today's word: jealousy

Kevin owns an Easy Button. That's right! *THE* easy button as seen on Staples commercials. And I want one. I think I'll get one this weekend so that when I start my new job on Monday, I'll be the coolest programmer in the office... with my own personal Easy Button.

Here's to you Kevin. My source of jealousy, and my only reader.

It's been some time since my last post. I seem to be slipping on this little endeavor of mine. It's late and I'm not going to even begin speculating why that is. Suffice it to say Foster motivated me to write something - anything for him to read while he's at work. It isn't much, but it's a start.

I can't even begin to cover the last few weeks/months happenings. It's probably best I don't try to hash it all in some epic story anyway. I think I'll just pick up where I left off - how I see fit - and continue on from here.

For now I see fit to head off to bed. I'm not feeling fantastic and I'd like to keep my weekend plans to visit friends in Rochester. I hope to avoid illness with a long slumber and some nyquil.

And since I know at least you will read this, hi Kev.

New Year's Resolutions

It's been a month since my last post. December has come and gone! It was a great holiday season but now it's time to return to the "normal grind."

I always try to start the year off with a resolution or two. I've spoke with a few friends and they don't seem to put much stock in them. They told me they don't think they could accomplish or stick to them anyway, so "what's the point?"

I choose to make resolutions despite their cynicism. If we don't make resolutions in the first place, then how do we expect to change for the better in the first place? I won't pretend to believe that I'll be fully faithful to my resolutions, but if I don't make them in the first place I won't have something to strive toward. I think that's the point of New Years. It's the spirit that an individual can improve or better one's self. Don't we all want to be just a bit better off than we were the year before? And since we're changing all the time - shouldn't we try to change for the best.

It's an ambitious year for me. I have five-ish resolutions... all of which are pretty lofty. With that being said, here (in no particular order) are my New Year's resolutions:

• Continue my efforts to lose weight & inches with visits to the gym and eating well.
• Change a "growing" to-do list into a "shrinking" to-do list by finishing projects I've started.
• Plan the best damn wedding possible - hopefully with as little stress as possible. (yea right!)
• Train myself to speak in full & coherent sentences. Speak with proper enunciation.
• Consider the consequences of things I say & do and how they will affect my friends, family, and people I interact with.

I realize that this may not be the best forum for a dialogue, but feel free to comment with your own resolutions. Good luck on yours!

This is "JC" the Kitten. His story reads backwards actually, so you may want to start with the bottom picture and read "upward" for sanity's sake.
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We took him back to JCPenney as previously arranged. We haven't heard if he's been found a home yet, I'll let you know when we hear something.
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He's attacking the tape holding together his litter pan. Anne and I were proud (and happy) to see that he instantly took to the litter pan. No messes all night! We like to think we trained him.
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This is JC attacking our bathroom cabinet door. Once he got the string he basically went berserk. Everything was a game or toy to him.
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We gave him a piece of string and he just played and played and played. He was SOOOO cute.
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We gave him food and he ate for a very long time. He must have been hungry.
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Anne and I took "JC" home for the night because the store didn't know what to do with him.
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This is "JC" the Kitten. He was abandoned with his brother "Penney" at JCPenney's yesterday.
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steve's new site

I'm trying to get some stuff done around here so this is brief. Go check out my brother's new website at www.kissingnovember.com. Make sure you use the comment form on the contact page so he knows it works ;-)

They got to her too

So Anne's taken a step out into the social networking novelty of the current internet generation. She's joined MySpace. You can see her little space here.

She didn't ask my opinion, but I gave it to her anyway. I'm not against MySpace. I just think that it's very fad-ish. I can appreciate that MySpace is one of many recent sites pushing the world wide web to a revolution (read more), but someone is going to do a similar thing in a better way and MySpace will be forgotten in a week as everyone migrates to that. I'd rather invest my time doing something more static - like blogging - which I realize is a just a tad hypocritical. (Yes that's right. I linked to my own blog to make sure you get my point.)

Perhaps I'd be less critical if MySpace did what it does better than it does it. She had been setting it up for less than an hour and was already having technical difficulties with the site. I hedged toward an "I told you so" and Anne responded with "well when are you going to write a new one?" I'll put it on my list of things to do.

I guess my other complaint is a stigma that maybe I'm alone on. I think I've heard several times from several people that MySpace was most useful for people just looking to hook up. I, for one, don't get that at all. Since when did the tried-and-true method for finding some action shift to broadcasting yourself in a public setting on the internet? What happened to attempting to meet individual people in social situations like a bar or chess club? I'm reminded of a Red vs Blue (thanks Jon) video comparing real life to internet life. Now there isn't an exact correlation within the video to this situation, but if you're intellegent you'll get my point.

Anyhow, visit her page. Click on some pictures, write her a comment, add her to your friends... or don't.

Anne and I in a little homage to our handy-work. Isn't she cute?!
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*EDIT* "She" would not be the pumpkin. "She" is Anne.

This is a shot of our pumpkins. Mine is on the left.
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Anne and I finally got to carving our pumpkins. We did it today so unfortunately it's a day late, but you get the point. Mine is on the left.
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Happiness

Happiness is finding and deleting the largest unused files on your hard drive.

