No surf, no surf.

What was supposed to be two days of surfing lessons in Santa Cruz ended up being one afternoon of sun burning and another of sea kayaking. The surf was vitually non-existant so our classes were canceled. After applying Sooth-a-caine to the areas of flesh that we neglected to apply sunscreen to at the beach, we ate dinner at The Acapulco in downtown Santa Cruz. On our way home Sunday, we stopped at Marianne’s on Ocean Avenue to treat ourselves to some ice cream. Yum!

Mind Lapse

Walking home from the train station today, I was all set to write an entry all about life, the universe and everything. Then I walked in the door, decided I needed to fix dinner and proceeded to forget everything I was going to write about.So instead I’ll just write about how I woke up this morning with a numb tongue. In fact, it still hasn’t gone away. I don’t remember eating anything especially hot last night. I must have been biting my tongue in my sleep last night.Is this the epitome of a true blog or what? I think I’ve sunk to an all time low.

Back From Defcon

I took Friday off and headed to Las Vegas last Thursday night for Defcon. It’s a hacker convention that is more networking opportunity and party than convention. The talks are usually pretty good, though most people go to just meet up with birds of the same feather and have a good time. Though the conference itself was a little disappointing due to over-attendance, it was still great to meet up with friends I haven’t seen in a few years. Continue reading →

Longitude

Today was a long day. The alarm went off at 4:30am. I slapped the snooze button a few times and rolled out of bed a little before 5am. Two eggs hit the skillet, the orange juice was poured and I ate as I prepared for the first phone conference of the day.It’s production roll-out time for my project and we get to deal with all of the little issues that of course had no interest in showing their ugly head while in the testing and user acceptance environments. Oh, no. They had to wait until we moved into the production environment.So today was a busy day. I stayed at home due to the frequency of the phone conferences. The last call ended at 8:15pm. The craziness was only interrupted by a short nap in the late morning (hey, I couldn’t concentrate, okay… I wasn’t doing anybody good), answering the door in my boxers and t-shirt to sign for a package, and a shower and haircut in the late afternoon. The night was topped off with a dose of “Dude, Where’s My Car?” in the presence of friends. Just what the doctor ordered for a long, stressful day: a mindless, stupid comedy and good company.

Chillin’ Evening

This evening was pretty nice. I was able to leave work a little early, though I had to get on a call shortly upon arriving home. I logged in remotely and did a little work from the Skychair on the back porch.We had some tomatoes and a little onion that needed to be eaten so I made up some homemade pasta sauce: sauted the onions, added the tomatoes, added a little white wine and then let it simmer for a few minutes on low. Oh, cut up a clove or two of garlic and tossed that in with a little oregano, too. In the meantime, I browned some beef and tossed bowtie pasta into boiling water. Voila! Pasta yum yum.Accompanied by Tosca’s Delhi 9, John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme, and the French Kiss soundtrack with the lights down low, it was a great way to unwind from the day.

iConnect

I had a good chat with my brother this evening. My immediate family tries to do a video conference on a weekly basis since my brother and I now live on opposite coasts and my parents are still in the Midwest. My parents couldn’t do it this week so my brother and I decided to test out Apple’s iChat AV. We usually use iVisit and need to boot into OS 9 since that’s what our parents are still using and the OS X version still has major audio problems. Continue reading →

Lost Summer

This summer just seems like it is flying by. It feels like there are so many summer activiities that I should be doing or should have done by now but haven’t. I haven’t had a picnic in a park. I haven’t gone climbing outdoors. No biking. No rollerblading. No camping. No hiking.Work has been kicking my butt during the week and doesn’t leave much time in the evening to do much. I’ve been consumed by it so much lately that I lost track of dates this week. Before I knew it it was 2 days after my brother‘s birthday and I owed him a belated birthday call. Somehow the weekends get filled up with “normal” things and the “summer” events fall by the wayside… shopping, laundry, cleaning up the apartment.Is it just an odd year, expecting the baby and all? Is it just that my job has been so demanding that I haven’t had the chance to take much time off? I dunno. I guess at this point I’ll just have to make the best of what’s left. Fortunately, living in California, that gives me until the end of October.