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less work please

No more web design projects.

I can’t handle anymore at the moment. I am inundated with so much to do right now and I want a break. I’ve had to purposely neglect my own website while I finish these other projects. It sucks too because I can always use the extra money and pages to put into my portfolio. But, I realize I’m in over my head and I’m a little burnt out. Maybe this’ll change sometime next year but this is it for me for now. I have a feeling that this current round of sites will probably take another couple of months to completely finish but the workload right now is huge. And it’s almost Christmas. Blah.

Besides my freelance projects, I have my full-time and part-time design jobs that also keep me extremely busy. And I’ve had to neglect the part-time a lot because of the freelance. And there’s so much I could do on a weekly basis to help them out. Soon.

I think the foremost reason I’m ready to stop is because I’m not allowing myself any time to pursue other things. I want to do so much else while I live here in LA and now that I’m funding myself and paying off my debt, I need to spend my freetime pursuing those other passions. I do not want to be a one career guy but I am content doing the things I’m doing now. Maybe a little too content as I’ve overloaded myself, but life is good. I just know that if I don’t sacrifice some of this for other stuff, I’ll regret it. And I hate regrets.

The critical part of me continues to tell myself that I need to take some courses to learn programming languages (PHP, Javascript) or software (Flash) that I don’t know. It’s not that I am not able to learn this on my freetime, it’s just I don’t have enough freetime to even begin to sit down and hash it out. Not only that but the structure of a classroom where I can learn bits sequentially would highly benefit me. There are many applications of the classroom setting that I cannot stand, where it makes the material boring and mundane. But I think that learning moderately hard computing languages will take more effort and time that I can’t just sit down and dedicate (I guess the level of difficulty can be debated). Anyway, I’m not sure if this is going to be an option either.

Changes shall be made. I need them. Bad.

how my technology habits are changing

Five years ago, I owned a Pentium II 400MHz with 128MB RAM. Today, I own a Pentium IV 2.6GHz with 1GB RAM and a laptop with Pentium M 2.1GHz and 1.5GB RAM. Five years ago I had a huge 4GB hard drive. Today, I own five 120GB hard drives and a 160GB hard drive. Five years ago, I used a CD player for all my music needs. Today, I own an iPod and listen to everything on my computer. Five years ago, I was increasingly making my own CD mixes for my entertainment. Today, I download almost everything I want and have CDs and DVDs that I bought over a year ago just sitting around.

Times have changed. Every year comes out new technology, and every year I make at least one big technological change. In July of 2000, I bought a Qualcomm 2760 from Radio Shack and signed up for Sprint PCS. I wasn’t sure if I’d have the phone for more than a year since I could barely afford the monthly payments. But, as time went on and I used the phone more, I realized my needs had changed and using a cell phone was a necessity. To this day, I still use a Qualcomm 2760. Not the same exact phone I bought 5 years ago (I had to give it up last year because it was just falling apart) but one I bought off eBay last year for $15. But, I think the time has finally come that I need to spend the big bucks to upgrade. I can’t receive normal text messages. I can’t go online. I can’t turn my phone to vibrate. My battery life is only about an hour, if even that.

There comes a time when you have to realize and give in to the technology that overwhelms your life, and my time has come. I think my biggest fear about this change is that when I get the new phone I’ll be tempted to pay extra money for text messaging service, and possibly even Internet. Which raises my monthly bills. I already pay lots of money for other things, but the fact that I am so dependent on a cellular phone is scary. It’s my only means of vocal communication to the outside world which is not a PC. I do not directly pay for a landline and have no plans to anytime soon.

And now, I shall show you my lust.

PPC-6700

This beast allows you to do anything and everything. Not only can you connect to the phone network, you can take this phone and surf this web on your home wi-fi connection, just like a laptop! It has just about any feature I’ve ever wanted in a phone. Except for the price. It’s about $600. I’m almost willing to make that purchase because I know I’ll make it last for years. And I’m not willing to go with a cheaper phone with less features.

