Yep!

Got a big project demo coming up tomorrow at work. It's excited to actually be showing the people that will be most using my project when I leave how far along it's come. Things are going well, still, but some days I just can't work straight through during the work day. That's what the laptop is for, though, so I've been breaking work up and finishing lots up at home and things and then going in to work a bit later in the morning. As long as the work is getting done, no one should care where I do it. And I get to declare my hours at home, so that works out damn well!

On other fronts, I'm really in need of some band practice. Maybe the weekend of Friday July 9th peeps will come down? I have no idea. I'm going to a concert in Philly with Drew and Mike Lee that Saturday, but the band could still rock out. We'll of course have to get back in practice with our current repetoire (3 originals and a cover of Dave's "I Like Punk Rock"), but I have ambitious goals for building up our set so we can kick off the fall on full tilt.

On that wavelength, I actually wrote a song. And silly as it is, I am somewhat proud of how the lyrics came out. Give it a read over on fatDOG: Green Caravan. Let's see if we can put some music to that!

Other departments of "productive relaxation" have not been as fruitful. I have yet to really sit down how to proceed with the new fatDOG. I still love the design I'm sitting on, but know it needs some tweaks. And lately I want to rebuild it in .NET or another server scripting language that allows server-side labels (those things work so well, turning into SPAN tags on the other end - genious!) so I can further separate my content from my code. I need to rework the design to use layers and much fewer tables. See, browsers render tables better and more reliably than they do layers at this point, but it's the new school of design thought that will have us using layers well into the future. And man, there hasn't been a new IE in nearly three years and there's been no real improvement to the Gecko *engine* in two and a half. Whatever, geek.

Went to the gym today with Liz and Leslie. Also saw a film preview the other night where someone mistakes their girlfriend Lizzy by calling her Leslie. It was pretty damn weird and I took note (of the weirdness). But at the gym, it was just further indication of how out of shape I've let myself get over this past year. I am active less and less each year of school and will have to go out of my way over the remainder of this summer and all of this coming school year to play some more sports and go on more runs, etc. I'm fine not be Mr. Buffy McBuffberger, but have always been in good shape. Then the latter three quarters of college struck and here I am. Meh. Saw Sarah Taylor at the gym, too. She is *possibly* the coolest person I know. Note: must hang out with her more often.

Workin' and Such

I've been spending a fair amount of time with work, lately. I worked for a few hours at the end of this weekend and have worked a couple days now without taking a lunch. I'm wrapped up in making this demo I have to make on Thursday particularly awesome. Right now, the evaluation system is very far along and looking good. There's no administration area, yet, but all of the persistence layer has been written - so the tedium of that won't be terribly much. I'm still enjoying the job and the solutions that I've been coming up with have been interesting.

Still got some sunburn - it's getting itchy, now, so it's moving along and much further faster than the wicked Saint Thomas sunburn from spring break.

Not much else has been going on in the way of interest. On Thursday I'm going into Philadelphia to see Dave play with one of his bands, Cheese on Bread, I believe. I'm really excited to see him play, because he gets pretty excited when he talks about the things he's been doing musically this year. We'll hang for a bit and then whatever. Probably won't be too long, though, as there's work for both of us the next day and for him - it's all the way back in New York. Then I'm trying to kick out kind of early Friday and head home for the 4th weekend.

I'm not sure what's going on this weekend, but I know there'll be a few people home and good times will be had. And it'll be nice to be home, especially with Monday off.

Summer Dinks

Liz, Leslie, and I headed up to Avalon, NJ for some shore lovin' this weekend and I had an excellent time. We shoved off in the wee morn' hours of Friday night, arrived at Liz' beach house around 2:00am, and promptly went to bed. Saturday was spent sleeping away in the morning (which ended up being kind of nasty weather-wise), heading to the beach in the afternoon (got some color!), an excellent dinner made at home of fried flounder, maccaroni, and vegetables, all followed up by a round of miniature golf.

And word to you, mom and dad: I won. So look out when we get down the shore for our summer event. I'm going to, as they say, "bring it."

