Rants and Ruminations

On working from home:

I have been doing a good amount of webdesign and social marketing from home lately.  But, for some reason, I never really had a dedicated area in which to work.  It’s not that I didn’t have the space.  I have two extra bedrooms in my house that were available to use.  I just never thought that having that spot to dedicate to work would make that much of a difference.  I was working in my living room and was being fairly productive.  Well, this past weekend the wife and I remodeled our smaller spare room into an office for me.  What an absolute difference it has made.  Just to be able to go in there and shut the door and not have to deal with the normal distractions of life.  It also allows me to keep “regular” office hours.  This has been huge for me and allowed me to really focus my efforts and plan my projects and billable appropriately.  So, for all you people who work from home.  Get yourself a dedicated space to do your work that is mostly free from distractions and you will see your productivity improve almost immediately!

On losing a little weight:

I decided it was time for me to get dedicated about getting a little healthier and shed a few pounds that have overstayed their welcome.  The plan is 3-fold: an interval training running program 3 days a week, strength training on the bowflex the other three days, and adjust the way I have been eating.  The last part, for me, is going to be especially hard.  I have the curse of absolutely loving food.  Not necessarily eating but I love the taste of well prepared food.  Being an addictive personality to begin with I tend to overdo the amount of good, tasty food that I eat.  It doesn’t help at all that I love to cook and try to make new dishes with unique flavor combinations.  The key to this was going to be eating smaller portions more often. Normally I eat, maybe, twice a day and I would eat a healthy portion of grub.  Now I am trying to eat 5 times a day and to target certain types od food for certain meals.  For example I want to make sure and have some protien for breakfast. I also need to add a snack (fruit) between breakfast and lunch, a sensible lunch (grilled chicken sandwich or grilled chicken salad here), another fruit snack, and a reasonably sized dinner.  One helping only.

So far so good this week on the food end.  I am doing it and I am full all of the time.  So we’ll see if I have the discipline to keep it up.  The running is a whole other story!  That is HARD.  I’m gonna keep it up but it isn’t going to be easy!

I know it will bore the people that actually read this blog but I am gonna keep updating progress here just to keep myself focused and on target.

Yeah.  Yeah.  Yeah.  I know.  I haven’t posted here in months.  And it may be a few weeks before I post some more as I am working on a relaunch of this site.  But you can follow me in several places:

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=539899732&ref=profile

Myspace: http://www.myspace.com/steveblount

Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/steveblount

Watch this spot for the relaunch!!!

The wife and I have had this long love-hate relationship with Blockbuster.  It seems like every time we go there they never have anything we want to see or there is another charge they want us to pay.  So we finally broke down and got ourselves a Netflix account.  So since I suck at keeping this blog updated, I’m gonna talk about the movies we get cuz I know that interests my millions and millions of two readers.  :^)

So here we go:

We Own the Night (IMDB page)

I was really looking forward to this movie.  Boy, did I get disappointed.   The plot was predictable and cliche and Joaquim Phoenix and Mark Wahlberg really didn’t click for me as brothers.  There was really no chemistry there.  So as much as I wanted to like this…it was just ok.

Rating: meh

Knocked Up (IMDB page)

So the wife thought she was gonna be slick and login to sneak what she thought was a chick flick to the top of our queue.  Boy was she sadly mistaken.  This movie is freaking hilarious!  I rolled the whole way through the DVD.  Judd Apatow is a genius!  I worship at the alter of his penis jokes.  I didn’t think there was anyway to top 40 year Old Virgin but I was oh so wrong.  Definitely get this movie!!!

Rating: Way Cool

I Am Legend (IMDB page)

Another movie I was looking forward to as I had read the Richard Matheson books many years ago and they were incredible.   Unfortunately, this movie blew.  It really couldn’t decide if it wanted to be speculative fiction or a b grade horror flick and didn’t do either well at all.   The acting by Will Smith was stale at best (and I usually like his performances), the plot was FULL of logic errors, and the graphics (outside of the first shot of abandoned Manhattan) were cheesy.  But that first shot of Manhattan was INCREDIBLE.  So…points for that.  The rest…not so much.

Rating: suckfest

Up next in the queue… Oceans 13, 300, The Pursuit of Happiness (it’s a Will Smith overload!)

Well the reason I haven’t posted in a long while has finally reared it’s head. We have been working VERY HARD to launch a new division of the company. We are now a nationwide dealer for the HughesNet Satellite Internet Systems. We have been working like crazy to not only move the store to get the room we needed to do this but to set the call center up, get a webpage designed and launched, and come up with the money for a national advertising campaign. We have done all that and now All Star Satellite lives!!!

Now the real work begins…

Beside the congruence of the date being 07/07/07, and the whole Al Gore show happening (does the guy have to be out there EVERY second?) today also markes the 100th birthday of my fave sci-fi author, Robert Heinlein. This is the guy that got me hooked on the never ending saga of the family of Lazarus Long as well as his very thought provoking commentary on the space program, and the always fun future-history series. Kansas City is jumping. Swope Park will never be the same!