Hi all,

I hope that everyone had a great Halloween! Laura and I followed through on the Chipotle Boo-rito idea and I believe she will have the pics posted in her blog, so check them out! Besides that, work has been picking up quite a bit. It's nice to feel like I have a place in my organization now. I'm going to give a quick rundown of my most recent tasks:

1. Training Manual Updates: Basically, taking new screen shots and writing explanations as our systems are constantly evolving. I'm working on the version for the end-users (service coordinators in our case).
2. Laptop/Desktop Deployment: Setting up laptops for our co-workers to use at conferences for a computer lab they set up as well as for doing demos of the software we develop.
3. System Testing: We had to check that transfered data was moved correctly from one system to another by spot-checking different residents' info. Also checking that links, titles, content, etc are correct and working within the system.
4. Software Architecture: Continuing to develop the software for our Mentoring program including building forms, researching inputs and reports and working with the actual program functioning - watching the trainings. These trainings help us to see what kinds of activities go on and help us to make our forms more comprehensive and useful.
5. Researching for Education project - Our company received a grant to build software for tracking AP and Honors classes/tests in San Diego high schools. The idea is to see if classes like AP, Honors, AVID, etc are adding to students' abilities to succeed (i.e., go to college, get a job, etc).

So, that is basically it for me. I'm still working on my loan issues. No one seemed to be able to help. I wrote a scathing letter to my university with a referral from a past professor. Hopefully something will work out :-/. As far as the rest of life, things are going very well. I've been playing indoor soccer (highly recommended), going bike riding a ton, and doing some baking. Laura and I went to the Haunted Trail in Balboa Park (near our apartment in San Diego) and got chased by ghouls, goblins and creepsters running with chainsaws - good times. We even rode our bikes to visit this random, self-maintained topiary garden a few miles from our apartment. Some person turned their entire yard into a zoo full of topiary animals. Pretty nifty. Anyway, hope all is well!