(why) I suck at blogging

OK, I'll admit it. Well, I'll admit multiple things, but there's two I'm getting at right now:

1. I suck at blogging.
2. I've become (a twaddict / twobsessive-compulsive).

I'll look at the blogging suckage now, and try to take a look at the need to be connected next week.

(why) I suck at blogging.

Let's see... I'm articulate ("Verisimilitude; Xenophobe; Regurgitation"). I've even got some things to talk about (C# Custom Attributes vs. Marker Interfaces? Eventually. HP's award-winning technical support? Eventually.) So why then have I not written anything in 5 months?

As I feared, I got distracted by something shiny. Note to self -- the start of the busy holiday season (Halloween, Child2.Birthday, Thanksgiving, Child1.Birthday, Christmas, New Year's Eve) is not the time to try to start any new endeavor, let alone two blogs. Then came January, full of promise...

...and we dropped one addiction for another.

I'm not going to say it's a bad thing -- it's just that The Lovely Bride and I quit smoking on January 12. For those of you who've never been down this road, there's a couple of issues -- the physical and the psychological.

The physical addiction was actually the easier side for us to handle. Working for a company that says "We want you to quit smoking so much that we'll cover not just your meds, but meds for any dependents as well" made it really easy to get the prescription for Chantix, which did wonders in that regard.

The psychological addiction was more difficult -- most smokers have events that get raised, and smoking is one of the handlers subscribed to those events. So driving, post-eating, lunch time and breaks at work -- all of these had to be handled differently. Some, like the breaks at work, just stopped completely -- I pretty much go to lunch, but that's it. Others were more difficult, with after-dinner being the worst of the bunch. We needed something to do with our hands, something to answer the question "OK, we're done with dinner -- what now?"

The answer was already in our house

Stupid Guitar Hero.

The Fat Man in the Red Suit brought Child1 the PS2 game Sing Star at Christmas. If you're not familiar with it, think of it as PS2-Karaoke. Child1 loved it.

Nobody wants to hear me sing. Trust me.

So we picked up Guitar Hero III on a lark, as something I could do -- and found in mid-January that it answered the question perfectly. It was engrossing, kept the hands busy, and was something we both enjoyed.

Guitar Hero III led to GH World Tour and Rock Band, then Rock Band 2 and GH Aerosmith on the Wii. Free time has now officially been filled.

There's good news, though -- neither of us has slipped, so we're now 3 months nicotine free. We've stopped playing GH / RB quite so much, so we're able to get to other things we want to do (I'm setting up a Virtual PC image w/Windows Server 2008 as I type this. The Web Platform Installer is made of 99.44% pure awesome, and i'm pretty sure the other .56% has something to do with Mr. Rogers) I finally caught up on some things on the DVR (we'd maxed out the drive), and now...

I'm going to try this again. Hopefully it'll stick this time. Next up: not sure, but it should be interesting to see when...

(dual posting between personal and tech blogs -- that way they're all at the same reset point.)