I know it’s been quite a long time since I actually bothered to write anything down here. On one hand, I feel sort of guilty for not updating because I know there’s a bunch of people that read this to keep up with what I’m doing. I am grateful that anyone would bother reading my words.

But on the other hand, this is for me. If you go back to one of my first posts, I started this kind of as an online journal to keep track of what I do. My thinking being that later I could go back and read a lot of this stuff. And in that regard, I feel that my words here can be limited or bountiful. Besides words are so much better when they are not forced.

With that, what has my life been up to the last two weeks? I guess you could say I’ve been busy. Maybe not so much busy as there have just been a lot of major “things” happening recently.

The biggest news is probably my parents moving to Minneapolis. This whole idea started a few months back. I have to say I was shocked when my parents started looking at houses down this way. I figured they’d check a few out and that’d be the last of it for awhile. Well over the last couple of months, they came down 3-4 times and eventually put a bid in on a place in Maple Groove. Guess what? It got accepted. So with that the wheels are set in motion and they probably won’t stop until next fall. Dad can retire in July and there is talk of renting their current home in Virginia.

I have mixed feelings on this move. Most people would be overjoyed their family is moving closer to them, of course I can’t be like everyone else. I love my family and everything, but like anyone else, I get annoyed with them sometimes and the distance we have right now serves as sort of a buffer. The other thing that you need to understand about my family (moreso my parents) is they were very protective when I was younger, and as such they tend to be pretty prying now. As I said, I love my family, but I am old enough now where they don’t need to take care of every little thing for me. (To Mom and Grandma: I know you’ll read this. Please don’t take it the wrong way. I just need my independance.)

Let’s see what else. Aaron and I have been going strong with Decoy launching new features, redesigning some areas, thinking of new ideas. I’m really proud of Decoy. The last year or so was a success. Numbers have been steadily increasing. We started the year a little rough, but I think we’re on track now.

About 3 weeks ago we announced a merging with fellow zine BreakingCustom. So far, so good. I had worked with Chris, the owner of BC, before trying to update the site, but ended up having to back out. I’m glad we get to work together again and I think with the talents and resources from both our sites combined, we can really do some great things.

Of course with all this progress comes more work for me. Thankfully, Aaron realizes I’m only one person and that I can only do so much. It’s crazy, I could probably spend all my spare time on that site. Aaron is always wanting to change things or clean something up. On top of that, there’s some underlying changes I want to make to the site. Making things more object oriented and reusing code.

And I haven’t decided if that’s going to come before the upgrade to vBulletin version 3.5; another major update. I finally did get the upgrade to happen on my home server, but it broke a lot of things on the site. I’ve considered an almost full re-write, but again, I just don’t have the time.
Finally, (because this is getting long) I had some friends make some moves recently. John is now living in St. Paul. I made a trek over his way the day he moved in. He’s got a nice little 1 person apartment and it sounds like his first couple of weeks at his new job have been going well.

ChoCho (aka Nick) also recently job a new job down this way and should be moving with his wife soon. I applied for a job with the same company, but they seem to be ignoring me for some reason.

And last but not least, my roommates, Laura and Hank, just bought a house. Well, not quite yet. They put a bid on a place, got countered and accepted. So it’s pretty much just paperwork from here on out. Goodbye Fox Forest and good riddance!