This past year has been big on self-discovery (as seen in Front Page posts with titles like 'Overexcitable? Moi?', 'Zodiac pwned!', 'Roads not travelled', and 'As the odometer turns...' - along with the whole '25 Years of Ryan G' franchise) and, among all the soul search action, I've rediscovered the avid reader in me... as well as the avid writer. In my freshman year of college, my english professor ("Professor of English") assigned us The New York Trilogy by Paul Auster, and the puzzling meta-fictional book made me feel like writing a novel myself.

Then, eer..., stuff came up. Jobs, internships, finals, saving the world by night, and so on...

Anyway, in the course of events outlined under 'From Star Trek to Shortwave to Dragon Slaying' (just do a search for that, it's in the 2007 'Zodiac pwned!' post), I brought my writing itch back to the surface. I sifted through my ideas and am now working on my first one (involves computer virus!). I'm praying a lot about this decision and your prayers are always welcome, too. The genre I seem to be gravitating toward is Christian Science Fiction or Christian Science Fantasy. Updates will be posted here and new pages will eventually be added to EG for what I write. As I better discover my own tastes, I'll probably also put up lists of other people's work (a "what I'm reading" sort of thing). l8r

BreadMeter, we (apparently) hardly knew ye...

Due to another crazy shift in how I handle/track my nickels and dimes, I've decided that I will not be using the BreadMeter program anymore. User feedback has been slow and page traffic light, so I am dropping support for the program (the Audio/Video Component Archive is satisfying my database craving anyway). The installation file and source code are still available at the old location, anyone interested in carrying on the torch is welcome to do so.

BreadMeter is the latest 'abandoned' thing in a very active year for me dropping projects. I officially gave up on repairing my Toyota Supra (Nickname: Eureka) in February, and I got the Cavalier in May. KeyPrint didn't have much of a future without TermTable (dropped last year), so it went away... in fact, I just took its page down today. EG SP became egrabow_NTC. FreeFolder.net was more trouble than it was worth. Finally, BreadMeter is removed from the table.

Wake Up! Pro remains as my last client-side software. With strong feedback from users and my own continued usage, that program won't be leaving the site anytime soon. Even then, however, version 3.0 is a good year or two away... and will probably be written in a yet unlearned programming language. Oh well, 2.5 is solid enough to hold its ground until then.

By the way, it's not a fluke or bad sign that '07 has been a 'scale it back' year for me. I've been meaning to clear my plate a little, since I tend to fill it up too much anyway. The Supra (Eureka) got replaced by the Cavalier (Alacrity), EG SP isn't really gone - it's just in a different form now, and I still build websites - I'm just not advertising or keeping it formal anymore. And, as you may have seen in today's other post, at least one new project did come out of '07!

I just put up the December edition of 25 Years of Ryan G last night. There will be one more article to wrap up the series, which I'll put up right after EG2008 is rolled out... and I'll probably make a big deal out of it as I did in July.

Wake Up! Pro 2.5 seems to be doing well, the Traffic Information System reports that 11.9% of EG's trackable activity is on that page. The Audio/Video Component Archive is also doing well, I've been adding more information to the database over the last couple of months and now almost all of the info I have on Kenwood stuff 1994 or earlier has been added. Once Kenwood is done up to 2002, I'll switch to a less-covered brand (Sherwood?) and then to the ever-popular Sony... which should take as long as Kenwood did if not longer! Still, user input is always welcome. By the time all the brands are covered up to their 2002 lines, the 2015 stuff will be on clearance racks! Sheesh, I still don't have any DVD Player coverage...

A better digital camera should mean nicer graphics for the EG2008 stuff. I expect it to hit on time (Jan. 1) and that it won't mean any radical changes from EG2007 (which was radical enough for 5 years!). Later.

I've been away from the desk for the last few weeks getting some autumn air up on Long Island.   After 5 years without, RRR&R came back this month... only now it goes the other way around!   Instead of New York to Florida every August, I'm thinking about Florida to New York every October.   (Info on the trips of 2001 and 2002 are up in one of the 25 Years articles)

I'm thrilled to say that (besides the fact that I made it back in one piece, always a plus) I didn't "need" this vacation nearly as much as I used to need them when working at Wendy's... I take this as a good career indicator.   The car performed admirably and now has earned it's nickname: "Alacrity" (the first car where I only have to turn the key once to start the engine).   I saw the family, looked up old friends in Patchogue, took a day trip to Orient Point (on Asphalt Day), went into the city with my dad, and got to wear my jacket in chilly air.   Winter can stay far, far away... but I missed autumn.   I even brought back some fallen leaves for my northerner co-workers.

