Yahoo! News - Kidman Wants to Be Swept Off Her Feet -But Not Yet
Do you think I can volunteer for this position??? I can wait until she is ready, I have patience.
January 2003 Archives
Halley's post, When 30 Degrees Feels Like Aruba, is ringing all too true today. It definitely feels like a warm day today, and my weather applet says its only 36. Too bad it doesn't say 76, but I guess it's better than 2.
This is just ridiculous.
I finished
From a Buick 8: A Novel last night. I have been a huge Stephen King fan for probably 15 years or so, so reading his books are always a pleasure for me. ( I have about 6 more to catch up on, as I have been trying to expand my horizons the last few years ).
This was a very interesting read. It is definitely not a horror story, so if that is what you are looking for, this book is not for you. It is told in a combined first person and third person which makes it very different from many books. It's basically a story about the strange happenings surrounding a car that gets left at a gas station in rural PA. (yes, amazingly it is not based in Maine).
I really enjoyed the book. I blew threw it in like a week. It did a good job building up the story and leaving you wanting to know what was going to happen next. There was very little character buildup, but it was really not necessary in this book. The main character was really the car and what it did and the "character" of the car was built up rather well.
Again, if you are looking for Stephen King horror, you won't find it here, but if you are looking for a good story, definitely an enjoyable read.
Does anyone have an interest in this tonight? I sure don't. All we are gonna hear is about why we should be attacking Iraq. I'll read the recap. Time to throw a movie in.
that I think of things to add to my to do list seconds after I close my PIM?
Wow, what a horrible game. It couldn't even keep my attention, so sad.
As for the other part of the SuperBowl, the commercials were really bad as well. A few were cute, but other than that I thought they did not live up to previous years at all.
Best commercial, would have to go to the new Matrix commercial. That motorcycle scene looked SICK. I can't wait for May, I will definitely be going on opening day.
Some runners up, I guess would have to be the first one with the Zebra ref, the Yao Ming/Yogi Berra one was cute, the Osbournes Pepsi commercial was sad, their 15 minutes are quickly expriring. Seeing some real clips from Hulk was neat, though I am not sure how good the movie is going to be, Bad Boys 2 clips, already online, but I loved the first movie, so I can't wait for the next.
Basically, not impressed with the game or the commercials. Gonna watch some Alias and probably set the tape, so I get it and Jimmy Kimmel. Since Kimmel stole The Sports Guy, it better be fuckin funny.
Is it just me or was Michelle Branch lip syncing her and Santana's hit song? It sure seemed like it, performance sounded WAY too much like the recorded version. Beyonce did seem to be singing herself and Michelle seems to be singing now in this piece after her song, but it sure seemed to me like she wasn't really singing (or at least that wasn't what they were braodcasting) for her main song. It makes me lose a little respect for her, as I really think she has talent and to see her lip sync makes me think she may be a bunch more produced than she comes across.
I made it back to Boston in one piece, lots more catch up later.
In NYC, ready for bed, a quick start. Booth all set up. Up way too late trying to make sure all is well. At the Marriot Marquis. Sleep now, hopefully lots more tomorrow when the show is actually open.
I am sitting here in NY being completely useless today. This would normally not be a problem being that I am home and it's Sunday, but today it is a rather large problem. First off, I haven't even eaten anything yet. That needs to get fixed quickly (as it is 4PM). Second, I need to do laundry today, because I need clothes to take in to the city with me tomorrow. Third, I need to pack said washed clothes, so I am not running around like a madman tomorrow morning. I also would have liked to have watched some football, done some reading, played some guitar, etc etc etc. I have been sleeping all day, which means its going to be next to impossible for me to get to bed at a decent hour tonight to get up in the morning. Argh, I hate days like this. Ok, time to get motivated and start getting stuff done.
when my little weather applet in my gnome panel says its ONE degree outside.
Well, I am pretty much packed up. Just have a few things to grab in the morning. I'm heading down to Mom's in the morning for the weekend and then in to NYC for LinuxWorld. Booth setup Monday and Tuesday and then the show floor is open Wednesday through Friday. Hopefully it will be a good time. I am hoping that they will have WiFi access through the trade show floor and I will be able to blog it some. I have my camera packed up too, so you never know what you are going to see if I get some WiFi. Well, off to get some rest before I have to get up and drive all day. Bye bye!
out the other. Paid all my bills last night (had to get done before trip). It's sad to see all the money that was in my account yesterday now gone and in the bill collectors' hands. Well, at least it will mean less phone calls to yell at me about me owing people money.
I actually finally wrote out a budget last month. I tried my best to stick with it over the course of January. I did ok. I got a couple of hits at the beginning of the month that threw me off, but working for the band made up for most of those. I think this half (I do everything by month halves, as I get paid 2x a month) will be a little easier as I will be away and on the company's bill all week next week. Time to break in the AMEX :)
If I can continue to stick to my budget, I will slowly get everyone all caught up and paid off. It won't be a quick process, but it will get the important thing of catching all my bills up done. Hopefully I will find extra bits of cash here and there and be able to take care of some things faster than others. Also, once I get a credit card paid off, I can start using the money I was paying them every month to speed up payments on other cards. I REALLY want this to work. I am sick to death of living check to check.
