1st Post Of 2017: DREAM YEAR

Well I know it's been awhile and I thought of a bunch of things I wanted to comment on but never have yet. Of course I can barely think of any of those things right now.

I have to address this whole Trump thing at some point so that will still happen. That's the only major one I can think of at this point.

We planned all through 2016 on DREAM HAHS and that seems to be going well. We've got what we wanted in some areas and had to compromise in others but I think this is going to be good if we can keep the ball rolling and it really happens.

Why wouldn't it really happen? Gee I don't know. What's one of the worst financial decisions a person can make? I'm kind of freaking right now as this is totally unplanned. What will the next 9 months bring? Who the hell knows. My life is not over. I run. I drink beer. I have my amiibos. I love Ale. I am happy and will remain happy. I know I can do it.

Dream Year 2017 will not turn into a nightmare.

September 2016 may have been the best month of my life

I had a bunch of stuff scheduled for this month. I did not know how much was really going on though. Around the middle of the month I was like 'Damn'. I decided I should write this all down and make a blog post about it. I tried to put everything that I could recall happening here.

• Got tattooed
• Hung out with Danimus
• House related
• Met with builder
• Scheduled lot evaluation
• Got loan preapproval
• Got an ultrasound on my neck due to weird, scary pains
• They say they found nothing
• Went to Danny's 3rd birthday party
• Saw WEIRD AL at the Benedum
• New Weird Al cartoon, Milo Murphy's Law, came out
• Went to the PT Fall Festival parade
• Pax's first parade
• Boys got their picture in the paper
• I biked a bunch
• I ran even more
• Steelers 5K
• Best time ever!
• Greensburg 5K
• Even better time!
• Post race after party with free beer!
• Gabby 5K
• She's not dead!
• Went to my first BEERFEST!!
• I drank a ton of new beers (not only at this event but all month in general)
• Went to the eye doctor
• Took Pax to his 18 month doctor appt
• We paid our school taxes for the year
• Finally paid off the loan for our property
• Went to a ton of new restaurants
• Michael's Neighborhood Griddle
• Ricks
• Abruzzi
• Hugos
• Checked out the new bike shop in Greensburg, Flat Tire
• Watched the first presidential debate
• Steelers season started!
• Bought tickets to go to Joe Louis arena
• Started bingeing Luke Cage
• Got a new credit card with the fancy, secure chip in it
• Got myself the new iPhone 7

The best thing didn't happen until Oct 1st so I will write that into it's own post. 

TRIATHLON (For real this time)

JANNEY AND THE Y TRIATHLON @ NORTH PARK
2016/08/07

RESULTS

I tried to do a triathlon before when I was not as in shape as I am now and it was not the greatest experience. I did it though. What sucked was they had to cut the swimming part out because the pool at the PTHS was under construction. In the end it kind of really didn't count as a triathlon. I had to do another one to actually be able to say I did one. One day I looked online and found this one.
I was super anxious about doing this. I wanted to but my stupid brain kept coming up with things to be nervous about. I almost didn't sign up but Ale encouraged me so I decided I was going to give it a shot. I can't tell you how happy I was when we finally pulled in and they waved us into a parking spot. We were here.

I signed in and the lady gave me a little gift bag and an entire pack of swim caps. If anyone needs one I got em. I found my racing number in the transition area and set up then went to the pool and waited for my heat.

SWIMMING 700M
The few people that I talked to all hated the swimming part. I know this was going to be my worst event. I can't tell you the last time I went swimming. Luckily it was not over open water. I could always touch bottom if I got tired so that's something to keep in mind going forward if I do this kind of event again.
The pool itself was magnificent. I don't think I've ever seen a pool this grand. It is 50m across so 14 times down and back ugh
I tried to think of it as 7 up and backs
I was raising my hand and counting out loud for the 7 "laps" so I could stay on track

1. I was fine
2. Started stopping already
3. Powered through thinking if I can get to 4 I'm over half done
4. Would take a few strokes then run out of breath, I could tell I probably wasn't doing so great at this point
5. Followed guy who passed me. I was close behind him the whole time, He made some more distance but it wasn't a ton, I was keeping up so it made me feel not too bad.
6. Next to last one. Same pattern: 2 strokes, run out of breath, start hopping on one foot forward as I took a few breathes, repeat
7. Last one, I can still see others swimming, I'm not last

I got right out when I was done and asked the girl what time she wrote for me and I saw 45:31
I started the 2nd heat which was 25 min in. 1st heat went at 7:30am, I went at 7:55am so really I did 20:31.
Results say I took 25:34 for the first leg so I estimate it took me 5:03 to run out of the pool, around a cone at the back by the announcer lady then out to the transition area and then me getting dressed. I guess that sounds right, I did take a long time to make sure my feet were good.

