Personal

 With the finale of Lost aired, I am comfortable posting my list of LOST mysteries that were never properly resolved. Without further ado.

• Walt. He was so, SO important in the first few seasons, only to be one of the first people to leave the island. He popped up sporadically after that, either as visions or, in his last appearance, a high school kid in NYC. Locke left him alone, saying he'd been through enough. And that was it. Really? This kid who kills birds with his brain that the Others kidnap and do experiments on, and we don't get any additional insight into that?
• The Outrigger Chase. Anyone else remember this one? Some people do, obviously, where there was all the random time-jumping, and in one of them they were paddling in a little outrigger and started getting shot at? A brief chase ensued, until they flashed out. The chase seemed important, like eventually we'd see the other side of it. Nope.
• The Hurley Bird. The bird with the distinctive call makes the list with 2 appearances and not even 1 attempt at an explanation. I guess since he's the new Jacob birds just love him? 
• The Supply Drop. Who is still dropping supplies? And while we're looking at the supply drop, maybe a litte more about Dharma? Are they still around? Run by who? Doing what? 
• Pregnancies. Why can't women have kids without dying? There's implied reasons, like electromagnetic crap and the incident and whatever, but how about you spell it out for borderline-retards like me?
• Numbers. Jacob had a thing for numbers, sure. But who recorded the original broadcast of the numbers that Sam Toomey heard who eventually told them to Hurley who eventually used them to win the lotto then hunt down Sam Toomey's wife in Australia and eventually land on the island? Rousseau eventually recorded over this, and it was a big deal in the first few seasons. Then, forgotten.
• Man in the Cabin. Remember the dude who said "help me" to Locke, but Ben couldn't hear him? Then he got all freaked out by technology and the flashlight and shit started flying around the cabin? What was that about? Jacob lived in a foot, not a cabin. What the fuck was that about?
• Raised by Another. The crazy maybe-phony psychic told Claire not to let Aaron be raised by anyone else, and even flew her to America to ensure that she'd crash on an island and be forced to raise the kid herself. But... well, Kate raised him, so... now what? Why was that so bad?
• Adam and Eve. I know this was explained to be the MIB and his mom, but PLEASE. I hate, hate, hate this explanation. Jack, saying the corpses are 50 years old but it turns out they're a few thousand? I know he's no Indiana Jones but I think even I could tell clothes that were 2,000 years old or 50. AND, the producers constantly using this as "this is proof we had a plan all along"? Please. Eve, a chick we've never, ever seen before this episode and will never see again set in a timeline completely incompatible with the timeline you'd set up before? Pick a new Adam and Eve, because this one sucked.

Overall, I'm okay with the series despite constant reassurances by producers that it ain't purgatory, only to have the last big reveal be.... PURGATORY! Or at least a purgatory-ish waiting room. I'd like to see a better resolution for my boy Desmond and it would have been awesome if Kate would have died, but all series end sort of crappily so I guess I should have seen this coming. I just wish Season 6 would have answered old questions instead of asking new ones so I could put some closure to these mysteries that, ultimately, don't matter a bit.

 I know I'm late to the netbook party here. I've wanted them, sure, but I never figured they were worth the money and fell short on too many tasks. Well, I was right about that, but with our upcoming European vacation, I found a gap it could fill: semi-disposable computer to keep our photos and videos organized and properly backed up, when I wouldn't care all that much if it got lost or stolen. 

Everything you've heard is true. The keyboard is cramped, the trackpad is too small. The processor is very slow, it lags in simple tasks. But, it'll do the job.

I did have an inner conflict. I wanted to use Ubuntu Netbook Edition, since it was made for small screens. I loaded it on without much difficulty, and it worked amazingly well for most tasks. It did fall way too short on being able to work with video from our little camcorder we're taking along with us. So, I decided to try loading OS X to ensure proper compatibility with our iMovie and iPhoto libraries.

My netbook, the Lenovo S10 is actually prime Hackintosh material. Loading OS X was no problem at all, along with the card reader, wifi, sleep, and all USB ports. The webcam and inner mic, however, do not work. They worked fine in Ubuntu, which sort of makes me want to partition off a part of the drive to use with Ubuntu. 

