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Ahoy, mateys – do you want to join our pirate crew?!

Posted on October 15, 2015 by Scott / 0 Comment

A few photos from our visit to Mickey’s Not-So-Scary Halloween Party the other night!

The evening was fun, but it seemed like there was more going on than at Mickey’s Very Merry Christmas Party which made it kind of hard to enjoy just because it felt like we were rushing and splitting up a lot to hit the things that we wanted to hit. I think if you just did characters and trick or treating it might’ve been better, but we also fit not really that many attractions into our evening (maybe 3???) and the sacrifice was decent viewing areas for both the fireworks and the parade.

I think that was hands down the biggest challenge to me – you have to go deeper into the park for everything else, yet you really want to be on Main Street for the parade and fireworks, and when you’ve only got 5 hours to work with, it’s simply too much running back and forth if you’ve also got a couple of strollers in tow.

Although I’d probably be willing to give it another try, I’m not sure what I’d change at this point … 5 hours is really rough with how big the Magic Kingdom is. But at least we all had fun!

Dream Journal : Trapped in the Past

Posted on October 13, 2015 by Scott / 0 Comment

If you found yourself non-consensually sent back in time, how would you get back to the present???

It started off as just another back in my hometown-style nightmare, but something wasn’t quite right about it this time. The more I wandered about trying to get back to Florida, the more I remembered about this alternate life of mine until I realized that I hadn’t just failed and wound up back home … instead, something very different was taking place…

The timeframe itself was a bit sketchy – Mom and Dad were still together, but clearly on the brink of divorce, and I was fighting with my sister a lot, but I also had these feelings like I just didn’t fit in and this wasn’t my time, and eventually I started to remember more about significant things in my life such as buying a house and having a wife and a decent job, and that’s when I began to fight harder to get them back.

Packing to leave was much different than before – after a fight with my Dad, I simply told him to join me for dinner the next day if he liked because the day after I would be moving back to Florida. I think the only things that ended up in my car were a laptop, some clothes, and an acoustic guitar because now I had the foresight that the other things that packed my car previously weren’t really needed anyways.

I was to head to Tampa Saturday morning by way of New York to try and hunt down my future wife. I didn’t really know what to expect – would she be back in New York as well or still in Tampa where I had left her? Worse yet, if I did find her in a state where we hadn’t even met yet, how would I convince her that I was her future husband and not just some crazy stalker person with insane amounts of information about her???

I walked through meeting her in my head the entire trip, picking nuggets of information about her and her family that no one else knew, as well as insight into our relationship together in the future, and how one day we would elope a year before our actual wedding, and how we would struggle for years before being able to have our first child. I still couldn’t imagine what her reaction would be to a stranger sitting across the table from her, able to recite her social security number and every medical procedure she’s ever had and her closeness with her grandmother … I was terrified but also determined.

The future that I once knew seemed so familiar, yet so far away … how does one get back to something you once took for granted?

Dream Journal : Shark Attack

Posted on October 12, 2015 by Scott / 0 Comment

I had gone swimming in this small swim area near the bay when somebody approached jokingly holding a baby shark.

The thing couldn’t have been more than a foot or so long, and this guy started wading into the swimming area even though everyone kept protesting that there were no sharks allowed in the swimming area!

It wasn’t long before the shark wrestled free from his grasp and got back into the water. In total, about a dozen people were injured – myself included – and an ambulance took us all over to Tampa General to get cleaned up. I was one of the worst that had gotten bitten because I was bleeding pretty bad after the thing took a chunk out of my right arm. They had me hold gauze against it and eventually came back around to give me stitches when they found that it was still bleeding.

I remembered right after I had gotten bitten dunking under water and reaching for the chunk of my own flesh that was falling to the floor, but I think I got jerked back up above water by somebody else just before I could get my fingers around it.

#halloweenhorror #floridastyle

Anniversary #8 … Memories

Posted on October 10, 2015 by Scott / 0 Comment

Yesterday was my eighth wedding anniversary.

At one point during the day, Facebook prompted me with the question of “What is my favorite marriage memory?” to go along with sharing a gallery of photos of Sara and I together, and I didn’t end up posting anything because at the time I honestly just couldn’t narrow it down to simply one.

That said, we talked about it a bit when we went out to dinner together later on that night and both of us shared some of our favorites because after eight years of marriage, who can seriously pick just one lone memory to elect as their all-time favorite?!

