spacecadet78's Journal
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Wednesday, December 31, 2008
I am drunk posting, so forgive me.
I just want to say happy new years to everyone, I'm using LJ after so long because I'm too drunk to make IRC work.
May your new year be better then the last.
Current mood:  drunk
Saturday, April 26, 2008
Well I have Patella tendinitis, the doctor has ordered me to stop biking for a week and running for two weeks. After that I have to take it easy and build a base back up. What this really means for me is I'm not running in Bay to breakers this year like I wanted to. With only three weeks left until the run I just won't be ready, I will have one week after injury to train again and it won't be enough.
In the mean time I am going to switch to a more comprehensive weight training program so I don't go insane from lack of exercise, I am thinking I'll go to the gym five or six days next week. The week after that, once I'm on my bike again, I'll go four or five days. For a few weeks after that I will still go four days a week because I won't be putting the same effort into my running and biking while I build my base back up.
Saturday, March 22, 2008
After getting white paint on my summer jacket, from pdx6's elevator, I haven't had a lite weight jacket to wear in the warmer months of the year. A jacket to wear in the mornings and evenings when there is a bit of chill in the air. Well since it's the time of year where my normal jacket is starting to get a bit warm I went shopping.
I got to the store and dug around through the racks, most stores had no jackets or heavy weight winter ones still, but I persisted and eventually found an acceptable one. Then I tried it on and it was too large, WTF?! It was an XL and most of the jackets in my closet are XXL! Thinking it was the cut of the jacket I tried on a few other XL jackets and they where all too large. So I tried L expecting to be disappointed and find I am yet again between sizes. But it fit perfectly!
In other news I begin an 8 week training program for bay to breakers next week. I will be lifting weights twice a week, running three days a week, and cycling two days a week. Friday will be the only day of the week where I completely rest. I want to finish the 12k race in under an hour, but I will be happy just finishing it.
Saturday, March 1, 2008
Well I am down to 211, so I've lost 14lbs this year. I had set a goal for myself where I could buy a couch and TV when I reached 210 and a Macbook Pro when I reached 200. Well I already got the Macbook, I needed a christmas present for myself, which means I have to switch my goals around. Here they are, at 200 I can buy myself a 42" or smaller flat screen and a couch. At 185 I can buy myself a MINI cooper sport, haven't decided on a 2008 or 2007. I've need a new car if I'm going to be commuting using one and I was planing on giving the Saturn to my younger sister for her 16th birthday which is coming up this June.
After a week of doing the 90 mile round trip commute I decided it was time to find a place in the south bay, I looked at ten places today and found one I like. On Monday I plan to go put in an application, the apartment opens up on April 1st and the soonest I can move in is the 3rd in any case.
Monday, January 14, 2008
Well I dropped below the 225lb mark, two weeks late, and I am continuing downward. I ran two consecutive miles at a 5 mph pace and can do up to five consecutive miles at a slower pace. I am still going to the gym and counting calories, I hope to continue this trend and make my goal of 180lbs by the end of the year. Of course I can't set my sights on something so far away so I continue to make short term goals, a goal for a week or month from now.
On another note I have become and apple convert, in fact I'm typing this on my 3 week old mac book pro.
Current mood:  tired
Thursday, October 11, 2007
So Saturday night we are going out for my birthday. If you want to attend the agenda is dinner at 6:30 (location TBD most likely in the mission), then drinking at Zeitgeist. After ZG I'll be picking mission bars randomly.
If you have any ideas for dinner I am open for suggestions!
Friday, August 24, 2007
Well, I didn't lose the 10lbs I set out to. I have lost over 6lbs but due to illness, travel and hurting my knee (yet again) I was unable to make my goal.
I am back at it and my goal is to be below 225 by Dec 1st. To help reach my goal, even if I miss going to the gym for a few weeks, I have started tracking my calorie consumption and setting goals for how much I consume. This has been really helping.
Otherwise, life is hectic, work is busy (when is it not) and I am still planing a trip to Bogotá, Columbia in the fall.
Monday, June 4, 2007
Last night I read my old entries and I realized I used to have an interesting life. I used to do things. Now I just work and play video games from time to time. It sorta sucks and I blame it on the Bay Area.
Well in any case, I didn't start to write this entry with the intention of bitching about how boring my life is now. So I'll get back on topic. Starting this week I am aiming to lose ten pounds over the next ten weeks. So I intend to weight 240lbs by Aug 14th. I figure if I post my intentions I will have more incentive to actually do so. Afterall I would be really embarrassed to fail at such a simple task after I said I would do it :)
Anyway thats it for now, time to get back to work!
