The Cat's Nuts

Today is the second Monday in a row where I have NOTHING to do. My job in Atlanta finished up and I'm now back in Westtown, rotting away with nothing to do. At least I can work out and relax and all that while still getting paid, but it's boring, and well... I hate being bored.

I complain a lot, and I realize that, but I think the main reason that I complain at work is because I am bored, never because I have too much work to do... and I complain when I'm sitting at home...bored, not because I have so much to do I can't handle it. Oh well.

My 365 Day self-portrait stuff is going well, so I can't complain about that, but the whole weight loss dieting thing hasn't been going so well... I mean it has, and I've dropped around 15lbs or so, but I had to stop doing the whole 5 mile run every day. For some reason, probably because I'm fat, out of shape, and haven't run in forever, my ankles and shins and calves hurt terribly when I am running. I went out yesterday to run, and it was a lost cause, so I stopped about .5 mile in and turned around. I am going to substitute in 45 minutes on the cycling trainer while I am home this week, but hopefully my legs will feel better whenever I am put on another project so that I can do some running.

Anyway, I'm not in a real blogging mood, I just had to post up here because it's been too damn long.

Posted by Michael at 12:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Another day, another burrito. That's kind of how my life feels right now. I've been traveling down to Atlanta, eating out every night, and it seems like the only thing that I am ever in the mood for is a Chipotle Burrito. Which, is obviously not the healthiest choice.

On the upside, other than last Friday when I had the whole company wide meeting after work, I've been running 5 miles a day, every day. Since I started on last Thursday, I've run 30 miles, well...I will have as of tonight. That's more than a marathon in a week. Pretty impressive for me. That's the most running I've done in a single week than I ever have done before. Hopefully, when I get home an step on the scale, there will be a little difference. Last Sunday, when I got on the scale after my run, I was 236. Hoping to see 234 this week, but maybe that's asking a lot.

Work has been going so slowly this week, with me kind of just finishing up whatever little projects I was working on. I am really looking forward to getting started on the project outside of Philly, because at least there I know I will have plenty to do. Originally, this project was going to be compiling a metadata definition library for their database, but as it turned out, there already was one and my boss didn't find that out until I was already approved for billing. Therefore, when I got out here, I didn't have a whole lot to do. They were able to find me some work to do, but overall, I think that if it were better planned out, I could have been more productive. There just wasn't a whole slew of things for me to get done, and many that I did have to do, required the active participation of other members of the team who are coincidentally, quite busy.

Oh well, that's why I'm being moved onto something else.

I am honrestly very much looking forward to this weekend because I am planning on going down to the city. Probably going to be bringing Joe with me, and we're going to hang out for Saint Patrick's day. Hopefully we'll have a good time. Don't know where we're going to be staying as of yet, but we'll find somewhere to crash, even if we do end up putting up money for a hotel room. Hopefully it won't come to that.

Yesterday was the first day that I shed some clothing for my self-portrait. I think it came out pretty good, but as I wrote in my comment, it would have been much better had I done it around 2-3 years ago when I was actually thin. Oh well, that'll come again.

Anyway, I just had a meeting with my boss and he gave me enough work for a week, so I gotta get cracking on that.

Posted by Michael at 01:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Every once in awhile, I just get fed up with my computer. As some of you will remember, when I first moved out of Brooklyn about a month ago, two days after the move my harddrive went bad on my desktop computer, obliterating everything that I had on the hard drive. I had recently aquired a copy of Windows Vista and decided to give it a go. Well, after having it up and running for 6 weeks, I've come to the conclusion that I don't like it. Why? Well.... I don't think it does anything that much better than XP. It's prettier, yeah, but it's so much more difficult to use.

I find myself not being able to figure out the smallest of things. For example, I cant' figure out how to get mpg movies to stream through Internet Explorer... this shouldn't be an issue. It's not that I COULDN'T figure it out, I just shouldn't have to.

Anyway, I am thinking that once I have some more spare time, it's going to be time to install Linux on my computer again. I now have 500 free gigs of space and the newest version of Ubuntu just came out, so it seems like a good time to get back into the world of Linux. Especially since there has been a bit more talk about Photoshop CS2 running through the new version of WINE.