Merry Christmas to me… :o)

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interesting week

Thanksgiving ended way too quickly, and I knew it would. I don’t get enough time off. But then again I’m way too used to taking long breaks when I fly back to Texas so I’m spoiled. Working this much is a little tiring though. I have way too much to do before the end of the year.

Sunday was such a long day. I got to the airport around 1:40pm. And that’s when it started. It didn’t end until 1am PST. I was basically in the air on airport all day long. My flight was delayed in DFW. Baggage was sent to Phoenix, and I had to take a non-stop to LAX which was delayed by two hours. If nothing else, DFW is so much easier to use now that the new Skylink is working. I hated taking buses to and from other terminals.

So my bag arrived to the house at 6:15am this morning, and I don’t go home until Friday. So I had to go to the store yesterday and fill up on only necessities. I don’t wanna spend too much because prices are so bloated compared to Wal-Mart. Yeah, I’m way too cheap. I didn’t even wear deodorant the last couple of days because I was hoping I’d get my bag back, but when I realized it wasn’t going to happen, I had no choice but to go and get some stuff.

It was nice to see family last week. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen some and not so long for others. But, it does amaze me how much we change in such a short period of time. I can’t believe that I’m old enough to say I remember when cousins weren’t alive. Or that I’m an adult in the working world. Or that I’ve done this or that way longer than you. It only gets worse, but hopefully I can enjoy everything on the way.

The Christmas season is here

You know you’re a geek if you not only setup Chrismas lights, but sync those lights to a soundtrack. Snopes reveals the name and city of this really cool display, along with some good specs.

I’m sure that this is going to become more common in the future.

Edit: 1/3/06: Well, guess what I found? Another Christmas light show, very similar to the original above, but with a complete website donated to the light show! Go to the videos section to see other shows as well.

e-mail notifications

If you are interested, I can now put you on a list that I sent out notifications when I write new posts to my blog. If you do want a notification, let me know your e-mail address and I’ll add you to the list. This way you’ll get all the breaking Micah news as it happens!

Oh, and by the way, my comments system sometimes goes a little crazy so if you receive some random code errors when you’re trying to leave a comment, just refresh the browser and they should disappear. Hopefully I can figure out what’s causing that and fix it asap.

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censoring myself

I censor myself when I write on here. I’m typically a what you see is what you get kind of guy. And my writing can show that. But, since I know I have many different ages and types of people reading this website coming from lots of different backgrounds, I try to appeal to the mass audience when I submit something for you to read. However, I’ve come to see I might have the ability to password protect some of the things I write on here, and thus could be a little more open at times.

Should I do this?

It’s not like I particularly NEED to censor myself in the first place. But, my language and/or material matter can offend people. There are topics that I don’t write about because I’m afraid of people’s reactions. I have a lot in my head, some of which shall never make it here, but some of which I wouldn’t mind putting here. I don’t know, I’m a little torn.

Maybe if I password protected and/or put a warning up about certain posts that would make me feel more comfortable? But even then, would it be appropriate? Where do I draw the line?

I write on this website because I know friends and family are interested in what I have to say or just to see how I’m doing, even if it is a little bland most of the time. I’d love to spice this up but know I have moral obligation to uphold and I know a lot of conservative minded people who read this. I’m not saying I’m some big liberal who’s gonna raise hell and display nude graphics and write about bloodshed and death and drugs. I’m just saying to free my mind would be nice and the topic matter could get a little ugly.

So, that’s my thought. I guess I’ll let this sit for a little while and I’ll figure out if I truly want to do this or not.

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it’s cloudy outside

It’s gonna rain soon. I can just feel it.

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what’s wrong with my iPod?

Apple's iPod
I have now owned my iPod since June of this year and I believe I can finally give my thoughts on this whole iPod obsession. I think it’s a nice innovation but I’m not a big fan.

