January 2008

I’m minutes away from the end of my twenties…

Thanks to a few people at work (Anthony and Bill) for my desk when I got to work this morning (at 6am).

There’s nothing like industrial saran wrap and packing peanuts to make an early morning seem better. Then about 20 minutes later, while standing in a 50 foot FedEx trailer unloading boxes, I was attacked by an army of employees with Silly String. It was a very exciting morning, all before 6:30.

[via] Instapaper is a great little tool for marking websites to read later. Why? Because it’s not del.icio.us? I’m using it to mark non-news I want to read later, that I doubt is interesting to many other people (like a Wired article on bike wheels or stuff I want to share at work) and which doesn’t require me giving out my email info and which I can access at any computer. (Much like how I use Bloglines as a feed aggregator instead of a desktop client.) I sit at a computer for many snippets of my day, it just isn’t always mine. Now I’m not emailing myself links back and forth between my work and home computers. Whee!

Oh. My. GAWD.

I just got the best email from Rachel! New Kids On The Block are getting back together! It’s a comeback! These guys were my first concert. I sat in the fifth row at Oakland with nine friends for this show (with Dino opening), then I saw them outdoors in Oakland too.

I loved Jon the most. While most of my friends loved Joey, I preferred Jon for his quiet and mysterious nature. Seriously, I think as an adoring public, there was the least amount of information about Jon floating around. I guess he could be whatever I wanted him to be…

In illness news, I’m still sick. Still feeling horrible, I stayed home from work today. Not that I was doing much good there, but I spent the last three hours at work last night sneezing and blowing my nose. I’m not quite sure why after eight days of being sick, I still feel this bad.

That is clearly a lie. But apparently “I don’t read” is a popular response to one’s favorite books on Facebook. (While I may have succumbed to MySpace, I cannot cross over into even more life-sucking time on Facebook.) Check out the interesting data collected by Virgil in regards to what books smart people read. Ok, no. It’s what books people with high SAT scores on Facebook read. I’m fascinated. If you haven’t already seen it, I present to you: Books that make you dumb.

I don’t know Virgil, but I like him. What’s not to like? Geek, cute, interested in books. FTW!

I suppose it’s interesting to note that my favorite books aren’t on the list. Hmmm. I’m off the scale, one way or another. I wish I remembered my exact SAT score. I do know that I scored more than 100 points higher on the non-math side…

For the record, some of my favorite books are:

• A Song Of Ice and Fire (series) by George R.R. Martin
• Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
• The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell
• Declare by Tim Powers

In completely un-related news, did y’all see Cloverfield? I’ve heard that I’d like it, but that since Blair Witch’s camera movement made me nauseous, I might not make it through a theater showing of this flick. If you did see it and you liked the music, you can grab Rob’s party mix from Cloverfield.

He does. Pees on command too. He’s been quite sweet, laying on the floor next to me while I cough on the couch.

Here’s what I’ve gleaned from the couch today:

• Ron Moore can write things other than great Battlestar: Galactica scripts. Read some smart, insightful stuff about the strike.
• What isn’t as smart or insightful? Our president’s art interpretation. Apparently Bush’s favorite painting doesn’t quite depict what he thought.
• I’m going to a swanky dinner at Masa’s for my birthday. Here’s what those Michelin stars really mean in a restaurant review.
• Watching old episodes of The X-Files both makes me happy that I have the DVDs and sad when I see season 9 on tv and realize how bad it got in the end. Thank god I was in Japan and didn’t get to watch the debacle live every week.

I just recently posted about the brilliance of Netflix and the fact that they recommend movies for me in (apparently) the same way my friends recommend movies. But this one? I will enjoy an Eddie Izzard concert film becuase I liked a British Holy Grail farce, an Italian neo-realist film, and a samurai movie?

(Nearly) everything is working again. Links shouldn’t be dead, gallery still works, images ought to display correctly. Credit where credit is due:

• CSSEdit made getting it back to “somewhat unoffensive looking” an easier task.
• Tarski is still the best, most extensible theme out there. It helps that it’s pretty right out of the box.
• MacHeist for putting together the software bundle that allowed me to get CSSEdit and Cha-Ching essentially buy one get ten free. There are only 22 more hours to get this bundle, and 25% of your purchase price goes to charity. (And you’ll now get three more apps that I did when I bought on Monday!)
• Mucinex is seriously the best decongestant out there.
• Transmit has been my steady-on FTP client of choice for, uh, five or six years now.

The header image is a photo I took while in San Francisco on November 24.

No, really. Watching the Australian Open is something I’ve always enjoyed, but watching it in HD? Holy shit. I think I watched five hours of tennis last night and I’m an hour in today. I like tennis, but generally not this much. Sports in HD will be my downfall…

During a trip to Japan in 1994, I was shopping in a giant record store in Tokyo called The Wave. While I was there, I bought a CD because I liked the cover.

Sometimes I’m just that shallow. Turns out that the CD was even better sounding than it was good looking and my happy aural relationship with The Frames began. Finding some of their music in the States has been difficult prior to a few years ago, but I purchased Burn the Maps last year and grooved along happily.

About two weeks ago the universe conspired to bring The Frames and their frontman, Glen Hansard, back into my life. I’d noticed that the top choice on my Netflix home page was Once. I didn’t look beyond the pop-up description and kind of ignored it. Then I received an email from my friend Jess. Usually we send novella-length emails back and forth, but this was a short burst from her…basically saying “I saw this movie, I loved it, and you will too.” Guess what movie it was. (Jess and I also happened to be reading the exact same book at the same time too. Whoa.)

I rented it. I loved it. Watched it three times. Bought the DVD and the soundtrack. I am officially hooked. (For those keeping score at home, please note that though the DVD and CD use the same photo for the cover, Glen and Mar have been Photoshopped together to be holding hands on the DVD. Hmmm.)

So thanks to Jess and Netflix I have a new movie I love, which I can pimp out to my friends.

Bryan and I are sick. This is the first time in more than six years that we’ve been sick together. Usually one of us is healthy enough to take care of the other for the first few days of the hacking. Now we’re both sick and it’s stupid.

The last two months have been…busy. Which just translates into “too lazy to blog.” In addition to the illness, I’ve got three days off this week so I’ll be working behind the scenes here trying to get a good theme up and running (including making the gallery work again–which might mean just dropping the dollars for a SmugMug account) and getting a few enhancements up.

What have I been up to?

• Sandy organizes my life.
• Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles has been making what was otherwise a dreary writer’s strike better.
• Watched a lot of movies recently. Highlights include Death Proof and the semi-related documentary Double Dare, Brief Encounter, and Samurai Fiction.