I've been given the assignment to write in this journal and record my thoughts and hopes and dreams.

To that end I'm going to quickly write the 3 tasks that I'm going to work on.

I'm going to make sure I exercise every day.
I'm going to make sure I write in the journal every day, and record my long term goals.
I'm going to clean one room of the house every day.

It is through repetition that I will succeed in this endeavor.

It's the same way I succeeded with Gentoo linux. I tried installing it for nearly a month before finally succeding. That's what I'm going to continue to do with this, keep the mentality that let me remain calm and succede in getting my "tux box" up and running despite numerous numerous failed attepmts. They wern't failures as each time I learned something new about them.

Long Term Goals:

To succede with our business, BrightBridge Financial. This means spending time each day making calls.
To succede with our business, BrightBridge Marketplace. This means spending time each day helping others be successful.
To become a better programmer. This may not result in monitary income, but it will allow me to create the tools I need. Plus I enjoy it.
To meet new people and make some new friends.

It's amazing how a little thing like the team you grew up cheering for winning the national title can change your whole day around.

Got up late, didn't feel well. Sat around didn't do much. Finally called Lois because she had called yesterday trying to get me to come over and fix her machine, but I had a fever. So I told her I'd be there at noon. Ran a couple errands then on my way up to Lois' house I got pulled over for going 55 in a 55 zone. I was being passed at the time, the highway patrolman did a u-turn, and as he did the guy who was passing me and going much faster, turned left and off the road. I was stuck the only one on the road and the highway patrolman pulled me over. He told me right away he was only going to give me a warning and was really polite as he ran my license and registration. He said since the road was wet and that the temp was 29 degrees I needed to be driving more cautiously and be on the lookout for black ice, and sent me on my way.

I made it to Lois' only there was no response to the doorbell. I preceded to Gretchen's work and called Lois. Since I had been made late by the highway patrolman she fell asleep waiting for me. I then went back to her house and spent 2 hours with the wonderful joy of making AOL work. I always knew it sucked, but after all the problems she's had with it I've achieved a new appreciation for it's immense suckiness

On the way home realized I had lost my perscription for my meds. After 20 minutes in the parking lot I realized I had put it in the glovebox along with my registration when I got my warning. I finally got my meds and went home. Today realy realy sucked until the game.

I haven't watched many OSU games this year. Growing up I used to listen to them every Saturday when we were building our house, but I've been too busy lately trying to just make money. It was great to take the night off. And though there were some questionable calls going both ways I'm glad it ended the way it did, though if it had ended sooner I may have had some more fingernails left to type this with.

Well gotta hit the sack, got a day off of gaming tomorrow and Sunday. Looking forward to the break.

First of all forgive the typos in this I'm writing it on my parents system

I started off by sabotaging my diet. Ate a bunch of food at 4:00am then later in the morning dropped Gretchen off at work an on the way home at Burger King and literally ate for two. I wasn't that hungry, but I think it may have something to do with my natural tendancies to sabotage my sucess.

I went home and pretty much slacked off, didn't really have the motivation to do much of anything. Had a list of about 10 things I wanted to do, and only had one done by noon when Gretchen called. She was a bit worried that we were doing the right thing by her leaving her job. That was all I needed for motivation. A half hour later I had everything on the list done.

Spent the rest of the day trying to install DOS and Windows 3.11 on an OLD OLD Gateway 2000 laptop that Shawn bought at a computer recyclelry and gave to me. It's funny walking around with a machine that says "Property of the IRS" on it. I did manage to get dos on it, but apparently the boot sector of the hard drive is damaged and it will not boot without a disk. (This is the reason Shawn couldn't get linux on it and gave it to me) I got Windows on it but had trouble getting acrobat reader on it as I just want to use the machine as an ebook reader. I'll have to hook up the null modem cable and kermit or xmodem reader over to it. Man that'll bring back memories of my BBS days.

Saw Dr. H who helped me understand quite a bit and is cutting my meds back a bit. We'll see what happens

Went to the flats and to the Rock Bottom Brewery. Had a great meal but ate too much (again) came back to my parents house and had a long talk with them. A kind of deep talk I have never really had with them. Was tough, as I'm not used to opening up to anyone. When it was over and they went to bed I felt like I needed something "comfortable" to do, so I pulled out a book on Java and started reading.