Current mood:  blah
Thursday, December 28, 2006
Well it's been a few months since I posted, so I figured it was about time to put something new here. As I really don't have anything new that I want to share with the internet I'll just link some photos and say Merry Christmas and Happy New Years!
You can find all my Christmas party photos here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/spacecadet78/sets/72157594427741627/
I want to thank ptweak and pkitten for having us, it was a fun party.
Current mood:  calm
Friday, September 8, 2006
Thursday, March 23, 2006
So for about two weeks I was spending a lot of my free time working on personal projects. I wrote my own profiling toolkit using GCC extenstions. I learned the basics of Java which seems like a really weak language to do object oriented work in. I started picking up DirectX. I wrote a cross platform fractal based terain generator, it uses X and Win32 directly as well as supporting OpenGL and DirectX.
The problem is I got bored with all these projects quickly, they have no real use for my day to day life. I suppose I could tackle a project that would have some useful results, but I realize nothing I do with a computer on a day to day basis needs fixing. Realistically I need to write a large opensource project in Java so that I can put it on my resume, since C/C++ seems to be going the way of the Dodo except in a specific areas.
Maybe I should write some simple games in Java, using both OpenGL and DirectX, and then release them as opensource. I have the AI backends for checkers, tic-tac-toe and chess which I wrote in a college AI class. I can tack on a GUI and graphical representations and be on my way.
In other news life is moving along, recently found out about my ten year highschool reunion. Been going to the gym three or four days a week. Been working about sixty hours a week. Not doing much else.
Current mood:  contemplative Current music: Dave Matthews Band - Crash
Wednesday, March 1, 2006
Well I have now worked at ModViz for one year. That's right I survived a year at a startup.
Current music: Nickelback - Hollywood
Friday, February 17, 2006
Goin' places that I've never been
Seein' things that I may never see again,
Well in case you didn't get the picture I'm traveling for work again. I've been back to Houston, my favorite city in the United States, twice in the last two weeks. At least lately it has been new tasks and new companies. I've been playing with VisRooms and large SMP machines for a change. In fact this week I got to play with a 64 processor SGI, with 640 Gigabytes of RAM and 16 graphics pipes (video cards for those of you who don't know the SGI lingo). The machine is fairly cool, but it lags in performance. It runs Itanium chips and ATI x3 video cards. I got to spend a lot of time talking computer architecture with someone who is an expert, he gave me a good explanation of why most code runs slow on the ia64 chipset. It also allowed me to finally understand why the architecture is so bad. Got to spend some time playing with ATI cards and seeing how they handle various OpenGL streams. I got to see the major differences between the PCI-Express and ATI bus.
Well that's it for now :)
Current mood: apathetic Current music: Orgy - Vapor Transmission
Saturday, February 4, 2006
On Friday or maybe very late Thursday night I broke down and ordered a Hauppauge 350 PVR. So that I can build myself my very own set top box/dvr. The plan is to use an old Athlon I have lying around, I will either install Gentoo and Myth TV or KnoppMyth. If I can get the hardware and software issues all solved I will then purchase a mini/micro atx case and motherboard and build a passively cooled set top.
The only problem is I wanted at least a prototype running early next week. Afterall the Olympics start soon and there are some TV shows that I watch. Alas I have been called away to Houston where I must spend three days doing customer installs. That means when the package arrives at the office on Tuesday morning I will already be on a plane. I won't be able to get back into the office to pick it up until Friday.
I mainly wanted to get this done before the TV industry pushed through some draconian DRM method which would make recording live TV with a homebrewed system illegal. So the delay will only cause me to miss things I'll planing to test with next week. Just the same it sucks that my newest toy will be sitting at my desk for three days untouched.
Edit: I really am tired, I screwed up the href tags!
Current mood: tired Current music: Disturbed - Fear
Friday, February 3, 2006
I am 23 days away from being in Oakland one year. I am 26 days from being at my current job for one year. What have I accomplished in this year? A much deeper understanding of C++ and object oriented design. I've learned my way around Oakland, Rockridge, Alameda, San Franciso and Berekely. What happens behind the scenes at a trade show. A few new tricks for system administration. How to write a Java to Native code interface. I've learned to both love and hate traveling for work.
I've grown as a professional. The question for me is if this is where I want to continue growing as a professional and a person. I have been kicking around the idea of finding a new city to live and work in. Maybe Seattle or New York.
