I write about myself because I can.

Monthly archives for January, 2005

January musings

Jan26
2005 Written by Andrew

And so here we are, the supreme test of my new website with the exception of the update mailer for when I’ve posted a new entry. I have most of what I want to add to my site implemented with the exception of the needed “About me” and “About my site” links that will come in time. Mostly, I just have to finish importing data from my old site to my new one.

But the pictures…ohhh, the pictures. They’re all there. All of them. 100% of what should have been posted two years ago, and 99% of what’s been taken since then. Pictures I took at school, pictures I took driving back from Beloit, pictures I took downtown, even pictures I took in California the last time I visited Heather last spring. Pictures you’ve seen for five years and pictures you’ve never seen before, but they’re all there, almost 1000 of them. Most are missing captions, but all the pictures themselves are there. I’m working on a way to have thumbnails of the newest pictures added to the front page here, but I’ve been having some trouble. For now, though, the link works well enough. Enjoy.

With this new setup, I have a very short to-do list, and what’s on it just requires some elbow grease. Heck, I could even leave things as they are and my site would run smoothly, but for now, I just have a few minor annoyances that will get sorted out in time and fairly invisibly to you. So…welcome to technodevil.com. I plan to make it my home on the Internet for a good period of time to come. If you or anyone else types in “www.agshender.net” in a web browser, it will redirect you here as long as I own the old domain name. My email address will get sorted out in time. I just don’t want to deal with the hassle of changing my address just yet. It’s such a pain in the ass to do, so I’m doing it slowly.

I had an odd situation two weekends ago in that I got sick for the first time since I had strep in college, at least that’s what I remember. That Friday night I drove over to Erika’s parents’ house to keep her company since she had been house- and pet-setting for the past week, and she was kind enough to make me dinner in return for my company, since she’s just had the dog and cat until my arrival. There wasn’t really anywhere for me to sleep, so we just camped out in the living room on travel matresses with the family dog plopped nearby. I noticed as the night went on, however, that my throat was swelling up. Not sore, mind you, but it felt like it was closing up. I thought I’d perhaps eaten something that I may have been allergic to, but after quizzing Erika there was nothing in the chicken curry she’d made that might have caused me problems. By the next morning, I felt a bit better, but my throat was still a little swollen, so I braved the ice that had formed overnight from sleet and freezing rain and headed back to my apartment. It had been bad in the morning, but I took off in the afternoon and things were just fine on the highways and roads I was on.

It became clear to me as the day went on, however, that it wasn’t any kind of allergy that was bothering me, but that I was getting sick. This became supremely apparent when I woke up at 3:30 AM Sunday morning and could only feel my head swimming around not in the “it’s the middle of the night” feeling but in the “oh I feel so sick” feeling. So I got up, took some Nyquil, and hoped for the best. It put me to sleep fairly quickly, thankfully, and Sunday was better than it could have been. Oh well. I had a nice dinner on Friday night with my girlfriend, decided to celebrate my good fortune of weighing a little less than I thought I did with a frozen pizza and some beer on Saturday night, but got sick anyway. C’est la vie. Of course, that meant that I wasn’t feeling well enough to last week to jog, so I took the whole week off, and I’m still feeling the aftereffects of when I jogged this past Monday with Erika. Oog. Guess my muscles don’t like even a week off.

Recently I took a long, hard look at the amount of computer stuff that I own and the cost of my proposed computer upgrade that I’d like to do this spring, and decided that the two of them didn’t mesh. So I began choosing things that I could separate from the herd and sell, starting with my old mini PC that I used to run my website from. It was a great system to have because it didn’t take up a lot of room, but I hadn’t used it in some time because the fan inside was too loud to have running in my room, and I got tired of hearing the whine in the computer room when I still lived with my Mom. So I took out the hard drive, memory, and CPU, and sold the little guy on eBay. Joining it in sale were the afore-mentioned memory and CPU, as well as an old hard drive, DVD drive, and the interface card for them. All in all, I ended up with about seven or eight things going, and I decided that the proceeds would fund the “Buy a new LCD monitor for Andrew” foundation. I estimated that I’d get perhaps $200 from the auction, and I ended up with more than $400 in the end. Not a bad deal.

