Things got busy

Eh, its been a little while since my last post. The whole blogging thing went on the backburner once school routines set in, and the little spare time I've had has been spent elsewhere. But I have a moment now, and thought I'd throw out a quick update.

Recently I've had a fair number of random side projects in addition to the glorious workload of school and work. One of which is the creation and maintenance of a website for the Seattle Institute Chorale: www.seattleinstitutechoral.org. (Choral is an alternate spelling of Chorale, though apparently the far less common usage, as I discovered too late~) And the obligitory plug, join the choir! Its fun. No, seriously, it really is. So come check it out.

In addition to that, I've become the Network administrator for the house in which I live, and setting up the house wired and wireless networks has been fun, yet another thing to occupy my time. By the way, if any reading this know of any good resources for setting up a bandwidth throttling DCHP router so as to set a bandwidth cap on any given connection during certain times of the day, feel free to comment on this post with that info. I've been looking at doing an IPcop box, though I still need to find appropriate modules for the bandwidth throttling.

One last thing I'll throw in here, growing out a beard has been an interesting experiment, to say the least. The reactions have certainly been varied, ranging from my youngest brother's claim that "I look like a cave man" to certain other individuals that warn me that shaving it would be one of the worst decisions I could ever make. At any rate, its certainly been fun to try it out, though I doubt it will be around for much longer. Having a beard did serve an interesting purpose around halloween, as it was suggested that I become a certain red-bearded individual for a halloween party. It was a fun evening, and the wall of quotes has been updated as a result.

Thats it for now. Perhaps (no promises) I may find time to start updating this more regularly again.

-Josh

Comings and Goings

It seems that this weekend marks the last time I'll see a few people for a while, as well as the first time I'll have seen some other people in a while. To start with, one of my best friends, Gabe, is moving out from his room across the hall from me, where he's been the past year. Friday evening he had just returned from a road trip to Yellowstone, and he had brought me a souvenir "Jr. Park Ranger" badge with my name on it, which of course I promptly put on ;) But he'll soon be heading out traveling for a while (first stop of Taiwan, who knows from there), and will be sorely missed. Have fun sir, the house won't be the same without you. Later that evening I attended a Mariners game with our ward, and got to hang out with another leaving friend, Andrew:

(if you look close, you can see the yellowstone badge flipped over on my shirt). He's heading out on his mission to Japan, which he is understandably excited about ;) I'm sure he'll do well. And here's a pic of a bunch of us at the Mariners game:

It was fun, and the Mariners managed to pull in a winning run in the bottom of the 9th.

But it seems like some sort of strange law of equilibrium is jumping into effect with two good friends heading out. Last night I came home to find (to my suprise) that my old roommate Jed was back in town, and as of last speaking with him, will be my roommate once again. So welcome back Jed, great to have you back! ;P But now, the best for last: today my Brother, Chris, returns home from Ecuador, where he has spent the past two years. I'm *really* excited about this, as I haven't seen him in nearly four years; he left shortly before I returned from England. As we both have many mutual friends out in KY, and the Winchester, KY ward was the ward to "send him off" so to speak, we'll be heading out to Kentucky on Wednesday, and spending a week out there visiting friends and both enjoying a vacation ;) (My family is not entirely pleased that I'm stealing him away for another week the day after he gets home, but hey, its been 4 years for me, and I'll be busy with school after this, while Chris will be back living at home, at least initially.) So that's whats on the plate at the moment, a week vacation with my brother to lounge around with friends in KY that neither of us have seen in some time (though longer for him than for me ;) It should be great, one of our friends out there has even secured the entire week off of work, and I know several others are excited for our arrival as well. It should be a great way to finish off the summer, considering that we'll fly back on the 25th, and classes start up the 26th. Where did it all go? Oh well, its been great, and as I said, this is a great way to finish it off!

-Josh

New Subsections

I've created a few subsections, which can be accessed by the Random Sections page on the right. They include Stories, and the Wall of Quotes. Check them out for more info.

-Josh

The Creation

Well, here it is, the initiatory blog post. I suppose I may as well explain how the creation of this blog came about, and what I plan on using it for. I was minding my own business when my friend Stephen fiendishly invited me to look at a new posting on his Economics blog, www.econsteve.com. It was fun browsing his posts there, and I continued on the link-trail from his econ blog to his personal blog. Having perused that for a time, I continued a link-trail onto another friend's blog, Jerkolas, and by that time was considering creating a blog myself. So thanks a lot Stephen, like I don't already have enough to do.

I do hope, however, that this may actually accomplish some good, fun, and perhaps even on rare occasions useful, purposes. My main intent in creating this is as a fun resource for all those that claim that I don't keep them "in the loop" with the random goings on in my life. Perhaps the greatest example of this can be seen by a few comments from my family. I tend to be somewhat reserved in general, and in commenting on that my parents mentioned that they probably got to know me better during my two years away from home in England than they did in 19 years of living with me, as during those two years I would write to them weekly via email ;) It's also become somewhat of a standing joke whenever I make it home for dinner to ask if I'm engaged yet, as they claim they wouldn't be surprised if the first time they heard about a girl in my life was when I gave them the invitations to the wedding. Add to that the many friends that I have scattered across the states and the world (with whom I am not always the greatest at keeping in touch) and I felt a blog might be a fun way to keep more people "in the loop." While I don't intend to be making many deeply personal comments or posting more personal events, it should no less help to form some sort of defense against the claim that I don't let people know what I'm up to ;)

Lastly, I love reminiscing on the great times I'm able to have with so many incredible people that surround me, a blog seems like a fun way to record those memories in a way that allows others to comment on them as well. So, by all means, comment on anything I put on here! Hopefully, if I'm able to find the time to keep this relatively updated, it will prove at least mildly entertaining and will help a few people get to know me just a little bit better ;)

-Josh