Indemnity83

Songs for the Cure ’11 is the 4th compilation by the Indie Music Cancer Drive, an organization that coordinates the efforts and talents of performers and composers from across the world in order to raise money to fight cancer and give support to victims and their families. All of the music for each album is composed specifically or exclusively appears on its compilation, with the primary goal of raising money for the cause. For the second year now my good friend David has a track on the album (Fever Pitch – Hurry Home).

If the Kings leave Sacramento, we all lose; they’re important in giving our city an Identity and they have so much potential for brining the city through an economic slump. Go show your support by Liking this cause; hopefully they’ll start motivating their fans with action items soon …

Well this is certainly exciting news! The HBO show will be out April 17th and the LONG awaited next book just a month later. Going to be a busy summer for A Song of Ice and Fire fans.

So … yesterday I bought some groceries including a few veggies for hamburgers; I was in a bit of a rush and not paying attention during checkout. Later, when I went to enter it into Quicken I noticed there was 40 lbs of tomatoes on my receipt! Whoops. Luckily I was able to take care of it this morning, and they just gave me a refund for all the tomatoes (I only had 2 anyway).

I guess the moral of the story is pay attention, the receipt was $100 more than it should have been and I was in such a rush I didn’t even notice.

Yesterday, I turned 27. The number twenty-seven holds no magical properties and this particular age does not signal any great change is my status as person (except maybe the inevitable shift from my ‘mid-twenties’ to ‘late-twenties’). I have already passed the magical ages: 16 years old (I can drive without benefit of having a grown up in the car), 18 years old (I can vote, often a disheartening proposition at best), 21 years old (I can buy booze, something I stopped caring about not too long after turning 21). The only thing turning 27 years old really means is I am now in shouting distance of 30.

Even approaching thirty, I don’t really feel grown up. However, there are times I feel old. It seems like not that long ago I could happily drink a veritable cornucopia of alcoholic concoctions, go to bed and wake up the next morning ready to run a marathon. Now, it takes me a full day to recover from such a binge. Similarly, sleep has become more of a necessity, and where I used to be fully functional on mere hours of sleep, these days I become something akin to the extras in Michael Jackson’s Thriller music video when I don’t get enough beauty rest.

I celebrated yesterday with a group of friends who came downtown last night. We saw a couple of bands at concert in the park. Had sushi and sake bombs at Nashiki for dinner and we wrapped the night up at a couple of bars. I ultimately had 4 beers, 4 sake bombs, 1 shot and a couple mixed drinks. This morning, a few of us made it over to Cafe Bernardo for breakfast. Tonight a few more friends are coming into town and we’ll do more of the same (although, maybe a little less alcohol for me). Tomorrow, my parents are planning to be in-town for lunch which means that I will have successfully extended my birth-day into a birth-weekend. Huzzah!

I’m thankful for the friends and family who’ve shared the last 27 years with me and look forward to many more.

First off, Happy New Year. I hope you had a wonderful holiday with friends and family. I thoroughly enjoyed my holidays even though they were over too soon. I was happy to see the friends and family I did, and regret not taking the time to see those I didn’t.

I am generally opposed to setting resolutions, particularly “New Year Resolutions”. I feel that most people set themselves up for failure by listing broad resolutions without any plan and they never get started. A resolution by itself is too vague to have substance in most cases, it needs to be split into goals and sometimes further into smaller action items to make sure you don’t lose site of the bigger picture.

A good example that I see all the time is the infamous ‘I want to lose weight’ resolution. Unless you set goals (“I will weigh 175 by the end of the year”), and break that down to manageable pieces (“I will lose 2lbs per month”) you’ll likely lose interest within the first month. Make sure you answer Who, What, When, Why, and How when you set your resolution. Don’t skip ‘Why’, its arguably the most important question of all.

That all said, I have a few resolution of my own that I’ve decided to plans out and act on. I’m writing them down here for a few reasons; primarily that writing out goals is the best way I know of to commit to something. Also, by writing them down where all can see I become accountable to my goals; an important bit in my own self motivational needs.

Resolution #1: Write More

More specifically, write more consistently. This blog goes though periods of dead silence and stints of furious postings. I want people to to come to my blog on a regular basis and find interesting information every time [why]. I actually started this with the “Flavors of the Holidays” series between Thanksgiving and Christmas and really liked it.

The simple goal is that I [who] will have have a new post every Wednesday morning [what] for you to read, starting today for the entire year [when]. WordPress allows me to create a post well in advance, and schedule it to be posted Wednesday morning. this is the secret of how I plan on achieving the overall goal. And means that I don’t have to sit down every Tuesday night and write a post, instead I can write two or three in one sitting and schedule them out.