So here are some of mine, and although no doubt there have been plenty of other noteworthy occasions along the way, here’s what I came up with at this particular juncture in our grand adventure through time and space together…

October 2006 – We celebrated our six-month dating anniversary together with a long weekend over at Disney where we stayed at Animal Kingdom Lodge for the very first time. We almost didn’t have any reason to leave the room because seeing the animals right outside our window was so cool.

In this picture you can see us enjoying a nice breakfast out on our balcony, which was amusing in its own right because Sara didn’t realize that room service automatically added a sizable gratuity when she added one herself, quite possibly making it one of the most well-tipped room service meals of all time!

October 2007 – We eloped! Exactly one year prior to the date that we’d chosen for our actual wedding ceremony, Sara and I snuck over to St. Augustine in the middle of the week for a mini-vacation that started with us very unceremoniously getting hitched at the courthouse … mostly for insurance purposes before she was to start nursing school that fall. We spent the next two days exploring the area and even climbed to the top of the local lighthouse, which now has a very special message from us in their guestbook if they happen to still have the one containing 2007 around!

October 2007 – Right around the same time, we moved into our first joint rental together – a three bedroom house where we would live for the next 3.5 years through nursing school, our real wedding, and the publishing of my first book.

Here you can see my beloved bride sizing up her new garden tub!

June 2009 – This year we traveled up to Minnesota to attend Tim and Amy’s wedding, but of course, a trip to Minneapolis just wouldn’t be complete without also paying a visit to The Mall of America! We literally spent an entire day wandering around something like five floors of this place, and playing mini-golf, and nearly losing my lunch on the rollercoasters that Sara forced me to go on. It was fun … most of it!

August 2010 – A year that will live down in vacation infamy, featuring Scott & Sara’s 2010 Awesome Summer Road Trip that put us traveling across the country for nearly a month, visiting all sorts of sights and enjoying a well-deserved rest before beginning to start trying for children in the upcoming future.

This particular photo is from our visit to Niagara Falls, which we actually ended up extending a day after not seeing nearly as much as we would’ve liked and admittedly having a pretty kick-ass hotel room to further enjoy the falls from to boot!

October 2010 – The anniversary where my wife actually somehow managed to surprise me with a trip to Disneyland!!! Truth be told, I even found it in her browser history at one point and she was a good enough to bluff her way out of it – that’s how good my wife is. We were there for a full week and visited both theme parks multiple times, on top of getting to watch the brand new World of Color from this great view that was quite possibly the highlight of the entire trip…

September 2012 – Our latest cruise was some three years ago, the same itinerary that we went on through the Western Caribbean for our honeymoon/2nd anniversary, though without all of the excursions and nothing but day after day of laying around the ship from port to port. I was so relaxed, in fact, that here on our very first day at sea Sara had actually persuaded me to get up and watch the sunrise with her … a feat that only five years of marriage, along with a pitifully small quantity of tequila, could dare to pull off!

August 2013 – And lastly, although he’s certainly produced plenty of adorable shots in the 18 months since his birth, I think this particular photo showing Christopher at nearly his earliest of all will always be my all-time favorite. It was roughly 10 days later when the doctor’s office confirmed from her hormone levels that Sara was officially pregnant … we were over at Disney to celebrate my birthday, and boy, was it one of the strangest, both exciting and nerve-racking weekends I think I’ve ever spent. Certainly a memory for the books, to say the very least!

Living Vicariously Through Big Change

Posted on October 9, 2015 by Scott / 1 Comment

My sister is moving to Florida!

Like right now!!!

And through this creepy app called Glympse that she keeps sending me links from, I can literally track her every mile of the way…

In all seriousness, though, I’ve kind of been living a little vicariously through her the last couple of days because it brings back all sorts of cool memories from when I made the pilgrimage myself from mighty frigid Michigan down to never frosty Florida some 12 years and 14 days ago. I know that on one hand it’s kind of terrifying to be trekking across the country with all of your worldly possessions packed around you in your car…

…or in their case, sitting in a semi-trailer somewhere between Michigan and Florida…

…but it’s also kind of exciting to pull into a completely new place where anything and everything is new to you and especially compared to our old hometown, you’ve got this absolutely ginormous region to explore! Beaches, theme parks, shopping malls, Toys ‘R Uses that aren’t a 2-hour drive away, jobs that pay more than $12/hour, people who are ethnicities other than white – all new and all just waiting for you to go out and explore them!

