Rebirth

The idea of a new year being a chance for resolutions or a new start hasn't been something that I've found myself believing in. However, this past year, I've been feeling more and more like it's time to start doing things a little differently.

I don't want to say that I've been "in a rut" but it definitely feels like it's time to shake things up and see how they settle out.

One of the things I've been thinking about for awhile is a rebirth of this blog. When I registered the domain name and started posting, I had some ideas as to what I wanted it to end up being about but, as with most of the things I start on the internet, I always seem to end up holding back because I know that people in my "real life" (family, friends, employers and such) have seen or may possibly end up finding things I've put up. I still struggle with the issue of keeping my private ideas private and separate from my professional life and I'm sure that I'll always have that struggle. So, I'll take this opportunity to issue a disclaimer that anything here is solely my own opinion. However, there have been things that I've been thinking and would love to put them somewhere. Why not here?

So, as a new start to this blog, here is a list of topics I was planning on working on in my personal life, as well as writing about on my recently retired "motivation" blog:

• eating more healthy / in-season / local food
• cooking at home more
• eating less prepared / fast food
• incorporating more enjoyable physical activity into my life
• finding ways to reduce stress
• worrying less
• meeting new people
• spending more time with family and friends
• keeping in touch with non-local friends
• simplifying and decluttering
• learning new things
• attempting to work on more creative / artistic things
• sharing thoughts and ideas
• starting new hobbies and revisiting old ones
• reading more books
• spending less time in front of TV
• spending less time aimlessly browsing on the internet

The plan, as it stands right now, is to roll the (modified) ideas of that blog into this one and actually share things that I want to share. I'll probably still hold back a little bit, but hopefully be a little more open that I have been in the past.

Minor Website Updates

I bet you didn't even notice the two very subtle changes that I made to my website over the past few days. I'll mention them in a minute... but, first, there's something else that I've been thinking about. This all started when I mentioned to a friend a few weeks ago that people are actually looking at my blog (according to my web stats from my web hosting company). He was as surprised as I was... possibly even more.

I'm not really even sure who reads this blog (let alone on a regular enough basis to notice my two tiny changes). I post here mostly just to write about interesting things that I've come across, to get ideas out, to rant and complain or just to blab about my somewhat boring life. I also have a somewhat poor memory and very little in the way of an internal time line... so keeping that stuff straight is another reason behind this blog.

However, even though I'm not sure that there's really even anything interesting here, I see in my stats that there are actually some people coming here mostly because of my MacBook Pro rants and my take on an article in Rolling Stone magazine about the hardcore crew FSU and the Hudson Duster in nearby Troy, NY. (Related tidbit: In that last linked entry, I mentioned another blog entry that I found while researching my Rolling Stone FSU article post that tried to draw a line between FSU and biological weapons which I thought was hilarious (in a bad way). That post actually drew a response from the guy who wrote the blog entry that I linked to and picked on! I noticed that his post is no longer on his blog now, though.)

Anyway, now that I got that out of the way... The changes I made to this site were adding a categorized "links" page instead of just a little column of links only on my main page and adding a drop down menu to my archives section on my blog page.

I had gotten out of the habit of posting links for the past few years on my various websites because maintaining links was too much of a hassle but recently I've wanted to add a few new (mostly local) links and felt the column was going to get too long... so... there is the reason for that change. As far as the archives drop down, there were links for every month that this blog has been going all listed out and they were getting rather unruly. I doubt anyone uses them, anyway... so the menu is much neater.

Anyway, that's all for this entry. If you're reading this leave me a comment or send me an email with the contact link to the left and let me know you're here...

Thanks.

Rosetta@home redux

In my last blog post I talked about past hobbies and I mentioned that one of my past hobbies was messing around with computers. I was always updating my PC and working on computers for friends and family. In turn, I always had spare hardware and hand me down computers from friends and family kicking around.

In the tail end of my switchover to Apple a few years ago I had my last personal PC running Ubuntu Linux and the only thing I was doing on it was running Rosetta@home. Eventually, though, I ended up parting out that PC and forgot about Rosetta. (I know I can run Rosetta@home on Apple computers, too, but I don't really like to run my main computers all the time and I weeded my computers down to my day to day laptop and my iTunes library computer.)

Last night my sister gave me her old Dell Dimension desktop since she upgraded to a new laptop so she could get rid of her large desk setup in what is now her son's play room.

