The world as I see it…

Why do I write blogs?  Why does anyone write blogs?  In a way, I guess it’s to tell a story about something that just happened or about something going on currently in their life…  reminisce about events that happened in the past…  or perhaps talk about plans for the future.   When I stop to think about it, I have no clue as to why I write any of these blogs.  Maybe because I have free time or nothing else better to do…  or maybe I actually enjoy it but don’t stop for 5 minutes to think about it and realize that I enjoy it?  I don’t know…

I don’t even know why I am writing this blog right now or why I thought to myself “gosh, I haven’t written in here since February – maybe I need to update.”

Well, here I am at starbucks… and working on my drill where there’s a mess of scores in my lap and chicken scratch covering almost all of the space in and around all of the music notes and expressions.   I’m a tad overwhelmed with things at the moment and the one and only thing that I can’t stop thinking about it my mom.

This is my first mother’s day without my mom.  As much as I believe she is always here by my side in spirit, I can’t express how much I miss her right now and how much I miss the hugs, holding her hand and those special moments of the past that make me smile and cry when I think about them.   We had fights…  we had disagreements…   but if there was ever anything that happened in my life that was rough or a hurdle I had to jump over, she was always there to help me and guide me.

More than anything I’ve ever experienced in the past, I’ve now come across the most difficult challenge I’ve ever had and probably will ever experience in my life…  and of all people to not be here for me, she isn’t.  I understand that I can always talk to her and pray and think of her.  But whenever I had a problem in the past, no matter if I was 8 years old or 28 years old, she would know what to say and it would never be what I expected or thought of on my own.  Sometimes it was always obvious…  but with the new experiences and emotionally compromising events I’ve had in my life, I had no idea what to say, think, feel…  and after talking to my mom, she was always able to help me get to the ‘next step’ no matter what the situation or circumstance.  She wouldn’t ever have to have a solution or even the perfect option…  but knowing she was there for me and hearing he say it was all I needed.

As I look to the future and without her being there for me now…  I’m not sure what to think or feel or do.  I’m really scared.  I’ve never been so scared in my entire life.  I hide behind the fact that I have a job to do…  people to call and design drill for…   friends to see to distract me from the inevitable future.

Rather than think about the future, I’m doing everything I can to stay in the present – today and now.  And possibly worry just little about tomorrow or the next day.  After that though…  it just gets me down so much that I can’t seem to function properly.  It’s nothing too serious…  but I just lose focus on the things I need to do today and now and I don’t have time for thinking about the future.

I have no idea what will happen tomorrow…   next week…  a month from now…  a year from now…  or even 25 years from now.  But what I do know is what is happening right now, today…. and how I feel right now, today.  I miss my mom very much and I need her more than anything.  I don’t think I have ever openly asked God for help until right now…  and I am asking God…  please, I need you…  I need your help and I don’t know who else to turn to.

This is going to be my last blog for a very long time.  I don’t think I write very well anyway, nor do I think anyone really reads these.  Maybe someday in the unknown future I’ll get the chance to write again…   but until that day comes, I’ll be spending each and every day worrying only about the present and not get caught up thinking too much about the past and what my life used to be.  I have spent a lot of time lately thinking of what could have been or should have been…  and doing so has unfortunately made me extremely depressed.  What I will be doing from now on though is everything I can to get from one day to the next and be as happy as I can from one day to the next – not letting anything get to me and keep breathing.

A lot of changes are coming in the future… and with that will be a lot of confusion, questions, sadness, anger, worries and even bigger hurdles for me to jump over.  I don’t know what the future has in store for me but I do know that whatever comes up or occurs from here on out, I will confidently step up and do my best to take on whatever challenge awaits me, be as positive and optimistic as I can about whatever the situation is, no matter how bad it might be, and I hope to God that I will have family and friends there to help when I need it.  I will always have hope and continue to pray for a future of happiness, friendship, peace and love.

Those are my thoughts and I am ready to take on this new chapter in my life…    These blogs are now a part of the past, and from now on I will be living in the present while looking forward to and preparing for whatever the future holds.

Thank you to everyone who has read or followed my blogs.  I can’t imagine all of the time you’d have to set aside to read some of my longer entries, but I appreciate every second anyone spent reading my blogs and every comment any of you have ever made to me about them.  From the bottom of my heart – Thank you!

- George

Does the title of this blog make sense?  Well, we’ll see… I’m sure it does.  It’s almost 5am and I’m fried!  I really need to sleep, but would rather write this now than later or tomorrow because I know I’ll get too busy with work stuff and forget.  So, it’s now or never.

