and now, for your daily dose of pauly d.
so that last blog post never got finished, i.e. i suck at these. but that's okay, because no one reads this, right?
so, here's what's been going on:
- hpo hrt (the project i've been working on for the better part of this year) is winding down because funding was cut, so we're basically down to fixing bugs and getting a very stable release, rather than continuing to add more features.
- the annual axiom holiday party is coming up. do i have date? ehhh..hahah.
- uva band day, and the last home game of the 2010 season, vs. maryland. more on that later.
annd that's about it.
'bout that time, eh chaps? righto.
heeeere's another blog post. i suck at updating this thing..sorry to disappoint any of my faithful readers! i know how much you care.
so.
all right, let's try that again!
h'ooookay, so. last real blog was from before convention, so i guess i have a good bit to go over. here goes:
- hit a the year mark working at keymind. still waiting on evaluations, which will hopefully be soon. had one (technically two) contracts end last friday, but two bigger projects are both due at the beginning of october, which is coincidentally the move-in date for me and ziqi to the condo we finally settled on (assuming our application goes through fine, of course). it's basically the same distance that i am to work now, but it's on the other side of i395. then there's the conference opener football game for uva the very next day, plus carolyn might be coming up? will be a busy weekend..also had our second real happy hour for work, which was similar to the first, but ended a bit differently. missed the second team building game night, because of convention (i think). started refactoring effort of hpo hrt in earnest, with rick and kathy, integrating spring.net, nhibernate, and other good stuff. s'about it?
- went to national junior classical league convention, at north dakota state university, fargo, nd. pretty awesome time; the vjcl did a tour as part of it, tacking on two and a half days before (one and a half of them in minneapolis) and after (ending up back in minneapolis, because the plane tickets+tour were cheaper than flying directly to fargo). plus it gave us vsclers a good excuse to hang out with each other beforehand. we hit the mall of america on our first day, where a number of us wound up watching inception with these "d-box" seats, which are like the moving/vibrating things from that one kings dominion ride, minus the 3D glasses. three fsclers (shawn, travis, and heather) roadtripped all the way up, and shared some drinks with another teacher i previously met at uva classics day, before crashing in our hotel room the night before convention, which was good times..finally getting to convention, it was a lot of the same old, and yet a lot of different things..the dorms were amazing, hahah! though the pool was nowhere to be found
the very first night, we had a tornado warning and had to all go out into the 1st floor hallway (where i talked to sroka for the second time since last year's convention in cali). did the same ludi and olympika as last year (swimming, track & field, volleyball, soccer, bit of ultimate). met this kscler maddie, who's a young'n from an accelerated high school who'll be at uchicago very soon, and got to know her pretty well. auditioned for that's entertainment host with blaine (a new vscler) and callie (txscl), but lost out to two of the north dakota boys, but callie still made it, too..i eventually helped them with their final skit, but missed TWO of my cues during the actual show, which botched things up, gah. hung around the ear office, caught up with tyler (making a triumphant return) and some of the old-timers, which i'm slowly realizing i'm becoming. enjoyed all the 50th anniversary special events, and the banquet especially.
- movies watched somewhere in this time span, one way or another: toy story 3, salt, inception (again), repo men, grown ups, the a-team, hot tub time machine, the bounty hunter, she's out of my league, sleeping beauty (yes, again), beauty and the beast (yes, also again), daybreakers, from paris with love, the book of eli, shutter island, invictus, alice in wonderland. yet to watch: scott pilgrim, the american, prince of persia, clash of the titans, robin hood, macgruber, the girl with the dragon tattoo, the losers, the crazies, maybe a few others.
- finally added a mile run to the beginning of my workouts, and have been trying to get my time down from 12min+. fastest time so far when my lung hasn't decided to interfere was about 10:43ish. tonight's was back up around 11:40 again. lost about five pounds since convention that i haven't been able to gain back yet..brenda (the roommate) got me to sign up at her gym, x-sport fitness (two locations in va), which was 2/3 more than i'm paying now, so i wound up canceling after the 30-day period, especially since where our condo is nowhere near either location. had some trouble on the phone with a rep calling from their hq in chicago saying i didn't meet the requirements (ten visits, one intro pt session), which i had fun arguing; she was supposed to call back today, but didn't, so i'll just dispute the charges on my next bill. need to change up the workout anyway..plus that gym was huge, and full of the usual top-heavy chicken-legged types.
