wii sports jazzercise

So I got Wii Sports on Wednesday, and after a couple of sessions playing, my back and arms are super sore! Wii boxing is absolutely hilarious (there's just something about punching someone in the head that I find so satisfying), but I work up a good sweat after only a few rounds.

I also took the fitness test: first day 41 years old, then 35, then 45. Not so good...

In non-Wii news, my new temp job at Bebe has been going well. It's fast paced, but not terribly difficult (I say that now), and everyone who works there have been super nice. It's definitely all about the product and the customer, as it should be. Even though I thought it would be fun looking at pictures of models all day long, clipping the background out of their hair is extremely annoying and zooming in to remove blemishes feels creepy. At the end of the day, it's just all pixels, though. This sounds bad, but I'm tempted to drive into work so I can have a car to drive to this Mexican place that serves up great burritos! Mmmmm..... global warmed burritos....

Now if I can only get used to the hour and a half commute! Bleh! On the upside of that, my BART EZ Rider card works great (seriously, that's the name they chose for a SMART card pass - their marketing team must have been on a break).

In older news, I watched the Transformers a few weeks ago. It was entertaining, but really violent and showed a lot of babe skin for a "kid's" movie. It was also like watching a commercial. There's product placement and then there's Transformers! It was almost as obvious as the Wayne's World Doritos spoof on product placement, but much less funny. The movie definitely didn't disappoint on Hollywood's long tradition of killing the token black guy though. Good joerb!!! I'd give this mainstream movie 2 stars.

crazy crazy

This past week has been busy for me. I signed up with a creative temp agency on Monday, set up an interview on Tuesday, interviewed on Wednesday, and started on Thursday. I also managed to get my hands on a Wii from eBay, but the seller didn't mention that Wii Sports (the reason the Wii is so fun) wasn't included in the auction. Totally dirty pool!

But the game it did come with was given to my nephew who will enjoy it a great deal I imagine, and Nintendo will be replacing my Wii Sports for a little over twenty bucks. So now all I'm doing is setting up characters and poking around on what it can do. As it turns out, it has a lot of fun features for connecting people who own Wiis. Send me your Wii number if you have one!

And now my new gig can help support another spending habit: getting crap for the Wii. I feel like such the consumer :)

vacancy

Almost as suddenly as they appeared, the nesting birds are gone! No more cheep cheep cheep cheep cheep. Although it drove me insane, I kind of miss it in a way. There was new life right outside my window! They left behind a nest made of mud and twigs and a pile of bird crap. Lousy tenants...

darn, it *IS* inconvenient!

So we finally watched An Inconvenient Truth and even for a jaded follower of the green movement, it was both extra scary and informative. I've read both positive and negative reviews on this movie and about global warming. I just can't understand why the naysayers just can't get past the FACT that polluting the environment is a BAD thing!

Whatever the politics, whatever the science, non science, hearsay, anecdotes, whatever you want to call it – spewing noxious fumes into the air just like dumping sewage into the ocean is not good for the planet and anything living on it and you don't need a scientist or years of studies to know something foul when you smell it. WHY oh WHY does there even need to be a film like this??? Let's just move forward and acknowledge that we all like to use energy, that there are much better ways of doing it, and that we should do it those better ways!

Speaking of which, if your energy provider is PG&E, go to their ClimateSmart page and please sign up for the program! It is a no-brainer way to help the environment by making the energy you use to be carbon neutral thanks to the offsets PG&E will fund through the program. Most people will see their bill go up less than $5 a month! (ours will be something like $2.75).

If you really want to put your money into carbon neutrality, go to Native Energy and buy carbon offsets for everything you do (drive, fly, fart, etc). I found that site through the Climate Crisis site that the movie endorses.

Think your contribution won't do enough? I say everything has to start somewhere, and if this planet melts into a big gooey mess, I want to have at least contributed something to fight it.

Want 100mpg plug-in hybrids? Go here!

home depot sucks

If there was a Lowes closer to home, I'd go there and forgo the torture that it is to visit Home Crapo. It really has gone down hill since it's heyday as the biggest home improvement supplier on the block. Now employees don't really know anything about home improvement, everything is dusty, and most of the time the inventory is in disarray.

This time around, I went to return some items and the 'customer service' line became mired by one individual with a stack of receipts trying to return every thing he ever bought from Home Depot. Instead of opening up another return register, jaded employees casually strolled by as passing customers (literally) gasped at the growing return line that went out the door. Several people just gave up and left - I'm sure the folks in front of me ended up waiting at least 45 minutes before they were finally taken care of. Do I blame the workers? Heck no! The management is always to blame for such situations. I bet they shop at Lowes.

Music Friday

In celebration of goofing off today, I've decided to share with you some more fun music picks from my collection.

Alive by Ima Robot
Scream by Ima Robot
I don't know of anybody who knows who these guys are and I think I found them through an iTunes suggestion. Do yerself a favor and listen to the rest of their album - it's awesome!

King Without A Crown (Live at Stubbs) by Matisyahu
I'm not a religious person, but this song is downright inspirational. The studio version of this song simply doesn't do ANY justice to Matisyahu's incredible talent and charismatic song preaching. Testify!!!