Anyway, I know this isn't interesting to anyone but me, but that's okay. You don't have to read it if you don't like it.

Maybe that's what I'll do for St.Patrick's day... get myself some Dogfish 90 Minute IPA, put some green food coloring in it and have a Linux party with Seven and Pud. Hmmm... yes, that makes me a dork WITH an alcohol problem. Awesome.

Posted by Michael at 04:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Since my last post where I was complaining that my life was too damn busy, I have gotten things back on track for the better. I ran on Saturday and Sunday, racking up a whopping 10 miles over the weekend.

I stepped on the scale after my run on Sunday and it showed 236. That's the lowest that I've seen in about a year, so I'm fairly pleased about that, seeing as how it's only been a week. I am hoping that over this next week, running every day and just pushing it out, it'll be even better come next weekend.

Got myself a haircut this past weekend and now look about 14 years old. It's okay, it's much easier to deal with now that it's shorter.

I've continued to do my daily pictures, and haven't yet missed a day, so that's going well. It's been hard with all the business and staying in Atlanta late. I haven't posted any of them in 4 days, but according to the rules, as long as you take them, that's all that matters, and I've done that.

Last night I passed out around 10:30, but the sad thing about it is that had it not been daylight savings time, I would have been passing out at 9:30. I am getting too old for all this.

I was looking forward to this weekend in hopes that it would be relaxing and I would have some downtime, but alas...that's not the case. This weekend happens to be St.Drunkard's day, also lovingly known as St.Patrick's day. I don't know quite what I am going to be doing for it, but chances are I may take it as an opportunity to go down to NYC, seeing as how I haven't been down there in ages, but then again, I don't really know. It's going to depend on how I feel and if I want to sleep on Ryan's couch while drunk. Thinking that it may just be a quiet evening at home, but who knows, it's too far to say.

This is my last week in Atlanta before I am put on a new project, which is honestly pretty exciting. This project has been dragging out and it's actually getting to be pretty damn annoying. The next project that I will be working on is being done in conjunction with the new company that just purchased my old one, so it'll be really interesting to see the difference there and to start to actually use the new company's massive resources.

Anyway, I have 1000 things to do at work today, so I figure that I should get working on that.

Posted by Michael at 03:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Well, I tried...what can I say? It was just out of my control.

I met up with Jason last night around 10:00, once he had gotten back from Birmingham. We went out to grab some food at a beer bar in Decatur, the Brick Store, and afterwards we went back to his place for a quick game of NCAA Football on the Xbox. By the time I finally got back to the hotel, it was 1:45, so I quickly brushed my teeth and headed to bed.

I woke up at 6:45, knowing that I had told the project manager that I would be into the office at 7:30. No time to work out there... So here I am, a little after 11:00, relizing that I have to now return my rental to the airport, then go to a company wide meeting, then to happy hour, then out again with Jason. Not that these things are bad things, they just don't leave room for my proposed 5 Mile run... I guess I left myself 4 spare days for a reason. Ugh, life is just so busy.

Posted by Michael at 01:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I did it... There is a loop of roads near my hotel that I have been running, so I decided to take my IPod Nano with my Nike+ running thingy attached and set it to five miles. I ran until it told me to stop. It was way farther than I remember it being..

Well... one down, 30 to go. :)

Posted by Michael at 08:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

For the past 10 days, I have been taking self portraits, and I have come to realize a few things....

I really really miss having my nice camera when I am traveling. Having the little one is just not the same.

I need to lose some weight. I hate the way that I look. Not that I have a problem with my self image. I know what I am and I know what I'm not. I know I'm not terribly obese, no matter what my BMI score may tell me, but I've certainly got some padding that needs to come off.

I figure that when I was wrestling, the start of the season was so damn miserable, but it did a good job of getting your weight in check, so I think that I'm going to put myself through a weight cutting regiment, cutting daily intake, and really just working towards getting off that first 10 lbs, working out twice a day and just overall trying to be healthy about life.

