Archive for February, 2005
The Arcade Fire
February 26
Looky looky. I’m actually posting a couple of MP3s. Yeah, they’re a couple of hours early for my old schedule, but schedules are made to be broken, ya know. So, enjoy Neighborhoods #1 and Crown of Love from The Arcade Fire and quit whining about me not showing you the lyrical love.
We’re in Arkansas, looking for a new house. If you read Elaine’s post, you know why. So, we’ve been provided with a realtor to show us around and find a place for us. Just a rental for now, but still, it never hurts to have some help.
Our first stop in is Bella Vista, the sleepy, winding little town that John lives in. There are no blocks in this town. Seriously. I’ll scan the map if you don’t believe me. Just winding streets that suddenly dead end. I have a feeling you spend a lot of time say “I know that’s down here somewhere. Guess I’ll turn around and see if we missed it.” The first stop is supposed to be a little condo that’ll take a dog. Yeah, we know we have a cat. Shh. First we have to find it, though. We’ve been told it’s number 5. Get to the right street (the Lane not the Drive) and we see 1 and 3 on one side; 2, 4, 6, and 8 on the other. No 5. No 7 for that matter, but we’re not looking for that, now are we?
After a few phone calls and several checks of the information she brought with her, the realtor is relatively convinced it’s house #5 on Drive. We go up, ring the doorbell, knock on the door. Try the key. It fits! So, in we go.
Linoleum foyer, carpet everywhere else. Well, I can’t remember the kitchen. I think it was Linoleum, too. Two bedrooms, one-and-a-half baths (well, sort of. Two sinks, two toilets, one shower/bathtub), a kitchen and a dining/living room. Oh, and a patio. Not bad at all for a first try. Something like 6 electric plugs on each wall, though. That’s just odd. Handy, but odd.
After checking the place out and telling the realtor we’d think about it, she dropped us off at the hotel again. Nice hotel, by the way. The company that Elaine is going to work for put us up for three days/nights in a hotel so we’d have time to look around and stuff. Really nice of them, we think. Anyway, she drops us off and we go get a paper to see what else is available.
Nothing. Seriously. We found one place that was in our range and seemed adequate. Elaine called the company and found out how to go see it. We picked up the key and get directions to the place and set off to see it. We drive around in the hills of Bella Vista for a bit, finally find the place and go in.
Not a cool house. The front porch looked almost rotted. The screen door and front door didn’t line up (one handle was on one side, the other on the other. I know that’s not really bad or strange or anything, but I don’t like it), and inside was even worse. Brown carpet, cabinet doors with peeling…I dunno what. Some kind of cover. The whole place was smelly and just felt dirty. Elaine commented that she thought it felt like it would be haunted or something. I know what she was talking about; the house just felt weird.
It was a lot like a house we looked at in Okmulgee, actually. Had a lot of wheelchair ramps and a toilet in the middle of a room (in this case it had a shower and washer and dryer) and that’s just wrong. We left the house quickly, dropped the keys off.
We decided to see if we could work our way back to the first place. Yep, easy as pie. Well, except for the fact that this state has problems labeling things. We got on one wrong road, but realized that pretty quickly and backtracked to the right place.
Well, we’re back in the hotel now, so I guess I’ll go ahead and submit this and tell you if anything else interesting happens.
Bushwackers
February 25
No, I’m not dead. Not even close. Yeah, the usual excuses apply. You’re used to them by now, though, so don’t have to tell you about the deadline last week. Or the new video games that are taking up my time ( Ghost Recon 2 is freakin’ addictive). I guess I don’t really have much else to tell you about, then. Wow, that really destroys my posting ability.
OK, I guess I’ll tell you anyway. Last week was the never-ending deadline. On Monday last week I get notice that I’m supposed to create a full-page ad for another paper for one of our clients. Wouldn’t have been a big deal if it wasn’t deadline week and the ad wasn’t due that day. But, it was a big client that we need/want to keep happy so I didn’t really have a choice in the matter. Oh, and I had no usable source files to build the ad from at first. I think they were finally emailed to me around 4 pm or so and I finished the ad around 6:30. That was on Valentine’s Day, so that was a bit of a let-down. Elaine and I came home and spent the evening together not really doing anything.
