So, for many reasons I’ve been neglecting this site for a while.  And, I’m going to take the easy way out as far as maintaining it.  It’s going to be a conduit for my tweets.  Yes, I’m on twitter. :p  No sense in typing up the same thing 2 (or more) times.

I’ve been horrible about keeping up with this site lately.  Ouch. Anyway, tonight ended on a pretty high level of self-esteem for me.  I’ve been pretty reluctant and in a serious state of disbelief about the whole working-out regimen I’ve been following.  I’ve been working out very regularly since mid May of 2008.  I saw a lot of my family for the first time in months over Christmas and they told me I was looking “skinny” and “very good.”  Not things I’m used to hearing, so I would laugh them off.

I’ve been having to completely re-vamp my entire wardrobe.  I put it off as long as I could, probably because I didn’t really think I’d have much success with this.  But, I’ve lost 40 pounds since May 2008.  There’s no way that much of my current wardrobe would work much longer.  And that leads me to why I feel pretty good tonight.  I wore different clothes to my personal training session tonight because I was tired of the others and the way they fit.  Tonight, the first thing my trainer said to me was “Damn, you’re looking skinny and fit.  Are those new clothes?  Holy shit!  Good job!”  It was pretty flattering when my family told me that, but it just really took hold tonight hearing that from my trainer, Robert. 

It’s been a pretty tough journey.  I started this because both sides of my family have history of heart problems and I just wasn’t feeling fantastic on a daily basis.  My trainer’s been a big part of my success by teaching me how to eat properly and really pushing me beyond anything I thought I could physically do.  So, tonight for the first time it just really sunk in with what I’ve done.  And, I feel pretty damn good. :-) 

Vacation?  No, I didn’t really have a vacation.  I took a few days off in July, though.  Anyway, here’s a rundown of what I did during this summer.

May: Joined a gym for the first time in my life.  And got talked into having a personal trainer for 3 weeks a month.    Started going to the gym 5-6 days a week immediately after work and on weekend afternoons.

My sister graduated from university.  We had her a graduation dinner and celebrated Mother’s Day on the same weekend.  They were conveniently on the same weekend.  Got my mom an iPod for Mother’s Day.  We got my sister an iPod Touch for her graduation gift.

June: Discovered that going to the gym suddenly gave me more energy than intaking large amounts of stimulants.  It was during this time I decided I needed a new hobby.   I had been putting off buying a Playstation 3 for a while and finally decided it was time.  Bought Grand Theft Auto IV, Assassin’s Creed and Metal Gear Solid 4.

Had to get my dad an iPod for Father’s Day.  He was trying to steal my mom’s.  He takes to it like a duck to water; he loads more songs onto it than my mom has on hers and uses it in the yard while doing yard work.   Now, my entire family has an iPod of some sort.  And the squabbling stops.

Spent a Saturday down at Rock Eagle giving a presentation about the 4-H Technology Team and Science, Engineering and Technology club.  Led an online scavenger hunt that afternoon during one of the conference’s events.

Went to Helen with my mom and brother again.  My brother really likes Helen.  And we went to Stone Mountain to see the laser show with my sister.  None of them had ever been to Stone Mountain before and they wanted to check it out.

While playing the PS3, I decided my current television wasn’t good enough.  So, I bought a 19″ LCD HDTV for my bedroom so I could play for hours without monopolising the living room one.

I managed to complete Grand Theft Auto IV sometimes between June and July.

July: Continued playing video games during my newly found free time.   Took off a few days in late July for some personal time.  One day I spent in Atlanta at 4-H State Congress doing interviews for the portfolio portion of the state demonstration contest.  I got to read over many youngsters’ portfolios of project work.

For the rest of those days off, I stayed at home and promptly played through Metal Gear Solid, Metal Gear Solid 2, Metal Gear Solid 3 and Metal Gear Solid 4.  I didn’t sleep very much.  But it was worth every minute I spent playing.  My eyes and thumbs hurt, but I didn’t care.

