Shane Conder's Whateveritis of Nothing

I doubt anyone still reads this (you know, because it's likely no one ever did).  But if there is anyone that reads this, I'm still here.  This isn't dead.  Really.

I had hoped to get more writing in about our honeymoon before getting back in to normal posts.  Unfortunately, that created a deadlock on both threads.  Until now, at least.

I got on to Windows Live Writer (still in beta, but many builds beyond what I had used last) and found that I had about four posts still sitting in draft about our travels -- and written during the travels.  So, check out the travel category to see them (if you want).

Things have been pretty hectic since we got back.  We returned to the house in the middle of construction (also known as a concrete slab downstairs).  I had to catch up on the happenings of over a month of work -- which included all of the stuff about the acquisition that had happened mere days after we left.

In the time since we got back, a ton has happened:

• Mostly finished the downstairs including flooring, lighting, painting, and other stuff (still some details to finish up). 
  • Expanded flooring to include bathroom, entryway, and kitchen (still to do)
  • Got carpets for the floor
  • Swapped living room with dining room -- we now have a larger dining room to make better room for our storage furniture and a smaller living room, with less seating.  Overally, though, it makes sense for our house.  And yes, it's permanent.  And yes, there is no TV downstairs.
• Hosted our first Thanksgiving with my dad, his wife, Laurie's brother, and my grandmother.
• Got and decorated our holiday tree with some friends in town
  • We got a redwood again.  We like them, except the setup part where they eat our hands and forearms.  I'm still picking out splinters and my arms were red and hurt for days.
• Got some new things (and just to pre-clarify: a lot of this stuff is thanks to our wedding, my birthday, stuff for our trip, and early Christmas gifts from ourselves and other people...  and it covers about four months... and provides a list of things to remind me on stuff I can talk about if I don't have anything to say... har har.)
  • I got a Gen 5.5 80GB black iPod on our first trip to Costco when back.  My white Gen 5 60GB iPod was full and they not only had the right size and price, but the right color, too.  I also got a clear plastic cover for it and a rubber cover that also holds the headphones.  Both together keep the inside looking new.
  • I got a 2006 Honda Accord Hybrid to make my commute cheaper and more comfortable.  And it's a car that can comfortably hold more than two people.  (You know, in case that occasion arrives.)  It improved milage by 88% over our two other cars and still has plenty of power. ;)
  • Laurie got a quad core machine with a 30" monitor to be able to work at 2560x1600 resolution (the current highest single monitor resolution readily available).  The Dell 30" monitor is absolutely amazing.  The quad core processor is also something of a treat.  However, with only a Nvidia 7950GX2 video card, graphics at full resolution are lacking with all but the best written 3D games. (For instance, Neverwinter Nights 2 just doesn't have a good enough engine for everything to be on at that resolution -- I have to run it at a lowly 2048x1280 for it all to work smoothly.)
  • We got a 2TB Terastation that we run with RAID5 for 1500GB of storage via gigabit ethernet that's reasonably safe.  The quad core machine runs dual 500GB disks in a RAID 0 for fast, but not so safe 1000GB of local working space.
  • Being the holiday season, we also got a number of smaller things, including:
    • New Spode
    • Curtains, carpets, table cloths, etc.
    • Microsoft's wheel for the XBox 360
    • Some new shortbread pans
  • Construction tools, including
    • Table saw
    • Mitre saw
    • Various other painting and flooring instruments that we didn't have

Anyway, before this becomes a silly list of stuff, it also goes without saying that there were a number of other new things even before we went on our vacation.  We had to get stuff for our vacation plus we received a bunch of stuff from our wedding.

We were jetlagged for at least two weeks after we got back.  It didn't help that if either one of us would wake up early (you know, like 1 or 2am) we'd both get up and not worry about going back to sleep.  That helped keep the jetlag around longer.

I hope it doesn't go as long before I blog again, but we're still quite busy so, naturally, I can't guarantee anything.  But I do hope to talk about some thoughts I've had lately as well as some of the new stuff that either works well or doesn't work so well. We shall see.

Posted by Shane on December 9, 2006 9:10 AM | Permalink