DarqByte

Ahh, the Muddy Buddy. Something I thought I was in decent shape for. But was I? Fuck no. Haha.

Prep

I got up at 6am this morning and got myself and my stuff ready to go. Headed out the door at 6:30. I had with me a full change of clothes, a towel, two bottles of water, my bicycle helmet I just bought yesterday and me. Drove off to Andy’s place because we were driving together. He had the mountain bike, I had the truck. It works. Haha.

From Andy’s we drove down 215 and hopped off at Eastern to get a small breakfast at Denny’s. I had this new “Slamwich” which is basically their Grand Slam ingredients on a sandwich. It was pretty tasty. We hopped across the street to Chevron and Walgreen’s to fill up the bike’s tires with air and grab some AAA batteries for his helmet-mounted video camera. So cool.

In case you’re wondering, we were dressed in Steampunk attire… Just thought I ought to mention that…

Anyway, we arrived at the race and signed our waivers and got all of our numerical decals. Ran back over to the truck and got our outfits finalized and numbered up. We got back to the stage just in time for the final announcements of some details we needed. Once the announcements were over, we met up with Ginger who took my truck key and my wedding ring and Andy and I scurried off to make ourselves “as light as possible” for the journey, if you catch my drift.

The First Three Legs

Here’s where things got interesting. I thought he and I were in Wave 1 because the waves are ordered by gender and the combined age of the partners… However, we weren’t, we were in Wave 2. Sadly, I told Andy right before they were letting Wave 1 bicyclists go that we were in 1, so he took off with Wave 1 and I had to wait until the Wave 2 runners. I thought he would be way, way ahead of me when the first leg of the race ended and we made the bike swap.

I ran for most of the first leg, about 75% of it, and climbed over the climbing wall obstacle that was there. I looked for the bike in the bike drop area and… Not there. I stayed around the area for about 5-10 minutes, looking over the bikes a few times and asking a couple of the attendants what I should do. I actually thought that Andy was disqualified for leaving out a wave too early and I didn’t know about it. Just as I was about to talk to one of the coordinators, Andy showed up.

It turns out that Andy had technical difficulties with the bike and didn’t end up getting it ride-worthy until Wave 3 went out, so I had a head-start on him and didn’t even know it. So anyway…

The second leg was marked by a lot of damn uphill hiking with the bike. And a big, big puddle of water that I wasn’t expecting and couldn’t power through on the bike. The obstacle at the end of it was a balance beam, which was initially difficult for me to overcome because my legs were feeling a bit shot at this point. There was a lot more hiking to the race than I anticipated, so I wasn’t fully prepared. Grr.

In addition, the bike was having chain slippage issues. The chain kept slipping between the chosen gear and one below or above it, and it was making life riding it difficult. I ended up stopping trying to ride it uphill because it was damn-near impossible and required an enormous amount of physical exertion that way.

The third leg was me walking about 75% of the way. I just didn’t have any juice to really get it going until the last quarter of the leg when I jogged in the rest of the way. The obstacle at the end here was a crawl underneath some netting. I wandered off to find the bike, only to see Andy hadn’t leapfrogged me, so I waited and talked to some random guy.

Andy showed up and gave me the bike. Off I went…

The Last Two Legs

The beginning of the fourth leg was already a doozy. There was a big stretch of mud. I don’t mean watery mud here. This stuff was like wet clay. Very, very thick and gooey stuff. The further you got, the deeper and thicker it got. And to top it all off, the second half of this stretch actually did have a big puddle on top of all of the mud, so… Holy crap. About 75% of the way through the non-puddle stretch, I almost lost my balance. In attempting to keep it, my right foot kept sinking deeper and deeper, and once I steadied myself, my left sunk deep as well. I was very worried I was going to lose my shoes and have to ferret them back out. Thankfully, I yanked my right foot and got moving again.

The bike was monstrously difficult to maneuver through all of this. For a little bit of the non-puddle I carried it. Once I got to the puddle, I decided to just plow through the puddle. There was a bank on the right side that looked just like the non-puddle section I got through, but it was tougher to get over there initially and also didn’t seem like it was supposed to be part of the course. I picked up the bike and kept it on my chest and sloshed through the puddle section. It was quite fun, I had a good time making a mess and big splashes. I hadn’t gotten that muddy and dirty in years, it reminded me of when I was a kid. Loved it.

At the end of this stretch was a small hill that was giving people fits because they couldn’t get traction thanks to all of their mud, so I helped a couple people up and was off on my way.

Most of the beginning of the fourth leg was uphill with a few downhill and flat spots, so I actually got to use the bike a bit. I climbed up this massive hill to see a nice, long, downhill slope for about three or four tenths of a mile, so I was looking forward to coasting, using the brakes a bit and just gliding through to the fourth obstacle and the fifth and final leg.

Sadly, this didn’t get to happen. About a fifth of the way down this nice downhill slope, the back tire on the bike popped. Big, loud pop. After I got off and started walking it down the rest of the way, some people expressed dismay that it had happened to me. It happens. It sucked, but it happens. I eventually got to the obstacle, which was a cargo net on the side of an inflatable slide. Said slide was the way back down on the other side.

I started walking off on the fifth leg and figured I’d jog it most of the way, but stopped and headed back to the obstacle area so Andy and I could walk the remainder together. It was a good walk, we got to talk about random shit and see if we were going to be dead last in the race. This leg took awhile simply because we absolutely had to walk it the whole way.

We got to the end and then had to deal with the final mud pit. My God, what an interesting way to end an already muddy day. We had to crawl through a big massive mud pit that had small hills and obstacles that kept us low and in the pit. Once we got out, out entire fronts were just massively covered in this light grey mud. Most of our backs were too, and mud had gotten inside both my shirt and my vest. We looked like we’d slept in the mud.

The Aftermath

Our official race time is unknown because we were supposed to leave in Wave 2 and I didn’t know what value the timer had at that point. And since Andy didn’t leave until Wave 3, who really knows. The race started at 9am and we got in at 10:57am… So we took a few pictures and meandered over to the “shower,” which was really just a massive water pipe and about 30 hoses all spouting out some really damn cold water. And it was only mid-50s and overcast for the race, so it wasn’t entirely pleasant, getting the mud off of us. We collected Andy’s bike and headed back to the truck.

We had Ginger and one of Andy’s friends there with us, and they helped us change, mostly by helping us get our shoes off and holding up towels so we could be modest. The interior of my truck doesn’t have much mud in it at all, but the bed does. It actually looks like it’s been used as a truck, haha!

