Recently in General Rambling Category

Been thinking a bunch over the last few days of what the new year is going to bring and more of what I would like it to bring. 2008 was definitely an up and down year for me, but I really want to try and make the best of 2009.

Music:

Last year was a banner year for me musically. At the beginning of the year, I set a personal goal for myself of being able to get up and play on stage with some of my friends at the various bars in Boston. This goal was set to try and get me playing my guitar more and really getting better at it.

I accomplished that goal many times over. I played at The Bell, Hennessey's (multiple times) and DJ's. I played with various bands and even solo once. This was great for me.

The other big thing that happened musically was that some friends and I started a band. It was rough going at first, but these days, we are really starting to get somewhere. We played at 2 parties at a friend's house, which were fun, but a bit of a mess at times (I've seen the video, so I know :). The big accomplishment was we actually played a real gig in a bar a few weeks ago. Huge deal for all of us, now we just gotta keep it going.

This year, I have a lot more plans for music. I really want to spend some time and perfect my sound, which means picking up a bunch of pedals, a pedal board, etc etc. I've got a bunch of ideas on what to get, now I just need to save up some cash and get it all set. I've already got one pedal coming this week and then it's going to be a game of ordering the rest of them.

In the same vain of the music geeking out, I also want to try and get some level of a home studio together. Nothing too major, mostly my mac and some other stuff. A keyboard/midi controller and some mics (instrument and vocal) are pretty much all I need here. Oh, and an external HD to save all the work I hope to do.

Once I get some of that stuff set, the big goal for this year is to "record an album". Now, I don't necessarily mean some great production, professional album, I just mean something for me. The goal is to write and record a song each month. The other part of that is that I want to work with a different friend each month, so it will end up being something fun and hopefully experimenting in a bunch of different types of music.

As for the band, I'd really like us to get good enough this year to be playing out regularly. This is a big goal in a lot of ways, but I think if we can really work hard, we will be able to do it. It would be great for a lot of reasons (not to mention a couple of extra bucks here and there), so I really hope we can accomplish it. I have the contacts, so I think if we can get up to speed, its something that's doable.

There are a couple of other things in the back of my mind musically as well. I'd like to take vocal lessons, but not sure if there will be the time or money for that. I'd also like to really learn a ton more songs and maybe get out and do a few solo gigs. Again, not sure if that will be possible, but you never know. Never bad to have some pie in the sky type goals.

Ok, this is already getting really long, so I guess I will continue this in some more parts over the next few days....

Wow, I have really been a slacker on keeping this up. This summer has been pretty insane, but in the end a total blast. TONS of music, lots of friends and lots of fun. A few more weeks and my time will free up greatly. Hopefully at that point, I will get this place back together again :) In the meantime, I'm skadz on twitter, probably the best way to hear about my adventures.

Back in the day, Dream Theater's guitar player John Petrucci used to write a column for one of the guitar magazines called Wild Stringdom, so I thought the name was appropriate.

My second goal for this year is to really get back in to playing music. I've always played a little guitar, but its always been a hobby that was never really fully realized. I would get in to playing for a bit but then would get busy and stop for a while. I never really got anywhere with my playing.

Considering how much time I spend around music and musicians, this really frustrates me. I have decided that this year I want to be able to get up and play with those guys and have them trust I will know what I am doing. It would be a lot of fun to be able to do this from time to time.

The other driving force behind this is that I recently found out a friend of mine has a full practice space at his apartment. The last few times we have been at his place for parties, we have jammed out a few tunes and it really felt good. I now am hoping we can turn that energy in to a regular jam session that will do two things. First it will help me get my chops up, second, it will help me get used to playing with other people, which is a skill I have not mastered in the least yet.

I have been really good the last few days in trying to get myself in to a routine of playing. I have a list (and an iTunes playlist) of about 40 songs I know or want to learn. I've also been really good about spending at least an hour each night playing some of that list. Now I just need to keep it up and push it even further.

The next big step is to spend some time with my books and magazines on guitar and music theory, which fits right in with another one of my goals which you will hear about later.

I figure I should start out with the obvious one (and at the same time try to start to fulfill it).

I totally sucked on blogging in 2007. Most of all, it was a time issue, but I think I need to make more time in my life for things other than work, drinking and watching TV (more on those things later). Also, I feel I have lots of document about my life, which is the whole point of having this blog.

I also write for 2 other sites, which I have totally been slacking on.

First is my Dream Theater site http://www.dreamt.org/. I get lots of information in my RSS reader about Dream Theater, but never seem to actually put it up on the site. This has to start now and I even tried to be good about that by posting something today.

Second, I recently was made captain of Metroblogging Boston, a site about local things happening in Boston. I've finally recruited a little bit of help, so now I need to step up and start posting things myself. I am out and about in Boston often enough, I should really have lots to add here and its one of the big things I plan on doing this year.

So, three sites, three different areas of my life, all need to be documented more this year.

I started writing a post about all my goals (notice I did not say resolutions) for 2008 and decided last night that I think I am going to explore some of them in longer posts and maybe do the final few in one big post after that. I think it will help me think about some of them some more than I would have in one big post.

My current phone contract is up in February, so it's time to start thinking about what I want to get. I have been a Sprint customer for over 9 years now (since they introduced the PCS concept), so my easiest path is to just get a new Sprint phone. I looked around a little and it seems like the best phone they offer for me is probably the MOTORAZR2 V9m. It's the higher end Razr phone and has a bunch of the features I would like to have in my phone (especially the phone as a modem feature, so I can use my laptop on the road).

This will end up costing me like $250 for just the phone and with tax and some other stuff, it will most likely end up being over $300. The biggest reason to do this is to just keep with the service and system that I have used forever. The other big reason in the past was keeping the same number, its been my number forever, so I would hate for it to change.

These days, we have number portability, so I could take my number with me wherever I went. And as for Sprint, its not like they do anything super special for me. Lastly, the $300 for the phone is kind of steep for a regular old phone.

So, the question becomes, do I just get an iPhone? First of all, it would only be $100 more than my current idea of what I want to buy. It has the obvious "cool" factor as its the hot phone out there. It also means that I can carry one less device (no more ipod) when I walk downtown or something. I'm a huge Apple fan, so it would fit pretty well in to my digital lifestyle. And its got a lot of great stuff built in to it and once apps can be put on it, it will be even better.

The cons? Well, I would guess we will be seeing a new iPhone pretty soon (I would love to see one at Macworld because that would make this decision a lot easier). It means switching networks, so if I have issues or can't get service in places, it means figuring out a new system. It means going through the hassle of moving my number. And it means dealing with some of the issues I have heard about on the iPhone.

I dunno. I definitely will have to think about this some more. I do have about 6 weeks, but that will go by real quick.

Daylight Savings Ends at 2AM, set your clock back an hour!

This past weekend I headed out to Saratoga Springs, NY to spend some time with my family out there. I hadn't seen them in over a year and hadn't been to Saratoga in even longer. I figured a weekend of some gambling, some drinking and some family would be a nice little get away for me.

The big thing about this weekend in Saratoga was it was the weekend for The Travers Stakes, which is one of the biggest races of the season at Saratoga. This meant it was going to be a packed house in the area.

Kentucky Derby winner Street Sense was one of the horses running this year. My family I was going to visit happen to be friends with his trainer, so it made for a much more interesting weekend.

Friday night was filled was some drinking around the some of the bars around Saratoga, including MARE, Gaffneys and the Tavern. Was a good time spent with my cousin and a bunch of his friends (two of whom actually live around the corner from me).

After a late start and some breakfast on Saturday morning, mimosas started flowing around 1. Due to the excessive heat, the part eventually moved to a friend's house (mansion may be a better word) for some more drinking and some cooling off. We finally arrived at the track between the 8th and the 9th races. We watched the 8th race and then headed over to the Paddock. The Paddock is where they saddle up the horses right before the race. This is very much a VIP privilege, so it was very cool getting to be in there. As we were leaving the paddock, my mom called to tell me that we had all been on TV :) We watched Street Sense get ready and then headed towards the track.

Next, we watched the race:

What a race! After the race ended, we headed down to the Winner's Circle. Sadly, we were not in the winner's circle picture (we were like the next few people to the left of the picture). But it was rather cool to cheer on the winner. After the winner's circle, we headed to the Saratoga room for the after party with champagne and hors d’œuvre.

At this point we were all hurting pretty bad, so we headed to a local establishment to get some food in to us before another night of partying :) We once again headed to MARE, but this time, we ended up there all night (it was after 3AM when we left). Good times with lots of interesting people.

Sunday was breakfast and some shopping (and maybe a couple of drinks). I finally hit the road after 5PM (not what I had planned). Got home around 8:30 and was in my bed before 10.

Overall, a great weekend doing some real cool stuff.

One of the possibilities of another race for Street Sense is here at Suffolk Downs. Hmmm, could make for some fun! :)

Almost 14 years ago, on my 18th birthday, I drove up from Long Island to Boston to start attending Boston University. When I arrived at my room in Warren Towers, one half of the room was already all set up. The most interesting thing I noticed was that the person who had done all this set up had Star Wars sheets on his bed. I have to admit, I was a bit concerned.

Later that same night, Craig, my new roommate, arrived back from the family event he had been attending all day. He seemed like a nice enough guy and at that point, we were stuck together, so might as well make the best of it.

We survived freshman year, not without its bumps, but came out as friends. The next year we lived next door to each other in Myles Standish Hall and without the pressure of being roommates, our friendship continued and we became even better friends.

We both left school after sophomore year and we drifted for a while. Eventually, we started hanging out here and there again while he was working at BU. A couple of years later, he joined me at Collective Technologies and we quickly became very good friends again and spent way too many nights drinking at Sissy K's :)

A few years back, he decided to move to Houston (why, I still do not know) and I took the car ride down with him to keep him company (and that was pretty much it, I think I drove about 2 hours of the whole journey :) We still keep in touch and talk on a regular basis, but it's been a while since we have seen each other.

Craig hit the state today and will be heading in to Boston to catch a Red Sox game and maybe have a pint or twelve tomorrow night. Can't wait to see him, as I said, it's been a while. I guess in the end, he is pretty much the oldest friend I have since coming to Boston, so it will be good to hang out and have some fun.

So I am watching some TiVo and hit play to return to my show and hear the end of a commercial that strikes me as something odd to hear on a commercial, so I rewind and actually watch the commercial. Again, I hear the same thing, so I decide to write it down because I found it rather interesting.

Everyone has heard about Restless Leg Syndrome, one of these things that seems to be "all the rage" these days. Well, there is now a drug on the market called Mirapex. While talking about side effects they tell you to contact your doctor:

"If you experience increased gambling, sexual or other intense urges."

Gambling and Sexual urges are a side effect? I would say they should market it FOR those purposes :)

Don't forget that today is System Administrator Appreciation Day. Go give your "computer guy" a hug, (s)he probably needs it :)

My good friend vlvtjones and I (along with about 12 other people I know) share a birthday. She posted "Truism #34 this week..." today. She is 1000% correct that it is true.

If you have been to a few concerts with me, you probably have met my good friend Don (aka Uncle Don, aka Tools). Well, he finally joined the blogging revolution a few months back and has been putting out some great stuff. So, if you know Don, or just want an other interesting blog about sports, music, etc to read, check him out at Tools' World.

So, today is 5 months since I had my last cigarette. I always said if I can go 6 months I will finally feel like I have really quit. One more month to go. Hardly even think about smoking these days, which is rather nice. Every once in a while I still want one though. Guess that will happen for a long time.

Quitting smoking was the first part of trying to get healthy. I have been getting better about eating and all that stuff, but the real scary part started yesterday. Yesterday evening, I went for a run. Yes, me, Skadz, went out to exercise :)

I did just under 2.5 miles in about 25 mins, which makes me feel pretty good that I should be able to ramp up on this pretty quick. I was really hoping to do 3 miles, but between not really eating well yesterday, and well, just not being in great shape, my body didn't let that happen. Hopefully I can crack 3 miles in the next week or so.

I definitely hurt for a while when I got home last night, but am sort of impressed with how I feel today, I really thought my body would be in total revolt, but I just have a little bit of aching in my legs.

The last piece of the whole thing is that I think using my lungs that much have caused them to dig deep and get the last of the smoking crap out. I coughed more since my run than I have in months. Hopefully this means my lungs will be good and cleaned out real soon now.

(And yes, I know I have been a slacker here, hopefully will be getting back in to the swing of it now)

You know your brain was not fully functioning the first morning after the 3 day weekend when you forget to bring your power cord in to the office. Woops.

Happy Mother's Day to all the moms out there, especially my mother and sister.

As I was thinking about blogging some today, I realized that it was some time around now I started this. So, I looked back and this past Friday was the five year anniversary of this place. Wow :) I don't think I ever thought I would keep this up as long as I have. (Though some would say I have no kept it up). Well, just wanted to mention that publicly since it was something I noticed.

I forgot to do this:

Hopefully I will have lots more after this weekend.

As I am quitting smoking, I figure I should try and get myself a bit more healthier in general. Try to cut out some of the junk food, try to eat better, etc etc. So, this week I have been trying to cook a bit better for myself.

On Sunday, I roasted a whole chicken. I was pretty impressed with myself that I was able to do it (not that it was all that hard), but the fact that I even spent the time and effort to do it. It came out pretty good, nothing special, I think I need a spicier recipe or something. Will keep playing with that one. Plus, it's a good one if I have company coming over.

On Monday, I just cooked myself a steak, nothing special.

Last night I made shrimp in lime sauce. Though it came out ok, I learned a few lessons. First, you need to have the right equipment to make things. I used a saute pan instead of a skillet and the sauce was pushed to the sides a bit more than it should have. Also, the recipe called for peeled shrimp and I left them un-peeled. This caused much of the flavor to be on the peel rather than on the fish, so I sort of peeled off all the flavor as I ate. I guess there is something to be said for being lazy when cooking. Had I not been, I would have had a much better meal.

Today, I have an easy mexican pork recipe going in the crock pot (something I totally need to make better use of). Hopefully I will have a yummy meal waiting for me when I get home this evening.

Haven't decided on a Thursday night meal yet and Friday will most likely be an out to dinner night.

My sister had her second son, Nolan Henry, on Monday. He was born 7 pounds, 15 ounces and 20 1/2 inches. Mom and son are doing well. Hopefully I will have some pictures later on today. I'm super excited to head down to New York in a week and a half and get to meet him.

The most interesting thing to me is going to be the interaction between my nephew Gregory and his new brother. Gregory definitely has only child syndrome these days, so his reaction to not getting all of the attention should be something fun to watch.

I surpassed fifty days without a cigarette this week. A week from today I take off my final patch. Going to be quite a ride over the next week, but hopefully things will work out.

One of the things I noticed in the last few days is how good I am at stressing myself out. I am very good at getting something in to my head and not letting go of it. It's not a healthy thing, especially in this time of trying to quit smoking.

One of my friends tells me all the time that I just need to say whatever more often and I wish I could do that, but it seems when there are things in my life that I want to go a certain way and they do not, I get myself worked up and just can't let them go. Definitely something I will need to work on if I want to continue not to smoke long past this time around on the patch.

Who knows? Maybe it's just the rain.

So, this past week or so has been good times for me and my car.

On Wednesday of last week, I brought my car in to Direct Tire down the block from the office in Natick. While there, the car got two new tired (which I have needed since last summer, oops!), an alignment and an oil change. Well, let me tell you, my car runs AWESOME now. It's great to be able to drive and not be worried about your car slipping due to bad tires and the alignment just makes it feel like a brand new car.

On Thursday, I checked my mail and what did I find? The title to my car! My car is finally paid off. It's been 5 years in the making, but now I have one less bill to pay each month (and it was a big one). This will definitely help in the moving towards buying a house plan.

Lastly, yesterday I found out that not only did I pay off my car loan, but I overpaid it. I found this out when I checked my mail and found a check for the overpayment. It's always nice to get a check you were not expecting in the mail :)

So, all in all, things with my car are in great shape. The drive to NY this past weekend was nice and easy and worry free :) Now I just need to make sure to keep up on the car, which should be a lot easier now that I have been to Direct Tire once. For me, it's just getting past that initial nervousness, then I am just fine going to a place again and again.

Well, it's not as ugly out there as it was yesterday, but it's definitely not the 60 degree and sunny day you hope to see for St Patrick's day, especially when it's on a Saturday.

Unless something changes drastically in the next little bit, my plan for now is go see the Hockey East final (UNH vs BC, go UNH!) over at the Garden tonight and then I may sneak out for a beer or two afterwards. Much different from the year's past when I would get in to a bar before noon and not leave until they closed :)

Small possibility I will wander over and see Scott over at Hennessey's for a drink or two before the game, but most likely not, I really need to catch up on housework :)

Whatever you are doing today, make sure to drink plenty of water and be careful, the streets are slippery!

This should cross post to my Vox Blog

So, after getting home much later than I would have liked last night, I continued my cleaning momentum. I got four loads of laundry done (the joys of an empty laundry room) and cleaned out another drawer from my filing cabinets.

The amazing part of cleaning the filing cabinets is just what I have kept (and moved MULTIPLE times) over the years. I found bank statements and cancelled checks from an account I had when I was in High School. I graduated high school almost 14 years ago and I still had stuff from this account. Just plain scary.

I've got one more filing cabinet drawer to do tonight. After that, I can go through and file the stack of paperwork sitting on top of the filing cabinets (and probably toss a whole bunch of that as well). The sad part is I have 2 two drawer filing cabinets. Once all this cleaning is done, I am going to have 1 to 1 1/2 of the 4 drawers full. Guess it will be time to start saving stuff up again :)

For a long time, I had always said I was going to quit smoking when I turned 30. It had been a personal goal and something I had always said I would do. And I did. On my 30th birthday, I finished the pack of cigarettes I had and then took a shower, threw on a patch and was done with smoking. Sadly, a few months later on Thanksgiving, I figured I was cured and I could have one cigarette after a great meal prepared by K and I would be fine. Half a pack later that night, I was on my way back to being a smoker. By January I was smoking full time again and didn't have any real plans of quitting again any time soon.

That was 18 months ago today (yes, that means today is my half birthday). Well, I am happy to report, that today I am 15 days in to attempting to quit again. I started on the patch 2 Sundays ago, but was still smoking occasionally over the first week. Now I have been completely smoke free for just over a week. I've had a few hard moments, but I just keep in mind the reasons I quit when the nicotine fits hit and I have been able to get through them. That and packs and packs and packs of gum (regular sugar free, not nicotine gum). The most impressed I was so far was being able to actually stand outside with people smoking and not immediately steal a smoke from my friends. The biggest issue thus far was after all the cleaning yesterday and kicking up lots of cigarette smoke created dust, I was hurting pretty bad. But, I have made it through and hopefully I will continue and this will be the last quitting attempt. It's the third serious attempt I have made over the years and am hoping this one keeps up.

Wish me luck!

Last night, after watching Sweep The Leg over at Hennessey's for a bit, I jumped in a cab to head home. Normally, I would catch a ride or walk, but it was late and cold and I was too tired to walk.

So, I am talking on the phone and the guy pulls up in front of my place and I go to hand him a $20 and ask for $10 back. A HUGE tip on a $7 cab ride, but I am always nice to cabbies and it was probably a slow night, so I know he will appreciate it. He says he has no change, can we go to the store down the block. I say the store is closed and I am not giving him $20 for a $7 ride. I tell him I am getting out, its his own fault. He starts to attempt to bargain with me in his broken English and since we all know I am way too nice, I say fine. So, we drive over to the 24 hour store which is 5 mins away. I jump out of the cab and go in and buy some gum (which I needed anyways, more on that in the next post) and come out. He drives me back to my place, I hand him $8 (why I still gave him a tip, I do not know) and head inside. A rather frustrating end to what had been a fun night up until then. That will teach me to trust anyone besides my friends over Green Cab. Green Cab ROCKS and if you are ever in Somerville or Charlestown and need a cab, you definitely should call them.

How fuckin stupid of a cab driver do you have to be to not carry change? Can someone please explain this to me?

Yesterday, I decided I really needed to start cleaning out some of my junk. I sometimes forget just how much of a pack rat I am until I see some of the piles laying around the house. The sad part is that I am even better at hiding things than I really noticed.

I started off yesterday just trying to clean out one pile of stuff next to my desk. I had a bag of random stuff and then a few piles. Well, that quickly spiraled out of control. I ended up going through those piles, as well as 2 drawers in one of my filing cabinets and my desk shelves. All in all, I think I threw out about 10 bags of garbage (and that was just from one small corner of my apartment).

I tried to pull away very hard from my pack rat ways and just get rid of stuff that I knew I did not need any more and was holding on to for that "one day when I may need it again". All in all, it worked out pretty well. I got rid of lots of stuff and freed up a bunch of space. The two filing cabinets drawers pretty much got completely emptied. There was stuff from 2 and 3 jobs ago still sitting in them. I also found some ATM receipts from the mid 90s. Along with all sorts of other junk.

It was liberating to get rid of so much stuff. And thanks to my new shredder, I was not too worried about the bank statements and whatnot which bit the dust. I have some more stuff to shred tonight (the shredder automatically shuts off after too much work) and still have 2 more drawers to go through, but it is getting there slowly.

The big goal right now is to keep the momentum up. I still have a ton of this kind of stuff that just needs to get tossed. The three main areas right now are the rest of the filing cabinet, the hallway closet and the bedroom. The bedroom mainly is clothes I need to get rid of. I have a ton of laundry built up that needs to get done and sorted in to keep and give to charity piles.

The one catching point for me right now is a lot of the junk is computer and electronic equipment. Since we have dumpsters and not city garbage picking things up, I may have to do a little research in to the best way to get rid of this stuff. But, since I have a ton of it, I think I may just call a company that picks this stuff up and pay them. It may be easier in the end.

If all works out, I hope to have the house "trimmed down" by mid-month. Will be a nice way to start the spring.

Saw this. My question is if you AVERAGE 4 drinks a day over the course of the week (even if you have your 28 drinks for the week in 2 or 3 days), are you still increasing your life span? :)

Just a test post from my new toy. More on this and everything else soon.

So, I get in my car this morning around 8:30, turn the key and NOTHING happens. Confused, I try a few more times, still nothing. I look, the lights and radio are working fine, so it doesn't seem to be the battery. This is all very strange. I grab the manual and start looking through and I find nothing about a kill switch, so I am even more confused.

I head back in to the house and boot up the laptop. I do a couple of searches which give me nothing. Finally I search on "2001 grand am gt won't start" (the amusing part of this is after thinking some later, I realize I have a 2002, but that is besides the point) and find this article. It says:

The problem is that the RKE (remote keyless entry) system has a defect in it that causes car not to start. As of now there is no recall on the passlock systems. As for a fix, the experts are honestly not sure. To reset the computerized system, put key in the ignition and leave it in 'On' position for about ten minutes. Then turn it off, and try - it should start then. Warning: Continued resetting of the computer this way will eventually damage computer and will cost lots to replace/fix.

So, I head out to the car and switch it to the on position. After sitting for about 10 or 11 minutes, the SECURITY light which has been blinking stops blinking and goes solid. I go from On to Start and STILL NOTHING. Crap! So, I turn the car off and try again and the car starts right up.

I turn the car off and head back in to the house to get all my stuff, jump in the car, it starts no problem and off I go. Thanks Google!.

The bad part is that I realized (after I had passed a cop or two) that I left my manual, which has my registration in it, sitting on my coffee table. Got to remember not to drive like a maniac heading home, so I don't get pulled over without my registration on me.

All in all, not too bad, since I saved myself from having to call AAA and get towed by checking in with Google first :)

Spent much of the day trying to play catch up from the last few weeks. Just about have the Inbox all cleaned out now. The aggregator is all caught up. Got some stuff done around the house, but there is still some more to do (laundry being the big one). The other big to do (and this is going to sound so sad) is to get the Tivos all caught up. Between all the recent travel and things, I was WAY behind on the Tivos. Made some progress today, but there's going to be a lot of TV watched this week in order to really catch up.

Once I get a few more things caught up, I will actually catch everyone up on the life (though, most people who read this probably know the whole story by now :)

Lots to catch everyone up on, but way too busy. Hopefully this weekend I will share all the news.

After just 9 days back in Boston, I am back on the west coast again. This time, I am already sick, so it is not going to be an enjoyable trip. Luckily, it's a quick hit, taking the red eye home on Wednesday night.

Once back in Boston, lots going on, including Queensryche, Los Lonely Boys/Ozomatali, Robert Randolph, and Sunset is a Battle shows, a possible trip to Albany, Tom's birthday, maybe King's X, and much much more. Hopefully this trip doesn't get me even sicker, because I won't have time to be sick when I get back.

Way back in February, I got a new phone. One of the coolest features to me initially was that it had a mini-SD card in it that I could put music, photos, etc on. It only came with a 32M card, but I figured until I really knew what I could do with the card, I didn't want to purchase a bigger one.

The first problem that came up was I didn't have an SD card reader. Oops! I tried to borrow one from friends to no avail, so I started looking in to buying one. Right around this time I ordered some new laptops for work which showed up. Low and behold, the two Fujitsu laptops had SD card readers in them. Woo!

