fruit for the masses

Lately, I've been eating way more fruit than I normally do. It's only been the past week or so, but still, it's something of note. I partially blame Andy for forcing clementines in my face all the time, but I suppose I should be grateful. In fact, today I've had two clementines, one banana, and one apple (granny apple sliced up and dipped into peanut butter — yum!) and I haven't even left work, yet! I rule. Food pyramid domination.

In other news, I have made the executive decision to repeat week 7 of P90X. Yes, that means when I'm finished I'll have technically done P97X. I had taken about 10-12 days off earlier this month because of a cold I had caught. This week I've been having to play catchup and I have strangely noticed some slight performance decreases in some areas. I decided that I wasn't happy with this week's results so I'm going to repeat the week before I move on to my recovery week.

Feeling down about it only being Tuesday? Sad that your weekend has not just begun like some other people (cough, Taylor)? Learn to like everything! Problem solved.

1/13/2011

Not a whole lot going on these days, aside from the usual work. The good news is that work is picking up for me right now. I'm doing stuff that I enjoy doing, and it's making my days go by really fast. Also, speaking of work, I found out that there are 19 openings in the new line of business for which I applied. Unfortunately, only a few (my estimation) are the position that I applied for, and only one or two of those will be in Austin. My chances of scoring that job are diminishing. However, they're interviewing in mid-February so if anything I'll know by then. No big deal if I don't get that job, I was probably over-idealizing it anyways.

I played disc golf for the first time this past weekend. I played at Mary Moore Searight park with a couple of my coworkers and their friend. It was fun and I definitely want to play again. Next time Taylor has the weekend off I'm going to get a group together to hit one of the disc golf courses. It's a fun and free way to waste a couple hours of time outside.

----USELESS DRIBBLE THAT YOU CAN SKIP----

Doesn't look like I have much else to talk about. Luckily, I have the power of never shutting up. As I'm sure you've heard (if you haven't you need to get out from under your rock), there was a shooting in Arizona, critically injuring a congresswoman and several others, and sadly killing innocent lives. That's not exactly what my topic is about, however.

My topic is about how reactionary everything is in our society. No matter what incident might have happened, our society feels the need to take a course of action to "correct" or "prevent" future occurrences. For example, in this shooting in Arizona, we are likely going to spawn off endless gun control debates. Also, speaking of the shooter, have you noticed that not one media member has deemed him a "terrorist"? Change his skin color to a particularly shade of dark, and change nothing else, and all you'll be hearing about is terrorism, what connections he might have had to Al Qaeda, etc. Sad state of affairs.

Sorry, I went off on a tangent in my tangent. Let's take another example: shoe bomber. In fact, the whole construct of the TSA is a perfect example of reactionary actions designed to help, but don't actually do anything. Now we have to take off our shoes. Great, because that was really necessary.

I feel like I'm not making a strong enough point, but think about it. Everything that happens, usually bad, requires some sort of reaction in order to satiate people. One person can ruin the way things are for everyone else. We have one mad man going around shooting people and now there will be debates on gun control, enacted laws, more security for congress members when none of that is probably necessary. When we have bad things like this happen, sometimes the best action is just to move on. If we continuously have these knee-jerk reactions we're going to be building up this huge fort with no foundation (I just made up a nonsensical analogy).

Sorry for this barely coherent ramble, but I needed to make this blog longer. Besides, I told you to skip it earlier, didn't I?

hello lovely people

I have turned on anonymous commenting. In other words, you don't need to sign in to anything or have any special account to leave a comment. Now you can leave one no matter what.

Isn't that just great news?

I'll have an update for you guys in the next day or two.

welcome to 2011

Thank You!

Application Submitted

Thank you for submitting your resume/application to █████████. If there is a match between your information and an opportunity at our company, we will contact you. We appreciate your interest in our company.

Well, I've officially applied for that new position as of today. In asking around about the position and working on my résumé, I've managed to get myself excited about this position. I've put in some effort in my application, and at this point I do hope I get the job. I will be disappointed if I don't, but I will get over it rather quickly. There are some key concerns that I have yet to get addressed, however, which would make-or-break the deal for me. For instance, it's not 100% guaranteed that this position will be based in Austin. I'm willing to travel but I am not willing to move. Austin is my forever-home.

Moving on...

My last post was before my Christmas break. Let's do a little recap, shall we? My time off was mostly uneventful, consisting of many hours of Left 4 Dead 2. I thoroughly enjoyed those hours, too. In between Left 4 Dead 2 games, I managed to spend some time with the family on Christmas Day and the following night. We did gift exchanges and ate some good food. Mundi's girls have really taken a liking to me, which is both good and bad. Nah, I'm kidding it's not really bad, but they like to play rough. They climb and jump all over me. Good thing I'm all buff now because of P90X, right?

