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This story fills me with joy.

April 27th, 2007. Published under General. 1 Comment.

Space, here I come!

(watch the video that accompanies the story too)

I need a Tech Writer…

April 26th, 2007. Published under General. 5 Comments.

* * * * *

Got all my website work done (mostly) last night. I rolled into bed at midnight where I laid awake for an hour. So I’m TIRED today. Ugh.

Less than two days and I’m on vacation! Woot!

Can I have an extra day before the weekend?

April 25th, 2007. Published under General. 3 Comments.

Well, after a stress-filled early evening, the rest of the night was good.  I FINALLY sold my goddamn entertainment center!!

*dances around desk*

So now…FINALLY…I have my car in my garage.  Shocking, I know.  Tim and I put a massive hurting on the garage on Saturday and getting rid of that entertainment center helped immensely.  Tim also cleaned and detailed my car over the weekend too - so it’s a clean machine all set for our road trip.

Also - I’m so excited that my best friend Diane will be driving up from Pennsylvania to Syracuse to see me!  We’re going to get a hotel room and catch up.  I haven’t seen her since December 2005 - so it’s been a while!  I need to check into hotels to see where to stay.

Anybody out there familiar with Syracuse that can tell me what area to stay in?

However, between now and Saturday morning (when we leave) I have a shitload of stuff to do:

• Wednesday:  Complete (or as close as I can get before I fall asleep) the website design that I need to have done before I leave on vacation.  Laundry.  Clean the house a bit.
• Thursday:  A department party for work.  We’re going out to The King and I Thai for dinner and seeing Triple Espresso at the Music Box Theater.  Won’t get home until after 10pm - so no cleaning or site design then.  Considering our department is 4 people and I’m the one setting it up - I really can’t skip out on it.  Not that I want to - but you know what I mean.
• Friday:  Finishing up the site (if needed).  Cleaning the house.  Packing everything for the trip (since we want to wake up, pack the car and leave first thing).  Also cooking supper for my Tech Snark co-host Jennifer and giving her the keys to the house so she can check on the furballs every day that we’re gone.  Since there’ll be no time for cooking - supper may be a veggie pizza from Papa Murphy’s.

Way too much to do.  Egads!

In other news, my hip is slowly healing.  Slowly.   Ok - maybe that’s not really news.  I got nothing.

* * * * *

Speaking of Tech Snark, you really should go download or listen to our latest episode.  It’s our best episode to date - and hilarious to boot.  Seriously - we talk about a beaver (the animal) case mod.  The jokes just write themselves.  So go listen - now!!

Now I really DO need a vacation!

April 24th, 2007. Published under General. No Comments.

The fun just never stops! Let me count the ways…
1. Sunday I pulled my left hip flexor muscle while running - so well so that I had to stay home from work yesterday because I couldn’t put any weight on it without feeling like someone was stabbing me.

2. I had an “oh shit” moment today - and as a result, I have a lot of website work ahead of me the next few days, because I have to have it done before I go on vacation.

3. I still don’t have any road trip music - and I won’t have time to either.

4. I still need to figure out what to pack for the trip.

5. Did I mention my pulled muscle - because it hurts like a mutha. It also means that I can’t work out at all. Well, I can do upper body stuff - but that isn’t going to burn the calories. The diet starts now because I’m not gaining any weight this time around.

In any case - this is going to be one busy damn week. I’m almost looking forward to the 2,200 mile drive that has no connectivity or anything to connect me to all this crap.

Beautiful Day

April 20th, 2007. Published under General. No Comments.

Too busy. Love my job - but way too busy today.

Went for a walk over the noon hour - that was good.

Had a chocolate chunk cookie a few minutes ago - that was even better.

I don’t have to work at all this weekend - the best.

Enjoy the weekend!

Vitriol!

April 19th, 2007. Published under General. 1 Comment.

I’ve been pretty quiet about the whole mess at Virginia Tech. Yes, it’s horrible what happened and my sympathy goes out to the families of those killed.

