Merry Christmas (or Whatever) To All

I hope everyone has been having a good holiday season, whatever holidays you happen to celebrate. {Even if the only thing you celebrate is not having to go into work for a couple of days.} Mine have been very busy but also very good.

I have been very busy with work, but all I'm going to say about that is that I have spent a lot of time processing a file with over 600,000 records in it to generate a 32,568 page report. This includes logging in remotely to "finish up work" on it over the weekend. Now I've been told that the client sent us bad data and will be resending the file for it to be reprocessed.

I hope that we were notified before the report was printed.

Outside of work a lot of time has been spent travelling. Christmas was spent with TWIL and her family, including having Christmas Eve dinner with The Sprout, her father, his SO and their parents at his house. The Sprout was staying over there for the night, which made it a little easier for Santa to do his thing with out having to worry as much about people waking up.

When everyone showed up Christmas morning with more presents, well let's just say there wasn't much room left. Especially after wrapping paper started to fly. TWIL's mother has surprisingly good aim when she wants to.

All told, I think the best present I got this year was being there and spending Christmas with everyone.

Domain Hosting

For those who don't know, I run this journal through Blogger but have it published to my own domain hosting account. I was doing this because I had other things hosted and planning on doing a lot more with the space. However, the other day I was thinking about my hosting and what I am actually doing with it.

Currently I don't really have anything on here other than my journal and my linkblog. There are still other things that I am thinking of putting up here, but I'm not sure when, or if, they will show up. So should I still being paying for hosting or should I move my blogs to Blog*Spot instead? {I'd still use my domain name, just as a redirect instead of having it hosted.}

I'm interested in hearing your opinions on this. Feel free to share them in the comments.

Of course I have decided to continue with my hosting for the moment. This is partly because of the of the recent outages that have happened on Blog*Spot and partly because of the hosting package I currently get. I am paying less than $4 a month for 5GB of storage, 250GB of monthly bandwidth, along with lots of email, access to PHP and MySQL, and lots more. I have been wanting to learn more about PHP and MySQL so I figure it is worth it to have all of this setup and usable.

I'm still interested in your opinions since there may come a time when I decide to move hosts or just do away with it all together.

I am not going to switch my current blogs away from Blogger. But who knows what I'll do with any new ones, if there are any.

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I'll be back soon with a real entry...
Until then,
Peace.

Happy Thanksgiving.US

The week has been rushed and greatly compressed. Partly this is because of how tired a felt on Monday after driving back from TWIL's on Sunday night. Well, it wasn't all from the drive, it was also due to the stress I had been under last week. {I'll tell you about some of it later, I'm still rushed right now.} As I'm sure happens to some of you as well, when I'm under a lot of stress and it is removed, my system relaxes and I start to feel very tired and rundown for a while.

The weekend with TWIL and The Sprout was great and at the end of it I had three people telling me I should stay. I would have stayed if it was possible, but I only had enough of my meds {I'm diabetic, remember?} to last until Wednesday or Thursday. So I came back for three days.

Now I'm getting ready to go head back. I'll be leaving in the next few minutes and will be there through the weekend.

Sounds like a Happy Thanksgiving.US to me.

Odds and Ends

It's been too long since I wrote anything, but I am kind of rushed right now and don't have time to write as much as I'd like. So let me just cover a few things that might be of interest.

I keep seeing news stories, web sites, etc. that make me think "I need to share this with someone." In some cases I feel like my head is going to explode if I don't pass some it along. However, I didn't want to clutter this journal with entries that do nothing but say "Check this out" so I started a new blog specifically for this purpose. You can find it at http://linkblog.wyldwoods.net I have already made a couple of posts over there, so go check them out.

That blog is just using one of Blogger's standard templates for the moment while I do some final tweaking on the template for my journal. Once that is complete you will see both updated to use the new template. Then I'll get to work on the new CSS that so the look of the whole domain will be changing a lot. Although it might happen in stages.

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I was in Salem, MA the weekend before Hallowe'en. I do not recommend this. Actually, I'm not sure I'd recommend Salem at any time during the month of October. But if you are going to go, the earlier in October the better.

