Posted on March 25, 2009 by Nathan Novak
Today marks the 9 year anniversary of Alicea and I getting married. Wow – 9 years. We’ve known each other since September 1992, and have been dating/engaged/married for all of that except 3 years. 9 years married, 17 years in each other’s lives.
I wouldn’t trade it for anything. How lucky am I to wake up every morning next to my best friend in the whole world? My soul mate? My partner in trying to do the right things in raising our daughter?
9 years since saying “I do” on a perfect Spring night in Charlotte, NC. 9 years since one of the happiest days of my life – I’m still on cloud 9 (ha!) every time I even think about that day.
We were talking about it last night, and these past 9 years have gone by so fast, and at the same time we’ve done and been through so much.
- An awesome honeymoon in Charleston, SC
- Starting our post-college lives and careers in Charlotte, only to get moved 3000 miles away at the drop of a hat
- Cross-country drive (arriving in Seattle for our 1st anniversary)
- Finding the perfect church on a whim on day
- 10 day road trip to California and back on US-101
- Buying a house when we never thought we could (we got our mortgage rate locked 2 weeks before they bottomed out!)
- Finding out we were pregnant on on your birthday
- Flying to the top of a snow-capped mountain in a helicopter
- Having to go to the hospital a few weeks later for “some testing”
- Having Kaitlyn born 3 days later; 5 weeks in NICU for her and over a week in the hospital for you
- Getting to celebrate a “0th birthday party” because KC was home a month before her original due date
- Spending a week on Maui while Grandma watch Kaitlyn for us (we TOTALLY need to go back!)
- Raising a healthy and beautiful 4 year old daughter
- Getting to spend each day knowing we have each other to come home to, rely on, vent at, care for us when we’re ill, and make us laugh.
9 has always been my number – I was born 9 pounds 9 ounces on the 9th day of the 9th month. I don’t buy into superstition too much, but I’m betting that this is going to be a pretty awesome year none the less. 
Here’s to you hon. Thanks for being there every day. Thanks for being my best friend. Thanks for being the love of my life. We’re still smiling!
Filed under: family | Tagged: Alicea, anniversary, wedding | 1 Comment »
Posted on February 12, 2009 by Nathan Novak
As the old saying goes, if there were no bad times you wouldn’t appreciate the good ones!
Kaitlyn got a beautiful, shiny, purple bead stuck in her right ear yesterday at preschool and didn’t tell anyone until last night as we were putting her to bed. We spent the next few hours at the Overlake Urgent Care in Issaquah where they tried a few different techniques to get it out – didn’t work. Lots of pain for KC though in the process – not good. 
We got asked to head to Overlake ER in Bellevue, where the doc took a look and said him messing with it would just make it worse. Got referred to an ENT doc in Issaquah – went there this morning. Consulted with him and everyone agreed the best course of action is to remove the bead while KC’s knocked out so she doesn’t get even more traumatized. Fun times!
Kaitlyn isn’t in any pain as long as someone isn’t prodding around in her ear, and she’s being a trooper about the whole thing. All the nurses love her and she’s gotten a bunch of new stickers out of the whole deal! Awesome ENT doc too – even had Kaitlyn look in her stuffed bunny’s ears to make sure no beads were in there too. The procedure is early on Tuesday (no worries about leaving it in until then), and we should be home by 9 or 10a.
What a trooper. Kaitlyn told us last night, before we even left the house, “that was a bad thing to do – I shouldn’t ever do that again.” At least we’re good enough parents that when she messes up she’s willing to tell us about it, and figure out self-corrective action for the future.
Good lord, my daughter is ready for the working world! She just did a post-mortem on a high-priority incident!!!
Filed under: family | Tagged: Kaitlyn, parenting | Leave a Comment »
Posted on February 4, 2009 by Nathan Novak
I’ve heard this is going to be resolved in Outlook 14. In fact there were huge cheers when we were told this at the Company Meeting in September. Time will tell…
In the mean time, time will continue to be spent sitting and waiting … and fuming.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tagged: Outlook errors | Leave a Comment »
Posted on February 1, 2009 by Nathan Novak
I really love Windows 7 and am happily using it on my primary laptop. The so far the only thing that doesn’t work is my AT&T wireless modem (need to find a driver installer that doesn’t care about the OS version).
One issue that I haven’t liked is the Windows Live Messenger client wants to live in the taskbar with the rest of my running apps instead of the system tray where I’m used to it staying. But I just came across a way to make it work like I want and stay over by the clock in the system tray: compatibility mode!
Here’s what to do:
- Close/exit Messenger
- On your local computer browse to C:\Program Files\Windows Live\Messenger\ (or \Program Files (x86)\ on a 64bit OS install)
- Right-click on msnmsgr.exe and choose Properties
- On the Compatibility tab click the “Run this program in compatibility mode box and choose Windows Vista. Click OK at the bottom.