Well…  as many of my friends know, I use Twitter for almost 90% of my “updates” and usually that comes from my phone or ipod touch.  I’ll admit that as much of a “techie” guy I consider myself, I’m still very ignorant and behind the times regarding much of the social networking that’s out there these days.  For instance, I signed up for Linkedin a while back, added many “connections”, yet I have no idea what to do with that profile or why I even have it.  It keeps telling me to add this and that to finish it and I just don’t wanna.   I’m sure that someone will tell me eventually, but this is really the first time I’ve ever asked (albeit, in a blog).

I don’t wanna write for 2 hours about random junk as I usually do, but I kinda wanted to touch on the Twitter thing and mention something I just found out recently.   As I said, I tend to be a bit behind on the social media thing… not that I’m not into it, but if something changes (like a Facebook redesign, for example) I could really care less, nor would I notice unless I read a million updates on people saying “omg! facebook changed the design again?!?!…  gahhh the world is ending…”    (blah blah get-a-life blah!)

But a while ago, Twitter added this new feature called “Lists”.  I saw it…   didn’t really look into how to use it and just figured it would be useless to me.  I tend to ignore these things at first rather than dick around with them.  I’m just too lazy, I guess.

Speaking of – I still haven’t used half the tools on Pyware yet…   people sometimes ask me, “how does this tool work?” and I say “umm, I don’t know… never knew that existed or what it does.”   (…really)

Anyway, after a while, I saw I was added to my friend Bill’s account under two lists.  I looked at the links and saw it was a compilation of different people, organized under that list’s name thus making it easier to keep those people all in one group.  Well, yeah… cool.  Lists are to create and organize groups of people associated with one thing or another so you can click on and view just those people when you want.  Yeah, okay.  Easy!

So, I went through and created a few lists to organize the people I follow and just use it for the reasons it’s there.  I mean, easy, right?  Well, yeah… but the reason I’m writing this is because I found out a neat little trick that people probably don’t know about, and after talking with my friend Brian about it last night, he didn’t know of it either and both of us agreed that this makes for a much easier and simpler experience with Twitter, by doing a bit more organizing of the people you want to “follow”.

Now, if there’s an official page online that explains this in plain black and white (or red and green… whatever…) and I’m just WAY late to the party, then please just don’t tell me. I don’t care.  I work a lot and have no time to read all that junk because I’m always constantly buried in music and drill and photoshop stuff.

So, these lists…  you can create them and add people to them and you can follow their updates through lists (which are essentially bookmarks)…  but WITHOUT actually following them in typical “Twitter” fashion!  (again, I feel as if I may sound like Captain Obvious here, but just let me have my moment, ok?)  ;)

I find it somewhat annoying that there are a few people/celebs/businesses that post like 45 times per hour.  Not that I’m really complaining that much, because after all, I DID voluntarily choose to follow them.  However, there’s gotta be some of you out there that agree with me that sometimes it’s just very random that so-and-so posts a blog-like message that covers 16 tweets in a row…  only that you have to read it backwards/bottom to top.  haha!  Random.

As I was organizing my lists, I went through and created/added all of the ones I wanted to and pretty much cleaned up my account which I hadn’t touched in a while.  After I finished organizing everyone into lists, I went through again and noticed a few random store sites and info sites I was no longer interested in following.  So, I just “unfollowed” them and went about my business.

Today, I went through and just for fun, I bookmarked each of my lists, so I can just click on the one I want and when I want.   When I clicked on my “shopping” labeled list, I saw a few sites that were showing that I used to follow but I coulda sworn I unfollowed.  Hmm…  Twitter has had issues before…  I just thought it was a random snafu.  Then I looked at the profile and saw that I was NOT following them.

Realizing that I unfollowed them yet didn’t remove them from the assigned lists I created, I experimented on some random place (Banana Republic, I think), I saw the pulldown menu for lists, added them to “shopping” and reloaded my list page for “shopping”.  They showed up there!!!

So…  this is totally awesome.   I may have found a way to actually simplify Twitter (for me) by doing a bit of organizing and arranging of the people I wanna follow or am interested in updates from.  And what I did in the process was made sure I had all of them in the proper lists and then I proceeded to unfollow them!  :)  This way, they will no longer show up in my default feed and the only people/celebs/companies that will are the ones I really care about each time I log on.

