A Nitrous Crouton

This was a much needed three-day weekend. This will also be the last Livejournal-esque entry for a long while. Although I’m not sure the world is dying to know my thoughts on web server and application technologies, Linux and my new book series designed to compete with O’Reilly’s Nutshell books: the “What the f*** is X?” collection (first on tap, “What the F*** is AJAX?”). Anyhoo…

The joy of having a room full of computer equipment and cabling is there is little in the way of middle ground when it comes to cleaning. Several hours of disconnecting, moving, dusting, vacuuming, moving (again) and reconnecting later, I feel much better about my studio. The subtle build up of paper, clutter and dust sneaks up on you until you realize, ew!

Every time I go through this process I wish for two things:

Practical wireless everything
Maid services specializing in high-tech households.

I procrastinated on some emotional housecleaning this weekend, however. This was stupid of me and is something I need to rectify before the week is out. When I was looking 2005 in the face, it was difficult because while I firmly believe in maintaining a positive attitude, it was hard to find anything to look forward to. On top of that, I was bushwhacked by some unexpected and unwelcome surprises. Now, however, 2006 holds much to look forward to, and I’m experiencing surprises of a quite different sort. Now I just have to not screw it up.

My latest bit of TV show bingeing was my final weekend accomplishment. I am now current on House M.D. I am so very resolved not to end up in that mold. Not in the irascible personality sense, but in the standoffish brokenness and refusal to accept love. The promos for the show didn’t grab me, but after reading an essay I found myself drawn, and in agreement with the aforementioned essay.

This week will mark eight years of living in Southern California. Goodness gracious me.

Fitting then that this past weekend I paid a very brief visit to my childhood stomping grounds of Chicago (or to be more precise the suburbs). I hadn't been back in quite a long while.

I basically never listen to the radio. One of the few exceptions is when I'm driving around in a rental car. As I made my way through rush hour traffic on the Stephenson, I fiddled around with the dial and found an agreeable station that had a pretty decent playlist of 80s and 90s tunes that I liked. It was Jack FM, a 'new' station that advertised they 'play what they want'.

The amusing thing is after returning to SoCal suddenly noticing Jack FM ads on buses in Orange County. While I intellectually knew about the trend towards multi-market radio stations with synchronized networked playlists and custom local region audio injections.

Between satellite radio, the decline of newspapers and tv over the web on top of cable and directv, local media is getting quite the kick in the pants.

As was my weekend.

Back to work.