I dropped Andy off at home and drove home myself. Took a nice, long, long shower, got some pho with Laura and read a chapter for my economics class. And here I am, writing this insanely long post that almost reached 1600 words. Maybe some photos in the future, or perhaps Andy will post some on his blog soon.

Robert Life hiking, marathon, mud, muddy buddy, trail

It’s been said before that I don’t venture outside my comfort zone much, and that’s probably true. I tend to not initiate hanging out with friends, I often let them do so. I don’t just jump at the chance for new experiences that often…

So here I was, sitting at home poking around Facebook and talking to Laura and she started telling me I should do this Muddy Buddy thing with F. Andrew Taylor. I had actually just seen Andy post something on Facebook, looking for someone to run this thing with him, and Laura started talking to me about it, saying I should volunteer to do it with him because he really wanted to do it.

So I did a quick bit of research on what the Muddy Buddy is. It’s a 6-mile course where you trade off every other mile who is riding a bike and who is hoofing it on foot. Every mile there’s an obstacle that the two members must clear before swapping the bike. And at the end is a big mud pit the two have to slosh through.

I sat for a moment and thought “I dunno, do I really want to? Does it sound like fun? It sounds like… Wait, wait a minute. What the fuck. I never do anything different or out-of-character or interesting. I’m in.” Thus, I informed Andy he had his muddy buddy and that I would join him on this trek.

This spur-of-the-moment decision now has me making damn sure I get to the gym this week. Not that I haven’t been hitting up the gym, but if I’ve got things or errands to do right after work on Mondays or Fridays, I don’t make the gym. And I was marginally sick last week, so I didn’t work out after classes, either. So I’m making sure I get to the gym and do a combination of walking/running machines and the bike machines.

On a side note, I’ve also begun my ab exercises. I need them, badly. My gut sucks.

Anyway, so since then I’ve been also looking into just what I’m going to have to wear for the event, and it seems a lot of people dress up in interesting (to say the least) duds for the race. I’m not sure Andy and I are going that far, but I do want to make sure I don’t ruin any of my good stuff and that I’ll be appropriately dressed for the weather. I don’t want to be mega-freezing or dying of heat exhaustion either.

The race is out at Lake Las Vegas, and Weather.com lists the expected high at 57, so I… have no idea what to wear yet. Probably a short sleeve shirt and pants. Maybe I’ll wrap a longer-sleeve shirt around a bar on the bike or something, who knows. The course is here.

In final prep before the race, I plan on taking my bike at home out for a bit and getting used to riding again, on Saturday. Then the race is early Sunday morning, like 9am. Should be fun.

Robert Life bicycling, lake las vegas, muddy buddy, race

Yesterday morning was definitely an interesting morning. But before I’m able to explain it, I have to give you some background information on my Linux machine at home, which is my development machine.

Last fall I started hearing CPU fan noise from the machine. Fan noise generally indicates that a bearing is wearing out, something of that nature. It concerned me, so I popped the side of the case off and looked at it. The fan was still running, so that was good, and if I pressed on certain parts of it I could generate the noise. Thus, to eliminate the noise and head off any potential overheating issues, I decided to get a replacement fan.

Only I never really did. I knew I needed one, so I just popped one on my Amazon wish list, which ended up being used as my Christmas list for all of my friends and family. And someone got the CPU fan off of it for me. Haha.

I never ended up putting the fan on, because at some point the noise stopped. And since the machine never overheated and shut off, I figured the issue had worked itself out somehow. It’s rare, but it can happen, so I never investigated further.

There’s background on the CPU fan. Now for the background on how the machine was operating…

My standard development machine is my Linux box, so I have all sorts of tools on it that I use. It’s actually very similar to my setup at work. I run three different Java applications (IDE, SQL client and SVN client) as well as Firefox for web browsing and a bunch of Bash terminals. And this all runs on KDE4.

I feel like KDE4 is a bit more of a memory and resource hog than KDE3, but that’s ok. So when I upgraded to KDE4, I attributed my decreased performance to the upgrade. But there would be times when my machine would get really sluggish and sometimes programs would simply get killed at the operating system level. I thought this was due to a memory issue, since Firefox can be a really damn big resource hog too.

I’d been having trouble with recompilations too. Again, I attributed this to memory allocation issues, and I’ve considered increasing the memory on that machine (I probably will be now, I just have to find out what’s already in there so I order the same stick). So some of my recompilations have caused KDE4 to come down entirely, so I’d started doing recompiles in a TTY without KDE4 running.

So a week ago I started a recompilation of Firefox to its newest version because I thought there may be a chance it would have better memory usage. I left the machine alone to recompile while I did other things. I did this from within a terminal in KDE4 because I turned off most of the other applications running.

So now onto yesterday morning… Working remotely from home.

The machine was at the KDE4 login screen. So I knew the compilation brought down KDE4. I didn’t think much of it, because if the compilation fails then the existing application you’re recompiling will still work. So I logged into the box and started all of my applications up. Yet Firefox… bombed. It would begin startup then just stop and never get anywhere… Hurray.

So I started a recompilation of Firefox from within KDE4 because I was signed on to the company Jabber server. I could still get some things done without Firefox, such as moving batch files from server to server and running other things on our batch process server. And then it happened.

The machine turned off. I was like.. WTF!

At this point, I switched to working from my Windows laptop, where my productivity is greatly reduced. I figured I’d try to recompile Firefox one more time in a TTY while I did work on my laptop. Low and behold… Powered off again.

It was at this point that I knew the CPU fan was toast. I temporarily took some time out to pull the box from my desk, pop off the side and pull the old CPU fan out. Holy crap was the heatsink mega hot, so I knew the fan wasn’t working correctly. Popped the new one in and started it up.

Everything booted up correctly, however I still stopped KDE4 and recompiled Firefox from a TTY. And this time it went much, much faster than it had been in the past. And it went all the way through finish.

So I started up KDE4 and all of my applications, and things seemed to be running faster and more efficiently. Firefox started up just fine, so I moved all of my work back to my Linux machine and worked from it for the rest of the day. No issues from thereon out.

Actually, I didn’t detect any of that common sluggishness that I had been before. So I wonder if my performance issues were related to high heat on the CPU… I don’t necessarily think so, but I guess it’s possible.

So I didn’t end up getting to work 100% from my Linux machine yesterday until 9am, which is 2 hours after I start work. However, I did get plenty of work and standard early-morning monitoring done during that 2-hour period, so I feel like I really only lost about 15-20 minutes or so of working time.

