Make sure you take a look at the photos towards the bottom.

http://www.indy.com/events/view/75129?end_date=2008-08-09&start_date=2008-08-09

This has got to be the coolest thing I've seen on the web in a long time:

http://goosh.org

I just stumbled across a cool band called Glass Hammer last night. Some pretty damn good Prog Rock. Like a combo of Yes, Rush and Kings X.

Sveet.

To all interested, I have a question:

How would you define how ‘pornified’ something is?

Rush rocks!

Ok, I know that just about everyone who reads my blog is rolling their eyes. But I am continually amazed that there is so much good music out there that I have passed by.

As many of you know, I an a HUGE Yes fan. Yes, is of course, the consummate Progressive Rock band. And I also love many other Prog Rock bands . Prog Rock is one of my "things", as the kids say. But for a long while Rush, another of the Prog Rock legends, has not really been a part of my listening spectrum. The reason is that many years ago when I was in middle school, when all my friends and I were just getting into Classic Rock, there was a little falling out. I discovered Yes. One of my other friends, Jeff, discovered Rush. We brought our discoveries to the group, and there was some dissension. The mainline of the group seemed to reject both, keeping with the party line of Pink Floyd and Led Zepplin. Jeff and I however, continued to pound the drums of Rush and Yes. And because of that a resentment of Rush took root withing my musical tastes.

Since then I have pretty much not paid Rush much attention. Oh how wrong I was! In recent years I have opened up to Rush a bit more, realizing the bullheadedness of my youth was completely unfounded. Last weekend hilhas1 and I went to a Rush concert here in Indy. WOW! It was freakin' awesome! Why, oh why, Lord God did I not realize this before?

So Yes, now I am also a die hard Rush fan. Jeff, if you are out there, you were right as well.

Does anyone out there know of any really good Java programmers in the Indianapolis area that have Spring and Hibernate experience that are looking for a job? I have a big hole in my team right now, and man, is it hard to find experienced programmers in Indy . . .

This week, July 9th-15th, is Nude Recreation Week! No, it is not anything dirty, it's a week long celebration to encourage people to sit back, relax, and try life naked! Try doing something nude, from Telecommuting to work to Nude Gardening.

To find out more about Nude Recreation Week, try out the American Association for Nude Recreation or The Naturist Society websites.

Or if you are in the Chicago/Indiana area and want to go somewhere nice to relax in the sun au natural, try out the Lake O' the Woods Club.

Just thought I'd pass on a cool article:

AMD Dual Core vs Mac Plus

It seeks to put metrics around a fact that many of us realize in the backs of our minds but don't want to admit: All the bells and whistles and coolest, latest tech hasn't really improved a damn thing. It just made everything more complicated.

There is a big fat, Indiana farm bread, Basketball-talking, slack face lookin', Mormon-on-a-mission-like-dressing, buzz-cut wearing, thinking he is a wheeling-and-dealing salesman young guy sitting at the table over, trying to sell god knows what to this older guy. I've seen so many guys like him. I don't know if it is a Indiana specific breed or what, but it annoys the hell out of me.

I apologize if I have offended anyone, but the insincerity in this guy's voice is nauseating. It is as if this guy embodies the weasily salesman stereotype, but in a pure-as-manure farm-boy package.

Why is he even here? BRBP is NOT the place I'd expect his breed to go to. Eh.

Being judgmental is fun sometimes. I hate myself for it, but it is fun.

The subject is a quote from a Jethro Tull song that I've had in my head for what seems like forever now. No real meaning, just think it's cool.

So ya, I havn't been posting for a while. This is primarily because of two things. One, the fact that hilhas1 very nastily broke her leg while we were in Austria and since then my primary job has been making sure she gets better, and also because all the interesting stuff I've had to say other than stuff about Austria has been about work, and as a Manager, I don't feel particularly comfortable talking about those things in a public forum where co-workers could read them.

So in this post, I'd like to expound about the work stuff. Austria has been covered by Hilary already, though I will give you my impression later. So on to work.

