J-Sin

The days melt into nights and nights into days, weeks become months, months become years, decades become lost in a haze of uncertainty and trail off in a blue blur. Isn’t that how we all begin to feel as we age and grow older day by day? My son today asked me if I was old. He does that sometimes, or says things that are funny like, “Grandma is old”. But today it especially touched me. Wow I am getting old – 31 years old to be precise. Do I act or feel “my age”? No not really. Take last night for instance, I stayed up till 2am playing videogames by myself. My wife was in bed not only because she has to work but because she’s smart! Of course now I’m quite tired and since I have the kids by myself all day, they are draining me of what little energy I can seem to muster up. But now I’m losing focus of the topic at hand. Is this an age thing? Probably not. But should I really be staying up till all hours playing videogames of all things? I say why not! Who cares! Let’s all have fun, and become one with fun (rhyming is sweet).

I remember when my blog (before they were called blogs of course) was very stream of consciousness, so much so that innuendo could sometimes get me in trouble. But it was putting virtual pen to virtual paper and it was good unrelentless emotional outpourings. Am I too old to do that now? In this age of hyper-sharing, do we have to remain guarded with what we reveal about ourselves and our thoughts, our very imagination? After all, the kind folks at Google (who recently put out an interesting image parser/relationship matcher thing) and the Way Back Machine have lengthy memories…who knows we may apply for a job and have an Internet search disqualify us immediately. Will my children’s generation grow up with everyone’s dirty laundry fully accessible 24/7 and documented for eons? Perhaps. And perhaps that is a good thing. Do we really need to put up fronts for one group or another, when honesty at its very raw core is deemed the best policy? I say no. I say let go of it, and to the hell with any of the haters that would dismiss you or yours over mere words and thought patterns shared with anonymous trolls. (That said, I guess my blog post title makes a little more sense now huh?)

Speaking of old, I recently was reminded of my childhood as I watched movies from Hasbro’s heroes, “G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra” and “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen” – everyone knows that movies with colons in the title are awesome. Surprisingly I enjoyed both a lot, though nods towards GI Joe in terms of repeat viewing. Also in 2011, apparently “The Smurfs” is coming out. I think it would be great if “The Smurfs” was dark and even more Marxist than the cartoon. I guess Thundercats is up next or something…

People that really believe that the climate change that our world is suffering under was not caused by humans are soiling themselves over the recent hack attack that stole a bunch of private data and conversations from scientists at leading research centers. Of course it’s completely taken out of context and what I’d like to know is what Big corporation hired these hackers to dig up this crap. Hmm, I wonder who has a vested interest in making sure that the public, who overwhelming support the notion that climate change is a result of human pollution, human agriculture practices, etc…

In unrelated news, it’s hilarious that Dave Lombardo totally busted Lars Ulrich’s chops. Literally and figuratively. In other improbable news, sometimes cops and anarchists agree only in Chicago though…

My favorite holiday, Thanksgiving, is coming up. Why is it my favorite? Well it’s the one opportunity every year that I get to see most of my family. While yes it is on my dad’s site of the family, if you count up my family members it’s probably about 90% of them on my side of the family – the wife’s family is huuuuge. This year I plan on bringing a Turnip Gratin, which I stumbled upon a recipe for recently. I think I look forward to showing off my kids almost as much as I do the food/family/conversations.

Are us white collar folks, allowed to be considered to be part of the “working class”? If so, then I think I shall tread lightly on this matter.

Talked to my brother for a long time last night, it was good hearing from him. He’s going to see Skinny Puppy on Sunday – I wish I could but unfortunately it falls under the “inconvenient” time slot. My daughter has been hectic today, not wanting to sleep at all. She usually has two or three naps at least an hour a piece. Well the longest she slept today was about 15 mins, maybe. She has passed out a couple of times in my arms or in her car seat, but really only for about five minutes at a time. She’s currently snoring on my lap right now. Funny in a “oh-my-god-I’m-so-tired-please-go-to-sleep” way.

Top Chef is kicking butt this season. All four of the final chefs are so good, I almost don’t know who to root for. It boggles my mind that these people can a.) cook under such immense pressure, 2.) use the given ingredients to craft a fine dish each and every time using techniques that are rare and intelligent, and iii.) often tell some sort of story or perform a theme with their food. To do all of that in less than a 10 hour period, blows my mind.

Music.

