Twev1701.net 2002-2012

2012 marks the 10th Anniversary of this site. There’s a long story about how it started off as Twev1701.com, then was FORCED to move to Twev1701.net. If you’re really that interested, you can read about it here. What’s more important then that is that it’s been around, regardless of the name, for 10 solid years.

Back when I first started the site, a program like WordPress didn’t exist. What I used back then was a series of scripts called NewsPro. It work very well except for one very important things — no database. All of the posts were stored into one large file that was then parsed and displayed on your site. This was fine for me back in 2002 when I was making mindless posts about this and that. However, I soon realized that it was a mistake the first time I moved to a different program. None of my old posts were transferrable. In fact, this would be true for a great many years. It wasn’t until I moved to MovableType that I had a true database backend. Luckily, when I finally settled into WordPress, I was able top transfer all of my old MovableType posts over. It’s taken many years and searching various hard drives, but I have managed to salvage a good number of posts from my pre-MovableType days. Unless I find some great unknown file somewhere, the earliest post I have a permanent record of is from April 21, 2002.

So what is a guy to do to celebrate the 10th anniversary of this site? I’m honestly not sure. So, I decided to have a little fun. I went back and grabbed a bunch of old headers that I still had from the last 10 years of site designs, and loaded them up into this design. Every time you load a new page or refresh the page, you’ll get a random header form the past. I even dated marked them with their debut date so that you can see when it was from. This was actually a fun, if not daunting project. It was a great going back and looking at not only all of my old designs, but through all my old files as well.

So what’s in store for the next 10 years? Who knows. I started this site because I always wanted to own my own site that was controlled 100% by me. I never imagined back in 2002 that it would still be around 10 years later. I think I’ll close out the first decade of this site fittingly with this…

So how did I fare in 2011? There were certainly ups and downs. Let’s start off by looking at the goals I set for myself at the beginning of the year.

Top 5 Things I Want To Work On For 2011

• Improve my time-management skills.
• Take more trips with my wife and son.
• Make more home repairs/improvements.
• Spend more time with friends.
• Try and cut out big chain restaurants from our eating habits. If we do eat out, make sure it’s a locally owned establishment.

Out of all of those goals, I am very proud to say I accomplished 2 1/2 of those. I took more trips with my wife and son this year then I have in the previous 2 years combined! I also made more home improvements by remodeling our living room with new moldings, paint, restoring vintage door hardware, and new laminate flooring. As for the 1/2, that would be eating at less big chain restaurants. When it comes to pizza, we eat 100% locally owned. However, when it comes to other food, we’re about 50/50. Not too bad considering the mide-boggling amount of chain restaurants in our area.

As for 2012, I am not setting any major goals. There are lots of projects I want to accomplish, but I’m not assigning them like you would a goal. What gets done, gets done.

As for 2011, it was a certainly a year of ups and downs. In my opinion, here are the top 5 best things about 2011.

• Taking Jackson to see the ‘real’ Thomas in Phillipsburg, NJ. Not only did he get to see him full size, but he got a 20 minute ride as well.
• Taking not one, but 2 trips to the beach. Why? On our first trip, I got to show my son the ocean for the first time. On our second trip, I got to show my nephew the ocean for the first time. How often does one man get to do all of that within 30 days?
• Seeing my wife finally realizing her dream and being hired as a music teacher. Of course, this story has a pretty shitty ending, but she was at least able to live her dream for 6 months. How many of us get to do that?
• Watching my son grow up. Yes, I know this is something we all get to do as parents, but it amazes me to no end how smart and ingenious he is. I love him more than anything else on this planet.
• Last but not least by any stretch of the imagination, I am grateful for my wife threatening to leave me this summer. That single act motivated me to seek help for my anxiety/depression that I have lived with almost all of my life. I was always able to keep it hidden, but after 25+ years of doing so, I could no longer do it. I am now on daily medication that let’s me appreciate the ‘little things’ in life rather than being a nervous nelly all of the time. Yes, I still have my bad days, but the good days greatly outnumber the bad.

