SuperSatellite

The Waiting Game

// September 9th, 2008 // No Comments » // Brain dumps, Health, Life and Times, Politics

After years of putting up with it, I finally went to see an honest to god real doctor about my back pain.  The past couple weeks have been pretty bad for me, and the places that the pain is affecting seems to be on the rise.  Anyway, I got in to him last week after yet another problem, and was looked over.  At first, I had to overcome the “is this person just trying to talk their way into some pain killers to feed a habit” suspicion.  When he hit my right knee with the little hammer, and the leg didn’t move, that seemed to put that to rest.  To me, that didn’t seem like a big deal, but apparently it was a concern to him.

The result was an MRI of my lumbar spine Friday, which I am awaiting the results on, and doses of Amrix and hydrocodone.  I love hydrocodone.  I love it because it works and it only costs me $1.97 a bottle.  I may not make what I’m worth dollar-wise working for the university, but the insurance is nice (though I’m still a little worried about the MRI bill).  In fact, I don’t even care so much if I get addicted to the damn pills, so long as they keep the pain away.  I’m expecting my results to probably direct me into physical therapy as a first step.  I’ll probably know today or tomorrow.

On some miscellaneous notes: production meetings have started for The Uninvited.  Show dates are October 30h-November 1st at Memorial Auditorium.  Mark it down.

I made some changes over at Penpedia yesterday.  On posts that come in from RSS feeds, I’m now only bringing in a summary, and the disclaimer is being tucked away with jQuery so that once you know it’s there, it doesn’t have to be in the way of your reading.  I didn’t want to look like a spammer, or get accused of stealing other people’s content and/or traffic by syndicating whole posts, I felt it to be a little impolite.

Anyone else tired of all the bullshit political banter yet?  Left, right, I don’t care. If you’re a politician, I just automatically assume you’re lying, so stop trying to convince me of crap in the past.  Just tell me straight up how you’re going to handle things now.

I bought donuts the other morning for breakfast, because I was feeling saucy.  Three glazed donuts now cost over two bucks!  I remember when you could get three plain ol’ donuts for under a dollar.  This economy makes me sad.  And you know as well as I do that we’ll NEVER see those kinds of prices again.  Oil costs have dropped nearly $40 from their peak, yet gas costs are only down 10%.  How stupid are people to not get up in arms over this?

Here’s a Big Fat Digest

// August 12th, 2008 // 1 Comment » // Brain dumps, Creativity, Tech, Web, Writing

Okay, here’s a summary post to cover a bunch of different crap.  Turns out I’m very busy lately, and there have been some changes that will probably impact my normal blog posting routine.  I know… you’re heartbroken.  Now, I’m fully aware that I have no routine as it is, but I aspire to, and those aspirations are being interrupted somewhat.

So, the first big news is that I am now blogging “professionally” for .eduGuru, which is a web technology development blog sorta thing for higher education.  That means things that I used to talk about here will probably get diverted there.  Now, generic web stuff I’ll still post here, as well as things like dotCMS guides and my personal stuff will be here, so don’t panic or anything.  If anything, it means stuff around here will be less dry, and I’ll get to tickle your funny bone more.  And believe it or not, my first post is already up at .eduGuru.  I invite you to go read it, of course.  Here’s a snippet:

Is Hosted Search Really Ready for Prime Time?
In my years that I’ve now spent in higher education, one universal truth I have found is that nothing quite moves a project along like when someone much more important and much less web savvy than you deems an issue worth addressing.  Such was the case only a couple months after I had started at the university, when the Director of Marketing noticed that new information she had put up on the site wasn’t coming up in search results, and the results that were hitting weren’t particularly relevant to the topic in the first place.  Thus, a mission was born, to find a way to make our search better, and to do it NOW.  That’s the other thing about people higher up than you, when they say jump, generally you jump…
[read the rest of this at .eduGuru]

Naturally, that will probably appeal to all two of you.  Something more interesting, however, is that I have a new play idea I am currently researching.  It’s the sort of thing that I feel has the potential to be great, too.  I just got the memoirs of the chap that’s at the heart of the story that I finally tracked down on interlibrary loan (I only found one copy for sale online, and it was over $200).  I have one other book that I need to track down a copy of as well.  Hopefully it will be everything I expect.  I will give you more information once I have a better idea of if it will pan out the way I hope it will.  Research must come first though.

