I’m heading up to Chicago this weekend to visit my friend Clay. He and I haven’t hung out together in months, so I’m going to spend the next few days up there.
I fucking love Chicago and I think I would like living there, but I’m not at all sure I could stand the weather. Of course, culture and community are powerful forces that can make a cold, windy city feel a lot warmer during the winter months.
Title: Nokia 6681
Uploaded By: trikenitdotcom
I’m now the proud owner of a Nokia 6682 (pictured above is a 6681, but that’s the just the European version of the same phone). It runs on the Symbian Series 60 operating system, and comes with a 1.3 mega-pixel camera and many nice features. It makes the baby Jesus very happy today.
My Sony Ericcson T637 is a darn good phone, but I decided that I wanted to get a unit with a better camera, better PDA functionality, and the ability to run lots of applications.
I could have simply bought a Treo, since everyone and their mother has one, but they’re usually more expensive and bulkier. I was able to get my 6682 off eBay for a pretty good price, even though I couldn’t take advantage of the rebate from Cingular. The rebate would have spared me some bucks, but I had already signed a two year agreement with the purchase of my T637, which I got about ten months ago. None-the-less, I feel like I got a very good deal, especially considering the retail price of $599 from Nokia.
The T637 is the kind of phone that makes you hunger for more. As I said, it’s still a good phone, and I plan to sell it to someone who wants it for about $75 to $100, but the camera leaves a lot to be desired and the interface can be very sluggish at times.
So, now all I need to do is find a UI theme on the new phone that I actually like. Not the easiest thing in the world, you know. There seem to be plenty of themes with hot-looking women on the wallpaper, but a dirth of ones with good-looking men. Oh well. The default Cingular theme seems pretty nice, on the other hand.
I realized the other day that I’ve been actively blogging for just over a year now.
It was this month back in 2004 that I started my first blog over at mnslab.com. I moved it over to Blogger, within a couple of months, but then finally ended up moving everything to WordPress and moving the site to a for-pay hosting service this past July.
Earlier this year I imported (read: hand copied) all of my old diary posts from Kuro5hin. I spent a lot of time on that site when I worked at Cummins back in early 2003 because I was so very bored working there.
Title: Straight ppl r cool
Uploaded By: Constant Reader
It was ten years ago today that I came out of the closet to my parents. It happened on Thursday, September 27, 1995, when I was just 18 years old and attending my first semester at Ball State University.
I spent several hours the day prior writing out a long letter to my parents, explaining that I was definitely gay, and then debunking some of the myths and stereotypes surrounding gay people. I explained that I didn’t desire to wear women’s clothing, for example.
In May 1995, I started attending the Indiana Youth Group, which is an organization for gay kids under 21. Prior to the meeting that night, on Thursday, I went with my mother to the grocery store. After we got home — when it was time for me to split — I put the letter to Mom and Dad under some grocery bags on the kitchen table. So, before Mom had a chance to read the letter, I was already in my car heading to the IYG meeting.
Now, several days prior to writing the letter to my parents, I wrote something very similar to my sister Lisa, via email. She was completely surprised, thinking that I was just a late bloomer, but she became immediately supportive when she found out.
So, I went to the IYG meeting and then went back to Muncie. I was awakened the next morning by a phone call from my mother, with her saying, “Matt, we already know this!” Yes, technically, they did already know.
Since that time, I’ve been open with my family about my homosexuality. It’s never been an issue. Now they just wish for me to find a partner and be happy.
I’ve made a few changes under the hood on this blog by adding a couple of plug-ins to WordPress.
The first one is called Feedburner Feed Replacement which essentially helps me rewrite my .htaccess file to redirect requests for my site feed over to Feedburner.
The other plug-in is called Google Sitemaps which automatically creates a Google sitemap XML file and then pings Google when there’s been an update to the site. This helps keep my site fresh in Google’s index.
That’s it for now. I’m off to bed.
Here’s a funny photo I found on Flickr today taken by one of my contacts.
Title: Sep25_001
Uploaded By: Fuzzface_63
It’s been a pretty gloomy day here in Indianapolis. It has rained all day, and hasn’t stopped for even a second. As such, I haven’t gone outside (except to take out garbage) or even bothered to take a shower.
Tony and Jason are pretty much moved. The kitchen is mostly in good shape, but there are lots of other things that need to be unpacked and put away. I’m pretty excited about it, but I’m feeling a little overwhelmed with things to do around here, mostly with my area on the second floor. It’s a fucking mess up here.
I’ve pretty much finished a big project at work, which has me feeling good. I’m so glad to be near the end because it has taken over a month longer than originally planned to get it done. Coming up I have another project to finish which involves our network load balancers. It’s fun I tell you!
Shit, I have dirty clothes to wash and it is midnight.
