RSS Feedthe time that i had an plan
don’t worry your pretty little head. i’ve got grand plans for relaunching EVERY single one of my web properties. stay tuned for more details.
the time that i was absent for a while
i could go on and on about what i’ve been doing for the last three months but that would be boring. the two highlights are below, more to come later (perhaps, assuming i get back to paying attention to this site):
Jury duty – i had been waiting for a jury duty summons since the day i turned 18. actually, i got one in june 2006 but it was from texas and i had just moved up here to chicago. while i was really excited about it going into it, i’m now not that sure i’d ever want to do it again (i lie, i so would). i have never met 11 other people who were so stupid (i was okay with the other 2). the biggest problem was that it was way on the southside and not convenient to public transportation from where i live. since i have no car, i relied on the bus and it was about an hour and a half journey each way.
New job – I accepted a job at an AWESOME digital agency in mid-december. tomorrow is my last day at the city of ideas and monday is my first day at the new place. it’s a bit weird to be leaving a place that i’ve gotten to know so well over the last four and a half years. but on that note, i’m also beyond excited about the new position and getting to try and challenge myself a bit more.
more to come later when i get around to having some free time to waste on this site.
the time that i didn’t have time to say hello
so yeah, it’s been a while. i’ve been off working on ryanlovestv.com so much that i forget this even exists sometimes. it’s taking a lot more time to manage everything and get things to a point where i’m somewhat satisfied with them. i’m hoping that by january i will have a better feeling for if i am going to abandon it or not. i have a wacom tablet on loan and it’s making things a whole lot more fun so i’m starting to think this might be a bit of a hobby that i might keep up.
beyond that, a lot of my life has been centered around work. it has it’s high-points and it’s low-points. i’m trying to keep my head held high and make the best of everything.
yeah outside of those two things, nothing terribly exciting going on. i had a cold for like three weeks. that was sort of exciting.
i’m about to embark on a battle with apartment building management. what i thought was somebody smoking in the stairwell/hallway and leaving a foul smoky odor, which was luckily vented by an open window during the summer, turns out to be an odor coming from the lady across the hall’s apartment. it’s insanely horrible and now that colder weather has arrived and the stairwell window stays shut, apparently the odor now seeps in under my door and into my place. luckily it isn’t that bad yet but it’s rather disgusting. i was more hopeful of a victory when i thought that it was somebody smoking in the hallway but now that i know it’s someone smoking in their apartment, i fear i won’t have much course of action but to wait until my lease is up and then move. blerg, i have bad luck choosing apartments apparently.
so yes, my life is my website, work, and playing the role of smokey the bear.
the other big thing i spend my time doing is trying to decide if i want a kindle, a nook, or to wait and see if apple plans on releasing a tablet w/ e-reader capability next year. i really want an e-reader now but don’t want to regret it later should something better come around in the very near future.
that is all, for now.
the time i needed more time in my day
i’m beginning to discover more and more that i’m just not a day person. i very well might be a vampire. i can’t seem to function between the hours of 6am and 11pm. when i’m at work i’m most productive from about 11pm onwards. i’m also starting to wonder if i don’t have a touch of ADD. all the noise and distraction has been effecting me a bit. i’ve been working best when i have my music on (particularly with headphones in) and can tune the outside noise out or after everyone has gone home for the day. oh how i miss they days when we each had our own office and could tune out the rest of the world and just work away.
work on my other site [ryanlovestv.com] is progressing along nicely i suppose. it’s sort of a bit exhausting, much more exhausting that i could have imagined. we shall see if i will keep up with it. i would like to but three weeks from now i might be thinking otherwise.
beyond that life has been pretty boring. lots of work. that’s about it.
i’ve been a bit bored in my free time and looking for a fun challenge. i thought my site/hobby was going to do it for me but i still am looking for a new challenge. drastic measures might be in order to find one.
