Weekend Review: July 14th & 15th

Every weekend there are new sights, sounds, and taste to consume. There are other sensory inputs that tickle my brain too, but saying there is stuff to feel sounds creepy. This is a journal of my weekend endeavors. Enjoy!

Northlanders
Brian Wood's work on DMZ and Demo made me a fan of his long ago. I started Northlanders this week and chewed through volumes one, two and most of three up through the weekend. Vikings and modern-ish dialogue mashed up to produce some great historical fiction. I dig it.

Ikea
It has been ages since we went to northern Virginia for affordable Swedish furniture. Our first two apartments were filled with their goods. On Saturday we went for a massive bookshelf (6'x6') to split Kaden and his soon to be baby brother's room. A wire installation to hang art in the playroom and a shelf system for my office desk, to elevate the monitors. All in all a successful trip, plus Swedish meatballs on the cheap for lunch.

CodeAcademy
Looking for creative outlets for my free time is a hobby in and of itself. My latest is learning JavaScript. An extension of my work life of sorts. CodeAcademy is a site developed to make learning to code more interactive and fun. So far the achievements associated with completing lessons have me coming back again and again. No clue what I'll do with it ultimately, but at the very least it is another item for my resume.

Aces Speed
Card games are decidedly not my jam. Something that royally bums out my wife. An admitted card fiend. So when she introduced me to Aces Speed on the iPad it felt like a trick. We have been playing it pretty regularly since. It is just Spit/Speed, but something about it being on a retina display and touch enabled makes me love it. I don't get it.

Aesop Rock - Skelethon
I've spinning loads of new hip hop over the past year thanks to my shared interest with Mike. In that time I fell off with a few of my old favorites. Namely Aesop Rock who I've listened to probably more than any other artist in my life (see: Wu Tang in high school). It was not that his flow or style got old for me, but he hadn't put out anything new in a while (2007). Skelethon is his latest release and I've listened to it on repeat since it dropped. I heart it.

Downcast
Podcast are the life blood of my daily commute. Managing them with iTunes was always a pain, but it was the price of admission. Then Ethan recommended Downcast a few weeks ago and the whole process changed. No more syncing to my desktop for new content 3-4 times a week. No more iTunes forgetting to downloaded the newest release. It is simple and requires no manual work from me. The way it should be honestly. That and the new Apple podcast app is a complete piece of shit.

It's Too Damn Hot

If, then statements tend to explain most situations with a nice little bow...

If (x=hot as the devils knee pit) Then
--we will not ride bikes
Else
--we will ride bikes
End If

Simple enough right. It has been crazy hot in Richmond this July and as such my riding has taken a nose dive. My mileage log is down right embarrassing...

February: 46.6 miles
March: 82.25 miles
April: 121.42 miles
May: 135.22 miles
June: 134.02 miles
July: 39.6 miles

2008 Year to Date: 559.11 miles

August will probably be more of the same unfortunately. The earlier I have to get up to beat the heat the less inclined I am to ride given my proclivity to sleeping in. By ten in the ante meridiem it is already too hot to ride most days anyway.

Images
A google image search of all things hot, heat, steamy, etc yield near naked and fully naked women. Half the search terms you put in have this result, the internet has porn on it, who knew? A search for all things temperature, sun, etc yield pictures that belong on science fair posters. Tough day to find a header.

Slash Played
I was listening to a podcast the other day and heard a discussion about the total amount of time spent in WoW across all of your characters lifetimes (/played). A listener had written in with a total just one day shy of 365, meaning they had spent one human year out of the four years that WoW has been out in the game. Pretty scary to consider. Mine was 85 days and 23 hours across five characters.

When I Grow Up

I don't know what I want to be...

For a while I thought the answer was an underwriter. I like statistics and excelled in the two business related stat classes I took in college. I think that goal was one of convince though not of desire. I have been in the insurance field for seven years now and the ladder up is through underwriting. It made sense to continue down the paved road, when the gravel road that forked away would require me to lift my head.

IT
I am a hybrid of insurance, marketing and information technology in my current job. I lean toward the IT side as often as possible. An IT career seems interesting enough that I have started to read up on databases in my free time (MySQL and Oracle). Fascinating stuff right, I can't wait for the dinner party conversations. I don't know where it will lead, but I enjoy all things tech so why not make it a career. This also seems like the easiest transition of all the choices I have considered.

Librarian
This is the one career option that would send me back to school. While I am not super thrilled to collect more student loan debt, a masters in library science would leave me set for life. Not financially of course, but from a personality and interest in my work perspective. Archival, research and literature work have always sparked something in me. This would be the biggest transition, but would not be so bad as I could keep a full time job while I studied for my degree online.

Web Design and Coding
I could most likely teach myself most of everything I would need to start doing website design on the side. I have dabbled in CSS a bunch of times and I have worked in photoshop for eight years now. Actually getting a full time job would be a bit more work though. To be honest I don't know if my vision and design creativity would be up to snuff ever. This is really the pipe dream of the three, but it is nice to dream.