Photo by Brian Adams, baphotos.com

Marian Call is one of the awesome people I’ve been following over on the Twitter for a while. Though I initially followed her because she followed me and seemed cool, it turns out she’s an awesome independent artist from Anchorage. Back in May, she set off on her 49>50 Tour, where she’s driving to every state in the nation (except Hawaii, because driving there would take too long and fry too many cars) to perform at venues her fans request.

One of the places she’s coming to play is my house. Yes, that dwelling in which I live. And she’ll be here soon. Like a little over two weeks soon. And I would love it if you could make it out.

Marian will be here to play for us on Wednesday, August 25th. I’ll open the doors around 6:30 PM for some mingling and fooding, then the music will start around 7:30. I’ll provide some munchies (burgers or hot dogs, some chips, a fruit tray) and basic beverages (water, lemonade). If you want to drink anything fancy (you know, alcoholic), please bring at least enough for you. I’m sure you’ll be able to share with everyone else if you want to try something else. If you want to bring a side dish or a dessert, it will be welcome. Also, if you have any spare chairs (folding, lawn, etc.), they would be appreciated. Late August in Nebraska can be unpredictable and often unpleasantly hot, so I’m planning on an inside concert. Kids are welcome if they want to come.

If you want to come, please, Please, PLEASE RSVP with me (not Marian) via e-mail (nick ät programmerman döt net) or Twitter (@Programmerman). Marian’s journeys are funded entirely by fan donations, so if you have $10 or $15 to put in the tip jar, it will be very appreciated. If you want to sample some of Marian’s music, check out her Bandcamp site, http://mariancall.bandcamp.com.

Some more about Marian: Marian Call delivers whimsical Alaskan folk funk for the Coffee Counter-Culture. She sounds a little like Joni Mitchell & Regina Spektor raising the child of Jason Mraz & Erin McKeown. Call’s sound is always soulful, honest, and clever, loved by all types — computer geeks, church ladies, teenage thugs, NPR listeners, and urban hipsters worldwide. Marian is currently touring all 50 states and hopes to play for you soon — find more information at http://mariancall.com.

While I was bumming, I spent a lot of overnights awake. One of the few things of consequence that happens in the middle of the night is Coast to Coast AM, a nationally-syndicated talk radio show which isn’t afraid to take on the “fringe” topics (aliens, conspiracies, Bigfoot, etc.). One night, they covered various natural ways of “doping” yourself with various sound patterns, optical illusions, and the like. The example that really drew me in was eating Stilton cheese before bed, even as little as an ounce, can lead to weird dreams.

I did a little research, found their source for this (the British Cheese Board, via the Internet Archive), found some Stilton, and gave it a shot last night. And, indeed, I had a strange dream. You see, someone had taken my ancient (ca. 1995) laptop and revived it. The laptop actually runs a first-gen Pentium with 8 MB of RAM and less than a gigabyte of hard drive space. It was still somehow running Windows 95, but it was running like I’d never seen it before. Some unnamed person in the dream had rigged up a wireless card, a fresh battery, and a mass storage device to it which reported several terabytes of storage (more than Windows 95 can support). I was confused and amazed in the dream, but before I could press for any real details or figure out that it was a dream, I woke up.

I still have more cheese to eat.

I moved into the house for the most part this last weekend. While there’s a few things I’ve forgotten, I’m ready to open up the house to my friends. What better day than Sunday, the 4th of July? I’ll be around all day long. There will be some kind of food for people (hot dogs is the current thinking, but I’m open to suggestions. I’ll make sure to have something veggie-based for my non-meat-eater friends, too). I’ll also have the Rock Band set up in the basement and an assortment of board games available if anyone wants to throw down.

I’ll also go ahead and let you know that I’m not expecting anyone to bring me anything. Except beer, if you want to drink some. I don’t drink myself, so my supplies are limited at best. If you want to come and want to drink, make sure you bring something to drink.

I know many people already have plans for the 4th. It’s one of those holidays where most have plans months in advance. So if you can’t make it out on Sunday, I won’t think anything of it. If you can only stop by for a little bit, that’s cool, too. I’d just love to welcome people into my new home if they want to come see it. I’m also not going to buy any fireworks, so I’ll be winding down the party around sunset to give everyone a chance to go to a show somewhere else around town.