something i really want to do is catch up on tons of reading. i’m really starting to want a kindle just for the convenience of being able to carry around a whole library in such a small device. plus the fact that most books are under $10 is pretty awesome. every week i find myself convincing myself i want one more and more.
okay i’m off to bed before i lose the ability to fall asleep for the night.
the time that i started my destined-to-fail project
so i’ve been wanting a new project to work on recently. i’m happy to announce the initial launch of www.ryanlovestv.com. it’s still in its infancy but for the last three days i’ve spent several hours getting it in the shape it is in now. i’m rather excited because it’s turn out much better than i had thought it would. my only issue is that it probably wasn’t a good concept to execute. i initially thought there would be some level of novelty to it but i’m not even interested in the content and i’m writing it. i’m going to give it a 30-60 day incubation period to tweak it to where i would like the content to be but if i don’t get there i’m abandoning it. as it is now it’s turn tv watching into a bit more stressful ordeal, although as i had hoped, it has also definitely made me feel good about watching so much television. the real test will be the next few weeks as my tv schedule gets ridic.
in the meantime, i will continue to seek out another new project to work on.
other than that life has been boring. a whole lot of work and not much else. i’m rather excited that summer is coming to a close. there’s something about summer that just doesn’t appeal to me as much. fall and winter are definitely the most exciting.
the two most exciting things to happen in the last 7-10 days are: 1. installing snow leopard and 2. hanging out with some friends yesterday evening. beyond that i’m at a lack of exciting things to talk about. until next time.
the 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.
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.
the time that i was [not so] awesome part #268
i have to say that this incredibly mild summer is quite nice. it has maybe been over 85°F two or three times this year. that is sort of awesome. it’s already mid-july and in two months fall will officially be on its way.
in the most important news in life at the moment, i was able to get the tivo’s external hd up and running long enough to perform a test on it and it is a confirmed failed hd. huge disappointment. especially given that i record so much stuff and i am finding my tivo is now filled up after a day or two. i can’t even imagine what it would be like once the fall season of new shows starts back up. this comes at a horrible time given that i’m trying to stick to my budget a bit more than i have previously. i think i might have found a way to get my hands on a new 1TB tivo expander drive for little out of pocket. i just hope that it doesn’t fail like this one has. after reading reviews for both of the tivo expander drives it has become apparent that apparently the western hard drive dvr expander drives are pieces of crap with high rates of failure. i guess when they are the only option they can afford to put out a shitty product.
yes, sadly the tivo hd has been the most exciting thing going on in my life recently. we’re now getting summer friday’s at work which is pretty awesome. two fridays in each month of july & august we get half days. not a bad deal.
yeah, that’s really all i’ve got.
the time that i became extremely annoyed with the bad karma
i’m not sure what i’ve done to deserve all this negative karma lately but i suppose i will endure. all of my technological failures are just the icing on the top i suppose. first it was the mac. luckily that was repairable. then it was my cable being out for a week. it took a week to correct, but luckily that too was repairable. today i woke up to my tivo acting odd. and by acting odd, i mean not functioning at all. it was stuck in a never-ending reboot loop. after a day of troubleshooting, i was finally able to isolate the problem down to the external hard drive. i suppose that’s better than it actually being the tivo hardware itself, but still, i just lost 60 hours of HD recording capacity with the elimination of the external hard drive. so very annoyed.
surely all of this bad karma will reverse itself eventually, right?
due to everything i have protested this extended weekend and have decided to stay indoors. i spent yesterday evening finishing the first season of gossip girl. i can’t believe i hadn’t seen that show earlier. a-mazing. but now i must wait until next month when season two comes out on dvd. and now i will fill out the rest of the weekend with movies on netflix. oh what a life.
the time that the interwebs were reconnected to my place
a week later and hours spent on the phone with comcast, and i finally have my internet back. apparently when my service was installed a few weeks ago, the guy never tagged the line properly so when they came to disconnect the old tenant’s service they pulled my cable not knowing it was for a new account. so yay, a whole week of no service because they don’t know how to do things correctly.