Well where do I start? The new Pelican is astonishing. A lot of the recent stuff I’ve been listening to has been extremely diverse, not that this isn’t somewhat of the norm. Gotta admit the new Weezer is great and, ahem, “Rad”. I really want to write some music soon – I’ve been so inspired lately and have been thinking about interesting effects and recording techniques. It should be a blast whenever I get around to it. I still really want to “build” a recording studio in the part of my unfinished basement. People are surprised when they hear that, thinking of wow that can’t be very big, but it could easily fit a whole band and several other people for that matter. It does need drywalling and other stuff to finish it off, so I guess I’ll have to make a call out to Bob the Builder (joke?…bad?…yes I agree)

Work-wise stuff has been slamming me lately. Balancing tons of projects all at once. It’s good to be busy but I’ve been frustrated lately because many of these I can’t just run with – indeed, the vast majority have other folks who I need deliverables from before I can move forward. Of course their level of participation and urgency is very lacking. Bummer. At least I’m learning a ton and contributing quite a bit at the same time.

Anyway, enough with this novel. Hope you enjoyed.

Having worked at one place, Network Solutions for my entire “professional” career (I joined right after college in 2000), it was certainly daunting to leave that all behind and join a new organization. Why stress it you may wonder? Well I had been there nine years, was comfortable, making good money, and had a very secure position in the company. Given the upheaval that the global economy has been in, that sort of security for not only myself but my family is coveted. However, I had been working so hard that I had been missing out on my children’s lives and the job had put undue stress and burdens on my wife and I to the point where I resented every waking moment. While much of it was personal reasons for leaving, there was also a volley of issues stemming from our upper management team that required me to rethink my current track and journey and move along somewhere else.

Now that my fourth week at my new position at NeuStar is over, I know for certain that I made the right choice. Not only did I join a growing and strong company but I was lucky enough to get a position that was created for my own particular specialties, get a nice pay increase, and enjoy a more reasonable work/life balance. It’s great to hear people wanting to hear your input, valuing it to the Nth degree, and to be challenged on many fronts myself. I continue to find myself learning a lot each and every day. It’s also nice to have my own assumptions challenged time and time again (in a good way). I’m excited about the opportunities that lay ahead and really genuinely excited about the years of experience ahead of me.

So the work thing is working out nicely for me. Recently a colleague of mine accepted an offer to join my team and I’m really excited for what lays ahead for my team. I just wish I could bring so many other great people that I’ve met over the years at my former employer on over; I truly was blessed to meet and work with such superb and intelligent individuals.

I recently bought an amazing recipe book on South Indian cooking and techniques that I’ve found quite fascinating. I already made one semi-traditional Sambar dish. It was divine if I do say so myself.

Over the past couple of weeks, I really feel like I’ve bonded with my beautiful daughter Avery. She seems to take everything in, is extremely chill, and loves to giggle. Each night I have been putting her to bed, rocking her in a rocking chair as I feed her. It’s truly special to have the kind of bond a parent gets with their children. Keegan has been hilarious lately, saying lots of funny stuff. He enjoyed Halloween with his best friend, we went down to Gainesville to their home to do trick-or-treating. Keegan dressed as Buzz Lightyear from the Pixar movie “Toy Story”. He got lots of compliments. A week or so earlier, we went to the “Boo at the Zoo” event at the National Zoo. Him and I took the Metro up and met my wife at her work, then we rode the subway over to the Zoo. He got to get tons of trick or treating in and see a lion, a leopard, gorillas (and a cute baby gorilla!), orangutans, and some other various animals. It was a total blast.

Lately I’ve been playing a lot of Madden NFL on Playstation 3. I think it’s due to the fact that sports are essentially over for me. The baseball season ended in a hum-drum fashion (who really wants to see the Yankees win yet another world title?), with my fantasy teams finishing up in disappointing fashion – my Yahoo team finished third, which sounds good but we were only a couple of points out from first all year, and my “pay league” team that I co-run with my dad finishing next to last. The Redskins and Rams are stinking it up yet again. I’m rooting for the Saints to go all the way because I’ve always been a big fan of Drew Brees and could never understand why San Diego ran him out of town, though Philip Rivers is pretty beast. My fantasy football team SHOULD have been unstoppable but due to crappy luck and a few bad picks, they are only one win better than the Redskins at this point. Sigh. There’s always next year…and there’s always Madden to dominate!

Last night I pulled out some old Rage Against the Machine albums. Hadn’t listened to “Bulls on Parade” in who knows how long. I was surprised I remembered some of the words. I can’t believe I tried to rap that song back in the day. Sigh. I miss singing for a band almost more so than playing drums in a band. I always kick around the can and wonder out loud if I should do music again but I always seem to never find the time. There are so many ideas floating around in my head about music I’d love to write or play. I guess things would be different if someone lived close by that I had good musical chemistry with or something.

Disappointed about the Virginia elections for sure. Oh well, Craigh Deeds ran a bad campaign and deserved to lose. I think, generally speaking, I’m disappointed in politics and Barack Obama and all that cliched hope that he had generated for me and thousands of others. I got the blahs big time.