On Tuesday and Wednesday we got into work around the normal time and left between 8 and 10 pm. That’s pretty late for non-deadline nights but it helped us get some important stuff done. We probably would have been there a lot longer on Wednesday (we had packed for it even) but Elaine had come down with that cold/flu that seems to be hitting people at random. It’s like sharpnel or something, attacking at random. She was sick Wednesday through Sunday or so, but she’s feeling better now.
Thursday I went in by myself at 10 am and the other designer that helps out part time and I spent the whole day in a mad panic to get stuff finished. I left around midnight to get Elaine ’cause she was lonely and I wanted out of the office for awhile. We got back to work around 2 am and that’s when I got sick. I spent the next three hours alternating between the work computer and dry heaving in the bathroom. My stomach and back muscles are back to normal now, but it took a few days. I went home at 5, leaving the last edits in our assistant’s hands.
She calls us around noon on Friday and has a few problems. I walk her through ‘em on the phone then pass out again. Things are worse when she calls again at 2, so I go take a shower and go into work, dropping Elaine and Poly off at her mom’s beforehand. See? We’re not completely stupid. It’s faster to drive from work to her mom’s than from work to home, and I knew I was going to be there for a long time, so I didn’t want any crazy drive in front of me.
Get to work at 5 and there are still several pages to finish. Our assistant and I trade back and forth on the computer until a little after 1 or 1:30 am, when everything is finally finished. She and the boss leave for the night and I sit there for another 3 hours collecting the last two sections (12 pages each this time) and sending them to the printer. I got back to my mom-in-law’s around 4 in the morning (Tulsa is actually nice to drive through at the time of night. Especially when it’s misty out) and I ate the first food I had had (other than a Coke and some Red Hots) since around 5 pm on Wednesday.
See, I have this nasty habit/condition. If I’m stressed, I can’t eat. If I’m tired, I can’t eat. If I’m in a rush, I can’t eat. What happens if I do eat? You don’t want to see. I get very sick. So, during deadline which is a rush and a lot of stress, I don’t eat. And, as deadline typically goes for a day or two, I get tired, too. Wow, look, all three symptoms in one convenient activity. Anyway, I ate a few bites of microwaved chicken strip and a biscuit before going to bed around 5 am.
I work up about 3 pm, just in time to see Elaine and her mom off to some garden exhibit in Tulsa. I spent the day dicking around with some HTML for Ray and just surfing the web at excruciating dial-up speeds.
The weekend, what was left of it, was pretty ordinary. I decided to treat myself after the deadline and I picked up a couple of new Xbox games. I’ll write more on them later ( Ghost Recon 2, Mechassault: Lone Wolf, and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 2) after I have a chance to more thoroughly play them.
Anyway, we have had some excitement this week, but I’ll leave that to Elaine to tell you about. As for me, it’s just more of the same laziness and procrastination that you’re all so used to. I have finally nailed down some more ideas for the redesign, but they may end up on another site. We’ll see. I keep thinking about bringing the MP3 of the Week back, so maybe that’ll give me something to make myself do soon.
Do It For Elaine
February 7
Hey everyone. I know you’re all wonderful people and that you love my wife and I with all your finger and bandwidth. Well, here’s a chance to do something neat. Click on this link and sign up and complete one offer. They’re really simple things, like signing up for Blockbuster Online. They’re all free or cheap (like $1) to sign up for and if I can get just 5 of you do this (yeah, I realize that’s just about everyone that reads this silly site), I can give Elaine an iPod Mini. No, I’m not trying to wrangle you into doing my Valentine’s Day shopping. That’s already been done. The reason I’m putting this up is that Elaine was the main reason I was able to get this awesome new computer. When we went to CompUSA to look at all the Apple stuff she saw the iPod Minis and really wanted one. With our jobs and bills and stuff it’d take quite awhile to get enough money to get one, so this looks like a great way to help her get something she really wants. Yes, I realize she’ll probably read this and that she could sign up for it herself and help speed this along. That’ll never happen, though…right? ;) Thanks for help guys.
