For anyoen interested in hearing what I’m hearing:

I just moved mail hosting (and I think inadvertently some hosting functionality) over to Google (and subsequently got Google Apps) for a few of my domains. Let’s see how that goes. If there’s one thing that’s bothered me to no end, it’s the squirrelyness of SquirrelMail and their up/down webmail functionality. I mean, it normally doesn’t bother me terribly much; I tend to use Thunderbird at home, and when I can use my Macbook Pro at the office, I use it for mail as well. But I have to admit, I’d love to be able to get rid of my many many filters, get rid of Squirrelmail, and get used to GMail’s interface for my webmail needs. The way Dreamhost manages their mail services is pretty much the only thing I don’t like about their services. Everything else though? Totally rocks. But I just made the changes, and sheesh if waiting isn’t the toughest part. I’m waiting for DNS to propagate, and while I know it can take days, sometimes it takes minutes, and well - I’m holding out hope. I probably shouldn’t, I should go to bed and let DNS take its course. The Net works in mysterious ways.

In other news, I’ve become inexplicably addicted to Plurk. I mean, Robert Scoble hates it, so there’s no reason not to love it, frankly. I still love me some Pownce, but man if Plurk doesn’t have a ton of really cool features. The ability to microblog (you’re limited to 140 characters, so keep it short, buddy) and then respond to other people’s plurks and participate in a discussion is a real win. The horizontal time line view is also really cool, as is the mobile page that has a more vertical linear view; and the way the service makes gaining “karma” kind of a game is also fun. At the same time though, it could definitely be easier to plurk - they have a mobile page sure, and the site isn’t hard to use, but I could use a desktop app or something. Maybe I’m just missing the Pownce app that uses Adobe AIR that I generally keep running in the background. I shouldn’t complain about having to go to a website, really. Either way, if you’re curious, here I am at Plurk. It’s kind of scary how addictive the service is.

I still haven’t picked up my costumes for Otakon. I really ought to do that, especially since it looks like something like half of the people who were excited about coming to the con a few months ago are actually bailing on us now, which drives up the cost for everyone. I kind of expected it, but I’m still a little disappointed. Even so, I think it’ll still be a good time, and here’s hoping some of them change their mind.

Next week I get the office to myself without my boss’s presence. It’s something of a vacation. Unfortunately, my direct report is moving to another group because he’s the best candidate for the job, and while I enjoyed managing him, we’re already on the lookout to hire someone new. The trouble is that I and my boss disagree on who that person should be - big surprise. Without getting into all of details, we have a fundamental difference on what their most important skillset should be, either technical or administrative. Ten bucks to the first person who can guess what I find more valuable in an IT group. Anyway, he’s already trying to strongarm me into talking to someone whose resume he found - and frankly, whose resume I don’t think is a good fit. We’ll see how this turns out, but suffice to say my plan “b,” as it were, is taking shape.

Anyway, I’m wiling away the evening thinking about what I could make my first post over at the Azeroth Metblogs should be about, and rather enjoying a Sam Adams Boston Lager - mostly because I finished the Black Lager last night. So far, so good on the relaxing weekend front. The only thing that makes me sad is that it’ll be over oh too quickly.

Oh! Before I forget. I seem to have fallen in love with an instrument I’ve heard a number of times but only recently pinned down; the Celesta. Listen for the glassy, almost xylophone/bell-y sound in this funky disco house track, and you’ll know what I mean:

I fell off of thesixtyone bandwagon for a while, but I’m getting back on. Seems there’s only so many hours in the day you can listen to music before you have to sleep. Imagine that!

It’s been too long, and I really want to get back into the swing of regularly blogging. It’s tough when you have ten trillion blogs, but that’s of my own making, isn’t it? I can’t complain too much - I haven’t been for lack of material to discuss on any of those sites, frankly. Either way, that’s enough of that - I don’t want to be that blogger who’s always complaining about how often or sparingly they manage to write.

