A person’s home is sacred territory. At least that’s the way I look at it. I mean just think about it. When everything is said and done, the home (or the room if you live with roommates) is a person’s only real place that belongs just to them. The only place that they can exercise complete dominion over. We choose to believe our homes are safe because it’s comforting, but it’s not always the case. Sadly, a lesson one of my roommates and I had to learn the hard way.

I currently rent a house with three other guys. What sort of makes this house unique is that a good majority of my friends have all lived in it at one point or another. Generally, a few guys live in the house for a while, get married, move out, and another friend of the group moves in. Because of this, the house has an almost communal feel to it. While we do lock up at night and whenever we leave, friends often walk in without needing to knock, coming and going as they please. And we welcome the “interruptions”. We’ve always been pretty laid back.

In the last few months, however, my attitude has changed drastically. Back in April we had a couple thousand dollars worth of electronics equipment stolen from our house. I’m not going to go into specifics, but we know who took the stuff and we know who, at the very least, provided the opportunity for the stuff to be taken. The funny thing is, that it’s not the stuff that was stolen that bothers me the most. In fact, there were far more valuable items that weren’t even touched. What really pisses me off is that my room and my personal space was intruded upon. What upsets me is that my sense of security was taken from me. What is really unfortunate is that my willingness to be apart of this communal house experience is now completely gone.

The simple fact is that I can no longer relax in my own house. I’ve had to go out and buy my own locks for my door, I have to lock the house up even if everyone else is still there when I leave, and I find it hard to trust people my roommates bring over. Simply put, my house no longer feels like a home. And it likely will not for some time.

posted by Christopher Schnese

When it comes down to it, I’ve never really been a huge fan of the holidays. First, they’re really just an excuse to take time off of work to spend time with those you’ve failed to make time for during the off season. Second, the monotonous daily grind of life doesn’t recognize them (i.e. the stresses of the world don’t stop so you can stuff your belly with turkey). And Third, any an all significance inherent in each holiday has all but died off over the years.

Take today for example. We all gather and talk about what we’re ‘so thankful for’, yet we just take it all for granted the other 364 days of the year. What’s the point? Well, it occurred to me this morning that maybe that is the point. We’re all so busy with our lives that we never seem to make time to sit down and reflect on the things we really are thankful for. Maybe we really do need another ‘pointless’ holiday to force us to stop, even if only for a moment, and reflect on the things we really are thankful for.

So what am I thankful for? One of the problems for me is that I’m such a cynic. I often focus on the obstacles standing in the way of the things that I want. Because of this viewpoint, I sometimes forget how amazing what I have is. So I guess what I’m really thankful for is the little things; the bits and pieces. I’m thankful for every little piece of this little puzzle called life. Sure, the final product is far from complete, but it’s coming together quite nicely.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone. I hope you have a wonderful day and I hope you stop for a moment and find something to be thankful for.

posted by Christopher Schnese

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Now I’m nothing close to a domain squatter, but at one point in time I had built up a small cache of domains to deploy at my will. Some of them were for failed projects, some for possible future projects, and some I just thought were clever and hoped I’d one day have a use for. Unfortunately, I made the mistake of ‘conveniently’ consolidating all their renewal dates at the suggestion of the company I buy them from. As it turns out, this is one of the least convenient things I could have done. If you pay for all your domains at once, it can be very expensive.

Unfortunately, last year around this time, I couldn’t’ really afford the cost of renewing all of them. So, I let about half of my domains expire. Admittedly, most of the ones I let go were for old school projects or online personas that I no longer operate under, so it wasn’t completely disastrous. Sill, it was hard to see them go. In the end, I just held on to my favorites (and of course the ones that were actually in use).

This year, however, when it came time to let some more domains expire it was a little more of a sacrifice. I had already dumped everything I could live without, so there was nothing left to abandon without really having to feel it. Long story short, I decided to bite the bullet and I purged every domain I had except the three that are currently in use and two variations of my name. My guess is that most of the people who are going to read this post aren’t going to be able to sympathize with the loss, but trust me it’s sad times. And to add insult to injury, the domain registrar feels the need to send me an email every day reminding me of all the domains I’ve let expire.

posted by Christopher Schnese

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Before I move on, let me first clarify what I consider “early riser”. To me, the term is completely relative to the time at which you’re required to wake up. For instance, I’m currently waking up at 5:20am every morning. I know there are several of you our there who have to be up earlier than that, so you don’t consider it that early. But here’s the important part: 5:20am is 2 hours and 40 minutes before I’m supposed to be at the office. It is the mere fact that I’m not required to wake up at this hour that makes it “early”.

While this may sound excessive to some people, I cannot stress enough how amazing it is to have time to relax in the morning before you start your day. This morning I woke up, took a shower, updated my Xbox 360, purchased, downloaded, & played 40 minutes of Shadow Complex, made breakfast, and prepared my lunch for the day. Now here I am writing a blog about it, and I still have another 20 minutes before I even have to finish getting ready to head to work. The best part is that by the time I finally make it into the office, I’ll be long past that groggy, morning-time phase and I’ll be able to start the day refreshed. It’s just a wonderfully awesome feeling.

