Week in Review, Week Ending 4/30/2006

Wow.  Long week, capped off by two long days.  The move went relatively well, with U-Haul upgrading us to a 14' truck from a 10' for no charge, and Deryk helping us out by standing in the U-Haul stacking boxes and furniture (he's still not very mobile, and his presence in the truck was a huge blessing).  Many people from the Elders' Quorum came and helped out, and the actual loading and transporting -- done in 2 loads -- was completed very early in the morning.  I'm not sure if that's some sort of record.  Since the kitchen is not yet complete, we weren't able to unload a lot of stuff, so the majority of the boxes and furniture wound up on the front porch (and lawn) until we could get it sorted in the afternoon.

Now for the downside:  Southwest Gas lost our move service order (they just changed our address), so we don't have any gas until Tuesday sometime -- not good since therefore we don't have any hot water or gas to cook with or dry our clothes with.  The rep was pretty snotty with Michelle, too, when she called and complained on Friday about it.  I tried my best, but still the earliest is Tuesday.  KW is going to let us use the apartment until Monday afternoon when we turn our keys in, but Tuesday morning, rather than taking the bus, I'm going to have to go into work early, "work out", and then shower at Intuit.  Also, one of the ceramic thingamawhoozits that we had hanging above the toilet in the second bathroom fell and punched a mighty hole in the porcelain tank lid.  I've been filling it with spackle and smoothing it out, and tomorrow I'm going to try sanding it down.  Hopefully things will look good after I'm done.  Oh yeah, and the refrigerator here doesn't exactly work -- it doesn't keep the food cold.  Minor detail.  It's nice and spacious, though!  In fact, not having any gas has turned out to be a good thing, since if we did have gas, we would have brought a lot more food over, which would have the potential to spoil more.  We don't want that to happen, obviously.

Didn't get a lot of reading done this week, but everything else went well.  I had to call Amanda and Dan to take the Primary class this week because I am woefully unprepared -- I couldn't even have told you where my Scriptures were until a few minutes ago and I stumbled across them while hooking up the DVD player for Elizabeth.  I also had a meeting at 9 AM this morning, which I didn't find out about until 10 last night, and since I am sitting here in my filth, I am gleefully skipping the meeting.  Kevin said he'd take responsibility for me missing it, which I'm fine with since I had absolutely no idea about it, but then again I don't feel completely comfortable with me shirking my responsibilities at Church this week.  Yes, I know, I found a sub for my Primary class, but still...

Going to go to the apartment to shower and help paint shortly.  Mom and Dick are already over there getting things prepared, and I think we're going to go shortly after Elizabeth's Baby Einstein video finishes up.

My new Italian pen pal hasn't written me back -- once again, I think this is the "I'm married with children" effect.  One went strange, and two haven't written back.  I really have been working hard to learn Italian, something I've wanted to do for a very long time, but I just can't seem to hang on to a pen pal.  Sigh.

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Favoritest Songs Ever As Of Right Now

I've found another song that I can listen to over and over. So I've decided to make a list of the most awesomest songs ever... songs that I've listened to over and over without guilt or pain or fear of wrecking them forever.

1. "Out There", dinosaur jr.


2. "Contact", KYO


3. "Je Cours", KYO


4. "Knowitall", Phantom Planet


5. "Lucky", Radiohead


6. "Crush Terminology", The Alpha Conspiracy (thanks Andy!)

Things I Won't Miss From the Apartment Complex

1. People going into and out of the fitness center all the time


2. Kids playing with shopping carts


3. Loud music from neighbors


4. No parking


5. Leaf blower dude


6. Dryers being out of order with no sign


7. Porch light out


8. Going to the bank to get quarters for laundry


9. The long walk from the car to the apartment


10. Maintenance men speeding everywhere on their ATV golf carts


11. Skateboards and scooters on the sidewalks


12. Loud kids


13. Recorders and clarinets


14. All-night parties in the clubhouse or on neighbor's balconies


15. Big dogs that obviously violate the lease agreement


16. Smoking porch-sitting neighbors on their cell phones


17. Patio covered with debris from tree


18. Not being able to grill and chill


19. Three inconveniently located dumpsters


20. Stairs


21. Feeling the need to live quietly to respect my neighbors and not getting it back


22. Having the computer crammed into the living room.

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Goals, Week Ending 4/30/06

This is going to be a VERY short list, with the move coming up on Saturday...

