Cars can suck

My car is in horrible shape.  At least I think it is.  It sounds bad.  I’ve got to get my mechanic to tell me for sure how bad it is.  Why can’t cars just work?

The Sting of Mondays

Okay my title is probably more exciting that this post. Every Monday morning is garbage day. Lately, probably because of residential expansion, the recycling truck doesn’t come as early as it used to. This of course has created a laziness in my wanting to get the recycling out early which today has resulted in getting into work later than anticipated.

Being in a new job will probably hamper my blogging efforts so please be patient if my blogs seem short to start.

Thursday Thirteen #4 – Jumbled thoughts

Today is one of thosed messed up days where all my thoughts are all over the place. Sometimes you have days like this where it is difficult to focus on any one thing. Is this because there are too many things going on in my life?

Thirteen Things about my jumbled thoughts Ping Pong – I’ve been in this ping pong tournament at work where the organizer has left on maternaty leave. I’ve filled in with continuing to organize the rest of the tournament. WoW – Been give the love to my favourite MMORPG, World of Warcraft. Laptop – Recently bought a new laptop for my wife. She really deserves it. It’s to help her do more of her own writing. I’m the acting network administrator for our household so I still need to do some configuring for her. Petition – I’ve been recently going door to door in my neighbourhood looking for community support for getting our public school expanded from only JK – grade 6 to include grade’s 7 & 8 so that when my kids get to those grades, they won’t be walking a couple of km to get to school. Blog – It’s work to make sure you are keeping up with your blog. I’ve made a personal goal of writing one entry each day with the exception of weekends and holidays. (Those are for my family.) Writing – This has really been making a home on the back burner. I spend a little bit of each day at least considering another aspect of my story. Editing – Each day I try to get through one chapter of editing on my wife’s story. Sleeping – Yeah I’m having to work hard at making sure I get enough sleep. I get caught up in things too easily. I need to either have more alarms telling me when to move on to the next thing or have to watch the clock better. Linux – This seems to aways be changing. I’ve been spending some time trying to make sure my SuSE 10.1 box gets updated. I’ve been following IPodLinux waiting for the final release for 5.5G products. Damn Small Linux has changes periodically that I want to follow. And then there is always the lookout for interesting things that people are doing with the distributions. IPod – So much music, so little time. I have ripped most of my CDs to my IPod. Now I just need to sit down and create some of my favourite playlists. House – There are so many projects around my house. I think I’ll save that for another thirteen list. (Maybe I’ll have to use several lists.) Yard – It’s spring again and that means I’ll be going out and working on the outside of the house too. This too can be it’s only thirteen list. Co-workers – I seem to spend a lot of my time helping out my fellow staff. I seem to be the goto person for a lot of the technologies that we use at the office. Okay, that is it for now. Keep up the smiles Links to other Thursday Thirteens! Marcia – Poems I’ve Yet to Write Gabrielle – Happy Garlic Day (leave your link in comments, I’ll add you here!)

Get the Thursday Thirteen code here!The purpose of the meme is to get to know everyone who participates a little bit better every Thursday. Visiting fellow Thirteeners is encouraged! If you participate, leave the link to your Thirteen in others comments. It’s easy, and fun! Be sure to update your Thirteen with links that are left for you, as well! I will link to everyone who participates and leaves a link to their 13 things. Trackbacks, pings, comment links accepted!View More Thursday Thirteen Participants

Are dreams a visit to a parallel world?

Okay, I used to wonder if dreams were really a visit to parallel worlds.  My dreams were always about locations that didn’t exist in the real world.  They were imaginary locations that I’d never visited, seen, or read about.  I used to get them on a regular basis.

Recently however, I have been doing some heavy gaming online and as a result I’ve found that my dreams are taking shape with certain aspects of the game.  Here are some examples:  In my dreams I’m starting to become concerned with how much space I have to carry stuff.  The other day I had a dream in which I was trying to figure out if this one rectangular bar that I found would stack.  In some of my dreams, I can see the names of everyone in the dream hovering above them.  In another dream, I was being attacked by something and wasn’t concerned since I knew that I could heal since I could tell how much damage I was taking and knew I could heal before I died.

Okay, so this to me is proof that dreams are mearly a process by which your brain is sorting out the events of the day and possibly trying to make sense of the information.