Title: Tony & Jason
Uploaded By: mattbarton77
They’ve moved in to my basement!
Over the weekend, I am helping them move the rest of their big furniture, and that should be most everything.
Their cat — a fat, old boy named Tolliver — is making Bess unhappy right now. She’s been a little fierce with him since they met, but I think she’ll get over sharing her territory, eventually.
Every time you reload any page on the site, you’ll see a photo of your’s truly in the upper-right portion of the layout, instead of a regular, static image. These photos are from my Flickr photostream which are tagged with the “me” keyword.
Isn’t it just cute?
Does anyone get the reference to Star Trek: The Next Generation in the title? If you do, I’ll be impressed. I’m actually impressed that I know, and somewhat embarrassed, too.
The trip is over. I’m back at home.
I had fun with my friend Ron, who showed me a good time. I got to see some really nice areas of Minneapolis and Saint Paul. I really like the area, and would even consider living there, but the winters are harsh. That’s about the only negative I can see from what I know of the place.
It’s back to work tomorrow.
I’m currently sitting in the Espresso Expose on Washington Avenue by the University of Minnesota campus here in Minneapolis, having just finished drinking a medium chai. Mmm!
I have to say that the people-watching is quite good from where I’m sitting: attractive college boys, trendy kids, etc. You get the picture.
Anyway, I’m enjoying my stay here in the Twin Cities — the class is going well, with one more day to go, and plans have pretty much firmed up for this weekend. I’m planning to hang out with my friend Ron, and will be flying back to Indianapolis on Sunday.
The people here in Minnesota are pretty cool, but they’ve honked at me twice on the interstate highway. I also learned recently about Minnesota Nice; however, it was characterized as passive-aggressive behavior.
I miss my bed at home pretty, terribly, awfully bad. I can’t sleep on hard-ass hotel beds, as they fuck with my sleeping patterns (which aren’t good anyway).
Well, I need to get some actual, day-job work done. I’m out!
I’ve been in four flippin’ cities today!
My day started in Indianapolis, leaving at 10:10 AM on and airplane for Detroit. I sat at the airport in Detroit for a while and then took another jaunt over to Chicago’s Midway Airport. That’s where I caught the third leg of my trip, bringing me here to Minneapolis. All three flights were less than 1 hour in length. Go figure.
My hotel is right by the University of Minnesota, which is pretty cool. I’m sitting here writing this entry at a Starbucks, sitting outside next to some guys speaking a foreign language I don’t recognize, using some free wireless Internet connection belonging to another coffee shop. (This T-Mobile HotSpot shit is bananas.)
While sitting at the airports in Chicago and Detroit, I heard some pages over the intercom for a few interesting names.
That’s all for now. I don’t have much juice left in this battery and I should get some sleep so that I am alert in the morning for my first day of class.
Tschau!
For those of you who don’t know, there’s a new social bookmarking site on the block called Digg, started by Kevin Rose, formerly of TechTV. Here’s what it does, according to the site.
Digg is a technology news website that combines social bookmarking, blogging, RSS, and non-hierarchical editorial control. With digg, users submit stories for review, but rather than allow an editor to decide which stories go on the homepage, the users do.
Digg combines several well-established concepts in to one site. Social bookmarking became popular with sites like del.icio.us. Blogging has exploded all over the place in the last few years, with RSS riding on its coattails. Kuro5hin introduced a user-controlled editorial system many years ago, which, for the most part, worked pretty well. Digg also sports an AJAX-enabled user interface, which, in an of itself, is based on technology that has been available for a long time.
In terms of actual content, I’m having a hard time figuring out how it is much different than getting the RSS feed of popular bookmarks from del.icio.us. The only difference I see is that each entry has user comments. Unfortunately, most of the comments I’ve seen are brain-dead, user-moderated blatherings that do nothing more than exemplify the fact that geeks are a bunch of whiny turds who only like “cool” stuff. It’s like reading Slashdot.
As not to be a total Negative Nancy, I do want to say that I think their concept is good — seems like a natural evolution for social bookmarking sites, actually, but I do have some suggestions.
Digg is obviously an experiment that will evolve over time. They take some great ideas and combine them in to something pretty cool, in concept, but the reality is that I’m going to stick with del.icio.us, for now.
Title: The Mall of America
Uploaded By: sfPhotocraft
I am leaving Sunday for Minneapolis and will be there for a whole week!
My employer is sending me there for some training on F5 Networks’ BIG-IP systems, which are the load balancers we use to handle traffic to and from our production servers.
I plan to enjoy my time while in the Twin Cities. I’m going to visit friends, family, and co-workers (who happen to live up there), as well as become a load balancing mastermind.
Earlier this year I went to Cancun and San Francisco, making this my third major trip this year. Whew!
(No, I don’t necessarily plan to visit the Mall of America, but I found the image to be appropriate.)