Had the machine powered down during Firefox recompilation after I had replaced the CPU fan, I would have cut my losses and actually headed in to work from the office. Thankfully, my Linux machine’s issues appear to be fixed.

Now all I have to do is send my Windows laptop in to HP to have a fan replaced as well. I can’t replace it myself and it causes overheating and noise issues too. Dammit!

Robert Technology compiling, cpu fan, overheating, wtf

Ok, so for the first time ever I have a significant goal streak going in soccer. This easily beats out the one game I had two goals in the last minute remaining, simply because I’ve never had two games in a row with a goal… Let alone three. We’ll see if I extend this out to for on Wednesday.

In any case, I wanted to break down the three goals for you because they’re pretty cool. The yellow circle is the ball, yellow arrows the ball’s path. Red people are opponents, green people are teammates, blue is me and the purple person is the opponent keeper. Our paths all match our colors like the ball path does.

Game 1, Goal 1: Wednesday, January 27, 2010

Game 1, Goal 1: Wednesday, January 27, 2010

I’m not entirely sure how the ball got into that area of the field, but the opposing player had it and was trying to run across the goal to get the ball around me to clear it upfield. I knew he was trying to do that, so I let off just a little tiny bit to give him the idea that he might have an opening. He took the kick and I got my leg out to block it. Low and behold I did, and I got a fortuitous bounce. The ball kept rolling the direction I was running, across the goal, right with me. I took a couple steps to line myself up and shot across the goal low, voila! Goal!

This was mostly all a hustle goal for me. I kept with the guy even though he had the ball and managed to force a mistake close to their goal, giving me a close-range shot, and the keeper didn’t have a chance because it was across and low.

Game 2, Goal 2: Wednesday, February 3, 2010

Game 2, Goal 2: Wednesday, February 3, 2010

This was just all great setup by a teammate. He had the ball near midfield and I snuck a bit behind the two opposing defenders, they didn’t know I was running on the other side of the field behind them while they paid attention to my teammate. He played a perfect pass between the two defenders to the point where, as you can see above, I met the ball. I didn’t even stop the ball for a shot, it was a one-timer where I hit the ball about mid-range vertically and to the right side of the goal. The keeper was on her back foot and had no chance. Great placement of the pass and shot. All my teammate’s doing.

Game 3, Goal 3: Thursday, February 4, 2010

Game 3, Goal 3: Thursday, February 4, 2010

One of my teammates kicked the ball along the right side of the field and it was a bit past me. I got hung up in the corner of the field, but there were no opponents near, the closest was probably at midfield on the left side of the field. This is very similar to what happened on my first goal. I brought the ball out from the corner, set it up a little and took a couple steps, then shot low and across the goal. It bounced off of the side post and in, the keeper had absolutely no shot.

This one was a little bit more special as it was (is likely) my last game with Brittany Gauldin. She’s been on my Thursday team for quite some time and this was her second-to-last game. She wanted to get a team picture and I was the holdout because I can’t make the Thursday games unless they’re 9pm or later. I managed to move some things around with my classes on this day so I could make the game, so it ended up pretty cool. I think I annihilated my accounting exam I took early, too.

Robert Athletics goals, soccer

I’m such a nerd that I put the word iteration in my post title, even when I’m updating my infamous (is it really infamous??) list.

It’s that time of the year folks, when I update my list of famous women that I can sleep with and encounter no repercussions with Laura. The whole point of this list is to be some funny, fantasy thing that will almost assuredly never happen because I’ll never meet these women.

One of these days I’ll make my “Man List”. One of these days… I already know Robert Downey Jr. resides on it, but that’s all I know. Anyway, that’s a topic for another time. At the end of this post I’ll give you the reasons that anybody who might have been dropped was.

Honorable Mention: Michelle Trachtenberg

Michelle Trachtenberg

She gets an honorable mention mostly for a sidenote I’m going to make at the end. But she’s pretty and back when I first watched EuroTrip, she would have qualified for actually being on my list.

Number 5: Michelle Rodriguez

Michelle Rodriguez

She wasn’t even in consideration for Iteration2 until probably a few weeks ago. I’ve always thought she was attractive, but for some reason I decided she belonged on the list after I saw her in Avatar. I mean, she is pretty hot. Although as Laura points out, she’s “too dominant for me.” As if that’s something that matters when we’re talking about a fantasy list. But she’s pretty hot.

Number 4: Jessica Alba

Jessica Alba

Really, she belonged on the list in the first place. The only reason I never added her was because just about everybody else probably would have placed her on their list, and I’m not one to follow a crowd. But oh well, this is personal preference here, so screw everyone else and if I’m just one in the flock here! Jessica Alba is pretty damn smokin’ hot. I mean, what else is there to say? Wondering why she’s not ranked higher, perhaps?

Number 3: Rachel McAdams

Rachel McAdams

Rachel never appeared on my list before simply because I kinda forgot about her. See, I don’t fantasize about myself being with hot famous women all of the time, so I can forget when I see one and think to consider them for my list. Hell, even when I think about considering them for my list, I’ll have forgotten later that I wanted to make that consideration! And Rachel McAdams was the unfortunate recipient of such forgetfulness. She should have been on here from the get-go. Can’t break into the top two, though.

Number 2: Jenna Fischer

Jenna Fischer

She very nearly well broke into the top spot. I mean, she was really close. Hell, even a few weeks after I first posted my list, she was pretty much going to get it. But I’ll explain why she didn’t here soon. She’s still hot and still a nerd magnet, so thus she retains her spot as #2.

Number 1: Amanda Bynes

Amanda Bynes

I almost knocked Amanda Bynes down to #2. I mean, she dyed her hair pretty damn blonde right after I made my list and I actually didn’t really like that look on her. She looks good with darker hair. But alas, two things saved Ms. Bynes. One, she switched her hair to highlights, which looks much better on her than the blonde, and I daresay might even look better than when her hair was basically just one cohesive color. And the second? She posed in Maxim, and got to prove that she’s indeed as hot as I thought she was. In fact, that’s just what the photo I have of her above is from, her Maxim shoot. Hot indeed.

