steakified: the life and times...

sorry blog....so neglected.

2008-04-22T13:19:00.002-05:00

sorry blog....so neglected.
Just been so busy lately. Summer's here, expect late nights and lots of free time.

Much has gone on...

2007-07-18T01:27:00.000-05:00

Well where do I begin? Let's see, last I think I said nothing much has been going on. Well, I lied. No wait, I didn't lie, I just didn't think about updating this blog while things are going on. We took the plunge and bought a condo. First things first, i hate the idea of condos because its kind of like you're renting but you "own" it. Whatever, we got one that we thought was a pretty good price and had enough space for all of our crap. We got rid of a lot of crap too which is good. I'm embracing the idea of "less is more". Less things to drag around with you and more freedom. Kind of like thinking that you own your stuff and your stuff doesn't own you. I sold all of my Cd's and got some movies that i've always enjoyed watching. We got rid of old furniture and just the act of getting rid of things was liberating. Sure, we sold it pretty cheap but it was worth it to just get rid of the stuff.

Now to the condo. We as a young couple are liked by pretty much everyone. I guess I should consider myself a yuppie? maybe...being young and a professional. I guess i'm not really all that young anymore but whatever, we've moved into a 'target area'. What does that mean? Well it means that the city of chicago is trying to clean up a particular area and they'll give you some incentives to move there. Now, linda and I have lived in some rough neighborhoods before but never really a "black" neighborhood. It took some getting used to but the neighbors on our block seem pretty nice and the street is rather quiet. I mean it still is Chicago so you're going to have more people around in a particular area. We have the cars that look and drive like crap but you sure know that their stereo is probably the most expensive thing on the car. You got tons of kids playing in a field and riding their bikes. It's kind of different but I think we're getting used to it. Getting used to how things are and just trying to be comfortable. Sometimes I sit back and think to myself "Do I really live here?". The neighborhood isn't the greatest but it is far from the worst. I mean c'mon, we've got a Starbucks and a Walgreens and a hell of a lot of new construction going up. I hope things clean up quick and the neighborhood turns. East Garfield Park seems like the place to be since it was pretty close to downtown. Hopefully we'll get bid for the olympics and things will tighten up quick. I say I don't enjoy the idea of a condo, but it does beat renting for the simple fact that you're investing your money. Not just throwing it away every month. True you have that freedom of just up and leaving, but I'm not going anywhere and I enjoy taking care of my own place and fixing things myself. I've got a couple projects ahead of me that i'm looking forward to doing. One of them being to take care of my budding home theater project and the other to start up on learning more things about computers. I'm on the last year of my "plan" so I gotta pick things up. Hopefully things will go well and I'll complete some of the things I set out to do. I'd be happy if I got one of those things done in the next 6 months. I just need some motivation.

Anyways, it's late.
--steak.

Not really too much going on...

2007-05-20T21:33:00.000-05:00

Title really sums it up. There isn't much going on except for work and the same old stuff. I've been trying to keep busy with projects I give myself and when i'm not doing that I'm usually watching TV. Though, I am trying to exercise more by taking walks and watching what I eat. It's kinda tough when you know things have to change but you're so unmotivated to do so...

Ah well, I'm not really into posting today, but figured I'd get something up.
ttyl.

--steak.

hey, how ya doin?

2007-03-23T22:25:00.000-05:00

Well, things are going...
Not bad really, could be worse I suppose. We've been doing well and trying to get things sorted. Linda's been doing her thing and getting more clients, hopefully things will take off once the real estate season goes into full swing. I hope they do, I sure do miss some of the luxuries we had before. Ah well, they'll be back again in due time. But as far as the housing market goes, we're not in a good spot.

We have 2 choices:
A) Get a small condo that is old and outdated and really just needs cosmetic fixups.
B) Buy a good sized house in the middle of the hood that requires a lot of work.

I'm all for trying new things and having new experiences, but living in an area where you feel unsafe is not something I care to revisit. And honestly, unless your condo is very unique and worth the hassle what's the point? I'm an old fashioned kinda dood, I like having my own cut of the land, doing my own house work and yard work and not sharing any walls and not putting up with any condo association bullshit. So our only real choice is to just keep the status quo and try to save up some more money to get a better place next year. Kinda goes back to my last post where I was thinking about what to do from here. I think that gambling with what money we do have saved up is a bad idea. We'd like to stay in chicago because we like the city and it's many amenities, but I do miss hanging out with my friends and being just a few minutes away instead of an hour. Though it's kind of fuckd up that your friends wont drive an hour to hang out with you... I understand the predicament but it still doesnt make it alright. We have some friends in Romeoville and pondered moving there, but the commute on 55 would kill me. We put in some offers on a couple of houses and one thing or another they all fell through which I think is a blessing in disguise. We did some checks on teh traffic from Romeoville to Chicago and damn, an hour plus at 7A. I dont start work until 9A and ill be damned if I spend more than 2 hours in a car total. The deals falling through kind of saved us from ourselves which I think is for the better. We also went as far as to have a home inspection on one of hte houses here in Chicago, but again the inspection turned up not very good and the house required more work than we had money for and again, probably for the better. Ah well, i guess i should stop watching these home improvement shows. On to better things...

