WordCamp Portland is this September, and I’m going! It sounds like a good time, with some useful material… and frankly, for $10 for lunch, dinner, and a tshirt, that’s a hell of a cheap date regardless of what I may learn. Perhaps I’ll see some of you there?

Just wanted to wish my friends Dan and Moonrise happy tidings on this, their wedding day! (It was a fantastic wedding, good times had by all.)

Also wanted to wish Jessica a happy happy birthday in about 3 minutes. Happy birthday, sweetie!

It may be a fruitless endeavor, but I’m trying to think about how to better organize my life. I have a lot of (often) disparate interests — keeping track of them has proven to be cumbersome and problematic, not withstanding my current living situation itself being chaotic.

I’d like to make a concerted effort to improve my organization and workflow, so that I might actually post, and more importantly, create. And do so in the places appropriate to the subject — this single-site consolidation I’ve done may have been a mistake. Well, just as a heads up, I may be incommunicado for a little bit longer, while I figure out what the hell I’m doing.

Way out in the water, see me swimming.

We’ve been experiencing some radio silence here, and I think it’s time to do something about that. The past month has been a busy one, starting off the month with a camping trip in the Hoh Rainforest out on the Olympic Peninsula with my girlfriend, followed very shortly afterward by a 12 day stint back east in Vermont and New Hampshire for a family reunion and annual trustee meeting, all of which went quite well and was a great time had by all.

I’ve been continuing to do the job hunting thing, with the occasional lucky break that has yet to pan out. Case in point: while I was back east, I got an email from Microsoft about an SDET position that I’d applied for a few months back, wanting a phone interview. I arranged for that (standing out in Meredith, in the rain, as there is zero cell coverage at Squam, so this was basically my only option), and it went reasonably well. Lucky break! But, it has yet to pan out — I was told that HR would be in contact with me within a few days, two weeks ago. I’m not sweating it, though. They’ll either call or they won’t.

On the same day I got the email from Microsoft, I had a chat with my cousin and her boyfriend, who run Mac Ranch out in Steamboat Springs, Colorado. I’m not sure how many realize it, but I do/did have my Apple support certifications, and it just so happens one of their techs is leaving sometime soon… so now I’m in the process of re-certifying and upgrading my Apple certs, with the awareness that I might be moving to Colorado if I don’t end up moving back to Seattle. I figure that regardless of whether the Mac Ranch or Microsoft gigs pan out, it’s 1) a good sign that I’m getting the occasional interview now; and 2) re-certifying is a worthwhile endeavor that could even potentially help me get a job here in Portland assuming I don’t take/get the two already mentioned.

We’ll see if it holds true, but in theory, I should know what I’m doing next by the end of the month. That will be a welcome change.

These last three years were God’s great kick in the teeth to me, and it hasn’t been easy. But things like these make me want to take back the ball and throw it really hard at the back of somebody’s head, like, I told you, motherfucker. If that makes sense, great. If not, I can’t explain it. (“Oh FUCK” by The Reverse Cowgirl)

Great blog, great writer, great quote.

It’s a beautiful day here in Portland — not too hot, not too humid, sunny but still with clouds in the sky (I have always been fan of a sky with texture), and a moderate breeze blowing through. This is pretty damn close to perfect in my view. Just got back from having lunch with my brother, with much coffee fueled discussion on a number of subjects that I won’t bother enumerating here. Suffice it to say, it was a good way to spend a few hours, and leaves me wanting to write a bit.

There are some things I simply don’t talk about on the blog, for a variety of reasons — you won’t see me discussing sex much, though I’ll freely admit I read several people who do. I try to keep the emotional baggage off the site as well (though they do happen from time to time). This is mostly because I fully realize that I’m a complete sap. I’m a hopeless romantic with an overdeveloped connection to the unrequited, and an underdeveloped sense of romantic objectivity. I’ve always been the moon-eyed lovelorn kid. I somehow doubt that’s going to change any time soon — I mean hell, I’m still beating myself up over a relationship that ended nearly two years ago, and still stuck on a girl I’ve not spoken to in a year and a half. (Working on moving on. Have a girlfriend again, and trying to let go of some of that baggage. Harder than it sounds.)

I COULD regale you with stories of emotionally charged dreams and idle thoughts and everything else, but frankly it just comes off as whiny, since it fails to affect any meaningful change in how I feel or my behavior — if it was remotely epiphanous and life-changing, perhaps I’d be less reluctant to share it. Sometimes some things strike a chord, though, and are worth sharing regardless. Case in point:

There is a sacredness in tears. They are not the mark of weakness, but of power. They speak more eloquently than ten thousand tongues. They are messengers of overwhelming grief…and unspeakable love. (John Irving, by way of Melissa Gira, by way of Clayton Cubitt)

Just wanted to say congratulations on graduating to Erica, Claire, Kate, Kelly, Casey, Beth, Vanessa, Colin, and everyone else at RISD who graduated today, some of whom I know I’m forgetting to list (for such oversight, I abjectly apologize). You’re done! Huzzah!

“The best laid plans…” and all that. Apologies for the slow posting. For what it’s worth, the day before flying back to Portland, I came down with a hell of a cough that has been driving me bonkers ever since. At some point, I imagine it’ll go away, but in the meantime, it hasn’t exactly put me in a posting mood (after a string of coughing, most of the time all I really want to say is “fucking hell…”).

Despite the cough, I’ve been keeping busy the past week or two catching up on things that I’d let slide while gone for the month (finally did my taxes today, woo! …and yes, I did in fact file an extension when I realized my paperwork was in Portland and I was in DC, so no guff about procrastinating this time). I’ve also been spending a fair bit of time with my friend Jessica (not going to jinx it by trying to define it into a neatly compartmentalized relationship, but I will say I’ve been really enjoying her company, and leave any conclusions to be made to the reader).

I didn’t get the LaCie job, which is a shame, but I remain optimistic about finding a reasonable position somewhere in the Portland area (not that it’s a requirement, but it would be nice… I’m also applying elsewhere, just less so). I’ve also decided it’s time to try revising my resume again, to see if I can elicit more responses from my job hunting attempts.

Will get back to posting more regularly soon.

I’ve spent the past few days staying with Scott, Shane, and Brian down in Arlington, doing the sightseeing thing through DC. It’s been good fun, and each day I completely filled the compact flash cards I have (two 2gb cards)… this may sound like a lot, but given that I was shooting raw, that’s really only about 500-550 images total. Now that I HAVE those images, of course, I need to actually sift through them, do any post processing I feel is necessary, and upload them… which in some ideal world will be after I move to Zenphoto. So, time willing, maybe by the end of the week.

Ice cream parlors that are open 24 hours a day are a brilliant invention of modern society. That is all.