lately, it just seems like…

it’s all a blur!

the last couple of weeks have been a real emotion drainer. if it isn’t one thing, it seems like it’s another. my daily habits have dramatically changed and they have changed because it just feels like there is so much change going on.

i think it all stems from work. things feel like they have been crazy busy lately and i’m starting to feel swamped. it’s not the kind of swamped that i felt a few months ago where it got to the point where i almost couldn’t function, but it is starting to feel a little overwhelming again.

they say that with this poor economy that it is a real struggle to find a new job and people are worried about their job security. that may all be true, but man, i wonder if employers see this as an opportunity and decide that it’s time to start whipping the chain.

it hasn’t been all bad. there have been some nice high points lately too. a week or two ago, my thursday night volleyball team won playoffs. it was my first season with them and i don’t want to point fingers or anything, but what was the only thing that changed this season? =P they say that it has been a four season drought since they have won playoffs. so it was nice to be able to help the team win and there was some good volleyball played as well.

i also got the opportunity to go bowling last week. that was fantastic, but i went bowling with a bunch of people who are all phenomenal bowlers. i was at the low end of the bowling crowd, but i still bowled my average of around 140 or so.

not a whole lot else going on, though. work is work. we’ve got a new dog staying with us for the night. he’s just crashing at our place after getting neutered. poor guy doesn’t feel quite the same and has thrown up a few times today. i was fortunate enough to catch him before he threw up and had him go outside the first time and…get this…i caught his vomit in a paper towel the second time. i know that that should really gross me out, but it all seemed rather normal to me. i guess that’s what happens after you’ve fostered 20+ dogs… i’m just glad that he didn’t throw up on the carpet.

sonoma weekend

we went to sonoma over the weekend and brought koda with us. koda was stressed out the entire weekend. i don’t think he knew what was going on. he seemed kind of lethargic the whole time. he didn’t sleep, he didn’t eat when he usually does, and overall i think he was just uncomfortable with the whole notion of a vacation.

maybe he’ll loosen up next time we go somewhere. he was fine on the car ride up though.

sonoma was a grand old time. we went wine tasting (at dog friendly wineries!) and bought some treats from a dog-only bakery called three dog bakery. pretty cool.

we were supposed to be charged $75 for a cleaning fee for having koda stay with us in the hotel, but the hotel didn’t charge us. we also got a 15% discount at the spa there so all in all the trip was a little cheaper than i expected. a good thing in these tough times!

more iphone love

i know, i know, all i can talk about is how great the iphone is and how it has changed my life. i’m sure that it is probably completely uninteresting to hear about what cool things you can do with your iphone, BUT, there are some cool apps that i would definitely recommend checking out if you are an iphone user.

App Store apps:
facebook – seems to be pretty obvious what it can do. i like that i can easily upload mobile photos to facebook. i don’t like that they all get lumped into the mobile photos album. update your status, see what else is going on in the world of facebook. pretty handy.

wordpress – update your blog from your iphone. i’m still not that great with typing on the iphone, but each day is better than the day before.

IM+ Lite – it is the best free IM client i’ve used so far. it seems like everyone is in love with the beejive client, but i refuse to pay $10 for an IM client. that is ridiculous. this is a place where i feel that apple really dropped by the ball by not including some kind of native app built-in.

google mobile app – the refined search tool in this app alone is worth it, but access to other google properties are nice too, i suppose.

to do’s – a simple, but great to do list.

usa today – this is probably my favorite news app. just feels like a nice polished app.

midomi – want to find a song that you only know the words to? hum it to your iphone and it will tell you what it is. pretty neat.

tmz – for all your celebrity gossip news.

yelp – this is actually surprisingly handy. i have become a stronger yelp user now that it is more available to me when i’m just looking for something nearby.

uhhh, non-App Store apps?
Not that i would advocate jailbreaking your iphone and not admitting that i have jailbroken mine, there look like some cool apps that haven’t gotten onto the app store.

cydia – THE installer for all your jailbroken apps. a must have.

sbsettings – one touch toggles for wifi, 3G, edge, bluetooth, brightness, volume, sshd, and more!

categories – add folders to put your apps in to organize your apps instead of having pages and pages of apps. i hear there’s also a 9 page limit. i don’t have quite that many apps, but this will help if i ever get there.

openssh – ssh into your iphone. not terribly useful, but you can also sftp into your iphone. now THAT’s handy.

whatIP – find out what your ip address is so you can ssh to it.

clearcam – take many photos at once and auto-stich them to create a high-res photo from your iphone

cycorder – record video on the iphone!

xGPS – GPS with voice instructions! why this wasn’t included with the iphone is a mystery. using this app, the refresh rate is kind of slow, so i think it’s a quality issue which is what prevented it from being put on the iphone at launch.

memtool – see how much memory apps are consuming, kill tasks, and free up ram.

sysinfoplus – all the info you could ever want about your iphone

touchterm – ssh client for your iphone.

backgrounder – force applications to run in the background instead of closing on exit. be careful, you can run out of memory quick!

statusnotifier – be notified of calls, mail

winterboard – springboard themer, allows you to theme your iphone.

makeitmine – i hesitate to put this on the list because it’s kind of lame, but this allows you to change the carrier and banner text at the top of your iphone. don’t like AT&T in your header? put whatever short string you want there.

any other must have apps? let me know!

iphone spam filtering

it is fantastic that the iPhone has a mail client and right now I have it checking four email accounts. the problem is that for one of my accounts, I get a lot of spam. a lot.

it looks like the solution for this is too forward all of your to a gmail account and let gmail filter it all out. a little bit of a crummy workaround but I guess that is what I am going to have to do.