L linked this to me earlier today... it is freaking hilarious!

http://www.palinaspresident.us/

So, since moving to Colorado I have been working from home.

When my partner and I left downtown Minneapolis (where I grew up) last March after living there for only six months (long story, suffice to say a combination of my crazy mother, some old high-school friends best left in high school, and a level of winter cold the North Carolina girl didn't believe was possible), I was offered to keep my job there in Mpls and just work from home here in Colorado.

Considering at the time, neither of us would have employment once we reached here the choice was obvious... they even shipped my computer here to meet us! I told myself this was temporary, until I could get a job I liked with a software company out here. But... almost 8 months later, I still work from home.

There are obvious advantages... can wear pj's to work, only shave for weekends and going out, and my cats sleep on my lap while working. Plus you can't beat the commute or the savings in gas.

But it can be amazingly isolating and very easy to get distracted. Plus, since I cannot easily maintain a presence at the company, many of the project managers are not very communicative, and I get little in the way of feed-back, I get paranoid I'll be up and fired one of these days. Actually, it is probably mostly my paranoia, but I find that if my mood is dark, it is far TOO easy to slack-off and get behind on projects. But I haven't really missed any deadlines recently...
I guess my biggest concern is simply this company and the technologies they work with are simply not the direction I want to go with my career... and I haven't gotten a raise since I started over 13 months ago.

So I am trying to study now to renew my Java certification so that I can move more into web services and more OOP design... most of the jobs in the area pay better than the one I currently have (even though I'll have to start at entry level again most likely), and some of the companies in Boulder look like the could be a lot of fun to work in.

Now to try to focus on studying!

So, about two months ago my then fiancee and I were in the middle of the process of buying a house. It is a relatively quiet town of about 80k people about 25 minutes or so outside Boulder (and about and hour from the Rocky Mtn. National Park... which we still need to go to, lol). Great deal on it, ranch style, small fenced in yard for our dogs (we are up to three now), pool table in basement, huge den, etc. Right before signing the papers though, we realized that it would be useful if we actually got married first. We had been engaged for about 8 months, and had dated for almost two years before hand, so it was hardly spur of the moment...

So, neither of us wanted a ceremony; the stress, the cost, etc. Seems unnecessary. If you want a wedding, great, but the idea that you NEED one is inane to both of us. So, we headed out to the court house, paid the $10, signed the papers, said a few words, and wa-la, we were married. Turns out in Colorado you can marry yourself.

Honeymoon consisted in a sushi dinner and seeing the limited release Bleach anime movie. Eventually we will do a REAL honeymoon when the cash is available. Thinking about spending a weekend in a nice hotel up in the mountains or something to that effect. Maybe this fall, turns out that both of us will probably end up spending both Thanksgiving and X-mas here in CO.

Just remembered this journal.

Not much to say, other than I'm married now and own a house a stones-throw from the rocky mountains.

Hopefully I'll stop being lazy start using this again soon, I sort of miss LJ.

We're moving to Denver.

Yay!!

Well, people calling on some poor teacher to be executed by firing squad for naming a teddy bear Muhammad. Don't fuck with the religion of peace or they'll rip you a new one I guess.

...hmmm... I hope my Muhammad-embossed toilet-paper doesn't offend anyone.

So L and I started Taekwondo this week, and we are both sore. A good sore though!
We tried Shotokan Karate earlier this month, but lack of later classes and their very slooowww pace (hardy ever broke a sweat, didn't learn anything practical, and mostly were grouped with kids) we decided to give Taekwondo a try. Much more dynamic, more people, and fast-paced. Also, since they go by number of classes attended (instead of weeks active like the karate dojo we tried earlier), and test quite often, AND have later class times, we can easily go 2-4 times a week, and it will be possible to reach black belt in less than two years (in time to move out of Minneapolis, lol). Plus this center had been around since the mid-sixties and also teaches Northern Shaolin KungFu, Hapkido, and Kumdo -- so there are plenty of other options if we want to try them.

So, I work daily with computers, yet at home the only thing I have working currently is a 12" ibook (last version of the PowerPC chips). My desktop was damaged in the move, and L's (my fiancée) went wanky soon after. I suspect a virus, but neither of us were quick to jump on fixing it... it was a very good excuse to stop playing WoW altogether. I had more or less quit at this point, but she was struggling to, and was just starting her new job (at the time it was only three days a week), so it helped to re-focus away from crpg's.

It would, however, be nice to have a working box again, so I this weekend I will be installing Ubuntu on her crappy dell. I haven't mucked with Linux in way too long, and it would give me a chance to work on my Java certification and tear away some c++ cobwebs. I get people sending me offerers for jobs as a java programmer, and I'd LOVE to look into it more fully, however, I am rusty beyond belief in OOP. Those three years at Iowa State working in Oracle Forms and Reports were mostly a waste... only upshot was improving my SQL programming.

Still have an interest in moving out west in the next 1-2 years, get a better job. And/or get my MS in CS. We'll see. Can't get rich working jobs, or even with a career, but for now I just want to get out of debt and on stable footing.

Plus, Linus would give us a web-surfing + graphic design system without the danger of wow or other crap taking up time. Yay for self-denial!!! Just got to teach L how to use it. She's a smart girl though, spends her day mixing chemicals and playing with radiation in a lab. Learning how to websurf and use some basic features of a non-XP system should not fry her brain.

Revamping this journal.

Been a way long time since I used it or met any of the people on my friends list. If I drop you from my list, please don't be offended, it was not personal. Just drop me a message if you want back on.

There is a 50% chance I will start using this journal more regularly. ...and about a 50% chance I will delete it. Place your bets!


Anyway, to those reading, a few changes have occurred:

1) I left Iowa, never to return, and am temporarily living in downtown Minneapolis Minnesota working as a programmer/analyst to a company designing web-based clinical trials for medical research. It is actually very interesting work and pays decently. I work mostly with tcl and oracle sql, but I plan to get more involved with other languages with the desire to expand my resume and make my next career move more ambitious. It is undecided whether I will ever return to school, I have a rather low opinion of academia right now. But part of me does want to get my PhD someday. Maybe. Probably not, a master would be more than sufficient for my goals. Any way, I plan to move with my fiancée out of the Midwest in roughly two years, give or take as opportunity presents itself.

2) I am engaged to my long-time gf and best-friend. I can't believe I met her in Ames IA of all places -- just before she dropped out of her PhD program because Ames sucks. I got lucky there. Very. Had we not met when we did, she would have moved back east to Maryland when she is from, and that would be that.

3) Gave up all things World of Warcraft related, and similar games that draw you into self-crushing sub-realities and masquerades that are designed to never end and perpetually feed on themselves. Been "free and clear" now for about 5 months or so. The nature of those games, and their "addictive" quality, stem from their ability to assist you in forgetting reality, who you really are, abandoning difficult goals, and present you with a spoon-fed existence of easy challenges and pre-ordained rewards. WoW is by and far not the only example of this, our society is built upon the thralls. ...but I digress.

4) For the first time in my life, I am trying to live for my own happiness... More on that later.


- J

I'm looking forward to the day where the individual can directly and intentionally alter their own brain. Cure depression, increase alertness, improve attention, etc. There are means now, but they are very involved, imperfect, and prone to failure and side-effects.

I need to get back to them however, and return to altering my brain to something more interesting.