Renewed!

1/6/2010 – 10:02 am

I’m sure everyone will be happy to know that I have just renewed this domain name for another year. What does that mean for you? Well it means that at least for another year I’ll be here semi-randomly, writing things of little or no consequence?

And what does this mean for me? Another year of possible copyright infringement on the late, great Mitch Hedberg.

So thanks everyone who has been along for the ride so far. I think we’re around 7 or 8 years of this, and hopefully we’ll have some more together. But now, I have a meeting.

By Nathan | Posted in General | Comments (1)

Happy New Year

12/31/2009 – 9:40 am

Greetings all, and Happy New Year, almost. What is there to say about a year like 2009? If you’ve been following my letters, you know that for the first few years I tried to be as ridiculous as possible, mocking what seems to be the traditional end of year letter where people whine and moan about the crappy things going on in their lives, as if they are the only ones who have it bad. (Do you wear a machine plugged into you? Does sugar have the potential to kill you? Yeah, I thought not. Shut it.) But you can only do that so much. And so last year I tried to be genuine, and that actually turned out pretty well. Now this year I don’t really feel like being genuine, or being ridiculous. So we’ll see.

I guess the best place to start would be the start of the year. History! Barack Obama elected President. Yay! My guy had one for the first time since I could vote. And not only was it my guy, but it was the guy that I had supported from the very start. So yay! We won!

Wait. What? You mean in a lot of ways he has turned out to not be what you wanted at all? Well that’s probably my own fault for placing so much hope in him, but he did tell us to do that. Oh well. At least my guy still “won”.

But politics are boring. So lets talk about all of the other glorious things that 2009 had for us. In April, Kelly’s horrible foster dog Jesse, who humped everything he could find, and ate through every piece of clothing he could get his hands on, finally left. But only after he ate a bunch of raisins, which could have killed him, so Kelly and I had to force him to drink some hydrogen peroxide in order to get him to throw up. Fun!

In one of the more surprising parts of the year, Abby managed to get a boyfriend. A real one. And one that is actually a good guy. And can put up with her. His came is Neo, and as far as I can tell, he has the patience that can only be imparted directly from God.

But that actually isn’t the most surprising relationship part of the year. No, that would have to be Phil and Helen getting married. That in itself is not surprising. We knew that they were going to get married since last year. No, the surprising thing is that I, Nathan, doofus of the family, performed the ceremony. And you know what? I did an awesome job. A much better job than you could have done, dear reader, for two reasons. One, I know Phil and Helen better than you, and two, I am better than you at being funny and witty and yet heartfelt. Their wedding was actually a very good day, and I think my blood sugar is still way too high from all of the amaretto cake that I ate.

Mom and Dad still have their new house that they got at the end of last year, although it is vastly improved. The entire improvement to the house, though, comes in the shape of a new room for Abby. The rest of the house is pretty much exactly the same, but now Abby has a brand new basement room that is the size of Phil and Helen’s apartment, basically. Dad built it with his friend, and now new family relative, John. They literally worked on this room for months, and spent untold fortunes on making it. It is beautiful, but there is an argument to be made that Abby didn’t deserve it.

But the biggest news has to be the reopening of Highway 40. I’ve recently gone into how great it is to have it open, so I won’t rehash, but I will say that now that it has been open for a few weeks, things have definitely smoothed out, and it makes my commute much easier. It also makes it much, much easier to get to Mom and Dad’s, except when I forget that it is open and still go the long way out of habit. But it is open, and there is something to be said for small good things in the face of immeasurable suckage.

Speaking of immeasurable suckage, I was talking to Kelly this year about how terrible this year was. Mostly because of some complete brain issues on my part. But they were pretty unhappy making, and kind of cast a bad light over the whole year. (Now we are into the realm of the traditional end of year letter.) But she made an important point. She asked if everything was okay right now, and yes, right now, at this instant, things are okay. I just ate a pastry, and I’m not unhappy, and I have a 3 day weekend coming up. So yeah, I am happy right now, even after this crappy year. And maybe that is all that you can really expect.

