Monthly Archives: September 2009

General, Sports, Uncategorized

Pause For a Breather

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Been a lot happening in the last week-plus.

  • Michelle got a new job.  She’s going to be working here.
  • As a result, we are going to move.  To here.
  • Meanwhile, we had a whirlwind week of Brewers baseball on their last homestand.  We saw them do this, this, Dave went with me to this, and finally, a nice ending with this.
  • We looked at many apartments.  It was hard to keep them all straight, but I think we have a winner, unless someone steals it out from under us.

Also, it got cold.  I like moving in fall the best, I think.  How about you?

General, Uncategorized

Notes To My Future Self: The Gizmo5 Edition

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So I use Gizmo5 in conjunction with my Google Voice account for VoIP (some of the time).  A few versions of the software ago, I was prompted to give the client my login creds for AOL and MSN instant messaging accounts, as a means of importing contact info.  At the time, I believe I did this in an effort to discover if anyone else I knew was also on this service (they weren’t).

I struggled (mightily at times) to figure out how to TURN OFF the association with those accounts.  I Googled the F out of the topic, and came up empty.  Finally, I surrendered, and sent a request for tech support.

Navid emailed me back in less than five minutes saying that he turned that feature off.

…

I don’t know WHY there is no end-user toggle for linking in to those other services, but at least it’s off now.

PS – Welcome, ye weary Googler; perhaps this helped solve your problem.

Sports, Uncategorized

Pro Football Predictions, Week 2

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Being up north for the weekend limits the time that I have for comment. Hoping that last week didn’t bankrupt you, wager away with this guidance of this week’s picks!

SUN, SEP 20
Carolina at Atlanta
Minnesota at Detroit
Cincinnati at Green Bay
Houston at Tennessee
Oakland at Kansas City
Edmonton at Saskatchewan
New England at NY Jets
New Orleans at Philadelphia
St. Louis at Washington
Arizona at Jacksonville
Tampa Bay at Buffalo
Winnepeg at Montreal
Seattle at San Francisco
Pittsburgh at Chicago
Baltimore at San Diego
Cleveland at Denver
NY Giants at Dallas
MON, SEP 21
Indianapolis at Miami

General, Uncategorized

Make the Time, Damn the Details

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The beginning of a new school year is always a bit overwhelming in my line of work– lots of administrative headaches and last-minute requests from students who could have prepared better.  But, that’s what we’re here for.  It doesn’t change the fact that the days can be draining, and when you compound that with my 2.5 hours of daily commuting, I’m sort of wiped out by the time I get home.

Another problem I’ve always struggled with is a desire to have an entire project mapped out immediately, and/or be able to deliver a “finished product” in a relatively short period of time.  I tend to dwell on all the things that will yield something polished and worthwhile right away, rather than making some small steps on the road of progress whenever they might come.  It is often a crippling problem that stymies action altogether, which only leads to further obsession about the lack of progress.

Lifehacker had a nice post today that might make you feel better if you’re at all like me in this regard.  Particularly when it seems like I’m awash in other concerns, I need to try harder to just do anything I can with all of my various side projects.  I need to let some of the details slide and get ANYTHING accomplished.

Sports, Uncategorized

Pro Football Predictions, Week 1

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Schneider seems to have actually retired from this game, quite unlike Brett Favre ever will.

I do not wish for you, dear reader, to enter this first weekend of the pro football season uninformed and unprepared to enter verbal combat with your friends, colleagues, and co-workers regarding the prediction of the games’ outcomes.  Goodness knows there is no place else on the Internet to obtain such information.

To that end, I will now announce the winners of every professional American football contest that will take place between September 13 and September 14.  Feel free to use this as a guide for all wagers, friendly or otherwise.  After all, I have not been wrong yet.

The home team in each contest is listed last.  The winner is in bold.  Go forth, and win millions.

SUN, SEP 13 MON, SEP 14
Miami at Atlanta Buffalo at New England
Denver at Cincinnati San Diego at Oakland
Minnesota at Cleveland
Jacksonville at Indianapolis
BC at Montreal
Detroit at New Orleans
Dallas at Tampa Bay
Philadelphia at Carolina
Kansas City at Baltimore
NY Jets at Houston
Saskatchewan at Winnipeg
Washington at NY Giants
San Francisco at Arizona
St. Louis at Seattle
Chicago at Green Bay
"Roll Your Own", General, Sports, Uncategorized

(Fast) Slow Week

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Quite a bit of action on the work front this time of year, and not nearly as much at home.  I have been ruminating on a few topics I’m anxious to share with you soon, up to and including a return of the podcast for the 2009-10 season.

One thing I did at home this week was to install the DD-WRT firmware on my router.  It’s got a much more robust feature set than the stock firmware, and I haven’t dug into everything that it can do yet.  Best thing I’ve found so far, though: support for zoneedit.com.  To you, dear reader, that will mean less down time on those occasions when my IP changes and I’m not at home…

Other than that, take a look at the Milwaukee gallery for some shots I took at a baseball game with the Schrubbe boys a couple weeks ago.  We had really good seats!

General, Uncategorized

Winding Down the Summer

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Michelle and I were originally supposed to be out of town this weekend for StoryhillFest-Midwest, but the plan fell through (mainly for financial reasons).  We ended up being at home in Milwaukee instead.

No complaints here: we had dinner together on Friday and just relaxed at home making some plans for the weekend.

Saturday, we each had some chores to take care of around the house before a shopping excursion to a couple of area malls.  After that, we went to Atwater Park for a while just to enjoy the beach and the view.  That night, we made a meal at my house and watched a movie.

On Sunday, we took a ride out to Lake Geneva to go to the beach.  The weather was cool and overcast over there, but the water was still pretty nice.  We ate an early dinner at a place called Popeye’s, near the lake, and then we had some ice cream as we mozied out of town.  We were getting back in the car just as Prince Fielder hit his walk-off homerun to salvage a victory against the Giants.

Sunday evening, Steph S had a house “warming” party (albeit 7 months late), and when that died down, Michelle invited the bulk of the party goers over to her place.  We hung out, had some drinks, ordered some food, and played games until about 3AM.

I’ve got more to do around the house again today, but I’m really hoping we can get out and enjoy the last day of a beautiful Labor Day weekend.  It’s been a very relaxed, easy-going unofficial end to summer…

General, Uncategorized

A Little Shift In Diet

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six days worth of snacking
six days worth of snacking

Ever since I’ve been working back in Oshkosh, I’ve noticed that I get really hungry several times a day.  It’s probably had something to do with my relatively poor diet– a lot of empty-calorie foods that are doing nothing for me but making me fat.  I had talked about it, but finally decided today I would go to the store and try to add some protien and fiber to my diet.  Not only should it help make me a little healthier, it should save time because I won’t be so goddamn hungry all day.

Bulk nuts and mixes are EXPENSIVE.  But the trail mix is nothing compared to unsalted bulk cashews.  I spent a little less than 12 dollars and got a little more than 2.5 lbs of food.  Maybe it’ll turn out OK, though– I was hungry on my way home, so I admit to digging in to each of the three varieties that I later mixed all together.  What remained I split up into 6 ziploc bags.  I figure one bag a day should keep me satisfied.

I really think it will; after I finished mixing up my nuts and raisins and whatnot, I looked in the fridge, shrugged and thought, “y’know, I’m not even hungry anymore.”