Wednesday, October 08, 2008
The Letdown
While growing-up in small-town Wisconsin, Chicago was the Mecca of the Midwest. Everyone went there at least once in their lifetime and would always have a story about the great times and sights of the city. Sometimes, a few people would even have stories about that one time when they became lucky enough to live in the Metropolis.

Even while in Madison, Chicago seemed like the place to be. Madisonians consistently complained about the lack of nightlife in Madison while concurrently exhaulting the nightlife in Chicago, as if venturing into the city at night would transport you into a higher dimension of awesomeness.

Fast forward to the present, where I am that lucky being fortunate enough to be living in the epicenter of Midwestern greatness. And all I find around me is the same thing: burgers, beer, and [insert seasonal sport].

It's not that the city doesn't have variety or events always going on; it just seems that the same events or places or foods that any other Midwestern city has are just multiplied by 100. So if you have one Greek restaurant, Chicago has 100. Or if a small city has one festival, Chicago has 100. The root of the issue: More is better.

The problem for me seems to be that I've already experience most of these foods, events, or places. Simply adding 100 times what I have already experienced, only makes it worse. The multiplicity makes my past and present experiences less thrilling and even less unique.

I'm hoping this is just a phase of accepting city life.
Monday, September 01, 2008
The Human Race
Jeffrey Davis, Jr alerted me to a race this weekend that would end with a Fall Out Boy concert in Soldier Field. As I've never been to a professional football stadium, I thought this would be a sweet chance for me to get back in shape while also going ONTO Soldier field.

The race was a 10k; I haven't ran that far in over a year. In fact, I haven't ran a race in over two and half years. My last race was the Chicago Marathon. But I'm still young and fairly in-shape, so I knew I could finish just fine. I would just have to adjust my pace/ego and take it easier than I'm used to.

The pre-race started out well with JD and I getting secretly photographed by the Nike+ camera crew while stretching near the starting line. Hopefully we make the cut and get in the final booklet.

The race was split into different flights, with the first one having a cut-off time of 8 min/mile pace. As JD is currently dating a tri-athlete, whom also was running the race, he decided he wanted to start the race running at her pace (7 min/mile = not taking it easy). I was planning on running about 9 min/mile pace (which means starting in the second flight). I went with the fast group anyways. I kept up with JD for the first couple miles. Then JD decided he wanted to be SuperMan and tried pushing the pace. I promptly told him to go on without me; I was fine running my ~7-8 min/mile. Eventually I finished the race in 49'31" (7'51"/mile pace). Turned out JD finished in 48'00", as he died at about the 5 mile mark. I was pretty psyched about finishing WAY ahead of where I thought I would.

Then I stepped foot in Soldier Field...


The jumbotron was playing all of the photo montages from all of the races from all over the world while Fall Out Boy rocked out on the only stage while the 15,000+ runners took congratulatory photos for completing the 10k.

I've got the itch for racing once again.
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
Catching Up
Laundry 101 is closed due to 'changes in the market'.

Cleveland's is once again open... but now is called Plaka and made me feel under-dressed in basketball shorts and a T. The food and pricing stayed the same, but I am still reeling from the shake-up in style.

Malaysia-plan has been canceled; Chicago-plan has been accepted. I will begin my employment in the Windy City eight days from now working for a construction consulting company doing PHP programming. The office is two blocks from Union Station. This week I will be picking out an apartment and subsequently moving into it. As I've been straightforward with the company, they already know about the Turkey plan and are willing to go along with it.
The Turkey plan: to be in Turkey working remotely and getting paid in USD by summer '09.
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
you win some, you lose some
Almost immediately after what I believe would be called nailing the interview, I had a run-in with either a sloppy painter or a really relaxed pigeon. The end result is a Monica Lewinsky sized blob on my suit coat and a smaller, Paris Hilton sized one on my pants. I tried washing them and nothing happens. At least I only have to wear the pair around for the rest of the day.
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
Getting some traction
Job
The summer is rapidly moving towards its conclusion and I am not that much closer to solving the age old question of 'so ... What are you doing?'

I've been posting resumes and cover letters for the last couple weeks fairly regularly. Thus far it's been recruiting agencies calling, asking if I am interested in positions I was either not even close to being qualified for or way over qualified for.

This weekend I decided to re-work both my resume and cover letters a bit, and I suddenly started receiving phone calls from the jobs I was actually applying to. My first interview out of the revamped paperwork is tomorrow in downtown Chicago for a PHP Developer position. I'm hoping there's a chance that if I got the position, I could work remotely. But getting the position is a little more important for the next 6 months.

Volleyball
My volleyball skills have improved significantly. The one area of my game that has not improved is still my serve. In fact, I'd say it's gotten progressively more sporadic and mind-bogglingly messed up. But at least I can hit with the big guys now.

Running
My oldest sister decided to sign-up for the Chicago Marathon a couple weeks ago. My brother-in-law to my second oldest sister then decided to sign-up as well. I did not sign-up and am slowly wishing I had. Although I'm significantly heavier now than I was then (20 lbs), I'm sure if I started training again a lot of it would come off fairly quickly.

But I decided to stick with the volleyball and basketball routine I have going now. I'm in two volleyball leagues (Mon & Tues) and have been playing basketball on Thursdays with some pretty good players. Michael Flowers has even shown up quite a bit to show everyone how we are just fooling ourselves into thinking we're good at basketball.
Monday, June 30, 2008
troubleshooting
Why does everyone at work always say Foxfire when referring to Firefox? And then try to explain to us how we're supposed to solve their problem.

Things would go much smoother if everyone just acknowledged their inadequacies with computers by simply stating their problem, with no suggested "solutions" or "I think..." statements. If there are further questions that need to be answered, the IT staff will ask the relevant questions to get to and solve the problem.

Additional/non-relevant information just messes with the troubleshooter and makes them even crankier than normal.