Awhile ago, Laura and I tried a soup diet, eating nothing but soup for a week. I think that I went through about 5 days and couldn't stand eating the terrible terrible soup anymore, but in the end, I had shed 8 lbs, which was pretty impressive. While some of it was probably water weight, I still felt pretty good, and that's what I'm striving for. I think that I may start making sandwiches for lunch and bringing those in because it'll really moderate the amount that I eat. Dinner is the tricky part. I'll figure out a way to make it work.

When I moved to my parents house, I had three goals.
#1) Lose weight
#2) Save money
#3) Figure out what I am doing with my life

Working on number one, number 2 is well on it's way, and number three.... well... I know "where" as in the physicality, but I still don't know what I'll be doing in the big picture of things.

So along the lines of my photo challenge, I am going to make another challenge to myself. I want to run 5 miles a day, every day for the next month. I figure that I will give myself 4 free days where I don't have to run it, but other than that, I think this is a doable challenge to myself. Will I do it? I don' t know, but it sure won't hurt to try.

Posted by Michael at 04:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I found out what my next assignment is going to be. I am going to be stationed in a little town outside of Philadelphia, near King of Prussia, PA. It's just a short two-three week assignment, so it should be a good time going in and doing an inventory of a HUGE system for a client.

We are creating a proposal for them so that they can take the next steps in developing a company wide ERP system... seeing as how they had net revenue of somewhere around 1.8 Billion last year, I think it would be good for my company to get in on that. The much much larger company that just bought out my smaller 5,000 person company is actually doing this project, and we are being brought in to work as Business Intelligence resources, so that's good. I think I am one of the first few people to actually work on a mixed enterprise project, so that is pretty exciting.

It's a 2.5 hour drive from my house, so that'll actually not be too bad. Considering how a typical trip to the airport is 50 minutes, this will be a breeze comparatively. I just hope they don't expect that I'm going to get there at 9:00am. Hehe... yeah right.

Tonight I am going to head out of work early and head over to the Sweetwater Brewery here in Atlanta. I spoke to my boss about it and he said that it was find for me to scoot out of here early, as long as the work that i was doing got done. This morning I put together a Powerpoint presentation on what we have been working on here in the past month. I think that it looks pretty good for a morning worth of work. Hopefully he'll feel the same way. It's far from done, but considering how we have about another week to work on things, I don't think that it'll be a problem. The real reason that we are making it, is so that after the huge merger that's going on at the client site, we can show this presentation to the new leadership in a month or so and try to pick up where we left off.

Other than that, things have been pretty quiet. I've been enjoying Flickr.com recently, so that's been entertaining. I've been doing a photo project, taking a self portrait of myself every day for a year. I am on day 9 or 10, and it's going pretty well. I've gotten some good feedback, but I think that I need to really step it up in terms of being creative. At first I was just taking pictures of myself, but I really have to start to amp them up in Photoshop and create an more interesting element.

This Friday, there is a meeting of all the people in my company from the new parent company and those that are in the old company. We are all getting together for a happy hour, so that should be good, and I'll get to network with the higher-ups here in Atlanta. I am going to be staying with one of the guys from my orientation group, and flying out on Saturday morning at 11:00am. Hopefully my hangover from Friday night won't be too bad. I think that we're planning on going over to Sweetwater... haha, oh well, what are you going to do.

Last night I ended up going to this Vietnamese restaurant where they had these huge bowls of soup. I didn't bother with the "Pho", I just stuck with a rice dish, but after seeing the other people in the place enjoying their soup, I kind of wish I had forgone the mediocre rice dish. oh well, live and learn.

Tonight I am going to keep it low key, probably just going to Chipoltle, or something else fast. I am leaving at 5:00 to go to the brewery, so I suppose that I should eat before I get there or risk being terribly drunk and not being able to drive home. Actually I am just really looking for an interesting place to take pictures and meet some random Atlanta folks.

Anyway, it's about time for me to head out and get some lunch.

Posted by Michael at 12:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

This was yesterday's self portrait. I like it. But then again, maybe I'm partial.

Posted by Michael at 08:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

There is a country station that I listen to in Atlanta when I am driving to and from work, it's called WYAY 106.7 The Eagle. Their slogan is "Where you never have to press 1 to continue in English"... it's very...umm... biased.. let's just put it that way.

