It's that time of year again

Posted By: Adam 2 Comments

This year is a little different. In years past, people have asked me about my plans for Christmas and I had some relatively clear idea of what was going on that I passed on to them. Visiting family, good food, stuff like that.

This year, with Dylan's birthday on Friday, people have been asking me what our plans are, or what we're getting for him, and I just go completely blank. For me, right now, life doesn't exist after Saturday (his party). I know we have plans, and I know we have gifts for him, but I just don't think much about anything beyond his birthday party right now. I know what he's getting for his birthday, and I know what's going on for his party. And I'm pretty sure there's going to be a day after that. But beyond that, I'm not really clear.

Luckily, I've got plenty of time to figure it out. When I get back from the doctor's office (where I am right now), I'll work a half day from home, but then I have the rest of this week off. So let's just call this pajama week, ok? I may even shower a few times.


Checking In

Posted By: Adam 3 Comments

I could explain the recent silence, but chances are you are already aware of some of the bigger things going on in my life; and know that those things can be stressful and distracting from things you might otherwise normally work on. Sorry about that. And uh, "That's all I've got to say about that." So let's check on a few things.

Dylan's birthday is a week from TODAY! He's almost a year old. Holy crap! He's nearly walking — getting better all the time; starting to add a word or two (sock!) and a couple of new signs (cat, for the first time the other night) and sounds (Elephant calls! So cute!) to his vocabulary; and starting to really get visibly interested in books. For the moment, I'm really enjoying this. He hasn't gotten to the stage where all he wants to do is sit and read every book we own consecutively (like certain nieces and nephews), but he is very pleased to get through two or three books, and even motions over toward them before and after naps, and at other random times.

From the slightly-less-mind-blowing department, I've continued to try new foods. Honestly, I don't know exactly where I stand in terms of the one per month thing. When I stopped posting about them I started to forget exactly when I tried what. Last Saturday we had our first Thanksgiving dinner for the year with our friends, and there I tried both a parsnip & pear purée (I guess in place of mashed potatoes?), and baked (not boiled) brussels sprouts. I didn't like either very much, but I disliked the brussels sprouts more. Honestly, I'm kind of surprised I tried brussels sprouts — that was one of the things I specifically thought I would NOT try this year.

I also recent submitted a presentation proposal for a ColdFusion conference I've been to a few times as an attendee. One of my goals has been to get more comfortable with public speaking and to do presentations now and then. I don't want to get myself too worked up over this — they haven't even announced the topic short-list that the community votes on to finalize the topics — but it's the public speaking equivalent of throwing myself in the deep end. In addition to that, I've taken over as the manager of the Philadelphia ColdFusion User Group, which means I'll be standing in front of a room full of people at least once a month to introduce someone else, if not presenting something myself. Hopefully that will help make me more comfortable in front of a crowd. I am at the same time both very excited and quite terrified by all of this. It might be a good time to invest in some Depends stock. Just sayin'.

So that's what I've been up to lately — pushing myself beyond my comfort zone. What about you?


Drül

Posted By: Adam 2 Comments

Hello peoples.

Just FYI, here is something I am drooling over this week.

Take a brand new 15" MacBook Pro with 2.53GHz cpu… Then add the Anti-Glare screen ($50), and 1 each of the DVI and VGA adapters because I hook my laptop up to a ginormous monitor with DVI and sometimes present at meetings which usually requires VGA ($58 combined), and add AppleCare (for $349). You've got a pretty decent laptop, and for $2,106 (free shipping).

But while we're spending our kids inheritance on gadgets, let's have some fun, eh? Replacing memory and hard drives is dead simple and much cheaper than buying through Apple, so let's pick up the newly-maximum 8GB of ram ($599). I use this much at home and it is incredible. Love it. Memory is no-longer my bottleneck. Fortunately it's a little cheaper for desktops — I think I picked up my home set of 8GB for something like $250 or $300 — but no such luck in the laptop market. And hard drives are dirt cheap right now. Grab a 500GB drive ($87.99, free shipping) — granted it's only 5400 rpm, and that will likely be a bottleneck for large files, but there is only 1 7200 rpm 500GB SATA laptop hard drive available right now, and it's a power hog, and has reports of being noisy and super-vibratey. No thanks. I'll just spend my $88 now and dream of a solid state replacement for the future.

Toss in a few bucks for shipping and handling of various things, and you're sitting at just over $2,800. Not a bad way to drop three grand, if I do say so myself.

How many dandelions do I have to pick to make three grand? What if I augment that income with mowing lawns? Cleaning gutters?

Suffice it to say… it's not going to happen for me any time soon. Still. Fun to dream!


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