Ramblings
Cars, Wizards and iPhones, oh my!
Jul 20th
I hate car shopping.
As many of you (all three of my readers) probably know, I’ve been in the market for a new/used truck. I’ve been doing a lot of research and have settled on a very specific model. So this past Sunday I went to test drive one. They had the short bed version in stock, but not the long bed. I figured the ride wouldn’t be a whole lot different, so I took it out for a spin. I was rather pleased. It has a stiff ride, which is to be expected as it is a truck, but at highway speeds of 65mph or more, it was a quiet, smooth ride. The dealership would have to order one for me if I wanted it in the green they have (Gail thinks red is too flashy, I detest silver, so green is a nice compromise). The Cash for Clunkers rebates kick in on the 24th, which means I’ll have to purchase a brand new truck if I want to take advantage of the rebates. I’ll have to seriously massage some numbers to see if I can get it in the price range I want. And that’s the part I hate. I like test driving, I like searching tons of car sites, reading Auto Trader, and walking car lots. I hate the negotiation part. That’s part of why Carmax appeals to me – no hassle pricing. If the Carmax dealer by me sold new Toyota’s instead of Mitsubishi’s, it’d make life much easier.
Aside from that, we had a busy weekend. Gail and I took the kids to see the new Harry Potter movie, which we all thought was excellent. Looking forward to seeing last movie. I think the movies themselves have just gotten better as they go along, which makes sense; the kids are better actors, they’re growing up and filling out their roles.
After the movie, Gail asked if I wanted to go to the Apple store, as it was in the same mall as the theater. I said “I can’t go in, I’ll have to buy something. I can only go in there so often and come out empty handed!” She said “So…let’s go.”
I took that as permission.
We went, and man was that place crowded. Gail remarked that you couldn’t tell there was a recession going on judging by the crowd in there. She was right. Wall-to-wall people. Gail found the iPhones and started playing, and then watched a guy who was giving a class on the iPhone. She has been wanting one almost as much as I have. I leaned over and said “If you go and ask if they have the 3Gs in stock, I’ll buy you one.” I don’t think I’d finished expelling breath from that sentence before she was gone from my side. Five minutes later, Sarah came up and said, “Mom’s looking for you.” Gail was at one of the laptops, and was half-way through the process of upgrading to the iPhone. She looked at me quizically, to see if I really meant it. She’d filled out all but the last four digits of my social security code on the upgrade form. I punched those in, and hit next.
We got in line, and about 20 mins later we were walking out of the store with her new iPhone. She was very happy, and for those that are wondering why I didn’t buy the iPhone for myself, as much as I’ve been talking about it lately, well – her smiles are always worth it. And her phone was starting to go into the crapper anyway. I’ll get one soon, and it’ll be easier to justify it now as well. See, aside from the cheese-factor of making my wife happy, there was also a bit of psychology behind it; Gail played with her phone all weekend, loving how easy it was, how she was able to navigate to the app store and download stuff (great example of that in a moment), and just the general overall coolness of it. When I start complaining how my phone sucks, or I’m jealous, she won’t hesitate to drag me over to the Apple store and get one. Hopefully.
Sunday Gail and I got up to go walking along the W&OD trail. We had walked all of about 30 yards down the trail when Gail said “oh, we should get my phone! It has a pedometer application!” We had left it in the car as she had no pockets and I didn’t want to be stuck carrying it. So we turned around and got her phone out of the car. When she said the phone had a pedometer application, I thought she meant already installed. Nope – but she knew the App Store had one, and even thought to look for a free one (which she found). And that’s part of the beauty of the iPhone, and Apple products in general; ease of use. Gail’s by no means a super computer user, but she had figured out how to get the iPhone to hook to the App Store and search for a application and download it. It took all of about 30 seconds, and then we were on our way, her phone sitting in my pocket counting our steps. Pretty damn cool. And I was surprised by the lightness, it didn’t feel heavy in my pocket at all.
Finished up the weeked by wiping Gail’s laptop and re-installing Vista. One way or another it managed to get a bunch of trojans and virii on it. Frustrating when the programs I tried (Spy Doctor, Norton, McAffee) couldn’t get rid of it. I figured it was due, so I told Gail the previous week to back up what she wanted, and last night I started the wiping process. I started by muttering how I wouldn’t have had to do this with an iMac (referring to my idiotic purchse of the Sony Vaio instead of an iMac) and Gail said, “Want to go to the Apple Store?”
Just to hear my head rattle
Jul 6th
It’s entirely too nice to be sitting inside, in my drab corporate cube, staring at this screen.
July has been odd. Yesterday the temps were only in the upper 70s and the humidity has been very tolerable. Today we’re in the low to mid 80s. I should be on my bike heading west, into the twisty curves of the some nice roads along the Appalachians, or down into West Virginia. It’s simply gorgeous outside.