- there's still yet to be any bites on the new house, and our agent suggested we drop another $20-30k off the price (basically taking a straight-up loss on it). we're in no hurry though, so we'll let it sit for a bit and hopefully it'l go back up. josephine and chris moved out back to their respective parentals' houses (well, chris to his dad's since his parents are divorced), once rob finally left.
- headed back to uva for the first home game, against our new coach's former school, university of richmond. was very close at first, but we eventually won 34-13, so it was good times. plus the marching band's halftime show was "british invasion," which was quite excellent.
annnd there you have it! dreadfully exciting, i know. anyhow i've got nothing clever for now, soo until next time, "pauly d" out! (maybe, with some encouragement, i'll get back to slightly more frequent/regular writing..but i'm no match for h&1/2! one of my personal favorites? the four levels of social entrapment..because it's SO TRUE.)
oh look, there goes another two months..
well, i guess updating this blog isn't obviously at the top of my priorities these days..but i figured for anyone who was interested (other than google, who seems to like visiting my blog daily), i'd provide another update, not unlike the last post i made:
so yeah, been busy and all, in a good way. until next time.
^-- so i just realized that it's been over a month since i meant to finish this post and never did, so i'm just going to abandon it and start a new one. X_X;;
oops, there goes another two months!
as you can see to the right column there, google is my only fan..sad panda! or maybe that's because no one actually uses this, and sticks to twitter/livejournal/xanga/fb?
soo, what's been happening in the life of paul lately, other than still working? speaking of work, world cup fever's kind of settled in, with our old unused tv being repurposed as an ota univision-only tv, lol. anyway, i'm tempted to make a list, in no particular order..but since this is the internets and you can already see that i've gone ahead and done that on the next line, here goes!
- finally wound up booking flights for convention instead of greyhounding with nicole—nonstop on delta, dca to/from minneapolis, as vjcl is doing a tour.
- visited charlottesville/uva/kato only once (maybe twice? okay, i don't remember!) wait, there was an african drum and dance ensemble concert with kato's newish gf, anna, that i went to, which was pretty nifty (as usual). i'd previously experienced it way back during my first year, in runk (a dining hall), when a longtime family friend of mine was in the class (and lived in the next dorm over from me but we never hung out).
- started playing borderlands (and a couple other games) with ziqi some fridays after work
- went to the wedding of the twin whose brother's wedding two years earlier was the first wedding i'd ever been to (the one with caitlin—we sat at the "iron man" table), and stuck around and played poker with the other twin (and their father), his wife, their longtime friend and his wife.
- went to see iron man 2 with several fellow developer coworkers, and the younger brother of another, female coworker (who refrained from joining us, some awk there = bad idea in retrospect) who's my age and was introduced by aforementioned coworker to the one female developer who's my age (this was the first non-work event since starting about ten months ago).
- participated in our first keymind "team building" activity, basically a lan party hosted by the network team, where we played unreal tournament, couldn't get age of empires II to work, and even managed to get the previously mentioned coworker fragging with us! i did have to help her with the controls a bit, but she definitely killed me a good number of times..
- watched kick-ass with jennelle/ma/jessica/kenny/jeremy/his friends, and then again with kato/anna/ziqi. not what i was expecting, but in an great way.
- helped other aforementioned female developer coworker (along with ziqi) move furniture from her aunt/uncle's house (which was in a strangely compact subdivision) to her new apartment/condo. didn't properly place the ONE breakable thing, a torchiere, which fell and shattered the top cover part, which i felt really bad about..especially because her "payment" was a baked good of our choice from a chiefly european cookbook of hers, of which i picked a rather difficult/expensive chocolate almond torte for her to make, while ziqi wound up settling for a pecan pie. U_U;;
- emailed tech/nd about grad apps; tech replied saying they sent the letter to marleah and amanda's place, and sent a b&w pdf instead of resending the letter. notre dame never replied, wtf?
