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Saturday, December 27, 2008
Mandatory New Years' Resolution Post
Will Take Work on a Daily Basis
  • Finish organizing my photo collection (~17,000 photos). Get at least 1/4 of the way through tagging, rating, and eliminating duplicates.
  • Get a real start on organizing my old design/writing work files.
  • Create a good organizational system for ITP work files.
  • Rate 40 days worth of music.
  • Average one blog post every 3 days.
  • Stay on-budget every month.
  • Make some babies~!
  • Use my 'power tower' (ugh hate the name) Christmas gift. I have yet to determine actual numbered goals. Get more sexy! This involves about 45 minutes of workout per day in 10, 10, and 25 minute sections.
  • Eat well (almost no corn syrum, limited sweets, good snacks like carrots and nuts, more but smaller meals, drinking 2.5 litres of water a day).
  • Take 4,000 photographs, including 400 5-star photos. Post the best to Facebook/Flickr.
  • Consistently shoot 80% on freethrows.
Will Take Work on a Weekly Basis
  • Create a home inventory for insurance purposes, including all photos, reciepts and serial numbers.
  • Finish Ignition. This means professionally mastered and with a new website to promote it.
  • Start re-learning piano and/or theory (haven't set up specific goals for this yet).
  • Go on at least 25 hikes or other outdoor excursions.
  • Consistently (at least 2x a month) do little things for my wife that would make her want to date me if we weren't married.
  • Stay connected to friends via Facebook. Use it to get together with friends while we're still young and sexy.
  • Get a good, highly-productive routine going at work that encourages me to take carpal-tunnel saving breaks and keeps me alert through the day (this relates to the eating and exercising).
Will Take Work on a Monthly Basis
  • Begin to learn PHP in depth, preferably through classes that work pays for...
  • Set up a long series of doctor's appointments to check for just about everything one can be checked for, to deal with any problems I might have before they're problems. That is - abuse the fact that I have a job with semi-decent medical care.
  • Work on some way of respectfully resolving some core differences of belief between me and the in-laws.
  • Get out of town 8 times (including at least 5 to family).
  • Read a book a month.
  • Reaquaint myself with all the outdoors knowledge I had as a Boy Scout.
  • Learn to properly tune up my car.

One-Time Events:

Winter:
  • Pay taxes by Valentine's Day.
  • Visit my co-workers in San Francisco (I work from home 700 miles away and have yet to meet them).
  • Use our new toboggan.
Spring:
  • For the Prius: Replace scratched rear turn signal assembly.
  • Redo my homepage/portfolio again in such a way that it all actually works.
  • Create "A Ninja Wedding"
  • Create the Impulse Nine TF2 frag video
Summer:
  • Get to a water park.
  • Write a short (20-page) religous-political treatise.
VW Work:
  • January: Scrape off all the tar board from the floors and put down rust-preventing primer. Install aluminum side panels.
  • February: Install floor drains. Put down floor lining. Install side brush bars. Install larger brake fluid reservoir.
  • March: Create map pocket and cup holder in side panels. Install fire extinguisher holder.
  • April: Install Dynamat (weather permitting).
  • May: Buffer time.
  • June: Begin working with simple fiberglassing by making rear trunk covers.
  • July: Replace all the wiring with Jordan, adding circuits for all the new stuff to be installed later. Add gravel guards. Replace turn signal. Install air horn.
  • August: Powdercoat rims, bumpers, brush bars, gravel guards, and door panels.
  • September: Buffer time.
  • October: Replace rims and tires. Raise rear suspension.
  • November: Install new headlight system.
  • December: Replace door and window rubber.

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posted by Steve @ 9:38 PM   0 comments
Thursday, November 20, 2008
A New NeurosIs
PTCD -- Postal Tracking Compulsion Disorder.

The act of obsessively refreshing the tracking page when you've bought something (usually something expensive) online.

ex: "I've spent the last half hour refreshing the UPS tracking page for my wife's Christmas present. It's supposed to get here tomorrow, but I can't stop refreshing. What the hell are they waiting for in Fresno???"

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posted by Steve @ 10:35 AM   0 comments
Saturday, December 15, 2007
Walmart during the holidays
Today, I was forced to go to Walmart because we needed a space heater for our place. It was about fifty degrees inside the house this morning; that's not OK.

