miércoles

Ah, miércoles. One of the best words in the Spanish language. It is one of my favorites, along with melocotones and mariposa.

Ooo, we might have rain here as early as Friday. I'm excited. I do love the rainy season. It might mean I have to put up my Birks for the time being. Maybe I'll leave them here at work and change from my sneakers.

Here's the first pic I ever took from my first ever cell phone (we're at Red Robin in Newark). Sallie's contract with Verizon was up for renewal so we decided to get a family plan and we liked T-Mobile's MyFaves list. I can call 5 numbers for free at anytime. The stupid thing is that the phones in the family plan are not free as well. So Sallie is one of my five. Work had to be one as well as my folks and Joanna. That left one free for a wildcard which I can change every month. Last month it was Anne but I never called her so I'll leave her on again in October.

We got free phones and I liked the slider from Samsung. You can record memos to yourself and then use them as ringtones. I recorded myself saying "Sallie is calling you. Pick up the phone." and set it to Sallie's number. Today she called and I actually heard it from deep within my bag. I recorded the 24 phone ring from a website I found and set Joanna's cell phone to that. She has yet to call while it's been set up properly so I'll let you know if it works.

I was wanting a little sleeve or pouch to protect my new fancy phone and Sallie is so cool that she got out her crochet hook and made up a bunch in various colors. I liked the black one the best but now my phone gets lost in my bag since it's dark and everything else in that pocket is black. I thought I could find some reflective tape from one of the cyclists in the office but no one had any. Brian found a couple red reflective dots and gave them to me but they're rather ugly. What I really want is something thin that I can weave through the loops of the crochet.

Now that I have a cell I keep expecting people to call me. No one really called me before so I don't know why I think they will now. And I can't really expect anyone to call if I'm not calling them! It has come in handy a bit with me and Sallie when she's headed to Costco and wants to know if I need anything.

Ah, miércoles. Una de las mejores palabras de la lengua española. Es uno de mis favoritos, junto con melocotones y mariposa.

Ooo, puede ser que tengamos lluvia aquí desde viernes. Soy emocionado. Amo la estación de lluvias. Puede ser que signifique que tengo que poner mi Birks de momento. Quizá I' el ll los deja aquí en el trabajo y cambia de mis zapatillas de deporte.

Aquí está el primer pic que tomé nunca de mi primer teléfono celular (en el petirrojo rojo en Newark). El contrato Sallie tenía con Verizon estaba para arriba para la renovación así que decidíamos conseguir un plan y nos de la familia tuvimos gusto de la lista de MyFaves de T-Mobile. Puedo llamar cinco números para libre en cualquier momento. La cosa estúpida es que los teléfonos en el plan de la familia no están libres también. Sallie es tan uno de mis cinco. La oficina tuvo que ser una así como mi gente y Juana. Eso dejó uno libremente para un comodín que puedo cambiar cada mes. Era el mes pasado Anne pero nunca la llamé así que la dejaré encendido otra vez en octubre.

Conseguimos los teléfonos libres y tuve gusto del resbalador de Samsung. Usted puede registrar notas a se y después utilizarlas como ringtones. Me registré que decía el " Sallie le está llamando. Coja el phone." y fíjelo al número de Sallie. Ella llamó hoy y lo oí realmente profundamente dentro de mi bolso. Registré los 24 anillos del teléfono de un Web site que encontré y fijé Joanna' número del teléfono celular de s a eso. Ella tiene todavía llamar mientras que se ha fijado correctamente así que le dejaré saber si trabaja.

Quería una pequeña manga o la bolsa para proteger mi nuevos teléfono y Sallie de lujo es tan fresca que ella salió de su gancho de ganchillo y compuso un manojo en varios colores. Tuve gusto el negro el mejor pero mi teléfono consigue perdido ahora en mi bolso puesto que es oscuro y todo en ese bolsillo es negro. Pensé que podría encontrar un poco de cinta reflexiva a partir del uno de los ciclistas en la oficina pero nadie tenía cualesquiera. Brian encontró puntos reflexivos rojos de un par y me los dio pero son algo feos. Qué quiero realmente es algo delgadamente que puedo tejer a través de los lazos del ganchillo.

