Just some random bits of thoughts running through my head and life:

• I’m supposed to go camping this weekend. I’ve talked about this particular camping trip before. I really hope it doesn’t rain, but the weather forecast isn’t promising
• I was nominated for an award here at work. They call it the Elite Award and give it to one person a quarter. Considering I’ve been here only ten weeks, I think that’s a good sign.
• Over heard at the bar, a lady talking to a guy: “Yes, she was my first lover, but I’m with you now, and I wear your collar” – I so wanted to turn around and stare.
• My buddy Doug has started flying lessons and is keeping a rather comprehensive journal about it. Very good reading, if you enjoy reading about that kind of stuff, which I do. Though it tends to make me jealous
• Looks like my iPod was stolen. Last place I remember having it was here on my desk at work. If it was, and if I did leave it, it has walked away. Sadness.
• I have been working on a new design. I have three mockups, with different colors and layouts. I just can’t decide on one I like. Maybe I’ll put it to a vote. It’d be nice to have my own design up, rather than a prepackaged one.
• Stupid Surf Control software here at work will let me work on muse.harleyroads.com but blocks www.harleyroads.com. Go figure.
• I finally bought the full license for Expression Engine, hence the desire to work on www.harleyroads.com in my downtime here at work.
• I want to sign up for Nathan’s creative writing class again – between work and work and play practice, I’m not sure I’ll have time…
• I need a time machine.
• I so hope it doesn’t rain this weekend.

No wonder I never sleep. Too much crap running through my head. Look at all that!

*yawn* *stretch* *cree-e-e-eak*

erg.

This past weekend Sarah and I made our annual trip to Camp Tockwogh, which is situated on the eastern shore of the Chesapeake Bay. It’s run by the YMCA and more-or-less signals the end of another year of Indian Guides (I know the link says “Adventure Guides”, but I disagree with the Y’s position that they needed to be “politically correct”. We did nothing but honor the Native American way of life). We left Thursday night and arrived around 11pm. We had caravaned with 3 other dads and their kids, and spent all day Friday with pretty much the whole camp to ourselves. We did the normal stuff over the course of the weekend; archery, rock wall climbing, fishing, etc. I managed to get into separate games of touch football, basketball, and a three hour beach volleyball match. I learned a couple of vital things and was pondering about them on the drive home Sunday:

1. If I’m going to be abusing my body in such a manner, I need to get in shape and do it more often. My legs were killing me Sunday. Didn’t help that I had play practice and had to dance and sing for four hours Sunday afternoon (more on that in a bit)
2. If I’m not going to get myself in shape, I need to look into getting some replacement limbs for when I do play like an 8 year old.
3. It’s possible to brush your teeth without using your arms. Yes, I was that sore.

Joking aside, I had a great time, and the aches and pains that come with playing hard for a few days (not to mention sleeping in a bunk on a mat that wasn’t much more comfortable than a tissue would be) are worth it. Sarah and I got to spend some time together and while she was asleep, I got to hang out with other dads.

We had to get back early on Sunday because we had to be at play practice by 1. I think I mentioned that Cody was in his school’s production of Peter Pan – he played a pirate. The lady who put on the show is doing State Fair this June, and had an open casting call for people of all ages. Sarah really liked Cody’s play, and decided she wanted to go audition. Cody thought it would be fun as well, so Gail and I decided it might be a fun family-type thing to do.

To familiarize ourselves with the show, we rented the 1945 version of State Fair and watched it. Afterwards, Cody decided being a pirate was much cooler than dosey-do-ing around a stage and opted for Tech Crew. So that left Sarah, Gail and myself to audition. I figured I would just take a background part, mingle around, be part of the fair crowd. Sarah and Gail would be doing the same.

At least, that’s what I figured.

Because of lack of people, I now have three different parts; I’m to be Uncle Sam, who walks out on stilts(!!) at the beginning of the Fair to welcome everyone; I’m playing the part of the hoopla barker (which a very young Harry Morgan plays the part of in the movie); I’m also playing a part of the quartet. Yes, a quartet. Meaning, I’m singing.

