My Blog

Welcome to greg.kathihill.com, the home page of Gregory Neil Hill. Please, call me Greg. There isn't a lot to this page, just a blog, a resume, and a portfolio. I may add more sections in the future as whim strikes me. Feel free to browse around, and contact me with any requests/complaints/admiration you desire.

If you want to say hello, Email Me Here


It's like I always say when I'm in the shower...

Submitted 10/17/2005 4:06 PM

So, it's been a while since I wrote. Let's see, what has happened. With me, not a lot. I did do a little programming, but I haven't been much in the mood lately when I do actually have some free time. I really need to get back to it. I'm starting to feel motivated again at last. Rachel's been doing tons. She re-stained our kitchen table and benches. At first, I didn't care for it, to be honest, but it has grown on me. She's thinking of maybe doing the banister the same color, but we'll see. She also made some curtains for the kitchen window and is going to make some for the laundry room that match (I think). She's mostly finished painting the laundry room to match the kitchen. Oh, and she painted the doors in the laundry room and kitchen. And she finished her mission slide show. She had a brief flirting with a job opportunity that fizzled out before anything happened. It was looking good, then the guy just decided he couldn't afford to hire anyone. Why post a job unless you're sure you want to fill it? That's just stupid.

I've been taking some new medication lately that has helped my joints immensely. I'm still stiff and have a bit of a limp, but I can walk so much more easily and the pain is almost always barely noticeable. It's such an amazing thing. You never realize how much you appreciate simple things until you can't do them any more. It's nice to have some of those simple things back.

We're gonna play Star Wars again this weekend; I got some great ideas for missions in the time period, mostly related to the forming of the rebellion. It'll be sweet. I can't wait for the Episode 3 and Clone Wars Volume 2 DVDs; that should give me some good creative fuel.

I'm sure I forgot some major important stuff, but as I said, I forgot it. So, adios.

Vini, vidi, vici

Submitted 9/22/2005 10:13 AM

So, I've started at Tahitian Noni. So far it's been cool, except for the firewall that blocks instant messaging. That part sucks; I feel so isolated. The team is cool, the company actually cares about its employees (which is sadly rare in Utah), so I imagine I'll stick around here a while. It's so nice not having to drive for 2+ hours every day. I've gotten back to working on Librarius Metallicus on the side. It's coming along, and I have some great ideas for getting even more performance out of my site framework. It's more of an IT solution than a code solution, but it'll be very scalable.

Rachel's just about done with the kitchen. We just need to get the new handles in and put them on, and she wants to paint another wall. Oh, and replace the glass on the two cabinet doors that had glass. I think that's it. She finally burned the DVD with our wedding slideshow on it; she's so relieved. iDVD kept crashing without telling her why (which is especially annoying since it took upwards of 10 hours to encode the thing each time). Finally, we got a workaround that had us create a disk image first, and then burn from that. That worked. The longer I spend on her Mac, the less impressed I am with them. Their software is just as buggy if not buggier than Windows software. I don't know how they got this reputation for being stable.

So, life's good. I'm catching up on things that I didn't have time for with the commute to Park City. I should be able to catch up financially, too, since the new job pays better and I'm saving $200 a month on gas. Won't that be nice. That's about it from here.

So, a bit of news

Submitted 9/2/2005 7:56 PM

I have taken a new position at Tahitian Noni in Orem. The commute to Park City became unbearable, so it was move houses or move jobs. For a number of reasons, Rachel and I decided it best to move jobs. My old friend Ben Byrd called me one afternoon and told me they were hiring Perl developers, so I sent in my resume. Last week, they interviewed and this week they made me an offer, several thousand dollars more than my asking salary!! I've always had to continuously follow up on jobs in the past and argue over pennies. This feels more like how it should be. So, two weeks from today will be my last day with backcountry.com, a short-lived jaunt, but worthwhile in many ways.

In other news, my kidneys decided they hated me again. I was out most of Monday and all of Tuesday dealing with them. It's about time I made those follow-up appointments ...

Rachel's off at her brother's wedding this weekend, so I'll probably end up playing a lot of video games. Congrats to Micah and his soon-to-be-wife Stephanie.