Anyway. At least I have the fact that I’ve been incredibly busy on my side. The company that I work for recently moved its corporate office back to that tiny little slice of hell that I grew up in (I shouldn’t be so hard on the place, it’s really not so bad) so I get to commute from our nest right outside of Washington DC up to my hometown every day. To say I have mixed feelings about it is an understatement though; my office conversations around where to go for lunch sometimes wind up in me revisiting a hot spot from my past, like the still-delicious after all these years Rocky Run Tap and Grill, and other times I shudder in horror at the prospect of going down to the Columbia Mall - the mall where I held what I maintain was the best job I ever worked: a clerk at the Waldenbooks on the 2nd floor - for lunch. At the same time as I remember the days when I used to hang out down there all of the time, the last thing I want is to munch on a light lunch in the food court (which is probably five times the size it was when I last set foot in there) and run into someone from high school. I moved away from Columbia to, well, move away - I wasn’t particularly running from anything, but the notion of going backwards in my life is a threatening one. I want to experience new things, new people, new places - I really don’t want to be tied to Columbia, at least not right now.

Regardless, the move was a nightmare of a weekend, one that I’d be hard pressed to really say that I’m still over, and then along with that weekend came the run-up to Father’s Day. All in all, I’m pretty exhausted. The job front doesn’t help much either - although I can happily say that I delivered my resume to my editor in New York City, so we’ll see where that takes me. In the meantime, I’m keeping my options open. The day job is bearable, but most certainly not somewhere I want to stay, at least not under my current “leadership.”

Even so, I’m very eager to take a few days off, maybe next week or the week after. The nice thing about the move is that our CIO graciously gave us all two days off on his dime to make up for the work we did that weekend, and I’m definitely going to take him up on it. Between that and Otakon in August and Digital Life in September, I’m stoked. I might even have to take a few days off between now and then just to keep my sanity. I really have to make a point to stop letting work take control of my life, especially if it’s not something I enjoy doing.

Freelancing? I love it, by the way. I’m trying to expand my portfolio a bit, and tossed my hat in the ring to be a blogger on the Azeroth Metblog, a WoW blog in the Metblog empire. Should be fun, and maybe if I can make some regular updates it might even breathe some life into it.

After chatting with my parents this weekend when we went to visit, I’ve come away with a little more encouragement to stay focused on those things that are important to me, and to make time for those other things that are important that are falling through the cracks. Spending so much time and energy on things that don’t enrich my life is a waste of that precious time. Here’s hoping I remember to take that advice.

My love affair with TheSixtyOne hasn’t dimmed by any stretch of the imagination. Leveling there is slow, but it’s oh so worth it to hear so much new music that I would never have been able to hear before. For example, if you’re in the mood for a little upbeat electronica, I’ve been jamming on CASIO’s Sexy Friends:

It’s a lot of fun, but warning, it’s a bit long. I tend to listen to the whole thing during those long nights in Karazhan or Zul’Aman when it’s me, my headphones, and my Sunfury Bow of the Phoenix. If you’re not in the mood for the whole upbeat thing, might I suggest the beateous brilliance of DJ Spooky’s It’s So Late. It’s a softer, more melancholy, and hauntingly rhythmic. I’ll probably be posting it to my Pownce feed anytime now.

In other news, I’ve been lusting over the kinds of home offices that people have posted at Home Office Snapshots. It’s gotten me thinking about how relatively dissatisfied I’ve been lately with my current job, and how lovely it would be to make freelancing a full-time gig and work from home, set my own hours, and work on something I truly enjoy. At the same time, I still owe my editor at ZD a copy of my resume so she can toss my hat in the ring for anything up there; but I hesitate to uproot Raevyn and I from the DC area, partially because I love it here and partially because she just got a promotion at her job and loves what she’s doing now. Maybe freelancing is the way to go, at least for the time being.

I had been meaning to give the fine folks at Whiff Roasters some love lately, because Raevyn and I, coffee snobs that we are, have been all but exclusively buying their coffee these days. They’ll ship anywhere, and have an absolutely ridiculous selection of blends, both flavored and non-flavored. Might I suggest the Aztec as a nice dessert coffee? It tastes like Cocoa Puffs. Seriously! And in the morning, might I suggest you open your eyes with a nice bold Zart’s Blend, or their delectible Kick-Ass Coffee? Yes - they have a blend called “Kick-Ass,” and it’s fabulous.

