This Christmas season is the first one in my life that hasn't felt like Christmas at all. I've just had the most difficult time this year actually believing that it is December, and that the holiday season draws nearer and nearer. Most of this is due to the lack of a winter break. Every year for as long as I can remember, December has meant time off from the daily grind (which, for the most part, was school). But this year, I didn't get to take any time off, mostly because I didn't have any time to take. Today was my first day 'off' from work, which says absolutely nothing, seeing as it's a Saturday. Thankfully, I'll be taking all of next week off, but this break is coming a little late for me.

Moving into our new home is also partially responsible for my lack of any Christmas spirit. We have done a ton of stuff to the house since we moved in (it seems everything needs fixing), and I still have a number of unpacked boxes in my room. Maybe this week I can recharge myself enough to actually get some stuff done. Unfortunately, I brought some of my work home with me (deadlines are looming) and that might take some of the restfulness out of this break. We'll see how things progress over the coming few weeks ... hopefully I can get back to a more normal routine soon.

Time seems to be in short supply this time of year, and I'm finding that especially so this season. I've been working later hours recently, and my drive to do anything computer related (after work) has been very small. After spending hours each day both digging through and writing code, I have little desire to work on any of my extra-curricular activities. In all honesty, I have yet to even begin working on the updated Firefox tutorial, and updates to Googlebar Lite have yet to be made (several bug fixes certainly need to be made). Fortunately, I'll be taking some time off soon, and I hope to make some progress on these fronts. As long as I can sleep in a little bit, I'll be happy. To quote a Beatles tune, I'm so tired.

Nearly 40 days ago, my family and I moved to a new house. And sadly, there are still boxes nearly everywhere you look. But we're definitely a long way from where we started. Most everything major has been repaired, and several exciting new features are coming this week: our backup generator and wood-pellet stove.

Just tonight, I actually got around to unpacking a couple of boxes in my room (something I've been horribly negligent about). I just counted, and was shocked to learn that I still have 13 boxes left to open! Fortunately, the majority of them are in my sister's room (which isn't being used). With any luck, I can make more progress on the unpacking front this week. Most of the remaining stuff will go through the following decision making process:

1. Is the item in question something I need to keep? Yes: keep it. No: proceed to 2.
2. Is the item valuable enough (and in good enough condition) to auction off on eBay? Yes: auction the item off. No: proceed to 3.
3. Can the item live somewhere else? Probably not, so proceed to 4.
4. Throw item away.

Moving day was rather eventful yesterday. My folks ran into a problem which almost caused the deal on our old house to fall through (which would have been a very bad thing), but it all got worked out and we're now moved in. And so now the fun begins. There are a lot of repairs that need to be done to the house:

1. The hot water heater is broken (I took a cold shower this morning).
2. Both air conditioners are broken, so it's rather hot on the second floor.
3. All of the smoke alarms around the house are 'peeping' (the backup batteries in them are dead).
4. Our cable hookup has been pushed out until Saturday.
5. There are apparently some mice in the house (our cat should have some fun with this).
6. Some wood around the dormer windows is rotting.
7. The previous owners left a broken refrigerator and freezer for us to cart off to the dump (gee, thanks).

I fixed the smoke alarm problem last night (at least the ones upstairs), so that's one job done. And several of the more important jobs are being taken care of today. It will take some real engineering to get a CAT-5 cable up to my room on the second floor, so that I can hook up my computer to our network. And we'll need to run the incoming coax cable over to our library, where we plan to put our NAT box and cable modem.

Anyways, things are starting to get back to normal. I plan to hook up my computer and begin unpacking my stuff tonight. One of these days, I might even get some pictures up somewhere. Googlebar Lite 3.0 development work should begin again soon - it will be out no later than the weekend of October 8-9.

What a morning! After a late night of packing, I wake up late, have breakfast, and finish some last minute packing chores. Then I pack up a suitcase with the stuff I'll need over the next day or two (or three) and put everything that's not to be put in the moving trucks on my bed. In doing so, I notice several items which have been lurking in the corner of my room for several days. I have no boxes to put them in (in fact, several items wouldn't have fit in a box anyway), so I go out to put them in the trunk of my car. As I slam the trunk shut, I realize a horrible truth: my keys are there in the trunk, along with everything else. And naturally, all of my car doors are locked.

With my dad's help, we locate the key box (which was packed away in the attic), but no spare key is to be found. My dad had made use of the spare a while back, so he was the last one to be seen with it. After placing a call with a local locksmith, my mom finally finds the spare: in a box of my dad's belongings. I cancel the locksmith, finish packing, and head out to work. On the way, an hour and a half late mind you, my car's check-engine light comes on.