I have now created a few more lists and will add people/organizations to those lists to “follow” without officially following them, and this will keep that home page clear of clutter.  Those people will only show up on my created lists and I don’t have to follow all those people anymore if I don’t want to.

I’m not saying I’m going to unfollow all of my friends.  No no no…   This is only for people like celebrities, companies, fan sites, things like “Google” or random accounts I was “following” who don’t follow me, that I only wanna read about once in a while.  Sometimes I don’t care about these Star Wars fan pictures at some costume party yesterday.  But I like to follow them for days I really need to kill time.  That’s why they went into my “entertainment” list and I’ll click on that whenever I wanna see all that stuff at once.

I added a ton of people/organizations to all of my “Lists” and now am able to view whoever’s updates I want, when I want and without all the clutter of mixed friends with ESPN with Shaq with Amazon with Weather… etc.   It’s just a home page with all of my friends’ updates, the few companies I follow that I wanna check on regularly and the few celebrities who’s updates I genuinely enjoy reading.  :)

Not to say I wasn’t aware that I could just create a “friends” or a “favorites” list.  I did that and that works fine and all, but this is just to simplify everything all together and to only see what I want to see, when I want to.  :)

Twitter is cool…  it is what it is and I’m always using it to update whenever I feel like it, post pics n vids, as well as posting blogs, like this one.  It’s already “simplified” in a matter if speaking, but with their addition of “Lists” and giving us the ability to add people to a list without officially following them really makes me happy and it’s kinda nice to still have easy access to all of the info I want with just a click or two, but only have who I really want on the home page.

Thank you, Twitter.  I’m probably a year late getting on that bandwagon, but that’s ok.   I tend to be behind on all this stuff, but that’s just how it goes sometimes.  :)

So, I used to be one of those who had a xanga journal.   Is that still even around?   What about Myspace?  Are people still using that too?  :P

I haven’t gone and done all the edits, but in the coming days I am going to update this blog with about 40+ copy/paste blogs that I saved from my xanga dating back to 2004.  (I really don’t know how many…   probably not quite 40.)  I lost a lot of blogs I wrote from the time between closing my xanga account and opening this wordpress blog because I was using Myspace back then.  I don’t do the myspace thing anymore and I failed to save those blogs before I closed the account.   Whatever…  no big deal.

I plan to pre-date them so they all are posted here according to the dates they were originally written.   And the only reason I’m mentioning this is because…    I guess there is no real reason. I don’t care if people wanna go back and wonder what George talked about in 2004 or if they don’t.  But it’d be kinda neat to read stuff from back in the day.   Even for me.  I made a personal choice to not go back and read any of those blogs…  not even for fun.   I may re-read them someday, but it’s not that important to me…   it’s all in the past.

You might ask, why are you doing this, George?  I guess all I can think of is….  because I want to.  *shrug*  I was going through archived files and folders on my backup hard drive and I found a folder named “xanga 04-06″.  I forgot I exported those and saved them.  Then I thought, why keep them on the computer when I can just add them to my blog?  I suppose it’s a bit of a hassle, but it’s just a few copy/pastes.  Easy!  :)

So, if anyone is actually interested…  or if you are really bored and need to pass the time…  check back here in about a week (I will blog about it) and I will add blogs that date back to november 2004.   I know that’s not like a long long time ago or anything crazy…   but for me, that was the beginning of my online journal writing experience.  Kinda neat to see where it all started.  :)

Okay…  I’m literally running on empty right now.  Going on 36 straight hours of being awake and I need to sleep!   There’s NO way I’m going to put up with being tired tomorrow night.  The final season of LOST is premiering and I still have to watch the last 8 episodes of season 5 to lead into the premiere.   I did the same thing last year and it worked out great.  :)   I don’t think I’ve ever been so excited for Groundhog Day!  (….which is one of the most fun movies ever made).   I’m actually too tired and excited to talk about any LOST stuff…  theories and whatnot.  I’m just going to ride the excitement and see where it takes me for the next 18 or so weeks.   LOST is my favorite show on TV right now and I’m looking forward to seeing how jacked this series ends!   You know, if you’re a fan, that it’s gonna end completely jacked.  JJ, Damon and Carlton – you guys and amazing!  Thanks for entertaining me and confusing the hell out me and all the rest of us LOST fans for the past 5+ years.

I was supposed to post a different blog here, but I haven’t actually finished it yet.  :)  I was writing it a couple days ago and I put it aside as I started backing up my computer files and documents to prepare for my big hard drive swap. I went ahead and did something I know I didn’t absolutely need to at this point in time, and went out and got myself a hard drive upgrade for my macbook.