Cooking.com is having a contest where the grand prize is a $1000 shopping spree at their site. I would love this. Fill the kitchen up Emeril style.
Thanks to Ain't Too Proud to Blog for the link.
Now this is a computer accessory I could use.
I got mail about my 10 year high school reunion today. Ugh, I am getting old. I miseed my five year, but I think I will go to this one. It isn't until June, but I think I will RSVP soon and go. It will be interesting to see who is doing what. I think my dropping out of college and now working for one of the most promising emerging companies today should hold up pretty well :)
watching this Fox special Man versus Beast.
Finally, it has been announced! Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix will be released June 21, 2003! Yay! You can order it from Amazon by clicking here. Currently they do not have a price available, which is funny since, if you look
The interesting part is that if you look at amazon.co.uk here, they have a price for it. An even more interesting is if you look here, they have an adult version as well. What might the difference be?
But, all in all, IT'S COMING! Yay!
NIN blasting, cleaning up the house. Ahh, this is how to start a day that might go somewhere.
test test test
This makes Bush's ideas about going to war make A LOT more sense.
can be found here.
Oh my, I can see myself doing this way too easily.
like this when I was a kid.
Can everyone do two things here:
a) Make sure you have a valid feed by running it through this.
b) Put your content in your feed! This bugs me when I am reading a feed in an aggregator and have to actually go out to the actual web page to read the text of the information. It's real nice to be able to just sit in the aggregator and read from there rather than having to spawn new windows.
Thankyouverymuch
Man, is Shaq's big toe a lot worse than we think it is? First, he starts doing BK commercials and now he is doing Radio Shack commercials? What's up with that? I think he is starting to try and get himself in to other arenas before he needs to retire.
Apple - Hardware - PowerBook G4 - Big and Small
New commercial for new PowerBook versions. Very amusing.
inluminent/weblog: Marketing 101 for the women
Now that's some funny stuff.
Now that I have a news agrregator up and running, I no longer need to use my fake web aggregator as my home page. Before I used this, I used Slashdot, but thats in the aggregator too now. I wonder what I should use now. What do other people use? I am thinking I may use something like a My Yahoo or something else, but am not really sure. Maybe I should just use CNN. I don't know. Any thoughts?
This article just plain sucks. Even the annoucers had it wrong, they said it could end on offsetting penalties. Idiots. I am slowly, but steadily becoming less and less impressed with the idiots that are hired to call NFL games. I have whined about this before, so I will digress, but I just wish they could get guys who knew the rules, not just guys who used to play and may boost their ratings.
BBC NEWS | Technology | Teenager wins DVD court battle
Yay! That's all I have to say.
I had what I felt to be a very productive day yesterday.
After getting up much later than I had wanted to, I decided to work from home (so I wasn't stuck in the office until all hours). I got a TON of work done for work, got past a number of issues I was having problems with, etc.
After I finished working, I picked up my guitar and played for about 2 hours. I tried picking up some new warmup techniques as well as a couple of songs. I got them down ok, now need to really be able to play them in time and well.
After that, I made some dinner and then spent some time with the TV.
While watching TV, I decided to try playing with PHP Layers Menu to get a slightly new look for the side bar on my pages. I got it working pretty well after some hacking. Still need to fix some colors and stuff like that, but its almost there. You should see a new look to the main part of the site in the next day or so.
After finishing that, I read a couple of pages and then fell asleep. A pretty good day. I really need to make days like this the norm :)
Why can't places like diaryland and xanga provide external RSS/XML feeds? Rather annoying. I have a number of friends/blogs I read that are on these services and its a pain in the neck to go check them all the time (especially now that I have a news aggregator working). Anyone out there work for these guys and want to fix this?
I FINALLY have a REAL news aggregator up and running. I'm using Straw which is a Gnome2 aggregator written in python. It took a bunch of work and fighting with LOTS of python packages but now its all up and happy. I have 38 feeds going in to it. I thought I had more than that. I guess now that I have a real one of these working, I can start adding other feeds which seem to be interesting. The one last thing I need to do now is yell at my friends who don't have XML feeds (yes, this means you Lukas). Ok, hacking done, feeds added, time to sleep.
Does this make it work better?
This is a test from MozBlog.
Being a HUGE Stephen King fan, I started watching USA's The Dead Zone television series last summer. I thought it was pretty good and was sad to see the season finale (especially since it was very much a cliffhanger). Well, the show is back tonight. It's on USA at 10 EST. I can't wait. I just need to remember not to miss it. (Another reason I need a TiVo).
