2009: The Year in Rewind
Posted by Mike
Be always at war with your vices, at peace with your neighbors, and let each new year find you a better man.
~Benjamin Franklin
Traditionally this is the time of year that I do the typical year in review type post. I broke tradition the past several years by either not posting at all or posting my todo list / resolutions for the year. Since the todo thing worked out well last year, I'm going to be wild and do both this year, though not in the same post. I'm writing this amid dirty looks and calls of "see you next year!" at a crowded Starbucks. The dirty looks are probably because I'm taking up an entire couch thingy with my feet propped up. Too bad! It's near a power outlet. Finders keepers and all that.
2009 in Rewind
I don't think there's any way I can describe 2009 other than frelling awesome. (Yes, I used frelling in a sentence. I'm aware it's a made up word. So is grok and I plan to use that at some point too so shove off.) Overall I think 2009 has gone well for me
Where I succeeded:
- I got in better shape. It hasn't been as quick as I wanted but I think I had some pretty unrealistic expectations going in. I've still got a long way to go but now I'm educated. I know more about muscle groups, exercises, and nutrition which will make this year even easier. It's like running downhill I think; the further you go the easier it gets. Daily Burn and my trainer Dennis were vital parts of this process as was the support of my friends and family.
- I was better at managing my money. I've setup automatic transfers into savings each pay check and a small spending stipend for things like books and movies. Mint.com has been a huge bonus to getting this done. Mint is like an automated version of Quicken allowing for automatic transaction categorization and alerts for a variety of situations (pending credit card payments, over budget, etc).
- Get more into my hobbies. Another one for the "win" column. I've been delving more and more into amateur digital photography/art, even to the point of opening my own store to sell prints. I've read more too, thanks to the Kindle app for the PC and iPhone, and I'm keeping up with it all via GoodReads. I rebuilt my website into something I like and I'm willing to maintain. As a side benefit I've learned a ton more about WordPress and I've actually done some custom site work and hosting. Hiking and camping excursions continue to grow, though not quite to the level I'd like. Moving out to San Diego will probably help that quite a bit.
- I moved to San Diego. Oh yes, this was a goal and it was most definitely met.
Where I failed:
- Self improvement. I didn't add a new technical skill or certification to my repertoire, and I didn't learn a new language. Gonna have to bump this one into this coming year.
Everything else:
- I bought a new car.
- I got invaded by ants.
- I had a few issues with the neighbors.
- I (unsuccessfully) tried Rogaine. More on this later.
- Attended MetaCon '09. Words cannot describe this event, ever. Probably because of the gag order from the judge. This year's MetaCon 2010 promises to be better!
- I got a job with Sony and moved to San Diego.
- Got told the truth a lot. Example:
: patience (you don't have) is a virtue (again which you don't have) - Did a fair amount of blogging. God, I hate that word. How about we say writing instead?
- Gained (and lost) a roommate.
- Went camping twice. Must do more!
- Got closer to my family. (Yeah, a win/loss there right?
) - Did I mention I took a lot of pictures?
- Got inspired by a pretty awe-inspiring blog post related to Harry Potter. I kid you not. Thankfully it's mostly due to the writer not the Harry Potter aspect.
Stay tuned for the 2010 todo list! Here's to another awesome year.
Books Odds ‘n Ends
Posted by Mike
Books to the ceiling,/ Books to the sky,/ My pile of books is a mile high./ How I love them! How I need them!/ I'll have a long beard by the time I read them.
- Arnold Lobel
photo credit: quinn.anya
While back home visiting last weekend, I posted a link on Loopt/Twitter/Facebook to the book FU Penguin, Telling Cute Animals What's What and said someone should buy me the book. Who else do you know thinks cute animals are probably pretty tasty? Three days later a copy of it showed up on my desk at work. Thanks anonymous book fairy who (creepily) knows where I work!
It's no secret that I like to read. I grew up in a small town and there weren't a lot of kids around my age in the neighborhood. My older sisters weren't my first choice for playmates either so I divided my indoor free time between building with Legos and reading books. My mother taught me to read before I was even in kindergarten so I was always read several levels ahead of my classmates in school. I had a book of the month club subscription throughout elementary school and went to the library almost every weekend. I was reading Dean Koontz and Jean Auel in 5th/6th grade, and it wasn't uncommon to see me on Saturday mornings walking the half mile to the drugstore to stand there reading comic books until they chased me out. As I got older the obsession never waned and one of my favorite (and longest lasting) jobs of all time was working in a coffee shop/bookstore throughout college.
