Thursday, June 11, 2009

Charles and François - Part 1

Watermelon Nights

Friday, May 29, 2009

How to stay alive at work

In my last post I realized that life doesn't seem too drab if you have something to be excited about. The only problem is, what do you do while you wait for your exciting event? For example, I might go wake boarding after work. At this point I am content with still having brain waves because I know eventually, I'm going wake boarding. BUT in the meantime, work right now is about as thrilling as watching dust accumulate on the nearest viewable surface. So what do I do (besides check my email 27 times, watch domino videos on youtube, twitter a few times, facebook as many friends as I can come up with witty comments for, and zone out for the time unaccounted for by the previously mention activities)? In other words, how do I make this moment more than bearable?

Here's a couple short-term solutions to minimize your zone-out time:

Listen to music you rarely listen to (I suggest starting with a disney playlist)
Start a blog and write about how bored you are at work (no one's ever done that before!)
Make a list of things you'd like to accomplish and do them one by one. Note: This might not work. Here's a how-to guide.
Stay away from sugar - it'll keep you going for a little bit, but it quickly turn on you and you'll crash like a cat on diazepam.

Long-term solutions: Hmm... a little tougher. What you need a sense of purpose. Why are you here where you are waiting for something exciting? Here's my reason for working behind a computer, inside for 7.5 hours a day: my wife. Kate loves sewing and wants to start selling baby blankets and homemade cloth diapers on etsy or her website to come, katekirchner.com. You see, you have to remember why you are here. If you really have NO reason why you are where you are, then get out of there! You have better things to do - higher places to go! Start a hobby, adopt a puppy, make a friend - find a reason to be doing what you're doing.

Find a purpose and if you can't, why are you there?

And I'll leave that up to you - one more thing to keep you occupied while you wait for your exciting event.

Posted via email from Kevin's posterous

Tuesday, May 26, 2009

A little hope for all you slugs out there

I was walking home from work for lunch and I was totally bumming about life. I didn't feel like I was getting very far in any part of my life - life was just creeping along at a slugs pace. And that's how I felt - like a slug - depressed, lazy, tired, bored, somewhat purposeless, and if for any reason God decided to rain salt down on me, I'd be quite content with shriveling up and taking the rest of the week off.

Then a small breeze blew by and the smell of warm concrete reminded me of longboarding. "Oh, OH, how I can't wait to save enough money to buy a longboard. If only I had a longboard to skate away my troubles this afternoon," I dreamed. Then suddenly I noticed my attitude - I immediately animorphed from my slug-state back to human form; I regained hope and purpose in life. You ask what purpose I find in longboarding but that's not the point. The point is this:

Life doesn't seem too drab if you have something to look forward to - if there's something you're excited about coming up soon. You'll drudge through the muddy thick of suckiness to reach your final destination. You'll live another day just to wait for your excitement to blossom.

I thought to myself, "Hmm, with this new revelation, how can I have more alive days and less slug-wanna-kill-myself-not-reallly-but-almost days?" Ok, maybe that wasn't my exact thought stream but you get the gist of it. Maybe if I had more to be excited about, I would live a happier life - seems logical I guess. And then I thought about my wife Kate - what if she doesn't have a lot to be excited about when she comes home from work? Now I could change that!

What things can I look forward to? What things could I do to help someone else look forward to life after slugdom? More spontanaity? Accomplishing set goals? Geocaching? I leave it up to you.

Posted via email from Kevin's posterous

Wednesday, April 29, 2009

Microsoft did something right today!

I opened up Internet Explorer 6 this morning to work on some debugging for an online community website and this page showed up: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/ie/default.mspx

For those of you who don't know - Internet Explorer (IE) has been the bane of web developers' existence since it's inception. It does not comply with the internet web W3C standards and therefore does not render web pages like web-standards compliant browsers like Firefox or Safari. Why not just forget about it, you ask? Well, turns out that about 70% of internet usage today STILL use IE - if you have parents or grandparents over 40, do them a favor and download Firefox for them - you'll be helping us all out.

BUT the point is the Microsoft at least tried to get me to download IE version 8 which is light years more compliant than it's predecessors IE6 and IE7. And to THAT I applaud them. I'm still going to use Firefox.

Posted via email from Kevin's posterous

Friday, April 24, 2009

Here comes the weekend

FRIDAY
Concert in Hillsboro:
Brian Lee and His Orchestra - http://www.brianleeandhisorchestra.com/

SATURDAY
am - Planting a garden in Greenville IL
pm - Going to a wedding in Clinton IL

SUNDAY:
Going to church and hanging out at the mance.

Posted via email from Kevin's posterous