Category: self-improvement

Big Changes

June 24, 2008 / / 3 Comments

I’m going to have some really big changes coming up in the very near future. I received a letter from my landlord a while ago saying, “Hey, your lease is up on August 14th. Want to renew?” My immediate response was, “What the fuck?”

Our lease expired in October of last year, and we’ve been living on a month-to-month basis since then. If he had sent a letter saying, “Renew or leave by the end of August,” that would have been understandable. This letter seems to imply that he has no idea what terms he agreed to when he signed our lease, since a.) he never contacted us when the original lease expired and b.) if he already knew we were living month-to-month, he’d have given us a deadline for August 31st, not the 14th.

Since our apartment is a dump, (leaking ceiling and faucets; tiny, uncleanable bathroom; no air conditioning; horribly expensive to heat; no laundry facilities; etc.) there’s no way we’re renewing the lease. This is forcing several issues.

First, Megan and I broke up quite some time ago, but we’re still living together. She has no reason to stay in Madison, and she’s trying to get into a massage school in Oregon state. Living without her is going to be really strange and difficult. I’m going to be a mess for a while afterwards.

Second, I just got my Linux+ certification. (94%! Whoo!) I’m hoping to parlay my new certification into a new job in a new city–with a lot of luck, Google in Seattle.

If all of these things happen–no Megan, new job, new city, new life–it’s going to be the most significant shake up I’ve ever had in my life. I don’t know if I’m ready for it.

Focal Plane Challenge – Done.

April 5, 2007 / / 4 Comments

I more or less finished the focal plane challenge. With the exception of the 30th, (I forgot until I was falling asleep, then didn’t have the energy to do anything about it) I took some photos every day last month.

I decided after day one that I was only going to post one photo per day, which left me with a lot of good photos that didn’t get end up being posted. I really like a lot of the photos, like this one and the pictures from the abandoned house.

That said, there are a lot of photos in there that weren’t picked for very obvious reasons. Have a look at the album and judge for yourself.

Starting over (again)

January 8, 2007 / / 0 Comments

If any of you used to read my Diary-X blog, you’d know that I used to blog significantly more frequently, and my posts were more… significant.  Virtually everything I’ve written in this miserable abortion of a blog have been tidbits of meaningless crap.  Even I don’t want to read most of what I’ve written.

There are a few reasons for this, ordered for you in a lovely and totally unnecessary list:

  • I don’t really have much to write about.  My life is increasingly banal. Describing how I bought and installed an under-counter light above the kitchen sink to disinterested third parties–that would be you–seems rather pointless.
  • I spend way too much time watching TV, and nowhere near enough time reading.  Seriously.  It’s all I do, and it’s really sad.  I decided tonight that if something isn’t worth recording on my DVR, why waste time watching it?  The more I read, the more I want to write.  It’s already the eighth, and I don’t think I’ve picked up a book yet this year.
  • I’ve been reticent about being overly personal in my posts.  Blogs have become the essential means of saying either “Hey world, look how fucking great I am,” or “I have so much pain to unload on the world.  Thank god I have my blog to vent in… or I’d need to go cut myself while listening to Dashboard.”

    I’ve been shying away from these stereotypes for quite some time, though I don’t really know why.  On my last blog, I let total strangers see my psyche laid bare on the asphalt.  I think the reason I was so comfortable there was because I knew no one was reading it.  When I belatedly found I had a small audience, I felt the need to censor myself.  Well, fuck it.  If I’ve got something to say, I’ll say it.  I’m tired of pulling punches.  From now on, I write for me, and any readers are incidental.

  • Most of the work I take pride in is unintelligible and uninteresting to readers.  When I’m at work, I spend my time doing seriously technical work.  A good deal of it is in-depth enough that even Microsoft Mikey doesn’t know what the hell I’m talking about.

    I could easily post an entry proudly describing how I put third party firmware on a WRT54G, hacked it to act as a wireless bridge with 128-bit WEP encryption, had issues with the ARP proxying not working when I tried to netboot a headless FreeBSD client–but who’s going to understand that?

  • I spend less time drinking alone.  This is a good thing, obviously.  Unfortunately, I’ve always done my best writing while half in the bag.  The words flow smoothly and the subconscious mental blocks in my vocabulary dissolve after a few whiskey and cokes.
  • I have very few friends in Madison. Or anywhere, for that matter.  I’ve always had a hard time making and keeping friends.  No friends means I spend most of my time in my apartment, means I spend too much time watching TV, means I do nothing and have nothing to talk about.
  • I’ve spent too much time making this list.  What the hell was I talking about when I started this whining?

    :: scrolls up ::

    Oh, right.  Explaining why my posts have been crap for the last year.

So I’m starting over.  A fresh start for a new year.  I’m going to blog more often, about whatever the hell I feel like that day, and just write because I want to write.

I hope you’ll continue to read.  Chances are pretty good that my quality and quantity will increase in the near future.  I appreciate people reading my writing, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to stop myself from saying things you may find offensive.