MikeBrum.com

It’s Halloween. Not a lot going on and nothing really planned. Apparently, we get trick-or-treat’ers at our apartment (we didn’t move in until after Halloween last year), so I’m tasked with getting some candy after work today. I think “while I’m out”, I’m going to try to pick up Guitar Hero 3 for my Wii. We’ll see if Target is able to come through for me or not.

I also need to get some batteries. Some will undoubtedly go to the Wiimote, but I got some new camera gear yesterday and need to get some into my new fancy flash.

I love buying stuff. A real lot. It’s a shame (for my bank account) that I have such poor impulse control.

In other news, I booked a flight to see my Mom near xmas. It’ll be the first time I see her new place. Will undoubtedly be weird. I need to remember to bring something that’ll allow me to get online while there so I won’t have to use her computer – be it a switch, router, wifi access point, etc. Something.

Well, now back to our regularly scheduled program.

I woke up this morning (about 15 minutes ago) feeling not too bad at all. I still got some stuff going on in my nose, but it’s nothing like it’s been the last week. I’ll probably have a bit of a runny nose for a few days still, but it seems like the bulk of it’s over. Thank-fucking-goodness for that.

Some medicine + lots of water + tons of sleep tends to help a lot every time.

Well, we don’t really have trouble.

The past week has been busy. It started the end of last week with the IAM issues. That kept things interesting. The technical stuff has mostly settled with the exception of a few hiccups. Hopefully those can get diagnosed and cleaned up soon.

Last weekend was a diving weekend. I got to take my camera out in it’s fancy new housing for the first time in the ocean. It’s amazing unwieldy and cumbersome it is on land and how fairly effortless it is underwater. Buoyancy is awesome!

Unfortunately, I have some blockage in my right ear. It’s not an infection, and it’s getting better day-by-day (and almost gone this morning!) – but it’s annoying and I wish it’d go away. Ah well, I was probably done diving for the rest of the season anyhow due to how busy October’s gonna be.

On major thing that’s kept me busy is my new job that I started on Monday. It’s been overwhelming in the way that new jobs always are – but it’s been fun and I like my team a lot. There’s a lot to learn, and it seems that the majority of new people are expected to be “totally useless” their first month. Hopefully I can reduce that time considerably – because I A) hate being useless and B) hate not doing stuff. So we’ll see.

Next weekend is our party. Got some cleaning to do, but it’s on track. The weekend after that is Scarwars (and my birthday!). I got a confirm that my room is all set for Phily and I’ve submitted my time off request for the 19th for the drive down to Phily. Should be a blast – can’t wait!

But for now, I’m going to head back and just read tons of docs. Got me a lot of info to get caught up on.

So I started playing with panoramas a bit. They’re a lot of fun. I’d never done any before and I don’t really have any good subjects to work with, but I figured I’d give it a shot around here anyway.

Here’s one I did in the portrait position:

The weekend was a good one.

Corinne arranged for us to see Paprika on Friday night – despite her being totally exhausted from her concert on Thursday night. The movie, by the way, was awesome.

Saturday was slow. We got up, got breakfast at Johnny’s and took it pretty easy the rest of the day.

Corinne did some walk for women’s health (forget the exact cause) this morning and was up and out early. I got up, got some food and watched Death Proof. Can’t wait for Planet Terror to come out next month! Then, around noonish today, got a call from Joe inviting us to see Transformers at the iMax. Since I hadn’t seen it at all, I was definitely interested. I really liked the movie and it was a blast on the big(ger) screen.

It’s been a good movie weekend – despite no plans before the weekend.

Got 5 more days at my current job, and then it’s officially behind me… kinda weird, but exciting to start something new. Should be fun, challenging and rewarding.

The last few weeks have been busy and interesting. There’s been the usual amount of diving, which has been very nice. Nothing big to report on that front – just the same awesome time. Went to King Richard’s Faire and the Boston Tattoo Convention a week and a half ago – good times, good times.