Current music: Korn - Fake
Saturday, January 28, 2006
I am hungover...
That is all...
Current music: Green Day - Nice Guys Finish Last
Wednesday, December 21, 2005
Hmmm...what state is my life in. I've been working a lot, but not as much as when I started the job. Been traveling a lot, for a period of about two months I was gone every week with one trip spaning nine days. I got a new cell phone. Headed off to New Mexico for Thanksgiving to see family. Heading to Alaska tomorrow to see more family.
Don't have time for any deep conversation piece that might spurn discussion on my LJ so I'm not even going to worry about. Maybe I'll actually post some useful info when I get back from the artic, speaking of which the Coke commericals with polar bears meeting pegiuns...complete rubbish, I should know as I've seen polar bears but never pegiuns.
Current music: Everclear - Your Genius Hands
Saturday, November 12, 2005
Well I'm back in Oakland, hopefully for awhile. In the last six weeks I have been out of town at least once every week. I have not had more then four consecutive days in Oakland during that period. Most of the time was spent traveling for work, but I did take a five day vacation for a friends wedding during that period too.
It has been an interesting experience traveling this much for work. I've ran into a gambit of system problems some of which actually forced me to learn new things. I have met a lot of people, too many to recount. Some of them where able to teach me a lot about my chosen profession. Most of them where just sales and marketing types which really didn't interest me.
Despite all I learned and experienced during my time on the road I am happy to be home*. It is hard to travel that much, it wears you down. You spend your days working and your nights entertaining customers and partners.
* I really don't want to call Oakland home, but I have no other name for this apartment with my crap in it....the saying goes home is where the heart is, but reality says home is where I come at the end of a long day at work.
Current music: 311 - Offbeat Bare Bss
Saturday, September 10, 2005
Well, I'm back from Houston. Hopefully this is my last trip for the near future. I've always liked to travel, but traveling for work can be an exhausting experience. In four nights and five days I slept about sixteen hours. It's amazing what can go wrong when setting up for a trade show or customer demo, I did both this trip. It is stressful having five people stare over your shoulder watching you make changes to a config file in hopes of getting everything to just work. It's even worse after you've been working for seventeen hours straight.
Now don't get my wrong I didn't spend every late night slaving over system setups. Since the tradeshow was successfull one of our partners took us out for dinner. We proceded to drink four bottles of wine at a BYOB resturant. Now a BYOB resturant right next to a liquor store is interesting. Every table had multiple bottles of wine on it, but none of it served by the resturant. The whole concept of a BYOB resturant was new to me and quite cool.
Of course this much drinking lead to some interesting, and very loud, conversation about the well augemented women sitting at the table next to us. They where very young, you probably know the type; tight low cut pants, tight halter top of some type and some ink on the small of their back, sitting with a group of older men (grey in their hair). Well one of these young ladies happened to overhear the conversation and get a little upset, well indignant is probably closer to the right word. I can't really understand the reason, if you behave like that in public you've gotta expect people to comment on it.
Bah I be rambling. Later...
Current mood: tired Current music: Rage Against the Machine - Voice of the Voiceless
Monday, July 4, 2005
Well I went on vacation for the fourth of july weekend. In fact I just got back into the bay area two hours ago. I went and visited some of my family in Ohio. So at this point you may be wondering why this is important; I'll tell you why!
I realized while patching up a hole in the barn roof that I hate the city. Yes, while I was on my hands and knees on the top of a rickety old barn I realized living in the city sucks donkey dick. It was comforting to be able to go to sleep with all the doors unlocked and the windows open. It was nice to be able to let the dog out to run free. It was nice getting up and doing work that was "real".
This has lead me to the conclusion that I'm not compatable with myself. My various passions in life collide in such a way where I can never be truely happy. Nothing reaches my soul like the simple pleasures that can be found in the middle of a forest, while floating down a giant river, while pounding nails with my family. However, my other true passion is computers, I love to solve complex problems. I love to be able to say I can do this in a novel and interesting way.
At this point you may be wondering why these passions cannot co-exist. Well it is simply because I cannot find a job as an admin or engineer where I want to live. There is no work for software engineers in the Yukon or in Mid Ohio farmland. My other choice would be to work as a farm-hand or a construction worker, simply put I've already tried and given up. I cannot do any work day in and day out that does not tax me mentally.
Current mood:  aggravated Current music: Golden Earring - Radar Love
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