So I took a candy cane from the Renaissance Festival people at Bookman's, and sucked on it until it formed into an impromptu shiv.

People are very gullible. Seriously: strawberry jam-coated candy canes? Silly officer.

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posted by Steve @ 7:57 PM   0 comments
Monday, December 03, 2007
Things that really are awesome
Most third graders are familiar with what I'll call shopper's ennui: the sense that what you bought can't possibly live up to the fantastic ideal that it's been built up to.

I realized this when as a twelve-year-old boy, I convinced my Dad to buy a $60 (that's six-zero point zero zero dollars, people) remote control car. It was fast, had a pair of tracks instead of wheels, and lasted for exactly fifteen minutes per five-hour charge.

Trouble with that being, of course, that I could use it at most twice a day, since I couldn't see it at night.

I did enjoy that little remote control car enough to remember it a decade and a half later. I also remember that it took me about three weeks to get sick of waiting for the damn thing to charge. It was effectively destroyed within a few months from pretty reckless (though awesome) driving, most of which involved making ramps and launching it in ways that one day, God willing, I'll do with my Volkswagen.

---

Anyway, the reason I bring up the remote control car is that it was, for about a year, the Thing I Coveted Most. A few years later, it relinquished that title to kissing and/or sex with girls, but at the time I recognized the feeling and the risk: few things are as good as you think they'll be. I figured kissing and sex would be an exception, but even then I correctly came to the conclusion that buyer's ennui was a real thing.

So in light of the holiday season ramping up its machine, here's a list of things that I bought that were every last bit as awesome as I had hoped they might be:

1. Dating and marrying Rachel. We have our dumb moments, usually caused by myopia or general illness, but I really can't imagine being really happy with anyone else because there is literally nothing I would really want to change. Not even the things that irritate me; those are usually the only things that keep me improving as a person.

2. My VW Beetle. Sure, it has had more repair problems than Chernobyl, but it's every last bit as rewarding as I think having a car can be. I suppose you can say that how awesome something is has little to do with how perfect, practical, or popular it is.

3. The Ampeg 8x10" bass amp I bought. I can feel my brain vibrating uncomfortably when I turn the Gallien-Krueger head past the "5" on the volume dial. It is wonderful being able to play a note that is remorsefully gentle and understated ...and still be 110 dB.

4. My Black & Decker power drill. An odd thing for this list, but it was so amazingly useful when we were pretty much building everything in our apartment, had ridiculously-long battery life and just did things it shouldn't have been able to for longer than I had a right to ask of it.

5. Radiohead's OK Computer, which I bought when it came out without knowing anything about the band, at all. I just liked the cover art a lot. Few things in the history of mankind have exceeded expectations like that purchase. U2's Achtung Baby also ended up being my favorite album, but the magnitude of the difference between expectation and reality were what set OK Computer apart.

6. My trip to Tokyo in 2001 with my family. It went about as well as any family trip can possibly go. We had fun, I slept very little, had about fifteen million great memories, and took some amazing pictures to help reminisce, which in turn really got me into becoming a photographer.

7. The book U2 at the End of the World, which I read at the height of my U2philism, was about as good a rock bio as has ever been written. I remember finding it in the Phoenix Main Library, and thinking, "there's no way this is going to be better than I hope it's going to be" -- but it was. You should read it. There's a part about a giant snake and hookers in Tokyo.

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posted by Steve @ 9:56 PM   0 comments
Monday, July 02, 2007
Prescott for the 4th
Yay! Rachel and I are going to Prescott for the 4th of July. We'll eat great food, see the in-laws, help build their new house, and rewire the truck. It's going to be great to see them and get so much done. I know that a working vacation is just what I need.

Meantime, I'm going out in a bit to check out where our next place is. I'm sad that we're moving, not because I'm particularly attached to this place, but because I've yet to live in the same place for more than roughly a year since I moved out to college - in 1998. That means this will be my 12th place in 10 years, including Okinawa.

Still, we've got enough money to be able to rent both places for a week or two, and so will be able to catalogue every last thing we own (!), partly to get rid of things we don't want or need, partly because getting rid of things will make the move easier, and also for home insurance purposes.

Oh, and this time, I have a nice camera to bring!

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posted by Steve @ 2:00 PM   0 comments
 
About Me


Name: Steve
Home: Tucson, Arizona, United States
About Me: I like to think about things, and I occasionally like to write what I think.
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