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What’s Going Through My Head Right Now

No outlining. No pre-writing. No brainstorming. Here’s just a dump of stuff that’s kicking around in my brain at the moment…

  • I’ve got one episode left in the new season of Arrested Development and you know what? It’s not bad. I’m actually enjoying it, despite the bar being set unreachably high from the get-go. Some episodes – the Tobias ones in particular – are striking me as very similar to the Friends spinoff, Joey. On Joey, we learned that the hilarious potential of the character of Joey Tribbiani doesn’t hold up on its own. Joey needed the other friends to play off of. It wasn’t just what Joey was doing, but how it affected the group. It seems to be the same with Tobias: he can still be funny, but a lot of the fun is watching Tobias say things that made the rest of the Bluths uncomfortable or irritated. Those reactions were missing here. Due to scheduling conflicts, there really isn’t any great Bluth family moment where the whole gang is playing off of each other for an extended period of time. Does that make it bad? No, not at all. It’s still funny. It’s still the Bluths – just separately, for the most part. And at the end of the day, it’s more Arrested Development that nobody really needed to make. It’s a gift that is appreciated, and I look forward to going back through the episodes and catch all the jokes I missed the first time. I hope they make more someday.
  • Operating systems were frustrating me quite a bit over the past few days. Ubuntu was causing some problems lately: still fast, but was getting buggy. Had a hard time connecting to the home server (a necessity in this house), internet dropping on occasion, and so on. I wanted to upgrade, and potentially invest in a “closed” operating system, but Windows 8 is just atrocious-looking, and OS X is so locked down that I would be even more frustrated than I am now. I installed Elementary OS, which is a very beautiful Linux-based OS. As much as I loved it, there were some departures that I didn’t care for, and being a beta OS, there were too many bugs to make it worth my time in the long term. Finally, I’ve settled on Linux Mint, which is what I’m using at the moment. It’s a clean, slick interface that looks nice and modern. It’s Ubuntu-based, so I’m still in a comfortable environment on the backend. And the bugginess is gone – internet works, accessing my home server is a breeze, and so on. Plus, it’s still free, and it’s still Linux – which makes me a happy man.
  • Another slick office development is upgrading a few pieces around my computer. Just got rid of my wired speakers and subwoofer for a bluetooth-connected single speaker bar. Sound is pretty good, and it’s wirelessly connected to my computer. Bonus? With a push of a button, I can switch the speaker connection to my phone and stream podcasts wirelessly. Love it. Along with that, got me a really nice webcam so I can switch my phone needs to my desktop (at least my business phone needs). Additional benefit is voice search in Chrome. I feel like I’m living in the future!
  • I’ve been slipping on my book reading in the past 2 months. I have a goal of reading 25 books this year, and I’ve stalled. I pushed myself to read The Grapes of Wrath, and it became such a chore that I subconsciously found ways to avoid reading. So I ditched it for something I’m enjoying. Now, suddenly, I have several books I’m reading, all for free. The beauty is I’m not breaking any laws, either. I’ve borrowed one book from Amazon’s Kindle Lending Library, one book from my local library’s digital library, and one as a review copy in exchange for an Amazon review in the next couple weeks. Hopefully I’ll make up some ground so that I can go after another good literary piece.
  • Today, I get to bottle some home-brewed beer. I’m putting them in repurposed glass bottles and capping them. Man, I’m excited about this. Previously, I had to carry around giant plastic bottles of home-brewed beer. Now it’s going to actually feel like a good beer!
  • For a birthday present, my wife bought me a heavy punching bag and boxing gloves. I’ll be hanging it from a beam in my basement. I can’t wait to take out a little aggression on that bad boy and start training like a fighter! I’ve wanted a heavy bag for a number of years now. Very exciting birthday present!

I think that’s about enough for now. What’s on your mind?

arrested development, linux, lists