In theory and practice, the Apple iPod is a really neat toy. It can hold hundreds of your favorite CDs all in one place. It’s instantly on when you hit a couple of buttons; No more waiting for the CD player to load. If you want to automatically load music (AAC or MP3) on it, there are multiple ways of doing it. You can connect it to both USB and Firewire ports to transfer files. And it’s light and small and very portable.

But that’s pretty much where my enjoyment ends. I know what I’m looking for is more like a portable hard drive which I can carry around with all of my data and media. But, unfortunately, this’ll have to do for now. Nothing seems to do what I want because everyone is afraid of DRM, or digital rights management. If the copyright laws weren’t such a big deal, I’d probably have exactly what I want. Basically what this means is that Apple requires that its iTunes media files be proprietary, or in other words you can’t use their music on any other device without illegally modifying it. So, there’s no reason to buy music from iTunes if you don’t have an iPod (unless you don’t care about portability). Simple as that.

Another problem that I have is transferring music to and from the iPod to the computer. The iPod can copy one one way: from the computer to the iPod. Apple doesn’t want you to “pirate” media to and from your friend’s or family’s other computers. Which means you can only use your iPod on one computer. Why would I want to use it on more than one computer, you might ask? For many reasons, but foremost because I listen to podcasts! I want to be able to transfer podcasts, which are completely free and legal, to and from any computer I use whether it be work or home! Why can’t I do that?!

One other thing: I hate iTunes. Can you believe it? I seriously think it’s over-bloated crap that installs extra features, icons and services onto your computer without your approval. I still prefer Winamp and use it almost exclusively. It’s smaller, faster, and does what I want quickly. It could certainly use a few features that iTunes has (and vice versa) but other than that, I’m still satisfied with Winamp. To the contrary, I must state that using iTunes on a Mac really isn’t all that bad (since I’m still used to applications being rather slow anyway), but using it on a PC is horribly slow and uncomfortable to me. It’s not designed for PC use and it wastes my resources (check your task manager and you’ll see that there are typically two or three different services running at once when iTunes is running) and time trying to figure out how to use it with my iPod. I typically have a nightmare when I want to copy over music from my playlist to the iPod. Instead of it being a click and drag, it’s more like go to the iPod playlist in iTunes and import what you want. It’s tedious, a waste of time and effort, and I can do exactly what I want with Winamp with no effort or thought.

So, I stated a few problems that I hate.

  1. It only holds music, not other files
  2. It requires iTunes to transfer music to it
  3. I can’t transfer music off of the iPod
  4. I can’t use it on multiple computers, and only one iPod per computer
  5. iTunes sucks!

Is there a solution to this mess?

I’ve been using a plugin to Winamp called mlipod. It allows me to do everything that iTunes does, but the way I want to do it rather than how iTunes forces me to. I can transfer everything using Winamp and I don’t have to have the bloated iTunes software to use it! So I just uninstall iTunes all together. Thank God!

To one up that, there’s even slicker software called Anapod that allows you to use iPod like a separate hard drive, pretty much exactly what I’m looking for. It requires a fee to use it but if you’re looking for a really great alternative to iTunes, this might be in your answer.

One more that I found in May 2009 is called Rockbox, which is an open source solution! It’s more of a complete makeover for your iPod but its features completely blow the regular iPod software functionality away. For instance, it supports multiple codecs other than mp3 and AAC, it actually has a real 5-band equalizer, crossfading, on the fly playlists, and many open source plugins.

So are there any good alternatives to the iPod that allow me to do all of these things with fast software? Not that I know of. I think the best thing to do is find out what has the best bang for the buck and then see if there is alternative software for that player. Otherwise, you’re stuck with a pretty toy that has extreme limits from its maker.

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the void

I have really been neglecting my website lately. And it’s sorta on purpose. I’m bored with it. I want to breathe new life into it but I find my millions of other distractions are the perfect excuse for me to not pay attention to this site. I hate feeling like I’m not accomplishing anything too because I have a great voice and want to express it, but my apathy and laziness really get to me a lot. Let me explain a little of what’s going on.