I did enjoy myself, but that had more to do with watching the tourists in the crowd and listening to some of the things that were being asked and said. There was also a very good art show based around the theme of Hallowe'en and Terror. I also bumped into Daniel GreenWolf although I didn't have much time to catch up with him. {I know at least one of you will know him as well, although maybe not by that name.}

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I also ran into my friend Fox and her daughter a couple of weeks before that while walking through Boston Common. We had somewhere around 4 years to catch up. Luckily neither of us were in a hurry and we had time to talk.

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I'm heading out to spend the weekend with TWIL and The Sprout. I'm not sure what the plans for the weekend are other than TWIL and I will be going to see Sol Dog tomorrow night. {Great band, great guys, great CD}

'Net connection has been restored.

In case anyone was wondering, I have been offline for the better part of a week while my cable Internet connection was down. I've said it before and I'll say it again, Comcast Sucks!

But in case anyone is interested, it is back up and running now and I have full 'net access from home again.

Of course, that doesn't mean that you are going to get much right now, as I have to get ready to leave for the weekend. Off to spend time with TWIL. Unfortunately, I am stuck at work right now waiting for someone else, which is how I have time to post from here, and will not be be able to leave for NY until the morning.

And as I write this, the 2-hour process, which was going to keep me here until 9PM, is officially 1 hour late getting started. and I am on a conference call listening to the others who are trying to get the process started. They are discovering more issues which are delaying things even longer.

This is SOOOO much fun.

Anyway... I need to go give some people a swift kick in the ... pants. Metaphorically. At least to start.

Don't expect much more than this out of me tonight. After I get out of here I still need to go home, pack a bag, call TWIL and get some sleep. I hope I can get all of that finished before midnight.

Who am I trying to kid... I hope I'll get out of here before midnight.

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Update [12:50AM] : Well, I'm finally done for the night. Now to pack and get some sleep.

Sleepy Thoughts

I was doing a lot of thinking over the weekend, and some writing to go along with it. Unfortunately {for me} none of the writing is in a condition that I would be comfortable sharing. Fortunately {for you} I realized just how crap it was before posting it. I imagine that some of it will make it here once it is cleaned up somewhat.

However, it has been a while since I talked about the sleep test and results. So, let me give you an update on that...

As you may remember, I went for a sleep study {described here} and I briefly gave initial results from it in this post but haven't said anything else about it since.

I talked to my doctor and we discussed the fact that my sleep apnea is very mild at this point and "the machine" wasn't necessary, although it would be worth a try to see if it helped. Well, we contacted my usual medical supply store to see about getting setup with the machine.

It turns out that they couldn't give me one because I lived too far away. They suggested I find a closer supplier and get the machine from them.

So far I have had no luck finding a closer supplier and have not gotten a machine. And while I have looked, to be honest, I am not really concerned about getting one at this point.

I am sleeping better and getting more rest from it for a couple of months now. I may go back and see about getting the machine if my sleep problems get bad again, but while I am sleeping relatively well I am not going to worry about it since wearing the mask and having the machine running by my bed would disrupt my sleep as much as it might help at this point.

And speaking of sleep...

G'Night.

Another Year Older

What a week {2 weeks?} it has been. The end of last week was nuts and had me working ten to eleven hours days in order to finish a project I as working on.

I did get it finished and managed to leave a little early on Friday so I could head out and spend the weekend with my girlfriend. {Here after referred to as TWIL, at least for now.} You see, Saturday was my birthday and I really didn't want to spend it anywhere else.

I got out early enough that I managed to get there in time to spend some time with The Sprout {TWIL's daughter} before she went to bed. We hung out and made some balloon animals.

Of course shortly after The Sprout was in bed I got a call from work and spent over an hour on the phone troubleshooting and fixing problems. Luckily, that was it for the weekend. Once I was off that call we had the rest of the weekend alone together.

Well, there were the three of us until Saturday afternoon when The Sprout's father picked her up. The there was just the two of us.

We spent the weekend enjoying each other's company since we don't get to spend time together physically often enough. Much of the time was spent talking and holding each other. Including a very good neck rub TWIL gave me after the call from work Friday night {Thank you, Beautiful} and a walk in the park Sunday night.

And to celebrate my birthday on Saturday night, we went out to dinner at a very nice restaurant and went to the movies.

I'd write some more, but I have to go. It is time for our nightly call.

Peace.