Tale of Five Cities by Peanut Butter Wolf
I found this song randomly while looking for Kid Koala music. It turns out that PB Wolf has an absolutely AMAZING album called My Vinyl Weighs a Ton. If you're into old school rap and DJ, this is the album for you.

Dosvedanya Mio Bombino by Pink Martini
I think this is the only song I've ever liked with horse clops in it. Seriously. This band is crazy unique, great fun, and sold out at all the shows that came to town! The entire CD is filled with great songs in different styles and languages. I've got to go see them live!!!

random tips

Internet Faster
If you use Firefox, go to preferences/advanced/network and change "how Firefox connects to the internet" to 'Auto-detect proxies from this network'. I used to know why this is faster, but that information got pushed out of my brain and was replaced with other things. I suggest you check it out for yourself and see if it makes a difference :)

Tivo Faster
Okay, this is everywhere on the internet, but in case you're a Tivo n00b like myself, you can change your Tivo skip button into a 30-second commercial blaster. Turn on your tv, then press 'select-play-select-3-0-select'. If you did it right, you should hear a few happy chimes. Once you do, your skip button (the one below your banana shaped fast forward button) will advance whatever you're watching 30 seconds instead of going to the next marker on the green bar. If your Tivo loses power or is reset, the button will revert to its default function and you'll have to do the trick again.

Read slower
Put on a blindfold and try to read a book. It's really hard! You have to read by smell, and since that takes a long time, you can really savor a good story.

the never ending house remodel

Check out the giant header Amit and I installed on Monday! It only took 10 hours and still needs to be properly secured to the rest of the framing, but now there's a bit more open space :) Hmmm... it would have been great to have a 'before' photo, wouldn't it have? Oh well - just use your imaginations to think of seeing a wall instead of seeing windows at the back of the garage.

Next up: cabinets! So all the crap you see lying around will actually have a home.

my iPhone iSaga

Ah the iPhone. Coveted. Scarce. Lots o' trouble. Well, it was worth the trouble I should say, because not only did I get to meet and observe all sorts of interesting people in line anxiously waiting to drop at least $500 on a phone (you don't see that every day), but what started out as a mission to earn some quick cash through reselling on eBay ended up as a tantalizingly difficult decision to possibly keep it as an anniversary gift for Cathryn.

After much deliberation, we decided to try to sell it on eBay and when that didn't work out, things went full circle to me standing in front of the counter at the AT&T store returning it. Even before the returning process began, the employee excitedly went to a fellow coworker and said, "Hey look! Another sealed iPhone!" His response, "Great. Put it on my desk." So it didn't even get back on the shelf before it was spoken for!

I immediately thought, "Aw man! I could have sold it to that guy!" Sigh... maybe I'm not greedy enough or don't have the nose for profiteering. Either way, I think I should give up anything that remotely smacks of grifting. Not because of high morals or anything, but because I don't think I'm very good at it :|

Japanese game shows are SO much better!

simpsons avatar

Thanks to The Simpsons Movie site and Sonia, I found this cool tool to create your own Simspons style avatar (I like Cathryn's blank stare). Fun!

be careful what you wish for (as usual)

Not so long ago I lamented the lack of birds in the area. First the hummingbird moved in, now these guys. But unlike the hummingbird which was small, quiet, and pretty, these birds are chirpy and crap EVERYWHERE. On one hand it's cool that birds are building nests and there's a feeling of 'one with nature' in a small way, but on the other hand, I think they've discovered the fountain finally and are building homes near a source of water (like us humans tend to do).

I know it wont last forever, but the constant 'cheep, cheep, cheep, cheep' of the baby bird(s) is starting to drive me crazy because they're right outside the office window. I really have thought during times today that I could have some quiet and a lot less bird shit on the house with just a few well placed blasts with the hose turned all the way up. Think I'm mean? Try this on for size...

CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP!CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! ..... CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! ..... CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! ..... CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP!CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! ..... CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! CHEEP! ..... CHEEP!

something weird this way comes

So this afternoon, I think, "Nice day. Go for a walk!". It was indeed a good walk and I got an errand taken care of as well. The walk only took about a half hour, but sometime after I left and before I got back, someone left a little something on the doorstep. How did they know I liked Hello Kitty? Do I have a secret admirer? Hmmmm... actually, the paper was folded to make a rudimentary envelope and the small ballerina bracelet probably means that it was a gift for someone else and was left on my doorstep by mistake. Still, it's very sweet. Or very weird. I'm going to sleep better at night thinking that it's sweet though :)

So you want an iPhone, do ya?

I'm an existing ATT wireless drone, so I was pretty excited about the exclusive iPhone deal, but I'm tiring of all cost associated with simply having a cellular phone. I currently have a mere $40 a month plan, but want 7pm off peak minutes, so I pay an extra $9 – up from $7, a nice 30% increase from what I originally signed up for, and all my text messages are now $0.15 instead of $0.10, a whopping 50% increase. It may not seem like much until you consider that such percentage increases in price would hardly be tolerated on anything else except for gas (and even that's finally motivating people to drive Priuses).

