Ramblings from a Chicago Geek

I know I really suck at this whole blogging thing.  The worst part is that I hardly post on here because I have no time, but yet I lead a mostly dull and boring life, so why don’t I have any time to come on here and say something?  I think that it is mostly laziness.  I’m just too damn lazy to do it.

Over the last week or so I have been doing some heavy duty self-reflection.  I have finally seen some of myself and do not like what I see.  This weekend was another indication for me that change has to come, and has to come quickly.  So even though I have tried to change things in the past and have had marginal success for a while, things are changing.  Some major shakeups are going to happen and we’ll see where we are when all of the dust settles.  I find myself just surviving.  Going through the same motions every day.  I know that it’s part of life and that eventually everything that you do becomes monotonous, but that doesn’t mean that I have to like it.  I like to think that I am an optimistic person, but life constantly wants to keep throwing things at me.  Not to say that I am not the root cause of some of this stuff myself, but still.  It kinda feels like the universe and my brain have teamed up to get me.  Like they are the bullies from grade school who would pull the chair out from behind you as you went to sit down.  So lately I have been here, sitting on the proverbial ground wondering why my ass hurt and why nothing seems to go my way.  It was then that I realized that just like back in grade school when something like that happened, you just need to get up, dust off, laugh and plot your revenge for later.  Things are only as bad as you let them get, so at this point in time, at this very moment, I have decided that it is time to change.  The need is there, the knowledge is there, and the emotion is there.  All the critical components that are needed to manifest change.  No more getting the proverbial chair of life pulled out from under me.  Now I’m going to kick that chair into the shins of the universe if it tries to do that crap again.  As the motivational speakers like to say, today is the first day of the rest of your life.

So I still feel like shit.  Been sick since Thursday.  I think that it is because Mother Nature can’t make up her damn mind and decide on what fucking’ season it is already!!  Spring or Winter, make up your mind!!  Even with being sick though, this didn’t stop me from from having an fun and productive weekend.  The wife and I went out yesterday with friends for a great lunch, we went for a walk down by the lake over by Magic Hedge on Montrose harbor.  After that, we went went and just hung out and played RISK.  Fun times!!

So what did I do today??  Took down the Christmas lights and watched some DVRed programs with the Wifey.  Just trying to relax and take it easy so I can get better.  All in All, a productive day.

Since I get sick like once every 2 years or so, it really sucks when it happens.

Well, i just wanted to let you all know that I havn’t forgotten about you all, and I will continue to post whenever I can. 

PS. Hi Sam!

So I know that I have not been posting on here a lot lately.  I hope that will change, but I’m not promising anything. 

So to help further things along, I’m going to post something that I wrote while on the train coming home from work this last Thursday.  We’ll see what happens after this.

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Blog Entry – 3-5-09

Yea, I am bored and siting on the train, so I figured that I’d start writing an update for this finally.

I don’t know what the hell is up with me, but I have been so unmotivated lately. At work, on this, in general. It is starting to piss me off, but I can’t seem to do anything about it. I’m going to have to do a working or something to try to get myself out of this. Or perhaps some deep meditation to find out what is behind this.

On a completely side note, the new conductor on this train seems like a cool guy. I like him, perhaps the ride will be good after all.

Anyway, so what’s been going one? Not much. I am on Facebook now, which is kinda cool as I have been able to catch up with a lot of people from high school and grade school that I haven’t seen in like 10 years.

I am also on Twitter and I am hoping that the constant need to update that will end up rubbing off on this, but who knows. If you should want to follow me on Twitter, I am @SongCloud. (My alter ego and online personality).

I am so done with winter! I can’t wait for the nice weather and the time for me to start up the garden and be able to work outside. I saw this today downtown and it made me very happy.

When they start to do work on the bridges and actually raise them, spring has to be close!

Well, I can’t think of anything else to write about, so that’s it for this update on the train. Perhaps I will write more when I get home, we’ll see.

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That’s all I had.  I really want to write more on this and let you all know what’s been going on, but with some of the shit that has been going on with work lately, i need to get to bed so that I don’t end up becoming one of the unemployed masses.  I shall try to update this sometime this week, but no promises.

Well, here we are. 4 days after the wedding and I’m finally posting something. Not quite the quick return I was hoping for, but hey, I did just get married after all. Damn, cut me some slack!

