So, uh hi.
Long time, no see, eh?
What have I been doing? Let’s see.
Family:
- We’re good, all things considered. Xmas was stressy and rough, but only due to external circumstances (see Housing, below). Considering what we were up against, I think Arwen and I did extremely well. Nobody got hurt, and the kids once again have toys that keep them busy without making us insane.
- My mom’s on the mend. We went up to visit, and she’s doing much better. Thanks to everyone who asked when they felt it was appropriate, and didn’t when they didn’t.
- My wife developed a thing for socks before either of us knew what hit her. One day, she showed me something, we both sat there for a minute, and then I said “Yeah, actually, that’s hot.” Who knew? $17 for a pair of socks can be a good deal, if they’re the RIGHT socks.
Work:
- I’ve been busy with work, which has been going really well, now that I’m finally getting the hang of not being an all-day techie, but instead getting used to the idea of putting together training and documentation FOR techies (and end-users). There’s a high-impact, but (we hope) low workload project in the very near future, thanks in large part to all the hard work already being done by the guy that works next to me all day. He knew this stuff was coming, so he did all the technical tough stuff, so now it’s just a question of all the stuff we didn’t expect, and rolling out what’s coming without freaking out our userbase. The next week or two should be fun*, and a nice way to come back from our winter break.
Housing:
- I’ve also been kept very busy with being a new board member at home, and trying to figure out how to bridge what I’ve been hearing and seeing vs. what can (and can’t) be changed/corrected. We got something rather, shall we say, alarming *right* before Christmas, which really put a dent in our holiday time, but in the end, I think it was bombastic enough that it meant I went to bat and started swinging. Is everything goodness and light now? No. Is it the end of the world? Also no. There’s hope now, at least, which is something I couldn’t say 8 days ago. Or even two.
Facebook:
- Yes, I’ve been booking many hours on there. Not really *doing* anything, just having a lovely OCD time and hammering that refresh button to see what’s happening NOW with everyone I know. I feel like those rats you hear about, who’ll push the “get food” bar constantly, even if there’s no food coming, simply because food comes sometimes when you push it. Karlababble has asked for a Intervention from Facebook, but I think that’s just ’cause she wants to get into fisticuffs with the older guy who shows up on there once in a while. On Intervention, that is, not Facebook. Wait. Dude. What?
Music:
- I’ve been listening to a fair amount of new stuff, thanks to a large number of excellent new/free music blogs, and streaming sites.
- Damien Rice hit my radar late one night a few weeks back, and I was instantly transformed into a slackjawed slushpile of overwrought emotional goo. I was sitting there feeling grief & loss for something that I had NOTHING to do with. I wasn’t just sad because the songs hit me, I was sad because those song existed. I’m not sure when the last time that happened was, but hooboy. If it was a seasonal thing, it’s good I wasn’t in the Hallmark store at the time, ’cause I would’ve started bawling right there.
- Johnny Vancouver and I did a podcast two MONTHS ago, and I haven’t had time to re-encode some of the songs that got squished by the process to post the whole show. Soon, baby. He and Warren have also been doing a Video Podcast that I’ll have to link to in the near future, so you can see that it’s not HIS fault we’re not doing shows, it’s all me.
Geekin‘:
- So, Vista came out around this time last year, and I’ve been using it at work in all its 64-bit glory (and bleeding edge stupidity). At home, I’ve been afraid to try to fix the Win2k3 server I’ve got running this site, (it’s currently completely unresponsive on the console, and Exchange 2003 isn’t talking to the outside world, but the webserver works, so I’m not touching anything), so we’re moving to 3rd party hosting in the very near future.
- I’ve also been fooling around with more flavours of Linux than you can shake a memory stick at. Ubuntu (and Kubuntu/Xubuntu) have all passed my “diddit goe?” test with flying colours under all sorts of weird hardware, and I’ve been happily using it as my “main machine” at home for doing everything I need to do in an evening. The October (7.10) version just plain works, including wifi.
- I’ve once again found new respect for Knoppix LiveCD, with it’s utterly awesome ability to ignore that a drive or partition are all screwed up, and just copy stuff anyway. My friend at Vancouver Film School can attest to the power of Knoppix when it comes to restoring data from drives that have been declared “dead.”
- Trinity Rescue Kit also made my day more than once this year. It’s nice to be able to pull a “dead” machine from under a user’s desk, and have their data shared back to them via Windows (Samba) networking shares in under 5 minutes.
- I tried messing with my iPod’s head, and installing RockBox, but eventually found it too annoying to USE, even though I like the idea. I’ll stick with the portable and multi-platform Floola to get my music onto my ‘pod without having to use iTunes (or stay married to a single workstation for music, for that matter).
- I also found out that old iPods can have their harddrives replaced using the odd little drives found in Toshiba R100 laptops. Also, a new (and bigger) battery for an iPod can be purchased online for less than $35 (incl. shipping of the battery).
- Digital Picture Frames purchased at ToysRUs for under $80 don’t necessarily suck. Way less work and heartbreak than trying to build them myself out of Frankensteined Laptops.
New Year’s Eve:
- This year was small, and time well-wasted playing Guitar Hero (I finally got over my stupid “but I’ll suck at it” stagefright to try it. I don’t know what I thought was going to happen, but I’m told I’m doing pretty well for someone who picked up a plastic axe less than a week ago. Totally Rick and Elissa’s fault if I even end up in front of the Movie-Theatre-sized screen at work, rocking out to Flock Of Seagulls’ “I Ran” in the next six months.
- I have a slight headache NOW that is, I think, the hangover from going to bed last night at 3am, and getting up at Noon. Possibly held at bay by taking the kids to the park in single-digit weather.
I’m not making any promises or resolutions this year, but I do *hope* to post a decent-length thing at least once a week. No more two-month hiatus (hiati?) for me.
What else am I looking at lately? Check here from time to time to see what I thought I’d want to look at later.
* Not really, I’ll probably be muttering a swearing to myself by middle of next week.
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January 4th, 2008 at 5:46 am
Holy crap dude,
I had no idea however was very curious and actually thought that I pissed you off about something. So not true, thank god. I’m going to email you about a more private matter. On an end note, my heart goes out to you and Arwen. Let me know if you need anything at all or if I can help at all.
January 13th, 2008 at 11:56 pm
Hello.
James from Off The Record, thanks for giving us a shout out.
Much appreciated.
You have yourself a nice blog here.
January 15th, 2008 at 11:49 pm
No James, thank YOU for all the yummy music you’ve pointed me to. I can’t say I dig all of it, but I’ve checked *most* of it out, at least, and the things I like?
I like a lot.