The wired highlight of the trip came in the form of two Toynbee Tiles (link to Wikipedia article).   I first read about them several months ago, and decided to stop and see a couple spotted in I-95's rest areas.   The one I photographed is from Chesapeake House in Maryland, I saw another one in the Molly Pitcher rest area along the New Jersey Turnpike.   Just like numbers stations several years ago, the act of actually standing in front of one of these mysterious tiles creeped me out as much as the articles I read about them.

I'm back in action again, uncertain if there will be a RRR&R 2008.   These trips do cost money, after all, and it needn't be an annual thing.   Another month, another 3,000 miles on the Cavalier!

I'm pleased to announce the release of Wake Up! Pro version 2.5.   I've also redesigned the webpage, threw up screenshots, and a new "extra tones" installer (updated from version 1.5's).   The manual and source code are updated, too.   I hope the new features, flexibility and robustness are enjoyed by insomniacs the world over...

In the end, the "Settings Wizard" stayed removed from the drawing board, but that was the only change I made to the plans.   The very flexible 'hourly chime' is something I'm putting to work now, and the new interface for View Presets should save me and other users a lot of headaches (sorry again for the mess in v2.0/2.1).   Please feel free to contact me regarding your own experiences with version 2.5.

With this release behind me, I intend to take a hiatus from programming.   Any bugs discovered in WUP 2.5 or BreadMeter 1.0 will still be addressed, of course, but I'm making my 3.0 ideas wait their turn as I shift my attention to tackling a new hobby (after I give picking-up-Spanish another pass).   2.5 will probably also be my last release in VB6.   When I do dive back into client-side coding again, I plan to be using something more platform-independent.

After months of thinking it over, I've decided to dump my service, freefolder.net, on October 1st.

Back in the unfortunate days of my New York job search, web design outside of egrabow.com was one of the few things that seemed to be going right.   It started with love961.com, which remains by far the biggest site I'd done commercially, then spread out into two more and plenty of leads.   Friends of mine were also referring me to people to fix their computers.   Unfortunately, things dried up after several months... leads kept coming but kept leading to dead ends and what I did have became too repetitive.   By the time I moved to Florida, I asked myself if I was endangering my side job... but there wasn't enough of the side job left to worry much about.   Leads came in Florida, too, but also went nowhere... then love961.com fell victim to typical radio conglomerate BS and I lost the site that was essentially the core of freefolder.net.

Money at the station picked up slowly but surely and I didn't like the prospect of advertising to total strangers (having given that thought while working at Office Depot - a good opportunity to have flyers and stuff made with my employee discount).   Online, the freefolder.net page was greatly improved in '06 and made more prominent on this site in '07, but to no avail.   I will still be available for web design and the other things listed on the page, just without the name or formalities that went with it.   Two years after the move, the name has become kind of a downer for me, anyway.   Due to its only success being back in the '04/'05 job search, I ended up associating it with that depressing period of my life... and I've come to think that it's not my path in life.

After a month off to work on the website, I've shifted my focus back to Wake Up! Pro.   The problem that prevented me from releasing an ALPHA version last month was quickly resolved (amazing how simple problems are after you've taken some time to rest and come back to it).   I'm pleased to announce that the .EXE file itself is compiling nicely and I'm preparing to BETA test it... if anyone would like to be in the loop on this, lemme know.   I'm still not setting a release date, but after my progress in the last two weeks, I'm optimistic that 2.5.0 can replace 2.1.2 early next month.   I'm also planning to revamp the Wake Up! Pro page here on EG and to make a new 'Extra Tones' file, which was popular back in the version 1.5 days.