That's it for now, Have a happy new year

Well today was quite interesting. Got the server set up with IIS. Turned it off so the script kiddies don't tear the hell out of it, and when I'm ready for it I'll fire it back up. Gretchen and I worked all day on our book. Made great progress, but I became a little frustrated when we discovered basically the same content online for free. I know open source is a great thing, but I've gotta eat too. Well we'll finish the project and see if we can get it online and see if we can make any money out of it.

I'm kinda getting a bit burned out. I need a day off. I know I'll have New Years Eve day and New Years Day, but as we'll be with family then it really won't be “off.” I recharge by being alone and unwinding with a game or a good book, and am not really a people person, though I'm becoming more of one. But being around large crowds and busy with family and friends will only stress me out a bit more rather than chilling me out..

In the evening we watched Bandits I'm usually pretty apathetic on movies, there's few I really love or really hate. But I'm pretty sure I don't care for Bandits. It didn't know where it was going or what type of movie it wanted to be, drama, romantic comedy, action etc. and I could see the ending coming a mile away. Maybe it was just because the movie felt a lot like Deja-vu of Swordfish only Swordfish had a lot more going for it. Cool computers (even though they were “Holywoodisized”) a tech related plot, and an actor that could Act, Sing, and Dance.

Well time to hit the sack. Tomorrow I have to find out about other broadband options and finish the book.

265 / 0 / 367

Had a great swim at the gym. Bounced wrong on the diving board and my right knee and ankle buckled and somehow I scraped the top of my foot on the top of the diving board. Don't ask me how I did it. Just a minor scrape, but still odd how I did it. I came home and did some work on programming, had dinner and worked some more after dinner. Gretchen was watching Trading Spaces, and kept calling me in to see what they were doing. I didn't mind that much but I wanted to keep going. I finally finished that chapter and am ready to move on.

At 11:00 Gretchen and I went to bed. In bed Gretchen asked "Can we talk for a little bit?" She was really getting afraid about the idea of leaving her work and working for ourselves when we didn't have a proven business. I did my best to comport her and tell her things were going to be ok. Working for ourselves has been our dream since we were first engaged, and now we have the opportunity. Yes it's scary, but we've got enough money saved up to be able to survive a few months if money does not come in right away. Obviously the goal is to have money come in, to you know do those important things like pay bills and whatnot. But I think if we both focus and work hard for ourselves there's nothing we can't do. Maybe I'm being overly optimistic, but I don't think so. I've just been mired in mediocrity for so long that I'm just ready to Kick Ass and Chew Bubblegum. And whaddia know, I'm all out of Bubblegum.

We planned and talked for quite a bit, and didn't get to bed until 2:00. This morning I helped Gwen with some scanner trouble, and I'm writing this while installing 2k on the new Web Server. I know that just makes people here at Slashdot wince in pain as I'm not installing Linux and Apache, PHP, and MySQL. Well the honest truth is I would love to, I really would. But I won a copy of 2k Server a while ago at the User's Group meeting, and I'd rather focus my time on developing apps and making money. With no income that's the best way for me to spend my time right now, in addition to all our other business ventures. While I'd love to learn Linux and run our business on entirely open source software, the time investment is what I don't have right now. I can't afford to spend the next month getting the server up and learning all I need to know. I've got to get it up this weekend and be ready for Monday.

266 / 0 / 368

Slept in waaaay too late. Enjoyed it though. I just got really comfortable in bed. I wasn't so much asleep the entire time as I was just laying there being comfortable and being lost in my thoughts. Sometimes I wonder if I think too much. I tend to over-analyze things and often think myself out of what I want to do and what I need to accomplish. Looks as if Gretchen wants to do her Spanish work today so I'll stay focused on my programming. I've got too many ideas that I think are good to stop now. I WILL turn something into making a profit so that I can reach my goal. Monday I'll look into getting the pricing for the Windcast Broadband and see if I can afford it. I know I'll need the extra upstream bandwidth that it will provide to host the server. Hopefully the price will have come down from the last time I checked (A $600 setup fee) and I'll look into it and some kind of satelite TV service. I'm tired of Time Warner Cable and Road Runner with it's “always on” connection which drops me 3-5 times a day.

Well time to head out to the gym. I always feel better after working out so it'll give me that boost to get everything done I need to get done today.

268 / 0 / 369

Well today was pretty interesting. I didn't manage to work as much as I wanted. It was tough fighting my natural tendencies, especially when I turned on the TV an the history channel had a marathon of the tales of the gun on all day. I don't know why I've always been so fascinated with historical firearms. I guess because they did change history so much. Anyway I'd write a program then take an hour break and watch an episode then do some more programming. I'm still not done with the chapter I wanted to be done with a few days ago but I took the time to “mess” with the programs as I typed them in. I changed a bunch of things and made them completely not work. It was great though as I felt like I learned as much or more by figuring out what I couldn't do as opposed to what I could do.

