All posts in Life

Cold

by Drey on January 9, 2010 in Life with 2 Comments

I am no longer tolerant of the cold of my Midwestern heritage. Spoiled by the relative warmth of the American Southwest, the cold is an invader, a threat.

But when I was a child, I relished going out into the snow. I would stand as far up the snow-covered driveway as possible, bright red plastic boat sled pulled to my chest, and run towards the back yard. I’d launch myself into the air, land with a crunch in the snow, and slide at great speed down the slope of the yard towards the woods, seeing how long I could stay on before having to throw myself out of the way of the oncoming briars.

Then I would lie there and let the thick, perfect silence fill my ears like frozen cotton. The sky was an empty grey, unfinished. Only my puffs of breath hinted that the world existed at all.

The Old Man and the Sea

by Drey on January 8, 2010 in Reft with 1 Comment

In my recent time traveling adventure, I arrived upon the calm shores of an ocean under a deep midnight blue sky. A lighthouse shone into the night. Sitting on the beach was an old man. Well, to be fair, he was probably in his late fifties or early sixties.

It was me.

He turned to look over his shoulder at someone out of my view. He had a wild, warm look in his eye.

I wasn’t alone.

In the end, the Tower becomes a lighthouse and I am contented to look out at the mystery of the ocean.

And I am okay.

Sleeping

by Drey on January 7, 2010 in What I Did Today with 6 Comments

Here is an animation of me sleeping. I set up my camera to take photos throughout the night at 30 minute intervals. Apparently there is a lot of thrashing about when I sleep.

Stopgap

by Drey on January 6, 2010 in Life with No comments

Whenever money is an obstacle, I often resort to MacGyvering devices together which serve similar purposes to the things I can’t afford. When I had a house with a large back yard, instead of paying to have the sprinkler system repaired, I jury rigged this elaborate system of hoses and sprinklers all connected to an epic foot-long sequence of pressure regulators, adapters and a timer.

Right now I have a few stopgaps of the electronic variety. Instead of getting one of the newer model Time Capsules with dual band and a 2TB hard drive, I have a second router and an external drive working with my older Time Capsule. Instead of one of the new widescreen iMacs as a media center, I have a Mac mini connected to the Time Capsule contraption, routed through a splitter going to a monitor and my HD projector. Instead of my own computer I have this borrowed company laptop running Windows XP and a mishmash of working software and hardware.

But getting by on half-measures is so 2009.

I want 2010 to be a year of simple, efficient connections and elegant solutions. I want fewer things. I want it to just work. I want the tools and means to be transparent. I want acceptable signal to noise ratios. I want beauty and brains and a competitive price point. I want stylish substance. I want to try social without the net and a little more work. I want more hearts and circles and less stars and thumbs ups. I want feeds that feed.

And I want to wave hello…hello…hello in a window that never minimizes.

Agricola

by Drey on January 5, 2010 in Board Games, What I Did Today with No comments

Boards ‘n Brews has been going strong for 10 months now, meeting just about every week. I recently moved the group to Austin’s Pizza and that’s been a positive change for the most part. It wouldn’t hurt to turn up the heat, though.

Tonight I got to play Agricola with mostly new players. I had missed the big Agricola frenzy from a few years ago and had only played the game once. I did better this time around now that I knew how important it was to gather food. Who knew that a game about farming could be so tense?

No Photos

by Drey on January 4, 2010 in What I Did Today with No comments

My internet connection and network transfers were crazy slow, so I switched my wireless network over to purely wireless-N. Of course, my iPhone could no longer connect as it was wireless-G. So I found out how to connect my Linksys router to my Time Capsule and have a wireless-G subnetwork. Now everything is fast and connected, regardless of protocol.

I have a shelf of art books that I keep meaning to put to use. So today I started with the photography section. I’m getting re-acquianted with my digital camera, learning what all the functions are. I didn’t get beyond taking a few test photos, though.

Laptop Blues

by Drey on January 3, 2010 in What I Did Today with No comments

I am borrowing a laptop from work while my main computer is down. It will be the end of the month before I hear back from APC and whether they’ll accept my claim and perhaps send some money.

I’m planning on upgrading to a new computer this year, a laptop. If I get a decent tax return…

Shopping around gave me an excuse to come up with a comparison spreadsheet.

Time Machine Go

by Drey on January 2, 2010 in Reft, What I Did Today with 1 Comment

It took a lot of mucking about in space-time to come out the other side with a new real thing: I love my friends and our connection is important. Chances are, you are one of my friends. Hello. I didn’t appreciate the connection we have and how things I do have an impact on your life and vice versa. But now I do.

Old Friends

by Drey on January 1, 2010 in What I Did Today with No comments

The other day one of my best friends from childhood tracked me down via LinkedIn and we’ve exchanged a few messages, bringing each other up to speed on the past 20 years. Sometimes it is weird when someone I haven’t been in contact with finds me, but in this case I was genuinely touched and pleased to hear from Todd. We had many adventures and I hadn’t thought of them until recently.

Smoke Signals

by Drey on November 30, 2009 in Life with 1 Comment

Having been a citizen of the 21st century for just shy of nine years, I think I’ve grasped recent communication trends well enough to develop preferences. Let me show you them. Continue reading →

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