Happy Birthday Elder Hintze!

Today my missionary brother turned 20!  It is different when your younger siblings get to be older.  For some reason, it feels like they should be the same age as they were when I went off to school, but alas, things don’t work that way. 

Alan is a great missionary; reading about the things he does makes me so proud of him and how hard he works.  He is a great examples, and I am proud to call Elder Alan Hintze my younger brother. 

Alan, if you read this, I love you and am so proud of you.  Keep up all the work you are doing.  You are indeed an example to us all.

HAPPY 20TH BIRTHDAY ELDER HINTZE!

Pictures!!!

After much work and sleepiness, the we finally have some pictures up of Lucy (our miniature Schnauzer) and our Vegas ’06 vacation!  This blog is only a temporary holding place for them, however, until our web site is up and running. 

For those of you who are new (basically everybody because we just sent out an email inviting you), you can feel free to browse the rest of this blog, comment on any of the posts, and come back every now and then to see what’s new.  Thanks!

The Real World

Well, we just spent the last few days in Las Vegas on our “big” trip of the year.  It was absolutely amazing.  We had such a great time.  We has a little more planned to do than we did last time we went, and we may have over done it.  But that’s not the point.  The point is, we had a great time.  We went to the Startosphere and rode the Big Shot and another new ride whose name I can’t remember.  It was crazy.  We went to see a show every night, and could do whatever we wanted, whenever we wanted.

Coming back on Sunday was a rude awakening.  We were coming back to the real world.  We had to work and be grown ups again.  The only thing I hate about going on vacation is coming back.  When you come back, you just know that the day before, you didn’t have any worries or cares outside of yourself.  It’s not the greatest feeling, but I guess we all feel it.  Anyway, I thought I’d share my feelings about coming back to the real world.

Teenagers…

Oh my what a day it has been, and it is only second period!  I am a little frustrated with the seniors right now.  They have become all too apathetic now, and I don’t know what to do with them.  They are to the point that they think they can do whatever they want, and it drives me CRAZY!  Oh how I dislike seniors in the Spring…

Microsoft Vista

Here are some personal Vista updates:

1. Office 2007:  Well, I saw a new video on Microsoft Office 2007.  It showed a whole new menu structure that doesn’t involve drop-down menus as we know them now.  It makes all the functionality more accessible and viewable.  The only way to really understand is to go see it for yourself here.

2. IE7 Beta Update:  I installed this beta a few weeks ago, and I’ve really loved the features of it (tabbed browsing, rss feeds, multiple home pages, etc.), especially the fact that it is SO much faster than Firefox.  I have recently discovered a major flaw (in my opinion), however.  I’ve found that when placing web orders in certain places (Chronopay, Woot), IE7 causes some fluky behavior that either breaks the server’s order process or causes it to halt completely.  So, if you are using IE7, be sure to watch out for that.  I keep Firefox on hand to place my web orders now.

It starts…

Fourth Quarter started on Monday.  All of my students are seeing the light at the end of the tunnel.  My seniors are getting more and more careless.  That class can be kind of difficult since they all have senioritis, and just want to get out of these hallowed walls of learning and teenage drama.  

I have made a goal that this quarter I will be more organized and stay on top of all the assignments that are handed in.  This way I won’t have to suffer like I did at the end of last quarter.  Those were stressful days, but now they are over and I can move on.  🙂 

Anyway, that is really all that is happening on this front right now.  I’ll tell you more when I know more.  If you are at all interested in what my students are doing checkout my Teacher Blog.  English 5-6 are my junior classes and World Literature is my senior class.

Incorporated?

What do these three things have in common:  1099, TEKsystems, convenience?  Absolutely nothing.  Here’s the story:  My business is needing some extra revenue for the next couple of months to fill in some gaps.  So what do we do?  We go out to some recruiting agencies to get some short temp work.  We wanted to do it on just a 1099 basis (1099 is IRS-speak for independent contracting) so we don’t have to mess with getting our employees on a W-2 basis with the company (TEKsystems).  That would make it a nightmare to transfer that money to the business then.

Ok, bear with me.  TEKsystems says they have two options: W-2 or Corp-to-Corp.  What, no 1099?  Who doesn’t do 1099’s?!?  Its the easiest thing in the world to do; no taxes, no hassle.  Well, apparently they don’t.  They would require each of our employees to set up their own corporation in order to be paid on a 1099 basis.  Can you say Jeppys, Inc.?  I can’t, and I won’t. 

Bottom line:  They would be great to work for if I just wanted some money for myself (good money at that), but they won’t work with businesses.  It really makes no sense that a company that provides employees for needing companies won’t provide employment opportunities to needing companies.  Geesh…

Yet Another Sunday

Well, another week has gone by, and my has it been busy.  I have been working like crazy to get essays graded and get everything caught up for the end of the quarter on the 23rd.  The end of the term means I get to go to Rexburg on Friday!  Whoo hoo! 

I got to a attend a first year teacher conference on Friday and Saturday, and it was mildly interesting.  Almost all the workshops I chose attend I ended up being disappointing.  They were geared more toward Elementary teachers, and any suggestions they might have had for improving my classroom organization or parent-teacher relations were (and still are) completely impossible for someone who has 212 students.  I felt like I wasted some time there, but I learned a few interesting things. 

I’ll post again soon.

Tabs and Giants

Hi everyone.  Its been a couple of days, and I’ve been meaning to post this:  IE7 Beta 2.  I was pretty excited to see this.  I know its not really all that new as far as the world is concerned, but its new to me and maybe anybody else reading this.  It features tabbed browsing, rss feeds, more viewing area, etc.  It will only be available on Vista, but the beta will work for XP right now.

Also, I posted a semi-permanent link to They Might Be Giants Podcasts.  30 minutes of so of new music by TMBG for your listening pleasure.  They’ve got a goal to reach 1 million subscribers (they currently have over half-million), so lets help out the cause, eh? 

That’s it for now, but I might come up with something good before the weekend hits.

My baby’s growin’ up

Well, I know many of you probably won’t care as much as I do, but Lucy has started losing her baby teeth.  And man, what weird teeth she has.  We’ve been finding them on the floor.

For the last few days we noticed that she has been chewing alot, and we thought she was chewing her gums raw.  As it turns out, she was just wiggling her teeth.  🙂  Pretty exciting stuff. 

Anyway, that’s all for now…

Edit (by Adam):  In case you didn’t know, Lucy is our five-months old miniature Schnauzer.  I just wanted to make that clear because you might think it a bit odd that we’re finding teeth all over our floor if she was a child… 🙂