11:48 CDT Friday 07/02/2004

I have officially moved into my apartment in the Chicago suburbs. I still have stuff strewn about everywhere, but I'm slowly unpacking and finding a place for everything. Pretty chaotic yet, though.

Todd, Ben and I celebrated my triumphant return last night with a visit to a new and wonderful bar/restaurant on the north side, called the Hop Leaf. It was most excellent. They have great variety and quality of food, along with dozens of delicious beers, heavy on the Belgian ales, all served in appropriate glasses, which is swell. Ooh, I'm getting hungry again..

Anyway, got to run or something.

17:41 CDT Monday 07/05/2004

New pictures! New pictures! Perhaps you will enjoy it?

Yeah, anyway, I finally got the pictures posted from when Kathleen and I went to Philadelphia an embarrassingly long time ago. Enjoy.

Ding ding! Round two. Having just moved into my new apartment in the Chicago area, I took some pictures documenting bits of the move. See my new place! Be tempted to come visit me. I have a couch! It'll be swell.

Well, I'm about internetted out. Time to make some dinner. Enjoy the latest.

18:09 CDT Saturday 07/10/2004

It looks like I've got a lazy weekend almost half behind me, and more of the same ahead. Fine by me, though, as this place could still use some organization and whatnot. Or maybe I'll play video games..

The new job has been really fantastic so far. Within two days, I had developed software that my group uses regularly. For the first day or so, I was mostly just setting up my desktop PC with the GNU/Linux distro of my choice, in this case, Gentoo for it's easy setup and configurability. My favorite days at Sprint were the days when I could just hack all day on a program to make our lives as a computer monitoring shop easier, rather than my normal work. Every day so far at my new job has been at least as good if not better in that regard. Yup, I'm pretty psyched. :)

The office is interestingly decorated, to say the least. Everything is either bare metal or lime green. It reminds me of stories of internet companies during the dot bubble, except no video arcade or pool tables. Sprint, on the other hand, did have füssball and table tennis, so points are awarded for that. We do, though, have snacks and soda for the taking. I'm quite happy with the setup.

Woo and yah!

23:15 CDT Monday 07/19/2004

Updates have certainly been few and far between lately. I would say that is mostly to do with my vastly reduced amounts of free-time while at work. It's funny. With the new job, I'm actually pretty busy. I still manage breaks and comfortable amounts of down-time, but I'm on the whole much busier than I was while at Sprint. I see this all as a good thing. :)

So, what have I been up to, you ask? This past weekend I managed tons of fun and a bit of travel. I went into town and met up with Ben, and we went to Old St. Pat's World's Largest Block Party. It was pretty much your standard Chicago summer street festival, the type of which I have greatly missed. Headlining on Friday was Guster, (Why do I even link any more..?) and they rocked the house. Ben and I ran into fewer people than we expected, but those we did run into also seemed to be having their own respective swell times.

On Saturday morning, Ben drove me to the airport and I headed down to Kansas City to see (conga-roll, please..) Guster again! Along with Ben Folds! Wow! The show was also fantastic, and they played a lot of different tunes, which was nice. Both acts were very natural together and played very well off of each other. They did several songs together, and I would say those were definitely the high-light. I'd recommend the show, but apparently, that was the last night of their touring together.

So, what am I up to in the near future, you might ask next. Well, work will likely be fun as I continue to learn a ton. More notably, Kathleen is flying in to see my new apartment this weekend, but before we get too comfortable here, we're heading down to Peoria to visit with those family members of mine in the area. It should be good, low-key fun. Then, who knows what's on the horizon?

Anyway, if I sound overly sunny, it's probably because I'm just in a darn good mood. Listen to Modest Mouse.

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