Tag: Nerd

Dough

I gots me a raise today. Just a little one. Every little bit helps. It will let me shoot and develop an extra roll of film when we go to Disney World in January (he said, sarcastically)*.

We got the first level of buy in on a coding project at work today too. It’s been a pretty good day so far.

My exercise and move (calorie) goals are both complete. I’m just two stand hours (stand for one minute of an hour, 12 times a day) away from a perfect week on the old activity app.

We had talked about going leaf peeping tomorrow. That’s off the table. I don’t know if it’s on the table for Sunday, but I don’t think so. Next week is the busy week, but this week is probably too early in the season anyway. I’d still like to go, but only if Jen goes with me. It would suck without her.

I did not try to run one of my USB audio interfaces into my iPad at lunch today. I think I am too scared to try. Sad face.

I am a jerk. I manipulated the internet today and I am sorry. I was looking at the stats on the new film-only blog and I was very close to seeing September get more total page views than the two previous months. I opened the page in July so there are only three months worth of data, but I really wanted to see September with the highest hit count. That’s why I put up a second picture today. I apologize to all involved for sort of gaming the system as it were. I’m a stats nerd. Sometimes I can’t help it.

On a related stats note, last October I went through the most amazing page view stats run on this page that I have ever seen. It lasted four months before slowly coming back down to Earth. This month’s stats are okay, but nothing compared to what I was seeing at the end of last year and the start of this year. I don’t get big numbers here even at my best, I ain’t no SEO pro or nuttin’, but it was fun to pretend for a while. I do appreciate all of the folks who come and visit still, even the bots and the spammers. Like I said: Stats nerd.

Hmmm… working on a project for work where the data does not match the spec. I need to dig in and do a little research on this one. Weird.

What else… nothing. I think I’ll click post now. I’m sure I’ll be back later. There are songs to mix and share tonight, even though they are AWFUL.

*Want to know what I did when I got my first raise from this company back in 2005? I bought a camera. Yup. Some things never change, babie.

Nerd Overload

Two thoughts on things to do with any pictures taken with Dad’s camera that don’t suck ass.

First, an Instagram account that only posts film? Hmm, maybe.

Second, spin off a new WordPress page that only posts film? Hmm, maybe.

Bonus third thought…. Do both. Speaking as a total content whore, this one seems likely.

Assuming there is anything worth keeping when I get the results back. That’s a tremendous if.

Unrelated thought… Dad’s camera has a 50mm prime lens. I’ve been wanting one of those for my Nikon for years. Let’s assume I get one before we go to Disney. Should I then get a Nikon film camera that can use the same lens and bring that and my D90 to Disney in January and leave Dad’s camera home where it will be safe? Assuming I can get a super simple Nikon film model for super cheap, of course. I’m thinking one roll of film per day. When the day’s roll is finished, switch to digital. Maybe.

The Boys

A couple of weeks ago, while convalescing, I got tired of waiting for season three of The Boys on Amazon to launch so I started watching season one. I figured I’d watch the first two seasons in time for the third season to start.

Unfortunately I got my dates mixed up. I thought the third season would start in mid-June, but it started yesterday. I was only one episode into season two. What was I to do?

I’ve been ready for season three since the minute I finished season two, back whenever that was. Should I just start season three without finishing rewatching season two?

Does it matter? Does anyone care? Do I care?

Okay, nerd-boy. Let’s finish season two. Nerd.

Distilled Water Watch

Last month I decided to use this here ol’ bloggerino to keep track of how long a gallon jug of distilled water lasts through regular CPAP machine use.

The first bottle lasted 18 days. I just emptied the second bottle. Care to guess how long it lasted?

18 days. Woah! Sounds like a trend!

Dude, I should make a spreadsheet!

YES!

Seventy-Nine Minutes

I have seventy-nine minutes to go until the long weekend. New Years is so close I can practically smell Times Square.

Two unrelated things come together in this post. First, I am curious how many of my loyal readers and only friends are planning on going out for New Years Eve. By going out I mean going someplace where more than 10 people will be present. Doesn’t matter if it’s inside or outside, I just want to know if you are going to an actual party. Second, WordPress.com has just given us access to a third party plug in/embed thing that lets us add polls and surveys and stuff like that to our posts. I add ’em and no one response to ’em, but I keep adding ’em!

I posted one of these polls the other day before I knew how to see the results without actually adding a response. Once I figured it out I found there were seven responses. Six of them were me. Wheeeee!

73 minutes to go.

What percentage of the work day is left? It’s 4:18pm. I work from 9:00am to 5:30pm. I have worked (7 * 60) + 18 = 438 minutes. There are (8 * 60) + 30 = 510 minutes in the day. I have worked ((7*60)+18)/((8*60)+30) * 100 = 85.88% of the work day. Fuck yeah, math.

Answer the poll! Polls are fun! Specifically, polls are fun when you’re a lame blog poster like me so let me have fun!

Catching Up

One hour of bad sleep on Saturday and six hours of bad sleep on Sunday. Yeah… it’s catching up with me. I am one sleepy red head right now.

15 minutes to go until I log out of my work computer. I’ve been logged in since about 4:00pm on Saturday and it’s 5:16pm on Monday. Well… I was out for a bit as I rebooted once this morning. I figured the lappy needed it after all the work I made it do this weekend. Have you tried turning it off and on again?

