I love that Springfield is a town that there’s nothing to do one night, but yet go out another night and meet people from another town that are doing a Tweetup, with a tweeter that has 15k followers, meet with up and coming local tweeters, talk to a guy that knows your blog life better than you do, then run into a lobbyist of a major city in Illinois, and another major lobbyist group…. all in one night.

Ahh, Springfield.

I am still in shock from daylight savings time. It’s like I’ve never seen it get dark by 5pm before.

My body feels like it should be June when the sun didn’t set till after 8:30pm. I am not going stir crazy yet, but by my estimations I should be in the loony house by Xmas.

Maybe it’s because at work I’ve got a skyline view of Springfield and each 4:30pm sunset is as dramatic as the climax in a play.

Tomorrow is the big Century. Still got a few butterflies in my stomach, but it should be a good day.

Per suggestion of Matt Penning, I will be Twittering / live blogging tomorrow. Don’t know what Twitter is? Don’t worry. Just hit the root of the domain to see updates from me. http://gotshoo.com or http://twitter.com/gotshoo

It’s that time of year where I can’t believe the summer is almost over. I’ve always looked forward to August because of my birthday and the state fair. But a part of me cringes at the thought of it because it always the crest of summer just before fall and school starting.

I am a full grown adult (plus a little belly) and I still get that ‘first day of school’ feeling every once in a while, even though I work year round. I still vividly remember the first day of fourth grade. My family had just moved across town and my brother was entering kindergarten. He cried like there was no tomorrow just before he had to get on the bus. I remember awkwardly trying to calm him down the best a nine year old could do.

Weird that I can still remember that, but I would have to Google the formula for pythagorean’s theorem.

The cool thing about fourth grade is that I would make friendships that still carry on today. Some of the most intelligent guys I know came from that year in school.

I know I am on kind of a tangent, but Snow Patrol is playing and I am enjoying a cold root beer. I’ll try to relate this back to August.

So August, it’s my new year’s day. It’s always been a month of starting something new. Something that’s never been tried before. I feel like I’ve been pushing myself in a new direction, striving for a new graduation.

In September I am going to ride a century which I’ve been training for the last three months. I rode 300 miles in the month of July. My side company, Afterhours Development, has a pretty large project going on at the end of the year and we’re developing some more neat local resource sites.

And I can’t leave out Mrs. Shoo! She was just accepted into her graduate program at ISU and will be starting classes this fall while still teaching full time. She works ten times harder than me, I don’t know how she does it.

Even though I’ll feel those August butterflies it’s exciting to think of what’s coming next. Who am I going to meet? What new challenges lie ahead?

Here’s to August!

I am heading up north next weekend for Lollapalooza. I’ve got a few delimas on who to watch. Who better to ask than my loyal readers. Warning, I may have already made up mind, but I can be persuaded.

The Raconteurs or Bloc Party

Duffy (she’s the sober version of Amy Winehouse) or Louis XIV (I’ve got an album of their’s)

Rage Against the Machine or Wilco

John Butler Trio or Brazilian Girls

Nine Inch Nails or Kanye West?

Well, the Illinois Times’ Cap City section picked up on the soul of Springfield again detailing the Springfield Bloggers and their adventures. I don’t know if I should be awestruck or flattered. I guess when you’re as popular as Gus Gordon, at least that’s what I keep telling myself, you’re fodder for the tabloids. I can see it in the headlines, Blogger Doesn’t Pick Up After Dog with a shot of the incrementing evidence and a less than photogenic portrait of yours truly.

I do want to set the record straight, I do blog with pants on and although it may be in a basement, it’s my basement. In fact, most of the time I do wear pants. The only time you would catch me with my pants down would be when I was reading a copy of the Illinois Times. Of course, that’s when I “do the business”, “take a load off”, “dropping the Cosby’s off at the pool”, “taking the Browns to the Super Bowl”, “communing with nature”, “making  some fudge”, “going to the office”… if you get my drift. And if you do get a whiff of my drift, I apologize a thousand Rick Astleys.

So in a less than welcoming regard, thank you Cap City for taking the time and energy to publish a blurb about a gaggle of nerds. Mom said she’s going to post this one on the fridge.

thunderheist – jerk it from thatgo on Vimeo.

The internet has changed so many things. Imagine ten years ago if someone said within 10 clicks, I can show you any video, play any song, or show you a picture of any object.

It’s just absolutely amazing.

The video is totally unrelated, other than being odd and kind of cool, to the post but it’s one of three in a contest for a DJ duo Thunder Heist.

If it’s not bad enough that I follow The Office religiously, I am now addicted to Lost. It started this week when Mrs. Shoo borrowed the season 1 set from a coworker. I had actually seen the pilot when it first aired and thought wow this would be a great show to get into. I’ve even read blogs where people have had Lost dinner parties. But somehow I managed to stay away, far away, deserted from the others.

I think it was a fear of jumping in the middle and being lost. I guess that could be my answer why I never watched 24 or the Sopranos. They all follow the same plot line twists as soap operas. One plot line seems to be making a break while another is in conflict. Guess you can’t have everyone happy or you don’t have a show.

We’re on disc 3, no make that 4 of season one. What’s nice about watching the DVDs is that there are no commercials and an hour show is shortened down to 45 minutes. I wish I would have gotten addicted before the writer’s strike so I could be caught up to the current season, but oh’ well.

At least I know they’re still lost.

I could really use two Saturdays in a weekend; that’s still including a Sunday.

Saturday I spent the day manicuring the lawn, planting a garden, and turning over the compost pile. That left no time to catch up on laundry or any of the numerous other projects that need to be done around the house. And it never hits me till Sunday night that there’s still a bunch to do.