- Now you can start Messenger again from the Start Menu.
- In the System Tray click on the “Show hidden icons” arrow and then click Customize.
- In the Notification Area Icons dialog find Windows Live Messenger and in the dropdown to the right choose “Show icons and notifications”. Click OK at the bottom.
- There you go! Messenger back in the System Tray!
Credit to www.mess.be for the tip! Unfortunately they don’t have URL’s directly to their posts.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tagged: Windows 7, Windows Live Messenger | 2 Comments »
Posted on December 30, 2008 by Nathan Novak
Just wanted to let you all know that I’m still around!
You may have noticed that I’ve added a couple of links/feeds to the right of this page. The first one is my Twitter account: http://twitter.com/nanovak. I have actually been quite active over there as I find the 140 character short post syncs up well with my usual desire for blogging: oh that would be a cool thought or quote to share.
The other feed is a “link blog” feed of blog posts and articles that I find interesting to share. Some good stuff there! http://feeds.feedburner.com/NathansLinkBlog
I’m starting to get motivate to write a 2008 year in review post, so stay tuned for that.
For now, it’s off to bed to try to get rid of a head cold. Joy.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tagged: blogging | Leave a Comment »
Posted on November 30, 2008 by Nathan Novak
Posted on November 9, 2008 by Nathan Novak
Just came across this in catching up on TechCrunch posts. Pretty funny revisiting of characters from the old Budweiser commercials from 1999-2002 … eight years later.
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Posted on November 4, 2008 by Nathan Novak
That’s from the homepage of www.nytimes.com right now. What’s the most impressive, not the “OBAMA” line. To me the most important is “Racial Barrier Falls in Heavy Turnout”. One of the most proud moments I’ve had in my 31 years. Proud of our country.
Thanks to all who voted. Remember this feeling, what it’s like to play a part in the process. No matter if your choice is victorious or not, it’s PARTICIPATING that’s the key.
And thanks to everyone who finally was able to put the “race card” back in the deck with all the other issues. Especially after living in the South for nearly a decade, it puts a big smile on my face to see Virginia and (at this point in the evening, possibly) North Carolina vote for an African American for the highest office in the land.
As John McCain is saying right now in his concession, let’s all “find ways to come together” to help restore our prosperity, enhance our security, and make this country a better place. “We are all fellow Americans.”
Congratulations America. Job well done.
Filed under: politics | Tagged: election 2008 | Leave a Comment »
Posted on November 1, 2008 by Nathan Novak
My wife informed me a couple days ago that my final college loan payment was made a few weeks ago, and we just received an official letter stating the loan is paid off and closed. Wow. At 32 years old I’m finally done with college!
It’s nice to have that paid off, but at the same time it was kind of my last connection with being a decade younger than I am now.
My career seems to be taking me in a more technical direction than I once hoped, and where I used to think that getting my Masters some day was good goal, now I’m not so sure. Sure I could be wrong, but at this point I don’t really see a big benefit.
So here’s to the good old days of just worrying about making it to classes and determining the best strategy for winning a game of Spades at 3am. But at the time, here’s to having a few glasses of a nice merlot while answering the door on Halloween while my wife and daughter are out raking in the goods!
Of course I just thought of another interesting tidbit: I’ve come full circle. When I was in college I thought it would be the coolest thing to work at Microsoft, but knew it was pretty darn hard to get hired there. In the last 10 years I’ve done a lot, and even reached the point where I thought Microsoft wouldn’t be the right place for me. Today I can’t think of anywhere else, or another team I’d rather work on than Messenger Ops at Microsoft.
That deserves another glass of merlot.
Filed under: job | Tagged: college loan, Microsoft | Leave a Comment »
Posted on October 21, 2008 by Nathan Novak
A new grocery store is going to open in our town. Well, reopen under new ownership after the last group went all Chapter 11 on us. This has led to some considerable discussion on the various email DL’s and other online forums for folks who live in Snoqualmie.
The best post I’ve seen just came in while I was at lunch, and is in response to my beautiful wife pointing out that a newspaper article said people in Snoqualmie were driving half an hour to get to a grocery store.
But then he got a phone call from a retail developer at Snoqualmie Ridge, who said the community’s only supermarket had closed and residents were driving a half hour to shop for food.
-Puget Sound Business Journal
What a load of bull the retail landlord fed these people! There’s a small organic grocery in downtown Snoqualmie (3-5 minutes) as well as a QFC and Safeway 6 miles away in North Bend. The response?
“Not sure where people would get information line that…”
Thanks Chris!
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