So, I brought the adapter (mini-SD to SD) one day and plugged the card in. I saw a few folders on the card, one of them called Music. There we go! So, I threw an MP3 in to that folder and put the card back in my phone. Nothing :( I also had noticed an m3u file in that directory, so I put the card back in and tried to hand edit that file. Still no luck. I quickly gave up and went back to work.

Recently, I have been thinking a lot about having music on my phone. I walk a lot and it sucks not having anything to listen to. I don't have the cash to afford the iPod I want, so getting music on my phone seemed to be the easiest solution. I thought I had gotten a CD with my phone, so I thought maybe that would have some software to copy music to the phone correctly. I looked around, no CD :(

So, I went to the one place for all the information you need, the web. I went on to Samsung's web site and looked up my phone. I then headed to frequently asked questions. It said that the way I had put the music on the card was pretty much correct. The one thing it mentioned was that the music would either go in the Music folder or the Media folder depending on your software version. Hmmm.

So, today I once again brought my adapter in and looked at the card. I had put an MP3 in to the Music folder, so I tried moving it to the Media folder. I then put it back in my phone and SUCCESS! So, I then said I should get a bunch of songs on there. Well, since I already had a bunch of photos and movies on the card, I only had about 22M or something available to me. So, I ended up copying about 3 songs (192k MP3s) on to the card. So, now, I have some music, but that won't even get me from home to Fanueil Hall (my normal walking path).

I figure I have 2 options. Option 1, use lower quality MP3s to cram more music on to the phone. This will work as a stop gap, but not the solution I really want to use going forward. The second solution is to buy a new SD card. Luckily for me, mini-SD cards are pretty damn cheap. I saw a 2G card on Amazon for about $60. That will give me a ton of music to be able to carry around with me on the T or walking or whatever.

The last issue? I still only have an SD reader in a machine that is on my desk in the office. As many of you know, I pretty much work from home every day these days, so having to be in the office to move music on or off the phone doesn't sound like a fun task. So, I think I am going to need to buy an SD card reader as well. I am hoping that it will work under Linux, so I can easily move stuff to and from the card. I _THINK_ I may even be able to fake Rhythmbox in to thinking it is a music player and be able to manage the music right from my music app on Linux, which would be perfect :)

The combination of my busyness and laziness has led to a rather nasty sight in my bedroom. I have a TON of dirty clothes. I have done a good job of getting enough laundry done to get me through each week, but have let a lot of stuff just pile up.

So, I have set the goal for this week to get through all of it. It probably means doing something like 2 loads a day. Yes, I have that many clothes.

The secondary goal of this project is going to be getting rid of clothes I don't want/need any more. I did some cleaning up when I moved in here, but never finished. So, hopefully by the end of this week, I will have a whole new set of clothes to give to charity (or throw away as will be necessary with some of the really old stuff) and will have a closet and dresser full of clothes I will actually wear on a regular basis.

Here's hoping this works out.

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So, I made it through being 30 :) I turn 31 today. This year did not include as much freaking out about my birthday as last year did. Luckily, once I got through the birthday it all went away.

So today marks one week until I turn 31. Been thinking a bit about doing something like 30 In Review. The sad part, I think most of it is going to be same old same old :) I'll have to see if I can come up with some good stuff. Maybe it will be one post, maybe it will be 10.

Look at today's Rocketboom from the Time 100. Is Will Smith going grey?!?!? Scary.

Feeling like crap is definitely the wrong way to start the week. I had some cold symptoms late in the week last week, but they seemed to clear up over the weekend. Yesterday I was feeling lazy, but didn't really notice the sick until I went out in the evening. This morning, I feel like total crap. Very tired, very snotty, no fun whatsoever. Hopefully, this will go away quickly, but I'm really not sure if its allergies or illness, which makes it harder to figure out what drugs to take :)

Yes, hopefully this means I am back to posting.

Lots of stuff swirling through my head lately, but nothing put down here yet. Hopefully soon.

Have a great Guinness filled day!

You MUST be kidding me. I kept wondering why myspace was having so many issues and I think I have found the problem. They run IIS on Windows 2003 (according to Netcraft). Guys, switch everything over to Apache on Linux and watch your machines suddenly work 10 times better.

I think I am planning on getting these tattoos as my first two. What does everyone think?

So, I heard someone this morning mention an arguement I find ridiculous. They said if we let gay people marry, where does it stop? People will start marrying their dogs and horses, etc. I've heard this arguement 1000 times and none of them has it made sense. If 2 people who love each other get married, how does that lead to people marrying animals? The fact that the two people happen to be of the same sex does not change the fact that they are 2 human beings who are in love and want to express it. If two people of the same sex getting married leads to people marrying their dogs, how does 2 people of the opposite sexes not lead to this same thing? Can someone please explain the rationale behind this arguement to me? I have never understood it and every time I hear it, it makes me think the person saying it is a complete idiot. So, a good explanation might help me get away from that thinking. Thanks!

is no fun. I guess I need to start posting again. Back soon, I swear.

DirecTV to pay $5.3 million in 'Do Not Call' settlement - Dec. 13, 2005:

NEW YORK (CNN/Money.com) - Officials announced a $5.34 million settlement Tuesday with satellite TV provider DirecTV over alleged violations of the Do Not Call rule, the largest civil penalty ever obtained by the Federal Trade Commission in a consumer protection enforcement case.

Good for the FTC!

Well, I've been a bit of a slacker lately. Mostly just too busy to keep up with things. Hopefully December will usher in a new era :)

I get quite a kick out of the fact that so many of the blogs I read on a daily basis have pointed to this article over at SF Gate about cleaning out the clutter. The reason I find it so funny is that this has been one of my pet projects since I moved.

I came to the realization when I moved that I really do own WAY too much stuff. Now, some of the stuff I own too much of, in particular CDs and books, I enjoy owning too much of :) On the other hand, things like clothes I haven't worn in 5 or more years, probably just junk :)

I started off by going through my old magazines. Mostly, I was trying to put things on shelves since my apartment was still piles of crap everywhere at this point. I basically threw out any magazines before this year unless I had a specific reason to keep them.

I did keep all the old guitar magazines. I need to go through these as a stage 2 and pull out what I need and toss the rest. Hell, I may even try to scan in what I want/need and toss the whole thing. One of the reasons I always kept guitar magazines around was tablature, these days, that's all online, so the only real thing to keep out of these magazines would be lessons, which hopefully will be a very small amount of stuff.

The next step was trying to get rid of some of the old computer stuff. Mostly, I got rid of a lot of old documentation. I still need to make a second push at alot of this stuff, but it's definitely much more organized than it was before.

The first two steps were done while I was still settling in to the new place. After being here a few weeks, I needed to take a few more steps. The biggest target was my clothes. Now, I have a TON of clothes. I do not have a ton of clothes I like to wear :) I have a lot of old crap still in my closet. I even have a whole bunch of stuff that doesn't even fit anymore. The other huge issue are my sweaters. I have a ton and many of them have been kept for some level of a sentimental reason instead of actual use. A few weeks back, I made a first pass on my shirts section of my closet. I was able to get rid of a ton of stuff. I basically narrowed the closet down to things I wear on a normal basis and dress shirts. I kept all the dress shirts, as they are always wearable and sometimes necessary. Today, I went through step 2 which was pants and sweaters. Both were very easy. I know what I do and don't wear.

The biggest thing that came out of all this clothes cleaning? I need new clothes! I seem to have very little clothing for occasions other than business casual and very casual :) I really need to spruce up my closet some. Hopefully some day soon, once some more money stuff is in order (more on that later).

The last piece I need to go through in the clothes department are my T-Shirts. I will probably get rid of some stuff here, but this will be the most difficult section. Why? Because I can always wear t-shirts :) So, why not keep em?

Overall, this has helped me some. Mostly, it just keeps proving how much of a packrat I am and how much more can go :) The next steps involve going through a lot of old paperwork. I have bills and bank statements and the like dating back to 1993 (and maybe even before). I need to get a shredder first and then I will be spending a whole bunch of time cleaning out my filing cabinets.

Hopefully, by the time 2006 roles around, I will be running a tight ship (and of course have room for a whole new year of crap to fill it up :)

I'm selling my old CD Shelf. It's over here on craigslist.

Since last I wrote, I moved, both physically and virtually. Broke all sorts of stuff here. Still putting all the pieces back together. More over the next few days as all the pieces come back together.

Had a super busy day in the office today, so I sadly missed Talk Like A Pirate Day. I actually thought of it recently when I heard a commercial on BCN recently where the guy starts talking like a pirate.

I have a very love/hate relationship with days like today. I was a good kid and was in work by 9AM this morning. I knew I had a bunch of meetings, so I checked e-mail and some blogs (my aggregator is currently OVERLOADED). I then did some things I needed to do for one of the meetings. At 11AM, the meetings started. At 4:15, the meetings finally stopped. Four meetings with 3 sets of people, had to have one meeting twice.

I basically ate lunch (which had been sitting around for over an hour by the time I got to it) in 2 parts. The first being between meetings, the second being during a meeting with the phone on mute. By the time 4:15 rolled around, I finished a couple of things left over from the morning and headed home.

The reason for the love/hate relationship is I don't feel like I got anything done today. I didn't get any project work done which is much closer to the truth. I did have 3 calls with partners that went real well and hopefully will advance some upcoming stuff quickly. I also had a meeting with a potential client which I think went real well (at least the hour I was there seemed to :) So, I know I did things to move some stuff forward, but I have a couple of things lingering over my head (which have been lingering for a while), which I didn't get anything done on and REALLY need to. Just seemed like a very mixed up day.

and then having to drive 3 hours the next day is that the high level of dehyrdration means you don't have to make a bathroom stop on the way home; :)

So, I made it. Last night was a blast, great to see everyone. Lots of rock stars and lots of friends. All in all a great time.

One thing I've been saying for a very very long time is that I was going to quit smoking when I turned 30. So, I've been wearing a patch since about 2:30 or so this afternoon and so far am doing pretty well. I have definitely reached for a smoke a number of times, but so far, the patch seems to be killing the cravings pretty well.

Reading the information that came with the patch, they say it usually takes about 24-72 hours for the real bad cravings to start, so the next few days should be rather ugly.

I am heading to New York on Thursday afternoon to visit with the family and am I usually much better about the smoking when I am there anyways, so hopefully that will help.

Talking to some folks at work today, Kev mentioned that gas by his house had gone up 40 cents overnight. Being someone who drives over 70 miles a day getting to and from work, I immediately got very nervous. This is going to kill my finances (which are already pretty much in shambles) if I have to pay that much more for gas. On the way home, I stopped by the gas station I usually use to get smokes and saw that their prices had gone up 62 cents over night (if I remember yesterday right and really read the board right). Crap! Even though I didn't REALLY need gas, I figured I should get some if it wasn't too bad, as it will probably be even WORSE next week.

Well, I decided I just was not going to pay that much. So, I jumped on the Mass Pike and headed home. While passing the westbound rest stop (I was going eastbound), my eyes almost popped out of my head when I saw their regular gas was just $2.85 (rather than the $3.29 at my normal place). I was amazed. So, when I hit the eastbound rest stop, I pulled right. Gas was still $2.85. Someone must have been a little slow in telling them to raise their prices. I only needed about half a tank of gas, but even with just 6 gallons, I saved myself like $2.50 by buying gas on the MassPike.

I remember back in the days when the used to severely gouge you on the highways. I know they have passed some laws which restrict how much they can gouge you these days, but seeing gas CHEAPER on the Pike than at a regular gas station blew me away.

So, today starts my final week of my 20s. As of next Monday, I am officially 30. I'm still not 100% sure how to react to it. Some days, I really don't care, others I get myself all worried about where I am, where I would like to be, etc. Who knows? I guess we'll see what happens next Monday.

Marc is bloggin again. :)

Yeah, so I'm back. Been here since Friday. Didn't leave the couch except to go see the kids play on Friday and Saturday.

Eased myself back in to work today and started to catch up on household tasks, like shopping, cleaning, paying bills, etc.

Got a busy rest of the month coming up.

Start with this coming weekend being Gasman's last weekend in Boston and it's also his birthday, I think a drink or 20 will be involved.

Next weekend is Gigantour. Will be good to see Dream Theater, as I haven't seen them in a few years.

Also on the tip for next weekend is Brier's bachelor party. Sounds like we have an awesome day planned, so I'm psyched for it.

I was hoping to continue on yesterday's topic, but that work thing got in the way.

And now tonight, I'm headed over to The Paradise to see Liz Phair.

Hopefully, get some more in tomorrow.

I've got a majorly busy week coming up this week.

Tuesday is Liz Phair at the The Paradise. I can't freaking wait for this show. Seeing her at Avalon a bit back was fun and all, but this should be incredible with it a) being at the Paradise, b) an acoustic show. I'm going with Lukas, who I haven't seen since last summer, so I'm pscyhed to get to see him too.

Wednesday night is poker night. I've missed the last 2 games, so I'm looking forward to getting back in to the action. Since I last played with these guys, they've built an all out poker table from scratch, so it's going to be fun to actually play on this table.

Thursday night, Craig (Houston Craig this time) gets to town. We'll probably hit the Bell and maybe Clarke's for a few cocktails.

Friday night, Craig and I are hitting the Sox game. We've got great tickets, so it should be a ton of fun. After that, we'll probably hit Sam's Cafe @ Cheers to see Sweep the Leg play. Probably won't be a late night, as I've got an early morning....

Saturday, I hit the road. Heading to Long Island. Got an early ferry. Will get my haircut while I am down there. Then, probably a chill night hanging out with the nephew (oh yeah, and his parents and my mom ;)

Sunday is the baby's christening. I'm the godfather. Are you scared? The church should be :) After the christening, there's a big party.

Monday will be a recovery day, chilling and cleaning and stuff. And then, I think I'll probably head back to Boston on Tuesday.

All in all, a crazy week :)

After a mad week of fun leading up to July 4th, this past week at work was rather difficult. Hard to get back in to the flow of the work week. I decided to spend this weekend relaxing. I spent much of the time on my couch, watching movies, playing with the computer, catching up TiVo, etc.

It was nice to just relax and not have anything to do. I need these weekend more often. Hell, I could use a good two weeks of this. It was nice not having to think too much about what needed to get done. I did catch up on a few important things though, which was good.

Now, back to the grind this week. I think it should be a relatively easy week. Hopefully going to get a lot done on a coding project I am trying to put together. Have a few meetings with customers and potential customers, as well. Hopefully everything will go smooth.

Oh and I finally got my outgoing e-mail working again, so if you have been waiting on e-mail from me, you should have it now or else should be getting it real soon now :)

So, vacation was good. The highlights were:

• Craig visiting
• Batman Begins (awesome movie)
• Red Sox @ Fenway from some great seats
• Seeing TONS of local live music.
• Guinness, Corona, Guinness, Corona, Guinness, Corona
• Finally getting this server moved off of Gentoo (yes, that's why I had downtime)
• Getting to spend lots of good time with good friends for some good summer fun

More soon, still getting some stuff on the server worked out and getting back in to the swing of things. Haven't really gotten myself fully removed from vacation mode yet.

As of the second I left my office today I am on vacation through July 4th. Yay!

Good way to start off the vacation too. Got home and took a nice 2 hour nap.

And then the Sox won and took back first place for the first time since April!

Everybody, everybody, everybody livin' now
Everybody, everybody, everbody fucks
Everybody, everybody, everybody livin' now
Everybody, everybody, everybody sucks
Everybody, everybody, everybody livin' now
Everybody, everybody, everybody cries
Everybody, everybody, everybody livin' now
Everybody, everybody, everybody dies

Ugh. Four days after the switch over from Homelink, Bank of America continues to drive me nuts. After complaining about the interface (which I continue to think sucks), the issues continue. Since Tuesday, the new one is that their DNS is all messed up. Almost every time I try to access their system I get a cannot find host error. After doing some checking on multiple DNS servers, it seems like their DNS is showing up and disappearing in a nice fluctuating manor. It also seems that some parts work while others break and then they switch. Good work on the switchover Bank of America, really, I mean it.

So, I got switched over to the new Bank of America Online Banking this weekened, along with everyone else in Massachusetts. I checked it out this morning. All I have to say is I WANT HOMELINK back! This thing is totally ugly, totally confusing and not well laid out at all. Please Bank of America, use the code from Homelink and make your online banking bearable, thankyouverymuch.

That is it 11:25AM and I am already ready for about 12 drinks? I hate dealing with tech support people.

Whenever I head down to Long Island to visit the family, I take the Cross Sound Ferry from New London down to Orient Point.

The number one reason I take it is how it splits up my commute. Basically it will take me about an hour and a half to an hour and forty five to get down to the ferry in New London (depending on if I leave from work or home). It then about an hour an a half on the boat. And the third leg to the family is about another hour and a half. So, with this, I drive for a bit, relax for a bit and then drive for a bit. Rather than driving for 4-5 straight hours.

The second thing I love about these guys is their flexibility. Yesterday, when I got a reservation, I was not thinking fully and made it for Friday evening instead of Thursday evening when I planned on leaving. I noticed later in the day, so I called them this morning. A 2 minute conversation and I had my reservation switched. No fees, no fuss, just a quick change and all done. They will do this right up to an hour before your reservation. And they will take reservations at any time. Also, if you arrive super early for your boat, they will throw you on the one before if you can fit.

It's just a very nice service without any of the troubles that flying can be these days.

We have made it to June. With May being just UGLY weather-wise, I'm hoping for a much better June. Got lots going on in June too.

First off, there's actually a Fakers gig this week (Thursday @ Shennanigans(sp?) in Southie). It'll be nice to see these guys play.

Next, a couple of shows this month. Friday, Gov't Mule with Robert Randolph and the Family Band are over at Harborlights. (Yes, it is and always will be Harborlights). I LOVE this venue, so I'm psyched to head over there. Hopefully Mother Nature will cooperate.

Next week, we have Ozomatli over at The Paradise. I've only seen these guys on Austin City Limits, but have heard all sorts of good things, so I'm excited to see them.

The Paradise also has Karl Denson's Tiny Universe on the 14th, but Don says he is out, so not sure who I can get to go to that with me. I would like to go though, great band.

The end of the month brings even more fun and craziness with Craig being in town from June 25th to July 3rd. I'm pretty sure I'm taking the whole week off to accomodate for the constant flow of alcohol that will accompany that week. I think we're even going to try and hit a Sox game that week, which will be the first of the season for me.

Hopefully, I'll also get a weekend somewhere in there to go visit the new nephew, I hear he's getting a lot bigger.

There's also one other semi-big thing going on this month, but I'll save that for when it comes.

My new headphones shipped today from Amazon. Sadly, there doesn't seem to be a tracking number associated, so I don't know how long it will be until they get here. I'm hoping for Thursday, as I am telecommuting tomorrow :) I'm DYING to have these right now. Life @ work is just not right without them.

Time.com has an article initerviewing Dave Chappelle in South Africa. He's not in a mental institution like has been reported, but rather just relaxing in South Africa trying to get some perspective. Sounds to me like some people either tried to or did screw him over pretty good and he's just tryinig to get his head back together to get himself back in the game. Good to hear Dave is doing well. I will continue to wait patiently for Chappelle Show Season 3.

The combination of a severe lack of sleep and not having any headphones I can use right now is making work very hard to concentrate on. I just can't get my head in the game. It really makes me realize how much I fuel myself on music on a normal day. If I can put my headphones on and not be distracted, I can usually pump out a ton of work. Today, that is just not possible. Looks like my headphones won't get here until late in the week or early next, so it's not going to beb a good week. At least I will get a couple of days of working at home in and then I can blast the stereo.

Yay! It's Friday! It's Pay Day! I needed both, badly.

Project Clean Desk went rather well yesterday. Lots tossed in the garbage. Why I had papers from almost 3 years ago still on my desk is something I do not understand. Have to get out of the packrat state of mind. Finally, I can use my whole desk again. Have to buy some sort of storage container for all the wires on the floor, but other than that, the desk is completely clean.

I also re-installed one of the laptops I have at work, so now I have 6 machines running at my desk. Oops :) I guess I am a bit of a geek :)

My big goal for the day today is to clean up my desk at work. Slowly but steadily it has gotten to be more and more of a mess. It's now at the point where I can hardly get in and out of my cube due to all the scattered hardware, cables, papers, etc. It needs a good cleanup and it's going to get one today.

Spilling an entire soda all over your desk is just not the way to start a day. Luckily, I missed all the computer equipment.

After a wonderful few days down in New York vising the family and the new nephew, I'm back at work today. Hopefully, it will be a busy (short!) week that will pass quickly and get back to the weekend. Missed seeing my friends last weekend, so I'm ready for some fun, which is forbidden until Friday.

Not to brag, but today is virtual Friday for me. I'm heading home tomorrow morning to visit my new nephew for a long weekend. I can't wait. Oh, and while we are at it, here is where my brother in-law has all the pictures he has taken of the new addition.

Just a test from Drivel

My sister had her baby this morning. His name is Gregory Robert. He was born at 11:51AM. He is 8lbs 4 ozs and 20 inches long. I'll head to NY next weekend for the new mom's first mother's day and to hang out with my new nephew.

One year ago today, I chopped off all my hair. Rather scary. Of course, I have grown to love my short hair, but don't love the maintenance. I'm horrible about getting my hair cut and my hair quickly gets out of control. But, in the end, its nice to have it short, definitely will be keeping it this way for a while.

It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood! It's 10AM and it's already 72. Working from home today with all the windows WIDE open. So nice.

A few weeks back, I finally got another 512M of RAM for my laptop. It was one of the happiest days I have had in a while. My computer finally worked the way I knew it could :)

Well, on Friday morning, my hard drive started acting up. Argh! I got a new one from IT and spent most of my weekend putting the machine back together. Luckily, I was able to successfully pull all the data off my old drive (unlike last time).

So, now I have pretty much a brand new laptop in the last couple of weeks. Yay, me.

The biggest issue now is I need to figure out a valid way to back up my machine. I borrowed a USB drive from IT here at work and it was VERY VERY VERY slow. Took like 3 or 4 hours to get 11.5 gigs of data off one disk.

Anyone have any suggestions?

It's Marathon Monday. I'd like to be at the game or spending the day bopping around Boston drinking too much beer, but sadly, that is not to be this year. I'm stuck at the office.

The one saving grace is that Giant Glass is coming today to replace my windshield. Next step, get the inspection done. I hate having a car. Way too much involved in taking care of it.

Yes, I'm still alive.

Finally, I get to wish everyone a happy st pat's. I've had a horrible day and know now that I should never ever go to work on St Pat's again. This was the first time I went in in about 5 or 6 years and it proved a very bad idea. Some dinner and then off for some Guinness I go!

Defintely an amusing article at The Register. The author Ashlee Vance spends 3 paragraphs bitching about the tech folks coming to the SXSW music fest. Sadly, she hasn't paid enough attention to notice they will all be at SXSW Interactive, not the music fest which starts the day after SWSWi ends.

And they bitch about bloggers not doing their research and just wildly posting anything that comes to their mind. Great to see that "real" journalists make sure they have all their facts straight before publishing an article.

Really Learn Spanish is a podcast to help you learn spanish. Very cool. I wish there was one to learn Irish (Gaelic), as thats the language I really want to learn.

Yesterday was my half birthday. That means just 6 more months until 30. Yikes!

I've been working from home much of this week (except Monday which I actually stayed home sick). I love working from home. In a previous job, I did it for 3 years.

The best part about working from home is the freedom. I can work for a few hours and then go run to the grocery store or watch a movie or something, if I need to clear my head.

The other great thing is the lack of distractions. If I'm working from home, I don't need to worry about someone stopping by my cube to chat or something coming up that someone needs me for. Also, I can smoke right in place, instead of having to put on a jacket and go outside. That's a HUGE distraction at work.

While working from home this week, I started thinking about it some more. One of the huge things for me when working from home is the money I save. I started doing some numbers. If I go to work, it costs me about $6 for gas, $4 for tolls, and then usually $4-$7 for lunch. So let's say $17/day. Well, if I work from home, I can warm something up or at the most eat a $3 frozen pizza. Maybe $1 for the iced tea or soda I have while around the house. So, that's like $4/day. So, if I worked from home, I basically can save myself up to $13/day. If I worked from home 3 days a week, that's almost $40 a week I can save myself. Just 2 and it's still like $25/week. If you take $25 a week and times it by 52, that's $1300 a year. I really need to start working from home some more.

In this day and age, between e-mail, IM, cell phones, VOIP, laptops, high speed Internet access everywhere, why shouldn't anyone be able to work from home? Unless you need to physically be in a meeting or actually doing physical work, you should be able to work from home, right? I just don't understand why more people don't do it.

My biggest guess is that people don't feel they are (or just plain aren't) disciplined enough to work from home. People think they are going to spend the whole day watching TV or goofing off or something. I know I can do it, so I take advantage of it whenever I can. I usually get so much more work done when I do anyways. And now that I notice how much it actually saves me, I think I'm going to have to start doing it more.

Over at Cruftbox a great post, What to know about SXSW Interactive, which gives some excellent tips on attending the Interactice part of South by Southwest.

I long to go to both the Interactive part as well as the Music Festival. Some day I will have the funds to take a week off and head down to Austin for some fun and learning. But, for those of you going now, you should definitely check out these tips, lots of good ones in there.