Meanwhile I've been diving deeper and deeper into the open source abyss. My buddy Justin and I attended NetSecure07 (computer security conference) at IIT which included some student projects that were pretty cool. One of the projects was right along the lines of one of the projects I wanted to do which was moving the wireless access point to my network on the outside of my firewall and having it authenticate with a server. Typically a wireless access point is the weakest point of your network, regardless of how secure and tight the rest of your network is. If you are using WEP or WPA (non-AES) encryption for your wifi security it's still not as secure as it could be. We all know that WEP can be cracked in 2 minutes and WPA has other security holes that make it useless as well. WPA2 is about the best you can do...for now. The security conference had some pretty interesting speakers from local companies as well as a guy from IEEE. Sure he was pretty dull, but he had some valid points and that is what kept my interest. He advised using a radius server and SSL certificates to encrypt all the links between the WAP and the wnic. Anyways, one of the student projects was setting up a WAP as a hotspot and then having it communicate with a captive portal and then having that captive portal forward authentication requests to a RADIUS server. What this setup also does is allow you to track who's logged on and where they've gone and how long they've been doing whatever. What I like best about the whole solution is that they used open source software for all of their components. The one I am most interested in is the DD-WRT opensource firmware for certain types of commercial routers. If I can get my hands on a couple of these I can really expand the wireless range of our WAP and ultimately make it very secure and easy to log onto. I've also installed Ubuntu fulltime on my laptop, been playing with Linux more and more and getting very comfortable with some of the functionality. Though I have a long ways to go just yet, I like having this kind of flexibility with the OS, not to mention the price is awesome.

Ah, so many projects and so little time. I have a few things I'd like to take care of within the next year to try to improve my worth in the IT job market. Time will tell.

thanks for reading.
-steak

posting...

2007-03-13T02:51:00.000-05:00

So things are pretty crazy right now. I'm not sure what to do... Do I take these past few months as a sign of things to come? or do I simply cast it aside and try to play the card at hand? It's like that point in a game where things were pretty even up to a point. Then due to some event no matter how big or small, turns the tides. It could be a mouse farting, a fumble, an errant pass, a split second where concentration is broken and everything you worked so hard for unravels...

Or these things happen and then you are stronger because of it? These cliche's are all over the place, everywhere you turn, every person's wise advice has some sort of basis on a cliche. Good or bad, whatever. I think they hold some weight and some truth somewhere simply because it's human nature to fuck things up and then regret it for years to come.

You'll know when you come to that point, I think we're there. Time to see if we choose wisely.
good luck.

-steak.

yep...still kicking.

2007-02-15T22:18:00.000-06:00

Yeh, i'm still living.
ttyl.

Round 02: ding! ding!

2007-01-18T00:05:00.000-06:00

Hey everyone. It's week two and things are looking up. Linda's feeling way better about herself and is making some progress, picking up some clients, applying for jobbie jobs. While I am desperately trying to curb buying food from my favorite cafe and trying to eat at home more and trying to eat better in general. I'm looking into getting some exercise equipment and trying to do some more work. Gyms by me aren't very close and i'd rather not spend the money atm. I looked into some fitness video games and didn't really find any, though i did find a few for the PS2 that looked promising, but again, I'll see how this elliptical works out and we'll go from there.

Just kinda taking a break from some work. It's kind of refreshing, I haven't done this type of thing in a while and it feels pretty good. Though it reminds me of a bad period in my life where i was doing anything and everything to make money (no, i didn't start ho'ing). I've been working on my brother in law's website for his little side business as a hypnotherapist. The site looks ok so far, but I want to have him look at it and see what he likes/doesn't like. It should work out though, he's kinda easy to please and eager to get things setup. What i enjoy most about this time at the computer is the amount of time I have to listen to music. I miss loading up a few albums and just listening. Most of the time when I do get a chance to listen to music at work or whatever is while I am driving or reading through our firewall log files. Though, I must admit my web design skillz are pretty mediocre now and I've gotta get some books on some new things. People are doing things so cleanly and so easily that tables are kinda cumbersome now a days. Ah well, nothing's easy eh?

I'm going to have to start up looking for a new hosting company for my domain if Linda decides to do this business thing. Plus I can host a few other people's websites and actually manage it for them. This might prove to be a decent amount of money coming in. Time will tell, hopefully things will pickup and we'll be back on track again.

take it easy,
t0ny

duck, duck, duck......gooose!