The big news is that I got a new job. Got an official offer on Friday which I’ve accepted and faxed in. Starting 10/1, I’ll be working at ITA Software in Cambridge. I’ll be doing support for their QPX product. If you’ve ever purchased plane tickets online, then QPX was probably used at some point to retrieve that data.

With all that stress now resolved, I’m going to try to get back into an updating routine. I got a bunch of messages I need to get back to (I’m not ignoring people, I’m just lazy) which I think I should be able to get to tonight.

I received my underwater housing on Monday. It’s really nice. Since I wasn’t around basically at all after work on Monday, I set everything up yesterday after I got home. All-in-all, it wasn’t too confusing considering I never used that hardware before. I didn’t end up taking any pictures because my point-and-shoot camera is buried somewhere and I didn’t feel like digging it out.

I’m going to go over to You Do It! today on lunch to see what they have for Pelican Case -style cases. I remember seeing something similar a couple months back that may work – so it’s worth the trip. Even if I just use it for storage at home and not travel, I need something to store it all in when it’s not in use.

I’m also going to stop by the dive shop today after work to see if they have any pool sessions in the near future that I can hop in on to put the housing through it’s paces. I definitely want to spend some time in a controlled environment for a little while.

With the end of the (non-drysuit) diving season approaching somewhat quickly (here in the North East, anyway), I want to try to squeeze in as much as I can. We don’t really have any trips planned for the winter months, so I need to get in as much as I can!

I slept really well last night. Usually I have to get up to pee or some other stupid reason. Last night was the first night that I slept all the way through – and it felt great.

Last Wednesday was my last photo class – which is unfortunate. I really learned a lot and enjoyed it. Pending how a few things pan out, I’m considering taking another class in the fall, but we’ll see. Might not be able to fit it in.

I also ordered my underwater camera housing. Should get it on Monday. Fucking expensive, but I’m really excited. Now all I have to do is move to somewhere tropical so I can dive in crystal clear waters day after day – though I don’t see that happening in the short term. Still hoping to come up with an idea that Google or Microsoft wants to buy…

Well, back to work. One bug down for today, who knows how many more to go.

I’ve been a bit neglectful lately. Whoops. in the last few weeks I managed to get a little diving in and a decent amount of photography.

Corinne’s been very busy with work and has been put up in a hotel for a while. It’s definitely strange with her not being around, but it’s only temporary and she’ll be back full time on Thursday night.

Photo class has been going well and I definitely feel a lot more comfortable with my camera and confidence in what I’m doing. Here’s a couple of pictures from this past weekend.

Anyway, I’m going to get back to shark week. While there’s a lot of over-dramatization and some semi-dodgy science, there’s still a lot of great footage and some good information if you know what to pay attention to.

I like bees.

This weekend we went to the Brockton Fair. It was much larger than I had expected and we had a good time. I think we spent more time at the agricultural part than any other single area of the fair.

There really wasn’t any sort of side show there, unfortunately. There were only a few randomly scattered oddities. I didn’t pay up to see any of them, since most of them were very poorly presented. One of them did catch my eye though, but it tucked strangely out of the way and looked like it wasn’t even open. I’m sure it would have been “totally awesome”.

Corinne noticed the name of this fun house:

For all those Geek Love fans, you should be amused. I don’t know why they went with a wild west theme for the decor, though. I did some quick Googleing and found that this is a mass-produced carnival attraction though. Maybe the name “Crystal Lil” has some other significance that I’m not aware of. Either way, it would have been a lot cooler if there were a Geek Love-themed mural on the side of the fun house instead.

Once again, I was left with just my camera phone to take pictures. I didn’t think there was going to be much there, so I didn’t bother taking a real camera. I should just start bringing one of my cameras with me everywhere I go.

Either way, fun was had by all and we’ll probably end up going to any other random fairs or carnivals we happen across this summer.