Have you ever found yourself in a hard drive crunch? You may know that there are large files still hiding out on your computer that don't need to be around anymore. Perhaps you've ripped dvds to disc or done something else that takes lots of space that I can't think of right now. I've been there - today in fact. I've been hovering around 10GB of space on my hard drive and thought, "I should have more space than this. It just feels too full for what I've been doing lately."

I found a new tool called Folder Sizes which really made my day. I downloaded it on a 15-day trial, but it is fully functional even on the trial basis. If you know you've got some old files and folders around taking up a lot of space and you're feeling trigger happy with the Delete key, then I'd give this one a whirl.

It's a small download (3Mb) and unpacks quickly. Upon first run, there are several well written and placed help boxes (which I immediately clicked through). You can turn them off simply by changing a setting on each box. It works in a similar manner that you'd expect a virus checker to work. I was able to narrow my report to one hard drive right away. As the report comes back, I could see which root drive folders were largest. I picked a culprit and drilled down into the folder. Each time I did so, the report was updated with the largest subfolders and files. I found a number of installs as well as temporary files I no longer needed and in less than 15 minutes I had freed over 30GB of space.

Now there are a number of other features, but I didn't even get into them. I saw disc reports and defragmentation information. It didn't matter. I was super happy just to find the largest offenders on my hard drive and destroy them. It definitely made my day. Maybe it'll make yours.

"Doctor Tiki" Podcast

If you don't have iTunes yet, get it. I'll wait.

Ok. Now that we're all on the same page... I found this pretty funny podcast while avoiding doing other things I should be doing. It's called Doctor Tiki. It's a humorous blend of dumb antics, drinking, and hawaiian parafonalia. In short... it's an a cappella song short of a typical BCS party. The lead charcter could easily be Fetzer. I highly suggest anyone with a short attention span or a need of distractions to check out. If you have a short attention span AND a need of distra-- hey you! Focus... focus.... there. You need to watch it twice. Damn kids and their Ritalin.

suroviec's blog

Be sure to visit a fellow Dave's new blog. It's already got some fun drawings to check out. I'm sure it'll be filled with all sorts of general Dave goodness. You can visit it by directing your browsers to this url: http://davipalooza.blogspot.com/. Or you can simply use my "Friends' Blogs" section and hit up Davipalooza!

Assimilation

We live in a one bedroom apartment with some decent closet space; however, no amount of closet space is going to store all the crap we have both gathered over the past 9 years together. Anne has a vast collection of teaching references and materials - sometimes I feel like I live in a arts & crafts store. I have computer equipment and Boy Scout equipment and other general ... equipment. We both have pictures of friends and diplomas and fun trinkets to display. In all we indeed have too much stuff.

We're both are fans of a TLC show called Clean Sweep. It's a reality program (oh the reality tv) about turning horribly cluttered rooms into nice Trading Spaces-esque rooms by pitching and yard saling away much of the room's contents. (ok no more TLC plugs today) And while we're no organization professionals (you can see for yourself if you come for a visit) last night Anne and I (I think) were beginning the long road to assimilating personal belongings into "our belongings" (dun dun daaaaah).

While cleaning, I came across a number of minor epiphanies: (which I think is an oxymoron because an epiphany is supposed to be large I would imagine)

• I am a hoarder (ok that I knew way before last night)
• I have too much stuff
• I don't seem to finish things I start very easily

So after an evening's worth of work, things of hers that were pulled out are now neatly put away and things of mine are sitting in piles on our coffee table. They will undoubtedly get put back into a box or crate and put into a corner to sit and await the next day when Anne and I decided to clean house a little bit. I guess I'll never learn.

I won't lie and say I enjoy cleaning and organizing - I don't like doing it one bit. There are so many other things I'd rather do with my time ... like type in a random journal kept online for a small handful of readers. But I don't' avoid it either. I will tell myself to pull things out and tidy them up occasionally. However I don't find it cathartic like some wierdos out there who get their jollies by throwing their things out. I'm paranoid - worried I may throw out the one shred of my past that will reunite me with a fond and hazy memory. Just last night while cleaning up, I found some pictures of me when I was pretty young. (Anne says I was the cutest baby. I'll have to post a few for the reading republic to judge.) So there I was thinking about "the way it was." Now I didn't throw away pictures - that would be criminal - but I did let go of some things which had been in a trunk or crate for a long time. I don't feel any better than when I started and what do I have to show for it? One empty crate which its contents were assimilated or trashed. Now all I have is an empty crate. I still don't' know what to do with it. Oh I know... I'll just put all the crap that's on my coffee table into it and put it in a corner.

I guess that brings me to another concern. During the long process of melding properties, decisions are made. At some point some one has to decide, "Hey! Your piece of crap is not good enough. It didn't make the cut. Get rid of it. Yours is the weakest link. Go directly to jail. Do not pass 'Go.' And certainly... do not collect $200." Maybe I'm being a little sensitive to the issue, but I think that's a deeper part of it. Many people will judge you by your belongings. "Oh my God, how could she wear that?" "I've got the super-wowie-zowie newest video card in my computer." "Who's driving that Porche?" And I think trying to decide which of our personal belongings makes the grade to become our mutual belongings is also the decision that "your link to your past memory isn't good enough to stay around."

So in conlusion, since I don't know how to bring this around to a clean ending ... um ... *looking around* ... er ... LOOK OVER THERE!!! *points over there*

*runs away*