Friday Five #1 – Contact lens don’ts

I’ve been doing the Thursday Thirteen and following it for a while now so I’ve been inspired to start a Friday Five. Not too big of a list. Hopefully something interesting to read. This morning I almost lost a contact lens that was irritating me so I’ve decided to create a small list of things not to do as a contact lens wearer.

1. Don’t take one of your contacts out when you are outside in the wind in the early dawn. I needed to readjust one of my contacts this early morning while I was waiting for the bus. As soon as I had removed it I realized my mistake. For those of you out there who are new to contacts, you will probably understand immediately. Those who have been wearing them for a while could make this mistake. Of course, those that don’t wear contacts might not get it. When I first started to wear contacts it took me roughly 45 minutes per contact to get them in. The eye has a wonderful defense mechanism to remove crap from hurting your eye. It tears. Believe it or not, a flood of tears makes it difficult to put a contact in. Another defense the eye has to prevent crap from getting into your eye is a reflexive blink. This too makes it difficult to put a contact in. Typically in putting a contact in, I balance the contact on the end of a finger and gently place an eye drop into the contact to maintain it’s softness (contacts can start to dry out in several seconds) and to assist in the getting it to “stick” to my eye when placing it in instead of it sticking to my finger. The contact needs to be placed carefully and quickly onto the eye and then gentle blinking will allow for excessive moisture to be removed and the contact will slide nicely into place. Okay, now lets return to the issue. Removing a contact is a last resort. Doing it outside is desparate. Doing it without any eye drops is asking for trouble. Doing it in the wind is idiotic both because the wind will excellerate the already short number of seconds it takes to dry out a contact and because it will make balancing a feather-light contact on the end of your finger impossible. Performing any kind of contact manipulation at dusk is foolish since you will never be able to find it if you drop it. Okay enough said.
2. Don’t eat hot & spicy wings when your contacts are bothering you. If your contacts are bothering you, you will need to make adjustments and we all know the badness of jalepeneos and rubbing your eyes.
3. Don’t wear your contacts to bed. Ugg. It’s happened to me when I’ve fallen asleep watching T.V. When you sleep, you don’t blink so much. Blinking is a neccessary way of spreading your eyeball lubricant around. Sleeping with your contacts on will result in your contacts sticking to your eyeball in the morning. It is possible to “detach” the contact from your eye and get the blinking going but I’d recommend avoiding this in the first place.
4. Don’t put your contacts in over an open sink. Typically in the bathroom there is a nice mirror hanging just above the sink. Until you become proficient at putting your contacts in, you will probably want a mirror for assistance. If you lean over the sink to get a closer look in the mirror and your contact falls, say goodbye to your contact.
5. Don’t use spit or saliva to lubricate your contacts. Bleck! Your mouth is loaded with bacteria that you need to keep your mouth healthy but your eyeballs don’t need this type of bacteria. Your eye balls are very sensitive and should never be exposed to this sort of stuff. Use proper eye drops or if available, your own tears.

Okay, so that is my Friday Five. Hope you liked it. Later I might even try to put it in some sort of format.

Things not to do

Okay so I got back yesterday on Monday and found that I had forgotten to get my Thursday Thirteen out.  Bummer.  I came up with what seemed like a brilliant plan.  I decided to write a Thursday Thirteen on Monday about why Monday is sometimes Thursday.  It seemed like a nifty idea.  I got to about the fourth reason when I had to take a break.  Bad sign.  By the end of yesterday I got all the way up to 11 reasons.  After that I had to quit.  In reviewing my reasons I realized that a lot of them weren’t even why Monday was sometimes Thursday but more why Monday and Thursday were similar.  A couple of the reasons I found were so similar I had to edit them to ensure they were separate reasons.  It became an excuse pile to try and bail myself out of having missed the Thursday Thirteen in the first place.  I was becoming very sad.  I finally just kept my post in draft and slept on it.  Waking up today I realize that it was foolish and have deleted the draft so that I can move on and keep up my blogging.

So, having written this blog entry, I feel much better.

Obsess Much?