2007-01-08T03:07:00.000-06:00

I can't really sleep...I was up pretty late last night playing the new zelda game, I'm not really sure if it's the game itself or if i'm depressed in a way. I'm sleeping entirely too much on the weekends and not enough on the week days and I'm kind of just zoning out. I'm hopeful that i'm just addicted to the video game, but with how things are going right now I can't be really sure. I'm optimistic but I can't help but be worried. Things were going so well and it was assumed that things will continue to go that way, we had big plans going on. Now everything is put on hold. No house, no looking for a house, no baby, no TV, no funz... It's a shocker how things played out but my wife was absolutely crushed. I felt bad for her, but this type of thing they say happens to everyone. No, we're still together and still as strong as can be so there's no need to worry about the relationship. Just a blow to our standard of living that we've become so accustomed to. I really hope she gets something soon and tries really hard in the next few weeks to remedy the situation. Financially we're ok still and honestly the best time for this event to happen was now, but emotionally I think this really beat her up. Probably has her doubting herself and doubting how much she likes doing what she does. I wish things didn't happen the way they did, but you can't help but think that if everyone was great at managing themselves that things would have played out differently. Things would have been nipped in the bud and taken care of with follow ups and proper procedure. But no one's perfect and people get hurt. Often times it's the one who has no idea that gets hurt. Kind of like car vs. truck situations. It's nasty and you can't help watching, but all in all everyone ends up hurt. Some might not know it until they find out that their spleen is bleeding. Wish us luck.

ttyl.
steakie.

teh holidays...

2006-12-13T21:14:00.000-06:00

Well, here I sit waiting for my laundry to dry. Figure I have some time to kill, I might as well post something. Not much going on in my life, just that time of year where new and innovated things come out, people spend money they don't have on things that they don't really need, and everyone gets all lovey dovey with their family and friends. I'm guilty of all three. Every year has been like this and somehow this year has been a little different. I have a bigger family now (nieces and nephew), i'm older, i have money..:), and i have no debt! All is well, I look forwards to christmas x 2 and seeing everyone. I have a good time at my in-laws and I have somewhat a good time at my own family's dinner. I like seeing everyone and how they've grown up...

This weekend I have my work's christmas party, should be a good time. I also have a sneak attack on the house we're looking at and possibly my sister's birthday dinner at my parents house. Good times!

~steak

checkie checks....

2006-11-13T22:56:00.000-06:00

Well, one more week down as we creep towards the holidays. Thanksgiving is next week and we're going to be traveling to Oklahoma to spend it with my mother-in-law as well as my sister-in-law and the kids. Good times, I hope the weather is pretty nice and we can do some swimming and fishing and of course turkey murdering...:P~

This past weekend was pretty slick, we did some house hunting just to get a feel of what's out there. We just wanted to get a feel of what our money can buy us right now and possibly what the future may bring in the next few months after the holidays. We found a house we really like and we may make an offer on it. My wife the attorney makes all the wheelin' and dealin' so hopefully thing's will go well. The house is in Chicago still and it's out farther west than we like but for the right house we'll make it work. More details later.

~steak

So, now i guess it's time to elaborate.

2006-11-08T02:01:00.000-06:00

hrm, where to begin?

Well first things first. I've been working at my new job since April, it's pretty slick and for once I feel that this job is actually perfect for me at the moment. Sure that might change in a few months but I look forward to getting things accomplished at work and finishing up a few more things before I look for new challenges. I think that's really how it should be. Though having a job that really pushes you will give you the greatest benefit personally and financially because ultimately you are maximizing the time for learning and progressing. The holidays are fast approaching and I've got a trip to Oklahoma lined up. Should be a pretty fun 4 days. Hopefully the weather will be better than in Chicago and we'll get to use the pool that my mother-in-law had built. With that said about the holidays I'm in the hunt for a new bigass TV. Initially I was looking at DLP televisions because they had a pretty good picture and they were pretty affordable. I found a 50" DLP 1080p for around $1500 which is damn good, but with the disadvantages of DLP, I am probably going to go with a plasma the Panasonic 50PX60U. Good Tv, great picture and relatively reliable. However I do have my gripes about the plasmas as well as the desired inputs.

Ideally, the TV would have DVI in addition to all the other standard inputs, but a lot of companies are not putting in the DVI input. This could be because of a number of factors such as HDCP , cost of putting a DVI over PC input and I'm sure there are technological restrictions on content that can come over a DVI connection to the TV via a computer. Which brings me to my second project which is building a HTPC (Home Theater PC). the project is to build a computer that will take care of DVD playback do some OTA HDTV recording and probably play some sort of games or rom emulation to bring back all of those old Nintendo memories. I've got most of it figured it, its just a matter of having all of the components fall into place. I'm planning on building a new gaming PC and having my current machine become the HTPC in a new case with some extra parts. Hopefully it'll all work and i'll have everything by the end of November and if not then most of the new PC parts and the television should come during one of the sales after thanksgiving.

Aside from the TV/HTPC business I haven't really been doing much, been trying to plan things so I am busy for a few months. I would like to start up my CCNA quest again and get that taken care of along with a few personal items I've been meaning to take care of. Really just organizing my life and trying to make things easier now that we're debt free. Things have been going well and I'm pretty satisfied with how things have gone so far. Back when we initially left for Springfield, this is kind of what I imagined would happen. We went to Springfield to better ourselves and it's happened, at least financially. We're happier too, less things to worry about and get frustrated over. Now it is just a matter of keeping things the way they are. I mean things are going to change obviously when we find a house we like and then we'll have no money but that's the game we all play. bah..i'm getting tired.

Goals (this seemed to work pretty well last time):
01. TV/HTPC business finished by end of DEC.
02. CCNA finished by end of JAN.
03. Pay attention to personal items.
04. Prepare for May trip to Norway (yes, Norway).
05. House.
06. Post more...

good times, thanks for reading.