Notes

Ok, so I mentioned Michelle Trachtenberg earlier as an honorable mention, in part because I wanted to make a note here at the end. I’m not too keen on how she looks much anymore, I think she’s too “plastic” looking nowadays. But Laura and I were talking about my list earlier this week and she was suggesting people to consider for my list. She mentioned “that girl from EuroTrip.” I mentioned that I thought she was pretty hot back when that movie was made. And then I realized…

Both Michelle Trachtenberg and Amanda Bynes were stars on Nickelodeon, back when I watched that kids channel when I was a kid. It appears that I haven’t outgrown the actresses that were on TV as kids when I was a kid. I wonder if that’s part of the appeal, at all..  I’m not convinced, though. I mean, Michelle Trachtenberg is only an honorable mention, mostly because I thought this was an interesting side-note, and I nearly knocked Amanda Bynes down for Iteration 2. None of the other ladies on my list were kid stars that I watched as a kid.

In fact, had Amanda Bynes not grown up to be so damn hot, she wouldn’t be on the list in the first place.

Dropped

You may notice there is 60% turnover on my list! Dropped from the ranks are Scarlett Johansson, Keira Knightley and Hayden Panettiere. These three ladies are still quite attractive, but I was putting my initial version of my list together without the full breadth of thought that it required. Really, lists require a couple iterations to get them right from the get-go, and from thereon out they’ll always be living documents because tastes change, people change and whatnot. So those three are dropped because they are unworthy when considered against my three newest additions. No offense.

Robert Entertainment, Musings Amanda Bynes, Hayden Panettiere, jenna fischer, jessica alba, Keira Knightley, michelle rodriguez, Michelle Trachtenberg, rachel mcadams, Scarlett Johansson

I understand there are plenty of voices out there with varying opinions on Apple’s new iPad, announced yesterday. For some inexplicable reason I want to voice my opinions too! Hey, I’m a nerd, I’m allowed to voice my opinion on matters such as these because I’m somewhat knowledgeable. That, and I’m a consumer of technology so my opinion does indeed matter.

Interface & Input

My first thought on the iPad is: looks neat. Really, it does. I think this style of computing could be the future. Now I know what you’re saying. You’re saying it’s been tried before, most notably by Microsoft, and it never took off. Well, a couple things regarding this point:

1. Digital MP3 players didn’t take off until Apple released one with a good interface.
2. Smartphones didn’t really take off until Apple released one with a good interface.

See the theme? Good interfaces. And this is yet again the difference that Apple has created with the iPad when compared to all other tablet-style computers that have come out before. If there’s one thing Apple is really good at, it’s interfaces. Sure, their interfaces might not hold up under the test of time when newer ideas and technology comes out, but when Apple does release new interfaces for products, usually it’s either groundbreaking in some manner.

And that’s where the iPad shines whereas previous Windows-based tablets never took off. They designed the interactions of the software around the input style of multitouch with contextual keyboards. The Windows-based tablets were just touch capabilities tacked on to the existing Windows platform, which didn’t work because the existing Windows platform was designed for a keyboard and mouse. The iPad’s interface is totally redesigned from normal computing. That, and it’s based off of the iPhone’s advances, which uses the same touch interface so they had a base of success to start with here.

Revolutionary? I think this is the start of a new wave of computing. Interacting more intuitively with technology is the way to go. I can just imagine humankind eventually getting to the style of computing seen in Minority Report and other movies that show more physically-based interactions with technology than using peripherals. I like the idea of using an iPad in the manner shown, as well as the keyboard attachment because it will likely be necessary at times.

E-Books

So let’s move on to the whole e-books concept. I got Laura a Kindle for Christmas because I knew she’d like it and she loves to read. I won’t get into the many reasons I got her the Kindle beyond that. I knew at the time of the rampant rumors surrounding Apple’s mythical tablet device and decided that I didn’t think the Kindle would be killed. So will it?

No, I don’t think so. First of all, the iPad will use DRM-enabled books like the Kindle does. Secondly, the Kindle is function-specific. Sure, the iPhone is multifunction as well and that’s one of the successful pieces of it. I’m sure it will be the same way with the iPad. But the Kindle is also much cheaper and will likely get cheaper still with the iPad announcement.

One other thing that the Kindle has going for it: the e-ink display. I know some people don’t like the refresh of an e-ink display, but e-ink requires no backlight. As a result, it is much better on the eyes. Additionally, the Kindle’s battery life is phenomenal compared to the iPad, again in part because of the lack of a backlight. And if the books are all available on the Kindle as well, it will always have a market.

I think the only way the Kindle dies out entirely is if books aren’t available on it but are for the iPad. I’m pretty sure that’s the only way that will happen. People want these devices for their content, so where the content is the device sales will go. I, for one, hope that books keep coming out on the Kindle so Laura can keep getting them. Even if they’re available on both systems, because the Kindle is smaller and easier on the eyes. Laura can carry it in her purse, but couldn’t with the iPad.

One more thing about e-books. There’s talk of textbooks appearing in the iBookstore for the iPad. If that’s the case and my textbooks starting this fall are actually available for the device, that may prompt be to buy it, so long as I can do book-like things with them, like bookmarks, highlighting, notes, etc. My textbooks for this spring semester weren’t available on the Kindle, but an older edition of one of them was, for $110 less. That’s why I want textbooks on a digital reader. Cheaper and much more portable.

Judging by what I saw of the book-related functionality, that seems almost like an add-on, “Oh, let’s try and take this market over too!” thing. The book-related functionality was definitely not the focus. I don’t necessarily think it was an afterthought, but Apple doesn’t seem intent on taking it over in quite the same way they’ve taken music over. But ultimately, who knows. Maybe they want to pwn Amazon after all.

Wifi & 3G

I find the whole $130 more to get 3G abilities a bit much. If I were to get one, I’m not sure I’d opt for the 3G capabilities. Not when I have an iPhone too, anyway. I can just tether it. But the pricing on the 3G monthly rates is good, especially with the lack of a contract.

Name

Yeah, the name sucks. They need a new one but it won’t happen. Oh well. I think even iAwesomeness would have been better…

Price

I touched on the 3G price hike a bit, but at $499 for the base model, that’s phenomenal given what you actually get for the iPad. And the iWork apps for $10 each is an excellent value as well. I’d probably opt for the mid- to high-range storage capacities myself, si”d spend anywhere from $600-$700 on an iPad. I guess I’d consider the 3G connectivity a little bit, but I just don’t see the pressing need for it… Although now just thinking about it, enabling tethering on the iPhone is expensive with AT&T, so maybe I’d pony up the $130.

Final Thoughts

Yeah, I like it. Enough that I’d consider getting an iPad over a MacBook Pro, which is what I want my next technology purchase to be so I have a more portable laptop than my current behemoth. I don’t really need an MBP, so an iPad might fit the bill for the kinds of things I’d want to use it for. Like I said, if this fall rolls around and my textbooks are available on the iPad, and significantly cheaper to purchase for it than in print… Likely I would become a new iPad owner.

