Allow me, please, to have a little brag. →[More:]
Not on my own account, but on behalf of my late fiancé's son, Johnny.

Johnny was a frighteningly bright kid and when it came to choosing a college, he pretty much had his pick. One of the offers he had was from MIT, on a full army scholarship but he turned it down because he didn't want to join the army. In the end, he went to Ohio University in Athens, which, although a good school, doesn't quite have the same kudos as MIT on your CV. After graduating from OU, yeah, you guessed it, he joined the army. Go figure.

Anyway, he graduated officer training last August, and is working on something geeky involving electronic communications. Whilst waiting to be assigned, he and another new graduate took on on a little project, and it turned out rather well.

Johnny has now been awarded a special achievement medal.

The Certificate says:

"For outstanding meritorious achievement while serving on a special project team to design and develop an automated training scheduling too for the Leader College for Information Technology. His hard work, technical expertise, and dedication to duty contributed immeasurably to the effectiveness and resounding success of the project. 2LT P*****'s exemplary performance reflects great credit upon him, the Signal Center of Excellence, the ***d Signal Battalion, and the United States Army."

And what did he do to earn this?

"While serving on a two-person special project team for the Commandant, Leader College for Information Technology (LCIT), 2LT P***** co-designed and developed a useable, virtually zero-cost automated training course/class scheduling tool within six months, whereupon a leading software company in the industry had previously failed to produce after a cost of almost one million dollars and two years of intense effort. The LCIT tool is being beta tested and expected to be fully implemented LCIT-wide in August 2010."

His dad would have been SO proud of him and as he's not here, I'm being proud on his behalf.