yeah, i can’t even remember the time i had insomnia like this. i’m saving my last ambien pill for tuesday evening so that i can make sure i get enough sleep prior to returning to work on wednesday. i think i probably had too much caffeine this evening which didn’t help matters any. i’m trying to be as productive as possible since i’m up anyway. i was able to add a couple of new features to the site, relatively small but somewhat useful.at this point in the holiday break i’m actually looking forward to getting back to work. one week of sitting around and doing nothing isn’t all that great. i’m starting to get a bit restless.my boredom says hello: 

so i’m trying to figure out what the weather is and my two different operating systems are providing different temperatures. thanks to the wonderful parallels virtualization software i can run both windows vista & mac os x at the same time and as per the first picture below the apple widget claims it’s 25F here in chicago and 45F in austin. however, at the same time the microsoft widget claims it’s 29F here in chicago and 35F in austin. they just can’t agree. wow, i must be pretty bored if i have resorted to writing about that.

okay. the sun is coming out now. i guess i should try to get to sleep again. i think i’ll call this my mid-morning nap. 

i have returned to chicago and was graciously greeted with a winter storm. although, in my opinion it most certainly didn’t turn out to be as bad as i had expected. no pics from this snow experience as i only bothered to go outside and walk through it once and when i did, it was just way too wet to want to deal with the camera in it.

my sleeping pattern was thrown off for some reason. i just couldn’t get to sleep last night and ended up with about two or three hours of sleep last night. i tried to nap but after an hour or so i woke up and just couldn’t get back to sleep.

no big plans for the next few days. going to try and take advantage of these last four days of vacation and just relax and catch up with a few friends. no big plans for new year’s, going to a party with a friend but i’m hoping it will be a low-key evening for the most part.

i’ve been entertaining myself with wikipedia over the last few days and i’ve learned some AMAZING things, including some interesting things about lake michigan. lake michigan covers more surface area than the country of croatia. the average depth along the chicago shoreline is 15-35 feet, however the lakebed it littered with tons of crap including ship wrecks and airplanes from world war II. history lesson for the day.

and now i must return to finish the last movie of the day. just about to finish the holiday which caps off a full day of other not-so-great films such as i, robot and maid in manhattan (shut up, don’t even start with me. there was seriously nothing better on tv.). 

i believe this marks the fourth or fifth year in a row that i’ve gotten sick over holiday break. it’s almost as though i’m too busy to be sick and then all of a sudden i have a few days off and the sickness takes hold. luckily it’s just a cold so it’s not too bad.

of course getting here was an ordeal all on its own … got an automated call from the airline on friday that said my 7pm flight to dallas had been cancelled. of course they rescheduled me for a new flight the next morning. sadly, the new flight had me connecting in new orleans. i was up at 4am on saturday so that i could get to the airport in a timely fashion only to arrive and have my flight delayed half an hour. we finally board 45 minutes after the scheduled departure only to have to sit in the queue to take off for another half an hour or so. of course by the time we get to new orleans i have missed my noon connection to dallas and have to try and get rebooked on the 3pm flight to dallas. that airport is all sorts of screwed up and the people were rude and made me go up to the main ticketing area to get rebooked. after going through security again and everything, i was finally on my way to dallas.

so i’ve been here since saturday and have had a nice, relaxing time. i have things i need to get done for work but i’ve just been wanting to relax. i’ll get to those later this weekend i suppose. so it’s back to chicago tomorrow afternoon.

that’s all i’ve got (for now).

I only went outside once or twice this weekend and when I did the snow was blowing so hard that I couldn’t hold my phone steady enough to take a decent picture, so instead I shall post a picture from two weeks ago and we can all pretend it was from this weekend’s snow storm.

i am thrilled to report that after nearly three weeks without a computer i once again am back online in a normal fashion. after finally getting the second part in and replacing it on my computer, it was determined that the repairs didn’t fix it and they had no idea what it was. so they gave me a new computer. so now i have an upgraded processor, video card, larger hard drive, better dvd burner and the LED backlit screen. super excited about it. i have forgiven apple for putting me through the last two weeks because they have definitely made up for it.that is all. for now. 

for the first time ever i am incredibly annoyed with apple and am on the verge of becoming a non-supporter. my computer has been at the apple store for two weeks now and they still have no clue when they are going to be able to fix it. makes me so very angry.

The snow has begun to fall and it is so exciting

I am going on 14 days without a computer at home. I am on the verge of going crazy. I love my iPhone but it just isn’t cutting it. Apple has had it for more than a week, I have officially started losing faith in them

Guess who is enjoying today’s bear’s game from an executive suite?