Are you pickin' up what I'm puttin' down?

First, I must give a shout to Jeremiah (J) from good ol' MSOE. Good luck to him, Jadon, Price, Ted, Drew, Westy, and all the others that have finals next week. Next off, I've got to say that things are alright with work. It's getting a little less busy, sort of.. I have to better utilize my time a bit, but hey, I'm a rookie.

My sister Amanda seems to be hanging in there at college. It's tough, but she works hard and tries her best.

Laura, although I'm not supposed to know yet... Is pregnant! That's a plus, because she's been married for over a year, so congratulations Laura and Nate!

Colorado is way too close. I'm not ready at all. I need to go drop off my skis for re-edging tomorrow for sure.

I'm still looking for the perfect house to buy. I think I have two roommates that would live with me, Matt (my current roommate) and Matt J. (an old friend from school)

As I explained in past entries, television is easy to get addicted to. I think my roommate might be at that point. I haven't yet had to force the remote from his hand.

Comedy Central gave props to blogs tonight... It goes to show that words can be made up and widely used in a matter of a few months.

Milk and bread in the back

Scheduling... The bane of my existance.

Every so often, I think to myself, "Self, can this get any tougher?" Lately, it's been in regards to work. I'm working on a redesign of a corporate Intranet. It's very cool, and I like working on it. My project manager is awesome, my boss likes it, the technical architect in the group thinks it's pretty cool, and it's fun. One minor problem, though, is that it isn't an easy project. I've found myself throwing a few extra hours at problems because I underestimate their difficulty. I'm going to work on Saturday as if its a regular workday, and I'm thinking that it will help me get back on schedule.

In other areas of life, things are going well. Jadon, Price, and I have nailed down a few more details regarding our ski trip. Although I've decided all rental car companies suck, we're still going to pull it off for under a grand, so that is Ok.

The remainder of this week is going to be busy, quite busy.
Thursday: Work, Nick Freeman is in town.
Friday: Work, Westy's Birthday
Saturday: Tony will be in town, and my sister will be stopping through.
Sunday: I'll be catching up on my last few things I need to finish for work on Monday, as well as doing some laundry.

Ah, so plenty of things on my plate. Oh well, life is still good.

Milk and bread in the back.

Losing the edge.

Today I attempted to set up a VPN for a friend of mine. He was using SBC Yahoo DSL, and I was not impressed. It was a pain to set up, and in the end, I couldn't get the VPN to connect. Since there are 30 points of failure, I just cashed in my chips and went home.

Perhaps this is just another subtle hint that I'm losing my edge with computer things. I've got to go back to school, or at least pick up some Java or .Net classes. Ehhh, or maybe I should just quit the whole computer thing. I could deal with working at a restaurant half the time. Ehh, I suppose time will tell.

Television

Based on personal experience and random statistics, I’ve decided television is an easy thing to become addicted to. My roommate is a big fan of television, and I am not really used to living in a place where the TV doesn’t turn off. I’ve started watching way too much TV every day, and now I’ve decided to do something about it. Sure, Scrubs, the O.C., Desperate Housewives, Lost, Alias, and the West Wing are all great shows, but I find myself watching random shows too, many that aren’t even good. I’ve decided… I watch too much TV. Therefore I’m replacing some television time with a few other things.
Playing piano – I’ve gotten a little rusty, so hopefully I will play some more to get a little better.
Work – Deadlines are fast approaching, so I have to dedicate a little more time to that.
Making dinner – Thus, saving cash, as well as having lunch to eat the next day.
Organizing – My room, preparing for my grad school stuff next year,
Going to bed earlier, waking up earlier…
Hanging out more with friends.
Going skiing
Etc etc
For now, milk and bread in the back.

The Packers didn't pull through for a third win against the Vikings (go ahead Jadon, rub it in) so they are done for this season. That wasn't very cool, but there weren't high hopes to go much further this season. Hopefully next year we'll keep our key players, and get some new ones.

This weekend, I'm headed home to pick up my skis, and I am hitting the slopes on Sunday. By Friday, I'm going to get my car fixed, so it will make it all the way to Wausau... But to pull all this stuff off, I need to get up earlier for work.

Thing I learned at work today: Using XML and HTTP requests, website developers can emulate type ahead functionality like Google Suggest does. I will probably try to use that stuff in the coming week or two.

That's all I've got for now.
-- Milk and bread in the back --

Busy Week

First week back to full-time work. Nate is headed back to AZ. Jon is back in town, with a new TV and an XBox. My deadline for work is getting closer. Our trip to Colorado is hanging on a thread of with time and money working against it.... But I still think we'll pull it off.

All in all, I've decided being busy is a very good thing. I've seen when I'm not busy, all I do is waste time watching TV. So, at the end of the day, I've decided being busy is worth it.

Two things I learned this week. The first, you can use @import to control stylesheet inclusion so that advanced styles don't ruin the performance of a site when users are running older browsers. The second, adding cranberry juice to smoothies doesn't taste the best.

Thats it for now.... And remember everyone... Milk and bread in the back.

My first real post.

I'm following a bunch of my friends in beginning a blog. I've read plenty in my time, and figure I should catch up now. We'll see how long it lasts. This New Year, I did the stereotypical thing and decided to wake up earlier and get to work on time, while at the same time not being as lazy as last year. It's Day 5, and I'm doing Ok. The first was also my brother's birthday... He got a new place, and bought a new TV, so his new year is going well.

This weekend is Tony's birthday too, so we're in need of something very cool to do.... I google'd cool things to do just to see what it had to say. The result was interesting, but I found out it is quite expensive to store Liquid Nitroges. Ehhh, what can you do.

Anyway, this is a good start for now. I will add more on lunch hour tommorrow, just to see if people actually check it out.