Is it finally time for me to migrate from LiveJournal to WordPress???

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As I’m getting ready to do a redesign of my main personal site, one of the questions that I keep coming back to is whether or not it’s finally time to just wave goodbye to LiveJournal and migrate everything over to something that I would host myself. This used to be something that I was really passionate against because I’ve been using LJ since 2003 and have accumulated nearly 1,700 posts here, but the more I go back and review the reasons that I didn’t want to leave, the less weight they’re all starting to have…

It’s where all of my friends blog!
Well, hardly any of those people actually use LJ anymore! The people that do still blog are either self-hosted or using another platform, and several have just thrown in the towel altogether and just post updates to Facebook these days. My Friends List, and even Friends of Friends List, are pretty much both just filled with RSS syndication of comics nowadays – I rarely ever see actual blog posts in there anymore.

LiveJournal Icons are cool!
While I still can’t necessarily deny this, I do think that I know enough about WordPress now to just mimic the feature there … that is, if there isn’t already a plugin available for it. I also used to argue that icons made my friends list more colorful to read, but if nobody else is posting…

I like the app that I use to post my updates.
I’ve been using a program called Semagic for a number of years that’s really easy to use and offers pretty dropdowns for all of the LJ-specific features (icon, mood, music, etc…), however the downside of this is that it’s actually a pain to post when I don’t have access to the application. Like for this actual post, for instance – I’m actually writing it in Word, but when I paste it into Semagic to post later, the formatting will look really ugly because of how Microsoft bloats its HTML output … I usually end up posting as plain text and then re-adding all of the formatting manually anyways.

Although I believe that Semagic can actually post into WordPress, too, I also have the option to post via the regular interface wherever I have web access OR I can paste via Word without formatting issues … this is already verified because that’s exactly how I do my humor columns each and every week.

Migrating everything is going to be a pain in the ass, and I’ve already paid for another year…
True, 1,700 posts is going to be a pain, especially considering that whatever import tool that I use likely won’t preserve all of the tags and formats as clearly as I would like, but on the other hand … you’ve got to start somewhere, right?!

I guess in looking over the nitty-gritty, I basically just convinced myself that it’s finally time … at least to say that I’m going to do it, anyways. Sure, it’s only $20 a year for a paid account with LJ and there’s really no reason why I couldn’t just go free, but the more I look at it the benefits are really dwindling these days … namely, nobody else uses LJ anymore and everyone I do follow I now use RSS for. Plus, I’m kind of making it a point to dump old online stuff that I don’t really need anymore this year, anyways. Already I’ve let a few domain names expire for projects years old that just never came to fruition, and although I never paid for Flickr, I’m still debating whether I want to get a pro account with them or use my own hosting account for photos as well.

Again, the money isn’t really a big deal, but a) like the placeholder domain names, it’s dumb to keep paying for something that I don’t need; and b) I already have a monthly bill for webhosting, so to some extent it does seem a little silly to pay an extra fee for another service that I could host myself … unless it offers some amazing features that open source software doesn’t currently replicate (arguably, this is my debate with Flickr right now…).

My requirements are pretty simple for this blog – I don’t even know if anybody else reads it because I’ve always looked at it more just as something for me to look back at reminiscently from time to time, so if we’re finally to the point where it makes more sense for me to just host a simple WordPress blog for it myself, maybe that’s finally ok. Besides, maybe that will put it in a better position to actually get read by more random people, and a few cents here and there from Adsense never hurts. I’ve already proven this year that even though something may seem stupid to me, that doesn’t mean other people won’t be interested in it nonetheless!

Anyways, I’m sure I won’t stop posting here for a while, but I suppose it’s something for me to start playing around with when the redesign for scottsevener.com gets underway. My original plan was just to keep it a portal pointing to all of my other sites, but I was planning on using WordPress as the framework, so including a blog in the mix shouldn’t be much trouble on that part. I’m not really concerned about the design, but the 1,700-post import could get a little ugly! Then again, maybe it’d be a good task to do 6 months at a time – that way, I can go back and tag all of those really old posts at the same time, too!

We’ll see whether I still renew my paid account here in Sept. 2011 whether this plan actually worked out or not…

Thin Post : A New Beginning (Yeah, Another One…)

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So admittedly I haven’t written one of these posts in a long time because I kind of hit rock bottom with the whole diet & exercise efforts. The last post that I wrote was just before going on our three-week road trip, so you can guess how well I ate during that whole excursion! Sadly, I can probably count the number of times I’ve hopped on the elliptical since then on one hand, attributed to a toss up between stress and just not making any progress whatsoever, but nonetheless I want to start back up and try again for a couple of reasons.