We played some board games and just "chilled" at night (it was so lovely outside), and followed up with some more time at the beach Sunday midday. We, of course, went sunbathing at the time of day they recommend you stay out of the sun the most. Back to Delaware in about two hours, a nice ride through the farming region of NJ, which is so damn beautiful when you're driving through on a day like today. Sun, blue sky, clouds like pillows, and lots and lots of green all around. Very cool. Then I hung out with Carolyn, Jess, Brandon, and Jason over on Choate watching a little Futurama and playing some more games. It was a nice evening and I was glad to get out. Perhaps some Stepford action tomorrow!

Oh an yeah: Swam left a 90 second voice mail of Clapton shredding the guitar from the concert at the Wachovia Center. I am appreciative because now I have a minute and a half clip of Clapton shredding to cherish, but resent Swam for rubbing it in even more. Seems he had an incredible time. Now if only I could get to some concerts this summer. Incubus Tuesday? Money for it? Tickets available? People that want to go with? Hmmph. Hmmph?

Bass line I most recently learned and rock out on: Let's Get Retarded by the Black Eyed Peas. You might remember the song from the many NBA Playoffs ads that ESPN and ABC *constantly* played during the end of the basketball season. Of course, the words are not actually "24 seconds to live," but close enough. Listen to that shizzit if you like, and just think of how awesome I sound strolling up and down the fretboard. Really awesome is clearly the answer.

Shorin' It Up

Heading to the shore with Liz and Leslie this evening. Not sure how long we're staying there. Not sure what we're doing. I'm just positive that I need it. Haven't been to the shore in a good length of time and I enjoy being there so much. There's nothing like sleeping at the beach or just waking up and spending your day in a lazy way. It's this attitude that just drips from the atmosphere there that makes me think pretty much anything can happen -- but whenever it damn well feels like it, set by no one's schedule.

Yeah. Vinegar.

Memory

Spacehog? Makes me think of a conversation had with Evan Wolf in the parking lot senior year of high school. It was the same conversation in which we discussed my like of Weezer's green album and his unhappiness with it (comparing, of course, to the opus that is Pinkerton). Why do we remember details of conversations like this? Or that the weather was positively gorgeous that spring day and that the parking lot had already thinned itself, possibly after a NHS officers meeting?

Need to get in touch with Evan and see how Malibu's treating him.

Anyway, it was on the radio.

Movie Quotin'

Still haven't found anyone close to me and my dad with Jaws. But the onus with which Carolyn, Jess, Jason, and Brandon could recall specifics from many many episodes of Futurama was very close. Part of me thinks that's different, though, because of the single-serving feeling that television episodes carry. I mean, many of us remember many details from many episodes of our favorite television shows, but there's a genetic aspect at play in my ability to recall very specific details in voice, inflection, and specific delivery to very large lengths of films. I can recite every line in Mallrats along with or just before the characters (or off the cuff without watching it at great length if you prefer). Movies I can remember right now that I've got that incredible detail going for:

Jaws ^{1 - the mother of all quotable films}
Mallrats
Clerks
Dogma
J&SB Strike Back
High Fidelity
Better Off Dead
Office Space
Pulp Fiction
The Goonies
10 Things...
Wet Hot American Summer
Fargo
Say Anything
Snatch

I'm running slightly blank. Now that's funny how I can recite details of details for each of these films, but can't even be sure I'm remembering all of the films for which I can do this. Trigger...

Maybe sometime we'll do this with television series (and by series I do mean series, not individual episodes only). Not that this is anything to be proud of... it's probably something to be ashamed of. Ahh well.

Just Thought Of...

The summer of 1998 when "Flagpole Sitta" was almost certainly broadcast from within Steve Stirling. Any time you heard that song, you knew that a certain Scotsman was nearby.

Playing hockey at Dereks? You'd hear it.
At the movie theater with friends? You'd hear it.
Hanging out at Greg's? You'd hear it.
Alive? You'd hear it.

