Lagging on getting photos up to Flickr, lots to post. Will get my act together soon.
Category Archives: Life
Avoidance
Today is a day just not meant for someone like me. I’m not at all into professional sports, football especially. I usually take today as a time to get out and take advantage of the absence of people everywhere, but this year it’s a little different, mostly because I’ve got a baby around and partly because there’s just not that much to do on a Sunday in the suburbs.
Coffeehouses aren’t much of a refuge for the non-sports minded, and there aren’t that many good ones around here anyway—I’m hoping I find a decent one that’s close by one of these days now that I mention it. The bars out here are mostly sports bars or would have some kind of television playing the game, and the clubs out here are, well, you get the idea. So my avoidance of the Superbowl has evolved into simply finding something to do rather than doing something different out of protest. Tonight’s something will be this.
The need to be
This past month has been really interesting. I’ve taken on a couple new projects, mostly personal, and have been continuing to develop my skills as a developer, writer, blogger and designer. Sounds like a lot, right? Really, everything all ties together and will hopefully prove to be very interesting one completed, possibly launching in the next couple months. While all this is great, it isn’t paying the bills. I’ll be out of work for a full year at the end of this month and I’m starting to feel a little disconnected and concerned about getting back into the fold.
I’ve had some new interesting things come up lately, one would be very interesting and close to home with the gym located in-between. I like the person I’d be working with seems like a good guy, although he gives me beard envy. I’m reminded on a daily basis how important stability is as well as the need to be strong. I typically take things at a slower pace than most when it comes to change—partly because I’m overly logical about it, as in “how will this affect me in three years” and partly because I’ve still got a bit of the lazy teenager hanging around whispering in my ear from time to time.
I am indeed hard on myself when it comes to certain things career-wise, mostly those to do with applying things I’ve learned. For example, I can program better than some of the people I’ve met who do it for a living, yet I’m not confident enough in my skills to present myself as a true developer. I think it’s probably a shield I keep up to protect myself, also that I truly think that never having a good mentor has hurt me professionally. I know I’ve got a lot more to give as a professional designer but my portfolio of work doesn’t show a particularly polished set of skills, or one thing I do particularly well. The same goes for my development portfolio; however, that portfolio is much younger than the design one and there’s a bit of wiggle room.
Sure, I’m still young and there’s some time to get things going and nurture the sleeping beast within, but I need to be. I need to be a provider. I need to be a father. I need to be a husband. And I think doing those things will make everything easier, however, right now I need to be eating something because I be hungry.
The brain is busy
I’ve got a bit going on right now. Just moved all of my sites (and set up some new ones) to a new server that I configured from the ground up. I’m pretty satisfied with the system, although I’m running a little lean on RAM. Will probably need a bigger slice in the near future, especially once I get back in to Rails development. We’ll see how much it makes sense after some things are built and I do some optimization tricks.
Keeping myself busy around the house lately too. Finally put up the top-of-stairs gate so the baby gorilla doesn’t suddenly go barreling down them and flatten himself. Have other projects to get to but that’s just simply part of owning a house I suppose.
No new music has passed by me in awhile, could use some new discoveries. Last.fm has helped, iTunes genius mixes have reminded me how much I need to organize (and throw away) some of the crap in my library, and the giant pile in the closet has led me to rediscovery but nothing new. Movies haven’t been too mind-blowing lately either, extremely disappointed in Zombieland. Not funny and it should have been. Did discover Ink on Netflix though, highly recommended. Tracked down the rest of the director’s films but haven’t watched them yet, curious to see how they hold up.
Back to work, giving someone a needed facelift.
So…
There were a few posts that got lost in my (relatively) pain-free server move. Just a bunch of stuff about me not knowing what I’m doing with Ruby on Rails even though I took a course on it in grad school. I suppose that I’ll be writing about it later since I’ve got a few projects lined up for myself that use Rails but for now, three missing posts. I think that there was something in there about Charlie and Christmas presents too, but who the hell’s even reading this crap anyway?
One step at a time
Officially began the first steps to a new project today, it followed me home from the store the other day and I think I’ll keep it. Not sure what to name it though. I will be posting about more here in case you’re interested, but probably not for a little bit.
Also, something very sad happened today, Brad Graham passed away. I only knew of him via his online presence but he seemed to have touched the lives of many people. Part of someone’s passing always seems to be the stories that they’ve left behind, hopefully I’ve still a lot of stories left to tell and we can all just laugh our collective asses off in the end. Cheers, Brad. I’m sad to have never broken bread with you.
Bring the noise
I’ve never made it a point to have new year’s resolutions, they just seem kinda arbitrary at best. I always thought that if there’s something in my life that I felt needed changing then why not start at anytime. The problem being is that I never usually got around to starting or organizing how I might even start (which is actually my biggest challenge for the future) and attempts to change came in a somewhat piecemeal fashion. I’m positive that the changes I’ve set out for myself are realistic and the goals I’ve set for myself are as well. There hasn’t been anything that I’ve set out to do in the past that was difficult when I just went ahead and did it. Of course there are bumps along the way but that’s part of the learning process and I came out better for it.
