andy’s place…

Well, by this time, I should be finished with the second phase of a rather large project, and be worried about the third phase.  But thanks to some political garbage involving funding, power, and agreements, I’ve had two weeks of “catch up” with no end in sight.  All members of the project were given cease orders from our side, so I’ve been cleaning up laptops, ordering new gear, documenting (yes, I do that often), and clearing my task list of a lot of stale items.

While it is going to suck when the project is restarted, as some will pressure this to be balls to the wall, ludicrous speed is too slow, I hope that the boss will reset the schedule as a punishment if you will… but I’m not expecting that entirely.

Best part…  I go on annual leave next week.  Starting at 5 PM on Friday, Nov 21st, I’m off until December 1st.   3 days of annual leave for 9 days off.  Usual trip to the Hills for Thanksgiving, dink around during the Black Friday (I’m usually done shopping by then), and do nothing for 3-4 days out there.  Not sure what all I’m going to do for 9 days with nothing to do (sleep comes to mind), but it will be glorious.  Might even throw another day of annual in there too.  Not sure if I need 10 days or not, but it could be fun.  The 3 day of annual leave works nice, as that only takes about 10 weeks to earn it back, which will require that I take time off during February at the latest or I’ll lose the time.  I love being maxed out.

Unfortunately, it’s not all good news.  Found out a coworker/friend who thought he had his cancer licked his another primary spot.  From kidney to thyroid now…  Getting sick of the bad news on this front…  got a fundraiser going for him though, so that helps a little.

Hope to see Quantum of Solace this week if I get around to it…  but with some nephew watching, xmas shopping, and vendor dinner’ing to do (that’s a new word, yes), it will be kinda busy.

My tv can finally return to normal.  No more evil ads, no more random crap in politics, just back to normal…

So, back for another post…

I’m looking at a Popcorn Hour A-110 for a possible Christmas gift for someone.  It’s not intended to be a full replacement for a HTPC, which might be a better overall pick, but neither I nor the individual it would be bought for has enough spare componentry to build a HTPC for a while (kids do that).

What I see this doing:

Youtube on the big TV

DL.tv/Revision3 on the big TV

Playback of ISO’s and other media files (BitTorrent, self rip, etc)

Not so much as serving media over the local network.  This individual doesn’t have a working desktop anymore (by choice), and uses basically only laptops for computing, so he doesn’t have a large cache of files on a home server somewhere that he’s pulling off of.  Previously, everything has been on the satellite receiver or on DVD/HD-DVD discs.  With small children around, not the best plan.  Ripping the files and storing on the optional internal drive would be safer for the media content.  Can always add larger drives/external drives if more storage is needed.  And the BT client is kind of nice…

Any thoughts on this as a device?  Experience?  Yay/nay?

Three of my favorite things…

http://www.holytaco.com/2008/10/14/the-nerdiest-t-shirts-for-nerds/

I won’t steal any of the bandwidth from these guys by hotlinking, but any article mentioning guys in their mom’s basement smelling of cheetos and sunny d is a winner in my book…

Been a while since I posted, and since I have little to say, I’ll mention the schedule of the upcoming week.

For Monday, the three day weekend really isn’t a weekend, as on Monday, I’ll be driving with the upper boss to Sioux Falls for a couple days of meetings, an brief install, a visit to a recovering co-worker, and a lot of hotel room time.  In sometime on Monday, out Wednesday afternoon.  Hopefully I get a few minutes during normal hours to hit up the shoe shop, as it’s time to replace these businessy shoes.

Hopefully Thursday or Friday I won’t need to head to Aberdeen for another install, that a decision is made to not push this install up in timeframe.

The days should hopefully be spent doing benchmarks on some new gear coming in and writing some new language for some contracts.  Fun huh?  Anyone want to join in?

Well, it’s official.  I finally went and got myself a gym membership.  I’m just about at the end of week 1, and so far, it’s going ok.  24/7 gym, half dozen treadmills, a treadclimber, two AMT’s, five elipticals, two upright bikes, and a recumbant bike for cardio, 15-20 nautilus machines, and a whole mess of free weights, stretch equipment, smith machines, etc…   and TV’s everywhere with headphone jacks.  Oh, and so far, one cute girl there

I’ve set a few goals for this.  So many minutes on the AMT without dying (beat the first goal on this already), running a mile in under xyz minutes (I’m let to run a mile in my life, so I’ll figure out a time later), drop so much weight, etc…  If I can find some Wordpress plugins to track them, I might put that up there.  Dunno if I will.

Here’s to not giving up…

So, the dull weekend brought forth one good thing, a newfound liking of the show House.  Never really sat down to watch it, but it was on in force, and the remote was… there (you can’t see, but I’m pointing far away), so I gave it a shot.  And it passes inspection.

A smart-ass main character with no shame in his body (all went out with the leg), an aussie (adds points to about anything), a hot young doctor, a neat set, and a token.  Adds up to a winner for me.

Now that the DVR has another show to fill up my evenings, I have more time to make plans.  My cousin’s wife (family shrink, literally, she’s got the degrees to back it) reminded me of the good it would do me to get out of town for a couple days to SF or RC.  And of course she reminds me of all the other things that would do me some good, like a woman, a maid, hobbies, etc… but what does she know :-).  Regardless, I’m trying to put together enough of a task list/shopping list to justify a 1-2 day trip to SF.  Any major events happening down there that I could try to correlate my trip with?  And not a drunk bus thing, that would be bad for Andy…  and you I would guess.  Given that the average weight of most of you is sub 175, you are easily tossable around the bus…

Should be a simple weekend.

Friday night - Weekly gaming session, if we have enough people.  Those bored, fire up some CoD2 (it’s 20 bucks for crying out loud).  Mix up a drink, and get a chance to shoot me.  You know you want to…

Saturday - Sleep.  Maybe laundry and cleaning, but sleep mostly.

Sunday - Grandparent’s 60th anniversary breakfast gathering.  Then, whatever I didn’t accomplish on Saturday.

Simple life is good…   What are you folks doing for the weekend?  Actually being social, or lazy like me?

I love randomness…. always have, always will.

Random Link 1

Random Link 2

Random Link 3

Which will you click first????

So, I haven’t posted in a while, been on the road out at the cabin.  No internet, no cell phone, just trees and some work to do.  We did get some touristy time in though.  1880 Train, Bear Country USA, Old MacDonald’s Petting Farm, Keystone, etc…  all for the nephew Jamie.  He seemed to like it all, although he got scared before the 1880 Train.  I can believe that.  Trains are cool and all, but an early 20th century steam engine (They bought a 1929 one earlier this decade) might not be the most comforting site to see while you are nervous and away from home.  But he settled down, and I had a nice 2 hour round-trip ride through the middle of nowhere.  9 miles takes a while, and the screaming 1 year old next to me (not the nephew) didn’t help, but I did get to relax for a little while.

Bear Country has been significantly improved since I was a kid, lots more critters than before.  Old Mac’s farm was alright, but not the best in the world.

Missed a LAN party on Sunday, but I wasn’t that concerned.  There will be more.  Hopefully the guys will rent a conference room in a local establishment sometime for a day/weekend and set things up there.  And speaking of LAN, I’m still trying to get my plan for a new machine put together.  About the only things I have locked in are 22″ widescreen, 4 gb of ram, 2 HDD’s, and a P182 case.  The PSU, mobo, proc, video card, sound card, HDD sizes, and brands of pretty much everything are still up in the air.