A little something to lighten up your Friday–
… stay tuned for football picks to come.
Make the Time, Damn the Details
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.
Pro Football Predictions, Week 1
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 |
(Fast) Slow Week
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!
Winding Down the Summer
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…
A Little Shift In Diet
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.”
Brewers Double-Entendres
DW Schrubbe pointed this one out to me in the Journal-Sentinel online this morning. I probably would not have seen the paper otherwise, so thanks to Dave for a morning laugh at the expense of our hapless pitching staff.
Mint and My Paranoia
If you’re reading this, you’re probably aware that I am something of a nutbar about digital security and the dangers of the Internet. Maybe it’s just because I read enough scary stories about it, or at least scary comments about it, that keeps the vast majority of my private or even quasi-private info OFF-line.
This is why the incredible convenience of spilling your virtual guts to some strange server you’ll never meet drives me insane.
Case in point (and one that I think of around the first of every month) is Mint.com. This is not the first time I’ve brought it up, and I’m sure I haven’t heard the last of it, either. I may have been moved to action over the summer when Gina Trapani brought up her struggles with handing a THIRD PARTY YOUR BANKING PASSWORDS in a blog post. It really sounded like she had similar security concerns and comparable complaints about the inefficiencies of her previous system. That, and the tools within the Mint service seem pretty tough to beat.
I still need to talk myself into it, or get someone to offer additional endorsement, but I’m going to strongly consider the Mint option. After all, I was willing to concede my email server to the Googles after a 4.5-day Internet outage at my house, and I’m contemplating a more tangible presence on Facebook, so maybe I’m warming up to the idea of my personal 1’s and 0’s flying aroudn the tubes.
I have a lot of reading to do with Mint’s privacy policies and data storage methods, but maybe it will save me some time next month and in the future.
Pardon the Interruption 2
My Internet connection at home was down for the last three days. I’ve been troubleshooting it myself and on the phone with the Indian tech support for the last 8 hours that I’ve had at home.
It was annoying as hell, and finally pushed me over the edge to moving my email ops to Google Apps. I just had to, with that sort of service interruption.
Now I’m going to go to bed. If the connection stays good for the next 24 hours or so, I might have more for you tomorrow.
Sigh.
A Recipe Your Wife Or Girlfriend Might Not Enjoy
Michelle came over tonight for a screening of State Fair and a ‘state fair smorgasbord’ of corn on the cob, fresh, lightly salted sliced tomatoes and cucumber, and sloppy joes. I concocted the sloppies myself, and I have to say I enjoyed them quite a bit (can’t say the same for Michelle; they had a little too much kick for her). If you have the ingredients handy, maybe you want to give them a try:
- one pound of lean ground beef
- 1/2 cup water
- 1 TSP chipotle seasoning
- 1/2 cup of your favorite BBQ sauce
- 1/8 – 1/4 cup of Secret Stadium Sauce or your favorite sweet/tangy ketchup alternative
Brown your meat, drain the fat. Reduce heat to medium-low. Add 1/2 cup water and chipotle. Stir in until mixed evenly. Add 1/2 cup BBQ sauce. Stir again, mixing evenly. Add Stadium Sauce and stir. Simmer, stirring occasionally until most of the water has evaporated (your meat should start to stick together a bit). Serve on a bun, or like we did, on a GARLIC BREAD BUN.
Tasty!