Ahora que tengo un teléfono yo guarde el esperar que de la gente me llame. Nadie me llamaron realmente antes tan de mí don' t sabe porqué pienso que ahora. ¡Y no puedo esperar realmente que cualquier persona llame si no los estoy llamando! Ha venido en práctico un pedacito conmigo y Sallie cuando la dirigen a Costco y quiere saber si necesito cualquier cosa.

Printing Woes

A few days ago I installed new system software on my computer at work and now I can't print. It's extremely frustrating. I just can't figure it out. And it's not like there's just one program or one user involved; every program I try ends up crashing when I try to open the Print dialog box.

I've tried so many different things to try to solve it and our IT guy is out sick (walking pneumonia). I hope he can figure it out when he gets back in. Until them I'm relegated to using other people's computers to print out checks.

ETA: Yea! My IT guy was able to get my computer printing again! I'm back to full speed ahead. Thanks, Clinton.

Design Your Dream Room

I was surfing through my favorite channels the other day when I landed on Top Design on Bravo. I just caught the end of the show and realized it was like Project Runway but for interior designers. I thought I'd check it out so set my DVR to catch all the previous episodes so I could watch them in order. In the meantime I went to bravotv.com to see what it was about.

While there I discovered my new obsession: Design Your Dream Room. They call it a game but it's more like a coloring book where you can choose the paint, furniture and accessories for a living room. Over 20,000 rooms have been created so far. Bedrooms are coming soon. I can't wait.

Here are the rooms I've designed so far:
(click on the room number to go to bravotv.com and vote)


#16273: My first try. I like the combination of colors and the pattern on the vertical lamp.


#16360: This might be my favorite of the lot. I like the colors overall and the style and arrangement of furniture. I think I forgot to color the chandelier though.


#16661: I love the dark green walls and the light complimentary green on the furniture. It looks like there's spot lighting right in the middle of the room. That red pillow is awesome! I should've done something else with the windows though.


#19395: Joanna designed a room which made me aware I was under-using the patterns offered in the game so I challenged myself to do a room with no solid colors. Some of the patterns are quite odd but I like this result.


#19689: I'm not a huge fan of orange but this room looks pretty comfy. I like the pattern on the side walls.


#19702: I wanted to use the L-shaped couch so combined it with the TV on the wall. I couldn't find any chairs that really worked so I'm assuming whoever lives here will get extra seating from another room. I love how that pattern on the pillow makes it look like it's angled into the curve of the couch.


#19734: I wanted to use the greens but they're just making me a little ill looking at them. I don't really like the two chairs together as a sofa either. The pattern on the curtains works well. I wish I could go back and edit it.


#19759: I stole the sides of this room from someone else's design but I didn't think their combination of furniture and accessories worked very well so I thought I'd take a pass. I really like this result, especially the art on the back wall.


#20941: I started this room with the back wall of brick and wanted to make a cozy, basement-type room. It was a challenge to find the patterns that would go together. Do you like this one?

If you design a room, email me your result. I'd love to see your work.

Am I a Geek?

TagFest: Tech

This tag category is kind of my catch-all for various topics, mostly internet-related. Here are some highlights:
Pandora Rocks: where I start up my own radio station, WKBJ
Say What?: where I get all excited about my brand-new Mac Mini
When Your DVR Lies to You: where I attempt to watch what I want when I want
Gmail Chat Away: where I persuade a recalcitrant friend to try a chat program
Going Off the Map: where we peruse cool places on earth from satellites
Gmail-Jackin': where I started getting some dude's Amazon emails
To see other tech posts, click on the word "tech" in the Tags section in the sidebar on the right.

I'm really enjoying the new Blogger. It takes a blink to publish a post when before I'd be sitting around for a few seconds. Of course, you know I'm loving the tags. The customization of text and elements on the page is much easier (e.g. "7 comments" can be "7 POVs" or even "7 wishes for you"). Comments can be dated now which makes it easier to know when your fellow readers have been visiting (and leaving their own POV). However, you still can't edit your comments. (Why can't they fix that?)