My computer has a 250GB and I upgraded only to 320GB.  I know that’s not much of an upgrade and some people will probably do the 500GB…  but I don’t need that much space ON my computer, especially since I already have a 250GB external, another 80GB external and with this new install I’m adding another 250GB external.  almost 600GB in external HD space.

psh…  that’s kinda ridiculous, eh?

I think that a lot of people think that “bigger is better” or “more is better” with the HD space.  Well, not me.  I prefer to keep it as low as possible. Who uses that much space anyway?  Well, not me.  I use about 2GB of space per year on my drill design…  my iTunes folder is the kicker at around 90GB.  But music is my life and I stock up on all I can.  But past that, a few applications and my web design work – I maybe use about 140GB total at any time. But then I have thousands of photos and videos from my travels and trips around the world.  (well, I can’t really say “around the world” – just the couple countries I’ve been to. )  But I would rather not store them on my computer. In 2006, my old Dell Inspiron crashed…  I lost everything on it and that included so many albums of photos and videos that to this day, I don’t know exactly what was on there.  I never really made a big deal out of backing up my data, but from that point on I don’t mess around.

Now a days, I’m perhaps overly protective, but that’s mostly just for my work related data than anything else.  I lost ALL of my 2002-2005 drill files, and that includes some of what I would consider some of my best work.  I was fortunate to be able to recover a majority of those files from e-mail attachements when I would send them to Mitch….   but I’m still missing a ton. I don’t know if you remember, but back in around 2002-2003, Yahoo mail only allowed something like 4MB of disc space. Around 2004 they upped it to 10MB and them immediately to 100MB a few months later.  I forget.  But I did not sign up for Gmail until the fall of 2004, but by then I had already had to delete dozens of emails/files to make room in my yahoo mailbox.  It never occurred to me to open another yahoo mail account, because I never thought that deleting those e-mails were eventually deleting my only “backup” of them.

Now a days, I have it covered is more ways than I think anyone would care to go through the trouble.  First there’s my backup externals.  I keep a complete archive of all of my drill files from over the years, organized in folders on all of my externals AND on my computer.  Not only that, I have an 8GB flash drive that is only for my drill and I keep that in a container on my desk.  I keep about 50% of my files/apps and drill on my own website server, which is a great extra benefit to having a website.  And then I have Dropbox, where I have 2.5GB of storage and I only keep my current year’s drill in that.

If you don’t know what Dropbox is, it’s an application that allows you to sync a folder online from your computer.  That way you can share through the web, or simply log on from another location with your account and access it from that computer.  In the event that my computer gets stolen and I lose everything on it, I will have my drill backed up on that account and I can access it from a different computer or location.

I guess using dropbox or my website file manager isn’t much of a difference…   but again, I’ve become overly protective about my files and I would rather save it all to more places than less.   By this time next week, I will have my entire drill archive backed up on my computer, 3 different external hard drives, a flash drive and a protected folder in my website file manager.  All of my photos are backed up on all of my externals and not on my computer anymore.  My music will eventually be backed up on my other 250GB once I get it outta my laptop, but right now it’s just on my computer and the other 250GB.

One thing I learned over the years, and mostly from my experience in 2006 – you can never be too careful with your computer files, especially if your life and work is on it.  I don’t particularly prefer to have so much on my computer, which is why I said earlier that I prefer to keep as little as possible on there so it’s not a huge loss if something goes kaput!  I also do full-system cleaning about 3 times per year (this one is my 2nd in 6 months) and I think it’s a heck of a lot easier to worry about 140GB rather than closer to 800GB.

Quick note – the new iMacs are friggin’ sweet.  I want one.  But they come with a 1TB hard drive (standard).  What would I do with all that space?  What does anyone do with 1TB of disc space?  How on earth could any casual computing human being honestly fill that disc up with data that isn’t 90% illegally downloaded videos or files?  How?  I would really like to know who’s job/work requires THAT much disc space.  Not only that, if you did fill it up completely…  however the heck that is possible…   what would you do to back it all up?  What if it crashes?   What do you do WHEN it crashes.  ;)  Obviously, I would never hope for that for anyone…   but seriously folks at Apple and the rest of the computing world – take it easy!  we don’t NEED that much disc space.  We just need fast processors, large monitors, mice with multiple programmable buttons and wireless keyboards that have number pads.  Lets take a break, because even with my 140GB of disc usage, I have everything on my computer I would ever want or need in my life, and I would have to try very, very hard to fill up the other 110GB on this smaller HD.  (I guess this is where someone chimes in with the whole growing popularity of the solid state drives. )