The other morning they were talking about how to increase the amount of safety in his home, he keeps his guns in a gun cabinet. It's just funny stuff.

Anyway, they had this count down on there:

Top 10 Reasons Rappers can't drive NASCAR
#10 -- Well you gotta sit up right while you're driving
#9 -- Pistol won't stay udner the front seat
#8 -- Engines drown ou the rap music
#7 -- Pit crew san't work in the car cause they're too busy holding their pants up
#6 -- They keep trying to carjack Dale Jr.
#5 -- Police cars on the track interfere with the race
#4 -- No passenger seat for his possie
#3 -- There are no sponsors for Cadillac
#2 --You can't wear your helmet sideways
and the #1 reason why rappers can't be in NASCAR ... when they crash their car they bail out and run."

Posted by Michael at 05:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

"What's new and exciting?" I ask myself...

"Well, not a whole hell of a lot."

It's very true. My days don't really hold the excitement that they did when I was a care-free early 20-something living in Brooklyn...but that's okay. I'm older now, and I accept the fact that I am going to have many evenings of sitting in my hotel room, alone, watching movies on my laptop. I have come to accept this conclusion, much in the same way that I have come to accept that I am going to have a killer widows-peak... just like my father and brother. It's okay, I deal with it.

Yesterday I ordered a new lens for my camera (Thanks Button!!!) with a gift certificate that I had. I am looking forward to having that for doing some portrait photography with nice background blur. Seeing as how I've been doing my daily self-portraits for my little photo project, it'll be nice to have another lens for taking pictures. I think that I am going to go for a drive this weekend and go somewhere fun to take pictures. Don't know where to go yet, but I'm sure that I'll think of something. Actually, I just looked at the weather, and damn... it's going to be cold and rainy. Maybe I'll have to save it for another day.

As of last Friday, I thought that I was going to be put on a project in New York City, staying in a hotel and working there for the week, commuting back to my parents house on the weekend. I just heard yesterday that I won't be doing that. That was going to be a six month project, so that wasn't all that exciting to me, considering how I was looking to move to Atlanta, but the idea of saving upwards of 15K during the next six months was appealing. As of yesterday, there was still some talk of me being put somewhere in New York, but I haven't heard anything else about it. I still have almost two full weeks here in Atlanta, so I'm not all that concerned. Worst case scenario is that I spend a week on the bench, working from my parents house.

For anyone that has a bunch of time to burn, there is a good comic strip on the internet that was created quite a few years ago, but it's all posted up on the net. Brad pointed it out to me, and if you have a few hours to burn, go for it:

http://www.undefined.net/1/0/

Good times.
Anyway... back to work.

Posted by Michael at 10:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The other night, when I was in Atlanta, I decided that I was going to go out and get some food for dinner. One of the places that I have really been enjoying is Taco Mac, a sports bar with a rather large selection of craft beers. On my way there, I realized that I really didn't want to sit and eat, so I decided that I would hit up Chipotle to get a burrito. Yes, I realize it's not real Mexican food, but it's damn tasty in my option...go McDonalds!

So I go in and order up my burrito. As I am waiting, I decide to go and pay and see if they had any beer that was worthwhile in their cooler. They had some Dos Equis, which, while not being a great beer, would have satisfied my beer hankering for the evening. I tell the gentleman behind the counter that I woulld like two along with my Burrito.

He looks at my kind of funny like I just asked him for a bump of coke, and then explains that he can only serve me one at a time. I was like..oh... well, okay, just one then. He reaches into the cooler, grabs the beer and proceeds to start to open it. I quickly explain to him that I wasn't interested in staying, so if he could just leave the cap on, that would be great. He then goes on to explain to me that it's not a "to-go" thing...

Now... what Chipotle is actually saying here is that they would rather I drink and drive and be forced to sit in their restaurant, that to take my food, beer and garbage away from their tidy little store and drink in the wholly safe confines of my hotel room. I don't know that that really says about Chipotle or the George State liquor laws, but it was rather irritating to me. Needless to say, I didn't bother with the beer and just took my burrito and ran....

The burrito was tasty.

Posted by Michael at 02:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)