But my favorite thing so far is the navigational tools. If you're at the bottom of a page, you aren't forced to scroll up to the top to keep reading—there are links to newer or older posts right there waiting for you. If you click on the posting-time link ("posted by bjwill at 9:09 AM") and you get to a page with a single post, you can even maneuver from post to post easily with the "Newer Post" and "Older Post" links below the comments.

If you're a Blogger user and have not yet updated. I would highly recommend it.

Happy Anniversary to Breeze By!

Congrats to myself for one year of blogging! To celebrate, I recently switched to the new (and improved) Blogger format which allows the use of tags, or labels, to better organize my posts.

You may have noticed tags at the end of posts the last few days. I spent a few hours on Sunday applying 23 different tags to the over 300 posts I made in the last year. Some unsurprising results were the high number of TV, books and sports posts but I was a bit shocked to have only a couple family-related entries. I guess I need to start talking more about my fam.

Another change is that instead of showing a list of the most recently posted titles (the Back Burner), my new template only allows me the monthly archives (The Collection, formerly known as Cold Storage). However, it does show how many posts were made during those months. I've definitely been slowing down over the last half year. I sure was a busy little blogger last May (46 posts) and June (51). Not surprisingly, that was right after I got my new camera and my computer at home.

My anniversary celebration will continue all month so get ready to share your POV and post lots of comments.

Gmail-Jackin'

Some dude (with my same initials) changed the email address for his Amazon account to my Gmail address. Oops!

I now know what he's been ordering (ink cartridges and an estate planning CD-ROM) and where he lives (Oregon). I graciously forwarded all the emails I've received so far to his old address. We'll see if he emails me back.

ETA: Just heard back from him and he changed it back. He was very pleasant about it too. I could've just made a new friend.

I Love Wiki

Wikipedia.org has a random article link that takes you to...you got it, a random article. It's cool like that. So follow along as I click "Random article" repeatedly.

Centennial (miniseries): a TV series from the late '70s based on the Michener novel that takes place in Colorado. I don't remember this show. It was probably a bit too mature for someone my age at that time. It starred lots of famous actors including Richard Chamberlain, Mark Harmon and Andy Griffith.

Happiness (film): a Cannes Film Festival award-winning black comedy from 1998, starring Lara Flynn Boyle, Jon Lovitz and Philip Seymour Hoffman, among others. I have to say I never heard of this film. I bet you have though.

Wisdom (surname): the names listed are Jack, John, John Minor, Norman, Olli, Peter and Robert Wisdom. Oh, man, I'm so tempted to click on the Olli Wisdom link but I will not. I'm on to the next Random Article!

Sensory neuroscience: which studies the behavior of neurons in our sensory systems in order to understand more about how the brain works. Cool.

S/2004 S 11: one of the satellites (moons) of Saturn. It's about 6 kilometers in diameter which doesn't sound very big in the scheme of things. Did you know that moons have an eccentricity as well as an inclination?

Landsbankadeild 2006: the elite football (soccer) league in Iceland in 2006. Included in the article are the top goal scorers. My favorite names from the list are: Tryggvi, Guðmundur, Sævar, and of course the winner, Björgólfur.

Hematon: part of the process of making blood cells. Other fun words in the article are: preadiposcytes, mesenchymal, megakaryocyte and haematopoiesis. Yea for science!

Dimocarpus: a genus of flowering plants in southeast Asia that includes longan fruit. Something else I've never heard of but I bet I'll be seeing longan fruit everywhere from now on.

Annemarie Moser-Pröll: an Alpine skier (downhill, giant slalom, combined) from Austria who won gold in the Lake Placid Olympic Games in 1980. She also got two silvers in Sapporo in 1972 not to mention lots of World Cup titles. She is now a grandmother and runs a café. Sounds like she's had a good life.

Karl-Maria Kerbeny: a 19th-century Hungarian journalist who came up with the word "homosexual" and wrote at least 25 books. He was inspired to argue for gay rights by a friend who was being blackmailed and then comitted suicide. Wow, so much information here. I could spend loads of time following all the links in this article. But onward...

Metaflow Technologies: a microprocessor design company in California. Not well-known to the general public. It was owned at one time by Hyundai.

