March, 2005:

Today’s dragging. Bad.

All of you people with camera phones should send me something to entertain me. Right now. Go! Yes YOU!

I’ve got a new plan for the way that I spend my personal time. There are a lot of things that I enjoy doing or that I need to do, that I never seem to find the time for. So, every “school-night” from now on, I’m setting aside some time for the things I need/want to do. 30 minutes (or more) of each day will be spent on photography. This could be editing pictures, taking new pictures, or even reading a photography magazine. 30 minutes (or more) of each day will be spent performing some form of physical activity like tennis, basketball, jogging, running, weight lifting or swimming. Finally, 30 minutes of each day will be spent cleaning something. Our house isn’t messy, but, that’s because we spend huge chunks of time cleaning it. I’d much prefer to do it in little pieces over the course of the week.

“Reverend,” you might ask, “how will you ever find the time for this?”. That’s a good question. I’ve realized that I spend way too much personal time in front of the computer looking for something to do.

I spend 8 hours a day in front of a computer for work. This can’t be avoided. When I get home, I use the computer for personal projects, catching up on the world, and conversing with friends. I don’t have any intention of stopping that. However, a large chunk of time is spent simply reloading the same pages over and over just waiting for someone or something to come around. That’s what isn’t at all needed.

The problem with friendships that are conducted primarily via instant message is that, if both of you don’t spend quite a bit of time in front of a computer, you’re unlikely to cross paths. While my 8+ hours a day would be considered enough by most people’s standards, some people are only available after working hours. If I’m spending less time sitting around waiting for someone to talk to, I’m MUCH less likely to run into you. So, a few things, in this regard, will be changing.

First of all, I’m going to start using more email and less IM. Email is wonderful because there is no expectation of an instant reply. If I send an email, you can respond when you have a free minute, and vice versa. Of course, this may very well mean a bunch of really short emails, or it could mean one really long email. Of course, quite a few people have a bad habit of not responding to email and instead, perhaps, waiting for that person to show up online. I hope that, with me, you’ll keep this in mind and consider responding instead.

Secondly, for those times where email just doesn’t cut it, I may start using the phone more often. If I don’t have your number, now might be a good time to give it to me. Additionally, much like a phone call, I’d like to let you all know that you can feel free to text message me if you’re available online and find that I am not currently there. If I just happen to be unoccupied or at a point where I can take a break, then maybe I’ll be able to talk to you.

And, please, if you find that, because of this, we’re talking less than you would like… let me know and I’ll do whatever I can to fix that.

Thanks.

I have the best friends ever. Truly. You guys are all fantastic. Thank you for all of your support, kind words, and sense talking.

In other news, I’m dead bored and really restless. So, despite being about 30 minutes shy of a full work day, I’m going to head home before I go crazy.

Driving home is the worst. It’s 60 minutes of pure alone with no where to go and nothing to break the monotony. I wish I had a little monkey to keep in the seat next to me. He could throw poo at passing cars or make lewd gestures at people next to me at the light just to keep me entertained. Or maybe a squirt gun so I could shoot the other cars around me that piss me off. Or, in a more friendly fashion, just a sign on my car that says, “are you bored too? call or text me at 469-4-THE-REV” (damn… I gotta try to get that number now). I doubt anyone would call though. I mean… who would call a complete stranger just because they were bored? I wonder if *I* would call a complete stranger if I saw that sign on someone else’s car. Probably. I’m just not sure if I’d call before or after I had the monkey throw poo at the car.

This is a bit backwards from the way this site usually works but, if you don’t read this site through LiveJournal, then you’ve missed the two polls I’ve created recently regarding the content on this site. Please take a few minutes to visit these polls and let me know how you feel. If you don’t have a LiveJournal account and don’t feel like creating one, you’re welcome to provide your answers as a comment to this entry. Thanks in advance.

