Ramble On
Why am I up at 2:00 AM you ask? It probably has something to do with the 3+ hour nap I took at around 6. Glorious as it was, it means I'm not as tired as I otherwise would be.
The reason I took a 3+ hour nap when my son was still awake? Well, he and my wife are actually in northwest Ohio for her sister-in-law's baby shower. I'm going to be an uncle again, probably sometime in July August or September. I stayed home because there would likely be little for me to do during the baby shower proper, and there were lots of things to do at home which can be achieved more easily while my son isn't here (he loves to "help"). Aside from the nap, I was able to mow the lawn (first time I was able to in over a week), trim the bushes, catch up on our ridiculous backlog of paperwork to be filed, and catch up on a back log of dirty dishes as well. I was really productive up until around 4:00 PM or so, and then slacked off a bit before finally getting the dishes done.
Topic change. The new computer is working out pretty well. I'm actually in Windows at the moment because I want to get the Orange box updated (far too much to download over our ~80 kB/s DSL line) but I'm dual booting with Ubuntu 11.04, which I'm liking quite a bit. I have to say I'm a bit spoiled at work with a dual monitor setup, but I may remedy that at home some time in the future. Saving money is a bit more important at the moment, what with the baby due in October and all. I haven't gotten much GPGPU programming done with the new computer, which was one of the reasons I got it, but I have done a bit more programming in general, which is helping out with understanding some of the things I'm doing at work. Another reason we got the new computer was to possibly try some video games with my son. We figured if he does bang up a keyboard, it would be better if the RAM, hard drive, and CPU were not directly underneath it. That and a stand-alone keyboard can be replaced pretty cheaply. I think we may have to switch over to cable internet soon though. The bandwidth with the DSL is getting to be quite annoying. Maybe we'll get cable TV at the same time, as we've been having signal issues with broadcast lately.
Another topic change: The last two times I've had my blood preasure read (once when I gave blood in early May and another time on Friday) they both read around 140/90. Putting me in the hpertension stage 1 range. I'm guessing this likely has to do with my gaining some weight and not exercising nearly enough. I've also had lower back pain for a little over a week. Nothing too severe, but enough to know that my lower back is probably getting weak. I did some Wii Fit balance games on either Wednesday or Thursday, and those helped with the lower back pain. I know the excuse that I don't have time for exercise is pretty weak, but my typical day is: get up, go to work, come home, play with my son until Dinner, watch some TV (~30 minutes) after dinner, put my son to bed. At that point it is typically 8:00 PM, and I could probably do some Wii Fit on most days at that point, but I'm pretty wiped by then. Another option is to get up earlier and work out before I shower and leave for work, but I've been having issues getting up at 7:00 when my alarm goes off. If I were able to do that, I could probably get a half-hour workout in without much difficulty, but then there is the issue of sometimes getting a bit board of Wii Fit. Maybe with some non-rain weather I could go for a 5-7 mile bike ride in the morning, shower and head in, but the forecast for the next week or so has even more rain.
Which brings me back to the lawn care subject. Haven't we had enough rain lately? We were just hit with the second wettest April in Dayton (recorded) history, and May has been pretty wet as well, though not to the same extent. All this rain has made exercising outside, such as bike riding, as well as working on the lawn, difficult. With the lawn mowing and bush trimming I did today though, I think I did get some exercise in. That reminds me though, while I was putting some of the bush clippings into a refuse bag, one of the neighbor kids (about 7-8 years old maybe?) was biking by and asked if there was anything he could do to help. I mentioned that he could help me put the trimmings into the bag. He got off of his bike and started helping. I figured I've give him a 50 cents or a dollar when we were done, but then 2 other neighbor kids came by and decided to help as well. None of them asked for money, and they all left before the job was actually done (so I didn't get a chance to pay them, and I was only planning on paying the one who started off helping me, because he took the initiative) but it was still a really nice gesture.