If you want to come, track me down on the Twitter or the Flickr and I’ll get you the address.

Though it started with the January of Laze, this year is turning out to be one of the bigger ones in my time. Between my professional, personal, and social lives, I may hardly resemble my previous self by the time the calendar resets again.

Professionally, I started a new job back in February. It’s a smaller job compared to the one I left last year, but it still has its challenges. Mostly in the people I have to deal with, of course, though the work itself occasionally throws a curve ball. But, with less stress, less responsibility, and fewer constraints, my feelings have improved. I can see the impact my work is having on those around me, and everyone seems better for it. This makes it far more rewarding than the endless grind of patch jobs and hacks that only quieted demanding customers (rather than satisfy them).

Personally, I’m continuing to improve my body. The long road to fitness has brought me to where I’m somewhat active, eating better, and happy to be outside. I’ve also removed much of the clutter that filled my personal space. But the biggest change is that I’m in the process of buying a house. For the first time, I will live in MY house. This will show me exactly which habits belonged to me alone, and which were brought out only under the influence of others. Having seen the best and worst from myself in my previous living arrangements, I’m greatly looking forward to how I’ll be under my own control.

Socially, I’ve started to take on a full identity. Before, I was just a guy with a hat and a camera who would show up at events, looking for anyone. Now, I’ve taken on my own voice, figuring out what I really stand for and how to speak up for myself in a crowd. I’ve also begun several acquaintances, which I hope I can grow into full friendships. Of course, only time will tell, but I generally like the people I’m around now and they seem to like me.

At this rate, 2010 may end up being my most important year thus far. I’m looking forward to to the second half and what it will bring.

For most of us, walking fills a significant portion of our time. From ambling out of bed in the morning, to taking us where we need to be, through a leisurely stroll through the park, walking provides essential mobility. It’s also one of the easiest, cheapest, and best exercises we can do.

I’ve been working to keep my better personal habits up (eating the right kinds and amounts of foods, mostly), but I’ve pretty much maxed out on my long-term body reshaping project. A long, cold, filled with snow winter did nothing to help the situation, either. But, with Spring came new opportunity to get outside. I had generally planned to do more, but didn’t have any real concrete idea of what to do.

In mid March or so, I bought a new game which came with a pedometer. There’s some gimmicky bits that make it work with the game, but I was looking forward to it mainly as a way to track my progress with the “get out and do more” plan. I also moved to a spot very close to work, which made walking many days a reasonable option. Combine this with friends doing “30 Days of Biking” and a desire to join them in spirit, and I had a plan: do more walking in April.

I had the walk to work to help me, providing about 2000 steps a day, if I walked to and from twice. Combine that with regular daily activity set a baseline day at around 5000 to 6000 steps. Between a nearby park with a walking track, as well as area hiking trails and some of my other hobbies, getting a good working average above that wasn’t too hard.

The month began with a lot of enthusiasm and effort. In the first five days of the month, I averaged over 10000 steps a day. This was a mixture of walking to work, finishing moving, and extra activity (like disc golf and bowling). After that, being finished moving, then a brief sick bout cut the extra bits down a bit. There were still a few good days in there, but many were in the 6000 range or even below. As the month continued, my attention was drawn in other directions (my friend needed some aid, I went through the home selection process), so my steps never rebounded to the early highs.

In the end, despite not having any set goal to begin with, I finished the month with a little over 210k steps, which I think is a good baseline number to work off. I’ve set a goal of 250k steps for May, so we’ll see how that goes. At the very least, I have some numbers to work from to gauge my progress by. I hope this can bring me back to the progress I had been making.

Did you miss me?

Due to an ISP provider change, my web site has been down since mid-January. Now, the content had gone dormant anyway, but then I really didn’t have a reason to update it. Knowing that I didn’t want to live here forever, and knowing that my blog isn’t exactly the center of my online life, I left it be. I told the people on Twitter a few times that it was defunct, there was no real outcry for it. But, oh, how things can change in three months.