After having a rather lacking February in terms of posts, my goal for March is at least one post a day, we'll see how I do.

I subscribe to an RSS feed of upcoming Meetups in the Boston area. Today, I saw one for the Attention Deficit Disorder Meetup. What must that group be like? I mean, if you have ADD, you can't really listen to other people talk for too long. I think I should show up and start throwing shiny things around :)

I had grand plans for this past weekend. I had 4 days (comp day Friday after LWE). I hoped to get caught up on a lot of things. Lots of domestic stuff was planned, lots of organization stuff, hopes to get some ideas moved farther along. Alas, I failed miserably. I got some stuff done, but in the end, I made no progress on a number of things I was really hoping to move forward.

I was also hoping to get this place back to something up to date. I did a bit of posting, but nowhere near how much I wanted to. Lots of stuff has happened lately (LWE, Hula, new Mono, new Beagle, etc etc) that I'd like to comment on. Maybe tomorrow.

Got my Bank of America debit card in the mail today, so I guess I have totally switched over to being a BoA customer. I got a gold debit card. I wonder if that's special? They also sent me one of those mini cards to put on your keychain. I put it on for now, will see if I actually use it at all. It's a bit nerve racking to have my credit card on my keys, but I guess I always have my keys with me so what the hell. Bye Bye Fleet, it's been less than fun!

Now they are saying another 2-4 inches or more for tomorrow. So, do I go attempt to dig out the rest of my car and then have to dig out some more tomorrow/Thursday or do I just wait until this next front passes? Ugh, I hate snow in the city.

Holy crap my back hurts. Here's why:

Before
After

And that's the only side that's done. Still 2-3 feet of snow against my driver side.

Just found this, describe some of my bad weeks at work:

"I always arrive late at the office, but I make up for it by leaving early."
-- Charles Lamb

Found over at Worthwhile

Ugh, I've gotten worse today. I woke up stuffed up with a sore throat and now I'm totally wiped out and have aches and pains everywhere. Luckily, it looks like lots of snow tomorrow, so I'm going to be working from home, which will hopefully help me get better once and for all.

Seems like my early to bed with NyQuil plan worked well. Felt pretty good all day today and feel good tonight. Just need to make sure I eat a little more often, seems when I delay on my meals, I start to feel worse.

Woke up this morning feeling somewhat worse than I did last night. I made it through the day at work, but felt a tinge of ill all day. The ride home I started feeling even worse. Hit Walgreens and bought up a bunch of drugs and some OJ. Took the vitamin type stuff as soon as I got in. Gonna take some NyQuil in a bit to hopefully get some good sleep and get this out of my system before it gets nasty.

I will guarantee that before this week ends I am going to end up super sick. I've heard about all sorts of things going around lately and somehow have avoided them all. This just does not happen to me. I'm actually feeling a bit crappy already, but that may just be from a lack of food today, I guess we'll see in the morning. But anyways, I am sure that before the end of this week, I'm going to end up sick. No fun.

Well, today is the last day of my vacation. I have worked in a week and a half and it felt good.

Spent much of the time at home with the family. Was the best way to keep me off the streets of Boston, but also nice and relaxing. Great to see everyone while I was there. So nice to see my sister living so happily.

Spent New Year's Eve up in Lawrence, MA (never thought I would say that) seeing some friends play and hanging out with good friends. Was low key, but nice. Spent the last weekend night last night with good friends having some beers.

Been rather lazy over these 10 days, so today needs to be productive. Gotta get my house and life back in order for the wonderful world of the working man. Hopefully, I can approach this year with a new attitude and ready to rock n roll.

Happy 2005 All!

Since all the cool kids are doing it, I thought I would put to "paper" my New Year's Resolutions. So, here they are:

1. Continue Fiscal Responsibility - Over the course of this year, I have gotten much of my finances in order. I need to continue this over the 2005. The goal here being to get out of debt, as soon as possible.
2. Quit smoking by 09/05 - I've said over and over again that I would quit smoking before I turned 30. So, I've got 9 months to do it.
3. Sleep in my bed. I've gotten in to a REALLY bad habit of sleeping on my couch each night. I need to get back to my bed.
4. Maybe a super set of the previous two, but the next thing would be to get myself healthier. This includes eating better, sleeping better, quitting smoking, and even starting getting in shape.
5. Get back to reading. I've slacked this year on my reading. This coming year, I need to get back in to the habit. Hopefully reading about a book a week.
6. Get better at guitar. I've totally gotten back in to my guitar, but now I need to improve my skills. Most of this has to do with learning and apply theory. Basically, being able to improvise and learn things by ear.
7. Better time management. This is a biggie and will be difficult. These days, I go to work, come home and slack, watch TV, noodle around on my guitar, etc. Usually because I go in to work so late, I don't have any motivation when I get home. This coming year, I want to get in to work earlier, so I can get home earlier and do things.
8. Work on my programming projects. I've had a lot of ideas for programming projects and projects in general over the last year, but never get to them. I want to spend a lot of time doing that this year.
9. Last, but not least, enjoy the end of my 20s. In 9 months I turn 30, so I have to enjoy the end of my 20s while they last :)

Well, I found out while at home that I'll have my first nephew in the beginning of May 2005. I've know about me becoming an uncle for months, but found out it will be a boy while home. I'm super excited, though a bit nervous about my vacation days as I'm not sure how I'll be able to keep away from NY once he is born. I was also honored on Christmas day when my sister and brother-in-law asked me to be the Godfather too.

Spent much of the evening sitting in front of the computer trying to catch things up. The worst part about living a full life online is that when you are mostly offline for a few days, it's very easy to fall behind. Now the aggregator is all caught up and mail is coming along slowly. At least I won't have to spend a whole day when I get back to Boston playing catch up.

The worst part about being at home is that I can't seem to find American Spirits, so I end up smoking Marlboro Lights, which are just gross to me these days even though I smoked them for years.

You'll notice comments are truely disabled now. I had them off by chmod'ing the CGI file last week after my machine was consistenly getting destroyed, but now have actually turned them off in my MT configuration.

From what I hear, they have some fixes coming out soon which will fix this. Here's hoping.

Slowly, I'm coming back to life.

OracleWorld was very long and tiring.

Had a nice visit with the family this weekend, though the weather could have been better.

Final Central Basement show on Saturday was great. Strange being back in The Rack though.

Lazy lazy Sunday.

Working from home today, trying to catch life back up. Still sort of on California time. 2000+ posts behind in my aggregator. Almost got my personal mail all caught up, work mail is next. Getting back in to the swing of work stuff.

I'm heading off to San Francisco this afternoon for Oracle Open World. Anything interesting going on SF this week? Doubt I will have much time, but its nice to have options.

It's a rather rainy and gross day today here in Boston. Would be very nice to be sitting at home, under some covers watching some TV or reading a good book. Having to drive to work was a rather unfun experience.

I'm really starting to worry that I am becoming an adult. I mean, come on, I'm only 29! This latest realization came this evening while at the food store. I only need a little because I am off to SF on Saturday (more on that later). As I headed to the checkout, I realized I had just had a very adult shopping experience. In the past, things like frozen food, ice cream, snacks, soda, candy, etc would have been on the top of the list. Today, the list consisted of real food INCLUDING fruits and vegetables and some toothpaste. No junk, just food and all of it real food. It's amazing what happens when you start growing up.

More like, yet another year. In an attempt to avoid the stress I caused myself last year by not having renewed my lease 3 weeks before my lease was up, I stopped by my landlord this evening and dropped off a letter of my intention to stay another year. My lease isn't up for another 2 months, so I am way ahead of the curve this time. Hopefully I can have this all taken care of before the end of the year.

Not really. Very strange being back at work after 4 days of lounging on the couch. Had a fleeting thought this morning of working from home, but gave up on it. Got up later than I should have, got a parking ticket about 5 minutes before I got out to the car. I knew I was going to get it, but getting it that close sorta sucked. Well, time to get back in to the swing of things.

Flickr: Photos from Skadz

OK, a little behind on posting today, been going back and forth between sleep and waking all day. Just wanted to pop up and say Happy Thanksgiving to everyone. More later....

After my plans to go to Maryland to visit my cousin for Thanksgiving fell through, I decided it would be best to just stay at home and relax and play some catch up for 4 days.

After braving the traffic on 495, I hit a wide open 90E and flew home. 90W, on the other hand, should have been renamed to the Mass ParkingPike or something. It was full from Boston to 496 and beyond. Glad I wasn't going that way.

I relaxed for a bit after getting home, being my normal lazy self, but then decided I should take care of some things. So, I hit the food store and made sure I had enough food to get me through until Monday. Then, I hit the convience store and made sure I had enough smokes until Sunday.

Basically, I am ready for a weekend of not leaving the apartment.

Because I am prepared for a nice long weekend in the apartment, I have a very long list of things to do and an even longer list of hopes to do :) Hopefully, I'll blog through instead of just vegging out in front of the TV for 4 days.

If so, can you please point me in its direction? Thanks!

Today has been such an up and down day. It started off with a flat tire which I mentioned earlier.

Then, I went to the service station and found that the tire had a hole in the side, which meant a new tire. Service station said they may not be able to get to it today, but it didn't look good. Not good as I was rather nervous about driving home on the donut in the dark.

Luckily, I got a phone call around 3:45 that they had the tire and could do the work today. Yay!

Then, I got the $170 bill. Boo!

Then, I got home and had a very late, but very timely birthday present in the form of a check.

So, I guess in the end, the day was a wash, but it has definitely been a roller coaster.

has a very large hump today. Hopefully, I can get over it.

Ever since I got a nail in the sidewall of one of my tires a few months back (just days after a major repair job on the car), I have had a fear of flat tires. Because of that, I pretty much check all 4 tires each and every time I get in the car to make sure none are flat. It's just part of my ritual of driving these days. I know it may seem neurotic, but I do it each and every time.

So, this morning, getting in the car at a decent hour (8:20) instead of some of the rather later times I have gotten in to my car in the last few days, I notice that my front tire is flat. Argh! This is not how I needed to start this day. I got all my stuff out of the car, set the alarm and headed back in to the house to come up with a plan. Contemplated calling AAA. While thinking about that, I realized, I hadn't really checked the spare. So, I headed back out to the car, checked that the spare was ok, and grabbed the manual for the car.

Spare was fine and the manual said it could do 65 for 3000 miles. OK, I have a good spare, what to do next? I decided to read up on how to change the tire (hadn't done this in a long time and never on this car). It seemed rather easy, so I headed out to do it.

The one minor glitch in the tire changing process was that the car was too close to the curb to raise the jack, so I had to move the car ever so slightly. Other than that, things went smoothly. Thank God.

Headed back to the house, got all my stuff, again, and headed out on the road. The drive went rather smoothly considering I had the donut on. Pretty much got in the right lane and set the cruise at 65. Since it was almost 10 by the time I left the house, didn't have to take it off the whole time between 128 and 495. Made it much easier, since I tend to be a fast driver.

So, now I get to find out if I need a new tire or not. I'm hoping not, my wallet can't really afford a new tire at the moment.

Hi there! How's things? It seems to me that the wind may have blown your calendar ahead a month or two. There really should not be a couple of inches of snow on the ground on November 13th here in Boston. It seems like an honest mistake, so I just ask if you could please fix your calendar and get it back to the 50 degree weather we should be having this time of year.

Thanks!
Skadz

From my panel:

Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

Any one else sick of Capital One? I get at least one credit card offer a week from them, which would be all well and good, except there is no chance in hell I could get a new credit card these days. Though, my financial situation is getting better by the minute, if Capital One took one second to glance at my credit report, they would know that they wouldn't even consider me for a credit card right now. It's amazing to me that a company can waste so much money trying to get me to get a credit card which I can't get.

Congratulations to Wendy and Joey who got engaged over the weekend!

Ms. GG is on her way to come visit GGG. Too many G's.

Howard Stern to Move to Satellite Radio:

Howard Stern, one of the most popular U.S. radio personalities, on Wednesday said he will broadcast his show on Sirius Satellite Radio Inc. beginning in 2006, after being dropped earlier this year from several stations that objected to his often off-color humor.

Now you can watch Sirius's stock fly! This should be real interesting for satelite radio.

Incredible comedian Rodney Dangerfield died at 82 yesterday. RIP.

My toilet has been in some major need of repair for the last few months. It both leaked from the screws holding the tank to the bowl and it was leaking at the flapper valve and running constantly. So, I finally made the trip down to the hardware store and bought the parts I needed today.

Taking the one remaining screw holding the tank on to the bowl turned out to be a much harder task than it originally looked to be. Once that was done, I pulled the toilet apart, installed the new screws, installed the new flapper and filled the tank. Well, tried to, water went everywhere. I then realized the err of my ways, fixed the screws, reattached the bowl and woot! the toilet is now working as it is supposed to.

Next step is to give it a good scrubbing.

Hide your women and children, Joey (aka the Accordion Guy) is heading to Boston

Just talked to Mom (after leaving her a whiny voicemail this afternoon) and both she and my sister and sick too. How they gave it to me hundreds of miles away is beyond me.

I had this strange idea that sleeping most of the day was supposed to make one feel better. I guess I was wrong. I feel MUCH worse than I did this morning.

The worst part? I live alone, so I need to take care of myself. Had to do stupid stuff, like go to the store, run the dishwasher and take out the garbage. It was much nicer when I had a roommate who I could whine at until they did whatever chores I didn't want to do while sick.

I thought I started feeling some unpleasantness in my body last night. Woke up this morning with a nasty nasty sore throat and all stuffed up. Don't feel terribly bad, but my throat is definitely hurtin. Decided to work from home to hopefully stop this before it gets very bad.

Growing up having dogs around my whole life, I was psyched to go and do some dog sitting. I love my cat, but dogs are just more fun to have around.

Sadly, I forgot one thing about dogs, they wait for you to wake up and then pounce. As soon as I opened one eye this morning the dog was whining to go out. Ugh, was in work by 7:45.

On a positive note, being at work that early on a Friday, means the weekend starts early!

I'm house and dog sitting for a buddy of mine at work who is getting married tomomrrow. I take over the house tonight and leave on Saturday. While at his house the other day to get a feel for it, I noticed he had a washer and dryer. Ooohh! Free laundry. So, what did I do? I filled my ENTIRE car with laundry. Gonna be fun trying to fit all this when I get home.

I'm horrible with laundry. I pretty much do the important stuff on a pretty regular basis, but if I wear something I don't wear a lot, it tends to build up and it makes my closet a total disaster. Well, this will all be solved now. Now, I just need to keep up on doing laundry on a weekly basis and my closet will stay clean.

Next step is definitely to go through all my clothes and start to donate some stuff to good will. I most definitely have too many clothes and much of it, I never wear any more. I think on Saturday when I get home, I may need to spend a bunch of time just going through and figuring out what can go to good will.

I might as well throw this out there. I've got 6 GMail invites. Leave a comment if you'd like one.

Well, its a gross day in Boston. Was hoping to go see Bionic and Chad down in Gov't Center for The Taste of Boston, but that isn't going to happen. Looks like its the couch and the Sox. Just talked to Mom in NY and she says that the rain has stopped, so it looks like we will have a game somewhat near on time.

Feeling much better today. Up at 7:15. In to work by 9 (damn traffic). Besides losing all my parking karma last night (drove around for an hour) and it taking me 30 mins to go like 5 miles this morning. All is well. It's pay day, I've got a fun weekend lined up. Let's get going.

Since the end of the crazy birthday weekend a week ago, I have totally not been right. I'm been very tired, VERY unmotivated (especially at work) and just generally not myself. I think part of it is my strange sleep schedule with the Red Sox on the west coast all week, but I don't think I can totally blame it all on that. I'm really not sure of what it is. Hopefully I will pop out of this sometime soon and get back to posting and doing such things.

Bring sweatershirt to work tomorrow. Holy shnikes is it cold at my desk. Damn vent right above me.

Congrats to Jason on the new gig!

it may be evil, it may be just plain wrong, but this made me laugh very loudly this evening.

HOLY SHIT is it hot. I was so psyched to get through a particularly mild summer in Boston without an AC and now I am wishing I had bought one somewhere along the way. I'm pretty much melting at this point.

I'm still alive. Mostly. Very busy at work. Not much to talk about. Just wanted to say hi. I'll be back soon enough.

My apartment is currently a metaphor for my life. It's a MESS. After being away for 10 days and then having very little time at home since, a super busy week at work and just being plain tired, I have had little time to organize my house, my head, or much else. I've got lots to post about, lots to do and lots of sleep to catch up on. Keep an eye on this space :)

A combination of being sick and being rather tired makes me just keep repeating to myself "a few more hours, a few more hours" while on the LinuxWorld floor today.

American Idol's William Hung Found Dead of Heroin Overdose

Las Vegas, NV - Kitschy American Idol Star William Hung, famous for his botching of Ricky Martin's "She Bangs" was found dead yesterday, apparently of an intentional heroin overdose. The announcement of his death sent shockwaves to the tens of people who still found him funny.

Why oh why can't stories like this be true?

Are there real fireworks displays every night in Boston this week? Otherwise, I think a small war may have broken out downtown Boston. Is this information posted anywhere? Freaked me out a bit last night, bothering me again tonight. I'd just like to know that the constant booms at midnight are part of the fun.

In the last hour I heard a barrage of about 10-15 bangs which were either M80s or gun shots and then a load of whistler bottle rockets going off. Is it me or is this possibly the dumbest thing you can do while the city is on super high alert with the DNC in town?

I'm headed to San Francisco again. I'll be there the first week of August. Sunday through either Thursday or Friday. Anything fun going on that week???

Common Courtesy - Bryan Forbes

AMEN

Cops: Stoned Student Steals Car From LGA, Gets Lost In Conn.

Now all you kids out there, learn your lesson here. When you are doing hallucinogenic drugs, sit at home, with some sober friends making sure you don't do anything TOO stupid. Watch Fantasia or something :)

I've gotten my coming in before 9 streak up to 7 days. For anyone who knows me, this is close to the level of a miracle. I do have to say, I love getting home early and actualy having an afternoon to deal with the rest of my life.

Halley had a party tonight and didn't invite me. No fun :(

Last night I finally did something I should have done a long time ago. I slept in my bed. Over the last few months, I've adopted a rather bad habit of falling asleep on the couch watching TV. This is not a good thing. First off, I wake up to the TV half the time. Second, it's not really all that comfortable to be sleeping on a couch every night. Third, I wasn't reading anymore, since I was filling all available time with TV.

Now that the real TV season is over, the TiVo has a lot less stuff on it, so I figured this would be as good a time as any to get myself back in to the habit of going to sleep in my bed. So, last night after some TV, I headed in to bed. I read for a while and then passed out. Got up good and early this morning and was in the office before 9. Go me!

Now, hopefully I can keep this up. The goal is to start getting to work around 7:30 each morning, so I can get out of here by around 4 and still have an afternoon to enjoy life and try and get other things done. We'll see how this experiment works out, since I am the anti-morning person :)

Doc Searls: I'm off to Boston. See ya there.

I wonder why Doc is coming out. Is something going on in Boston this week that I am unaware of?

A sweet video of some Transformers getting down. Amazing rendering.

The first set of wedding pictures are up. Somehow, I avoided being in any of these :)

After a long stint in LA, my old roomate, Sasha is finally heading back to the east coast. Go East Coast!

This could quite possibly be an interesting motto to live by :) gapingvoid just plain rocks

I'd forgotten how much my morning cup of tea on the way to work helps my productivity until this morning. Between being away a lot and not having any milk, I really haven't been having my normal tea on the way to work. Went food shopping last night and remembered to put milk on my list. Had a cup of tea on the way to work this morning. Now I'm banging things out left and right. Four checks on my to do list already and three other tasks started. And that's just in the first hour or so of being here. Yay me!

Man, two hours ago I was just about to fall asleep and now I'm wide awake staring at the TV. Not fun at all.

is fire alarms going off in your hotel

False alarm. Gone off a few more times since the time they actually evacuated people at about 5:45 this morning. May have to yell at hotel management as I leave for the show this morning.

On Sunday, right after I arrived in San Francisco, I learned that my co-worker who was supposed to come out and support the trade show with me was ill and was not coming out. No big deal as I have done shows on my own before and pretty much have become an expert at it.

Well, the no big deal changed yesterday evening when there seemed to be some confusion to who was going to be doing the talk at the Intel booth. I had been told one of the other people I work with was going to take care of it, she never heard anything about having to do it, etc. Mass confusion.

So, now it turns out, I have to give a presentation on a slide deck that I saw for the first time about an hour ago. Aiee! I can do nice small presentations in front of customers with my eyes closed, but having to get up in front of an audience to do a presentation I have never seen before it a bit more difficult.

Well, here's hoping it all goes well.

The worst part about losing your machine is having to piece is back together. I spent a bunch of time on Friday and this weekend trying to make my operating environment at least somewhat close to what I had before the crash. Now, I pretty much have all the application I use installed and running somewhat well. There are still a number of glitches and inconsistencies, but it's getting there.

My next step on this piece is to get Fedora Core 2 installed. At least that is Linux 2.6 and Gnome 2.6. Linux 2.6 is somewhat necessary on this machine, as I would like to be using ALSA and ACPI. Gnome 2.6 is just a nice piece, but I was getting used to it. Also, I need to get evolution 1.5 back up and running and get my snapshots back. Lastly, straw is still a version behind and lacking some features I used somewhat extensively.

The other HUGE problem now is the missing data. My aggregator has maybe a quarter of the feeds it used to have. Been slowing looking at my blogroll and adding pieces back. Figuring out what to eliminate and what to keep. Also, figuring out what I have added since I last updated my blogroll is rather difficult.

The other ugly half is that all my contact information is missing. I am WAY too used to typing 3 characters and having an e-mail address come up. Also, lost lots of birthdays, home addresses, etc. Slowly I will get this all back together, but it will take a while. I figure a mass e-mail will go out if I find some free time this week and get that all worked out.

There is also lots of little stuff. Getting my TODO list back up to speed is taking some time. Trying to remember the little things i had on there is not the easiest thing in the world. Slowly getting that back, as I remember things.

The loss of my MP3 collection is hurting somewhat these days too. I had lots of rare and live stuff on there more than just albums of artists I had.

Next time I get some money, I really am going to have to invest it in getting all the little pentiums I have sitting around the house back up and running with lots of disc space, so I can set up some automated backups and stuff. I have had lots of plans over time to do this, I guess now I have proven why it needed to be done.

I think the best way to do some of this is do de-centralize. I really want to set up a LDAP server, some sort of bookmarks server, a music server, a file server, etc. Make it so everything is out on servers which data can be pulled from and pushed back to rather than having everything in one place. I think the de-centralized idea is a much better one anyways. Plus, I can than access my data from anywhere, instead of just when I am sitting on my machine.

Slowly, this will all come back together, but its going to take a while. I know I am still slowly realizing some of the stuff I lost.

Good morning. Sitting around in my room at the Hotel Palomar chilling out. Listening to some Phish and just playing catch up.

I totally dig this hotel. It's very rock star with lots of fun ammenities. The in-room stereo is a nice thing to have, instead of having to blast tunes through my computer. The TV programming is rather amusing too. There is a Yoga channel that just does yoga lessons all day long. Also, there is a serenity channel which plays nice music with pretty scenes in the background. Very San Francisco.

The free Internet access in the room is great too. The hotel seems to have a very nice pipe to the Net too. I'm downloading Fedora Core 2 CDs at a very nice pace. Trying to get this machine up to a more updated state, since I am trying to fly without the net of my normal machine due to last week's unpleasantness.

I notice between yesterday and this morning that trying to watch TV without TiVo is rather difficult when you are so used to skipping commercials and watching a concentrate of stuff you like.

I've noticed I've gotten very good at rambling here lately, deal with it for now, eventually I'll have some better content :)

Woke up in CA and one of the first things I saw was Jay McCarthy's house burned down. Sacry experience. Considering I smoke in my apartment, this is a big fear of mine. Hearing about it from someone I somewhat know (well, at least I know about and read about) is very scary. The good part is everyone in his family is fine. The bad news is pretty much everything was destroyed.

Lisa Williams has set up a pay pal donation box for all to help out in any way they can.

Good luck in slowly getting your life back together, Jay.

Man, I have been exhausted all day and now that I finally try to go to sleep, I'm sitting with eyes wide open staring at the TV (and now the monitor).

Spent the afternoon hanging out with gnome-girl. Headed to an early dinner as we were both starving. Then she decided to be domestic.

Watched the season finale of Alias. Of course, more questions opened than answered. Brier told me that they are not going to come back on until January so they can do like 22 straight weeks of Alias with no repeats. That will be neat, but the wait is going to be way too long, especially with all the un-answered questions. I really need to get the early DVDs of Alias. I don't know the early stuff all that well, just saw a couple of episodes here and there.

Saw Welcome to Mooseport as the movie on the plane. It was ok. Had me laughing a bit. I'm not really sure how much I like Romano though. He seems to play the same kind of character as his character on his TV show.

Also watched Scary Movie 3 on the laptop. Was cute, but still wan't all that great. It was basically like the first two, but more Zucker humor. This series has been somewhat disappointing in my opinion.

OK, enough late night rambling.....

Made it to San Fran in one piece. Here til Saturday. Severe lack of sleep at this point, not good.

