neglecting some work to get other work done…

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It’s been kind of a hectic spring.

I’ve found myself juggling a lot of different projects lately, including a veritable boatload of them from last year that never quite got completed, and as a result it’s starting to have a not unnoticeable impact on the new things that I wanted to do in 2012. I started the year thinking that I could just do a little bit of work on all of them simultaneously and eventually everything would just work itself out … but that didn’t really pan out like I had hoped, so now as of the last couple of months I’ve sort of changed gears and instead been picking one project at a time to focus all of my efforts on, and unfortunately as a result it means that everything else has been falling behind… 🙁

The good news is, it’s technically working in that I’ve been able to get one of the big things off my list and another absolutely gigantic one should finally be wrapping up here shortly.

The bad news, though, is that those other projects – including my beloved humor column – have sort of been collecting dust and just keep getting farther and farther behind for every week that I ignore them in favor of the bigger picture.

On one hand, it definitely does bother me because I’ve put a lot of work into some of the other stuff and I hate to see it neglected, but at the same time if this is the only way for me to get caught up and I’m not willing to simply put things officially on-hold so that they don’t build up a backlog while I’m focused elsewhere, then I guess that’s really all that I can do at this point. It’s sure going to suck when I’m finally ready to launch the big thing that I’ve been stuck on the last month here in another week and then when I get up the next morning, now I’m faced with several months of old humor columns that need to get caught up … but what else could I even do???

I look forward to the day when I’ve got all the time in the world to properly address each and every one of my creative endeavors, but since that’s not likely to happen anytime soon, I suppose a juggler I shall remain … and like it or not, sometimes it’s just more efficient to put the other balls down and focus on them one at a time! You can’t do that forever, but hopefully in a few months I’ll be able to look back and see that it was the right decision to make at the time.  😐

Where was this SSEP when I was in grade school?!?!?!

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This is really cool.

I came across it when I was surfing for random tidbits about SpaceX’s launch this week and their plans for the future … as it turns out, in addition to all of the regular supplies being shuttled up to the ISS by Dragon, the craft is also carrying a number of science experiments created by grade school (and above) science students to give classrooms a unique opportunity to test the effects of microgravity without ever having to leave the comfort of Earth themselves! The program actually started two years ago and included the last two flights of the shuttle program, and is now continuing with SpaceX’s and other crafts as well to transport these experiments that kids are creating in their classrooms up to the space station for actual astronauts to complete and then send the results back to Earth for the kids to analyze!

I mean, talk about an awesome way to suck kids into science class – not only are there a myriad of new ways with the Internet to monitor activities on the ISS itself and talk about them in class, but just think – teachers can even see their students enrolled in this competition to design something of their own to send out into space … I would’ve eaten something like that up when I was 12 years old.  😮

Ever need just one more excuse NOT to go skydiving???

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vleQ1bh-YAM

Skip ahead to about the 2:00 mark to watch this 80 year-old woman practically having to get forced out of the plane, and then a few minutes later the dive camera zooms in to see her falling out of the harness 12,000 feet up in the air!

The thing is, until I watched this video, that thought would’ve never even crossed my mind! Sure, the chute might not open – that’s still a pretty big concern, but who knew that falling out of your harness was even another option on the table?!?!?!

Yeah.

So just in case there’s ever any inkling, little shadow of a doubt … skydiving – most definitely not on my bucket list!  😯

Personal Challenges : Learning to Swim at Age 31

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I’ve never really been a very strong swimmer…

Which sounds kind of weird because I went through a period when I was really into SCUBA diving, and I’m even fortunate enough to have a pool in my own backyard these days, but I’ve always been afraid of being in water over my head and it’s a problem that plagues me to this very day.

I remember my parents having me take swimming lessons there for a while at one of the local hotel pools, but I guess it just never really stuck. Whenever we had water-related activities to do in scouts, I’d typically duck out or come up with an excuse of why I had to be someplace else at the time instead. And I think the main reason that I was ok with diving was because not only did I have my own personal oxygen tank strapped to my back, but also a fancy flotation device working from that very same air … it’s a lot easier to maintain one’s confidence when the fear of drowning has some dedicated lifelines to fall back on!

That said, I know that this is something that I want to get over because Sara has expressed an interest in someday getting into SCUBA diving together, which I think would be a lot of fun, but I don’t think I’m anywhere ready for it today. In fact, the memory still sticks out in my head of when we went snorkeling in the Cayman Islands a couple of years ago during our anniversary cruise, and I … had issues. I wasn’t very confident in holding my face in the water with just the snorkel, I figured that I could float in the salt water fine without a life jacket and I couldn’t, and then I panicked even further because Sara wandered off ahead of me while I was going through this … which was a problem because sticking by your buddy was one of the big things that I took out of dive training when I earned my certification back in high school. The whole thing was pretty embarrassing for me because I didn’t end up seeing much or having a lot of fun, and I probably killed a crap load of coral by trying to stand up in various areas in my panic attacks!

The point is, I want to get better and so I’m trying to figure out little ways that I can work towards that goal.

