RSS Feedthe time i started flying my white flag
well it is official. i have lost my battle with sleep. it has conquered me. i seriously just can’t win. i’m on this sleep cycle where i go two nights of only being able to sleep 3-5 hours and then having the following night of about 8-10 hours of sleep. then the cycle starts all over again. i am clearly not meant for a normal sleep schedule. i can’t even remember the last time i was on a normal sleep schedule. it seriously must have been back in sixth or seventh grade and that was about 13 years ago. 13 years of now sleep, i suppose it has just become second nature to me.
i wish i could sleep, it would sure come in handy. work has been rather busy lately. the good news is that while it has been busy i’ve caught up on the majority of the outstanding items i’ve been putting off. three more items that i need to get off my list and i will be 100% caught up. victory on my to-do list is near.
the time that i didn’t want to write a title
i don’t enjoy that i have been getting hungry at the most inopportune times lately. i wasn’t hungry all night and then all of a sudden, at 11p, i get really hungry. oh well, i will have to hold out until tomorrow. i would have gone to bed an hour or two ago but i’m waiting for midnight to hit so i can download imogen heap’s new album (ellipse). listening to the streaming preview for the last week was awesome but i’ve been dying to get my hands on the real thing.
in my free time this evening i started working on my self-performance review for work. i loathe having to do these things. if i could, i would just write “i am awesome” under each section and be done with this thing. but alas, i suppose i will have to put something more substantial than that. perhaps this year i won’t procrastinate four months before actually doing it?
i have decided i need a project. i need something to work on. something exciting and challenging. i’m not sure what it’s going to be though. i think my next big thing is to further my flash development skills but i need something even more exciting than that. i sort of miss grad school but i just don’t have the time to deal with classes at the moment. hmmm. surely there must be something else out there to keep my occupied. i will just have to figure that out i suppose.
in more exciting news (at least for me). i finally received my 1TB TiVo external hard drive. A-MAZING. i just hope that this thing doesn’t fail like that last one did. the expanded capacity that this has afforded me is going to be a lifesaver once all the new shows have premiered in the fall. after the old one had failed i was having to go through the tivo recordings everyday to make sure something that i really wanted didn’t get accidently deleted because of it running out of space. with the additional 1TB of space added on it can now record a total of over 165 hours of HDTV without any issues. so far it’s recorded a full week of programs (so far 231 shows) without having to delete anything. of those 231 shows about 90% of them are in HD. i am slightly concerned as to how excited this makes me.
that is all he wrote. for now.
the time that i wanted a kindle, or do i?
i think this has been the never-ending week [month, quarter, year also?]. the good news is that i’m finally getting caught up on a whole lot of work that has kept getting put on the back burner. this will leave room to grab some more exciting things and throw them onto my desk. one thing i can’t seem to get enough is web analytics and reporting. my mind just boggles thinking about all the data that can be gained from online analytics. it’s becoming an obsession. the next step in this obsession will be to figure out a life plan based on it.
in order to make my commutes a bit more enjoyable, one thing i’ve been considering as of recent is acquiring a kindle. i have several internal conflicts over this item though. right now i think my hesitations will continue to hold out. while i would greatly appreciate the freedom of having thousands of books readily available at my fingertips for less than the cost of most paperbacks, i don’t know if that is enough to overcome the significant initial investment and the lack of being able to physically handle a book. such a toss-up. needless to say, the jury is still out on my decision to invest in a kindle.
and now i can’t remember what else i was originally going to say.
ryan is awkward #1 – singing stripper girl on the train
so i’m on the red line going home from work this evening around 7pm. when i got on the train there were these obnoxious girls, who were either pre-teens or early-teens, making lots of noise at the tiny compartment at the end of the car. well, by the time the train gets past addison these girls have moved closer to the door of the train and one of them ends up singing and dancing with one of the poles in the train. and she’s not dancing dancing, she’s full-on stripper dancing and humping this thing. this whole time while she is doing it i had to put 110% effort into not just start bursting out laughing. i did this not because i wanted to be nice and not make her feel bad but because had she gotten pissed off i’m sure she could have beaten me up. 12 year old girls could probably beat me up. my name is ryan and i am awkward.
[this has been the first test installment of the "ryan is awkward" series ... more to come]
the time that i lied (well one of them anyway)
… but don’t worry, i only lie about the funny/meaningless things in life.
the moral of the story is that i got to sketching out some redesigns for the site but every time i did, it ended up that i like what i have better anyway. so, in lieu of a big redesign i’m doing two things. the first would be that i’m making minor tweaks. nobody will really notice these except for myself, but there are a few things here and there that i need to take away and a few i need to add. i need to work on the background in particular. i didn’t realize i had repeat off and the image is so large that i didn’t notice that it looks weird if i am at my computer at work which has a much higher resolution. i can’t handle the bars on the sides and when i turn repeat on everything just looks odd. so i will edit to make it seamless. not that anybody cares, but whatever.
the other big change will be that now that i’ve finally got the design headed in a direction that i’m comfortable with, i’m going to go out and start developing some of my other tangent sites that i’ve been wanting to. i’ve bought a few more domain names and hope to start making something of a few of them. on the priority list: asseeninchicago.com (a photo blog/gallery, if i can get into snapping photos more often), hugecanofawesome.com (not quite sure what i want to do with this but i have a few ideas and it will be something fun), and ryanisawkward.com (a daily/weekly collection of all the awkward incidents that happen in my life and make it so amusing).
other than that i’ve been working. working like there’s no tomorrow. i did so well trying to keep my hours as close to 40/week for a while but i am ramping it up so i can stay on top of as much work as possible. the good news is that as much as it is stressful, i am still enjoying it quite a bit. sure there are some downsides, but overall my transition to the new team is progressing nicely.
okay, laundry is done and i am exhausted. more to follow soon. (okay i seriously just went through and read it for clarity’s sake. i have the worst grammar and spelling ever when i’m typing these things out. go me!)
the time that i started to change things up a bit
okay i’m in the middle of re-imagining this site so updates might be sporadic for the next month or so (not that they haven’t been already).
the last month have been a bit crazy. actually, that’s sort of a lie. it’s been rather boring. i’m trying to inject some excitement into life but have failed at doing so thus far. small successes here and there but a few big failures. ah such is life.
overall, summer has been rather uneventful. i’m quite ready for summer to wrap up and for fall to set in.
that is all for the moment. more to come soon.
