seanwillson.com

amy and i made it to the opening of the apple store in oakbrook mall. it was yesterday from 6pm to 12 midnight. we got in line around 5pm and were about 150-200 people back. the first 1000 people received a cool white apple shirt with a blue aqua looking apple on the front with the text “oakbrook” on the front. kind of like the hard rock shirts that are branded per location. they also gave out some cool apple word magnets. they let you make up sentences using apple related marketing words like ipod, :-), itunes, apple, i love, etc.


while we were there we decided to replace my crappy creative labs pc speakers with these cool jbl creature speakers and subwoofer. we chose the metallic silver ones. they sound perfectly clear and thankfully so far they don’t pick up the darn mexican radio station broadcasting 1/4 mile from here. they look very cool on my parsons desk with frosted glass top. now all it needs is an apple 22” cinema display sitting next to it. we mainly bought the speakers for use with our soon to be born ipod’s.


we finished up most of our holiday shopping this weekend. we were up on friday at 5:30am to get some of the big post thanksgiving deals. i couldn’t believe some of the lines we saw at some of the stores. people are crazy when it comes to holiday shopping.


i finally picked up a copy of the body for life success journal. i plan on starting with it tomorrow.


amy’s sick with the stomach flu.


more tomorrow when i get that journal filled and started.

amy and i are spending this thanksgiving in the chicagoland area. we’re planning on heading to michigan for xmas though. i’m looking forward to spending some time with our families this year since we haven’t seen them as much as i’d like.


i’ve had a really good week this week with my health & fitness program. i was able to make it to the gym every single day. on sunday amy and i did 45 minutes of cardio and then swam for like 20 minutes doing laps in the pool. on monday i did my lower body workout. that workout can be summarized in one word …. ouch …. i’ve had trouble walking since. in fact my knees and ankles are getting kind of angry since i’ve been walking strange compensating for the pain. yesterday chris and i made it to the gym later at night and did 30 minutes on the elliptical trainer and 10 on the upright stationary bike. today i left work a bit early and got my upper body workout in. i wasn’t able to hit some of my weight numbers from my previous workouts which kind of disappointed me. i’m still amazed at how quickly my body gains and loses muscle and strength.


i’ve been waiting for the body for life success journal to show up at my local bookstore. i’ve stopped in every day this week and have nothing to show for it. hopefully the snailmail shipment they get will show up soon.


i resolve this week to remain focused on my workouts and eating right. i’ve had really healthy meals and some great workouts and i’m not about to blow that on a few days off. don’t get me wrong, i plan on participating in the good eats tomorrow on thanksgiving, but i’m not going to go overboard. amy and i are also getting up early tomorrow to attend a spin class, my first ever. i’ll let you know what i think, that is if i don’t collapse and kick the bucket.


i now declare myself in focus mode.


i bought most of amy’s xmas gifts. just thought i’d toss that bit up here on the site to rub it hun =) … this year i’m not giving her any hints about what i got her. every time i’ve hinted to her in the past she’s been able to guessed it and that kind of bums me out. not this time, no way no how …


i’m going to try to make it to the oakbrook apple store grand opening party on friday. maybe i can win myself an apple and get a free t-shirt in the process? plus they are having a thanksgiving party from 6pm till midnight with free stocking stuffers and discounts. if i don’t win anything i’ll just have to save my pennies, wish me luck!

this week is going fairly well. besides a few snafus at work in the final hours, we are ready to release a new version of our software. that usually means last minute fires and debugging issues. fortunately we planned this last release pretty well and ended the “development” phase a few weeks ago so we’ve been fighting the fires earlier. so now that we’ve reached the release, we’re pretty much settling in for the rollout. we have one final usability test to go before being done and moving on to new development. everyone knows geeks long for that new development phase. we can only take so much debugging and support work.


amy and i are ramping up for another painting project. we’re moving on to the family room now. we’re thinking a tan faux finish, but this time it will be a lot less laborious then the bedroom was, that’s for sure.