Me! Singing! In front of people! Without the comfort of my shower!!

It was a total fluke how I ended up in quartet. During one of the main numbers, our director point to a group of four guys (which I was a part of by happenstance) and said “you guys just stand in for the quartet for now”. So we did. And during the song, I just sang. Well, the lady that’s helping our director was standing right in front, heard me, told the director I could sing (ack!) and now I’m “second tenor”, singing in two different songs. We’re going to be doing quartet bits in the main number, and then by ourselves during a separate bit.

Terrifying.

But, truth to tell, I am having an absolute ball with this. I might be freaked out about the singing in the quartet part, but when I’m with the rest of the cast, dancing around, I’m singing my fool head off. As no one has said I need to quiet down, I’m going to assume that at least I’m singing on key. This is just so different from things I’ve been doing recently in terms of hobbies and entertainment. I was in the marching band throughout high-school and college (band fag!), and I enjoyed the performances that we did, so I guess I’m just rediscovering that feeling of performing for other people. But acting? And singing? And – God help us – dancing?

It’s quite amusing when I think about it. And naturally, you’re all invited to come watch me make a complete and utter fool of myself. I’m going to be having a ball doing it.

Sometime back in October, I started ripping down tile in my bathroom with the intent of replacing drywall and re-tiling.

Yesterday(!!) I finally put the shower curtain back up and this morning we were able to take a shower in our shower instead of tromping upstairs to the kids’ bathroom. It’s not completely done (need to finish up some trim around the window and baseboards), but it’s usable.

6 months. I know I procrastinate, but geezus that’s a long time.

About 6 weeks ago, I purchased a new laptop for Gail. Her Dell had been in the path of Hurricane Sarah, and the display on the laptop was half-broken (the top half worked great. Bottom half, not so much). It was an honest accident that happened at least 6 months ago, and Sarah still feels bad about breaking mommy’s laptop.

One evening, after having to use Gail’s clunky jerry-rigged setup (17in monitor hooked up to the laptop, sitting on its own side table while the laptop sat on the dining room table), I went to Best Buy, and pretty much on the spur of the moment, bought a Sony Vaio laptop. The hardware specs on this thing are nice: Dual Core 1.66 ghz, 2GB of RAM, 180 GB hard drive. It’s a good machine and should last Gail awhile. But it has one serious flaw:

Vista.

Windows Vista can be summed up in one word: Beta. And in this case, beta is synonymous with crap. This feels like the most incomplete OS I’ve ever had the misfortune of playing with. It has weird quirks that just makes it feel like it’s not done. When I purchased the laptop, I got a free Lexmark printer/scanner with it. Gail’s been wanting a scanner, so I was kind of jazzed about that. I set it up, put in the included CD with the drivers, and spent the next week trying to get it to work consistently. I would get it to work OK, but if I turned the printer off or unplugged it, the next time I powered it on (or plugged it in), Vista would try to re-install the drivers and set up a new default printer. At one point in the Printer Control Panel, I had 8 freakin’ Lexmark printers listed.

It’s also been having a wonderful time trying to find my wireless network. With XP, I’d open the laptop and in 2 seconds or less, it would detect my wireless and I’d be happily surfing away. With Vista, I’ve had it take 10 minutes, 2 reboots, and lots of creative cursing. And I’m not the only one…my boss at the restaurant has the same damn problem. I’m hoping there will be an update fix for it soon.

And then there’s error messages like the one up above. I’m thinking some poor programmer from India, with a minimal grasp of the English language, was tasked with creating this message, and then no one bothered to proof read it. I’ve read it three times, and it still doesn’t make sense to me.