“How do you prefer to read and comment?”:http://www.livejournal.com/users/revjim/736151.html

“Why do you read this site?”:http://www.livejournal.com/users/revjim/736331.html

Um… hey everyone. According to “LiveBrownie”:http://sumeet.info/LiveBrownie/, I must be the hottest guy in all of LiveJournal. Or maybe they just wrote a really crappy application that can be broken even accidentally and especially on purpose. Nah, that couldn’t be it. I’m just really hot.

It’s sunny all week and now today, since we’re planning on grilling outside, it’s pouring rain and muddy everywhere. Thanks a lot.

Someone send me “something nice to look at”:http://revjim.net/page/distractions/ to cheer me up.

The Grillin’ and Chillin’ event has been moved to tomorrow (Saturday the 26th).

It looks like there is going to be around 6 or 8 of us. Just right for a nice cozy gathering.

Jess’ parents got us a new Grill as a late X-Mas present. Tomorrow (Friday the 25th), we’re breaking it in and you’re invited. I know it’s short notice, so don’t feel bad if you can’t make it. But, if you can, show up around 6:30 with some meat and something to drink. Mike’s going to bring the sex toys and a video camera… so I don’t think we’ll need much else, but you’re welcome to bring whatever you think might be interesting. RSVP quick. Like now, or something. And, if you need directions let me know.

*Update*: “event has been moved to Saturday”:http://revjim.net/item/10284/

damnit damnit damnit damnit damnit damnit.

Somehow I managed to forget the passphrase to my GPG key. Ugh. Well… looks like I’ll be building a new one. Grrrrr. I imagine that means I forgot my SSH key passphrases too, right? Yup. Damn.

Okay… that’s it. Anyone know of any security issues with Revelation? If not, I’m gonna keep a record of this stuff in there from now on. At least then I only have one password to remember and it’s likely that I use it often enough not to forget it. I have a bunch of work passwords in Revelation now (as I don’t care so much about security on those) and it seems to work fine.

Grrr… this is so annoying.

Ladies and Gentlemen, really… does it get any better than this?

I was already working on my own little pile of code to allow a Rails ActionController to be run from cron. Additionally, in another world for another project, I was already working on a way to allow a Rails ActionMailer to *receive* mail. Well, it looks like “Rails”:http://rubyonrails.com/ 0.11.0 ( “released this morning”:http://weblog.rubyonrails.com/archives/2005/03/22/rails-0110-ajax-pagination-non-vhost-incoming-mail/ ) does both of those things for me.

In addition to that, Rails just got a lot easier to run out of a subdirectory of your document root without Virtual Hosting. It also got AJAX (I hate that buzzword) support, and a new Pagination helper.

Wow. I’ve said this before… and now I’m saying it again…

Web development just got a whole lot easier.

This past weekend was a little bit of everything.

We had a nice dinner Friday night with Jess’ family.

Saturday morning we brought them to the airport (on time, despite Jess’ mom’s insistence that we were going to be late).

Saturday afternoon we went shopping with Mike and Lisa and then headed out to Ray Roberts Lake for a camping trip. We brought way too much stuff and had a hell of a time getting it all out to the camp site. Once we get settled in, though, we had fun. It was good to spend time with a bunch of people I don’t see nearly enough.

Sunday morning we packed up our stuff and headed back home. We showered, ate lunch and then decided to go out for a picture drive. We were within minutes from being where we were going when my phone rang. It was the alarm company telling us that the police had been dispatched to our house. We turned around and headed home. A Denton County Police Officer was there waiting for us. Somehow our garage door had opened.

I won’t begin to speculate how it happened here, because every conclusion I come to adds up to my alarm company being quite incompetent. I will say, however, that the Denton County Police were very nice. They weren’t at all upset that they got called out for nothing, and he even humored me and walked through the house with me just to make sure someone hadn’t come in.

By the time that was squared away and we were ready to head home my light was lost so I only got a few pictures. Then we stopped at the grocery store, picked up a few things and headed home for some grilled tilapia and vegetables, a few beers, and some good music.