The Revolution - Personal

Melbourne Trip
March 27, 2005 12:25 AM
My New Apartment Complex
In preparation for my new job at Harris Corporation, my family and I headed down to Melbourne over spring break to check out apartments. Apartment shopping is hard. There are so many things to consider and in most of the apartment complexes there wasn't even a model to see because they were running a full capacity. But to make a long story short I think I've found an apartment to live in down there. The complex is called "Grand Oaks at the Lake" and it's located on the west side of Melbourne right off of New Haven Road. New Haven appreas to kinda be the "woodruff road" of Melbourne - so I'll have easy access pretty much everything. Also, it's only about 10 minutes away from where I think I'll be working so that makes for a easy commute. I'm pretty excited about all this.
My Apartment, highlighted
As you can see from the picture above, I'm on the third floor of a three story building. It's a one bedroom apartment - comes with refrigerator (w/ icemaker), dish washer, stove, washer/drier connections, and is wired for cable service. The apartment complex has a pool, hot tub, exercise room, fishing pond, tennis courts, and even a small putting green. One thing that's kinda odd about Melbourne - almost every single apartment complex we visited had a pond in the middle - which is probably used for drainage purposes - that they refer to as a "lake" and charge extra for having a view of. They even keep these ponds.. err.. "lakes" fully stocked with fish if you want to fish there. How strange is that?
At any rate, that's the big news in my life right now. I'm sure I'll have more updates on this later.
Harris Corporation
Wikipedia - Harris Corporation
Wikipedia - Melbourne, Florida

Hannah
March 3, 2005 5:03 PM
My Girlfriend, Hannah
This is my girlfriend Hannah. She's been bugging me for a few months now to add her to the web site and I'm just now getting around to it. I know, I know - I'm such a horrible boyfriend. Anyway, Hannah is a Sophomore at the University of South Carolina Honors College majoring in Women Studies. Right now she's planning on going to grad school and getting a masters in education after undergrad.
We met in high school but didn't start dating until my second semester here at Clemson. At the time she was attending the Governor's School of the Arts and Humanities. The Governor's school is a special boarding school where the best and brightest arts/humanities students in the state go to focus their studies not only on academics but also in art areas. For instance, Hannah attended the Governor's school to study Cello - which she is awesome at by the way. Because of the Governor's school, Hannah has two high school diplomas, a normal academic one and an arts diploma.
Fun with PhotoBooth
Anyway, Hannah is smart, attractive and a really great person - I'm lucky to have her as a part of my life. She still has a few more years of school left but it won't be long until she is joining me down in Florida. We just recently discovered the University of Central Florida which might be a really good grad school option for her. If memory serves, I think it's like an hour or 45 minutes away from Melbourne so if we can live outside of Melbourne or halfway in between Melbourne and UCF we can have a pretty easy communte. Thats the plan as it stands right now.
The End

Moving to Florida
December 24, 2005 2:21 AM
It has been a really long time since I have added anything to the site. A lot has happened in the last few months. One of the biggest pieces of news is that after graduation in May I have a job lined in up in Melbourne, Florida with Harris Corporation. Harris makes communications equipment and software used in by government agencies and private sector companies. The division of the company that I'll be working in is the Government System's Division which services both civil (think FCC, Census Bureau) and defense (think CIA, FBI, DOD) agencies. This division makes up the majority of Harris's revenue and from what I can tell is kind of their bread and butter.
My job title is Software Engineer I, which is exactly the position I was hoping for and I'm looking forward to really improving my knowledge of the whole software lifecycle, development process. According to what they tell me, Harris takes on a number of different projects and as a software engineer you are constantly using new and different technologies to get things done. I won't get stuck doing cobol or visual basic for 20 years. One project they may use Windows servers and C++, the next it may be Linux and Java, or any combination - the right tools for the task. And since each project is a completely new venture - they aren't tied down to legacy software or investments.
Melbourne is a little less than an hour southeast of Orlando. It's a bit smaller than Greenville and supposedly some of the younger guys at Harris have even referred to it as "Melbouring" but I'm really not much of a thrill seeker and as long as I have a Best Buy somewhere close by and a high speed internet connection I should be happy. Clemson is pretty small and I enjoyed living there. I'm not, however, looking forward to being in weather that is warmer than South Carolina, especially in the summer. That will be an adjustment.
At any rate, I'm pretty excited. It's a great opportunity and I'm really looking forward to it.
Harris Corporation
Wikipedia - Harris Corporation
Wikipedia - Melbourne, Florida