I currently live in two places. I have a weekday home and weekend home. Weekend home is the one I moved into last year. Weekday home is a new pad for me to stay during the week and it’s a lot closer. While I live in weekday home, I park my car and never use it during the week. I save on gas. I save on car maintenance fees. I save on parking garage fees. I save on lots of time. But the financial balance still weighs heavier on that side than what I’m doing now because I am not utilizing my time properly. I hate driving so much everday but I also hate wasting my time and paying an extra rent every month. It’s one versus the other and having a 2nd place still just feels right even though it’s costing me a lot more. Maybe I’ll change my mind by next year.

So let’s see, how, much more negativity can I blog about! :o) I guess everything so far has sounded sorta negative but overall I’m okay. Just a little overwhelmed. I have my job, my 2nd job, and my freelance jobs. And they take up 100% of the time I give them, which is never enough. I’m in over my head.

I know I can accomplish everything, but I need to pace myself because I’m getting very burnt out. I guess we’ll just see what happens in the coming weeks and months. I hope I don’t go bananas over everything! Although, that would be sorta fun!

Okay, I think I’ve done enough venting for today. I hope I can figure out a way to refresh this blog because it’s so boring!

weekend tidbits

Going to the dentist tomorrow to get my tooth bonded. Work will eventually reimburse me for most of it, unless I decide to get some extra work like whitening done while I’m there. The reason I’m not getting it capped just yet is because it would have cost almost a grand. I’m still in the be thrifty mode trying to get used to paying bills and other things. I don’t want to go hog wild with my money.

California is having a special (ed) election this November on some issues that are really important for the governor and his chances at a next term. The issues deal with abortion, teacher’s permanent status waiting period, political contributions, school funding and a few others. Nothing here seems too controversial except maybe the abortion and state spending on schools. I’ll try to at least give a little attention to it and seek to vote but I don’t see it being all that important either. Maybe I’m a little too apathetic about this one.

So what’s up with the president’s 39% approval rating? I sure am hearing a lot of media bias about this presidency and it seems they keep pointing out Bush’s religious convictions in choosing Miers, in going to war, and in his personal life in general. Not only that but this whole CIA leak going up as far as the vice president’s office makes me continue to wonder what’s next. I didn’t want a stupid president in the White House to begin with, but with the only real alternatives being Gore and Kerry in the past two elections, I think we screwed ourselves up. Nepotism, corporate contributions, and religious beliefs shouldn’t play such a big part in our leaders’ choices, but I continue to see more and more of that as time passes.

Have you ever heard of Jim Cramer? If you ever have time to watch his show on CNBC, I highly suggest tuning in. It’s a financial show on steroids, and I mean lots and lots of steroids.

During my workout at the gym yesterday evening, I had the pleasure of seeing a semi-famous celeb! Not one that many people would know unless they were fans of Freaks and Geeks, but Martin Starr and friend were there. I’ve met him two previous occasions at some Freaks and Geeks gatherings, but decided that this wasn’t an exception to go bug him. So I kept to myself but it was cool just seeing a guy who was in one of my all time favorite shows ever!

It finally rained for the first time in months earlier this week and it’s been overcast the rest of the time, or at least here in Santa Monica. Maybe back home it’s less overcast but I guess I’ll find out tonight. I’m enjoying this cooler weather and hope it’s definitely here to stay. I need the break from the heat and can’t wait to bundle up. I miss the snow sometimes.

I have a ton of projects, as usual, that need to be finished and finding the motivation to do them has been once again lacking. I have overwhelmed myself with too many responsibilities so learning time management, and making myself finish one thing after another can be a struggled when I emotionally don’t feel up to doing something. I guess living in two places is also taking its toll physically and mentally. But, as I can see it, this really is the best way for me to live right now as I try to balance time and work.

A few other things have been affecting my personal life as well but I will get to those issues in future posts.