So, after 5 weeks of crap like this, I did what felt natural; wiped it and installed XP. Well, apparently 90% of the stuff that’s in the Sony Vaio I have doesn’t even have drivers for XP, it’s all Vista. I spent another two days trying to get video working properly (it always looked too flattened for the wide screen), trying to get wireless working, etc. I finally hopped into the Sony Support chat room to ask about the availability of drivers for XP and was scolded for removing Vista. I kid you not.

So, after realizing that XP wouldn’t be that much better, I ordered a System Restore disk ($38 bucks with expedited shipping. Tax time ya know…), and now I’m back to square 2. Not square 1, because I have the printer working exactly as it should. Rather than trying to install from the supplied CD, I just downloaded the driver straight from Lexmark’s website and it works as expected now.

In all this, the thing that REALLY kills me is my impulsiveness…if I’d taken just an hour to think it over, rather than fly off the handle and decide Gail needed a new laptop RIGHT FRAKIN’ NOW, I would’ve thought about getting her a new MacBook, which will install and dual-boot XP just fine for when she wants/needs to use Windows.

Anyone want to purchase a new Sony Laptop?

For Christmas, Gail gave me a one-hour guitar lesson from Cody’s current guitar teach, a guy by the name of Jim Cash. He’s been teaching Cody everything from Guns ‘N Roses to Led Zepplin, AC/DC to The Eagles. I wanted to learn more of the finger-picking style, and when we were setting up my lesson, I told Jim as much. He had some good finger exercises for me, and we started from the basics. I can play some guitar, such as chords, or picking out a melody to a song on the radio and what-not, but as for the basics, scales and notes, I haven’t a clue. So that’s where we started, with the good old C-major scale. After doing that, we moved to some arpeggios, and progressed into a finger exercise.

Throughout all this, I’m sure I had this stupid grin on my face (when I wasn’t scowling because my fingers wouldn’t do what I wanted them to do). I’d forgotten how much I enjoying playing music. Learning something new, learning a new technique, learning scales…I enjoyed it all. So much so, that I’m planning on going back and trying to progress even further. I’d love to get to the level Jim was talking about; being able to teach his younger students.

Me, teaching music to kids. What a hoot that would be.

Also along the music front, I was cleaning out my old email, and came across two separate gift certificates my mom and brother had sent me. They were from my birthday some three months ago, and totaled $125 bucks to Amazon.com. I love finding money! I bought a new book (“Sams Teach Yourself Active Server Pages 3.0 in 21 Days” — hope it helps with the new job!), and the following CDs:

• Worlds Apart by Blue Stone
• Sanctuary by Magna Canta
• The Dawnseeker by Sleepthief
• Nuages du Monde by Delerium
• The Nine Worlds by Achillea

Prior to my purchases, I’d only heard of Delerium. I basically chose those others based off of Amazon.com’s ‘Customers who bought this item also bought:’ and then would spend time listening to the samples of each track. So far, I’ve not been disappointed.

Also in the ‘found’ department, check out what I pulled out of my pocket one night when getting ready for bed. It’s a 1901 Indian Head penny that I must’ve gotten from the bar. It’s not in the greatest condition and it certainly wouldn’t be worth more than 50 cents or so, but it’s still pretty damn cool!

And on a completely different note, big huge props to Krysta for always talking up Veronica Mars. I think Krysta’s tastes in TV shows and movies is very similar to mine, so I added it to the Netflix queue. I have to say, I am enjoying the show immensely. It’s also nice to be able to watch it when the kids are around. Previously, I had Deadwood and if you’ve seen that, you know there’s probably not a more vulgar show on TV than that one!

And I’m out! This time next week, I’ll be starting my new job. I’ll let you all know how it goes.

So it’s been another few weeks of job hunting, answering ads, taking phone calls, going to interviews…

…and receiving a job offer. Finally. Yesterday I received a call from the HR department of Online Resources, a company that specializes in online banking and bill pay software. The offer was within a couple of grand of what I was making at AOL, so it’s more than likely I’ll be accepting (I might see if I can negotiate a bit higher…never hurts to try at least) and once again I’ll be gainfully employed, complete with benefits and all.