Books as a hobby has a few drawbacks though. Books take up a lot of room especially when you're talking hardbacks. I avoided hardbacks for the longest time because they cost more and were awkward to hold, but many of my favorite authors became popular and started going from straight to paperback to hardcover then paperback. This could/would make me wait up to two years for the next installment in a series, which was especially frustrating. I'd bought the last few Jim Butcher novels in hardback when the solution came in the form of the Kindle app for iPhone.
I've been reading books on it for weeks now, and I absolutely love it. It's small, portable, and my phone is with me 100% of the time. Now my books are too. While there are still books I'll buy in physical copies, my standard fair "trash" reading- low end sci fi/fantasy stuff, single books from an author, that sort of thing is all done via Kindle now. Any computer related / howto stuff or series authors I love (Jim Butcher, looking at you here) will still be purchased physically, even in hardcover, because all my other stuff can be snagged on release day for the cost of a paperback or cheaper. The addition of the Kindle PC app turns my netbook into a handy reader as well. The Kindle wireless service auto syncs my place in books so I can swap between devices with no issue. My only complaints regarding the iPhone app is that I had to reverse the color scheme to white text on black to conserve battery and change the font size. All of my casual reading for the last 2 months has been done on the Kindle with no problem.
Interestingly enough, between the iPhone and PC software I don't see a need for the actual Kindle device itself. I know that Amazon, Sony, and now Barnes 'n Noble are all pushing their respective versions, but I just can't see the appeal of a dedicated reading device when we the typical professional already carries at least one of these two alternative "unified" mediums at all times anyway. Why introduce a third? What's the appeal of a dedicated reader device that you can't get from software on existing multifunctional devices? I thought the trend introduced by Sony Ericsson and Apple phones over the last few years was to UNIFY mediums not to split them off again? Sony started by including Walkman functionality in their phones, and Apple iPods/iPhones really drove it home to the average consumer. Isn't this the same stubborn ideology that's gotten newspapers in the state they're in today? There definitely seems to be a correlation when you look at the fact that many of these readers are coming with cellular data access to download periodical and newspaper subscriptions. While on the surface it seems to be an interesting idea, they're once again they're duplicating functionality that exists in other unified/portable mediums.
I wonder how long it will take for electronic reading material vendors to get on the bandwagon? I have a feeling the improved smartphone/netbook markets will be the winners in the end.
It’s beginning to look a lot like everyone’s favorite retail holiday.
Posted by Mike
It really doesn't FEEL much like Christmas here in San Diego- I can't recall the last time I wore shorts in December- and since it's not quite time for New Year's resolutions, here's a metric ton of holiday themed linkage you might need throughout the Yuletide season.
10 Things to do by End of Year.
The Art of Manliness has a slew of Christmas related articles:
- 6 Holiday Style Tips for Men
- 11 Ways to Get Into the Holiday Spirit (for men and women!)
- The Art of Manliness Holiday Gift Guide 2009
- The Christmas Tree Crib Sheet
Everyone's favorite chic geek chick, @snipeyhead, has a great gift buying guide for the geeks in your life.
Dear old Grandma doesn't have teh intertubez you say? Use Postful's email to mail service to send out holiday themed postcards or letters to the family.
Need to get lose some leftover weight from Thanksgiving before Christmas breaks your belt? Check out 1on1 Personal Training for diet and fitness advice!
Comment with some of your favorite holiday links.
A case of the Mondays
Posted by Mike
"Looks like someone's got a case of the Mondays!" Yeaaah, she scares me too.
Yes indeedly, and it's every day that's gym day. It's been hard for me lately to motivate myself to go to the gym every week; once I'm there everything is fine and dandy but actually getting myself there becomes a battle every night. While I think it's way too early for me to be hitting any sort of burn out I'm definitely far enough past the "newbie" phase that the quick improvements are going by the way side, so now I have to buckle down and really work at it. I'm pretty impatient in general, so it's hard for me to be motivated without continual visual improvement. While I'm glad I recognize it for what it is, it doesn't make it any easier for things like Dragon Age to not eat up all my time.
Tomorrow is weigh in / measurement day and I'm more than a little happy. Looks like my weight will be ~165, which means I only have 5 more lbs to my goal of 170. Granted that translates into another 4 or 5 weeks, but I'm trying really hard not to think about that too much. After that it's a week to relax the diet a bit, then I start cutting down again. I've had tons of support and advice from my friends (Dorian and my old trainer Dennis at 1 on 1 Personal Training) in regards to diet and exercise and I couldn't have done it without them. I mentioned that it was hard for me to stay motivated, but the easiest way I've found so far is to be open about what I'm working on and my goals are- I find I'm less likely to let myself slide if I know other people "watching" what I'm doing. Ironically that's also today's topic on the My Daily Wellness Tip blog. Another good motivation tool is that I have friends coming to ME now for fitness advice. It's a good confidence booster and it helps me to keep myself on track. I also follow a few different twitter feeds and forums for fitness motivation; For websites, there's the forums at Bodybuilding.com of course, the forums over at Daily Burn (as well as a small fitness group I'm a member of there), and My Daily Wellness Tip, which is run by a few different folks. I follow many of those sites by Twitter, including jlboissonneault from the Daily Wellness Tip blog, Bodybuildingcom which is pretty self explanatory, and Bodybdercoupons which is a Twitter feed of new forum topics + discount codes. Dennis my old trainer has a Twitter feed as well as 1on1trainer.
