Zibblog

Occasionally, I start to feel like I’ve overloaded myself with information in the general sense. Everything from blog feeds that I’m attempting to read to books on my shelf to projects in my head. Sometimes it feels like I’m about to explode. That’s why, sometimes, it just feels good to watch some Stargate Atlantis. Oh yeah, Stargate Atlantis. You know you love it.

Hopefully, I’ll have something more insightful to post tomorrow. Maybe I’ll just write about how my Chicago Bears kicked some 49er ass on Sunday. Um … actually, I just wrote that. Guess we’ll just have to wait and see.

Lately, I’ve seen some blog posts about leaving work like the highly memorable Goodbye Mercury! and I Quit, so I decided to construct my own post on the matter.

The oddest part of the whole experience was the feeling of relief to be done with work at the same time as the odd feeling from realizing that I really was leaving. The best part of the experience was the nice comments I received from random people in the office when I was making my last walk around the cubes (well, that and the thought that I will never have to answer some question about code that I wrote in 2001). I worst was probably the awkward conversations with some people where I really just wanted to have the somewhat obligatory handshake.

After reading Scott’s post about his vacation between jobs, I was wishing that I had taken off a few days to get caught up on my sci-fi book backlog (around 40 books at the moment), finally get my blog up at zibblog.com, get in some good running and yoga, get some use out of my netflix subscription, and organize my apartment. However, in the end, the book backlog can wait until my next trip to NE, my blog will get up in its own good time, I did some pilates and running over the weekend, and my apartment might as well stay unorganized since I’ll just be moving in a month anyway. For the moment at least, the new job is fun, there’s a lot of work to be done, and it’s nice to be enthusiastic about my work again. In somewhat related news, I’m having a lot of fun doing some AJAX and CSS reading lately, so expect some blog entries on random web technologies soon.

For anyone that has an iPod or is thinking about buying an iPod, the iLounge Holiday Buyers’ Guide is a great reference to various iPod related items.

A little while back, I got an iPod Nano from a friend of mine. (This page on iLounge is a great resource if you have a Nano or are thinking about getting one.) Originally, I had been in a camp of wanting an iPod that would carry around all of my music, photos, etc. like the 60GB iPod with Video. However, once I started playing with the Nano, I realized what a gem it truly is. First, the amount of music that I listen to in any given day is certainly less than 4GB (I will say that I think that the 2 GB is kind of small unless you are using it more like an iPod shuffle). Second, the thing is tiny and skip proof so it’s great for running. Third, the one thing that really makes the nano useful in my book is podcasts. I can’t really listen to music while I run, but I love listening to podcasts when I can’t just zone out into a smooth run. My experience with podcasts was pretty similar to this article that had something interesting notes on the iPod UI.

If you are looking for good podcasts, personally, I like to use Yahoo Podcasts because it gives you a change of pace from the ones that iTunes talks about. It simply has a nice little interface for helping you find the podcasts that you want.

Some of the podcasts that I’m currently listening to are (feed links):

• iLounge.com Podcast
• Macworld Podcast
• Media Artist Secrets
• NerdTV (PBS)
• Silicon Valley, Technology, Media InfoTalk
• The Gadget Show
• Pipeline Comic Book Podcast

NerdTV is probably my favorite in terms of real content. I’m currently listening to the interview with Tim O’Reilly which has been pretty interesting so far.

As I get ready to leave my current job, I have been given less and less real work to do with a lot of it being transitioning things and being around for people to ask questions of. While I was waiting for my server to build and restart, I was surfing the web for good mortgage payment calculators. After a little surfing, I found calculators.interest.com which has a few different tools for calculating things like monthly payments based on interest rates and the amount you are financing.