In conclusion, today is an arbitrary delimiter of time, so let’s not get too excited everyone. Drive safe. Don’t shoot guns in the air. Don’t make a big deal out of this. It is just Thursday.

By Nathan | Posted in Family, Filler, Pointless Ruminations | Comments (4)

Merry Boxing Day

12/26/2009 – 6:45 pm

I hope that everyone out there had a lovely Christmas. I certainly did. I got lots of lovely presents, and spent the whole day hanging out with my family and eating way too much food. So that seems like a pretty good day.

This year, as opposed to previous years, I am writing a New Years letter, as opposed to a Christmas letter. Mostly this is because I was lazy and didn’t get around to writing it yet. But also, everyone writes Christmas letters. I’m going to be a little different. It should be up in the next few days. I will do my very best to have it up before the new year.

I’m also getting very excited about my trip to Europe. I leave in less than two months, and it is going to be quite an adventure. Actually, when I say excited, what I really mean is scared out of my mind. And excited. But SCARED. I have never been someplace where they didn’t speak English (unless you count Puerto Rico, which I guess I should, but don’t) and it is going to be quite the experience. But I should come back with at least a few stories.

So I hope everyone has a festive week, and keep checking for that New Years Letter.

By Nathan | Posted in Birthdays, Family, Filler, Kelly, Pointless Ruminations, Travel | Comments (0)

Birthday!

12/18/2009 – 8:50 am

Mom! It is your birthday! Happy Birthday!

By Nathan | Posted in General | Comments (3)

Boeing 787

12/16/2009 – 10:00 am

It is a pretty well known fact that I am sort of an aviation aficionado. If by “aficionado” we mean someone who spends hours reading about aviation, planning trips around aviation, simulating aviation, boring his friends with aviation.

Well yesterday was a pretty big day. It was the first flight of Boeing’s newest airliner, the 787. If you pay any attention to the news you know that the whole project has been somewhat of a boondoggle. The first flight was supposed to be two years ago, and then finally it was supposed to be in June of this year, but several weeks before the flight they discovered a problem with some parts made by a subcontractor that were involved with holding the wings on, so that’s an issue. It had gotten to the point where the snarkier of the online commentators started questioning if the plane would ever fly.

The main issue that has caused these delays is the use of composites (plastics) instead of metal for the main structural bits of the plane, like the fuselage. In the end, Boeing say, this will make the plane lighter which will allow it to fly using less fuel. It also allows other things like a non-circular fuselage. But this is very new technology for this application, and so obviously there have been delays, but way more than we in the aviation fan kingdom would have liked.

Well yesterday we finally got to see the first flight, and it was pretty amazing. Boeing did a live webcast so I was able to watch the first flight, and I definitely got a tad bit emotional. So if you go to the following link, you can watch a video that Boeing has put together of the flight. Although you probably won’t think it is nearly as cool as I did.
http://787firstflight.newairplane.com/ffindex.html

By Nathan | Posted in General | Comments (0)

Religion – As Explained By “Community”

12/11/2009 – 4:16 pm

The show “Community” did an excellent job last night of describing in general how I feel about religion.

“To me, religion is like Paul Rudd. I see the appeal, and I would never take it away from anyone, but I would also never stand in line for it.”

By Nathan | Posted in General | Comments (1)

I-64

12/8/2009 – 10:25 am

For the last two years my life has been completely disrupted because one of the main East-West highways in St. Louis has been shut down to be completely rebuilt. It also happens to be the highway that is 3 blocks north of my house, and a key road for getting to my parents, work, and Kelly’s parents. It is just about the worst highway to have taken away, and I have had to deal with it being gone for the last two years.

But as of yesterday, it is back open, and completely rebuilt. And you know what? It is pretty much just the same as it was before. They didn’t add any lanes to help decrease traffic, and they didn’t really change some key intersections so that traffic is building up in exactly the same places that it was before the highway was rebuilt. And to make things worse, they took away some exits and entrances, including the main one that I used to get home.