1. Read Hebrews 4 - James 5


2. Pack the remainder of the apartment


3. Spend afternoons at the house to help get it set up


4. Find out my new schedule as determined by the running of the busses (With gas prices approaching $3.00/gallon, there is no way I can afford $100/month for gas. What is this, California?)


5. Return CDs to the library that are sitting out as part of the stagnant 500 Greatest CDs project. I'm having a hard time getting back into that, but I think that's just because of my iTunes playlist setup putting a lot of weight on "newly added" CDs and assaulting me with a lot of Billy Joel. Don't get me wrong, I like Billy Joel, but only in small doses. Or maybe he just seemed a lot cooler while I was on the mission and was listening mostly to MoTab.

OK, so that wasn't as short as I thought it would be. Still... pretty do-able and will require a LOT of hustle on my part. I can get it done though, especially since Michelle will be helping out with number (2).

Week in review, Week Ending 4/23/06

Never thought I would get it done, but I did indeed catch up on my Bible reading last night during the Diamondbacks game and this morning. Is it wrong to read scriptures during a baseball game? Well, I read mostly during the commercials (you know, the three or four that they cycle through... tonight's were the "Miller Lite Across America" and cars.com "Meter Maid" commercials. Also, since it is the D-Backs we're talking about here, they could use all the divine help they can get! :-) Gonzo got hit in the head/neck with a pitch late in the game and stayed in it until the end, which was pretty cool of him. The game was also a good opportunity to explain to Michelle the finer points of the double-switch, and how a pitcher's ERA is calculated.

Finished assembling the cabinets for the house yesterday, as well. It feels really good to be able to participate in the refurbish, even though it's not "my" house, I feel like I am putting some of myself into it... especially in the kitchen, where I will be spending the majority of my time (that's not the home office).

Packing is going well, too. I buckled down yesterday morning and really started busting out some packing, and have most of the bedroom done... waiting on Michelle to finish a lot of her stuff up. We still have a lot of stuff in the kitchen that needs to be packed, and some of the baby's stuff (although that will be easy; we're just planning on throwing it into a tote and taking it over), and then the computer stuff and other electronic equipment. We will probably have that done on Friday afternoon and take some time Friday night to keep ourselves entertained in other ways.

All in all, a good week!

Updating on Scripture Reading Goals, week ending 4/23/06

I figure if I didn't post this soon, it was never going to get done.

I have (mostly) completed last week's goal, having underestimated how deep into 1 Thessalonians I needed to read.  I now need to read to Hebrews 3 by Saturday evening in order to complete my goals for this week.

It is nice to see that, 16 weeks into the year, I am mostly through the New Testament.  It will take me about 16 weeks to complete the Doctrine and Covenants and Pearl of Great Price, which I am looking forward to, and then the remainder of the year will be dedicated to reading (selections from) the Old Testament.

A short note on the "invisible other half" of the reading project:  reading the Book of Mormon.  Due to many aborted attempts at reading it earlier in the past couple of years, I decided to start a little bit past the beginning, with the book of Enos.  I am currently in the middle of Alma 30, and reading 1-2 chapters a night.  I am confident that I will finish the Book of Mormon this year and accomplish my overall goal of reading the entire Standard Works in one calendar year.

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Motivation.

Yes, I haven't done the goals thing yet. A big part of that was not hitting them at all last week - including the Bible reading. Now I need to play some serious catchup, but at the same time I also would like to play catchup on my sleep. When it's 95 in the apartment during the afternoon, guess which one wins.

Knives, great things, and delays

Going to have to wait until Monday I think to go over the goals and stuff from last week... we are at the parents' house for Easter weekend.

Went and saw the Jesus the Christ pageant at the Mesa Arizona temple. It was awesome as usual (either the second or the third time I've seen it). Also as usual, there were protesters on Main St. I wonder what they were protesting? I wonder if they realize the irony that they are protesting a show that is taken completely from the Bible and proclaims the glory of the resurrected Savior. Also, I don't think Jesus went around with big signs telling people that they were going to be damned.

Another thing... this whole "greatest thing since sliced bread" thing. What I want to know is, what was the greatest thing before sliced bread? And is that thing second best still, or have there been things greater than that which was greatest before sliced bread, but not as great as sliced bread? And what qualifies something as the greatest thing since sliced bread, anyway? Is there a list of that anywhere? You'd think the phrase could only be used once in someone's life as it is, because they will eventually find something greater than sliced bread, then the phrase will become "the greatest thing since", say, string cheese, or pay-at-the-pump fueling. Can I get an answer on this question?

