A wedding engagement, a new MacBook Pro and UP band, a Comic Con... I haven't put up a new 'blog post since December, so yeah, I'm way overdue. This one'll more than make up for it, I'm sure. Let's start with the biggest news... I'm engaged! :-) I asked Laura to marry me on St. Patrick's Day, after a delicious sushi lunch at Sushi Momoya in Bloomfield, and she said yes. I got down on one knee, Elvis' "I Can't Help Falling in Love" was playing ("It's now or never," I thought. "My love won't wait.")... it was just right. The date was doubly fitting, in my opinion, because my love is half-Irish and because March 17th marked one and a half years since we began dating. We haven't gotten too far with planning yet, but we're shooting for a low-key fall wedding before the year is out.
The combination of diamond, owls, and white gold seems to have gone over incredibly well with my fiancée and everyone who's seen the ring. I'm generally better at buying tech than buying jewelry, but it seems that I done good. And I'm glad. I love her so much, and she makes me feel like the greatest American hero (no, not the permed guy from the '80s TV show; well, OK, maybe a little).
I do love tech gadgets. Maybe too much. I recently ran into technical problems with two of mine, and these blossomed into long-running customer service problems which were fortunately resolved to my satisfaction, considering I'd been previously effusive in my praise for both companies.
I've written in several prior 'blog posts about my trials and tribulations with the UP by Jawbone band that Laura bought me for Christmas 2011. While the product was certainly faulty, the company stood by it and sent me several replacements as each band died, sooner rather than later, until one I received in the summer lasted for several months. That band, too, eventually came to an untimely end, but when I contacted Jawbone to see about having it replaced this January, I received an initial response telling me that I was eligible for one more replacement and that I'd soon be sent an address to which to send my existing band... and then nothing, for weeks. This was in marked contrast to the excellent customer service I'd received all last year from them, and as E-mail after E-mail got nothing but an automated reply, I began to worry that the technological singularity had come, and had started at Jawbone.
In the meantime, the LCD screen of my MacBook Pro had begun to come loose from the hinge, and the display was giving me the same problems I'd experienced in 2011. I wasn't eager to spend a few hundred dollars to have it replaced again, but it still seemed more sensible than shelling out a few thousand for a new laptop, so Laura and I headed to the Apple Store to drop it off for repair work. I was pleasantly surprised to learn that this was now a known defect, and as a result, the screen would be replaced for me at no charge! However, after waiting several days beyond the three to five I was told it would take for me to hear back from someone, I called the store and was told that they'd found that the battery and the AirPort card would need to be replaced as well, at my expense.
I was more upset about not being contacted than I was about the additional delays and costs, but I gave the go-ahead. A few more days went by, and I still didn't hear anything from the Apple Store. I called them again, and eventually got word that it would be ready for pickup that night; I pressed for 6 PM and was told that the tech working on it would try. Laura and I went back to the store around 6:15 PM... and now heard that the logic board was going to need to be replaced, too. I wouldn't have to pay for that, at least, but they couldn't tell me how much longer I'd be without a laptop. Unhappy but with no real options, I left the store with my love, grumbling about the customer service at both Apple and Jawbone that I'd loved so much before.
Well, I finally got good news from Apple on February 9th, and from Jawbone on the 12th. The MacBook Pro and the UP band were both replaced with newer models, and all I needed to spend was a few bucks to ship my old UP back to Jawbone. I've got a shiny new laptop with Mountain Lion, a faster processor, and double the hard drive capacity of my old one, and a new wristband to monitor my sleep and movement, and while I was irritated with both companies initially for the seemingly interminable delays in communications, in the end both came through. Both the MacBook Pro and the UP by Jawbone wristband are holding up well so far. Whew! I've finally gotten around to revamping the AndersenSilva.com and JoyInTheNew.com Web sites, too. Some of the content still needs to be reformatted and put back up, but both sites are functional and laid out better than they had been.
CISPA? Again?!? Perhaps Representative Mike Rogers (R-MI) thinks we've forgotten what CISPA is, but along with the ACLU, the EFF, Mozilla, Reddit, former Representative and presidential candidate Ron Paul, the White House (for now, at least), and others, I'm still putting my foot down. I've got some issues with piracy, and we need to be vigilant against true cyberterrorism, but the law is just too broad in its scope and in its immunity for businesses; the potential for abuse on both a corporate and a government level is alarming. I'm against it whether you call it CISPA, SOPA, PIPA, DUPA, or anything else.
