Friday night Jen and I had Todd and Heather over to the house for a cocktail and to start the Wedding Dress Face-Off. Heather was not ecstatic about the first one, which meant that a second trip to the car dealership bridal shop was needed to decide. After the modeling was finished, we drove into the frigid depths of Columbia to try out an Indian restaurant Jen’s friend Meg told us about. The menu selection was larger than a Manhattan phone book (and the names were just as exotic), so we started with appetizers: the best samosas I’ve ever had, as well as some potato pancake type things, and some tasteless white cakes served with dipping sauce. Once we had some drinks and food in us, we found it was easier to decide on entrees. Heather tried something whose name I can’t remember, which was delicious; Todd had the palak paneer and Jen had alu ghobi, which was just spiced enough to be perfect, and I ordered dosai masala, which sounded great on paper but came out looking like a giant rolled pancake. Inquiring how to eat this massive thing, I asked our waitress, who told me in her best english to use my hands. (This was about the time when the other patrons of the store were laughing at me.) Everything was excellent, and vegan to boot, so I think we’ve found a new favorite restaurant to explore southern Indian cusine—just minutes from home.
Saturday, Jen and Heather returned to the original bridal shop to look again at the first dress that caught Jen’s eye; after a prolonged search for the dress in question, they found it and Jen began to put it on. Heather took one look and agreed—it was the dress. Here’s the best part: when they got it to the counter, it turned out that the dress was 1/2 off the original listed price. Score!
OK, just for the record, people: When somebody invites you into an organization and asks you to bring money/buy merchandise/pay a hefty membership fee, and then turns around and asks you to get all your friends to join as well, and ave them bring money/buy, this is called a Ponzi Scheme. The entire economy of frickin’ Albania collapsed because of this crap. (Yes, I’m stuck at home yet again today, listening to Oprah.)
As much as I think this is a bubble, this is an interesting take on the state of the economy.
I have a check deposited in my account for a freelance job I did back in November. I’ve been earmarking this money for a new iPod since the job was completed. Now that I have it, I’m reconsidering the purchase—are there better things I could spend the money on?
This American Life. Tonight I have my choice of programming on network TV: A sitcom about a gay man and a straight woman who are having a baby together; a drama featuring fictionalized, glamorous forensic investigators in Las Vegas; a standard family-oriented sitcom starring Damon Wayans; a show pitting an alaskan bear and a Japanese man in a timed contest to eat the most hot dogs, and a “reality show” featuring, among others, Webster, the uptight chick from 90120, one of the Coreys (does it really matter which?) and Vince Neil, who comes off as a pudgy, sleeve-tattooed version of your uncle Bob. Vince Neil. Mr. “Shout At The Devil.”
(What did I do? I’ll tell you. I turned it off.)
Has anybody noticed that it’s now a wiser (and in some ways, more respectable) decision to do a layout in Playboy than to appear on a “reality show” to Boost A Flagging Career? Somebody should really start calling around to the PR people in Hollywood and pass that memo along. (Tootie, Baldwin Brothers, Coolio- this means you.)
After a four-year dependency, I’m moving away from the usage of a blind HTML page on my site as a bookmark site; every morning when I wake my Powerbook from sleep (or boot my PC workstation at the office) all my browsers point to the same page. This way I avoid migrating troublesome bookmark files from one browser/platform/version to another, and I don’t spend days formatting them to fit my peculiar workflow. With the advent of Safari as my main browser, and its beautiful method of organizing bookmarks, I’m slowly migrating all my favorite links into the browser.
The financial planning meeting went very well, and I left with one very important goal: Sell the house. Fix it, clean it, paint it, sell it. Quickly.
Today is Old-School Van Halen Day. Fair Warning: Women And Children First. (the latter is also nominated for the title of Best Rock Album Cover.)
Happy 30th Anniversary, Roe V. Wade. Ladies and Gentlemen, please consider your rapidly dwindling rights as an American citizen and support the 1973 decision. Please don’t let a group of old white men dictate women’s rights.
Another example of how real creative people think. I’ve not taken a lot of pictures these days because it seems like the only time I see the world is when I’m in the car, driving to or from work. And that’s a pretty boring stretch of road. Michael Sippey found a way to make the situation a little more interesting, from a west coast perspective.
Tomorrow I’m meeting with my accountant/financial planner at the early morning hour of 9:00 to discuss how I’m going to be able to do all the things I want to do this year: Buy a house in the county, buy a ring for Jen, put more money into savings/IRA and afford a used car. Perhaps it’s serendipity then, that we’re getting paid for the first time in January tonight. My homework is to gather all my tax information, make a list of goals over the next five years, and tally my invoices to see what kind of a hit I’m taking on taxes this year. Pray for me, friends.
