Sunday, July 31, 2005

Yep, blogging's definitely slower when I'm not at a job that gives me broadband access with little to do. The new job is so far fun learning experience. It has its pluses and minuses, but I am certainly enjoying it.

Today I'm 29 (really). Woohoo! Fiancee was incredible, finding some very old military history books (printed in the 1880s) that are pretty cool. Just have to read them without destroying them. And met the parents for lunch at Waterloo, which was fun. They gave me an executive pass to Zach Scott, so I suppose it's time to heap on the culture - Shear Madness, anyone?

Did something to the soft muscle around my ribs a week and a half ago playing basketball. Whatever's wrong hurts, but not bad enough to indicate a fracture, so I'm just hoping I heal by the wedding.

Which is right around the corner, and the reason I'm not blogging in off-work hours. Not so much wedding details (although there are a ton!), but also moving Fiancee's stuff in (she's done almost all of the design/organization work, which has turned out quite well!), and just juggling all kindsa stuff.

Speaking of which, thanks to Chris for pulling together a bachelor party that was a lot of fun yesterday. Went to MainEventUSA where we raced and air hockied and laser-tagged a group of 10-year-olds into oblivion, then the Salt Lick (yes I'm still in a glorious meat coma!), and then video games at a friend's house. Any bachelor party involving 4 Slurpees just for me and the words "Super Monkey Ball Fight" has to be good. And it was.

I needed some escapist reading, so I'm re-reading my Xanth books to determine where the series went bad so I can give away the books that were written after that point. The early stuff was really cool, although Piers Anthony seems more desperate to include sexuality in his writing than I remember. Perhaps I just didn't notice as much in middle school.

Dunno if you'll hear much more from me in August, but I'll try to get a routine going some time in September. Since married life is supposed to be exclusively blissful and complication-free and all.

What I've Learned: 1) First phone calls don't always resolve everything. 2) Almost every day I realize I'm even luckier than I imagined to be marrying Fiancee.

I'm Glad About: 1) Birthdays are fun! 2) New Company's database was actually designed with database programming in mind - could be a first in IT history.
posted by Unknown 11:11 PM | 0 comments

Tuesday, July 12, 2005

Accountability: No gym this morning and probably not tonight. But I've set up racquetball for tomorrow, basketball Thursday, and possibly racquetball Friday. I can live with that as a weekly activity schedule.

Congratulate the Fiancee! Got her department's training grant, which basically pays her for doing lab research she would've done anyway without requiring a TA or other work. Competition's pretty stiff, so this is a pretty cool accomplishment. Woohoo!

So I'm wrapping up transition stuff here at the old job - tis kinda scary how little useful information I have at this point.

What I've Learned: 1) Startups really don't have a process for leaving employees any more than they do for entering ones. 2) W is planning on writing some kind of post-Presidency book that won't require crayons to fully enjoy it.

I'm Glad About: 1) racquetball 2) the auto-stop triggers on gas pumps so I can hold my book in both hands while pumping
posted by Unknown 2:34 PM | 0 comments

Monday, July 11, 2005

Accountability: Made it to basketball Thursday night after racquetball, which was exhilarating but also made me take off Friday. So not much exercise on the weekend, but played racquetball today. So woohoo!

Had an early birthday party Saturday night - Dave & Buster's is much fun. And it's been far too long since I had Ruby's BBQ. Thanks to everyone who came, and Fiancee for putting it together.

Wedding details are really getting knocked off left and right - I'm hoping I can finish any legwork we need this week as my job becomes more demanding next week. It's going to be fun.

Reading: Well, knocked off Order of the Phoenix this weekend - it is really, really good. Has me all kindsa salivating over Half-Blood Prince coming out on Friday. Between now and then, I'm catching up on some magazines (Mental Floss is amazing!) and reading more of Montaigne's essays.

Also I've noticed I have a tendency to complain. I don't blame myself too much - I think it's a societal thing, but that's no excuse. So I'm gonna try to include something I'm glad about in these entries. Today I'm glad about: 1) Laura 2) the publisher who finally didn't reject JK Rowling

What I've Learned (if I'm adding a list of 2 entries, this is being cut down to 2 entries): 1) Nobody ever actually has nothing to do. 2) Wedding bands may look like commodities, but they have to be individually custom-ordered. (cough)racket!(cough)
posted by Unknown 4:50 PM | 0 comments

Thursday, July 07, 2005

Note on frequency: I'm starting a new job in less than 2 weeks, which means I'm cramming to prepare and taking a lot of vacation time to use up what I've got at the old job. You might think the days off would be prime blogging time, but I'm catching up on naps and helping pull together a move and a wedding. So if I get a lot spottier on the blogging thing over the next couple of months, you have my sincerest apologies.

Thoughts and prayers go out to all who are in London (including a friend of mine on his honeymoon there - they are safe). I'm glad that our security forces work well enough for this to stand out as a terror attack - no sarcasm there, I'm sure a lot more of these are headed off before they happen.