Here's to hoping there's only 4 more weeks to go!
Hidy ho there…. neighbor?
Posted by Mike
Aren't neighbors great? One of the highlights of apartment living for me is the opportunity to have so many close neighbors. Where else but an apartment complex can you pay extra for the ability to share walls with someone else? Not in them thar fancy houses, no sir! I personally think that's why most mortgages are so low; you're not getting to share walls/floors/ceilings with other people! With an apartment you're paying for the privilege of living near everyone. By that logic I wonder how much it would cost to live in a sardine can.
Of course there's a downside to this shiny happy sharing world- sometimes, very rarely, you get bad neighbors. Maybe they throw wild parties and don't invite you, or hang pictures all night. Yup, just pounding away at the walls with hammers in a rhythmic fashion. Definitely hanging pictures. Whatever the case may be everyone has had them and everyone has had to deal with them. But what happens when YOU'RE the bad neighbor? I've never thought of myself as the bad neighbor. I've definitely thrown a few shindigs in my day, listened to my fair share of gangsta rap too loud at night (west side!), and certainly I've cranked the bass for the occasional testosterone-and-explosion movie fest from time to time. Despite all of that I've never once had a complaint lodged against me in all my 10 years of apartment living until last week.
It started innocently enough. A voicemail popped up on my cell Monday morning from my apartment complex letting me know that "a neighbor" had complained about noise from my apartment over the weekend. They were very helpful, even going so far as to give me a few tips and pointers on how to move my subwoofer away from the walls so to not disturb others. "It's not the actual VOLUME you understand, just the bass every now and again. Thanks for looking into it!" I'm sure it's just a random coincidence that I had finished running the wiring for my surround sound setup the day before, and had felt the need to test it a wee bit. I shrugged it off with a laugh and a mental "oops" and went about my week. "Boy", I thought. "How lucky am I to move into an apartment complex that offers surround sound hookup advice?! Who needs GeekSquad? Not me buddy! I got Mission Ridge."
Friday night rolls around and I'm deep into my latest addiction- internet pr0n. Kidding... that's my fallback addiction. I'd been squeezing in a few hours of Dragon Age: Origins between work and gym nights, so I was looking forward to an uninterrupted romp through the game. Instead I got a visit from my upstairs neighbor at 11:30 at night. Talk about immersion breaking yeah? Nothing like opening the door to a barefoot schlub wearing pajama pants and an Affliction T-shirt to get you out of the RPG mood. Maybe he should have shown up dressed as Elrond (or his daughter, rawr!) and I'd have been more receptive. Instead the conversation went more like this:
Him: "So uh, like, hey. We can sorta hear some noise from down here? We think it's the bass from your stereo. It's definitely not the volume though, no question!. You seem like a nice guy even though I just met you and..."
Me: "Hrm, that's weird. Can you hear anything like now? I mean my door and windows are open, did you hear anything outside?"
Him: "Upstairs, yeah! But not out here. Want to come listen?"
Me: "Not really. I mean, it's 11:30 at night...."
Him: "Um... right.. I mean...
Me: "Kbye!"
Understandably I was confused; what kind of magical sound could travel through the floor, walls, ceiling, and air to reach out and disturb these poor people and yet not be audible from eight feet away. Clearly witchcraft was afoot or I was being framed. Or both... those crafty witches, always out to get us techno-savy regular folks. Obviously a case of techno-envy. If it wasn't the witches then certainly this was a fluke right? To be on the safe side I lowered the bass, treble, and overall volume on the subwoofer, but apparently that wasn't enough as someone began pounding on my ceiling at 9:30 on Sunday night. Now THAT was some magical floor transitioning noise.
By Tuesday I'd found a letter on my door. Reading between the lines (and the grammar issues) its obvious that he's been complaining to the apartment complex again. I'm going to call them in the morning to see what we can do to straighten this out. Between the letter, the neighbor harassment, and reading things like this on the web, it makes me lean pretty strongly towards finding another place when my lease is up in March.
About Me
Lackadaisical writer, amateur photographer, professional grump, and all around spiffy IT guy.
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