Robert School, Technology apple, ipad, kindle

Some people know that I used to co-own a business. It was called Dambert Lush, it was an electronics e-commerce website. My friend Damian Sheets and I owned it. It never really took off, and a lot of the reason for that was that we had no money to start it. Aside from the fact that electronics e-commerce websites are extremely plentiful, we just didn’t have the advertising money to get the name of DL out there. It was running for over a year but we shut it down because we couldn’t ever get it rolling well. I re-bought the domain recently and have it pointed to DarqFlare Enterprises.

Anyway, I bring this up because my MBA courses relate to starting a business. I mean, one of the reasons I’m getting an MBA is because I eventually want to start a successful business and work for myself. That’s a theme I’m sure you’ve seen pop up here on my blog time and time again. I want to work for myself, that’s my ultimate career goal. Even if it’s working hard, I want to work for myself. As I’ve said before, right now my ideal job is working on OMGN for a living.

In any case, my accounting class’ textbook has actually made me more aware that I want to start a business again. There are examples all over that book of people starting businesses, and they’re obviously always in reference to accounting systems to ensure that money is kept track of appropriately. Some of these businesses have been started with very low funds, albeit more funds than Damian and I had to start DL. But it all just reminds me of where I want to be and where I’m at now.

The start-up funds aspect of businesses is what’s staring me in the face right now. To start many businesses, you need to have seed money. There are many types of businesses, but the two that have been covered so far in more detail in the text are service-based businesses and inventory-bases businesses.

Service-based companies basically accept money to provide a service. There’s no inventory costs really and the start-up cost for a business like this is pretty low. Hell, this is a kind of business I could likely start without any funds, but the problem here is that the income from the business wouldn’t be high enough to cover my family’s expenses. Yet another limitation on me right now.

Inventory-based companies typically have to purchase merchandise then sell it back to other companies or consumers to make a profit. There’s a considerably higher amount of money involved in getting these types of businesses off of the ground since they’ve got to get inventory and a place to put it. This was what Dambert Lush was, but since we were a dropshipper, we didn’t have to hold inventory. Still, our marginal profits were really low and there weren’t enough of them. No advertising, remember?

Anyway, all of this introspection on starting a business and going into the accounting of businesses this semester has really told me that, yeah, starting a business is hard work, is more of a crapshoot than it should be and that you’re very likely to fail many times before getting it right. I’m alright with that and I’d be even more alright with that if I wasn’t married. See, I’d be much more inclined to take risks since it would just be me that I’m impacting. But I’m not. I have Laura to think about and the potential for having a family in the future.

A lot of Web 2.0 companies have started with guys living in their parents’ houses. Many of these people starting these new successful companies were single when they started them. They had relatively low costs of living and a lot of time to burn. I don’t fit the bill at all. Now I’m not blaming Laura or using her as a crutch here, I’m just being realistic. I’d have a much better opportunity and chance of success if I were single, didn’t own a home or any pets and had craploads of expendable time to put towards a big project that won’t make me any money for years.

However, I’m not in that situation. So I have to wait. Wait until Laura and I have more money stowed away for me to start a business with. Wait until we have fewer monetary obligations than we do now (i.e. vehicle payments and student loans). And if we have kids, then that’ll impact the likelihood of my starting a new venture. I’m just trying to figure out if it’s ever going to be a viable thing, me starting a business.

As I’ve said before, really the biggest thing keeping me from working on OMGN full time is the fact that I have to go out and earn a living. If I could pipe all of that time towards the site, I have no doubt it would grow and get bigger and better in stature as time went on. Unfortunately, that’s not the case. All of the responsibilities and obligations I’ve built into my life make it impossible to spend the kind of time and effort required to build OMGN into what I want it to be. Sure, you can say “work on it a little each day and it will grow!” but it won’t ever grow enough. Sites like OMGN require constant updating, which isn’t something I can do and it isn’t something I can expect people to do on my behalf for free or very, very damn cheap either. It’s just not feasible.

So here I am, wondering if I’ll really ever be able to start a business anytime soon. Sure, when I’m in my 40s sometime we’ll probably be in a much better financial position to take a risk like that. But let’s say for example I’m 48 then. I imagine by then we likely won’t have big money-draining kids with us by then, or at least we’ll be charging them enough in rent to make up the difference (haha). I’ll be 48 with about 25 years generated in my 401k and plenty of time in Laura’s IRA. Other financial retirement accounts will likely have money for us then as well. At the end of my 40s, would I rather just bide my time until I can retire, which may be very soon in my 50s, or put a bunch of money towards a business that may jeopardize my family’s financial well-being?

I may need to adjust my priorities. I do like my life as it is now. I love my wife, I’m enjoying my pursuit of higher education and I know I’m fucking good at my job. Sure, I want to move up there as well, that’s another shorter-term goal I have for my career. But maybe this whole starting a business thing just isn’t in the cards. Maybe I should just look at my life, adjust my priorities and be happy. But then again, that’s not my style now, is it? I’m a bit like Laura in this regard. I want bigger and better things for my family, for my career and for me. I want to achieve things and leave my mark on this world. I don’t want to settle, I don’t want to sit stagnant and watch other talented people in the world shape this world. I want to take my place with those people. I just hope I can reconcile my desires for grandeur with reality.

Robert Life, School business, delusions of grandeur, mba, omgn

I’ve never really worked out on a regular basis. I’ve tried in the past for different stretches of time, but ultimately I’ve never been successful at it. The only times I’ve ever lasted any amount of time is when I got to work out with Laura. But with her early-morning schedule of working out conflicting with my work hours, I can’t join her in the morning.

So this month I thought I was making decent enough progress on losing weight that I might actually hit 175 pounds by February 1st. That’s not looking like it’s going to happen, with only even a couple of days late last week that killed some progress I’d made. Apparently my margin for error on losing weight is very small now, so there’s almost no way for me to continue losing weight with what my willpower looks like.

Couple that with the fact that I do generally want to be in better shape, and you’ve got the recipe for me to attempt to work out again. Now keep in mind losing weight via a proper diet and working out are two separate things. You can work out and not really lose weight. But in combination, they can actually work to help you lose even more weight and to get into better shape.

I started working out again last night at the UNLV gym. Being a student I can use the facilities for free, so I gave it a shot last night after my last class ended at 8:15pm. Yeah, that’s kinda late, especially since I get up for work at 6am and only have any kind of a break from 4pm-5:30pm, the time between when work ends and my first class begins. So it was a long, filled day.

