It's been a while. A really long while. Not really sure why, though there were some holidays in there, and I took a couple of weeks off and went to PA and moved a bunch of stuff to storage and and and....
So now it's the end of January, and I'm reminding myself that a working fireplace is the shizznit; even though it's almost always too hot in my apartment, a crackling (and convenient) slug of pressed sawdust and coffee grounds with a binder of copper and other metals that burn colorfully is quite a pleasant luxury.
I don't really know what to say about the last few weeks. The Eagles run in the playoffs was nice, and even though it was pretty surprising, it's too bad it didn't go a little farther. I've been a terrible correspondent, and I owe many of you email; "many" is a funny term in this context, because only about 4 people read these musings with any regularity. But I guess I'm addressing "many of you" in the grander sense, all the while being well aware that I should stop mentioning how much email I owe people and just get down to writing some replies.
I've also been sick, off and on, necessitating antibiotics to combat a sinus infection that generated some impressively vivid green snot. (I have pictures, but I'm going to keep them to myself.) The colds that preceded and succeeded that were a nuisance, but I guess that's how winter goes.
I've been trying to get control over some of the stuff that's accumulated around me. I'm in the process of dumping a few dozen VHS tapes to DVD. I'm getting rid of some old hardware on Craig's List. I'm going to reorganize bookshelves so that everything that should have a place on a shelf will. And for that matter, I'm even thinking of moving to a bigger place. And not in NYC, either, which is the place I usually threaten to move to. No, if I do it this time, it'll be to Winchester, MA, with Joe and Leah as my through-the-wall neighbors, where I can lay out all my furniture (and thus clear out my storage unit), put a roof over Veloce, root for the Winchester HS Sachems....and double my commute. Or I might just stay near the robber barons in Cambridge for a bit longer.
Things at work have improved drastically. Nothing like asking for what you want. I'm getting out of writing FORTH (which I hate), and getting more into interaction design and product management. It's a little weird to go back to IA after so much hard core coding for 4 years, but it feels good, under the circumstances, to get back to something I'm comfortable with. The fact that it's for mobile and not the Web means I still have a shitload to learn, but that's proving fun too (as opposed to writing apps for our platform), and I'm working on some cool stuff that I'm not allowed to talk about yet.
I'm doing a lot of this work on a new Mac laptop, and after 10+ years, it's pretty great to be doing work on Macs again. (BBEdit, for chrissakes!) These new Intel laptops are pretty amazing, and though I love my (tiny) 12" PowerBook, this 15" MacBook Pro is tough to beat as far as size vs. performance is concerned. (Plus, I can grill a steak on it!) I could have done all the Java and FORTH stuff on OS X, but until last week, I didn't have quite enough CPU in a Mac I could take to work to handle that stuff. So. Yeah.
Wow. What a boring post, so far.
The new year is typically resolution time, but I haven't really made any. What's the point? I'm not going to get in shape just because it's January. I'm not going be a better listener just because the days have started getting longer. So I'm left with all the amorphous desires that have been knockng around for a long time, none of which have really changed much. However, I do have a new (if vague) thought to be more scared of actual scary stuff (like 110 mph on the Mass Pike), and less scared of other stuff that is less likely to kill me or someone else (failure, telling people what I think/feel). Heretofore those things have been a little out of whack, and I've found it a lot easier to drop the hammer in 6th gear than to wink suggestively at someone or try a new recipe. We'll see if this new approach actually gets going and/or bears fruit. Or phone numbers, or whatever. It worked at work, so that's something.
But not everything has changed. The Robots still have the best show on the Internet, for one thing.