There is a screenshot on the right, though not all of the work shows up on the clock itself.   Here's a rundown of what's coming:

• More indicators!   Don't like indicators?   Just turn 'em off!   (You can hide the date as well if you only want the time)
• Color of the 'chassis' can be changed without using a background image, and the image will show up around the buttons (problem in 2.1).   On the flip side, an image can now be used for the background of the clock.
• Hourly chime.
• Pffft... like I'd stop at "Hourly chime"?!?!?!   Program chimeage for any minute you like, and have certain sounds play only at certain times of the day... or just use the master on/off switch.   Chimes can be borrowed from alarm settings, and alarms can be used to turn chimes on and off for the day.
• View Presets handle more like Alarms, a lot more.   They're easier to switch between, too.
• WUP can play sounds when you open it and when you close it.
• Quick Set Alarms are customizable.
• Date/Time formatting wayyyy more flexible.
• Limits to how many times you can hit 'Snooze' (just what morning-you needed!)
• Error Detection (did you really want to set an alarm for 6:30 PM?????)
• Less chaotic randomization of alarm beep tones (set limits so WUP can 'ballpark it')
• and, just for fun, you can check a box and make the colons flash on the clock!

If anyone would like to BETA test this, lemme know.   I need to know if this works on Vista.

Due to some use-it-or-lose-it vacation time, I decided to take a road trip in the Cavalier to Tampa, West Palm and Miami (never been to the latter two). It was a short road trip, but I couldn't wait until October to break-in the car!

BTW... I recommend staying away from Miami's roads!!!! lol no, seriously

That was the first half of my vacation, now I'm using the remainder to tweak the website... some work is overdue. l8r

Well, now that the ice cream cake is gone and the birthday check$ are cashed, it's time to get back to business.

Wake Up! Pro Alpha was ready for release on the 9th, but for reasons I have yet to discover, it wouldn't 'compile' properly (run outside of the development environment). Project W25's deadline has been cancelled and no new dates will be set... things just aren't cooperating. The first release will be a BETA again, and while I'm hopeful it will be soon, I've decided that EG will get WUP's time just like I scheduled. If WUP can't stick to a schedule, maybe web development can. That would be ironic...

Mid and late July will go for this website and egrabow_NTC. The upgrade to Version 7 hit all the important pages in January, and creeped into a few more since... now I want to finish the rest of them, putting in some badly needed updates (Media Page, History Page) while I'm at it.

Comments are, as usual, welcome!

Well, I guess I should write something here.   Lemmesee...

Monday is the quarter-century mark, I'll be 25 years old.   Praise the Lord for bringing me this far, I pray for another good 25 years... wait, double that... no, triple gotta adjust for distant-future life expectancy.   I hope you die-hard EG fans (there go those crickets again) are enjoying the monthly 25 Years of Ryan G articles, which put these 25 years into review.   I'm having a lot of fun writing them, plus I get to take a stroll down 'memory lane'.   In January, I'll wrap the series up with the events of '07 and I will attempt to predict my next 25 years... so I can mention how hilariously inaccurate they were in the 50 Years of Ryan G article coming up in 2032.

Well, maybe I don't plan that far in advance.  I'm still held up deciding which hovercar to buy in 2028, anyway.

I decided to tie a lot into this birthday, here's what has been done recently and will be done soon (either by coincidence or intentionally) that I consider 25th Birthday 'upgrades':

1. Wardrobe (intentionally, see below) 2. Cavalier (coincidence, but why not think of it as a birthday present to myself, anyway?) 3. Wake Up! Pro 2.5 (both... beta will be out soon, I promise) 4. Promotion at Work (keeps fingers crossed cause that would be really great) 5. Savings account (coincidence, a sudden surge of overtime makes it easier) 6. Spanish and Lucid Dreaming  maybe even LDing in Spanish?  (existing projects that got/ will get increased attention) 7. Online presence (both, EG SP was going away anyway, I just decided to time it around this) 8. Cell Phone (coincidence, but I txt my peepz dat itz intentional) 9. Ice Cream cake (definitely intentional... on every birthday!)

This is a good place to talk about the new threads, everything else is addressed in other Front Page postings (hmmm... maybe I should talk about the cake?!?).

I decided to do my first 'apparel upgrade' since high school (when I traded in the jeans for khakis and started wearing a watch regularly), attempting to make my wardrobe more resourceful... more 'Grabow'.

In with the pockets!   I prefer to have one, if not two, on my shirt for pens, paper, sunglasses, etc.   Cargo pants replaced the khakis, though I can tell you I won't be using the pockets for my PDA or other electronics (after breaking its predecessor in a cargo pant pocket several years ago), but they are useful for less-fragile stuff.   All in all, I have 7 or 8 pockets on me now (he he he).   After wearing my old work shoes exclusively for the last two years, I decided that I preferred shoes with lots of utility but not the utilitarian look.  Steel toe, slip resistant, long lasting... it's the only habit I actually kept from Wendy's.   The cell phone was recently re-introduced as well, so lets just count that as an upgrade thing too.

