Random Thoughts On Friendship

Today I wanted to write about friendship. I don't have many "real" friends. I can count on one hand the number of "real" friends I've had in my life. I have acquaintances. I have work friends. I have my family. Growing up, my sisters and my mother were my closest friends overall. They were always there, and I knew I could always confide in them with mostly anything and with very little judgment in tow. Now that I'm an adult and I've moved away from home, I have a lot of people I get close to temporarily and then we grow apart. I don't know if it's because I'm a flake or because I don't trust people, or what (it's because I'm a flake). In the end, I find myself surrounded with all of these awesome people that I just can't or won't commit to, and the ones that I always do commit to end up being the same type of person: the kind that need all of my attention all of the time. I don't know what it is about me that draws me toward this type of person, but I wish I would stop. I try to be everything to these friends, and in the end I feel like I can't be anything to anyone. Sometimes I feel so guilty about not being there every waking second for my friends in their respective times of need. Other times I feel like I overstep my bounds in being there too much, for some people. And then there are other times when I have to step back and realize that I do have my own life, my own job, my own relationship, and my own problems that I have to tend to, and I have no friends to talk to them about because all of my friends (that I would talk to about the intimate details of my life anyway) are in a seemingly perpetual state of meltdown, so I have nobody to vent to or confide in, other than my grandmother - she's the one stable rock that's always there for me with a fresh perspective. I'm sure there is a psychological reason for this, but I'm sure I don't know what it is. I'll call it Friend Disorder. At the onset of my writing this post, I really wanted this to be an empowering post for my friends in need, now I fear that I might have stepped on some toes. That wasn't my intention. I love you all (obviously). I'm not talking about any one specific person, so please don't feel guilty or take this wrong if you think I'm writing about you - I'm not. I wish I could be a better friend to you all with some solutions for your issues to make them better, but I don't have answers. All I can do is listen and be supportive in whatever you do, and tell you when I think you're being a dumb ass (hopefully I'll be nicer than that). I guess that's what makes me a lukewarm friend.

So Busy!

The past couple of months have been super busy for me. We moved into a much larger apartment and we had two different sets of family come visit us recently, so my free time has been sparse!

I did want to talk a little bit about the obstacles I ran into when setting up the network throughout the new apartment and ensuring that the Internet penetrated every room of the new place.

Our apartment complex was built back in the early 1960s and the construction materials used then were a lot less wireless friendly, so I got the Linksys E3000 in anticipation of this move, and it works perfectly, but the 802.11-N 5GHz spectrum that is the fastest doesn’t go all the way to the back of the apartment into my bedroom, and the slower 802.11-G 2.4GHz spectrum is in use by everyone else, so it is pretty slow when that far from the router (that is in the front of the apartment in the living room with my entertainment center), so my solution was to use my older Linksys WRT54G router as an access point in tandem with a Belkin A/V Homeplug adapter. Here’s what I did

Set up my Linksys E3000 router and plugged the Belkin A/V Homeplug adapter into an open ethernet port, then I plugged the Homeplug adapter into a naked wall outlet (not into a power strip/surge protector, the homeplug adapter doesn’t like the filtered power), then in my smallest bedroom that is doubling as an office, I plugged the second Homeplug adapter into the wall and I plugged it’s ethernet cable into an empty port on my WRT54G router (NOT into the Internet/WLAN port—that doesn’t work either), logged directly into the WRT54G and changed it from being the DHCP server (so it doesn’t assign IP addresses on its own), and put it into ROUTER mode. I gave it a different SSID so it doesn’t compete with the other router (that may be a nonessential step, but I wanted this to work with very little hassle), and VOILA, I have a solid blanket of wifi throughout the new apartment, and they all play nicely. Any computer connected to the router in the back of the house can fully see and access the Windows Home Server in the living room, and the wireless printers in the small room can be used anywhere in the house.

This was my solution, and it worked for me. If you have any ideas about how I might make it better (without voiding any warranties or without hacking firmware), let me know in the comments. If you have any questions, ask away!

Thoughts of Changing This Site

The original intent of this site was to be a 365Project where I take pictures every day and upload them to the site. Right from the start I started incorporating blog-like items with the pictures, which I think was a mistake on my part. I actually found that I enjoyed writing the blogs, but doing it daily along with a picture feels like a chore rather than something I should like doing. I got a comment from a good friend of mine that brought to my attention that other people might feel the same way. Here is her comment:

Disclaimer: this is constructive criticism; not an attack in anyway. I believe that your blog is a little lacking in substance. I read many of my friends’ and acquaintances’ blogs, and I rather enjoy them. The reason for this being that their blogs contain book, movie and music reviews, opinionated political essays and so on and so forth. Entries that recall things like daily activities are better served on a platform like LiveJournal.com. These entries, or at least this one in particular, seem to me like emphatic and loquacious Facebook status updates. Being the self-proclaimed tech nerd that you are, I’m surprised that you’re not writing compare/contrast essays on new pieces of portable technology or commenting on the usage of computerized special effects in say the newly released Avatar movie.

Just thoughts of mine. I applaud your effort to write – I just think it might behoove you to give us more to read so that we may want to return to see what more you have to say.

This is my response to her comment:
Stef,
Thank you for your candor. Quite honestly, I was thinking about this just yesterday. The hard part for me is that the goal of this site was intended to be a daily journal, particularly a 365Project where I take pictures everyday to visually document my daily activities, but I am finding that it is difficult to write something of substance every day to go along with these pictures, rather than a standard blog. I see where you're coming from with the suggestion of using Live Journal, but this site is a hosted site, rather than a site like Live Journal where it is on their servers. I wanted the flexibility to do what I want with the site rather than having to go with the restraints put on me by using WordPress.com, Live Journal, Blogger, etc.

Keeping that in mind, as I stated before, I am having a tremendously difficult time finding things to write about every day, so I think I may change the scope of the site and make it more of a blog. I believe if I changed the direction of the site, it would attract more readers, and could be a destination, rather than just someplace you go when you see the update link posted.

So yes, the site will be changing. I will take the direction of more of a blog and I will be writing about things that I find interesting, not just tech, but about the books I'm reading, movies/TV shows I've watched and enjoyed/hated, and many other things.

Stay tuned to see how things pan out!

January 10, 2009

Today we slept until almost noon, but it's still my birthday weekend, so it's all good. We got up and Darrell made me an awesome breakfast with this egg dish he made with turkey, cheese, and I don't know what else was in it, he made these awesome fruit and yogurt parfaits, and I was STUFFED. Afterward we went to the mall to get our hair cut and then we went to Sam's Club to get some random stuff. The pic-of-the-day today is me taking a break and lounging for a minute at Sam's.

Happy New Year!

Hello everyone! This will be the first post of hopefully MANY more to come! I plan on uploading a picture every day to this site and doing blog posts periodically. Check back often to see what's going on in my life!