Baptisms, Buy.Com, Books, Brainz, and Good Bye

This past weekend was my cousin's twin's baptism. It was the first time I had ever been to one and was a very nice ceremony. The only problem was that my cousin asked me to film the ceremony with their camcorder (a nice Sony model, I would love to get one before a large trip or we have a kid), and thats a fair bit of pressure to be sprung on someone. Oh crap, is the thing on? Is it recording? How can I get a decent shot of babies from where I am sitting? Did I just say that out loud and now its on the tape? Etc. But I digress, it wasn't about me. It was a nice ceremony and it was good to see the family all together.

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Last Friday afternoon I ordered a new monitor for a family member from Buy.com. Sunday night I got an email saying they had "shipped" the item meaning they had informed FedEx to pick it up. Tuesday morning it was delivered. Not too shabby at all. Especially not shabby considering we had done the free bulk-rate shipping option and the original estimates said 1-2 days for processing and 7-9 days for delivery.

In addition to the very fast delivery I have to promote Buy.com and Google Checkout. This is the second time I have ordered something off Buy.com and both times the prices were very good. Both times the shipping was fast. Both times Google Checkout gave me discounts: $10 my first order for signing up with Google Checkout ... and $20 off this order b/c it was my "first order over $100 for select members". Who knew I was a select member, but fast shipping, good prices and $30 off without me having to do anything are all great!

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I have been reading a lot more lately than I did in the past few years and in an effort to keep track of what I have read, what I am reading, and things I want to read in the future ... I have put up this temporary solution. I am still looking for a better solution to help maintain the many lists I have these days (things to read, things to learn, to-do's, gift ideas, project ideas, etc) but this site is working well for the time being.

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A few weeks ago I stumbed upon this article from TUAW about the iEatBrainz application. The MusicBrainz service is a centralized place for people to access and store digital music information. The iEatBrainz application is a great little app that produces a digital "fingerprint" of a song in iTunes and compares the result against the MusicBrainz database. It then presents you with a list of probably matches, sorted by probability, of tag information for your song. With just a couple clicks, you can have the app search thousands of songs in your iTunes library ... find their tag info, and then with another click, go off and update them all. Admittedly, it takes a while to update thousands of songs and isn't perfect (it was very good though, some it couldn't find and other songs that were on multiple albums, it chose a different one than I wanted) but for those of you with iTunes libraries with many missing tags (maybe b/c the mp3's were gathered in a unusual manor ;-) ) it is a great resource. Warning ... the original article says that the service will be going down at some point, so check it out early or not at all.

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This is my last week at my current client and the last week working for my consulting company. On Monday I start work with my new company. Honestly, I am extremely excited and very anxious to see what it is going to be like. Its been hard wrapping up my current work but it will be nice to start on some new things.

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I have new posts at my other blogs as well.

Mother Nature needs to go on intervention

... because she is definitely on something.

This past weekend it was 70+ degrees. Em and I even took in some sites at Forest Park downtown (although it took FOREVER to get there b/c everyone else had the same idea). Today, I came home early b/c after being at work for less than 3 hours there was 6-8 inches of snow on my car and no sign of it slowing up (also I have 3 days of comp. time I was going to lose if I didn't use).

At the moment it is still coming down pretty hard; for St. Louis standards at least.

Not a whole lot has been going on besides the crazy weather. Just work and such. I was going to go to a JUG meeting tonight on Adobe Flex, but it has been canceled. Hopefully the afternoon off will give me a chance to catch up on some of my personal projects that I have been putting off recently.

One thing I have been keeping up with is cooking new things. You can see a few new posts about my adventures in food at my other blog.

The only other thing going on is that tomorrow, March 5th, the next arc of the Dark Tower comic book series by Marvel comes out. I am eagerly awaiting this new set of stories b/c they are completely new and not directly based on anything in the books. The story of what happened after Roland and company left Mejis was only hinted at in several places. :-D While I am not crazy enough, especially given the weather, to venture out at 12:01 AM to pick up a copy, I will have to try and get one tomorrow some time.

Working Hard or Hardly Working?

I have been trying to work hard this week, but meetings and a series of annoying issues have been conspiring to make things otherwise. All well.

Not much going on other than some very strange weather (way warm the last few days with 70+ yesterday and some of the craziest lightning and thunder last night I have ever witnessed).

As far as my 2008 goals are concerned, I am currently reading Forward The Foundation which I received for Christmas, slowly progressing on Project Spedini, cooking some new things, planning on attending my first JUG meeting on Thursday, and am now 6-1 on Fact or Crap at work!

Unfortunately, I haven't had a good chance/urge to take any pictures the last few days and only worked out once last week.

Reading

A while back I posted on the BForum about how I wanted to read more in the upcoming year and was looking to put together a reading list of sorts as way of doing that.

Between then and now I have finished reading Into The Wild and have started and finished The Hobbit (my thoughts below). I am still in the process of putting together a list of "New Years Resolutions" but tentatively I am thinking to try and read 4 new novels by different authors, 4 tech books (this will be easy) and 4 non-tech and non-fiction books between now and the end of 2008. This may be a lofty goal, but you know me. Who would I be if not for my lists and lofty goals. :-)

Hopefully I will put together an intended reading list soon, but until then Thanks to everyone who posted there and I have talked to in person. You all have given me a list of candidates that is much longer than I can even comprehend. Now I just need to pick a few to get me started.


Into The Wild - by Jon Krakauer

This book outlines the most unusual life and death of Chris McCandless. By recounting the information found while researching the book, and a previous magazine article which originally brought Chris' story to national attention, the author tries to piece together the events that lead to Chris's tragic end and tries to understand the man.

Big abstract words aside, I found the story very interesting and thought provoking. I won't spoil too many details here, but Chris' story hinges around his unusual lifestyle, his relationships, and his death in Alaska while attempting to live out the summer "in the bush," completely alone. I had a chance to see the recently released movie just before starting the book but didn't for reasons I have forgotten. I will definitely have to see it now.

I have thought before that it would be interesting to try and live off the land, go back to simpler times and see how well I (or someone like me) could survive if put into an extreme situation without modern comforts. Its probably why Robinson Crusoe always appealed to me. Its amazing how it took our ancestors thousands of years to figure things out as "simple" as carpentry, foraging, hunting, etc and how fast a person of today can fall if these things are taken out of the equation.

The idea of moving back to simpler times. without cell phones. without computers. without the "need" of prepackaged precooked preprocessed foods from around the world. Its very provocative. Like being at our cabin without the worry that in a week or 2 you have to go back :-p


The Hobbit - by J.R.R. Tolkien

Having seen and loved the LOTR movies and never read the original books or The Hobbit, I thought this was a good starting place. I was surpised to find the book fairly light given the depth of back story and details that the movies describe and which are found in the book.

I was surprised by how what I thought would be the climax of the book, wasn't, and how the last third of the book flew by in a flurry of action and plot changes. I thought it was a great story and helped to tie together a number of things that the movies (by themselves) left without closure or explanation. I can't wait for this movie either.