After the stable release of Wake Up! Pro 2.5, I will finish implementing EG2007 (version 7 of this website).   Some pages, notably the About Pages and EGrabow Media, haven't yet been upgraded, and some features were left only halfway through development (Random Page link, TIS Infoboard).   In July and August, I'll be updating whatever's left and revisiting the already-upgraded pages to make sure they're up to spec (they can work in GrabowPedia Mode, for instance).   The Front Page will get better archive links (since right now there is only one that returns everything back to 2004 - I will add links for each year).

The breakoff date for myspace.com/egrabow has been moved back to July 19.   I decided a few months ago to expand my internet presence outside of egrabow.com (which nearly everything fell under until now), under a new 'egrabow_NTC' banner.   The new NTC stuff will not be part of egrabow.com (except for files I need to upload to the server and use elsewhere) or EGrabow Media... myspace.com/egrabow will cease to be EGs 'Satellite Page' and become the main page for egrabow_NTC.

When that stuff is done, the Audio/Video Component Archive will briefly receive my full attention.   I'll be redoing the page layouts and adding some information.

I think I'm coming out of a long drought.   For the last several months, my paychecks have been just enough to cover things (and praise the Lord for what I have)... but a little surplus never hurt anybody and I needz some!   June, it seems, will not be a dry month... not for the state of Florida or for my bank account.

OK, consequences... all this extra work is taking a toll on Wake Up! Pro development.   The deadline (July 9) is coming up faster than I anticipated and a stable release of version 2.5 just isn't realistic anymore.   It seems I've added too much, now I don't have the time to finish coding!!!   Sooooo, two changes to the game plan...
1. Forget the Settings Wizard, I wasn't crazy about it anyway.
2. Stable release will be later in the month (or in August if the station keeps me busy... no complaints), but a beta still seems feasible on or around the 9th.

Since getting broadband at home, keeping the landline became unnecessary... no sense in tying my phone number to the apartment anymore.   I had my number ported to to T-Mobile, which offered the best plan (made better by the fact that I knew a sales rep.).   It's back to the mobile lifestyle for me!

After about 8 days of car shopping, I ended up in an '03 Chevy Cavalier.  Sure, I'll miss the power everything from the Supra (what of it still worked, anyway), but not having to use a wire to start it!   I'll definitely miss the zero-dollar-a-month payments from the LeBaron and Supra, but I'll be praying that lower maintenance bills make up for that.

Since I'm such a statistics-nut, here's a few off the top of my head:

1986½ Toyota Supra
238,000 miles
2-door hatchback, power windows (passenger side broken)/ locks/ mirrors, cruise control
Will need new engine and steering system (but still drivable on existing), dent on passengers side
Location: Fort Myers, FL
Asking: $1,000
Interested?  E-mail me.

Just before the major coding for Wake Up! Pro 2.5, I fixed some bugs in the old version and released version 2.1.2 (hey, the Manhattan area code!  Fuggedaboudit!)

I got caught up in the Audio/Video Component Archive this last week, which is fine since that's this website's traffic ((((magnet)))).   That part of EG is funny, I just feel like building the database up one day, then I get hooked.   No worries, I'll make sure it doesn't sidetrack me from the other project: learning spanish.   Right now, I'm going through Kenwood Receivers from 1991 up... all categories for Kenwood 1990 and earlier are done (at least considering the information I have on those lines).

The Supra will be on sale next week, just as soon as I have one last cruise to a place I've never been before (southern Collier County).   I'm an old romantic when it comes to the road... and I don't know how long it'll be before I find myself driving a vintage sports car again!

Those are the titles I write at 5:42 am

BreadMeter 1.0.2 is out now, it has several fixes (always finding stuff - one of the joys of programming) including a pretty serious one I discovered when I tried to upgrade and use it on my own machine... I loaded my own newly-upgraded copy of BreadMeter and found the data file blank.

BACKUPS!!! OH, PLEASE LET THERE BE A BACKUP!!!!!!!

Fortunately, I leave the auto backup feature turned on, so I got my $$$ history back. Then I cracked open the installer and asked myself what I was thinking last year... the 1.0.0/1.0.1 installer was blanking out the main file during upgrades! I put a stop to that in 1.0.2. With BreadMeter revised, I can move on to Wake Up! Pro 2.5.