As an existing customer, I have the option of getting the phone but I'll have to tack on a $20 data option to my plan. That would increase my base plan cost by, yup 50%. And regardless if you're an existing customer or not, they still stick you with a $36 activation fee for the privilege of taking the iPhone home to do all the activation yourself via iTunes after agreeing to a two-year plan extension. Just bending over isn't good enough any more, now you have to bend over so much it would take Stephen Hawking to figure out how many different dimensions you're being bent over in.

Let's do the math, shall we? iPhone $600 (because really, are you going to pay for the $500 version once you've gone this far?) $20 extra a month for 2 years: $480; $36 activation fee; grand totaling to: $1,116 on top of the $1,176 that I would already pay for staying with ATT for 2 years with no changes to my current reaming plan! And that's not including taxes, other hidden fees, and the "oops we realized where we can make even more money" fees that they will probably charge down the line like they did for the 7pm off peak (which was once standard by the way) and text messaging. Funny how their contracts are written so they can increase any fees they feel like, but you'll be charged $175 if you decide to change your mind.

The bottom line, I would still like to get an iPhone, but only if I can take all the money I will spend on it and cram it down the throat of the ATT CEO.

Want to see more number crunching but in a less wordy and ranty form? Check out engadget's cool iPhone cost matrix.

monkey monkey monkey

If you haven't already, you should read this article on the Monkeysphere. Just what is the monkeysphere you ask? Basically, it's the sphere of people you know and care about. Within that sphere, any losses are tragic and very hard to take, but outside of that sphere, you're just reading about it casually with some coffee and a donut before going to the bathroom for your morning dump. And you guys thought I was a heartless bastard! It just turns out that my sphere is smaller than most.

[insert joke about having a small sphere here]

my kryptonite

It's a good thing that only one of these items is kept in the house on a regular basis. Growing up in a family that was a proprietor of a liquor store for almost a decade gave me an aversion to alcohol until I was about 24 (first beer: sierra nevada at Bottom of the Hill) and also developed my snacking palette. I remember when Nacho Cheese was the new Dorito flavor as well as when Chili Cheese Fritos first made their way onto our shelves. It was glorious!

If any of the above snacks find their way into my hands, I turn into a snack eating zombie and don't notice what I'm doing until I'm halfway or ALL the way through the bag/can/package/box! Sadly I can't eat any of these much any more... the whole getting old and having a high cholesterol thing.

One day perhaps, on a lost weekend, you're find me passed out with a pile of empties atop my bulging midsection and a huge grin on my crumb covered face.

Honorable mentions: Famous Amos Chocolate Chip Pecan Cookies, Funyuns, San Francisco Sourdough Snacks, Planters Cashew Halves, Hawaiian Sweat Onion Kettle Style Potato Chips, and Cheetos Twisted.

See Britney Spears and Angelina Jolie Naked on American Idol!

Yesterday, if you haven't heard already, an amusement park ride severed a girl's feet at Six Flags in Kentucky. Gruesome!!! I think I'll stick to roller coasters where your feet are tucked in at all times from now on. Long time ago I was on the Top Gun ride at Great America and thought that we were passing pretty close to the trees below. I stuck out my foot a little bit and clipped a branch as we zoomed by. Thankfully I still have my feet, but it hurt like the dickens!

Google Analytics got updated and now I can see what people are searching for when that happen upon my little blog. My favorite search so far is, "where in the fuck are my passports". Ha! I feel your pain, whoever you are! It turns out a lot of people are getting two passports. The one they suffered for at the passport office and the one they were supposed to get months and months ago that arrives the day or day before travel. Can you feel the increased security? I can. O yes. I can. Fuck Bush indeed.

So even though Britney Spears has been outed as the trailer trash she always has been, people can't seem to get enough of her. They also wont shut up about American Idol. And since I'd personally agree with trying to see what's going on with Angelina Jolie, I've made the most powerful blog title ever! Surely this will increase site traffic...

hooray for Friday!

For whatever reason, Thursday felt like Friday. Does that make Friday Saturday? And if so, do I have to work?

honk if you think the Patriot Act is unconstitutional*

I had forgotten about the photos I posted to stock.xchng when I was contacted by Midori Nakamura (an editor for DivineCaroline) who wanted to use one. Good for Laura Sweeney who wrote a positive article about how the French and U.S. helped each other out during times of war and how we have much to celebrate this coming 4th and 14th of July (Independence Day and Bastille Day respectively). Right now I feel the world has had enough of the U.S. and I don't blame them! But feel good for a moment and remember that times were once tough but got good again by reading this nifty article.

*Read up on the Patriot Act

winning BART widget

Check out my fabulous London Underground inspired BART map!

A couple of years ago I helped out a guy make a map for an Apple widget he was making. The fun project really hit a sweet spot for me because it involved design as well as map making. A few weeks ago I received an email from the author informing me that his widget had won an Apple Design Award in the Dashboard category!

It was very cool to be a part of something fun that actually got some well deserved recognition (it actually is a very cool widget), and if you live in the Bay Area, take BART, and own a mac, I would recommend that you check out Bret Victor's BART Widget and revel in all its well designed utilitarian glory :)