Working On A Sunday (and Monday)

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This weekend was a 3 day weekend (4 days if you count the day off I took Friday). I wouldn’t have know that if I looked at what I did this weekend. See I worked all day yesterday and today. I actually just finished up a call a few minutes ago. That means I was working on and off since 10 AM this morning. Fun. If that wasn’t enough fun, I worked from about 11:30 AM to about 9 PM last night also. I had problems with something at work that required attention. I don’t like days like this, but I also know that days like the last two come with the job. That doesn’t really make you feel much better when a weekend is ruined, but it is true.

I didn’t have major plans yesterday but I wanted to do some shopping. That was out. I didn’t plan on it, but Beata wanted to goto dinner tonight and I couldn’t because of a planned call I had, that actually turned into two calls that lasted about two and a half hours. Having to cancel or avoid making plans because of unplanned after hour work is not fun.

Now I am sitting on my bed with my netbook writting this post and some other stuff, while listening to music. I am trying to unwind from the crazyness I had all day and get ready for sleep so I can get up and start the real work week!

On top of all the craziness that went on, I also ended up taking some migraine medication since I started getting a head ache this morning. All in all a stressful semi depressing weekend.

Friday TV

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Since I was being lazy Friday night, I watched a bunch of TV. I went through my Tivo and watched a bunch of stuff I missed since I had plans most of the week. After watching most of the good stuff (still a ton of crap on there) I watched some semi live TV. I say semi live since I don’t start watching anything until it has been on for at least 15 minutes so I can safely fast forward through the commercials. Gotta love Tivo!

I ended up watching the first episode of Dollhouse. It was pretty good, but lets see if Fox cancels it like they did the last Joss Whedon show. For now it is programed into my Tivo.

I also watched the latest episode of Battlestar Galactica. It was really good this week. I though John Hodgman as the brain surgeon was great. I loved his little bit of comedy in his scenes. I am not sure if he was supposed to be funny but he was. The regular doc is always funny so he fit right in.

So Far, A Lazy Weekend

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Today was a total lazy day. I got up around noon after only going to bed at around 11:30 last night. I didn’t do that many productive things today and I am very happy about it. I did clean my apartment a bit, scanned and shredded some documents, and ordered a printer. Other than that I was pretty lazy.

I don’t mind being lazy since I was so busy during the week. I had plans Monday, Tuesday, & Thursday this week. I almost had plans Friday but I was so tired I decided not to go out. I like going back and forth between really busy and lots of lull time to relax. I know by Monday I will be a bit bored but for now I am living it up. For me this is a 4 day weekend. I took off yesterday, and I have Monday off as a holiday. With the 7 train not running tomorrow I will probably have a lazy day then too. I don’t have anything so pressing that I want to deal with shuttle bus’s and lots of waiting tomorrow.

OK, now off to bed!

Printing

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I find myself spending money this weekend on a printer and all the accessories that go with it (extra ink, paper, etc) even though I avoid printing at all costs. I currently own an HP LaserJet 1200 that I bought way back in 2002. Back then I couldn’t stand to use an ink jet printer. The Laser Jet still prints black and white copies perfectly 6 years later. That is the problem. It prints black and white copies only. If don’t print much, but more and more the things I have wanted to print are in color. I have recently been thinking about upgrading one of the oldest pieces of gear that I have.

I looked at color laser printers, but decided not to go that route. HP had a nice one that wasn’t much more than what I ended up spending but it was a huge workgroup printer. Laser Toner also would be really expensive especially since I don’t print that much. I looked at several multi function printers and ended up buying an HP OfficeJet J6480. It got really good reviews from Cnet. I liked that it could be used as a flat bed scanner, and it had wireless networking. Both functions I wanted and it worked with my Mac. It wasn’t the cheapest multi-function printer out there, but it had some of the best reviews and the wifi was the final deciding factor for me. I should hopefully have it by mid week.

Day Off, Not Really

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Today I took the day off. The problem is that I might not have worked, but I didn’t really get a day off out of this. I got up earlier than I normally do for work so I could be at my accountant by 8:15AM. He worked his typical magic and I got back more this year than last year. I attribute that to more $ I put into the 401k, but whatever the reason I am happy I got more back. I wasn’t so happy that he didn’t see me personally. This guy is so busy he has assistants (lackies). Due to a scheduling snafu I didn’t see him but someone else. Typically I see the main guy but since my return went up I didn’t make a big deal about it. The fee went up again this year but when you are getting like 15 times the fee in a return you don’t really complain.

After the tax’s were done I grabbed a capachinno at Starbucks and then headed home for a few hours. I then had to head out to two doctors appointments. I had some checkups I needed to goto as follow up to my incident in October. Apparently they figured out (or think they did) what caused everything that happened in October. If I do what they tell me, I should be fine, yay!

Unfortunately two doctor appointments took up the entire afternoon, so I just ended up going home to crash instead of heading out to Blaggards to meet up with some friends.