I have no idea what the problem is, and I have no time to take it to the shop. Tomorrow I take a half-day of vacation to carry my cat over to the new house (which should be painful), and to meet the cable guy. And all of this rests on the hopes that one of the realtor's agents will meet me at the house with a key to get in.

I'll be so glad when all of this is over...

With the movers coming Tuesday afternoon, anything and everything in sight is being placed in a box. Most of our stuff gets packed Tuesday, and the rest gets packed Wednesday morning. Later that same day, we close on our current house and on the new one. Then everything gets moved in to the new house after that. I'm definitely looking forward to the end of all that.

I still have a decent amount of stuff to pack in my room, although I have made excellent progress. I would estimate that I'm nearly 85% done. But with tomorrow evening being the only time I have to finish everything, I'm beginning to panic a little bit. I know I'll get it done - it just seems so overwhelming now. There's no telling how many boxes I've already packed. 15? 20? 25? It's a lot, I know that. And so much of it is junk!

This is my last post from this house (my computer gets packed up tomorrow night when I get home from work). And please note that I will be "off the air" for several days. With any luck, I can continue to make blog posts from work. But don't expect any progress on the Born Geek front: updates there will most likely resume in a week (or two).

My family and I move one week from today, so we're beginning to kick our packing efforts into high gear. Until one packs up all of his belongings, one doesn't realize how much junk has accumulated through the years. I've packed up a total of five fairly large boxes so far, and their contents consist of only my books and computer game boxes. A tiny ripple in a very large pond.

Fortunately, I'm moving up in room size. I outgrew my current room a number of years ago, so it's well past time to have something larger. My new room provides substantially more real estate (having two closets will help tremendously), so I won't be nearly as cramped as I am currently. As soon as I have a sizable down payment stored away in the bank, I'll get a place of my own (and then I'll really be moving up)!

Unfortunately, all of this activity is hurting my Googlebar Lite 3.0 efforts. We are unlikely to have internet connectivity for a few days at the new house, so that won't help matters (although I can still work behind the scenes). So, don't be surprised if version 3.0 shows up later than expected.

Seeing as it has been a long time since I last made a backup of stuff on my computer system (the last one I did was on April 17th), I decided that it was well past time to make another. In the process of doing so, I had the opportunity to do a little "fall cleaning" on my computer. I have since learned that my computer is surprisingly unorganized.

A number of redundant files were lying around (mostly stuff that can be recreated from other files that I have). So this was the first batch of stuff to be discarded. I also had a ton of really old stuff, some of it dating back to my early "JGB Productions" days. I zipped up all of said old stuff (so it wouldn't lie fallow anymore), and then placed it in a safe place: just in case. There were a number of instances where files just needed to be zipped up: one folder of server logs was well over 110 MB and, after compression, was a mere 4 MB.

I believe I removed between 1000 and 1500 files in the process. Unfortunately, I didn't calculate the entire disk savings, but it must be upwards of 1 GB or more (a number of duplicate MP3's were also tossed out). All in all, the experience was a good one for me. Not only have I backed up vital data, I've tidied up my virtual home. It sure feels good to get clean!

(Apologies if this post jumps from one topic to another; I have a great deal on my mind).

For an incredibly long 13 weeks, my family has been trying to sell our house. Anytime anyone wanted to view it, we would end up having to go somewhere. It didn't take very long to run out of places to visit so, needless to say, we quickly became quite bored of this routine. My mother is particularly tired of it, since she stays home during the day. So every time someone came to view the house, she would have to leave. Thankfully, we have just received our first offer for the house. The folks want to close in an incredibly short amount of time, so I expect things to get hectic around here very shortly. Please bear with me if my posts become erratic. I may not have internet connectivity for a few days (something I already loathe), so updates may be few and far between for a short while.

I continue to make excellent progress on Googlebar Lite 2.2. Just tonight I fixed a lurking bug that was recently reported, added a brand new option, and made several other miscellaneous changes. Some strings need to be translated, and a new feature or two may still need to be added, but this release is already shaping up to be a good one.

Various theme tweaks continue at this site. I located a very inefficient styling problem earlier this week (regarding the background rendering for each page), and squashed that bug. I’m not happy with the way comments are styled, so I plan to alter that in the coming days. I also hope to eventually get a contact page up on this site. Other general improvements are also planned.