Addendum: If you do sign up, please leave a comment on this post. We’ll want to send you some sort of nice thank you gift and we’ll be sure and let you all know what color of Mini she gets and take photos of the arrival. Man, that sounds so silly, but I did it with the iBook. Thanks again.
Super Questions
February 6
So Elaine and I watched the Super Bowl tonight, mostly for the commercials. After last year’s crappy commercials I was skeptical, and I wasn’t disappointed in my skepticism. AdJab has a run-down of all the commercials if you want more details or whatever. Mostly just want to give them a link. Good site that just started.
I have a few questions about things I’ve noticed. First off, why are the winners of the Super Bowl the “world champions?” We don’t play anyone else in the world. We’re the only people who play this sport, really. Everyone else plays soccer, err football, err…whatever it’s called.
The other two questions were about the post-game show. When the owner of the Patriots (who sounded drunk when giving his little speech) said that “competition is what made America great,” Elaine and I noticed that you can make anything what makes America great. Free speech, competition, liberty, SUVs, color-coded threat levels. You name it, it made America great. Forget all that crap about freedom from taxation without representation. That had nothing to do with America. Nothing. It was all about being good Christians and playing some football.
Secondly, did anyone else notice that they played the theme to Star Wars at the beginning of the post-game show? How odd is that? I mean, yeah, they played U2 every time they wanted to have some “inspiring” footage, but that’s pretty standard pop-culture usage, but Star Wars?
The Ameriquest commercials, the designated driver beer commercial, and the careerbuilder.com commercials were pretty funny. Everything was…well, it wasn’t. Too many of them were hinged on some miniscule plot/joke/theme that didn’t translate very well to the average viewer. I would think that $2.6 million would be spent a bit more wisely. I dunno, I feel like I’m just bitching about stuff.
After the game and the post-game show and the post-post-game show (just kidding, but I’m sure it existed on some channel) a Super Bowl-themed Simpsons came on. It seemed a bit too cheesy, even for the Simpsons and American television. It was good, but it was mostly visual gags and one-liners instead of the usual intelligent Simpsons humor. After that was American Dad, which has was pretty disappointing, especially since it was created by those responsible for Family Guy.
Well, that’s enough complaining from me for one night.
Shop at Home
February 4
Up late watching TV for no reason other than that I haven’t bothered to go to bed yet. Flip over to the Shop at Home channel that only comes in after midnight. The guy on it is trying to see a Toshiba notebook and I start to realize why so many people are confused about technology. He’s talking about an average notebook like it’s this amazing thing. 100gb hard drive. Ooh. Wow. ATI graphics card. OMG.
The best thing, though, is when he talks about the wireless Internet. First, he thinks people should be impressed that he can open up 54 Internet Explorer windows at once. Now, I’ll grant him that it’s impressive to be able to open that many IE windows without it crashing, but he was getting at how awesome it was to have that many windows open without it slowing down the computer. What I guess he doesn’t know or doesn’t care to think about is that once a page is loaded, it’s loaded. It’s process ends. No more stress, no more memory space, nothing. Just a loaded page.
The second was two blatant lies on his part. First is that he claimed it had 55Mbps internet. 55? No, sorry, it’ll have 54, like most other wireless routers and WiFi cards. And that, my dear salesman, is nothing out of the ordinary. His second lie was that this “55Mbps” speed WiFi card was FIVE TIMES FASTER than any other wireless card. Five times? What?
It’s no wonder people get so confused when it comes to technology, especially computers. Sometimes it takes a complete moron (who is now complaining about the letterbox bars on DVD movies. I’ve heard him say that they “scrunch up the picture” which is complete bupkiss) to point out the obvious.