Archive for the 'Life' Category
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Turning Tricks
February 9
Since I’m a stay-at-home dad now (not that I’m not looking for work!), I’ve had to adapt how I use my computer. You can’t just plop down on the couch (or, more likely, our new recliner) with the iBook in your lap and go crazy.
The external USB keyboard that Elaine got me for Christmas last year (an old strawberry iMac one that’s been rekeyed to Dvorak) works great. The keys are a little loud, but not so bad that it wakes Monkey up if I keep the typing sane and calm. And Quicksilver eliminates the need for a mouse to launch programs.
Still, a few things bugged me. For one, I couldn’t always know or remember the keyboard shortcut for something in some obscure app that I only use every 3 months. Enter KeyCue. This awesome little app shows all the keyboard shortcuts for any app when you hold down the Command key for a (configurable) brief period. It even changes the highlight depending on your modifier keys.
If that’s not quite enough for you, Apple has something a bit more roundabout built-in. Hit Control+F2 to focus on the menubar. Esc will take you out of it if you don’t chose something.
Window-switching is another area. Yes, I know I could use Exposé, but having learned most of my Mac on an iBook, the function keys aren’t always the most useful (you have to hold down a second key to, for instance, go to Dashboard). I’ve used Witch and it works great if you need to jump from one application’s windows to another’s. If you just want to switch around the windows in a single app, though (like TextMate which has great shortcuts for almost everything else), Witch makes it a bit difficult, as the list is presented in alphabetical order, which is, I now see, configurable. Now, though, I know why TextMate didn’t build that in; Command+` rotates between all the windows open in a given app. Does Apple love you or what?
And, lastly, I’ve been using Firefox for quite awhile since Safari isn’t the most stable on my computer (probably my fault) and I’d really rather work with something more cross-platform. It is, however, a bit annoying to have to reach over to my trackpad just to switch tabs (Command+Shift+Left/Right, or Command+Tab number), switch to the search bar (Command+K) or address bar (Command+L), or switch the search engine (Command+Up/Down when in the search bar). Thankfully I’ve found all of those in the last couple of days. Oh, and to just search through the links on a page, hit ‘ before you start typing.
So I seem to be pretty well set for all of this mouse-less, keyboard-only computing. Now if only I could figure out someway to get my computer to fetch me a drink. Do you have any awesome keyboard/usability shortcuts that you want to share?
Handguns For Hearts
September 10
I had a job interview this past week. It felt both strange and great to be back “out in the game” or whatever you want to call it. I’m not going to go into details over the job or the interview or anything, but it was definitely a good start to getting back in the saddle. I’m a font of euphemisms today.
Now that I have the interview behind me (although there will hopefully be more ahead, too), I’m gonna start working on EHZ again. I had to stop myself from installing any new Wordpress plugins or screwing around with my theme for awhile there so I could be sure everything would work for the interview. I think I’m going to tone down the brightness of the site (yes, I’m changing those colors that I’ve been using for some 2 years now. How sad.) and try to clean up a few other things. I’m still definitely infatuated with how simple Wordpress seems compared to previous experiences.
I want to start posting more on here that’s design- or web-related, but I don’t really have much that I feel is unique enough to belong in the blogosphere. We’ll see, though.
As far as personal stuff, goes, I finally played throught Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater this weekend. Aside from Hideo Kojima’s usual insanity, it was a good story and a very fun game. There could have been fewer/shorter cutscenes and less Codec-chatting, but they didn’t take you too far out of the game. And the addition of some player-controlled cutscenes was definitely a great idea!
Alright, I’m outtie for now.
Something New
July 29
Sorry it’s been so long since I’ve updated (how many times have I started a post with that?), but as most of you know, I’ve recently started being a stay-at-home dad. It’s a lot of work, as I’m sure you can guess, but I wouldn’t change it for anything. You can read more about all of that at The Loves.
Anyway, you’re not here to hear about that, probably. I don’t really know why you’re here. But since you are, maybe I’ll tell you about this dream I had last night.
For some reason, I was in Branson, MO, or somewhere like that. And I was a killer. Of the serial variety, I guess. Maybe not. Anyway, my partner and I had just offed someone and hid them behind a dumpster out back of a motel. I think it was a woman. The victim, not my partner. After we had stashed the body, I remember folding up a diaper (see, that dad stuff seeps into everything!), and asking my partner if I should just throw it away. He said something like “It might be used for evidence, so we’d better take it with us” and I agreed, so I tossed it in our car and we drove away.