~steak doggy stizzle.

hey all, just checkin in.

2006-10-30T01:30:00.000-06:00

Hey all, just checkin in.
Some things that have ended and others that have started.

Ended Things:
01. Finished my AST
02. Debt Free! yay!
03. new job probationary period.

Started Things:
01. NFL yay! (yeah, i know i'm a few weeks late)
02. HTPC and Big TV hunting.
03. House hunting.
04. Cisco stuff.
05. Holidays.

I'll elaborate later.

so, what's new?

2006-10-30T01:01:00.000-06:00

Well, it's been a long time since my last post and it was a result of a combination of a few things that have ended and a few new things that have started. I'll divulge information later. I'll post something later on this week.

well well, back to normal.

2006-05-16T22:06:00.000-05:00

quick update on the goals:
01. Sell the house in springfield...Done!
02. Finish Degree...2 months summer AST then done.
03. Find homes for 2 of my 4 cats...kaibashed.
04. Find a job that pays better...Done!
05. Find swank ass apartment...Done!
06. Help Linda with her goals...in progress.

Yeh things are normal, for now anyway. The job is awesome, pretty easy so far and super close to home. The new apt isn't bad, we'll see though in the summer with no AC, probably have to invest in some window units soon, but for the space, you can't really ask for any cheaper in rent. Unless of course you dont mind living in the hood. Nothing much else going on really, just fighting the good fight and trying to make the most of each day.

ttyl. steak

the trance is the motion.

2006-04-21T09:41:00.000-05:00

oh shizzle!
3/6, so good. so good.

01. Sell the house in springfield...Done!
02. Finish Degree...in progress.
03. Find homes for 2 of my 4 cats...in progress.
04. Find a job that pays better...Done!
05. Find swank ass apartment...Done!
06. Help Linda with her goals...in progress.

good f ucking news.

2006-03-21T02:21:00.000-06:00

The plan is in motion.
one down. Five to go.

01. Sell the house in springfield.
02. Finish Degree.
03. Find homes for 2 of my 4 cats.
04. Find a job that pays better...Done!
05. Find swank ass apartment
06. Help Linda with her goals.

Yeh, now comes the hard part. Leaving...doh!

been a long time...

2006-03-14T01:46:00.000-06:00

yeh, it's been a really long time. At least it seems that way. As of feb 01, 2006 my life got turned upside down. I'm in limbo really. No real place to call my own, and the place that i did have...well it's in a town I no longer call home. It's pretty hard to live this way. Always traveling and not really knowing where you're going. I have goals, I have purpose, just right now I'm in a very transient phase. I've been working in the Chicago land area, living at my brother in law's place, trying to finish up my last semester of school and try to find stable work that pays pretty good (better than what I have now, anyway). Some would say that I am doing way too much. I can understand that, I can also see that this situation is a result of me doing not enough...

I have a problem of not finishing things that i start which leaves me with a lot of loose ends. I can look back and think of 5 things that I should have finished right away and not dawdled with. Hopefully, this year will be a year of change with a potential of being a year of finishings. My goals for may, as discussed (in my head of course):

01. Sell the house in springfield.
02. Finish Degree.
03. Find homes for 2 of my 4 cats.
04. Find a job that pays better.
05. Find swank ass apartment
06. Help Linda with her goals.

Easy enough eh? Time will tell, bitches.
BTW, my house in springfield is still standing and everything's ok. Just we have no power...it's so hard knowing that your eggrolls and corndogs will go to waste.

peace.

well well, looks like i'll have a bit more time on my hands...

2006-01-25T03:23:00.000-06:00

Hey everyone, how's life? sucky? mine too...
yeh, things haven't been going so well here in steakland. The house is still on the market, i still have no job in chicago and furthermore, it's looking like i'm not going to have a job in springfield either, technically. I guess it's kinda true what they say about nice guys finishing last. You try and help someone out and really, all they care about is themselves. No matter how many times I get screwed over, I still give people the benefit of the doubt and everytime, i get the shaft. I guess it's in my nature to see the good side of things and try to believe that people are honest and good natured. I'm not saying I'm the nicest dood out there, because I am not, nor am I the meanest dood out there but as far as good guys go, I think I'm in the upper 25 percent. I'm not one to kick someone when they're down, nor am I one to horde information when people need it. I feel like it's my duty to help someone out when they need help, especially when it is with technology stuff. It's like it's a burden that someone has to take on when they're especially good with something. Be it some craft or skill or intelligence, helping others makes this world a nicer place to be. But i guess that's free will, free will to screw over whomever gives the opportunity. I wish things went better, but now I feel like things are kinda closing in on me, and I need to get out of dodge...
I just wish some of that good karma I've built up would put itself to use.

later on peeps, keep fighting the good fight.

uno, dos, tres, Quat! (yeh yeh, dont ask me, ask Max Cavalera)

2006-01-17T21:33:00.000-06:00

so, house selling sucks, job hunting sucks, moving sucks, school starting sucks, yeh, that's me right now, all me. Teh Suck. Our last open house went about as well as our first open house which went pretty well, only not that well cuz the house is still mine which is teh Suck. Had a couple of people who really liked the house, but didn't like it enough to buy it. So, here I sit, working at my job here in springfield and applying for new jobs in Chicago. I had a interview a while back, things aren't looking good. Been a while and no phone calls and I hope they're just too busy to call me back, I'm living my lie and procrastinating on the truth which would be that they didn't like me and I am teh Suck which sucks. I should call them back and ask for an update, good for closure you know? But nah, i'd rather live my lie and hope they're just too busy.
Bears teh Suck.
Money teh Suck.
Winter teh Suck.
I am...teh Suck.

good times, later days. whatever.

one down, one to go....