Car shopping is only two weeks away. Nothing new to report there.

The spanish language learning is moving along swiftly thanks to a Columbian co-worker of mine. I can switch on TeleMundo and make out about half of the words now (as far as what the words mean... I still have to flip frantically through the dictionary for that part of the experience). The goal is to be better with spanish than french (when I was in school, anyway) by July.

Finally, as part of my recent expansion into online message boards, etc. (which the broadband connection facilitates nicely), I've decided to sever myspace.com/egrabow from EGrabow Media in late June. Until now, I've basically applied "EGrabow Media" (and before that, "Ryan Grabow Network") to all my work online... whether or not it could be called 'work' in the traditional sense. EG SP will be kaput and the MySpace page will do its own thing under a new name... there will still be links to egrabow.com, of course, but they won't be as prominent. The blog there (which you may be reading right now) won't mirror the Front Page anymore, either, but some posts may still show up in both places.

Later.

Oh yeah, and NOOOOOOOOOOOOO DX to report, this season is dead so far.. what gives????

As everyone can probably tell by now, I'm making this July 9th more than just another birthday.   Heck, I'm not even sure why I'm mile-stoning this year so much... I guess 25 is just a nice age to be.   Hopefully I'll feel the same way about 30, 35, 40, etc...

I've decided that I want to reach three goals by July 9th.   Wake Up! Pro 2.5 has already been announced (I'm making a quick stop at BreadMeter 1.0.2 to warm up... I haven't coded much since Office Depot sapped my free time last summer!).   The second goal is to become about as proficient with the spanish language as I was with french (which shouldn't be hard 'cause I didn't get that far!).   Third is to get back into lucid dreaming (like I got anything better to do when I'm sleeping?)... I never really stopped trying, just stopped trying as hard.   Wake Up! Pro will actually tie into the third goal... and if I end up dreaming in spanish I'll *know* I'm on the right path!

Some other fun pre-25th B-day stuff... the Supra isn't expected to stay on that long, I've set April 25th (this instance of the number 25 was coincidental) as the day my new car search goes from passive to active.   I'm thinking about another Toyota... one from this millenium!   The monthly articles will continue throughout the year.   BreadMeter is getting a revision and some more work may be done on EG.   That's all for goals and plans, there will certainly be some other pre-25 events I didn't write on the calendar... already this year I had a fender bender, discovered my 'overexcitability' (which domino-effected through my whole identity), and explored a job opening in Tallahassee... none of which was planned but was significant.   107 days to go...

I just had an unexpected career moment. They were bound to start sooner or later.

I don't intend to go into too much detail, but a directing job opened up in Tallahassee that I had a good chance of getting. The catch was that, unlike the "traditional" directing jobs at Waterman, my job would be directing on a ParkerVision system. No one wrote a WikiPedia article for me to link to here, so I'll just say that ParkerVision is an automation system which puts most of the aspects of production (audio, switching, moving cameras, etc...) directly into one person's hands. Last week, I took the opportunity to drive up there (800 mile round trip) and see this system in action, plus (of course) conduct the interview and meet the staff.

Let's step back for a second, my career isn't something I've posted much about lately...

I started at Waterman Broadcasting (WBBH/WZVN) in August '05. This production assistant spot, combined with an increasing role in church's media department, allowed my first year in Florida to make up for my crummy last year in New York. After a year, I considered the standard P.A. duties conquered and began on my next move... director.

Directing won't be easy, nor should it be. I ask for advice, seek out problems that might impede my development as a director, and try to change my whole mindset on the job. Wall-to-wall positive feedback, but no title. The openings dried up, more months go by than I anticipated, then Cameron tells me that there's an opening at his old station.

Was I at the point where I would actively look in other markets? No. But this option had to be explored... at the very least I wanted to learn more about the automation system being set up in stations all over the country... stations I might be applying to whenever I decide to "market hop". At any rate, the ParkerVision system is definitely something I can wrap my head around, I can say that much for it.

After some thought and prayer, I decided that I still have a good thing going in Fort Myers... the title will likely come soon, after all, and then I get the traditional experience. If the opportunity doesn't come, on the other hand, then I'll consider market hopping... to a ParkerVision station or a traditional one. ParkerVision (now called Ignite) will still be there and smaller markets may hold just what I'll need. This isn't a roll of the dice, it's a fork in the road... I just need to give it to God so he will give me what I need to make the right decision.

