Increasingly, I spend time on Twitter and Facebook, leaving little purpose to anything that is posted here on the blog. Why post that awesome YouTube video here when I get a much greater audience on social media sites? And worrying about cross-posting is just a waste of time.

With that being said, I’m just stating what I have been practicing for some time now: this blog is pretty much dead. I will keep it up and maintain it for the sake of posterity, for myself, really.

I also have little interest in keeping this blog as an aggregator, of sorts, for the things that I do elsewhere. I find that I prefer to keep most of my social media activity as private as possible, which is why I keep my Twitter and Facebook feeds locked down. Having such information easily available here is a bit scary to me now.

As of right now, all references to my FriendFeed account are removed, and the stream itself has been made private. I’ve also removed the sidebar widget showing my recent Twitter posts, and the link allowing people to send me an email (which was never used anyway).

On the flip side, I’m keeping links to my Flickr, Delicious, and Last.fm accounts. I’m not concerned with the information posted on those sites, and I have the ability to make items as private as necessary, in the event I need to do so.

For the time being, consider this my last post until otherwise noted, but some day I may revive this thing, if I ever decide that I have something worth sharing with the world. Maybe some day I’ll start a blog dealing with email infrastructure? I don’t know; it could happen.

Well, so long, and thanks for all the fish!

For those of you interested in some pictures, here you go.

Instead, I’ve been actively using Mint.com.  It’s freakin’ awesome!  It’s able to connect up all of my important accounts: checking, online savings, auto loan, 401k, student loans, etc.  They’ll even let you track the value of your important assets like your car and home.

There are two exceptions, unfortunately: I’m not able to track my two Health Savings Accounts.  It’s not a big deal, really, because I rarely use either account, but it’s worth nothing that they’re supposed to contribute to my overall net worth.

So, why do I like Mint.com so much?  Here are some of my reasons.

• Mint.com automatically pulls data from many more sources than Quicken 2009, without me having to go to the financial institution’s web site and download the data myself for importation into Quicken.
• It’s much, much, much simpler to use.  It provides my net worth and let’s me see how I’m spending my money with pretty graphs and stuff.
• Mint.com has an iPhone application, allowing me to see my current balances and transactions from anywhere at any time.  This is huge.
• It’s free, for now, but I would definitely pay for it.

It’s really a good financial tool for those of us who are too lazy to dick around with Quicken, and the ability to check my accounts on my mobile device is a really big deal for me, especially when I’m traveling.

So, with all that being said, I don’t intent on buying another version of Quicken again.

Photo Set: Bahamas Cruise – January 2009

So, what was the big thing for 2008?  Well, I traveled a shit-ton.

• Florence and Venice, Italy – This was a friends and family vacation that spanned over New Year’s.  It was great, except for Alitalia losing my luggage for six days.
• Chicago – I met up with my friend Jordan and some of his friends for a weekend of fun in the Windy City.
• Las Vegas – My company sent me to Las Vegas to work on our data center there.  I got to spend time with my friend Bryan, as well.
• Kansas City – I went to go hang with my friend Mac for an extended weekend.
• Minneapolis – I went to go hang with my friend Jordan for an extended weekend, as well.
• Toronto – A bunch of friends and I went to Toronto’s gay pride celebration and had a total blast.
• Washington, DC – I went with Dad and Jake (nephew) to check out the nation’s capitol.  It was my first time there and got to hang out with my friend Mike who lived out there, at the time.
• London, England – I spent a week in the UK with my friend John.
• Detroit – A vendor asked me to come up and give a presentation about how we use their product.  I also got to hang out with my friend James who showed me a little bit of Detroit.
• Saint Louis – My friend Bryan and his boyfriend Skip invited me out to spend the New Year with them.

Of course, I did manage to do some other things, but this was the year that I wanted to take a bunch of little trips, and I did.  I love to get out of town, honestly, and I plan to do a lot more this coming year in 2009.

Next up will be a weekend cruise with some friends.  Stay tuned.

Sadly, I never finished college, but the knowledge and experience I managed to get under my belt while at Ball State have been worth it anyway.

One Christmas Eve when I was around four or five years old, I was very sick.  There was no way I couldn’t be amongst the action of the party, so Mom had me lay down on the sofa in the living room.  Sure enough, I got sicker, and I ended up barfing on the floor right by where everyone was standing, which I remember being totally gross.