BIKING 12M
I had to stop right away to put on my gloves because I just carried them with me. I think I went slow the first lap because I did not know where I was or how much I needed to pay attention to turns.
My first lap around I was following someone who was finishing and I wrongly started following them off the main course luckily I realized it and cut right back over. After that I was good.
The uphills really felt like they slowed me down and I was dragging. It seemed like the first half of the course was uphill. A lot of people passed me which I am not used to riding the bike trails by myself. There were some people with some all-pro bikes I tell you. I wish I had an extra $5K to buy one of those.
I made up good time on the down hills. That's where I passed the most people. It seemed like the back half of the course was downhill.
There was a marker thing to run over which I made sure to do every lap. I thought I saw people missing it so that threw me off but I keep doing it. That was good because there is a page on the results that show that information.
I also got confused with the exact distance and amount of laps. I knew we did 4 but I was trying to figure it with my GPS as I went and it didn't seem like it was going to add up. I ended up just figuring when I pass the end and I have a close miles ridden that's the time I should go in. (It was 5 laps)
It was also weird with the staggered starts because I could already see people running and people I saw when riding I couldn't tell how good I was doing at all.
I was looking for Ale when I got to the crowds but I never saw her which made me kind of sad.
I think I rolled in at 11.93m and back to my stall. I didn't need to change this time. Just take off my helmet and gloves.
Results say I took 52:21 for this leg.

RUNNING 5K
Again I was off kilter at the beginning because I wasn't sure where the trail was or anything. I wasn't that bad though. There seems like a nature trail winds all around the grounds of the park and that's where we were running. There were lots of white arrows painted on the ground and there were lots of girl folk pointing and cheering as you went by. The only thing that sucked about this trail was there were plenty of sections where there were nothing but big rocks and tree parts. It was not very conducive to running in my opinion. Mountain running maybe. I actually kicked a rock and bit it at one point. The next day I had a nice bump on it. I got right up but someone was behind me and saw it.
I think I stopped a few times when I started running but I think when I got over half way my last wind must have kicked in and I even went faster and finished good. Either the new socks were the bomb or the blister things worked because I had no trouble whatsoever with my feet. The last 3/4ths of a mile finally went on to the road and I motored pretty well. I passed one more guy and finished! Yay! There were ladies right at the finish line ripping your chip off immediately which was pretty funny. They really wanted them back.

I also must say in addition to the pool, the bath house is amazing too. It's huge and the showers were nice and hot.
This is one high quality park that I feel bad it's so far away because I would definitely take my family here again for a picnic or holiday.

Well I did it. It was hard but I did it anyway. Maybe I'll come back next year.

Continued Success

I own 2 acres of land. I have an 11 year old son and a 3 month old son. I have the most beautiful, real, soulmate that anyone could possibly hope for. I have every amiibo released so far. I get to play all the awesome new games that come out on the best systems. I have plenty of awesome bike trails to ride to my hearts content. Now I just got a promotion at work. It doesn't feel like a promotion you see on TV or in a movie but I think it's pretty darn good. Certainly turned this year around from the way it started. Let's hold this together and keep moving forward to even better stuff.

2014 PTARC Triathlon

I ran a triathlon this weekend. I guess maybe that sounds impressive but in reality it was horrible. My legs hurt. Either I trained too much or not enough. It was probably the latter. I went out a few times to ride the bike and get my muscles ready but every time after the first time my legs lost strength really quickly. I thought I was overdoing it and wanted to save up my strength. I guess I should have beat myself earlier and then took the week prior off.

Anyway I thought it would be a cool life goal to cross off my list: Participate in and complete a triathlon so that is why I did it. I would have done it last year but there was a Weird Al concert that weekend so I had to pass. No such distractions this year. I was good to sign up and go.

When I woke up at 5am that morning (2014/06/21) it was raining like crazy and I thought they would call it off but about 2 minutes before I was ready to give up, it stopped raining. I was really worrying about it all that week so I would have felt bad if I wouldn't have showed up.