So I ended up buying a new LCD, and I took a little of the money I’d saved and applied that towards the balance of a gigabyte of RAM as well as a new wireless keyboard and mouse for my system. Things look a lot sleeker on my desk right now, that’s for certain. I now have a new set of things up for auction on eBay, including the Dell desktop computer that served as my webserver after I abandoned the mini PC I had already sold. I’m hoping for maybe $200 from that auction, and I think that will fund the purchase of a new uniterruptable power supply for my computer, basically a nice battery backup to keep it running when the power drops for a moment, as well as a new sound card, maybe something else depending on the final amount I get from the auctions. After those, I have a few more things to sell, and probably a few more…it’s entirely possible I could fund more than half this new computer off the proceeds of eBay auctions alone. Maybe even the whole thing.

In a sense, though, this is the end of an era for me. I’m auctioning off things I’ve deliberately saved over the years that I thought I’d use again in the future, but realistically, I have nothing that I’d use them for. I’m down to only two computers at this point–my desktop and my laptop–and that’s a pretty dramatic drop from the five or six I had not too long ago. My life is changing, I can feel it. I don’t play computer games as much anymore, I’m losing the desire to collect parts for computers, and I see no value in some of the crazier things that I used to do with my computer. Is it possible that I’m growing up? Bah, that can’t be it.

Still, my new computer will be a nice gaming machine, even if I don’t use it as such. It won’t be a top-of-the-line monster like the kinds I used to require constantly, but it’ll run things well enough that I won’t be wanting for more power without breaking the bank. The new LCD is gorgeous, both in its good looks and its visual quality, and since the keyboard and mouse match it, I’ve decided that my new computer must match it, as well, and I’m making sure the whole system is balck and silver. It may collect dust more visably, but it won’t be nearly as drab as that computer beige that I’ve endured for the last thirteen years or so.

In other news, I’m now at 29 different McMenamins that I’ve been to. I checked my list and realized some of them were on there twice, and so I’d miscounted several times, btu now I’m confident that I have an accurate count. It’s a good thing Erika doesn’t mind going to McMenamins. Friday afternoon I met her for lunch at John Barleycorn’s here next to my office, Saturday we met my Dad for lunch at the West Linn McMenamins, and Sunday we visited *two* different ones. That was my specific request, though, and I thanked her profusely for accomodating me. We took a trip out to the coast on Sunday where we had lunch at Mo’s, walked along the beach at Devil’s Punchbowl State Park, and ate far too much saltwater taffy for our own good, but since we were in Lincoln City I made her stop at the Lighthouse Pub that I’d only been to once before, last fall when my Dad and I joined six others and did a backroads convertible run to the coast just to go there. I have not-so-fond memories of that trip since that’s when I needed to go to the bathroom so badly and my Dad wouldn’t stop until we got to Lincoln City…but the rest of the trip was nice.

So anyway, I made Erika stop at the Lighthouse Pub, and I just had a beer so I could call my Dad and take our competition one step further with the standard greeting of “Guess where *I* am?” that we always use when visiting brewpubs. On the way back, however, is another McMenamins that I hadn’t yet been to, and she was kind enough to stop and let me add another one to my list, the McMenamins in Sherwood. My Dad must have thought I was nute, calling him up a second time with another “Guess where *I* am?” comment.

Then last night, I hit #29, the Raleigh Hills Pub. Bad location, good architecture, good food, bad service. I think that only leaves four in Portland I haven’t hit yet–two relatively close ones and two way on the other side of town. Neither of the cross-town ones are in areas I tend to go to very often, but maybe I can make a special exception one of these days. I just have to catch up with my Dad, that’s all. I might have to take a field trip one weekend and hit the Roseburg one, the three in Eugene, and the one in Salem I haven’t been to, but that would be A) a lot of time on the road, and B) a lot of beer in one weekend. I have to, after all, have at least a pint at each one.

Things at work are going well. I’ve been bouncing back and forth between a couple of different projects, but the biggest news is our move in a few months. It looks like it’s definitely going to happen, though th destination is still somewhat in flux. It will be right in the heart of downtown Portland, that’s for certain, but which building is the question. No matter which building we move to, two things are certain. The first is that we’ll be fairly high up and have a view. Of all the options so far, nothing has been below the 10th floor, and all have views of Mt. Hood, the Willamette River, and other parts of downtown Portland. We’re going to have a much better view than the parking lot I have now. Secondly, my boss is provided free public transportation passes to anyone who wants them since he gets a tax break for doing so. I’ll be able to ride the MAX or bus into work every day–for free–and back again in the evening. Talk about financial savings. This will be especially helpful is looking for a new apartment that I’ve been planning on doing this spring, as so as long as I’m on a bus line I’ll have free transportation every day. Gas isn’t terribly expensive right now and I get good gas mileage, but any savings is savings, yes? It’ll also be a fabulous stress-reducer, as one of my biggest sources of stress each day comes with dealing with the morning commute. It’s not bad or hard, but there’s always someone who manages to raise my blood pressure ever so slightly every day.