Argh, of course I end up hitting a set back as I try to get ready to go to California. I ran a too large load of laundry which caused the clothes to all be uber-wet. I ran them in the dryer for almost 2 hours, but they are still damp and I am out of quarters. I headed to the store to see if I could get some quarters there, but they were all out too. Doh! Hopefully the dampness will dry out before the morning, but I gotta leave in 6 hours. Aieee!

Man, this is really getting annoying now.

Not only is my computer FUBAR, but then I go to get cash today and the ATM is down.

What the hell is going on with me and machines?

Have your hard drive completely crash to the point where it looks like it may not recover. On your main machine. Where you pretty much store your life. With no backup. MOTHERFUCKER.

Hopefully we can figure something out tomorrow, but it looks grim.

Oh yeah, let's not forget, I brought home another laptop to use for the evening and DIDN'T bring a fuckin power supply.

Watch out liver, here comes too much alcohol.

The Redhead has organized a get together tomorrow evening over at Clery's right next to Back Bay station to welcome the Accordion Guy back to Boston.

Finally, I am actually going to be able to make it to one of these. Haven't seen Joey since we terrorized Boston back in October following BloggerCon.

Hope to see you all there!

Do not take a drink of water just before reading Dilbert. Almost caused a laptop disaster this morning by spitting water all over the keyboard.

she's obviously insane

Yeah, maybe I will be in CA in a few days.

I mentioned last week that I was slowly trying to get things done bit by bit. Well, this has turned in to a full scale spring cleaning. My goal here is to really make my place in to the place I dreamed it could be when I first moved in. This is going to take some effort by in the end I think it will really be worth it.

I've been thinking since I moved in, I wanted my place to be a place for my friends to stop by, hang out, watch some movies, play some video games, or just to sit and chat. I want it to be a viable alternative to going out, I guess. Would be nice to have somewhere that people felt they could drop by whenever and know they were going to enjoy themselves.

I put a bunch of money in to my apartment when I first moved in to do some of this. Things like the new couches, surround sound system, the PS2, etc. Now, I've added things like the WiFi connections, the TiVo and a whole bunch of kitchen appliances.

Now, if I can just finish up some of this cleaning and make the place a nice clean place to hang out, I may just have the next cool place to be in Boston.

You can tell it's a gorgeous Friday when there is a mailing list thread on how you spell the past tense of panic (paniced vs panicked)

Ugh.

Gorgeous day out.

Feel like crap due to what I hope is allergies.

Work stuff just not going as planned.

Can't seem to find any of the people I need to speak to to finish some other crap.

No fun, I just want to go sit on a roof deck of a bar with a margarita in my hand.

I realized about 15 minutes in to my car ride this morning that in my joy of being up good and early this morning, I never actually turned the alarm clock, that I beat by an hour, off. Oops!

I'm a rather bad procrastinator. I constantly have a ton on my TODO list, and even more constantly push things to the next day, every day. It's a very very bad habit. This becomes even more true when things get pushed off to the point that they cause stress in my life. I have enough stress in my life that I don't need to cause myself any more.

This past week, I have been trying to start knocking things off my TODO list. Whether they be little things or things that have been hanging over my head for a while, I'm just trying to get stuff done.

Thus far, its been nice. Even little stuff, like the single load of laundry I did last night, feels good, as I had been pushing it back all week. The biggest accomplishment of this week thus far has been throwing away the huge pile of boxes that I have accumulated over the 2+ years in my apartment. It may not seem like a lot to you, but it was a burden off my chest. Now I have more space in my bedroom to put the furniture I will eventually buy.

It's nice to feel a sense of accomplishment every day and even nicer to get weights off my shoulders, so I can continue to move forward. Now, hopefully, I can keep it all up.

I'm in NYC for the Linux on Wall Street trade show. Just hanging out in my room right now, about to go get dinner. Was supposed to have dinner with 2 different friends and both have cancelled out on me, damn them. So, about to go grab somehting to eat, then have setup from 9-12. Fun Fun.

So, I have some old taxes that I still need to deal with. Got a couple of letters from the IRS and sent them some money, but I still owe them a bunch. As I have mentioned before, I'm no good at making phone calls where there is some possibility of conflict, so I have been putting this one off.

Well, I was PLEASENTLY surprised this morning when I went to do this. I called the number on the sheet and the computer asked me for my SSN. I pushed it in and got some options about what I needed to do. After that, I was asked by the computer if I wanted an extension or wanted to set up a payment plan. I selected payment plan and figured this is where they were going to send me to an operator. Nope! Next the computer asked me how much I wanted to pay each month. I pressed in an amount. Next, what day of each month would you like your payment to be due. Typed in the 22nd and continued. It then asked me to confirm what I had filled in. I did and it told me that a letter would be out to me in 10 days whether or not they accepted my plan.

How cool is that? Complete automation. I didn't even have to talk to a person. Sad to me now that I pushed this off for so long, I could have already been a few months in to a payment plan if I knew it was going to be this easy!

I'm currently riding on the LIRR to NYC for the Linux on Wall Street trade show. Been on Long Island since Friday afternoon, spending time with family and whatnot. Oh yeah, and getting all my hair chopped off.

One of the big thrills for me of going home is getting to eat Taco Bell. Yes, I know this stuff is horrible and probably horrible for me, but I love it. Back when I went to BU, there was a Taco Bell in the bottom of my dorm which I was a frequent visitor of. These days, there are none too close to either work or home, so I really never get to enjoy some Bell. Luckily, when I come down to NY, there is one just a few blocks away from my sister's place which I visit often.

After a few years of threatening, I finally did it. Eleven years of having long hair, all gone. Check out the before and afters over on my moblog.

Someone take care of me, I feel like crap.

Well, if all goes well, it looks like I will be in San Francisco from the evening of May 23rd until the afternoon of May 31st. I will be working at BEA eWorld from Monday to Thursday and then will be free to have fun for the whole weekend (and a long weekend at that). Hopefully I will try and get together with some of the #joiito folks in SF together on Friday or Saturday. If you're in the area, leave a comment, so I can figure out who might want to get together.

but today looks like this:

Update: Even hotter!

Happy Patriots Day to all in Boston. Patriots day is another wonderful made up Boston holiday to give everyone the day off to go watch the Marathon :)

Nail in tire not patchable, more money in to this damn car. Argh.

Someone brought in Permission to Land by The Darkness for me to listen to today. Everyone knows the song they have out, "I Believe in a Thing Called Love", it's even the background music on the Girl Next Door promos. Well, this album totally rocks. Most would probably disagree, but if you are in to hair metal (Poison, Warrant, Skid Row, etc) like I am, you will TOTALLY love this disc.

Can't sleep Sunday night. Fall asleep some time around 3.

Wake up, feeling amazingly refreshed, realize it's 9:30, not 7AM like the alarm was set for.

Check alarm, set for 7PM. Doh!

Shave (necessity due to client meeting), Shower. Nothing bad, amazingly enough.

Start getting dressed, button falls off shirt you were going to wear. Switch shirts and get out the door.

Get to car, ticket on car, nail sticking out of back tire.

Amazingly, get to work safely. Too much to do to get tire looked at. Argh. Hopefully it doesn't blow up on the way home.

CNN.com - Man bets all on roulette and wins

Though, it would have been better if he bet on a specific number.

And how can you resist the Sports Guy in Vegas? Especially with nuggests that end like this "And if that doesn't make sense to you ... well, you've never been to Vegas."

when people stop talking to you for no apparent reason?

Neil's new adventure made it in to The Patriot Ledger

News Askew RSS Feed Now Available

Finally! I've been waiting for this one for a long time. Of course, it isn't a full feed, but it's better than nothing. Kevin Smith news in my aggregator, woo! The feed is here.

Yes, I am alive, just been busy.

It's 7PM and its still sorta light out.

If you're wondering why you are late to everything today, it's because daylight savings started today :)

is that I am going to miss seeing Joey in Boston tonight. Of course, they are going to a bar that is 10 mins walking distance from my house. My timing sucks.

So, in my never-ending attempts to stop being a slacker and starting to get my life fully together, I need to find a doctor. I haven't seen a doctor in something like five years. I really would like to get a regular checkup, etc. Also, it would be nice if I had a doctor close by that I could go see if I am sick, like I have been the last few days. So, anyone have any suggestions for doctors in the South End/Back Bay area? Thanks!

So, April in Boston is starting on a cliche, as it's raining. Hopefully, the May flowers will start soon.

April means taxes need to get done. That's in the plan for this weekend. Figure for once, I will beat the rush.

April also means that it's the anniversary of this blog. It will hit 2 years late in the month. Funny how small beginnings have led to all this chatter.

April now means the end of the Car Saga series. Which means I need to spend the time to write it all up.

April 1 means it's April Fools. Things thus far include Howard Stern off the Air, Linux starts collective royalties for Linux, and Google is offering jobs on the moon.

I've been gettign a sore throat the last few days and it seems to have developed in to a full fledged cold today. Throat hurts, all stuffed up, very tired. Ick.

Great train of through post by Greg. This seems like a possible way to answer the Unix car vs. the MS car question.

More on this in the car saga thread that I will continue eventually, but I really am a big baby. I'm a virgo, so I don't like conflict, right? Well, I take that to a whole new level. I don't like doing anything where I have a lack of a comfortability level. I'm horrible at phone calls, even to friends of mine. My mom loves to tell stories about how I wouldn't call people when I was a kid. I still do it to this day. I literally almost had a panic attack making a phone call today that I should have made 6 months ago. Once I got on the phone, I talked to the person, got it taken care of and it was done in less than 5 minutes completelty harmlessly. It's just ridiculous that I can not get myself better about this stuff. I need to work on it.

Does it both anyone else that Bob Dylan is in a Victoria's Secret commercial?

I had more to post about, but they are all escaping my brain right now.

(oh yeah and MT is acting up due to Amazon acting up)

I just got e-mail from one of my good friends here in Boston. Her birthday is in a bit more than a week and the e-mail was titled "My Birthday". Now, this friend is a firm believer in the birthday month theory. So, basically, starting next week and continuing through the end of April, she feels you need to do anything she says because it's her birthday, even though her birthday is only 1 day.

Well, I'm reading this e-mail and I realize she is already trying to plan her birthday party for NEXT YEAR. It's her 30th, so she figured we should be good an informed on what she is doing and what she wants us to do.

I can't plan what I am doing tomorrow, how does she expect me to start planning what I am doing a year from now? Crazy kids ....

I have a total schoolboy crush on Mary-Louise Parker and especially her chracter, Amy Gardner, from the West Wing.

I knew I needed a car for a while, but kept putting off getting it. I was starting work soon and really needed to get this taken care of. I was busy having fun, so I pushed it off. Finally, after a week or two of work, I finally went with an old friend (and former car saleman) to go look at cars. I very quickly found a shiny new Grand Am that I really liked. It was a pretty painless experience, besides the signing my life away for $25,000. I got a slightly higher interest rate due to my rather poor credit, but the deal was done. They needed to inspect the car and get plates and all that, so I scheduled to pick it up a few days later.

A few days later, Vinnie, who was still out of work at the time, grabbed me from work and we headed down to get my new toy. We picked it up and off we went. OK, I have a car now. Next, car maintenance.

In late 2001, I moved back to NY. It was for a variety of reasons, but it was the best idea at the time. I moved back in with my mom, my sister and two of my sisters friends. Four women and me, ugly. I was actually supposed to move down on 9/11/2001. That didn't happen for obvious reasons. I stayed in Boston for another week to attend a concert I was planning on coming back up for and headed then headed to NY.

Six weeks after getting to NY, I was laid off from my job. This sucked. I had been with the company for 5 years (actually a day less than 5 years) and really enjoyed working there. This put me in a strange place. Do I try to move back to Boston with little money or do I get a job in NY? I really didn't want to do either. So, I didn't. I spent the next 2 months sitting around the house, watching Netflix movies, staying up til 4AM watching TV, and basically rotting away.

I spent New Years Eve, alone, watching TV, drinking Guinness with my sister's animals. This killed me. I decided that I was getting my life back together. The next morning, I bought a train ticket to Boston, booked a hotel and got back up to Boston on January 2nd. I had a plan heading up. A week in Boston to find a job, get an apartment and have fun with all my friends. Well, I did one of three done, had fun with my friends. Woops!

Tim from Central Basement came to my rescue at this point. He was about to head out for a week and said I could crash at his place if I took care of his cats. Worked for me! He had a computer and Internet access. This has always been key for me. I jumped online the first day and looked for apartments, I found some listings and sent out some e-mails. I got a quick e-mail back and set up an appointment. Also, while online, I had an e-mail from an old co-worker who had heard I was out of work and wanted to set something up.

In the next few days, I was back on track. I found an apartment and got a payment put on it. I had some preliminary info for a job. I was getting my life back together and getting back to Boston. Yay me! Over the next couple of weeks I had a work interview, finished getting the apartment (which included another trip to Boston) and started figuring out my moving plans.

I got back to Boston on February 1. Over the next few weeks, I got settled in to my place, dealing with all the little stuff. Got cable installed, got the DSL set up, bought some new furniture, etc etc. I also had some more interviews and got a job offer.

Now to the one small problem. The job was about 35 minutes west of Boston and there was no public transportation anywhere near the office. What did this mean? I needed a car.

This is post number 1000. I started just under 2 years ago. Can't believe I have kept this up this long and gotten 1000 thoughts out of my head.

I'm going to start telling a story here that I've somewhat kept to myself over the last few months, because it shows me in a rather stupid light. But, hopefully the resolution is slowly coming on its way, so I guess its time to tell it. It's all about my car and my ridiculous levels of procrastination. This saga has caused me more grief than good in the last few months. If there is one shining light, its the money help, but that will come later. So, here we go ....

One of my favorite days, St Patrick's Day. Happy St. Patrick's Day to all! The weather outside looks like it should be Christmas. Up to 7 inches on the ground from what the weather says. And it's still snowing. Ugliness abounds. Going to get some work done this morning and then head off to enjoy the merriness in Boston.

Someone forgot to tell Mother Nature that spring officially begins on Saturday. We're supposed to get anywhere from 6-12 inches of snow in the next 36 hours. Fun Fun! Looks like St Pat's is going to be less than stellar in Boston. Now to decide on a plan.

Lukas seems to be making his return to posting. Good to see. His blog was one of the first I read and a good part of the reason I started blogging. Hopefully, he keeps it up.

So, much is going on in the U.S. since the whole Janet boob incident when it comes to indecency. One NPR radio personality was already fired because an engineer forgot to bleep out fuck from one of her pre-recorded broadcast. It's all Howard Stern can talk about, at least according to Jeff Jarvis. Bubba the Love Sponge was fired too. All of this over a boob.

The point to all this? Well, I'm finally watching the CNN Presents show about the Dean Campaign. Very interesting thus far. But, Joe Trippi has said shit at least 4 times so far. They did bleep out one fuck, but shit, they have just let go. Why is this allowed? Why is CNN not getting fined for this? Someone explain.

And Cat Attack proves it. I should get this for my cat, it would drive her absolutely nuts (well, father nuts than she already is).

Si, son of AKMA, has his opening night tonight for a performance of The Crucible he is in. Good Luck!

Anti-smoking researcher calls on R-rating for movie smoking

Now this is just ridiculous. It's not bad enough that I can't smoke in a bar in Boston any more, but now they want to raise movie ratings based on people smoking in them? How freakin ridiculous is this?

I got spam in my Inbox today based on the fact that I am registered for BloggerCon from The Williams Law Firm.

This is a horrible abuse of Dave having the registration list published. I think it's great that I can see who is going and someone taking advantage of this is a pure violation of netiquette. I've sent Dave e-mail informing him of this abuse as well as asking him to uninvite the person who sent this from BloggerCon (as the message claimed they were planning on attending).

Hopefully we'll see something on Scripting News today about this.

UPDATE: Looks like Scott picked up on this too and he is less than pleased to say the least.

Man, it feels very much like a Monday here. Since I worked from home yesterday, this is my first day in the office in over a week. Had 13 new voicemails to go through, expense reports to do, etc. Hopefully that Monday feeling doesn't hang out too long.

After a 65 degree day last week and continuous 50's since, it's been beautiful here in Boston for the last week or so. Well, that's all over with. It's now in the lower 30's and snowing on this wonderful Monday morning. Ick!

Having to sit on a trade show floor, with people coming in only on 15 minute breaks and then them going away for 45 mins is just NO fun. I'm in Vegas, I should be saying hit me over and over again.

My name is Ryan and I have a gambling problem.

Hi Ryan!

Got in around midnight Vegas time yesterday, forgot to go to bed until 11AM and had to be up around 3. Oooooops! Well, when you hit a good table, you just have to ride it out.

Got some well deserved rest last night, now just working the show. On a break now, so some time to blog, read e-mail etc.

I'm off in a bit, heading to Sin City.

Nope, not basketball, but my life. March is shaping up to be a rather busy month for me.

First off, I'm heading to one of my favorite US cities tomorrow evening. Vegas, baby! Going for BEA's Sales Meeting Partner Lounge to show off Egenera's wares. Should be a good time, I always love being in Vegas. Hopefully my gambling luck is better than last year.

Then, we have my favorite holiday. My saint's day, St Patrick's Day. Has anyone seen the Guinness commercials about treating St Patrick's Day like a real holiday? Well, that is totally me. It's a Wednesday this year, so the madness will probably not be as good as it is some years, but hopefully still fun. I'm still debating taking the day off, but it is tradition, not sure I will break it.

Next up is Bob Dylan at Avalon. This should be a total blast, as it will be seeing Bob in a small venue. Never thought I would see that.

The next day, Gnome-Girl is scheduled to arrive. The jury is still out on whether or not she will show up this time, though she keeps claiming she is coming.

Then, that Sunday, we head back to Avalon to see Liz. This time should be better than last, as I know a lot more of the music now than I did when I saw her a few months back.

Overall, lots going on. Hopefully, Vegas will be good to me and will help me afford all the fun.

Halley reports "Angelina Jolie No Date Tonight". Now there is a job I would have no problem volunteering for.

Argh. My server got totally hosed this morning. Of course, I was running out the door and had to leave it down all day. It's back up and running now, hopefully for a while. Have I mentioned lately I really need a new server?

Rather hard getting going at work after a 4 day weekend (I took Friday as a vacation day). My brain just doesn't want to get moving.

After seeing this picture, my first thought was Xeni should have played Tank Girl.

Halley asks why people don't give sheets for Valentine's Day? My thought would be that they are almost too suggestive. A woman would assume you are just thinking about her in terms of sex rather than love if you gave her sheets. I guess people do give lingerie which probably conveys the same message, but at least lingerie makes a woman feel sexy, so I think the argument there is different.

Chris says he'll have all the details out on Thursday for Gnomedex 4, but this may be enough of a reason for me to go. Though, I'm not sure the organizers of the event would be geared up for my drinking habits :)

CNN.com - MTV consigns racy videos to late-night - Feb. 10, 2004

This is all getting a bit ridiculous.

This week really can not get any worse. First, the whole jacket incident puts me in a completely foul mood, which I have been having a losing fight getting out of. Now, I check voice mail from a call I ignored last night to find out my great aunt passed away yesterday. This really has not been a good week for me. And it's only fucking Wednesday.

Last night's unpleasantness has left me in a rather foul mood all day. I called the bar this afternoon and no luck. So, now its mid-winter and I have no winter jacket. This is going to be oh so fun. Argh.

So, yesterday was a great day. Great win for the Pats. Afterwards, some of us heae to Fenueil Hall to join in the celebration. We hung out for a bit and then hit the bars. Well, the one way to ruin a great night? Walking away from your jacket for about a minute, asking a friend to watch it, and still having someone walk up and walk off with it. I'm RATHER unhappy about this at this point. I'm just hoping someone realized the err of their ways and is a nice enough person to return the jacket to the bar they grabbed it in and not just leave it somewhere else. Gonna call the bar this afternoon and see if anyone has returned it. Otherwise, I need to go buy a new winter coat. Something that REALLY was not in the budget right now.

Slowly getting out from the pile of things to do. Between a week away, being sick and just plain being a procrastinator, there is a lot on my to do list. Biggest thing I did today was get my Dream Theater site updated with the latest information. Mostly tour information, but its off the plate for now. Also, working from home today, I got a lot of the needed TiVo caught up. I still have a ton of Simpsons episodes, but other than that, I'm just about back to ground zero.

Also, the last couple of days, I've been spending a bunch of time trying to get my server updated. Had some old packages on it and stuff. This has made me realize just how much I need a new server. Definitely have to figure out where in the budget this fits in, but its near the very top of my list of new purchases. As soon as the rebate check for my phone shows up, I will have to go and deal with this.

I still have a ton more to go, but at least I am slowly knocking things off the list. Still have a bunch of posts which I have in my head for here. Some WAY overdue. Hopefully the next few days will afford me some time to do some of that.

A long time ago when I worked at a different job and in Boston, it was a Friday afternoon tradition to head down to Sissy K's after work. On a slow week it was just Craver and I. But usually we had a good group of 5 or 10 and sometimes even a real big group of 20 or so. It was nice because usually it was us and a few other random people in the bar, so we kind of ran the place.

I was recently reminded of these times because I found some MP3s of the guy who used to play on Friday afternoons. Great music that really took me back to the days when Friday afternoons were a big social event for me. Tom O'Donnell and his buddy Carl Johnson played most Fridays. It was a good time. They played mostly older tunes rather than the current stuff that most solo guys play these days. Was great to hear something else rather than the same 30 or 40 songs you hear at every cover gig. Tom may be doing some tunes in Boston in the near future, I'm trying to get some information from him on when he may be around. If you're in the area and enjoy some good music, you should definitely check him out.

But somehow I have yet to be invited to orkut :(

It seems as if the snow forecasts have been going down all day long. Now the totals are at about 6 inches, rather than the foor they were earlier today. I'm still staying home to get some good rest and hopefully shake this illness for good. Hopefully I can get the TiVo caught up in the process as well.

Woah, Galeon added the best feature ever for bloggers. It now asks when you try to close a winodw with an edited form in it. So, if I have a blog post that I have yet to hit post on, it will warn me before closing the window. Since I killed off a long post just the other night before sending it to the site, this makes me VERY happy.

On my way back to Boston this morning. I was supposed to return yesterday, but fell hard to an illness that racked my whole body. I'm still not feeling great, but at least I'm awake and not getting sick any more. It will be very nice to get back to my apartment and sleep in my own bed (or at least on my couch). Also, the cat will be very happy to have me back home.

LinuxWorld was good. I think we got some good leads out of it, but only time will tell. I was actually presenting more than anything else at the show. We did a demonstration of how to build up a server on the Egenera platform every hour or so. I think I did my presentations pretty well. Somehow I didn't get nervius at all and just went right through what I needed to do.

The only bad thing was between presentations and making sure everything was ok at the other booths Egenera was in (Intel and BEA), I didn't have a ton of time to check out the show floor. I really would liked to have seen what some other companies are doing, especially some of the smaller and newer companies. Also, its always fun to see what the competition is doing.

Got to see a number of friends from my old company who were wandering the floor. Nice to see some of them, especially a very good friend of mine who I haven't seen in years at this point.

Going back to Boston on Monday is going to throw me some. I already took a sick day today, so I won't have to worry too much about work, but I already have too much to do without even thinking about work. First thing is I need to clean out my e-mail. I got a lot while away and never got a chance to read much of it. Going to be an uphill battle. Task two is to clean out the aggregator. I have almost 3000 posts in it. That's going to be a priority on the Amtrak ride back to Boston, so hopefully that will be done before I even get to my apartment. The next thing is a week of TiVo recordings. I did a good job of thinning out what TiVo would record while I was gone, but its still MANY hours of TV to watch. Also, I should have recieved my package for a PS2 game I was supposed to start beta testing last week. That's going to take up at least a couple of hours a night if I want to do it right (and be involved in future beta tests). I also have all the other normal stuff you need to do after a week away. Things like shopping, cleaning, going through the snail mail, etc etc. So, very busy day today and the next few.

With snow on the way for tomorrow night and in to Wednesday, I may get an unexpected work from home day or two this week, which will help getting caught up on some of this stuff. We'll see what happens though.

Safely in to NYC. Spent most of the day dealing with getting the booth all set up. Hopefully tomorrow will go a bit smoother. Staying at Park South. Had been compared to Hotel Palomar in SF, but does NOT stack up at all. My room is about 10x10, no idea of how I am going to fit all the booth babes in here for the after party ;)

Yes, I am the type of guy who is so much of an asshole that I order delivery on a night when it's like 20 below with the windchill :)

Last night I really put to work the fact that I am involved in a bunch of online communities. While talking to the Straw developpers, I mentioned some issues I was having with the latest version. They reported back (as I had thought, that it was a problem with the feed parser). The project uses Mark's feedparser.py to parse it's RSS. Well, Mark hangs out on #joiito, as do I. So, I jumped windows and asked if he was around. He was. So, I reported the two bugs myself and the Straw folks were seeing. He looks at them, fixes them and released a new version of his program. I reported that back to the Straw folks and they updated the version in Straw and now everything works perfectly. What a good liason I made ;)

Was at Gillette Stadium most of the day yesterday for a company event. Lots of pictures in the moblog.

