managing stress in a fast-paced world

I got dragged in, at first I didn’t mind helping, but then I found out how mind numbing it really was. It was bad, some parts went smoothly, others took forever to run, and then there were the problems.

I somehow knew it wouldn’t be a good day when I woke up and found an alert on my mobile saying the one server which we were planning to use wasn’t working. Luckily someone else was in the office to help me get it up and running again.

Then 2 hours later, we started the work, and I waited, immediately there was a problem, 2 hours after that they decided to only do 1/2 of what we originally planned to do. ugh. Four hours later and I was done… the most painful launch I’ve ever worked on. It wasn’t really that hard, but by the end I was drained, physically and mentally.

After we got the okay that everything was working, I jumped in the shower and spent the afternoon working on my car, nothing major, just rotating the tires and checking the brakes, checking things mainly. It felt good to do something physical, after waking up and sitting in front of a computer for almost 8 hours, it felt damn good.

Later, just as I cleaned up and had made myself something to eat, I get a call from work that something is broken. I log back in and fix the problem, not sure why it didn’t work, but I fixed it. I finally get to eat something, even if it is cold by now.

To top it off, I had a small accident late on sunday, completely my fault. I’m upset at myself the most, I think I’m having a string of bad luck.

I didn’t really work much more than usual this week, but it seems like I did. Couldn’t finish all my work either, kinda depressing when you can’t see the light at the end.

It’s final, I’ve asked for two days off, combine them with the weekend and labor day, and I’ve got myself a 5 day vacation. Where am I going, not sure yet. Probably up to Canada.

my investments aren’t doing so well right now, I wonder what else is out there to invest in. Right now I’ve got a little money in just about everything.

Alot of times I wonder if I spread myself too thin financially, almost like being too risky. It’s hard to talk to other people about money and getting advice though. It’s just a touchy subject, maybe I should talk to a pro about what else I can put my money into.

My new DVD-R media came yesterday, I ordered 200 of them, a combination of Ritek & Supermedia branded discs. Best of all they are 8x media and they burn at 8x with my new burner.

It’s so much faster, before when I first started making my own DVD’s, my first burner only did 2x burning, something was weird about the firmware, eventally a newer revision came out, but then I only had 2x discs laying around. Which reminds me, I bought some cheap media from Surplus Computers right around the corner, and they were a complete waste of money. I would never buy from them again, after looking at the discs, I could actually see bubbles and scratches in the media.

Anyways, the NEC ND-2510A DVD+/-RW DL drive works great, I picked up mine from Newegg.

I want to start a new business, not to make money, but I see so many other people around me doing so much with their lives… It makes me feel a little boring (which I am) and unproductive. I’ve been like this for a while, a few years now, but I do remember a time when I wasn’t. There was a part of my life when almost anything was possible and nothing could stop me, well nothing except for myself.

Everyday I do the same thing, I wake up, go to work, I come home from work and just hang around, people come and go, nothing really happens. This needs to change, I just can’t take it anymore!

I was at home most of the weekend, well, actually, saturday I spent most of the day at home, then had dinner at Mike’s. Sunday I made a morning trip to Costco and stayed home for pretty much the whole day. I’m still trying to clean up the garage, but it was just too hot in there.

So one of the things in my head over the weekend was a rolling cart for my Weber Q Grill. I started to think how it would be nice to roll the grill everwhere, then I thought it would also be nice to have a cooler somewhere to store the food to grill… the only problem is now transporting a grill and big cooler in a car with 4 people and all their gear. I think I’ll make a trip to Target and check out their Igloo coolers, hopefully I’ll find something to fit my needs.

I’m driving to work again, I realized at 1am last night that I had no ticket to take the train this month… yep, I completely forgot to go buy it. Turns out it was a good idea since it looks like I’ll have to stay at work late this whole week. Strangest thing this morning though, when I got in to start my car this morning, it was completely out of gas… It would start for a few seconds, but then sputter and shutdown.

A quick trip to the local gas station and I’m now an owner of a little 1 gallon red gas can.

I must have a black cloud hovering over me, today I found that my one year old hard drive is completely dead. Bad news since I don’t have a backup, not even sure how I would have backed up 200 gigabytes. Luckily I moved off all the important stuff to another drive, but still, that drive was 99% full when it died.

Good news is that it’s still under the 3-year warranty, so I can get a new one, but a good chunk of my data is lost for good.