Slime is going to the Boston Comic Con! Laura and I talked last year about the possibility of attending a comic book/science fiction convention at some point; neither of us has ever been to one, and now that we've got our own comic (a Webcomic, but still a comic), we've got even more reason to go. We're not "exhibiting" or renting a table, but we'll be walking around the Comic Con at the Hynes Convention Center on Saturday, April 19th in our Slime T-shirts. Let us know if you're going, too, and perhaps we can say hi! There'll be buttons... We'll actually head up to Massachusetts the day before, so my honey can visit WEBS, a serious yarn store, and we can spend a little time in and around Beantown, one of my favorite cities.
Another thing my fiancée and I are going to do together is tackle a 5K, in June. She ran one the day before St. Paddy's, in Clinton, and is going to run another at the Bronx Zoo next month, but the Run 2 Glow 5K at Belmont Park is an untimed event, which makes it ideal for a non-runner like me. It takes place at night, and there's glow gear and music and a party afterwards, and it just seemed like a fun time for us both.
The glow run is just over a week after Make Music New York, which is on a Friday this year. Registration just opened up, so there aren't many venues listed yet, but hopefully I can pick one soon. I may also find myself in a band later this year; my old friend (and occasional Not An Exit collaborator) Jon asked me last week if I'd be interested in joining a group of guys that have gotten together to do the music thing, and I think that perhaps I am, as long as the logistics sort themselves out. Of course, I need to get back to my own music, too... but working on tunes with them will probably spur me to crank out more of my own.
So this is the kind of thing I mean when I say "Better that your life be a blur than a blurb." This newly-sprung spring, while not especially warm just yet, will be busy, but it's a good busy. Most importantly, I'm healthy and I'm happy and I'm in love. How's things your way?
January's been a busy month, and it's just about over! There's always a lot of cleaning up and catching up to do after the holidays, of course, and work tends to be busy this time of year as well. Laura and I saw my parents last weekend for my mom's birthday, and finally caught up with Laura's mom this past Friday night, too. There are still some Christmas gift exchanges to be made, though...
Why, yes, I have been losing weight; thanks for noticing. Laura and I have both shed some pounds since starting on the South Beach diet at the beginning of the year, and I'm now at 141.6 lbs. as of this morning, which frankly seems to be on the low end of where I should be as a 5'9" 41-year old male. While I'm glad to be able to fit into an old pair of jeans again (woo-hoo!), my goal was never to drop ten or twenty pounds, but to eat and feel healthier. Now that I'm doing that, and planning on mostly sticking to phase three of the diet, I've decided that I want my weight to hover around 145.
Of course, the fact that my beloved Up by Jawbone band finally died on me has put a minor cramp in my style. It was nice to be able to easily monitor how much sleep I was getting (and how deep a sleep it was), how much walking I did, and what I was eating and how it made me feel every day. I'm not alone in having problems with my Up, but I believe in the product enough to have opted for a replacement rather than a credit or refund. Hopefully, Jawbone will get the kinks worked out soon, because I still feel the band has great potential.
In other technology news, I finally got around to upgrading my beast of a MacBook Pro, Athena, to OS X 10.7.2 (Lion) today. I'm also going to start utilizing the Time Capsule I got from Microwize Technology at Christmas to run automated backups wirelessly. I've been better with backups lately than I used to be, but it's nice to have a solution that doesn't require me to plug in an external hard drive before it'll run. I took the opportunity to jailbreak my iPhone 4S as well. Maybe I'm not quite on the bleeding edge of technology these days, but the cutting edge is still shiny.
My andersensilva.com and joyinthenew.com Web sites both got 'blacked out' for the anti-SOPA/PIPA protests on January 18th, and while I'm sure that had much less impact than Wikipedia's and Google's and Reddit's (and others') blackouts, I still felt the need to do it. Both bills have been temporarily thwarted, but neither is dead yet, and ACTA is at least as scary as SOPA and PIPA, and international to boot. People need to be aware and pay attention to more important things than the Kardashians and "Jersey Shore."
Speaking of Web sites... I'm maintaining a new one! Starting this Thursday, Laura and I are publishing our original Web comic, Slime, at slimethecomic.com. There's nothing really going on at the site just yet; I'm waiting for Thursday to put everything up, and then a new strip will be published every Thursday. We've been having a lot of fun putting it together (Laura does the art, we come up with story ideas together which I write, and I'll keep the Web site chugging along) and we hope you'll have just as much fun reading about our friends in the Field! I even put together a short theme song for Slime. I will be promoting the frak out of the Web comic. Just wait and see...
Well, after one week on the South Beach diet (phase one), I've lost 4.8 pounds. My aim isn't really to lose weight, or not any significant weight anyway, but it still feels good to know that my metabolism hasn't slowed down too much. The diet itself hasn't been bad at all, and I'm not craving sugar or bread or chocolate at all. No, really.