I updated her old computer to XP Pro and put Rosetta on it. I think the research that Rosetta is doing is a worthy cause and I really don't know what else to do with the computer right now.

If anyone out there knows of other worthy projects that I can donate some distributed computing time to please send me your recommendations.

The high price of cookies. Only you can end it.

I just came across the blog called Conditional recoil of a guy who I used to work with on a pretty much daily basis in my last job (through a link on facebook) and I think it's a great read. He doesn't have that many posts up there yet but the ones he does are the type of posts that make you think.

In particular, though, there was a post from last November titled "Where does it end?" that I felt I needed to respond to. If you know me, you'll know why. ;)

I agree with what he is trying to say which is basically that corporate America is hosing the consumers that buy it's products because in many cases they are. However in (slight) defense of the particular industry he picked as an example (and in turn, all other industries). There are many direct costs that people neglect to take into account when figuring out what things really cost. In this exact example:

* He didn't account for labor to bake, package, label and put out said package of cookies. (Plus don't forget the ever increasing cost of benefits for the workers.)

* Then there's the cost of the actual package. (Which due to energy and material costs, which you guessed it, are increasing.)

* Don't forget the energy to run the ovens and keep the lights, heat and a/c on. (Which also increases in cost from year to year. Are you seeing a trend?)

* Transportation costs to get the case of cookies from the warehouse(s) to the stores. (Fuel costs aren't going down, you know.)

* On top of all of that how much is your time worth? How much would you pay to not have to bake the cookies you'd like to eat? Your time and convenience are also worth money...

I'm not going to detail what it costs for the above things. Instead, I'm going to simplify the equation.

Companies ARE in the business of making money and that's exactly what successful companies do. The more money they make for their owners or investors the more successful they are and the longer they stay in business.

So the answer to the question "Where does it end?" is that it all comes back to the consumer. Things tend to cost what people are willing and able to pay. If there are people out there that are willing to pay $3.99 for a package of ready to eat cookies, that's exactly what they're going to cost.

[So now that we simplified everything down to the statement that things cost what people are willing and able to pay, I'm going to re-complicate it if you're willing to continue reading.]

All of the other cookie providers that are competing for your cookie purchase also know what people will pay. How the different businesses differentiate themselves is how they gain your business over the other competitors.

* They can charge slightly less on cookies and hope that you'll buy something else that they make more profit on while you're there. (How much profit is in a cup of coffee?)

* They can have a better location that makes it easier for them to get their cookies in front of you.

* They can advertise.

* They can play up the quality of their cookie and/or how they're freshly baked (and directly or indirectly that they're better than the other guy's cookies).

It goes on and on... but the end result is the same. You want the cookies, you don't want to bake them yourself and the companies that are selling cookies want as much of your money that you're willing to let them have.

The ONLY way to make the price of cookies come down is really just to stop buying them. If nobody is buying cookies the price will either go down to a price that the customer is willing to pay (at which point the customer will resume cookie buying) or the cookies will not be available any more if they cost more to produce than the customer is willing to pay. You'll have to buy the ingredients separately and make them yourself.

The things like the cost of the raw cookie dough or ingredients, packaging, energy, transportation, labor, benefits, etc. do factor back into the equation if you can lower the tangible costs of producing and supplying the cookies in order to get them back to a level where a lower price for finished cookies still leads to an acceptable profit for the company selling them. However, if we attempt to go down this path we'll see that there are many more deep "root causes" for why the cost of everything keeps increasing which makes lowering costs difficult.

* America's "energy policies" (if you can call them that) are a little bit frightening. I'm constantly reading stories about people fighting against wind turbines ("I don't want that eyesore in my backyard." and "What will happen to the birds that fly into them?") and stifling other promising energy production methods for other ridiculous reasons. On top of that there are the people who think we should take over the Middle East by force because we're entitled to drive gas-guzzling SUV's powered by imported oil. We need to find ways to lower the cost of energy and don't involve direct conflict (which costs a lot of money).

* The cost of health care and insurance really needs to be addressed. (That's enough about this one.)

* Property costs were rising at rates we're now beginning to see weren't sustainable. (Which leads to increases in cost for rents, leases and purchases of property which also leads everything to cost more.)

