Back at it

Laptop back up and running, back in glorious LA and the fantastic weather, work starting back up a week into November, massive tax return arriving imminently.

Things are looking pretty damn good from where I stand.

I picked up a book my mother gave me about how to financially survive 2009 the other day while I was laptopless and started reading, way too late to usefully apply the wisdom inside to maximize all the potential of 2009 financially but it has triggered another shift in thinking.

I have always been focused on the present. The only thing that ever mattered was what was happening in the now. Instant gratification and wants were given precedence over intelligent foresight and needs. Not surprisingly, if I had read the book at the end of last year when it was presented to me, I would be in a far different position today than I am, probably looking to buy my first home. Instead I'm kicking myself for being remarkably foolish.

So I'm getting off to a bit of a late start but I am thinking more about the future and all its uncertainties. Anything can happen, it is wondrous and scary at the same time. The 2009 tips the book gives are of course applicable to any year, the interesting thing is that it pretty accurately predicts everything that has happened this year and laid out steps to avoid getting screwed by the things when they happened. I have always been fascinated by the fact that you can fairly easily predict the future in certain ways just by being intelligent and seeing patterns. I did not pay attention to the patterns and got tripped up because I was watching my feet, not where I was going. Silly me, we learn from our mistakes.

Went to the Staples Center in Downtown LA and saw the UFC fights on Saturday night zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz....... Two times been there live, both were kind of disappointing. Think I'm watching from the comfort of my own living room from now on.

Friend's birthday last night was good fun. Sitting around a booth in a crowded bar over beers with the guys is something that hasn't happened for a while now. Good natured razzing and marvelling at how poorly the birthday boy tried to hook up with a friend and ex-roommate. Some guys just have no game.

The light at the end of the boredom tunnel is getting brighter.

Watching: horror movies for Halloween

Reading: For Whom the Bell Tolls (again, been too long) and American Psycho (another of my all-time faves)

Listening: lots of Sublime (reeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaaal good to be back in LA and get out of Maine before first snow storm, made it by two days)

Mourning

For the past week my super laptop has been warning me about an imminent hard drive failure. Having only had it for a year I foolishly ignored the warnings and carried on with me day to day. Last night the failure became less imminent and all too real. For the second time I have lost a laptop without backing up any of the info on it.

Now I find myself relegated to the use of a netbook which is much less super than the super laptop and allows me to do next to nothing that makes the super laptop like a trusted friend. No TV shows, no movies, no video games, superb internet capabilities. Positive that when I go to see if they can't mine some of the data off the corrupted drive the answer will most likely be, "Nope. Sorry."

This sucks.