This year will bring a lot of interesting things. Charlie will turn one-year-old, my wife and I will be together for ten years, and I’ve plenty of opportunities laid out for myself that just need starting—first being organization. Not just cleaning up messy files on my computer or papers off my desk, fully committed organization with serious strategy, the kind with schedules. If I don’t start it now, well, I just won’t start it. I’m interested to see how well I can manage it cause I’ve always enjoyed solving problems in a non-math kinda way. (unmath?)
Happy new year everyone, may it be filled with happiness.
Getting old and the FU variable.
Here’s something they don’t tell parents about: daylight savings. Oh boy, I never would have thought about much potential it has for screwing things up but here’s a little fact for you: babies can’t tell time. It’s led me to a theory that old people get up so damn early because of conditioning due to daylight savings time and how kids just wake up whenever they damn well please. I now know why some states don’t observe it.
Normally, six o’clock is a decent morning for Charlie to wake up. He’s pretty chipper and six means that he’s had about 11 hours of sleep total. I don’t sleep that much and neither does my wife, who is a sleepyhead most of the time. Lately we’ve had some issues with the baby gorilla waking up in the middle of the night–for a couple of reasons we think we’ve figured out—and now we’ve got this new damn variable introduced into the mix, the FU variable.
I’m pretty sure that all parents have had to deal with the FU variable, and some more than others for certain. Even those without kids can relate. The FU variable is that one little thing that gets introduced right when you think you’ve gotten things figured out, with any general problem or whatever, and you’re ready for life to return to some sense of normalcy and then, oh yeah, the FU. It turns you around and makes you watch what you thought was going to be normal nights of sleep, quiet evening on the couch or in bed, etc., get crushed with big meaty hands and then proceeds to force-feed you bits of bitter happiness until you puke.
Granted the FU variable is simply something that will take it’s toll on my wife and myself more than my son in this instance, but it’s FU for sure. To the point where previously after Charlie went to bed I had at least a good five hours to do anything. Work, read, anything. Now, thanks to the FU variable, I’m probably going to be considering bedtime around 9 because there’s a good chance that Mr. Crabbypants might visit around the ripe old time of four in the morning. Shit.
It seems the value of my FU variable in this case is not all that uncommon. Hopefully, it won’t be that big of a deal and I’m just ranting for nothing. Charlie’s a good baby and never really put us through the sleep ringer. I’ve heard stories, not pretty. On the upside, I always to look forward to this time of year, the darker the better. The benefit of up an hour early is in bed an hour early. Having not been through any of this before I don’t know what to expect but I’m becoming all to familiar with that phrase.
On baby bottles
So, as far as drinking containers go, I’m a glass person. I’ve always preferred glass to plastic, ceramic or metal. Plus, I think it feels better to hold in your hand. With that, I took it upon myself to choose glass baby bottles over plastic and with all the anti-plastic propaganda information out there, it seemed like the responsible thing to do as a parent. Unbeknown to me, there’s something that happens to you when you become a parent. You break things. A lot.
I’ve broken more damn baby bottles in the past nine months that I care to think about and in hindsight it seems like a huge waste. The things aren’t cheap (around $17.00 for two glass bottles) and unless you want to find yourself washing bottles all day, you’re gonna need about six to keep up with a hungry baby. This week I broke my last damn bottle, I’m done, no more fucking glass bottles.
It doesn’t seem to take much to break one either. In all I’ve dispatched seven, only one I can honestly say I expected to break given the situation–a fall off of a counter. The rest were either lightly knocked over while resting on the counter or softly tapped into the side of the sink. I’ve had many more significant accidents with much thinner, fragile glass that didn’t result in breakage or even chipping. This has led me to an unfortunate theory, becoming a parent makes you a huge klutz.
I’m not a terribly oafish guy. I’m pretty aware of my surroundings and don’t have an unusual amount of accidents involving cuts, falling down or any general number of things that cause harm. I’ve always had a problem with falling while walking up stairs but it’s led to little more than embarrassment, and possibly heightened reflexes. At least while walking up stairs. So, basically, now that I’m a parent and not having tiny little shards of glass lying around on the floor for my son to encounter, I’ve developed a terminal case of the dropsies.
Really, there’s been a lot more that’s broke over the past nine months except bottles but why’s it all glass? It’s a little annoying. This leads me to rethink the practicality of having so much glassware in the kitchen. I’ve tried to be more careful, it didn’t work. However, there is the alternate theory behind glassware breakage that the more careful you are around it the more fragile it becomes, but whatever, it all just seems to break anyway.
The discovery of Dr. Brown’s plastic bottles was cool, not just because I’m feeding my son with something invented by someone named Doc Brown, but because he seems to like them a little better and they also seem to reduce gas just like they claim to do. So here I am, $60ish dollars in the hole and back to plastic, or reintroduced to plastic, or whatever. Bah. At least they were recyclable.
Things I find myself saying a lot latey.
What’s wrong with you?
Where did you get that?
What are you eating?
Stop acting so weird.
Don’t eat the kitty.
Ow.
Please stop pulling my pants off.
Why yes, that squash is better on your head than in your mouth.
Ow.
Please don’t destroy tha … oh well, I guess I can get another one someday.
I suppose books do taste better than baby food but please, not the limited editions.
Where did THAT come from?
What’s that smell?
I need a drink.
Ow.
I need a big drink.
I have no words for what just happened.