This week, while relatively busy (with the exception of Tuesday), is all about Friday. Why? Well, this is another of those things that I can’t tell you at the moment, but suffice to say that it’ll be big. Not big as in Microsoft announcing that it’s taking over the world big, but big in another way related to my job. We’ll see exactly what I can tell you on Friday after it happens.
If I want to go the 360 + Media Browser way for my parents in Dallas, I have the approval to get them a 360. It makes no sense for me to get one up here since we don’t get a discount on them, but if I decide that’s the best route, I can do some accessory purchasing. Oh, it would also help to have Media Center running on the server also, so an upgrade to Windows 7 on that computer would also be in the cards.
Personal - Seattle
If I fall prey to Twitter, the blame falls 100% on Andrew. I’ve lived my life perfectly fine without being a Twitter addict up until now, but Andrew got started on it yesterday with TweetDeck, and I’m finding myself using it slightly more and more. For bonus points it can post to Twitter and Facebook at the same time, so you could partially argue that it’s really just a rich client for posting to Facebook (like Writer is for my blog) with Twitter on the side. Unfortunately that name makes that explanation a whole lot less believable.
I finished the last episode of Dexter today, so now I have to move onto something else. Do I go back to movies from Netflix? Do I work on Fringe and catch up with it? Maybe I try to get into Naruto (a 220 episode anime series that, of all people, came up in conversation with Andrew)?? All I know for sure is that come September, Showtime or not, Dexter Season 5 will most definitely be one of my weekly shows someway.
Personal - Seattle
So tell me this, oh wise people of the internet: if things like Gmail and other web apps are supposed to be all the rage, why would I almost universally rather interface with them using a desktop program? I use Outlook for my mail (and not even Exchange, just my typical Yahoo account), Andrew is possibly getting me to use Twitter via TweetDeck, and I even write virtually all of my posts now via Windows Live Writer instead of the WordPress interface. Sure, the web interfaces for all of these are great when I’m on someone else’s computer, but the experience is just better with a rich client.
I seem to have found an extremely workable solution for a pleasant media interface linking my 360 with my movies and TV shows on my WHS. There’s a plugin for MCE called Media Browser, and it doesn’t seem to suffer nearly as much from the speed issues that similar ones I tried did (I’m looking at you, MyMovies). It requires a little more testing from me, but it could be a very potential option for an HTPC replacement in Dallas (specifically that being, upgrade the server to Windows 7 + this and replace the HTPC with a 360).
Personal - Seattle
Tomorrow was effectively supposed to be one, long, all day meeting that should have kept me fairly occupied (if not a little bored). Now, there’s one meeting in the morning and a party in the afternoon on my calendar. The middle of the day is five hours of barren wasteland on my calendar, so we’ll be returning to the Wednesday school of entertainment.
There was the possibility of going snowboarding on Saturday, but with a high of 50 at the mountain, I didn’t really feel like I could just pull off the sweatshirt style of snowboarding and not end up completely drenched from the melting snow by the end of the day. Therefore, movie? WoW? That’s something I’ll just leave until Saturday morning to decide.
Personal - Seattle
My grandmother decided to send me an Easter box (yeah, a little early, but I’m fine with that) full of small baskets, plastic eggs, that green plastic grass that gets everywhere, and about 20 kajillion Butterfingers after I mentioned that I happened to like that candy. It didn’t help that I opened the box upside down (in my defense, the shipping label was on the bottom), so there was really no hope of there being a clean unpacking job to begin with. At least the grass is easy to pick up since it isn’t annoyingly tiny.
Tomorrow is a much less empty day which equates to less time required for me to entertain myself. Today went fine, however, which is good because Friday will be similar. I feel like I’ve lived through this before where I have multiple days each week with basically nothing to do except sit in my office. Oh well, must just be my imagination playing tricks on me.
Personal - Seattle
My 2010 Census form arrived today, and filling it out was a lot less exciting than I expected it to be. I mean, doing taxes is a mini-adventure each year, and the census is only done every decade, so you would think the government would want to make it 10x more “interesting”. Alas, no, it’s just 10 questions that are insanely easy to fill out, and then you just mail it back to them. Where’s the fun in that?
Tomorrow is a day of few meetings, so my new office and I should have quite a bit of time in order to get acquainted with each other throughout the day. Lucky for me I have quite a bit of stuff to write as well as new software to play around with, so I should be able to entertain myself just fine. Of course, meetings are (almost) always more interesting, but not every day can be perfect.
Personal - Seattle
Well who would have thought that Microsoft would actually be able to pull off a move successfully? I can completely understand why they kept delaying it until after our milestone was over (because today was worthless for getting anything productive done), but overall I didn’t have any major problems. Of course, I guess really the only notable news of the day is that I was able to find my new office without having to wander around my building for a while, unsure of exactly where all my stuff was now living.
MIX kicked off today in Vegas (yet another conference there that I’d love to go to, but CES will do for a start), and Microsoft announced a bunch of stuff concerning the developer platform for Windows Phone 7 Series. A lot of what they showed off was quite impressive, and if the game integration with Xbox Live takes off, I can definitely see it surpassing the iPhone as the dominant mobile gaming platform. Now if only one would be out in a little over a month when I’m eligible to upgrade…
Personal - Seattle
I forgot that WordPress knows how to update itself for DST now, so first thing this morning I checked in order to prevent days/weeks of mistimed posts. My other clocks weren’t so lucky with five (including my watch since it can’t do it’s syncing thing here apparently) needing to be manually changed. The ultimate result is that today only got to be 23 hours for me instead of 24, so what I said yesterday about Monday coming too quickly? Good thing this didn’t happen last weekend.
Perhaps the best thing about tomorrow is that it will force me to play WoW less than I otherwise would. In effectively the last 72 hours I got 8 levels on my character, so I think a temporary break can be taken without needing to worry about being unproductive too much. For the first time I saw a WoW item pop up in my FB news feed, and while I remember setting something up to do that, I had forgotten totally about it. Good thing I’m fine with it being there and don’t need to go on a great hunt in order to turn it off.
Personal - Seattle
After two weekends of effectively just having a single day of rest, having both yesterday and today off from work is something my body isn’t entirely sure how to deal with. On top of that, another day off tomorrow? In the past, Monday has been coming too quickly. Now, I might actually be excited for Monday morning to come around.
My $15/month subscription to WoW has been put to very good use between Thursday and today to the unfortunate neglect of all my 360 games. The time I did spend on my 360 today was either spent watching TV shows or playing Rock Band (because I felt like it, that’s why!). As enticing as Rapture might be, it just has to get in line behind the other forms of entertainment that capture my limited attention span first.
Personal - Seattle
Last year I was in Park City visiting Brandon. This year Brandon is up here visiting his stepbrother, and I’ve been over at his house for most of the evening. In addition to Wii Rock Band, we’ve been playing a “guess the word” type game. We haven’t exactly been playing by the rules, but I think our way has been more fun anyway.
Bowling this afternoon was fun even if I only managed one strike all afternoon. I think that my sports skills should stick with ultimate frisbee and maybe some casual football. Either that or the pins need to be moved a lot closer to the beepy line.
Personal - Seattle