Got an XM radio in my car, courtesy of my mom.  She said it was part of my graduation present.  Just a few years late.  But, hey, it’s pretty sweet.  Better late than never.

August: Still working on finishing a myriad of games I’ve bought but haven’t had the chance to play.  I also bought a PSP to add to my ever growing gaming collection.

Visited Alan’s fancy dorm/apartment at Georgia State and hung out with Josh and Crystal last weekend in Roswell.

This weekend, we’re going to the Braves/SF Giants game in Atlanta.  My mom and brother have never been and they wanted to go.

Oh yeah, and that whole gym thing…I’ve managed to lose over 20 pounds since May.

I got a Playstation 3 a few weeks back.  I need some PSN friends.  My online ID is colonelpannik.  Feel free to send me a friend request.

/end shameless self promotion

In preparation for the release of OS 10.5 Leopard, I decided to upgrade the RAM in my PowerBook. It had only 512MB, now it has 1GB. But the path I took to get there is much more entertaining than the result.

I had been looking at RAM for a while. Apple charges way too much for it. Obviously. So, I was looking at newegg.com and trying to decide on what I wanted. I found some compatible RAM, but once I compared the prices to it on newegg to some brick and mortar stores I wasn’t going to be saving much. And, besides, I have a lot of BestBuy gift certificates that I need to use.

I went down to BestBuy last night and “purchased” 512 MB of RAM for my PowerBook. It didn’t cost me anything, courtesy of the gift certificates. I was happy.

Well, I got home only to realise that I didn’t have a screwdriver small enough to open the RAM bay on the bottom of my PowerBook. Ugh. I decided to leave it alone and go buy one in the morning.

Just in case you’re interested in upgrading YOUR PowerBook RAM you need to buy a Phillips #0 screwdriver. Yes, the screws are that small. Nothing else will work properly. I found a precision screwdriver set for $5 and it worked well.

It took 3 people to pull the cover off the RAM bay. I was getting frustrated, so I let Erica have a go. She got 1 out. I tried again and got frustrated again. Then I let Ben have a try. Ben got the remaining screws out.

I pulled the battery out and popped the RAM in. Turned on the computer and…it didn’t show that there was more memory in the computer. Crap. So, for about 25 minutes I tried a myriad of ways of popping the RAM in and out and turning the PowerBook back on. Nothing worked.

I started to get worried. I thought that maybe the secondary slot on the Logic Board had gone bad. My fears became even more founded when I used the OG RAM and placed it in the secondary slot. When I turned on the PowerBook, I heard a beeping sound along the lines of “omg, I don’t have any RAM!” Ugh.

Well, I popped the original RAM back into it’s slot. Then I tried once more to see if the RAM would fit before I resolved to getting my Logic Board replaced. On the last try, I suppose I popped the RAM in at the appropriate 30 degree angle. Because when I turned on the PowerBook, it worked.

Here it is:

This is what I did on my day off; I played hand model.

Also, the iPod touch is an amazing war driving device. It picks up at least 4x the networks as my PowerBook. Just in case you were wondering what else it’s good for. ;)

Went down to Jekyll Island/St. Simon’s Island with Erica, Ben, Josh, Crystal and Robbie.

Here are the highlights:

- Found two big horseshoe crabs on the beach.

- We played beach football.

- We rescued a seagull with a broken wing and took him to the Georgia Sea Turtle Centre.

- Ate dinner on St. Simon’s Island.

- Caught sea creatures in tidal pools.

- Got a nasty sunburn on my feet.

I have decided that I need a vacation.  There are little things that are beginning to piss me off for no reason what-so-ever.  I’ve been yelling a lot more (than normal) when I drive.  Or when I’m in a store and wanting to get out in a hurry and I can’t because someone can’t work the self-checkout lane.

Unfortunately, most of the people I’d like to go on a “vacation” with are either in school or working.  So, I may just take time off for myself very, very soon and not do much of anything.

Bah.  I probably need to sit down and pick some days I want.