Everything's ok, situation normal... how are you?

Submitted 8/29/2005 6:06 AM

Ok, a few things since I last wrote. First of all, Lars got a counter-offer from Sprint and is staying in Kansas after all. In even bigger news, we started playing a new campaign of Star Wars RPG, and this time I'm the gamemaster. Only 1 mission so far, but round 2 is coming up in a few weeks. Joey, Tony, James, and Jeff all played, and Ryan joined in via webcam. They're a group of Jedi padawans who escaped the massacre at the end of Episode 3. Should be fun. In even bigger bigger news, mom got a job!! She's working at UVSC in a capacity similar to her BYU job of a few years back, only without the snivelling, petty coworkers screwing with her self-esteem. So, congrats to mom.

Rachel got a job doing photoshop work for the guy who took our wedding photos, but unfortunately it didn't seem to work out. They wanted to pay her a pittance, and then they complained about everything she did (nothing was ever good enough). Oh well; she'll find something better I'm sure. In the meantime, she's decided that she wants to make our kitchen look pretty, which means she wants to tear it apart first. It's like a construction zone, but I'm excited to see the end result. She's refinishing all the cabinets and painting, for now. Once we can afford it, we'll put in new floors and (in our dreams) new countertops. I'll get some pics up as things progress.

Librarius Metallicus is nearing completion. All that's left is the lineup editor, which so happens to be the most daunting part of the whole project :) I have some good ideas, though, so I hope to finish it this week. I've already sent out notification to the librarians to have them begin testing everything else. I also need to do some performance tweaking. Garth and I have some ideas for other projects, so there may be more to report soon. I also need to finish the Star Wars RPG site Ryan and I started last year. I want to redo a lot of the current interface and make it more interactive.

I finally got Rachel addicted to Farscape. We're about half-way through season 2. It's been fun watching them all again, but I have noticed a little more this time that season 2 is fairly melodramatic. Still good, but a bit overdone at times. Season 3 & 4 are really the meat of the series anyway.

Well, I best get off and get ready for work. That hour commute really cuts my morning short. Ciao.

Carry on my wayward son

Submitted 8/4/2005 3:39 PM

Lars got the job! He's moving out in a few weeks; that will rock. A big congrats from me.

Rachel has been training with the photographer that hired her. It's going well, but she's itching to be doing real work methinks. In the meantime, her Mac OS X fried itself. A bit of a rant here, but those Mac users who tout how 'easy' Macs are and how 'stable' OS X is need a lesson in reality. Her Mac is both less stable and more difficult to use than any PC I've ever built. I couldn't even take it apart, because they use non-standard screws so you can't mess with it yourself. They really go the extra mile on Macs to ensure you can't do much of anything beyond the basic functionality they want you to know about. End of rant; I hate Macs.

I've been working less on my rewrite of Librarius Metallicus lately, but it's still coming along. I picked up some new techniques commonly called AJAX. It'll let me alleviate all of the remaining pain points the librarians have had with the old system. I even wrote some cool form-validation scripts using the Prototype javascript library. I plan on making some contributions to the open-source javascript movement that seems to be picking up steam lately. Garth and I have some ideas for projects we want to work on together. More news on that later. First I have to finish Librarius, then finish my Star Wars RPG site, then I can think about other projects.

Laters.

Oh what a nerd I am

Submitted 7/20/2005 2:01 PM

The Librarius Metallicus rewrite is still coming along. I got most of the frontend done, and probably 1/2 of the admin. It's at http://beta.librariusmetallicus.com. It's not officially in beta yet, but I should get the remaining parts coded over the next couple weeks. Then, I'll start beta testing with the current librarians in early August. It's been fun to revisit such an old project and make it right. It's also provided me the opportunity to add some enhancements to my site-building engine that I'd wanted to do for a while. But I digress.

In other news, we're going to start playing Star Wars again soon. Joey, Tony, and James are all playing, and I'll be the gamemaster. The setting is this: 3 Jedi padawans on the run from the empire at the end of the clone wars. Should be good times. It's gonna be my first attempt at gamemastering, so I guess we'll see if I'm up to the challenge.

