Today was a very fun and exciting day.  Could this be the most worthless post of 2010?  Only time will tell… watch this space, more tomorrow.  For now, sleep.

Tonight, PW and I headed up to Red Rocks to see the Goo Goo Dolls in concert.  It was a really great show, their live act has a little harder edge than their recorded work.  John Rzeznik really knows how to work a crowd and they played pretty much every hit I wanted to hear!  It was neat, when they played Black Balloon many people in the crowd produced black balloons and started batting them around.

Not to go without mention, the opening acts tonight were downright excellent.  Switchfoot was really high energy, and I think their lead singer was really taken with the venue.  He made mention several times of the beauty of Red Rocks and what an honor it was to play there, and he waded out into the crowd not once, but twice to “hear how the rocks sound out here.”  A band I’ve never heard of before named Green River Ordinance opened up for Switchfoot and they were really interesting as well.  Their sound was similar to that of Switchfoot and Goo Goo Dolls but tinged with southern rock (which makes sense, since they’re from Texas).  I may have to pick up one of their albums since I enjoyed their show so much.

That’s all for now, chalk up yet another great gig!

Last night I was up late (again), so I opted to spend some quality time with my Les Paul Custom.  I got my Marshall Micro Stack that PW got me for my birthday out, along with my Grado headphones and rocked out for awhile.  Before I knew it, hours had flown by and it was 2 am.

I’ve been continuing to do some research into building acoustic guitars.  One of the more interesting parts of the process is the finish that is applied to most really nice acoustic guitars.  It’s called a french polish, and is very interesting.  The whole finish consists of shellac flakes, grain alcohol (at least one person uses Everclear), and paraffin wax.  You build up the finish by rubbing small layers of finish onto the wood using a small ball of cheesecloth.  You use the paraffin wax to lubricate the surface, the shellac/alcohol suspension dries almost instantly so you don’t even need a dust-free environment to apply it.

It is acoustically the best possible finish because it is so thin and doesn’t restrict the vibration of the wood as much as other finishing processes.  The only downsides are that it takes a period of days/weeks to apply completely and due to its thinness it isn’t the most durable, but you end up with a beautiful mirror finish that makes  the guitar sound great.

I understand that I’m WAY ahead of myself, but I find the finishing part interesting. 🙂

Today was The Day of Chores, so I started out cleaning the bathroom.  Our upstairs bathroom is an unenviable task to clean.  It gets used frequently, and I am often too lazy to get the job done in a consistent manner.  The drain had clogged, so I poured my Drano Foaming Pipe Snake down there while I worked and I am happy to report that it performed its task admirably.  After about an hour and a half, our bathroom is as clean as I was going to make it.

I took a break for lunch, and then headed down to clean the rabbits.  This is another one of those tasks that I don’t do often enough, and since our rabbits have switched to an all hay diet they tend to just fling Timothy hay all over my basement.  I set to work with my Dyson DC17 Animal, which proved itself unworthy to deal with that amount of hay.  At first it was doing fine, but before long the wheel assembly ground the hay into small hay flakes which quickly clogged the hose assembly.  Dyson does a pretty good job of making certain portions of the vacuum easy to disassemble, so I took it apart and got as much of the hay out as I could.

This caused the thing to start up and sound as if it was working, but I suspect I settled enough of the hay into the inner tubing to cause a bigger clog that it couldn’t deal with.  The hose assembly usually makes a sucking sound when it is in the upright position to indicate that it is ready and eager to suck up your filth.  Now, mine sat there like it was off and completely unwilling to suck up my filth.  The brush assembly was operating, however it was not actually pulling any debris into the canister.

I was certain at this point that I was going to have to send the thing out for repairs.  Dejectedly, I headed to the garage to get my shop vac, which is more than suited to this type of mess.  It did the job in fairly short order, however trying to clean an area that big with just a hose is a pretty tedious task.  Seeing how easily the shop vac did its work, I decided that I might be able to fix my Dyson by using the shop vac to suck out the hay clog.

I headed upstairs, removed the Dyson canister, and was happy to find that the shop vac’s hose fit right into the rubber gasket that led to the canister.  I engaged the shop vac and heard a rather disgusting sound of hay and rabbit poop exit the Dyson into the waiting maw of the shop vac.  Figuring this was about as good as I was going to get, I plugged in the Dyson and was happy to find that the upright hose assembly was working again!

That, friends, is the tale of how I fixed one vacuum with another vacuum.

The day started out like many Saturdays for me, full of ambition.  We had a chiropractor appointment, after which we went for a good lunch at Denny’s.  The plan was for me to come home and clean the bathrooms while Tasha put away clothes, then we could set up our new TV in the bedroom once the laundry was cleared.  In reality, the Denny’s lunch filled us up sufficiently enough that we just opted for a nap instead.

The chores being well and truly deferred, we headed off to our friend’s house and D&D around 3 pm.  We had a potluck dinner at their place, where Jenny made some great chicken noodle soup that reminded me a lot of my grandma’s.  The game went on fairly well, however we didn’t make as much progress as I would have liked due to about two hours of socializing that happened beforehand.  I don’t mind it when that happens, though… it’s always fun to catch up with our friends.

Now I’m sitting here, eating nachos while the dog predictably begs for my leftovers.  Thanks to the nap I’m pretty awake, so I sure hope some of my friends/family show up on chat to entertain me.  Tomorrow is definitely going to be chore day, I have to clean the bathrooms, clean the rabbits, and possibly mow the lawn.  I’d best save up my energy for that effort!