Thankfully, they’ve at least got a couple of things going for them that I didn’t when I moved. First and foremost, her husband actually already has the job that he’s moving down for, and they’ve arranged to stay with us and with some friends of his until they can get on their feet, so no $37/night Howard Johnson specials for them! And to leech off of their situation just a little myself, they’re actually moving to Orlando, so I’m kind of looking forward to a bit of my own expanded exploration as I’m sure we’ll be around their neck of the woods a bit more often and up until now the farthest we typically ever get into Orlando is either Disney World or occasionally The Florida Mall.

Granted, I’m sure it’s also a little more trying of an adventure in that they’re traveling with two kids whereas I was only traveling with a small bucket of goldfish that all promptly died within 72 hours of reaching my destination, but they were pretty big goldfish! Life on the road isn’t fit for everyone…

Enjoy your remaining 673 miles, S’sr Rabbit – here’s hoping that the rest of Tennessee is slightly less stinky for you than it was for me.

IVR Dueling

Posted on October 9, 2015 by Scott / 0 Comment

Ok, so this kind of amused me just now – calling my bank with a simple question about payments…

Me: *presses 0 for an operator*

IVR: I’ll connect you to a customer service representative, but first, please say a quick phrase to describe what you’re calling about…

Me: payment question

IVR: Ok, payments – I can help you with that! Would you like to…

Me: NO!!!

IVR: Ok, I’ll connect you to a representative…

14 Days of Self-Control – One Week Down…

Posted on October 8, 2015 by Scott / 0 Comment

Ahhhh, the blog post I’ve admittedly been rather anxious to write…

…because…

…yours truly has lost a total of 8.8 pounds in the last week!!!

Now I know that this rate isn’t going to keep up forever … or at least maybe it’s not … it would certainly be awesome if it did, but nonetheless I’m pretty damned excited about this as a reward for my first week’s effort! The early boost of encouragement has definitely helped to push me through some of the tough spots so far, anyways.

I’ll write up a separate post about what I’ve been eating later, but there have of course been some challenges with cravings and whatnot. My mouth still occasionally waters for my favorite sub from Firehouse that I was previously getting on a weekly basis – the Smokehouse Beef & Cheddar Brisket, which can run anywhere from 890 to a whopping 1500 calories depending on whether I got a medium or a large … in one meal, before I even bought chips to go with it!!!

I’ve also been yearning for pizza a bit – Domino’s, in particular, whose slices can range anywhere from 225 – 475 calories a piece … as much as I can almost taste their garlic buttery crust in my mouth, I keep trying to tell myself that it’s just not worth the calories, at least for right now.

Thankfully, my analytical side can easily see that either of those ranges are pretty ridiculous when you’re only averaging 1,100 calories a day total, so I’ve been trying to weigh that logic along with dropping about a pound a day as incentive to stay the course so far.

For the most part, though, the meals I’ve been eating are pretty good and realistically the volume of food is still considerable – it’s just that instead of being a pile of bread dough and some processed meat, it’s a pile of broccoli or celery alongside a fresh-cooked protein. I’ve definitely been cooking a lot more, which takes some getting used to but I’m slowly finding my groove. I’m looking forward to over time building up a nice repertoire of menus so that there’s more of a variety to choose from, but so far I’m just taking it one day at a time.

Distractions also seem to be helping a lot, whether it’s focusing on writing a new blog post when I’m hungry or making myself do the dishes or laundry, or even just getting lost in a TV show but without the bag of chips at my side to slowly graze out of until I reach the bottom. Sometimes I think that my appetite is starting to subside, but other times I really have to work at it.

Still, it’s only been a week, so I know that I can’t really expect too much all at once.

I think week #2 is going to present some new challenges – tomorrow is my and Sara’s anniversary, so we’re going out to dinner, but we picked a restaurant that specifically caters to smaller portions. And then on Monday we’re hitting up Mickey’s Not-So-Scary Halloween Party over at Disney World, but I actually think that as long as I plan well and take it easy before we get there, I should be ok as long as I can take it easy in the candy shop! A single counter service meal for dinner isn’t going to kill me, and there are probably some halfway decent options to pick from there if I really think about it…

All in all, I’m obviously ecstatic about my results so far – I was really expecting maybe 3-4 pounds with water weight, not upwards of 10 pounds! So it’s very encouraging to think that even if/when it dwindles down to 1-2 pounds per week, I could still be down 30+ pounds by Christmastime, which would be absolutely fantastic.