Still, despite all of that, it is back, and I have a direct route to very important places in my day. And I save about 15 minutes each way to work. And I guess better gas mileage since I’m on the highway. I think that is reason enough to celebrate.

By Nathan | Posted in General | Comments (2)

Movies Make Me Nervous

11/30/2009 – 9:12 am

I might be the only person in the world who suffers from this affliction, but movies make me horribly, horribly nervous and uneasy. It is so bad that I rarely watch movies because I know that most likely, it is going to be an unpleasant experience. And now, if you didn’t already, you probably think that I am certifiably insane. But let me explain.

It seems that the whole purpose of a movie is that you don’t know how it ends. In fact, most times, you don’t really know the middle bit or the start either. Because if you did, then why would you waste your time and money seeing the movie. But what if you are the kind of person who gets horribly, horribly anxious about the unknown, even the fictional unknown? Well then not knowing how something is going to end is a terrible thing.

So what does a person who suffers from that do? Well, if they are like me, they look up the plot of the movie before they see it. But here is the thing about that. It sort of ruins the whole movie experience. Because a big part of seeing a movie is seeing how the plot unfolds. If you already know how it unfolds, then it is just kind of a big waste of time.

This leaves me in quite the predicament. If I don’t look up the plot, then I’m going to be nervous and freaking out the whole movie. If I do look up the plot, I’m going to be bored and not care. So what do I do? Well, in most cases, I just avoid movies all together. But that is kind of boring, really.

And just for the record, I feel the same way about TV shows. But since they are shorter than movies, I can usually tough it out. But I still end up looking up the plots to the show that I’m about to watch a fair amount of the time.

By Nathan | Posted in Movies, Ridiculousness, TV | Comments (3)

My Long Travel Day

11/19/2009 – 3:59 pm

As has been discussed on here before, I’m kind of an idiot when it comes to how I travel. I have been known to base my travel arrangements on the most interesting flights, and not on what will make my life the easiest. Well on Tuesday, on my trip back from California, I hit a new low, even for me, and it has me reconsidering my entire travel philosophy.

I mentioned before that I planned my flights back so that I could fly on a propeller driven airplane as opposed to a jet airplane. And that happened. I left San Jose around 9:45 in the morning, and 30 minutes later landed in Sacramento, which is really just up the road. I earned 95 frequent flier miles, so I’m guessing that is a pretty good estimate of the distance covered. In air travel terms, that is nothing.

So there I was, 30 minutes later, in Sacramento, at the entirely wrong terminal. And in Sacramento, if you are at the wrong terminal, you have to leave the building and catch a bus to the correct terminal. And by “leave the building” I mean that I had to exit through security. Which meant that I had to go back through security again. Two times in about two hours. Fun. And then I sat around the Sacramento airport for 2 hours waiting for my next flight.

This flight was all the way to Salt Lake City, which is really not that far away. It only took about an hour and a half, and on this flight something really interesting happened. A woman started having trouble breathing and they had to ask if there were any doctors on the plane. So for the last half of the flight all of the flight attendants were scrambling around trying to make sure this woman didn’t die. And then when we landed we were stuck on the plane for 30 minutes while the paramedics came on and checked on her and then hauled her off. Luckily, I wasn’t in a rush.

My flight from Salt Lake City to St. Louis left 2 hours later, so I got some food and then waited. Eventually we boarded, and this flight was on a little regional jet, which really aren’t that bad, but for a 2.5 hour flight it starts to get a little long. Except my flight wasn’t 2.5 hours. It was more like 4, because as soon as we pushed back from the gate the Captain announced that there was a mechanical problem, and we had to sit around, waiting for them to fix the plane. That took about an hour and a half, all things considered.

