this, that, and the other thing…

Got up bright and early (read: 5 AM!!!) to do the finishing touches on the calendar revisions and print out some stuff, but those plans were soon trashed when my printer completely and thoroughly crapped out on me. Everything came out blue…nothing but blue, and opening up the cover, I found that mysteriously the pink and yellow tanks had somehow gotten blue ink in them as well – talk about a mess! Came home and yanked the print head out to find that there was a ton of blue ink pooled at the base of the jets – I guess it must’ve back fed up into the other tanks or something. Soaked the whole thing in rubbing alcohol and water this evening and it looks fairly clean now – will be interested to see if the damn thing still works tomorrow after I let it dry overnight! 😛

Got my schedule changed at work so I’m now doing 9a-6p instead of 8a-5p – hopefully that’ll cut down on the time that I have to sit in traffic a bit. Mind you, I’ll only be reporting downtown for another week, then I’m in the new building two miles away from home anyways, but lately I’ve been staying late until at least 6p to get things caught up, so I might as well get an extra hour of sleep for it.

I’m also hoping that this will help change my mood in the evenings, too. It seems like for the past couple of weeks, I’ve been kind of crabby / depressed / don’t want to do anything when I get home, which sucks because I’ve got about a million different projects that I want to be working on right now! Sometimes it’s been stemming from leaving work in a bad mood – I know that, for sure – but today I was fine until I got home around 6:30p, and then suddenly it was almost nine o’clock before I could motivate myself to get up and be productive! Maybe it’s just something with trying to change so many things in my life at once – between the diet and the exercise and resurrecting several creative projects, I might just be overwhelmed. *shrugs*

Made a taco salad for dinner this evening, just like Mom used to make! Mmmmm….

Time to go exercise. Bleh…

“And the more skin that you shed, the more that the air in your throat will linger when you call him your friend…”

Geeky Bullets:

  • Finally found my boo boo in the section of L7’s SQL code that has had me scratching my head for literally months – dropdown menu for the comic now lists all of our strips and also stays centered on whichever strip is being displayed at the time! Added a second set of navigation links above the comic to make it easier to search through the archives.
  • Although there’s still a ways to go, I also made tremendous advances (at least for me) in the dev upgrades for Just Laugh’s Joke Database – nothing viewable online at this point, but the first steps for the new site-wide management system are now behind me and it shouldbe just a matter of getting organized at this point.
  • Also along dev lines, not sure exactly where it stemmed from, but the head-clearing walk mentioned below somehow did wonders for getting me motivated once again about the massive project that I’m gearing up for with bringing Just Laugh back. So much potential – now to see if “two years of growing up”– as the last two years of my life have been referred to – can have an impact on this venture as well…
  • Watched The Fantastic Four this evening – it only had about ten worthwhile minutes in it, as I’d suspected. Kind of like The Punisher, I suppose, but really, it’s tough to follow in Spider-Man’s footsteps anyways.Non-Geeky Bullets:
    • Because I knew that whatever I watched on pay-per-view this evening would be crap (it was between The Fantastic Four and War of the Worlds), last night I watched Mallrats on DVD and those were good times. “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned for Sega…”
  • I worked out both Saturday and Sunday, and I really think that it’s starting to do some good. I’ve had increasingly bad neck / shoulder cramps ever since I drove trucks up in Michigan and I’m always saying that I should start going to a chiropractor, but this weekend I actually found myself feeling betterafter doing my time on the old elliptical. The last machine I used was lower body only, whereas this one works the upper body, too, so my best guess would be that I’m just finally stretching out those muscles that got beat on so much up north! Now if I could just beat the 215 mark…
  • Took a little break in between all of the geek stuffabove to take a walk around the neighborhood because I realized that I’ve never really done it since I moved here. I used to do it all the time back at the old apartment on the other side of town when I needed to clear my head, but I guess I’ve just never taken the time here. It was pretty dark, so I didn’t really get to see much, but relaxing nonetheless. Will try to do some more exploring to wind down tomorrow evening, perhaps…
  • I also picked up the hooks for my balcony so that I can hang some plant baskets from the ceiling – my little relaxation area is really starting to come together out there! It’s tough, though, because I’ve got the new table & chairs picked out from Lowe’s that I want and they’ll go perfectly with everything else that has been done … but I’ve already spent so much in the past couple of months and I reallyneed to curb my spending for a while. It’s just that I hate to fix up everything else, then be left with an ugly ass, half rotted table as the center piece … I shouldn’t do it, but we’ll see… :PSo much to do tomorrow, but at least I feel like I got some decent stuff accomplished again this weekend. So far my to-do list is about three or four items long, so it shouldn’t take too much motivation to press on and get them done before Surface so that I can still get to bed at a decent time. Hasta luego…

MSN woes

Does anyone else experience issues trying to use MSN Messenger via Trillian? I’ve upgraded to the latest version (3.1 Pro), but it still drops that particular connection all the time and I can’t find any good explanations why. Is there a port that I’m supposed to be forwarding or something maybe?

ICQ, Yahoo and AIM all seem to work fine…

compliments are always welcome in any shape or form!

Kind of like catching wind of people saying good things about you behind your back, sometimes it’s kinda nice to find out when complete strangers have been linking to one of your websites. In going through the server logs for comedic-genius.com tonight (which I almost never do), I found one of the more prominent Disney World news blogs linking to my gallery from Epcot. There are some good photos in there! 🙂

http://www.comedic-genius.com/gallery/disney

…which reminds me – I need to go through my latest pictures from Animal Kingdom one of these nights…

three hundred big boys

I don’t think I can imagine a better place to spend a Tuesday afternoon than the auto repair shop. $270 down the tubes for a new alternator, plus one wasted vacation day – good stuff!

The difference between you and me? I make this post look GOOD…

w00t – new userpics!!!

Today was a good day. Got a veritable boatload of stuff done before noon this morning (cleaning, etc…), so I wouldn’t come home to too much of a mess, then went over to Animal Kingdom to check out the Passholder Preview of Expedition Everest. The lady next to me seemed to do enough screaming for the both of us (…it’s a rollercoaster, by the way…) – I, myself, was still a little tipsy by the time the thing ended, though! Intensity probably compares to any other Disney rollercoaster – Big Thunder Mtn., Splash Mtn., etc… – and really, that’s fine because I couldn’t handle much more than that anyways (sorry, Busch Gardens…). Nonetheless, the attention to detail from the waiting line to the scenery on the coaster itself is immaculate as usual – I’ll never cease to be amazed by how much they put into even the most mundane of details. The “whole new world” effect alone makes it worth the admission price to me.

Also, it’s kind of weird now to have a giant, Himalayan mountain in the background of half of my pictures from around the park. Meh…

Anyways, spent the rest of the afternoon just walking around the trails, looking at animals and such. I can’t remember the last time I actually went to a zoo, so it was a nice change of pace. When the park closed, I went and had pizza with Kim, who I still can’t believe I hadn’t seen in over a year and a half. It’s kind of weird to think that she was one of the first people to welcome me to Florida, aside from Michael, that is. My how the time flies…

I’ve got a feeling that tomorrow’s going to be a busy day, but for the first time in a while, I actually feel like I was somewhat productive this weekend. I was up before noon on both days, my kitchen doesn’t look like the catastophe that it normally resembles at this point, and I even spent some time outside! What is this world coming to???