Today marks the beginning of Project W25: Development of Wake Up! Pro version 2.5.   This upgrade will have its stable release on July 9, my, well, 25th birthday.   I smell a commemorative edition.

The Wake Up! Pro page will reflect this shortly, and it will also feature beta versions leading up to the final release.

What more can I cram into Wake Up! Pro that isn't already in v2.1.1?   You'd be surprised.   I already have a laundry list of suggestions from users and another laundry list I drew up over the course of many mornings, including stuff that didn't quite make it into 2.1.   If you have a suggestion for a new feature or a bug to report, now's a great time!

After two and a half years of very expensive fun... I've decided to bring the axe down on Project Eureka (restoring the old Toyota Supra).   I'm planning for this to happen in a couple of months, but it is definite now.   Details forthcoming.

This is gonna be about a lot more than MySpace, but I guess I'll start with that...

For the last time, Tom, I DO NOT practice astrology!!!
It seems like the MySpace administrators are really into the zodiac, because they don't give their members the option of removing it from their 'details.'   E-mails asking about this go ignored (or maybe user e-mails in general go ignored).   Fortunately, as a geek who knows his way around a search engine and HTML code, I didn't need the option to... I just did.

This code hides the automatically-generated details column on the left side of MySpace pages... involuntary horoscopes, vagaries, bad text formatting and all.
This code lets you put it all back however you want, albeit manually... which is a long process if all you wanted to do is take out one thing.   If you know HTML, then the process will be simple enough but a little time consuming.   I highly recommend opening your 'before' profile in a separate tab/browser before starting, that way you can copy and paste the hyperlink URLs, etc. as needed.

My religion: "Christian - other"... wait a minute, other what?
I remember when Christianity was just a religion to me... when I was a kid and couldn't sit still in church and found the maps in my Bible more interesting than the scriptures.   If I had taken a "What's your religion?" survey then, then I would definitely have checked "Christian."   Today, I am born again... I don't go to church because my mom wants me to anymore, nor do I because directing cameras there looks good on my resume or scores points with "the man upstairs."   What was once my religion has become a full-blown belief system... the MySpace page now reflects that.

BTW, "Christian - other" means non-catholic.   The first time I saw that on someone's page, I thought "What the heck is 'other'???"   Then when I signed up I noticed the drop-down box summing up Christ's love for me with two whole options.

Darn it, Dabrowski!   What have you done to me?
If you haven't read Overexcitable? Moi? from last month, this may be a good time (it's still current).
Well, it was the Holy Spirit, of course, not the polish dude... nevertheless, I have a name for the "software anomaly" that's been running in my head for the last ten years.   Just as the dust began to settle from this new self-awareness (of my own self-awareness, LOL), it went and intensified on me... like pain from a paper cut you just found out you had.   The ground trembled, a few buildings collapsed (that were getting kinda run down anyway), and I found myself with a new drive to expand my spirituality.   This is normal stuff during a "great shift" of the identity.

From Star Trek to Shortwave to Dragon Slaying
In reality, my identity is quite stable, thank you.
In fiction, however, I've determined that I love alienated protagonists/characters.   Sliders, Star Trek: Voyager, Doctor Who, Stargate SG-1 (and, to an extent, Reboot and Lost):  All on my Top 10 list.   Recently, I've discovered the common thread running through these series:  Our heroes (who we the viewers relate to) keep getting thrown into one alien environment after another... be them parallel universes, unexplored planets, or anyplace else carrying its own set of rules, which the main characters must continuously adapt to, grow by, overcome, or set right.   Alienation!

Long before I made the identity-connection and merely knew of my overactive imagination, I went ahead and ordered a book about space-time beyond three dimensions: Hyperspace by Michio Kaku.   Hyperspace was written to make science fiction into science fact: Sliders features parallel universes, so how might they really exist???  (BTW, Sliders was how I found out about the book)   What I got out of it had little to do with sci-fi... it was training my various overexcitabilities to think multi-dimensionally!   Well, God's plans over my own...

Heh, the best things can come from the most unexpected places.

In comes a preacher named Dr. Gene Scott, who during 2004/2005 I listened to on shortwave every Sunday afternoon to make up for my absence in church.   I don't think that I ever heard one live, but the tapings ran like crazy all over the band (he went to be with the Lord early in '05, but you can still hear his taped sermons easily enough by tuning around).   Anyway, his messages seemed to go where normal church services didn't: he would analyze translations from Hebrew and Greek a lot, for example.   One week, he preached about  human beings' unique classification as "animal-spirit hybrids."   Cool.