So, how is the site back online? Well, I’m moving. And the new home is on the old ISP (the one who lets me host this website from my home Internet connection). I’m in the process of getting all my stuff transposed, but my main equipment (my main computer and my server) and now up and running at their new home. So that’s cool. It’ll be fun learning to live somewhere else again. Six years is a long time to get familiar with a place. I wonder how many times I’ll take the wrong exit from the freeway.

Some routine has returned to my life. Every Saturday night, I’ve been going bowling with some friends. There’s usually about five of us, though this week there’s going to be 10. I wrote an article about this weekly bowling event this time last year. So, if you’re interested in joining me one week, let me know on the Twitter.

Oh, and I got a job. I’m working as a software developer for a web hosting company here in Bellevue. I was hired on the eight-month anniversary of my last day at my old job. Some advantages of the new digs: short commute, lower stress than my old job, and I’m not really working on anything that’s “customer-critical.” The environment is taking a little getting used to, so we’ll see how that goes.

Where does that leave this blog? Well, the “professional bum” bit is retired. I’ll go back to more of the long-form articles than the short-form daily posts, since the daily posts were growing old and stale anyway. How many times can you really say “Got up, made breakfast, bummed around, felt really angsty about things, yelled at some kids to get off my lawn, and went to bed”?

Yes, I did almost title this blog post “Friday, January 1, 2009.” Better than December 32. :)

Happy new year!

Probably due to the crap amounts and types of food I’ve been putting in me lately (not that the quality has been sketchy, just the balance), I didn’t really feel great today. I spent the day in bed watching TV and drinking water (and occasionally eating something like PB&J with dried apricots). By the end of the day, I was feeling quite a bit better.

Also in there, I filtered out the best of the previous night’s pictures and posted them privately out to Flickr, so some select people could see the set. I’m still waiting to hear back on that, to see if anything worked out particularly well.

Tim had asked me earlier in the week if I’d be their designated driver, with plans to do things like rent a minivan to go pick everyone up and drop everyone off. I’m not really a drinker anyway, and Tim and his crew are a fun group to be around, so I told him I’d be up for it.

The day started with lots of sleeping in and a fairly late coffee, as well as the occasional post on Twitter to let everyone know I was still alive, and trying to nail down the details of the plan. As the day progressed, the plan seemed to fall away, each progressive message knocking another peg out. You see, Tim and his crew have been working hard on some new project, involving many late nights and long hours. So, one by one, people said “Oh, we’re not going to drink that much, we’ll be okay to drive.” By the time all was said and done, no one needed a ride, and I was just driving out there to party.

The night was long, fun, full of conversation and pictures. After the place closed down, most everyone headed to Tim & Jenn’s for the “after-party.” As this was even further from home, and I was starting to get tired as it was, I decided I should just head home.

Once home, I cooked some after-party pancakes and broke out the laptop to look at the night’s haul. I pretty quickly figured out I didn’t have much the mind to process photos, and so I just headed to bed after finishing off my snack and cleaning up.

Another glorious day hanging out with my friend. I spent the morning and afternoon futzing about the house, getting cleaned up, and such.

Toad and I started with a nice game of Scrabble, our second of this visit. I was often a “STAN” away from some former Soviet state, but I put up a good fight. Toad still got me by about 50, evening the match at 1 game each (the first game was last week). From there, it was off to the opposite side of town for pizza. Having heard that this place does Chicago-style pizza right, we had to give it a shot. We ordered a “works” (without olives), waited for it to pop out of the oven, and dug in. It tasted good (I’d easily eat there again if it weren’t 10 miles away), and the sauce was atop the toppings (which all had good flavor), but the crust was not “authentic,” at least to my memories of Chicago pizza. It was deep and tasty, and definitely Chicago-inspired.

After pizza, we headed back to my place, where we turned on the Nebraska football game. Oh, what a routing that was. At halftime, we broke out the Scrabble board for a deciding game. Despite Toad’s best efforts to lock down the board (again), I somehow found room for “PlANTER” and “ATONERS” to pull out game 3 (and keep the board open enough to finish).

The boring day of the week. Nothing at all exciting going on.

Coffee and leftover banana bread, followed by more banana bread for dinner. Spent a good part of the day catching up on what’s happened with an old online community I once participated heavily in (sounds like the better days were in the past). Before I knew it, the day was over.