I took tomorrow off to recover from the weekend. What should I do? Besides sleeping of course. Well there was mystery*… no, that’s not right. How about well there is music. I need to do car music. I have eight songs that need singing. Actually, I have 11 songs that need singing. I added two new song ideas to the list yesterday in a very not successful attempt to calm my ass down. There is also one little music memo thing that I added to the song list but it’s not very good so I will probably drop it. So…. eight songs ready for vocal tracks, two songs that still need to have their vocal parts written. Maybe car music in the morning and then more car music in the afternoon? Is that possible?

What else? Well there’s my desk. I have made the (likely temporary) decision to keep my work day desk setup in Harry’s room, but move my MacBook back to the desk in our bedroom. I like it better in our bedroom, but I have also found I really like working elsewhere. It was starting to feel like I never left that room. Now I will definitely be leaving it for 8.5 hours a day, five days per week.

Okay, work time is up. Time to go cook dinner for my love.

*There is a song by Bill Bruford’s fusion band, aptly called Bruford, called Fainting in Coils. It opens up with a quote from Alice and Wonderland where Dr Bruford reads the passage with his voice sent through a harmonizer and lowered an octave or so. There’s some other sauce on there too. Someone else reads some narration and then the good doctor’s voice comes in louder and right up in your face and the first thing he says is, “well, there was mystery.” In my massively sleep deprived state, that’s what I was thinking of as I was typing that paragraph. There. You’re in the know now.**

**Am I the only doofus who puts footnotes into meaningless blog posts? Yeah, I thought so too.

50/90 Day 12 Update

I suppose it’s time for a 50/90 update. Let’s do some math, shall we?

July 4th through October 1st. 90 days over three months.

90 songs in three months means 16.67 songs per month. Thanks for coming out even, stupid math. So at the minimum, two of the three months need 17 songs and one needs 16. Since July starts on the 4th instead of the 1st, July is the shortest month, therefore logically July should be the month that only needs 16 songs.

Math is hard.

As of bed time last night I have 16 songs in progress. All of them have the song form set, half of them have very badly performed guitar parts recorded, none of them have lyrics or melody yet, and all of them pretty much suck so far.

But….

I am on the minimum pace.

I want to record some guitars tonight, and I’m hoping that by the time the weekend is over there will be some vocals down too. We’ll see. That might be a tall order.

I also feel that I should warn you, faithful readers (he said like he was Stephen freakin’ King or something) that a few minutes ago I started on what could be the nerdiest project I have ever undertaken… and that’s saying something.

Jen and I have become a little weirdly obsessed with candles during our four month lock down. All through our work days we both have a candle or two (or three) burning near our desk. I don’t really know why, and I don’t think she does either, but we do.

This morning when I lit my desk candles I started taking a time lapse video of one of them. I pointed my iPad at a candle, started recording, and lit the bastard. I was planning to let it run for an hour or so out of fear that the battery wouldn’t last for much longer than that. As I was writing this though, I found a lightning cable long enough to plug my iPad in without moving it from it’s video-ing location.

It is possible that I could take a full 8-9 hour long time lapse video of this candle. Oh. My. Nerd. Hopefully I don’t accidentally knock over the iPad or something. Knowing me like I do, I’ll probably do something stupid to screw this up and spare you, faithful readers, from my epic nerdness.

We shall see.

Upping the Nerd Level

I’ve always been a nerd. Going all the way back to 1977 when Star Wars came out, my nerddom was well established. Two things have happened in the last few days that have actually upped the ante on my nerdishness.

This one is a little hard to see. It actually demonstrates nerd level alpha for me, but brilliant level alpha for my wife. I use a Windows machine when I work from home, but a Mac for everything else. I had a Windows laptop, but it’s kinda a P.O.S. I thought that maybe I would like to get a Windows desktop and set it up to share the same monitor I use with my Mac. My brilliant wife sketched out a way that we could plug everything into a switch and make it happen. Also, she just built a new Windows box and could therefore let me inherit her last machine! She set it all up yesterday, and I just set up the VPN so I can connect to my desk at work. Success! WOOHOO! My wife is a total genius who is more brilliant than any of you reading this, and I am a complete nerd!

Now for the really, really, super, uber nerd admission…

So, you know how when you watch an episode of The Walking Dead premier on AMC it is followed by the after show/talk show The Talking Dead? Well, when you’re not watching on cable you don’t get that hour long decompression discussion show and sometimes you kinda need that. Talking Dead is available on AMC.com, but not until later in the day on Monday, so if I watch the main show on iTunes when I wake up Monday morning, I can’t watch the Talking Dead until I get home from work. That doesn’t work nearly as well. So what to do?

Podcasts. I got this idea to see if there were any post-show podcasts that I could listen to on the way to work. Turns out there are a shit load of them. Most are recorded on Monday or Tuesday, but there are one or two that are already out on the ‘net by the time I leave for work. For the eight weeks the first half of season 7 was airing, I was listening to tons and tons of post show podcasts. Most of them are somewhere between annoying and okay. A few are enjoyable listens. All, even the bad ones, are worth a listen. When the show went into its mid-season break though I started to miss it. I decided to start watching the show from season one episode one and pick one podcast that’s been running since the beginning and listen to the episode corresponding to each episode I watched. Yes, Virginia… I am the biggest effin’ nerd who has ever lived. I found a podcast that is a discussion as opposed to just a recap, and everything I listened to from season 7 had a positive vibe, even when it was being critical of the show. Most of the podcasts were really, really negative, but this one was upbeat even when the episode was weak. I appreciated that. I finished season two yesterday and right now I am listening to the last two episode’s podcast episodes.

If that doesn’t win me the Biggest Nerd Alive award, then nothing will. Nothing.