This was the first "great shift" of the identity, if you will.   My mind ran with the hybrid idea and I found myself identifying with things spiritually.

I didn't have a spirit.   I was my spirit, what I had (temporarily) was an earthly body.

Fast forward to Florida:  A real job, back in church, really living it up... now I've dabbled in Dungeons and Dragons (the fantasy role playing game).   Understandably, D&D has a bad rap:  Like tuning a cable-connected TV to scrambled porn, D&D can easily be made unsavory to the Christian gamer (so to speak).   The role-playing aspect alone makes it a lot better than some card game, most of all for my, eer... overactive imagination (see where I'm going with this yet?).   Fiction comes naturally to me and I had no problem playing as and interacting with non-human characters, but, of course, there was the magic this and that which made certain decisions necessary.   I had already accepted magic as a plot device or shortcut in works of fiction, so long as I wasn't looking at sorcerers or hearing chanting, etc...   Magic would equate to a directly manipulatible force (like electricity) and that's all... a tool of the imagination not to be taken seriously.

Finally, we get back to the paper cut, err... WikiPedia article telling me I'm overexcitable.   Boom... second "great shift."

Secondary Integration and Beyond!
The cards were laid out on the table, I knew what it was, my definitions became clear.   God flicked a switch in me and suddenly there was room for more stuff.  More Bible stuff, I've been reading it three times as much lately, dang...   I've also been spending a lot of time at answersingenesis.org as a result.   Furthermore, the general need for knowledge (like those languages I've been meaning to learn for-like-ever) has also increased.

I'm different than I was just two weeks ago.   More spiritual, a step closer to whatever the Lord wants to make out of me.   Just to think, he used a science book (still have it), a fantasy RPG (still play it), and an online encyclopedia (probably goin' there in five minutes) to get me there.   Oh yeah, and I suddenly felt like removing the zodiac thing from my MySpace page... there, full circle.

Interesting times ahead!   God bless.

Just an hour ago, Comcast became my ISP, restoring an old tradition of mine... going really, really fast on the internet.

As a result, I will ending my Earthlink account. This means my main e-mail address has changed.

Old: egrabow@earthlink.net

New: egrabow4@comcast.net

Please update your records immediately because there will only be a one week transitional period (this is the first time my outgoing ISP is a paid one, and I'm not paying for two ISPs)

Anyone who uses ryan@egrabow.com don't need to do anything, that address is permanent. Anyone who still uses another former main address of mine: egrabow@optonline.net... well, it still works, actually, but it's long discontinued.

Viva broadband! I'm gonna go watch YouTube now.

I've considered myself a creative person for a long time. In elementary school, I was kind of a dunce but I had a few strengths and in those I liked to go beyond the assignment or to approach it unconventionally. The latter got a lot more prominent by the time I graduated college and the former had reversed itself.   The Lord gives us all unique gifts to use in his service and I'd identified an active imagination as one of mine... and that was swell (after all, if you're reading this on egrabow.com, does the website look like a template or out-of-the-box thing?  C'mon, this is expression!)... but an "A-Ha!" moment last week cleared things up even more.

In spite of the Wake Up! Pro article deletion, I've become an undeniable fan of Wikipedia and, on one of my after-work late-night Wiki-binges, I stumbled over this article, which led me to more info on overexcitability, which seems to explain why I'm on Wikipedia so much.   Don't look now, but I think I'm "overexcitable!"

Wait...

DON'T LOOK NOW BUT I THINK I'M OVEREXCITABLE!!!!!!!!!!!!!  OMG!!!! (much better)

The links I followed from there seem to support my self-diagnosis, which was:

Psychomotor Overexcitability: Yes and no.   I like to be energetic and unfortunately that leads me to interrupt people a lot, but controlling that isn't too hard.

Sensual Overexcitability: Yes.  Sight, sound, feeling, taste and smell... collect all five senses and concentrate really hard.   The senses aren't necessary sharper, but the signals sent via the nervous system run through the works a little more.   It's like a heightened degree of awareness with my environment... all the time.   I also like to experience/sense new things... this may explain why I don't mind standing out in the rain unnecessarily (but then when I get out of it, I want to dry off as quickly as possible.   Wierdnesses abound.).

