On The Home Front
Stuck
Apr 2nd
I’ve talked before about lack of motivation and how actually trying to finish a project seems to defeat me every time. I’m in that zone again where I’m feeling like I want to start a new… something…. and I’ve noticed that when I’m getting this way, I start looking at how other people have accomplished things, or the tools they’ve used, and use that “research” as an excuse to not get started. Eventually that feeling of wanting to start something new, or finish something that’s perpetually in progress passes.
In sort, I find ways to defeat myself. I recognize that about myself, I know the key to fixing it is to do like Nike says and “Just Do It”.
Easier said than done I guess. I’m still stuck.
Yeah. That worked.
Apr 1st
So that last update wasn’t very truthful, was it. I got absolutely no-where with being better about updating this site.
But hey, cool theme, eh?
Slacker no more (hopefully!)
Nov 30th
Updating here has come pretty much to a standstill, but I’m hoping to remedy that soon. I’ve decided that rather than bemoan the fact that I have too many interests (writing, music, photography, web design, etc…), and then get overwhelmed and not do anything towards being creative, I’m going to instead set aside time for each pursuit. Rather than focus on one, I’m going to dabble in all.
What’ll make this fun/frustrating is that I’m horrible with time management, and I can be seriously lazy. So we’ll see where this gets me. I’ve been thinking about this for the better part of two weeks, so I’m hoping when my 40th birthday rolls around (23rd of December for those keeping track at home and want to buy me something), that I’ll have a basic list of the things I want to accomplish, and a basic schedule of how I’m going to accomplish it.
Wish me luck.
Slackin’
Sep 29th
I think my desire to post here waxes and wanes…but more waning lately than waxing.
Pretty much, life is the same. Work is work, but at least I have a job. I’ve been wrestling off and on (again, more off than actually on) with Drupal in trying to get it to work the way I want it to work with a new site I’m attempting to create. Kids are back in school and seem to be adapting well. The oldest is keeping on top of things, which is good, and the youngest is enjoying middle school and all that entails.
I bought a truck back in August. She’s a 2006 Tacoma Double Cab 4WD Long Bed. I named her Rosie.
My new truck!
I have plans for her, new equipment, new wheels and tires, etc. Naturally those all cost money, which I don’t have enough of at the moment ’cause I just bought a new truck. Vicious circle.
Gail’s off to Ireland this Friday. Assuming she can kick this cough-bug-flu-bronchitis thing she has. Whatever it is. She doesn’t know, doctors don’t know. Hopefully she’ll be ok to travel, ’cause she’ll kick herself if she doesn’t get to go with her ghost hunting group to Ireland to visit the castles and such.
Soccer’s back in season, but I’m not coaching this year. Had originally planned on going back to school, but can’t afford that so now I’m looking at getting a part-time job to get on top of these bills so I *can* go back. We shall see.
And that’s how my world is turning, in a nutshell. Exciting, no?
Recap
Jul 13th
For a change it felt like I had a somewhat productive weekend. I managed to get a site I’d been working on for awhile up and running. The people I was building it for seemed happy, so that’s cool. Went to a winery on Saturday night and watched Third Stream Giants, a funky band from Fredericksburg. Gail and her mom (who has been visiting since Tuesday) sampled the wine and declared it ‘crappy’, but we had fun regardless.
Sunday they decided to take the kids to an all-you-can-eat ice-cream festival. Figuring I didn’t need to be party to such debauchery (as I would probably partake to a degree that would leave the sponsors of the event wondering what they were thinking in having an all-you-can-eat event), I hopped on the Harley and went down through the countryside towards Culpepper. Ended up putting about 125 miles on the odometer. It was a great day for a ride and I enjoyed the heck out of it. I have the ‘biker’s tan’ now: white hands (from the gloves), burnt forearm, and white biceps. Gonna look like a barber pole at the end of the summer.
With the one website out of the way, I’m going to try and keep the momentum going and finish my writing critique site. My friend Treva said she’d help, as she has more experience with Drupal than I, so here’s to hoping we can actually accomplish something. I don’t have a layout, but I want to get the back end working properly and site flow to make sense before throwing it into a layout. That’s probably doing it ass-backwards, but I’ve never been accused of making sense to begin with.
Just a weekend recap
Apr 20th
Since my last post describing how I was getting into Drupal, I’ve worked on it a total of once. Not exactly going to get me closer to my goal of figuring out how it all comes together. This seems to be the way I operate; I get excited about something, I start working on it, I build a few pages, get a very low-level basic knowledge of whatever it is I’m working on, and then I let it go idle for a period of time. I’m trying to overcome that, but not having a lot of success at the moment. Too many other distractions.
One of those distractions is back – soccer season has swung into full gear. Our team had its first game of the season this past Saturday, which we won, 1-0. It was a great game, and we had some great plays by our keeper. After the whistle blew sounding the end of the game, we were all giving each other high-fives and congratulations and lining up to go shake the other teams’ hands when I noticed Sarah was in tears. I asked what was wrong and she said she couldn’t breathe. Turns out she’d been trying to get my attention the last part of the game because she needed a break and was having a hard time catching her breath. I asked why she didn’t just run over and tell me or the other coach that she needed to come out and she replied with “I was worried the ball would come my way and get past me and they’d score.”
