My brother and sister-in-law got in this afternoon. It’s so weird how everyone just slips into their familial roles, and the newer additions just flow in and fill in the gaps. It’s nice to have them here.
As if it needs to be said, posting may be light as I’m off celebrating all that Christmas stuff.
NetNewsWire is a neat RSS feed reader. Ok, wait, step back. Don’t know what RSS is? Nevermind. It allows you to read the most recent posts from some of your favorite blogs (and other newsy sites) without having to fire up your browser and load all those pages. This is the first newsreader I’ve used, and it’s incredibly easy to use. It’s smooth, fast and easy to find new content to add.
The one question this raises is how this fits those “pay for content” business plans out there. If you’re RSS-ing your site, and you expect people to pay, how does that work? I’m sure there are people thinking about/around it, like only posting snippets, only posting whole posts older than X days, or just not RSS-ing anything.
I’ve been thinking about my crazy business ideas I come up with while driving, or in the shower, while doodling in meetings. I think I’ll start blogging them so you can all share in the wackiness.
I’m feeling the stirrings of that design inspiration I’ve been seeking for the past couple months. I want to do something totally different. There are thousands of blogs out there, and lately, they all (rash generalization, there are those that don’t, and you know who they are) look alike. Mine looks like everyone else’s now, and it didn’t use to. Everyone has a white background with black text, a semi-interesting header (and a lot of people using photos of musicians or actors, which bothers me for some reason), a menu with the standard bloggy content (last X posts, blogroll, links to photos, etc – ummm, just like me), and sometimes a third column (because three column layouts were the big trend this year) containing often useless information. Some people resort to a fourth column with even more useless info which I don’t think they realize causes all kinds of problems in non-maximized browsers. See, it’s all the same. The problem is partly that there’s only so much you can do with bloggish information. You have your posts, comments, links, etc and there are only so many different ways to display them.
There are other ways to do things. I honestly believe someone will do something completely original with a blog in the next year that everyone will copy (poorly in most cases). So, what’s my inspiritation? Which sites inspire me? Here’s the list, and why:
Now, I’m not planning on using any elements from these sites, but all of them have given me ideas and spurred me to think about different things I can do with this site. I may not do any of them here where you can see them, but I’ll get around to it (another reason I love OS X – I have Movable Type and a copy of this site running in my local copy of Apache).
There’s just something wrong. What’s wrong? I have no idea. I’m taking the blood pressure medicine (started on Wednesday). Today, I just feel worn down and low. I’m not tired, I just have no energy – listless would be a good word for it. We went out to lunch, and eating didn’t feel good (that part is psychological, I think). Funny, I just did some research and apparently, depression and fatigue are both known side effects. Funnier still is that my doctor wants me to lose weight, but all I want to do now is curl my fat self up on the couch with a warm blanket and a pint of Ben & Jerry’s Phish Food.
I’m depressed that I’ve cut out a third or more of my daily calories for a week and haven’t lost a pound yet according to my bathroom scale. I’m worried that I’m not going to be able to stick to this diet and that I’ll always be fat and die before my time (if I stay fat, my “time” could be “any ol’ day now”). It’s a crappy way to be at Christmas, don’t you think?
Ho ho ho
After our marathon meeting this morning, the folks in my group headed over to Banjara for some Indian food. Why? I suggested it because Jen doesn’t like Indian food and I had a terrible jones for it. I’d never been there before, and I was pleasantly surprised. The lunch buffet is stocked with really good stuff. Their Tandoori Chicken is the best I’ve ever had, and the other dishes were excellent. There were four main dishes on the buffet, Tandoori Chicken, a salad, six different chutneys, four or five appetizers and a lovely garbanzo bean salad. It was all excellent. If you’re ever in Ashburn, VA and need some Indian food, definitely check them out.
And, without caffeine, and with a buffet in me – I’m sleeeee-eeeepy.
Ok, why isn’t today over yet? It’s only 4:50, and I can’t keep my eyes open. I’d give anything for a Code Red or Dr. Pepper right now. I think it’s a great sign of my commitment that I haven’t had one already.
In the interest of lowering my blood pressure, I’ve undertaken the following:
I am going to be one grumpy, tired fat guy for the next three months. But, serious news causes serious action, and I’m not kidding this time. I’m young enough that I’ve never really contemplated my own mortality. I have now, and I haven’t done nearly enough to consider giving up now. I even considered getting the Al Roker Halve-Your-Stomach With Staples thing done. I’ve never really attempted dieting before, so I’m going to give that a serious shot before considering practically-irreversible .
I’ve been fat since the age of eleven, shortly after my first knee surgery. During high school and after, I held steady at about 220 by playing volleyball, basketball and swimming. Then, I got married. It’s happened to all of my friends who get married – they gain 10 – 20 pounds. Why? I’m not sure, but it happens to almost everyone. Then, I blew out my knee, and well, that’s how I got to where I am today. All my fault, and a product of having other things that I thought were more important. I’ve never been one for exercise, and only played sports as a venue for trash-talking (OK, that’s a lie, but it’s funny).
You’re welcome to come along as I try to break sixteen years of bad habits. I hope you don’t mind swearing…
I’m still sick, so I decided to suck it up and go to the doctor. He says it’s still a cold and if it’s not better by Thursday, come back in. Ooooo-kay. In other news, I have insane blood pressure. It’s kind of scary that it’s been creeping up over the past few months and is now in the “we’re going to medicate you” range. So, I have to get serious about losing weight and exercising and taking pills until I get it under control. I get to go back in two weeks for a physical.
I’m twenty-seven, how did this happen? Oh yeah, I got fat and lazy and am a workaholic who’s knees complain at the thought of doing anything exercise-like. It’s a cyclical mess of excuses and problems and it’s time to stop. I’m not going to be a 40-year-old heart attack victim who can’t play with his kids. Just so you know…
It says something, I’m not sure what, that I refuse to get sick during the week. I have been miserable all weekend, coughing up lung monkeys, blowing my nose and finding rubber cement in the kleenex and feeling just horrible. I have a doctor’s appointment tomorrow morning to get some drugs and hopefully head off the pneumonia I need to get every year. I skipped it last year, thankfully, but it seems to have caught up to me.
Tomorrow, a huge project goes to QA, and I have to be there. Why? Because it’s mine? Because I don’t trust anyone else to get it there? That’s not true, because I know there are guys on my team who can get it done. But, I’ll be there after the doctor’s, coughing, CVS’ing things, and doing my job. I’m nuts, I know…