Resolution #2: Better Cash-flow

“Better Cash-flow” is much more vague than the previous resolution and involves a couple smaller goals (broken into even smaller pieces). This isn’t going to be something I can complete in one year, or cover in a single post so I’ll be breaking this resolution down in multiple posts over the first part of 2010. But in summary, my committed expenses (read here about committed expenses) are nearly 100% of my income, which means I’m cash broke all the time. The main contributing factors are reduced income (compared to previous years), lingering debt and increased living expenses (living on my own). I want to be able to go out with friends and not borrow cash, I want to be able to buy a new TV with cash to replace my aging panel and I want to stop giving money away to the banks.

So until next week, when we can go over things in more detail, thanks for reading.

Do you remember in elementary school, after summer break when your teacher would have you stand up in front of the class and explain what you did over the summer? Me either frankly, but its so cliché I couldn’t avoid brining it up since it leads right into my post today.

I want to actually start this off by saying I’d love to get some input back on this, tell me what you did over the summer. A lot of the people I’ve grown up with are just getting their families started while others aren’t done exploring the world. I’d like to know where life’s path has lead you.

As much as it irks me to admit it, Facebook is great for keeping tabs on old friends, but it lack any personality, its nothing more than a list of milestones. Facebook lacks the telling of a complete story. And I know this sort of thing is often left to a letter in a Christmas card, but frankly the Holiday’s have enough things going on, I think its time to go back to elementary school when we updated our friends at the end of the summer. So without further adieu, My Summer Vacation, a report by Kyle Klaus:

I’ll admit, 2009 started out on a bit of a sour note. But I ended up having a great new years with Matt Lockyer, his girlfriend Kelly and brother Travis in Oakland. It was a bit of a foreshadowing event, but more on that later.

2009 marks the fifth year of this blog (through various forms) . While its not much of anything to celebrate, and to say its been constant would be a lie, I’ve still enjoyed putting my musings, ramblings and ravings to ‘paper’ and I hope to continue. This post actually makes number 316 over those five years for anybody who is counting.

In February Kerry and I (as well as the rest of her family) made the long drive down to San Diego to watch the 2009 Rugby Seven’s tournament. It was only the second time I had ever been to a rugby game, and this was on a whole different level. I had a great time and took a ridiculous number of photos of the event. Also, before we left to San Diego we spent a brief amount of time enjoying the very very rare snowfall in Cameron Park.

In April though, Kerry and I split up. Without trying to be too much of a downer, there wasn’t much love left there and it was just simply time to move on. Unfortunately, our lease wasn’t up until the end of September, so we stuck it out and continued to live together until the end of our lease (not really something I would recommend, but we managed it OK).

On a better note though, I started taking tests towards my MCSE certification. The link does a better job of explaining fully what that means than I will here, but basically its a Microsoft certification that says I know what I’m doing when it comes to managing computer systems and, bottom line, is a meal ticket to higher pay. I still have 5 more tests to take to finish my certification, but with the tests I’ve done so far I can officially call myself a “Microsoft Certified Professional (MCP).

I also was able to spend a brief time with the Hoffman’s at Cody’s parents cabin. We went for two reasons, one because the place is awesome and a great way to spend a weekend, but more importantly Cody and Becca wanted some portraits of the very beginning of their new family.

In September I moved out on my own! This is somewhat of a highlight to the year for me. I’m living on my own now in Downtown Sacramento. Its only a studio apartment, but its comfortable and makes me feel très chic. Keith (my brother) only lives a few blocks away, so we’ve been able to work more closely on a small project of ours called Flublub (more on that when its closer to finished). Being able to walk to family, friends and the downtown life has been a gift I don’t plan on wasting.

In case you thought I forgot to mention work; I’ve been working for Airtop Technology Group since February ’08 as a Technology Consultant. Its a small company (only four of us) but we have some big plans. Most of my time is spent with clients providing proactive service on their servers and workstations to make sure they continue operating 24/7. Its sometimes a thankless job, and that can wear but if I’ve done a good job, nobody knows I was there in the first place, so in a way its a complement.

So that brings us to about now, where I’m enjoying the cool crisp air of the night, listening to my eclectic collection of music and composing overly lengthy posts. Now its your turn, tell me what you’ve been up to. You can email it, post it in a comment below, or put it on Facebook somehow.

Until next summer my friends.

What are your plans for valentines day? Kerry and I will be headed down to San Diego to watch the Rugby Sevens. It will be nice to get away and take my first vacation in about a year, even if it is just down to souther California. Admittedly, I’m not any kind of Rugby fan, but Kerry is, so this trip is for her although I have no doubt it will be a good time.

Also, a fun side note on the same line; When I came into Prudential NorCal Realty’s office this morning I was greeted by heart shaped, pink dough-nuts. They usually have something every Wednesday morning, since thats their weekly stafff meeting, but this was unique and deserved an iPhone snapshot.