I found out the week before that there is construction on the Penn Trafford High School pool for the next 2 years so the swimming portion was replaced with a run. So instead of swim, bike, run it was run a mile, bike 13.5 miles then run 2.5 miles. As soon as it started my strength left me. I knew this was not going to be fun. Luckily I wasn't the absolute last person to finish the first run. You could tell a lot of the people who were in this thing had high levels of experience doing it. I think I was the only one that wasn't wearing fancy bike pants.

When we got to the bike part I quickly fell to dead last. The first 2 miles were horrible. It was all steep hills and I had no strength. I was seriously contemplating quitting. The only thing that stopped me was that I knew as a kid I rode my bike seriously long distances and if I could do it then I could do it now. Plus there had to be a point where there were no more uphills and the downhills started. If I could just get that far. It wasn't till the turn onto Lux road that happened. Going through Claridge was awesome compared to the first part. Nice and flat. There were cops or firemen at all the intersections too stopping traffic so I never had to slow down. In fact as hard as it was, I never stopped. Even if I had to get off my bike and push it up the hill (which I did once or twice) I kept my feet moving forward. Now all I had to dread was how the hell was I going to run when (IF?) I could make it past this part.

When I finally showed back up to the venue (the course was one big circle both starting and ending at the municipal building) I could see people were still running. At least I wasn't that far behind that everyone was done before I even got to that part. Ale and Isaac were there to cheer for me as I parked my bike. I love you guys. I started running. It also sucked. Maybe 1/5th of the course was in soggy wet grass mud too which was not cool. At least put some boards down or something. There were volunteers around the track making sure I knew where to go and to clap for us and tell us what a good job we were doing, etc. I guess that was nice.

The hills here were rough too. I probably walked for half of the time as I was destroyed physically but I kept going. I think I clocked in finally at just under 2 hours and as far as I know dead last but I did it. I feel I kind of got screwed that they took out the swimming. Can I still count this as a triathlon? I guess I will. Maybe I'll do it again and if I do I'll definitely train more. Riding your bike on the nice flat Greensburg trail is not enough to be able to handle those hills.

I finished!

Hopefully they will be posting the results here. (At least I see in past years there were people who took longer than 2 hours and even a couple DNFs)

Ale found the results on this other site

Heres my biking info
Heres my running info

Highlights 2013

Well I wanted to make a Top 5 list of the best things that occured in my life this past year but as I was looking for notable events that happened I found way more than 5 things I wanted to remember. Without further ado here is a list of things that happened this year that are memorable to me and a brief explanation of each. This is somewhat in chronological order.

Ear Of Luigi - According to Nintendo after pushing Mario down our throats for 20 some years it is finally time for Luigi to shine.

Data Analyst 2 - At work I have finally been recognized for my hard work and effort and after they retooled the job titles I have been promoted. Long overdue but at least I finally got a noteworthy bump in salary to help pay for the things that have gone up in price in the last few years when they skimped on giving us more money.

Attended 100th Pens Game - I've been to a lot of Penguins games and luckily I have a lot of friends that are fans that went with me. I don't know how much longer I'll have the tickets but I am super satisfied with what I have achieved so far. (add my record here)

May Trip To Argentina - Well I have been out of the country before. This was actually my 3rd trip to Buenos Aires, Argentina in my life but this time we were able to take Isaac. He is now an international traveller. I think this was super good for him to see another culture. Hopefully it sticks with him.

1 Year Anniversary - On 2013-06-08 I have been married to my wonderful wife for a whole year now! How is that not awesome?!

Took Isaac To See Weird Al - This wasn't the first concert the boy was ever at. We took him to see Phish before but we haven't been able to get him to a Weird Al show until now. Unfortunately due to the venue we were not able to meet up with him after the show but it was still a great experience.

Bushy Run Battlefield 250th Anniversary - Despite living only a mile or 2 away and it being around my birthday ever year, I have never been to the Battle Of Bushy Run Battle Reenactment before. We finally made it this year and it was the 250th anniversary to boot so it was a good one. I got some cool swag.

Ale Got Her Driver's License - She failed the test 5 times. I was admittedly not very happy. I couldn't understand how someone as smart as Ale could not grasp the concept of driving. She's still not a pro at it but finally at least she passed her test and is a licensed driver.