Has it really been a month?

I'm not sure what to write, so I'll just start writing and see what comes out. Let's start with Pennsic...

I got to Pennsic on Saturday and my tent was already pitched, I had sent it along with friends who had gone earlier. So all I had to do was move my stuff into it and get my space set up which didn't take too long. After that I spent the rest of the evening (until almost sunrise) hanging out with my brother and a couple other friends. It was a good night.

Sunday afternoon was the wedding. I have been to weddings in the past. I have even been in the wedding party once or twice. But this was the first wedding I have performed. First time I have seen or filled out a wedding licence as well.

Have I mentioned that I don't like public speaking? No. Well, I don't.

I got several compliments on my speaking voice and my projection. One person was at the entrance to the space, about 30-35 meters from where I was standing, who said he could hear every word quiet clearly. A couple of other people said "I told you said you weren't any good at public speaking." To which I had to reply, "No, I said I didn't like public speaking, there is a difference."

Anyway, the wedding went well and my friends are now married. {I'd say it went off without a hitch, but then I'd have to get my coat.} The rest of the week was spent relaxing, hanging out with friends, and going to the occasional party. All in all, a good time.

And as it turns out I spent three weekends in a row driving for around ten hours. Driving to Pennsic one weekend, driving back the next, and then round trip to see my girlfriend the next. The third weekend being the best of the three.

Not everything went well the weekend I spent with my girlfriend. Don't get me wrong, everything went well with us, but I got an emergency call from my brother and had to leave for a while to help him out.

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I just looked at the clock and saw how late it's getting. I'm going to leave it here for tonight and go get some sleep. I'll pick it back up later.

I still don't get to see and hold my girlfriend often enough, but we are still talking every night. I am going to be spending this weekend with her, and with her daughter for part of Saturday, and I am very much looking forward to all of it.

Walk in Beauty.
Peace.

Posting when I should be Packing

I can't take long to do this because I should be packing, but I thought I'd make a quick post while printing out driving directions.

I had a great time on Wednesday with my girlfriend and her daughter, we all seemed to get along great and I ended up spending every night with them this week. Until tonight.

All three of us wanted for me to go over and see them again tonight but I have to pack for my trip. I'm leaving in the morning, and will be gone until next weekend. I am heading to Pennsic for a vacation and for a good friend's wedding. I'll tell you all about it when I get back.

I will be missing my girlfriend terribly while I am away so it's a good thing I will have my cell phone with me. I expect to call her most nights while there.

If anyone else is headed that way {With 10 to 15 thousand people going you never know...} Feel free to ask around for Bjarni Bjornson. You best bet to find me would be around Casa Bardicci or Camp Rubber Duckie. Most of the people who know me are in those camps. But please, no stalkers. I've had two and that is more than enough. {If you ask nicely, maybe I'll tell you about them sometime.}

Anyway, my directions finished printing and I must go.

Be back in a week...

A Big Step

A while back I started getting seeing someone, and we have been dating for a while now. It is a long distance relationship, for now, but that is not a bad thing. It has ensured that we spend time talking, which we have been doing a lot.

When our schedules allow, I make the 5-6 hour drive out to New York state and we spend as much time as we can together, although this is usually just the weekend. We do have been doing this once or twice a month since May. When we can't be together we talk. Either on the phone or through instant messenger.

We have talked every day since May. Sometimes for 15 minutes, more often for anywhere from one and a quarter to three hours, but it has been every night.

Yes, it is serious. And last night we took a big step in our relationship.

I met her daughter.

Because her daughter is 9 we were being careful and my girlfriend didn't want to bring me into her daughter's life too early in the relationship. A reasonable way to handle things and one which I understood and agreed with. And then yesterday they came to Boston for their vacation, a trip which had been in planning before we started dated, and I met them for dinner after I got off work.

We had a good dinner with good desserts. {What else would you expect from "The Cheesecake Factory"?} And we had a good time hanging out and walking around a bit after dinner. Later on, when it was time for the daughter to go to bed, we went back to their hotel, the daughter went to bed and my girlfriend and I sat up and talked for a while longer.

It was a very good night.

And tomorrow I am taking the day off work to spend it with the two of them.

It may be time for me to come up with an alias to use for my girlfriend when I refer to her on here.