Finally we took off, and I did get back to St. Louis around 10:30 at night. I left Phil’s apartment around 10:00 St. Louis time, so it ended up taking me about 12 hours and three flights to make it back home, which is a completely ridiculous amount of time for that journey. But I achieved my goals. Next time, however, I will be flying non-stop.

By Nathan | Posted in General | Comments (1)

The Tough Thing About Having A Blog

11/11/2009 – 10:13 am

You have to think of things to write about. And I’m pretty convinced that my life just isn’t that interesting. At least, not in the way that it used to be.

I’ve been writing this blog for going on 7 years, I think. I could be wrong, but it is somewhere close to that. And I’m sure many of you remember a time when I updated 6 or 7 times a day. You probably remember that period of almost a year where I didn’t go a single day without updating. And then it was actually highly difficult for me when I actually took a break. I think I defined myself in a lot of ways by this blog. But more importantly, I was able to think of 6 or 7 things a day to write about. I’m sure that a lot of them were terrible, but still, I could.

Now I just can’t. I feel like the same things just keep going on in my life. I go to work. I go to skating. I mess around with my home computer. Every once in a while I go on a trip somewhere. That is pretty boring. At least, I think it is boring to other people. I’m actually very happy with the amount of stuff going on in my life right now. But I don’t think people are really that interested in hearing about skating every day.

I also think that Facebook and Twitter have gone a long way towards taking away some of the power of my blog. It used to be that if I wanted to say just a little something, I’d post it on here, and it would turn into maybe a couple paragraph post. Now I just make a Facebook status update, and I don’t really elaborate, because that isn’t the place to do it. But the main point gets across, so no blog post is necessary.

So I don’t know what to do. I’m not planning on stopping Smackie. I don’t know that I could ever do that, and I have no desire to do that. It is just hard to think of things to write about. I do plan on an overview soon or my upcoming trip to Europe, and I’ll try to post a summary of my trip to California when I get back. And I’ll do my best to find things to write about that I think might be interesting to other people.

By Nathan | Posted in General | Comments (2)

Quick Post

11/5/2009 – 2:40 pm

If you aren’t watching “Modern Family” on ABC then you need to. It is hilarious and witty. Wednesday nights on ABC as well as on Hulu. Some people call it the new “Arrested Development”, but I don’t agree with that. It isn’t nearly as weird and crazy as “Arrested Development”. It is much more down to Earth, and heartfelt, honestly. But hilarious in it’s own right, and you need to be watching.

In other TV news, I watched “V” the other night, and it was completely disappointing. I thought that it was slow and it felt way too much like the writers and producers were trying to made a sloppy critique of the current administration. Not that they don’t deserve critique, but they need it from the other side, not the tea party crackpot side.

Also, The Office has gotten pretty terrible. It is kind of like a joke of what it used to be. Community, however, is an amazing show, and has saved Thursday nights on NBC from being really sucky.

Okay, that’s about it. I just realized that I’ve been watching way too much TV and need to do something else. Like skate more or something.

By Nathan | Posted in TV | Comments (4)

Thoughts From A Road Trip

10/28/2009 – 8:17 am

- Driving in the rain is not a lot of fun. The drive from Louisville to Charleston was through the rain for about 60% of the time. The drive from Atlanta to St. Louis was about 85% through the rain. I didn’t realize how difficult it would be to drive in the rain, but with all of the big trucks there were times that I had difficulty seeing. And I’d hit patches of water on the road. I’m really glad that I bought new tires before I went.

- Matt’s wedding was a lot of fun. I am really happy for Audrey and him. They are among my favorite people and I’m glad that they found each other. It was a little warm in my suit, but not too bad. I think one of the best parts was wandering around city right before the wedding with Matt, Kelly, and Matt’s brother. I think it is a new tradition.

- Kelly and I had a lot of fun in Atlanta. We went to the World of Coke, which will give you high blood sugar just thinking about, and I tried an awesome French white peach soda. Then we took the behind the scenes tour of CNN, which was even more awesome.

