Testing out new notification

Testing out MT-Notifier

Time for a change?

I've been quite for quite some time now. It's certainly not from a lack of activity...

Over the past couple of months I have:

• Went to California and had an absolute blast with Dave at Comicon
• Made a trip to Errol to visit Jen's parents
• Went camping with Shane in Vermont and established a new camp site.
• Went to the final regular season game at Fenway (to go along with hitting the home opener earlier this year)
• Went down to Baltimore with Matt and Brian to visit with our friend Joel and catch the last 4 games of the season

While all of that has been going on, work had been pretty much the same. We've been struggling along with a crippled QA team while the contractors come up to speed and at the same time we've had an unusual amount of serious customer related issues. That's why when Matt told me about a position opening up at the Harvard-MIT Data Center, where he works, I jumped at the opportunity to interview. After two visits, they made me an offer I simply couldn't refuse, so at the end of the month I will be leaving my current position at Softech.

I'm really looking forward to this new position. I'll be able to work directly with people I genuinely like, have a short commute (at least when I'm not visiting Jen), and be able to get my butt in gear and start pursuing my Masters Degree.

Hopefully now that I'm winding down I'll have a little more free time to post here and get back on a regular posting schedule, but I've said that before so we'll see what happens...

New Hosting

If you're here, the new DNS records have populated. I'd like to thank my friend Matt profusely for stepping up and allowing me to use his box to host the site. This way I save a few more bucks every month (which will go to you Matt every time we go out for drinks, first round's always on me).

Time to rededicate myself

Now that the holidays have long since been over, I have no more excuses, it's time to get back to the good habits I developed last year. I did not make any New Year's resolutions this year because I'm still working on the ones I made from last year. My weight is the lowest it's been my entire adult life (I'm pretty sure I haven't been this thin since middle school). I'm far more social than I've been in the past. I've been reasonably good about my finances (overall I think I'm at about the same level of debt that I had last year, but 90% is now on far lower interest rates so I should be able to knock it down faster). Over the holidays I managed to not put on any weight, which was a good thing. I didn't go crazy buying gifts for myself or anyone else (as I pointed out, I even hand made one gift).

I also need to get back to posting here. I finally got around to going through the back log I had in the Netflix Log, now it's just a matter of maintaining a regular posting schedule. I'm still trying to find a good time to do a daily post. I think it'll end up being the morning. I'll just add updating the blog to my normal morning routine when I get into work.

I'll be back soon enough

Not sure why the blog page got emptied... I never asked MT to update, but whatever. I'll be back to posting either today or tomorrow. Got a few things to talk about.

Extremely Conflicted

I've been pretty quiet lately, mostly because I've been thinking about the blog and what I should and shouldn't post here. In the past I've posted whatever was on my mind, even if it was personal in nature. That's gotten me in trouble more than once, so I started to censor some of the content I put up here. The blog has also soured a few friendships from my posting of things better left for private conversation.

So what does this mean? It means I'll probably be taking a break from personal blogging for the next week until I can figure out some sort of posting guidelines for myself. I originally intended for this to be a fun place for my friends to come and find out what I've been up to and for me to tell them without the requisite mass e-mail. I hope that after some time off that I can get back to that point. Until then, I'll be updating the mini-blog and the netflix log as I find stuff to post in them, and expect a return of the main blog some time in early December.

What's my excuse this time?

I've been pretty quiet lately. First and foremost was the disheartening collapse that was game 7 of the ALCS. I had gone down to the city to watch the game with Matthew; I wanted to be there in the city when the Sox finally put the Yankees in their place. The game started off well enough; the Sox chased Clemens early with some good hitting, Pedro was battling but managed to keep the Yanks off the board. They made into the 8th inning with a 4-run lead. I figured for sure we'd see Timlin and then Williamson and was shocked when Pedro came back out. It became readily apparent he was tiring, and when the first run of the comeback scored I was screaming for Grady to take him out. When he didn't, I knew it was over. Grady had left pitchers in too long all year, mostly because the bullpen had been suspect. In the post season though, it had been the one thing that had rescued us when the offense was struggling. So when the Yankees tied the game, I literally passed out, I was so exhausted from cheering (not too mention a few too many beers), and literally sat down and passed out. I was woken up by Matt hitting me with his hat, right after Aaron Boone's homerun. I was upset, I screamed, I yelled, I even punched a wall hard enough to bruise my hand. I drove home and talked to Dave the entire way, bemoaning yet another year of baseball flushed down the drain.