It took me less than a week to completely transition into my new sleeping schedule, but the benefits far outweigh the first  few days of tiredness. Though I’m sure the prospects of waking up 2 hours earlier than you need to may sound intimidating to some people, I’d urge them just to try it out. Start with baby steps. Wake up 30 minutes early for a week or two just to see how it feels. In fact, as I’m sitting here writing this I’m thinking that I just might push my alarm up 20 minutes and just start waking up at 5:00am every morning from here on out. Sleep well everyone

posted by Christopher Schnese

Update
I just noticed from the “related posts” plugin I have installed that I’ve written a similar post before. I wrote that post back when I moved into my current house and I changed my sleep schedule to link up more with my roommate. That was a while back and this time around, it was just a conscious decision to try to give myself more relaxation time in the morning…

This morning, for whatever reason, I woke up in an extremely reflexive mood. As I showered and thought back on past experiences, I was transported back to the summer between Junior and Senior year of High School. For some reason my memory fixated on something I wrote in another guy’s yearbook*. I had just endured a summer long trip and grown really close to a group of people I hadn’t even met a week prior to the trip.

The fun was over and everyone was returning to their families. We were all saying goodbye, likely for the first and last time, and we were signing yearbooks*. Having run out of ways to say “Dude, this trip was awesome. Nice to have met you”, I decided to repurpose some stupid little impersonal poem some douche bag had once left in one of my yearbooks. It’s not that it was mean, it’s just that it was a total waste. It had been an amazing summer. I had grown really close to the whole group. And with one stupid sentence I had stolen away all lasting significance from the trip.

That was almost ten years ago. I’m sure that guy doesn’t really care. Hell, in the grand scheme of things, I don’t even really care. Hell, the guy probably doesn’t even have that yearbook* anymore. None of that matters, though. The truth is that deep down inside I regret that moment in my life. If I could go back in time and write something important, it’s not like any significance could come out of the change. Yet somehow, this memory really bothers me.

posted by Christopher Schnese

*footnote: It wasn’t an actual yearbook, but for the purpose of this blog post and to avoid having to explain the back story of the situation, a yearbook is effectively the same thing.

This morning I awoke suddenly, laying on my side, eyes open, staring across my room to the far wall. There was a strange noise that I couldn’t quite place. It wasn’t especially loud, but it didn’t belong in my room. That much I was sure. It was a weird, almost sticky tearing noise. My anger (at being woken up) quickly turned to confusion as I lay there trying to decipher the strange noise.

I began to rotate onto my back, as if some how the position would allow me to think more clearly. And that’s when it hit me. Literally. As soon as my back was firmly pressed to the mattress, SMACK. The tap light that I had fastened directly above my head (the one I installed so I could read in bed each night) came crashing down right onto my forehead.

And then. Just as the pain and frustration were about to boil to the surface. Beep, Beep, Beep, Beep. My stupid alarm went off.

posted by Christopher Schnese

1) Take The Spoiler Warning podcast beyond Episode 13:
As some of you know, I recently launched a podcast called The Spoiler Warning with a friend from work my friend Nathaniel (extremely gratuitous plug added). The podcast is a reimagining of a project I started my last year of college. The podcast was a new media project for my Visual and Performing Arts Capstone. Unfortunately when the semester ended, so did the project (just after episode 13). On December 11th I restarted the podcast. This time with a revised format, better equipment, and a lot more experience. I’m really excited about the project and that’s why I’m making it my first resolution. I want the project reboot to surpass what we were able to do in our first attempt.

This weekend The Spoiler Warning reviewed Adventureland in Episode 14 of the podcast. Technically it was episode 15, but one of those was a bonus episode so I wasn’t counting it. Either way though, we have surpassed unlucky episode 13 which is a pretty big milestone for us.

2) Read Watchmen before the movie is released:
Watchmen is hands down my most anticipated movie of the year. The source material is, from what I’ve heard, ‘one of the greatest graphic novels of all time’ and believed to be ‘unfilmable’. So, I want to experience it in it’s original form before seeing the movie. I’ve picked up a copy of Watchmen and now it’s really just a matter of making time to read through it.

I finished the graphic novel a mere three days prior to the release of the film. Sure, I was cutting it a little close and a majority of the reading took place on that tuesday, but I did it. Besides being able to cross a resolution off the board, I found the graphic novel absolutely amazing. So, it made that victory just a little bit sweeter.

3) Read a book:
‘Colbertian’ might be the best way to describe my track record with reading books. That is to say that I simply don’t do it. With the exception of the Ender’s Game series and The Way of the Peaceful Warrior series, I just never really got into reading books. If I total up every book I’ve ever completed, I think the grand total is around 8 books (not including children’s books of course). This is something I’d like to change. So I want to read a book. A friend of mine at work has been saying I should read the Harry Potter books forever, so I figure the first in that series would be an easy start.