now that i have my cable tv and internet back i don’t feel like i can leave it. so much to catch up on. in addition to that, i’m in the middle of watching the first season of gossip girl. totally didn’t realize how amazing the show is.
but yeah, even with the lack of cable i did actually have a good week. last sunday was the pride parade which was a lot of fun. it was a short week at work which was very nice. spent the evenings either watching gossip girl or hanging out with fun people. all around it was a good week. and now it’s the weekend and i have the pleasure of having three days to relax.
my next big task will be to shop for groceries on peapod for the first time. this could get complicated. i don’t know if i have the patience to go through all of this and grocery shop online.
one of the most exciting parts of the week was receiving my new label maker. now all i want to do is print out and label everything in site. this thing is addicting.
and that my friends, is all for now.
the time that i had a lame friday evening
my original plans for this evening were to come home from work, take a short nap, wake up and work on a presentation for work a bit and then order pizza, open a bottle of wine and settle in on the couch with a movie or two.
instead, my evening turned out nothing to the sort and yet it wasn’t any more or less exciting.
upon arriving home i performed my daily ritual of putting on my lounging shorts and settling onto the couch to watch my evening news with brian williams and then an episode of arrested development (i literally do this every weekday and a day doesn’t seem right without this ritual). i opened up my computer and waited for the Internet connection to kick in. nothing loaded and immediately I started to panic. I turned on the tv only to be greeted by a blank screen. apparently my cable tv and Internet decided to stop working sometime between the hours of 1p and 530p. I called comcast and of course I seem to be the only one with a reported outage in the area and of course they can’t get anyone out here tomorrow. instead I have to take off sometime next week for them to come fix it. erg. this will mark the third time they have been out here this month and the second time I will have had to take time off from work. now the big problem is rearranging my work schedule to get the cable fixed. next week couldn’t be a worse week to have thus come up as it is already a four day week but I can’t wait until Friday to get this fixed.
so of course this happens the next day after I have received my fixed computer back from apple. while it has been great to have my computer back, especially since they fixed the DVD drive too which I hadn’t realized was even broken, I have quickly realized that the computer is useless without an Internet connection.
so back to my story … so I end up watching my arrested development episode instead that was recorded in the morning but without the Interwebs to simultaneously peruse, I decide I am better off napping. So I head to my bedroom to nap and then I hear my phone ping as someone was messaging me. Of course it was people I wanted to chat with so I delayed the nap. Eventually I ended up back in the living room watching TiVo.
All of a sudden at about 11p I hear a funny noise coming from the kitchen/bathroom area. I think nothing of it until it gets worse and i finally go check it out. Water is pouring down through the doorway. When the building manager gets here we go upstairs and into my neighbor’s apartment only to discover it is actually coming from above him. Turns out the guy on the third floor let his bathtub overflow. He must have fallen asleep or something in there because there was so much freaking water that made it’s way down to my floor. So at this point the evening has already been a bummer but to cap it all off the building manager felt it necessary to tell me he story of how he had experience with incidents like this because one time in another building he was the one to discover a dead body in an over flowing bathtub.
Seriously, what is up with all my bad karma over the last two weeks? If it isn’t one thing it is another it seems.
And that has been my thrilling evening. All night I have held out hope that the cable is going to magically start working so that I can have some entertainment. That would make me so happy at this point in time, but instead I suppose I shall settle for sleepiness. And that ladies and gentlemen is the story of my thrilling Friday evening.
the time that apple products continued to hate me
apple and i have a love-hate relationship. i love it, it hates me. today i went to restart my computer and when it went to come back on, nothing but a blank screen. after some troubleshooting it has become evident that the graphics card has died. i will now have to take it in to be confirmed and hopefully fixed. so very annoying.