Green Baycation - I had on my 'bucket list', if you will, to attend an NFL football game at the holy mecca of football stadiums, Lambeau Field in Green Bay Wisconsin, for several years now. The problem is due to the way they make the schedule the Steelers only play Green Bay once every five years and of course last time they met they played here in Pittsburgh but finally this year it was our turn. I have been pushing this to all my friends for years and it seemed like I had a following but when it came time to put up or shut up, no one came forward. I was disappointed but not deterred. I had to shanghai Ale and take her instead. Luckily the whole trip worked out better than I imagined. We saw Chicago and the game went down exactly as I pictured it, snowy and wow what a game to boot! (link doc and pic album)

PS4 - Sony released a new system. Pretty impressive. I hope they follow it up with some good games. There wasn't really anything good that I craved at launch so I am still awaiting justification. Hopefully Infamous Second Son, Watchdogs and Destiny are kick ass.

Xmas Vacation - I took the rest of the year off after December 20th. Not only for the Green Baycation but to spend time with the boy and play with him and play video games of course. I had a lot of stress this year so it was nice to be off and not have to do anything for a while. Hopefully I can make this an annual thing.

Babbies - To say this was the year a lot of my friends had a baby is an understatement.

• ADELYN MAE WEYANDT  - MAY
• CARTER RYAN MEALS - AUG
• DANIEL MOOK FREY - SEPT 
• ZACK WEIN - OCT
• GALL - NOV 

Health - Also did a lot of things to stay healthy.

• I walked 4 million steps (4,322,302 to be exact)
• Did 10k push ups (10,220 to be exact)
• Read 50 books (52 to be exact)

IN CONCLUSION 
Well if you look at it like that it seems I had a fairly awesome year. Hopefully in my mind I can change my perception to think of this year in these terms and that should help me stay happy and positive. Next year as Ale and I have already discussed won't be filled with as many trips and events as we have been doing because we need to start saving money but I think it will still have some noteworthy happenings going on. Here is a small preview:

Big Stuff Planned for 2014

• Paying Off Student Loan
• Buying Property For Dreamhouse
• Groundhogs Day
• Cartwright Babby :D

Satisfaction

I still don't understand my internal set of values and things that allow me to feel satisfaction. I think accomplishing certain things should make me feel good and sometimes they don't. Sometimes I do things that I feel are unimportant or insignificant and feel great satisfaction after completing them. It's strange.

I was super impressed with the help the boy provided this weekend. I had a huge list of chores that needed done, from cleaning, to phone calls, to errands run and everyone was extremely helpful in getting them done. The boy himself personally oversaw the cleaning of the bathroom and vacuuming. I again was very thankful and I've conveyed to him several times now how much that meant to me. I hope he gets my feeling and it helps him build on it and grow into a better person. I do wonder why most of my satisfaction comes from chore related tasks. I think I have my mother to thank for that.

Also I don't really like barking commands to be followed out to my wife. I like to bring them up in regular conversation at earlier points and be like 'Hey we're going to need to do this soon. I'll need you to do this.' Sometimes we reach the point where I can't continue until she comes through though so sometimes I do have to say to her 'Hey, get up, let's go with this'. What is absolutely wonderful about her is even if she not in the mood she is smart enough to realize the advantages of taking a few minutes of her day and getting up and getting things done. It's not like I'm trying to inconvenience anyone or that I'm asking some back-breaking, effort-intensive activity that benefits no one and I'm asking simply to irritate her. If you put a halt to what I'm doing here I may become cranky and who knows when I'll work up the gumption to get on this kind of a roll again. She realizes that helping me out really helps our whole family out and damn, after what I've been through in the past this is indescribably beautiful to me. I love that woman so much again I don't know if whenever I feel these waves of emotional thankfulness and I try to convey that to her if I could ever possibly come across in a way that she can understand. I love talking to my wife. She is my best friend. Most of the time I get the feeling that she listens to me and cares what I say and think. That is a good feeling. She shares my concerns. We are in this together. Sure some times I talk about stupid stuff that doesn't matter but even then she still half-listens. I can't really remember connecting like this with someone in the past.

I guess I'm just trying to say I love my wife, I love my son, I love my family and I am super lucky to have them. I am trying my best to be the best for them. Doing so makes me feel good. 