Tired tonight, church early tomorrow. The Ten Commandments is on TV right now, I guess that's the closest they can come to showing an Easter-themed story (Passover) on TV without anyone freaking out. It's interesting how Easter stories, if told correctly, encompass two faiths. Maybe that's why there's not as much squawking about them as there is Christmas stories... Christmas only favors one religion (and all its many flavors), and has the word "Christ" in it. I suppose it could be worse... we could have things like TV specials for Administrative Professionals Day or some other "holiday" that Hallmark has invented for the sole purpose of selling greeting cards.

New finance method

Stumbled across a question on Ask Metafilter on how to avoid overdraft fees. One of the answers was to build up a reserve in your checking account by rounding: rounding up to the next dollar on withdrawls, and rounding down to the previous dollar on deposits. I was going to check how much money we would have accumulated for the year, but February and March were weird months for us financially. It was nice, however, to see that we would have accumulated $43 in January. That's pretty darn good -- figure $43 over 12 months is about $500, and who couldn't use that in the bank? Plus, if we get a high enough reserve, we could actually earn interest on that amount. I'd like that.

Probably going to switch over to the credit union for all of our finances once we move -- I've sold Michelle on the rounding thing, now all we need to do is get our finances in a more friendly, local place, and I feel really, really good about a CU for that.

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New stuff

I am trying out a couple of new things for the blog... since I can no longer use the Post from Word add-in for Blogger, since I no longer use MS Office, I am trying out a little something called "Qumana."  We'll see how it works.

Tags: test

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Goals, Week Ending 4/15/05

1. Read Ephesians 2 - 1 Thessalonians 5. These little bits, by the way, are about 20 pages in the LDS KJV Bible.


2. If you didn't guess "pack the bedroom", you haven't been paying attention closely enough. :-)


3. Try not to miss my old stereo receiver too much. I was thinking of ways we could run the computer through Michelle's stereo, and also be able to split speaker output between the "main" speakers, and a set of satellite speakers for outside or the enclosed patio (at the new house). Then I remembered, my old stereo receiver did all of that. SAD FACE.

Not a lot this week; it's Easter weekend and we are going to be going up to Mom and Dick's on Friday afternoon.

Week in Review, 4/8/05

1. Read the Bible. Probably the longest it's ever taken me to do it, since I technically finished it this morning, which is outside of the goal period. But, I did complete the goal.


2. I packed a bunch of stuff in the kitchen, only to find out that Michelle needed some stuff for this weekend. Who knew?


3. We did find the moving checklist, however, Michelle has hidden it on a website to where I have forgotten the password.


4. Stuff in bedroom still needs to be packed.


5. Never did figure out what that fifth item was...

In addition to all this, the music listening project is almost completed... I have listened to or either have on reserve all the CDs from the top 100 of the list, putting me at or near the 20% mark. (I need to be at 33% to finish by the end of the year.) I am getting more aggressive, although it is difficult to listen to so much music in such a little time.
The BPM project was much more easily implemented at work, so I did it there... and promptly exhausted my "up-tempo" (120+ BPM) playlist by listening to it all day. What a wonderful invention. I loved listening to a wide variety of music. Now, what I need to do is, get about, oh, 700MB of music from my computer at home to my computer at work, so I can enjoy more music at work.
I have also started looking at "Once a Month Cooking" more seriously, borrowing a book called Frozen Assets from the library. It has good tips in there, and I think it would be nice to implement something like that, maybe not on a "cook-for-the-month" basis, but to at least have some homemade frozen meals ready to go in case neither one of us feels like cooking. Simple things, like spaghetti sauce, pizza dough, cookie dough, meatballs, etc. Just keep a supply of those onhand in the freezer, as homemade frozen staples.
I think that's it for the week... oh, no wait, there's more. The band got together and recorded some stuff on Wednesday night, and Kent laid vocals down at home. We got one really good song out of it (I would like Kent to re-do the vocals on "At All"), "Fall", and it sounds demo-worthy. I would love to be able to record that professionally, but more importantly use this to get a gig somewhere.
Also considering upgrading the blog to more of a website feel, since I am now writing more things than just goals and journal entries in here. Get back into the writing groove. Back to music for a bit: I am using my growing music library to make mixtapes for other people, and I would like to post those so they can be preserved for posterity.

Fin.