My poor dog Annie has been having a hell of a skin infection/rash lately. Since March she’s been scratching. I literally mean that. Since March it seems like all she does is scratch. And lick. And scratch and lick and scratch and lick and oh my god I’m ready to go insane. She’s usually worn out by about 10:30 and we get some sleep. But about 5am she starts up again with the scratching, and by now she’s snuck into our bedroom and is scratching (or licking) right at the foot of our bed. Some nights she is scratching so vigorously she shakes the entire bed, waking us up in the process. On a good morning Gail isn’t the most pleasant, add being forcibly awaken in such a manner and she’s just grouchy as hell. At about 5:30 this morning she threw the covers off and stormed out of the bedroom muttering something I’m sure was vulgar and probably involved some sort of evil way to get rid of the dog. Poor Annie, it’s not like it’s her fault. I’ve been trying to remember that when she won’t stop and it’s frustrating me. We’ve spent a ton of money at the vet so far and right now she’s eating kangaroo dogfood to try and get her on a different protein. We’ve done the steroid shots and sprays, baths galore, even aloe vera and coconut oil. Hopefully we find something that works soon.
Gail’s mother is coming into town tomorrow and so this past weekend, rather than cruising around on the motorcycle, was spent cleaning and finishing up projects that’d been sitting around. The hallway is painted, along with Sarah’s room. It was 3/5ths done, and we finally got the other two walls painted the purple she picked out. It really is quite cool. Dark, but cool. I also replaced toilet seats, intake vents and put new outlets in Sarah’s room, replacing the old ones. The previous owners just took the paint roller and went over the socket and faceplate in one swoop. Now it’s nice and white instead of that mauve they had. There was power washing, floor scrubbing, kitchen scrubbing (including the top of the refrigerator), dusting, vacuuming. I imagine tonight will involve some steam cleaning. Wee.
I’ve been looking at trucks lately. It seems the one I want – a Toyota Tacoma Double Cab Long Bed 4×4 in something other than silver – is difficult to come by. At least for the price I want. I can go to buyatoyota.com and build my own to the tune of 30K, but that’s out of my price range. Gail and I stopped by Carmax yesterday and they had one that was almost exactly what I wanted on the lot: 4×4, double cab, red… but the short box. If I get a truck, I want the be able to lie down in the back and close the tailgate. Can’t do that when the bed is all of 5’6″. I guess I’ll keep looking. Maybe if I save a bit more and take advantage of the Cash for Clunkers government program, I can get a new one. I’ve never had a new car before. I know people say you lose a good chunk of the value of the car as soon as you drive it off the lot, but that’s OK. I tend to drive my cars into the ground, putting 100K or more in miles on it, so it makes sense to get a new one. At least to me.
Let’s see…what else can I babble about? Cody’s in summer school again, for failing biology. He’ll probably get an A in the class. He’s not dumb, he’s just lazy. Guess the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree in that case. Because of the F he can’t go see the Green Day concert which we bought him tickets to, as sort of a bribe (pass the class and you can go!). He didn’t, so Sarah and I will probably go, and sell (or give away) the other two tickets. In August my friend Scott and I are going to go see Silversun Pickups, which is just about my favorite band right now. They have a Sonic Youth/90s sound that I really like. That’s it for shows I believe.
And I guess I’ll stop babbling for now as well.
Grammar Nazi or Valid Point?
Jun 21st
As I alluded to in the previous post, Sarah had her All-Star soccer tournament this weekend. Out of three games, her team lost two. Which isn’t all that surprising considering they’ve had about four practices together. Individually they might be good, but soccer is a team sport and you can’t gel as a team with only four practices. But this morning’s game (the third one) the team played well. They won 2-0 and Sarah scored one of those goals.
But I digress in what I really wanted to talk about.
I’ll admit, I’m a bit of a grammar nazi. Not that I’m perfect; I’ve made stupid mistakes as I’m sure many of you have, and I’d be completely unsurprised if there weren’t a couple in this post (double negative!). But I have a healthy respect for the language, and it drives me insane when I see ‘your’ or ‘there’ instead of ‘you’re’ or ‘their’. And it’s scary because I’m seeing college-aged kids who don’t seem to know the difference as well. Slack was apt in a comment in my last post; it seems a lot of them have the intelligence of a donut (doughnut?).
There’s another word that’s been driving me nuts in the way it’s being used lately, especially now that I coach soccer; the word is ‘verses’. The girls all seem to think that saying “who are we versing today” is acceptable. I’m constant correcting them. And it was really driven home when I overheard one of the other parents ask the All-Star coach who the team was ‘versing’. The way she said it sounded almost mocking, as if she was fully aware that she was using it completely wrong (and I really hope she was…). But how long before she stops mocking herself and using it naturally? I understand language is fluid and dynamic and is constantly evolving…but this is driving me up the wall.
