matt

Okay, this swine flu thing is getting really annoying. Let's look at some facts....swine flu is no worse than the "normal" strain of the flu. There are drugs out there that will shorten the duration of the effects the flu has. There's a handful of people in a few states that actually have it. Yet we are treating this like thousands are dying and it's something out of "28 Days Later".

The news media is LOVING this and while they make it seem like the impending doom of mankind at the hand of influenza, the reality is IT'S NOT THAT BIG OF A DEAL. There are far bigger issues to deal with, like the economy, and the news is just doing everything they can to scare us. It's quite ridiculous and I have no doubt that they are creating much more fear and worry about this than is necessary. My favorite is here in Florida, where until now, there have been no cases of swine flu, yet the news constantly reports long segments on the fact that swine flu isn't here yet. That's like reporting no one has been murdered today and then going on and on about how someone COULD be murdered today...it's a non-story!

We had our pre-construction meething this morning with the builder and it went well, although we had a bit of surprise. The closing date on our house is not some time in the fall or winter, but rather July 13th! Needless to say, we were a little surprised. The issue we have is our lease goes through Jan 2010 and we wanted to ideally have the house closed on in the late fall/early winter. It looks like right now we could delay closing until about August but that seems to be the end of the line. The worst case scenario for us is we can't get anyone to rent our apartment and we have to break the lease, which costs like 1.5 or 2 months rent and we could just borrow the money from one of our parents and pay them back when we get the $8k from the government later on. It's not the end of the world by any means, but it was a surprise.

Also a surprise was when we pulled up to our lot, it was no longer just a pile of dirt, but it's become a pile of dirt with some actual work done on it! They haven't poured any concrete yet, just laid out where the foundation will be set. When we saw this, I told Marissa "I don't know who's paying for this because it's not us" (We still don't have a mortgage technically). I'm really excited about the house in general, but I have to admit I'm worried a little bit but I think that's simply nerves; let's face it, this is a big purchase but I think we can swing things the way we want. We just need to finalize the mortgage stuff and I can stop worrying about that.

I recoginize this is rather old, but it's new to me!

As I was driving home today, I was driving down I-4 with my windows down and it was one of those days where it's warm enough to wear shorts and short sleeves, have the windows down and not really NEED the air conditioning on. I also couldn't help but think that pretty darn soon, it's going to be the return of summer to Florida and that means obscenely hot temperatures once more and I cringed a bit.

What's great about the weather today is it's nice and warm, not too humid and at night/early morning, it's absolutely gorgeous (hell, you might need a sweater or coat if you're the sensitive type). But in about 2-4 weeks, it will start getting really hot and really humid and even at night it will be hot. The truth is you do get used to the temperatures and it doesn't bother me all that much, but the weather will affect what you want to do. In April, I'm up for just about anything, indoors or outdoors. But come June through September, it's going to be so uncomfortable outside that I'm not going to want to do anything outdoors between the hours of 11am and 7pm.

Before you shed any tears for me, I realize that I don't need a jacket between November and April for the most part and shorts have been the norm here since about Presidents Week. I'm just not excited about the prospect of summer 2009 coming my way but I'll learn to deal with it.....as in I'll deal with it at Typhoon Lagoon!

I've been watching a lot of baseball lately and watching it got me thinking "Wouldn't it be nice to have a site where I could write my thoughts during the game and post them online?". These are the sort of thoughts a geek like me gets from time to time and I started envisioning the features of the site and the design of it and how it would be an internet sensation in no time. And that's when I decided it was a bad idea.

Well, not a bad idea, per se. Rather, I've come to the realization that I simply don't have time for these little ideas. In the past, I'd always gone with these ideas and out of them came a few Disney World websites, a podcast, this blog and a few other ideas. Whenever I've had a passion for something, I've gone for it but after doing all of my thinking about this great baseball site, I quickly came to the conclusion that all of these ideas for this wonderful site would take up a lot of my time and that is time I simply do not have. Not anymore.

It seemed like I used to have unlimited time on my hands and if I wanted to take a few hours out to work on something I could. In fact, when I became a brother in my college fraternity, the night that we "crossed over" when all my pledge brothers were out at the bar getting wickedly drunk, I went home after one drink and I stayed up the entire night to create the fraternity website. That, in a nutshell, is me. I put in everything in the moment and when I'm struck with an idea for a great website, I go for it.

But things have changed now for me. Besides the stuff I need to do for work, I still have committments for my sites and podcast to fulfill (or try to). And of course, I have a committment to my wife to actually be there more than just siting in the same room as her. As it's been explained to me, coding something in the same room as her doesn't constitute actually spending time together (I know....go figure!).

So while I sat on my couch coming up with the great idea for my site, I relucatantly dismissed the idea because I know, deep down, that I don't have the time anymore for anymore. Sure I'll miss the fun that comes with achieving something like a great web site, but as the Greek god Apollo always said, "Know thyself" and I realize where I am right now and it's not right for me, right now. That's okay, and I get over it....usually thinking about how much development time it would take to "get it right" and I move on.

It's too bad because it was going to be a real kick ass site...