Yes, I Went Bowling

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Last night I ended up going Bowling of all places. I don’t bowl very often, but whenever I do I have a good time. I went to Bowlmor near Union Square with a friend. We played 3 games. I was surprised I actually won all 3. My wrist hurt afterwards. I then remembered why i don’t go bowling very often. The wrist hurting happens. Oh well.

Also had drinks and dinner at the Heartland Brewery beforehand. That place is always fun. Work was typical craziness today. I was in the office today, but my team wasn’t. We switched the one day the local team meets to Thursday this week.

Another Long Monday

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Today started off on a negitive. Well lets face it, all Monday’s do, but this one started off with getting a call from work at 6:30. That is never good. It then was hectic for most of the morning and early afternoon. By then all of the excitment from the weekend was squared away. Then it was time to focus on other outstanding issues. I was thankful when it was after hours, even though I can’t recall where 3-5PM went!

I had to take something for a brewing Migraine. Thankfully the drugs worked, but I am not happy that I had to take something. I am trying to limit the meds, but major head ache makes you take stuff.

Other than that the evening was ok. I cooked up some crab cakes for dinner. Checked my mail and tried to clean off some shows built up on my Tivo.

The Work Weekend

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I had to work this weekend. It wasn’t just work, but I had to be onsite at a data center for all of Saturday. I can’t and won’t really talk about what I did, but it was allot of waiting, and then allot of work. During a lul in the work I left a little before 9PM. I got home before 10 and was back on a conference call regarding the work that was going on. Unfortunately things took allot longer than originally anticipated and I had to get on another call at midnight. It didn’t end until after 4AM.

I vaguely remember getting to bed around 4:30 and was up by 9:30 freaking that I slept past an alarm I had at 9AM for another call. Thankfully that call never happened anyway. I ended up working for the majority of the day until after 5. Thankfully everything worked out ok, but things were dicy for a while. I really would like to talk in more detail but I am mindful of the sensitivity of what I work with. So nothing more than the vague descriptions I gave.

Thankfully I was able to get a little rest in tonight before sitting down to write this. Now it is off to bed.

A Last Round Before Work

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I went to Blaggards for a quick round of drinks last night. I said it would be quick since I knew I had to get up really early for work tomorrow. 3 rounds in I knew it wasn’t going to be as quick a night as I thought. I did get home at a semi-resonable hour but I had more rounds than I planned. I didn’t sleep so hot because of that. I did get to see a bunch of friends, so I was happy.

Getting the rental car this morning was painless, that is why I like Zipcar. The trip to New Jersey wasn’t so bad, but even at 9AM there was some light traffic. 10 miles takes 40 minutes with little traffic on in NYC.

From Unlimited to 900 Minutes a Month

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Back in August I wrote about how I was saving by using Skype instaed of my mobile phone when at home.

I also finally canceled my Broadvoice account over the summer. It wasn’t because I was unhappy with the service. I was, in fact they were always great. I would recomend them to friends looking for a VOIP phone. I just didn’t use the service that much so it wasn’t worth spending the $8 or so a month that it cost to have the cheapest plan. I also was using Skype more and Skype was cheaper and provided more options for me. It wasn’t an easy choice but eventually Skype won out and I dropped Broadvoice.

Up until August I had switched to an unlimited Mobile phone plan so I could use my Mobile as my only phone and not have to worry about number of minutes used. This was nice and easy but also about $40 more expensive per month than I was previously paying for Mobile voice service.

Now I am using Skype out for my calls when I am at home, and I am routing most of my work calls through GrandCentral so I can select what phone I want them to ring at. This has decreased my Mobile minutes used by allot. I probably could get by with only 450 minutes a month but I have yet taken the plunge and switched to that cheap of a plan. I am sticking with the 900 minutes I have had but I use less and less each month. It is weird since I have relied on my mobile as basically my only phone for years. I have been thinking about going back to the unlimited mobile service because it is just easier to deal with, but for now I am enjoying cheaper service with Skype!

South Street Seaport

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Went out tonight to the South Street Seaport for dinner with a friend. It was nice. There was a fantastic view of the bridges in the snow. Really cool. The walk to the Seaport was really cold though! It was a good end to a really fun weekend. Now I need to unwind a bit before work tomorrow. No snow photos since it was really cold and I didn’t think to break out the camera phone!

For a change of pace I will work from home tomorrow and then go into the office on Wednesday and Thursday. Well it isn’t really a change of pace, since my schedule changes week to week.

The Day Off

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I have today off for Martin Luther King day! In the past I have worked at companies that didn’t give this as a day off so I am happy to have an extra day to relax. This is especially good since next Saturday I have to be at work in New Jersey for probably 18+ hours for some disaster recovery drills. Not fun but it doesn’t happen that often so it should hopefully go ok.

I am not sure what I am going to do today. I hopefully with think of something!

Live With WordPress

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My site is now live with WordPress. They typepad version of the site still exists for now at http://powerz.typepad.com/. I am still tweaking some of the plugin’s for my WordPress install, but so far things are working ok. The hardest problem is getting my Feedburner RSS feeds to be the default feed for my blog when you click on the RSS icon.

I am still trying to find a better theme than the one I have, but for now it will do. More updates as I tweak the site.

The WordPress Plunge

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I have talked about it a ton of times over several years but I am finally taking the leap and moving my blog to WordPress. I have been very happy with Typepad over the years but the flexibility of WordPress is bringing me over. I tried to build an instance of Moveable Type to port my blog into but I had issues with it on two different hosting providers. WordPress was easy to setup, almost too easy since I started and stopped working on a site at least a half a dozen times. I finally found and configured all of the widgets I wanted that I have with Typepad. I also found decent themes that make the site look good.

As I write this my hosting provider Lunar Pages is making some minor DNS changes so I they can host the DNS for my powerz.org domain yet I can continue to host my mail elsewhere. That will enable the URL I currently point to Typepad to point to my hosting account with all my other domain names. Actually since I am writing this entry on my WordPress site, by the time you read this I will already be running on the new site.

The good news for me is if I change my mind or end up not being happy with my choice to move to WordPress, I can always move back to Typepad. I paid for the service through the beginning of November. I know bad timing on my part, but I will wait till the Fall to cancel just in case I get cold feet.

One noticeable downside of my new setup is I see a bit of sluggishness with my site loading. I am not sure if it is the server my account is on, or if it is just wordpress being slow?