It wasn’t long thereafter that I ended up in my parents’ bed, which was by far the most comfortable spot to rest in the whole house.  At the time, it was one of those heated water beds, straight out of the early 1980s.  I remember sleeping soundly for a long while, but, of course, in adult-time it was just a few hours.

Eventually, someone came into the bedroom to wake and bring me into the living room.  All that was left of the big party was just my immediate family: Mom, Dad, and my three sisters.  Everyone had already opened their presents; they didn’t include me because they wanted to let me rest as long as possible.

So, there I was this little four or five year old boy, surrounded by his family, opening all of his gifts by himself on Christmas Eve.  The only present that I remember getting that year was a mechanical car racing game.  It was super cool, and something that my friends and I played for many years to come.

I have many other fond Christmas memories, but this is honestly the earliest one that I can remember, and by far the sweetest one of them all.  For as sick as I was, my family made it very special to me, and, for that and many other reasons, I am thankful that I still have them in my life.

Merry Chtistmas, everyone!  You are all in my thoughts.

As it turns out, he belonged to one of the neighbors, but they kept him outside all of the time, which is definitely not healthy for cats, so it was no shock when I took him to the vet to learn that he had a parasite.  Thankfully, the treatment was extremely easy and now Charlie is a healthy boy.

In work-related news, I took a trip up to Detroit to attend a one-day conference put on by one of our vendors.  They invited me up there to do a 90 minute presentation about what we do at work, how we use the vendor’s product, and how to use the vendor’s online self-service tools.  Overall, everything went very well, and it was a lot of fun.

Lastly, last month I went to go see Shiny Toy Guns at the Music Mill up on the north side.  It was my first time at the venue — very nice.  The show was great; they played all the songs I loved, including some new ones on their recent album.

That’s all for now, folks!

… I was on my fifth mojito last night at about 8:30, and some dumb bitch came to my door canvassing for McCain. She asked if I was excited that Palin was in Noblesville today. I said, “No, I’d rather have my cat on the ticket than Caribou Barbie.” She just walked away.

I love my friends.

Photo Set: Garrett’s Toga Party 2008

I had a blast with everyone, and hope this becomes a new annual event.

The trip back from Heathrow to Dulles was very uneventful.  I bought an Economy Plus ticket with United, and ended up without someone sitting next to me.  (This happened on the way to England, as well.)  While these seats are only a $69 for a cross-Atlantic flight, United fails to sell out the section.  This enabled people to move to more comfortable seats, allowing me to have my own space.  I loved it!

Here’s a picture of Cape Cod. It was the first bit of American land I saw coming back.

I wish I could say such positive things about the trip from Dulles to Indianapolis.

The very first problem was the lack of air conditioning in the plane during boarding.  We were told this was due to a faulty ground A/C unit, but that we’d be OK as soon as the engines were started.  This wasn’t a big deal and I could deal with it.

As we started to cool down and push away from the gate, we hit a bump, and were informed that the plane ran over one of those wheel-stop blocks.  Doh!  Someone apparently forgot to remove all of them before the plane was ready to depart.

We waited for 30 minutes for the ground crew to bring a ladder for the pilot to get out and meet the mechanics to inspect the airplane.  As it turns out, the plane didn’t run over anything; it was the tractor pushing us out of the gate area.  Thankfully, there was no damage.

Finally, after restarting the engines, taxiing to the runway, and sitting in line for a while, we took off and headed towards IND.

During the flight, I had the displeasure of sitting in front of a twenty-something douche bag.  Though he wasn’t much taller than me, he apparently needed to jab his legs into the back of my chair throughout the entire flight.  To make matters worse, he couldn’t sit still to save his life.

I desperately wanted to turn around and punch the shit out of him, but I digress.  I’m not one for violence and I certainly didn’t want the pilot to land the plane to have us escorted off by the police.  It wasn’t worth it; however, I found quite a bit of solace and satisfaction just thinking about it.

To make things more annoying, the head flight attendant wouldn’t shut up.  I think he really enjoyed listening to himself speak.  Instead of being professional and announcing like every other flight attendant, he would go on and on, adding bits of commentary throughout everything.  He seized every opportunity to talk.