i just don’t seem to have good luck with apple products. keep in mind that this macbook pro is a replacement for the one that just stopped working one day and they could never figure out why.
i guess i’m without that computer for a few days. luckily i have my (now outdated) iPhone and my work computer. i suppose they will have to hold me over until the mac gets fixed. blerg.
the time that i disliked the heat
i am not going to lie … this weather reminds me why I left texas. i know it is only mid-80s (compared to texas’ upper-90s) but still, i would take a cold, snowy day over this any day. i lie. the only reason i am bitching is because i don’t have central ac and it isn’t very comfortable in the apartment right now.
i have my air conditioner from the old place but the problem is that it is an energy hog. you can’t put much else on the same circuit without ending up with an overloaded circuit. that has presented problems at the moment due to the layout of the apartment and the circuit overlays. i am going to have to move tons of furniture around to try and balance the electricity load across all of the circuits. after that dillema is solved, that still leaves me with the next dillema of needing another air conditioner for my room (or vice versa, the living room). then there’s the second bedroom although that won’t be a priority to deal with until the parents come visit. a place with central air would have been so much easier. i have central heat but no ac. that just seems silly to me.
darn, isn’t my life just the most exciting thing ever? blerg.
the time that the ring didn’t fit the finger
one of the last things i do every morning is to put my ring on the ring finger on my right hand. if the ring ends up fitting tightly i know i didn’t eat very well the previous day. i had been doing quite well this week, until today that is. i met up with sarah for drinks this evening and before i knew it i had consumed a margarita and greasy mexican food. the ring won’t be fitting the hand very well tomorrow. nevertheless, it goes without saying that me beginning my wii fit regimen has been moved to later this weekend when there isn’t a pound of melted cheese in my stomach.
in other news, i am happy to report that last night as i was going to bed at about 11pm i suddenly got productive and was able to unpack two more boxes. at this rate i’ll be done before thanksgiving!
the time that i seriously started using my wii fit
okay. this double chin and extra fat has got to go. starting tomorrow i will start to get very serious about the wii fit. i’m trying to eat better and slowly getting there. still much progress to be made. once i reset my stats on wii fit tomorrow i’ll start some online tracking, all i know is that my goal is to lose like 20lbs. good times.
the time that i still hadn’t finished unpacking
i need serious motivation to help push this unpacking along. i did absolutely nothing on saturday and ended up unpacking about three containers (but not full ones, just half of six different ones). i am setting a goal for myself to have this done in the next 10 days. the new apartment is comfortable but taking some adjusting. it’s more vintage than the last place but still in pretty good condition, i just need to get stuff unpacked so that it really feels like home. it’s fairly quiet here except for the fact that apparently damen is a route for semi-trucks to go through during the day and the fact that the lady and kids across the hall from me are obnoxiously loud. i’m curious to find out who else lives in the building.
so far this summer hasn’t been too exciting (granted it’s not officially summer yet). the weather has sort of sucked. i’m almost certain that it hasn’t been warmer than 75 more than one day this year. i suppose i should start taking advantage of the decent weather while it is here. it will be cold and snowy again before we know it. muwhahahaha.
that’s all for now.
the time that i moved 3.5 blocks
so you would think a move down the street, literally only 3.5 blocks away, would be easier than this one was. going into the move i was convinced that it would only take about 2-3 hours to make the move over to the new place. yeah, not so much. it ended up taking a good 7 hours to get everything cleared out of the old place and into the new one. last time i moved i didn’t have much furniture since i had roommates previously. what a pain in the ass. trying to get the couch in through the back door was a task unlike any other.
i’m slowly adjusting to the new place and taking my sweet time unpacking. didn’t realize how much crap i have. instead of boxes i used tons of those plastic containers. it took like 15-20 of them and now they’re scattered throughout the house. i estimate at the rate i’m going that i should be done by the end of june or so.