And that, my friends, had to also be the summer where Steve was given a lobster hat for his birthday, that he wore for a very very long time. And possibly the same summer that Steve kicked off by spraining his knee badly on a slope in Greg's backyard while impersonating a pirate and wearing a torn-off Extremes hockey jersey.

What a kid!

Note to Self

Franz Ferdinand 'Take Me Out'
If only it would get out of my head.


But more importantly... I've heard 'The Reason' by Hoobastank 6 times, today, already. It repeats on the radio every hour and a half or so. This song needs to leave the airwaves... even if it's another single by Hoobastank that replaces it. It's on all of the time!

It Was Lovely Weather Yesterday

I'd gone home too many weekends in a row to go home this past weekend. I figure it might be good practice to actually get to hang out with Liz and Leslie some! Had a good time Friday hanging with Carolyn and Brandon and then the trip to Philadelphia with Liz Saturday was excellent. Yesterday, I was treated to dinner with Leslie and her family, as her Mom, Dad, and brother James came down to meet Leslie and her brother Steve. It was a very funny time as it always is when the Forsyths visit. We spent the latter evening just relaxing.

I gave my dad a call for Fathers' Day and explained how I am working on trying to get some Phillies tickets for a weekend in July. When I find the right pair of tickets, we'll have a great time. And the next weekend I go home, I'm going to celebrate Fathers' Day *observed* with him. I miss being home this summer, a lot. It's been lots of fun living in the house and in an eerie way, it's kind of fun to take care of all of the homeowning details (cleaning, groceries, home repair, bills). Okay, maybe it's not fun, but it is oddly rewarding. It also helps me to realize that I am in no way at a point in my life where I could own or rent my own place and reminds me that it's still not "real" and that I am still in college. All swirling thoughts, there.

Decided last night I'm not taking enough pictures, anymore. I need to more often take my camera with me and get some pictures of some good times and fun things (and hell, the mundane boring things, as well). I was going back through pictures from 2002 and there are sooo many. I organized photos from that year into 80 or so distinct folders. I'm not nearly on that pace this year and last year that was off, as well. Hmm. I also have to go through my pictures and get prints made of some of the better and funnier pictures taken through the ages.

Anyway... more work to do and a database issue to reconcile....

Cheesesteak Log.

Had a steak at Pat's last night. The plan was to hang out on South Street and enjoy Jims' Steaks, but Liz and I didn't get to the city until around 10:00. So since South Street was packed and we nearly never got out of there and found no place to park, we just default to 9th and Passyunk Ave (naturally). It was a good, quick jaunt to a delicious place with much delicious food. I had an excellent evening with Liz.

And I came up with a great website/blog idea: "Steak Log." On this website, the authors post pictures of every cheesesteak they eat and relay the experience to those reading. I imagine you'd need a handful of people contributing, because no one should eat too many steaks in a short enough period of time to keep it going. But the thing about it is that every steak has a story: what you were doing that evening, who you were with, if it was a city-wide search or if it was direct, was it after a ball game, etc.

I'm getting excited just thinking about it.

Dodgeball and Fire...

Hung out with Carolyn and Brandon last night. Went to see Dodgeball... and it was really great. I enjoyed it so much. There was laughter the entire way, no waste of time building up anything without humor. Man.... so enjoyable. In fact, there was so much to laugh in that movie, it'd definitely be worth watching again.

Then we bought some fireworks in Maryland and set off a few tiny ones last night in the street. It's my belief that fireworks are very illegal, however, in Delaware. So we have to be careful when we do the rest of the box! Who would guess that you can get mini explosives in an assortment for under $10!?

Tonight I'm trying to figure out what's on the agenda and am very intrigued by the possibility of going to Philadelphia for maybe some cheesesteaks and South Street? I have no clue what anyone else is doing, 'cept that Liz is still at the Italian Festival and Leslie just left to go hang out with her brother... and play miniature golf. Now if only I'd known there was a mini-golf place around here... I would have been going since freshman year all of the damn time.. honing my craft so I can defeat my mom in the annual McCloskey minigolf showdown (which is coming up soon in the next month).

Nah-uh

No Boston. And thus far, today, no rain. Maybe Philadelphia? meh.