Then that part ended (I hate when that happens), and I was still in Branson, but wasn’t a murderer. Now I was in some rinky-dink little shop with my mom and dad, killing (ha!) time until Elaine got off of work. The store sold things like wooden rubberband guns and ceramic wolves howling at painted moons. You know, the usual junk stores you find in retired cities like Branson. As I was wandering through the aisles, my parents apparently met someone they knew and started talking to them about me. I could overhear bits and pieces of the conversation.
Apparently I was an aspiring actor and these people could do something about the “aspiring” part. My parents led them over to me; it was an older couple and a younger boy (early teens). Maybe their grandson? My parents were describing me to the couple, telling them I was a good reader and that I took care of my son all day (where Monkey was at this point, I have no idea). Also, oddly, that I was a good Christian boy and that I was thin.
I had walked partly away by this time, looking at some finely-crafted snowglobes or something, and the grandson approached me from behind. He spat out two words: “He’s short!”
I turned and gave him a fierce look. Yeah, I’m short, I know. I think I growled something at him under my breath, but it was lost. Must’ve had an effect, though, as he slunk back and away. I turned and walked away from the group toward the front of the store.
There I found a glass cabinet with VHS movies piled up on top. Mostly family movies from the ’80s and ’90s, but a few DVDs scattered in there as well. I squatted down and looked in the case to find some more DVDs, apparently the more valuable ones, and some PSP games, which surprised me. What was a crappy little place like this doing with games for a relatively new (and quickly becoming obsolete?) system?
I didn’t get to find out ’cause that was when Elaine woke me up to take the baby to pee.
You know what’s really annoying? That the GoodTimes release of Bruce Lee’s The Chinese Connection has a “GT” imprinted on the image in the corner. I freakin’ hate branding, and it’s even worse when it’s on a great movie like that.
Some of you might have noticed that I haven’t been online since about this past Wednesday (4/5). Well, we got a fun phone call on the Thursday before that (3/30). Seems the guy that actually owns our townhouse needs to move into it. Something to do with his mother or something. In any case, we have to move out by May 1st.
Well, no one wants to move with a baby, so we got started as soon as we could. Meaning we went out that day to look at available properties.
First was a house not too far from our townhouse. Ugly bastard sitting crooked in the lot with no real yards. No storage, either. The kitchen “pantry” was all of three inches thick. So like one-and-a-half cans. Yeah. We left there quickly.
Next was one of a pair of townhouses right next to each other. This one was in the middle. OK, let’s see, the good points. It had a nice enough view of the golf course and tennis courts. Other than that, it was dark, dank, and smelled funky. No windows except on the front and back, linoleum over a lot of the house, which is just nasty, and the place seemed so small compared the house we were already in. We exited post haste.
Luckily the next place was right next door. So this one was on the end, more windows, and had more carpet. Same view, by the way, if you were wondering. Still seemed kinda small, but it wasn’t horrible. We left, but not really quickly.
Back to the property management offices. “Hold that one for us, but do you have any other places? Maybe even in another of the nearby cities?” There was one other. We pulled into its driveway and sat there, looking at the kids sitting in the garage of the other house (duplex). Now, I’m not one to judge based on appearance. I’ve often looked kinda rough and anyone who knows me knows that I’m a mild as the cat. Hell, I probably have him beat on a few things; I rarely throw up wads of hair or lick my own ass.
Anyway, back to the house. Or rather the kids next door. Three kids, two of ‘em guys, all looking stoned to high heaven (no pun intended). The also had a big black dog standing at the opening of the garage. They were lolling on a couch out in the garage, one of the kids wearing a Misfits t-shirt. Despite the positive feelings coming from a common band, I wasn’t too comfortable with them. Elaine wasn’t either, so we sat there for a minute. The kids stared, we sat, and eventually we decided we didn’t care to check this house out. The rest of the neighborhood was kind of skanky and whitetrashy. We pulled out of the driveway and went back to the PM office to tell them we didn’t like it and to keep holding the other.
The next day, Friday, found me calling the hell out of realty places. No one had anything. Well, I take that back. One place had a house for the top-end of our price range, but wasn’t sure it’d be available for rent. So that was a no go, obviously.
We thought about it over the weekend and decided that second townhouse would have to do for us. We could deal with having a bit less room. We had to get into the new place ASAP because we wanted to move before Monkey came. So we called the Property Manager and told her we wanted the house. And that we’d like to move in the next weekend.
