No WoW: Day 1

I sort of cheated, I logged on for about 1 hour to say "goodbye" to everyone I played along side. Mostly my guild, a few friends and my arena team leader were who I chatted with. But, I did log off before the evening's raid started and my account expired about 6 hours later.

In the evening I managed to:

• Put away leftovers from dinner
• Take my son to and from Cub Scouts
• Spend more time hugging and talking to my wife
  
• Put away laundry my wife had folded
• Lay out my clothes for work the next day so I wouldn't have to hunt for them at o'dark thirty

I was in bed by 10:00PM and asleep about 15 minutes later. I'm pretty sure it's the first weeknight I got more than 6 hours of sleep in a long time and it was a very pleasant change.

More tonight or tomorrow morning for Day 2. So far so good though.

No more WoW

Yesterday I cancelled my World of Warcraft account after playing for about 3 years. I decided that playing for several hours every night, as I was prone to do, was becoming detrimental to my personal life and family. To help remind me of that I've decided to keep track what I did instead of playing WoW on any particular day. This should help remind me of exactly what I have accomplished in what was previously "game time". I'm hoping that will be quite a bit.

I may go back to playing in the future, but definitely not every night. We'll see . . .

Working Late, Missing Lots

Lately I've been working late quite a bit. The extra tiem itself doesn't bother me much. In fact, when I'm busy the time seems to fly. It's just when I get home I've missed so very much.

• I miss dinner a lot. Eating by yourself or while trying to get in that small bit of time with the kids is not fun.
• I miss relaxing and talking with my wife. After eating, putting the kids to bed and doing a few chores it's time for bed. Not winding down and only sleeping becomes a bit disconcerting. Our longest conversations seem to be over the phone and all to often interupted or cut short.
• I miss playing my video games. There's simply no time. My only video game time is kids games on the Gamecube with the children. They enjoy it, but I usually don't.
• I miss having unplanned time. What little free time is left is very planned out to fit in the things that need to get done when any opening is available.
• I miss sleeping in. I have not slept past 7:30AM since the spring of 2006. I'm not short on sleep, I get enough. It's just the luxury of getting extra sleep that's gone.

There's a few more things. But, at some point I'm going to have to start saying "no" to the extra work and taking my lumps at review time on my "effort" and "team player" scores...

Back here

My ISP didn't want me hosting a webserver on my connection, and they are well within their rights. So, I'll be moving things back here. A new year, a new bunch of meaningless cruft...
-R

Moved the Blog again

To my faithful 3 or 4 readers,

So, I wanted to move this blog for a couple reasons. First, I wanted to have more control over the server it runs on and all the admin stuff involved with that. Then, I was curious about Movable Type and wanted to see if I could get it running on my server purely as an exercise. Sure enough, it worked great after some nudging and poking. Finally, all the publishing applications for Blogger use their API. For some strange reason you can not give your externally created posts a Title line, ony a body. This bugged the crud out of me. The tools for MT do not have this issue.

So, go check out the new Oxidizing Everyone for future updates. I won't be moving the Google Ads or the other right hand side silliness over there. But, eventually I'll take the time to backport all the posts from here over to there and wholesale move the contents that currently live here.

Also, should you want to host your bloggity thing on my server just let me know. I'm sure most of you are comfortable with what you have. But, I'll entertain any request from friends.

Hurt my back

I got some new furniture for my den. One of the items is a nice big wood desk with a return. Two of us moved it into the room in 2 pieces. We placed it where I thought it shoudl go and I screwed it together. Later that day, while my wife and kids were out, I began putting my computers and stuff on the desk. After a bit I realized that power and network jacks were not going to work out well from that direction and the desk needed to be rotated 90 degrees. So, what does stupid me do? Yep, moved the thing myself. I didn't lift with my back, just my legs and arms. Or so I thought...

For the past two and a half weeks there has been a pain in the muscles along my spine right at the tips of my shoulder blades. It hurts more on the right side than the left. I went to the doctor for something else (a virus that was making me feel woogie) and asked him to check my back. He said I pulled a muscle that is slow to heal because you use it frequently. Now whenever I lift my arms up it hurts. Carrying the baby hurts. Even walking hurts. I start the day in good shape and am in throbbing pain by the end of the day. I wish I had time I could take off work just to flop and rest the muscles until it heals.

I have learned yet another painful lesson. But, don't feel bad for me. Just laugh and mutter "dumbass" under your breath. :-)

Just for Tasha

You'll need iTunes to follow this link...


I was cruising for songs to download using a gift certificate I won. I came across a song called Mississippi Girl on the iTumes Music Store top 100. I immediately thought of Tasha. I haven't heard the full song but it sounds promising.

Dental Joy

I went to the dentist for the first time in about 14 years this morning. I'm in pretty good shape for not having any work done in so long. I don't want to go because I simply do not like the pain and I can't use novacaine for various reasons. This is the first time I've seen this guy and he seems OK. I have my first appointment for work in 3 weeks. He's going to do a scaling which is a deep below the gumline plaque scraping. It might be painful, but I'll have to do it without novacaine until I can see an allergist. So, I'm already freaking out about it. And, this isn't even the 7 fillings I need which will be more painful.

He said I should call the day before the appointment if I was feeling nervous and thinking about skipping out. He would perscribe me a Valium to take the edge off and encouraged me to not miss the treatment. I've never had Valium before, so I'm still not sure.

Well, enough blathering about my boring life...

Either tomorrow or Monday we'll be hitting the Chinese buffet in Montgomery IL. I'll post a detailed review shortly there after, typing while my belly is still bursting.