- finally watched avatar at home on my 46", though not in 1080p. josephine'd already seen it, but mother hadn't, so both kind of watched along.
- can't break 192lbs., but started adding ~20min cardio (biking) to the front of my routine, and got a new workout from kato, which will hopefully change things up (and cut me down a little). almost through the plain 5lbs. whey isolate and halfway through the 5lbs. casein..one coworker noticed and pointed out that it appears i've been making progress, which was encouraging. just trying to hit 200, and get rid of the "skinny" descriptor.
- bought my first shirt.woot, a fire extinguisher of a special variety!
- wound up going clubbing at lima in d.c. to see oakenfold, with a coworker, her husband, and one of their friends, which was pretty awesome. video1, video2.
- headed down to wake forest for ncjcl convention! met back up with leslie, and met some cool ncsclers. also, christine conklin (tj's latin teacher, and a head honcho on the national committee) was randomly the guest speaker, hahah..
- went swimming for the first time this year on memorial day, with shane and his wife elizabeth, whom i'd been hanging out with a fair amount.
- didn't attend my first uva graduation in two years, despite my landlady's daughter (and now "roommate") graduating.
- got three fraudulent charges originating from marseille and another place in france on my citi forward card totaling $1200+ and a foreign transaction fee hit, resulting in having to get it canceled and a new card issued, etc. still haven't gotten the credit back..
- finally agreed (with the family) to sell the new house in richmond, at a very likely loss, and completed the paperwork. it goes up monday. rob moves out tmw, josephine and chris at the end of july.
well, i THINK that's about it..busier than i thought it would look, before i wrote it all out..hahah. i promise i'm not too busy to actually update, i just don't really think about it because i feel like no one actually reads this. oop, i think my laundry's done drying! there's only a month left until nationals! 
DD so, until next time..
so, i guess to pop in for an update since it's been just under a month. work's still been going well—a bit of busy work to reinforce some basics, as well as lots of debugging and fixing things. been back to uva a handful of times, to play at the spring football game (paid) and continue beating army of two: 40th day with kato, among other things. came back to fredericksburg this weekend to help with finals certamen, since it was at one of our county high schools (whose latin teacher was the senior drum major my freshman year of marching band back in high school). about nine sclers were there, including several i hadn't talked to in a while, so it was fun catching up with them (sposty also has the same floorplan as my hs, so i knew where everything was). really not that much going on otherwise, though i will be attending north carolina's jcl convention this upcoming weekend, which should be exciting, and a nice change of scenery.
got the thin envelope from the university of florida earlier this week, and we know what that means—my remaining two denial letters are probably en route (knock on wood?). pretty disappointing, all things considered..so either i apply again next year for the same thing AND get an architecture job in the meantime, or i keep doing what i'm doing and go back for something else, and/or putting my "dreams" on the back burner for the next twenty years or so, in the process. not exactly ideal, but..hopefully it won't come to that? :\
caitlin finally started gchatting to me again, after a few emails back and forth that she initiated..it's been interesting, though i guess if nothing else it's nice to know that after a year and half we're finally on speaking terms again—even if she still hasn't unblocked me on fb. florida had its state convention this past weekend; shawn had a status about laura becoming fscl president, which i indirectly congratulated her on. she still hasn't unblocked me, either. i guess i still find it extremely amusing that someone you forged such a strong connection with in such a short time could so easily drop you from their lives.
still haven't watched avatar (although i have gotten the dvd (there's no bluray yet)), but i did churn through the imaginarium of doctor parnassus with kenny, jennelle, and her friend jeremy. it was very..odd, though that was kind of expected. seeing heath ledger's last performance was also compelling, and each of the tonys showed flashes of previous characters they'd played in their mannerisms. currently putting together a new mix (pm xl!), which should be pretty jawsome..and working on an ncjcl convention mix, for the drive down. changed air filters/cleaned the interior of my car, so today wasn't a total waste, hahah.
now, what's next?
blog
