Things so normal as to not fit neatly into any other area.
Here I am, trying to recover from time off, spending just 4 days up in Tahoe and coming home feeling the most sickly I’ve felt in quite some time. Ear and head congestion, ringing in the ears, and a general feeling of unbalanceness (is that even a word?).
Serves me right for trying to take time off while at the same time dealing with the aftermath of work and the complete lack of outside-of-work issues. Save for the taxes. This time of year is oh-so-much fun thanks to taxes.
I held off for a while, but I now own a PSP. While this is not totally unexpected, given my employer, what is surprising is the speed at which it has consumed my personal time.Â
This is due in large part to the PSP’s WiFi abilities. You see, it can browse most web pages and stream music wirelessly. This means I can listen to virtually any podcast anywhere I go, as well as any music I happen to find. Combined with GTA I find less and less free time on my hands.
The next step for me, obviously, is to setup some PSP specific web pages to stream my own MP3 collection, as well as make it easier to get to the information I want. I hope I can do it soon, though, as I really don’t do well on less and less sleep.
Tonight (or this morning) I took one small step toward hardwired ethernet and phone line goodness in the house. I’ve now wired the spare bedroom directly into the downstairs office, eliminating what I hope will be the last of the connectivity problems with the remote PCs.
There is still stuff to do, like cleaning things up, painting and patching walls, and the like. But with the connection now working up and downstairs, it seems like things are on the road to networked utopia.
On Saturday and Sunday, January 14 & 15, the California ski season began for me. It wasn’t the greatest skiing in the world, thanks to some high winds, wet snow, and really cut up trails at Heavenly, but it was skiing nonetheless.
I’m now at home and really tired, having realized that my legs are just not in the kind of shape they need to be in order to squeeze maximum vertical footage out of every day on the slopes. Guess its time to get on the treadmill and start eating my Wheaties.
After a long dry spell with no postings, here’s an update. I’ve just gotten back from two full weeks of travel plus another two days on the road inside California. Due to all of this I’m spending the Christmas and New Year’s holidays here at home. This is the first time in nearly two months where I’ll have a stretch of time to sit down and just be at home.
Of course, I can’t sit around and do nothing (besides watch movies and Tivo) so I got brave and zipped out in the rain with the new car. It was a big step for me, as I’ve been very protective of it, and kept it out of the water as much as possible. As the pictures I’ll post in the gallery will attest, I think it was worth it.
Chalk this one up to being one of the reasons its good to live in California.
I pushed on through and drove direct from San Diego to San Jose tonight (or today). It took longer than I had hoped, starting at around 7pm or so, and ending at 12:45am. The car is finally in a home garage again, extremely wet, and slightly dinged, but in pretty good shape all things considered.
It was 4 days and 2000 miles of driving, but I’m glad to finally be home. Next time I will definitely take the plane. When I wake up sometime today I’ll try to post some new pictures of the ride in the gallery area.
I had always believed that Californians were poorer drivers than the rest of the country since moving here 10 years ago. However, I now have definitive proof that they are the worst. Take this sampling of data, for instance:
This is but a small sampling of the frustration happening near the end of this trip. I’m only to San Diego and I’m tired of the driving here. If I don’t find a route around LA I may have to revise this post and add all the pain of sitting in traffic for hours and hours going nowhere.
I wasn’t sure how this was going to turn out, but I sold my first item via Craigslist: the component rack. I got $49 for it, even though I posted the ad at $60. In the end, it was something I wasn’t using so I’m glad to be free of it.
I’ll consider this money towards the new equipment and car, although the scale is off by a little bit.
I’ve been putting off this purchase for a while, but this year I finally gave in and got a sports car again. It’s not in my hands for another few weeks, but you can see it the same way I did, in pictures.
Today I had one of those moments that I try so hard to avoid, the one where the rational brain and impulsive brain are fighting it out for control. Let me give you the rundown:
So with all of this known, my rational brain told me to call it a day and go home. My impulsive brain said “wait, you can squeeze in one more flight on your own.” So armed with this information I took the plane up again. The takeoff roll was good, the circuits around the field are fine, even the wind buffeting isn’t a big deal.
And then I land. Or I should say I hit the runway.
Now I have a broken rudder, a crunched wing, and a lot of work ahead of me (or someone who fixes things for me) before its flight-worthy again. Sometimes fate is a cruel master, and this time it reminded me that its not always smart to listen to the impulsive thoughts in my head. Doh.