www.mtvmusic.com

MTV has posted Hulu quality videos of EVERY VIDEO THEY'VE EVER AIRED. EDIT: NOT every video, but there's a LOT. Some key missing items, especially for us 80's folks.




Here's proof:

Tags: music

So we're re-doing this very large website for a very large manufacturer. Their old site is in Drupal 4.x and we're coding up the new site in Drupal 6.2, and making significant improvements in the base code and also the way the CMS integrates with the site. Ae we're pulling content and reviewing source from the old site, we come across a comment that's been added into the code of the old site by one of our client's developers. It reads:  "WTF kind of jacked up code is this?!! Re-written to be legible below."

They're going to like our version of the site.

Tags: work

So I know it kills the sexy  - but anybody got any good recommendations for iPhone cases/protectors/holsters?

1. Less than that actually - Max and I are flying to VA on Saturday and then heading down to the Outer Banks to hang out in Duck for the week with my Dad & Stepmom, Brother and SIL, and the step-brother and step-sister (and her kids). I cannot WAIT to get to the beach. I want that sea-oats-in-the-heat smell and I want it now.
2. I love Apple's packaging. It's such a nice experience to open an Apple product. Especially my shiny new 3G iPhone!!!! It's so Japanese, the packaging. We all swooned over Japanese package design back in school. I'm glad some of that design has made it here to us. Considering what you pay for these products, it's nice when the experience matches the investment.
3. Life is good right now. It's changing, but in good ways.
4. Just a quick note to say hi. Hi.

Headed to Bend tomorrow morning, by way of Smith Rock, to pick up Max from his road trip. I'm going to head out of Portland late AM or around lunch and then spend the afternoon bouldering around at Smith Rock after the heat breaks and hang out for the sunset, then cruise on down to Bend. Max and the gang will be pulling in sometime in the afternoon. Until then, I'm just going to hang out and wander about downtown. Maybe I'll take my golf clubs. I haven't been to Bend in a while, and haven't been to Smith since my birthday. During my last year of college, I was there every weekend. I love the smell of juniper and sage in the heat.

I have 6 more cigars in my box. After this, I'm not buying any more.

I haven't been able to eat much lately. My stomach is just not down with food at all. I've dropped 12 pounds at least, in the last two weeks. To balance it - I'm finally, at age 42, starting to eat a more balanced diet. I actually ate broccoli with salmon at dinner the other night instead of fish and chips, and I've only had one hamburger in teh last two weeks.

If you had any idea how radical a statement that is.... Now, I gotta get off the junkie's diet of coffee and cigars. It's a miracle I can get through a TKD class the way I've been living the last two weeks.

It will be good to have Max back home this weekend.

1. Having the new bathroom makes a person want to re-do the deck. Myabe I should start by refinishing the part of the living room wall that fell out when the contractor put in the medicine cabinet. That would be a good tonight project. I wasn't going to pay him to re-texture and paint it - but he did a great job of building in a new wall after the other one fell out. The adventures of having a house built in 1928.  Home "improvement" projects can be a very "careful what you ask for" proposition.
   
2. Max called this morning from his road trip. they were in Bryce canyon two days ago, bow they're headed to Provo. I'm picking him up in Bend next weekend. I'll probably take my rock shoes and go Saturday, hang out at Smith Rock and boulder around saturday and then tent out or go into Bend and grab a hotel and get Max Sunday afternoon, then we'll head home.
   
3. Hmm..... Well, refinishing the wall MIGHT happen tonight, or I might hit Up Guardian Games for Friday Night Magic. I played pretty well in the Saturday draft last week, won a couple packs for third place.
   
4. Our new website's up at work. Compassrosemedia.com
   
5. So I actually broke two boards with the feared (by me) roundhouse kick yesterday in class. It was super easy. First try. No pain. Of course, you gotta remember to pull your toes back. Still - I'm glad I got past that since it was intimidating me. Now to try some sets with my left leg.
   
   Now I'm gonna go for three, to put thre pressure on Raul whose wife is a black belt and they've been having this little breaking contest going on. His wife is small but her kicks are VERY powerful, and it really annoys him that he can't break at the same level.

On other things - this is a public post and there's some things that I'm currently discussing behind a friends-only lock that I'm not discussing publicly, you know what I'm sayin'?

My boss just ordered iPhones for all the producers.
Yay!
Sorry to rub it in, KL.