I made myself feel better tonight by throwing in a load of laundry and cleaning up the laundry area. So much better that I am blogging about it. It’s an accomplishment for a Sunday.

Now I am too the point where I’ve got a knot in my stomach about Monday. Mondays never fair well with me, even when I was in school I’d still had the same feelings about Mondays. I know everything will be okay, but I like to hold onto whatever is left of the weekend.

Even a Saturday-Sunday-Saturday weekend would work for me.

Put your votes in the comment section.

No, not that kind of hum-zoo. I realized the other day that I blogged zilch about Humzoo. Let me back up for a second, I forget that not everyone spends 3/4 of the day connected to the net. What is Humzoo? Well, Humzoo.com is a place to blog and upload photos for the world to see; and supposedly everything tastes like cake. It’s free and really easy to use.

Ok, now you’re asking, Aren’t there hundreds of other places on the net to do that? Yes, but this one is really easy and there’s a great community atmosphere. Best of all, one half of the creators is local digital Renaissance man Dave Heinzel. The other creator is Denny Deaton, a cool guy from the East Coast, that has two awesome wiener dogs. We like wiener dogs on Gotshoo.

So Shoo, where’s your Humzoo blog? Right here. Well, what about Gotshoo?, you going to move your blog over there too? I’ve thought about it, but I’ve got about four years of posts invested in Gotshoo and I use the site for development purposes, and I currently use my Humzoo blog to post geeky web findings and photos that don’t make the dailyphoto. So no, Gotshoo is here to stay.

What did Dave and Denny slip you a Lincoln to talk about Humzoo? No, but $5 bucks sounds pretty sweet right about now. I think Humzoo is a cool site and easy way to post content and photos to the web. It’s especially great for those in the last six months learned the term ‘blog.’

It’s free, go check it out!

Fishing with Grandpa., originally uploaded by gotshoo.

Last week I took a half day to go fishing with my Grandpa. I’ve been fishing with him since I was a little kid (6-8 yrs old). We’ve shared quite a few memories and caught quite a few fish.

Some random facts: I started driving the boat solo when I was 10-12. I used to troll around the boat docks while he got the truck and trailer. We’ve fished together over a half dozen lakes. I’ve thrown a complete rod and reel into Lake Otter on accident. We’ve also seen a guy break an axle on a trailer trying to pull a boat out of the lake.

I can’t tell the number of ‘fish stories’ and jokes that have been shared.

He’s had 3 different boats since we started fishing.

The main rules of the boat: Live bait is for kids, no catfish, drums (an actual nasty slimy fish – they’re in Lake Springfield), or carp in the boat; must be a long range release.

Don’t tell Grandma how much he’s spent on lures.

And finally, a bad day of fishing is always better than a good day in the office.

Today’s dailyphoto is brought to you by the unfolded laundry sitting in the chair.

If there is one chore that I hate more than the scrubbing, sweeping, vacuuming of the daily upkeep of living; it’s laundry. I was babied as a kid all the way through adulthood till the day I moved out. My mom did the laundry.

Everything from sorting and folding socks to getting that nice crease in dress pants. She did it all.

Of course, I never questioned it, “Hey Mom, love you, but can you stop taking care of me? I am a real man now, and I’d like to clean the skid marks out of my own boxers now. Thanks.” Are you kidding me?! I relished every Downy fresh sock, shirt, and pant that magnificent woman washed.

Now I am left to half ass fold my own boxers, bunch up my socks, and find some way to get out the wrinkles. It’s not the same anymore.  I wonder if the dry cleaning lady will let me call her mom?

Bonus daily photo.

I am in one of those moods tonight where I could sit behind the computer till the wee hours of the morning and just churn out productivity. I’ve got Radiohead (In Rainbows) on in the headphones. I am far from tired, but know the time change is going to make getting up a challenge.

Talking about daylight saving time, word is on the blogs (or at least Gizmodo) that the 2005 Energy Act Policy isn’t doing much for the nation in saving energy. Go figure.

Well, so much for being productive for the rest of the night. I’ve got to hit the sack.

This is from a while back when we took the ‘poopers’, aka dogs, to the park.

We have two very different jobs. Mrs. Shoo is a teacher at a high school, and I am a IT guy for a consulting company. Our work environments couldn’t be anymore different. She wrangles some 20-30 kids per hour into a learning environment, assigns homework, disciplines, and prepares for the next batch of kids. She’s lucky to get 15 minutes of downtime during the day. I, on the other hand, have a zen like atmosphere that’s quiet 90% of the time. I spend most of day trouble shooting and problem solving issues, ‘We have 4000 missing records from this database. How do we get these records in the database without causing more issues?’

When we meet up at the end of the day, her stories for the day outweigh mine by far. How am I to compete when she’s telling me about the mess Johnny is in for cheating and hasn’t been to class in three days, then Suzy from fourth hour caused a commotion that spilled into seventh hour that screwed over the rest day. When I am like, ‘Dude, ran a query in the middle of the day in their production environment and caused a whole heck of a lot problems, and we had Starbucks this afternoon.’

No comparison, especially when your partner doesn’t speak geek.

Anymore I let Mrs. Shoo do the talking. You’d think she’d want quiet, but in the opposite fashion, it let’s her clear her mind by speaking to someone that isn’t yelling back or ignoring her. It took us me a while to figure out this method, but it works.

Last weekend’s warm weather with today’s blizzard is killing me. So, to beat the last of the winter blues, here are my tentative plans for the summer.

* May – Matt & Mel’s wedding.

* June – Float trip?! Philly and Catherine mentioned this, but no date yet.

* July – CO Trip?!

* August – Birthday, Cards vs Cubs in Chicago, Moonlight Ramble, Springfield Century

* September – Will & Jessie’s Wedding

Friends, am I missing anything?