Gym Notes Roundup

Sometimes the gym serves me as a random thought generator. Since I carry a notebook with me, I sometimes write down said random thoughts. I actually write one phrase a day, and looking back on almost 3 years of gym notebooks reminds me that when lifting, I usually write gibberish.

However here's some that I feel like archiving here. These aren't the daily phrases, but the random thoughts I write in the back of the book. The extra fun for me is figuring out where I was in life when I wrote them

• Don't focus on the time you don't have, focus on the time you do have.
• It must be nice to get a new hair cut. I'm at the point in life where my next new hair cut is "bald".
• Good dog's name: Hurley
• The moment you realize that now matter what you do someone will be unhappy is a liberating one.
• Given the condition of Ballys, the fact that I don't go there and still pay dues should be deductible as charity.
• You don't have it figured out, and don't think you do, because it only hurts more when you realize you don't.
• Run with actual pumpkins!
• Sonic Boom!
• Gyms should have a book of the month club. First month: New Rules of Lifting
• You know you've hit the big time when you have 2 stair wells leading between the same 2 floors
• We've been gifted so many candy dishes that even Willy Wonka would find it excessive.
• There's people that see it in me, and people that don't. I don't wait to be led/managed/mentored by people that don't.
• Because I choose to
• People shouldn't complain that married people get special treatment for the same reason I shouldn't complain handicapped people get special parking.
• Maybe the point of sports talk is that it's so benign. Politics and religion get people fired up, but maybe sports don't matter just enough.
• A dog? I'm not sure if I'm ready to have something in the house she loves more than me
• Writing a letter feels so 1930s...like after I should go to war or something.

Yeah, good thing I wrote down those gems, eh?

Hey Blog, Howya Doin?

Blogging is an easy thing to do. It's also an easy thing not to do. So why do I so often choose to not blog, than to blog?

I don't worry too much about not blogging until I take one of my trips down bloggery lane. I will occasionally find great joy in looking back on the early parts of this decade. I know that I will some day like to read about my experiences in the latter half of the decade. Unfortunately, I won't find such records here.

However, let's take a snapshot now, shall we?

Work is busy. Work is challenging. For the past two weeks I had this perpetual feeling of swimming against a tide, falling beneath the surface, and wondering why-oh-why did I leave ELDP island. I joked internally that I was waking up every morning and thinking, "Is this the day I quit, or get fired?" I kept that sentiment inside because I knew that neither would be the option.

Why? Because the fun part of growing up is realizing your own silly patterns. I've been here before often enough to know how I react. There's a wonderful moment when I realize, "Ah, you're going to quit, right? Like you said you would when you started all those rotations, and previous jobs? Remember how you ended up not quitting, and eventually doing a great job? I bet you'll once again remember that you don't excel because you're the smartest, but because you work harder than most. One might say you're too dumb to give up, so you'll win again."

It's like calling bullshit on myself, and I take great joy in doing so.

Outside of work, life is terrific. Oh, did I mention in this venue that Jackie is pregnant? Yep, two months to go!

The prospect of fatherhood is wonderfully exciting. Sometimes its unbelievable. Sometimes I sit back and think, "crap, I'm really grown up now." Of course, that's usually while I'm waiting for the Wii to load Mario Kart. Some things never change...

...but some things do! So fatherhood is going to rock. The road to fatherhood is full of thrills, and far less bumpy than the motherhood road our better halves take.

I now understand why wives are called our better halves, too. Seeing the perpetual discomfort and freaky things that happen to a woman's body in real time is wild. Thank you, dear!

A week ago we were watching Jackie's belly in a dark room with a light coming from another room. With the right lighting we could actually see the belly twitch as the kid, whom we gave the androgynous name, "Thumper", kicked. It's the kind of thing you can watch for hours and not get bored, like fail blog videos or a dog chasing its tail.

Speaking of the dog, Cara is still around. I mean, I love the dog! Newfoundlands really are the best breed. Obvious caveats include: you must not mind drool, or grooming a dog for 45min a week, or getting bumped around by a dog that doesn't know its own size. Also, when I write lists like that I realize how appropriate the dog is as a substitute when I'm not around.

Speaking of not being around, going back for an MBA is one of the most ambitious dumb things I've done. I've obviously forgotten any math skills from my engineering background, because if I did have them I would add up the number of hours in a week, and the number of hours I need to sleep, work, and live a happy life, and I would quickly realize I need to figure out time travel to survive.

Speaking of time travel, how awesome was Season 5 of Lost? Anyone keeping tabs on the comic-con videos this summer? It's as if they never crashed...

Speaking of crashing, it's time to end Friday before a weekend of leadership, Villanova style. Go Wildcats!

Through Intelligence, there is Stupidity

I respectfully withdraw my previous knocks on Denon. Denon makes great products. Their only problem is that they cannot help but sell those products to stupid people like me.

You see, Denon receivers have a large Standby Button. When I tried pressing the button to turn on the receiver, the receiver did not turn on. Therefore I assumed the receiver broke.

Using my EE skills, I opened up the receiver last night. I tested power to the unit, and then into the unit. I found a line flowing towards the front of the unit. I traced it and noticed it connected to a button. I looked at the front and realized that next to the large Standby button is an On/Off button. I pressed it and the receiver promptly sprung back to life.

Through my intelligence, I realized I am an idiot. At least until I saw this, and then I felt a little bit better about me.

Customer Reviews

Thought of the moment: If you read enough user reviews found on website shopping outlets (Newegg, Amazon) you will never buy any piece of electronic equipment ever again. Yikes!

Welcome back!

Seven Hundred and Sixty Three posts later I now walk away from the first Nucklehead blog. It served me well over the years, cataloging the many (mis-) adventures had by me and those around me. However, every once in a while it's nice to start over with a clean slate.

So why the need to ditch the old blog? Minor factors included the desire to start tagging, "search" on those tags, and better RSS functionality. Mainly I wanted to turn on the Archives feature. With the old setup I could not directly link to a specific post, so once a post left the front page it was gone. 

I could have added all that aforementioned functionality, but that would require tooling around with DotNetNuke, and an outdated version at that. I find myself without the time to be in the website maintenance business. I want to blog and run, or blog and nap, or blog and gym, or blog and do any of the other activities that are infinitely more fun and rewarding that screwing around with GoDaddy's kloogy website manager interface.

Plus, once I went to all that trouble of getting archives up, I would then provide open access to all the crap I put out on the web during my formative years. With the great memories comes a lot of extemporaneous garbage. I like reading it, because I know where I was when I wrote it. I also know where I am now, and that's a different place. So I'll always have my memoirs from roughly 2001-2008 to read, the general public won't, and that's best of all involved.

With the clean break, we're heading back to basics. I went back to a blogger template. Picasa hosts my pictures and Youtube hosts the video. I'm a Google man, apparently, and it feels easier and more manageable. Twitter is still here for those of you that like excruciating minutiae. So let's get to it.