Why, Blog, Why?

OK - So, I've been a stay at home dad now for over a half-year and I should have plenty of time to post, yar? Nar! Honestly, the only reason why I have any free time right now is because Mom has the kids for a few minutes so I can finally finish up this post that I've been working on for literally months. So what have I been up to?

1. Fatherhood
2. See #1

Honestly, that's about it. My plan to aggressively code for freelance projects in the off hours took a sever hit within the first few days of this role change circa January '08. Office work left me mentally drained. Full-time fatherhood leaves me physically drained.

So how has it been so far? No doubt it's been fun. As I tell anyone who will listen, whether you're a stay at home dad, a normal working-man, or even a divorcee with visitation writes, fatherhood is an excuse to act like the 13-y-o dork that still lives inside you. Cracking fart jokes, wrestling on the floor, wearing a clown wig - fatherhood, to me any ways, is about showing your kids the fun side of life and being a kid again, recapturing that sense of wonder from discovery and that lackadaisical, hakuna matata sense of time. Well, that and screaming your head off because the kids seem to have lost their ears/brains over breakfast. That is fatherhood.

I guess I can't say that's all that's been happening around here. Since the Summer months have come (at least according to the calendar if not the actual weather...) things have ramped up. People talk about having Seasonal Mood Disorder, but honestly I think it should be called "You Live In New England". Summer makes me want to stay here forever. The other 11 months remind me why I probably/hopefully won't...

Any ways, Summer has ramped up our social lives. We went to an awesome wedding at a summer camp (marshmallows and weird-smelling cabins included!), went to Maelin's first dance recital, celebrated our 6th anniversary, saved a bird from certain death-by-cat (not once but twice!), have been to the lake a few times, had the family over, etc., etc.

Freelance work has actually been pouring in as well despite my time for completing said work. That has resulted in all too many 20-hour coding binges during which I still managed to neglect some of my favorite clients (Sorry Steve!). My Mom's off for the summer though and taking the girls a few days a week for the next few months so hopefully I can catch up. Oh, and Firefox 3 launched last week but while I managed to get an updated Clean & Close patched to work with it, it's currently still waiting for someone from Mozilla to review it so it's not available for auto-update yet. (But you can download it directly here)

OK, I got code's to write. Until next year...

A few months back I came away from TicketMaster.com with a really bad taste in my mouth, and 2 really expensive tickets in my pocket.

Unlike a traditional e-commerce site where you have time to evaluate your purchase before checking out, TicketMaster.com has unrealistic time limits on each step of the checkout. After searching for tickets, here's what they give you:

Confirm seating selection: 2 minutes
Log in or sign up for a new account: 1 minute

Complete purchase: 2 minutes

In the first step, it took nearly 2 minutes just to pull up the web site of the venue, find their seating chart, load their ridiculously slow Seating Chart Java applet, enter the section and row of the seats that TicketMaster was holding for me, and wait another 20 seconds for the 360-degree panorama to load. So by the time I did that and saw that they were really good seats I had just enough time to go back and click Continue. I had already been burned once by the time limit, so it felt like a pretty high-presure sale situation the second time around.

Next screen: sign up for an account in 1 minute. 7 fields (one of which is hidden until the end), 1 minute total, 8.5 seconds per field. That's crazy.

Last step: Checkout, 2 minutes, including billing and shipping info. Have you ever been rushed trying to enter a credit card #? You are guaranteed to make a mistake.

Check out this all star lineup of comics performing in LA next Friday, December 14th. Curse geography and the limitations of space-time!!!!

From The Official Eddie Izzard Web Site:

WRITE AID

Eddie Izzard to perform at "Write Aid", a benefit performance to help those affected by the Hollywood writers strike.

"Write Aid" also features comedians Lewis Black, Sarah Silverman, Patton Oswalt and Tenacious D (Jack Black and Kyle Gass)

"Write Aid" will take place Friday, December 14 at 8 p.m. at UCLA’s Royce Hall.

Tickets on sale Friday, December 7 at 12pm PST

Visit www.UCLALive.org or call 310-825-2101

PS: If you haven't seen any of Eddie Izzard's stand up, you should add one
of his DVDs to your Netflix Queue. Circle and Dressed To Kill are my
favorites, followed by Glorious. The other ones are still funny, but a
bit more odd. There is also a pretty extensive library of clips from
his DVDs on YouTube if you search on his name. If nothing else, his bit about Darth Vader at the Death Star canteen is a treat worthy of any Star Wars geek.

As a follow up to my last post, I am proud to announce that Sarah has passed her NAPLEX exam!!! She was so worried about this for the past week, and I know it's a huge relief to know that it's over with and she doesn't have to think about it. Not to mention that it means she gets an immediate pay raise (she was working at 50% of her salary previously). I'm so proud of you, Sar!

Dear Blog,

There's so much I have wanted to tell you over the last few months, but couldn't because things were still so uncertain and I didn't want to alarm you or any family, friends or colleagues. I think now is a good time to clear the air.

Sarah and I are very indecisive, we know this. It's not really that we can't decide out of a given set of choices, it's that we can't stop adding new choices to the pile. We suffer from a habit of trying to discover every possible outcome to a problem.

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