In other news, I’m still musing over the costume I was thinking about over 2 months ago now. We still haven’t registered for Otakon, but the hotel rooms are all nicely booked and money is slowly getting stashed away for the convention. It didn’t help that I had to sink about $1200 into car repairs and new tires, but it’s an expense I can recover from, especially if I manage to get my freelancing checks on time. I’ve also recently fallen in love with Code Geass in recent weeks, and I’ve been thinking about cosplaying a Britannian schoolboy since I really love the jacket they wear in the anime. The high neckline with the fleur-de-lis on the neck just wins me over. For example:

I think maybe I just love the neck line. I could never cosplay Lelouch, it’d require purple contacts, a wig, and probably being of somewhat paler complexion than I am now, but I think I could pull off one of his schoolmates pretty well. I found a few other leads on the costume that are a little cheaper, and I’d have to have it custom made, but I think it’d be nice.

Anyway. I need some time off. The big corporate move to Columbia is at the end of the month, and everything I hear says it’s going to be hellish getting up to that point. My gripes and grudges aside that the entire people and corporate move fell to the technology group for a rather silly reason, I’m glad that on the other end of the move I’ll feel a bit freer. People’s workloads will have lightened, sure, but I won’t have an obligation to stay and put up with the mess I’ve been putting up with. Then again, with all of the stress off, maybe things will get better. That being said though, I really don’t like my new seat in the new building, and that could chafe me more than enough to make me go - frankly, I already don’t want to go there every day, if I hate my desk space, I’m not going to want to be there any more than an I am now.

But that’s not totally why I need some time off - I need some time off partially to regain my wits, some time to just not be tethered to the office, fielding phone calls from my over-needy boss who has no clue how anything we work with works, much less how to help serve our group’s customers (how to you make technology recommendations when you don’t know anything about the technology? I’ll stop there though, I’m not in the mood to get Dooce’d because I talked smack about my boss.) But the past few months I’ve felt my wits slipping and I’m more and more depressed in the morning before heading into the office. I think I need some time away, maybe take up more hobbies than World of Warcraft, and possibly to chat with a therapist on a semi-regular basis.

The other reason I need some time off is to get my finances in order. I want to save more, and for some reason lately I’ve been very concerned with nest building. I’m planning on sending my entire stimulus payment (whenever I get it, I was supposed to get it by now) to my lowest balance credit card and work my way towards having that paid off. By November, my car will be paid off, so that’ll be some more money in my pocket to pay down debt, and I want to start squirreling away more money for my retirement - I haven’t contributed to my 401(k) since I joined the company I’m with now. (Partially because for the longest time - and this changed only two months ago - you could only enroll during an enrollment period every quarter, and even then you had to attend a training class where the HR folks taught you how to fill out the forms and read from a Powerpoint presentation on a projector screen. Have I mentioned my biggest pet peeve about meetings: people who read directly from Powerpoint presentations? I know how to read, thank you very much. Add onto this the fact that our corporate match is something like half of one percent, and it’s vested over EIGHT years. Yup - worthless. The only thing that changed is that we have a better selection of funds and you can enroll and manage your account online anytime. Even if the company won’t take an interest in my retirement with their vesting schedule and pathetic match, I can take an interest myself.) I have investments scattered across three or four different investment firms and banks, and I want to get some order and control around them. After all, it’s my money - I shouldn’t let people I don’t want to have it keep it just because I’m too busy to take a personal day. If anyone knows a good financial advisor, let me know.

I could fill the days off I want to take with chores and tasks I’ve been meaning to do, honestly. I managed to vaccuum the house for the first time in months just this week. Laundry needs to be put away as I type this, the bathroom needs to be scrubbed, the dishes need to be done, we have DVDs that need to go back to Netflix, a storage room that needs cleaning, clothes that need to be donated, closets to empty out, a spare bedroom that needs fixing up, a carpet that should probably be cleaned, movies I want to see, the list goes on. It’s stressful knowing there’s so much to do, so much I want to do, knowing it doesn’t necessarily match up, and knowing that I waste 9 to 10 hours a day when I wish I had time to do any of it, much less relax.

Yeah, I think I need a vacation. Or a sabbatical. Maybe both.