2005-12-27T02:06:00.000-06:00

Hello again, Welp Christmas just came and went, and we've got a week break before the next holiday. Kinda cool, yet kinda not cool. I had a pretty good Christmas, got some stuff I needed, got some stuff I didn't need, but the important thing is that I ate a ton...:), no really, I liked seeing everyone for the holidays and it's nice. You dont see them enough, especially if they live out of state or far away. I wish I had more time though, I didn't get to see any of my friends. I'm hoping to see them over NYE though, that should be fun. Just have to decide on what to do, all of which I have to go somewhere since no one wants to come to springfield...

Bah, anyway, I got straight A's this semester, never got straight A's ever, ever. Maybe I did just enough to get B's growing up and that's probably my problem. I wish i tried harder at things, I'm just not too motivated sometimes. That's the hardest part, getting motivated to do things. I have a huge list of things i "want" to get done, but actually I probably wont get any of them done til it's too late or way harder than it should be, but I guess that's how I do things....the hard way. Though i must say, doing well in school gives you a pretty good feeling especially this semester since I worked more and overloaded on my classes. Next thing i want to accomplish is taking the CCNA exam, I want to take it before I forget everything I learned, so I'm hoping for the first week after the new year. I hate those tests though, I think I'm just a bad test taker and the pressure kind of gets to me, partially cuz I know money is on the line and they'll laugh at you once you walk out of the testing facility...lol, ok maybe not laugh at you, but i'm sure they'll point and sneer...

til next time.

well well, bout that time...

2005-12-14T01:05:00.000-06:00

hello all, it's the holiday season and guess what....finals! Yep, Yep, i have one more final to go and man, it's been rough. Of my 4 classes, 2 are online and 2 are on campus. It's kinda funny how it worked out, I've aced 2 of the courses and the other two are just a matter of how well I do. I'm kinda worried about this Cisco class, been kinda rough with all that's been going on (house & work). I think I'll be alright, frankly I'm a bad tester. I dunno what it is, maybe it's because i misread shit, or whatever and when you have those certification type tests, man I get all nervous. Anyway, things should be pretty good after finals are over. I'll have some time to collect myself and get more things started with the house, work and some projects i've been meaning to get finished as well as take my CCNA test.

Ah well, wish me luck and merry christmas everyone.

death....so close, so near, so real.

2005-11-30T03:37:00.000-06:00

It's easy to forget how fragile we all are. Death reminds us. Being at the top of the food chain makes things like that easy to forget, we as humans have virtually nothing to fear. No real predators, nothing we can't find for ourselves (i'm speaking in a very broad and general manner), and nothing we can't figure out and find a way to survive. I guess when God figured all this stuff out, (s)he made strengths and weaknesses for everything. It's unfortunate that he made ourselves our own worst enemy. Of all the things we fear, we fear each other and ourselves, I post tonight because death again has come so close...

All semester long I've sat next to a gentleman who took his own life this weekend. Sat right next to me, I joked with him, antagonized him a bit, asked him about a few things, gave him a few job sites to look for...all so sudden (so it seems) and all for naught. It's hard in any academic setting to truely get to know someone, things on the surface may seem ok, but you never know what lies beneath. Could have been anything and really, could have been nothing. I hope he's in a better place now, and I hope his dogs are ok. It's unfortunate that things ended up the way they did, for I know that he had good in his heart and I wish his family strength through these hard times.

This situation has reminded me to take care of a few things i've been neglecting...
later on everyone.

P.S. My thanksgiving went awesome, had fun, met new people...I wish I was back in Chicago. I miss my wifey...:(

so, the house is finally finished....

2005-11-14T01:28:00.000-06:00

As i sit here, listening to some tunes, I reflect on this weekend. Finally we're done working on the house, all of the major projects we've taken on we're finally finished. This past weekend we finished up the bathroom, and what a sad, sad bathroom it was. This trip down to springfield kind of reminds me of how we've changed this house. Our purpose was to come down here, better ourselves, and to come back better then when we left. I think this house has done the same changes. I'll add a page covering all of our housecapades soon, but it feels so good, despite me feeling so nasty having not showererd for a week. I can't wait to shower tomorrow. We spent saturday and part of sunday morning getting the house ready for the realtors to come over and look at things, well worth it....blah, i'm tired and i'm enjoying this pizza and thai food way too much, so i'll post the house stuff tomorrow.

good day.

hmm, so busy i almost forgot.