1) As usual, one of my New Years Resolutions for next year is going to be to lose weight.
2) Over the last couple of months I’ve seen some medical diagnoses that are hopefully going to make this goal actually attainable going forward.

First and foremost, a few months back my doctor finally diagnosed me with some sort of thyroid problems, which honestly I don’t know all of the details about offhand except that it can really screw with your metabolism. Admittedly, I was kind of hoping that this would just be the magic pill that would cause the weight to simply fall off once it got stabilized, and it didn’t … but at least it’s one less hidden variable working against me going forward.

The other more drastic change is that earlier this fall I was diagnosed with sleep apnea – something that my wife has been suggesting for a while because I snore like a buzz saw (and apparently stop breathing during the night!), but I never wanted to accept because it would mean that I’d have to wear this creepy gas mask to bed for the rest of my life. Well, after continuing to not show any signs of weight loss after stabilizing my thyroid, the doc sent me off to do a sleep study (a horrible night spent with wires taped all over my body) and at the end of six hours of “sleep,” they concluded that I had woken up from not breathing something like 40 or 50 times over the course of the six-hour period.

This is important because apparently the body needs to actually get rest in order to properly burn fat, which it can’t do if instead it has to focus on waking me up subconsciously every 15 minutes when I start to suffocate in my sleep!

Yikes, indeed.

And as much as I really didn’t want to hear all of this, it was kind of a relief because it actually makes a lot of sense. It’s the same reason that I was feeling lethargic and tired all of the time – because although, yes, I’m fat and that plays a big part of it, at the same time I’m also feeling drowsy because I’m not actually sleeping in the truest sense of the word at night, and of course, shorting myself sleep to stay up late working on stuff just compounds that even further! Looking back, it seems really obvious, but frankly, it took a long time getting here and I honestly probably would’ve kept on denying it even longer if I wasn’t beyond ready to give up with weight loss…

So the long and the short of it is that as a result, I now have to use a CPAP machine when I sleep, which is the creepy gas mask thing where I wear a little mask over my nose that pushes air down my breathing passage and keeps me from stopping breathing in the middle of the night. I hate the thing and it’s a huge pain in the ass, but on the bright side, I do feel a little more rested and I don’t feel like I yawn during the day nearly as much as I used to. At the time I’m writing this, I’ve been using the thing for a little over a month.

Also, Sara says that my snoring disappeared completely, which I know is a huge bonus for her!

That said, the game plan now is this – basically, try again!!! These were two potentially huge variables working against me that I had absolutely no knowledge of over the past years, so it could very well be that now that I’m actively managing them, I actually stand a chance at losing weight on my own. Granted, I don’t expect the weight loss to be handed to me – I’m also starting to accept that as I get older, my metabolism isn’t exactly working for me anymore, but at least if I have a fighting chance instead of doing everything I’m supposed to and then still just failing miserably, that’s gotta be worth another try at this whole thing. For all of those other reasons that I don’t want to be overweight, and now also because I don’t want to wear this stupid gas mask for the rest of my life!

Holiday snacking and our ridiculously cold weather has made diet & exercise tough these last couple weeks of December, but so far that’s the plan and I’m slowly inching myself back into the habits of working out and eating better that are supposed to make this whole thing work. Today’s post is really just an attempt to bring things back up to speed, but I’ll do my best to write more in 2011 once I get things back into gear…

*fingers crossed*

What game should I play next???

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One of the things that I really want to try to do more of in the new year is play more video games, but I’m kind of stuck right now in that I’m not really sure what I want to pick-up next. The last game that I finished was Dragon Quest VIII (PS2), which I ended up really getting into, so I’d love to find another game that follows in that same spirit. I’d almost liken it to Final Fantasy 2 (SNES) in that even though it was a pretty long game, by the time I had finally finished it, I was so attached to the characters that I almost wish there was a sequel that I could just pick up and keep right on going!

Unfortunately for the most part, both of those series’ tend to start fresh with each new game, but here are a couple that I’ve been thinking about so far…

Dragon Quest Swords: The Masked Queen and the Tower of Mirrors (Wii)
My big concern with this one (as with a lot of Wii games) is that I really want a turn-based RPG – I’m just not a fan of the Kingdom Hearts-style fighting where you have to mash buttons like an action game to attack (Zelda is one of my few exceptions to this rule), and my concern is that the Wii controller is going to make this mechanism even worse if I have to wave the Wii-mote in the air to swing my sword!