Talk about making dad feel like a heel!
After being able to rest for about 10 minutes, she was back to her normal bouncy self and was happy they’d won. It didn’t seem like asthma or anything, she was just wiped out.
The rest of the weekend was spent doing the normal weekend-suburbanite chores. I did manage to wipe out the front page of a website I’d been working on. That was lots of fun. Thankfully because I had the page still loaded in a browser, I was able to create it with minimal fuss and had it back online within 20 mins. Hopefully the owner of the page didn’t notice.
And hopefully this will make me start doing backups more often!
Foggy Morning
Mar 19th
It will be during the dog days of summer that I’ll recall mornings like today’s with fondness. As I sit there on my motorcycle, stuck in traffic with all that metal of the cars reflecting the hot, overbearing sun onto me from all directions, the heat rising from the asphalt, the engine idling between my legs cooking my jeans. As I struggle through traffic to try and get some speed up to create a breeze to cool my sweat-beaded brow, as I feel the sweat drip down along my spine to the small of my back. That’s when I’ll recall wistfully of the rides taken in March, when I was snug in my leathers, my head encased in my full-face helmet and the temperature brisk. Mornings where you felt happy to be alive.
But this morning, as I traveled down the road and the fog grew increasingly thicker, I was being anything but wistful about the ride. The weather reports were promising a beautiful afternoon with highs near 70, blue skies and a slight breeze. Completely perfect riding weather. As it’s been a nearly two months since I had been out on the bike, I figured it’d be a great day to ride to work. It was a great day to ride HOME from work, but certainly not to.
When I got on the 6-lane that I take to work, the already thick fog grew even thicker, and I couldn’t see twenty yards in front of my bike. Combine that with the condensation that was collection rapidly on my face shield and the traffic coming up quickly behind me and probably not seeing my puny tail light, I decided it was time to get off the road. I pulled off at the next exit, and found a Chik-fil-a for some breakfast. I couldn’t even see the buildings across the parking lot, so I figured I’d stay until I could. Luckily I had a book of short stories in my saddle bag, so I had quite the pleasant morning sitting and reading.
I do love foggy mornings. Just not so much when I’m riding in them.
Is AIG Hiring?
Mar 17th
I’ve decided I’m in the wrong business, and have started to look for a new career. I have something in mind, something where my talents and skills won’t be necessary. I want to be able to have the kind of career where I can do badly and not have any reprecussions. The kind of job where I can lose my company money, and still be rewarded. Where I can mis-manage funds so badly that the goverment has to give me billions in loans just to keep millions of other people who depend on my company from going under. And then I can take some of those billions and pay out bonuses to all those people that were spectacularly crappy at their job.
Seriously, because they have a contract they should be allowed to keep their bonuses? Did these contracts not specificy that it was based on performance? If not, why the hell not?!
Bits
Mar 16th
Two posts in the same month? Yes, apparently hell has frozen over.
I’m going to concentrate on writing more again. I do like to write, but as mentioned in the previous posting, facebook has been sucking up my time. I’m going to try and make a status update just once a day, and only check it once (ok, maybe twice, once in the morning, once in the evening) during the day as well.
Everyone have a nice weekend? I had a dinner theater performance Saturday night that was a lot of fun. It was one of those mystery theaters where the audience gets to ask us actors questions trying to gather information about who committed the murder. It was quite a lot of fun. Because of the nature of the play, there were very few lines I had to actually memorize. Mostly it was facts one where my character was and other tidbits that could lead to clues. So our answers weren’t scripted, they were all improv. Which in itself was challenging and quite a lot of fun and I can’t wait to do it again.
After my performance, I picked up my friend Eric and we went to a poker game. I actually won the game, taking in $140. It was a twenty-dollar buy-in, so not a bad return on my money. I was pleased with how I played, and considering when it was just down to three of us, and I had two big blinds left, I think I did well. And caught some good cards.
The rest of my weekend was chores and working on Drupal. Which is a chore in itself! It has quite the learning curve, and if I had the money, I’d be buying Expression Engine to use for this site I’m working on. But I don’t and the economy being what it is, I opted to go with Drupal. I have a few friends who are big fans of it, so that helps when I get stuck. Hopefully it’ll click and I’ll understand how it works soon. Otherwise, my head is just going to get flatter from banging it on the desk.
Dust Bunnies in the corners
Mar 10th
Is anyone even still checking in here?
I’ve been woefully absent of late. I blame Facebook, as it’s easy to make a two sentence update and be done, and that’s where it seems all my friends hang out.
Perhaps I need to gear this site towards a specific subject. Harleys, photography, knuckle-cracking. Something. Guess I’ll ponder that for another four months before I write something here again. We’ll see.