—

Watched the debate last night. I think it’s the first full debate I’ve sat through. I don’t see how you can see those two men sitting there, explaining their policies and think that McCain is the right choice. Watching McCain sitting there, flustered and agitated and go on the offense, while Obama sat composed and collected (and admittedly, a bit on the defense at first), it makes me wonder how soon McCain would suffer a stroke from the pressure if elected President.

—

There’s two words that should strike fear into the hearts of not only Americans, but world-wide: President Palin.

—

Received a newsletter from a group downstairs that they wanted posted on the internal website. Took a half-hour and structured it properly. The result was 289 lines of code. Took the same document and did a “Save as HTML” in Microsoft Word. That came up to 3865 lines of code. I consider that a half-hour well spent.

—

Two Bodies of Mass Cannot Occupy the Same Spot #1: To the lady driving the SUV while on her cell phone and brushing her hair; do me a favor and check your mirrors, look over your shoulder, anything to make sure I’m not in the spot you’re currently trying to occupy.

—

For those Windows users that want to switch to Mac but are tied to expensive programs (namely Adobe’s Creative Suite), Adobe now has a competitive cross-upgrade program that lets you upgrade from Windows CS3 to Mac CS4.  They don’t seem to advertise the cross-upgrades that much and they’re only available when purchasing the upgrades over the phone (800-833-6687). But if you’ve been wanting to go to Mac, why not go and upgrade to CS4 (Aside from the obvious cost!)? via TUAW

—

Kung-fu bicycle fight. This is what the intertubes were made for.

—

I’ve been researching CMS‘s for work. Which means ASP/NET based CMS’s, as opposed to PHP, which I’m used to. There are a lot more free/low-cost PHP-based CMS’s than ASP (at least that I’m familiar with). And some of those ASP solutions cost as much as $90,000. For that much money, it better design and program itself, follow up on sales leads, integrate seamlessly with the CRM system, never crash, and get me coffee.

—

Two Bodies of Mass Cannot Occupy the Same Spot #2: Don’t scowl at me because I almost hit you on your bicycle. You’re supposed to stop at stop signs just like the rest of traffic. If you’re going to ride in traffic, obey the rules!

—

Evernote is a cool little app -  I used it to capture some of these thoughts so I wouldn’t forget them

—

Fall is here! Great riding weather, and hopefully, if I get off my ass, great picture taking opportunities. The wife’s been bugging me again about more pictures.

—

Best example of a tange getting all tongueled up: “A fresh of breath air” – from McCain at last night’s debate.

And that’s it for now!

I’ve been flipping back and forth over so many aspects of this journal/blog/site/what-have-you that it’s been nearly crippling me. So much so that for two months I’d think “well, I have this idea I want to write about in the journal, but geez, I still haven’t completed the new layout I have in mind, I have to update to WP 2.6, maybe I want to switch over to EE instead, but I also need to figure out if I want to focus on something specific, or if I want to continue the way it was…” blah blah blah. I’m my own worst enemy.

When it comes down to it, I’ve missed writing. Whatever I’ve decided to write about, I’ve been missing it. So while there will be some tweaks to the layout here and there, the text will still be up. It might be all skewed as I play around, but you all are used to that, right?

So again, welcome back me. This time I’m not going to close the curtain unless this show ceases production.

Simply put, it was a lot easier than I expected. At the beginning I had suspicions that I would have a difficult time coming up with something new to talk about each day. Part of the challenge is to not only post each day, but to post something meaningful and interesting to at least yourself, if not others. After all, this journal is for me to read. I like having others read about what’s going on, and enjoy it when they react to a post strongly enough to feel the need to leave a comment. But first and foremost I’ve always treated this journal as something I keep for myself (with the exceptions of the random IMs I get – some of those are just too funny not to share). At least half-a-dozen times I’ve gone back to read old posts, reliving the moment.  So the postings had to be important or interesting or meaningful enough for me to want to read again.

Secondly, writing every day is good practice. I found myself thinking of ways to clarify my thoughts and try to get my point across in a more meaningful way. At least more coherently.

And third, I realized that I do enjoy writing. I’ve always enjoyed fiction writing, but just random thoughts in my head can be fun to express as well. I’ve been thinking about a career shift; maybe I’ll become a writer! Oooh, here we go, I’ll hop on my bike, hit the open road, and take pictures and write about places I visit. That cures my wanderlust, my career change lust, and my harley lust, all in one shot.

Hell, throw in a redhead, and I’ve got ALL the bases covered.

To do this, I was thinking of topics I could talk about. And I came up with a whopping list of two. So, obviously I’d better start thinking of more. The two I came up with are Racism (I think I have a unique point of view) and sort of a list I call Over & Over – i.e., movies, books, foods, TV, whatever…stuff I can seemingly do/watch/listen/eat over and over and not get tired of it.

Anyone got any other ideas? Two topics certainly aren’t going to get me through a whole month…

even if I didn’t already know you I would definitely accept this story for Pedestal on the strength of its construction

I even get paid for the submission. Being a piece of flash fiction, it’s a very short piece, but I think more importantly than being paid is that someone thinks enough of a story I’ve written that it’s worth publishing so other people can see it.

That in itself is worth it in my opinion.

Needless to say, I’ve been busy.

This weekend, however, should be a good decompression type of weekend. I’m going camping with about 25 other people, and it sounds like it’s going to be quite the debacle. I just got back from camping with my daughter two weekends ago. This weekend is all about “adult time”, as in no kids, lots of alcohol, firearms, and even a stripper pole.

Who knows, get enough alcohol in me, and I’ll get up on that stripper pole myself. Whoa…that’d probably scare everyone else sober. Best not.

Now, I have a what is seemingly a non-problematic habit when typing: when considering what my next sentence is going to be, I hold down the shift key in anticipation of capitalizing my first word. Well, on WindowsXP (Perhaps 2K and 98 as well, I don’t know), when you hold down the shift key for more than eight seconds, you launch something called Filter Keys. Basically it’s an accessibility option of some sort. The problems (Among many) are that it capitalizes all your letters and it’s damn near impossible to turn off. It’s quite frustrating.

So sitting at one of the computers, I inadvertently turned it on. After messing with it for a few minutes, I got frustrated (I get easily frustrated with Windows), and moved to another machine. About 3 paragraphs into my story, I friggin’ did it again. As it was nearing the end of class, I figured I’d print my story out and simply finish it up at home.

But, naturally, it was not to be. That particular computer wasn’t hooked up to the network printer, and the lab tech responsible for such things was nowhere to be found. No problem, thinks I, email is just as good.

Nope, email isn’t working on this one either. And I can’t save it because it’s a networked computer. Forty-five minutes of time, right down drain. Quite the frustrating night.

Later that night at home, I told the wife about my idea. All the little stories and such that I’ve written in the last year have been either amusing or analytical. When I told her about the idea, she actually jumped a bit and said “That’s creepy!” which is exactly the kind of reaction I was going for. I want to stretch myself, and see if I can actually write in different styles, different generas, and broaden my skills. Not that they’re all that right now, but practice, practice, practice, eh?

On a side note, it appears commenting might or might not be working. Thanks go to Sarah, who mentioned it in her own comments so I would see. It looks like I’ll be upgrading to pMachine Pro, especially now that it’s free. That’s assuming my brother and his buddy (the guys who run ragnarok.net) let me. Maybe if I bat my eyelashes and my kissy faces in their direction or something.

Ok, maybe not.