I relaunched Penpedia tonight.  I decided Drupal was a little too robust for my needs, and I don’t have time to learn it to a degree to really leverage its power well.  I’m like a monkey with a jackhammer when it comes to Drupal.  Wordpress, on the other hand, I know inside and out, so I switched to that for the new system.  I was lazy and did not design the theme, though I plan on doing some work to customize it a little in the near future.  So if you’re a fountain pen person, go give the new site a look-see.

Brandon showed me a cool site the other day I’d like to share.  It’s an online stock trading game called UpDown.com.  Basically, it’s a total nerd type game.  Think fantasy football, only with stocks (but I have a fantasy football league going too).  You start with a million bucks, and see how well you can play the market.  This sounds stupid, only it isn’t.  For one, it’s actually kinda cool, because you really are fighting the system, and you have limited time to do it (the stock market isn’t open 24 hours a day after all).  Plus, it can help you get an idea of how to play the market, should you want to do it for real later, so it’s great practice, especially for you kiddos out there who actually understand the only way you will survive retirement is to have your own money.  So go check it out.

Week in Review

// May 3rd, 2008 // No Comments » // Brain dumps

It has been a busy week for me, and I apologize that I haven’t found time to get any thoughts added to the ol’ blog recently.  I did accomplish a lot this week, however.  And I’ll also be gone a chunk of next week, so you can safely predict it’ll be a few days until a new post after this one (unless I get ambitious and inspired tomorrow.  Don’t bet on it).  Luckily, there’s always Twitter!

I started and completed the little task of adding a set of stairs to the side of my porch finally, so that we don’t have to jump up and down it (yes, we have front steps, but we never go that way).  Basically did a task each day (I was going to say a “step each day,” but I think the double meaning would have been too confusing.  For me, not you).  I used my grandparents’ front steps as inspiration, though theirs are done in a half moon shape.  I didn’t want to dig up that much brick to do that.  Click the image to see photos through the process.  All the brick came from around the house.  I think I’ll eventually use some to make a path down to the sidewalk.  I also think I’ll start all the porch railing this month as well, which should finish the porch out nicely.

The bad part is how very much it hurt.  There’s no good reason for that.  When I moved to Pittsburg, I helped dad do construction all over the place, and even found myself doing whole sidewalks of brick without a complaint from my back.  It never mattered.  Finishing that top step all at once today just broke me down though.  I had been subscribing to the “work through the pain, you’re just out of shape” mantra lately.  After this, I’m starting to kind of question that.  It’s not even that what I did was so hard.  Dig up a few brick, wash them, and mix a few buckets of concrete and mortar.  I think more it was the frequent up and down.  A good hot shower seems to have loosened things up, but I still feel like I was in a car wreck.

Random fact I just learned: Stephen Lynch starred in the lead role in The Wedding Singer on Broadway.

I shall be out of town again this week.  I’m headed back to Miami Mon-Wed for some developer boot camp with the folks who created dotCMS (partly in preparation for our user training on campus at the end of this week).  Sadly, I won’t be there long enough to enjoy the Miami scenery, but hey, hooray for company condos.  Also, I get to eat at that good sushi place near CocoWalk, who’s name I now can’t remember.  And why aren’t there any nonstop flights to MIA from MCI?  Joplin also needs to run more shuttles to MCI through the day, that’d be a much more convenient drive.  I really hate the drive to MCI by myself whenever I have to fly somewhere.  Anyway, I’ll try to follow up after the training by sharing some of what I learn (or at least what I understand, heh).

I finally sucked it up and upgraded to a Flickr Pro account.  Having done so, I readily admit I should have done it sooner, and it is well worth the $25 a year, and I’ve only had it about four days.  I have already uploaded what I am pretty sure is my whole photo collection, got them sorted and tagged and everything.  Sorry Picasa.  Not sure what pushed me over the edge, other than scrounging up twenty-five bucks and having enough curiosity to make it worth blowing.  The interface is simple but flexible enough that it really seems like it will serve me well.

My neighbor caught me outside today while I was working.  Apparently he works at Pitt Plastic.  For whatever random reason, he hooked me up with a few rolls of trash bags.  Not complaining, it was just a little out of nowhere (when was the last time your neighbor went out of his way to supply you with trash bags?).  However, now I don’t need to buy more trash bags until I’m 38.

