Tuesday, July 31, 2012

Metallica Plays "Ride the Lightening"

After 68 days...

Consistency. That's the thing. There's not a lot of it in the graph below.

Monday, July 30, 2012

Come Together

Happy Moving On...

Life happily moves along. The next two weeks are insanely busy, between the kids going to a Cubs game with their Grandma and Grandpa and returning to Elkader soon. We also have our college get-together on Saturday. Looking forward to 19 years of marriage on Tuesday, the 7th, and to Megan's birthday the following week.

I wouldn't have it any other way.

On top of all that, I continue with the conversions to MP3. The replacement cassette to MP3 device arrived and I will try to get back to it tomorrow night. I have a lot of cassettes to convert so I need to keep up.

On WWE, AJ is now the General Manager and she just made the main event at SummerSlam. It will be a triple threat between CM Punk, John Cena, and Big Show. Gee, who didn't see that one coming? BORING... Put the Miz in the mix, please.

Joke

At a Wisconsin wedding reception, the D.J. yelled, "Would all married men please stand next to the one person who has made your life worth living."

The bartender was almost crushed to death, but is expected to survive.

What are They Thinking?

Here's a tour schedule. It makes ZERO sense to go from Lawrence, KS east to St. Louis, then back to Omaha, NE. What are these people thinking? Do they not have a map?

And, once again, where is a stop in Iowa?!?

Thursday, July 26, 2012

Wednesday, July 25, 2012

Life Continues

  • I like the pace of the conversion. Both last night and tonight, I have been blistering through CDs while I wait the cassette to MP3 converter replacement.
  • Work was pretty good today. I worked on a project that I had kind of procrastinated working on. It was kind of easy work - creating new help files, writing some basic content, updating a mapping file, and that's about all.
  • Yesterday, I also sat in a demo of a new system that is coming out in 2013. I am excited about writing the documentation for that system.
  • The best part of my life is that I love my work. I have zero desire to go anywhere anywhere except to where I've been going since 5/31/11. It's amazing to think about - job satisfaction.

Tuesday, July 24, 2012

Status

Walking, walking, walking, and yet, I'm here, writing, writing, writing.

Comics

The fact that someone is talented enough to draw the following cartoon is inspiring. I can barely draw stick people.

Monday, July 23, 2012

What Happened?

Life sometimes is just that. Life. There are too many things that need to be done. I was offline after my last post until, well, today.

Tonight, though, should be a good night. The 1000th episode of WWE Raw is on at 7 PM and it starts with the Degeneration X reunion, which should feature HHH and HBK. Maybe Billy Gunn will show up since the Internet wrestling sites say he has arrived in St. Louis.

I plan to sit down @ 7 and, except for a phone call @ 8 PM, I do not plan to move from the couch in the basement. I hope it does not disappoint!

My CD & Cassette to MP3 conversion sits at 44365 and while I wait for a new cassette converter, I will keep myself busy with rewinding cassettes and calculating how many hours each box (15 total) will require. I have it mapped out to be done by 10/31/2014 or 2 years, 3 months, 1 week, 1 day, from now. Halloween in 2014 is on a Friday. It is also 830 days away.

Monday, July 16, 2012

One a Day Until 2013

Without really meaning to do so, I've now done myself into a corner. My goal of hitting 1000 posts by 12/31/2012 means I have to post one blog entry a day for the rest of 2012. The challenge, of course, comes later this week when I will be off-line for at least 3 days. Maybe I can set up one of those auto-post thingies. I'll look at that later tonight.

Today, like last Monday, was pretty damn good. My work really rocks my world. I love being in meetings with my department and sharing ideas about what we should do and what we envision the future looks like for our product documentation. I've been with the company now for 1 year, 1 month, 2 weeks, 2 days, and time literally flies by during the day.

Right before I left, I began a project that will involve taking an existing manual, let's say Client A, and then changing all of those references to Client B. That was the easy part. The real work comes when I access Client B's system and modify the existing documentation to match what is actually in their system. And then, when that piece is done, I will tag the huge "single source" document with Client B's information so that whatever tool we end up with will be able to generate a manual that has Client B's information.

I saw this picture today:

I also cannot get enough of this song by TurboNegro:



I also have 44386 MP3s and WAV files. I have ceased converting cassettes because the fucking thing STOPPED WORKING and I have to send it back. This is the 3rd time.

Tuesday, July 10, 2012

Shaken out of the Tree

I felt like a kid last Thursday (6 days ago). I walked into Slackers, came out with 25 CDs and wow! I felt like I had hit the jackpot.

I'm back down to earth.

How the hell did I miss a band called "The Black Keys?" Where have I been? What is this

Sunday, July 8, 2012

Step Status Stupendously Seen

The last two days were not good for stepping, as shown below:
However, I do not see that trend continuing as I return to work tomorrow. My co-workers and I are pretty rigid regarding going for at least a walk in the AM. Sometimes, the PM walk doesn't happen due to just getting busy with the things that need to get done during the day.

The St. Louis 25 but Only showing 24...

Before we left for a weekend at Elkader on Friday AM, I ripped the St. Louis 25 CDs to my 1 TB external hard drive. A careful eye will detect only 24 folders, but that is because Windows Media Player (which is the software I use to rip CDs to MP3) classified two CDs as having the artist called "Various Artists" and put two CDs worth of music into the same folder. There are two sub-folders under "Various Artists" but I'm not showing them in the capture below.
Of all those bands, the only one I've heard of previous to buying these 25 is Spock's Beard. I'm 99% sure I have one of their CD but I have not ripped it to MP3 yet. I'm sure I will sometime.

This AM, I thought about the cassette to MP3 conversion. I will collect my thoughts and post again soon. How's that for a tease?

Thursday, July 5, 2012

Chesterfield Mall (Paradise)

We went to St. Louis for the 4th of July. We left on Monday.

Monday - Budweiser brewery & Alex and I went to a Cardinals game (they won) and sat 7 rows from the field. The seats were behind where the shortstop plays.
Tuesday - Arch & City Museum
Wednesday - Zoo
Thursday - Chesterfield Mall on the way home.

While each day has its own highlights, in my mind, going to the Chesterfield Mall was the highlight today. I didn't enter the mall with a lot of optimism. My initial thoughts were to find a bench, hopefully with a cushion, and bide my time until such a point in time that Megan and Karen would be done with a store called "Charming Charlies." I believe, however, that someone is looking out for me. I walked into the mall first and directly across from the door was a store called Slackers. It was a comic book, music, and video store. I knew things would be okay.

Upon entering Slackers, I saw a lot of things I wanted to buy. I always pause at the DVD box sets and think about buying the existing seasons (1-3) of "How I Met Your Mother" or a season of "ER" or even a season or two of "MASH." Today, like most other days, I walked past those temptations down the CD aisle. I saw the new Offspring and considered that as a purchase, but decided to return to it.

I'm glad I did. there was what can only be described as a plethora of CDs in a wooden rack. There were probably 12 shelves with each shelf holding at least 20 CDs. There was a sign on this rack: 25 CDs for $10. My heart skipped a beat. I started looking.

I walked out of Slackers with 25 CDs. I picked up a Spock's Beard from 2000 (V) and the other 24? I had never heard of them. As I write this, I am ripping them to MP3 and doing so randomly. The order in which they are ripped is the order in which I will write a review of them. My hope is to submit a review each week. We'll see how that goes as a challenge!