Mind you, even the notion of dropping into the 250s as soon as this weekend after being 270 a week ago is equally satisfying!

Onward and downward!

Speed Testing via the Linux Command Line

Posted on October 7, 2015 by Scott / 0 Comment

Last night I relocated a bunch of computer stuff – namely my home server and router – to our bedroom closet, which in a positive way got it more up and out of the way so that we only have to listen to fans spinning when we’re picking out clothes to wear, but in a not-so-positive way, it means that at least until I climb into the ceiling to run ethernet cables around the house, my rig in my office will be relying on wifi instead of a wired network connection for a while.

Now this didn’t really seem like much of a big deal until this morning I noticed that Verizon dropped its prices on the higher Internet tiers and now upgrading to 150 Mbps is only an extra $20 instead of $50!

And mind you, I don’t necessarily need most of that speed here at my desktop, but I am somewhat addicted to speed tests just to randomly remind me how awesome my Internet connection is these days, and not for nothing but speed tests over wifi kind of suck.

That said, my home server is still hard wired because it’s literally sitting right next to the router in the closet now, so a bit of quick Googling found this nifty post that provides a great walkthrough of how to run speed tests directly from the command line in your friendly, neighborhood linux box…

I already had Git installed, so it was maybe 30 seconds to pull down the speedtest-cli script and copy it into /usr/local/bin, then I was off to the races! I’m pretty much a sworn user of Speedtest.net, so to see that it was interfaced directly with them was an easy win. And the customization is neat, too, how you can either run in a default for the fastest host or choose your own, in addition to getting the link for your results badge to wear so proudly.

My favorite feature, though, is how simple they made batch testing so now you can actually pick multiple locations around the world and kick them all off in rapid succession. Though normally I default to my web host up in New Jersey because I think testing with a local server here is stupid when we don’t really have a lot of data centers here for major websites anyways, they were admittedly running a little slow this morning so it was neat to be able to also throw in LA and Miami as two other corners of the country to help round my test results out!

Now to see if I can find that promo where they were giving away the free router to upgrade to 150/150…

Silly Monster Jammies

Posted on October 7, 2015 by Scott / 0 Comment

I’ve got to say, I see more and more of the very same silly sense of humor that I had when I was little in my son every day.

Tonight he was so well behaved while I had to be on a late night conference call in the other room, but when it was time to get him into his pajamas it was like he had flipped the switch over to full blown wacky! The jammies you see him in above are admittedly getting a little small for him, so I had a bit of trouble getting his feet into them to get him started. The first foot wasn’t too bad, but each time that I would try to get the other foot into place, he’d start wiggling and playfully poking at one foot with the other…

…which in these particular pajamas looked like a tiny, blue little monster was trying to get me…

…AND I JUST ABSOLUTELY LOST IT!!!

Christopher is very much at this stage right now where he plays off of your emotions, so if you’re laughing, he’s laughing, and if he realizes that he’s the reason why you’re laughing … well, much like I know my pre-school teachers had to endure both years that they tried to temper my immature shenanigans, good luck getting him to stop once he really gets going!

It probably took me a solid five minutes to get the rest of those pajamas on – with several breaks included – because he just had me cracking up the entire time I was fighting with him, which honestly just made him act silly all the more. And it was kind of fantastic to see the little comedian playing off of my own amusement, even though he probably didn’t know exactly what it was that was making his Dad laugh his head off!

He just kept doing it anyways … because that’s what you do when you’re making people laugh.

Plex Streaming 101

Posted on October 6, 2015 by Scott / 0 Comment

For Plex proponents like myself, this video is a nice, simple walkthrough of the ways that Plex Media Server streams media to different devices both in your home and abroad.

I’ve been lucky up to this point in that the main devices that we use Plex on at home are two Samsung TVs and Plex Home Theater on my computer, all of which support DirectPlay. So far this has been a good configuration for us because even adding my sister-in-law remotely who occasionally needs to transcode due to receiving Internet speed, it hasn’t really affected simultaneous playback here at home. Nonetheless, I can see beefier processing power in our future eventually to help from buffering if we add any more relatives connecting in the same manner who all want to watch at the same time.

But hopefully by then I’ll have justified the bump up to a swanky rack-mount server boasting a sexy RAID configuration and a new motherboard that supports multiple processors!