2005-10-13T01:56:00.000-05:00

Porch pictures! yay!
Yeh, things have gotten pretty hectic around here. I've been working my usual and then some, plus midterms have rolled around, I'm hoping to catch up this weekend. I'm only behind really in one friggin class, hopefully I'll make it through my Cisco midterm ok and then be in the clear to concentrate on this damn Unix. Everything else is ok though, I think i'm gettin sick....blah.

Column
Front

I'm busy, so piss off.

amazing..

2005-10-01T21:22:00.000-05:00

well it's the funkalistic, the blunt eyed twisted,
the slammafied, buddahfied funk on your discus.
Oh what you missed this? You got to bear witness,
catch a ho and another ho, merry christmas...
Cypress Hill - "I Want to get High"

I love this album. It reminds me of so much and takes me back to a time where everything was so new and so fast. I think the album came out sometime during my high school years like 92 or 91, man this was the shit back then. Even listening to it now I see where it fit in my life. Why me and my buddies attached ourselves to this album and listened to it constantly. I wish things were a bit different and my buddies were still around. We had good times back then, doing all sorts of crazy stuff and so much destruction of other people's property. What I remembered most was "garbage night", man that was so crazy. I think about it now and it's a wonder how we didn't get busted driving so fast through our subdivision. With all the good times, man it reminds me how much my life used to suck. How much I used to hate confrontations with my dad, how much I used to hate the way I felt after he'd yell at me for some reason, he'd always find a reason to put me down on top of finding other faults to yell at me about. He's probably the reason why I never had any sleep overs or any friends over for that matter, I always went to their house. It's unfortunate that the only place where I felt I could be myself was at someone else's house. My father has gotten better in his old age, I think he's calmed down a bit and is not so resentful towards me, I always felt his rage/anger always had some underlying tone to it and was always a bit more fierce then it needed to be to get his point across. Maybe it's a result of his own upbringing, or maybe he was just disappointed in me, whatever it was it's made my relationship with my dad almost none. I used to hang out with him every sunday watching the bears lose, this was when I didn't have many friends and didn't have anywhere to go, let alone have the guts to ask him if I could go to a friends house for the day (if i had any, anyway). Weekends usually sucked cuz that's when I'd do so much yardwork it was unbelievable, my friends joke about that shit to this day, but man i'd remember being almost finished with some chore and boom, i'd have another few things to do as soon as I thought I could leave. As I got older, my dad's rages got worse, I hated my first few years of college back in 96. He'd always guilt me by making it seem like me going to college was a waste of time and money because I was so stupid and I wouldn't learn anything anyway. God, I hated him. So, I decided to help my dad out with the college money by working at his machine shop during the summers inbetween class, I hated that shit too and boy it was a bad move. Those 3 summers I worked were the worst in my life. Ever. I worked 65 hours a week, second shift M-F (4P - 2A) and another 5 hours on saturday from 10A to 3P. Granted, i respect my father for doing that job for the past 20 some years, but this was my time to find myself, become who I am supposed to become, live life, etc, yadda yadda yo mama. Instead, i got crap work, crap pay (doing work that grown men do to take care of their families, yet i get paid next to nothing for it), crap time schedule along with my father as my boss. I dunno who convinced me to do that who made it seem like a good idea, maybe it was my fault I didn't speak up and do my own thing. i wish i did though, probably would have changed the way I handle things...Bah, the important thing is that I'm taking care of things now, I guess I'm just looking back at things and how things could have gone differently. Hindsight's a bitch and you never know what you have until it's gone. I'm grateful to have a wonderful wife who loves me and a family that's ultimately behind me in whatever choice I choose. It's just the things you've lost that you pawn over the most.

I had few friends growing up, changed schools once and really the friends I have today are friends i've known for quite a while. I've been fortunate to have stayed out of trouble whilst some friends had gotten into trouble like the night my buddy mike and mike (yes, 2 mikes) shot out a window of the house across the street with a bb gun and the cops raided mike's parent's house and they both got busted for it. Lucky for me, I wasn't there (I lived a block away from mike), i stayed home since it was a weekend and didn't want to talk to my dad to ask if I could leave. There's 2 people i wish I still had in my life. One friend, was one of my closest friends, we did lots of stuff together got to know his family really well and he was almost like the brother I never had. I remember getting that call from my friend mike (there were 4 of us, the crew, mikes and tonys), some day in February, it was pretty cold and I had just gotten home from Linda's place. I knew by the sound in his voice that something was wrong, and in a way I felt what he was going to say before he said it, my friend tony had died. We all hadn't heard from tony in a couple of weeks since we all did our own thing for a bit, finding ourselves whatnot. It's always a shock when someone you know dies, and even more so when you find out how. He had died of a heroin overdose, his mom had found him one afternoon and that was that. We had no idea how bad things were and honestly, i wish I was there with him more. His mom always wanted tony to straighten up and show everyone how smart he was instead of screwing around doing parties and get rich quick schemes. I wish I had the guts to help him clean up his life, but i respected tony and saw him as my equal as one of my best friends and it wasn't my place to say anything. I wish I had. I will never forget the first time I spoke to tony's mom after he had passed, I never want anyone to feel that kind of sorrow. It was so awful knowing that she was in so much pain and I could do nothing to console her, nothing I could do to make her feel better or give her any answers as to why her son was gone and no one could help her...I miss him.