The worst bit was him talking about 9/11.  He felt the need to also recognize the serviceman sitting in first class.  I love my country and am proud to be American.  I’ve had family members in just about every major military conflict in the last century, but, for the love of Madonna, this was silly.  As they say, there’s a time and a place for everything, but this wasn’t one of them.  Is it so much to ask for some peace and quiet in what is already an uncomfortable situation?

Eventually, the plane landed, although a good 30 minutes late.  Poor Mom kept calling me to find out where I was, but my phone was turned off during the flight.  She finally drove around one last time, and met me outside of baggage claim.  At that point, all was right in the world.

Below is the London Eye, which is located along the south bank of the River Thames. There were some fantastic views of the Central London.

We also paid a visit to the Tate Modern.

Yesterday, I went down to visit Rey in Brighton, which is located right on the English Channel.

The trip is coming to an end soon, sadly, but there’s still more fun to be had this weekend. I’m not due back in Indianapolis until late Monday afternoon. Till then!

Here are a few pictures from my previous trip there.  Enjoy!

It’s all about learning to relax. There are tons of pictures that I’ll get around to uploading to Flickr eventually. No one really cares if they’re untimely, so why should I? I’ve been mostly quiet for the past week on Twitter, to the point of having some people wonder if something’s wrong. I’m not worried about it and I’m definitely not worried about reading every single post someone makes. There’s just too much information and none of it really matters, in the end.

Probably the biggest service that sucks away my time is Google Reader. In the past week, I have removed feeds that aren’t necessarily as interesting to me anymore or just simply post WAY too much every day for me to reasonably keep myself informed. As for feeds that I want to keep, if there are just too many articles to read, I’m just marking the entire feed as read and moving on to the next one. It’s all about keeping it simple and not worry about inconsequential things.

On the flip side of things, I’ve found renewed interest in my blog, which I’ve neglected a lot this Summer. I really enjoy writing and I think it’s time that I spend less time on Twitter and more time writing out what I’m doing in my life. I consider this article a first step in this direction.

Social media is supposed to be fun, right? It is! The point I’m making here isn’t that social media is wasteful and sucks too much of my time; rather, it’s about returning to what’s fun about it. I love to be connected to the world and my friends this way, and I think it’s more important to focus on quality instead of quantity.

Today I decided to switch to fervens-a by Design Disease. I found it pretty quick and knew that I wanted to use it as soon as I saw it. It’s a clean design and not complicated. I like that there are page links at the top and two sidebars for me to use.

While changing to the new thene, I created an online activity page. You’ll see a link to it at the top. This is basically nothing more than an embeddable widget of my FriendFeed activity, which is perfect for the blog.

Another new feature that comes with the theme is a preview of my recent Flickr photos. You’ll see that on the right sidebar.

Anyway, I think I’m still going to make a few tweaks here and there, but I’m generally happy with the way things look now. I hope you like them too.

http://www.last.fm/user/mattindy77

If you’ve got an account, be cool and add me.

Tonight I was at the Kerasotes Showplace 16 with Andy, Laura, and Rich to see WarGames. With about 30 minutes left to the movie, they encountered a technical problem. Turns out the system they use to run the movies is on Windows. We reckoned it’s Windows 2000, to be specific.

Checking out the new WordPress application for the iPhone. This is pretty nifty.

Wow!

I don’t feel like taking the time to write out some creative and thoughtful essay about it, so instead I’ll just tell you that I loved it and I think you should go see it.  I might go back and see it, again, myself since I ended up sitting in the front row of the theatre.  We got there late and there weren’t hardly any seats left for us, so all of the visuals were pretty distorted for me.

Anyway, it’s also been a long time since I’ve posted on the blog.  I definitely have some catching up to do!  I’ll be posting articles here soon detailing recent trips to Toronto and Washington, DC.

Till then ….

So now I’m the proud owner of a genuine Nintendo Wii.  This is the first game console I’ve owned since the original Nintendo Entertainment System I got for Christmas in 1986.

Anyway, if any of you have one and want to be Wii friends and stuff, here’s my information.

Wii Number: 2643-3117-6543-0061

I’ve also been playing a ton of Mario Kart and am quite good at it.  So, if you want to play me sometime, here’s my friend ID for that.

Mario Kart: 0430-9292-5242

Remember that you need to send me your information, as well, in order for this to work.  Either email it to me or post it in the comments.

This is one of the quality, low-cost bourbons on the market. Sadly, this is the only picture I took while in Louisville.

