Lots going on lately, been a while since I posted an update! The first week in October I went to the Adobe ColdFusion Summit in Las Vegas. Years ago Adobe bought the ColdFusion server software I’ve been developing in for over 20 years now. First it was a company called “Allaire”, then “Macromedia”, now it’s Adobe. Those in the IT industry will tell you that “ColdFusion is dead”. Yeah, they’ve been saying that for years. From the conference, the number of Fortune 100 and 500 companies that use ColdFusion:

Their sales have been outpacing any lost customers for a while now. Their move to AWS and the cloud in general has been a huge boost for business. The company I work for is always hiring more people because we keep getting more and more people looking for ColdFusion developers, so don’t believe everything you hear. 😉

Here’s the swag from this year’s conference:

In the past they’ve given out backpacks, big beach towels in reference to Hitchhiker’s Guide, all kinds of stuff. It took place at the Mirage and man, did I get a crappy room! The place smelled like sour water, not sure if it was all the flooding they had or what. I was on the third floor right by the “Valcano” and every hour on the hour from 6-10 that thing went off and the whole room vibrated, plus the rumbling sound. I was also by the bell tower so every hour all night that thing rang out through the whole area. Fortunately it was only for 2 nights! I guess the Mirage has been bought and will soon become a “Hard Rock” location.

For a couple of years now I’ve wanted to reduce the amount of grass on my property. Finally, with the passage of the new law this last March that no association or municipality can require people to have grass in their parking strips I was able to get permission to rip it out from the HOA. It helps that others in the neighborhood have already done it, but I don’t believe they got permission first. 🙂 It’s not that the HOA can stop them, but they can impose standards on what to replace the grass with and that hasn’t been updated yet.

Unfortunately the approval process took too long and it’s going to have to be split between this year and next, but they’re tackling what they can now. Pretty much anything they can rip up that doesn’t require a lot of new plants is being worked on. They guarantee the plants, but it’s a waste of time/effort/money if they’re not going to survive the cold. When all is said and done, I’ll have very little grass left in the front yard, but I’m keeping most of it in the back for the pups. Here’s the progress so far: Xeriscaping Project. I feel bad for those guys having to work in the cold! We’ve had a couple of hard freezes and some snow that didn’t really stick around long.

The weather was pretty good for Halloween though! I think we got to about 60 degrees here on Halloween day. Made me super happy, because I went all out for Halloween this year: Spooky Garage. I worked a couple of weeks on the garage and was pretty excited/motivated earlier in the month. My sister and niece came over one night to help me make all the bottles of “potions”. Had fun playing with slime kits, colored sand, paint, and whatever we could find! The pic of my lava lamp is after it had been on for several hours – too cold for it!

By the time Halloween got here though, I was pretty much done with it and ready to move on. 😆 It went well though, I think I got close to 100 kids. Pretty sure a lot of them came from the apartment complex next to the neighborhood. I had a fog machine that was doing A LOT for being so small! Had to warn the neighbors that no, my house was not on fire! I heard fire trucks at one point and freaked out hoping they weren’t coming my way! If I do it again, I think I’ll invest in a black canopy/tent instead of hanging all that tarp again. The ceiling is over 12 feet high in the garage! 😩

The next day almost all the Halloween stuff was gone and I had my fall decorations up. My Christmas shopping is done and I’m settling in for the cold and winter. I’ve decided to invest some time in myself during this time and have started the Mayo Clinic Diet. What I really like about it is it tells me what to buy and what to make for each meal of the day! Also, everything is single serving size! Yay! You can pick from several kinds of menus: Their basic menu, Keto, Vegetarian, Mediterranean, and many more. You can track your meals and scan barcodes with their app on your phone. It also comes with an exercise plan! That’s too much to start off for me. I’m trying to get used to so much cooking first!

I was sticking to it absolutely at first, but after about 3 days my body rebelled against the change. I’m not used to so many veggies – half your plate is supposed to be veggies/fruit. I guess cabbage can be a bit hard on your system, and I’d had a lot. I need to work up to it all, but that’s OK. I’ve got time and want to make a lifestyle change to eat better, not just lose weight. I think I may try the Keto diet next week, just for fun. 😉

I played with one of my candle making kits with a candle mold the other day, turned out pretty well!

A bit hard to tell from the picture, but the rose is actually pretty big! The scent I chose is Jasmine. Today I poured a white one that’s peppermint and vanilla. Curious how that one will turn out! It needs to cure for at least 24 hours and when we made them at the candle shop in town I think we were told to wait a week before burning it. So I’ve got a while.

I think that’s about it! Stupid time change weekend tonight, someone at work posted this:

I’m firmly in the camp that wants the light later in the day, not earlier. 5 out of 7 days I’m working in the morning, “earlier light” does nothing for me.

Oh well, here’s a video of the pups. They always go nuts on laundry day when I wash everything and have to make the beds fresh:

You can hear all kinds of snorts and grunts if you turn the sound up. Most of the time I have to lock them out of the room while I make the bed or they’re right in the middle of everything the whole time!