Tags: work

Well, the bathroom is done, but we're having all the carpets cleaned in a hour or so, so ALL of our furniture is piled up in corners of the house. The cats, as you can see, do not approve.



Even Max cannot cheer them up - perhaps because his teeth have him looking a lot like David Letterman in this pix.



So here's few snaps of the new bathroom - we had it stripped to the walls, a couple of which then proceeded to fall apart. We moved everything but the tub, but the tub itself is new, and deeper. We saved and re-used the countertop, which longtime readers will remember that we had made a few years back. The walls are a really light slate-like light blue. This is the view from the door - our house is WAY too small for me to be able to get the whole room into a shot with a standard lens. The windows are new too.





This is the shower/bath. All tile with a cool rock/pebble texture band. Our contractor cut in a soap storage area which you can see to the left.



So that's it then. It's pretty nice. A contrast to be sure with the rest of our hose which was originally built in 1928 and has been updated in a rather homebrewed fashion between then and now. But, as we were doing this project we also replaced all the doors, and so for the first time, after living in our house since 1997 we have actual doors with knobs and latches that shut and stay shut.

1. So this girl just posted to damnportlanders that she's considering beginning to make picnic tables. Now, Portland is strong with the crafts movement and all, but I don't see many people waking up saying "I'm going to start making picnic tables!". Then again, it's been kind of hot and humid out here, and Portland people are a little punchy in those conditions.
2. We had a very intense thunder and lightning storm out here around 3AM this morning. I kept debating whether or not to get up and go out on the porch to watch the storm. 3AM won that argument. It was hardcore though - the cats were a little freaked out. It reminded me of this one storm from some years ago. I was in some random hotel in Marlborough Mass and this nor'easter blew up REALLY fast, as they do, and the storm was so fierce that all of us road warriors went and stood out under the roof above the driveway outside the hotel and just stared. I do like watching thunderstorms.
3. Anybody out there have one of those "office nicknamer" people? I used to work with one. The guy was always calling me "Chief" or "Cochise" or something. At a different job, there was another nicknamer, but this one was always calling me "big guy". Why does every office seem to have one of these types?
   
4. What is up with calling people "Cochise" - was he like from some sort of management tribe? Why not Geronimo, or Sitting Bull? Is this just a west coast thing?
5. Total. Bathroom. Remodel.
6. Yeah - it's finally done today and I don't even want to know what the final cost was, but it will be nice.

So before going to Reno for the weekend last week I was dinking around in one of the local RPG/Magic/bookstores and I noticed a copy of Asimov's Foundation for 99 cents. I piked it up, since I have never read it. Once I started reading it, I got to thinking of all the other "classic" books that I am aware of, but never read. Although I've always been a voracious reader of pretty much anything, there are many books that "everyone" has read, that I haven't. Part of this is due to the fact that my english classes in high school and college were always more writing focused - which is why I've never read "Tale of Two Cities", "Catcher in the Rye" or  "insert name of required reading book here"

So I say to myself, I says, "I should make a project to read all the classic lit in SciFi, now that I'm starting out with Foundation." I thought many times about how I would compile such a list. Lucky, the Internet has come to my rescue.
Popurls has this link to 32 Sci-Fi books you "should" read, so I think that's a start.

So that's-a-gonna be my list, see? Not like I'm going to be posting book reports or anything - the first challenge will be finding copies of them all, but then again, I can walk to Powell's from my office at lunch. Anyone want to put down the Danielle Steele or whatever it is that people read in the summertime now and join me for an ad hoc LJ Nerd Book Club?

On an unrelated topic - Tae Kwon Do last night kicked my butt. However, we did some breaking. Two boards with a stepping up side kick, which I've pretty much got dialed. Time to move on to a new kick, like a roundhouse which I've done with one board, but doing two scares me 'cause I don't want to break my toes again, and roundhouse = toes, man, if you throw it wrong. Then two boards with a palm-heel strike, which was easy. I could easily do three and maybe four with a forearm, and maybe three with a palm if I can figure out how to throw it without bending my fingers back. All the black belts are telling me that punching is the hardest, but I'm not intimidated by that at all. I can punch through a board with my eyes closed. Maybe not two though, yet. And when the time comes, a guy my size will have to do three, or at least 2 and one of Master Kim's super-boards at a promotion test. Got a few months to work that one out. Next test (purple stripe - halfway to black) is in August? Oh, a few weeks then.

As you all know, I'm an un-reformed gamer from way back. Been playing mostly Magic the last couple of years, but last weekend I went over to Guardian Games for the D&D 4.0 release day events and sat in on a pre-gen adventure.

