Where the Moose Does Dwell

There are days when you have all of the answers, and days when you don’t. Today, thankfully, was the former and not the latter. Tomorrow is anyone’s guess.

I’ve been thinking a lot about work and being an attorney. Next year is ten years out from law school for me, and despite the occasional clusterfuck at work, I think I’ve gotten into a pretty good groove where I don’t feel like I’m just acting confident when dealing with clients, I actually am self-assured, because I’ve been doing this long enough to know what I’m talking about in my practice area most days. It’s a confidence that sort of snuck up on me when I wasn’t looking, and was a bit startling to realize was there.

Not to say that I think I’m all that and a bag of chips, but the advice giving business is a lot easier when you know what I do about the BGA now that I’ve been there for almost four years. I’ve still got a ton to learn, but it’s nice not feeling like I’m faking it all the time.

Of course, this will all go right out the window once Congress gets around to changing the budget rules again, but for the moment it’s a good feeling.

Today was flying in and out of meetings, reassuring program staffs that they weren’t in trouble, promising things which will be delivered in short order, and generally was most people’s best friend. It’s so much nicer when you can be helpful and not have to say no (because you don’t have to, here). The nay saying will come back soon enough (and is occasionally nice in and of itself when your client is being a ninny, but is generally more of a pain than anything else - I mean, who wants to deliver bad news to someone?).

[side note - I'm so used to old-school WYSIWYG web editing programs which insert a paragraph tag when you hit a return and a break tag when you hit shift return, that this new version of WordPress is a bit disconcerting in its word-processor-like behavior when it inserts only a break when you hit return once, and a paragraph when you hit it twice. How new school. oh, and I miss the "html lookup" button, which appears to be obsolete now that it's keeping tags visible in the editing screen.]

I put in a WordPress plug-in that will allow me to post more easily from the iPhone. I did confirm with it this morning that I have to be determined to post, though, since if I leave the browser to do a lot of other things it tends to lose the post. I’ll have to play with it more to see if it’s possible to save and come back to something.

The LiveJournal one is cross-posting stuff well, too, even if it doesn’t allow me to choose the user pic from WordPress any more.

And on that note, I’m exhausted and need to crash.

Okay, it worked again here, too.

The cross-posting to LJ worked fairly well, though I’m not keen on the fact that I have to go in and manually change the LJ icon on the post rather than doing it through the plug-in; that was a definite plus to Live+Press. It’s a shame the writer of Live+Press didn’t keep up his work.

But now I’m all upgraded, and with less trouble than I thought I’d have. Now it’s time to play with other plug-ins.

Going to try and upgrade my install of WordPress here finally. It’s possible I’ll break a thing or two while in the process, but will try to get up and running as soon as possible.

Since we’re not getting snow any time soon here in DC (it’s getting up to almost 60 today), I decided to add snow to my web page. Yay for simple java script files. Enjoy!

(the instructions and file to add it to your own can be found here)

Started looking at dates for races for next year. Cherry Blossom and the Dismal Swamp look doable - CB’s about 2 weeks before DS, and a 10 miler would be a nice training run for the 13.1 miles. The Rock ‘n Roll Half is also doable, just need to decide if I want to sign up before the end of this month for the cheaper registration.

Upgraded WordPress last night, and fixed Live+Press this evening. L+P was having the same issue it did when I first installed it, so had to look up the fix. Thankfully I knew I could fix the problem, it was just a matter of finding the issue and uploading the errant file again. Yay for easy fixes. Had to upgrade not because I particularly wanted to but the comment spam was starting to become an issue again and that was something up with which I was not going to put. Leave it to security problems to force an upgrade. Thankfully someone put out an unsupported version of L+P so I can still dual post to LimeGerbil.

Along with planning the season I’ve been giving thought to the off-season. I think this year I need to hit the weights more and add some strength that’s been missing. I know I can add the cardio endurance, but I’ve neglected weights and that’s affecting the rest of performance. Plus I’m as vain as the next guy (moreso, many would say; after all that song is about me), and some pretty gym muscles would be nice to go with the other ones. I have pretty nice legs, but the arms are, well, lacking. And the swim would definitely benefit from stronger arms. Not to mention strengthening my back is going to be crucial to doing longer rides as I lengthen my triathlon distances. Nothing worse than coming off the bike with a back that’s ready to kill you (takes a couple miles to work that out, making the beginning of the run pretty painful).