Why do I let it bother me so much? Good question.
Pits and Bieces.
Oct 16th
Not much out of the usual has been going on, hence the lack up updates. Mostly it’s been snippets of thoughts that I always think about writing down. Figured I’d share what I had.
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Watched the debate last night. I think it’s the first full debate I’ve sat through. I don’t see how you can see those two men sitting there, explaining their policies and think that McCain is the right choice. Watching McCain sitting there, flustered and agitated and go on the offense, while Obama sat composed and collected (and admittedly, a bit on the defense at first), it makes me wonder how soon McCain would suffer a stroke from the pressure if elected President.
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There’s two words that should strike fear into the hearts of not only Americans, but world-wide: President Palin.
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Received a newsletter from a group downstairs that they wanted posted on the internal website. Took a half-hour and structured it properly. The result was 289 lines of code. Took the same document and did a “Save as HTML” in Microsoft Word. That came up to 3865 lines of code. I consider that a half-hour well spent.
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Two Bodies of Mass Cannot Occupy the Same Spot #1: To the lady driving the SUV while on her cell phone and brushing her hair; do me a favor and check your mirrors, look over your shoulder, anything to make sure I’m not in the spot you’re currently trying to occupy.
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For those Windows users that want to switch to Mac but are tied to expensive programs (namely Adobe’s Creative Suite), Adobe now has a competitive cross-upgrade program that lets you upgrade from Windows CS3 to Mac CS4. They don’t seem to advertise the cross-upgrades that much and they’re only available when purchasing the upgrades over the phone (800-833-6687). But if you’ve been wanting to go to Mac, why not go and upgrade to CS4 (Aside from the obvious cost!)? via TUAW
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Kung-fu bicycle fight. This is what the intertubes were made for.
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I’ve been researching CMS‘s for work. Which means ASP/NET based CMS’s, as opposed to PHP, which I’m used to. There are a lot more free/low-cost PHP-based CMS’s than ASP (at least that I’m familiar with). And some of those ASP solutions cost as much as $90,000. For that much money, it better design and program itself, follow up on sales leads, integrate seamlessly with the CRM system, never crash, and get me coffee.
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Two Bodies of Mass Cannot Occupy the Same Spot #2: Don’t scowl at me because I almost hit you on your bicycle. You’re supposed to stop at stop signs just like the rest of traffic. If you’re going to ride in traffic, obey the rules!
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Evernote is a cool little app - I used it to capture some of these thoughts so I wouldn’t forget them
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Fall is here! Great riding weather, and hopefully, if I get off my ass, great picture taking opportunities. The wife’s been bugging me again about more pictures.
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Best example of a tange getting all tongueled up: “A fresh of breath air” – from McCain at last night’s debate.
And that’s it for now!
Unorganized
Sep 19th
I’ve always been unorganized. I’ve tried several different ways to keep things organized, but I’ve never stuck with one. As a result, I have task items and calendar notifications in Outlook, AOL.com and Google. I have Post-It notes everywhere. I have scraps of paper I scribble on. I have a Franklin Planner that I write in religiously…for three days or so, and then it gets buried under the scraps of paper and Post-It notes. I need to find a way to organize pretty much my life in general. Anyone have any tricks or tips or thoughts? What do you use to organize? Do you follow the GTD crowd? Do you use a PIM of some sort?
I bring this up because I dropped the ball on a project that was due this past Wednesday. Thankfully the marketing manager I was supposed to do this for wasn’t concerned about the date (in fact, he left me voice mail last night stating he had changes to the web pages he wanted to make), but it still grates that I missed this. I was in the middle of doing “urgent updates” to the website for another department that was launching a product today. Because it didn’t get in the production schedule, I really wasn’t supposed to be doing it. As a result, it’s going to be late, along with a couple of other projects.
I foresee a late night tonight, especially if I’m sitting here writing journal entries rather than cranking out the work.
Ah well…
Friday Roundup
Jan 4th
Sort of like randomness, but on a Friday.
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No, no design up yet. The creative process is temporarily stalled while I try and clear all the snot out of my head. The snot’s blocking up all the creative passageways in there.
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My New Year’s Eve was spent with the wife in bed by 8:30, the kids occupied, and me playing online poker. Came in second in a tournament, which is cool. 35K in my bank. Too bad it wasn’t real money.
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My mom’s Christmas present arrived late this year. She put a $100 bill in the card. I had another sitting $100 bill on my dresser. I put the two of them together in a quiet spot in my sock drawer. I’m hoping with a little mood lighting and some Barry White, they’ll get busy and start sprouting out baby $100 bills.