Oh, one last thing. 2012 is the 10th anniversary of this site. I have some pretty cool things planned to celebrate throughout the year. If you’ve been a reader for a few years, I think you’re going to enjoy what I’ve got planned! :’)

And it’s not kidding around!

Today was one of those days where all I wanted to do was crawl back into bed. I got very little sleep last night partially do to a night filled with very bad tartness dreams, and staying up a wee bit too late watching ‘Breaking Bad’.

When I did finally get out of bed this morning, I found that I had overslept by about 10 minutes. Not a big deal, but this put me on the rush.

Once I got to work, I found that my anxiety was slightly out of control today. This usually happens when either I have bad stress dreams or not enough sleep. Unfortunately, I had the pleasure of both last night. Trudging through the day, I finally left and made my way home…only to remember that I was out of green tea. Off to the grocery store I go!

After a quick grocery run, I return home to an equally tired wife and a napping son. I put away the groceries and quietly land my ass firmly onto the couch. After sitting there for about 10 minutes, I can no longer keep my eyes open. It’s not even 5pm and I can’t fight it anymore. I curl up in a blanket on the couch and close my eyes.

I am the. Woken up by my wife 3 hours later. Apparently I had just slept 3 hours and didn’t really mean to. Yep, I was tired all right! So I get up, have 2 bowls of cereal for dinner, and watch some DS9 with Jackson. A good night all around!

For now, I’m off to take out the garbage and then head to bed with my lovely wife. I really need to get more than 4 hours of sleep tonight!

I just noticed that for some strange reason the search function on the site is not working properly. As my IT department at work would say, this is a known issue and there is no eta for a solution, nor is there a workaround.

I did something a few weeks ago I never meant to. Looking back, I’m glad I did.

Anyone who really knows me knows that everyday I ‘do my rounds’ on the computer. This involves me going to a handful of sites and reading their new daily content. This list can be broken down into 4 major categories — web comics, news, social media, and tech sites. Reading all of these sites usually takes me a good hour or so. To be honest, it’s time consuming and was getting to be a real pain in the ass. So, a few weeks ago I stopped. Cold turkey. To be honest, I don’t miss it.

I have been reading web comics for over 10 years, and I surprisingly don’t miss reading them.

When I would digest my dozen or so tech site’s information, I felt like my brain was going to explode. No more of that.

I still check social media and news sites, but I limit those sites to 2 a day. I check notional & local news, and Twitter & Facebook for my social needs. What used to take me an hour typically takes me about 10-15 minutes now. The best part? I really don’t feel like I’m missing out on anything. Kinda makes you wonder how many hours I wasted in the past 10 years reading garbage. Weird, eh?

In part of my quest to return to ‘normalcy’ after my ‘interesting’ summer, I decided to finally return to this site. After really looking around, I realized that I haven’t changed things around since March of 2009. That’s 33 months with the same design. That may not seem like a long time, but it is a record for this site!

I decided to go with a Steampunk theme since this is what I am currently obsessing about. The original theme had a gas mask headed, but I decided to change it out last night to a more colorful clockwork theme. I think it works a lot better.

Today we’re going out shopping in search of a white button down for Jack that doesn’t cost more than my last visit to the ER. In addition, we’re going to attempt to take him to the movies for the first time. If everything goes to plan, we should be going to the 1:45pm showing of ‘Puss In Boots’. Not only has he been asking to see this movie, but this is a nice dry run for when I really want to take him to see ‘The Muppets’ next month.

Wish us luck!

Jess and Jackson have been away since last night. Jess went down to New Jersey to hang out with Kelly and Katie, while Jack spent the night with his Aunt Brandi and cousin Sam. Me? I spent the night working and then home with some great music and code.

Today, after sleeping in (something I haven’t done in months!) and having some breakfast, I decided that I wanted to go out for the day rather than sit at home all day. I decided to hit up some of the stores I like to browse in, but never can due to Jack’s impatience. By the time I hit the 2nd store, I found myself starting to shop for Jackson. Before I knew it, I was at the mall with bags in hand full of Christmas presents for Jackson. Unexpectedly, I started Christmas shopping today. You really can blame me though with some of the sales I encountered. Most were buy 1 get 1 1/2 off. Can’t beat that!