WHIM (AM): a Florida radio station known as "Christian Heritage Radio" broadcasting since 1998.

Uses of podcasting: a list of reasons why you might want to create a podcast, including being subversive and communicating from space.

--oOo--

Well, that was probably too many pages of stuff. But it sure shows the variety of information on the great resource that is Wikipedia. Go Wiki!

Going Off the Map

One of my Christmas gifts this year (thanks, Sal!) was a book called Off the Map. It's a collection of satellite images and commentary by two Scottish brothers who author GoogleSightseeing.com. The images are of natural formations, oddly-shaped buildings and even a sword-shaped swimming pool. They include coordinates so you can look up the images yourself in Google Earth or on Google Maps.

I was excited to see that my favorite satellite image was their first entry in Off the Map: the Richat Structure in Mauritania. I first saw this image on NASA's Earth As Art website and have used it as the desktop on my work computer for many years.

Best Tour on (Google) Earth

The other night while I was looking around for cycling and Tour de France news, I found a link to download the Tour route to Google Earth. It is so cool. It shows the climbs and sprints and feeding stations as well as the kilometer marks and waystation points along the way so you can follow along from town to town with the cyclists. It has a live function too but I have to admit that I haven't been getting up early enough for that. I'm just following along with Phil and Paul on my DVR.

I wish OLN would give us the town names more often though. I can't always see the physical landmarks well enough to figure out where they are. It seems, for the first couple stages anyway, that Google Earth doesn't have the highest resolution images in France. I was able to see really close yesterday only for a little while. In fact, the bridge they used to cross the Rhine into Germany from France wasn't built yet when the Google Earth images were taken. It looked, according to Google Earth, that they were riding right across the water!

Discovering the Tour

I thought I should read up on the Tour de France and recent cycling news tonight on the eve of the Prologue tomorrow in Strasbourg. I had to skim the "Operation Puerto" doping scandal articles. It's just too depressing that Jan, Basso and Vinokourov are out this year. We knew it wouldn't be Lance this year but surely it would've been one of them.

Anyway, I checked out my usual cycling websites for RSS feeds to add to my Safari lists and found that the Discovery team has been publishing video podcasts (they call them webisodes) for the last month and a half. So I downloaded them all into my iTunes. They sure are fun. All the behind the scenes stuff with the riders is really great. I wish they had closed captioning though. Some of their accents are kinda hard to understand. If you're a Discovery team fan, you should definitely check out these Race2Replace shows.

The Discovery guys have a good shot at some glory in the Tour now with the favorites and loads of others out of the race. I can't wait to get up early tomorrow to see what happens.

Email Reminders & RSS

If you're like me and you sometimes forget to go visit your favorite blogs, Feedblitz provides an email reminder service for us slackers. I set up this blog so you can subscribe through FeedBlitz if you need a kick in the pants to come read about my life. I tried it out and it sends out an email every morning if I've put up new stuff the previous day.

Just click the link Subscribe via FeedBlitz in my links list and enter your email address. You'll get an email you'll need to respond to in order for your subscription to become active. Then just sit back, relax, and know you'll always know if I'm keeping up.

Or if you've joined the RSS universe, you can add my Atom feed to your feed reader. I'm using Safari to keep up with my favorite blogs. It has a cool feature where I can add feeds to my Bookmarks Bar folders and it goes out and checks for new content for me. All I have to do is just click once to get all the latest posts. (if only Safari supported more Blogger features I'd be a happier member of the blogosphere!)

Seriously

After I write this I'm going to shut down the computer and read a book. Seriously. This damn computer thingy is really cutting into my reading time. Whose idea was it to introduce that WWW whatever into my quiet life? I've about had enough of RSS and myspace.com and iWeb. I'm thinking about boycotting all electronics for the next 24 hours. I'm not sure how I'm going to do any work, but who cares? I'll at least get some books read.

p.s. The database changes I figured out last night worked like a dream. Well, a really really slow dream. But they work!

Gmail Chat Away

My sister-in-law and I email each other a lot. Sometimes it's almost like instant messaging. I've tried to get her to use a chat program like AOL Instant Messenger but she claims that every time they've tried installing it, their computer crashes. I find it hard to believe. And my brother's a computer guy too!