Rain, Rain Go Away!

Accidentally slept through my alarm this morning and didn't get into work until 10:00. Gasp! It's okay, though, because I worked for about two hours last night on the project The major work last night and today was building a content manager that accepts evaluation objects and then builds an XHTML representation of the object using reflection and a stream-writer that I wrote. This lets me build an evaluation form that users can fill out based on completely unknown questions - which are set by the HR administrator. So I've got this thing which works pretty well. It's modeled after the FAFSA and tax software (oh you know I've got *loads* of knowledge about that).. but the form is filled out all in a wizard format that has to be able to be altered quarter-to-quarter.

Enough blab about work and geek stuff you probably don't care about. It's been raining crazily every day this week and today was the worst of it. Just as Carolyn stopped by to borrow a video (she moved in today and needed some entertainment for her and her mom) and of course selected "Pirates of the Carribbean." I offered to drive her back to her house, because of the obscene amount of rain and we were treading water all the way to Choate. Her house is nice. In need of some work as most homes in a college town are, but really pretty cool. I hung out there for a bit before turning off what I'll refer to as "willy nilly" access to our wireless network and working out encryption so people can't snag whatever I'm doing on the Internet. Easy enough.

Oh oh! And today was my first pay day! The only good thing about was that it came. Not really a good deal on the FICA raping, which was the largest a check of mine has ever been. That might have something to do with me working more hours than at previous jobs. Hmmm. We'll see what future checks look like in the tax department. This will inevitably worse than this week's and they will be for two complete weeks. Ahh well.

Tomorrow? A somewhat shorter day at work followed perhaps by napping and then... umm... Boston? I should really figure this out. I'm gonna go call Kasey and see if he's still up for that drive in his car........

Boston?

Likely tripping up to Boston this weekend to celebrate Kate's graduation. Seems Kaes, Q, and Chris and I might made a road trip of it. I'm not sure, but it should be a good time.

But I just want to sleep in on Saturday!!! Ugggh.

Makin Chicken!

Liz and I prepared dinner this evening. We fried some chicken cutlets, thus creating a dish of "Chicken Vincenti." It came out well as was fun to do. Must learn more about this cooking thing, because I seem to really enjoy it. I'm lazy about preparing food most of the time, but under the proper circumstances, it seems cooking can be fun. Hmm.. I've had a few really good cooking experiences, I s'pose. And my home ec team always did well. Interesting...

Apart from that, it was a regular day at work, today. Had to stick around a bit longer to work out a portion of the project I was a little stuck on. I'm getting to the point where I'm actually about to create the evaluation step-by-step (I have an Alpha-edition demonstration in two weeks from Friday). The backend, database, and software all seems to make sense, but this one portion of the presentation puzzle is difficult. I imagine it will be a good number of days before I can have a reliable demo model. Then I have to go about importing all of the test data from the existing database, which is a mess and won't match up well against the system I'm building at all. A good week is going to go into making more software that will simply connect to the old database and convert that data into the new database. It will work for the best, I'm sure. We'll see soon enough when I build some testing apps tomorrow. All in all, though, it's going well. And damn 475 is easily becoming "the most important class I've ever taken" because I've applied so much of what I learned there to this course. It was rough, but most obviously worth it.

Tonight I gave my parents a call and had a good long chat about all sorts of things. Ahh the Jaws references always are fun to make to people that "get" them. I also had to rig it so my dad could send my I-9 identification stuff in a fax to Graver. Which brings up the issue of father's day and what I am doing for that...

Pirates

SOOOO good. Watched "Pirates" with Liz last night. Incredible!

Summer Air is Heavy

Felt pretty much like crap this morning. After all of the rain last night, it was still somewhat muggy and annoyingly humid in the house. Summer air is heavy. Since I was feeling a bit under the weather and certainly tired, I slept a few extra hours before going into work. When I got there, I found my "todo" list from yesterday (a practice I have is to make a certain list of items to tackle the next day). Woah, boy! There was much on it. I had to completely rediagram the entire primary namespace and build up the groundwork for my persistence layer and database configuration. I ended up hanging around Graver until quarter after 7:00 or so. Nothing exciting, but it's still going well.

