Oddball Update

Greetings, and welcome back to Oddball Update. Not that you went anywhere; after all, it was I who vacated the premises for two weeks, but now I have returned. Apple and I went on a bit of a vacation to Michigan, where most of my family and friends live. It was a great time — the weather was picture perfect the entire time (except for the day we left), we got to do lots of stuff we like, eat at our favorite restaurants, and basically relax.

For me, it was a working vacation — I put in the usual 8 hours a day working on my new notebook computer, and although it was a little tricky getting re-adjusted to a single screen (after my triple-monitor setup at home), working on the notebook was soon like second nature. The only snag was that a last-minute project crush blew our plans for a family outing last Thursday, but sometimes such things cannot be avoided. We had a great trip otherwise.

Being up north reminded me of how much more fun it is to drive on Michigan roads. Compared to Naples roads, at least. I’m sure my dad would argue, as he’s often driving all over the metro Detroit area on business, dealing with traffic at its worst. However, the simple acts of running to the grocery store or performing other errands in Redford, Livonia, Northville and the surrounding cities is always pleasant, or at most, a little crowded. Rush hour traffic on Livonia’s Six Mile or Middlebelt roads is like traffic on Naples’ Vanderbilt Beach or Airport roads — in the summer at three in the morning.

Up north, it’s not uncommon to witness large expanses of roadway with few or no cars clogging it up. Traffic lights are typically spaced at least a mile or so apart, and you can actually drive for miles without stopping at one — while doing the speed limit — because they’re actually synchronized properly. Going for an evening drive on roads like these, even to run some errand you’d rather not run, is relaxing and invigorating all at the same time. I’d forgotten why I used to go out every night around 7:30 just to drive my car. Because I actually got something from it — besides a stress headache, that is.

Sure, I’m exaggerating a little. But the motorways of Naples are definitely no fun for the driving enthusiast. The reminder of that fact was harsh enough this afternoon when Apple and I took the GTO out to run some errands. Even though it’s Sunday in the middle of summer (our tourist off-season), I had to dodge around, be hindered by, and otherwise experience Florida’s typically dumbassed drivers out en force as usual. People cutting me off, people not signaling, people changing their minds and pulling in front of me so they could make a right turn instead of a left. It’s all par for the course here, and it’s all enough to reduce a leisure drive to a knuckle-dragging fight to get back to the safety of your garage. And this is August — I can’t wait until season starts in a few months.

But I likely doth protest too much. After driving up north for a while, I’ve renewed my self-imposed goal to go out and find some decent roads to cruise on around here. The only sucky thing is that I’m almost guaranteed to have to endure at least fifteen minutes of shitty cruising before I could get to anything good, but I guess that’s par for the course too. There’s a lot of great stuff about living here, so I guess you can’t have it all. (And maybe once they widen Vanderbilt, things will be better.)

In other news, after eating my fill of home cooked meals and other old favorites while up north, I’ve decided it’s time to get my ass into shape. A few years back I undertook a workout regime that helped me lose about 25 or 30 pounds, but I’ve since gained some of it back. Additionally, since I started working at home, I’ve largely been pretty inactive, and it’s taken a physical toll. So today, I kicked off my ALL NEW workout regime by getting on my bike and riding around the perimeter of our huge gated community, something I intend to do every day from now on. This is a distance of around 5 miles and takes me 27 minutes to traverse. I’m not racing out there or anything, but I’m not puttering along either. Hey, any physical activity at this point is better than nothing.

The weather was actually perfect for the ride today; the afternoon rain shower was on its way, so it was cloudy and cool. The wind had picked up in advance of the storm, which provided a nice breeze. I took the iPod along, which kept things interesting. Being Sunday, traffic was light, so I didn’t have to dodge too many cars (or worry about cars dodging me), and since I kept to the perimeter roads, I didn’t have to contend with strollers or dog-walkers while out and about.

Going hand-in-hand with this new exercise regime is a closer attention to detail when selecting meals. Eating healthier, by any other name — something that shouldn’t be too difficult since I don’t have a major snacking problem as it is, but every little bit counts.

What else has happened in the last couple of weeks? Work-wise, I got my bosses to agree to pay me hourly now, instead of on a fixed salary. Meaning, if I work more than 40 hours a week, I actually get paid for it — I have authority to put in up to 10 extra hours a week without seeking clearance. The point of this is to provide some extra time to the company since there are so many tasks that need doing, and so many of them have my name attached to them somewhere. This will also help me consolidate my “extra earnings” and avoid having to take on so many damned side jobs from people I don’t want to deal with.

I’ll still keep some of my legacy clients, though — to wit, my previous employer, who contacted me while I was in Michigan and asked if I’d be interested in building yet another new corporate website for them. This time things are a little bit different — they’ve hired an outside marketing firm to create a new corporate identity package, from business cards and letterhead to a website and media kits. Interestingly, though, while they allowed this marketing company to create the design and content for their new website, they want me to implement it. Since that’s the easy part — any back-and-forth about preferences happens during the design phase, which is already completed — I took the job. I’ll be having a conference call with them this week.

I also still have another outstanding project to work on, for a local guy in town. Originally we wanted to have his website up by now, but he’s pushed his product launch date back to Jan/Feb of 2007 for unrelated reasons, so there’s more time to get it right. The ball’s back in my court on this one, with content revisions and ecommerce implementations to be researched and completed. All of the aforementioned work is going to finance my new computer build later this year (or early next), which right now seems likely to be powered by an Intel Conroe (Core 2 Duo) chip.

Whilst in Michigan, as planned, I picked up the last vestiges of my audio cassette collection. Now that I’m back home, going through them has been fun — I’ve only previewed a small fraction, but there are some real gems here. What’s interesting is that the best material I’ve come across has all been unexpected…stuff I didn’t even remember I’d ever recorded. As such, I’m planning on dubbing (excuse the pun) this batch of tapes the “Lost Episodes.” Digitization is already underway.

Oh — I should mention (for the record) that Apple quit her job at the restaurant just before we went on vacation, when it came to light that not only was the evil idiot manager Connie going to keep her job, but the restaurant owner himself apparently needed her to cover the illegal hiring and accounting practices he not only participates in, but encourages. Apple wasn’t alone in her disgust — another high-up employee quit, too, and a second was fired before she could voluntarily leave (for siding with Apple and the other honest workers, naturally). One of them, I hear, plans to file formal complaints with the IRS and U.S. Immigration Service over the restaurant’s continuing falsification of social security numbers for their illegal immigrant workers. Sadly, that’s a place we’ll never be able to eat at again — while the food was delish, I won’t continue to support corrupt, arrogant assholes with no respect for other human beings, to say nothing of honesty and the laws of the country they live in. Fuck ‘em all straight to the Ninth Circle where they belong.

Tomorrow I’ll be jumping back into work. Apple and I have to go to the bank so that Apple can sign the form they need in order to link my business and personal accounts together (I am sick and fucking tired of this incompetent bank’s inability to do jack all of anything properly, but that’s a whole post in and of itself), then I’ll have to get back into my heaping task list and also find time to get some work done on those two side projects I mentioned. I’ll be going for my daily bike rides early in the day, because by evening I’m never in the mood to work out anymore.

More regular Oddball postings to resume.

Categorized as Life