Hmm. Doing my daily weblog scan, I found a link, via Dominey, to a blog on AirPort, and from there a link testing the new 802.11G wireless standard (“AirPort Extreme” falls in this category.) Good info for the day when I get an iMac in the office and set it up as the base station/server for the house, so that Jen and I can work from any room without tripping over the cables. (I wired the whole house for Cat-5 two years ago, right before wireless took off.) With the promise of some incoming freelance money, this will become reality soon.
I also found a link to this service, offered thorugh OWC by Newer, to upgrade Pismo PowerBooks to a 500mhz G4. At some point this year, I think we will take advantage of the offer, as we own two Pismos and probably won’t be buying any new hardware this year.
Guilty Pleasure Dept.: Fametracker. Grab a beer, pull up a chair, and sink your teeth into this one. Great writing, and everything you want from a publication about celebrities but never get. *cough* InStyle *cough* *cough* People *cough*
So I’ve been looking around at other online comics/novels/stories and I found this one, called Broken Saints, which apparently has been around for a while. It’s a long story with multiple parts to each chapter, and it seems to be meaty with dialogue. My criticisms are that I got bored pretty quickly with the format. They do a great job of setting up the story and providing sound effects and ambient music, but the word bubbles remove the layer of believability. The Flash work is nice, and some of it is slick, but the pace of the story is glacial and dull. I read fast, as I’m sure most of their target audience does, so I get tired of waiting around for the next text bubble. When it does come, it has the effect of making everything deep or dramatic. I had enough of that in High School (and I wrote a bunch of that in High School.) The other drawback to this approach is that he action is paced too slowly when it does come. I’m willing to entertain thoughts on this, if anybody has them.
No, I don’t have anything to show you yet, because I’m still working out the subtleties of dark scenes with scratchboard. But I’ll have something up soon, I promise.
Holy S%$*, this guy has a really nice site. And his work is first-rate as well. I suck.
Fortune Magazine says someone my age (31) should ideally have $100,000 stashed away for my retirement by now. It also says to maintain a current lifestyle of $100,000/yr, I need to save seven million dollars by the age of sixty-five. My current lifestyle is nowhere near that figure, and neither is my retirement fund.
Interesting Developments Dept.: Looks like there will be a fourth Mad Max movie after all. As an early fan of the series back in the 80’s, it’ll be interesting to see where George Miller takes the story now.
The balance of my Citibank card is, with the exception of about $500, paid off. You better believe I can deal with the interest on $500 instead of $3K+. That’s a good feeling, to have that liability gone.
So I got DJ Shadow spinning Ape Shall Never Kill Ape on iTunes right now; does anybody know when he cut this and if it was a tie-in with that *ahem* Tim Burton movie…? (It’s really funny to have Charlton Heston screaming about damned dirty apes! over a real sweet backbeat.)
I was able to put in the first step to the deck last night; there’s a 4×4′ support on either corner with carriage bolts tying in the step and the overhang boxes (pictures to come) so that everything is secure and won’t hop or sag. Next I’m going to pick up a 2×8 or so and fabricate some stair hangers to tie in that step with the main frame; then I can lay and secure the rest of the joists, run wiring to the stair lights and planter boxes, and then the difficult part—figuring the math for the stairs and building them.
Note to Amazon: I want to hear the audio clips you so generously provide on the site, but I absolutely refuse to download and install the Real player or any software written by that company.
lakewood halloween display, 10.9
I deposited a hefty freelance check in the bank this morning that will then be used to pay off about 90% of my credit card debt tomorrow. God, what a great feeling that is. Although my mind regards the credit card debt as a liability, for some reason I don’t think of it that way- it sort of floats off on the side as a bill I just continually pay. Hopefully my 2002 policy of NEVER using the credit card will carry through and I won’t creep the balance back up on it like I did two years ago. (I did exactly the same thing last year—a freelance job paid off the balance, and within six months there was $1K on it again. Grrr.)
The living room is red. Very red. I painted the wall going up the stairs a deep shade of red last night, and it has changed the whole mood of the house. I’m not sure how I feel about it yet, because I didn’t get the chance to cut the edges in or even out the application, so I’ll reserve comments until that’s done.
It’s because of companies—and CEOs like this—that the current investor does not trust the market. This company’s board should kick the two brothers out the door on their asses and keep the money. The employee made a great point. It’s too bad the only reason he knew he could say anything was because he was already leaving.
When you’ve loaded your cart with a Super-Jumbo package of toilet paper, a pallet of canned cat food, the New Bonus-Size! can of tomato juice, three 25-lb. sacks of kitty litter, and seventeen other super-sized containers of consumer goods, remember this simple fact: The Humongous Warehouse Conglomerate Cleverly Marketed As A Down-Home Corner Grocery Store© does not take your MasterCard. No, little buckaroo, they have made it Corporate Policy® to only take Discover cards, so leave your fancy titanium frequent-flyer Corporate Edition card at home.