Ha! I couldn’t help but steal the title from my good friend Christine at her site.  I’m self tagging to write 5 things I obsess over:

1.  Gaming:  I can’t even put this one lower on the list.  I have a facination with the complexities programmed into the great games that are made in this age.  My current fav. game has to be World of Warcraft.  What a time consumer.
2. Writing:   I’m constantly thinking about my story and where I’m taking it.  I’m reviewing how it’s progressing, I’m reviewing the next chapter that I’m writing (on hold at the moment), I’m reviewing how the rest of the story is going to pan out, I’m reviewing what I’m going to have to change, I’m even contemplating having that first review by someone else.  *shudder*
3. My Wife:  What!?!  I can’t help it.  She’s just so gosh darn….lovable.  I just can’t help but give her a hug when she’s within reach.
4. Computers:  Perhaps I was a mainframe in a previous life.
5. My Kids:  Okay, it’s not that they are the last thing on my list because they rank that low.  They are great kids.  I love to have fun with them every day.  We wrestle, game, play imaginary games, socialize, bike, learn, read and watch TV together.  And with that, I think having them at this part in my list leaves all of you readers with a warm fuzzy feeling.

Keeping up with the Browns

Wow, I start hooking up into some of the blogging community such as Thursday Thirteen and suddenly my visibility climbs.  Now I have to make sure that I create something interesting on my blog for everyone to read.  I don’t know if I can keep up with the pressure.  I mean how do you create something different and interesting all at the same time?  At least my Thursday Thirteen should be interesting.

I just need to keep working at this blog engine and train it to behave the way I want it to behave.  If I can just keep the thing from messing up the flow then I should be good.  First thing on my list is to figure out how to let those comments come through without having to moderate every single one of them.  Need to find options…..

Thursday Thirteen #2 – My Morning

I’m starting to get the hang of the Thursday Thirteen thing so here is a list of my morning.

Thirteen Things about what I do in the morning Hit the snooze button on the alarm clock. I don’t know what it is but I need that extra 9 minutes of sleep. Have a shower. I’m generally a pretty clean person. I like the fresh feeling of being clean first thing in the morning. I also think this helps me wake up in the morning. Put in my contacts. Yay! I can see again. Dress in the dark. This is more difficult than it seems. I can usually find all the stuff that I need however I don’t keep my socks together so finding a match can be difficult. Why in the dark? I get up before my wife and I try not to wake her. Sneak down stairs. If I can get downstairs without waking anyone (presuming my shower didn’t wake them), I get to have my morning to myself. Make some breakfast. I don’t do the eggs and bacon thing. I’m more of a cereal or bagel and cream cheese type guy. Clean up the kitchen. This doesn’t generally involve much. Most of the big stuff has been handled from the night before. I do want to make sure that I don’t leave the kitchen a mess for my wife when she gets up. Get my pocket things. This includes my wallet, bus pass and office access badge. There have been days when I’ve forgotten my office access badge and have had to wait outside for someone else to let me in. Brush my teeth. Have to keep those pearly whites! Collect my gear. I need to make sure I have my stuff that I bring to work each day. Grab coat and shoes. Obviously I won’t need my coat when the weather starts to get warmer. Shut the lights off in the house. No need to waste electricity if nobody is up yet. Re-arm the security system and lock the door as I leave. Links to other Thursday Thirteens! Christine d’Abo – What I do as I’m editing (leave your link in comments, I’ll add you here!)

Get the Thursday Thirteen code here!The purpose of the meme is to get to know everyone who participates a little bit better every Thursday. Visiting fellow Thirteeners is encouraged! If you participate, leave the link to your Thirteen in others comments. It’s easy, and fun! Be sure to update your Thirteen with links that are left for you, as well! I will link to everyone who participates and leaves a link to their 13 things. Trackbacks, pings, comment links accepted!View More Thursday Thirteen Participants

Silencing the Noise

Ever notice how noisy a workplace gets?  I work in an office and I sometimes find it amazing how much noise we live with on a day to day basis.  The excessive whine of 30+ computers struggling to stay cool and the groan of the air conditioning system keeping the air moving in the building is enough to drive one crazy.  Add to that the fridge in the lunch room and the occasional fan pushing air and soon you can’t think straight.

Thankfully there is a solution to all this.  Noice cancelling earphones.  Luckly you can then pipe music into your ears or you would probably go crazy in the silence.