... Five Years Later

February 1st, 2004.  A very cold and snowy night.  Super Bowl XXXVII's "controversial" halftime show had just finished.  This was when I began my drive from Ames to Omaha.

It's been five years now, and it's kind of strange to realize that.  The time has flown by, as clichéd as it is to say.  I've met some really great people, and had a lot of good experience at work.  There's probably more to say about it, but it's way too late (and I was at work for 13+ hours today).  Perhaps I'll expand on this more later.

New Year's Resolutions

OK, sure... it might be a little late in the game to be making these, but better late than never, right?

• Try to write (at least) one blog entry a week.  Might help if I would let my perfectionism go a little and realize not everything has to be supermegagreat, and just do something!
• Exercise (at least) twice a week.
• Read (at least) one book a month.
• Write (at least) once every two weeks over at NARPFS, and add (at least) one demo a month.  This way I might actually contribute to the development community and give something back.  (Again, let go of perfect!  Just do anything!)
• Try doing the Project 365 thing, there's no rule saying you have to start on Jan 1st.  :-)  Thank you Omar for the inspiration.
• Relearn enough Spanish to (at least) get by on the Peru trip.  Would probably help if I'd actually do any of the BBC Weekly Lessons I signed up for, huh?
• Stay in touch with friends and family better.  Maybe even call them every now and then.  :-P
• Actually cook something for myself, in my apartment (at least) once a month.
  
• On a similar note, keep my apartment "clean" or at least cleaner :-)
• Don't be such a workaholic!

See a common theme here?  Nothing like setting the bar low, right?  But maybe it's not so much that, as just giving myself achievable goals.  That way for each bit I go over (if I somehow read 2 books in a month, or whatever it may be), I get to feel that much better.  And, don't they say that you're more likely to work towards a goal if it is achievable?

Really, I just want to get back some of my creativity, and to reconnect and rebuild relationships that aren't as strong as they were.  Force myself to get out of the comfort zone, but get back the  things I've lost.  These are the people and things that are important to me, and I need to remember that.  So, here goes nothing.  Let's all keep our fingers crossed and see what I can accomplish!

UPDATE: For those who want to follow my Project 365 set.

Random Act of Kindness

Just went down to start a load of laundry, and what do I find waiting for me? Why, a load of T-shirts I'd apparently left behind. All of them, nicely folded and waiting for me on the small table across from the washer and dryer.

To explain, about a month ago, right before going home for 2 weeks for xmas and NYE, I did a few loads of laundry. Apparently, I either fell asleep or somehow got distracted in my late night laundering and left this load of shirts in the dryer. Now, during this time I had wondered where some of these shirts had gone. When I was packing to go home, I couldn't figure out why I didn't have as many clean T-shirts as I thought I should, especially considering I'd just done laundry a few days before.

But, I was in such a hurry that I didn't really think too much about it and just threw what I did have in the suitcase. I now know where they were... sitting downstairs waiting for me. After a rough first week back at work, this was a very pleasant surprise to brighten my day and ease me back to what, I'm sure, is going to be another long one.

Music Copying Madness

Tonight Julia decided she'd like to get some mp3s from me.  So I set up file sharing on the ol' macbook and she hopped on their XP laptop (my first time successfully using the SMB sharing!), and proceeded to start copying folders over that she liked.

I, however, forgot to mention that it would probably be better to select multiple folders to copy at a time instead of doing each artist individually.  This is what the end result was...

New Tech Blog

On this lazy Sunday, I had a bit of inspiration for a name so I've started up a new blog,  Not A Real Place, For Sure.  My intentions are to post more techy, geeky, nerd-related info there that I come across.  My hope is that the separation will get me to actually write more.

So, if you're more interested in the tech side of the force, follow me there.  Or, keep me here and there.  The choice is your's, but choose wisely...

UPDATED: I changed the address of the blog since I've decided to add a Wiki to it for adding demos as I feel necessary.

OJUG Presentation on JCR

Tonight I presented at the Omaha Java Users Group (OJUG) on JSR-170, the Java Content Repository (JCR) API.

The slides are available to view and download from my SlideShare. I've also uploaded the demo source code and PDF of the slides to SkyDrive. And, thanks to TechOmaha, you can even watch the presentation over at ustream.

my afternoon on the beach