There are tons of issues... I really could go all day on this topic but I keep coming back to the fact that if you really don't like the price of something the only thing you can really do is stop buying it. That'll send a undeniable message that you're not willing to pay what the seller is charging. If others do the same then things start to change...

(Broken links removed March 24, 2010.)

Nostalgia for my Clarkson days

I got to see some good friends from my two years at Clarkson this weekend. It all started about a month ago when my friend Liz sent me an email saying she was flying in to Albany to go to the Clarkson/RPI hockey game at RPI with another person we went to Clarkson with. She wanted to know if I wanted to go...

Fast forward to this weekend. I'm not a huge sports fan but the game was pretty good.

After the game we re-grouped at Ryan's Wake which despite the depressing sounding name was actually a pretty nice place. It was packed, though. I recommend getting Dooley's Cheese Board and if you like shrimp, I'm told the shrimp cocktail was good.

It was great to catch up with two of my best friends from my time at Clarkson. The time flew by, though. I know there were some pictures taken so hopefully I'll get some of those from the people with the cameras. It was also nice to meet some nice new people who are friends of friends. It's a little weird to meet people who live close to you through people who live hours and hours away.

Sunday morning I was feeling nostalgic (which usually happens when I see people I haven't seen in a long time) so I was looking around the internet for Clarkson stuff and I stumbled on a 7 part series of You Tube videos of my freshman chemistry professor's "Chemistry Magic Show". Dr. Jim Peploski was one of my favorite professors. I remember him doing most of those demonstrations in class. That was one of my Clarkson classes that I always tried my best to make it to.

I also ran into some old co-workers earlier in the day on Saturday at the store I used to work at, which was another source of nostalgia.

In other news, I'm still making a solid attempt at the Weight Loss Challenge. Saturday I went grocery shopping for healthy foods and went to work out...

Affluenza and more.

First let me start out with a quick update to my last post: The scale at work is definitely broken. I might have lost a few pounds... but not anywhere near 15. I'm still trying to eat a little better and exercise a bit more, though.

This weekend was pretty good. I guess it felt more busy than it really was, though. I spent most of Saturday hanging out with my family and washing & waxing my car. (It was FILTHY!) I went to a BBQ at a friend's apartment on Sunday. Great food and awesome friends always makes for a good time. Yesterday morning we picked up our roommate from the airport and then spent most of the rest of the day relaxing for the most part. I read a little more of Affluenza before bed. I'm slightly into the third section which deals with ways to cure affluenza. So, expect to see some entries in this here blog thingy about that in the near future as I finish up the book. So far I've found it well written and funny. Most of the stuff they're saying makes sense to me but I'm hoping that they have some real ways to cure the problem written in the end. I'm afraid it's going to fizzle with no real solutions...

I was talking with my mom on Saturday and the topic of having a vegetable garden came up. She was saying that she missed having really fresh tomatoes after I mentioned that I don't like tomatoes anymore. I remember liking tomato sandwiches as a kid... but now I even pick tomatoes off my $0.99 Wendy's Jr. Bacon Cheeseburgers. We used to have a garden when I was growing up and I remember picking and eating fresh snow peas, green beans, tomatoes, zucchini, peppers and much much more. So, I'm trying to talk her into starting a garden at her house next year. My parents definitely have enough room for a decent sized garden there... I think the main issue that I'm going to run into is the fact that my father has been busy working on my sister's house the past year and they still have a lot left to go there. I know it's going to be a TON of hard work but it'll be good exercise and hopefully we'll get some good fresh vegetables out of it. At the very least I'll spend more time with my family and hopefully learn something about gardening, canning and cooking.

Also, I'm also in the beginning stages of a hunt for a new apartment. I have no idea where we'll end up as of January 1st... but we'll still be in the Albany/Troy general area. I'm taking Friday off to look at a few different complexes and I guess we'll go from there. Once we get closer I'm going to look into some private owner type apartments, too. I'm also thinking that we should try to negotiate with our current place to see if they'll lower our rent to be more competitive with other places that are including heat, hot water, plus cable and internet! I kind of like our current apartment but it's going to get too expensive once our roommate moves out in the end of December.

Books and eBay.