But it went well. I’m a bit tired and slightly sore today, which means I pushed my body a bit, which is what you need if you’re trying to get into better shape and lose weight. All I really did was this elliptical-type machine, I don’t know what exactly it was. What I do know is that it required a bit of endurance and some leg strength in muscles I don’t normally use. I was sweaty and tired afterwards.

I’m going to vary my routine up, hitting different equipment at different times. I do want to do some weight training as well, but I need to figure out what muscles I want to focus on and when. In weight training, I’ve learned that you need to leave a day between times when you work out the same muscles, so if I do my upper body one day, I shouldn’t do them the next day. I think this’ll work to my advantage, since I want to combine cardio and fat burn with strength training. Oh, and I need to make sure I work out my abs, since that’s where most of my fat is.

Basically, my workout routine will be on weekdays. I can’t see myself heading up to UNLV on the weekends to work out, since Laura can’t go there, it’s far enough from my house that driving there to work out isn’t palatable, and I’d be taking up time I could be spending with Laura. My schedule will be:

Monday: After work ends at 4pm
Tuesday: After class ends at 8:15pm
Wednesday: Indoor soccer
Thursday: If indoor soccer starts 9pm or later, then indoor soccer. Otherwise, after class ends at 8:15pm
Friday: After work ends at 4pm

All of these times are pretty convenient for me in terms of distance from my last activity of the day and not overlapping with potential Laura time much. I get off of work before Laura does, so working out immediately afterwards doesn’t impact seeing her much. Indoor Soccer overlaps with her church choir practice. The only day that gets impacted much is Thursdays.

So today is day 2. Not sure what exactly I’ll be doing yet. Probably some weight training of some sort and maybe ending with a small dose of cardio.

Robert Life weight loss, working out

34 inches? I know what you’re thinking about but no, I’m not talking about that. 34 would be selling myself way short anyway.

The latest chapter in my whole “make myself look and feel better” thing has arrived. I’ve been putting off getting new clothes mainly because I wanted to complete my weight loss first. I didn’t want to have to buy a bunch of clothes in a stopgap fashion. Unfortunately, my last two pairs of jeans bit the dust, so I was forced to replace them. They were Levi’s, and they were built rather well. The only problem was that it was tough to find 38-30s that weren’t below my heels. They weren’t truly 30s so I kept stepping on them and wearing down the bottom of the pant legs. For the record, I really needed 37s, not 38s. They don’t make 37s.

Now I’m in 34s! 34-30s and they aren’t too long. This makes me a very happy person. I’ve lost at least 30 pounds and 3 inches off of my waist. Good stuff. I’ve recently begun making progress again and I anticipate hitting the 175 mark by the end of this month or early February. That would be 35 pounds off since I started nearly a year ago. I think my target is 160, but I won’t really know until I get there.

I recently looked at photos of me when I went to just the mustache, the Robstache. Wow I’ve lost weight since then. I do look better. Still got further to go. Additionally, I’m going to try to start running in the mornings with Pepper (and potentially Laura). I was supposed to start this week, but being excessively tired when my alarm went off put the kabash on things. Hopefully I’ll start tomorrow.

And if I do start tomorrow, wow what a day it will be. Today I start my next semester of MBA courses. In 50 minutes, actually. I’m in Lied Library right now. But because my classes are on Tuesdays and Thursdays, I’ve signed up to play soccer on Wednesdays. I was originally waffling on the decision, but Laura’s support for me switching days and the fear of getting really out of shape spurred me to sign up. In any case, tomorrow’s my first Wednesday day of soccer on a new individual coed team, and for some odd reason we have two games tomorrow… What the fuck. Two games? A doubleheader? I’ve done it before, but by choice not by facility scheduling. Running in the morning plus two soccer games in the evening. Wow.

And that’s not the end of it! I told my Thursday soccer team I’d make the games if they were late enough, which is basically 9pm or later. So the 9:10 game this Thursday? Yup, I can make that. And I’m hoping to run on Thursday morning as well. Which would make three runs (Wednesday, Thursday and Friday) and three soccer games from Wednesday morning to Friday morning. Wow. See why I think I’ll hit 175 this month?

In other news, I wish I had endless time to do everything I want to do. Not only am I trying to find time to work on OMGN 4, I want to write a memoir about my video game life until, well, now. I think it would be very interesting because I don’t think there’s much of anything like that out now. And I’m a pretty good example of someone who gamed a lot when they were a kid and make the transition to being a responsible (well, at least I think so) adult with a married life and a job and other normal responsibilities.

This brings me to another subject: video games. Specifically, the original Atari joystick. See, my friend Jonathan recently got a tattoo in Elvish from Lord of the Rings. He loves it and I’ve always wanted a tattoo and I’ve always loved video games. I wasn’t 100% set on what tattoo I wanted but I knew I wanted a video game-related one, especially after seeing Anne’s roommate Ed’s “Mario 1up” tattoo he’s got. See, I didn’t want a tattoo that was system- or franchise-specific, I wanted one that represented video games as a whole. Now I know the Atari joystick is still Atari, but it represents so much more than that these days. And I’m asking Jonathan to give me a nice illustration of it so I can verify I indeed want to get it permanently marked on my body.

Laura’s been making sure I really want one, and I do. I am, however, curious to know what you all think of it…

Anyway, that’s it for now. Chat at you all later when I know more about my spring courses and I can let you know if I think I’ll be on track to continue my pursuit of a 4.0.

Robert Athletics, Life, Musings, School soccer, unlv, Video Games, weight loss

I’ve been in a bloggy mood lately, so here we go with another round of updates in my mundane life. Maybe I’ll post something other than “here’s what happened!” soon, but who knows. Occasionally I like to have posts like my PHP Soap Timeout post, so maybe I’ll come up with something awesome like that soon. But for now, all you get is life updates.

Arizona

I didn’t mention this before here on my blog, although I did mention it on Twitter and Facebook, but I decided to head down to Arizona for my grandparents’ Christmas Eve party. My grandfather had some health issues this year and I didn’t want to miss a guaranteed time when I’d be able to see him around Christmas. I don’t know how much time he has left with us, be it a few months or fifteen more years (I hope it’s even longer than this!).

In any case, Laura was unable to accompany me on the trip. I took off a half-day on Christmas Eve to make the drive down after I got off of work on the 23rd. My work only had a half-day scheduled for the 24th, so I only had to take off 4 hours. My Dad met me here at work when I got off at 4 and we set off for the Phoenix/Mesa area, replete with gifts and items we’d need to survive the harsh Arizona desert… Rather, clothes and toiletries.

