August 2006

What is a dedicated television viewer to do? The meme has been done by The Man himself, so I had to participate. via.

So here’s what happened: Slither director (and Jenna “Pam from The Office” Fischer husband) James Gunn wrote a list of his 25 favorite TV characters ever. (Yes, Pam was on it.) Now, Gunn is on the radar of Joss Whedon fans because he cast good old Nathan Fillion (Capt. Malcolm Reynolds of Firefly and Serenity) in Slither. So naturally, they took note of the list… and were shocked to find Captain Mal scandalously omitted.

This kicked up some dust on Whedonesque, and eventually resulted in Joss himself lightheartedly weighing in with a rival list.

My own criteria is that I will not choose two characters from any one show and while they’re numbered here, they’re in no particular order. Please note that this list has taken me days to put together, and I’m sure I’ll change my mind a few seconds after I post. But what are blogs and memes if not an arbitrary task designed to capture a moment of your life? Ooooh, deep.

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It’s kind of annoying that all my work friends have MySpace. I refuse to break my myhymen (Lorilee, is that even how I spell it?!), but I feel compelled to leave thinly veiled insults and full-boob hugs as comments for my friends, which I can’t do without breaking my myhymen. OMG. The brain power it just took to think that thought could power the MySpace servers for nearly a nanosecond.

A brief mention of The Thing Known As MySpace tonight at Beer-Thirty was all it took. I looked for someone “new,” and found out that I’m mentioned in their “general interest” category. Me! She who only looks at MySpace to realize how happy she is running her own blog. Shalon, why must you taunt me so?! Goddamn. Now who’s the Devil?

In conclusion (as though it matters): I will not be breaking my myhymen any time soon. I just request that I be talked about often, and possibly featured as a special guest star in someone’s high school musical version of their MySpace comments area.

At Blogging Pro, David asks if personal blogs are too personal. I’m not sure if this one is. Actually, it’s probably fairly personal, but in a superficial kind of way. Does that make any sense? I blog about things I might bring up in casual conversation with people I know moderately well. Nothing extraordinary will end up here, and nothing which will put the people I write about in an awkward position.

This goes double for blogging about work. I don’t offer detail beyond what I’d tell anyone else. Work stuff is work stuff. Most of what I write about is stuff that you might see while I’m working, so it’s not even vaguely spilling the beans on anything which might be a no-no. Even so, I’m quite carefull in blogging about work. No sense in getting fired for blogging about work.

I started blogging while I was in Japan. It just seemed more efficient to rant in a web-based arena rather than send my rants out to my mailing list. (Want to read one of the emails? Read one here.) I started a website, which is actually how Bryan and I met. (I registered in the forums, he read my website, and the rest is history.) From the website, I graduated to the LiveJournal. This site is now just over 3 years old.

Farecast is a service in beta, but it’s still the coolest way to look up flight info online. Unlike services like Expedia or Orbitz, Farecast will give you a prediction on whether the flight cost will be rising or falling in order to ensure you’re getting the best rate, even looking forward to tomorrow and the next day. Now with 55 cities served (including the 3 airports closest to me) and an RSS feed for your flight searches, Farecast is hot shit in a world of cold poo.

About two months ago, I suggested to Bryan that we cancel Cinemax (Skin-e-max) and get Showtime instead. I think it’s been a good change, since the amount of original programming we get to watch is better. I wrote before that I was very much enjoying Huff. Now I’m totally loving on Weeds. Have you seen it? Clever, funny, and fantastico! If you have seen it, you’ll enjoy the Elvis Costello version of the theme song.

I am refraining from committing retail therapy upon myself, though there are several new products out that I really want.

• Timbuk2’s Slant Bag is new and super sweet. Gimmie in brown!
• Keen London Boots are awesome. I want them and I can’t get them through work. There is much sadness.
• A new laptop hard drive, which will bump me from a 40GB drive to a 100GB drive. Since I won’t be getting a new Powerbook any time soon, this is an acceptable alternative. And I am doing this soon.

In good news, I heard back from Canon, and they’re going to fix Little Snappy (as the camera is now named, it seems) for $107. Considering that’s about 30% the cost of a new camera, I think I’m doing pretty well, as far as not having to buy a new camera to fix my camera-dropping issue.

