you tend to manage and protect.

This birth date adds to the emotional nature and perhaps to the sensitivities.

Affections are important to you; both the giving and the receiving.

What Does Your Birth Date Mean?

House Hunting Complete

Filed under: Personal — Brian Reese @ 05/14/2005 @ 1:03 PM

After 5 or 6 offers, all on very good first homes, I finally made an offer that was accepted. I found a nice townhome in the Casselberry area. It has 2 bedrooms and a loft that could be converted to a bedroom in the future as well as 2.5 bathrooms. The inspections have been completed, there are no major problems and no evidence of wood destroying organisms (termites, carpenter ants, etc.). The next step in the process is to secure all the financing. Once that is complete I will be closing on the property. The closing will probably be early June.

In other news…
The mission trip to NC went well. We built a playground for Camp Grace. I have lots of pictures, some taken by me, and more taken by others that went on the trip. Hopefully I will be able to post them soon.

In 2 weeks my littlest brother will be graduating from high school. I should be headed home for the graduation ceremony and will probably be there for a week, but I’ll still be working, so it’s no vacation.

The Search Continues

Filed under: Personal — Brian Reese @ 04/08/2005 @ 12:39 PM

I just got off the phone with my real estate agent… I didn’t get the house, so the search continues.

Anticipation

Filed under: Personal — Brian Reese @ 04/07/2005 @ 10:33 PM

I made an offer on a house and will be by the phone and email pretty much all day tomorrow hoping to hear if my offer was chosen.

I was kind of skeptical when I went to look at the house, because I didn’t know the neighborhood, but once I got there things started looking good. The neighborhood is older so the trees were left around the houses to be built and there is quite a bit of yard between the houses. As far as the inside of house goes, the inside is pretty standard and in good shape. If my offer wins then I will post some pictures of the house. (How many times have I said that I will post pictures?)When I wasn’t looking for a house or working, I was doing something for fun.

Last Saturday, I went to Lakeland to do an urban mountain bike race. The race consisted of going down the town hall steps, down some steps to a path around Lake Mirror, up a little hill, back along the lake, zig through a bank like drive through, up a parking garage, and back down the parking garage. I ended up in 7th out of 9 riders in the first timer class. I don’t think I did all that bad but I wish I was able to get there earlier to pre ride the course more.

Tonight I watched Collateral, last Thursday, I watched Mr. 3000. I liked both movies but, I think Collateral will end up on my list if DVD’s I’d like to have in my DVD collection.

Good Friday

Filed under: Personal — Brian Reese @ 03/25/2005 @ 10:35 AM

I’ve bee busy with work lately. Our second major web application project is nearing completion of the first phase. We’ve included almost all of the features we think the client will want and are in the process of preparing the project for the client to test. In the mean time I’ll be working on some change requests for our other clients.

Recently, I’ve been thinking about how to continue to develop my skills. I’m beginning to regret not taking the object oriented programing class when I was in college. To make up for the perceived lack of knowledge I’ve picked up a book and have started reading it and am trying to figure out what I should do to help make the information stick. I’m also hoping to have a Microsoft developer’s certification by the end of July or the beginning of August and would like to get a database certification as well. I’ve also realized that with all the applications we are trying to push to the web, I have very few design skills. I think what I have made so far is pretty good, but there is definately room for improvement so I’ve been looking for books and web sites to help me improve.

I’ve started coaching t-ball again. I’m the assistant coach for the Pirates (who don’t do anything). We’ve had 1.5 practices so far and I have not met the whole team yet. Hopefully next week we will have 7-9 players. The kids are doing very well, they seem to catch on pretty quickly, hopefully we will keep finding ways to challenge their skills so they will be able to continually improve.

House hunting has started to drive me crazy. There are so many options. I could live in a condo, a townhouse or a regular house. Aside from a good neighborhood, I really do not want to have to maintain a yard. Hopefully I can find a house in a good neighborhod with a home owner’s association that does the yard for a reasonable fee. The HOA maintained yard really contradicts with my not wanting to live where the HOA has a lot of rules. I don’t want to have to get permission to use my property, if I’m paying the mortgage I think I ought to be able to do what I want (within reason, I’m not going to create a dump or paint my house bubble gum pink). I have heard of neighborhood’s where the HOA will not let you work on your car unless it’s in the garage with the door closed.

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