But I’m getting so sick and tired of the “big question” that the media keeps thumping like a tribal war drum: “how could this have been avoided?”

Unfortunately, nothing could have been done.

This kid was disturbed, obviously, but expert after expert keeps coming out and saying that there’s no way in hell the school or the faculty could have accurately seen the signs and stopped this kid from snapping and mowing down everyone he could.

Now, what’s pissing me off is that now there are all these colleges around the country gearing up to “develop an action plan” to handle situations like these.

When are people in this country going to pull their head out of their asses and stop living in this reactionary-action society we’re in now? Nothing EVER happens in this country until something happens to make us react. After 9/11 - every city had to come up with a “terrorism plan” to deal with an attack. I would bet anyone $100 that if any terrorists tried to attack a US city again, none of these “plans” would work. Why? Because they were set up to deal with the type of attack that happened on 9/11. Logic dictates that the terrorists wouldn’t use the same type of attack in that hypothetical next attack.

Same thing happens at the airport. Some whack-job had explosives in his shoes - now we all have to take our shoes off for intense inspection. Another crazy tries to take some flammable type of liquid onto a plane and now I can’t take my bottle of Diet Pepsi (which is not an explosive) or my normal-sized bottle of contact solution in my carry on!

Do the people “in charge” really think that once we caught someone doing these things that they would TRY IT AGAIN?! Hell no!

No wonder we live in a “society of fear”…all we do is react to the shit that’s happening around us, rather than be a little more proactive and pay attention to what’s going on around you and doing something about it! No, we have to live in our nice, safe, little suburban bubbles until some Big Bad Scary thing comes along and burst that happy pink bubble - then we lock ourselves in our houses with Grandpa’s arsenal and watch Fox News 24/7 getting more scared and paranoid.

“Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave?” Yeah right.

I have a hard time calling what happened at VT a tragedy. What happened after Katrina, that was a tragedy. Today, there are people who STILL are homeless and there are areas of New Orleans that look EXACTLY as they did right after the hurricane. This war that we’re in that we will NEVER win and has cost us over 3,300 soldiers (not to mention the number of other soldiers and civilians that have died because of this clusterfuck) to date, THAT’S a tragedy. What happened at VT was horrible, unfortunate and sadly unavoidable - but when compared to these atrocities, it’s not unique. Hell, after Katrina hit, we had FULL CONTROL over what would happen and that got all fucked up. I noticed it only took Bush a day to go to VT - when it took him more than 4 days to visit New Orleans, the site of the worst natural disaster to EVER hit this country.

Great job!

I’m getting rambly now, so I’ll just leave it at that.

Where did the weekend go?

April 16th, 2007. Published under General. 2 Comments.

Well, half of it was spent at my parents for Easter dinner. We drove down and drove back the same day. And a good chunk of yesterday was spent at the movie theater at a matinée for the Grindhouse movie.

Which is an AWESOME flick. Go see it before the rumored “split up” of the two movies happens.

We also checked out the new Trader Joe’s up in Maple Grove - and I wasn’t that impressed. I think I’ll be more impressed with their wine shop - but the store itself wasn’t “all that”. I was shocked at how TINY the place was! We still bought a few things, though.

But, as a result of all the activity, I didn’t get much of ANYTHING done this weekend around the house. I guess I’ll have to get some stuff done during the week - I hate doing that, but it’s gotta be done.

* * * * *

With the high set to be in the upper 60’s to low 70’s today, I had a difficult time finding something to wear today. I then realized that aside from a few pieces here and there, I haven’t bought any new clothes for almost 4 years now. I suppose it’s good that I can still fit into the clothes I bought 4 years ago - but still. Everything I have is pretty plain and sad looking. I’m wearing a long-sleeved dressy t-shirt with my black dress pants today. Exciting!

And, my favorite place to buy clothes is closed now - so I’m at a loss as to where to go shopping for some updated work clothes that won’t cost me a ton of money. I love Ann Taylor - but that’s too fucking expensive for my taste.

