Hustle, Bustle and Flow...

The three days off this past weekend was nice, but since Monday, I've been hard at work. We're wrapping up a big Intranet project at work this week (it launches to the company next Tuesday,) and I couldn't be more excited. While we will be wrapped up in supporting the new Intranet for the weeks and months to come, the thick of it will be over, and I see it as a huge relief. It's pretty much all I have been doing at work since the beginning of January.

I get that way with projects sometimes... when doing design work, it's nice to "take a breather" every now and again, just to refresh the creative flow. I like variety - it keeps it interesting. It is both a blessing and a curse... and this is exhibited in my customizing work as of late.

I haven't touched the dremel in months. I did some painting a few weeks ago, but I have many, many unfinished projects collecting dust on my workbench. It just seems lately, when I'm home, I've been spending my "downtime" on other things... and not spending as much time down in the basement where "the lab" is. I have felt a pang lately to get back down there... but lately when I go down there, I have been mostly cleaning and re-arranging.

I have new ideas... and like I said, many unfinished ones. I just haven't had a drive to do much with them. I keep waiting for that spark again... but it hasn't been firing. I think it's a phase... I am apt to be like this. I have been so encapsulated in web world with my job, and then this Mac thing has intrigued me, that my head has been in "tech world," not toys. I haven't bought a toy in over a month either (which is something I've been working to cut back on as well.)

So I'm sure the customizing will be back soon enough... in the meantime, I have been working on the Design Lab website. Just about the time I get near done with it, inevitably, I'll get bored with it and go back to the customizing thing. I call it my "creative ADD." I don't get it much at work though, because I have people to answer to in regards to my work. Since I don't get paid to play around at home, I'm much more lax.

I think I'm gonna go play some video games now...

Takin' a day...

Sometimes it's nice to take a day off of work for no other reason than to just give yourself a break. As much as I love my job, I've been working on the same project since January, and we're near completion... so it seemed like a good time to take a three-day weekend and clear my head a little.

Plus, it's my birthday, so it seemed like a perfect excuse. I don't have any big plans, and didn't when I requested the day off a few weeks back, and that makes it even nicer.

Sitting at home offers too many distractions, and I'd probably just sit around and play video games all day, and then tonight I would feel like I wasted my day. So I'm at Beaner's, enjoying the free wi-fi, catching up with some things I have been wanting to do for a while (including making an update to this here blog, and working on the Design Lab website.)

It would be nicer if the only good seat available was underneath a speaker, and the music of the morning here is apparently "Annoying International Warbling." Luckily, I brought my iPod and noise-cancelling headphones... so I am listening to the Free Beer and Hot Wings podcast, with a hint of what I think are accordians and bagpipes (simultaneously) in the background, intermingled with loud frothing milk noises. I think I'm going to have to switch to music soon to drown everything out. I think I'll crank out some Arctic Monkeys... I'm sort of hooked on their songs these days...

It's kinda neat to be sitting here, away from home, and still be able to surf the web and use a computer... and I'm really digging this whole Mac thing. While I'll never give up my PC at home, I really enjoy using the PowerBook. Mac is certainly doing a lot of things right, that's for sure. It's very intuitive... and in the two weeks or so since I've had this thing, I haven't once had any odd sort of issue installing, configuring, or using a single application. If anything, I'm amazed at how simple it's been, and it makes me nervous... on the PC, even the simplest installation can somehow mysteriously stop working when something else in installed. I like how applications are contained in their own little "capsules" - you just drag the "installations" in a folder, and they run. Holy crap.

I'll be back in a little bit...

A Moment of Silence...

Big Mac Attack...

Very exciting stuff... I am typing this message from my new PowerBook G4 (Thanks work!!)

This is actually coming from a little Blogger widget... pretty neat stuff and very accesible.

What's even cooler is that I am sitting upstairs on wireless... it seems somewhere I have a neighbor who doesn't know how to secure their WiFi network... here's hoping they never learn!

This Mac thing ain't half bad!

I'd rather eat spackle...

As much as people like to bitch about advertising, the plain and simple truth is this: it friggin' works. I don't even think it's a question any more... it's just a simple fact. It is still amazing to me when I see its effects on me, even when I don't realize it at first.

I pondered this late last night when I got hungry and fixed myself a peanut butter sandwich.

My wife went grocery shopping a few weeks ago (which I usually do... but I'm not complaining.) I reminded her before she left to buy peanut butter, specifying only to make sure to get the crunchy kind. I just sort of assumed she'd know which brand to get... the one I always get.

Now I'm no peanut butter snob, but I always get Skippy. I always have... for as long as I've been out of my parents' house and buying my own groceries. Even at home though, my mom bought crunchy Skippy for me. It's delicious (and crunchy!) and I thought my wife knew this, as we always have a jar in the cupboard (to her defense, she doesn't eat it... she likes Smuckers Natural.) Regardless, she bought Jiff (at least it was the cruchy kind.)

I was a little disappointed. I asked her why she bought Jiff, when I *always* buy Skippy?

Her response? "I thought Jiff was better. Choosy moms choose Jiff, right?"

If by "choosy," they mean "cruel," then yes... because Jiff is disgusting should not be sold in stores.

Granted, I did not express this at the time... I just asked her to please not ever buy it again, and to only buy Skippy, because Jiff is crap in a jar. I said I'd eat it eventually though.

Which leads me to last night. I thought of that witty little sentence about cruel moms as I gagged down that damn sandwich. I don't know why I ate the whole thing... it might have been to see if was as really as bad as I built it up to be, or that maybe I would learn to accept it as I ate more. Either way, it sucked, and I am going to throw the rest of the jar away (since I am the only one in this house who would possibly eat it.) I hate wasting food, but I wouldn't even use that crap as spackle.

[Ok, that literally made no sense... peanut butter would make horrible spackle. It doesn't set, it would get moldy, it's all bumpy, and you can't really sand it and paint over it. I just like the word spackle, and I like working it into things when I can. Happy?]

My point (while practically lost in my slightly pathetic internal debate involving nut-based sandwich spreads) is this: my wife bought that Jiff crap based on a slogan she heard, probably fifteen years ago.

And I thought everyone knows that for good nutrition, it's hard to beat Skippy.

Wonderlic-ious

Quite the funny name for a fairly well-used test...

So how do you score? (this is just a sample of a real test... the real one is 50 questions in 20 minutes.)

I got 13 out of 15, in case you cared.