I bought this netbook on eBay, used, for pretty cheap and they included a 9-cell battery, on accident I think. So this little guy gets about 6 hours of battery life using OS X for simple web browsing, which is kind of nice. 

The few attempts I made at fixing my audio issues resulted in completely crashing the setup and having to install from scratch, so I've given up the dream of making it all work. It does what we need it to to get us through our trip, and that's enough. 

If anything, this crappy netbook reminds me why I love Apple and OS X so much. I hate having to deal with drivers, incompatible software and hardware, constant restarts to make sure things are working. With my Macs, it all works, all the time. With my netbook, I've been through Windows XP, Windows 7, Ubuntu and now OS X. Some things work, some things don't. It's ironic that the software that works the best for it was never meant to be loaded on in the first place.

 Someone much, much smarter than me once said "When you're self-employed you can make your own schedule. Any 80 hours per week you choose." That seems about right, really.

My frantic work schedule has left us in a fantastic place financially, even being a 1-income household for the time being, but is a bit of a drain on me, professionally and personally. Don't get me wrong, I'm ecstatic being self-employed and successful at it, but I do sometimes wonder what it would be like to just work a normal job like most people and, ya know, be able to stop working every once in a while.

Unfortunately the work schedule means very little time for things like my blogging and other illustration. There is, however, a very bright light at the end of this very dark tunnel, and if I can just keep up this pace for the rest of this week, my schedule will be free and clear. All active projects will be wrapped and invoiced. That is, until the 2 meetings I have lined up for next week about new projects. 

My time off will be spent making yet another play at illustration work. I know, I know, this illustration dream of mine may be worth giving up at this point, but I'm not quite ready to give up the dream right now. I've bought another couple books on the matter, and I need to work on the whole business package like I have for my web design business that has been so effective. Then, of course, I need a portfolio I'm proud of... that's the hard part right now, but I'll get there. 

There's not many things in this world cuter than my dogs playing in the snow if you ask me. So here's more video of Winnie and Lizzie in the field near our house having a grand-old time. And, yes, unfortunately that will be the entire purpose of this post. Deal with it.

Yeah, I know, I haven't updated in a while, as per usual. And the worst part about infrequent updates, especially having to do with things like vacations, is that I almost instantly forget stuff that we do so I can't type about anything as accurately as I would have if I would have just sat down and done it earlier.

But hey, whatever's clever, as they say. I'll just have to be brief about the last few days of vacation and leave it at that.

We ate some really nice dinners at places like The Cheesecake Factory and Houston's. Mark and I got totally lost in a huge shopping mall after stopping at the Apple Store there. We ate at Houstons. We saw Valentine's Day on Valentine's Day at the largest theater I've ever been to. We played Rock Band. We drank margarita's at a traditional Mexican restaurant followed by beers at a traditional Texas bar. We drank beers out of a huge 100 ounce beer tap thingie at some Hooters-esque bar I can't remember the name of.

The drive home was fine, but long. We stopped for lunch in Dallas where I met with a long-time client of mine, and it was nice to meet him face-to-face for the first time. We did get stuck in a little more snow on the way home, but not nearly as bad as the drive down.

Video is coming eventually, as soon as I have time to capture and edit it. 

A Rocky Start

Our little vacation got off to a rocky start unfortunately. I had a client meeting on Monday and mentioned leaving early the next day for Texas. My clients were horrified and suggested I leave right away due to a bad snow storm coming our way. I texted Hill and told her to pack up early, we were leaving right when I got home.

We were in the car and on our way about 18 hours earlier than we'd expected, hoping to avoid all the snow and ice. For the most part, we totally avoided it although there were some stretches of very bad conditions. We saw several ditched cars, but made it through alive. Our night ended in Jackson Mississippi, at the world's dumpiest motel. It was dirty, gross, and outdated, but at least it was a place to sleep. 

Finally, in Houston

We finally made it! While passing though Beaumont Texas, we got a call from Mark who, coincidentally, was just a couple miles behind us. We slowed down so we could follow him and have a guide into the big city. After a quick stop in Winnie Texas, we made our way into the city. We hit some traffic, but made it to Courtney and Mark's much, much earlier than planned.