Whew. Fourteen hours of work and I got much of what I needed accomplished. Now I basically just need to pack everything up and ship it off to the show in NY. Yay me!

Cold Virus Kills Skin Cancer

And so far the common cold is winning. Since skin cancer runs in my family, this is very good news.

I figure since I bitch about Fleet bank as much as I do, I ought to credit them when they do something good. Friday night, I headed to the ATM to grab some cash to learn that I was $100 short in my account. This annoyed me to no end. I had figured out where my cash situation was just a couple of days before and I knew there should have been more cash in the account. Saturday afternoon, I remembered to check Homelink (Fleet's online banking) to see if I missed something. I then saw something suspicious. I had 2 ATM withdrawl for Thursday from across the street from each other. I knew I had gone to one ATM, gone through the whole process of getting cash out and then gotten a temporarily unavailable message and the machine spit my card out. I then walked across the street and pulled cash out of the machine across the street.

Well, I finally called Fleet today to get it dealt with. The people on the phone were very nice and helpful. I went through the process of the claim and then the woman on the phone said the strangest thing, the thing I didn't think would happen. She told me my account would be credited the money by midnight tonight, though the investigation could last another 6 weeks. I was in shock. Fleet is actually giving me my money. How nice of them. Now I just have to sit and wait for the day that the money magically disappears again if they decide to deny the claim for some reason. The only way I can see that happening though is that if I somehow walked away from the machine and it actually gave me my money and somehow I didn't see it. I know this didn't happen, but it would piss me off if that's how they ruled.

Seems like everyone read Too Much as I had too much to do YESTERDAY. No no, I have too much to do today, not because of laziness yesterday, since it is all work stuff. Just a real busy time at work with LinuxWorld coming up next week.

I officially have WAY too much to do tomorrow. And VERY little of it is stuff I can put off. Gonna be a long busy day.

It's funny how things can change from one week to the next. Last weekend, I spent all day Sunday doing domestic things. Laundry, food shopping, house cleaning, bills, etc etc etc. I meant to do some of the same today. Somehow though, I never got off the couch. Woops!

My new entertainment center showed up from IKEA yesterday. After putting it together and pulling apart my old setup, I got it all set up. It looks real nice and it's much nicer than my old setup. The best part is that everything is all organized now. The second best part is that the TV is about a foot higher now and now I can look at it from over my laptop and from the kitchen. Slowly my place gets to the place I really want it to be.

I set up a moblog

OK, I am really annoyed with the new T prices set by the MBTA. The extra 25 cents for the subway causes more problems than good. I go to the Prudential Center T stop normally. There is no collector there, so you have to use the automated machines. Probably 50% of the time, the machines are broken or are just accepting change. Well, in the past, you could just throw a dollar on the T and be done with it. Well now, unless I have a quarter in my pocket, I will have to put 2 dollars in. Well, an extra 75 cents just because I didn't have the quarter is just ridiculous. Last night, in the freezing cold, I walked all the way to Copley just so I didn't have to pay the extra 75 cents. It was rather cold last night (somewhere around 0), so this extra walk just plain sucked. The T either needs to have their machine be MUCH more reliable and serviced much more often or else, they need to have manned tellers at every station.

Now this is some cool shit. Acid trip:

These 9 drawings were done by an artist under the influence of LSD -- part of a test conducted by the US government during it's dalliance with psychotomimetic drugs in the late 1950's. The artist was given a dose of LSD 25 and free access to an activity box full of crayons and pencils. His subject is the medico that jabbed him.

It seems as if Sprint's Picture Mail service sends an e-mail with a link rather than the actual photo out when you try to e-mail them. Anyone know of a way to have it send out the actual pictures, so I can set up a moblog?

Today is going to be the warmest day of the week with temps in the mid-30s. After that, we have this to look forward to:

Thursday...Sunny. Highs around 17. Northwest winds 15 to 20 mph. Wind chill reading as low as 8 below.

Thursday Night...Mostly clear. Lows around 6.

My new toy

A bit late, but happy new year all!

CNN.com - Man's product seeks to potty train cats - Dec. 30, 2003

I think I need one of these for Cracker.

Pictures from Christmas

Last night, CMS came over to hang out. It's going to be the last time we hang out for a while, as he is moving to North Carolina to work for Red Hat. He's excited about the gig, so I'm happy for him, though disappointed to lose another friend to places outside of Boston. Much of the night was spent geeking out, which should come as no surprise. We worked on getting Gentoo working on his 12" G4. After about 6 kernel compiles, I finally really read the error message and saw it was switching his disks. Once we checked one box in menuconfig everythinng worked much better. Now he gets to go through the fun of compiling everything he wants. Was nice to see him one last time before he left.

One thing I did notice though is that this was his first time seeing my place and I have lived here almost 2 years (gotta call the landlord and get the lease renewed!). I think I need to get the place nice and cleaned up and have some of my friends over some night, since many have yet to see the place. Oh good, yet another thing on the TODO list, which never seems to end.

Is it just me or does it annoy others that the scammers who send out e-mails trying to dupe people in to going to a fake web site to put in their credit card information are being called Phishers? I think that Phish should be most offended. Every time I see an article, I think, oh cool, an article about Phish or it's Phans and then realize it's just another article about scam artists.

Bill Simmons: "When your name is Dwight Gooden Jr., do crack dealers just start cold-calling you?"

Bill is just way too funny when he does his ramblings.

If relationships were internet protocols

Very cute. Especially like the last one.

[ via makeoutcity ]

The picture on the top of Exploit Boston! is rather disorienting. My mind keeps trying to flip it over and now I am getting dizzy.

Still one of my favorite lines from Gremlins. Well, this morning I had a bright light attack. While away for the holidays, maintenance has put three new flourescent bulbs in the light above my desk which previously just had one. I used to have a nice dark and quiet workspace, now it is WAY too bright. I wonder if I throw things at the lights and break them they won't get fixed for a while. It's way too early for this much light.

Waking up to the monster pictures below on top of you trying to lick your face two mornings in a row is just plain not fun.

And to think, the monster was this little puppy this time last year.

Looks like travelling on Sunday was a better idea than waiting until Tuesday. The national terror alert level was raised yesterday. That means lots more security everywhere, slower lines, more random searches, etc etc. Glad I'm already sitting at my sister's house in NY.

So, at the end of the night, well, the end of the after hours night, I headed over to jump in a cab. I got in the first cab in line and told him where I was going very specifically. He started off going and I noticed he seemed to be weaving a bit. I just figured that's how he drove and stopped worrying. Well, then he took a very strange route, which bothered me a little, but whatever, as long as it isn't a ton more than the usual way. Then, we get to a red light and when it turned green, he didn't move. Someone behind us beeped and he got going. At this point, I started freaking out a bit. I almost asked to get out, as he seemingly just fell asleep at a red light. Well, then he went a total wrong way and ended up dropping me off about 4 blocks from my apartment, or else he was going to have to turn around and go back and I figured I had tempted fate enough.

That was most definitely the theme song for this evening.

It started out innocently enough. After seeing some recent security advisries about Linksys routers, I decided to check to make sure mine was up to date. I checked their web page and saw that there was a newer version.

Of course, like any other vendor out there, there is only a Windows program to upgrade. This is amusing considering that the Linksys routers all run Linux. So, I did what I have done before and used Wine to run the Windows program and upgrade. Well, it didn't seem to work as well as it has in the past, so I decided to reboot it. Well, that made it even worse. I now could ping the box, but the web admin interface was not coming up. Also, the wireless light had now gone dark. This causes a huge problem as the only network wire close enough to my laptop is rather unreliable. So, I put my old router in place, so I could get on the net and started searching. I found a number of things, but nothing that really helped. I did notice the tftp server was up and running on the router, but the web interface didn't work, so I couldn't disable the password as I had found in one set of instructions. After a while I had pretty much given up adn decided to try the Wine method one more time. Amazingly, it worked. It seems as if there is a huge problem with the Linksys doing an upgrade while active. People should watch for this. So, now after about 2 hours of searching and trying different things, I am finally back up and running. Argh.

Well, then, the funny part. My DVD player is basically not working any longer. I have already decided I want a 5 disc changer some time in the near future, so I can replace both my broken CD and broken DVD players. So, I have been watching movies on my laptop lately. Kind of sucky, as I don't get the surround sound or the big picture (well, bigger than my 15" laptop screen). As I was putting away a bunch of manuals that I had pulled out trying to fix the router, I saw something with the DVD symbol on it. It was my PS2 documentation. I had TOTALLY and COMPLETELY forgotten the damn PS2 can act as a DVD player. ARGH. Well, now at least I have a DVD player hooked up to my TV again, especially since I have 2 action films coming from Netflix in the next day or two.

Argh, well, now I am tired and frustrated and have to get up early, so i think it's time for bed.

So, it's snowing again. Fun fun. So, some random snow stories/comments.

A week ago Tuesday, while driving in to work with my friend, the snow was coming down pretty hard, even though we were supposed to get next to nothing. Due to the cold temps, the roads were very slick. My friend's real wheel drive car was sliding around a bunch, so we were going rather slow. Well, in his rearview mirror, he sees a jeep do a 360 on the road and keep going. That was rather worrying. Minutes later, the jeep is now in front of us (do people EVER learn?) and he starts to fishtail in front of us. Luckily, he caught it in time or else we may have been a victim that morning. He then cuts across two lanes of traffic to get off and the comment was "he's not getting wherever he's going". Seems as if we were the last to not get killed by traffic that morning. About 15 minutes later in to the ride we heard about 2 cars which overturned on the road we had just travelled. Reports came in throughout the day of it taking people 2-5 hours to get to work on trips that were sometimes as short as 20 minutes.

Walking through the neighborhood on Monday to get some provisions, as I hadn't left the house since Friday night with all the snow. As I walked through the streets, I was thinking to myself about the snow in Boston. The snow itself is not a big deal, but living in a city the big problem becomes there is NOWHERE for the snow to go. You can shovel, but you basically just have to make a big pile right next to where you are shoveling. We don't have lawns to throw all the snow on like they do in the burbs. Rather annoying.

And now, we are here again for the second weekend in a row with the snow coming down. They are saying this snow is going to get gross by the end and turn in to sleet and rain. I'd much rather have pure snow.

Laptop Steering Wheel mount

OK, so people talking on cell phones have caused more trouble than good on the roads these days. Well, what the hell is going to happen when people are playing Doom or Quake while driving?

[ via Accordion Guy ]

Don't forget to stop by and wish Betsy a happy birthday today.

Last night while watching B00005JLSB, I was reminiscing about boyhood dreams. More specifically about how movies when we were kids affected those dreams. I remembered things like watching 0800179501 and wanting to learn karate or watching B00000ILFQ and wanting to learn how to skateboard and other such flash in the pan ideas. These ideas never lasted more than a few days or maybe a couple of weeks, but each time a new movie started, so did a new dream. Over time, there was some money spent on this fleeting dreams, one karate lesson, a skateboard bought in Florida, and probably lots of other money spent in small doses in things that were tossed to the side as quickly as they became an interest.

Well, as I was watching this movie, I thought, what would have happened had THIS movie come out while I was a kid? The main character is only a kid himself, 16, when he begins his little crime spree. Could this movie have inspired lots of people to go and try counterfeiting and bank fraud? Obviously with today's computer networks connecting banks together, these scams would be a lot harder to pull off than they were in the 60s, but still, it would have been yet another idea that ran through my head and seemed like a good idea, at least for a few minutes.

LayerOne

Now this looks like a totally fun geek conference. Maybe somehow by the middle of next year I will have expendable cash to be able to go. Check out their Call for Papers. Lots of interesting topics . Maybe I should write a proposal. Hmmmmmm

Bank of America: Three's a Crowd?

After reading this article, I definitely think it may be time to leave Fleet. I have had nothing but issues with them over the years (the remark about them being last in customer service did not surprise me in the least) and this may be the straw that breaks the camel's back.

Basically, the article says that Bank of America still hasn't fully integrated the systems from their merger with NationsBank many years ago and now they are adding Fleet to the mix. Sounds like it is going to be a nightmare to try and continue to use them, especially when travelling, as not all BoA machines are compatible.

So, anyone have any suggestions on a bank? My biggest needs? Well, first and foremost is to have an online banking application rival to Homelink (Fleet's Online banking). Second, would have to be free/cheap ATMs. I use the ATM all the time and having to pay $1.50 each time I used one that wasn't from that bank would drive me nuts.

Spent most of the weekend on the couch either watching TV, movies or hacking on Dashboard. It's amazing what the snow can do, you end up starting to learn a whole new programming language.

Still have lots of blogging to catch up on, going to try and do some of it tonight between Evolution re-compiling and hacking more code.

Dilbert handing out the digits

From Alcohoroscopes:

VIRGO

Drinking style
Cerebral Virgos are compelled to impose order onto their bender. Their famously fussy quest for purity could lead to drinking less than other signs, sure -- but it could also lead to drinking booze neat, to sucking down organic wine or just to brand loyalty. They rarely get fully shellacked -- but, oh, when they do! Virgo's controlled by the intellect, but there's an unbridled beast lurking within, and they let it loose when walloped. It's dead sexy (and surprisingly unsloppy). As one Virgo friend used to declare, "I'm going to drink myself into a low level of intelligence tonight." A toast to the subgenius IQ!

Trademark cocktails
Many Virgos prefer clear, simple, untreacly drinks like vodka tonic or a real margarita, though you'll find 'em drinking anything -- from unflinchingly downing Cuervo straight to smirkingly ordering a dirty virgin. They also tend to like bitter, low-alk guzzles like Campari and soda. They rarely change their drink once they've found it, however.

Drinking buddies
Cameron Diaz, Hugh Grant, Christopher Isherwood, Michael Jackson, Freddie Mercury, Carrie-Anne Moss, Dorothy Parker, Ryan Philippe, Keanu Reeves, Lily Tomlin

Who me? Pick one drink and stick with it? Never. Oh wait, I just drink Guinness, oops! Sounds like an interesting drinking crew, though I think I would tell Michael Jackson to go the fuck away.

so little time. Lots of posts up and coming I swear. All sorts of craziness going on, so been too busy. Also, some ideas swirling around in my head that I may spew on to the world. Snow in the forecast, maybe it will be a blog filled weekend.

The 86 Rules of Boozing

I'd have to say I agree with just about all of these. The try a new drink each week thing isn't really me, as I figure you find something you like and stick with it (though I somewhat live that theory in everything I do). A fun read.

Site will be slow for most of the night, as I am downloading some large files overnight.

The biggest problem with Sunday nights is that after a weekend of being out late and sleeping in, it rather difficult to go to sleep. It's almost 2AM and I'm not even really all that tired yet. No fun at all.

Some may have noticed that I added my recent del.icio.us entries to the side bar. Del.icio.us is basically a group link blog. You can access my page here and the RSS for it here

I spent a bunch of time over the long weekend working on the new laptop. A bunch of software updates to the latest gentoo development releases, mostly multimedia stuff to make sure I have lots of goodies when it comes to that stuff.

Though I am very much a fan of MPlayer, as it plays EVERYTHING video, including Windows Media, Quicktime, Real, DVDs, etc, I am very quickly falling in love with Rhythmbox. It's an iTunes clone and looks real sweat. Does a lot of nice things with organizing MP3s too. The two issues I have so far are no support for editing ID3 tags. Very annoying, as it does a great job of using them, but won't let me fix things when I see they are broken. Looks like it is in the plan though. The other problem is a strange one. It seems as if it isn't keeping internet radio stations I add. Oh? Did I mention it handles internet radio statioins? Very nice. Also, the gnome-panel icon is very nice too.

Much of the rest of the work on the laptop was on trying to move all the data from my old laptop on to this one and get it organized. The getting organized part is the hardest, but I have a pretty good directory structure now. I have about another gig of data to organize, but I will do that over the course of the week.

Now that I have all the data moved off the old laptop and think I have everything I need on this system, the next step is to install Fedora on the old laptop. I need to decide on a new platform for my group of laptops that I travel to trade shows with. I may eventually get the Red Hat Enterprise edition. Advanced Workstation is it called? Something like that. But, I figure Fedora is a good starting point. The other possibility is the new SUSE, but that's still a bit off.

Watched lots on the TiVo over the weekend. Lots of West Wing as I mentioned earlier. Other than that, nothing all that interesting. Caught B00005JM0B. It was pretty good. I thought it was going to be more war and less chase, but I guess I was wrong.

Made some pork chops on Saturday that came out ok. I think I needed something to offset the citrus some. Anyone got a real good pork chop recipe out there? Got lots of food at the store on Saturday, so I'm prepared for a week of good cooking.

And yes, Halley, I did go out both Friday and Saturday . Tee Hee :)

So, I'm in Boston for Thanksgiving for the first time in 7 years. Usually, I head home, but this year circumstances made that not possible. At home, the night before Thanksgiving is the busiest night of the year for the bars. So, I headed out last night planning on much of the same in the bars around Boston. I headed to Cheers to see Greg play for a while. On the way there, things seemed rather quiet. I was surprised. I got to the bar and there were about 10 or 15 people there. Well, I thought, this is really a tourist spot, mabe the other bars will be more crowded. When I got over to Sissys, it was more crowded, but still nothing compared to the crowds of Long Island.

Talking to a number of people, they felt that it's the townie bars that get the people. People head home and go to local bars. No one really lives in Boston all that much, but rather the suburbs, so they just go to bars there. Interesting, but I guess since I live in the suburbs on LI it makes sense.

Happy Thanksgiving to all. Try not to eat too much turkey!

Neat! My hometown, Kings Park, NY, has a web page. I even know some of the people in the pictures on the top level page. Too bad there are no RSS feeds.

I'm on my way out the door, but I just wanted to post something before I hit the road, so that Halley knows I am really going out and not sitting around not blogging to make people think I am out.

I got a new laptop from work this week. I've been slowing getting all of the software on it so that it is fully usable. I installed Gentoo Linux on it, as I have become a big fan of it recently. Also, with the recent moves of Red Hat, I think something new and different was worth a try.

Well, now that I have this new laptop, I want to organize the HUGE mess I made on my previous laptop. I probably have 20 gigabytes of data that is strewn throughout the laptop in many different locations and just not really organized. I want to try and take this data and put it in a much more organized format. I also want to clean off any excess data to make the system a bit cleaner. One of the big goals is to get documentation and other files that should be more easily located up to my web site at work. I really want to expand this site from its current state in to something much more useful. I've already put many of the tools in place. It's front end is a MT blog. I also have a few static web pages on it, that I really need to move in to MT to make it much more of a CMS. I also have a wiki up on the site that I have been using a bunch, but I have much more which should/can go up there.

I figure if I can really organize all of this stuff, it can make working much easier. If I don't have to think twice about where i put things, it means extra time to actually work while there. Also, I can use the resources on the web to point other people at the company to and limit the amount of support I end up doing.

I'm hoping over the course of the next week to get this all set up, so when I return to work after Thanksgiving I have a much better operating environment.

Also, hopefully getting my computer organized will lead me to get other things organized in my life.

Sunday liquor sales passed

Finally, you can buy beer on Sundays! I'm starting to feel like I live in a normal state.

A couple of new toys mentioned by Boing Boing this morning.

thewalldirect.com - Pink Floyd The Wall Collector's Boxed Set of Maquettes

The Wall actions figures. Sweet. They look real nice, though at $79.95, this is going to spend some time on the wishlist. And, of course, as a limited edition, it will be well sold out by the time I actually can afford it.

tomatochip.com : USB Christmas Tree Light

Very cute little Christmas tree for your USB port. They already seem backlogged though, says they are taking pre-orders to ship after Thanksgiving.

Break Up Letter Generator

Man, I have just turned in to a posting monster this year. This is post 800 overall. I would say its almost 600 this year :)

Keep Your Brain From Going to Pot

Well, not exactly, but a company is working on a drug based on THC that is seemingly helping people with head trauma from having continued effects after the initial trauma. Neat.

For the first time in who knows how long, I woke up when the clock was still in the 5AM range. (Yes, it was about 10 of 6, but still). This is just way too early for me. Looks like I will be either taking a nap when I get home or else doing some sleeping in tomorrow, since I am working from home.

Update: So, the reason I came in was I was supposed to have a meeting with a potential customer this afternoon. Well, I just found out that it has been cancelled. So, my 3.5 or so hours of sleep could have been 8, but no, now I am here and stuck. Ugh.

George W. Bush's Resume

An excellent reminder of why Bush should be fired ASAP. Can't we just impeach him? We impeach a guy for a blowjob, but not for ruining the country.

Guinness really IS good for you!

to all the veterans out there on this Veteran's day.

This year, Veteran's Day means a lot more to me, as I have friends who are over fighting wars for this country. If people like my friend J had not decided to fight over the years, we would not be the country we are today. Who knows, we all could be speaking German.

So, thank you, and to all those still involved in wars around the world, stay safe.

This letter received by the RMV shows what happens when people try to use electronic translators and they just translate a little too literally.

In Halley's post Spelling Bee, she talks about how young girls are good spellers and how later in life they never spell anything out. Ain't that all too true.

This is just not the way to start a week.

I got up at before 7AM this morning, so I could move my car for street cleaning. In my neighborhood, they clean either side of the street once a week. On Mondays, they do it from 8-12. So, I get up, head downstairs and wait for someone on the other side of the street to move. After about 30 or so minutes with no one moving, I decided I would start doing some looping. Well, I knew my car was not doing well, but trying to move the car went worse than I thought, so I pulled back over to the side of the street where I had to move my car from to see if someone further down the street would move because looping just wasn't going to happen. Well, after another 20 minutes or so, I gave up. Fuck it, I'll take the damn ticket. The only small problem with that is that I have a couple of tickets I am behind on and it is possible that I am going to get a boot on my car. I really hope this doesn't happen, but whatever. I can't deal. I was in the car for like an hour and no one was moving and my car wasn't moving all that well.

So, now, it's 8:30. I've been awake for more than 90 minutes. I feel like shit, I'm pissed off and I really just want to go back to bed. ARGH.

Watching Modern Marvels from the History Channel and they just said this:

"Hoover Dam is one of the primary attractions for those visiting Las Vegas"

I could have sworn the gambling, shows, strippers, alcohol and all forms of legal (and some illegal) sin were the attractions of Vegas :)

Frrom my tool bar:

With all the helicopter crashes and shootdowns lately, I have been very worried about my buddy over in Iraq who pilot choppers. A mutual friend of ours sent me an e-mail yesterday and it reminded me to drop by buddy a line. He actually responded rather quickly which made me very happy. He is still doing very well over in Iraq, as he is far from the major fighting. He is currently worried about some friends from his sister battalion., as that battalion was involved in one of the recent crashes. But all in all, he is well. It's always good to hear from friends who you are worried about.

always seem to go wrong in the end. I was supposed ot be having a guest for a few weeks starting tomorrow. I was totally psyched up for this visit. I was psyched up to the point that I woke up this morning thinking it was Thursday and was totally psyched until my sleep fogged brain realized it was only Wednesday. Well, I found out tonight my friend had some last minute issues and now won't be coming. I'm totally bummed. I was looking forward to this visit for a while, as it had already been pushed back on multiple occassions. Now, I sit here with my mood completely crashing from the high it was on and quickly getting very very low. Argh, this sucks.

The Buttafly Guide to Interpreting Friendster Photos

It's Joey aka The Accordion Guy's birthday. Everyone should go wish him a happy birthday.

UFO Abductees for Dean

And they are even having a caption contest

The forecast:

This Afternoon...Partly sunny. Near record warmth...Highs in the mid 70s. Southwest winds 10 to 15 mph.

Windows opened wide and heat off, excellent.

Oh goodie. I'm not a huge fan of Halloween. Actually, I pretty much can't stand it. I'm way too self-conscious for Halloween. I am not good at making a fool of myself and Halloween is all about making a fool of yourself.

At least the kids are going to have a nice night to trick-or-treat. It's in the mid-60s and sunny out.

Fox News Threatened to Sue The Simpsons

First off, can Fox news please calm down? Do they think they are SCO or something and can just sue everyone around them to make money?

Second, I find it just hilarious that Fox News would sue a Fox TV show. Isn't that just like transferring funds from one person's budget to another's? Ridiculous.

Third, my favorite part of the article:

"The Fox News Network did back down on its threat, although it has told The Simpsons creators that in the future, cartoon series will not be allowed to include a "news crawl" along the bottom of the screen, which might "confuse the viewers.""

Can someone please explain to me who would be confused when they saw cartoon characters doing the news and think it was the actual news? Are there people out there who are really this dumb?

$47b Fleet sale expected today

Oh goodie! In the 10 years I have lived in Boston, I have used one bank. In that time, this will be the fourth time that bank has been bought and I have to get a new ATM card. Now, I have never had much good to say about Fleet, so I am hoping this will be a change for the better and not for the worse. Anyone out there use Bank of America (the bank buying Fleet) and have any opinions?

I have two worries. The first is problems with direct deposit due to the the bank change. This hasn't bothered me in the past, but you never know. The second is I worry about online banking. Fleet's online banking rocks. I have used it for a long long time and really enjoy using it and really don't want to lose anything from it. Hopefully, the BoA service is just as good.