For me, managing people has been different. VERY different. This last year I have learned a lot, but I have so much more to learn. In my field, Enterprise Programming, I can pick up new technologies/languages/frameworks/patterns/whatever very quickly. Quicker than most people in this field apparently. I can go home, mess around on my computer with them, and go back into work an expert. The situation is VERY different with management stuff. I can't mock-manage a team of people at home. I have to make all my mistakes LIVE. On the job. UCK!!!

The short end of the stick is that I've found it takes time to learn these things. More time than I am used to. I've had a pretty intense year of Manager learning, hirings, firings, process improvements, great employees, crappy employees, pregnant employees, meetings galore and business plans to develop and be graded against. But I feel like I have only read the first chapter.

I am enjoying this. It's leaning, it's a challenge, and truthfully, it's a scary. But any learning that is scary and is a challenge is worth leaning. It means that I am pushing my borders. But I can't say it's fun. Right now there is a distinct lack of fun in my life.

Maybe it's the 'stage' of life I'm in. I'm 30, just getting into the meat of my career. I've gone through the crap of entry-level jobs. I've pursued a path upwards and have reached the next step. Stepping up is never fun. But you do it, because at least for me, being content with where I am is not an option. The day I say "I'm content with what I know now" is the day that I die. I'm just not sure what I am learning is what I really want to learn.

But the other half of my life is great! I am going to be marrying hilhas1! This doesn't scare me at all. In fact, it makes me very, very, very happy. I am enjoying living with her, planning things and just sharing my life with her. We butt heads every once and a while, but that is part of the fun. Yes, fun. The fun that I do have is at home. Wow, I guess that has gotta say something. You know, what that says now is that I need to go home.

Later.

I'm still getting used to the short hair and trying to find a style that I like. I don't like the part down the middle, which my hair does naturally b/c of how long it was. So, I'm trying a bunch of things. Did something a bit different today and hilhas1 liked it. She took this picture and thought I should post it:

It's amazing the things you can learn from web comics such as Goats.com. For example, I never knew that reality as we preceive it is created by the constant dance of Machine Elves. How did I go through life for 30 years so far and never hear about this? There MUST be some sort of Government/Illuminati/Mason coverup going on here!

Sometimes I feel like my days are filled with herding cats. All I seem to do is go from one person to the next asking about XYZ, is XYZ done yet, if not, when is XYZ expected. The people respond with Oh XYZ isn't done yet because I've had to spend my time on EFG. And then I have to say no, no, no, we need XYZ. Of course the reason I ask people about XYZ is because there are other people asking me about XYZ, ABC, and 123. I guess Business is really just Hierarchical Cat Herding. The Fat Cat at the top herds the next group of cats below, which then herds the cats below them . . .

I think I'm getting re-addicted to LJ now. I keep on thinking "Oh! I should post that!" and so forth. We'll see how long it lasts.

Anyway, hilhas1 and I are hooked on a very, very cool BBC show that somebodystrange told us about. It's called Life On Mars. It's about a modern day Manchester cop who gets hit by a car and wakes up in 1973. It's got this cool "Learning from the past and the past learning from the future" thing going on. The head-cop guy and the main character go back and forth on the ethical way to police vs getting things done a lot. They also hint that the main character is actually in a coma and imagining the whole thing, which leads to some interesting internal strife. Every once and a while they mix in this creepy girl with a doll that comes out of the TV and seems to want the main character to give up fighting. Overall, a refreshing twist applied to a generally good crime show.

Oh! Another really cool thing that goes on is that the crimes that they solve always have something to do with the main character's life in modern times, so you get this sense that there is some reason he is in the past, like he's supposed to be solving these crimes to understand the present. And that of course links in to the comma thing and his own mind working his life out.

hilhas1 asked me for a birthday gift list and all I said was Lowes Gift cards. Stupid house, making me wish for perfectly usefullish things for my birthday instead of things like XBox 360s or new fangled PDA phones!

Ahhhh! I am turning 30, have a house to keep up, have a career I care about, I'm saving up for a very small but very important piece of jewelry . . . Damn, I guess I'm an adult now. When did that happen?!?!?!

After cetan_feed pointed out something that bugged me too about "The Boxer" layout, I decided to play around with some of the other styles. Don't know if I like this one or not yet, though it's nice to see LJ added some more since I last looked. I know you can really get technical with these styles and all, and I might look into that too, but for now, I'm going to use out of the box.