I went on a work-sponsored camping trip Tuesday and Wednesday. We went to Loon Lake, which is in El Dorado National Forest. Group Site 1 is a 50 person site, but we managed to cram about 100 employees from many different stores into the site. I had a grand time with my friends who were there, and accomplished my goal for those two days: sit around, drink, hang out with friends, read a book. Woo!

Bryan and I have finally gotten back on the horse, and are busting through an episode of Battlestar Galactica each night. Three more and we’re done with season 1, and Bryan has ordered season 2.0, and then we’ll snatch up season 2.5 when it comes out in September.

Sarah’s motto at work has always been, “Sarah first, safety second.” Shit motto, She Whose Name Shall Not Be Spoken. Today at work, Sarah was drilling something (actually safety-related, ironically enough) when the drill bit broke and went through her thumb. Yes, all the way through. Her thumb is now like a pinhole camera.
ETA: View a photo of the thumb!

Thanks, Akismet. You’ve caught more than 4000 spam comments on my blog thus far, and no false-positives yet. A few random ones got through to moderation, but I forgive you.

Yesterday I began getting spam comments (caught, of course) containing Mark Wahlberg quotes. It seems that the latest iteration of this bot has been crawing Marky Mark interviews to try and get past spam filters. Huh.

In lieu of being a normal couple, Bryan and I are going to work the geek thing to the full extent. This is what happens when geeks get married. I sense…disapproval from the one person I’ve told, but whatever. Our wedding, our rules. Keep up with us, there’s more on the way. Two weeks from now, I think. My next two days off will be for camping, not for geekery.

My Canon PowerShot SD450 died a sad death a few months back when I went to Big Sur with Amanda, Tommy, Savannah, and Sylvio. I sent it back to Canon this afternoon in hopes that they’ll fix it up. I realize it’ll probably cost me money, since dumping your camera in the ocean is generally filed under “dumbass” and not “warranty.” That being said, I may get lucky and they’ll decide that they can fix it for nothing more than what I paid to ship it.

I miss my camera. Come back soon, little snappy*!

[* The camera does not have a name. Really. I just thought that up.]

As I’ve said ad nauseum, opening a new store is craaaaazy. We’ve been open not quite a week yet, and if this last week has been any indication, we’re on a path to be enormously successful. With just a week of sales under our belt, we’re crushing our monthly sales goal…so I can’t complain. Though it seems like the work might have abated, it’s only just begun.

So I haven’t spent much time doing anything but work, and haven’t really seen my friends. Hell, I don’t even see Sarah unless we carpool, even if we’re at work together. I saw Amanda Tuesday night, for a miraculous night of rum and foosball at the bar. Except for seeing her for about an hour at our community night, I haven’t seen much of her at all. Today we set aside two days we’re going to take off together, so that we can do dress shopping. Aieeee!

Rach and Darren take off on their world tour today-ish. They’re literally going everywhere, and I’m enormously jealous. With a brief stop in our neck of the woods for the wedding, then off again. Bon voyage!

In addition to the above, I smell like dog pee. Yup. Dog pee. I’m now going to take a shower and then work very hard to not kill this particular dog (not ours) who peed on me, bit me, and then bit the fuuuuuck out of Bryan’s hand. Witness my enormous anger.

• Opening a new store is tough. Where are my vending machines? The extra cardboard recycling dumpster? The employee entrace phone? The traffic counter? Aiiieeee!
• Went to the bar tonight, and even though Amanda, Tommy, and I were convinced it was Monday, we had a good time. Miles was working! Yay! Also, I should add that I very much like vanilla rum and Diet Coke.
• I love my new clothes and belt from Mission Playground.
• I also love Sephora and may have spent a little bit there, but still didn’t get what I needed, which I’ll have to buy some time soon.
• Helping Tommy with computer stuff is fun! I am far too nerdy for my own good.
• After a week of bitching about the weather, I have to say that this last week has been faaaaaantastic.
• Thinking about wedding planning right now makes me want to take a nap. So I’ll work on it after grand opening.
• Rach and Dazza leave on their round-the-world adventure shortly. I’m so jealous I can’t even express!
• I’m sending my camera in for repair this week. Wish me luck!
• I’m tired. So very tired.