I had assumed that this would be my hardest, most long term resolution in the bunch. Not hardest in difficulty, but hardest in dedication. I just don’t really like reading all that much. You know, unless it’s delivered in an RSS feed. But guess what? I knocked that one out of the park too. Sure, I was only reading Harry Potter, which I think has the reading level of a Dr Seuss book, but I still finished it. Yay!

So, yeah. That’s my update. Mission accomplished for this year’s resolutions. Maybe next year I’ll raise the bar a little.

posted by Christopher Schnese.

I’ve been a huge fan of FireFox for as long as I can remember and it’s always been my default web browser. In fact, the first thing I do on any new computer or fresh OS install is download it. However, lately the browser just seems to be frustratingly slow. It takes forever to launch (even with the home page set to blank), it freaks out when it sits in the background for too long, and I’m just getting tired of it. Fortunately, Apple released the public beta of Safari 4 this week, so I now have a new browser to play with. I’ve only been using it for half a day, but it’s snappy enough that I’ve decided to make it my default browser for an experimental period of one week. So here it goes, my week without FireFox.

Right off there bat, there are quite a few aesthetic things that I really hate. Most notably the tabs at the top of the window (like in Google’s Chrome) instead of being part of a tab bar,  the absence of separators in the comments, or the fact that the ‘top sites’ view gets automatically populated until you actually have some visited sites built up. All in all though, the browser is super fast, launches instantly, and I’m digging the way it’s rendering most pages (you know, when it’s not completely breaking them). So far I’m actually liking it a lot. We’ll have to see if I make it the whole week though.

posted by Christopher Schnese

1) Take The Spoiler Warning podcast beyond Episode 13:
As some of you know, I recently launched a podcast called The Spoiler Warning with a friend from work my friend Nathaniel (extremely gratuitous plug added). The podcast is a reimagining of a project I started my last year of college. The podcast was a new media project for my Visual and Performing Arts Capstone. Unfortunately when the semester ended, so did the project (just after episode 13). On December 11th I restarted the podcast. This time with a revised format, better equipment, and a lot more experience. I’m really excited about the project and that’s why I’m making it my first resolution. I want the project reboot to surpass what we were able to do in our first attempt.

2) Read Watchmen before the movie is released:
Watchmen is hands down my most anticipated movie of the year. The source material is, from what I’ve heard, ‘one of the greatest graphic novels of all time’ and believed to be ‘unfilmable’. So, I want to experience it in it’s original form before seeing the movie. I’ve picked up a copy of Watchmen and now it’s really just a matter of making time to read through it.

3) Read a book:
‘Colbertian’ might be the best way to describe my track record with reading books. That is to say that I simply don’t do it. With the exception of the Ender’s Game series and The Way of the Peaceful Warrior series, I just never really got into reading books. If I total up every book I’ve ever completed, I think the grand total is around 8 books (not including children’s books of course). This is something I’d like to change. So I want to read a book. A friend of mine at work has been saying I should read the Harry Potter books forever, so I figure the first in that series would be an easy start.

So there it is. My list of resolutions for the new year. Sure they’re nothing that exciting, but they are very attainable. The way I see it, there’s no sense in making resolutions that I have no chance of keeping.

posted by Christopher Schnese

About a month ago, my bad apple roommate decided to lose his keys. You know, just like he lost his cell phone on four different occasions over the last year. For over a month he has made absolutely no effort to replace his keys, but he is completely fine knocking on doors and windows until someone wakes up to let him in when he gets off work at 1am.

Apparently, tonight when he came home there was no one to wake up and let him in. So, he decided to ‘break’ in through the bathroom window. In the process he pulled down the shower curtain and broke the shower curtain rod in half. This fact was not made apparent to me until he caught me in the kitchen and said, “Um, hey. We need a new shower curtain rod”.

Really? ‘We’ need a new shower curtain rod? No, no, no, no. ‘He’ needs a new shower curtain rod. I honestly cannot believe this crap. I have know idea what time it was when he broke the shower curtain rod, but the responsible thing to do would have been to immediately head out to the store a buy a new one. Being the bad apple that he is, this fact did not occur to him. So, by the time I had gotten home, all the stores were already closed. This means we can’t get a shower curtain rod tonight, which means we can’t take showers in the morning, which means someone has to go out and brave the ‘black friday’ crowds to buy one before we can.

That person sure as hell isn’t going to be me. As soon as I finish posting this blog, I’m going to go have a talk with my bad apple roommate and explain the following to him. In the morning I’m going to go wake him up. He’s going to hop on his bike, armed with my house key, and bike his ass to Walmart. While he’s there, he’s going to buy a new shower curtain rod and make two spare keys. Then he’s going to ride home, install the shower curtain rod, reattach the curtain, give me back my key, and then give me one of the spare keys to keep safe for the inevitable next time that he loses his key.

posted by Christopher Schnese