I finished reading The Working Poor by David K. Shipler on Saturday. I must say that it did end up being a somewhat depressing book. It was basically a collection of stories about the histories, circumstances and lives of people who were attempting to work their way off of welfare or who were forced to get off welfare. I was hoping that it would have a lot of insight into how to work your way out of the "working poor" trap but I didn't really find too much that was helpful (especially to me). The people in the book did run into some good people who helped but it sounded like the basic tenets of the book were:
* don't drop out of high school and go to college if you can (a degree is almost a necessity these days to get a "decent" job)
* vocational training should have less of a stigma attached (we're always going to need people who work in trades like plumbing and carpentry)
* don't do drugs
* health care shouldn't be so much of a burden for people with low incomes (but maybe making it a government responsibility isn't a good idea either)
* if you're poor don't get sick because you'll get poor care and if you're really sick chances are pretty good it will ruin you financially
* doctors who work with lawyers and case workers tend to get more accomplished in the overall situation of poor children. (They can sic the lawyers on the parties responsible for poor housing conditions and for denying aid to people who are qualified, etc.)
* be a good parent to your children because if you're not you'll fuck them up for life and they'll end up stuck in the same trap
* it's extremely helpful to have a strong support system of friends and family to help out

Other than those obvious things I picked out of the book there really wasn't too much meat there... just a bunch of sad stories about people who were in horrible situations.

The next book I started to read last night was Affluenza by John de Graaf, David Wann and Thomas H. Naylor. I think that I'm going to like this book a lot better than "The Working Poor". For one thing it's written in a sarcastic, funny style. I laughed out loud dozens of times in the first few chapters and I had to read half a dozen things to my girlfriend as I was reading them... but at the same time it has very serious information in it that makes you think...

Yesterday I put some CDs, a book and some random stuff up on eBay. I'm hoping to get some of my computer guts and other stuff on there tonight...

More new books.

I stopped at Borders on the way home to return the ridiculously overpriced PHP book that I bought last night and picked up The Working Poor: Invisible in America by David K. Shipler and Natural Capitalism by Paul Hawken, Amory Lovins and L. Hunter Lovins.

While I was at Borders my freshman year roommate from Clarkson called. It was good to hear from him and it sounds like he's doing pretty well.

New books, strange new people and work.

I went to Borders after work today to spend the gift card that my parents gave me for my birthday. I picked up Affluenza: The All-Consuming Epidemic by John de Graaf, David Wann and Thomas H Naylor and PHP for the World Wide Web by Larry Ullman.

Hopefully I'll get to put the PHP one to use on my website soon. I actually think I'm going to return it and get it on amazon for 1/2 of what I paid at Borders, though.

I met a strange guy at the bookstore tonight. He seemed really friendly but I think he is going to try to get me to sell energy drinks. We talked for a few minutes about our histories and he asked if I was interested in doing work outside of my current job and I said "possibly" when I should have said "no". He ended up giving me his business card and when I looked up his website when I got home it looked like a generic template that you get when you pay into one of those businesses that let you resell their crap products.

My supervisor came back to work today, too. I NEVER thought I'd think this... but I'm glad she's back from vacation. Today was a million times more productive than any of the days last week. My phone didn't ring off the hook. It actually didn't ring that much at all. I have a meeting with my newest boss on Wednesday. Hopefully that goes well...

Brazilian Chicken, gross out food TV and crappy sleeping.

I went to dinner at a friend's apartment last night. It was our host, her boyfriend, our friend Jon and my girlfriend and I. Before dinner I talked with Jon mostly about cars and music. She made a dish she calls "Brazilian Chicken" which is made sort of like this and it's delicious.

After dinner we sat around and listened to the funny, random songs on our mp3 players and then watched some TV shows where the host goes to different countries and eats foods that look disgusting. There were snakes, bugs, fish sauce, civet coffee, and lots of testicles among many other foods that looked completely unappealing to me.

When I got home I was pretty tired so I got ready for bed, laid down and then I couldn't sleep. I laid there for probably close to 2 hours before I fell asleep and then my girlfriend woke up having a coughing fit. After that I tossed and turned again for a little while and then slept in little chunks for the rest of the night. Surprisingly, I'm not as tired as I thought I'd be after sleeping so horribly last night. I really need to find a new job because that's pretty much the cause of most of my stress. Which, in turn, was the cause of my crappy sleeping.

