Archive for the 'Goals' Category

I have been working on getting my LinkedIn profile up to date so I can feel comfortable inviting more people to link to me. I have included new functionality to have relevant blog posts included on my LinkedIn profile. I was struggling with how to enter my freelance web design and Linux consulting while I was a student, treat but I think I came up with a solution, so the gaps in my employment history are gone. Excellent!

Around October of last year I started using a blog marketing service called PayPerPost to make a little bit of extra money while I was going to school. In about a month’s time I had earned enough for a Nintendo Wii! Then in November life came at me fast and I ended up taking a job in Arizona. The resulting change in circumstances caused me to put my participation on hold. I had intended to come back to using PayPerPost as soon as things settled down. Well, things never really settled down, so I figured: What the hey! I’m excited this time because I’m going to be able to apply the proceeds to my arcade cabinet in progress! PayPerPost is really great. The other users on PayPerPost, called “posties,” have been great in helping me out every time I’ve had a question. It’s a great community and a great way to help you post to your blog more frequently. What’s not to love? I’m excited to see what sorts of new technologies I can find out about early as a result of my involvement with PayPerPost. If you use PayPerPost I’d love to hear about some of the experiences you’ve had with it.

I was going to wait until we were settled in our new home before writing another blog post, but it looks like that’s still going to be aways off in the distance. We found out today that circumstances are such that the closing date of our new home has been moved out about two weeks later than we were originally planning on. We were expecting to close on Thursday of this week, but now instead of a 4-day wait, we now have a 20-day wait ahead of us.

At first this seemed like a tragedy of the highest order, and my first thought was that we were not going to be able to get the house for one reason or another. Even though it upset a lot of plans, it turned out that within just a few hours of receiving the bad news everything had settled in to place and we were left with only a few minor inconveniences. We will have to pay another month’s rent on our storage unit, but that is the greatest of the frustrations. It could have been much worse.

Our friends, who have been incredibly kind and have let us stay free of charge in their guest bedroom for over six weeks now, would not accept our offer to pay them rent for the time from now until we leave. They have been a great blessing to us. Moving drained our resources and we are just now again in a position to take care of ourselves. If it weren’t for them, we would not be in the fortunate position that we are in. Without their generosity and effort on our behalf, we would still be struggling to pay rent in California awaiting the day that I finished school and got a job there.

I will try to keep things up to date if anything interesting happens between now and our new closing date.

I finally broke down and bought the Wii. I thought I would be able to buy one in the stores by now, but it looks like demand is still outstripping Nintendo’s supply, and stores are immediately selling the few Wiis that are trickling in on their delivery trucks. I ended up bidding on eBay until I accidentally won one of the auctions. After all was said and done I had paid about $400 on it. I was a little upset at first, but as soon as I got it set up and started playing with friends and family I immediately knew that I had made the right decision. My only regret so far is having waited so long to buy it.

When I got home from work today I was feeling really sick. I had a pretty bad head cold and a cough, and I am pretty sure that I had a fever, too. I arrived home just 15 minutes before the post office closed and there was a slip of paper indicating that a package that required a signature upon delivery was waiting for me at the post office about two miles away. I grabbed the paper from the mailbox and went right back to the car without even going inside the house. I wanted to get the Wii ASAP!

After I got out of the post office with the package, I opened it up in the car. The way it was packed made it impossible to remove without getting packing peanuts everywhere, but I wanted to open up the package completely in the car before I got it home. If this had turned out to be an eBay scam, then I wanted to be alone when I found out. I was fearing a Wii box filled with rocks or some other heavy substance instead of the game system I was expecting. Everything checked out, and the system seemed as brand new as it comes!

Krissy was really excited for the new Wii. She wasn’t quite as excited as I was, but that’s understandable, I guess. My coworkers were amazed to hear that my wife actually approved of the purchase and looked forward to playing video games with me on a regular basis. I love my wife!

I can hardly wait to get more friends and family involved when I can get more than just two controllers. You see, the Wii becomes more fun the more people you can get playing it together at the same time. Wii remotes are sold out almost everywhere, just like the Wii. It’s a good thing I bought that Wii remote at Toys R Us back on November 20th of last year!