Looks like Rachel has a job working for the photographer who took our wedding/engagement photos. She's going to be the backup photographer at a wedding on Friday, and then do photoshop work and possibly more photography after that. That's sweet; she's really excited.

Lars came out to interview with a company called Prosper. My friend Jacob works there, too. Here's to hoping he gets the gig and moves out. And, since I know he's one of the few who actually reads this, here's a 'sup Lars?' from me.

Nothing else I can think of to report.

Hey! You guys aren't from the pizza place!!

Submitted 7/8/2005 3:06 PM

Still chugging along. Life's been good. Working, playing, watching lots of movies. I've gotten quite a lot done on the rewrite of Librarius Metallicus, but there's still quite a bit left to do also. Should have at least a beta up in August, I think. We went to see The Lord Weird Slough Feg in concert Wednesday. My ears are still ringing a little. My buddy Dustin's band Katagory V opened for them. Despite technical problems with the sound and crappy seating, it was a good show. Can't complain about free tickets, anyhoo. Joey's coming down this weekend so I can help him build his new computer. He ordered parts based on my recommendations, but he hasn't ever built a computer before, so he needed assistance.

Work's going well, except that 1 hour commute, that part sucks. They let me work from home on occasion, so that alleviates it to some degree. Rachel's still looking for jobs, but she has some good leads. She's also been adding the wedding and honeymoon pictures to her slideshow so she can finish it up. That thing's a monster now.

Can't think of much else to talk about. Life's becoming more normal again, which is nice.

Where in the world is San Diego, California?

Submitted 6/24/2005 4:38 PM

So, I haven't written much since I got married, but I've been uber-busy. As you can see from the pics, I finally got my office set up how I wanted. It's so sweet that I almost crap my pants every time I go in there. Rachel and I joined Netflix, so we've been watching a lot of movies. Beyond that, I've been working on a complete rewrite of Librarius Metallicus using my JBHV site engine. It's coming along well, and I have basic functionality on my dev box. Soon I will have searching and browsing going, then I'll work on the remaining sections of the interface and debug it. Hopefully I'll have a beta of it up in July sometime.

Rachel has been building her portfolio and looking for jobs. She learned that the demand for photographers is pretty low, but the demand for photoshop work is actually pretty high. So, she shifted her focus because she figures that it would be good experience for her, and she'd still enjoy it. We're really both a couple of nerds; we spend lots of time in our offices working on our computers. The other day she got on IM and sent me a message from the next room because my music was too loud to hear her asking whatever question it was. That one made me laugh somethin fierce.

Mom moved into John's and did an amazing job cleaning up the place. We went over a few times to help out organizing and such, but she and John did the bulk of it. I'm amazed they fit so much stuff in that house.

The sprinklers hate me again this year. We fixed the leak in the front yard twice, but it still has a very small drip. I'm tempted to just bury it anyway; it isn't getting worse and it's so slow that it doesn't even form a puddle. We fixed the hole in the backyard, too, only to discover that there was another hole farther down the same pipe. We need to get another part to fix that one, so it got delayed. Our poor yard is gonna be fried before we get the sprinklers going. I'm hoping we'll get that done Sat morning so I can finally put an end to it. I'm very tired of working on sprinklers.

So, yeah, life is good, but busy.

Some pictures from the wedding


Submitted 6/17/2005 11:21 AM

At some point, I'll make a photo album page with tons o' photos, but for now, these will have to do.

Here's a few pics that my sister took at the wedding and reception.

Enjoy.

And the projects never cease


Submitted 5/31/2005 5:59 PM

So, I finally got tired enough of my computer desk to get a new one. I found a behemoth at Costco that would work for me to set up my dual monitors and my other computer, so we got that. Rachel and I spent a lot of time Sun and Mon getting it together, and it looks great. Now I just have to hook my computer back up. Anyway, that's why I haven't replied to emails for the last few days, if you're one of the few who wrote me during that time. I can't send from my email at work (at least, not yet), but I still receive them.

Once I get everything set up I'll get Rachel to take a few pics. This desk is really insane, I love it!!

Mom should be getting here tonight or tomorrow. We're supposed to go help unpack tomorrow night.

That's about it for now.