Firstly, I’m not really that motivated to post things with any sort of regularity. I am not trying to be a “blogger”, necessarily. I just like the idea of having a place on the web to post whatever I want. Usually, when I’m inspired to actually write something, it’s about a subject I know a lot about or am very interested in, or some event that recently occurred. I also tend to post things that I think others will be interested in, or will find interesting or amusing in some way.

The other thing is taking the time to actually sit down and type something out. I have notebooks and papers full of ideas, but I don’t often do anything with them. If I stop and think about it, it really doesn’t take too long to type out a few paragraphs. Although in my case, I usually spend a lot of time doing it, treating it like a high school essay, rather than the informal blog post that it is. I really don’t need to do several drafts of something that few people are going to read. Especially since I’m not getting marks or money for it…

To be honest, two things recently inspired me to even write this up. The first is my friend’s girlfriend telling me robmaeder.com is her new homepage. Whether or not that’s actually true doesn’t matter, but the fact is that I have this site up here on the Internet for everyone to see, and I’m not doing anything with it. If it’s just going to sit here idle, I might as well shut it down.

The other ‘recently inspiring event’ is I just finished helping my brother Chris set up his new website, chrismaeder.ca. He’s convinced the Internet is the key to riches, and I’m starting to think he might be onto something. If he’s going to be 2010’s hottest new blogger, I figure I should try to keep up.

I’m not going to make some outrageous promises that I’m going to post every day, or even on any sort of regular schedule. But if I’m going to keep robmaeder.com alive, I’m going to have to post at least a couple times a month.

Eventually, I realized there was no point trying to play server administrator, because the hassles just weren’t worth my time. So back in April, I moved my email hosting to Google Apps. It’s free for personal use, and was fairly easy to get set up. Now all of my robmaeder.com email goes through Google’s servers, which do an incredible job of spam filtering. All my email is read through GMail, which is so much better and easier to use than any other web-based mail software I’ve tried.

Since making the switch, I can recall only seeing 3 or 4 spam messages actually reach my inbox. My spam folder currently has 27,931 emails in it from the past 30 days. That’s getting close to 1000 spams per day. I highly recommend Google Apps for this sort of thing. It’s way easier than rolling your own, and you don’t have to worry about updating software regularly, since it’s all taken care of for you. Thanks to Google, my email is now usable again.

She gave me a bunch of pamphlets and information about Oshawa, coupons for discounts and free offers from local businesses, and some free samples as well. Check it out:

I got a free sample from Mary Kay, a coupon for $10 worth of business services at the UPS Store, a bunch of random coupons, a toothbrush, popcorn, some pens, fridge magnets, a diaper, and a six week old copy of the Oshawa Express newspaper.

The Welcome Wagon has been around since 1930, and does visits for other “lifestyle events” such as brides-to-be, new grandparents and expecting a new baby. It’s basically a way for local businesses to advertise to you, but it is pretty neat, and I did get some interesting and useful things out of it.

For me, owning a home is a lot different than renting or living with your parents. I really notice the little things, like how messy the house gets, repairs that need to be done, and general upkeep that houses require to stay in good condition. I now understand the whole “pride of ownership” thing, because I am the sole person responsible for everything in my house. Even though I live alone, I sometimes find it difficult to keep the place clean. Just a couple of lazy days leads to dishes piling up, floors that need sweeping and vacuuming, and bathrooms that need washing. Plus there’s lawn maintenance, houseplants to be watered and of course, bills to be paid.

It’s been a real learning experience so far. I really enjoy the freedom of living on my own, in my own house. I don’t have to worry about following any rules or how my actions will affect anyone else, since there isn’t anyone else there. If I want to keep my bikes in my family room, I can and nobody will tell me to move them. If I want to play my music loud, I can (as long as it isn’t so loud that the neighbours can hear it, but that’s another story). If I want to cook or do laundry at 3am, nobody is going to object. Plus I can pee with the bathroom door open.

I was recently asked what my favourite thing about living on my own is, and my answer was the freedom. It’s not like I was really oppressed or lacked freedom before, but now I notice all the little things. I can do whatever I want, and I love it.

There are a couple of small side effects that I am dealing with. I find that my eyes get dry sometimes, and I’m a bit more sensitive to light than I remember being before the surgery. Dryness is easily remedied with a couple of eye drops. At most, I’ve had to put in eye drops two or three times a day, which is tolerable and not a big deal to me. Most days I don’t have any issues, but if I’m tired or working on the computer for an extended period without taking a break, I notice the dry eyes gets worse.