Tonight I think I'm headed to my old house again to go through more junk. I really want to put another dent in what I have to get done over there and hopefully find some more "treasures" to sell on eBay. I'm also hoping to dig out some of my old toys to clean up and give to my sister to use for her son until I have kids someday. I'm going to have to post up some pictures of Alex soon... he's getting so big.

[05/20/2026: Removed dead epicurious link to similar recipe for "Brazilian chicken".]

Valentine's last night...

Last night I went to Valentine's for the first time in YEARS. My girlfriend's friend, Mark, was filling in on guitar for a band for a band called "Margan and the Red Lions". I was definitely impressed with his talent on guitar. He didn't really get too much of a chance to show off his skill in that setting (being a fill-in for an existing band doing a very short 4 song set) but it was apparent that he could play his instrument very well. The first song of their set started off a little rough. (It sounded like three different songs at once. Drums playing one, bass playing another and keyboard, vocals and guitar on the third.) The songs improved quickly up to the fourth and final song which was the best of the set.

I'm not going to rip the other acts (My Friend Peter and Sgt. Dunbar and the Hobo Banned) up too much. I appreciate that they can get up on stage and play music that they're proud of but it wasn't my cup of tea, if you will. (I like screaming vocals, loud guitars and double bass drums.) As soon as I saw someone with an accordion come up on stage I had to escape. I don't do (most) accordion music. The sound irritates me.

I went downstairs to catch part of the punk/hardcore show they had going on there. I'm not even sure what band I saw. It might have been Reptar (can't get to myspace at work to see pictures) or Social Cirkle (can't find website) but they were pretty good. They were loud, fast and tight and they projected their energy into the small crowd who went borderline wild for their whole set. I got kicked in the hand once and pushed back into the row of chairs behind me a different time... it reminded me of going to Valentine's back in the day to see shows...

Oh... I almost forgot how much I like Magic Hat #9, too. ;)

Le Tour de France

After reading Sam's latest post about Le Tour de France, I'm starting to see stuff about Le Tour popping up in the news. Today on BBC News there are stories all over, but I found this one with some background on the basics. I thought it was pretty interesting.

I'm not much of a "world traveler" type person but I do think it would be cool to see part of the Tour de France!

The TOOL concert was awesome

The TOOL concert at the Time Warner Center in Albany, NY on Saturday was amazing. The seats that my friend got were awesome. We were in the First Albany box suite. The box was pretty sweet. There were about 10 seats, a lounge area with a couch and a private bathroom. The view was from stage left at the top of the first level. We had a perfect view of everything going on on stage and all of the screens.

The opening band Big Business was well... they were interesting. I found the vocal delivery very distracting from the total sound and I couldn't understand a lot of the lyrics. I must say the drummer Coady Willis was one of the best drummers I have ever seen. One of the highlights of the TOOL portion of the show was actually when Coady came up on stage and did dual drum duty with Danny Carey.

I'm not going to do much of a review other than to say that it was one of the best shows I've ever been to. The only show that actually gave this one a run for the money was the last time I saw TOOL in the same arena in 2001 which was called the Pepsi Arena at that time. This one relied a lot on visuals projected on 4 screens behind the band and one on either side plus a pretty cool laser light show for the second half of the show. They played a lot of their Aenima biggies including my favorite TOOL song 46&2.

Overall the show was awesome and I'm really glad that I had the opportunity to go! Thanks Nadia!

[05/20/2026: Removed Big Business MySpace link.]

Little excitement left in "green" movement?

A news story about the "green movement" popped up today on ABC's website today.

The basic premise of this article seems to be that the reporter feels that excitement of the "green" movement is basically over before it even began. The article seems to feel that many companies are jumping on the "green" bandwagon more as a tool to drive sales with little plan for the future or no desire to actually do any good.

There are a lot of points that were brought up that do make sense.

From my point of view, it is kind of crazy that people buy things based on a label such as "all natural", "organic" or "hybrid" without understanding the benefits, impacts or costs of what they're doing. It's more of a fad than doing something for a benefit. People are willing to pay extra for something that's labeled "all natural" or "hybrid" because that's the in thing right now. Actors and other pop culture "idols" spout off their ideals and people hang on their words and rush out to go "green".