haven’t played earth and beyond at all this week. tells you how “engrossing” that game is these days. don’t get me wrong, i’m not quitting it … yet. i still enjoy the questing and fighting with mike but honestly that game was released 6 months too early. it lacks content in every shape and form. let’s hope eve online doesn’t screw that one up. if they do i’m sure to switch for good and never look back.


in case you haven’t seen it, i released the amy & sean wedding site, formally known as willson.us. i have temporarily commandeered it for the wedding. look for updates over there on all things wedding.


i’ve been eating well this week and i worked out every day except for tuesday when i went to dinner downtown with tony. my ankle has been killing me all week actually which really sucks. for those of you who don’t know i had ankle surgery about 9 years ago and i have 9 pins and a plate in my left ankle. needless to say it doesn’t help my ankle that i am overweight. anyhow, the night i was downtown with tony we walked everywhere which was probably like 2 miles from work to the restaurant and the back to the train. if you know downtown chicago you know what i mean. since then it’s been aching like a mofo.


i still don’t feel like i am kicking ass in my workouts. i’m losing weight slowly, but not rocking the casbow like i want too. i started listening to the body for life book on cd again. can’t hurt reviewing what you think you know. plus the stories are pretty inspiring. i’m looking forward to the release of bill phillips new books — body for life cookbook and energy for life; both of which are due out in early 2003.


right now i’m reading fats that heal, fats that kill: the complete guide to fats, oils, cholesterol and human health by udo erasmus. i just started reading it on the train today. i figured if i got into a few of my health books it couldn’t hurt motivating me either. right now i have a queue of about 20 books i own and haven’t yet read yet. shhhhhh, don’t tell amy.


damn it’s cold here. i’m gonna have to finally pull out the gloves and put the insert into my winter coat before i go outside again. i froze my yoohoo’s off this morning.


you gotta love refinancing mortgages. i won’t name names but i’m refinancing right now and i can honestly say it is the most ungodly painful process i have ever endured. hell, closing on the purchase of the house was easier. the pain’s not because of the questions or paperwork, it’s due to the length of time it’s taking to close, 2.5 months in processing so far. yea you read that right, almost 1/4 of a year. i understand that it’s “the busiest time in 40 years” (which is what their recorded status message keeps telling me every week on my answering machine) but come on this is ridiculous. what ever happened to customer service and those things called “computers” that make things faster? i know they want my money so that can’t be the issue. anyhow, i hope to close before the end of the year. it’s worth the wait though since we’ll be saving a nice chunk of cash in the long haul.

this is a smallish slideshow (184k) of the results of our striped faux finish in our bedroom, it turned out pretty nice. this project took about 4 weeks from start to finish and was very labor intensive. these pictures were taken with a sony digital camera and later processed in iphoto where it was turned into a quicktime slide show.

had a good workout last night. 25 minutes on the elliptical trainer and 8 minutes on the stationary bike. i’m looking forward to doing my upper body workout tonight. i’m skipping “must see tv” since my fitness is a bit more important than seeing a few tv program. all the more reason to buy a replay tv some time soon.


i’ve been eating good all week, no complaints in that department. i might be able to get some additional veggies in but then again who couldn’t?


amy and i are looking at buying some ipod’s.


i helped a friend set up her new ibook this past weekend. i really do love mac os x. it was fun to set up and easy to use, what more could you want? hope to snatch me a mac some time next year.


working on a wedding website, stay tuned for more information. i expect something to appear this weekend.

Amy and I are looking at purchasing matching Apple iPod MP3 players. We plan on waiting until the MWSF which is held January 6-10 2003. There are some rumors over at macnews.net.tc about an update to the iPod that will include a reflective TFT colour screen, integration (through iSync) to iPhoto, full MPEG-4 support, and more. Either way we are mainly waiting on a price drop but I’d settle for more features as well. Anyone have any additional info?

Are you looking for some good spam filtering software for your e-mail? Well if you like to live life dangerously you can download the nightly build of Mozilla with built-in spam filtering. It uses a Bayesian filtering system devised by Paul Graham. If your not into living dangerously you can either wait for the next major Mozilla release or buy an Apple and use their Mail application which introduced junk mail filtering in release 10.2.