My other friend whom i grew up with was one of my father's friends sons, we hung out a bit outside of his family coming over and having dinner etc, but since he lived in another school dist, it wasn't til high school that we finally went to the same school. As we grew older we were two different people, hung out with different crowds and did different things. I think his problem was that he cared too much about what other people thought, tried to fit in and now he's in prison serving a 12 year term. Prior to his incarceration, we'd kind of lost touch, see each other here and there, but we barely talked. I know he's not dead, but I know he's not going to be the same after he gets out. I think about these guys every day, it's kind of my way of not forgetting about them and it reminds me to cherish everything I have.

sry for the long post, thanks for reading.
porch pictures tomorrow!
yay!

another weekend...

2005-09-25T19:51:00.000-05:00

Welp, the wifey showed up this weekend and brought some slave labor to help paint the porch. We had finished stripping the porch of all the alligator lead paint a couple of weeks ago and finished sanding everything smooth and finally we were going to paint the porch. We had repainted the shutters from a sun-dulled black to a chocolately pudding brown color. The color is ok, maybe i'd like a darker brown, but for now it works, and everything matches up. We've got lots of earthy tones and just decided to run with it. Painted the cement blocks, porch floor, railings, pillars last night, but early this morning it rained so kinda held up our progress a bit and the porch lives another day. I'll take some pics and post em up as soon as it's all done.

Meanwhile I started the next programming assignment and all the reading for my other classes. I wish I read faster.

L8s

break;

2005-09-23T02:58:00.000-05:00

I finished my recursion project....

So, it's Monday....

2005-09-20T02:20:00.000-05:00

So it's monday, and what did i do? I friggin worked. then i came home and worked on my friggin homework still. This recursion project seems pretty tough, I seem to have it figured out but the solution still eludes me. As I create more methods to figure out how to take apart the problem, I see that they all do the same thing, and what happens is that i create a new method that mimics a previous one, the cool thing is that I can jam them all together making one monster method, the bad thing is that i have to dissect it over and over again. I'll work on it some more tomorrow and probably have it finished by wednesday. Been up pretty late these few nights and it's tiring.

My buddy hip is in the process of buying a new house, should be pretty dope. I'm pretty happy for him that he's finally got his own house with lots of room and a big lot. I always knew that when you get older your priorities change and your tastes mature a bit, but deep down you're still that kid that wants everything. I sit and listen to other people's conversations sometimes and I try to relate their topic to an experience that I've had before or something that I can understand. Being in the current situation i am now, I run into different people in different age groups and I take into account their perspective on the topic, but then I realize that i really dont care what they have talk about....lol.

My Porch and the damage I've done.
Later days.

So, another week gone by.

2005-09-18T20:19:00.000-05:00

Alright, this weekend my plan was to get some homework done, finish up some more of the house and really, just to catch up on homework. I've been behind on some of the reading which is ok, but I had a project that was due for my computer science class that i was somewhat worried about since it was the first actual programming assignment since last semester. And you know how summer goes, it wipes away all knowledge and recollection of past semester learned items.

So, here's a recap of the weekend:
Friday: Worked, last call of the day met a strange fellow who had some really nice stuff in his apartment and oddly showed me his V-drums. I got there, fixed his computer and he felt compelled to show me his 3 to 5K investment, show off prick.

Saturday: Stayed up way too late on Friday working on my programming assignment so I didn't get up til about 1PM (late is 4A, biatches.). Got up and painted the living room with a second coat and then sanded all of the front porch (that sucked btw). Proceeded to work on project some more.

Sunday: Stayed up late again, woke up at 11A and messed around with the project some more. Odd thing, I did notice one of my cats limping around, I checked her out and hopefully she'll be better in a few days, else I gotta take her to the vet and see what's up. Next, went to Lowes bought a few things, asked a few questions to the paint guy and went home to prime the porch. Primed one of the rails and it got dark, so I started dinner. I had a steak left over from one of my shopping trips so I fired up the grill and the stove and voila, it's how steak is done.

Welp, off to work on this recursion project again.
lates.

Long time no postie, homie.

2005-09-17T02:00:00.000-05:00

So, I've been inspired to keep my blogger up to date (thanks carl). Really, that's my problem. I have no motivation unless i'm pushed by something else. I really hate that about myself. It's in everything I do. I always do my best artwork when it's for someone else or at someone else's request, and when I do things for myself, I think it's crap or not as good as it could be....bah.

What's going on with me? Right now I've got no time for anything. I work around 30-40 hours a week, and i'm taking 4 classes (16 hrs) and I've been *trying* to work on the house and get this thing sold. Things are going so fast, I just wish I was back in chicago already, springfield is cool and all, but really it's not my town. I've met some really cool people here, and I miss everything about home. Bah, it's late, my cat's in heat and I'm tired. I'll have some updates to the house in a few days after i paint the porch. Meantime, be enlightened and think "do all asians think like this?" and check out my cousin's blog at: http://tainteddragon.Blogspot.com

Well, been a while....