So I have this whole week off of work, the wife only was able to take of Monday and Tuesday, so I guess it is less of a honeymoon and more of an psudo-seperate vacation for me. Not that I plan on being able to relax. There are so many things that I need to get done around the house that I just can’t do any other time due to my crazy work schedule. For example, today I was able to put up the holiday lights. This was something that I wanted to do so that I wouldn’t have to do things last minute, like last year. Ah yes, fond memories of Christmas eve 2007. We had the in-laws (now), her brother, her aunt & uncle, and where could I be found?? Outside decorating the house in freezing temps!! Nope, better to get it done now and get it over with, which I almost did today until I found that the net light set that I bought was not quite enough to go around the bush. in fact, it only covered about a quarter of it, so now I need to go out and get some more sets. Grrr. I also didn’t quite have enough of these cool 2-in-1 colored lights to go around the front window, so I have to get another set of those as well. So this task is going to have to get finished tomorrow. What else do I have to do, you ask? Well, I already got most of the outside done and ready for winter. The garden is down and all but the onions and broccoli are pulled out already. I am now making plans for my compost heap that I want to build and the rain barrel that I want to make, as well as planning out the garden for the spring. I have to fill the fishtanks tomorrow as they are all extremely low, but the water parameters look good, so all I have to do is top off all of the water that has evaporated in the month since I’ve touched them last. Oh yeah, and I have to go to court in Bensenville for a bogus parking ticket. That’s going to be a waste of an hour or so. I also want to put up this fluorescent light fixture in the laundry room that I’ve had sitting around since we moved in. Cleaning up my office would be nice so that I can see what I have and what I can sell on eBay. So all in all I have a lot of stuff that I want to get done, and not a whole lot of time to do it. At least I’m not overwhelmed anymore by all of the wedding stuff! I was starting to feel a bit like this:

Overwhelmed!

Oh yeah, and I have a bunch to say about the wedding . . . but that will have to wait for another post!

So just a quick update since I am completely busy and freakin’ out a little now. The wedding is only 6 days away now, and there is still soooooo much to do. Even with all of that, I still wanted to celebrate the fact that the Host that this site is on, Dreamhost is now carbon neutral. So as a result, that means that this site and all that are hosted with them are also carbon neutral!

So something cool to celebrate. And I promise, once this craziness is behind us, I will definitely be posting more on here. Not that anyone other that 1 or 2 people read this thing anyways! (Love ya Sammy!! )

So yeah.  I’ve been bad.  I have not been posting on here at all as frequently as I wanted to. I think that this has a lot to do with the wedding coming up which is only 37 days away now, but I also think that my laziness has a lot to do with it as well. 

It’s odd.  As I go through the day, I keep thinking of good shit to put on here, or a funny comment that would be great on here, but when I finally get a chance to post, I have no idea what I was going to write!  I’m sure that I’m not the only person that has had this problem, but by he time I get home from work, eat dinner, spend some time with the pooch, and get my times entered for work, I am already falling asleep.

Not to mention that I just got upgraded from my web host to unlimited bandwidth and disk space, and I am only using my space to host this blog.  It’s sad.  I want to do so much more with what I have, I want to do a nice website, and perhaps host a forum or 3 on stuff that interests me.  Unfortunately, all of that takes time to set up and I just don’t have the time to spend on it.  Perhaps after the wedding, when the cold grip of old man winter has Chicago wrapped tight, I might have time to do all of this stuff.  Just because there won’t be a whole lot else for me to do. 

So as the big date of the wedding draws steadily closer, things start to get a bit hectic around our normally mundane lives.  With the Holiday last week, we had a bunch to do over the weekend and got most of nothing done.  Oh, don’t get me wrong, we did a lot of stuff, bit only on one day.  I got either bad allergies or an actual cold, so i felt like shit from about mid-day on Saturday on.  I still have a little bit of the congestion left, but the sore throat and the sneezing & coughing crap has gone away.  So we had one day over the whole 3 days off that we got to do stuff.

