My eyes have settled in quite nicely. I can see things like I never thought I’d be able to see things.  Night time vision is still a bit blurry when it’s really dark, but that’s getting better as time progresses.  They say that I’ll be completely clear and healed in another 8-10 weeks.  I look forward to that.

The holiday season was good. Lots of time with family. Lots of good times in general.

I’ve been working on a redesign for MJJ Designs’ website. Should be done in a couple of weeks.

Finished up some sites for clients recently, they’re in the portfolio on MJJ Designs, if you’re interested.

My contract with BU was up, then wasn’t, then was, then wasn’t. I still don’t know if they’re going to continue the contract or not. We’ll find out in a few weeks.

Christine and I have been working hard on the Kindle site (here), and made quite a bit of money over Christmastime.  That was nice.  We’re looking for a house, and hopefully can get one when our lease is up in June.  So we’ll see what happens there.

Other than that, it’s just life as usual. Nothing else noteworthy to report.  But yes, I’m still alive, and for those of you who stumble upon my site here, thanks for coming back.

There’s been a lot of questions since there, so I’ll do my best to answer them.  Also, in the future if people stumble onto this page, maybe it’ll answer some of your questions:

• No, it’s not painful to be zapped in the eye with a laser.  It is a bit painful when they put the clamp on your eye, and apply pressure while cutting open your cornea.  It feels more or less like someone’s punched you in the eyeball.  It goes away after an hour or so.
• No, you can’t immediately see after the surgery’s over.  When you sit up from the chair, it looks like you’re under water.  That goes away (mostly) after your mandatory 5 hour nap after surgery.
• Yes, my vision is perfect now.  At least that’s what they’ve told me. According to my morning after test, my vision is now 20/20.  It’s still a bit foggy around bright white things, and Tv/computer, but it’s getting better each day.
• Yes, I could technically have gone back to work the day after surgery. But why risk it. I took a long weekend, and should be more than fine on Monday to go back full time.
• There are a metric ton of eye drops you have to put in pre and post surgery.  Every hour I have to put in artificial tears, every two hours some anti-inflammatory medication, and 4 times a day some antibiotics.  If you don’t like eye drops, you might not want to get this surgery.  I didn’t know about all the drops until the morning of. (Yes, after I’d already paid.)
• It’s still an expensive procedure.  After a discount I got, it cost me just shut of $3500.  However, there are cheaper procedures you can get done. I got the “CustomVue” surgery from The Lasik Institute in Burlington, MA.  Dr. Sheth did the surgery, and was fantastic.  The cheaper surgery that the Lasik Institute folks have available is as cheap as $650 per eye. (As of the time I’m writing this.)  The “CustomVue” I got also comes with a lifetime guarantee. If my sight goes bunk at any point, I can have the surgery done again for free.
• Yes, you go blind temporarily when they’re doing the surgery.  My eye sight went completely black for about 10 seconds.
• Yes, you can actually see when they flip the sliced part of your cornea away from your eye.  It goes from clear to blurry pretty quickly.
• Yes, the laser makes a scary sound. (Similar to the first time you hear a tattoo gun. It’s that scary.)
• Yes, the eye drops they make you put in give you a metallic taste in your mouth.  You get used to it.
• Yes, I’m glad I did it.  Once my vision crisps up, I’ll be 100% glad I’ve done it.
• The laser itself is very quick.  My left eye (which was worse than my right) took two blasts. 8 seconds, and 6 seconds.  The right eye (which was the stronger of the two) took one blast, 8 seconds.  All in all, I was in the chair about 8 minutes or so.  (A few minutes for prep, then the slicing, then the laser, then done.)
• My eyes are incredibly bloodshot right now.  The pressure they apply with the clamp, to make it so you can’t move your eye, can cause bruising. It’s normal.  It doesn’t hurt anymore, though.
• If you’re thinking of having LASIK done, and have the financial means to do so.  Just do it.  While the surgery is something I don’t want to do again in my life, it was definitely worth doing it once.

I’m still recovering, but getting to the point where I can function.  I can look at the computer screen for more than ten minutes now, without having eye pain.  I drove on the highway today for the first time since the surgery, and it was a trip.  Being able to read things far away is pretty awesome.

I’ve been playing “Can you read that?” with Christine since my eyes started healing.  I’m determined to find something that’s far enough away that she can’t read it, and I can.  So far, I’ve failed.  She has some damn good eye sight.

Other than that, life’s just chuggin’ away.  Keeping busy.  Did all my holiday shopping today, wrapped all the presents and placed them under our mock-tree. (We didn’t buy one, we just designated a spot on our floor that we were going to stack the presents.)

That’s all I’ve got for now.  Uninteresting, I know.  C’est la vie!

