Gather Little by Little

Photo by: Ian Muttoo

Those of us in the M-Network participated in a group writing project this week that yielded 15 articles on vacations. 10 of which were published on Tuesday and the remainder yesterday. Just think, all of this great vacation reading just in time for your summer vacation! Coincidence? I think not…

You can read all of the articles by visiting our M-Network site where Pinyo has generously posted links to all of the articles. I really enjoy writing for these projects and sure hope you enjoy reading all of the great information as much as we enjoyed writing it.

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Photo by: ?ick Harris

Looking at my subscriber numbers this week, I finally crossed the 1500 subscriber threshold. All I can say is wow! and thank you! I continue to be amazed at how many of you read Gather Little by Little on a daily basis. Based on the number of encouraging emails I get each week, it would seem you enjoy my writing and get something positive out of it as well. That is what it’s all about for me, making a difference.

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Photo by: Mr.Thomas

Today is my wife and I’s 16 year anniversary. It simply doesn’t seem like 16 years. In my mind it seems like only yesterday we were married in a small baptist church with only 30 or guests. I will never forgot the feeling I had when “Here comes the bride” began playing, and l looked up and saw my beautiful wife. It was the happiest moment of my life. I never for a second questioned my decision to marry her, and knew from the moment I first met her that we were supposed to be together. 16 years, 6 kids and a few “bumps in the road of life” later I love her even more. It’s truly amazing that no matter how much you love someone, you can love them even more each day you spend together.

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Photo by: Jessica Driver

I mentioned last week that we paid off our Chase card using some of the money from our economic stimulus check. The $3000.00 we received also went to a family dinner out at Olive Garden (something we seldom ever do) and the highlight of the week for me, we purchased a Nintendo Wii.

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Excellent capture by: Looking Glass

Due to what seems to have been a bug in the new version of WordPress, this post did not publish as it was supposed to this morning at 8:00EST. My apologies for it being late.

Today has actually been a great day so far, and it’s only 8:00am here on the east coast: 1) I received my economic stimulus rebate money via direct deposit, just as the IRS said I would 2) I immediately logged into my online billpay, and finished paying off my Chase credit card!! Another card down, 2 to go.

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Photo by: joiseyshowaa

This week I learned about the power of Google and how much traffic they can send to a blog. Over the past few weeks, people around the internet have been using Google to search for terms related to the in economic stimulus rebate. Fortunately, I’ve written a few articles on the subject: one discussing when the rebate checks will be send out, another clarifying that the stimulus rebate isn’t a loan as some people stated, and one talking about what I plan to do with ours.

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Photo by: Mimi Tang

For the first time in quit a few weeks I really struggled with what to write for this section. I usually write about something exciting or interesting in my personal life, some major news topic, or about my “real job”. This week though, nothing really happened all that interesting. To be honest though, this is a good thing. We’ve been spending a great deal of time outside as a familyglb working in our yard, playing basketball, throwing the football and just enjoying the wonderful weather here in the Carolinas.

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Photo by: esphipul

I had a great week. The training I attended was probably one of the best classes I’ve ever taken. I came back to work with some great ideas for improving our software development process and bringing my team together even more. While I’m not a big fan of class room training generally, this does prove when the training is done by a top notch instructor who is an authority in their field, it makes a huge difference. This was definitely an epiphany class for me.

Important Stuff

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Photo by: titanium22

This week has actually been a fairly normal week for us for a change. One of the highlights of this week for me has been our Japanese maples blooming. We have 6 in our yard total, and they are absolutely beautiful this time of year, especially my prized red lace maple.

The house we’ve been looking at received an offer the day before the inspector was supposed to take a look at it. Fannie Mae counter offered and we’re waiting to here how that turns out (and for the counter offer amount!). I put the inspector on hold until we see how the offer turns out. I didn’t want to spend $400.00 for nothing.

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Photo by: trekkyandy

For a few years now, my wife and I have desired to move further out of the city and into the country. We’ve dreamed of finding a home big enough for our family of 8 on some land, say 3 – 5 acres. We desired to find something that was far enough away to be remote, but not so far away that we wouldn’t have reasonable access to nice schools, hospitals, shopping areas, etc.

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