I think a huge part of it is simply being comfortable in water over my head, so I was playing around with a couple of things in the pool the other night that I think might help. First was, I pulled out my old mask & snorkel and just started playing around with that. It’s obviously a much different feel breathing through a snorkel than you would normally, so it might take some time to get re-acclimated so that I’m not panicked as my air is now being filtered through this tiny tube!

…especially when it randomly gets water in it!  😯

The other thing I was trying was just floating with a pool toy – one of those foam noodles, to be exact. And as odd as it might sound, I think it actually helped because I could rest on the noodle in the deep end where I can’t touch, and I could feel my breathing starting to relax whereas I usually get very stressed when I’m in over my head. Eventually I want to learn how to actually tread water so that I can float on my own, but right now I think my breathing just gets so sporadic that I just flail my arms and legs and run out of energy too fast!

It’s all a gradual process, but as I’m actually starting to lose weight productively, it gives me a new way to exercise and also work on a brand new goal as well … plus, the weather’s finally warm enough that I can swim at night without freezing my ass off, so that’s certainly a bonus, too! Eventually I’d also like to see if I can work up to bringing some of my old SCUBA gear out to the pool and playing around with that, but there’s a whole new level of hoops to go through there (some of it is old and might need repair, not sure if I can even get tanks refilled with my cert. being so old and no active dive log, etc…). I don’t really have any goal to get back into diving this year, but ultimately in addition to losing weight so that I don’t need 80 pounds of lead to weigh me down, I know that actually becoming a proficient swimmer would be a big help, too.

I’ll probably post more about it this summer as I progress. Hopefully I can start to feel comfortable enough with these two initial exercises that I can break off into others as well – maybe try some diving while snorkeling for rings or something … I never was any good at that! I don’t like not being able to swim and it’s frustrating because I do enjoy spending time in the water, on boats, and so forth, so it’s really a necessity as well as a personal goal that I finally learn how to do it.

I suppose 31 years old is still better than never, right?!  😆

Lego Kermit!

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Now this is pretty freaking amazing, too – came across it while getting caught up on The Brothers Brick this afternoon. How cool would this look sitting in the corner of my office?! 😉

P1190940
From the Bricks by the Bay 2012 LEGO Convention (California)
 – by Bill Ward’s Brickpile

Also, why I have I not gone to one of these huge Lego conventions yet???

Lego Lord of the Rings sets are already on sale?!?!?!

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How did I miss these hitting the shelves???

I don’t know – I guess I just assumed that these would be waiting until the first part of The Hobbit comes out later this year, although it would probably make sense to push some of the LotR sets out now so that they can focus more on The Hobbit around Christmastime. Up until today, I had only seen the promo art that I posted about back in January, so this is pretty cool – I can honestly see myself collecting pretty much this whole series … now if only I could find some more shelves to put all of this stuff on…  😯

And while we’re at it, I couldn’t help but notice on the Theme Page over at Lego’s website that they’ve really got some neat themes going on at the moment. Apparently they’re just finishing up on the Alien Conquest series, which I really got a kick out of and in fact have several of the sets still sitting here at my feet that I got at Christmastime and just haven’t put together yet. I suppose I’d better hurry up and pick up the rest before they get discontinued now! I also like that the Marvel Superheroes are also getting some love, as I was never really a fan of the DC ones … too bad there’s no way for me to get some of the Marvel minifigs without actually buying the entire sets. I also kind of thought that this new series featuring monster movies was kind of neat – random, but a neat idea nonetheless.

2012 is a fun, albeit also somewhat expensive, time to be a Lego fan!  :mrgreen:

The Tale of the Five Hour FiOS Installation…

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So we’ve finally done upgrading from cable to FiOS, but boy, was it certainly a series of unexpected challenges right up until the very end!

And for what it’s worth, the Verizon tech(s) handling my install were actually pretty great about the whole thing – he made a point to stay until every last problem was solved, which was very much appreciated because one of my biggest fears was them getting it half installed and then saying they’d need to come back another day, and have me get lost in scheduling hell, and so forth…

But that didn’t happen, and I’m very much grateful for it! 🙂

Anyways, so the “challenges” that we saw:

  • First, he found that the fiber line running from the street to our house had been cut. Luckily, they had another tech out within 30 minutes to get the line replaced.
  • Then there was some bad wiring throughout our house that was preventing the cable boxes from communicating with the router. Apparently a separate line up in the attic had been run dedicated for the office where the router sits, so it had no way to communicate with everything else.
  • In the meantime, he also ended up replacing all of the Verizon hardware inside and outside our garage before finding the true problem. He thought that we could just use what was already there from a previous tenant, but replaced it anyways as part of the troubleshooting.
  • And then probably the most bizarre of all, we lastly discovered that the router was also receiving interference from the cordless phone sitting next to it! It was enough to cause problems with the on-demand features on the TVs, but was easy enough to fix by switching the channel used by the wi-fi in the router to a set channel instead of letting it choose automatically. Weird…

Yeah – it was a long process and I was definitely getting a little nervous at times, but at least it’s done now and so far there seems to be a decent improvement! Below are a couple of speed tests I did with the web host where all of my sites call home – nice to see that the uploads should be going a little quicker in the future…  😉

   

Admittedly I was a little dismayed that I’ve yet to see the true 25/25 Mbps that the package I chose boasted (I think my old package with Bright House was 15/2). The tech gave me the typical line of “It’s marketing – that’s why they say speeds up to 25 Mbps…” which I still think is a lame excuse, but whatever. And I understand that speeds are going to fluctuate throughout the day, and that the farther away the servers are, the lower speeds will be … either way, as long as it doesn’t consistently drop every 24-48 hours at random like cable was doing for us, that’s still a huge step in the right direction as far as I’m concerned.