Final Fantasy IV: The After-Years (Wii / Virtual Console)
I geeked out about the concept of this game earlier this spring, but never actually got around to playing it. The game is supposed to pick up with a number of characters from my beloved FF2 and take them on new adventures. This could be really cool, or it could kinda ruin my favorite game of all time if the graphics and voice actors that they came up with for my pixelated party aren’t actually all that good…

Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: The Crystal Bearers (Wii)
I’m not a huge fan of mixing technology with magic in the RPGs that I play – the airships and chainsaw from FF2 and FF3 respectively were ok, but the dude with the machine gun arm in FF7 was pushing it a bit for me! So I definitely have concerns when the first bullet point on Amazon describes this as “…where technology has advanced to its peak and magic is considered taboo.”

Older Final Fantasy Games That I Never Got Around to Playing… (PSX)
I guess I also have a number of other games that I picked up in the moment and then never actually played – FFII (Final Fantasy Origins), FF5 (Final Fantasy Anthology), Final Fantasy Tactics, as well as either FF8 or FF9, and also FF10 for the PS2. A lot of these I held off on for one reason or another – either I didn’t care for the battle system or for the collections, I bought it for one of the other games on the disc … but ultimately I suppose these are all worth a consideration, too.

Also, having just bought Sara a Nintendo DS for Christmas, I can’t help but notice how many games from these series’ ended up on the portable platform, too! So far I do like it from what little I’ve played around with it, but I just don’t know if I can stare at that tiny screen for the amount of time that I’d typically put into an RPG…

Still, that’s a lot of games!

Any suggestions? It looks like right now it’s a toss up between something old and something new…

Christmas imagery…

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It all started with my wife making pumpkin french toast on Christmas Eve…


Then we made cookies – only two kinds this year, but they were both really good!


I didn’t put up as many lights as normal due to a lack of time, but still had a better display than most of the block.


Santa was very good to us with regards to presents this year!


And Mickey was happy to stand guard over them for us!


Our quaint, little Christmas Village, a la Legos and gingerbread…


Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!

Amazing 2010 Summer Road Trip Review – Reflections…

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Ok, this is it – the last blog post about my awesome summer vacation.

I mean, it is December now – admittedly I am probably pushing the statute of limitations on this sort of thing anyways!

Still, it was important for me to actually write about this trip in its entirely because, as you might guess from pouring over the previous 33 blog posts and some 15,000 words, this was a huge trip for us. It still amazes me how much we were able to do on that trip – looking back, it’s just incredible to me, especially when you consider how most people would end up making this half a dozen shorter trips … or more!

But we were really lucky to be able to pull it all off in one shot – we planned ahead and really took the approach that this was going to be the last time that we’d be able to do a vacation of this magnitude for quite some time. The next couple of years have a lot of new challenges in store for us – having kids, buying a house to call our own, career changes – so between time, energy, and finances, this summer seemed to be the best time for us to actually be able to pull something like this off. As they say, it was a “once in a lifetime trip”, or so we thought.

In looking back over all of these amazing things that we did across nearly a month of roaming around the country together, though, I think the most significant thing that I want to take away from it all is that in hindsight, that kind of adventure most certainly does not have to be a once in a lifetime event. In fact, if anything it needs to happen many, many times in this lifetime! To be honest, the costs really weren’t that bad for the duration – actually, we probably spent about as much for these three and a half weeks as we spent for a week out at Disneyland, airfare included, so if anything, more demanding was actually just setting aside the time to be able to get away from work for the better part of a month. And considering that we both still had enough vacation time to go on two other major trips this year, the excuses are actually drying up pretty quick…

Now I’m not saying that eight months from now we’ll hit the road again and go exploring in a different direction, but looking at it more long term – I’m 30 now, so by the time I’m 35 or 40, it’d be nice to have something a little more recent to look back on instead of just saying, “Remember way back in 2010 when we did that amazing road trip because we didn’t have any of this weighing us down?!” Life is what you make of it, so after a grand adventure such as this that was just ridiculous amounts of fun and bonding time, in 20 years I want to be able to look back on this as the start of a family tradition, not just a once in a lifetime trip.


Challenge accepted!