I wasn’t sure how I was going to return to Indianapolis because I-65 had been closed, but, thankfully, it opened up early Sunday. I made my way home and was able to capture a shot of the water near State Road 11 between Columbus and Seymour.

It looks like a lake to me!

My sympathies go out to everyone who’s affected by this. I know a co-worker of mine who’s entire house is ruined from the flood, but she and her children were evacuated safely.

Anyway, I had a great time and it was super fun checking out the city.  It’s a totally different experience than the one I had a few years ago.

Thanks, Jordan!

I’m staying with my friend Jordan who I last saw in February in Chicago.  I also plan on visiting my cousin Lori and her family.  I haven’t seen them in a couple years, if I recall correctly.  My friends Andy and Lou recently moved to the Twin Cities, so I plan on spending a bit of time with them, as well.

Overall, I’m expecting to have a good, relaxing time with everyone, and hope to get some good photos.

Ciao!

People went nuts in the Castro the evening following the announcement.  Photos were posted by Jameth.

Good times included eating just about every ethnic food one could have in a weekend: Chinese, Thai, Indian, and Mexican. We also spent a good part of an afternoon at the University of Kansas, where I took a bunch of photos. It reminded me a lot of Bloomington, actually, and I had no idea it was so hilly. I assumed it was all flat!

Here are some snapshots.

Another highlight was making it into Kansas City itself to see the Plaza, which is this outdoor shopping mall created back in the 1920s. Here are some shots from the area, but nothing specific of the mall itself. I guess I forgot to take pictures.

The last highlight I want to mention is that we saw Iron Man at the movie theatre Friday night. I thought it was a fantastic movie (except for the blatant product placements). I highly recommend it if you feel like hitting the movies in the near future.

Photo Set: Kansas City – May 2008

Somehow I managed to sleep through TWO ALARMS (my phone and my regular alarm clock) and somehow woke up suddenly at 7:20 AM, about 25 minutes before my flight was scheduled to leave.

I rushed to get here like a madman, and managed to pay just $25 to change flights. I thought I was going to be on standby, but Northwest apparently had seats available so I’m all confirmed and ready.

Whew!

I’ll be making it to Kansas City just a few hours later than I expected, thankfully, but now I have to fly through Minneapolis instead. At least I get to fly direct on my return trip.

I’ll post some photos when I have them.

Bon voyage!

BRAINS!

On my way home, I dropped by Steph and Stephanie’s house in the Old Northside. My friend Jonathan was there with his two dogs, Jackson and Jefferson, having a cookout with them. Not too long after my arrival, Dan and Doug showed up to pay a visit, too.

As it was getting dark, Stephanie decided to make some brownies. Have I ever talked about how much I love chocolate?

Anyway, at about that time, Steph and I started obsessing over history, architecture, etc. It turns out she has an historic postcard collection of Indianapolis just like me! Sometime soon she and I will have to do some card trading. Nothing fancy — just your average nerd fun.

After getting home tonight, I watched the Darjeeling Limited. I’m definitely a fan of little esoteric films like that. Have you seen it? What did you think?

We got bored at work the other night.

Cut Copy – Lights & Music

This is the first single released from Cut Copy’s new album: In Ghost Colours.

Bat For Lashes – What’s A Girl To Do

The bunny masks and bicycles remind me a bit of Donnie Darko.

Goldfrapp – Happiness

This is the second single off of Goldfrapp’s recent album: Seventh Tree. This might very well be my favorite track on the whole album, but I’m not sure yet.

Hot Chip – Ready For The Floor

This is off Hot Chip’s recent album: Made In The Dark.

Beatles in Indianapolis (1964)

In keeping with the British theme, I present to you parts one and two of the Beatles performing here in Indianapolis back in 1964.

I’ve switched to using Quicken 2008 (for Windows) which I’m using on Windows XP running VMware Fusion.

I wish I could get a refund.

FriendFeed aggregates your online social networking activity on sites like YouTube, del.icio.us, etc. Basically, anything that allows you to share data on the Internet can be brought together into a single feed accessible by either a web browser or RSS feed.

Link: My FriendFeed

So, every time I share an item in Google Reader or post items to Flickr, you’ll see it in my FriendFeed. They also offer Facebook integration so you can see my feed in a profile box.