2005-04-06T23:14:00.000-05:00

Well, it's been a while since my last post, I've been super busy with school and getting the house all setup. We're almost done with the kitchen, the cabinets have become a pain, we're not really sure what to do with it just yet. We thought abou painting them or having htem removed all together, but that's a little bit out of our budget. The other option is to paint them, with painting them we're gonna have to do a few things first. First they need to be cleaned, they've got some funky grime on them that's pretty nasty. It's almost like it's body soil (blah, gross as hell) because everywhere that you'd normally touch, like cabinet edges etc is friggin nasty. You can literally scrape it off with a knife. Besides cleaning we're gonna have to figure out how we're going to paint them to match the kitchen. The problem then turns into how much work we want to put into something we're totally going to change later anyway (possibly)...bah, i'm done...i'll post more later once we get some progress on the kitchen.

Busy, busy, busy...

2005-03-21T00:36:00.000-06:00

Well, just moved into the new house, got most of the stuff there and everything is everywhere. I've got some cleanup left to do at the old apt, but that shouldn't take long. I put in new ceramic tile in the kitchen and I moved all my crap into the new house. Good times. Now onto the unpacking of all my stuff. I've got my desk rebuilt and my computers setup (almost, stupid kvm switch). Everything is moving along just dandy....

So, I went a week without my internet connection, life is rough. Though, I did get to hang out with some very special people and I got a ton of crap done. None of it though was my homework, and really who does homework over springbreak? I've got monday morning and afternoon to get this paper done and this presentation all together. Should be pretty easy, I'm just worn out from this weekend, hopefully though I'll have more motivation to get this all figured out once I get a good nights rest, i'm not a morning person by any means and this past week i've woken up at 6A more times than I can remember. Though, I did work that early morning shift at kinkos back in the day, it was the suck. Well anyway, i'mma head to bed, night.

sup doods...

2005-03-13T22:24:00.000-06:00

Well, did soem more work on the house this weekend, I should have pictures up by the end of this week. Previous pictures can be found here http://www.steakified.com/house/house.htm , we almost have the whole upstairs painted. The brown turned out pretty good, and the red is kinda...well, red. The blue/gray in the guest room is pretty slick, it's bluer during the day in natural light and turns to a gray color when you've got the roomlights on, s'ok though guests shouldn't have a pimpass room anyway. Me and my brother in law, phildoe, got the bathroom squared away, we put in a shower and a new pedastal sink. Pretty handy having a plumber in the family, now if only i had a carpenter.....

We got only a few major projects in the house, but nothing we can't take care of during the week and nothing we can't live with til we have more money to spend on the house. Next week I'm on springbreak and hopefully we'll be all moved into the place or at least mostly living out of the new house. Moving sucks.

Anyway, i'mma get some sleep for the big work ahead of me.
lates.

Inlaws....

2005-03-10T23:00:00.000-06:00

Fo' sheezy, the inlaws are in town. This week is/was midterms week, most are done, i got a few projects to finish up before springbreak, I can' t friggin wait. Finish up stuff on the house, start packing up all my stuff to move......yeh, that last part sucks. You move enough times and man, you'd think it would get easier, but it doesn't. Unless you got loads of money to pay big husky lookin doods to move your stuff.....sigh. Ah well, i'm gonna go to bed, laters.

Another day at the hizzy, my nizzy.

2005-03-07T19:02:00.000-06:00

OK, house stuff. Woke up today, kinda sore from all the painting that we did at the house. Today i went back and primed the trim in my office room. Right now it's a ugly peach color with years of dirt and grim on it, we've got wood trim around it all which I would love to strip and have the wood back unfortunately we dont have all the time to do this, since we gotta be out of this apartment in like 2 weeks. S'ok though, we've got more than enough work to do right now.

to do list:
01. finish painting (2 bedrooms, upstairs hallway, living room, dining room, pantry and kitchen)
02. pull carpet in upstairs hallway, salvage the hardwood floors.
03. clean all hardwood floors (3 bedrooms, hallway, living room, dining room).
04. seal the basement (gotta wait til the weather gets better so i can air it out, else i'mma die.)
05. thank the good lord for givnig me the strength of street knowledge.
06. take photos of the damage and progress.

good times, catch you later....alligator the player hater come see me chew on this now and later.

Alright, checkie checks..

2005-03-07T01:55:00.000-06:00

Welp, I bit the bullet and went with one of these blog sites. There are some pros and cons to my decision, one of them being that my custom blog that I had used before got messed up and now I can't log into it to post or whatever. sux. The other being that I really enjoyed having a nice interface to type things in and link photos or whatnot, again goes back to my phpscript not working anymore. sux x 2. So, here I am again, so much to do and not enough time to do it in.

Brief description of the situation I'm in: I now own a house, I go FT to college, I work as much as I can, I play video games, I do freelance web design when the work is available and I sleep very little. Sure, you can blame me for playing too much video games, but you know how that saying goes, all work and no play makes steak(me) a very very undesirable character to be around....anyway, i'm fargin tired, lates.