Coctails and Steaks

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Today was a hectic day at work. I was in the office and my NY (NJ) team was also in. That means even more meetings than normal. Well, not really since every day this week was 100% filled with some meeting or another. After work there was a meet and greet at one of the other offices downtown. I walked over with some of the people from my office. It was a nice get together. I got to meet a few people I never have actually meet, but have spoken to on the phone dozens of time. That is always nice.

I had to cut out of the meet and greet slightly early to head uptown. I meet Beata and two of her friends for dinner at the Kobe Lounge. They had a restaurant week price fix going on. I never have done the restaurant week thing. I am not a fan of the limited menu’s of the price fix. This was good since if there wasn’t a price fix there is a good chance wouldn’t have ever gone to eat there. The food was fantastic but I don’t see the value of spending a ridiculous amount of money for a few ounces of special beef. My typical thinking is as long as i can still find a good steak for under $50 I am happy. What can I say I have simple food tastes! Overall I had a blast. I think I got along well with Beata’s friends and like I said the food was really good.

I took tomorrow off, but I still have to get up early to goto my accountant so I am now off to bed.

Dating

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This is the first post in a long while where I bring up a relatively overlooked topic on this site, dating. I decided long ago when I started dating I wouldn’t really talk about it in my blog. The reasons are many hopefully obvious reasons. It is easy not to talk about individual dates hear and there. My dilemma is what do you do when you find yourself entering into a relationship with someone? Did I just say relationship? Wow, kinda not sure else how to categorize, it so yeah.

So what do you do when your personal life involves someone else more and more? I figure I can blank out that part of my life from writing about, or I can openly include it. For the past several weeks I didn’t know 100% where things were going, so it was an easy decision to leave out things. After several weeks of getting to know someone and liking what you learn, I guess you want to write about it. That and the more you go out with someone the less I have to write about other things since I spend more time with her. It has started making writing a bit more difficult.

What I decided to do was just write about everything anyway and not post anything. That way I can still write. Ironically I was discussing with her writing about a party we went to for her birthday this Saturday that I said I wouldn’t post anything right now. I also offered to let her read what I wrote. I was slightly surprised when she said she didn’t mind me posting things if I wanted to. I guess that is why I like her in the first place. She is really cool.

So here I am writing about a girl for the first time in years. It is kind of awkward, but really cool at the same time. Her name is Beata. I meet her online. There was a time when I would be embarrassed to say that, but I have come to think that online dating is a great tool.

The Big 30

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It was Beata’s birthday yesterday. She turned 30. She had a bunch of friends meet up at Mixx for drinks. I had a good time. It was my first time meeting Beata’s friends, but they all seemed cool. After Mixx a bunch of us headed over to the Delancey Lounge. Apparently Beata’s sister worked there and we got in without waiting on the line. I typically don’t goto clubs like that, and I certainly don’t get to avoid the line so it was a nice change of pace. The first floor was super crowded. We were able to head upstairs and it wasn’t as bad. We found some seats in the back and relaxed for a while. I don’t think anyone was drinking by this point.

We called it a night and I got a ride back to the Canal Street subway station.

Lazy Sunday

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The 7 train isn’t running this weekend. That meant I had an interesting time getting home late last night / early this morning. I had to take the Q to Queens-borough Plaza and wait for a shuttle bus to take me to my stop. What could be a short trip took over an hour with all the waiting. I didn’t get home till after 2:30AM and into bed until after 3.

I didn’t get up until after 12. I felt like crap. That is what happens when I mess up my sleeping patterns. I had breakfast and felt a bit better. Thankfully today is/was a lazy day. I am doing some laundry and hanging out. It is nice out, but I just want to relax so I haven’t been out today.

Since I have no food in the house apparently I am debating on what to order for dinner.

iLife 2009

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I have been using iPhoto as my photo editing and archiving software of choice for several years now, and although it isn’t perfect it is the best that I have found. Earlier this week I got iLife 09 specifically for iPhoto 09. The two main features that got my curiosity peaked is the faces and GPS features. With my iPhone I am capturing the GPS coordinates of all my camera photos so the GPS feature in iPhoto seems cool. I am still a bit gun shy to post GPS coordinates on all my photos to Flickr, but for me to have them and publish to my friends is cool.

The really interesting feature in iPhoto 09 is Faces. That is what is hopefully worth the cost of the software. I have been tagging and labeling my entire photo album for a while. It is always a work in progress. With the Faces function I can label all my photos in one shot. As I write this post I am letting iPhoto scan my library to look for faces. Hopefully it will be easy to label after that.

The one downside I have with iPhoto is that all the photo detail (EXIF) data is not stored in the photo. That means if I export a photo it won’t have any tagged details that I put in iPhoto. Since I am a fan of data portability I don’t like that. Since I have started using iPhoto I keep a copy of all photos I put into iPhoto in a separate folder in case I have problems with my iPhoto files. I am glad I did this since I already have damaged my iPhone DB once and had to restore a several months old version. Without my regular backup I would have been out of luck.

So far the new version of the app looks decent, but I am not so sure if it is worth the cost? Only time will determine that.