When I got home, Leslie'd only just returned from work (she had the internship and Bath & Body Works today) and I whipped up the heartiest of hearty breakfasts: a buttered English muffin and a Pepsi. Mmmm delicious! Liz is still out at Houlihan's. She seems to like waitressing thus far. I hope her and Leslie are able to make a good deal of money this summer. Lord knows they'll be busy enough.

I need a haircut badly, but it seems to like raining while I'm on my way home.. which gives me no inclination to walk up to Main St. and get it taken care of. We'll see how long I can go still standing the longer hair. I think it's in that phase between comfortables: it's too long to make me happy and too short to just be ignored. Maybe I'll let it go longer? Hmmm.

I think I'm going to watch Pirates of the Caribbean tonight. And definitely see about getting some more food going...

Summer 2004 Begins

I really have done a poor job keeping up with my fdDaily and such. I love my website, but have certainly come to realize that it's been lacking in recent months: no new content, no new authors, same old design, nothing new in the concept. I've had a concept design for the new fatdog for months and was hoping to debut it back in March, but was held up by massive amounts of homework, the project that is my new band, and other things. It was an emotional ride this past spring semester.

But from that comes a completely new and refined desire to get certain projects and things moving for myself, again. I have a number of goals that are for fatdog and thosekids that I hope pan out over the summer. I will no doubt be busy with work, being the "man about the house," and other diversions (a major one I hope is sleep and rest), but I hope I can work on my goals. The concept for the new fatdog is incredible: the same content gets a boost with much more to do for authors and a completely different visual style. The design also would feature complete skinnability (users could not only select site color schemes, but which design they prefer to use). That may be a way off (as everything currently written must be re-written to make it work and scalable), but I'm hoping to deliver. I'll talk more as I find the time to really work on it.

Though I've touched on them already, that brings into play my summer plans. I am living in Newark, DE for the summer with my best friends Liz and Leslie. 209 Haines Street, stop on by. That arrangement is the case, because I've procured summer employment at Graver Technologies, an industrial filtration products company in need of a serious rework of a handful of their human resource processes. I am assigned to a project I have complete design and development control of, building a complete evaluation and performance appraisal system for them. It has thus far been very fun and enjoyable. I enjoy my coworkers and the environment is wonderful. It will be lots of hard work, but wonderful experience ... and in a different type of industry, as well.

Still have a band. We're pretty much back to having no name, but we have operated under "Consistent Taper" and more prominently "The No Action Club." We had a band-members'-ears-only release with the following cover:

I imagine that would sell pretty damn fast. At any rate, we have a good blend of what we call "eighties joke rock" (though you can find us in your local record store's "Melodic Punk Rock" section). It's been very fun to gather weekly with this talented bunch of hilarious guys. Kaes is an incredible person to learn from, Tony's written some really great words for us, Chris is so dedicated to learning, and HT can amaze us with remarkable drumming on household objects. We're awesome.

It was tough to say goodbye to the Ray Staff at the end of the year. Being an RA was a very incredible thing for me. It opened me up to many wonderful new people, places, and things, while finally giving me the perfect opportunity to give back to the campus community along the way. I had many great residents that I feel I have built incredible relationships with and I look forward to many of them living on my floor again next year. Ahh, but saying goodbye for the summer to the staff and knowing that the staff group will never be the same again was difficult. Here's the people I'm talking about:

Top: Kaes, Brett (hall director), Yours Truly, Mike (bossman); Toppish: Kate; Front: Carolyn, Greb, Yvonne, Kristen (hall director), Melanie, Davita; Scooter: Quentin

We'll see what next year brings. And now, to wrap this up and because you all know I am the biggest conservative in the world, I present to you the truth about the man in the oval office:

Yes. We are in love. That is all.

Hello, Blog

This is a test post to make sure things are working. I suppose I could delete it, but meh. Bigger, better introduction coming soon. Perhaps I will also get off of my ass and design my own template for this madness.

Only time will tell.