I think we need to find a way to help people understand the impact of the things they're doing. Sometimes it's not better to buy a brand new hybrid to replace your well maintained '92 Honda Civic hatchback that gets 38MPG. It's not better to throw out all of your clothes and replace them with organic cotton and hemp clothes. Why do we have to spend extra money at the supermarket to buy organic tomatoes grown thousands of miles away when there's probably a farmer's stand or market close to where you live?

Things like this annoy the hell out of me but on the other hand, when was the last time I stopped at a farm stand for fruit and vegetables? Hmmmm...

I'm going to see Tool on Saturday!

Yesterday one of my good friends surprised me with a free ticket to see Tool here in Albany on Saturday 7/14/07!

I was grumpy all day yesterday because I had a wicked headache and a TON of stuff to do that I didn't feel like doing (putting stuff on eBay, dishes, laundry, etc.) and my girlfriend kept urging me to go over to our friend's place to hang out, have pizza and help her bottle her beer.

Normally, these would have been great low key Sunday night plans... but I felt like crap all day and I just didn't feel like leaving the couch.

She was very insistent that I go, though, and she said she promised that I'd have a good time. I grumpily agreed to go... and right when we walked in the door my friend gave us hugs and said hello and immediately reached into an envelope and pulled out a ticket and handed it to me!

What a good surprise...

The "What next?" generation.

After reading a friend's blog entry today I started to think about one of the rough questions that I pulled out of his entry. Most of the people I know in my rough age bracket are in an almost constant state of "What next?".

It seems that many people in my generation don't feel secure in their jobs or their future. Most people I know who went to college changed majors more than once after realizing that their initial choice wasn't what they thought it was going to be. Some of those people that eventually picked a final major and graduated with a degree in it ended up working at places that have nothing to do with their education. Some friends who do have jobs that match their education have worked at a few different companies already.

It just feels (to me) like many people feel like they can't really have a true purpose in life besides helping someone else become rich while struggling to survive. Quite a few people seem to feel that they can't trust their employers to take care of them in return for helping them to make a profit. I've noticed a lot of people that suck at their jobs end up getting promoted to management and end up delegating everything to people who make a shitload less money than they do while they sit in a comfortable chair at an expensive desk by a window and do practically nothing while someone opens their mail, answers their phone and schedules their appointments.

What happens when the time comes for us to "retire"? Will there be such a thing by then? Or will we be forced to work until we die because jumping from job to job (without great benefits) without enough money to put into savings or retirement accounts be the norm for my generation and the ones that come after?

I think the main hopeless feeling comes from realizing that everyone is just a cog in an unstoppable machine that (generally) has different ideals than the people who are making the machine move. In order to survive you do what it takes even if the ideals of the organization don't match your own. If you decide you aren't content you are reminded somehow of just how replaceable you are, while you are left to contemplate the question of: "What next?". Where do I go from here? How the fuck did I end up here?

Maybe I just think too much. Maybe everyone else is perfectly happy and I'm just not satisfied with the choices I've made. Maybe I'm just not confident in myself. Is it just me or does anyone feel this way?

New cell phone... and the rest of the weekend.

I couldn't believe how nice the weather was this weekend. Saturday morning I had to bring my car into the dealer to get it's oil changed. (Free oil changes for 5 years!!!) It was so beautiful outside that I was excited to spend the rest of the day outside doing something. My girlfriend and I ended up driving up to Saratoga and hanging out downtown for a few hours. We wandered around and checked out some of the shops including a small sports card/estate jewelry shop that a friend works at, got some drinks at Uncommon Grounds (which doesn't seem to have a website that I can find) and then headed back towards home to run a few errands.

One of the errands was to pick something up at the mall and while we were there we stopped into the Verizon store to see if we were eligible to renew our contracts and get deals on new phones. We ended up getting LG VX8600's for free after a $50 rebate. I like mine a lot so far. It's much smaller and lighter than my previous Motorola e815. It has a lot more neat features and the contact list is much easier to enter and navigate through. Among other things, I REALLY hated the contact list on my e815, the antenna that stuck out and made the phone more bulky and the fact that when I plugged it in to charge sometimes it would start to charge and then sometime overnight it would drain the battery completely and shut off and I'd wake up to a COMPLETELY dead phone.

Hopefully this phone turns out to be better than the Motorola.