So, now I think back. I started out with BayBank. They were outside the dorms when I moved up here for school. They then went and merged with Bank of Boston, to form BankBoston. Then, Fleet bought BankBoston. Now, Fleet gets bought by Bank of America. Oh, the fun. The one semi-nice thing is I have a credit card with Bank of America and hopefully now I will be able to easily access that account through one interface.

Well, here we go again!

Dave asks: What is there.com?

The opposite of here.com?

(sorry, had to do it, just what popped in to my head when I read it, didn't even look at the site. :)

Jesus actor struck by lightning

Hmmmmmmm. [ from Grant ]

I think I finally have found the downside to living alone. I have happily lived alone for 18+ months and everything has been great. No one to answer to, run around the house naked when I want, etc etc etc.

Well, the last 2 1/2 days I have been laid up VERY sick. It started Monday afternoon and got horrid yesterday to the point that I slept most of the day. The bad part? Well, a few. First, I had next to no food in the house, so no food means I can't eat as much as I should be, especially being sick. If I had a roommate, they could run to the store, get me food, get me Gatorade, etc etc etc. No roommate? Eat whatever I can find around the house, which is rather little. Secondly, I have been very weak. Moving for more than a minute kills me. Well, it has made cooking, getting drinks, going the bathroom, etc vey difficult. Having a roommate? They could make me food, pour me drinks and help me out in any way they could.

Though, I still love living alone, right now I wish I had a roommate to take care of me. I called my Mom yesterday, but she was unwilling to travel the 300 miles to take care of me :(

Update: I'm amazed no one said anything about the spelling :) Fixed.

Anyone seen these? Money is starting to look faker and faker by the day :)

Actually, the new twenty dollar bill looks much more like European money. Lots of colors and stuff. It also feels very fake. Not sure if that is because its all brand new right now or if it just feels different.

The other thing I was thinking of the other day is how quickly the last new twenty, which is now pretty much the standard replaced all the old 20s. I actually got one from a money machine a couple of weeks ago and realized I hadn't seen one in a while. I wonder if this new 20 will become the norm just as quickly.

Calvin is all too right

Just so everyone knows, Cheyenne is planning on moving to Boston, as soon as she can get all her finances together. This has been a big secret for a while, but she says I won't post it, so here it is. Halley said something in her Chey's comments the other day, but obviously noone has read them, so now I will let the cat out of the bag.

Six Apart, makers of Movable Type (which powers this blog) and TypePad have some job openings. If I weren't so happy in my current position (and wasn't 3000 miles away), I would totally be applying for the developer job.

Wired News: Wanted: Master Lego Model Builder

According to the official requirements, the "role of the master builder exists to offer design, build, repair and service functions to all models and animated features within LegoLand California and selected external locations."

Who are they kidding?

"You get to play with toys for a living," summed up LegoLand spokeswoman Stacey Slingerland. "It's the greatest job in the entire world."

This sounds like way too much fun.

Server will probably be slow overnight and possibly most of the day tomorrow. Someone over at Gentoo got bored today and updated just about every package they have and the server will be doing lots of re-compiling for a while.

Update: Doh! I just figured out what I did. I caused this myself. While trying to get Mailman working earlier, I un-masked all the un-stable, but not yet approved stuff. Just re-masked everything and now I have nothing to update. Whew! No more slow server.

A bunch of Escher's work done in LEGO:

Relativity

Ascending

Waterfall

Belvedere

The Adventures of Accordion Guy in the 21st Century :: Last Sunday in Boston

I will not confirm nor deny any statements made in his post. I will say that anyone who may have groped me may not have had any recollection of said groping the next time I saw her.

This is post seven hundred. Scary.

Now there are pictures and video of me on the Internet.

Dlibert's Business Plan for the post dot com era

I'm broken right now.

My nerves are shot from the Sox game.

I've had too much caffeine, so I am all wired.

I have eaten way way way too little today, so I am strung out.

And now I am supposed to sleep? Eek, this is going to be difficult.

Leo just said this on the West Wing and I liked it:

A man was in a hole and couldn't get out.
A doctor walked by, the man yelled up, can you help me out? The doctor wrote a presciption and threw it in the hole.
A priest came walking by, the man yelled up, can you help me out? The priest wrote a prayer on a piece of paper and threw it in the hole.
Finally, a friend came walking by, the man yelled up, hey Joe, can you help me out? The friend jumped in the hole. The man said what are you doing? Now we are both in the hole. The friend said yes, but I've been in this hole before and I know the way out of the hole.

Since Joey said I had to, here's Cracker just chillin ....

God damn! It's cold! I woke up and my computer said it was 43 degrees outside. I actually had to turn the heat on. Scary, I usually can hold off on that until like the middle of this month or even November. Folks coming to BloggerCon better bring some sweaters.

Joey says: The Adventures of Accordion Guy in the 21st Century :: Don't forget: tomorrow is Post a Picture of a Cat on Your Blog day

Hmm, I guess I will have to take a pic of the cat. Maybe I will take a pic of her playing with her favorite new toy. It was designed specifically for her to play with and she is enjoying it very much. It's called "Crushed up for the garbage aluminum foil which missed the garbage bag and is now a favorite toy of the cat's"

I swear, anything she can push, she loves, her new thing is knocking loose change off of the counter and knocking it around the hall. But, this ball of tinfoil really got her going last night. Back and forth, up and down the halls, while I watched the horror show called the ALDS featuring the Red Sox and A's.

WAAF Ultimate Mantown

Wow, this is a sweet prize pack. Though, I am not really sure what I would do with a riding lawnmower or a gas grill in my little apartment. The rest of the stuff would be a blast though.

Cheap iPod

What a nice thing. I had to get up early this morning to move my car due to street cleaning. So, being in work at a decent hour, I got to leave at a decent hour. The nice part about leaving early? You can actually do stuff when you get home. I stopped by my friend's place to drop some stuff off and then went to the grocery store and bought some actual groceries, now sitting down for a somewhat healthy dinner. Yay me!

This weekend was an interesting weekend when it comes to friends.

Friday evening, while watching Identity, I was trying to figure out who one of the actresses was, so I popped open the laptop to an IM on my screen. Now being that it was Friday night at 11, I couldn't figure out who would be saying hi, since all my friends should have been out and about. What I saw was the message "Greetings from Iraq!" and had to do a double take. It was my friend Juris. He's a helicopter pilot for the army and is currently stationed in Iraq. He's been on my mind a lot lately due to hearing lots of things about soldiers dying, so it was great to see his typing (the Internet equivilant to hearing his voice). We talked for a while. He told me about the things he has been doing and how the conditions are, etc. He seemed to be doing very well. This put a smile on my face for the rest of the night because I knew my friend who I have been worrying about a lot lately was doing well. He also said to pass along hellos to everyone, so anyone who reads this who knows him, he says hello.

Then on Sunday, I had the flipside. My good friend Craig, who has become a reliable drinking partner since Craig went to Houston (yes, they are both named Craig), is moving to Indiana (no, no one understands why). So, last night we went out to say our goodbyes. A smaller group of us first went to Maggiano's for some dinner. There were about 18 of us, so they do the food family style. Too much food came to the table over the next couple of hours, all delicious and very filling. After that, we headed over to Clarke's to see Chad and Stu play and meet up with some other people. Silliness ensued as it always does. I was too full to drink all that much, but that was probably good, since I had to get up early this morning to avoid yet another ticket. Craig seemed sufficiently intoxicated when I left, so mission accomplished.

It sucked losing friends. I lost one a year ago and it was wonderful to hear from him this weekend to know he is doing well. Now I am losing another one (to Indiana no less). I wish him all the best and I know I will see him soon (the current over/under on when he will be back is 6 months ;)

So, in the closing, I am currently accepting applications for a new drinking partner. Said partner needs to be able to go out in a pinch on pretty much any night of the week. Be able to hold their liquor and also know how to have a good time. Please e-mail me drinking resumes :)

Red Herring is back! Somehow I think they are doing web only right now, but we'll see what happens. I was a subscriber, but not a very good reader for a long time. So, my first question ... where's the RSS feed?

If anyone is still linking to /junt instead of just http://www.skadz.com/ PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE update your links.

Thanks!

Ya gotta love it when incompetence on the part of others causes what was a very productive day to become one of an inability to concentrate you are so pissed off.

I am definitely of the same mind as Calvin

Crap, fall is coming. It's getting dark early again. That means driving home in the dark. I HATE driving in the dark. I am really going to have to attempt to start getting in to work earlier so that I can drive while its still light out.

Can someone explain to me when it became fun for kids to just scream at the top of their lungs sounding like they are being beaten? Seriously, I get worried sometimes these kids are actually being hurt, but no, they are just screaming. And they do it all day and all night. Very annoying. I need to empty my neighborhood of all the kids.

Stayed home sick today. Woke up with a nasty sore throat. No good at all. Some drugs and some OJ has helped some, but nowhere near as much as I would have liked. Not smoking is the hardest part right now. The fact that it is muggy outside and my apartment is just gross isn't helping all that much either.

I've also noticed I am not very good at being sick. I've been e-mailing back and forth with work all morning, trying to make sure I don't fall behind by a day. I'm also channel flipping, reading blogs, doing personal e-mail, etc. Aren't I supposed to be like sleeping or something?

This post is for Brier who wants me to post to test his aggregator. Everyone say hi to Chris! (who doesn't even update his blog, the lazy bastard.

Pictures of my rock star room at the Hotel Palomar in San Fran.

Today's Fun

Made it safely to San Fran this evening. Settling in to the hotel and then going to get to bed. Have to be up early to get started on setup and still be able to catch the Sox and Pats games (which are both on at 10 out here. I hate time zones.

Flight was easy, staying at the Hotel Palomar, way too classy for lil ol me :) More tomorrow.

I'm older today. Happy Birthday to the following as well:

Lynn
Vaughn
Jay

Happy Birthday Yesterday to:

Tim
Michelle

Yes, I know too many people with birthdays this weekend :)

Ahhh, slowly feeling accomplished. Been running around the house with cleaning products and a vacuum all day trying to get the place all cleaned up. Almost looking good at this point. Trying not to spend too much time in front of this damn machine or the TV and doing pretty well so far. A little more cleaning and this place might actually look like someone takes care of it.

I am on vacation this whole week. I figured since I had Monday off and I would have taken Friday off for my birthday, I might as well just take the whole week. Haven't had a vacation in a while, so I figured it would be nice to have nothing going on.

I'm not going away or anything, just getting some needed relaxing and stuff. I really hope to spend a lot of time catching up on life in general. Want to try and get all the little things I have been putting off for all too long done. I head back to San Francisco on Saturday for OracleWorld on Saturday, so I hope to head there with a clear head and with a feeling of accomplishment.

The biggest worry is I do what I did today which was a whole lot of nothing. Didn't answer the phone, played on the computer some, watched too much TV, etc. Tomorrow I definitely need to get up and get going as quickly as possible instead of getting comfortable in the house.

Inconceivably went off the air in the last few days. No fun.

This is post 600.

Ever notice when you have a long list of needs and wants, you have no money in which to get them?

Right now I _NEED_ a new cell phone. I needed a new one a year ago, now I am DESPERATELY in need of one. My current phone is all busted up, hardly works, loses signal constantly, battery only lasts 10 hours, etc. I probably am going to get the new Sanyo 8100, just need to find the extra $200. I _MAY_ have a hookup at the local Sprint store though, so I may be able to do it somewhat cheaper. You would think they would want to take care of someone who has been a customer for like 5 years.

Secondly, I really need a new server. Some things just take WAY too long. The current system is an old AMD K6-2 with like 128 megs of ram. Definitely not enough to serve all my e-mail, as well as this site. I should be able to get something for just a couple of hundred dollars here too. I wonder if my old MicroSystems credit card still works. I should find out. That has money on it :)

Those are the big two on the needs list. Next, I have the wants list. Well, besides the huge list of CDs, DVDs, books, PS2 games, etc that are on my Amazon Wishlist, I also need things like a TiVo, a bunch of furniture (entertainment center, night tables, lamps), kitchen stuff (new pots and pans, other such cooking stuff), a new WAP (as I blew mine up), a new CD changer, an iPod, some guitar stuff, a new TV, all sorts of random computer stuff (mostly hard drives) so I can get a bunch of old servers working here to set up some fun network stuff in the house (and keep the heating bills down), an AC, etc.

I really really really need to get my money in order and fast, so I can start knocking a bunch of this stuff off this very long list, starting with the needs stuff and moving slowly to the wants list.

Also, hopefully some fam will knock some of the things off the wants list next Friday :)

T-Shirt of the day

Oh boy, I need one of these shirts!

Someone is using one of my domains for the e-mail addresses of their spams. Very goddamn annoying. Been getting bounces all damn day on mails I am not even sending. Argh.

Halley thinks that GG has great timing. My current conspiracy theory is that she was the one who pulled the plug on the East Coast as she left.

Update: Starting to think this is the slow admission of guilt and it was done as revenge.

I just went for a walk around my neighborhood to drop something off. While walking back through my nice quiet neighborhood, I was thinking of random things on my mind and just enjoying the silence, being outside the house and enjoying thinking to myself. The biggest thing is I tend to do this at bed time, which is not good, cuz I sometimes get myself all worked up about something which causes me to not be able to sleep well. So, I think I may make an evening walk part of my routine. Just going out and walking for 15 or 20 minutes would probably help clear my mind some and let me get out of the house for a bit which would hopefully help me get some of my rather disordered life in to some better order.

deviantART: Liquid Courage Wallpaper by `lllo0o0olll

Well, the stalker turned about to be very harmless and only wanted to get me to my hotel (in a RATHER roundabout way) and then hang out. Was a rather mellow time, as I was exhausted and starving and she wasn't doing much better. Hopefully more fun as the week goes on.

On the Linux World show floor right now doing set up. Things are going really well so far. The Intel folks have been wonderfully helpful as always. I've pretty much got all my stuff set up, gonna grab some food soon and see if there is anything else I can help out with.

All done packing, got everything in to my suitcase, well, except for the normal morning stuff (bathroom stuff that I will need before I leave). Of course, after running around the house getting stuff and trying to remember everything that I needed for the trip, I am now wide awake (and have to be up in 6 1/2 hours). Not too bad yet, but if I can't get to sleep quick, I may be in trouble. I think I am gonna throw Daredevil in (again, I watched it this morning) and try and fall asleep.

I was a total slacker today, never left the couch. Watched some movies, TV and the Sox game. The problem? I totally forgot I was supposed to go out and buy headphones before my flight tomorrow. I'm getting the feeling there is going to be nowhere to buy a decent pair of headphones in the airport at 8AM. Argh. Will have to get some out in CA, so I can at least watch a movie on the flight back. Lukcily I do have some books to read on the way out.

to Cali to Cali

I'm off to San Francisco in the morning for Linux World SF. If you are in the are or are going to be at the show, stop by and say hi, I'll once again be hanging out in the Intel booth.

Also, my stalker is picking me up at the airport, so if I disappear, blame her. Also, please do it by Wednesday night as she is going away on Thursday. Don't want to miss my flight back to Boston on Friday.

the worst packer ever.

LWN: Things to see at LinuxWorld 2003

This article is completely incorrect. The thing to see at LinuxWorld is ME!

Just got some dinner from my pizza place. And with it came a new menu. On the new menu, a URL. Hmmm, I said. So, I went to the URL and found out ....

My pizza place now takes delivery orders online!!!!!!!

Woot! Even less human interaction! ;)

More idiots:

CNN.com - Vatican fights gay marriages - Jul. 31, 2003

Come on now. I mean, I was raised Catholic, was an altar boy, worked in the church for 4 years, hell, my Mom even teaches religion at a Catholic school these days, but this is freakin ridiculous. TWO YEARS writing a paper on why gay marriage is bad? How about 2 years writing a paper on why fucking little boys when you are a priest is bad? How about 2 years on why killing other people in the name of God is bad? There are plenty of much more appropriate topics these days to write papers on than why gay people are bad.

First off, they aren't! Secondly, why do you care? I think half the reason for this is so that half the priests don't leave the priesthood and go marry other guys. (And though this is a broad generalization, much of what I have seen first hand in priests makes me believe many many many of them are gay, to which I have no problem whatsoever with and neither should the Vatican.)

Next thing you know, Bush is going to be saying that his statements yesterday he was told by God and that's why he said them.

Ugh. Fuckin idiots ....

that our president is a fuckin idiot:

CNN.com - Bush wants marriage reserved for heterosexuals - Jul. 31, 2003

Can someone explain to me why girls where rings on what is supposed to be their wedding ring/engagement ring finger when they are neither married nor engaged?

Just tends to confuse boys. I know since its one of the first things I look at if I find a girl attractive. No need to deal with girls who are already well attached.

Someone needs to teach GG about timezones, she doesn't seem to understand them.

calling A-listers @ 2am while intoxicated :)

(yes, one, maybe two people will understand this)

Thank God.

Monday sucked. Let's go through the highlights:

a) Got nothing done at work
b) Got bitched at by a co-worker
c) Snapped back rather nastily at him
d) Sprained? my pinky while parking my car (don't ask)
e) Spilled soda all over my table and rug
f) Missed a call from my Uncle and found out that he is going away tomorrow, so won't get to talk to him soon
g) Service Engine Soon light came on in my car (though hopefully I have fixed that)
h) Forgot my breakfast this morning
i) Figured out where my finances stood, wept
j) Fought with my e-mail client all day. I think it crashed 7 times over the course of the day.

What a WONDERFUL way to start the week. Off to read some more HP5.

Can I tell you how freakin happy I am that it is pay day in 15 minutes?

Can I tell you how unhappy I am that I went through and figured out all my bills and all that money is virtually gone already?

Ugh, the ups and downs of the green stuff (well, one of the green things) everyone loves.

For once, reading the manual actually worked!

This morning while driving in, the Service Engine Soon light came on in my car. I freaked slightly, but finished my drive and pulled out the manual. After freaking me out for a few paragraphs, it said something along the lines of, if you have re-fueled lately, make sure the gas cap is on tight because this could cause the light to come on. Well, since I live in a neighborhood of a lot of, well, lets just call them hoodlums, I figured maybe someone had screwed with my cap. Low and behold, I walk around the car and it is loose. Whether it was hoodlums or me rushing at the tank last week, I don't know, but I screwed the cap back on tightly, so hopefully the problem is now fixed. Whew!

The funny part is I noticed last week I seemed to be using much more gas than I normally do. I bet it was because the damn cap wasn't on tight. Doh!

post 500. Scary, 200 all year last year, 300 already this year and its just over halfway done. Guess I am starting to like this weblog stuff.

The funny part about going by a nickname is that slowly your real name becomes secondary. I noticed this very obviously recently when I was playing on Google and could easily find my web page by searching for Skadz, but it didn't come up at all by searching on Ryan Skadberg. Just a lot of posts to various mailing lists over the years came up. So, as you will now notice, I have my real name in the banner. I figure if anyone from high school or college or something is looking for me, they will have a much easier time finding me by my real name rather than my nickname (even if most people who have known me since HS do know me by Skadz). Just a random thought late on a Sunday night.

CNN.com - Garbage Pail Kids set to return - Jul. 12, 2003:

"After being off the market for 15 years, a new series of the hugely successful stickers that entertained children in the mid-1980s with depictions of bodily functions will be released in August by The Topps Co."

Sweet! Now, I need to remember next time I am home to go looking for all my old ones. If these things hit again, I bet their would be a market for them again, which means some Ebay love would be in order.

I am just hoping that they didn't get destroyed in the flood that occurred in the closet in my old room at home.

Actually, I really should clean that whole closet out some time. There are TONS of baseball cards in there, which I probably could make a ton of money on. That would be a nice way to make up some of the cash I am down these days.

I was a fanatic when it came to baseball cards, spending all my money on them for a while. I have all sorts of un-opened packs of cards from the 80s and early 90s. I also have all kinds of better cards put away nicely in binders.

Now, where I might be able to fit all this stuff is a whole other issue.

Anyone remember this from SNL? I need one of those right now. Between smoking and being stuffed up from being sick, my lungs feel like crap, it would be nice to be able to clean them out right about now.

Well, this weekend is going to be filled with two of the three things in the title of the page. First off, I need to finish The Cluetrain Manifesto, I have about 30 pages left to go. Then, I plan on attempting to read and finish Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. So, lots of reading this weekend.

Also, have three movies to watch at some point, Bound, Phish - Live in Vegas, and Road to Perdition.

Also, I want to try out OpenGroupWare. I also want to do some playing with wikis this weekend. Have a bunch of thoughts of places to use them, but want to learn more about them. Also, I may finish up re-doing this site to match the look of the blog. I think I am also going to make the blog the top level page. Some other geekiness will probably occur as well.

Lastly, I definitely plan on jamming out some tunes. I hope to accomplish learning about 5 more songs this weekend. Also, I want to finish learning a few of the songs that I sorta half know right now.

The missing element to the weekend is my beloved Guinness. Been having a bit too much of it lately. Gonna save some money and try and just relax at home this weekend and not go out partying.

Should be a nice weekend if I can get all of this done.

How did alcoholic drinks get the name cocktails?

Many different versions of how it came to be, too bad they couldn't find one that is authoritative. Over the past year or so, I have started saying let's go out for cocktails myself. I think my Mom got be started. I guess its a little more grown up then, "Let's go get wasted", though that is usually what occurs when we got out for cocktails ;)

to kill a cat? Mine may not make it through the evening after she just nicely came very close (and the issue is still up for debate) broke my ONE fan and its 80+ outside and 90+ in here. Oh, and don't forget, in the attempt to fix the freakin fan, I now have krazy glue all over my freakin fingers and burnt one of my fingers. If this fan comes apart again, the cat is the broken blade up her ass. ARGH.

So, I guess the weekend is over. It'll officially be Monday in about 20 mins :)

Had a good weekend. Wednesday (yes, the weekend started on Wednesday), I went out for Bogie's birthday. I knew no one but he going in, so I was rather nervous going out. I definitely had fight or flight instincts on high. In the end it was a good time. Went to two places not in my normal bar scene (though a buddy manages one of them ;) Was nice. Met a number of cool people. Hopefully hang out with them some more some time soon.

Thursday I went to Pearl Jam as I already mentioned.

Friday, I lounged around most of the day and slept too much. At night, I met up with a friend who was in town and headed to the bar. It was actually pretty crowded which I was suprised about for the fourth.

Saturday, went to the bar early and then headed to see the boys at the Harp. Got too drunk, but nothing stupid. It was an alright night, good to see some people I haven't seen in a bit.

Today, I've been feeling crappy all day. I was supposed to go gig with my friend, but that didn't work. This is just not working out well for me.

All in all, I am very much in a rut lately. Seems like I am doing the same old shit with the same old people. Wednesday was nice because it was something different, but other than that, it was just another weekend. I definitely need to work on that. I have DT this week and I think I am going to lay low otherwise. Definitely need to start finding other things to do. Actually gotta start doing more at home and not going out. Start saving some money and doing other house type stuff. The guitar playing has been nice. I need to keep up on that. I should probably start doing the PS2 thing again. At least it is something besides drinking. I also have to learn to step away from the TV. Spending much too much time in front of it.

OK, enough ranting from me.

SARS contained across the globe / But World Health Organization warns new outbreaks may occur

Hmmm, how is that possible when I think I caught it in Boston last night? Yeah, I know, prolly just a cold, but still, I usually blame the latest disease for my sickness. I had ebola like a dozen times :)

Retrohacker.com - Nostalgia for the geek of yesteryear!

Just had to plug my buiddy's new site :)

til its gone. I really didn't realize how much I enjoy my daily IM banter with a buddy of mine until he got laid off last week and is now offline for the time being. It was nice when I was bored at work or had something random to say to be able to send him an IM and we would chat for a few minutes here or a few minutes there. Now I actually have to call and stuff, which is just not as fun or easy.

GOD DAMNIT, IT'S FREAKIN 92.5 in my living room right now

Coming home at 4AM to the fire alarm in your building going off is NO FUN

Returned to Boston yesterday afternoon after a week in NY for some home time and the SIA trade show.

Had a nice relaxing weekend on Long Island last weekend. Saw Dad for Father's Day. Had a good dinner and hung out. Good to see my dad. We don't really talk all that much these days, so the chances I do get to see him are nice. The two of us are both very bad at making phone calls, keeping in touch, etc, so it just leads to the two of us not talking all that much.

Headed in to NYC at an un-skadzly hour on Monday morning. Headed straight to the Hilton New York to set up for the show. We were in the Intel booth for this show. Set up went rather smoothly considering it was just me from Egenera. The Intel folks were rather helpful. I was pretty much up and running in about 4 hours, which I think is a record. Sadly, we had a partner doing some exhibiting on our machine and they had issues, so I ended up hanging out until about 5 or so before I gave up and headed to my hotel.

The show itself was pretty good. Talked to some good people. The scanner for the badges was rather inconsistent, so we didn't get as much scanning in as we had hoped for. Hopefully some people we talked to will contact us if we didn't get their information. A lot of people seemed very interested in our technology and saw the power of what it could do in the datacenter. I also see that we are slowly but steadily getting more and more brand recognition, which is a very nice thing. Hopefully this trend will continue.

This show was an interesting one because my trade show manager had some family stuff to deal with, so I played not only technical guy and booth staff, but also trade show manager for this show. Luckily, there were no major issues, so it was an easy job for me.

