For me my time is at the end of any of the semesters. Usually around the last week in April until halfway through May. So here we are, just now recovering from the mass of work that has swamped me. And I can finally see the light at the end of the tunnel. I always have to temper my enthusiasm, because there is a long summer of work ahead of me. But the ever present press of deadlines and students stressing over their work is lifted for right now.
Sure there are always deadlines, and yes there will always be students lurking about when you work at a university but the end of the spring semester is probably one of the most stressful times of the year. Students are literally fighting for their careers, their academic lives and their stress wears off on everyone around them. They take worse care of themselves, stay up late and frankly run themselves into the ground. They get ill and pass the fun on to the support people who are trapped in their offices.
Last year and this year i got really nasty sick at the end of the spring semester, caught from whatever cesspool of infection is running through the studios. My doctor suggests i wear a mask when people come in hacking up a lung. Like Japan during the SARS epidemic. I might have to consider that. Until next year i get to Lysol the hell out of my office each week.
We are currently watching Cars the movie. If you follow me on twitter you probably see that about 3 - 5 times a week. The boy loves the movie. And I gots to tell you its a good movie. The best part about this as opposed to any number of silly kids shows right now is good. And the music isn’t half bad. I guess thats part of being a parent and a kid is watching the same movie 500 times in a month just because it makes the little guys happy. When i was growing up My sister drilled Little Mermaid to the point where i could and can still sing every song word for word…
At least thus far I’m lucking out on music. The boy doesn’t seem to like Radio Disney but has taken a shine to Rage against the machine, Slipknot and Disturbed. He dances like crazy whenever Van Halen, ACDC, or Aerosmith comes on the radio. He’s a pretty cool kid. I would have view of a funny dance he did, but daddy had the sound turned off while recording so he’s making funny faces but you can’t hear the music. not as funny as it could be. I’ll get it next time
In the various houses that comprise our family unit there is one overarching tradition each spring. As punctual and annoying as hayfever the spring project rears its ugly head time and time again. Apparently we all feel the need right around the same time each year to buy mass quantities of construction materials and make major life changing and home altering projects from winter dreams into springtime realities.
This year, i have already re landscaped the front of the house. Good for next year being we used more perennials, which means less replanting for years to come. Bad is that it all was done in one day without too much being done with the back yard yet. In the back i found a previous layer of white landscaping stone underneath what we thought was a flower bed, not good. And to top it off i need to cut down another small tree and get the roots out because that will end up as my veggie garden. On the inside of the home we removed the linoleum tiles from the foyer, ripped the carpet up, but the next thing on the menu is the whole dinning room, big job.
My father in law is ripping out his kitchen and my own parents are putting a new floor in their basement. You feel good when your done but man this season is hard on you while you still have things to renovate. Anyone else out there having the same fun as we are?
The place have all come to know and love is no more. I might be late in saying it but if you take a look back at the internet and visualize what it was 10 years ago you will feel a cold chill creep up your spine from the dizzying heights we have attained. As well as a deep sadness for the shattering lows that come with every truly great achievement. The great things that we have now are twitter, Podcasting, Youtube, craigslist only to name a few. These all but shadows of the one overarching advancement.
The Internet of old was static, it was plain, ugly at times and unforgiving. Now the same unforgiving beast has grown larger and more hungry for attention and business. It has a softer, more pastel and florescent shade to it. Very web 2.0 the new beast, same as the old. The greatest advancement in the last 10 years has been the connectivity that the new beast has engendered. We are all a couple of keystrokes away from friends and from foes. The best defense against the dark arts of hacking, the specters of identity theft, and the demons of decayed morals, is information, education and the scepter of knowledge wielded by the acolytes of understanding.
Ok so Wordpress 2.5 is pretty spiffy. Still finding my way around in the spacious new confines of the Admin side of things., it looks like not to much has been changed on the user side of things. Although i am getting pretty tired of this theme. I think it fit my mood at the time but I’m in a much more positive place right now. Need something sleek, efficient, light and sophisticated, things i need to aspire to. I have the rough and angry thing down pat.
I’ll post more of a technical run down after i take the leap and drop an update on CaffiNation… which will be a little while before that happens.
testing out the Podpress, podcasting features as well. Posting a promo for the CaffiNation Podcast
The wife and I were giving the house its yearly spring cleaning top to bottom once over which included scrubbing floors, getting into the corners in the back of closets and the like. We just moved into this house, as our first home, in July of 2006. So there are still plenty of things that need work, and on a limited budget its one small step at a time.
Jen found a hint of blue peeking out from under the hideous beige tile in our foyer. You can see the tile in the picture to the left. It wasn’t bad, didn’t show dirt very well. But it was reminiscent of hospital tile, it was formless shapeless and boring to say the least. This hint of blue was a missive of royal blue peeking out from corners, and around the entire area. We quickly pull up on f the tiles only to find a lovely Blue and gold tile which the previous owners had for some reason covered up.
