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February 28, 2006

ye olde days

I was looking at a Flickr gallery of old-skool gif images from the BBS days and waxing nostalgic. We were lucky enough, in our town of 400 people in ruraler-than-rural Kreamer, PA, to have Danny Shambach's Strawberry Fields BBS. It wasn't a huge operation. I remember when he added a whopping second phone line. These were in the days of 2400 baud modems, when the file transfer protocols would die in the middle of a transfer because somebody picked up the phone, and there went your whopping 140K download.

The internet has come so far. Do you realize that browsers used to have an option for turning off image downloads...and people used to use that option? Time was, we'd go to a computer show to buy shareware games and utilities on 5.25 and 3.5 inch floppies and use them as uploading chits on sites where you had to upload a certain amount of original content before you were allowed to download new stuff. That's how the 'net got built: you wanted to leech, you had to share first. Or you paid a few bucks, which went towards the purchase of a freeware CD-ROM that would provide thousands of screensavers and solitaire clones for downloading pleasure.

I'm going to take great pleasure myself someday in being an old fogey of the internet. Heck, it's hard to go back much further than somebody with my exposure to it....before I started hitting the World Wide Web, most of the people who did so had helped to invent the thing!

I kinda want to buy a domain and set up a BBS-style site on it. Lots of FTP directories for user contributions, forums, and only give our logins to friends and family. Maybe recapture some of the glory of the frontier days of the 'net.

Anyway, things are going just fine up here. Spring is on the way. The next few months have some activities, but there is some quiet time in the near future. I am content.

I did a sample Myers-Briggs personality test today. I am a type INFP. My boss mentioned that he is an INTP. Funny how much difference a single letter makes.

This page has a sample test that gives you a four-letter MB personality type.

This page explains the 16 possible types fairly well.

Comment away! Note that I do have to approve comments, but that's only to prevent comment spam. I'll definitely approve your comment if you post.

Posted by Mark at 10:18 PM | Comments (1)

February 27, 2006

doing better

I am actually having a pretty decent day, which is nice since I've been in a bit of a funk lately. This weekend I came to some conclusions about some things that I think are enabling me to put a lot of stuff into perspective and be happier about some things. So that is good.

Kara took part of the CPA today, and hopefully it went well. She didn't feel that she had really studied enough to probably pass it, but as long as she improves that is the important part. I think she does better every time she takes a part and that is a good thing.

Her mum and Aunt Janet wanted to surprise her with a visit on Sunday, so I picked them up from the train station. She had sent me to the store to get some soda and orange juice, and I brought that stuff up the stairs and then said "Oh, I found these other things there too." She was pleasantly surprised.

Also this weekend, I started brewing the Porter that Mike and Matt got me a kit for this Christmas. Five gallons of dark, chocolatey beer are bubbling away in a bucket by the back door. It's fun to watch the CO2 bubbles rise through the airlock.

I'm off to meet up with Kara and get a post-CPA celebratory cheeseburger.

Posted by Mark at 05:30 PM | Comments (1)

February 23, 2006

nothing much

I had a bit much fun at Corrib last night and am consequently a little slow on the uptake today. Thank goodness for free soda and Spaghetti-Os. (the soda is free...not the Spaghetti-Os. although that would be nice)

I got nothin' much to say, but I feel like I should get back into the habit of blogging anyway. I woke up. I came to work. I'm doin' some stuff. That's about it.

I might go take a walk around the building later this afternoon. I kinda want to do some more research into houses, see what is out there. Um, that is all. Nothing much to see here.

Posted by Mark at 12:42 PM | Comments (0)

February 22, 2006

ski, house, job

I have been slowly catching up on Matt's blogs, so I'll write just a bit.

I went to Lake Placid with the Midd-West HS ski club two weekends ago, where I discovered that:

I did make it from the top of the mountain to the bottom, and to Mike and his patience I will be eternally grateful. It made me hurt in ways I have not felt since perhaps High School Cross-Country.

I guess the "not like riding a bike" part isn't entirely accurate, as it wasn't like I was flailing my way down the hill out of control. I was making turns. They were not graceful by any means, but I was turning. It was more like getting on a bike and riding, then discovering that every time you turned the pedals, ogres would appear and beat your legs with hammers. My muscles are not used to such exertion, sadly.

In other news, Mom is home, I am done with travels for a bit, and things now have the opportunity to calm down. I forgot to have Syracuse send BU a transcript, so my application hasn't been finished yet. It was sent out this morning. Maybe for my 28th birthday, I'll be accepted, and that can be my Big Birthday Thing for this year.

Kara and I are going to back away from the house search for just a bit so she can focus on the CPA; I may just continue on my own to investigate the possibilities. She, however, didn't feel she could give ample time to studying both accounting and real estate, and work has got to come first. So we're putting things officially on hold until she gets the results of her end-of-April CPA exam in early June. As I said, though, I'm going to continue to see what is out there, even if it is just looking at emails from the realtor on a daily basis.

Work is work. I occasionally accomplish something neat or learn something new. Mainly, though, I'm excited about learning more about the business side of things. The level of enthusiasm here is either lacking, or just hidden. I suspect the latter, but that doesn't make it any more fun. Oh well. I go to work, I do some stuff, I get paid. For right now, that's enough.

Posted by Mark at 09:38 AM | Comments (2)

February 07, 2006

stuff again

I am kinda stressed. I need a haircut.

Skiing this weekend should be fun but I have a lot to get through between now and then.

I have a work thing to go to at 6 that is optional and right now I just don't feel very much like going to it.

Posted by Mark at 03:13 PM | Comments (0)

February 03, 2006

quick update

I know I planned to write more often but it's been an especially hectic week.

My MBA interview on BU on Monday went quite well I think. I should find out in a few weeks whether or not I am accepted, and I'll go from there.

No big weekend plans, even for the Super Bowl. I usually at least go out to a bar to watch the game, but I don't know if I will this year. I might just stay home and make some wings. I know I'm not supposed to eat wings on Weight Watchers and all, but I can cheat a little for the big game.

Speaking of which, I'm down 8 pounds. Hopefully that trend will continue until I am at a more comfortable level.

Mom is doing pretty well; her white blood cell count is climbing again and she should be able to start the final stage of treatment soon, which means she gets to go home.

Mike is playing the lead in Guys and Dolls. I'll get to hang out and ski with him next weekend at Lake Placid; I wish I could take Friday off from work but it doesn't look like I'll be able to. Also, Kara has a work dinner to which significant others are invited, so I am going to head over to the ski resort early Saturday morning. We are going luging on Saturday night.

Matt has settled in to his new job at Accenture in Philly and is liking the post-collegiate life. If you are reading this, send me your new address.

That's it for now.

Posted by Mark at 11:17 AM | Comments (0)