Sunday I woke up and messed around with the template for my new blog in progress on suburbicide. I wanted to just upgrade the template to this blog to match the new design for suburbicide and host it on my own site but I couldn't get that to work correctly so for now I just made a new blog with nothing in it aside from a couple test posts to check out the template. I'm still going back and forth on what to do with it because I can't seem to find a way to code the "tags" feature into the classic style template and it seems that you can't host your own blog if it doesn't have a classic style template.

For now I'm going to keep posting here while figuring out what to do with the new blog.

[05/20/2026: Removed dead cnet phone review link.]

More website updates.

The past couple weeks my domain renewal notices started coming... and I'm halfway certain I'm letting smushybrain.com/.net go and 99% sure I'm letting scenebot.com/.net go.

In anticipation of this tentative decision I threw together a website for suburbicide.com using a free template I found online at freecsstemplates.org. I redirected scenebot and smushybrain to there for now.

Anyway, there's not too much up there now... but it's a start... and it looks better than the crappy shit I've had up in recent history that I threw together in two minutes because I was bored rather than inspired. Eventually I'll get around to creating a nice, fresh new layout of my own... but until then this will have to do.

Also, I haven't gotten around to adding some of my content or links yet. If you're reading this and you want me to link you to my "Friends of suburbicide.com" list please let me know. I'm not sure where all of your spots on the internet are these days...

Sam & Jason I'm going to add your blogs unless you have somewhere else you'd rather have me link to. Shoot me an email or drop me a comment if you're reading this.

I can't wait for the weekend.

Luckily this is a short week at work because I took vacation days on Monday and Tuesday. Sunday and Monday my girlfriend and I went to the NYC area.

On Sunday we left our apartment around 10AM and headed to the New York Botanical Garden until it closed and then took the train from there down to Manhattan and wandered around in the rain. We went to Toy Tokyo and to get Pommes Frites with Pesto Mayo. By the time we were done with all of that it was raining pretty hard and we decided to go back to our hotel. I got myself pretty lost on the way back from the train station in an area I've been to dozens of times and ended up someplace I'd been once before but I couldn't get back to where I wanted to go. I actually had to stop and ask for directions. Luckily the place I stopped gave me SIMPLE directions and I was able to find my way out without any more trouble.

Monday morning it was still pouring so we decided to skip out on our plan to go to the Bronx Zoo and hit the Palisades Mall instead. We had some mall-"Mexican" food and wandered around the mall for a few hours and headed home. I was glad to find that most of the ride home it wasn't raining all that hard because I hate driving in the rain.

Tuesday was spent relaxing and buying another air conditioner for our apartment. I got sick of feeling the temperature rise with each stair I climbed up to our third floor apartment which was like a sauna in anything over 70 degree weather outside. It's much more livable now than it was last summer. I spent a lot of time last year locked up in the bedroom in front of the only A/C in the apartment... so I think it'll be nice to be able to stand to be in the living room for more than a few minutes this summer.

Thanks to Sam for answering my question about what decent but cheap 26" street tires he'd recommend for my mountain bike. I'm going to try check out my bike this weekend and see what kind of condition it's in these days before I spend any money on it. If it looks like it's in good shape I'm probably going to pick up some tires for it soon. I need to get outside and be more active while the weather is nice. It sucks to admit this, but my legs are still sore from walking around this weekend...

Me... excited?!?

Those of you who know me know that I'm not an easily excitable person.

I tend to be very mellow and laid-back even in the most extreme conditions. However, I just got off the phone with an old colleague and friend who I worked with on a joint project with my current department and the IT department. I called her to say hello and get the scoop on a job I applied for over in her neck of the woods, so to speak.

She mentioned (without me asking) that I could use her as a reference. She also gave me a little background on the department that I'd be working in. She said that the position had room for advancement, was very busy (job security!) and that she thought it was something I could handle. The one negative that she heard mentioned was that their physical space was small so people were tightly packed together... but that's something I'm used to... ;)

Anyway, now it seems that I have at least three people going to bat for me on this job. My current boss has been MORE than supportive plus two people I worked with in the past in the IT department both seem to be in my corner. The only thing that I think might get in the way me of getting the job is that the position now sounds like it's more of a mid-level position and I really don't have any hands on experience aside from my college programming assignment debugging days.

I'm trying not to get my hopes up... but I think this job would be a perfect move for me right now! Now I just have to try not to get nervous. I have a tendency to get nervous around new people and clam up and just give basic answers to questions I should elaborate on.