Today marks a monumental occasion: it was the first time that Will crapped in the potty. He’s been doing pretty good, for the most part, on urinating in a potty. And he no longer wears diapers except when he sleeps at night. But for the past few weeks he has been pushing a turdball into his undies everyday.

Today he discovered that it looks more like a snake and less like a ball when it comes out while sitting on a toilet. Imagine that!

Luckily for everyone (most of all Will), no pictures were taken. (we’re not that crazy! … usually)

Will thought it was pretty funny and talked briefly about pooping out seashells and turtles, in addition to balls and snakes. Speaking of the deranged imaginations of toddlers, he wakes up after having pretty vivid dreams quite frequently. He may have inherited these types of dreams from his mother (mine are usually less engaging and less memorable). I say that because he frequently talks about all sorts of crazy stuff, typically involving some of his favorite cartoon characters, right after he wakes up in the mornings.

News Flash: For all of you who have submitted a comment only to see it disappear, my suspicion was right: your comments were magically and (so it seemed) irrevocably being marked as spam. Once I installed WordPress’s anti-spam plugin (Akismet is included with WordPress), I was able to access the spam comments and restore them. So all of your comments are now up! Yeah! If this happens to you again, it will hopefully be restored from spam in short order. Also, I’m hoping that the Akismet plugin identifies fewer false positives than whatever mechanism WordPress was using before.

While we’re talking about filthy things like potty-training, I’m reminded of a link I failed to put in my last post. It is a video for a tune by Andy Samberg and Justin Timberlake. It’s very funny, won an Emmy (???), and features some adult language (so make sure no toddlers are around when you watch it): SNL’s Special Christmas Box.

Onto another topic: things at work seem to be going well. The unrest over our recent acquisition is still going strong, but not as strong as immediately after the announcement. I’m excited because it looks like I might actually get to work on version development. I think the members of my team (all two of them – three if you count co-ops) are also excited. I also have some “extended team members” (kind of like cousins in the org chart) which will remain working on SEM interfaces (Ireland’s Single Electric Market) and other market interfaces. They may not be as happy about the version development thing since that team is not included – although they are probably happy about our deadlines for SEM-go-live soon being behind us. Some good news that we heard was clarification (at least for the moment) that they will remain in the product development part of the new organization. At one point there were fears that their team may instead be absorbed into the implementation part of the org – which could be less pleasant.

One of the down-sides to the acquisition is that there are lots of people flying all over the country. Our folks have flown out to various places in the Midwest and on the west coast to visit our new staff (once our competitor). And vice versa: some of their management was in town last week, and more folks will be in Atlanta over the next couple of weeks.

This certainly isn’t a down-side all by itself. It is understandable that lots of people need to get their heads together to figure out the right way to merge the two companies. It is a down-side because it has meant a reduced presence at Oracle’s OpenWorld this year in order to minimize additional non-billable travel. I got my hopes up earlier last week about going to San Francisco in November. But by Friday it was decided that a smaller contingent, which does not include me, will be going. My boss’s boss assured me that we will still have a presence at JavaOne next year – so hopefully I’ll get a chance to go to that.

That’s about all that’s new around these parts. Come back later to catch up a little more…