Krissy was going to take the car to work today so she could run some errands. I was planning on sleeping in a little bit so I could drive at least the last leg of the trip and be awake at one o’clock in the morning. She wakes me up just before she leaves and tells me that there is a flat tire. We’ve had a slow leak for about three months, so I’ve been refilling the tire with air every couple of days. Luckily we have a small air compressor that plugs into the cigarette lighter jack. The tires cost about the same amount of money that I had set aside to purchase the Wii. Once again, the money set aside for the Wii has been taken for something more important.

I could get upset that the Wii has been yanked out from under me twice, but as I see it, at least I had the extra money we needed when a sudden need arose. The Wii can wait. I’m just glad that the tire failed now before we drove to Las Vegas. We are leaving tonight.

Maybe I can make some extra money writing articles for News Forge.

I went to two Target stores, three Costco stores, two Toys R Us stores, one Circuit City, and one Walmart location and all I got was a Wii Remote. Only one of the places I went said they even had any left today. So much for Nintendo’s claims that they would be able to meet the demand. I demand that my demand be met!

It looks like it will be a while before I get to exhaust the Wii Fund.

I thought I might be able to get a Wii on Monday morning, but it is looking less and less likely the more I read online about the popularity of the Wii and the numerous Costco locations that have already sold out. I was banking on the fact that Costco has been overlooked in previous console releases. The Xbox 360 was still easy to get at most Costco locations the day after its official launch. The only way that I might still be able to get one tomorrow is if one of the local Costco stores didn’t receive a shipment on Sunday and get them in on Monday.

If I can’t get the bundle from Costco it’s not the end of the world. I won’t really have much time to play it anyway. I was still excited for it though. The bundle comes with Zelda: Twilight Princess and Excite Truck. It is looking to be difficult to get Zelda anywhere else; everyone is sold out. Message boards online are also saying that the only way to buy a Wii Remote is from Nintendo.com, so it looks like no two-player games for a while. I will post again when I have more information. Here’s hoping that I can find the Wii somewhere tomorrow.

The money just keeps rolling in from PayPerPost. Things are even better than I expected. I now have enough for the basic system and there is still a week to go. Of course, you don’t get paid until 30 days after you post, so the money I’m getting now is for posts made a month ago. Thanks to my foresight I am on track to meet my goal!

The US Wii website has a lot of new videos of people playing the Wii for the first time. It’s great stuff if you haven’t seen the system in action yet.

I haven’t had a chance to call around and see if any local retailers have playable Wii demos set up. This just happens to be an incredibly busy week for me with a lot of unforeseen deadlines to meet, so I won’t be able to check until Thursday or Friday. I have heard reports that some Gamestop locations around the country have set up Wii displays. I’ll have to go during the day when all the kids are still in school. Early reports say that Excite Truck may not be as much fun as it looks. We’ll just have to see about that.

At Church yesterday I heard some people talking about the Wii. It seems a lot of people still don’t even know that Nintendo is releasing a new system! Unbelievable! With the Release of the Wii in the US just two days after the far-more expensive PS3, Nintendo will soon be all over the news. Once the Wii launches no news story about the PS3 will fail to mention the also brand new Wii. Let’s hope the gameplay from the new Wiimotes is as revolutionary as the system’s original codename implies.

I have some homework that’s due by midnight tonight. One would think that since this homework has a deadline so near and since I know it will take me about two hours worth of work to get it done that I would have picked it up first thing, right? Well, I am really good at finding things to do when there is a task I don’t want to work on. I filled out the rebate form for a product that was recently delivered and got it ready to go. I listened to a podcast while I looked up some information for another assignment that’s due in a couple of weeks that I haven’t started yet. I had some candy and I drank some water. I looked into the newest version of WordPress and the steps needed to upgrade. I noticed that there was a new version of Freevo just released and that got me thinking about DirectFB and df_xine. I looked and saw that DirectFB just released 1.0-rc2 and I downloaded that and started it compiling. I wrote a post for PayPerPost, and I decided to blog about how I’m procrastinating too much.

It’s time to start getting stuff done. I still haven’t decided exactly how I am going to implement it, whether I go paper or digital. Expect progress reports to come.

On Costco’s website they have information about the Ninendo Wii and the upcoming release. They say that you will be able to preorder it, but they don’t have it available yet. They have Red Steel and Twilight Princess available for preorder, though. I don’t want to do that, though, becasue Costco is well-known for their bundles and I want to wait and see if they are selling the Wii bundled with a game or two. I’m guessing they will bundle the Wii with Excite Truck and le tpeople buy Twilight Princess seperately, though. This is getting more and more exciting!