Crumpled Notebook

I’m back online officially. No big hurrah or anything. I have a few blogs to post up and will try to do start that tonight, but going to Santa Cruz to see Forgetting Sarah Marshall, so we’ll see how I feel when I get home.

On a similarish note, for you inquiring minds, I’ve been seeing this guy named Nathan. We actually dated before. If you are curious, guy #3 here. Wow that was forever ago. Anyway, I stopped blogging about guys here for the most part, but I guess it won’t hurt too much.

Hm, I see an update for the new wordpress already. It says “better performance for categories.” Perhaps that will solve my biggest problem with it. That actually might make it worth coming back and updating tonight.

Okay, this is the last post until next week. My night ended up being a bit busier than I planned, so I didn’t get much time to say good by to my good pal the internet (a.k.a. my drug dealer).

Here is probably a better way to explain what I’m doing, in case you are still baffled. I’d compare it to a fast. The purpose of a fast being to sacrifice something for a time, food or whatever, like during Lent, and use that struggle to turn to and rely on God. Now, I don’t blog too awful much about that stuff. I prefer to keep most of that stuff private. And I’m not going to say that is my entire reason. It’s basically that it is what consumes most of my time, and probably an addiction of some sorts. So, more time with God isn’t the reason I necessarily decided to do it, but by doing so, I hope that is a result of it. I basically just neglect things. Things I want to do. Things I need to do. I put off cleaning, reading, praying, studying, hanging out with people and all sorts of other things. So it can be a fast in the sense of just re-prioritizing my life, which definitely includes my relationship with Christ.

So, I’m now officially ready for my fast :-) Pray for me. It’s gonna be a long week!

The thought of checking Google Reader next week and finding over 1,000 unread items is horrifying. Today I’ve been unsubscribing some of them. Not a lot, but the ones that easily post 30-60 things a day (if not more, Engadget) and then the things I just never read period (like Engadget). Helps me prioritize. I also organized my labels for them so that I can just click on the folders I want to read to start with. I should make a favorites label so I can start with those.

I’ve replied to all my email (almost, I have one left to do), so I should be basically caught up. My solution for those important, yet non personal emails is that for the most part, they all go to one account, not my primary account and then I have them set to forward to my primary account. So I’ll just check the sub-account. I don’t get emails from real people there and it’s rarely something to respond to. Basically it’s a “you were poked on facebook, ” “so and so wants to be your friend,” “here is your bible verse of the day,” etc…. You get the picture. My 5 month or so long poke war on Facebook will have to be paused I suppose. That actually makes me sad.

(Still hate the category list at the bottom. I forgot it last time and it defaulted to Personal, which was okay for).

Preoccupied

I mentioned in my last post that I’ve been preoccupied this week with something. Now, I’m not going to write about it in detail here, but I did want to comment on a couple of aspects of it.

So, I’ve had this interest in something for quiet some time. It’s been a build up actually. Some (ahem, Ross) might even call is an obsession. Anyway, it’s been building up and in all honesty, I expected this very lackluster and boring moment of “oh, that’s it.” I was actually hoping for that too. But it wasn’t. It actually left me with a lot more questions and something new to obsess over. But the point here isn’t that.

Isn’t it interesting that usually when we are building up to something, we except the grand things? We prepare ourselves for the big finale and then when it isn’t quiet that, we’re let down and disappointed. Yet at the same time, when it’s just the opposite–when we want some plain white bread, we’re still not satisfied with what we got. Sometimes we shouldn’t be either. I know in my case, I shouldn’t be. I want my white bread. But, what I’m thinking is that usually when we build up to things, get ourselves worked up, etc…what we expect and the reality are usually very different.

No Internet

So, I apologize for doing two subjects here, but I don’t feel like posting two times. So, the question of the week, or the last few days anyway is, “Why are you going without internet?”

There isn’t some big answer. I mean, I’m addicted, but it’s not like I have any expectation of really changing my behavior. I will say that when the idea came was as I was checking my email for about the 10th time on my cell phone during my 45 minute drive to Santa Cruz on Tuesday night. So part of it was the fact that I know I’m attached and addicted to the internet. The other part is just that I think it would be an interesting challenge. In all honesty, I put off doing a lot of things I’d like to do because of it. I mean, I do other things in the evenings, but it’s always on. I never miss an email, poke, comment or whatever else.

(I think I hear an alarm going off in one of the buildings…sigh)

Here’s the weird part. I’m actually looking forward to next week. I mean, yes, it will be hard, but I’m looking forward to doing other things. I keep lining up things to do next week, so I’m hoping it will be a productive week for me. But yeah, I really am looking forward to it. Sometimes (rarely) I just turn off the computer and enjoy my time away from it. I think it’s probably like any other kind of addict that probably wants to break their addiction but isn’t motivated enough to just quit on their own. They enjoy their life without it, but just aren’t strong enough, or don’t think they are strong enough to break it. Obviously I’m not giving up internet completely. That would be insane anyway, but I am anxious to see what I do with my time next week and see what affect that ultimately has on my priorities. In all honesty, it’s probably the thing I put first in my life, not God, so hopefully He’ll use that time as well to do some work on me.

Anyone got any good suggestions for good quality online video? (BTW–this is my first post in my recently updated Wordpress 2.5…we’ll see how it goes).

So what I’m looking for here is something that retains decent quality of the original file. Something that isn’t really ad-based (or at least not too annoyingly) and something that works well (i.e. no hiccups in playback). I’m working a video for work for a competition thing, so I’d just like to take out any of those annoying factors. I will post it up to YouTube regardless, but YouTube really messes with the quality of the videos (even IF you follow their submission guidelines to a T), so I’d rather submit the video from a better quality site (it has to be submitted as a link from a free video site).

Some of the ones I’ve looked at are Revver and Veoh. Any opinions or other suggestions?

(okay, the categories and tags being below the write screen isn’t that bad when I’m using a desktop and actual mouse, cause I can use the scroll on my mouse, except that I have to click and scroll my categories too, which I don’t like. This is going to be dreadful on my laptop. Oh, hm, you have to actually click the “add” button to add your tags too. That’s kind of dumb).