Personal

Air Hockey

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I went to Jillian’s last night with Alison. That place is a fun diversion, but only after 10PM. Before 10, it is filled with kids. After 10, it is 21 and over. I had a good time even though I got beaten at air hockey 3 times:( I would be lying if I said it was a close three games. I got beat bad 2 out of 3 of them. I am going to stick with Skee ball and foose ball. Not sure if that is how you spell it, but I always liked foose ball. Of course I blame the lack of alcohol on my air hockey loss.

We had dinner at TGI Fridays. As homer simpson would say: Mmmmm jack Daniel’s grill.

The Big Three O.

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My birthday is next week. I turn 30. Not exactly a super happy birthday for me. I feel like I am getting old. You know why? Because I am getting old.

I am more worried about the fact that my sister called me last night wanting to know my work address. She is like I don’t have it, what is it? Now I don’t believe in coincidence’s. My birthday, plus her asking about my address at work = she is going to send something to work. I am all for celebrating my birthday, but in a low key way. Now I am worried.

The next weird thing is my brother in law called today asking if I wanted to go out for dinner tonight with them. that is also curious. No complaints about hanging with them, but they don’t exactly go out all the time since they have a 1 year old. I will see what time I get home from the train station and I will decide if I will go to eat with them.

The other down side of this birthday is that I will be the first of my friends to turn 30. In college I was the first of my friends in my year that turned 21. That was a good birthday. This isn’t so good because until everyone else turns 30 I will get the I am an old guy jokes:)

Other than that, I am looking forward to my B Day. I always do. It is right before St. Patrick’s day, and right after the eyes (not spelling it correctly) of march. I think it is like a 3 day holiday!

I Am Back

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I have not written in a while. I was sick with the flu for almost all of last week. I am finally back and felling alive again. It was hard to believe but I think I was worse off last week than I was when I was sick in October. Lets just hope it is completely over.

I lost like 5 – 10 pounds last week. I need to switch belts because the one I am using is too big. Unfortunately this phenomenon will be short lived. I will gain the weight back in a few weeks. it will be nice while it lasts.

The Treo 600 Shipped

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I got an email a few hours ago saying my long awaited Treo 600 finally shipped out today. Fedex says that it will arrive tomorrow (Tuesday). Hopefully they are right. I hope I actually get good use of it. From what I saw when I had the AT&T Treo 600 for two days in november I think I will be happy. I will know tomorrow.

Maybe A New iPod???

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I have been pondering purchasing a new iPod. I like the one I have, but I am running low on disk space. Unfortunately I don’t use the iPod as much as I would like to, but sometimes it is a life saver on the train. I am trying to figure out if it is worth it to upgrade. I would make a few $$$ on my old one, and the new one would have a bigger hard drive.

I have over 9 GIG’s of music now. In order for me to get everything I want on my current iPod and still have drive space for other stuff I need to filter playlists in order to keep the music under 8 GIG’s.

I am starting to use the iPod as a portable hard drive. it is nice to drop stuff on it, and plug it in at work and use it. As a portable hard drive it is a bit expensive, but as a music player / personal storage, it is nice.

Instead of buying the new one, I am also looking at spending AMEX points for one. Not sure if I want to waste points on gear. A decision is forthcoming…

The Early Train

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Now that Jayson is gone you would think I would leave my house normal time. Think again. Today I got up and ended up on the early train. It is funny because 2 years ago this early train was the normal train I got on, but now to me it is the early one.

Hung out most of the day sunday. I got Quicken to finally work on the Mac. I even figured out most of the online banking issues I was having.

Meet Alison for dinner. We ended up at Chillis. We always try to go there after the movies and never stay since the line is so long. Today we hung out for 30 minutes and got a table. It was a nice low key dinner.

I was going to see my family during the day, but my mom and sister took morgan shopping and they didn’t get back until after I left for my plans, so I missed them. Morgan is walking now. I can’t wait to see her. She is so CUTE!!!

Cleaning Up

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Jayson has gone back to New Orleans. I cleaned up my place a bit Saturday. It is still a mess, but it is better than before. It wasn’t that he makes a mess, but I am not used to having others staying for a week. The air mattress in the living room was difficult enough to navigate around.

I need to find time to do my laundry now. Hopefully I will do it during the week.

Now that Jay is gone I need to figure out when I can actually go visit him and Gretchen. February is almost over and March is looking busy.

Quicken

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I am a long time quicken user. I have been using it since at least 1995. I have almost every version since then. I have also used Turbo Tax like 3 times. I am a huge fan. The problem I am running into is that I now have Mac’s. I used to only have a PC, so moving my quicken data from one PC to another was as simple as copying the files. Now if I want to use Quicken on my Mac I have to convert it. As simple as Intuit claims it is, it is not so simple.

Back in Oct/Nov 2002 I converted my quicken data to run on my Powerbook. Once converted it was not simple to continue using my PC files. So I just left a copy on my PC and used my Powerbook. In AuGust of 2003 I decided I wanted to have both a PC and a Mac copy of my files. I like having options. I converted everything back to PC format. It takes several hours because out of thousands of transactions at least a few don’t convert. Then you have to spend time figuring out what one didn’t. Once done converting I never did keep updating my Mac version.

Since AuGust I have been running Quicken only on my thinkpad. Now I decided I want it back on my Powerbook. Once again I have to go through the whole conversion process. This time it wasn’t as bad as before, but I still had some problems. Most related to how the two different quicken programs keep investment information. Intuit should get their act together and keep the feature set’s of both products the same. On the plus side I found an error in how I recorded some stock information. That I guess is the silver lining in my whole ordeal.

My last gripe with Quicken for the Mac is that sometimes it has problems moving the file from one machine to another. When I migrated to a new computer last year I couldn’t open my old data file. I had to export the data and create a new file and import the old data. it was a stupid waste of time. Hopefully they fixed the problem in the 2004 version that came pre-installed on my newest Mac.

The Game Place

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Rich, Amanda and I went to Jillian’s. it is a game complex out on the island near Roosevelt Field Mall. It is cool. you can do arcade games, play pool, bowling, skeet ball and other stuff. They are on a budget, and I should be so for $20 we got an evening of fun and entertainment. We didn’t realize how late it was when we wanted to go bowling. We decided to put that off for another time.

Jillian’s is not as good as Dave n buster’s, but it is allot closer to everyone. I went to a Dave n buster’s in Chicago. it is really cool. Same concept but I think they do it better. It is just expensive.

We went to a decent Mediterranean restaurant in the source mall for dinner. I still have to get used to getting my meat on a stick!

We grabbed cheese cake from the Cheese Cake Factory for take home desert. it was awsome as always. I had the special edition godiva chocolate cheese cake. I still have half of it left. I am saving it:)

Busy, Busy, Busy

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Yesterday was very busy. it was one of those days that you don’t remember where I spent most of my time, but I looked up at it was 3:30PM already.

Today and tomorrow will probibly be just as busy. Stuff is going on I cannot really discuss just yet, but the work will keep Keith and I busy for a while.

Jayson went to Dave’s again last night. His mom was cooking dinner. I declined to go. I was tired and had things to do around the house. I got some stuff done, but ended up watching some stuff I had on Tivo. I have not had a chance to watch much TV since last week, so I have allot of stuff on the tivo I have to see or take the chance that it will be overwritten soon.

Tonight Jay and I may goto Angilo & Maxie’s. it is a really good steakhouse right by my office. I need to talk with him later about it to see if he is still up for it.