As for the TV, I really haven’t had much chance to play around with it yet, but I did just help my wife setup Verizon’s Mobile Remote app on her phone, which so far seems pretty slick because it will actually let you use your iPhone as a remote control! I was pretty impressed that there’s really no lag or anything at all – I had the regular remote in one hand and my phone in the other, and the box responded equally fast from either one, so that’s kinda neat. Don’t know how much we’ll actually use it, but neat nonetheless … and I like how their mobile app schedules things via the DVR a lot cleaner than cable offered, too.

I’ll probably write a separate post sometime later when I’ve really had a chance to dive into all of the new cable offerings, but in the meantime as long as the Internet connectivity is more reliable – and also a bit faster, and cheaper – then really that’s good enough for me. All that’s left right now is for me to return all of this crap to Bright House tomorrow…

Curious to see if they have anything to say in response to me canceling after having been a loyal customer for over 9 years, but then again, if they couldn’t be implored to offer me a slightly better rate when I called a few weeks ago to say I was thinking of switching yet again, then maybe they don’t deserve my business anyways!  🙄

Hope Verizon lives up to my expectations, but so far, so good…  :mrgreen:

Launch of SpaceX’s Dragon is a Success!!!

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So how many other people found themselves up super late last night/this morning to watch SpaceX’s historic launch?!

To be honestly, it was completely accidental that I just happened to still be up around 3:30am finishing up some writing, and when I saw the reminders of the 3:44am launch coming through on Twitter and Facebook, it seemed kinda silly to not stay up another half hour to watch. And talk about cool – admittedly in the past I’ve been a bit of a skeptic as the shuttles were being decommissioned, but it really felt good to watch SpaceX officially picking up the reigns where NASA had left off and having something to show for it … not just a prototype ship in a hangar in the desert, but taking another leap towards being the first private company in history to send a spacecraft to the International Space Station is kinda huge!

Anyways, so it looks like Dragon will be in orbit for a couple of days now before it’s actually able to dock with the ISS – looking forward to watching that, too! – but in the meantime, here’s a collection of screenshots that I took from the webcast that I thought turned out kind of cool. You can actually also go watch the original videos of each stage of the launch over on Vimeo as well.

Granted, I never looked to see if NASA did the same thing with some of its launches, but how cool is it that not only we live in a time when we’re watching a new industry erupt into space, but also communications technology is to the point where we can watch videos of the launch both from the ground and also from the rocket itself streamed live over the Internet in real-time?!  8)

Neil Gaiman on being an artist, and making mistakes…

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And I suppose one more to help round the night out – this video is a graduation address that writer Neil Gaiman gave to the University of Arts (Philadelphia). I really enjoyed this talk because it was full of real life experiences and he had a lot of good takeaway inspirational quotes. My favorites below the video…

“If you don’t know it’s impossible, it’s easier to do.”

“I learned to write by writing.”

“It’s been an amazing ride, but there were parts of the ride that I missed because I was too worried about things going wrong.”

“Often you will discover that the harder you work, and the more wisely you work, the luckier you will get.”

“Be wise, because the world needs more wisdom, and if you cannot be wise, pretend to be someone who is wise and then just behave like they would.”

“Go, and make interesting mistakes, make amazing mistakes, make glorious and fantastic mistakes, break rules, leave the world more interesting for your being here … make good art.”

Thin Post : A Return to WiiFit?

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I’ve been saying for a while that I need to incorporate more stretching into my workouts, so the last couple of nights I finally whipped out the old WiiFit and decided to give that another whirl.

I can see already that my biggest contender once again is going to be time because even though my basic stretching routine is right around 20 minutes, it’s really easy to get caught up in it and want to spend a little time playing the balance games and whatnot afterwards. Which ironically enough is actually a good thing, until I catch myself weighing exercise time with the other things that I need to be doing, anyways! My goal is to take it nice and slow, though – maybe try to take a little time for it every other night, or even just every third night … sometimes just my quick yoga stuff, and sometimes doing some of the other games, too.

Believe it or not, I’m actually getting pretty good at that one where you dress up like a penguin and try to catch the fish! 😉

I also really enjoy the soccer game, and the one that’s kinda like Marble Madness, but with your body as the controller.

The one thing I’ve decided that I won’t be doing, however, is the Body Test every single day because as far as I’m concerned, it’s just as bad as using the scale every day … possibly even more so because I’m playing in the evening rather than the morning when I normally weigh-in (conflict #1), plus my weigh-ins are rarely ever at the exact same time (conflict #2). It’s just too much negative reinforcement floating around my head, and right now I need all of the positive weight loss vibes that I can muster!