Fixed the Desktop PC

I've had my desktop PC for a while now. I bought it new from Dell a while back and it's served me well for a long time but it's been so crappy slow and buggy for so long I almost couldn't stand it anymore. My plan was for Ale to help me redo everything when she came up for #mayvacation but that didn't work out so I needed to think of a new plan. What is the best way for Marc to accomplish something? Set a goal! So that's what I did.

I started on Sunday. I hooked up my external drive and started backing up my music while I made a list of everything else that needed saved off. As long as I got all my files (pics, music, databases, etc) and the programs I use on an every day basis saved off I didn't care what happened to the garbage that filled up the rest.

It took me another 2 days to get everything saved off but on Wednesday I was ready. Now my plan was to reformat the whole drive and use the bios to put Windows back on when it was done. I wanted the whole thing wiped and clean but Ale's idea was to just add a partition and install Windows there. I wasn't so sure about that. Wouldn't the garbage still be on there? I don't know but I put in the disc and picked the Custom install option. This says it will totally disregard any files currently on the drive but the first time I tried to install Windows it died almost at the end and I had to shut the PC off to break it out of that. Restarting set it in a repeating loop so something went wrong. My worst nightmare! What if I couldn't fix it and my PC was junk? :(

I went back in the bios and booted straight from the disc. What was this option.... What drive do I want to install Windows on? Oh reformat? Yes please. BOOM!! Not even an hour later my PC was up and running a brand new copy of Windows 7 and I had an entirely clean hard drive to put everything back on. I had done it. I put it off for so long but all it took was for me to make it a goal, write it down and plan it out. I am super happy. I starting putting everything back together and crossed this task off my list. :D

Isaac's First Taste Of Fail

Last night was pre-test night at karate class and I'm sad to report that Isaac will not be testing for his gold belt this weekend. I'm pretty sure this was one of his first tastes of fail and I hope he learns to not like it.

I did my part to help him as much as I could. For the last 2 weeks I made sure he was practicing all the time especially on days before class. It is helpful for him to have it in his mind before he goes I noticed. The Saturday this started (which probably would have been the 11th) he had the worst class of his life. He got yelled at constantly, repeatedly had to do push-ups and Mrs. Romano even asked him to sit down as he didn't seem like he cared or knew what the heck was going on. I had a talk with him at this point about what he was going to do. I found out that his mother (*shudders) hadn't be taking him to class for the last 2 weeks she had him. I think I detailed this before. Anyway he followed that up with the two best classes I've ever seen him have and I thought he was on track to earn his belt.

I have noticed that when we start practicing he never actually punches, he just raises his arm up and same with kicks. He also just moves his legs forward taking a regular step instead of properly going into a stance (legs wide apart, knee bent). Usually I see this and tell him about it and he does a little better. Apparently this was one of the main things that kept him from testing. I made him go and ask what the problem was. I felt it was a good idea to teach him that. Can't learn from your mistakes if you don't know what they were.

I didn't watch it go down. I sat in the car. I felt I gave him all the tools and assistance he needed at that point and it was up to him now to perform. I didn't want to be a distraction for him as he always seems to look at me to see if he thinks I think he's doing well or not. Well he didn't. He went about it all lackadaisical and it ended up biting him in the butt. All in all Master Romano clipped 9 kids this time and I saw several run over to their mommy's crying about it when they discovered it was them. Isaac was very disappointed in the car. I had sweetened the pot with promises of rewards if he did well and I don't think I like this but it seemed he was more upset about not getting the rewards than not earning the belt.

I keep getting asked 'Why push him to do this if he doesn't like it or want to do it?' and I have to answer like this: He's 7 years old. He doesn't know what he wants. When he's 10 or 12 or 15 THEN he can pick what he wants to do. It's my decision as his parent to do what's best for him. I made the decision to enroll him in karate because I discovered through research that it :

• Builds character, discipline and self-esteem.
• Teaches respect.
  
• Gives him an activity to do so he isn't sitting around the house on the couch playing video games all day everyday or getting into trouble because he's bored with nothing to do.
  
• Related to that, it's good exercise. It helps build his muscles and gives him self-control.
  
• He gets to hang out with and talk to other kids doing the same thing.