Thank goodness. I was getting worried. I kept having flashbacks to when I was first married…I had been laid off from the title company I worked at and quickly picked up a job delivering pizzas for the cash. Within two weeks, the owner offered me a management position because I’d had experience. The biggest fight of my marriage came out of that offer (even to this day, some 13 years later, it’s still the biggest one), because I didn’t want to take it. I knew it’d be long hours, and 6-7 day work weeks. And it was. I took the job and I never saw my family. The flashbacks I was experiencing were being pressured into shooting for a more permanent and responsible position at the restaurant where I bartend. Bartending is easy. Doing the whole ‘be-responsible-and-be-here-70-hours-a-week’ isn’t. But I’m back at 40 hours a week or so with a company that offers benefits.

Yay.

I received a very cool, albeit belated, birthday present this past Friday. My buddy Scotty came over to play poker Friday night and handed me one of those gift bags and said that he thought I’d laugh at the present, yet still think it was cool.

When I dug through all the tissue paper and uncovered my present, I did indeed laugh. It was a book I’d loaned him sometime back in late August, early September, and quite frankly, had forgotten I’d loaned out. He then told me to open to the title page, and there was the ‘cool’ part he’d mentioned.

The book I loaned him was Xenocide by Orson Scott Card. For those that read Sci-Fi, it’s the third book in the Ender’s Game series, and if you know Sci-Fi, you’re probably familiar with Ender’s Game. And if you’re not familiar with it, you should be! But I digress…Scotty has a friend whose parents know Orson Scott Card. Scotty sent the book to them, and they managed to get Orson Scott Card to autograph it to me personally! How freakin’ cool is that? It says (if you can’t read it), “To Shad – Thanks for sharing my stories with others! Orson Scott Card, 14 Jan 2007″

Again, how freakin’ cool is that? It has to be one of the best birthday presents I’ve received in a very long time. Thanks Scotty!

It’s amazing how difficult it is getting down here (‘here’ being the basement where my computer is) to write a post. I’ve seriously slacked off all aspects of not only writing a journal, but reading others. I guess when you’re not working in the tech sector all week, you tend to forget about these things.

Instead, I’ve been job hunting (natch), and working at the bar. I’ve stepped up the job hunting a bit because I got notice that my COBRA benefits will cost me in the neighborhood of 1200 a month. That’ll sober you up right quick. I can’t afford that, so I need to find a decent paying job with decent benefits ASAP.

Wish me luck. And hopefully I’ll get back to writing more often.

Job hunting sucks. Just wanted to throw that out there.

I haven’t really jumped into the whole job hunting thing just yet. Mostly sending resumes to people I know, networking and such. If nothing comes of this in the next week or two, then I’ll be doing the whole dice.com/monster.com crap. Can’t wait.

The holidays were very nice this year, all things considered. Very quiet. Kids got what they mostly wanted, and were happy. Sarah got a replica Hermione wand from Harry Potter… she pulled it out, and the first thing she did was point it at her brother and say “Avada Kedava!” (which is the killing curse for those not up on their Harry Potterology). She seemed quite disappointed when he didn’t keel over, but Gail and I had a good laugh.

So it was a small Christmas, and then we played a version of monopoly with the kids for about 3 hours. Afterwards we went and saw Eragon. Then it was to a neighbors for Christmas dinner.

New Years was much the same, though I worked at the bar until 11. Went to the same neighbors we did for Christmas, and rang in the New Year. Then it was home and bed by 12:30. Didn’t have a drop to drink, but that was fine by me.

So here’s to a Happy New Year! Let’s hope it’s better than the last one

Here we are again! I gave myself a Christmas present and moved off my brother’s server and onto a Dreamhost account. So far so good! I’ll give a decent post probably later this weekend. Updates on Christmas and whatnot. Probably redo the theme again as well. And we all know what kind of trouble I can cause when THAT happens…
So…did you all miss me?