Amazing 2010 Summer Road Trip Review – Best Of… Photos

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Having shot over 1,800 photos on this trip, it was hard frankly to even narrow those down to the 135 that I ended up featuring in these blog posts. Nonetheless, even amongst those a distinct handful stood out as my own personal all-time favorites. Some highlighted key moments during the dream, some just turned out to be nice-looking shots, so if you don’t feel like skimming through the other 33 posts in this series, here are the very best according to me…


whale sharks at the Georgia Aquarium


an amazingly adorable moment shared with the Coca-Cola Bear


Brandi wishing that she could get through just one family visit without Lori or me shoving a camera in her face…


incredibly well-lit tyrannosaurus rex at Science North‘s dinosaur exhibit


the awesome view out our hotel room at Niagara Falls


purdy flowers seen while we were walking around the overlook areas by the Falls


a neat view of a bridge disappearing into the mountains somewhere along the Hudson River


although admittedly blurry, I thought this was a pretty shot of all of the colored banners representing the different brands that Hershey’s owns


a lucky view of the Washington Monument at sunset that I caught on our way back to the subway


Walt always said that nighttime was extra special around his parks, and apparently it also applies to his hotels as well

Amazing 2010 Summer Road Trip Review – Statistically Speaking

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24 days, 23 nights
4,550 miles driven

20 cities visited (actual destinations, not just driving through/stopping for gas)
16 states, plus the Capital
2 countries

16 specific planned attractions (i.e. aquariums, museums, national monuments, etc…)

8 tanks of gas (average 47 mpg)
11 unique hotel stays
14 hotel nights total
9 family nights total

9.5 longest driving hours in a single day (Niagara Falls to Vermont, included a wrong turn)
4.87 average driving hours on driving days

1,802 photos taken (6.1 GB)

34 blog posts (15,000 words, 135 photos)

Amazing 2010 Summer Road Trip Review – Snacking Edition

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What can I say – I think if there’s one thing that we can all agree on, it’s that a road trip simply isn’t a road trip without one thing…

The snacks!

Of course, this particular road trip was very long, so it would only make sense that there were a lot of snacks consumed on the road along the way. And I wouldn’t be a very thorough blogger if I didn’t document each and every one of those snacks to later write about ad nauseam! So without further ado, here are some of the highlights…


First snacks of the trip – although I actually liked the Tailgater BBQ flavor better of these two football-inspired chips, this one still held its own as we drove our very first leg from Tampa up to Atlanta.


These were actually Sara’s choice, but I’ll admit that I stole a few here and there to enjoy while I was writing … that is, until we managed to spill half the box between the seats. Man, was that a pain in the ass to clean up with a jam-packed car!


Good, old reliable Hostess Fruit Pies – I think this was “dessert” along with a bottle of soda when we reached our hotel for the night in Toledo.


I bought these more because they seemed quirky and unique than because they actually looked like decent snacking foods, but they honestly weren’t too bad. That said, I don’t think I actually finished the whole bag because something better eventually came along…


I picked these up at a gas station in Canada because I was amused by the alternate titles that they came up with for their flavors. Final verdict – Bold BBQ, not bad; Spice 2.0 – not good.


I don’t care if I already shared this one before – Tim Hortons’ Cheddar Cheese Bagels were absolutely incredible and deserve any and all praise that they can muster! And frankly, I just tried some new Cheddar Cheese Bagel Twist that Dunkin Donuts started offering and they ain’t got nothing on Tim Hortons…


You can’t really go wrong with Nacho Cheese Combos – they’re always a good, safe snacking option, and from Vermont down to New York, they helped to fill in the empty voids between meals nicely.


I wasn’t really sure what to expect from these, and frankly, Chester Cheetah’s commercials have just gotten really fucking creepy lately, but I actually really enjoyed the bit of spice that these added to your traditional Cheetos flavors. Nice!


Ok, so I couldn’t bring myself to actually purchase these because they sound absolutely disgusting, but I had to take a picture regardless. Side note – gas station attendants don’t exactly like you walking around just taking pictures of things if you’re not actually going to buy them…

Amazing 2010 Summer Road Trip Review – Homeward Bound

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Morning Cheer
As the sun arose over Crescent Lake the next morning and the concierge lounge began to fill up with juices and cereals and other breakfast-type items to charge people up for another wonderful day at Disney World, we knew that it was finally time for this couple to go home…

Ok, so I wasn’t exactly up at sunrise, per se – I mean, I’ve heard of it, but I’ve personally only ever witnessed its brother sunset at the more desirable end of the day. Nonetheless, over the years I’ve managed to hone my sleeping habits so that no matter when the checkout time is, I tend to wake up approximately 45 minutes prior to that time, leaving just enough time to shower and then rapidly pack before housekeeping (sorry – mousekeeping!) starts beating down the door!