I stand by my decision. If someone else can come up with a alternative solution that provides as much benefit as this then I would definitely listen, if not then stfu. Anyway he's paid up until November of this year so he might as well get used to it. In life we all have to do plenty of things we may not want to do. He needs to acknowledge that and learn to develop a way of dealing with it. I will not see him cower and avoid this things. I want to teach him to conquer and overcome these types of obstacles. It's going to be a tough road ahead due to this setback. Now he's stuck doing the same things for the next 3 months and that's going to be hard to keep his interest. Also with his mother finding it easier herself to give in and not take him. I can't go over there everyday when she has him just to ensure that he gets there. I don't know what he does or doesn't do over there but it seems like the work I'm doing with him gets undone to a degree. I hope that is not the case. I want Isaac to be prepared for life and know what he needs to know to succeed and most importantly be happy and although it's hard work and I get confused and depressed sometimes wondering if I'm doing things right or if I made a good decision I know that at the end of the day I am doing a good job and I will do my best to continue that. Hopefully this setback will actually end up being a good thing and he will learn some valuable life lessons that will help him in the future.

Immigrate

Well we've decided during the course of #mayvacation that Ale and I will go forward and begin the process of obtaining her a fiance visa so she can move up here to be with me. I think that is great. I've never had a connection with someone the way I do with her. It's amazing and every time I get on one of these gushy rants about it I love to make sure she knows. It's going to be hard. I can't imagine what it would be like to totally move out of your country and far far away from everything you've ever known. Love won't fix all our problems but it will sure feel awesome. I'm confident that we can pull this off and live long happy productive lives together. Buno

Quick Update

Sorry it's been so long since my last update. I have been doing so much (that I probably should have been writing about).

I finally got my new job in December. I moved from my old Miller project group to my new Stores group. I"m finally getting to learn new things and be useful. I love this job. I'm writing SQL and learning Appworx chains and all kinds of things. There's so much to know that somedays I feel like, 'Oh yeah I"m getting it' and then the next day I'm like, 'OMG I'll never ever understand all of this'. It's all okay though. I'm just going to do the best I can and I know good things will happen.

I finally got a new car to replace my beat down Buick. I bought a 2001 PT Cruiser from a junkyard that was totaled. Someone Chuck knows does body work so he fixed it up. It took 2 months but I finally have a sweet car that hopefully won't give me problems for a long time.

And lastly, I am finally back out on my own (w Isaac). It took about a month of constant hard work but we fixed and cleaned up Chuck's old farmhouse and I moved in there. It's pretty nice and big and we like it. It's just nice to be out by myself again. I'm scared about paying all the bills with Lisa still hounding me for money but I can't stop living my life just because she's a freak.

The best part is the #mayvacation is like less than 70 hours from now. I finally get to see and be with Alejandra again. She's so awesome. So many people were asking me, 'What's going on' and we finally get to sit togehter and figure out when she can move up here and stuff.

My life is rocketing off towards good things and I love it.

What A Great Holiday

This was an absolutely fantastic holiday season. Perhaps one of the best ever!! Everything went great and with the exception of my car not a thing went wrong at all. I saw tons of my family and friends and did all sorts of fun things with them. I am so very lucky and happy and I wish I could feel this good all the time.

Wednesday 12/22
It all started when I went to the Pens game with Drew. (read more) We had a blast and got to see each other and hang out and catch up on stuff not to mention that the Pens whooped some ass that night. Perfect way to start the holiday.

Thurs 12/23
No more work for the weekend!! I was supposed to call Drew to invite him over to Matt's for his holiday/the dog's birthday party but he ended up being busy with his family but it didn't matter. I had another absolutely fabulous time. I got to meet Matt's new girlfriend Brandi and she seemed really nice. Plus tons of other friends came over and we watched the Pens and then the Steelers and did shots and got drunk and it was just insane. I remember wanting to cut out early when I started getting tired but because I was the first one there my car was jammed up in the back and there was no way I was getting out. I ended up sticking it out and being the last person to leave. The only bad thing that happened is that Brandon broke the ESPN food dispensing football thing that Matt had. Now it doesn't play the sound when you hit the button to open it so we had to do it manually all night. People wondered why we were doing that but it was funny to us.

Friday 12/24
I got up late today and decided to just laze around until 6pm when Isaac was supposed to be here. I had a package in the mail though when I went out to check and it was my copy of 3D Dot Game Heroes for PS3 that Ale had bought me for Xmas! Yay!! There was something for me to play.
Got Isaac, left out bells for Santa

Sat 12/25
Xmas!!
We played all day!! The big toy of the year, Snap Circuits, was a huge hit!