Mark cooked some various Italian food while Hill complained about our previous night's hotel. Our change in plans also meant we were able to see the latest episode of Lost live, which was good for us. 

Heading to Mexico

Courtney and Mark both worked on Wednesday, so Hill and I left the mutts and made our way to Mexico. It was quite an experience, I'll tell ya that. On the trip we saw the truck whose posted at the top of this post. Google Maps and our GPS unit both steered us wrong in getting to our hotel and ended up getting us totally lost in both Texas and Mexico. Thankfully Hill's amazing navigational skills got us relatively close, and then I had the bright idea of stopping a cab and simply following him to our destination. 

Our hotel was gorgeous. We didn't stick around too long though, since we both wanted to see the marketplace in the city center. Hill bought some lawn-chair bag-thingies, a shot glass and strange figurine that the woman tried to tell us was a dog, but I'm not sure I believe her. I bought a sweet Texas hat since Hillary wouldn't let me buy a Mexico hat, saying they were all gang related. 

Once it started getting dark and cold, we headed back to our hotel for some Mexican food, Margaritas, and good times. We also had our first Vampiros, which was basically a Bloody Mary with tequila instead of vodka. It was interesting I guess, but it will be my last.

Back to Texas

We only spent one night in Mexico. I wouldn't had minded spending a little more time, but I was totally fine heading back to Texas too. Border Patrol searched our car pretty thoroughly, which was totally expected, then we were stopped again a little while later having to simply answer to "Are you a citizen?". We were, so we were allowed to make our merry way. We were also stopped for my expired tags (I know, but the DMV was closed on Monday and we left so frantically due to weather I just didn't have time!). We got a warning, which was nice, although while stopped we were asked very seriously if we brought back any marijuana or cocaine. Uh, no officer, we didn't.

That night we met Mark's kids and had a nice pizza buffet dinner at CiCi's. I know, CiCi's isn't necessarily a traditional Texas restaurant, but ours shut down and we missed it. So there ya go. It was delicious.

Outer Space

On Friday, Courtney took Hill and I to Souper Salad for lunch, since one can never have too many buffets in my opinion. It was a great lunch. Mark was at work, and the plan was to hit up the Space Center without him and meet up with him later. Courtney is a bad influence though, so she talked him into ditching work a little early to join us. 

We headed over to pick him up, then it was on to Johnson Space Center. It was a lot of fun seeing all the space shuttle mock ups and old space suits. The tram rde was a bit frigid, but still a lot of fun and I'm glad we went on it. We saw the old Command Center used to launch the old space flights, the mockups of the space station, and a rocket that was never put into space but should have been.

After all that fun and excitement, we headed to Houston's for dinner. I had the ribs, but Hill was boring and had a cheeseburger. 

We made our way back to their apartment and rocked out with some Rock Band for Wii. I don't think I was very good, especially at the drums, but it was still fun. 

Part Two Coming Soon

And now I'm awake and typing this while everyone else is asleep. The mutts are also sleeping. I'm not used to being the early riser, but I guess I could get used to this.

Apple's announcement came and went. A few cool things went down, like iTunes rentals (in HD!) and an AppleTV update. But unfortunately I won't be getting anything new from Apple this month.

The MacBook Air they introduced is simply amazing in its size. It's so light and thin, and really just incredible. But at $1,800, it offers no real difference from my upgraded MacBook. I can see how it'd be great for traveling business men, but for now there's just not a big enough advantage to make the leap. But I have considered throwing an iMac into the mix for  my home computing needs.

But enough of that Apple talk.

I'm used to being a busy guy, with a full-time job and always some sort of project going on. Whether it be a home improvement deal, or an art project, or building a computer inside of a case where no computer should ever be... I'm always doing something. But I'm not at all used to this busy schedule where I don't have even 2 seconds to sit and relax in the course of an average day.

But, the good news is that in a couple weeks I'll have an excuse to clear at least an hour of time into my busy schedule to relax: I gotta watch my Lost.