December 2004 Archives

Since all the cool kids are doing it, I thought I would put to "paper" my New Year's Resolutions. So, here they are:

1. Continue Fiscal Responsibility - Over the course of this year, I have gotten much of my finances in order. I need to continue this over the 2005. The goal here being to get out of debt, as soon as possible.
2. Quit smoking by 09/05 - I've said over and over again that I would quit smoking before I turned 30. So, I've got 9 months to do it.
3. Sleep in my bed. I've gotten in to a REALLY bad habit of sleeping on my couch each night. I need to get back to my bed.
4. Maybe a super set of the previous two, but the next thing would be to get myself healthier. This includes eating better, sleeping better, quitting smoking, and even starting getting in shape.
5. Get back to reading. I've slacked this year on my reading. This coming year, I need to get back in to the habit. Hopefully reading about a book a week.
6. Get better at guitar. I've totally gotten back in to my guitar, but now I need to improve my skills. Most of this has to do with learning and apply theory. Basically, being able to improvise and learn things by ear.
7. Better time management. This is a biggie and will be difficult. These days, I go to work, come home and slack, watch TV, noodle around on my guitar, etc. Usually because I go in to work so late, I don't have any motivation when I get home. This coming year, I want to get in to work earlier, so I can get home earlier and do things.
8. Work on my programming projects. I've had a lot of ideas for programming projects and projects in general over the last year, but never get to them. I want to spend a lot of time doing that this year.
9. Last, but not least, enjoy the end of my 20s. In 9 months I turn 30, so I have to enjoy the end of my 20s while they last :)

Well, I found out while at home that I'll have my first nephew in the beginning of May 2005. I've know about me becoming an uncle for months, but found out it will be a boy while home. I'm super excited, though a bit nervous about my vacation days as I'm not sure how I'll be able to keep away from NY once he is born. I was also honored on Christmas day when my sister and brother-in-law asked me to be the Godfather too.

Spent much of the evening sitting in front of the computer trying to catch things up. The worst part about living a full life online is that when you are mostly offline for a few days, it's very easy to fall behind. Now the aggregator is all caught up and mail is coming along slowly. At least I won't have to spend a whole day when I get back to Boston playing catch up.

The worst part about being at home is that I can't seem to find American Spirits, so I end up smoking Marlboro Lights, which are just gross to me these days even though I smoked them for years.

George Carlin enters rehab:

In a statement, Carlin, 67, said, "I'm going into rehab because I use too much wine and Vicodin. No one told me I needed this; I recognized the problem and took the step myself.

Sad day for comedy. Hopefully he gets better soon.

An early Christmas present for Sox fans (which I'm reporting on a little late):

Sox reach deal with Varitek

This makes me very happy. Also, the Sox named Tek the captain of the team, officially. Though many players have said Tek has played this role for a long time, I think it's a great honor that they officially gave him this title.

Seems like the comment spammers don't take Christmas off. Got over 160 spams on the blog over the last few days. Finished cleaning them up this afternoon. More later.

I just want to send a very big thank you to Movable Type. Since installing MT 3.14 last night, I have had over 1000 hits on my comment script and my machine is still running fine. And trust me, it doesn't take a lot to knock this machine down.

A little present from our friends in the HP world:

New Harry Potter on sale in summer

LONDON, England (AP) -- The sixth novel in J.K. Rowling's blockbuster Harry Potter series, "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince," will go on sale in Britain and the United States on July 16, publishers said Tuesday.

From reading many of the GNOME folks' blogs, it seems like a little friendly competition has started between GStreamer, Metacity and Epiphany. The competition? Who can have the lowest bug count. Now that's some competition I can enjoy, as it means a better linux for everyone.

Movable Type Publishing Platform: Movable Type 3.14 released

It's out and has the fixes in place to stop comment spam from taking out machines (hopefully). I've re-enabled comments, so let's see what happens.

You'll notice comments are truely disabled now. I had them off by chmod'ing the CGI file last week after my machine was consistenly getting destroyed, but now have actually turned them off in my MT configuration.

From what I hear, they have some fixes coming out soon which will fix this. Here's hoping.

Got this e-mail last week, but been busy. Bonnaroo 2005 dates: June 10-12.

Some day I will get to this show.

When four of Santa's elves got sick, and the trainee elves did not produce the toys as fast as the regular ones, Santa was beginning to feel the pressure of being behind schedule.

Then Mrs.Claus told Santa that her Mom was coming to visit. This stressed Santa even more.

When he went to harness the reindeer, he found that three of them were about to give birth and two had jumped the fence and were out, heaven knows where. More stress.

Then when he began to load the sleigh one of the boards cracked, and the toy bag fell to the ground and scattered the toys.

So,frustrated, Santa went into the house for a cup of apple cider and a shot of rum. When he went to the cupboard, he discovered that the elves had hidden the liquor, and there was nothing to drink.

In his frustration, he accidentally dropped the cider pot, and it broke into hundreds of little pieces all over the kitchen floor.

He went to get the broom and found that mice had eaten the straw end of the broom. Just then, the doorbell rang, and irritable Santa trudged to the door. He opened the door, and there was a little angel with a great big Christmas tree.

The angel said, very cheerfully, "Merry Christmas, Santa. Isn't it a lovely day? I have a beautiful tree for you. Where would you like me to stick it?"

And so began the tradition of the little angel on top of the Christmas tree.

Congratulations to Charlie Weis who was named head coach of the Notre Dame football team.

I'm sad to see him leave the Pats (but not until AFTER the season), but this is a great move for him.

Slowly, I'm coming back to life.

OracleWorld was very long and tiring.

Had a nice visit with the family this weekend, though the weather could have been better.

Final Central Basement show on Saturday was great. Strange being back in The Rack though.

Lazy lazy Sunday.

Working from home today, trying to catch life back up. Still sort of on California time. 2000+ posts behind in my aggregator. Almost got my personal mail all caught up, work mail is next. Getting back in to the swing of work stuff.

I'm heading off to San Francisco this afternoon for Oracle Open World. Anything interesting going on SF this week? Doubt I will have much time, but its nice to have options.

Python 2.4 was released yesterday.

It's a rather rainy and gross day today here in Boston. Would be very nice to be sitting at home, under some covers watching some TV or reading a good book. Having to drive to work was a rather unfun experience.