Sunday's Patriots win was enough to mend the wound slightly, but hardly made up for the crushed spirit from Thursday. When I got home that night however, I had received an e-mail from a woman I had recently become very friendly with. She's leaving to move back to Florida this week, and not knowing when she would see me again, she wanted to let me know how she felt. I was completely taken aback; in all the time we had spent together we had never really discussed any sort of romantic relationship. There was occasional flirting, but I took it as just that. So when she told me that she often thought about what could have happened if we had met at a different time, under different circumstances, what could have been, I was floored. Last night I spent a night out with her (our last for the foreseeable future), where we both came to the conclusion that as much as we both would like to pursue the idea, the fact was she was moving back to Florida for the winter, and neither of us wanted to torture ourselves trying to make something work long distance. So we've decided to just remain friends for the time being, maybe to pursue the possibility somewhere down the line. Just another case of my life being full of bad timing.

Needless to say, the emotional roller coaster has left me a little drained, and with work still going full tilt, I have not had the time nor energy to write in the blog. I think I'm finally coming out of it, and hopefully I can get back to some sense of normalcy again. Only time will tell though.

It's been quiet around here

I wish I could say the lack of updates was from being really busy, but the truth is I've been rather lazy. Didn't get as much done as I'd hoped with my two weeks off, but something is better than nothing. Nearing the end of Zelda, don't think I'll finish it before next week though. Tomorrow, I have to take care of the title to my car, get the lean transfered to DCU, then Shane and I will be heading to SLC for graduation. We'll see when I feel the urge to post again.

It's getting close

Got the site pretty close to where I want it, just a few style layouts here and there left. After that I can move to actually creating some new content. I'm rather excited about how well this is turning out.

Hooray for MySQL

Finally got MT using MySQL. Getting the correct version of DBI was a real headache, I had to update perl just to get it to build. All is well now though, so I should be able to start building some MySQL/PHP stuff. First up will probably be a CD catalog, or possibly something even more simple like what Joel did for his gas mileage. We'll see what strikes me next week.

Site Cleanup

I'm working on cleaning up the website. Got to PHP-ize some stuff I'm working on for overall site navigation (not just for the blog). Hopefully this two week lay off I've got will help me get stuff the way I want it.

Life lessons...

The blog is back, but not without some issues in between. I've learned a few lessons in the last couple months. First and foremost, ALWAYS backup your time-sensitive data, like your website. My firewall/web/ftp/etc box had a critical failure around July/August, which all but wiped out 1.5 months of work getting the site to look the way I wanted it to. I'm now using a D-link router for my firewall needs (the thought of setting up ipchains again gave me hives), and I'll be running weekly backups on the new web server.

Secondly, don't trust anyone. Thinking everything was hunky-dorey with Kate, we moved to New Hampshire to begin our new life together. Not one week after we moved, Kate dropped a bomb on me and said she thought I wasn't connecting with Laura. This lead to her leaving me a little less than a week later, leaving me an emotional mess. I later found out she hooked up with some other guy she met on-line in Ohio. I got royally pissed, broke into her e-mail account, generally rifled through her stuff, did some other not so nice things that got her real pissed with me. We've since been able to patch things up to a certain extent, though b/c of logistics, we haven't been able to talk much.

Otherwise, things are proceeding as normally as they can. At work, we're wrapping up the initial development of our next release. I wrote reporting engine for this release that is heavily based in XML/XSL technologies, which meant I had to teach everyone how it worked. Dave's visiting from LA for a week so he can tie up loose ends here in New England and become a full-time CA resident.

Mind the clutter while I once again attempt to get things in order around here.

First Post...

Hmmm, starting a blog... What started me down this dark path? An inflated ego that seems to think that others might find my life interesting? A desire to log my life for postarity? A need to get my feelings out in some way other than grabbing a gun and running to the nearest book depository? Probably a little bit of all these things.