When I was cleaning out my Gmail inbox last night (I usually download my Gmail to my Mail program), I saw that Gmail now has a chat feature and you don't need any software. Yippee! Our problems were solved. I sent her an invitation and when we were both logged into Gmail today, we tested it out and it was great.

Of course, it's not as cool as iChat or Fire (I like being able to change the font color and size), but it's really good for what it does.

Fun with iWeb, Not So Much With iMovie

I think I'm not cut out to be a filmmaker. I tried playing with iMovie today and it was just too much. I think I ran into trouble when I just started adding clips and photos indiscriminately. I needed to be telling a story and I had nothing. Maybe I'll go back to it if something inspires me.

I'll just concentrate on my Photoshop lessons and on gradually reducing the number of books on my library shelf. I didn't feel like reading again today. I'm not sure what's wrong with me. I even cleaned my kitchen to avoid it. Well, it really needed it! It got pretty bad while I've been sick and then recovering my energy.

Tomorrow should be cooking and reading day at my house. I need to make planned-overs for lunch at work this next week. I'm thinking...um...lentil stew! I know, I'm in a rut.

When Your DVR Lies to You

Tonight I was scheduled to be watching the Angels game (which started at 4) on my DVR while it was taping the A's game in HD from 7 to 10. I would watch the A's game when I was done watching and fast-forwarding through the Angels game. A pretty good plan, I thought. However, my DVR box lied to me. Again.

The A's game was not on in HD on channel 720 after all. It was only on the regular FSN Bay Area channel 40. So had I not checked to make sure it was recording properly (that's another post for another day), I would've had three hours of some show on jockeys (and I don't mean the shorts) and probably a food-eating contest or two.

Luckily, I was able to switch over to FSN and am now happily watching the A's barely holding on to a 1-0 lead in the 6th inning which was actually played two hours ago.

I like my DVR. I really do. I just don't like all the lying!

Stupid Website

Once again I've stayed up too late. Tonight I was working on my photo website. I decided to put up my Photoshop projects both recent and old. I thought it'd be good motivation for working hard on my current projects. Otherwise, I'd be the only one seeing them and I could just please myself. Now perhaps I'll think of a wider audience.

Earlier this evening I finished creating a photo album on shutterfly.com. When I bought my camera, I got three coupons for free hard cover albums and they expired today. I used one a few weeks ago to make an album for Joanna with photos of her family from a CD she sent me last fall. I hear it looks awesome. I was hoping to use Anne and Jordan's photos from their trip out here last month for the other coupons but I didn't get them in time.

Joanna's folks just got back from a trip to Alaska and had taken her camera so had plenty of great photos. She used one of the coupons for an album for them. I'm sure it'll turn out great.

I used the other one for me. I put photos of my folks and family, some old and some more recent. I can't wait to see it.

Optical Effects

There are a couple blogs that I enjoy reading occasionally that have white (or light) text on a black background. I think these bloggers do not read their own blogs much.

After reading for a few minutes, when I glance away from the screen, I suffer optical effects that obscure my vision. Maybe I'm just getting old, but it takes awhile to return to normal. I sure wish they would choose to a more reader-friendly format.

Photos on Mac.com

I may still post an occasional photo here if it strikes me but for the time being I'm posting my pics to my .Mac website. They had some nice templates for photo albums. I'd rather spend my time editing the photos themselves than the website.

Cable Modem Crazy

The lights on the cable modem are driving me crazy. They're all flashy, flashy all the time. I've tried various methods of blocking them. First was a breakfast bar, but I got hungry and ate it. Now I have an empty bottle of ibuprofen lying on its side, but it likes to roll away. I think I may have to just put the modem on the floor out of my line of sight. I just can't have the flickery distraction.

Sounding Good

As I was putting on my shoes (getting ready to go out for my usual Saturday morning errand run) I was reading the side of my monitor box and I read "concealed speakers". Concealed pretty well. I didn't even notice! So I found the audio cord and plugged it in. Wow. No more listening to my iTunes or WKBJ on the tinny speakers of the CPU. I am so lucky.