Well, this weekend was busy, but alright. I definitely did not/have not gotten anywhere near as much stuff as I had hoped to done. Saw the band, Thurs, Fri and Sat. Was actually working for them all three nights, so was actually making cash. Its nice walking out of a bar with more money than you walked in with. Yesterday was much of a non-day, since we had to load everything in to the van starting at 5 and I didn't get up until noon. Woops. At least I ate and stuff before going out. Today (as I have since Friday, but today is the worst), I ache. Moving all sorts of heavy equipment around helps you find muscles you never knew you had. I also have been trying to do some minor working out in my apt, which is making the hurt a bit worse. At least I am doing something towards that whole taking better care of myself thing. I made it over to the food store today. I haven't been in one of those in years (just used PeaPod). I didn't get anywhere near the amount of stuff I meant to, but I made a start. Since it was my first time in the place I got somewhat of a better feel for it. I still think I like Peapod more, but if I just want to get a minor grocery delivery, the $10 delivery charge kind of hurts. I think I may need to work on getting 2 weeks of groceries every 2 weeks. Then I could do some cooking and freezing of some stuff, etc one day and have enough real meals for the week. I still need to figure that all out. I have to check the Peapod delivery prices too, I think over $75 means only a $5 delivery charge which is more worth it. Other than that, just been watching football and stuff. Actually watched another movie (I need to post about the mad amount of movies I have watched this week). I cooked a burger from lunch using my new George Foreman Grill. Worked rather nicely. Still need to figure how to put cheese on my cheeseburger without causing trouble. I really need to get at least one load of laundry in at some point this evening too. I should get some stuff together soon. Well, that's about all.
A reminder to everyone in Massachusetts, register for the Do Not Call list, by clicking here. This list goes in to affect on April 1st (as long as you register by March 1) and you will be able to report any telemarketing calls and the companies making them will get fined. Hopefully it works, I get plenty of junk calls all the time.
My friends, Central Basement just found out they will be opening up for Avril Lavigne at the Orpheum in Boston for a special Kiss 108 show this Wednesday. Congrats guys!
We can all hope, huh?
Thinking back to 2002, it started pretty bad. I spent NYE home, in NY, in my Mom's basement, jobless, prospectless, motivationless (is that a word?), and just plain not happy.
I headed up to Boston on the 2nd of January to try and re-find my life that I left when I moved to NY. I planned on being up for a week or so, trying to find a job and a place to live. Well, without an internet connection and having been away for a while, I spent the initial week partying, seeing friends and just plain having fun. I hit a break when a buddy mentioned he was going away for a week and I could stay at his place and watch his cats for the next week. That sounded like a good plan. I continued my fun having, but with Internet access was able to send some emails, look for listings for apartments, etc. I struck good luck in both my attempts and had a place lined up a job interview lined up when I left.
I arrived in Boston for good on February 1st. I spent much of my first month, settling in, getting back in to the swing of things, etc. I got a job offer and took it, so things seemed to be getting good. I spent a little too much money before I had started a job again, but was thinking I could get it all taken care of once I got the job started.
I started my job and bought a new car in March. The job was going well, the car was fun to have and things seemed to be going well. When I first started, I was very good about not going out often and was just really hanging at home and working. It was working ok.
Over time, I started heading out more and more again. I learned very quickly that all the money that I was spending on my car was causing my going out habits to become major cash issues. They still are there :(
The rest of the year pretty much just went along. My dad retired from his teaching job after many years. Good for him (though he is back to working 3 or 4 days a week already). I continued my goings out. I started going to see Central Basement all the time, I slowed down on my Sissys time. Continously having cash issues, but kept making it by.
I headed out to San Fransisco twice for work. Once for OracleWorld, and once for LinuxWorld. Good shows both of them. It was nice to get away on the company's dime. I continue to learn I need to keep better track and actually file expense reports. I'm bad like that. Not that I was spending ALL that much money, but money is money.
I turned 27. It was an ugly few nights, but I had fun.
I went to 5 weddings (out of the 6 I was invited to). It's sad for me to see my buddies all getting married, but I'm happy for them. (Side note: one friend's wife called me the other day, using her married last name and I didn't even realize who it was at first, woops). One wedding in LA, one in NY, the other 3 in the Boston area.
Mom went to Ireland without me :(
I started blogging! It's been fun. It's a good way to get shit out, as well as to comment on random things that are going on in the world. I'm enjoying it. I guess I proved that with over 200 posts in pretty much 6 months. I would not be suprised if I had over 500 this year. Reading lots of other blogs were involved in this process as well. I am very much enjoying reading what other people are saying as well. I seem to add more and more evyer day to the list I read. I wish I could get an aggregator I liked. I think I may just write one. That's one project for 2003.
All in all, it was an ok year. I continued to suffer from depression a lot mostly derived from money issues. I have finally written out a budget, which I think will work. The only problem right now, it is written from the point of view of actually being caught up and I am definitely not :( Hopefully with a little extra income (and maybe a raise?) I will get this under control this year. I would really like to try and buy a place when my lease expires next year (I just renewed).
Hopefully this will be a year of accomplishment and prosperity. I really want to get my life in general organized. Slowly but steadly I think I am getting there and that is going to be a big issue for 2003.