We decided to pit-stop in Boulder City to say hello to Laura. She wasn’t expecting us to drop by before we got out of town, but BC is literally on the route to Phoenix from Vegas, and the diversion from the US-93 to her office isn’t very far. She was happy to see us and we chatted for a bit before finally heading out.

The drive was mostly uneventful. We got held up at the dam for awhile because there were quite a few people driving out south on US-93 and there are security checks at the dam. It took us about 20-25 minutes to get through the checkpoint, then we were off to the races. We didn’t end up behind very many slow people.

There was a point in Wickenburg where US-93 ends and that section was totally rebuilt and included two traffic circles. My Dad was leading the way and hadn’t encountered the rebuild before, so there was a little stopped-in-the-circle action before he figured out what direction was what. Apparently, he also needed to fill up in Wickenburg and he’s got a Chevron card, so he was originally going to stop and get gas there. Unfortunately, his regular Chevron had become a Shell station, so he ended up skipping it. Once we were on the AZ-74, he called me up to use my GPS or iPhone to find the nearest Chevron. We ended up hitting up a Chevron at our connection point from the AZ-74 to the I-17.

The rest of the drive was all highways inside the metro area basically until we got to my grandparents’ place. Once we got there, we unloaded a few things, talked with my grandma for a bit, then headed to bed.

Note: I just noticed I’m already over 500 words. I have three topics to cover and I’m only about 1/4 through the first topic… Are you ready for a much longer read?? I sure am!

The next day was obviously eventful as it was Christmas Eve! The day of the party, the day I’d finally get to see a lot of my Dad’s side of the family that I never get to see. The morning started off slow, with my Dad, my grandma, my cousin Cody and myself all talking about stuff and whatnot. Cody’s still pretty young so I guess he didn’t talk much, rather than act like a kid, but hey. I ended up playing a game of Stratego with him, and he’s pretty good. I haven’t really ever played before and he had some good tactics.

My cousin Dani showed up a bit after noon. She’s turning 18 on New Year’s Eve this year, and holy crap she got tall. Not quite as tall as me, but taller than Laura. We didn’t have a whole lot going on at the time because my Dad was puttering around on his laptop and my grandma was cooking up food for the party that evening. She suggested for Dani and I to go catch a movie, so we did. Ended up seeing The Blind Side. Good flick, I particularly enjoyed it.

Even though I had my iPhone and the GPS in the Prius, I decided to just follow Dani to her place so I could see her parents earlier than they would have made it to the party. Mark & Ricki, I hadn’t seen them in quite some time either, so it was really nice to see them. Mark’s lost quite a bit of weight, I’ve never seen him as light as he is now. I’m not sure how much, but I’m fairly certain it’s around 50 pounds.

Oh, did I forget to mention my grandma also lost over 50 pounds? She’s looking much better too. What is it with all of the weight loss in my family? Apparently my Dad is the only one gaining weight, haha. Love ya Dad.

So I helped them load up gifts and whatnot and we drove on back to my grandparents’ place. My grandfather was finally home from work when we got back, so I caught up with him for awhile. It was really good to, since he was the primary reason I decided to take this trip in the first place and miss Christmas Eve with Laura and potentially screw up time with her on Christmas.

My uncle Brad was also finally there, so we got to trade shots and banter around a bit. It was fun, he always is. He’s one of the four of us look-alikes: My grandfather, my Dad, Brad and me. I dare say I’m the best looking of the group!

The look-alikes! From left: Me, my grandfather, my Dad, Brad. Lower-right, my cousin Cody managed to get part of himself in the photo.

From there the party really started. My cousin Matthew and his wife Danielle showed up, and even he’s lost weight! 60 pounds! He officially weighs less than me, the first time in our lives that had ever happened. Unbelievable. He really looks different, being that light. He’s thinking of entering the police force in Phoenix or, if that doesn’t work out, he’ll see if the military will give him a job. I’d rather him be in the police force myself.

I apologize to the rest of the party attendants, but my short-term memory can be bad and in this case, I can’t remember who all else was there! I suck, I know. Oh, my great-grandma Sigourney was there as well. She’s still going strong, I can’t believe it. She’s in her 80s.

The white elephant gift exchange went well, I ended up walking away with three items. I originally nabbed this storage net you can mount to a wall. At one point during the exchange I mentioned that Laura would like this nice carafe that was out there. My aunt Ricki is the one who originally bought it, and she nabbed it at the end with the expressed purpose of getting it for me. She’s awesome. My grandma also had an ice cream bowl & toppings set she opened that never got stolen, and she let me have it because she knew Laura and I would like it and she wouldn’t use it. Interesting stuff. A few other small gifts were passed out and the party ended.

One thing I did discover during the party — my cousin Dani is a nut. She fits in with this family well. Dani and I have been messaging back and forth in Facebook for awhile now and I never realized just how much like the rest of us crazy people in my family she’s like.

Actually, she was my first recruit into getting my family to call me Robert, and she never slipped up once while I was down there. When I was younger, I went by Bob (and even further back, Bobby) and I’ve long been trying to get my family to make the switch and call me by what I want to be called, Robert (even Rob works, although I never introduce myself as Rob… still get called Rob more than Robert…). My aunt Ricki made an effort, so that was cool. My Dad was also making an effort.

Interestingly, my grandma had always wanted my older sister Katie and me to call her Gran. I had no idea until she mentioned it to me during the trip. Thus, I am now calling her Gran.

I got up at 3:30am Vegas time on Christmas and left at about 4:20am Vegas time. Arizona doesn’t participate in daylight savings time, so they share the Pacific time zone during the summer, and during the winger they share the Mountain time zone. So they were ahead at this point. I filled up my car to the brim with more gas before getting out of town, and I was off!

The drive up was again, relatively uneventful, but as I got closer and closer to Vegas I felt the pressure of making sure I got into town in time to shave, change and get to mass in a presentable manner. I was unkempt and didn’t have a change of good clothes with me, so I was trying to avoid driving straight to mass. So I sped, as we did speed going down to Arizona.

At one point, the US-93 was switching between a single road with a dividing line between north and south lanes and having a median between the two. During one stretch of the median, suddenly there was a car coming head-on at me! Thankfully, I was still barely inside a two-lane stretch so there was room around him, but if I had been about ten seconds further ahead, we would have met in a very narrow one-lane spot… Doofus. Needs to learn how to drive.