As for NY, I didn't get out much. Having no trade show manager meant I was pretty much in NYC by myself. I pretty much stuck to the show floor and my hotel for most of the week. These shows do a very good job of wiping me out. Almost every night, I returned to my room and took a nap due to being so tired.

I did get out to Virgil's one night with a number of friends I have known for longer than I care to think about since I know most of them from online :) Food was awesome as usual, though it was a rather quick get together because some people had to catch a train back to Philly.

Show break down was the only bad thing the whole week. Show ended at 12noon on Thursday. Our boxes to pack everything up showed up at 6:30PM. Argh! Sitting around waiting is no fun. Did get packed up in about 30 mins though :)

While I was in NY, Mom took my car in to get tuned-up. Found out that there is an issue with my rotors. The mechanic said they should still be under warranty, so I should go to GM to get them fixed. Oh goody, something else that I will have no time to do.

Took a later ferry than I had hoped to on Friday due to the cat deciding hiding was much more fun than going home. Argh. Of course, she is now the happiest cat alive that she is back in her house. Dumb cat.

My biggest worry about coming home as late as I did was rush hour traffic. Not traffic itself, but the exit I needed to get off to stop by UPS. Luckily, for once, the exit was empty. I got lost about 4 times trying to find the UPS location, but once I did, I picked up my box of goodies from Amazon that I had ordered with my gift certificate that I won from Ximian. I now have 6 new books, 2 new CDs and a new DVD. Yay!

Mom, as always bought me stuff for my apt. I now have a toaster and a kettle. Will be nice to reclaim my pot that I use as a kettle right now. The toaster will make morning bagel much more of a possibility too. Yay! Thanks Mom!

Should be a rather slow weekend, as I really have to wait for my expense check from this past week until I really have any money. Tuesday, Guster is doing a free show in Boston, so I will probably go to see that and then probably stop by for a bit and see Stu.

Now Playing: Ra - From One (Thumbs up on this one!)

On Deck: Audioslave - Audioslave

Wired News: Orrin Hatch: Software Pirate?: The senator's site makes extensive use of a JavaScript menu system developed by Milonic Solutions, a software company based in the United Kingdom. The copyright-protected code has not been licensed for use on Hatch's website.

All I have to say is BAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAAHAH

Jackass

Only I can make potential partner contacts while at the hotel lounge having drinks :)

enough posting for me tonight. I think I posted enough for myself and other people who have been really quiet today. :)

That I am sitting in one of world's largest cities, the one that never sleeps, blogging and being bored instead of actually going out and enjoying myself. Hopefully going to meet up with some people over the next few days, but tonight has just be a lazy night. The WiFi access in the room is nice though, sitting on the bed, headphones on, playing with the computer.

I think I should add a guitar category sometime soon.

I'm totally aching to play some guitar this evening, but didn't drag it in to the city wit me due to not really having any clue of how much free time I will have. Looks like tonight will be the only night with free time, but still I wish I could strum out a few chords right now and learn some new songs.

Since deciding about a month ago that I was going to try seriously to start playing again, I have been doing rather good. Usually playing every day for about two hours. Learning new songs all the time. Its amazing the ways your fingers can bend and move after some practice.

I've been playing just acoustic guitar due to not really having an amp at home. I used to have one, it went away, don't ask, its a long story. Considering I listen to a lot of music that is electric in nature, I do think I am going to have to rectifiy the situation at some point in the near future. Hopefully I can save a couple of bucks here and there and buy something nice.

Maybe I should take the path Dave took and quit smoking and then buy myself a nice amp in a few months. Wouldn't that be nice (though most likely impossible).

Hopefully this Sunday I am going to bring my guitar down to my favorite hangout and jam a bit with a buddy of mine. Really gotta get some pratice in this weekend to make sure I am ready to do that. He sent me a nice list of songs to play with him. Just gotta make sure I know the changes pretty good. I'm getting good at playing and not having to think about it, but since a number of these songs are new to me, I will have to work on them.

I've even gotten to the point where I can almost deal with singing and playing at the same time. Another buddy of mine joked a few weeks back that once I knew 50 songs, he would put me on the sub list. Would be very funny if that ever happened, since I have been going down and seeing many of these guys play for many years to start filling in for them here and there :) Though I doubt I will ever get to that point, but you never know. I probably should practice playing while drinking if I ever hope to get to that point as well :)

I'd almost love to take some voice lessons at some point. I can almost sing, even can hold a tune most of the time, but it would be good to get some level of professional teching if I ever really wanted to do it in public on a normal basis.

OK, enough rambling about my non-existant musical career. I'm much better off living vicariously through all my rock star friends :) Hopefully one of them will actually make it someday, so I can say I knew them when :)

Ahhhhh, my hotel has WiFi, so I can stay connected when not at the show. Yay!

I'm bored. Had all my stuff up and running for the trade show like 3 hours ago, waiting for someone else to finish so I can go pass out in my hotel room, as I have been up since 5:30 this morning (which is HOURS before I normally get up).

I'm at home on Long Island. Headed in to the city tomorrow for the SIA trade show. Will be working in Intel's booth. Since we don't have our own booth, hopefully it won't be as crazy as some other shows. Heading back to LI on Thursday and then probably back to Boston on Friday. Thinking I will head up to New Hampshire on Sat to see the boys, but we'll see, that's a long time away.

Heading out to dinner with Dad in a bit. Really should hit the sack EARLY tonight, as I have to be on a train at 6:18 or something in the morning. Scary scary.

Posting will probably be scattered this week.

You know you go to the same Subway too much when you don't have to order.

You know you go to the same McDonalds too much when they change their menu, you don't realize it and they still know what you meant when you order :) (and you are at the drive through ;)

You know you go to the same bar too much when the manager apologizes to you for not having any Guinness.

Ugh, I need to find some new places to go :)

Cambridge votes for ban on smoking

And another town bites the dust. I guess Sommerville has already passed a ban for Oct 1st as well. This sucks. Oct 1st is going to be a bad time for it to start though because the weather is going to start to be crappy and smokers are just not going to go out. That's the SINGLE nice thing about the Boston ban, at least its the summer and I can go outside without a jacket or anything to smoke.

This is the part of the article I like the least:

He said the Cambridge ban could force bars and restaurants that oppose outlawing smoking to support a statewide ban, given the prospect of losing customers to other communities.

''Now that it affects them, they are suddenly advocates for a statewide ban,'' he said.

Oh, ok, this is a good idea, let's make the different bar and restaurant owners fight against each other. I just don't think this politicing at all.

This is definitely the post of the day, I almost spit my juice all over my keyboard when I read it :)

I got home an hour ago, since then I have:

filled and started the dishwasher
cleaned out the cat litter
upgraded all 3 of my sites to MT 2.64
updated the tour dates on dreamt
posted about a new venture of the band on dreamt
paid two bills
put fresh batteries in and re-sync'ed my palm
posted what I worked on today to my work blog

Man, that was a nice and fulfilling hour. Now to keep it going.

Dave is getting picked on over at Boston Common. Funny part about it, I almost did the same thing this morning. Was very much thinking, what the hell is Cape Cod? Is that something like the Cape?

Timmie because he just had to go and remind me that on nice days like today (yes, its a miracle, its actually nice out today), that all the little cutie yuppie girls are wearing summer clothes and all looking very tasty. That is probably THE biggest thing I miss by not working downtown anymore.

After closing Clarke's last night (yes, I should not close bars on Sunday, I know), I jumped in a cab sitting at the cab stand and headed home. I get to my house, its like $7, I hand the guy a $20 and ask for $10 back. He had no change. Asked if I had anything else, I said 2 singles and 2 twenties. He said, well, I guess give me the 2 singles, not your fault.

Now, HOW as a cab driver, do you sit at a can stand, knowing you have no change and not either a) drive to a convenience store and get some change, b) ask one of the other 20 cabbies sitting there if they have some change, or c) tell the potential passenger that you don't have any change right now, so they need exact change (which would have sent me to another cab). So, instead, he loses money on the ride instead of just losing the ride completely.

Just thought it was wierd and rather dumb.

Been a lazy day today, recovering from all the fun at the Funway last night.

I went and spent my $100 Amazon gift certificate from Ximian. Got a bunch of books, CDs and a DVD. Can't wait for that package to show up.

I also finished up some more of my guitar songs project. I hopefully will fix a few more things and then maybe even release it as Open Source. Just have to add some more functions and clean up the web interface some. It is usable now, so I am trying to use it as much as possible.

I played a bunch more guitar today too, but more on that later.

Trying to decide if I am going to go out tonight. There is a going away party for a friend of mine from the bar. I really should go. The weather kind of sucks, so my inspiration is kind of lacking right now.

Sorta watching Vanilla Sky right now, but not totally paying attention to it.

with not reading much in your aggregator for a few days:

I now have 37 web browser windows up with random stuff I wanted to read more closely.

Looks like today is going downhill quick for work :)

cuz then I could have at least washed my car in the rain and felt like I accomplished something today. Disasterous day at work, too late to back out, its going to be a LONG WEEK. Ugh.

Only in today's digital world would the question When is it appropriate to send a thank-you note via email rather than the mail? be asked. I just find it amusing. I do so much of my communication over email I have no clue of why it would be bad to send electronic thank yous.

Cuz I finally can! I just got home from my last dentist appointment in a series that has taken me 14 months. I went from gross teeth rotting out of my mouth to a perfect smile in just $5000 :) It took a lot of work and MANY MANY appointments, but now my smile is looks perfect. Yay me!

A wondeful link from anything but ordinary. I could use one of these hooked up to the washer and dryer in my place. It would save me MANY trips up and down the stairs I wonder if I can get any of my MIT alumni friends to tell me how they got this working :)

I think its time to turn the volume on my headphones down. I have had like 4 or 5 people come in to my cube without me noticing whatsoever today.

Burner must be on for water to boil.

I've always wanted one, maybe this would be a cool way to get one.

The last few days I have picked up my guitar again. Actually even learned a song or two. The problem is that I get very un-organized with my practice. End up playing some stuff I have known forever and sorta learning some new stuff, but not really and then getting bored within a few weeks and the guitar ends up back under the bed.

So, this time, I think I am going to try a different approach. I'm going to code my guitar practice. I hear songs all the time that I think I can learn pretty easily, but never remember them later. I am going to write a program to keep track of those songs. And then, in the program, link to their tablature, maybe even an MP3 of the song that I make, and then a progress meter of some sort. I figure if I can get this all organized, I can really start learning some songs, maybe even joining some of my friends when they play at bars. Should be some pretty easy coding, which I don't do a lot because I don't find many projects to work on (or think of awesome ones that are going to take tons of time to code and I end up just thinking about them rather than actually working on them). This should be a couple of hour project initially to get me up and going. I figure I will use a database backend, create a form to submit the initial song, then have a page to edit the properties of the song (tab location, MP3 location, length of song, etc) and then a page to update progress. I figure I can then say, hey, I learned 4 new songs this week and having locations of MP3s, I can actually even test myself.

This sounds like it will be fun for 2 hobbies at once!

USB Memory Watch

Though I did get a little 64M USB Memory "keychain" at the EMC Techn Summit, this would definitely be one step further :)

I just cut my hand on a potato chip. Ugh.

It's a beautiful day, sunny and mid-70s.

There's a Yankees/Red Sox game tonight @ Fenway.

They are tied for first.

I think it's time to go beat up the IT Director here (who is also a good friend of mine) and steal his tickets for tonight.

Got How to Fake A Hard Day at the Office from a friend. Good tips on how to be a slacker :)

Happy Birthday, Norway!

Well, Anders says its Norway's birthday today. I guess since I am half Norwegian I should go out and celebrate :) (any excuse to drink, that's my motto!) He's got a bunch more information over at his site if you want to read up some more.

I think a bit of age discrimination is at play here, Amazon only sells Harry Potter Socks in children's sizes. No fair! I want a pair.

my anal retentive attention to detail never got me anywhere.

From Ximian:

You are the winner of The "Genetic Problem" Award: The person
reporting the thorniest, most complex bug. You have won a
$100 gift certificate to Amazon.com.

(Bonus points if you can name the movie the first line is paraphrased from)

me on fourth floor, machines on first just doesn't work for me. Too many stairs.

I am definitely a slow starter when it comes to the morning. I got in almost 2 hours ago and I am just now getting to real work. Had to check email, respond to a number of them, read blogs, check in with some people, etc and now 2 hours later I am finally getting to work (and its after noon). If I was in earlier, less people would have emailed me, so email would be quicker, blogs would be more empty and I would just get a better start. This is definitely a new leaf I need to work on turning over.

Well, it was a slow weekend this weekend due to my not thinking I had any money (a story for another time). Friday I did the CB show and then Sissys. Yesterday I spent pretty much my whole day in front of the computer updating my machine to Gnome 2.2.1. No more snapshots. My machine is good and clean now. Only Evolution and Red Carpet in Snapshot mode.

Today, I did much of the same. Playing on the computer, cleaning out e-mail, etc. Did some house cleaning stuff too. Place looks decent enough to live in. I need to do some more laundry this week and do a little more cleaning and the place will really look nice.

I do have my INBOX down to 7 mails though, which is rather impressive for me. Hopefully I will respond to all of them tomorrow and get all caught up.

I also spent a bunch of the day thinking about a couple of upcoming projects to try and make me some extra cash on the side. I am sick to death of being broke and I figure I should finally try and do something about it. I have one possible site work project for a friend and then I have another project for myself which will hopefully make some money. Need to talk to a number of people about some ideas on that one and hopefully will get started on it this week. If all goes well, it could mean all my hosting fees paid for and then some. That would be very nice :)

The one bad thing about staying in last night, is I stayed up WAY WAY WAY too late and now am not tired at all. I really want to get in to work early this week, so I can get home at a decent hour and try working on some of this stuff. I think I may pop a melatonin soon if I don't get any more tired.

OK, so Sunday night, I got 2 hours sleep, flew home to Boston, took about a 45 minute nap and then was up til 3 or so, then woke up at 7:30. Spent much of the day half asleep, came home, fell asleep for about 30 mins (missed the first half of AI, woke up, and now at 1AM am wide awake again. How does 8 hours of sleep in 2 days translate in to wide awake? Shoot me now.

OK, I'm back from Vegas, lots to catch up on, be back soon :)

Manning a booth at a trade show on 2 hours sleep is just not good.

I'm off to Sin CIty today for 8 days (trouble) for the EMC Tech Summit and a little vacation. Posting will probably be sportadic (unless there is WiFi) over the next week due to debauchery :) Have a good week!

Man, I am really getting stuff done today. Since my last update, I have gone to the store, started the dishwasher, made lunch, cleaned the bedroom (and then messed it up again with laundry from the closet), put a load of laundry in, put a second load in a basket, and cleaned the lint off my new fleece. Yay me! Now, I just need to do a couple more loads of laundry and pack and then I may give myself permission to go out tonight :)

A lesson I remember every once in a while :) I stayed in last night knowing I needed to at least have a little money for my upcoming trip (more on that later). Woke up this morning, slacked for a bit, but now I am in full productive mode. Kitchen and living room are all clean, CDs are all organized, dishwasher loaded, I'm doing good so far. Now its off to the hell that is the bedroom.

Much like Jeremy, I must have a clean house before going away. I guess I am strange too :)

Well, with a ton of help from the IT guys at work and some more help from Duck, my laptop is back and happy again, yay! Seemingly nothing important lost, thank God.

WHY did my computer have to decide today was a good day for it to go south? I have known there was a hard drive issue for a little while now, but since it was not anywhere near consistent, I haven't decided to have it checked out. Well, today, I booted up (after a crash last night) and now it is getting stuck on recovering the journal of one of the file systems, seemingly hitting what is a bad sector. I am leaving for a week on Sunday and I can't be without my laptop. ARGH. Hopefully my wonderful IT guys can get it all fixed up.

Recording Industry Goes After Students Over Music Sharing

This bothers me greatly. Firstly, why would you sue a kid for millions of dollars? Do you really think you are ever going to see any of that? It will all be settled out of court anyways, so, why even bother? Kids will be kids, why does this change when it comes to file swapping? First off, how is this REALLY all that different from kids borrowing each other's CDs? I mean, I have a ton of MP3s, most are from my own CDs, that I make available to myself online. Every once in a while a friend will want to hear a track from a certain CD and I will send them the track. If they like what they hear, they go out and buy the CD. This is a good thing. This makes people want to hear new and different music and try out new things. If people hear music they like, it means MORE, not less sales for the record industry. As I mentioned in an earlier post, they need to find a better way to incorporate new technologies rather than try to kill them. Much like they wanted to pretty much make the sale of blank tapes illegal, they are trying to do the same with file sharing. In the end it is very much the same thing. People hear music they like, they go out and buy CDs, go to concerts, buy merchandise at concerts, etc. I love how the RIAA keeps blaming file sharing when at the same time, they released less albums than the year before, they are putting out a LOT of crap, they are putting out virtually the same music by very similar artists constantly. The solution is to put out more and better music, not try to play the blame game. I heard something (and I am never going to remember where I heard it) that someone is now creating a program to listen to what is currently popular and design music that sounds like that music in order for new popular music to come out. How sad is that? I mean, today's radio stations play enouigh of the same crap over and over again, why can't we let new bands come out and see what they have to offer rather than offering us the same stuff packaged differently over and over. I think this is one of the reasons I love the jam band scene so much. Not only can I see 10 different bands that are completely different, but I can see the same band 10 different times and have a very different experience each time. Bands like Phish are doing a WONDERFUL job of dealing with file sharing, they are just making all their shows available online just 48 hours after the show. So, not only are they making money from people going to the show, but those same people are then going home and downloading the same show at a high quality so they can enjoy the experience over and over again. This is innovation, not an excuse, much like the RIAA is doing. OK, enough rambling from me.

I have been rather chatty today.

I hit 20k miles on my car yesterday. Took me just over 13 months. Is that bad?

I swear my desk was clean as could be when I walked in yesterday, how in 2 days did it become a disaster again? Argh!

Update: OK, wasn't as bad as I thought, just needed to throw some stuff away and move some wires around. Much better again.

I feel like crap, I'm exhausted, I just want to go to bed, but gotta at least make it through 24.

and I won. Got up WAY too late this morning. Though I was up at 8, I couldn't drag my ass out of bed until 9:30. Not good.

Marathon weekend was fun. Too much alcohol, too many cigarettes, not enough food, luckily not terribly much drama. Doing 5 nights of drinking in a row is never a good thing though. I am pretty much broken and coming to the realization I may be getting too old to pull this crap.

My socks smell. I just thought everyone should know that :)

Go sell drugs for me :)

I'm not the only one who lovethis guy.

Nate is not the only one who get get his name on an O'Reilly Cover.

Monday morning and realizing you are still drunk from the night before is just plain bad.

I hate women.

The sky is blue instead of gray.

There is nothing wet or frozen falling from the sky.

There is a big yellow ball (which appears to be made of fire) up in the sky.

Should I be worried?

I will get my company to send me to this next year come hell or high water.

So, I got all domestic last night and it was actually really nice.

I got home early to wait for Peapod to show up with groceries. They were supposed to be there between 6 and 8. I was hoping they would not be 2 hours late like last time. They showed up around 6:30. This helped make the night very productive.

I made a nice dinner of steak and steamers for myself, did 2 loads of laundry, 2 loads of dishes, cleaned out the cat litter, cleaned out the fridge, took out the garbage and even picked up around the house some.

So nice to have clean clothes, clean dishes, no garbage and food in the house.

You'd think so, with the way the weather has been here in the Northeast recently.

<Homer>Steeeeeaaaakkkkkkk</Homer>

Hmmm, I am thinking a road trip may be in order for the week after July 4th. Dream Theater, Queensryche, and Fates Warning are going out on tour together and are playing the Northeast that week. Currently the shows from the 5th through the 12th include Montreal, Wallingford, CT, Holmdel, NJ, Wantagh, NY, and Wilmington, DE. Hopefully a Boston date will get added in too. So, that would mean 6 shows in 7 days, 2 countries, 5 states. Sounds like fun to me. The $50 or so a ticket could hurt though ;)

It probably won't last, but the coolest thing about coming in early? You get to LEAVE early. I'm gonna be on my couch by 5 :) This rocks.

Somehow I don't think I am gonna survive this day. Due to the time change and sleeping in yesterday, I couldn't fall asleep until after 3AM and then went and woke up at 6AM. Three hours sleep really is not enough for a day of work, especially when I will have to drive home in the snow tonight. I want this day to end before it starts. No fun.

Update: Yeah, this is gonna be wild, at 9:05 I had already fixed a machine that was having problems and had a set of tests running. Scary.

As the guy said on SportsCenter last evening, can whomever pissed off Mother Nature, please give her a call and apologize? I'm sick of this white stuff falling out of the sky.

Ahhhhhh, very nice. I spent much of the day today getting my computer back to the state I wanted it in. I was running Ximian's Gnome 2.2 (Snapshots) before I upgraded to RH 8 and everything worked nicely. Well, after the upgrade a number of programs stopped working :( I finally spent almost the whole day today getting Gnome 2.2 up and running on my machine and got all my programs working again. Hopefully this week, I will spend a bunch of time getting things all up to Gnome 2.2.1 released version while I wait for Ximian Desktop 2.0 to come out. The best part of this work, is my aggregator FINALLY works again. Turns out it was probably not a gnome issue, but I did figure out where the issue was :) Yay! News again!

I just noticed while sitting here working on my computer that the sun is still shining bright and its 6 at night. I love daylight savings :)

Man, is this war just a LITTLE over covered by the media? I just heard this one CNN: "So and so reports on a wounded Iraqi soldier found by the CNN camera crew." WHAT?!?!?! Why is the CNN crew finding soldiers? Shouldn't the area be 100% secure before news crews go wandering around? Wow, just blows me away.

Can someone please tell me who the FUCK gave Mother Nature permission for this weather? It was 65 on Saturday and now its 30 and SNOWING AGAIN. This is just not fair. I just got over a cold going from the cold weather to the warm and now I am gonna have to suffer through another one, I know I am. Argh.

Well, I have been a bit lazy with this thing lately. Basically just been very busy with work. This weekend was fun. Friday, I did the normal Rack and Sissys thing. Nothing all that special. I did see my friend who had taken some pictures of mine to get framed and got them back. They look awesome, I'm psyched.

Yesterday (and today), I was wicked lazy during the day.

Last night, I went out with the guys from Central Basement to send off their sound guy Jeff who has decided to retire from the job. We went to the Sky Bar in Sommerville first to see Bionic. These guys are good. They are rather heavy which was very cool. I bought their CD and its awesome. Definitely a band that people should chek out if you see them playing.

We then headed over to The Harp and saw Drop Dead Sexy. These guys were interesting. They were all over the map on what they were playing. Some of it, I liked, some of it, I really didn't like. The interesting part was that all of the guys seemed to be very versatile. The singer would let someone else sing and play trumpet, and then the sax player would rap and then sing GNR. Very interesting.

Over all a really fun night and not all that bad a weekend.

Does this thing still work?

Though I have had MANY issues with Fleet in the past, I have to say, I LOVE Homelink (their online account management stuff). I sent out 11 payments on Wednesday. Nine of them have already cleared! For someone like me, who likes to procrastinate, its nice to know that I can send thing out at the zero hour and places can still get them on time.

I hate having to make crappy decisions. Due to be sick and knowing I have to go to work tomorrow and then have to drive to NY tomorrow, I had to make the decision to not to go to Dave Matthews and Tim Reynolds acoustic tonight. Possibly a once in a lifetime opportunity. Crap!

Much like 9/11, I am glued to my TV again. I just can't get enough news. At least I am just watching one channel (so far) unlike 9/11 where I was flipping between all the different news channels. It's much like a car wreck, you don't want to look, but you just have to.

I'm starting to get sick. I blame Cheyenne. And since she is 3000 miles away, the only way she could have given it to me is via the Internet. :)

Ignore me, just helping him test.

Jeremy Zawodny's blog: My TrackBacks are Broken

when you spend like 2 hours compiling something and then realize you missed an option and have to start ALL over again? Argh ....

Hope everyone enjoys my saint's day today :) Don't drink toooooo much :)

Though it is not as warm as promised for today so far, I just checked the forecast for tomorrow and its gonna be 55-60 for National Amatuer Drinking Day (aka St Patrick's Day). I will be spending my day indoors with a Guinness in my hand :)

Ahhhh, today I feel back to normal :)

I worked from home, I smoked too much and I wrote 1000 lines of code. Ahhh, just like the old days :)

So, I got a bunch of mail at work today. Three things came:

a) Oracle Magazine. Most tech mags go home, this one comes here, why? I don't remember.
b) A credit card application. Who the fuck is sending me credit card applications at work? Argh. My credit sucks, don't you know this by now?
c) A package from Syncsort. Months (AND MONTHS) ago, I filled out a survey thing for SyncSort. And today, I recieved a shiny new Leatherman. I think its closest to the PST. Very cool! I had one of these years ago and lost it along the way. Now, I just have to remember to take it OUT of my bag before flying or else it will QUICKLY get taken away.

My house is currently a disaster area. Most of this is due to the fact that I was away for most of last week and then busy/lazy for the weekend. I got home too late tonight to get cleaning, so hopefully I will do some catching up on cleaning tomorrow.