Intellectual Overexcitability: Yes, and more than I expected.   Mind you, this doesn't make me a super genius, it just makes me more willing to try ;-)   I don't think this developed much before middle school or I would have had way more scholarship money going though college (rats!).   This would be the one that makes me hungry for Wiki and the internet in general.

Imaginational Overexcitability: When I found this as one of the five types, I decided it was a safe bet and haven't been proven wrong.   I can create an entire universe in my mind just to answer a question and discard everything in five seconds (an exaggeration, but that's how it seems).   Throw this in with the intellectual stuff and you find new ways to solve problems, to really think outside the box.   This kind of overexcitability prevented me from showing my work in 10th grade math class (I'm digging a lot of Warning Signs out of my memory now) 'cause I didn't use any paper... or the solutions we were taught to use... oops!   It's also safe to say that my interest in certain sci-fi series stemmed from this.

Emotional Overexcitability: Nope.   No wonder I can do the Vulcan hand thing so well... emotions are illogical.

Positive Disintegration: It's like the Holy Spirit has been building a new wing onto my house and I've only now found out what to call it.   In the 60's a Polish psychiatrist/psychologist wrote a theory on people altering their personalities/habits/values on an increasingly conscious level.   The first time I read the article (again, total fluke), I just skimmed the key parts and only minutes later realized "Wait, that was interesting."   The guy's theory seemed factual enough to me, because it did a good job of laying out what I'd been going through for the last 10 years and why few people around me seemed to follow suit.

I'm inclined to think that a lot more people have overexcitability than realize it, and apparently not everyone's development with it is positive.   Now that I have a better definition of the "software anomaly in my head" (had to get a compu-reference in there somewhere), I'm eager to find out what the near future holds.   After all, the more you know about a thing, the more you can use it.   Praise the Lord!

Tonight ends my coding frenzy, most of my brand new EG2007 stuff is plugged in. Some work remains on the Traffic Information System InfoBoard (a brand new EG thing), the Random Page script (still using 6.0's), and, as always, updating the actual pages! DX/Radio and the AVCA are done, but EGrabow Media isn't, the Logo Gallery isn't... you get the idea... not to mention lots and lots of old files I mean to clean out but don't. It'll happen sooner or later.

Comments about the new EG 7.0??? You know who to send 'em to!

I've just crunched the numbers for the first full year since I moved from New York.   No month got above "Lean", but fortunately none slipped as far as "Failing", either.   Overtime from A-Team production helped boost income in the Spring, but serious problems arose when that show ended and the paycheck numbers fell.   A cash holiday and part-time job kept things from falling apart too much, and now the storm seems to be passing (so to speak).   A new auto insurance company and a second roommate have given 2007 a sunny forecast... and if overtime materializes to any real degree this spring, I may see something I haven't since June '05... a "Balanced" month.   Anywho, here are some fun new statistics:

The Good:

• 2006 had the most income of any year so far.
• 2006 was the first year in which career income ranked highest.
• In 2006, month-by-month annual income set record highs six times.  The current high is December 2006.   This was influenced by Office Depot and will probably drop again over the next few months.
• The highest check from any job was cashed in September 2006.
• Supra - Maintenance ended well under budget, down 89% from 2005.   Alas, I don't plan on being so lucky in '07.
• Supra - Insurance, well... any car insurance, continues to fall from year to year.   The 2007 projection is a nice one too.
• Keeping gas in that Supra cost 33% less in 2006 than it did in 2005.   Mind you, it was a different commute until 18 months ago.
• Tithing/ Good Deeds, with a goal of 10% of total income, jumped from a puny 0.1% in 2005 to 0.3% in '06.   Whoopie!

and The Bad:

• 2006 had the highest expenses of any year so far.
• 2006 was the first year in which no credit card statement was paid off.
• 2006 was the first year not to have a single "Balanced" month and had the most "Tapped" months of any year yet.
• Rent and utilities are up 299% from 2005, but that was expected since this was my first full year "out of the nest".

oh yeah, and The Food:

• 20.4% of all food/grocery money was spent at Taco Bell, 10.0% at BK, and a mere 3.9% at Wendy's (which I'm still not used to paying for at all)
• Speaking of Snackage & Groceries... up 68% from 2005.   Gotta figure that one out 'cause I was a pig back in '05, too.