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The big news of the week – well, I can’t say just yet. Has to do with work and the rest of the company doesn’t know. I’m 99.99% certain no one here at work reads my journal, but why take the chance? I should be able to say more next week. Until then, cheers.
Randomness IV
Dec 20th
Yeah, changed the theme again – one of these days I’ll get around to creating my own. In the meantime, I’m sticking with the three-column layout. It’s grown on me.
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Tonight is opening night for our reading of “A Christmas Carol” – “our” being Sarah and myself. She’s playing the part of Tiny Tim, and is very cute doing it. It’s an interesting adaptation, and I hope I get invited back next year to do the full production.
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I have a birthday sneaking up on me here, on Sunday to be exact. I’ll be all of 38, which sounds so grown up and mature, but I still don’t know what I want to be when I grow up, so go figure. Speaking of, anyone want to buy me this? No? I’ll settle for this. Hrm, still no takers? Guess this is out then…
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Had a parent/teacher conference with Cody’s math teacher yesterday. Kid is failing math, not because he doesn’t know the material, and not because he’s not paying attention. It’s because he’s lazy and doesn’t want to do his homework and lies to us about having done it. My past is coming back to haunt me. I did the same damn thing. His teacher even said that when called on, he knows the problem. But because he doesn’t do the homework, he doesn’t do as well as he could on the tests. Turkey.
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After Christmas, I’m going to go out and buy a new hard drive and install linux on it and start messing with that again. Once I get Gail her iMac, I’ll take over her laptop and install something other than Vista on that. Vista out of my house would be a wonderful thing.
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Dicewars Cheats.
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If Slack doesn’t fix his white border problem, I swear to god I’m hacking into his site and fixing it myself.
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If I don’t see you or post again before Christmas, I want to wish everyone the very best holiday possible. Make it more of family, peace and love than “look what I got!”. Merry Christmas everyone.
Under a Microscope
Dec 4th
I’m looking at the world today and I’m thinking, “Is the world insane? Is everybody just eff-ing crazy?”
It’s kind of unnerving.
NaBloPoMo Day 30 – the end.
Nov 30th
So, today is the last day of NaBloPoMo, and having posted every day but one, I figured I’d take a second to reflect on my experience.
Simply put, it was a lot easier than I expected. At the beginning I had suspicions that I would have a difficult time coming up with something new to talk about each day. Part of the challenge is to not only post each day, but to post something meaningful and interesting to at least yourself, if not others. After all, this journal is for me to read. I like having others read about what’s going on, and enjoy it when they react to a post strongly enough to feel the need to leave a comment. But first and foremost I’ve always treated this journal as something I keep for myself (with the exceptions of the random IMs I get – some of those are just too funny not to share). At least half-a-dozen times I’ve gone back to read old posts, reliving the moment. So the postings had to be important or interesting or meaningful enough for me to want to read again.
Secondly, writing every day is good practice. I found myself thinking of ways to clarify my thoughts and try to get my point across in a more meaningful way. At least more coherently.
And third, I realized that I do enjoy writing. I’ve always enjoyed fiction writing, but just random thoughts in my head can be fun to express as well. I’ve been thinking about a career shift; maybe I’ll become a writer! Oooh, here we go, I’ll hop on my bike, hit the open road, and take pictures and write about places I visit. That cures my wanderlust, my career change lust, and my harley lust, all in one shot.
Hell, throw in a redhead, and I’ve got ALL the bases covered.
Grrr (NaBloPoMo Day 29)
Nov 29th
I’m having a wonderfully frustrating day. The kind of day where every turn you make you run into a wall, and the most positive thought you can conjure is that at least the half-hour you just spent banging your head on the desk is good exercise.
Because we do online banking, it’s policy here that I cannot see certain types of information. Fair enough. Let me give you an example of how this works; Let’s say we have a form that has some personal information on it. I can create the form, create the display template the bank will see, and a ‘thank you for filling out our form’ page. I can create all three of these, but I can’t view the results of the display template. That’s where the sensitive info might reside. So the normal SOP is to create the form, send it to my boss, she uploads them, fills it out, and then checks to see if the results are as expected. Because some of these forms have lots of different fields that all have to match up, it’s not uncommon for me to miss something. She takes a screen shot, let’s me know the problem, I take a stab at fixing it, send it back to her, she uploads it again…you can see how this can frustrate a developer who is used to being able to see the results right away with a simple reload of the page. And she has other things going on sometimes, so there are times when it takes half-an-hour, up to three hours to get to it.
Now…take my boss out of the equation (She’s off getting married this week). What do I do? Normally, I’d send them to a second person and he’d take care of it. However, he’s off watching my boss get married.
So now what? I sit, twiddle my thumbs, try to find a way around this silliness. Quite a frustrating day I’m having and it’s not even two…