resistance to persistence

Woah…I’m feeling tired today. This week I’m on a kick to try to get into the office early. Both yesterday & today I was into the office shortly after 8. You have to understand, I’m a night person and I’m usually still in bed at around 8:30. I’m lucky that my job (and most companies in the software industry) aren’t restrictive in the hours you work, as long as you do the 40 hours and get your work done. I’ve seen people start their day at 2pm. Whatever works for them. I’m about to leave for an Ultimate Frisbee game, and I’m not sure how much energy I’ll have. I’m losing it. I had a 2 hour presentation meeting at lunch today…not that it was boring…but if you just shovelled a sub in your face and had to sit in the same spot in a hot room for 2 straight hours, it can make you a little sleepy. I’m sure the freezing blast of air i’ll receive when i step outside will wake me up.

A few years ago now, my stomach stopped cooperating with me and it became sensitive to different foods. Unfortunately, it’s the really good foods and left me the healthy foods. So now the good stuff like beer, coffee, fast food are all out of my reach. How brutal is that? I do like beer and seeing friends drink it is painful to watch. But I loved coffee even more. How could you not…you can’t drink beer at work, but you can drink all the coffee you want. And it’s even free at the office. Not so for beer. Mind you, there are some times where we have free beers at the office, but if you came into the office every morning and immediately headed to the kitchen to pour yourself a beer, your days would be numbered at 99% of any jobs. Coffee was perfect. And it has the great benefit of letting you get more things done in a day by keeping you hopped up on caffeine, requiring less sleep. Beer has the reverse effect. The more beer you drink, the more you need to sleep to work off that hangover.

So now I go through life walking by at least a dozen coffee shops on my way to work in the morning…how can you miss them… Taunted by coffee drinkers with their triple grande frappee mocha-chocka-lattes and bulging eyes from lack of sleep or excessive caffeine addictions. Once and a while I try a decaf, sip about a 1/4 of it and enjoy it as much as possible. If I had to choose between beer & coffee, I’d definitely choose coffee, without question. Too bad I can’t choose either.

I did read a while back about totally decaffinated coffee. Stimulants (caffeine, alcohol, nicotine) and other things are no good for my stomach, so I’m looking for no caffeine. I’ve only been able to find this stuff online and would like to find a spot in town that sold it. If you know of a place to get this magical coffee that claims to taste just like regular coffee without the caffeine, let me know. I’ll be there in a second.

The past couple nights I’ve been working on a new photo gallery. I’ve currently got 92 photos posted, but will be working on scanning & posting more before I open it up. I’ll end up killing the gallery I have on this site and moving everything over to that one. I’m using Apache/PHP/Gallery for those who care to know. It’s really easy once you have it installed. It automatically creates all the code, resizes the images and thumbnails. Stay tuned for that in the near future.

What’s going on here? I’m feeling ill…total chills. My office is so cold, you’d think they didn’t pay their heating bills. But it’s actually the opposite. They pump the air conditioner 12 months a year. I’m always hunched up shivering at my desk. As you walk around the offices, you see numerous people with small space heaters. I’ve gotta get me one of those. They even run them in the summers because the air conditioning is pumped so much. Time to warm up with some tea or something…

Earlier this week there was a massive avalanche at Revelstoke, BC. I didn’t think much of it. The night before last, I heard the name of one of the people who died in it. None other than Craig Kelly, the snowboarding superstar. Craig dominated the snowboard scene in the early 90s, winning 4 world championships, amongst other titles. Many people have called him the Michael Jordan or Tony Hawk of snowboarding. I agree. I’ve never seen anyone ride big mountain so smoothly and flow all the way down. He gave up competing to ride big mountain and back country terrain. The true soul of where snowboarding lies. A legend in snowboarding lost.

It’s my birthday today. The big 29. This one actually scares me since it’s the lead in to 30. I’m not anywhere near 30. 30 seems old. I remember when I was younger thinking about people who were 30 and how I thought they were mature and I don’t think I’m anywhere near there. I still play video games & get kicks out of all sorts of cool toys. I don’t think I’ll ever act my age. I’ll be 40 with kids and it might be even worse because I’ll be playing with my own kids’ toys. Maybe this will be the year where I speed up and mature at an incredibly rapid age. But it’s not just me. A lot of my friends are like this as well, so it doesn’t make me feel as bad. As long as we’re all kids together.

This weekend turned out pretty good. Friday night I went out for some drinks with the guyz. Came home and played some Grand Theft Auto: Vice City. I’m addicted to this game. It’s been seriously cutting into my sleeping time, but I’ve been toning it down lately. And I can’t believe how graphic the game is. I expected some mature themes, but there’s a part where you buy a movie studio and start making x rated films and there’s some off-camera action…let’s say it’s explicit. Anyways…Saturday we woke up, read the paper for a bit. We (Jenn & I) wandered around the “fashion district” of town in -20deg weather. It was freezing. We ended up buying a bunch of art supplies including another easel. We were out for the entire afternoon walking back & forth to the same stores repeatedly checking out prices. Went for some Thai food. Home for a couple hours to warm up before going to the movies. Chicago…not my cup of tea. I was suprised because I actually enjoyed Moulin Rouge and Romeo & Juliet when I didn’t think I would. But Chicago had too much singing without action. I actually took a couple naps between scenes. I did wake up to see Lucy Liu’s scene…couldn’t miss that.

Today (Sunday) was a day of art. Jenn & I set up at my place and painted from 3 till midnight. I finished my first painting since I completed my art course. I’m very impressed with the results. I’ll be hanging this one up for sure. Once I get my photos of the painting developed, I’ll be posting them on my portfolio page as well. Bedtime now…work tomorrow morning.
posted on 1/20/2003 12:39:00 AM

I ended up emailing Chris Pirillo (the LockerGnome) after I read his daily blog and he mentioned wishing he could subscribe to peoples email addresses so he would always be updated. Ding, ding! That’s what Infotriever, one of my former employers does. I emailed him to tell him about it and when I was reading his daily software newsletter(read the 2nd paragraph), I saw my name and snippets from the email I wrote him in there! How cool is that! The newsletter goes out to over 200,000 people a day! My 15 minutes just started …more like 15 seconds. Thanks Chris! Check him out on TechTV’s Call For Help as well.