I’ve added back in the “Music” section, which isn’t complete yet, but it’s almost all of the lyrics to songs I’ve written in my lifetime.  I haven’t written in years, and I’m hoping seeing all of my past stuff on the site every time I come to will inspire me to write something new.

So, there you have it.  Read away. Comments are turned off for the lyrics, but feel free to send me a message if you’ve got any feedback, or even comment on this post.

Note of warning, try not to read anything from the ’90s, I was just a kid and wrote cheesey meaningless crap back then.  2000 and 2001 were good years for me, at least I think so.  Anyway, enjoy. Or not.

Dedicated download speed

Note the 1.5 MB/s downspeed, from a server! Get that with a shared host. I dare you!

I’ve done quiet a bit in the last six days of having a Mac, including doing my first bit of design work on it.  I also learned what applications I need to rip and burn DVDs, which is so fast I have a hard time believing that this is actually working. Amazing, right?

I’m still in awe that I’m able to do all the things I can, and so far.

I was scared to make the switch full time. I even bought Parallels, just in case there was something I needed to do on Windows. I haven’t even opened it aside from when I installed it, to make sure it worked.  It’s amazing.

Who knew that I’d convert after all these years?  Did I go to the “dark side?”, no. I think quite the opposite, actually.  I went from years of being frustrated with Windows, and not being able to do the things I wanted to, to having the simplicity of a Mac, and the ease that comes with it.

I’ve got a lot of web-related stuff to do this weekend, so I’ll finally put it to the test.  I’ll also be upgrading the last two drives in it (the one it came with, and the secondary one that will be for Time Machine backups), and possibly getting a new mouse.

Why didn’t any of my Mac friends make me switch years ago? Thanks, jerks.

So, how’s the Mac? Glad you asked. Let’s put it this way: I’ve used a lot of high end PCs in my lifetime. A lot. And not one of them has ever come close to this thing.  Here’s the final specs:

• Dual Quad Core 2.26 Processors (I would have upgraded the processors, but a) I didn’t think I needed to, and b) the prices are a bit crazy)
• 8Gigs of Ram
• ATI Radeon HD 4870 (The upgrade with 512MB of DDR5 on-board  video memory.)
• 640 GB main drive.
• 30″ Cinema display.

I’m about 80% done installing all the software I need, and it’s so easy because this thing’s a freakin’ beast.  I’ve been installing handfuls of apps at a time.  My PC would have thrown up and died an hour ago.  So awesome.

As you may know, my PC had two external hard drives, each a terabyte in site, that I had planned on connecting to this beast. However, they used Firewire 400 and the new Mac Pros only have Firewire 800 (only, like it’s a bad thing, heh.)

So my solution was rather destructive.  I ripped open the cases, and dropped them into the available slots on the Mac Pro.  I know what you’re thinking; it’s day one and I’m ripping the thing open already to put more stuff in it?  With a PC that may be complicated, but fret not, it takes less than 10 seconds to install a new drive into a Mac Pro. Literally.

So I dropped in the two terabyte drives, and the secondary 320gb drive from my PC, for a total of 2.94TB in the Mac Pro.

The hardest part was opening the freakin’ cases of the drives, which I learned is more complicated than it needs to be. The first was easy, the second I ended up smashing to bits to get the drive out.  It worked though.

One of the drives is formatted in a way that OS X can’t erase stuff from it. (I assume this is a formatting issue), so I’m going to copy everything off of it, format it, and put the stuff back.  It’ll take a while, but it’ll get done eventually.

The biggest question people are going to ask, is about the 30″ Cinema display.  Is it as good as it should be for $1800?  You bet your sweet ass it is.  I can fit the whole freakin’ internet on this thing, on one screen. It’s huge, and the resolution is enormous.

It truly is a work of art. Given, it should be for what I paid for it, but I’m not complaining.

Overall, my Mac experience thus far, has been nothing but excellent.  My PC is sitting next to me (as a reminder of what applications I need to install) and begging me not to through it away.  With those beady Windows eyes of it.  Evil! Evil I say!

Photos of the new set up below (Warning, I didn’t re size them, so they’re going to make your monitor explode.  Mine, on the other hand, loves them this large):

Thanks again to Nick at the Apple store. You are awesome, and my new computer thanks you for selling it to me.

Thus, Mac Pro day will be this Saturday morning, October 10th.  I’m beyond excited.

Also, in case you weren’t following along at home, I’m making the switch to Mac after 25 years on a PC.  I’ve been using an iMac at the office I’ve got with one of my clients for about 4 months now, and I love it. I can’t wait to switch. The fear of not having Windows was pretty strong for a while, but has completely subsided. I’m ready for change.

I’ll be purchasing a Mac Pro, with some added options to it, and a 30″ Cinema display. (Or possible 2 24″ LED displays, depending on whether or not the sales person thinks they’ll be better for me.)  Check back this weekend for photos.