A note on perspective, though - hundreds are dying and being tortured in Sudan every day (here's a report claiming 500 deaths a day - if they're off by 90%, it's still more than the bombings), and thousands die from conditions related to poverty (this report says 50,000 daily - it can be 99% wrong and would still be 10 times as many). Did you see A Time To Kill, where bongo expert Matthew McConaughey's character details the abuse of a young girl, then asks the jury how they'd respond if she was white? I think it's a bit heavy-handed on the race card, but I think a similar factor is at play here - 9/11, the Madrid bombings, the London bombings, and most other terrorism hits situations we can imagine ourselves in, and that inspires more fear than a primitive warlike state where the best-armed family in the neighborhood does whatever they want to everyone around them, or conditions where there's not even enough food to steal to keep everyone alive.

I don't want to minimize the suffering of those killed and wounded this morning - their pain and their family's pain is every bit as real as those in the other areas I've described. I just hope we don't let fear of more familiar dangers take over our priorities, since there's been no shortage of agencies/companies/attorneys general willing to take advantage of that fear. What if, instead of being afraid and trying to avoid things that might happen, we reached for our dreams and what we hope for? I don't think I've ever heard of people making that kind of change who didn't improve the lives of everyone around them as well as their own.

Tony Blair said "It's particularly barbaric that this has happened on a day that people are meeting to deal with world problems at the G8 in Scotland." Would it have been less barbaric if no meetings had been going on? Is there a day where the government isn't trying to deal with world problems on some scale? While it is mightily inconvenient for it to happen as the G8 convenes, it suggests a bit too much emphasis on his own current mission, as worthy as it is. Hope that's not too hypocritical after my previous soapbox.

Accountability: Played racquetball yesterday morning, and am playing again this afternoon, as well as hopefully basketball tonight. It's gonna hurt, but I love playing these sports. Much more entertaining than ellipticals and such.

What I've Learned: 1) Anonymous comments are worse than worthless. 2) My funniest moments have a nasty tendency to be unshareable. 3) Really good books reveal something different every time you read them, even 3 times in 2 years.

Thanks to Bohemian Yuppie for pointing me to Order of the Stick, a great comic strip for anyone who's ever played Dungeons&Dragons, with enough other references to keep me laughing far too long.
posted by Unknown 12:08 PM | 2 comments

Tuesday, July 05, 2005

Accountability: Well, no one was available to play on Saturday and the holiday threw a wrench into exercising plans. And today, sadly, work interfered with racquetball. Would go to the gym tonight but it looks like I'm playing racquetball tomorrow morning, so I should just stick with that.

Woohoo! Got a new job I'll be starting in a couple of weeks. And the non-profit database project hopefully can be the beginning of my career shift in that direction. I hope that works out well. Interesting summer: new job, new non-profit gig, new cat, new wife (not that I have any old ones lying around). This pretty much rocks. And so no one has to ask, no, that was not in order of importance.

Currently Reading: Wrapped up the first set of Montaigne's essays last night. His essay on education pretty much says that reading it's not enough, I have to use it in something original to consider myself educated by it. Hope this is original enough. ;-)

I started to reread Order of the Phoenix last night in preparation for my blitz on Half-Blood Prince next weekend. Interesting reading will be slower as I'm reading a PL/SQL Tuning/Optimization book for the new job and an Access 2003 for Dummies for the other project after that. Will still keep my fiction going, but the pace could subside.

What I've Learned: 1) I'm not interested enough in money to take on an as-needed consultant gig for the current job after I leave. 2) Hash joins are useful for antijoins. 3) Christian Bale looks kinda pouty in the Batmask.
posted by Unknown 4:23 PM | 0 comments

Friday, July 01, 2005

Accountability: Behold the power of the jinx! Made it 2 miles in just over 18 minutes this morning, then the weights (improved to all 3 sets of arm curls at 100 pounds, although the last two didn't curl very much).

First Supreme Court appointment in 11 years is about to happen - I'd kinda like a balance of 3 conservative, 3 liberal, 3 moderate, but I think we've seen how pretty much every administration of the last years values balance. Odds on a non-lawyer getting appointed? I'd hope not, but would we really be surprised?

Been thinking about education, between school finance "plans" (more of a hope and a dream) and reading Montaigne - are schools supposed to prepare us for life, or just stimulate intellectual growth? It seems we're pushing more of the former in there, and it matches what I'm seeing in the workplace. In school, I remember lessons and, if you finished your work early, you could play (if the teacher was nice), so leisure was only a by-product of the best and fastest work. Somehow adult life feels similar - Enjoy life! But only once you've built your career/bought a house/raised the kids. I'm not advocating throwing off responsibilities, but it seems life would be better if it balanced productivity and leisure, exploration and safety, rather than assigning certain times of life for each end of the spectrum. Just a thought.

What I've Learned: 1) Time really starts to fly with a big project looming on the horizon (this is more being remembered now from college). 2) Data, or at least testimony, can be found to support any claim you'd like. 3) People still forward hoax emails with reckless abandon.

posted by Unknown 11:47 AM | 0 comments