Well, I watched the WWDC 2007 keynote this evening. I’m a little miffed it’s not available as a download in iTunes yet, but the streaming was MUCH better than the Macworld keynote back in the spring. I expect it to be in iTunes sometime soon; I’d rather watch it again later and be able to pause it for an extended period of time.

Anyway, there’s lots of cool things going on with Leopard (Mac OS 10.5) and I’m pretty excited about it being available this October. I’ll be glad when the UI is uniform and not mixed; I’m tired of plastic, brushed metal and whatever-you-call-the-in-between-theme. It doesn’t matter that much to me, but it’d be nice if it were uniform. I’m not gonna bore you with details here; you can watch the keynote yourself.

There were some highlights. Hilarious PC & Mac guy introduction. Gamers will be excited to hear that EA Games will be releasing games on the Mac platform at the same time as the Windows platform now. No more waiting and many, many more titles will be available. So, no more of that “no games for Mac” whining.

The things, though, that killed me were these. During the new iChat demonstration, Jobs fired up his version of iChat and said “I don’t have many friends. My only friend is Phil Schiller”. So, they were going through the demo of iChat and were showing the new “background” feature. Now, you can do AV chats through iChat with a background. Much like the “green screen” segment of “Who’s Line is it Anyway?”.

Schiller threw in an “Obi-Wan hologram” effect and started reciting “Star Wars” lines, and you could see Jobs trying not to smile. Then, Schiller demonstrated another effect that allowed you to be the “mouth” of a photo. It, basically, had an alpha channel for the mouth and inserted yours in it’s place. He did a turn as George Washington and then a brief turn as Steve Ballmer. Steve Jobs and the audience were dying laughing. Jobs was trying hard not to choke on his bottled water. Pretty cool update to iChat, hilarious demonstration. Schiller’s a pretty funny guy. I enjoy each time they let him do a demonstration.

And, the funniest thing (to me, anyway) was Steve Jobs’ slip-up of calling “Windows” “Winders”. He promptly corrected himself, but his choice of pronunciation reminded me of a certain “character” I know. It’s really, probably only funny to myself and a few others who know about the person who says “Micrasoft Winders” a lot.

I guess the best thing, though, is knowing that when Leopard comes out I can just pop down to the local Apple store now. No more do I need to drive to Buckhead or order it online. Athens/Watkinsville now has it’s very own authorised Apple Specialist. They’re located on 316 across from Lowes and are called PeachMac.

Oh yeah…Apple has ported Safari out to Windows XP and Vista now. I still don’t know how I feel about that. But if you wanna test drive it, you can download the public beta here.

Just a few things.  I’ve been so bad about keeping this up lately.

1. Last weekend was Mother’s Day Weekend.  We drove back to visit our parents and say “Happy Mother’s Day” to our mother.  There have been a slew of really bad forest fires in that part of the state lately.  I had heard about it but I didn’t realise how bad it was until I experienced it.  When the winds blew just right on Saturday, the air was full of smoke.  You had to drive with your headlights on at 10am just to see the other vehicles on the road.  There was no visibility.

And just as quickly as the smoke rolled in, it went away.  The winds changed and it was clear Saturday afternoon and all day Sunday.

2. The older I get, the more I stay clumsy.  I’ve always been clumsy.  My mother calls it “accident prone”.  I call it unlucky.

Case in point.  I went to the bathroom early one morning this past week.  I thought I had a “map” of where everything was.  But I didn’t.  I managed to run into the edge of a shelf and bruise the area between my eyebrow and eyelid on my left eye.

3. I saw someone that almost fall down the other day.  It was funny.  He jumped over a small concrete barrier, misplaced his foot and tried to catch his balance.  I sat in my car and watched it unfold and laughed. Hard.  Why do we laugh when people hurt themselves in a non-lethal manner?

4. My brother is 14 and really into video games.  Last weekend, he got “Spiderman 3″ for his PS2.  He got so excited when he unlocked “black suit Spiderman” that he squealed like a little girl.  I’m still laughing at that.