If you follow me on Twitter, I’m sure you were bombarded late this morning by a barrage of tweets from my account telling you about a ridiculous amount of apparent new blog posts on my blog.

Oops

First off, my apologies. I deleted all of the tweets (there were upwards of a hundred of them) but not all Twitter apps will pick up on their deletions.

I updated a bunch of WordPress plugins and one of them went rogue (either WP to Twitter, or Lifestream) and although I’ve at least got it rectified for the time being, I still have to apologize.

That is all on this subject.

UPDATE: I’m beginning to think the issue actually was with the WP to Twitter plugin. Hmmm…

Every once in a while I get an idea in my head that a good way to simply update my blog would be to post what I did on social networking sites throughout a day. Oh, and guess what, there’s a plugin for that! I don’t have to do any actual blogging! Just keep updating my social networks (ie. Twitter, Facebook, last.fm, etc) and my blog will have content! Yay!

I had this idea once before and soon realized that a whole bunch of micro-blogging status updates do not a real blog make. I make no vows and no promises that this site will now suddenly become full of new content, but there will be no more of these sorry excuses for blog entries.

I would love to try to make something out of this website. Pick a topic, and go with it. Would it be all about music? Technology? The Oilers? Is there some kind of marriage I can make between the two or are they so dissimilar that they would require separate websites? Let’s face it. Personal blogs hardly ever make anything of themselves. They appeal to friends, family, and the odd time, someone with similar interests who might end up caring about a personal blog. Personal blogs are also mostly forgotten (much like this one) and rarely updated (yes, there’s always expections to the rule).

I guess the major question I have to ask myself is whether or not I really care about whether or not this blog goes anywhere. I mean, sure, I’d love to have a website that people actually come to read on a daily basis and are actively involved in a commenting capacity, but realistically, if I hardly have any time to update as it is, would it really matter if I just chose a specific topic to write on? Or would it suffer just as much from a lack of updating?

I JUST HAD AN IDEA!!!

I could write a daily blog about how I never have to time to update my blog properly.

BACK TO SERIOUS BUSINESS

Perhaps this blog post is mis-titled. It’s less about a New Direction as much as it is about keeping the Status Quo. OK, there it is. The status quo. I’ll guess I’ll go with that. Well, that, minus those stupid annoying “Thing I Did Today That Probably Weren’t Productive” blog posts that are cluttering up my Facebook Friend’s News Feeds, that people seem to think I actually manually create on a daily basis.

brigs

About 2 weeks ago I had the chance to play host to an old friend, Andrea Burgoyne, and her tour-mates in Speed Control. Andrea’s touring in support of her debut solo EP “One Step, Two Steps” and she’s ridiculously talented. It can be hit-or-miss when you see a friend you haven’t talked to in ages, whether or not you’ll have much to say to each other, but it felt like we were back in high school, just shooting the shit. It was great to see her back on the stage, since I haven’t actually seen her perform since we performed together in Odd One Out.

OK, people, back to your daily lives…

Let’s just say the last few weeks have been pretty packed. Perhaps not so packed that I couldn’t have updated this wee blog, but packed enough.

I’m working on a few posts right now, a Nexus One review, a couple of new Bergtrax 4000 mixtapes (still trying to figure out the best method to do this), posting the second Canada Noise podcast, and of course, I’m still putting together my notes on how to set up XBMC on an Acer Aspire Revo R3610.

Now that I’ve lost a few readers with my gobbledygook technobabble I’ll start talking about the things they probably would have been interested in.

This past Friday Heather and I went to our first raclette at Derek and Leanne’s. It was wonderful. I’ll leave out the part where I spilled cheese on my jeans…

Basically a raclette is this specialized electric grill with a compartment underneath where you put cheese in trays to melt. Then you cook vegetables (onions, peppers, mushrooms, eggplant, etc), meat (bacon, shrimp, etc) either on the grill on top, or in the tray with the cheese. You then pour the cheese (and meat/veggies) onto potatoes, or bread and eat away. It was delicious. Between the 12 people there, we also polished off 12 bottles of wine, however I’m pretty sure Sarah Klein (@srklein) polished off at least 3 by herself.

Heather and I celebrated our 9 year anniversary on Thursday, April 8 (of dating obviously). We celebrated, as we often do, by going out for dinner to The Keg. And, as we often do, we got something for free! Let me explain.