I think I forgot to mention this, but why did I just go on a rant about disc space and not needing a whole lot, yet I’m upgrading to a larger HD?  Well, simple.  The HD that I use now is something like a standard Mac/Toshiba something-something 5200 RPM stock hard drive.  My new HD is the western digital scorpio black 7200 RPM performance hard drive.  From all of the benchmarks and reviews I’ve read and seen over the past several months since I began researching this, it isn’t a whole lot different from the western digital scorpio blue (5400) regarding speed.  But it is certain that it’s a heck of a lot faster than the stock drive I have now. (or so I’ve read).  I don’t really know – yet!  But I will in a few days.   I just need something that will be able to read/write just a bit faster, to help me speed up some save/load times with work stuff and photoshop projects.  I know that a lot of what makes the computer faster isn’t just one thing, but several including the processor and the RAM.  I’m pretty set with a 2.4 C2D and 4GB RAM.  Now I get a faster HD (with the added bonus of some extra room) and can hopefully get a better experience out of my everyday work life,whether it be with web/graphic design, or the drill design.  :)

I’m looking forward to this new install.  I love the feeling of a computer when there’s nothing but the bare essentials, and I get to rebuild it with the applications I want and really need.  Every year I download a crapload of apps and junk that I install and never use.  I eventually delete it, but some of them I have on here and think “oh, I’ll use that sometime”.  Well, now I can just install it whenever I actually wanna use it.  Which might be never for some of them.

Okay… I’m just rambling and sounding like a wannabe techie. I really don’t know all there is to know about computers, and every time I go to forums discussing this and asking questions, I get replies from the most ridiculously hard core computer gurus who treat me as if I’m an idiot for using “just a laptop” and that I should have a desktop PC, with a full tower and multiple internal HDs.  umm… sure!

It really feels good to have a job that relies on the computer and not have to get the biggest and best stuff on the market.  I can save my money and buy cooler stuff – like flights to Hawaii or eating out at Cheesecake Factory a couple extra times.  Yumm!!

Weird!  So, my site was down for about 36 hours…  or more…  I don’t even know.  All I know is that I was informed by a friend that it wasn’t there.  I checked.  It was a pic of a cute blonde girl and ads for babies and baby names.

Yeah…  awesome.  What was that?

I contact my peeps to get the low down on that, and apparently my credit card didn’t auto renew.  Must have been some millenium bug – but 2K10 style.  I had my card on file, same one that’s been there since I got it, went to my profile, confirmed it was correct and wrote them back to ask what happened.  I never heard back until just this morning, when my site went back up and the e-mail said “we received your payments and everything is fine.  Is there anything else we can help you with?”.   Umm… yeah.  How about answering the questions I asked you in the first place?

I believe my e-mail to them looked something like this:

“Hello.  I was just informed by your billing dept that my credit card was invalid and the auto renew failed.  I did as I was asked and went into my account and checked the info.  I confirmed that the CC on file and all of the billing info is correct and it is working.   However, since my monthly bill went through on Jan 10th, why was this rejected on Jan 1 as an invalid CC, thus closing my website?  I am very concerned about this happening again and I just want to make sure that I have all of the right information in the account….” blah blah blah…

So, I asked about this and kindly asked if I could get some more info regarding what happened or if there’s something I need to do to prevent this from happening again, but instead of answering that question, I was greeted with a “everything fine – not sure what the problem is…” kind of reply.

Oh well.  :) I have a feeling it was a glitch and they realized it or did something wrong and didn’t feel it was necessary to give me the specifics.  I don’t care that much…   everything’s here and I’m able to write in my blog again.

In other news, I got my room put together about 50%.  It probably looks like more than 50% to the average person, but I have yet to even touch the closet. (I consider the closet about 50% by itself…  all my clothes, organizing them, getting bins and making sure there’s room for storing stuff, etc.)

There’s still SO much in there that needs to get thrown out, donated or boxed up for storage. I can’t wait until we get enough stuff boxed up so we can finally get that storage facility and move things over there.  I can’t believe how much stuff is in this house.  And about 80% of it, I look at it, scratch my head and ask myself “why do we have this?”  I guess we’ll never know.

Well, I’m gonna make a fruit smoothie and chill for a bit.  long night last night and maybe I’ll sleep some tonight.  Have to find some more shelves and hopefully get to hit up IKEA later today or tomorrow.

TGIF!