Sun 12/26
Globetrotters, went to see Pappy, Rick's for dinner

Mon 12/27
Played, went to see Pappy, saw the cigar box guitar museum at Speal's Tavern

Tues 12/28
Played, practiced karate, built Lowes trains

Wed 12/29
Thurs worked

Fri 12/30
Went to Nate's, played w iPad

Sat 12/31
Winter Classic, tailgating

Sun 01/01
Recover time, went over goals with Ale

Is This Enough?

To say I had a productive week last week (WE 11/13) would be an understatement. If accomplishing all of this doesn't make me feel good about myself then what the hell do I need to do?

• Finally after months of having the same basic conversation with myself about what I would say to get them to drop these bogus charges I went to my lawyers office to discuss the matter with them. They didn't even want to hear my carefully constructed, overly repeated story of the events they went straight to what my last offer would have been: Pay what I think the remaining balance is and I'm clear. I did so.
• I also asked them about this other BS that WM County is trying to collect off me. Probation charges from 15 years ago. They seem to think that it may cost me more to pay them then to pay the charges. I'd rather that happen than the county think they can push people around like that.
• I put off my grocery shopping way too long and was out of stuff. I took care of that.
• I've been good at keeping up with my bills but I've just been stacking up the papers afterwards. I finally took this mountain of paper and properly filed it away in its correct folder and cleaned up that mess.
• I haven't backed up my new movies since at least September. Since Ale and I had made enough progress on the MovieDB, I accomplished this task as well. Moved them all to the external back up drive and logged them in the new DB.
• I did two days worth (4 lessons) of Spanish learning.
• I called about this medical bill thing I was having issues with. They quit sending me the bill for the balance remaining on my MRI from last year.
• I called the karate place to get the scoop so we can get Isaac going on that.
• I called HR about my new job and what was going on with it and when was it going to start.
• Nate was down at Bakery Square doing some work and I met up with him and we found the geocache that I couldn't find before (Joe's Got Your Back).
• I called Bushy Run about my geocache. Do I have permission to hide it there? (I still don't have an answer)
• We also found 5 other geocaches on Saturday and my first travel bug.
• We went to Lowes and Isaac built a periscope. (We also found out that in December they will be doing 3 train cars and Stephanie said as long as we sign up she will grab them for us on the days we can't make it)
• We also built the Funhouse Mirror that he got during Trick or Treating after we got home from Lowes.
• I helped Chuck with repairs to his shed so he can store some stuff in it for winter.
• We got Isaac's school pictures for 1st grade and his report card (Grade-wise: Great, Behavior-wise: Meh)
• The stuff I ordered for my family for Xmas started arriving. I should have everything taken care of and paid for well beforehand.
• The Pens and Fleury have been winning.
• I signed Isaac up with an email address (I did this before but I forgot the password and Google will not release it to me) and thus I was able to create for him a PSN account he can get credit for his trophies he earned himself.
• I read Isaac all the stories in his newest Highlights magazine and helped him do the puzzles and games.
• And most amazingly enough I had a productive conversation with Lisa and maybe I can finally getting the rest of my stuff (vgs) off of her.

Wow that does seem like a lot of good things that happened this week. :D

Getting There - MoobeeDeeBee V1.0

I have christened the first version of the MovieDB last night. It's not to where I want it yet but it does work and is serviceable. I used it for the first time last night to enter the latest batch of movies and it worked fine.

I feel this was a very simple task for a first project collaborating between myself and Ale and I am happy with what we have produced so far even though it probably took way longer than it should have. It is still a bit rough to work over Skype with each other. I feel if we were in the same room we'd have made better progress but whatever. Something is better than nothing.

The task was to create a database so that as I acquire digital copies of movies I can log them in so I know what I have, when I got them, file size, etc, etc. I thought to put several other attributes in associated with each movie as well so I pull different reports on them. Say I want to know what horror movies I have or something along those lines. I have been using a regular Excel spreadsheet to keep track of this but it was getting too much and it was time to start a database.