That was a mistake.

I've been jonesin' to get back into a good D&D game for a long time, and the 4th gen rules streamline the mechanics in such a way that it's easy to concentrate on the playing bit, whether it's combat or story. Very similar to the way my old game club friends and I would re-structure the (1st generation) rules to suit our desires, back in the day. Feels natural.

So now I'm REALLY in the mood to get into a game. But the problem of course is being a 40-year old, professional, dad type kind of narrows your game-group options. I'm not going to get pulled in by the 20-somethings, and most older guys who still play are well, a little nerdly even for me. Plus, I'm ONLY interested in D&D, none of this d20 system Vampire, Firefly or Lovecraft stuff. I gotta find a game of like-minded folks or some good 30-somethings that are past the "fighter named Bob" stage.

You know, or not, but it'd be nice to play again from time to time.

So I'm very digital in many ways. I'm online all day every day, I'm down with the video games (although my XBOX just red-ringed on me, which is very annoying). I don't even HAVE checks for my checking account - everything is paid electronically. However, there are  FEW things that I am decidedly NOT keeping up with. Here's a short list.

1. I do all my financial things electronically, but I cannot bring myself to put a paper check into the ATM as a deposit. I make all my deposits that aren't electronic deposits in person.
2. I don't Instant Message. Yes,  I know I've occasionally been spotted online in AIM or Google Talk or LJ talk or WTF, but they spot alligators in the sewers from time to time too. I just don't need the distraction of little pinging popups all day on top of the hundred emails and phone calls I get on the average day.
3. Voice mail. I HATE voicemail. If you call me and don't get me on the phone - call me back, because I despise listening to voicemail.
4. I still have a charcoal grill. I almost bought a gas grill today, but I am a ninja master of the Weber charcoal grill and I'm going to have to relearn to cook a steak on gas - these things can't be rushed. Besides - could these freakin' grills be any bigger?
5. TiVo. No. TV is just not that important to me. Plus, I don't want people coming over to discover that my TiVo storage is filled with episodes of The World's Strongest Man competition, A bunch of Samantha Brown travel shows, and a couple of Biggest Loser episodes which would be taking on some extra meaning, no?

This is all brought on by the fact that my Mother, who can't figure out how to delete a file, is now pressuring me hardcore to get up on Skype.
Up to this point I've avoided the Skype. Not because I don't like free phone calls - I've got VOIP at work and at home, but largely because I don't need the distraction of another communication channel (See #2 above). However, the real reason is that I don't have a decent stand-alone mic, and I feel like a hodad sitting in front of my computer with a full-on headset on.

I'm crumbling though. I DO have a headset - I use it on Sunday nights for Guild Wars, where our group has recently begun using a Ventrilo voice server versus trying to type in the middle of a battle. Problem is I prefer NOT getting game sound in my headphones - so I kind of half-wear them and still get game sound of my (good) external speakers. This exacerbates the hodad factor by about 3. Oh yeah, and the XBOX headset which I usually try to wear while playing Halo3 Multiplayer until either Velma or Daphne begins paw-batting the mic.

So yeah, Skype. I'm going to download the bits now. What can I do, it's my MOM.

So I'm driving home the other night and This American Life is doing "prom" theme, which reminds me that I have to tell you all a prom story before I forget about it again. Anyway, today on Carrie Brownstein's blog @ NPR, she's got a list of Oregon High School prom themes for this year.

Here's a link to the post:
I've Had The Time of My Life @ MonitorMix

"Rumble in the Jungle"?!?

.snarf.

I'll be back later with that prom story. That'll give Renee an excuse to repost the white tux picture.

So, it's a long story. But the bottom line is, that right now, I'm tired. Not tired of posting per se, but my overall tiredness has been manifesting itself in a lack of energy to post. I found this quote in Sunday's Times Magazine's cover story on Emily Gould's blogging life.

"The will to blog is a complicated thing, somewhere between inspiration and compulsion. It can feel almost like a biological impulse. You see something, or an idea occurs to you, and you have to share it with the Internet as soon as possible. What I didn’t realize was that those ideas and that urgency — and the sense of self-importance that made me think anyone would be interested in hearing what went on in my head — could just disappear."

The whole article is here. It's a the NYT, which requires a login, but it's The Times, so you should really have a login anyway.

So I thought I should post that, when I saw it. Don't have time to elaborate just now - one thing at a time.