comcast came and installed on wednesday and it only took four days for them to get everything working. the one thing i am impressed is that these old coax wires coming in from outside can handle everything (4 HD Streams + 1 SD Streams + Cable Internet). one HUGE complaint is that the HD box that they provided me only connects to the TV with component cables. horrible picture quality vs. HDMI. i never thought the difference would be so glaring.
to top everything off, thursday was the dreaded layoffs day at work. i was lucky enough to be safe this time around which i am quite grateful for. i will however, be using this as an opportunity to try and get more interactive responsibilities put on my desk.
now that the move & everything at work have passed i am hoping the anxiety attacks start to slow down. i woke up from my nap this afternoon and was freaking out. attacks coming out of sleep are the worst.
and now i’m off to go do some more unpacking. until later.
the time that i prepared to move
so after all that drama i am relieved that i’ve finally found a new place to live. of course living with joe would be preferable but since he lives almost in India (indiana, but whatever … that’s how close india and indiana are from each other, it’s just a difference of an a!), that just isn’t practical at the moment. after extensive searching i ended up finding a place right down the street from me. literally. i’m only moving 4.5 blocks west. it will be rather exciting. the new place has an extra room that i have no idea what i’m going to do with.
now that i’ve started packing i’ve come to realize that i think i have completely underestimated how much crap i have. i thought i got rid of tons of it but the plastic containers that i bought to move with are filling up much faster than expected. oops.
this week has been television upfront week and i am rather unexcited about it. i was so looking forward to it but have been a bit disappointed. abc showed the pilot to one of their new comedies, modern family, and that looks like an awesome show. definitely will be something to look forward to. i look forward to watching the rest of the pilots over the next few weeks to see what else seems decent.
more soon.
the time that i still didn’t have a place to live
so it’s now less than three weeks before i have to move and i still haven’t found a place to live. i don’t think i’ve ever waited this long and it’s starting to make me really nervous. Luckily I’m hoping that once I do find a new place it will be an easy move. I’m using tons of plastic bins instead of regular boxes this time and it should go rather smoothly.
may is always such a stressful time. with everything going on at work and trying to find a new place to live and a million other things, it’s just a bit crazy. i so look forward to june coming along and getting to rest easy.
i’m in the middle of watching the day the earth stood still and i don’t know how i feel about it. this remake is rather strange. totally not what i was expecting.
that’s all for now. more later.
the time that i was sore (and out of shape)
softball season is in full swing and it has made me realize just how out of shape i am. i didn’t even do much today during the game but play catcher and just the squatting and standing tired me out. lame sauce. i must say though that i missed playing softball more than i had expected.
now that may has arrived i need to kick up the apartment search a bit. i’m approaching the situation with caution though. i’m afraid to sign a new lease and then end up with no way to pay the rent. i have no idea what i would do then. i am starting to get really paranoid and i suppose i would need to plan some strategic back-up plans should that happen.
okay i have decided that i need to resolve to start using the iphone app for updating this site because i can’t remember what to say. so that’s all for now.
the time that i saw death cab for cutie live
i don’t quite remember what happened monday through wednesday. i suppose it was just work and trying to relax.
thursday was rather awesome. my client is sponsor of soundstage on pbs. as such, i was able to score some tickets to thursday night’s recording of death cab for cutie. it was pretty much awesome. standing like 10 feet away from the stage and 15 feet away from them was amazing. i also got invited to a blackhawks playoff game the same evening, which would have been my first hockey game ever, but sadly death cab had to come first.
the weather around here finally rebounded and friday ended up being amazing. too bad i didn’t have the day off to enjoy it. finally did get to enjoy it on saturday though. it was the first time in 7 months that i didn’t have to wear a jacket. on saturday evening joe and i ended up meeting some of his friends along the lake and we had a nice walk. it’s so nice to finally be able to go out and enjoy the city again. it did start raining though and i don’t think it’s stopped since then.
and that, was my (not-so) overly exciting weekend.