As for light sensitivity, I’ve noticed sunlight seems excessively bright at times, and I have to squint when I’m outdoors as a result. I wear sunglasses a lot when I’m out on a sunny day, or when driving, but I think it’s a good idea for most people to wear sunglasses anyway, to protect one’s eyes from UV rays. Plus, I got to pick out some stylish sunglasses for the first time in my life, instead of wearing those geeky clip-on shades that go over your regular glasses.

Overall, I’m very happy with the results of my LASIK procedure. If I knew it would be this good, I would have done it years ago.

I put an offer in about a month ago, did a bit of back and forth negotiating and we settled on a really good price. Now is a great time for first time homebuyers, since house prices have dropped and interest rates are really low. I’m off to the lawyer’s in about an hour to get the keys, and I’m pumped. Tomorrow I’ll be doing some cleaning and getting some things set up and Saturday will be the big moving day.

I’ll keep everyone updated and post some pictures in the next few days.

I went to the TLC centre in Toronto last Thursday morning and had a great experience. I was there for about two hours, with most of that time spent going over paperwork, finalizing details and prepping for surgery. The staff were all friendly and assuring, easing most of the stress I had about the procedure. My surgeon, Dr. Nick Nianiaris, was very straightforward, very skilled, and kept me calm during my time under the laser.

Here’s a basic recap of what happened: I sat in a waiting room with two other people awaiting surgery. A nurse came in and explained what we’d be going through, and talked about aftercare and recovery. She cleaned my eyes a couple times, put in a bunch of different eye drops and gave me an ativan to help with the nerves.

When my time came, I went into the surgery room, laid down and Dr. Nick started the process by putting some more numbing drops in my eyes. First, he put a suction ring on my eye, which felt weird and pretty uncomfortable, but didn’t really hurt. At this point, my vision went black, which was pretty scary, but I knew it was coming, so I was somewhat prepared for it. The Intralase laser then cut a flap in my cornea, which took about 30 seconds per eye.

Dr. Nick then removed the suction ring and my vision came back, although it was pretty blurry. He used a little metal instrument to gently lift up the flap that was created, and then positioned another laser above my eye to do the actual correction on my cornea. He told me I would smell the laser gases, which I did, in addition to the smell of burning cornea tissue. The laser made a weird clicking sound and one of the two nurses in the room gave me a countdown every 5 seconds, telling me how much time was left and telling me how great I was doing. I think it took 23 seconds of laser time for each eye.

I’ve watched tons of videos of lasik surgeries, so I knew exactly what steps would be taken and what to expect, but it was still really weird to watch it from the other side. I could actually see the flap being lifted off my eye, which was a little disturbing. While the laser was doing its work, I could see little purple circles of light pulsing randomly around, which was kinda neat.

Overall, I’m very happy with the results. I have a bit of dryness in my eyes, especially in the mornings, and I use lubricating drops 4 or 5 times per day, but it’s not unbearable. I still sometimes go to adjust my glasses and I still reach for them first thing in the morning, until I realize that I can see without them. I guess those habits will fade over time.

As I said, I’m really happy with how things turned out, and I’d recommend Lasik surgery to anyone who is a candidate and can afford it.

I’m scheduled for tomorrow morning at 9:40am at TLC in Toronto. The actual procedure only takes about 15 minutes, but it is a bit scary, since they are going to be cutting and touching my eyes and a big laser is gonna shoot rays at me. Recovery is usually pretty quick, and a lot of people report seeing clearly almost immediately after the surgery. I’ll have to use various eye drops for the first few days, but I should be able to return to most normal activities within a week.

I’m pretty excited and a bit nervous, but I’m really looking forward to life without glasses. Wish me luck!

I only heard about the Eagles of Death Metal concert last week, even though tickets went on sale in September. When I found out, I was pretty excited, since they are a great band and I’ve heard they put on a live show worth checking out. I went to buy tickets, but of course they were long sold out.

Yesterday, out of the blue, my friend Spencer emails saying he has extra tickets. Lucky me!

Eagles of Death Metal play fuzzy-guitar straight up rock and roll, complete with falsetto vocals and ample doses of cowbell. They sounded great live, despite a few technical difficulties with microphones and things. Lead singer Jesse “The Devil” Hughes looked like he was having fun, which made it easy for the crowd to have a good time.

Bottom line: loud dirty rock + beer = a good Thursday night.

We just had an election in Canada, and it came and went in about a month. That was annoying enough, but at least bearable, since it was somewhat relevant to my day-to-day life and relatively short lived.

I can’t wait until Tuesday (November 4th) when the whole thing is finally over with.