The Up band has been very cool (thanks again, honey!), and the only hiccup I've seen with it so far was more than likely caused by me. I've been using it to keep track of my meals and how I feel after them, as well as my sleep and my walking, and I think it's all tying in nicely with the diet and my aim to improve my health and fitness this year. Laura and I intend to start playing tennis in the spring, which will be great for the both of us.
I believe I've finally resolved the ChinCam (http://www.andersensilva.com/chincamp.php) issues, by setting up my old iPhone 3G S as the webcam and by dumping Stickam in favor of USTREAM. Though Meguilla the chinchilla is not going to be active 24/7, the stream will be up more often than it's down. Maybe Meggy would be more interested in entertaining you if there were raisins involved...! Chinny playtime, a nightly occurrence in the Silva/Liston household, will not be televised, for the most part, because it involves Meggy running all over the dining room floor, and often over us as well, and there's just no easy way to keep a cam trained on her. There is also now a YouTube channel for the grumpchilla's finer moments, though! Check it out at http://www.youtube.com/meggychincam
I've started reading one of my Christmas gifts, "Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid," by Douglas R. Hofstadter, and while it's not light reading at all, it's quite an intriguing book, and it had the unexpected side effect of prompting me to purchase and start listening to some Bach. I've always been a Mozart fan, but I've now discovered that I really enjoy Bach, too. Nothing wrong with switching the KMFDM and Metallica and Regina Spektor and Beatles with some Bach once in a while, eh?
I finally spent some more time with the guitar yesterday afternoon and started coming up with music to a new song, "So Much Happy." I still need to record "Burning in the Sun" and "Let Me," both of which were written last year, and there are older songs which stil haven't been recorded, either, but it feels good to want to write music again.
SOPA sucks. Google, Twitter, Facebook, and other Web giants have purportedly considered a one-day blackout in protest, and to demonstrate against the bill, though this is far from confirmed. I hope they do it. Too few Americans are paying attention to what gets done in their names these days, and suddenly not having access to those sites would certainly make them take notice.
One week down, fifty-one to go... How's the New Year treating you?
I hope everyone had a wonderful New Year's Eve! Laura and I had a fun time at a small get-together at Jon and Karin's last night, and finally got to meet baby Lydia.
December started with a stinging hurt: less than a week after bringing the chinchillas to Lyndhurst, we woke one Saturday morning to find Prissy had passed away. She'd seemed seriously ill earlier in the week, but had apparently rebounded the following morning, and then slowly declined again. Laura and I were both incredibly saddened by the loss, and buried Priscilla in one of the town's parks. Fortunately, Meguilla is doing fine, and we've been showering our chinchild with love.
I got to take Laura out for Sunday brunch in New York, and we saw some of the Christmasy sights before taking in Cyndi Lauper's Home for the Holidays concert, which was a real blast. We picked out a real Christmas tree, over five feet tall, perfect for the apartment; not only did we use some of her decorations and some of mine (and I got some mistletoe, one of my best purchases of the year), we made one of our own! Using Sculpey polymer clay, we each fashioned a little penguin, then put them together on a base of 'snow' and attached a loop for hanging. We had a lot of fun making the ornament and plan to create a new one every year. :-)
Laura accompanied me to Microwize's holiday party and Christmas dinner at my parents', too, where she met most of my colleagues and the rest of my New Jersey-based relatives, respectively. We still need to figure out when we're seeing her mom again, but it should be soon.
Resolutions? Well, I was resolutely planning not to have any this year... But I do intend to be healthier this year, which includes going for a physical, something I haven't done since... well, the Bush administration. No, not Dubya, his dad. I'm also going to do something perhaps even more shocking; today I started the South Beach diet with Laura. I don't know that I'll stick with it long-term, or that I need to, but I 'd like to at least get through phase one with her, and hopefully spend some time on phase two as well. No, I'm not particularly overweight (151.4 lbs. as per this morning's weigh-in), but I'm also not as fit as I could be. Helping with that goal is the Up by Jawbone that Laura got me for Christmas; it's equal parts health-conscious and geeky, an electronic wristband that monitors my sleep and my walking and other things and makes it a little easier to get a better picture of how active I am, how certain foods affect me, etc.
Other than that, I plan on getting more serious about my music. I'd really like to get my second album completed this year, and I can do it if I put the time into it. There are songs I need to write and ideas I need to explore. 2012 will be the year that happens.
I hope this year will be one of joy and peace and prosperity for everyone. Joy in the New Year!