• A few years ago my steak was a little overcooked, so they got me a new one, no big deal. I wasn’t expecting anything other than a new steak. A few minutes later a manager came by and told us how sorry they were for the steak being overcooked and they gave me my meal on the house. Score!
• Last year Heather ordered a steak/lobster meal off of their special menu. I believe it was to be a chipotle lobster. Heather didn’t care, she just wanted lobster and this one happened to be cheaper. The waiter came back a few minutes later and explained that they had run out of the chipotle lobster and asked if a regular lobster would be alright. Heather explained that yes, that was perfectly fine. Again, a few minutes later, a manager came by and explained how sorry they were and that Heather’s meal would be taken care of. Double Score!

After we were seated at our table on Thursday, we sat and waited for our waiter… for 20 minutes. I was getting a little angry, so finally I stopped a hostess as she walked by and asked if she could kindly send a waiter our way as we didn’t even have water yet. When our waiter finally came by, he obviously apologized, and took both our drink order and our meal order. We ordered a bottle of Blasted Church Syrah to share. After a few minutes, SURPRISE!, a manager came our way and told us how sorry they were and that our wine would be on the house. TRIPLE WORD SCORE!!! Wait, wrong game.

The meal was delicious as always, and despite the fact that we seem to always end up with something going slightly wrong, we really enjoy going to this particular Keg as they always make up for any shortcomings.

One last thing before I sign off. Since I haven’t mentioned anything about my phone on my blog as of yet, I thought I would mention, in advance on my review, that it’s amazing. If you’re considering getting a new phone, I would strongly urge you to consider a Nexus One, or any Android phone for that matter, particularly the Motorola Milestone on TELUS, or the Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 on Rogers. Bell still doesn’t have a premier Android phone, however the Nexus One can be used on their network.

Robin Sparkles – Let’s Go To The Mall!

Click here to view the embedded video.

I really love Banana Republic so that was the first, and only, stop on this trip for me. Heather and I quickly found the perfect suit and after a few shirt/tie combos found the right fit for the weekend. I’m going to look awesome (but not as awesome as Heather). I’m not 100% sure this is the exact suit I bought, but if not it’s close:

Modern chalk-stripe two-button suit blazer

That’s also the exact tie I bought in the picture on the left, however I’ll probably be wearing it with a white shirt. Heather says I look like someone from Mad Men in the suit. Not Don Draper tho, she made sure to point out. I’ll take what I can get.

This is also going to look awesome on International Suit Up Day.

Excuses:

1. I’m just not a very compelling writer
   • I always have these great ideas (or so I think) for posts, but can never properly put them into words and feel good about putting up on the internet for people to actually read
2. I’m usually at work when I think of something to write about.
   • Case in point: I’m at work right now! I don’t generally spend a lot of time on the internet at home, and unless I get a new phone (I’m looking at you Nexus One) writing out posts while mobile just doesn’t seem like a good idea.

Reason why Excuse #1 is L-A-M-E:

• It’s the old age adage (or is that age-old adage, I can never remember), but you’ll only get better at something by doing it more often. I blame my feeble self-esteem, and my lack of internet-cred.

I’ve got a few things on the go, and although I’m not going to call it a “resolution” I hope to post with a bit more frequency in 2010.

How many friends do you know who have started a blog? Of those friends how many of them actively update them? Chances are those blogs are a lot like this one, with sporadic monthly updates, most of them saying “I PROMISE TO UPDATE MORE FROM NOW ON”, but that post is from 3 months ago and now you’re left to ponder if it’s even worth checking that blog anymore.

I’m not going to pretend like this post is any different. I do have at least one cool thing to talk about in the near future, like the awesome home network/media center I just picked up and put together this past weekend which I promise will constitute a real blog post within the next few weeks. Let’s face it, I’m blogging this really quick post from work, but work is not where I should be blogging from, in fact I feel guilty blogging this right now (my excuse is that I’m waiting for a test model to alarm so I can capture a few data points), and when I’m home I usually don’t spend much time on the computer, so realistically, no, don’t expect much more in the way of frequency of updates, except when I have something to cool to blog about or I feel like talking about the Oilers.

But it has now simply become depressing for me to look at my own website and see an entire front page of just Twitter updates. I can imagine that coming to my site and only seeing my tweets from the previous day a little bit underwhelming for a new visitor. Besides, if you navigate to the sidebar or to My Lifestream you can see everything that I’m up to in almost real-time, including my Twitter updates, Last.FM latest plays, Delicious bookmarks, Google Reader shared items, YouTube favourites and videos, flickr photos, Picasa web albums, TwitPic photos, Facebook status updates, and Xbox Live achievements (although I don’t think that one’s working at the moment).