And now that we are closing in on 3 AM, I think it's time for me to head off to bed. If you made it this far, I apologize for rampling so much. If you didn't make it this far, well, you shouldn't be reading this line then.
The reason I took a 3+ hour nap when my son was still awake? Well, he and my wife are actually in northwest Ohio for her sister-in-law's baby shower. I'm going to be an uncle again, probably sometime in July August or September. I stayed home because there would likely be little for me to do during the baby shower proper, and there were lots of things to do at home which can be achieved more easily while my son isn't here (he loves to "help"). Aside from the nap, I was able to mow the lawn (first time I was able to in over a week), trim the bushes, catch up on our ridiculous backlog of paperwork to be filed, and catch up on a back log of dirty dishes as well. I was really productive up until around 4:00 PM or so, and then slacked off a bit before finally getting the dishes done.
Topic change. The new computer is working out pretty well. I'm actually in Windows at the moment because I want to get the Orange box updated (far too much to download over our ~80 kB/s DSL line) but I'm dual booting with Ubuntu 11.04, which I'm liking quite a bit. I have to say I'm a bit spoiled at work with a dual monitor setup, but I may remedy that at home some time in the future. Saving money is a bit more important at the moment, what with the baby due in October and all. I haven't gotten much GPGPU programming done with the new computer, which was one of the reasons I got it, but I have done a bit more programming in general, which is helping out with understanding some of the things I'm doing at work. Another reason we got the new computer was to possibly try some video games with my son. We figured if he does bang up a keyboard, it would be better if the RAM, hard drive, and CPU were not directly underneath it. That and a stand-alone keyboard can be replaced pretty cheaply. I think we may have to switch over to cable internet soon though. The bandwidth with the DSL is getting to be quite annoying. Maybe we'll get cable TV at the same time, as we've been having signal issues with broadcast lately.
Another topic change: The last two times I've had my blood preasure read (once when I gave blood in early May and another time on Friday) they both read around 140/90. Putting me in the hpertension stage 1 range. I'm guessing this likely has to do with my gaining some weight and not exercising nearly enough. I've also had lower back pain for a little over a week. Nothing too severe, but enough to know that my lower back is probably getting weak. I did some Wii Fit balance games on either Wednesday or Thursday, and those helped with the lower back pain. I know the excuse that I don't have time for exercise is pretty weak, but my typical day is: get up, go to work, come home, play with my son until Dinner, watch some TV (~30 minutes) after dinner, put my son to bed. At that point it is typically 8:00 PM, and I could probably do some Wii Fit on most days at that point, but I'm pretty wiped by then. Another option is to get up earlier and work out before I shower and leave for work, but I've been having issues getting up at 7:00 when my alarm goes off. If I were able to do that, I could probably get a half-hour workout in without much difficulty, but then there is the issue of sometimes getting a bit board of Wii Fit. Maybe with some non-rain weather I could go for a 5-7 mile bike ride in the morning, shower and head in, but the forecast for the next week or so has even more rain.
Which brings me back to the lawn care subject. Haven't we had enough rain lately? We were just hit with the second wettest April in Dayton (recorded) history, and May has been pretty wet as well, though not to the same extent. All this rain has made exercising outside, such as bike riding, as well as working on the lawn, difficult. With the lawn mowing and bush trimming I did today though, I think I did get some exercise in. That reminds me though, while I was putting some of the bush clippings into a refuse bag, one of the neighbor kids (about 7-8 years old maybe?) was biking by and asked if there was anything he could do to help. I mentioned that he could help me put the trimmings into the bag. He got off of his bike and started helping. I figured I've give him a 50 cents or a dollar when we were done, but then 2 other neighbor kids came by and decided to help as well. None of them asked for money, and they all left before the job was actually done (so I didn't get a chance to pay them, and I was only planning on paying the one who started off helping me, because he took the initiative) but it was still a really nice gesture.
And now that we are closing in on 3 AM, I think it's time for me to head off to bed. If you made it this far, I apologize for rampling so much. If you didn't make it this far, well, you shouldn't be reading this line then.