I hate driving in snow. I hate having wet socks. I want Spring.

That is all.

Wow, what a morning. The description of the workout is very easy: Sochin kata. My good buddy and I knocked out 22 kata.

I started the workout intending to work on my stance and leave the upper body light and airy because I still feel like there is fundamental problems with my Sochin-dachi. After some nice comments by about how my feet weren’t moving all around like they were last week, I started amping it up a little bit.

Sensei Hartman had some good advice about tension and how it should look and feel as we move into the slow movements of the kata, and beginning to work on those concepts really made a difference in the way things felt. Today was one of those “on” days, where you get the few small lightbulb moments that make you just want to keep hammering at it all day.

I knew I was going to have a workout like this soon, because on Friday as I took my half-day vacation I had to fight the urge to put a jacket on and go outside for some afternoon birthday Sochin. The only thing preventing me from doing so was the dog bombs, so I decided to put a can on it until this morning. I felt decent today, and I think all this advice and help I’ve been getting is starting to stick a little.

Today, Tasha and I ventured to Peoria to do some shopping. I found a cable amplifier to suit my needs to continue pushing an HD signal and still provide all of the necessary juice to my 3 tuner cards in my Myth.

The guy that helped me at Radio Shack also hooked me up with two 1′ long coaxial cables to hook up my MythTV, but after I got home I realized that they were too short to reach the computer from the floor.

So out we went again. I got two footers this time, and I am pleased to report that I now have three active tuners in my MythTV setup. That means I can record two shows at once and still watch live TV.

I’ve already messed with the Picture-In-Picture mode and it is one of the more cool things that I can attribute to my nerdly skills.

Oh yeah, and for the record, this post has been written via Firefox on my 55″ Plasma TV. 🙂

Earlier in the week, I decided that I would start my HAL-9000 case modification in such a way that I would do functional things first. My intent is to begin this project with a purpose, and hopefully that will drive me to actually finish it to completion.

So the acquiring of components began tonight.

I was somewhat conflicted over how to rectify the interior elements of the case design. The lighting would be easy: red to mimic the interior of the Brain Room. I wanted to do the cabling in such a way that it helped continue the look and feel of HAL, but because of Kubricks desire to keep HAL very clean and antiseptic we rarely if ever saw cabling in the film.

The metallic styled looming and sleeving that I could find looked too industrial. The primary colors you see related to HAL in the film are the black of his panel and the monolith or the antiseptic white of the rest of the ship. The case I am using as a base is dark grey, the faceplate that will get modified is going to be black and monolithic in the end. So I decided that I would try to find some rounded white sleeving to do the trick.

Luckily, I came across this kit that contains all of the looming and sleeving needed to tie back the unruly mess of power supply cables that currently infiltrate my system. Shortly thereafter, I noticed a link to rounded ATA cables in white sleeving also, which I thought would round out the look very well.

The purpose of this is to provide clear passage for cool air… I’ve seen results from people that do cabling this way and they can see anywhere from a 2-10 degree drop in system temperature simply because of the rounded cables. That’s a good thing.

When I showed this, he had a great quote:
Vanir: it says ‘antiseptic freako computer’
Vanir: oh yeah dude
Vanir: thats all “there’s mental slime in that”
Vanir: thats gonna cook me up and spread me like human brie on a circuit board

So you know its going to be good.

My birthday has come and gone. It was a pretty fun day! I basically vegged out in front of the TV during my half-day off, and proceeded to my parents house for a fantastic spaghetti dinner.

After clowning around with my brother-in-law and watching some TV, I opened my presents and ate some of my sister-crafted Boston Creme Pie (Cake?). My sister and brother-in-law got me Mr. and Mrs. Smith on DVD, a movie that I’ve wanted to add to my collection since we saw it in the theatres (Angelina Jolie… oh yeah). My parents gave me some money “because I’m hard to buy for” and Tasha got me the Noble Collection’s Harry Potter Wand. She kicks so much butt. 🙂

Then I helped my Mom and Dad figure out how to use the Soyo Pocket 20G drive that my Dad wooted a week and a half ago. Its a slick little number, I kind’ve wished I had wooted it for myself after seeing it in action.

It was definitely a nice birthday. Everyone was far too generous, much good food was had, and I only had to officially work for a few hours today. Here’s to another good year!

I think this article is onto something.

This is the whole basis on which leading IT companies thrive. New ideas == new business opportunities. You don’t get new results by doing the same old thing brainlessly as time marches forward. You’ve gotta sit and contemplate new technology, new ideas, and new ways to get work done in order to innovate in a space that already exists.

I wish I could get my company to understand this notion.

Well… maybe not 111th. But it is my 26th! It is shaping up for a pretty mellow day… all of my meetings at work got cancelled, so I’m taking a half-day off in the afternoon to sit on my can and grow older by the minute!

I’m having dinner at my parents house tonight, and the weekend should bring some more celebration with my friends! Thanks to everyone that have helped me survive another year, especially my lovely wife Tasha. I would likely go crazy without all of my friends and family! 🙂

Tonight was my pre-birthday workout, which would’ve gone undetected if not for the big mouth of a certain coworker Nidan of mine. McCabe got after me for calling the offending person a sonnovabitch, but I stand by my assertion.

Anyway, the workout was great. The first class consisted of a boatload of basics. I got five Sochin in before class, so my legs got the good burning sensation pretty early in the workout. I felt solid tonight… taking the time to focus on the little things and use my center really made the first class feel really strong. I was trying hard to pull my shoulders down into my center and I started to get the same connection we got when we were doing standing punches during the Saturday workouts last month. I can already tell I’m going to be sore tomorrow.

I got five more Sochin in between class. The second class consisted of loose, relaxed sparring combinations in a circle, followed by 3-5 time sparring and slow sparring. I had a *fantastic* time sparring… I dished out and took some pretty good shots, I got a huge adrenaline kick around the last five minutes of class that really made some good stuff come out. I felt relaxed, yet unafraid to intermittantly take a shot to give one. I like this aspect of learning Sochin, the part where it makes me spar better. 🙂

It was a really great time. I need to spar a little more.

I saw this article on CNN tonight about workplace burnout… I know I’m guilty of more than a few of these symptoms. Anyone else see anything familiar here?

Back when I was on PartStore and the first half of my time in EM I couldn’t wait to get to work, I really was happy to dig in and was really focused on my work. Lately, however, I’ve found that apathy (or frustration) has replaced enthusiasm and I’m watching the clock constantly after about 1 pm. I’m still getting along with my coworkers pretty well, so that’s positive.

I think I just need a vacation day or two.

I was reading up on case modding and I came across a tutorial for case lighting. In my college days, my buddy Mike and I had installed a blue cold cathode light bar inside my case hooked up to a toggle switch.

Ever since I put my new power supply in, my system would mess up a lot when I attempted to turn that light on or off.

Not thinking much about it until tonight, I decided to dig a little deeper. Apparently, when I re-installed the new power supply I wired the light and my hard drives to the same lead. I noticed I heard the “booting up” sound when I hit the switch, I guess it drew too much power from that lead and was interrupting my hard drives mid-spin.

Probably not good for the drives.

So I swapped it to the lead that controls my often unused DVD drive. I just tried playing a DVD while turning the light on and off and it does not appear to have a problem, which is a good thing. I’ll have to run that by him and find out why the switch had that unintended feature. 🙂