New Toy

Will I be able to resist?

http://www.dpreview.com/articles/nikond200/

That's it for me hopefully

Just now as I'm nibbling on my chocolate chip cookie bar, I couldn't help but think about the show I was watching last night at 12am titled The Half Ton Man. Don't remember the station it was playing on, Discover maybe? So I'm wondering how many of these would I have to eat to get remotely fat, let alone tack on 850lb. Then I thought, what the heck am I doing watching a show called the Half Ton Man at 12am? A few months back I was busy enough that I hardly watched any TV for weeks at a time, and now that things have slowed a bit I can't say I'm making the best use of my time. Might be time to put down that remote.

Apple Sidra is best!

Right now I'm enjoying a frosty glass of one of my favorite drinks, Apple Sidra! Mmm, delicious! Like apple juice, not quite as sweet, and carbonated. Comes in a can that looks like it hasn't been redesigned since the 1970's. Made in Taiwan and not available in MN. I got this can at the Ranch 99 in Seattle and have been saving it until now. I do get the feeling that if I had it all the time I would get sick of it. But if you ever see it for sale, give it a try!

Movies!

I finally found a video rental with a price I like. Mr Movies has 99 cent new releases every monday with either two or four days to return them. Nice!

Speaking of movies, I bought Inital D, an HK movie based off a Japanese anime of the same name. What an incredible disappointment. I can't remember the last time I felt like just turning off a movie half way through. Everything likeable about the series is missing from the movie. Sad. It could have been so much more than what it turned out to be.

Is it you God? Oop, no, it's just the I.T. guy.

After a few years of working with the best I.T. guys around at my old job, I've forgotten what it was like to work on computers managed by meglomaniacs. But a conversation today reminded me of my college days, where tech geeks managed to get on my nerves almost every day for two years. Little did they realize that computers were supposed to be used instead of managed. And did they even know what a Mac was? I'm still not sure.

Technobabble ahead...

These lovely guys would delete all sorts of stuff from the system software in order to... to.. I'm not sure what they were trying to do. "Hmm, the video card driver software takes up 2MB, we could save that space if we just delete it" they think to themselves. Look, the computer still turns on and an images shows up. Great! Too bad a web page takes two minutes to scroll through since the driver is no longer there to speed things up. What's all these extensions and plug-in's inside the Photoshop folder? Who knows, let's just get rid of them since we don't know what they are. They could be a virus! Now that they're gone, I can't find my web safe colors. When I go to ask them to reinstall it, they give me a convoluted workaround involving downloading an image from the web and using the colors from that image. I'm wondering at this point if they are serious or not, but none of them crack a smile. Obviously that experience left a mark and thinking about it five years later still raises my blood pressure.

Onward to the good guys..

I've discovered work computing heaven, and it's at Marketwatch.com. IT guys who would help when needed and leave you and the computer alone otherwise. Now is that so hard?

An aside, just in case some work person stumbles upon this site. This has nothing to do with the IT department at my current job. http://www.dooce.com/ demonstrates why you do not discuss work on your blog.

Minnesota Sucks

So what's up with this state anyway? It seems like people don't want to stay here one minute longer than they have to. Looking at my [mostly Asian] friends, I can't say that there will be too many of them here ten years from now. So it's cold, but it's not that bad. So when one of them announces that they will be moving away soon, instead of missing them, I almost feel a sense of relief for them that they're getting out before this place starts doing strange things to their brain. Is it because this place doesn't have much of an Asian community? No decent Chinese restaurants? Everyone lives 30 minutes away from each other? Spiritually unsatisfying? Who knows, maybe this is the way it is everywhere, but I just don't have a point of comparison.

First Ever

Well, after a busy summer thus far, I finally have a few weeks where I can actually go home after work. Just enough spare time to start a Blog! There's a million thoughts rolling around in my head, and this might be a good way to keep track of them. In addition, I'm hoping this will improve my writing skills. Ever since email has come into existence, I can no longer create a proper sentence.

So why not xanga? It's simply too ugly to use. I also want to see what kind of web work Adaptive Path, the web consultant/design firm who created this site, is doing. If they are as good as advertised, this should be the most user friendly site around.

Till next time!