Of course I wouldn’t need to tell all of this if there wasn’t some shit with which to hit a fan. So that’s what Tuesday was about.
When we moved into the first townhouse, the Realtor who showed us the place knew we had a cat. She told us not to mention him, as the owner apparently wasn’t happy about them. So we got the house and never mentioned him, not that we had any chance to mention or avoid, since we never really talked to the Property Management for the whole year we were there, and we never talked to the owner. So we didn’t hide anything.
Tuesday, however, found them claiming that we had withheld information on having the cat and they just weren’t sure they could help us with anything, I guess thinking they couldn’t trust us. Remember, we needed to tell people when we were moving if they were gonna help us move. And move the utilities. And hire a truck for the move (we’ve done it in the back of a car…never again (and that sounds dirty)). But do they care? No.
Wednesday was Monkey’s baby shower and the day we finally got the word that the PM was willing to “let bygone be bygones” and let us move into the new place. My parent’s had come up to help us and were as glad as we were that we got the house.
So Thursday was solid packing, Friday was two U-Haul trips of boxes and furniture, and Saturday (when I’m writing this without Internet access) was cleaning and moving whatever small stuff was left over. We’re still inundated with boxes, but we can get by for a day or two. Hopefully we get some more of this crap out of boxes tomorrow (Sunday) and be comfortable enough to live without moving boxes for a few days.
Oh, the new place is two-story, so my legs have started circling a petition to secede from the rest of my body. I think my hands have signed, having grown tired of clutching dirty brown boxes. My back has definitely signed, and started passing out flyers to increase support.
I should have Internet again on Monday, Tuesday at the latest. Then you can all tell me your horror stories of moving. Hope I make it through.
EDIT: Isn’t it great when neighbors leave their wi-fi connections open and turned all the way up?
By Your Powers Combined…
March 9
I am Captain Quitter!
God, I hate coming up with those fucking intro paragraphs. Next design won’t have those. Assuming there is a next design.
Yeah, I’m gonna pull a John Oxton. Well, not completely. I’m just feeling like I’m not doing something right. I don’t want to give up doing design or programming or anything like that, I don’t even think I want to give up blogging. At least not all the way.
Right now, I haven’t done real, serious design work in a year. In a few days, we’ll have left GTR a year ago, and I won’t have worked since. I did that little stint for Sproutit, but that was bullshit on both sides. All I’ve really done since then is learn a new language, write half a novel, and troubleshoot shit for Max and Ray. And I don’t want either of them to take this the wrong way. I love helping my friends and I consider the two of you to be some of the best designers and friends I’ve known. I just feel like I should be doing something else.
Kinda funny, huh? Burn out from not working.
I don’t plan to disappear, like I said. Manny and I have been talking about doing a podcast. I really want to do this, so that’s my first concern. I hope at least a few of you will listen to it. It’ll probably be a bunch of elitist punk/hardcore ramblings from us and then music you don’t like being screamed at you, but, still, give it a try.
I also want to get back to where I belong in design. I’ve always loved Photoshop, but now I find myself starting up Illustrator more and more often. I’m not an illustrator, never have been, never will be. My early design was all about music, too. Music was my muse, more or less. So I want to get back to doing some stuff like that. So, any bands need a web site?
Two other things that I want to deal with. The first is my newest NaNovel, The Lazarus Process. I need to finish it. Most of my life, I wanted to be a writer/poet. I kinda gave that up in high school when I really started learning how to do web design, and college squashed it further. I think this novel is a lot better than last year’s Rat and so I’d like to finish it. Maybe I can have it finished before the baby comes. I’m not going to rush, though.
Secondly, Webpen. It’s my first real, first big Ruby on Rails application. It’s not finished. Remember all that stuff you hear about how fast development with RoR is supposed to be? It is…to a certain point. Then it slows way down as you try to figure out how to do something. I just spent two days trying to get an optional third-party part to work, and I know Manny (who’s been helping me) has spent a few days trying to get one form widget to work like we want. The problem is a lack of specific documentation. That’s not my goal, though, to write docs. No, I just want to finish the damn thing. So, I plan on spending a good amount of time in TextMate to get it done.
I guess I’m not really quitting. Not in the traditional sense. Mostly I just mean that I’m not going to be looking for real work for awhile. I’m going to build my portfolio back up, finally decide which I want to do: design or programming, and get back to my roots. So, look for more music here, less blogging, and I dunno what else.
The Announcement
December 15
Remember that big news I hinted to awhile ago?, well, I finally revealed what it was.