So you should know this about me - I am obsessive when I want to finish a project. Don’t get me wrong, I’m plenty lazy, but when I decide to accomplish something…I won’t stop for days. In fact I’m pretty lousy at multitasking, as I can only really concentrate on one thing at a time. Big thing or small thing, it doesn’t matter, as I’m totally unable to prioritize the long list of things I want accomplished.

So take the month of January. After a fun and productive trip to Boston to watch an actual engineer mix an actual album in an actual studio (see the proof here)…I then spent about a week converting, importing into iTunes, and tagging all of the videos we now have scattered around hard drives in Fenario. What seemed like a simple and cool idea (thanks to isquint) took a lot more time than I imagined. I wanted to have all of our video selection tagged and available from an always running copy of iTunes on our backup machine, ready to be streamed to anyones computer (thank you iTunes 7). But my frustration increased every day, as I felt I was wasting a lot of time for not a lot of gain. Is it really easier to fire up iTunes and watch a shared video, or just mount an external drive and play it with videolan? Still, it was a project i just had to finish. Often, these projects involve a computer somehow. Most things I do involve a computer. If the problem at hand involves a computer, I am 500% more likely to be driven to solve it.

And so then, after that was done I spent 10 days playing World of Warcraft (free trial). Now just stop right there. Don’t you be judgin’ unless you’ve played yourself. Unless you’ve felt the thrill of leveling up a character you created. Watched as he or she grows and learns new abilities. Begins to kick butt where once one’s own butt was kicked. Explores new lands, saves damsels in distress, rides hippogryphs across vast oceans. Sicking your pet tiger on some bad guys. Making some new friends and creating strategies for kicking but together. You get the idea. They don’t call it warcrack for nothing. I’m an old school gamer from back in the day, but I haven’t found myself sucked into a game like that in a few years now. Which is why I knew, when my free trial ended, that I simply could not allow myself to purchase the thing. I just have too many other things I want to accomplish right now. No time for game playing. Not of that calibre. No thank you. My free trial ended 9 days ago. It gets a little easier each day. Thanks for asking…

And so how did I spend the next week? I started this blog. And the matching photo gallery, as seen here. This seemed like a simple task as well. I’m quite proficient enough with computers to install wordpress and gallery2. And to install some cool themes. Getting the two to work seamlessly together though, was a whole new bag. Lots of tweaking and editing of code I have done in the past week, kids. Lots. And finding a new way to manage all of the photos scattered around my hard drives, start tagging them, and finding an easy way to upload them to gallery2, with descriptions and tags intact? Not an easy task kids, not at all. Some IT professionals get paid serious dough to do this for people. I’m talking about walking around money here. But not me, I’m too much of a schmuck to make such obvious use of my talents. Anyway, the tweaking is done.

And why do you ask? Why all the trouble? As I said before, it was a problem involving computers. So it just had to be solved. But mainly, so I could ramble on aimlessly here at 2 in the morning for all to read. And, so I could post my photographic work, showing how wonderfully amateurish I am behind the lens. And, so I would have something to feel a little better about at the end of the day, then having spent a metaphorical 12 hours playing a videogame….Um, ok, so maybe not metaphorical. Yeah, that’s why. And so endith january of 2007. Thank you and goodnight!

Oh, and now I will be stuck at work for the next 2-3 weeks. That I will save for a future subject. If only my lvl18 Night Elf Hunter could do the work for me…

SJ