On Minimalism, iTunes, and Smart Playlists

Last entry I talked about my desire for simplification in all facets of my life, and basically deconstructing everything down to the bare essentials. This apparently does not apply to my music listening preferences, however, as I have completed one-half of a rather extensive project which has little to no real practical application.

I must digress here and say how much I hate labels. I don't like being pigeonholed by people, and I don't like confining people -- or other things -- to labels. This naturally extends to music. So it's only natural that I would spend forever and a day meticulously tagging all my .mp3 files down to the littlest detail (BPM). I scored a handy utility from mixmeister.com which will go through .mp3 files and determine their BPM, and then I can just go into iTunes and re-capture all the file info to get that loaded in there.

I figured that once the BPMs were loaded, I would be able to create "chill out" mixes and such so I could make "smarter" playlists (more on that later). Here's what I found out, at least from my work music library (which consists of 307 songs with a median BPM of 112), that many of the songs that I consider "chill" have a higher BPM. So, while I now have two new smart playlists -- Uptempo and, um, Not -- divided along the 120 BPM line, I will still have to go through and tag songs according to if they're "chill" or not. I will have to find a way to get that taken care of. :-) It's not that I don't want to listen to all the music on my hard drive (and at home the process is what *really* scares me), it's just I don't want to sit there and tag all the music, especially with my huge music library at home where I'm adding albums by the truckful, without necessarily listening to all of the songs.

About the Smart Playlists thing -- I'm trying to figure out why it appeals to me so much. I think a lot of it has to do with the computer programmer/data manipulator in me. Sure, having a consistent style of music going from the speakers so I don't shuffle from, say, Public Enemy to the Tabernacle Choir, is very appealing, and I love that idea.

I have officially forgotten where I was trying to go, so I'm ending here and "quitting while I'm ahead".

Musings.

I've found myself embracing minimalism for a long time, and I am looking forward to moving so I can really take the chance to just completely rid myself of things that I don't need. I've eschewed my rather large CD collection for the opportunity to purchase music online (a large hard drive helps out a lot). I'm using the library a lot more for my book-reading needs. I'm just trying to keep everything down to nice and simple. I like simple.

On a side note, baseball season has started today, and MAN, do the Dodgers look good. Even though they're losing 8-5 right now to Atlanta, they look like a really good team. I love Opening Day. There has been baseball on TV for 5 hours now, and I get to be home and enjoy it instead of at work trying to catch up on scores on the Internet.

I kow we're getting a fairly decent-sized house (1200 square feet), but I am treating it like a much smaller space, so we can really maximize its potential. I've got Michelle talked into using the "Arizona Room" (I prefer to think of it as an enclosed patio, which it really is) as a den, with the bookshelves out there to act as an artificial wall to the washer and dryer. We might even get to keep the dining room set out there, because I am really looking forward to having some nice get-togethers out there, rather than having to go to other people's houses because we are in a somewhat cramped apartment.

That monster.com commercial, where people look so excited to be on the job? I seriously can't think of a job I would have where I would react like that. I think this job is one of the best I've ever had, and I still can't wait to get out of there at noon every day, and it's very hard for me to get the computer turned on to work from home. I think I'm going to have to talk to Michelle about me working until 1:30 and then coming home, with her working from 2-5 every day. I can tell you, that would probably be a lot easier, because right now, with working 7 straight hours without a formal break, I am getting burned out pretty quick near the end of my day at work, and any time after 11 AM is barely productive for me.

Goals, Week Ending 4/8/2006

1. Read 2 Corinthians 1 - Ephesians 1


2. Pack kitchen implements we're not going to use in the next month.


3. Get a moving checklist online and make sure we are caught up, then stick to it for the remainder of the month.


4. Complete the eternal bedroom project of get this stuff packed or else


5. I'm sure there's something I'm missing... sorting through to find out if I need it or not. Can't quite figure out what it is, though. So my goal is to figure out what it is.

Nothing else too spectacular this week. Just trying to keep my head above water here; last week was way too exhausting for me.

Week in Review, 4/1/2006

Two goals, 50% complete.

1. Read 1 Corinthians.


2. Tackled that file cabinet... finally. Wow, that's more work than I thought it would be, and getting it started throughout the week while trying to make up hours missed on Monday was too hard. I made a major dent in it on Saturday between Conference sessions, but I would be lying if I said I was anywhere near being done.

And that's it. I did get the cookbooks packed in the kitchen, for what it's worth.