MG and I went to the local BDSM club’s S&M 101 course last night, this one on restraints. Was remarkably easy to do the body harness once they showed us how to put it together. A useful skill, and one that I suspect will come in handy. Just need to get some cotton clothesline now instead of the thicker stuff I’ve got now (not long enough, and a tad too thick for this purpose). Glad we went, it was fun and informative. Looking forward to next month, impact play (smacking, hitting, flogging, etc.), even though I know I’m not terribly keen on that on the receiving end.

LJ’s security flaws managed a mention on the Washington Post’s security blog today. I remember seeing at least one friend’s account get caught by these folks, but it’s interesting that the MSM has picked up on it now.

Sitting around the apartment in a kilt with the AC going, even though it’s in the 60s outside, makes for one cold Moose.

Tonight was a chill-out night. Richard’s in NYC, Mike’s at work, K’s at a concert, the Imp’s at home, so was just me and the TiVo. Cleared out several shows, and just generally decided to do nothing. Was going to play with a template tonight, but wasn’t in the mood to have to hunt down the alterations I needed to make to make it look right. So just some chill-out time with the Teen Titans and the Justice League.

Chatted with a woman I work with who’s signed up for February’s AIDS Marathon training program. She did 5 miles this past weekend and was incredibly excited for having done it. It was really neat to see someone so excited about beginning an exercise program, especially at a time when I’m restarting mine, ever so slowly. I’m trying not to dive in too quickly, which is my usual wont, so I’m just running a couple times this week, with stretching on the “off” days. I know my system’s deconditioned a lot since the start of the bed bug mess back in August, so I’m just trying to get out and do some gentle runs to get back into the swing of things, and gradually add in the other two sports and weights as I feel ready to. No set plan yet, just trying to get back up to a comfortable level, then go from there, hence starting with my favorite event.

Work is in the usual end-of-the-fiscal-year madness season, but I’m doing better with it this year than I have previously. I’ve gotten a better handle on the legal issues involved, which makes these things much more fun to deal with, as well as making it easier to be a relatively calm voice in the middle of the storm. Which is a role that I much prefer to play over the scrambling attorney, trying to play catch-up and/or stay one ahead of the game. Is good to get some experience under ye olde belt.

Anyway, past time to crash here. Gotta try and get up to run tomorrow.

I am a creature of habit. By nature I have a system that lends itself better to a set routine than one that varies. Once I pin down a routine that works, I stick with it. So it’s always difficult when I change the routine, either by choice or not.

I traveled down to see Richard’s family this weekend, celebrating his father’s marriage to his new wife. Going out of town always entails a change to my routine. I usually don’t sleep as well, nor do I exercise most times (on short trips), and eating, the lynchpin of my system, is a nightmare. Either I don’t eat enough, or too much, or the wrong things, or not enough fiber, but regardless, my system gets thrown off quickly once the routine goes.

Likewise, I don’t do change well in other things. I’ve been wanting to change the design of this part of my site around, and get an easier interface than having to sit at the computer, edit the files, upload the same, check the links, etc. Too troublesome.

Today was spent reinstituting my routines. Caught up on the missed sleep, got my diet back in order, fixed my stomach, fixed my web site. Ran this evening, shopped during the day, took the lessons I learned with fixing my Count Four main site and applied the same to the diary/journal site.

I’m pleased with the implementation of Word Press on the site. Hopefully this change in habit will be a productive one. The run today was a mess, but it’ll get better as I get back to a normal exercise routine. It’s easy to slip out of habits, and sometimes hard to slip into new ones, but the better old ones fit like a glove, and I’m so much better when they do.

As threatened, I’ve upgraded the web hosting software here to Word Press. I’m still fixing some links, so if you find any broken ones do let me know. The old archives are still up and running, and will remain so for the indefinite future. I liked the old design and like to see it captured there still in those older archives. But that doesn’t mean it wasn’t time to upgrade to a newer system for updates. Until then, enjoy.