And I’m trying to stick to opening ‘Liferea’ every time I logon. I’ll try to stay more informed.
Long period of silence brought on by frustration and laziness. I have just gotten my new office workstation setup to blog from so there should be more daily posts.
I may even start getting more personal (oh snap) with the content. Like this!
So early in the week I go visit some friends. It is a married couple that consists of a retired mechanical engineer and a retired airport manager. They’re some of the coolest, most down to earth people you’ve ever met. Their house is located 10-15 minutes out of “town” and I love going there. It’s one of those, take this highway to this road, take this road allllllll the way down until you see this dirt road on your right, take that dirt road about three or four miles, look for this tiny mailbox at a dirt/grass path that runs off to the right of the road, take that path about a half a block and look for a set of tire tracks that wonder off to the left between some pine trees, follow that path around until you see the front porch, type of trips. Their home was something they’ve been building for years. The guy is an engineer and he’s been using steel/iron to create the frame structure of the house with standard wood walls and floors. It has at least three ponds on the property as well as a “pet” gator and turtle. The majority of the outside of the house is glass which makes for a great view of their little paradise. Anyways, I have a tremendous amount of respect for the lifestyle of these two people. It honestly looks to me like a lifestyle that I would love to live, albeit in a different part of the country or world (can you tell I’m not the biggest fan of Florida?).
I’ve also been doing a lot of stepping back and taking a bigger picture review of my life, accomplishments, and goals. This week I spoke to some people at the local college and found I’m four classes from my degree. I’ve never realized just how close I got. I will be watching for the new class schedule to come out in the next week or so and will start class in May. I could possibly have my degree in August. How amazing would that be? On the same sort of note, I’ve been doing a lot of soul searching to figure out the best career path. I think I may end up using my IT background to enhance another field of work which I could study after I finish my degree here. What I’m currently looking at is either architectural engineer or civil engineer. Either way, I want to be taught the skills of designing something big from the ground up. I have goals of one day designing a geodesic based green home that is completely off the grid and self-sustaining as well as a mid-engine, rear wheel drive, 4 cylinder, turbo-diesel car. This probably sounds completely idiotic to most people reading this but hey, this is what keeps me up at night and drives me during the day. I’ve heard people that are incredibly wealthy and successful tell me that what you do for a living should keep you awake at night and give a drive you can never fake and is the secret to success.
Co-workers have returned. Ambition to write blog is now gone. That is all for now.
Jan 15
So I’m three weeks deep into coming back from my vacation. I have been double and triple booked and not enjoying it. I am also finding myself committing time and effort into projects I know I won’t have time for. I am taking a break from that for a while.
I did find some family I haven’t talked to in forever on Myspace. Hopefully it’ll bring my daily focus back to family and friends and less on work and bills. That’s what it is all about anyways, right?
A reader has given me a wonderful link. It is the Christchurch City Libraries site. This should fill my free time effectively. Thanks to Sally for that one.
I have also been looking into starting a tattoo sleeve. I know the first thing I want to get done is an owl for my grandmother who passed many years ago. Now I just have to decide on which kind of owl and find an artist to draw it up! The future tattoos will probably be at least the Maori phrase Ko Te Houora and some art from Maori to create the lower band around my arm above my elbow. I’m very excited about this but I have to be patient (you know that whole permanent thing? yeah… ).
Yesterday I spent some time sorting the photos I have accumulated in the last 6-7 years. Almost a momentary time-warp when looking at ancient pictures of myself and family. Very cool to see progress and very eye-opening to see where it lacked.
More to come!
I’ve done a bit of prettying up the site. On the sidebar I have added a Flickr feed that pulls from the group ‘NZ’ (New Zealand… doy!) as well as a Digg widget. Very interesting foray into Javascript and CSS. Maybe Java and C++ should wait on me mastering Ajax? Next item is to add a small music player and find someone to supply some music! One of these days…
This marks the beginning of this blog. What to expect? Hell if I know.