When Gretchen got home we watched My Big Fat Greek Wedding. It really is quite a funny movie. Ooopah!!!

Well it's time to hit the sack. Have a lot more things I want to get done tomorrow.

268 / 0 / 369

Starting to get used to this new Kinesis keyboard. The wrists aren't hurting as much and while my speed is down slightly, it's getting back there somewhat quickly. Forcing myself to relearn typing a few years ago when I switched to a Dvorak keyboard has been a big help since I'm touch typing rather than look typing. The big thing to get used to with this keyboard is the odd placement of the arrow keys, hitting enter, backspace and delete with my thumb, and turning the three-finger-salute into a 1 finger salute and naturally you know which finger :)

I got up early today and went to the gym. I'm pretty proud of myself as I did 10 minutes on the skating machine, 15 minutes on the cross trainer and 30 minutes between the various pieces of weight equipment.

today's goal is going to seem simple but I'm sure be pretty hard. I want to commit to working 5 hours straight on programming and learn OOP. I know it will be tough, not because I don't want to learn it, I just know my natural tendencies to work for 5 minutes and take a “break” for 20. I know much of that stems from my work in Television with it's hurry up and wait attitude, but it's time it changed. I'm also a bit worried about Gretchen calling and talking to me for quite a while. I'm sure she'll get talked to quite a bit about her leaving and then call me and tell me all about it. I'll be there for her, but I want to get all my work done too.

268 / 0 / 370

Today has been quite interesting. First of all I didn't really accomplish my goals. It was a little frustrating that that happened, but I had valid reasons for all of them. The problem is for a while I was pretty pissed off at myself because I had reasons. It shouldn't be about reasons or excuses or whatnot, I just need to get the work done. And that goes double with all the news I received today.

The first big news came early this morning. Gretchen called and was fed up with DCI because of the way she was treated by she bitch. She was really pissed off, and after a conversation, we came to the conclusion that it was time for her to quit. She had worked too long and too hard for a company that didn't care and wasn't interested in treating her with respect or paying her what she deserved. Not to mention the fact that it's the same company that layed me off 6 months ago. She was planning on leaving soon anyways, but this will be the opportunity for us to work on our company and start our dreams, just a little bit sooner. So she gave he 2 week notice today, with the added bonus of only having to work 3 days next week due to New Years Day, and because she will technically work some of 2003, she'll get her vacation pay for '03 as well.

The second big news was that Gwen called and asked if we'd mind caring for her cats for another month or so. She'll be sharing her apt with someone else for a month to help them get started in NYC, and he's apparently allergic to cats. So we'll keep them until that time. With Gretchen quiting her job who knows, maybe we'll go to NYC and drop the cats off, it would be a fun adventure. Also it means we get more time with Gilda and Smokey which is great because I wasn't quite ready to get rid of them yet.

So because Gwen wasn't coming to pick up the cats I didn't have to clean the house. And for a while I couldn't reach Gretchen on the phone. Because she had asked a few questions to people there about what she was entitled too upon quitting I was concerned when I couldn't reach her. I had visions of her in her boss' office getting chewed out for wanting to quit or something like that, so I had a hard time focusing on getting my tasks done until I was able to talk to her. She was outside moving her car so that they could plow when I called so didn't hear my call, and didn't check for her messages until after her lunch. Then after all of that commotion I fell and hit my head on the bathtub, and while it didn't do too much damage (not that there was a whole lot to damage) it just knocked the remaining wind out of my sails. I ended up taking a nap and didn't get the remaining work I wanted to get done done.

Well things look exciting for the future. I won't have the luxury of the events of today once Gretchen is no longer at work. This should be a big motivation, but hopefully I won't let it become too much pressure. Looking forward to tomorrow.

268 / 0 / 370

This is the first of what will be I am sure many journal entries. I've started many journals in the past only to find some reason to quit or stop. I'm posting this on Slashdot for a couple of reasons. First I'm geeky enough to regularly visit Slashdot, and secondly, I like that they call it a journal. I hate that damn word that starts with a B and rhymes with frog. Anyway I'll post more and more as the days go by, this is just my starting place.

Goals for today.
Clean House
Write 2 sections in the book
Finish Chapter in H2PC#