So that’s wehre I stand. I hope you like the beginnings of my new site, and I’m working on it trying to get it back up to snuff in my spare time, but having a full time job and a full time girlfriend, as I stated once before, cut into my so-called “free time.” Mainly, I just have other things that I like to be doing instead of sitting and coding. I hope mostly to have the automatic email notification working next, and I’ll notify all the people currently on the list of their options at that point.

Thanks for reading, and I’ll write agains ooner than it has been.

Posted in Beer, Erika, Geekery, General, Work

Is this thing still on?

Jan13
2005 Written by Andrew

I have been…occupied.

A full-time job and a full-time girlfriend are quite demanding on my time. Mind you, I don’t have objections to either of them, but when it comes to planning your time around those two very large draws, other things get lost in the shuffle. I haven’t been writing on my website, I haven’t been watching much TV, I haven’t even finished Half-Life 2, which I waited several years for! It’s not been for lack of desire, just lack of time. I like having a solid block of time in which I can sit down and play, and as I said, I’ve been occupied.

Clearly, things are going well for Erika and me. We just celebrated our two-month anniversary recently by not doing a thing. In fact, we didn’t even speak of it. I’m not big on intermediate anniversaries, and to tell you the truth, I’d have to check a calendar and emails to see when we started seeing each other. But I do remember that it was early November. Things are going quite well with her, and it’s very nice to have a stable, adult relationship for once. I think that says more about her, though, than me. We’ve been seeing each other a few times a week and all of most weekends, so she’s become a fixture in my apartment. Recently we’ve been plodding our way through the marvelous “Babylon 5″ series that I’ve written about in the past, and that takes up a tremendous amount of time. I tried to get her hooked on the great “La Femme Nikita” TV show, but she didn’t take a liking to it, and even though I’m sure she would enjoy it after that initial awkward phase that all series have, I didn’t want to press the issue and force her to watch something she didn’t enjoy. So, on to “Babylon 5″ and then eventually “Farscape” if she still wants to spend any time around me. Thankfully, she’s taken at least an partial liking to “Babylon 5″ and she’s been receptive to watching multiple episodes at a time. I really made us rush through the first season because while it’s still good, it’s not nearly as good as the subsequent years of the show that really pick up the story and characters. I just had to balance speed and a reasonable number of episodes each time we watched, but we’re intot he second season now, so hopefully I can take less aggressive stance on watching the show.

Christmas has come and gone, as has New Year’s. This past year was a significant year for me, though, as it was the first year since 1996 that I did not spend New Year’s either by myself or just with family. I spent the evening at Erika’s apartment with her and her roommate Katie, and we ate pizza, drank strawberry daquiris, and played Cranium until midnight when we had a champagne toast with a nice bottle of champagne that Erika’s mother had given to her.

Christmas was fairly low-key in my family for the third or so year in a row. That may be a byproduct of the baby in the family (that’s me) growing up and not demanding legions of toys, or it may be because the legions of toys that I demand now are sightly more expensive than Legos. That’s not to say that I didn’t have a wonderful Christmas, of course. I got some great presents, gave some great presents, and ate way, way too much food. In fact, the period of time between Thanksgiving and Christmas helped me to gain ten pounds that I’m currently in the process of losing. My family always laments that they don’t know what to get me, but I guess they finally found that DVDs tend to be a hit. Like my birthday, I received a good number of DVDs, including the Star Wars trilogy on DVD and the miniseries “From the Earth to the Moon” that I’ve been wanting so much to see since it was released. My Dad made sure I had a DVD player that could hold them all by giving me a 400 disc DVD jukebox, supplementing my single-disc DVD player. Basically, you stock the jukebox with your discs on a giant spinning rack, select what number disc you want to play onscreen, and voila! Instant library. Of course, I’ve had to write down every title I own and record which number slot it’s occupying in the jukebox, but I can just print that out and put it in a little binder.

