Welcome to The Esoterik Blog’s new home! Yes, I have a new domain as you can see. All of what you’re seeing so far is just the beginning stages for a couple of personal and professional projects that I’m working on. I won’t disclose what I’m working on but, trust me, it’s bigger than most projects in my past. I took baby steps in the learning process to get me this far and I’m not going to stop anytime soon.

Even though I consider myself in the field of Graphic Design and Web Implementation, I’m still an amateur compared to others. This is a WordPress blog, a free blogging program that uses your server space to create one’s personal blog. In the design of this blog, I tried to monkey around with the template and theme to create my own look. I’m good with HTML and still learning CSS implementation, but all of the PHP files and calls that this program uses were just too much for me to learn right away. I eventually shopped around for a theme that fit my personality and I luckily found one. So… thanks to Aaron Martin and Michael Behan of Evok Interactive for creating this wonderful theme. I did do some hacking around, of course, to get it to look the way I wanted it to (trust me, the original looked quite different!), and I learned more along the way than I did trying to hack the original WordPress themes.

What was I going to say….? Oh, right! The whole reason for this move was twofold. I wanted to tie this blog in with my aforementioned projects; it will mesh smoothly, I hope. Also, I was getting sick of Blogger.com’s server issues. Even though I’ll miss the blog-from-a-phone feature, this WordPress blog is soooo much richer in features and it doesn’t rely on server space you can’t trust to stay up. I’ll be keeping the original blog files on Blogger.com until I edit and fix any broken links from the old entries I migrated over to this space. Then I’ll announce a complete changeover before I terminate the Blogger.com account. The ASCS Journal will still be on Blogger.com for awhile, until I discuss changeover plans with the bird club. I want to share this with ASCS because I think the board members will benefit more from a blog account that isn’t so public and prone to crashing.

I’m quickly learning more of what it means to be a webmaster. I like it! I wish I could do this as a full-time job. Oh well, dreamers can dream, I suppose. Bye for now!

The honeymoon’s over folks! At least, that’s how Christine feels about Arizona. We’ve been living here for two and a half years now and, for her, the absence of the friends, family and culture of Chicago are really weighing down on her. She’s had the chance, so far, to write to all her friends and say how she’s been feeling. I usually don’t feel the compulsion to blurt out my feelings; then again, I don’t have a great deal of heavy feeling on the subject. However, I did tell her to tell the friends that I’ll be writing my thoughts on the subject in this blog for everyone to see.

Well, when we first moved out here, I made the conscious choice to make this work whatever the cost. I initially wasn’t happy with the prospect of moving away from the family and friends I had left in Chicago. Christine really, REALLY wanted to move out here and I took on the role of supportive husband, no matter what my misgivings were. If she wasn’t going to be happy staying in Chi-town, I wouldn’t be happy because of her misery. So, I got a transfer with my work, she planned out the move, and in October of 2003 we made the move.

She had two good reasons for the move: Health (her asthma was the big concern) and family (her parents moved out here a year earlier). Other smaller reasons were prevalent, such as weather. She was sick of snow, which I don’t mind and I actually like.

Zoom to present day. She now wants to move back to the Chicago area. Unfortuanely, I’m the type of person that can make their home anywhere. I’ve grown to like it here, except for the harsh summers; between that and Chicago winters, you just can’t win! She’s mainly homesick for her friends. My counter to this was that 2 1/2 years is NOT enough time to really solidify friendships in our new residence, not to mention that friendships are harder to acquire and maintain in adulthood as opposed to teenage and early adulthood (the times of living with parents). She also misses the Exit Chicago club and some of the native food and restaurants in the Chicago area. I explained my side in that there are many good alternatives here to the things she misses if we look hard enough. It’s too bad we can’t have the best of both worlds right now. No one, not even well-off people, can afford a round-trip plane ticket monthly to Chicago and back to AZ. Her third argument is the people, and culture, here are colder and more callous (read: apathetic) here in PHX, AZ. Yes, I’ve noticed this, too, from day one. My counter is you get the same type of people in Illinois. Maybe not the culture, but one can really make the best of bad situations. In fact, because of the apathy and closemindedness of some of the people here, there were a few times that I wanted to move back “home”. After a time, things got better for me personally. Unfortunately, it seems she can’t make the best of these grievances.

My dilemma is the same now as when we were in the Chicago area deciding this move. I was opposed to the move in the first place, mainly due to family and friends, and my life as a Chicagoan. Now, I find I’ve gotten used to life out here. I guess I just adapt too easily. It would take a lot for me to move back, even with the finances. When you establish a life somewhere and are determined to give it your best, even three years is not enough to give anything that takes long-range plans a chance. We moved out here for a fresh start on our life together. It doesn’t make sense to move back and resume the life we left behind, without giving everything a good, honest long-range shot here.

I’m still making the decision to support my wife however I can. If she’s not happy, then of course I’m not going to be truly happy, no matter how I outwardly feel. I hope everyone, including Christine, can read this and understand how I feel about all this.

The plan, so far is to live out here until we can buy a house here. From then, we can build up enough equity to be able to shop for a house in Illinois. This may take five to seven years, more or less, depending on circumstances. Not as easy as it sounds, I get the idea. Hopefully by then things will be better with living out here. If not, well then we’ll see about moving back to “sweet home Chicago”.

Ok, I’ve vented my spleen. Time to make din-din!

Wow!

After playing with Virtue (a virtual desktop manager) for just a few minutes, I’m just stunned! I’m kicking myself for not installing an application like this before. This opens up possibilities for a user like me that likes to have a lot going on. Somehow, even with a 20″ screen, I manage to clutter it up with two browser windows (or more!), IM’s, widgets, code editors, mail, and iTunes. Virtual desktops make it easy to have applications spread across multiple desktops, easily switchable through hot-keys or F-keys. I may never have to use Exposé ever again! I put the link at the bottom of this post for any Mac user to visit Apple’s download page and read more about this wonderful (so far) creation.

Virtue - System/Disk Utilities - Apple.com

Yes, my mom has just gotten another year older younger! I’d like to celebrate with Dad and her, but I’d have to take an unplanned roadtrip. Mom, I’ll settle for calling you later, but just in case you’re checking the blog before that call:

Happy birthday, Mom! I love you and miss you!

This is my wife’s parents new addition to their household. What would you do with a too-cute-and-sweet calico kitten? Cuddle, cuddle, cuddle!