The one other factor to this mess is the new game my cat likes to play. The rules go like this:

1) Skadz is in a rush in the morning, so he forgets to close his sock drawer.
2) Cracker decides that all the socks in the sock drawer would look much better in a nice pattern on the floor and down the hall.

Argh!

Someone put up a page called Rock Tragedy. When I initially saw this page, I thought it was going to be a tribute to the people who died and were injured in Rhode Island a few weeks ago.

When I got to the page, I was shocked to see it was a page basically saying that the people who died in Rhode Island deserved to die and they died because of their rock n roll lifestyle.

Growing up Catholic, though I don't practice regularly these days, I think it is SICK that someone could use a tragedy like The Station as propaganda to the cause of believing in God. Religious zealots like this make me ill. I have many friends who I go to shows with who head to church every Sunday, without fail.

This bothers me even more now that I know people who were involved in this. Both were very good guys who just loved music, much like I and many of my other friends do.

So, to anyone who thinks using something like this to change people's minds about religion should know, the only change you are going to make in their mind is to turn them away from it even farther.

I think my airport karma is finally getting fixed. After way too many times of getting on planes and getting searched at pretty much EVERY check point, I finally made a full round trip without getting checked more than the regular security check point. I think I finally have the whole thing down to a science. I _MAY_ be going to Vegas in April, but if not, I don't have any trips planned for the near future, so I guess I won't be able to test out this science for a while.

Though my sister and her boyfriend set a date for their wedding a few weeks ago, they were not officially engaged until night before last. She called me last night to let me know. Congratulation to her. Sad that my sister who is three years younger than me getting married long before me (well, unless I meet someone and get married REAL quick). The date is set for next June. I guess I better start saving money now for a gift :)

Got in to the office at 10:15 today, found out I had someone waiting for me since 10. No one ever felt the need to MENTION to me that this person was coming, luckily I sorta knew it may be happening.

Doing support for our UK guys for a demo tomorrow. Already 7 their time, so this means that they are probably headed towards panic mode. (Just got an email from them and they are almost there, yay!)

Then to top it all off, ITS SNOWING LIKE A MOFO. Saying 4-6 inches, already been a HUNDRED car pile up down on the South Shore. Going to be a fun 3 hour ride home today.

Can I go back to 80 and sunny please?

Due to the wonderful world of WiFi, I found out this afternoon that I did lose an acquiantance in the Rhode Island tragedy last week. A follow phone call also let me know that another guy that I know pretty well was badly burned in the same incident. It messed with my day pretty bad. I think once I get back to reality, this is going to hit me even harder. I would like the Pickett and the Christina families to know I have both of them very much in my mind right now. If either of these families read this an there is anything I can do, please contact me. Matty and Joe are both people I know on some level and any help I can provide, I am more than willing to.

One of the nice things I like about Orlando is that I can be nice to people (saying hello, etc) I see in the hotel and whatever and do not get funny looks :)

I made it to Orlando in one piece. After getting up much later than I wanted and having a cab that smelled of gas so bad I thought I was going to be sick, the rest of the trip down actually turned out rather smooth. I actually made it through a whole airport without being stopped once!! Yes, this is amazing for me, I usually get stopped each and every time.

Once getting to the hotel, I called the other person I am down here with and we met up and headed over to the convention center. Setting up the booth was very much the blind leading the blind. Neither of us had set up this booth before (I usually only go to shows when we have the big booth and the Nth Degree guys set up most of that, I just need to set up my machine). We got everything up and running. The Internet connection in the booth was the next challenge. After huntind down where my wire went, I saw that the the hub I was plugged in to wasn't powered on. I flipped on the power strip it was attached to and everything went smoothly from there.

Last night was a reception, so there was beer and food on the floor. Makes it a little easier to deal with people when they have a cocktail in there hand. I bumped in to an Oracle guy I have done some work with and talked with some potential partners. No real hardcore leads so far last night, but we did talk to a few people.

It seems like we have really cool people at the booths around us, which is nice. Will make dealing with the slow points of the day a little easier, rather than just having to talk to the two other people in my booth over and over again. Not that they are bad people or anything, but 10 hours a day together for 4 days, you tend to run out of things to talk about :)

After the show ended, we caught the shuttle back to the hotel, changed and went to dinner. We went to a place in the Mercado, though I don't completely remember the name of it. Neat place, all the waiter and waitresses sing opera-like songs between serving tables. Had some good food and a bottle of wine. Headed back to the hotel, caught up on some email, and then headed to bed.

Slept for shit last night, as I tend to do in unfamiliar beds. Hopefully tonight will mean some better sleep. Ok, I am supposed to meet people in 15 mins and I have yet to shave, iron or shower. Uh oh! I think there is WiFi on the floor (or so the rumor is), so if I get that working, I will be back later, maybe even with some pictures.

Well, actually, just gonna be in his neighborhood. I'm off to Orlando in the morning for work. Hopefully I will have some good Internet connectivity, but if not, I will probably only be around sporadically the next few days. Have a good week all.

I plain suck at packing. I always end up with WAY more than I need. I just finished, well, almost finished and now somehow have like 7 or 8 days worth of outfits for a 4 day, 3 night trip. Ooops. I think I need to go back in and figure out what I REALLY need.

And the posts just keep on coming ....

Allen gives me no love. :(

I just got word a little while ago that a good friend of mine is headed to the Middle East to serve. This makes me very nervous. I really don't know how I feel about this war right now and having good friends involved in it scares me every worse. I hope everything works out ok. Make it home safe, JJ.

This past Thursday, I was called for jury duty. As is the case EVERY day, I woke up late. Not too late luckily. I showered and dressed quickly and headed out. To make sure that I was going to be on time, I jumped a cab and headed downtown. I got there 20 mins before necessary, so I stopped and grabbed a soda. I headed in, went through all the metal detection fun and headed to the jury room. Once handing in my form and getting a number, I sat down. I was in group 10. People continued to fill in until after 8:30, even though we were supposed to be there by 8. I guess I didn't need to worry that much. Right around 9, we were told there was a judge on the way to give us some instructions. He showed, talked quickly, saying there were lots of potential trials today and having so many people here could make them settle quickly. I found that to be interesting, but I guess that is very true. If you KNOW you are going to start trial that day and there are definitely jurors for it, you may decide to take a plea or something. After the judge left, we watched a movie for about 20 minutes which pretty much went over the process of being a juror. After that, they nicely gave us a 30 minute break, which I used to go grab a couple of smokes and make some calls. Shortly after the break they called the first 8 groups. Whew! Well, that didn't last long, as my group and 3 others got called about 20 mins later. As is ALWAYS the case, I ended up on a jury. It was a civil case, which to me, is better than criminal as you don't have to worry about putting someone away. The case was a girl who fell in a restaurant and was suing the restaurant for negligience (sp?). It was about 12:30 by the time the case started. The nice thing we learned early on is that this judge only sees over court from 9-1 unless the jury is deliberating. So, we heard the opening arguements and were let go for the day.

The next day, I got up on time, so I took the T down to the courthouse. I got in around 8:30. Court started promptly at 9. We heard 2 witnesses. One for each side. Besides a 20 min or so break around 11, that went til noonish. After that, the 2 lawyers gave their closing statements. This put us to about 1. Because we were deliberating, we were allowed to go past 1 (which I think everyone was happy about, as they didn't want to come back for a third day). We had some lunch delivered, so we ate sandwiches and deliberated. After a quick vote, we were close. From what some of the people on the fence said, we got a clarification from the judge. After hearing the clarification, we were decided. We found for the defendant. Afterwards, the judge came in and spoke with us for a little bit and we were released. We got out around 3. Not bad at all.

All in all, a good experience. I'm two for two now. The first time I got called, I ended up on a criminal jury. That time, I ended up being an alternate, so I didn't get to go through the deliberations that time. It's an interesting process to see at work. At least you know that the justice system somewhat works. I definitely won't say it always does. Well, at least I don't have to do this again for at least 3 years (it was 5 this time).

A few days away from the blog due to jury duty and a busy weekend.

A very interesting, albeit extremely scary piece of fiction entitled If It Happened Here by Paul Ciotti. It's a piece about an weapons grade anthrax attack on Los Angeles. Though I can't tell if this was meant to scare the shit out of people or just to give people an idea of what happened, it did both for me. A good read though, as long as you aren't already very scared about this type of stuff.

I have to do my civil duty tomorrow. I have no problem with doing it, its just that I have to be downtown at 8AM. Now, thats no fun at all. That means I need to be on my way by about 7AM. This means I need to be up by 6:30. This is going to be no fun whatsoever. Hopefully I will be able to get up good and early and have a fun day being a juror (or more hopefully NOT being a juror). I gotta decide whether or not I am going to bring my laptop and stuff. I'm not even sure if I am allowed to. I may just bring a book and my headphones and be done with it. We'll see what happens. More tomorrow.

Take a look at this. If you look at the Do Not Enter sign, just below it, you will see some bits of a red car, that's mine. Ugh. And no shovel to boot. This is gonna SUCK.

Well, its snowing like crazy here. Depending on who you believe, we are expected to get somewhere between one and two feet by the time its all done tomorrow morning. Its wild out there right now, I can't even see the Pru.

My goal for the past week or so has been to attempt to organize my life. This started mainly with trying to organize my house some. I spent a ton of time doing laundry last week and got 9 loads done (Yes, I am a straigh male who has enough clothes to fill 9 loads of laundry and not even get it all done). I then started to try to find other things to organize. I broke down all the empty boxes which have been sitting in my room for much of the last year. I have yet to throw them away, but it was a step in the right direction. After that I continued over the weekend doing other small and large projects to try and get things organized. Now this organization has started to spread elsewhere. I am in the process of moving all my digital stuff to a more organized status. This was inspired by having to remove my stuff from the Internet provider I have used for pretty much 9 years now. Getting all this stuff organized is somewhat of a hassle, but I think in the end it will prove very worthwhile. Hopefully I can continue to get all this done until I really have my life organized. Its funny how a project to get some laundry caught up ended up being this much work, but I think it will be a very good thing for me in the end.

In my never ending (and recently re-newed attempt) to get my apartment well set up, I finally set up my old reciever (which was replaced by my surround sound system last year) in my bedroom. I also hooked up my portable CD player to it. It was rather nice to play a mellow CD while reading and then going to sleep last night. I am such a huge music person, its nice to have it playing as often as possible. Now if I could only find the plug to my portable CD player, so I don't waste batteries when playing CDs in my bedroom.

I just found out that Hotel Skadz is opening a week from Friday. My sister just IM'ed me and told me that her and 4 of her friends are coming up to visit next weekend and are all staying here. It should make for an interesting time having 6 people staying in a one bedroom. Hopefully it will be a fun weekend at least :)

works for the RIAA. Check this out:

Cracker investigating what the CD burner is putting on to a CD

So, I got a bit behind on my cable payments and they turned my cable off at the box. With my last paycheck, I caught up and was happy to know my cable would be back on soon. On Wednesday, I came home, the cable was still off, but when I checked Homelink, I saw the check had cleared, so I called. The call went something like this:

Me: Hi, I caught up my bill, but my cable is still off, can you please turn it back on.
Cable Drone: Yes, I see your bill caught up, but your service is turned off at the pole.
Me: Well, I am still seeing the TV Guide channel (thats what stays on when your box is off)
Drone: You should have no service sir, your cable it turned off at the pole.
Me: OK, but I am seeing the TV Guide channel, so some signal is coming in, can't you try and turn the box back on.
Drone: No sir, the computer shows the service off at the pole, you will need a technician to come out.
Me: But, I have a signal.
Drone: No sir, its off at the pole, you will need someone to come out and re-connect it at the pole.

At this point, I gave up fighting and scheduled an appointment for a technician to come out on Friday (today)

Technician shows up today and finds the outside box. Its on the side of the building next door, probably 10-15 feet above the ground. It's snowing like a mofo today, so I say to the guy something like "Hey, I have a signal in my apartment, I am seeing the TV guide channel, want to check it before you climb?" Guy says that sounds good. Comes up, checks to make sure signal is there, it is, calls service center, on hold for 10 mins, finally says, I need a box turned back on, service center hits magic button, cable comes back up. Guy basically tells me the people at the service center should not be listened to and if it happens again, keep calling until someone turns the box back on.

The fun part is now I have to fuckin call and fight the technician visit charge ($20 more than the normal re-connect fee) because there was NO NEED for a technician to come out, much like I told the nice drone on Wednesday. Argh.

leads to another. My wonderful night last night (good dinner, 3 loads of laundry, some guitar, some GTA3, dishes, etc) lead to a good morning this morning. Got to work right around 9 (usually I get in between 10 and 10:30) and am good and awake unlike most mornings. Hopefully I can keep this streak going.

after a home cooked meals is one of the best things in the world.

Just ate a great dinner of chicken, rice and salad.

Second load of laundry in the dryer, third in the washer.

Called and bitched at cable (more on that later)

Now if I can catch up some e-mail, play some guitar and play some GTA3, I will feel like this has been the night last night was supposed to be.

Can I use this page to say my name was in Rolling Stone??

My plan for the evening was to be very productive. I had Peapod coming, I was gonna make some good dinner, do some laundry, watch 24, play some guitar, take out the garbage, play some GTA3, etc. Well, Peapod decided to show up more than an hour and a half LATE, so instead of getting all sorts of stuff done, I ended up sitting here, waiting for the Peapod guy to show up, starving with no motivation whatsoever. How FUCKING annoying. I guess tomorrow turns in to busy night. Ugh.

Kasia nails why some people love to program in her article, kasia in a nutshell: Programmers -- the abused profession? Its stuff like that rush of problem solving that makes me miss programming as much as I do sometimes. I keep trying to find some cool project to work on at home in my free time, but can't think of anything real good. I think I just need to spend some time and re-learn some C or even learn some Java or Python, so I can contribute to some of my favorite Open Source projects. I would really love to have that rush of getting stuff done again. If I could only find a project to keep my attention.

Yahoo! News - Kidman Wants to Be Swept Off Her Feet -But Not Yet

Do you think I can volunteer for this position??? I can wait until she is ready, I have patience.

Halley's post, When 30 Degrees Feels Like Aruba, is ringing all too true today. It definitely feels like a warm day today, and my weather applet says its only 36. Too bad it doesn't say 76, but I guess it's better than 2.

This is just ridiculous.

that I think of things to add to my to do list seconds after I close my PIM?

I made it back to Boston in one piece, lots more catch up later.

I am sitting here in NY being completely useless today. This would normally not be a problem being that I am home and it's Sunday, but today it is a rather large problem. First off, I haven't even eaten anything yet. That needs to get fixed quickly (as it is 4PM). Second, I need to do laundry today, because I need clothes to take in to the city with me tomorrow. Third, I need to pack said washed clothes, so I am not running around like a madman tomorrow morning. I also would have liked to have watched some football, done some reading, played some guitar, etc etc etc. I have been sleeping all day, which means its going to be next to impossible for me to get to bed at a decent hour tonight to get up in the morning. Argh, I hate days like this. Ok, time to get motivated and start getting stuff done.

when my little weather applet in my gnome panel says its ONE degree outside.

Well, I am pretty much packed up. Just have a few things to grab in the morning. I'm heading down to Mom's in the morning for the weekend and then in to NYC for LinuxWorld. Booth setup Monday and Tuesday and then the show floor is open Wednesday through Friday. Hopefully it will be a good time. I am hoping that they will have WiFi access through the trade show floor and I will be able to blog it some. I have my camera packed up too, so you never know what you are going to see if I get some WiFi. Well, off to get some rest before I have to get up and drive all day. Bye bye!

out the other. Paid all my bills last night (had to get done before trip). It's sad to see all the money that was in my account yesterday now gone and in the bill collectors' hands. Well, at least it will mean less phone calls to yell at me about me owing people money.

I actually finally wrote out a budget last month. I tried my best to stick with it over the course of January. I did ok. I got a couple of hits at the beginning of the month that threw me off, but working for the band made up for most of those. I think this half (I do everything by month halves, as I get paid 2x a month) will be a little easier as I will be away and on the company's bill all week next week. Time to break in the AMEX :)

If I can continue to stick to my budget, I will slowly get everyone all caught up and paid off. It won't be a quick process, but it will get the important thing of catching all my bills up done. Hopefully I will find extra bits of cash here and there and be able to take care of some things faster than others. Also, once I get a credit card paid off, I can start using the money I was paying them every month to speed up payments on other cards. I REALLY want this to work. I am sick to death of living check to check.

Cooking.com is having a contest where the grand prize is a $1000 shopping spree at their site. I would love this. Fill the kitchen up Emeril style.

Thanks to Ain't Too Proud to Blog for the link.

I got mail about my 10 year high school reunion today. Ugh, I am getting old. I miseed my five year, but I think I will go to this one. It isn't until June, but I think I will RSVP soon and go. It will be interesting to see who is doing what. I think my dropping out of college and now working for one of the most promising emerging companies today should hold up pretty well :)

NIN blasting, cleaning up the house. Ahh, this is how to start a day that might go somewhere.

he was too stoned at the time.

I had what I felt to be a very productive day yesterday.

After getting up much later than I had wanted to, I decided to work from home (so I wasn't stuck in the office until all hours). I got a TON of work done for work, got past a number of issues I was having problems with, etc.

After I finished working, I picked up my guitar and played for about 2 hours. I tried picking up some new warmup techniques as well as a couple of songs. I got them down ok, now need to really be able to play them in time and well.

After that, I made some dinner and then spent some time with the TV.

While watching TV, I decided to try playing with PHP Layers Menu to get a slightly new look for the side bar on my pages. I got it working pretty well after some hacking. Still need to fix some colors and stuff like that, but its almost there. You should see a new look to the main part of the site in the next day or so.

After finishing that, I read a couple of pages and then fell asleep. A pretty good day. I really need to make days like this the norm :)

Well, this weekend was busy, but alright. I definitely did not/have not gotten anywhere near as much stuff as I had hoped to done. Saw the band, Thurs, Fri and Sat. Was actually working for them all three nights, so was actually making cash. Its nice walking out of a bar with more money than you walked in with. Yesterday was much of a non-day, since we had to load everything in to the van starting at 5 and I didn't get up until noon. Woops. At least I ate and stuff before going out. Today (as I have since Friday, but today is the worst), I ache. Moving all sorts of heavy equipment around helps you find muscles you never knew you had. I also have been trying to do some minor working out in my apt, which is making the hurt a bit worse. At least I am doing something towards that whole taking better care of myself thing. I made it over to the food store today. I haven't been in one of those in years (just used PeaPod). I didn't get anywhere near the amount of stuff I meant to, but I made a start. Since it was my first time in the place I got somewhat of a better feel for it. I still think I like Peapod more, but if I just want to get a minor grocery delivery, the $10 delivery charge kind of hurts. I think I may need to work on getting 2 weeks of groceries every 2 weeks. Then I could do some cooking and freezing of some stuff, etc one day and have enough real meals for the week. I still need to figure that all out. I have to check the Peapod delivery prices too, I think over $75 means only a $5 delivery charge which is more worth it. Other than that, just been watching football and stuff. Actually watched another movie (I need to post about the mad amount of movies I have watched this week). I cooked a burger from lunch using my new George Foreman Grill. Worked rather nicely. Still need to figure how to put cheese on my cheeseburger without causing trouble. I really need to get at least one load of laundry in at some point this evening too. I should get some stuff together soon. Well, that's about all.

A reminder to everyone in Massachusetts, register for the Do Not Call list, by clicking here. This list goes in to affect on April 1st (as long as you register by March 1) and you will be able to report any telemarketing calls and the companies making them will get fined. Hopefully it works, I get plenty of junk calls all the time.

We can all hope, huh?

Thinking back to 2002, it started pretty bad. I spent NYE home, in NY, in my Mom's basement, jobless, prospectless, motivationless (is that a word?), and just plain not happy.

I headed up to Boston on the 2nd of January to try and re-find my life that I left when I moved to NY. I planned on being up for a week or so, trying to find a job and a place to live. Well, without an internet connection and having been away for a while, I spent the initial week partying, seeing friends and just plain having fun. I hit a break when a buddy mentioned he was going away for a week and I could stay at his place and watch his cats for the next week. That sounded like a good plan. I continued my fun having, but with Internet access was able to send some emails, look for listings for apartments, etc. I struck good luck in both my attempts and had a place lined up a job interview lined up when I left.

I arrived in Boston for good on February 1st. I spent much of my first month, settling in, getting back in to the swing of things, etc. I got a job offer and took it, so things seemed to be getting good. I spent a little too much money before I had started a job again, but was thinking I could get it all taken care of once I got the job started.

I started my job and bought a new car in March. The job was going well, the car was fun to have and things seemed to be going well. When I first started, I was very good about not going out often and was just really hanging at home and working. It was working ok.

Over time, I started heading out more and more again. I learned very quickly that all the money that I was spending on my car was causing my going out habits to become major cash issues. They still are there :(

The rest of the year pretty much just went along. My dad retired from his teaching job after many years. Good for him (though he is back to working 3 or 4 days a week already). I continued my goings out. I started going to see Central Basement all the time, I slowed down on my Sissys time. Continously having cash issues, but kept making it by.

I headed out to San Fransisco twice for work. Once for OracleWorld, and once for LinuxWorld. Good shows both of them. It was nice to get away on the company's dime. I continue to learn I need to keep better track and actually file expense reports. I'm bad like that. Not that I was spending ALL that much money, but money is money.

I turned 27. It was an ugly few nights, but I had fun.

I went to 5 weddings (out of the 6 I was invited to). It's sad for me to see my buddies all getting married, but I'm happy for them. (Side note: one friend's wife called me the other day, using her married last name and I didn't even realize who it was at first, woops). One wedding in LA, one in NY, the other 3 in the Boston area.

Mom went to Ireland without me :(

I started blogging! It's been fun. It's a good way to get shit out, as well as to comment on random things that are going on in the world. I'm enjoying it. I guess I proved that with over 200 posts in pretty much 6 months. I would not be suprised if I had over 500 this year. Reading lots of other blogs were involved in this process as well. I am very much enjoying reading what other people are saying as well. I seem to add more and more evyer day to the list I read. I wish I could get an aggregator I liked. I think I may just write one. That's one project for 2003.

All in all, it was an ok year. I continued to suffer from depression a lot mostly derived from money issues. I have finally written out a budget, which I think will work. The only problem right now, it is written from the point of view of actually being caught up and I am definitely not :( Hopefully with a little extra income (and maybe a raise?) I will get this under control this year. I would really like to try and buy a place when my lease expires next year (I just renewed).

Hopefully this will be a year of accomplishment and prosperity. I really want to get my life in general organized. Slowly but steadly I think I am getting there and that is going to be a big issue for 2003.

Well, it's that time of the year again. I've got a number of resolutions. One is kind of big and all encompassing and some other small ones. Here goes:

1. Take better care of myself. This is the big one. This means a number of things. The biggest one would be getting myself to eat better. I need to be cooking for myself more often and eating better foods. Maybe even doing some working out and stuff. And the last part, at some point (no, not at midnight) I need to quit smoking this year. Smoking American Spirits has totally cut down on my smoking, now I just need to quit.
2. Play more guitar. I would like to start doing this much much more. I figure if I can practice a couple hours a night, I can get much better. I also need to use the resources available to me (like the 20 guitar players I know), to help out with this one.
3. Along the same lines as the last one, I need to find more productive things to do with my time. I want to stop watching as much TV as I do now (oh, I wish I had digital cable, so I could get a TiVo). Even if this means playing some video games here and there, maybe doing some programming, etc. I just need to get out of the come home from work, crash out in front of the TV cycle I have been stuck in.
4. Better money management. This one if huge. I can't continue to go through life living check to check. I have a number of of ways to fix this. First off, I need to control my spending when going out. I can't just spend like I have a million dollars. Second, I need to live by the budget I wrote out for myself. Third, I will be helping out the band from time to time now, so that is cash as well as free alcohol, so that helps out in 2 ways.

I think those are the big ones for now. I also think that will be enough for me to handle. No need to add useless stress in to my life :)

Ahhh, made it back to Boston in one piece. The drive was easy, no traffic at all. The cat whining the last hour of the ride was somewhat annoying, but thats what I get for taking a cat on a 6 hour trip. It took me like 8 or 9 loads to get everything up to my apartment, but I did get a space right across the street, so it made it easier than it could have been. I've put most stuff away, took a shower and now waiting for my buddy to come over, so we can grab some chow and then go see the band.

The one thing I always forget I miss so much until I get home is water pressure. I took a shower after putting everything away and the water blasted me. It felt very nice. My mom's water pressure sucks and you hardly get a rain down on you when showering. I never feel like I got 100% clean. Now I feel good and clean and ready to party (well, ready to EAT and then party). Fun times.

Tomorrow will be some football, some LOTR Extended Edition, some catch up on the week and some RnR. Fun fun.

I'm off to Boston in about 45 minutes. Hopefully, it will be an uneventful trip that will pass rather quickly. I do wish I had had my CD burner here with me, so I could have burned this Phish show I downloaded last night, but whatever. Hopefully the array of CDs I have will hold up just fine. I definitely think I am going to need to get a bunch of new music in the near future, but I think that all depends on the all mighty dollar and how it plays out. Well, time to shut down the machine and pack it up. See everyone back when I get back home.