I found as I was stocking it, though, that I own more than 400 DVDs. Well, when I include all my TV show DVDs, that is. With just movies, I have 273 slots occupied, which includes movies with multiple discs. I’d say all in all, I own perhaps 230-240 different movie titles. Add in all my TV shows and I’ve got about 425 DVDs (not titles). That’s a whole lot of DVDs, but with my new changer, I don’t have to open up the case and get my fingerprints all over the disc, just punch in the number and away I go! I should really record the serial number of the unit, though, because if someone were to walk away with that at somepoint, not only would I be out the unit but the 273 discs inside it. Talk about putting all your eggs in one basket.

I recently ran a series of auctions to get rid of some old computer stuff, and I managed to net myself $410 from auctioning off parts I don’t use anymore. Not bad. I expected that I’d maybe get $200, but I was pleasantly surprised that I was able to get more than twice that. I ran the auctions so that I could get myself a new monitor for my computer–a sexy black LCD instead of a CRT monitor–and I was going to supplment the cost from my paycheck, but the auction managed to pay for my entire LCD plus a future upgrade I was going to wait on. Not a bad deal at all. And then I’ll be able to sell my old monitor for maybe $50, freeing up both space and finances.

Ah yes, finances. I’ve been examining my finances for the last couple of weeks hammering out a solid budget for myself so that I know how much “disposable income” I have each paycheck, but mostly so that I can make a good estimate of how much I can afford to pay for rent when I move out at some point this year. I’m currently paying $320/month, but if I upgrade my computer like I’ve been wanting to do for the last…oh, two and a half years…and get those expenses out of the way, then I can afford up to $500/month as long as I cut a few corners here and there. I’m currently overpaying my student loan and car payment, and I can free up another $100/month if I pay the sticker price for each payment. That’s a last-ditch thing, though. By my calculations, though, I can afford that level of rent, moderate utilities cost, and even have a decent amount to save from every paycheck if I stay close to my budget.

As a precaution and also because my Dad’s been egging me on to do it for several years now, I applied for a credit card. Mostly for emergencies and so I’m not constantly draining my checking account, but also to build credit. It’s a reward card ($25 gift certificate to Amazon.com every $2500 spent), so I can actually use it instead of my debit card, go home, and then pay the statement online as soon as the charge shows up. That way I’m not carrying a balance, plus I get the credit for the money spent.

One of the reasons I’ve been hesitant at posting is that every time I post an entry, I get a torrent of comment spam to my site. I’ve been working on implementing ways to prevent it, but frankly, I’ve been limited by running my own web server from my apartment. Things are going to change around here, though. I’ve been brewing a few ideas for the last couple of months, and I decided to kill several birds with one stone and I took a step in a different direction for my website. From now on, instead of running my website from a computer in my room, I’m paying a hosting company to host my site for me. They handle configuration of the machine, updating software, installing drivers, you name it. I got a great deal, and this frees up a computer for me to either sell or do something different with.

I also took another fairly large step and regstered a new domain name. AGSHender.net doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue. Try telling people over the phone that your email address is “andrew at agshender dot net.” I have to spell it every single time, and it’s almost nonsensical. It makes sense to ME, but I get tired of explaining the story when people see my email address or website. I’m going to keep it indefinitely so I can retain the email address, but the main URL of my website will change in the near future. Say goodbye to AGSHender.net.

Say hello to TechnoDevil.com.

Why TechnoDevil? It’s easy to remember and say. People won’t ask me to spell it. I wanted a .com adddress. And it sounds funny. I’m even contracting two graphic artists I know to whip up a logo for me that I can use here, maybe even some design help. Pretty much, I’m restarting my website from the ground up. Yes, all my old content will still be there, but hopefully since I’ll be working on the site to get it up and running that will give me incentive to post the pictures I’ve been meaning to post for literally years now.

It won’t be up and running at its new name for as bit, but I just wanted to let people know. So does that mean my email address is changing? Yes, but I’m keeping my old one for at least another year so that I have plenty of time to change it. When everything’s in place, I’ll let you all know and make the appropriate changes so the shift is as painless as possible. Thanks to Erika for the idea for the name, though she had no idea she was giving me the idea when she said it.

So that’s a minor update of where I stand on the important things. Everything’s going pretty well here in Andrewland, and I just wanted to make sure that everyone knew what’s coming down the pipe.

Until next time…and hopefully it’ll be sooner than the last.

Posted in Erika, Geekery, General, Movies, Work

About me

Early 30's, Portlander, professional geek, runner, cook, beer drinker, beer brewer, gamer, occasional blogger.
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