That's What Jenni Said

  I found this to be an instructive tale. I don't know if you have seen it or not, but Fox is airing a new show [actually taken from another show in Latin America] whereby contestants are asked questions in front of a live audience for millions of viewers to watch and if they tell the truth they win money. Sort of like truth or dare, but without the dare. The twist is that they've already been asked hundreds of questions beforehand while hooked up to a detector and then they are asked a small subset of those questions [the spicy ones] again on stage. On Monday's show - taped two weeks ago - one particularly cruel and greedy woman - Lauren - was a contestant. Lauren's ex-boyfriend made a surprise appearance and asked: "Do you believe I am the man you should be married to?" As Lauren's hubby Frank Cleri grimaced on the sidelines, his wife said, "Well, wow, um. I'm going to be honest and say yes." The lie-detector results said she was bei

Our company is looking for a full time SAS programmer who has experience on the 9.1.3 platform and understands what I mean when I throw out terms like "OLAP", "Cube Studio", "Stored processes", etc. The pay is good, the job is located in Rockville with some days available to work from home. You must be a US citizen [but no clearance is required]. You would be working with our other programmers to create deliverables for our clients- mostly cubes, processes, info maps, and reports but you'd also be involved in our ETL work as well. If this is something you would be interested in, please email me: jenni AT parjen.com. Feel free to pass along to friends as well if you know of anyone who might fit the bill.

Last month I opened a trading account on zecco.com. They offer FREE stock trades if you have a minimum balance of $2500 in your cash account with them or $4.50 trades if you have less than that. I still keep my account at ameritrade.com because zecco doesn't offer trading on the OTC market, but Zecco.com looks promising for all my other trades. Why pay ameritrade $10 a trade if i don't have to right? Anyway, if you trade stocks, or want to get into the stock market, doing so with $0 commissions is the way to go. Then you just pick a decent stock and invest and sit back and wait for it to grow. Simple. Here's the link for my referral: http://friends.zecco.com/r/b0e416a63511102b8555 So far I am doing pretty well investing in CBI which was my first stock pick.

Some of my favorite worship songs to follow in the next few posts. May they remind you of who and why we worship. Selah

It's been a busy week as usual. Every night I've either had a social event or a meeting with a ParJen client. In addition I was up until 1am last night working on a project for my regular full-time job. Good news all around: My parents are inching closer to finishing the steps to move across the country from New Mexico. We have narrowed it down to Haymarket, VA (just 12 miles up the road) in terms of best places for them to settle. We start looking at condos for them Sunday. Another 6.6 pounds down. I was invited to participate in a forum event for gifted women. Apparently they contacted several alumni of the PEG program for a possible roundtable discussion panel. They want our perspective on what it was like for high-IQ gifted individuals to come through out 20s and how we are settling into our 30s. The kitchen remodeling is coming along nicely. Can't wait until it is over and I can cook in my own kitchen again. Jon asked me to start considering what I would like mo

Last Weekend I finished the upgrades to my consulting website. You can view the new site layout and content at http://www.parjen.com . Please pass on the site link to any of your friends/family/colleagues locally and out of the area who may be in need of IT services. ParJen Consulting services clients nationwide. I appreciate it very much.

  For K: "Rather than let hot air circulate randomly, convection ovens carefully create a uniform temperature with internal fans that circulate hot air. Convection ovens are larger and more expensive than standard, or radiant, ovens, but they cook food faster, at a lower temperature, and with better results. Fans ensure that the same temperature reaches the top and bottom of foods, as well as foods at all rack levels. A frequent complaint of cooks with radiant ovens is that bottoms of foods get scorched, while tops are not browned evenly. This is because the temperature is not the same over the course of the cooking time, as well as over the volume of the oven cavity. Convection ovens correct this variation by using a fan that blows the hot air throughout the oven. A "true" or "European" convection oven goes one step further by adding a third heating element. Thus, the fan actually blows pre-heated air, rather than distributing the already-heated air. These a

It's been another productive week. My days were filled with solving problems at work and my evenings were filled with socializing and a few select ParJen Consulting appointments. Saturday was the busiest day of all. In the morning Jon and I ventured to DC to lead the NoVA walkers on a stroll around Southwest DC on the waterfront. We did 3 miles and then enjoyed brunch at Phillips. Immediately following we headed to Alexandria where Jon dropped me off at a client's home to perform some consulting work while he browsed home depot for our new kitchen appliances. After that we headed to my friend Rho's house for the monthly NoVA Supper Club dinner. The theme was Italian and the food was great. Met some new people who were very nice. Today Jon and I finalized our kitchen appliances purchase at the local home depot. We are going with all stainless steel and picked out an oven, over the range microwave, dishwasher and fridge. I'm excited to finally have a convection oven.

Just a quick update to advise that my Belize Blog is finally complete, including pictures. Take a look at it here: http://www.travbuddy.com/travel-blogs/22977

I got a lot accomplished this week. I did some solid work on my consulting business (ParJen Consulting) and am working hard to build my client base again. I let it dwindle when I took on my latest full time job as the challenges of the new position were pretty overwhelming and needed my full attention. However, now that I'm settled into the role and have a handle on managing things I have more time off hours to devote to consulting again. I got our financial records closed out for 2007 and up to date through the end of Jan 2008. We use Microsoft Money for financial management and I really feel good when everything is organized and we have a clear picture of our financial outlook. I filed our state and federal taxes. We have a hefty refund coming back this year. This was due to the fact that 2007 was my first full year at my current job and I didn't do a good enough job at estimating what our final taxes due were going to be and had too much withheld. We will adjust our w2 fo

This week I chartered three new meetup groups, bringing my total to six. Here is the list. Pass the info onto anyone who may be interested: Northern VA Walking Meetup: http://walkers.meetup.com/218 Our scheduled walks and hikes are of the easy to moderate variety and most are also dog and kid friendly. Plan on leisurely adventures with plenty of time to stop and smell the wildflowers or look at the city landmarks. You are encouraged to bring snacks, a journal, a camera, whatever you'd like to carry to make the experience more enjoyable. About every month or so we hold a Happy Hour for members -if you'd like to join our group but want to get to know a few folks before showing up for a walk we welcome you to join us at next happy hour.   Northern VA Supper Club: http://cooking.meetup.com/343/ The Northern Virginia Supper Club hosts a member dinner each month. One of our members hosts the dinner and prepares the main entree. The rest of the members bring a side to share. Com

Thanks so much for your thoughts and prayers. We have good news- the ServePro company has finished the smoke/fire clean up stage 1 earlier than expected. They finished last night and so we have been able to return home today. This entire restoration process has been fascinating to watch. Wednesday the duct cleaning people subcontracted by ServePro began their work. They used special equipment to clean our entire heating/cooling system and then sealed off the vents with fancy filters [haha they just used cheesecloth]. Wednesday was also the day the dry cleaning company came and picked up items from the house for cleaning. Thursday morning ServePro began their detailed cleaning. It took them two 8-10 hour days to complete the entire job. We will not have use of our kitchen until the contractors complete their work, but we can at least sleep in our own beds. Except that we have no sheets or pillows or towels. The dry cleaning company our insurance company hired has taken ALL fabric out of