It seems like summer is finally here in Chicago. It only took a few months, but it is now roasting at 90 degrees each day. Needless to say, the third floor of my apartment is drawing heat pretty well and I fear I may have to resort to air conditioning soon enough.

So I just procured some sling chairs from Restoration Hardware the other night for my back porch. And now I am sitting out on the back porch on my wireless network listening to the sounds of the city. Life isn’t too shabby…

One theme that seems to be somewhat common since I’ve moved to the city - getting home at 4am. I certainly don’t mind, though. :)

My DSL was abnormally slow, lately. I called their tech support and they told me that an automated “optimization test” was run and it was determined that my line could not handle the full bandwidth, so the “optimization process” limited me to the slowest speed possible. What kind of optimization is that?!

In any case, they had a tech come out and look at it this morning. Prior to the tech poking around in the phone box, I was downloading at 40Kb/sec. After the tech jiggled the wire and we plugged everything back in, I was downloading at normal speeds again. What the heck, Bobby!

I am in a hole known as Peru, IL. The hotel I’m staying at has the dirtiest phone lines I have ever dialed up across. I cannot seem to connect for more than five minutes every hour. When I am not connected, I am trying to connect and either constantly trying to reconnect or getting bumped off immediately after I do. I must be getting punished by the Internet gods for some reason. Which raises an interesting question….if there were an Internet God, who would it be?

I was taking a cab somewhere last night and didn’t have any small bills on me. The ride ended up being $5.90, so I had the cabbie a 20 and ask for $13 back. He didn’t have any 1’s handy, so he had to dig into his stash, but finally handed me four bills back. As I’m about to get out of the car, I spread the bills and notice they’re all 1’s! I mention this to the cabbie and he mumbles something about forgetting to give me the $10 and hands me two 5’s. grrr - oh well, at least I caught it…

You know you travel too much when…you keep the travel-size toothpaste in your cabinet at home, and the regular toothpaste in your travel bag.

Congrats to my sister, the mother of a brand new 9.4lb baby boy! Wow…that means I’m an Uncle. Crazy.

So I assisted a psuedo-Houdini tonight during a Key West sunset. I was picked out of the crowd at random to help put this guy in a straight jacket, wrap 80 ft. of chain around him, padlock the chain in multiple places, hoist him up by his feet and watch him get out in 4.5 minutes. It was pretty impressive. The sunset wasn’t bad, either.

I must apologize, I’ve been quite delinquent lately posting to my site. I guess that’s what happens when you’re hardly home and living out of a hotel/suitcase most of the time, though - other things begin to take precedence.

On a mildly interesting note, I only scored a 35.89744% on the Geek Test - a Major Geek. Which…I am, but there are so many higher levels of geekiness that I come nowhere close to.

I’ve seen the Matrix Reloaded twice now - I had to go see it a second time because I forgot to stay past the credits for the Revolutions trailer the first time. Let me tell you - watching it again has not cleared up any of the questions I had.

For now - I must leave you. An after-hours conference call for work is screaming my name. wa, hoo.