So of course we got straight to pulling the old tile out, which took about 1.5 hours to get it all out. But we were left with a mess of sticky floor. Linoleum glue sucks… In fact after trying everything in our cleaning aresenal we came up with the only contraption capable of removing the residue. First off a good dosiing with Acetone to turn the glue into goo, then a quick scrub with a Scotch Brite pad to collect the now gummy goo before it turned back into glue after the acetone evaporated. Then spray everything down with Goo Gone to remove the tacky, sticky bits left over. THEN scrubbing the floor with soap and water.
So 5 hours later out 6′ x 6′new foyer was done. Only problem is I had a hangover from the fumes for the next day and a half. The door was wide open with a fan blowing right out, it was just overpowering.
Just a small note, if you know a quicker way to get that god awful glue off the floor, keep it to yourself for a couple of weeks, until the pain has subsided. If someone tells me vineger or something else simple rips it right up i swear i’ll cry…
And all of this prompted the removal of the carpet on the stairs in the entry way as well, because that was dirty as can be, and incapable of being cleaned. Everytime you get it looking nice it only lasts for about a day. Wooden stairs will be so much easier to clean. Don’t mind the stairs I need to sand down and refinish them, so they will be B E A utiful in time.
I really wanted to talk about health. Everyone out there in this fast paced world of ours is struggling to not only find time for things like twitter, social media, jobs, family, traffic, life in general but also manage to pry themselves away from the computer long enough to get a little exercise in.
Both my wife and I work. We have one child, Paul who is 17 months old. Unfortunately since we both work, we miss out on some of of the fun of having him around all the time. This really gets to both of us on different occasions. Today i got to take a rare day off to be with my son. It was just the boy and myself for 90% of the day. And it was awesome, we get up shared breakfast, me a coffee, him milk. And I got to check my email, seesmic a little and twitter all throughout the day during the lulls in action. Paul even got in on the show. In fact i don’t hesitate to say he stole the show. as you can see below.
The best part was getting to play outside and in the park, there is preciously little daylight left at the end of the day usually so this was a nice change. Besides he is so much happier of a child before 5 pm.He just starts to wear down and get cranky after that, poor little man needs to keep to our schedule to a certain extent so he needs to get up at 6am too. Here are today’s fun Vids
Not too much to work with on that one…
I still can’t get over just how cute he is doing that. The “All done” comes out rapid fire or very emphatically when he doesn’t want to be somonewhere, like a car seat, or the mall.
Check out the CaffiNation for the last vid from this morning.
You know, if i had to go to prison I’d want it to satisfy two conditions. First off i wouldn’t want to be put in on some silly charge or circumstantial evidence. No i’d want to be a definite interment case. If for no other reason than you’d want to be taken seriously by the other inmates. You don’t want to have the Alice’s Restaurant littering charge on your resume. You want to go down as the guy who tuned up a mugger, a vigilante. Not that I’m planning on ever going in but if I did I would hope that it would be for some altruistic purpose.
Secondly, if i was to go to prison i could only hope that the penal system would have evolved to the point where scene’s like this are commonplace.
Its Much harder to shiv someone when your throwing down some MC Hammer. Besides your probably going to be a little less up tight and concerned with your image if you have to practice for the big dance number next week. No one messes with a guy lifting weights but its hard to build up a good head of steam when your practicing a quickstep.
Not taking myself too seriously this week can you tell? The video was funny, you have to laugh.
I’m more than a little bit of a science journal lurker. I love reading about all of the new discoveries out there. New Species, advancements in technique, anything i can wrap my head around. When I see video’s like this this National Geographic Deep sea video clip I usually stand in awe of the wonders of nature, and at the same point in time never vow to set foot in the ocean again… Giant Sea spiders indeed. In fact i was attempting to find a better picture of these things and i came up with this lovely Picture…
from this blog. What struck me wasn’t so much that guy had an icky spider sitting on his face but rather that people upon seeing this denzin of the deep immediately tried to find a way to eat it… And while yes they may be harmless little creatures, not these are normal sea spiders not the foot long antarctic variety, which i can only assume taste great in gumbo or chili.
For those of you really wanting to check out exactly how tasty these things are here is the recipe. I can understand some of the stranger delicacies from around the world. mostly because they involve indigenous items to the area, snails… er escargot… well they have these. But for sea spiders theylive on the bottom of the freakin ocean, you have to go out of your way to snack on these things. Its not like this is fear factor or something, there is no prize, no gratification, just you and an apparently tasty morsel… BTW if you need to invent a tool to let you eat it, its probably not on my menu. I’m looking at you escargot, you and your snail tongs.
And all of this prompted the removal of the carpet on the stairs in the entry way as well, because that was dirty as can be, and incapable of being cleaned. Everytime you get it looking nice it only lasts for about a day. Wooden stairs will be so much easier to clean. Don’t mind the stairs I need to sand down and refinish them, so they will be B E A utiful in time.
Got to get Tough
from this 