- And finally, thanks to Matt’s sister, Jill, we discovered a fried chicken restaurant called Bojangles’. It is similar to Popeye’s, except better. (Maybe, I’ve never had Popeye’s.) But they had the best biscuits that I’ve ever had. Sadly, they are only in the South.

By Nathan | Posted in General | Comments (2)

Randomness

10/19/2009 – 9:51 am

- I’m going to South Carolina this weekend with Kelly for Matt’s wedding. We are both really looking forward to it. We are going to Louisville, Charleston, and Atlanta on an extended weekend road trip. And going to the South Carolina state fair.

- Two weeks after I get back from that I’m going to California again. I don’t really know what I’m going to do when I’m out there. But I do get to ride on a turboprop airliner, so that’ll be fun.

- In February I’m going to Belgium. That will get a whole post at some point. But…

- I fell TWICE at skating this weekend, and I hurt my hand pretty bad. It feels much better, but my left hand still hurts pretty bad, and it is kinda hard to type.

- I had to buy new tires today. Buy new tires is not a fun thing. It isn’t like buying $350 worth of chocolate.

By Nathan | Posted in Filler, Pointless Ruminations | Comments (3)

Going to the Doctor

10/12/2009 – 7:46 am

I go to the doctor a lot. I mean, a LOT. Probably way more than you. In the last four months, I’ve been close to 10 times. I go at LEAST four times a year just for my diabetes doctor. Then I also have to go to the skin doctor, the eye doctor, often I have to go to the diabetes doctor more. You get the point. I spend some time in doctor’s offices. And recently, because of a light touch of the crazies, I’ve been going to a psychiatrist.

So you’re probably wondering what I’ve learned from all of this time in doctor’s office waiting rooms. Well, the answer is that the future is bleak. We are all going to get old, and it is going to be unpleasant. In fact, if you are in one of these waiting rooms as much as I am, that probably means that your best years are already behind you. But basically you are going to get old, ugly, weak, and fat. Sorry to break it to you. That’s just how it is.

But the psychiatrist has opened my eyes to a whole new kind of thing that will happen to you. You will lose your mind. Oh yes, the psychiatrist waiting room is the worst. You see the old people wheeled in, and they don’t know where they are. You see the people with their elderly parents, and the parents are asking “Why am I here? Do you think I’m senile?” Oh, the parade of delusion.

I guess, then, my advice is this. If you aren’t yet going to the doctor as much or more than I am, take advantage of your life. Go out there and enjoy things. Because seriously, it is going to get much, much worse. I have seen the future, and it is dark and ugly.

Happy Monday!

By Nathan | Posted in General | Comments (1)

Happy Birthday

10/8/2009 – 7:52 am

Happy Birthday, Baba! Your baklava is on the way.

By Nathan | Posted in General | Comments (4)

Text of the Speech

10/5/2009 – 2:29 pm

It was requested, and here it is. The text of the wedding speech, for those that couldn’t make it, and didn’t watch the video.

Wedding Speech

By Nathan | Posted in Family | Comments (0)

Roller Skating Update

10/1/2009 – 9:51 am

So I’ve kind of become a little obsessed with this whole roller skating thing. Kelly and I are taking two classes a week, and I’m thinking about going even more. Most importantly, it is actually good exercise, and I hadn’t really been getting any of that. With my condition, exercise is definitely something that I could use more of. So that’s good.

But I’ve also found out that I’m pretty good at this, for some reason. I think that in part it is because I spent many, many hours playing hockey on skates when I was younger. So I’m pretty comfortable being on skates, and skating around. But I don’t think that is all of it. I think, as scary as this is to admit, that I might have a little bit of natural talent at this. *shudder*

So yeah, I can already sort of do some spins, and I can do some jumps, including a toe loop, which anyone who has watched the Winter Olympics knows about. I also suddenly care about posture, and knee strength, and bone density. These are things that I’ve never cared about before.

And then I think about all of it, and I write a post like this, I get this kind of queasy feeling inside myself and wonder what the hell has become of me.

