Yawn.  Wow, has it really been that long since I’ve last posted?  Wait, wow, is it really 2009?

I owned my name dot com (for example, johndoe.com) for a few years. It existed as my blog for awhile, and then it just really ceased to exist. I always planned to develop it into my resume and portfolio, but it never really got off the ground.

Awhile back, another individual with my name (gasp! there’s two of me, maybe three) contacted me pertaining to the domain — he had wanted to use it for his professional music career. Well, after a year or so, I wrote back to him again (I first declined his request) and told him it’s all his. I’m sad to see it go, but I’m happy someone will put the name dot com to some good use that it actually deserves.

House Shopping

House shopping as to be one of the most exciting, yet frustrating, events in our lives. In the last few weeks, we’ve decided to house shop when an opportunity for a cheap house came out of absolutely no where. We ended up bidding on the house, and then retracting our bid when we realized the timing of it just would be too overwhelming (they wanted to close asap, we needed to sell the condo, etc). But we opted to keep at the house hunting game and hope we can come across something that will allow us to save for approximately a year while it’s being built.

It’s appearing more and more that you can get a great home with large rooms, nice layout, and upgraded kitchens — yet absolutely no property space. Oh, and in, for lack of better wording, shitty neighborhoods. On Saturday, we went to a home that we were very excited about. However, as we drove to the development, we began to see why the homes were so cheap; the homes surrounding the new development were mostly boarded up and foreclosed. And the ones with individuals still living there, well, they didn’t maintain them all that well. For an added punch to the stomach, the elementary school looked like it was abandoned as well.

Later that day, we went to another development. They were nice homes and the builders were offering huge incentives. But again, the neighborhood just wasn’t comfortable and while the homes were spaced far apart, there was absolutely no backyard space. So where do you compromise?

It’s going to be rough, but I’m sure we’ll eventually find what we want.

When you upgrade WordPress and they tell you to backup everything before you upgrade, listen to them.  I just lost a shitload of custom programming for this site.

With that being said, I’m about to go kill someone.

Our wedding planning has officially started.  And as such, I’ve decided to start a blog based on the trials of being a groom while planning a wedding.  I had originally wanted to post everything on this site, but I’ve since decided that it’s best to have a seperate blog focused strictly on the wedding planning (from a groom’s point of a view). 

Posting on 24Hansen will resume, but everything marriage-related will be posted on www.timetoelope.com.  So, definitely check it out.

Phew.  Finally got around to fixing the way the feed displayed some of the entry titles.  It was annoying the shit out of me.  Not that you care.  I just needed to get that off my chest.

Carry on.

For the last few months, I’ve been contemplating starting another ‘blog’ aside from this one. While I do enjoy 24Hansen, it’s my personal realm where I share everything and anything that I stumble across — links, movies, music, etc. I also enjoy ranting here about my daily fights with Comcast, Lowe’s, and various other companies.

But my hesitation with a new ‘blog’ is that I’m afraid that I will not keep up with it. Perhaps to get things rolling, I’ll just discuss my idea a little bit further.

My entire life, I’ve lived in New Jersey — so why not present various aspects of it? Mainly, I’d love to discuss the many restaurants throughout the state (hell, there was a tv show done on great NJ diners). I’m not looking to be a food critic or anything like that. My fiance and I just love to enjoy quality food, so why not share our love with others? I’d also like to share various spots (sight-seeing, hangouts, bars, etc) throughout the state that we enjoy. I’m sure I would also be posting various news items that pertain to New Jersey.

I don’t have much time between work and SongMeanings, but my fiance and I make it to various restaurants at least once a week. So then, at the least, I’d be able to make an entry pertaining to one restaurant per week. We’re also going to be looking for places to hold our wedding reception — why not use that as entries as well?

We’ll see how this goes. Ten bucks that it never gets off the ground.

Now, what would be a good name for this site?

Going to try and update the back-end software that drives this site. Cross your fingers that shit doesn’t explode!

Update

I’m rather shocked how quick and easy that upgrade was. Wordpress certainly made it a breeze — no major issues or bugs. I had to update a few snippet of code that I modified myself for the previous version, but besides that, this upgrade went flawless.

Cheers.

Finally got around to fixing the archives to reflect both entries and links — it only took about 8 months, eh?  How’s that for not caring about a website?  I kid, I kid.  I also cleaned up the archives, appearance wise, so that the site looks more uniform.

Now I just have to get one solid feed that contains both entries and links.  But, I’ll save that for another day.

Remember my old blog from back in the day?  I’m talking several years ago?  Well, I had all the entries in a nifty database dump.  I had intentions to revive those posts onto this blog, for all to read.

Those intentions are gone.  Not because I don’t want anyone to read them, but because I’m a complete moron — a 100% bonafide moron.

I recently put one of my old hard drives into the file server running underneath my desk.   I browsed through the contents, saw the database dump, saved some pictures to another drive, and then proceeded to format the contents of the drive.

Did you notice something in that above statement?  I did not save the database dump.  It, instead, went to a place where deleted data goes.  Gone.  A moron, I am.

There were a few entries I really wanted to post up here — the post about my broken leg and surgery, my long entry about moving to Florida, and the entry about when I first kissed Rebecca.