Speaking of P90X, I've been officially "on break" from P90X for about a week now. No, I haven't given up. I got sick about a week ago with some sort of cold/sore throat, and I haven't felt great. I did a little browsing on the P90X message boards and confirmed that it's not worth it to continue working out while sick. Exercise helps boost your immune system, but while you're sick exercise can actually hinder your immune system. I'd much rather get well sooner. I'm just about over my cold now, so I'll probably be back on my game here in the next day or two.

Some other good came out of the last week, too. It's a bit too personal to talk about openly on my blog, but let's just say someone told someone something, and everything went better than expected. All you need to know is that it's great news.

That's really about all I have to add for the last 10 or so days. I wasn't lying when I said I played a lot of Left 4 Dead 2. Wish me luck for that new position, and I hope to have some good news for you guys here in the next month.

travel required

So my company recently opened up some new positions for 2011. I won't go into too much detail about them, though. Speaking of that — I don't know if you noticed, but I don't like to talk about work-specifics on my blog. Those of you who know where I work might understand why, but honestly it really wouldn't be that big of a deal. Still, I'd rather be safe, than sorry. Anyways, back to the position. It's interesting and a completely different position than software engineering. The catch? Well there's two actually: one, I'm not quite qualified (d'oh), and two, it requires the ability to travel up to 50% of the time.

The reason I'm not quite "qualified" is that the lowest engineering position they opened up is still higher than my current position, which I just got promoted to last year. By their standards, I probably don't have adequate experience. And as for the travel thing... I'm undecided honestly. The position will include some great experience for me, so having to travel frequently would simply be a trade-off for that. Also, there is probably no better time in my life to have this kind of position than now. As you get older, the ability to travel as part of your job becomes harder. That isn't to say it wouldn't be hard now, since I'm in a relationship, have a dog, etc. It would be easier now than later, though.

Whoa, whoa. I'm getting ahead of myself. I'm going to apply, but the likelihood of landing this job is pretty low because of the aforementioned experience qualifications, and that there are only a handful of positions opening up (and we have a lot of engineers in our company).

I won't be disappointed if I don't get the job, but I might be disappointed giving up a potentially good opportunity without even trying.

winding down 2010

We're starting our final descent of 2010, and we should be landing in 2011 shortly. Please put your seats and tray tables in their upright and locked positions.

I got a B+ in my class. 87 on the midterm and the final, and a 92 average for our projects gave me an 88.6 in the class. I guess curving is out of the question, huh? I thought graduate classes only gave A's.

I have a pretty hefty break for Christmas thanks to my work's holiday schedule. I get off December 24 through January 3. My first day back at work is January 4. As you would expect, my brain has shut down — a week too early, I might add. Everyday at work this week has felt like a Friday for various reasons (meetings, holiday luncheon, etc). Finally, it is Friday and it has been slow as hell. It's only 11 AM! We also have a holiday potluck today, so I've been grazing on food all morning which really compounds my work ethic issues.

P90 is still ongoing; I am about to enter week 5. Time is starting to go by quick, huh? I was hoping that by around now, P90X would seem like less of a chore. Unfortunately, I still don't really want to start working out. A couple of times I have skipped a day, but made up for it by making that skip day my recovery day for the week. That way I've still stayed on schedule. I still need to be eating more. It's a constant battle.

Since I've moved sharing links to the left bar, I've had less blog updates. Plus I haven't been updating as often. I might start sharing links in blog entries, too. That way I'll have more updates for you guys, plus I can add my witty commentaries as well. I'm sure you guys don't really care either way, though.

xmas break around the corner

Okay, so it's a pretty big corner, since we still have 2 weeks.

What's happened lately? Not a whole helluva lot, honestly. I finished my class in Software Systems Engineering. We took our final on Tuesday, and I felt I did well. It feels like an A performance, but with the way the professor grades (i.e. bullshit), I wouldn't be surprised or that disappointed with a high B. Mid B or lower will be a disappointment, though. I'll find out this coming week.

P90X is still ongoing. I had a lapse day yesterday, skipping Kenpo X. I thought I was catching a cold and felt kind of gross, so I didn't try to push myself. It turns out it was just a random allergy outbreak out of nowhere (I barely even went outside!). I'm feeling better today, and started my recovery week on schedule. I am now on the last week of phase 1, week 4. My weight gain has plateaued. I need to eat more. A lot more.

Unfortunately there's nothing more for me to really add. I'm listening to the Tron Legacy soundtrack as I write this, and it's good. Nothing groundbreaking, but it was composed by Daft Punk and they did a good job of mixing electronic and orchestral. Taylor and I are going to 10:30PM IMAX 3D showing of Tron Legacy on Friday. I don't really know why I'm excited about it, but I don't have that much reason not to be excited about it, I suppose. Nothing wrong with getting excited about things, right?

I haven't even had all that much going on in my links section, either. Nothing seems very interesting in the news and on the internet these days. Oh, there's that whole Wikileaks thing. I won't be talking about that, though.