By Nathan | Posted in Pointless Ruminations, Roller Skating, Stupidity | Comments (4)

Birthday Wishes!

9/25/2009 – 7:48 am

Happy Birthday, Kelly! You have been making my life wonderful and crazy for more than 3 years. I love you so much I don’t think you even know. Good luck with your 16 remaining wishes!

By Nathan | Posted in General | Comments (2)

Jobs

9/24/2009 – 7:55 am

I have this real problem with jobs. It seems to happen around the same time, I’m noticing. After about 2 years at a given place, I start to get real antsy. And as it turns out, today is my 2 year anniversary here. And so guess what? Yep, I’m getting antsy.

I don’t know what to do about this. I guess I just need to tough it out. The job is fine, really. Not particularly intellectually stimulating, and my skills are going to waste, since we use ridiculously rare and outdated technology here. But it is a job, and right now it would be pretty difficult to find a job somewhere else. And maybe more importantly, I don’t think that it would solve anything. I think I’d just go someplace else and in a couple of years have all the same problems.

So I’m not sure what the answer is. Maybe I’m in the wrong profession. I don’t get a tremendous amount of joy from programming. At least not the stuff we do here. It is very monotonous. Basically doing the same thing over and over. I do enjoy learning new programming techniques, but more from a research and development side, as opposed to an implementation side. The actual interacting with end users and completing a project gives me very little satisfaction.

Then maybe I’m in the completely wrong field, but at this point I’m not really sure what to do about that. I can’t afford to take a pay cut to do something crazy, and so I guess I’m stuck. And maybe that is just part of being an adult. Being stuck doing something that you feel is slowly driving all the life and fun out of you so that you can afford to pay bills.

That part is definitely not explained in school.

By Nathan | Posted in General | Comments (3)

My Next Stupid Travel Plans

9/15/2009 – 10:46 am

In the past I’ve talked about making ridiculous travel choices based on what airplane I wanted to fly. Usually it isn’t that ridiculous, though. There is only 1 non-stop flight between here and San Francisco, so usually, unless you want to pay extra, you’re going to be making a connection somewhere. And as long as you are making a connection, you might as well have some fun with it, right? If I’m going to be flying through Chicago anyway, I don’t see the big deal in trying to find a way to fly on a 747.

But my next trip takes the cake. I will be going to visit Phil and Helen in early November, and this time I decided to fly into San Jose, because it will shut Phil up about asking why I don’t fly into San Jose. Not to bore you too much with airline details, but if you want to fly between St. Louis and San Jose you basically go through Dallas, Los Angeles, Denver, or maybe Chicago. That is, that’s what you do if you are a normal person and just want to get there as quickly as possible.

And, as a matter of fact, on the way out there I am being a very normal person. I fly from St. Louis -> Dallas, and then Dallas -> San Jose. Perfectly standard. If a normal person were booking their trip, they probably would have chosen this exact same flight, since it allows me to get in a full day’s work before travelling, and also happened to be the cheapest fare.

But then there was this flight on the way back that was just too tempting. You see, I’ve never flown on an propeller driven airplane. I’ve been on a bunch of flights in my life, but they have all been on jets. That’s pretty easy to do because most flights, except the very shortest, are on jets, and even a lot of the very shortest are on jets. But I found one.

So on the way back, I’m flying from San Jose -> Sacramento on a Dash-8 Q400, which is a very modern turboprop airplane. But it is a prop airplane. For those of you not familiar with Californian geography, San Jose is about 90 miles away from Sacramento. It is completely ridiculous that I’m doing this, because then I fly from Sacramento -> Salt Lake City and then Salt Lake -> St. Louis. Way out of my way, and adds a whole bunch of time to my travel.

But I don’t care. Because there probably aren’t going to be a lot of opportunities for me to do this. And if I was travelling with anyone else, they’d look at me like I was crazy and smack me if I tried to schedule something like this.

So yeah, I’m weird. But also very excited.

By Nathan | Posted in General | Comments (6)