If you’re wondering how to get to my lifestream, simply click the tab where it says “brendan” near the top of this page, or below the 10 latest updates in my sidebar. Easy peasy right?

So I won’t make any promises other than the one I’ve made to myself: to post 3 meaningful updates per week. That’s all I feel I can ask of myself right now, and if I have to do so, perhaps I’ll make it a belated New Year’s Resolution (of which I’ve made none in the past 5 or 6 years out of spite).

Here are some of the before pictures:

Heather's Computer Desk

Heather's Dresser

My Dresser and TV in the Main Bedroom

A Permanent Mess in the corner of the Main Bedroom

The Computer desk in the main bedroom beside the bed

So as you can tell everything was a little cramped in both rooms. If you’d like to take a look at some of the in progress pictures, I’ve uploaded the process in photos to both my flickr and Picasa web albums. Here’s the links to both of those:
Flickr
Picasa

Here are some of the after pictures to show you what a difference this entire process has made.

Main bedroom with the bed now out of the opposite corner and against the far wall.

The dressers now both in the same room with the TV still at the foot of the bed.

This is what took up a lot of the time setting up the computer desk but it's well worth it to have the cords off the floor.

The finished office. It feels nice to finally have it out of the bedroom and on its own.

The main bedroom is now so empty compared to before that there’s an echo. Heather and I are trying to decide on a really good picture to Rasterbate to put on the wall to use up some space. We might even do 2. Bottom line, we’re very happy with the way everything turned out and although it’s not 100% done we feel a lot less cramped in the house.

Well, let’s put it this way. I have things to talk about. I really do. I just don’t generally have the words to make any of it sound worthwhile to read about. But let’s face facts, I’m not a professional writer, I coasted through English in high school and university; we even get a class in University that’s basically a dumbed-down version of English 101 for engineers. I’ve never even really looked into any type of formal writing course. But that’s exactly what I can pretend to be on my own blog, someone with something important to say.

And pretend I shall, on perhaps a less frequent basis to start. I had hoped to keep this blog updated every weekday, however I’m thinking three posts per week is far more manageable. So that is my hope, and I hope to stick to it, with this counting as one of the three for this week of course, and hopefully at least one of those each week about gaming which I can use as a column towards The Social Gamer.

Sincerely,
Brendan

So about 3 weeks ago I got an email from Skype telling me that my credits were about to expire. I’d used all of 0.02 euros of the 10 euros I put in about 6 months ago when I was working in camp, but the internet was just so terrible in camp I couldn’t even use Skype for voice calls. Since I’m back at home and I can only assume calling Argentina from my home phone wouldn’t be nearly as cheap as calling from Skype. I didn’t really look into that but I figured it was a great excuse to actually talk to my sister, so I got her number and called her up on Skype. I don’t think we’ve ever talked that long. It was great to hear everything she’s up to now. Sounds like she’s having an amazing time learning Spanish, learning to Tango, wandering the street side markets, and soaking up the Buenos Aires lifestyle. It truly sounds like she’s happy, and as her brother I can’t help but be happy for her, even if it is a little scary having her alone and so far away.

She finishes her Masters program around the beginning of June, and since I told her my wedding is at the beginning of September she now plans to come back in August. She had been waffling on whether or not to come back in August, to be back in Edmonton for her favourite festivals, or stay in Argentina until December so she could say she’d been there for an entire year. I’m glad she’ll be coming back in time for the wedding. It wouldn’t be the same if she weren’t there.

Since I rarely use Skype, actually never, I’ll be giving my login info to Kristin so she can use up my credits.

I also convinced my parents to come home a few days early from their snowbird vacation in Arizona. They have a trailer down there and during the winters they escape to Yuma for 5-6 months before coming back in March or April. I need to be frugal with my vacation this year and save it up for the wedding and honeymoon so I plan to use a long weekend in conjunction with my SDO and the floater day to only use up 2-3 vacation days to get an entire week. Heather and I need to go back to BC (where the wedding will be) and sort some things out and just generally get away for a bit. My next available time to do this is the week leading up to Easter. Unfortunately my parents wanted to stay in Arizona until the middle of the month. I was literally able to guilt them into coming home about 10 days early, using phrases like “Oh, I guess I’m just not a good enough reason to come home early..” and “I’m trying to guilt you into coming home early.” I’m awesome.