Tasha and I were invited to dinner tonight by one of my coworkers. It was a lovely night for rest and relaxation, they grilled chicken and we ate on the back porch while their kids played in the back yard. We visited for a long time, eventually retreating indoors to dodge the onslaught of mosquitos.

They are from New Zealand, and so they offered to show us an episode of a television show that was a documentary of different aspects of New Zealand life. This particular episode was showing the possum fur trade and how it operates, I found the whole thing very interesting.

It was getting late, so Tasha and I said our goodbyes and headed home after a very comfortable and relaxing evening. Thanks to Jason and Maria for having us and for all the great food! Hopefully we can do this ahain soon!

Today was a constant, draining effort.  I worked flat out from 8 am to 6 pm, struggling with various bugs, meetings, and the like.  The good news is I actually got a few things productive done today, including some unit tests for a particularly thorny feature.  Relaxation was not in the cards for me tonight, though.  Tasha and I grabbed dinner out and then had to do some grocery shopping, so it was a fairly busy evening on top of a long day.

Despite all this effort, I still find myself not able to sleep.  To make up for it, I’m relaxing by trying to get through Sir Edmund Hillary’s autobiography ‘View From The Summit’.  It was loaned to me by an officemate that is really into non-fiction books.  I find it very interesting, but at the same time it has been a struggle to read more than a few chapters at a time.  The stories are exciting and inspiring, but I still find the read difficult.

I’ve had this book for quite some time, though… we’re going to my friend’s house tomorrow night for dinner and I’d love to be able to return the book to him then.  We’ll see if I make it!

Thanks to our roleplaying blog and some great fans, both Tasha and I are now published authors.  My article on sizzle cards and Tasha’s on developing your roleplaying were both selected to appear in the Open Game Table, Volume 2 book, available now.  This book is a compendium of articles selected by peer review from around the roleplaying blogosphere and we are honored to be included.

Tonight is D&D Encounters, so we’re off to celebrate our nerdy accomplishment by being even more nerdy!

Tonight marked my return to the Arvada dojo from a few weeks abroad.  The workout was a sweatbox, they’re still doing renovations on the dance studio where we train and the air is intermittent at best.  I was the highest ranking black belt aside from Sensei Tarrant, so the honor to warm up the class was mine.  I did a fusion of warm ups from both the Colorado dojo and the Central Illinois dojo, folding in some pushups and Japanese situps into the mix.

Our combination of the month is interesting:

From sparring stance, reverse punch then step forward with a rear leg front kick.  Another reverse punch from here, then perform another front kick in place, putting the leg back into stance without stepping forward.  From here, jab with the front hand, front leg roundhouse kick, and then slide in with reverse punch.  Do this repeatedly for about 20 minutes and suffice it to say: sweaty.

We then moved on to partner training, doing variations of reverse punch, stepping forward reverse punch, with a sweep and third reverse punch immediately after.  This combination was modified later to more of a hip throw, where instead of the sweep the attacker just slides in with the hips and turns the hips sharply to knock the opponent off balance.

We ended the night with kata, Kanku Dai and Sochin.  It was nice to get to do Sochin in a group with the rest of the club, it really felt good tonight.  More soon!

First off, if you don’t get the reference I’m making in the title allow me to help.  Harvey Danger is a RIGHT, people.

I am pleased to report that my dreaded Monday was much better than I suspected.  I have realized two things lately: when isolated from a situation, it is very easy to get paranoid about what is continuing to happen without you.  I had worked myself up into some fairly awesome levels of concern about a few meetings that were set to take place immediately after my return to the office today and I’m happy to say that most of that worry was unfounded.  I had a good long discussion with my supervisor about ratings and performance, and a retrospective of a dreaded user story went MUCH more smoothly than I anticipated.  I don’t know why paranoia acts this way, but I do know it is frustrating and relieving at the same time.

I mentioned at the start that I realized two things lately.  The second thing is that as I’ve gotten older, I seem to have become comfortable convincing myself that I can’t do certain things.

Examples:
Oh, that piece of the code at work is too daunting I’d best stay out of it.
Wow, learning the guitar is hard so I can’t do it.
I’m not around my beloved dojomates so getting into karate is implicitly harder for some reason.
There’s no way in hell I can learn to build a guitar.

And the list goes on.

What happened to six year old me that had a new interest or hobby every few weeks, and wasn’t intimidated by not knowing about something and instead is buoyed by that fact?  Where’s 10 year old me that saw “The Karate Kid” and up and decided that karate would be a fun thing to try out?  Where’s 15 year-old me that up and decided he was going to take on the Powerball Quake modification that was abandoned by its creator, despite the hindrance of ZERO coding skills?

A more correct assertion is likely that I’ve just become tired having SO MANY interests and have elected to focus on just a few.  While some of this is healthy and necessary for enjoyment of said hobbies, I miss the spirit of not being intimidated by learning new things that I am unfamiliar with.

An excellent example of what I am talking about is my ukulele project.  I don’t really have any experience doing anything like this… my grandpa taught me some things about woodworking but not on instruments, so I found it VERY fun and refreshing to have something completely new and fun to try.  This is also a great example of my previous point: that kit was purchased for me by my Dad YEARS ago and set dormant on a shelf because I thought I didn’t know enough about how to do it.  What a shame.

I don’t really know where I’m going with this post, aside from just acknowledging this fact about myself so I can endeavor to correct it.  Before anyone gets all smart-alecky: no, this is not a mid-life crisis (I’m not mid-life yet, nor in a crisis) and you won’t find me buying a Maserati or going skydiving or anything insane.  I just want to get back to feeling excited about the learning process again instead of intimidated by it.

That is all. 🙂