Links on a Tuesday? Is nothing sacred?

I finally broke down and bought a membership to Conquer Club. Behold, the internet has broken down the barriers of distance that limited the in-fighting that used to only exist at the holidays, between the younger three Knowles brothers and I.

Children of Hurin is coming.

Adding randomness to your photos.

None too often you see an anonymously authored article run in the WaPo...

I need this.

NYC Inside.

Why the semantic web will fail.

If the world was made of rubber...

Great eclipse photo.

I'm completely against letting people know about the power outlets I'm familiar with in the airports around the lower 48.

The Amen break: world's most important 6-second drum loop.

From Vail...

This is no less than the 4th time in the past couple of weeks that I've opened up the delightful MS OneNote to blog while north of earth by 30,000-some feet. I never actually got around to pasting any of the former attempts into an actual post, as the continuing lack of posting whatsoever testifies to. These 4 recent attempts all sit shamefully just below the page of some that I wrote back when I was in Miami. A year ago. So if those never got posted, that gives you some idea…

Nothing I write anymore is anything close to the quality I was putting out when I was actually making time to read/write on a regular basis, anyway, so nobody's missing out on anything. I'm trying to make a resurgence on the reading but I've been trying to do that since college. Goodreads appears to be perhaps a decent method for keeping track of what I've been reading and perhaps letting my friends hold me somewhat sublimely accountable by their voracious amounts of read books that will consistently dwarf mine. What I don't like about it is the fact that at least 50% of my reading is online these days. I just finished Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde online recently - I guess I could throw it on Goodreads but I never cracked the actual book. Read a lot of Asimov this way too. Not that I'm reading a lot, by any means.

If you don't know about MS OneNote, allow me to enlighten you - its an awesome, little-known note-taking app rolled in with the full set of MS Office products - sans FrontPage, that is - if you happen to work for the kind of company that requires you to have such things. Or if you happened to drop the kind of cash I'd never think of giving to a company like MS, personally. Now you know. Half the battle. 10 points for the kids who can name that pop-culture reference.

This weekend will be the first "normal" one (by my standards of recent years) pretty much this whole year, save maybe one in January that I'm not recalling at the moment. If you've read my blog for any amount of time you're familiar with that format, I like turning into a creature of habit on the weekend, I find it quite comfortable:

Friday I work too much. Then late in the evening I get my take-out Chinese and retire with the latest from Netflix (still working through Season 1 of Arrested Development at the moment).

Saturday mornings I meet with the closest thing I've been able to find to an older man / mentor to talk through life stuff. On weekends when Kuz is in town and we're both free, we meet for lunch/accountability somewhere in Hell's Kitchen. I like the dining options around there, always have. The rest of Saturday is usually a mixed bag, the exception to the creature of habit bit…although it usually involves a mix of putting the finishing touches on the lesson for Sunday, watching some form of sport on the tube (bring on baseball season), and when the weather's good and I've been regular with my running - a nice long one.

Saturday nights continue the mix theme - poker, hitting the West Village haunts with Dave, dates, maybe catch a movie, whatever. Nothing too late what with Sunday mornings.

Church starts with youth leaders meeting to pray at 9:30 before the UES service. Then I head to the service with the high schoolers. After, we head to the church offices and have senior high group. That goes til 3ish depending on how good the conversation in group time pans out. There are 16 or so Sundays in the year that involve football for the next few hours. The rest involve getting home and catching up on life stuff that needs to be done before packing and crashing early because Monday morning's flight is gonna be an early one.

Kind of takes all the fun out of stalking me, doesn't it?

Anyway, that's what I'm looking forward to this weekend. I've been traveling for various reasons for a LOT of the weekends in the last 6 months, which is a LOT more difficult when you already travel for the week. I'm looking forward to NOT doing that for the next few weekends, spending a good deal more time in the city, and enjoying it while I'm still there.

After all, potential ADP projects are looming.

I still need to blog about that, don't I?

...later...

So what ended up happening? I worked too much on Friday, then headed into the church offices where I talked to Katherine about some interesting positions there, but at this point I'm not really sure that's the right move for me. Cregan and I worked on our lessons and then went to see 300 with Dave. Movies were still getting a decent turnout despite the blizzard. Flick was OK, about what I expected of it. Cool to see a movie set in a historical place I got to visit recently.

Saturday we had a youth leaders brunch in the city to discuss this year's mission's trip. Except, when I showed up to Cregan and Mindi's to catch a ride, I found them beginning the process of cleaning snow drifts out of the car after the sun roof vent had been left slightly open during the storm. So that took us about an hour. Brunch went nice, then the rest of the day was chilling and working on the lesson. Today was typical - church, youth group, home now. Picking up the roommate and his fiancee on their way back from Paris at the airport in about an hour, so I have to take off for that now...

So my sister is like totally a nurse now. Woot.

Well, about a year ago I was battling illness, busy with youth group events like the 30 Hour Famine, in love with NY and making promises to write more about it, and, on the other hand, warning about working too much to blog regularly.

Not much has changed.

Sick for the second time in 3 weeks, so that's very not cool. I wasn't sick for the Famine (2 weekends ago) for a change, but I didn't do the sleepover as work has been, well...work. The hours these days are similar to what they were a year ago - far too many, but now it just seems to come with the new title, hence - less complaining on the blog and more straight up work. Traveling to Chicago doesn't help.

From a Volkswagen ad in a ski mag I was reading in the doc's office at lunch today:

You have "a thing." And no. It's not your "issues." Or your "stuff." It's the one thing you love doing. And maybe even being. Maybe you feel it when you're plugging in a guitar. Maybe you feel it when you're sitting in the middle of the ocean, alone. Waiting. Maybe you feel it when you're taking a load of Little Leaguers to Districts, two states away. Whatever it is, its your thing. And it's always been your thing. Okay, sure. People may share the same thing. But deep, deep, deep down, you know your thing is a little different. (Okay...a lot different.)

Oh, and I got accepted into Accenture's Developing Partnerships practice, which is flippin sweet. Next post will elaborate on that.

(maybe)

(oh, and the picture...long story short, one of my good college buddies named Dave [what else?] did an internship for the German company Sick one summer, and our whole senior year we couldn't get over joking about how sick everything was, like how sick the forklifts in their warehouses were, and how sick it was to be in Germany, and how sick...you get the point. Anyway, good times. Dave's married to a cool girl now and I think they have a kid. Last time I saw them was my 5 year reunion, right at good old Benji's, where I left him.)