I’d love it if I could buy pants for work at Target, but my hips are too big for their standards. We’ll have to make a trek out to H&M to see if I have any luck there. That does require going to the Mall of America, however. I’m not a fan of that monstrosity.

So I may go another year without buying anything - because I’m not a patient shopper. Too bad someone can’t nominate me for What Not To Wear because I’ve been in a fashion rut for so long. But I do know what I’m doing, fashion-wise - I’m just too cheap.

I’m open to suggestions as to where to go for clothes!

Shake-zula, the mic-rula

April 13th, 2007. Published under General. 1 Comment.

In a shocking turn of events, the Minneapolis Star Tribune movie reviewer gives the movie “Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film For Theaters” a 3.5 out of 4 stars.

Seriously!

I can’t wait to see this movie…but it’ll have to wait until next week.

* * * * *

We’re hitting a matinee on Sunday for Grindhouse because I had such a horrible sinus headache last night and Tim took pity on me. I was going to tough it out at the movie, but he wouldn’t let me. So we’re going Sunday. Should be fun!

Have a great weekend!

Because I love COLOURlovers…

April 12th, 2007. Published under General. No Comments.

COLOURlovers is a site that I’ve been a huge fan of and a member of for a couple of years now. They just updated their site to a “Web 2.0″ style and added a ton of functionality.

They’re up for a Webby Award for “Best Community Site” and they’re up against some HUGE players: Flickr, del.icio.us, Threadless and Yahoo! Answers.

To quote Darius Monsef, the creator:

If my competitors don’t win a Webby Award this year, I don’t think they’re going to miss any sleep over it. This isn’t “I Win, They Lose.” All of them have already won. They’re worth millions of dollars. They’ve made it.

Yahoo! has 3 sites in this category: Flickr won Best Navigation/Structure & Best Practices last year and is nominated for 2 other categories this year. Flickr & Delicious creators were treated to a nice multi-million dollar acquisition not to long ago, and Yahoo! Answers is a mega project by one of the internet’s biggest companies.

Threadless is a great site, no denying it. But there’s also no denying the Empire that Skinny Corp. has. Those guys have made it. More power to them and their success.

COLOURlovers on the other hand is a grass roots site, Nowhere near acquisition, Still largely in debt, and Facing sites with x50 the traffic and membership.

So, this is the favor I ask of you, nay, my call to action! Help our little community beat 4 of the biggest communities out there.

So, my friends - go and vote!! Please!!! :-)

Life is a Highway

April 12th, 2007. Published under General. 1 Comment.

Tonight, we’re going to go see the movie “Grindhouse” - the new Tarantino/Rodriguez movie. Why not wait for the weekend (and the ability to sleep in the next day because it’s a 3+ hour movie)?

Well, due to the poor performance at the box office the opening weekend, the studio is talking about 1) splitting the movie into two separate movies and 2) getting rid of all the film scratches and stuff that made the movie look like an old grindhouse movie.

Basically, they’re going to ruin what is making it interesting.

So, if we don’t go tonight, I fear they’ll change it before we get a chance to go.

* * * * *

So…the Duke Lacrosse players were cleared of their rape charges. I don’t understand why people would lie about something like that. It’s sad, really. Sure they may have been spoiled rich kid athletes, but that doesn’t mean they should have their lives ruined by a false accusation. I hope they do press civil charges against that District Attorney.

However, in another shining example of why I’m going to hell in a handbasket, whenever I hear “Duke Lacrosse” on the radio, all I can think of is Adam Carolla saying how Duke Lacrosse would be a great porn name. And it would.

* * * * *

I need to come up with a travel playlist for the ‘ol iPod for our trip at the end of the month. I have some great road-tripping songs already:

• “Panama” - Van Halen
• “Baby Got Going” - Liz Phair
• “Sex Machine” - James Brown
• “All My Life” - Foo Fighters
• “No One Knows” and “Lost Art of Keeping a Secret” - Queens of the Stone Age
• “Rearviewmirror” - Pearl Jam (hell, any Pearl Jam song, really)

I need some more, though - give me some suggestions!