seanwillson.com

well after talking about them for 3+ years, reading about them daily/weekly, and lusting over them for years i finally bit the bullet and purchased me the new apple 15” aluminum powerbook. it has a 15.2” (diagonal) widescreen display with 1280-by-854-pixel resolution, 1.25ghz powerpc g4 processor with velocity engine and 512k on-chip level 2 cache, 54mbps airport extreme (802.11g wireless) networking, bluetooth, superdrive (dvd-r/cd-rw burner), backlight keyboard, ati mobility radeon 9600 64mb video card, firewire 800/400, usb 2.0, 80gb hard drive, 512mb memory, and it’s only 1.1” thick. if computers can be sexy then this one is da bomb diggidy.


i ordered it about a week ago but wanted to wait until it was close before i wrote about it. i should be picking it up from the airborn express office tonight. i upgraded the hard drive from the 4200-rpm default to the 5400-rpm version. i also changed the memory from 2 x 256mb dimm to a single 512mb dimm so i can upgrade the memory later without giving up some as well. i picked up a bunch of software on sale with the purchase as well. in short i’m gonna finally be a switcher.


i’ll post more information tomorrow or this weekend after i’ve had it for a few days. it took some convincing but amy let me buy it, needless to say i’m a happy camper. thanks hun!!!

as you may have noticed i haven’t been updating regarding my last body for life challenge. i fell off the wagon, not hard, just took a small tumble. no i didn’t gain anything back, i just had trouble putting it all together. i was either working out and not eating perfect or eating perfect and not getting my workouts in. i want to start another challenge before the end of the year but i want to have 1-2 solid weeks under my belt first. i started back hardcore today trying to do both the workouts and the nutrition.


a few other things amy and i are changing regarding nutrition … we’re taking a small daily aspirin, drinking more wine, eating more fish, trying to get more vegetables in, and eating more foods in moderation. sometimes we’d have something bad and i’d overindulge, obviously a no no, even on a freeday. anyhow, that’s a thing of the past now.


i really have some important goals i want to achieve that i’m kicking myself all the time over. i hate pushing the dates back over and over again. i don’t want to enter my 30th birthday or the year 2004 for that matter, with my current body. i am going to change, i am going to illicit a dramatic change in my body. i’m going to do it, starting today!

i was out on a short 13 mile ride early last week checking the distance and the time to ride from my house to the schaumburg train station. i’m obtaining a enclosed bike locker there that will allow me to commute to the train via bike and not leave it exposed to vandals. anyhow, i arrived at the station after 30 minutes and about 6.4 miles of light riding. as i turned to return home i felt my right pedal give a little and then sag. i lifted my foot off the pedal to look and the body of my less than 2 year old shimano dx pedal fell to the ground leaving the greasy axel on the crank arm. i was dumb struck … yet another problem with my bike, this was not my summer that’s for sure. i stopped, slid the pedal body on the axel and then rigged it so i could ride home. needless to say my left leg was extremely tired when i got back from doing 90% of the pedaling, but hey, it was a good workout.


obviously this forced me to buy some new pedals for my bike. i didn’t go with the clipless pedals i talked about before, i’m still planning on getting those in the spring. i wanted to stay with a platform pedal because i think it will give me the best support and strength for my size. i narrowed my choices down to the brooklyn machine works shin burgers, atomiclab aircorps, and the easton flatboy. i called all around the chicagoland area and was only able to get the flatboys at a local bike shop. i didn’t feel like waiting on an order so i went ahead and just bought em.


they are very slick looking pedals, all black, with laser etched lettering. they really gripped my feet well for the little time i rode on them yesterday. i’m looking forward to punishing them this weekend. ride on!

after 18+ months of waiting i finally got the call about my portaball telescope. i have about 3-4 more weeks wait and i’ll be able to begin exploring the universe. you can only see so much through a pair of binoculars and i couldn’t get myself to leach onto my club members another time without a telescope. i know they don’t care, but i did. anyhow, i’m geeked and anxiously looking forward to picking it up. i’ve decided on two eyepieces as well, the 35mm televue panoptic and the 9mm televue nagler type-6. later, after i’ve become more experienced with the scope i want to pick up the 20mm type-5 and 13mm nagler type-6.


for you non astronomy folks, the mm focal length of the eyepiece effects the magnification of the image in a telescope. magnification = focal length of telescope / focal length of eye piece … the portaball i’m getting has a focal length of 1585mm. so with my two new eyepieces i’ll get effective magnifications of 45x and 176x.

i know this is a back post, but i wanted to put it where it belonged.


happy birthday sweetie!!! today is my wife’s 26th birthday. big hugs and kisses!!! i love ya, sorry for not getting it on the day. hopefully you’ll accept this and the other things i gave ya on your birthday though

i’ve closed down the willson.us wedding website and archived it here. for now the willson.us domain will just redirect to seanwillson.com. i have plans for it in the future but to little time now to work on it.

ellis and christina commented that i hadn’t posted anything about their life changing incident yet. i figured i would do it now, it’s safe i think. in december of 2003, the 18th if my memory serves me right, baby samanth willson will be born. yep, my brother’s gonna be a father and christina is gonna have a baby girl. the first baby willson to be exact. heck, it’ll be the first baby ciamelo as well … that’s christina’s family name in case you were wondering. my first niece, amy’s first niece, my dad and mom’s first grand child, heck there’s to many first’s to name them all.


christina is doing well, she’s as happy as a fish in water. she’s glowing every time i see her, it’s very cool. we’re looking forward to spending some time with them around the time of her birth. i’ll keep everyone posted as the day gets closer.