As far as the wedding itself, we have gotten a ton done, but there are still a helluva lotta more little things to do.  The big stuff has been done for a while, but the small stuff is what’s hard.  like the centerpieces, the gifts for the bridal party, things like that.  This week was also the week that I finally printed the damn shower invites.  They went on on Wed. night/Thurs morn. and people started getting them on Friday already!!  To make matters worse, we still have not finished registering for all the crap we want!!  So this weekend is due to be fun!!  Meetings with the Pastor, finish registering, giving the dog a bath, changing the water in all the aquariums, plotting out the final design for the garden for next year so I can get the materials planned and the irrigation plot created, making plans for the homemade rain barrels, Making a detailed flower bed plot so I know what bulbs are planted where, plotting and planting the rest of the fall bulbs.

Lots to do and little time.  72 . . . wait, it’s after midnight now, so make that 71 days until the wedding.  It’s all going to be worth it in the end, it will be a fun time, but getting there is going to kill me!!  8^)

So Jibi over at BlackberryNews.com found this cool little easter egg for the blackberry 8220. The easter egg displays a message on the screen that reads “This is Sexy, isn’t it?” This is just more proof that us geeks can have a sense of humor after all. Take a look at the post over at BlackberryNews!

So I’ve been busy lately. With planning for the wedding and work and going out with friends and stuff, I have had like no time to do anything, let alone update this blog as much as I wanted to, but that;s going to change (I hope!)

So this past weekend was cool. The pseudo-wife and I went to go see The Dark Knight on Saturday. It was awesome! What a fitting performance for Heath Ledger! If anyone had any doubt as to his acting ability, this movie should show that he was a first rate actor all the way! His ability to get into the mindset of the Joker in such a riveting way is just amazing. Both Heath and Aaron Eckhart (Harvey Dent/Two-Face) gave all-start performances. Whomever is tapped to pick up the Joker role in the next film will have some big shoes to fill after Heath’s performance. Another cool thing for me with this movie was to look at the places and say “I know where that is!” since it was filmed in Chicago. Hell, I don’t know how many times I walked through the set without knowing it! I already want to get it on DVD so I can check out all of the locations and try to figure out where everything was filmed. As a side note, there have been a lot of films being shot around here. We had Wanted, The Break Up, & The Dark Knight, as well as some others. As some of you know, I was able to be on the set of the new Johnny Depp movie, Public Enemies, that was being filmed in town here as well. (So Cool!)

JD's Chair. So pissed I didn't get a pic with him!

A quick search on IMDB show that Chicago is no stranger to things being filmed here, whether they are documentaries, movies, or TV shows, but I am still excited at all of the cool ones happening as of late.

Another cool thing that happened this weekend was that I saw the outrageously funny Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog.

I know that i am probably going to get threatened with having my Geek Card taken away since I did not know of this sooner, but I claim Social Ignorance! So in the interest of having everyone check it out, I am embedding it in this post so everyone can bask in the glory of Neil Patrick Harris Singing!

So enjoy the awesomeness. I’ll be back with more soon enough!

So I feel completely lazy now. I took the Monday off after the long holiday weekend in an attempt to get some stuff accomplished around the house, and instead wasted the day by lounging around and generally getting nothing done. As if I wasn’t feeling lazy enough, work was relatively easy this week, as I knew where I was going to be most of the days. I love being a consultant and being able to work at different places, but sometimes getting up in the morning and not knowing where you are going to be is just a pain. Anyways, this week I knew where I was going to be, as I was teaching 1 day and at a steady client the other 2. We had a company outing on Thurs. Night to the Schaumburg Flyers game, but it got rained out after an inning and a half. It was cool anyways, as all of us from work got to hang out for a while, which is always fun! I didn’t have any client to go to yesterday, so I ended up working remotely on projects and generally taking an easy day. Because of the holiday we moved out normal First Friday gathering to the second Friday, so that was some more fun to add to an already easy work day. Now we get to today. Since it is shitty outside, I am stuck in here all day, playing games and generally fucking around. I still have a lot of shit to do around the house, but I am in such an unmotivated mood that it’s not even funny! The future Mrs. & I might go out today and do some more work on getting crap added to the gift registry for the wedding, but we’ll see if I can even get motivated for that! I love these days and being able to do nothing on the weekends after so many years of working retail swing schedules, but I hate that after them, I always feel like I did nothing . . .mostly because I did nothing! Oh well, I can dwell on it later, for now, UT2003 is calling my name again!