Note: if you were to ask my wife about said practices, she would probably infer that her waking me up is the only thing that gets my lazy ass out of bed before checkout time, but to me it’s simply an issue of symmantics…


A quick shot on the way carrying bags down to the car – such a nice day!

No Beach Club Stay is Complete Without…
Of course, the timing was as such that we were basically going to have to eat out for lunch either way, whether here or once we got home and realized that we didn’t have a crumb of food left in the entire house, so we opted to grab an early lunch over at Beaches & Cream, another favorite dining establishment of ours here at the Beach Club. We ate here last time for our honeymoon as well (on the last day, in fact!) and it’s just a neat, laid back place to grab a quick bite to eat. The hotdogs are good, the authentic soda fountain drinks are good, and, well…


Their dessert offerings ain’t too shabby, either!

The Final Leg Home
So on that note, with ice cream in our bellies and admittedly a bit of a heavy heart for our journey finally coming to an end, we hit the road and drove the last 66 miles back home. It seemed a little surreal for it to finally be ending – just a few days ago we had been starring up at the Washington Monument on the National Mall, and a week before that getting completely soaked at Niagara Falls! Even looking back in writing these blog posts, it’s kind of incredible to think about all of the things that we managed to do in those three and a half weeks…


I don’t know what else to say except that I, for one, can’t wait until our next big adventure! I wonder where the open road will take us next time…

Amazing 2010 Summer Road Trip Review – Visiting Mickey, Part 2

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A Swim at the Beach (Club)
Believe it or not, I think this was the first time that we were actually able to relax and kick back in a pool this entire trip! Don’t get me wrong – we most certainly tried on many other occasions, but looking back, it seems like something or other always came up…

  • Tennessee – pool too cold, only spent a few minutes in the hot tub
  • Sudbury – rowdy kids, hot tub was “missing”
  • Toronto – pool area was over-chlorinated, gave Sara a headache
  • Washington, D.C. – pool was really small, and turned into a dance club at 5pm

Fortunately, like I said the pool at Beach Club is pretty much the awesomest one on property, with something like a dozen different pools, a sand-bottom, a lazy river, and even a slide, so it was great to be able to just spend an hour or so just floating around, not freezing our asses off or suffocating from chlorine fumes! Granted, I did almost get hit by a duck that decided to land in the pool, but honestly, it’s not the first time that it’s happened so I’m actually starting to get used to it…


This area looks crowded because it’s the kiddie area, but where we actually swam was relatively quiet. We did have to walk quite a ways just to find a chair to leave our towels on, but sometimes you take what you can get!

One Last Romantic Dinner
After we returned from a dip in the not at all freezing pool, it was just about time for dinner … our selection this evening was just around the Boardwalk at Cat Cora’s new restaurant, Kouzzina. Lately I think we’ve found more fun in exploring the various restaurants around the World than just riding the attractions over and over again, so even though we’ve eaten at Cape May Cafe right there in the Beach Club and enjoyed it several times, I decided to surprise Sara with something a little different…


I wasn’t exactly crazy about the cuisine when we finally saw a menu – the place is actually a Greek restaurant, which Sara enjoyed but I could take or leave. I think I ended up with the lasagna (Pastitsio), whereas I believe Sara had the lamb shank or something – either way, seeing how pretty much everything on the menu includes wine pairings (and I also don’t really care for wine), I think it was just one of those places that simply wasn’t for me.

Nonetheless, at least I enjoyed the company…


And Fireworks to Close Out the Evening
I don’t know if I could even tell you the last time that we set foot into Epcot earlier this year – we’ve definitely been a bit lax in the Disney Fanatics arena lately, but nonetheless, at least for the moment it was just nice to be home, so to speak! We ended up just finding a seat on a random bench over between the UK and Canada to wait out our time, and found ourselves a worthwhile alternative to watching the show front and center, if I do say so myself!


Overall, it was a nice and relaxing climax to an incredible vacation, and although the following morning we would need to pack up and finally make the last leg of our journey home, for the time being it was nice to just walk back out the International Gateway to our hotel, kick back and watch a little TV (Willy Wonka was on!), and occasionally peer out our balcony to this awesome, nighttime view of Stormalong Bay…