Getting through the dam at this point was a breeze. I ended up getting home at 9am with basically 30 minutes to shave & change and get out the door. I went a little longer than I wanted, leaving the house at 9:40, but I still got to mass with about 10 minutes to spare. Thus, Christmas had truly begun for me!

Ah, but wait! A note on miles-per-gallon for the trip for the Prius before I start section 2 for Christmas. Going down to Arizona I got about 48 MPG. Pretty good for highway driving in a Prius, it made me happy! But that should have been an omen. It turns out most of the driving down to Arizona is literally down. Downhill, that is. Driving back to Vegas is pretty much all uphill. I effectively got 36 MPG going back to Vegas, which is abysmal for a Prius. I actually had to fill the tank in Kingman to make it all the way back. It sucked.

Christmas

Note: over 1,800 words so far! Wow… Long.

Mass was good. It was a nice Christmas Mass. I got to sit next to Ron & Priscilla, Laura’s stepdad and mom. Laura sang cantor at Mass as she always does and had an excellent solo near the end. It actually elicited applause from the congregation, which isn’t really supposed to happen. Haha.

Laura and I headed back home after Mass to collect the gifts we needed to track back on over to the Waltons’ place and to change into non-Mass clothes. So we did all that and headed back out.

Opening gifts was fun. Laura got to open her new Amazon Kindle from me, which I wrapped in triplicate — I wrapped the Kindle and its cover, put it in a box, heavily taped that box and wrapped it, then put that box in another, heavily taped and wrapped again. It was pretty funny, if I do say so myself.

I had a pretty good haul myself. Got this new component shelf I was wanting for the bedroom so we could put an “entertainment center” in there with the TV I scored from work for $50. Laura got me this awesome new Harmony remote to replace the one downstairs and move the existing one to the bedroom. I need to customize the new one with a background image and a new font theme. Hells to the yeah! Other goodies came my way, such as a Bionicle Lego set, Left 4 Dead 2, The Hangover and more. I also got this nice cube of photos from Katie and my other Parkers up in upstate New York, which was totally awesome. I love hand-made gifts.

We transitioned to dinner, which was excellent as always. Unfortunately, the Waltons don’t get the NFL Network, so I kept up with the Titans-Chargers game online via the NFL’s website. Unfortunately for the Titans and their playoff hopes, it wasn’t a very merry Christmas and they got handled, so no playoffs this year. Maybe next year, we’ll see.

Speaking of Christmas sports, the UNLV Runnin’ Rebels had a basketball game against USC. Unfortunately for them as well, they lost, bringing their non-conference record to 12-2. That’s a pretty good record and I think they’ll make some noise in the Mountain West Conference this season. I think, unless they totally implode, they’ll make the NCAA tournament this year, making it three times in four years. Getting back to where the program needs to be!

After dinner we just sat and talked and watched TV. Ron and Laura read books from their Kindles and Julia worked on her Christmas gift to her boyfriend Alex. Laura and I got sleepy, so we headed home to get some sleep.

Cleaning

We didn’t end up going to bed right away. Our house was an absolute disaster at this point. Neither of us had any time to keep things clean and neat while we were both getting Christmas gifts ready for people and I was prepping to head out to Arizona, so the place was very messy. I ended up doing a little tidying up and organizing and breaking down boxes while Laura read a bit more on her Kindle. Then we headed to bed.

The 26th wasn’t a day for straight cleaning. I still did a bit here and there throughout the day, but we had a lot going on that didn’t involve cleaning. Laura had breakfast with her friend David, we both had lunch with some of my old friends from high school and we had dinner with her parents at White Chocolate Grill. Tasty goodness, I had this great penne alfredo. Afterwards, we came home and I hooked up our new bedroom “entertainment center.” It contains the TV I bought from work, as well as a Blu-Ray player and DirecTV HD receiver I got from Best Buy (using gift cards from both the Tuckers and Waltons) while Laura was having breakfast with David. To mount the component shelf on the wall, I used this new DeWalt 14.4V drill I got with a Lowe’s gift card my Dad got for me. The drill was very nice, but some of the studs in my house are so difficult to screw into that I actually have to use slightly shorter screws…

I got all that setup and reconfigured our old Harmony remote from downstairs for the new system upstairs, and voila! I’m particularly happy about the Blu-Ray player, as it can connect to Netflix, Pandora and YouTube. So we can now also watch Netflix streaming in the bedroom off of the Blu-Ray player, while downstairs we do that using the Xbox 360. We can’t use Pandora downstairs, so that’s a plus. Although I’m sure I could find a way to stream Pandora downstairs if I wanted to, maybe via a laptop or something. Maybe I will…

Thus, the 27th! Cleaning day! Collected all of our trash, including the now-empty boxes from our new components and gifts. Broke down the rest of our Amazon boxes and stored those and the packing materials away. Cleaned off the living room and dining room tables, put all of our new gifts away, stored our wrapping materials (well, what’s left of them). Cleaned some straggler dishes, put the previously-clean ones sitting int he dishwasher away. Tidied up the bedroom slightly, but there are still some straggler clothes in there. Did cable management on the new “entertainment center” in the bedroom. Took the closet door off (we’re replacing it with a curtain, it got in the way of some racks of clothes and was more of a bother than anything useful). Cleaned up and organized both the library and loft. The library had my bin of cables and technology parts strewn about because I needed to find cables for the components in the bedroom, so that was a chore. Vacuumed downstairs and upstairs, dealt with piles of mail, dealt with piles of stuff to shred.

We still haven’t gotten the empty boxes and non-food trash bags out of the house. Our trash days are Tuesday and Friday and our trash bins were already 100% full, so there’s nowhere outside to put the new trash. We’re taking it to the curb tonight, thankfully.

Hmm… Anything else? Might be, but trust me, that list I just gave you took quite a long time to do. We ended up having people over in the evening, so we were happy we got all of that squared away. We still need to do hard floor cleaning and some dusting and have a new, smaller stack of things to shred, but other than that I think our house actually looks good again.

Anything else you want to know about my four-day weekend? Oh, I’m pending some more CD/DVD/BD jewel cases because we’re really low and I’ve got paintable cable covers for the bedroom coming soon so that’ll look better. Phew. And I need to cut down our coaxial satellite cable, because it’s too long and it’ll look bad because I can’t figure out how to make it look goo otherwise.

Hmm… I do still have a Home Depot card to use…

Over 3,000 words! WTF!

Robert Home, Life, Technology Arizona, blu-ray, christmas, cleaning, directv, family, friends, netflix, pandora, youtube