So we hashed that out and started making tables and a form. Not too difficult. Ale thought typing in the information for each movie was stupid though when in the file properties that information already existed so she branched off trying to invent what we have come to call the Magical Button. Apparently you can use the internet to acquire movie information from a bunch of different websites (Amazon, Netflix, IMDB) and she found a site called TagChimp where you can register and get some information on APIs to do just that. She got it up fairly quickly but it's not working 100% yet. I figure this will be something we will work on for version 2.0 of this project. I didn't mind the typing but I can see where once finished this could be a powerful tool plus it would be valuable experience in coding and development so I am happy she was able to research that option.

There were a couple additional issues working with new version of Access I had on my PC but we hammered through those. I was happy to be using a current tool for once. We still use ancient versions of Access and Excel at my work.

After the main form was established I got a switchboard working and made a few reports and it seems like we were ready to go. It worked just fine as I entered data in last night. I didn't have any problems but I already see room for improvement. We still have to get the keyword system implemented. That is another big fix that will bring some benefits as any crazy word we feel like entering and tagging to a title will be able to be searched on. I think that is when it will really feel like we did soemthing awesome.

Again I am very happy with how this turned out. I think it did take way too long to come up with it but oh well. I'm glad Ale was there to talk to and assist me with this. She is wonderful and the only person I've found in my life that cares about my concerns and it makes her happy to help me. She is so smart and awesome. I can't wait to start another project. (We are thinking about making a Firefox extension that can add a movie to your Netflix queue from any web page anywhere) I just know that working together we will become smarter and better than we would separately.

Another great day

While walking around the parking lot on a break on Tuesday I was showing my new shoes off to Billy and I said offhandedly that they were so awesome I could totally beat him in a race. Now I'm used to hanging out with lame people who would never take me up on that, never even consider it, but to my pleasant surprise he took off running!! It was close at first but about halfway thru I pulled away and he couldn't keep up. That was amazing!!

That wasn't even the best thing about that day. I love when things just come together. When I left work and picked up Isaac I thought it would be a cool idea to stop at Bushy Run park and take a walk. It was. (I just wish my walking tracker thing would have worked. I must have not hit the button or something) So we got a nice little workout there to keep our fat asses in shape. We went home and did our bookbag thing where I looked at all his papers and he did his homework. No Mimi today so we got to cook our own dinner (tacos, of course) and cleaned up after that. There was a little time to play and I used that chance to update my MovieDB with something I was working on and it worked!! I can now change the results of a drop box menu box based on the choice from another one. We made our lunches for the next day, got cleaned up and our clothes ready and even read a story good night. I just love days like that!! <3

Today was a Good Day

2010/07/19 didn't start that great. It certainly didn't get any better in the next few hours but I do consider it to be a good day. Let's see what happened.

First I woke up. I was still tired. I stayed up late all weekend and wasn't able to fall asleep early enough to get enough rest. Not good.
I got to work and the lady from the Westmoreland County Clerk of Courts called me back about a letter I got on Saturday. They say I owe them $575 for me being on probation for 23 months between 1996 and 1998. Apparently whether this is made up or not or a 12 year charge or not, I have to pay it even though this is the first I've ever heard of it.
I also looked up obtaining an immigrant visa for my fiancée. That costs $455 to submit a form. Yes you read that right.

You could definitely say my day didn't start off that great.

After I finished my work and went home though things really started to happen. I was waiting for this and I jumped right in. Since it was possible for me to sit and the computer and get stuff done without Isaac bothering me (he was at his mother's this week) that's exactly what I did. I was just in the zone when I got home and I feel I made the most of it. I did branch around and do a lot of smaller tasks not my 'main list of things' but the bottom line was that things got accomplished.

• I ended up making progress on one of my work related goals.
• I started a LinkedIn profile.
• I started cleaning up the mess that is the 'My Documents' folder on my desktop PC.
• I messed with my Delicious toolbar and made it way more useful and productive.
• I updated the progress on a bunch of my Goals.

It seems like I did so much more too but I guess most of those 5 items there are a lot more detailed than the one sentence description I gave there. My main point here was that doing all that made me very happy. It was a few weeks since the last time I had a day like that. If I could find a way to increase the number of those days I'm certain that things would really start happening for me. Alejandra was with me last time and I was sad that she wasn't this time but that's cool. She was at a belly dancing performance. I would like to see one of those live someday soon but it's okay because she will be with me later this week.
Right now when I don't have Isaac we take out 3 days to 'Be Productive' - 1) Work related goals, 2) learning Spanish and 3) learning development by hobbyist programming. I can't wait until all my hard work on these areas pay off. :D