Ice Cavern Studios

It's been a good week so far. Work is going well, and things seem to be falling into place. Life is good.

I've been doing a lot of reflecting lately. Mainly because it's been a year since my life took a major turn. About this time last year, Nicole and I started coming together. Looking back at posts like this one are fun to go back and look at. It's fun because I know that I was spending a lot of time with Nicole at that point. Then it was just as friends, but eventually the posts stop being “just friends” and move towards dating.

It's sometimes crazy to think about mine and Nicole's interaction before we were dating. I thought she was awesome, long before we dated. We worked on labs together. She, her roommate Julie, her ex, Brad, and I all did problem sets together. Throughout it, I thought she was awesome. Way to awesome to be with a guy like me.

Let's just be honest: a beautiful female engineer who's into sports? How often are you going to find that? Not very often. She's smart; she's funny, she can skate. (Props to those who can place that). I always figured Nicole was out of my league. Let alone the fact that I was in a relationship.

But yet, things can change. And I'm glad they did. The past year has been awesome. Really awesome. Nicole is a big part of that. I'm blessed to have her in my life. I truly am.

Life and Times

Well, it is in fact official, I am not a resident of the state of Washington. I have all of the rights and responsibilities of anyone else from this state. I can vote; I can legally drive; and my car is now liscend with the state. Pretty cool.

Of course, this means that I got up a bit too early to be a totally restful Saturday. It also means that I spent quite a few hours in the various departments of liscensing. *Shrugs* At least I had my GBA; because I had to do some serious waiting. What made it even more fun is the fact that the places where you go to register your car, and where you go to get your drivers liscence are totally seperate places. I don't understand why this is.

While it feels good to get all of this crap out of the way, I still feel a bit sad. I'm no longer a citizen of Ohio. This is kind of a strange point for me. I've never been a real resident of any other state before. Sure I lived in New Jersey, but I was only going to school there. I was more of an extended visitor.

Sigh…

I'm currently listening to a version of Afro Blue performed live by Tito Puente's Latin Jazz All-Stars. For some reason, this song really reminds me of Patrick. Patrick is the one who really got me into listening to Jazz. Being a Jazz saxophonist, he took it upon himself to expose me to Jazz. For this, I am truly greatful, for a lot of the music I love to listen to, I know of specifically because Pat sent me an mp3 and said, “Listen to this, it'll change your view of reality.” This is one of those songs. I remember Pat telling me, “You know these guys are bad, because this is normally in 3/4, but they're playing it in a Latin-4.” Man…good times.

Hmmm, think I'll go shoot Pat an email. I haven't heard from him in a while. Yeah, seems like a good plan.

Life and Times

Hmmm…So, I just stopped to look at the site, and I wonder if maybe it isn't time for a redesign. I often contemplate the merits of doing such a thing. Would it be worth it. Do I really want to take the time to go through and redesign what I have already been told is a good site. Hmmm…

See, I often debate whether I want to do such a thing. Part of the problem is that I really like the current layout. It's simple, yet has some decent artistic quality. It's not overly simple, but yet, not overy complicated. I often wonder about the merits of having used so many images. Then again, this use of images and tables is what makes the site render the same in basically every browser.

Heh, I think what I need to do, before I even think about updating the look of the site; is finish the backend. Sadly, I am not finished with everything on the back. I say this evey couple of months, although I'm now getting to the point where I have the real time to make the additions.

I know I need to do something about the back tracking on the site. The list of all the months is getting a weeeee bit long. I think it's time to get off my ass and build the browseable archive. I have the functions necessary, I just have to piece them together. And while I'm at it, I should set up an RSS feed. It really shouldn't be that hard. Well, at least now that I've seen a smart way of doing it.

Alright, enough of that. Time for bed. Night all.

Life and Times

I'm going to apologize in advance for this post. Since I haven't gotten around to getting my technical blog site up and running, I'm going to have to use this space to just write some things down that have been really on my mind recently.

The first thing I'd like to talk about is this whole “wireless” thing. Now, I know it's not new. Not by a long shot. But man, for a technology that has been this hyped, you'd think that companies would at least take the time to make this stuff clearer. I recently had the fun of getting the network in my apartment set up. Now, I use the term “fun” a bit loosely.

As it stands, the network consists of my group of compters in my room, Steve's laptop, and two Xbox's (mine's connected via wireless, Steve's via wired connection). Now, I figured, all I'm going to need is a wireless bridge and I won't have to run a cable through the apartment. Of course, I didn't want to pay for a bridge, since it can be a pricey piece of equipment. Instead, I bought a Wireless Access Point after having heard that it could bridge the connections.

Of course none of this actually happened that easily. After messing with settings, I coerced the WAP into bridging with the router by setting it it's “repeater” mode. This sounds straight forward, but you must understand that linksys provided the useless setting of “wireless bridge” on the access point that only bridges with 1 other access point.

I don't think I would mind this so much if it weren't for the fact that all of the wireless stuff I own (with the exception of my XBox adapter) was made by Linksys. I mean, this stuff should be easier to get to work together if it's all made by the same people. I really am wondering if QA is something these people have even heard of. I mean come on. How about some documentation with the thing. Or even a picture or two. I shouldn't need to use knowledge aquired from my degree in order to get wireless up and running. It's absolutely ludicrous.

I was going to talk about some other stuff, but I really am a bit too tired to. My computers have been a bit weird recently and fixing them took up all of the evening. Oh well.

Life and Times

So this past weekend, I was back in Princeton. What for? Well, I just decided that I wanted to surprise Nicole. Forunatly, I realized I wanted to do this a few weeks ago, so I was able to get a good price on roundtirp airfair from Seattle to Princeton. But yeah, this weekend was awesome.

So it started off with leaving work at 11:00 AM to go to the airport. Mind you I went into work at 6:30, so it's not like I had a really short day. I just had an early one. But work was fun, we had to haul a bit of ass to get our beta out the door, but it was definetly worth it. Getting that released made it easier to leave Seattle for the weekend.

Princeton was a lot of fun. Spent a lot of time just hanging out with Nicole. That's all I wanted to do and that's what I did. We went to various Princeton eateries (got my Hoagie Haven cravings satisfied); went to the football game, and we even did a little dancing. It was great.

Although the best part of the weekend was definetly walking into Charter on Thursday night to surprise Nicole. I found Nicole playing Outburst with Yeppie and Julie (two of her roommates) and Greg, Julie's boyfriend. Since Yeppie and Julie knew I was coming, when I walked in, they just kind of said, “Hi Stan” and kept on playing. Nicole, having not been let in on me showing up, was in a state of complete shock. It took her about a minute and a half to realize that it was in fact me who had just strolled into Charter. What got her more was the fact that I just kind of strolled in like I never left. It was pretty cool.

Sigh…

I'm in a really good mood. I just had an excellent weekend that really hit the spot. I feel ready to get back to work and start kicking some more ass. I feel rejuvinated in terms of work and life in general. I miss Nicole a lot, and getting to see her, even for just a short time, is such a boost for me. *smiles* Yup, this is going to be a good week, I can feel it. And even if it isn't, I feel that I have the energy to handle what life throws at me.

Hmmm…sleep. Think I'll get me some of that. Yeah..that'd be super.

Life and Times