I asked Andy P. and Laura to model for me.

For those of you who aren’t in the know, this is Google’s offering of Gmail for domains. Since they offer a basic package at no charge with IMAP support and lots of storage, it made sense to switch over to them from Tuffmail. It’s just me and my mother using netmonkey.net, so I don’t see the point in paying someone for something I can get for free (and still keep my domain).

(By the way, I have nothing bad to say about Tuffmail because they’ve been an extremely reliable hosting company for the past three years, but it is time for me to move on.)

Anyway, the only difficult part of the migration was the migration itself.

• DNS hosting for all of my domains, including netmonkey.net, was handled by Tuffmail at no cost. Since I’m canceling my service, I had to move to a new provider. Fortunately, GoDaddy also offers free DNS services, so it seemed like the logical choice, for now.
• I have a lot of email! I did a manual migration using Apple Mail which worked just fine, but it look quite some time to complete. Ideally, I would have used a migration script, but I didn’t feel like doing it.

I had to get used to the way that Gmail handles its IMAP folder structure, but so far I don’t have any complaints. It works exactly as it should.

I think this is a great idea! I love the idea of having my videos and photos in one place.

So, here are a couple of videos I’ve posted. They’re nothing special, but it’s nice to get them archived up somewhere.

Thunder Over Louisville 2005

I was in Louisville with my sister, brother-in-law, and nephew for Thunder Over Louisville back in 2005. We were on top of a parking garage in downtown. It offered a pretty good view of the 4th Street Bridge over the Ohio River.

Back Home Again in Indiana by the White River Jazz Band

The White River Jazz Band was performing back in 2005 for the annual Strawberry Festival in downtown Indianapolis. I filmed this on the southern steps of the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Monument.

I went up and talked to the banjo player.

She kept asking me whether she should smile or not while I took her photo. I hope she’s still performing; it was great to see her play and capture the moment in my photo stream.

So far, I’ve had no problems. My plug-ins worked without any problems, although I did update a couple of them prior to upgrading WordPress, so that probably helped.

I absolutely love the new administrative interface; it finally looks like a real Web 2.0 application.

Yes, it is, but I’m still going to do it.

To be honest, there isn’t a ton to report. The majority of the rest of my time in Las Vegas was spent working in a cold, loud data center cramped for space with some of my co-workers.

Fortunately, I had time to see more of my friends out there: Rick and Allison. Rick and I have known each other for years online, but didn’t get a chance to hang out until recently. Allison used to be my manager when I worked for ExchangeNet in Cleveland way back in 1998. It was great to see them both!

In conclusion, I’m convinced that I wouldn’t visit Las Vegas if it weren’t for my job. I can’t really see myself visiting there otherwise, except for the people I know, but at least I got a chance to experience Las Vegas a little bit and add it to the list of places I’ve seen.

Lots of things to report. I’ll get ‘em posted here soon, including some pictures.

As always, you can find me at Twitter, which I update a few times a day, usually.

We flew Southwest Airlines and I have a few comments to make about the company.

• The Bad: The boarding system doesn’t seem any faster than the other airlines, and it confuses people. I also think the price we paid for the direct flight from Indianapolis was way too high, but that could be due to when we purchased the tickets.
• The Good: The flight attendants are very nice and bring drinks often. I also like their seats, which have lumbar support. I feel comfortable when flying, and that’s a first in a long time.

Anyway, after checking into the hotel and going to work at the data center for a few hours, I had some free time. So I met up with my friend Bryan and his friend Tim.

We started out having a delicious Thai dinner. We ordered too much food; our eyes were bigger than our stomachs, but managed to get a bit of everything. It rocked! Afterwards, we made it to the last bits of First Friday, which is the same as events in Indianapolis and Louisville of the same name.

The big highlight of the evening was going to Fremont Street and seeing the light show. We got ourselves some cocktails (open containers allowed), went out to the street, and had a great time. It’s something I’ve never quite seen before, but I do wish it had lasted longer.

So, after getting a heavy dose of Las Vegas culture under my belt, Bryan and I felt old and tired, and decided to call it a night.

I wish I could say that I’m going there for pleasure, but mostly I’ll be spending my time in a cold, cramped, and extremely loud data center. I’ll still find time for some fun.

I don’t expect to update much on the blog, if at all, but I’ll be posting photos up on Flickr.

Good times!