Clean up

// March 12th, 2008 // 2 Comments » // Brain dumps

Marisol is finally over with.  The play ended well, and ran smoothly throughout.  I think I accomplished my goal of gaining back lost ground.  Everyone seemed to think that the sound was more than adequate.  Memorial Auditorium came through with their stage mic.  However, I think it’s time for a break again.  I enjoy it, but it is very stressful, and I find myself so busy that committing the time to taking care of sound for a show is not the easiest thing in the world right now.  I’d also like a chance to pick up a few new pieces of gear before the next show I do.

That said, I did get a group together after the post mortem today to do a reading of Freefall, my one act that I’ve been writing since finishing Walking.  It went well, and the feedback was very positive.  I was pleased with the comments made on the dialog, something I’ve been taking a lot of care with.  I plan on doing the first round of major revisions now, as well as lengthening it some to address what I found out today.  I could sure use someone looking to direct a new one act, hint, hint.  I do need to start scouting festivals and such to submit to though.  I think Freefall is some of my better work recently.  So, while I don’t want to work on a show again right away, I do plan on using the down time to funnel creative energy into my own projects.

Speaking of creativity, I’m in the middle of redesigning my blog.  I’m about 45% done so far.  I haven’t done a Wordpress theme in quite a while, so it’s been a little slow getting back in to it.  My development environment is also not ideal, it turns out.  It’s just giving me some bugs when trying to work on it at home.  I think you’ll like it though, quite a bit different from the way it is now.  I’m pretty happy with how it’s shaping up, and I don’t normally give myself a ton of credit in the design realm.  It’s not that I can’t, it’s just that to do it well, I generally have to put forth more effort than I want to do for myself, or for free.  Just so happens that this covers both of those.  Sure, I suppose I could pay myself, but where would that really get me?

Michaele and I took advantage of the play being over to start some wedding planning.  June 6th is the big date it looks like.  Next year, not this year.  I’m not that crazy.  I also posted one of the pictures we had taken.  Wal-Mart does pretty cheap portraits, though the other picture came out awfully dark.  It doesn’t help that I don’t photograph well.  I’m not good at smiling on command, as as you can see, I look bucktoothed.  We’re trying to get a budget in line right now.  Unfortunately, I’m a little new to the whole marriage thing, so I’m not totally sure what we should be shooting for.  Advice?

Once in a while I get finicky

// February 26th, 2008 // No Comments » // Books, Brain dumps, Theatre

Sorry that I’ve been too busy lately to write much. Marisol is running at the studio theatre at PSU next week, Thursday thru Saturday (I think that’s right anyway…). I’ve been pretty tied up doing the sound design/board op stuff for it as we prepare for full tech rehearsals. I have to make up for lost ground due to Alice in Wonderland (don’t ask). Anyway, sound for this show is shaping up to be quite a spot of all right, and so far the cast has been happy with it. It’s just a time suck, as usual. I stand by the theory that I could go for a shorter year if it meant each day could have a couple more hours to them. Be sure to stop by if you get the chance, it’s a short show. I think once this wraps, I’m going to take a longish break from theatre, and get back to writing (as well as finding someone to produce Walking).

It’s a good thing I’m not actually in it though. My voice is apparently taking a vacation from my body at the moment. I feel fine though otherwise, which I’m hoping isn’t a bad sign. I say that only because of that super crappy throat infection I had a couple years ago that was similar. Like swallowing molten shards of glass. I’m keeping an eye on it, so far there isn’t anything resembling that former pain, so it might just be random sore throat. But I sure do sound funny.

I finished Yakuza Moon last week. It was all right. You could tell it had been translated (some of the language was awkward, and it was far from without typographical errors). It wasn’t quite what I had expected. Very “young lady overcoming adversity,” not so much “young lady fighting the dark shadow of the Yakuza boss father.” It is, however, a fast read, which makes up for some of the lack of details. I just expected a little more information about the skeletons in the closet her family had or something like that. It was just more personal than I expected. But, it was also her first (and so far only?) book. I suspect future work will be a little thicker around the middle, hopefully. I’m probably coming across as very “don’t bother reading this book,” though, and I don’t want to give that impression. It wasn’t what I expected, but it was still a fine read. And it’s short enough that even if you don’t like it, you aren’t out much time.

Jamaica we have a bobsled team!