Author: cosmo

Actual e-mail conversation between Alex and his cousin Gabe, over the span of about a week:

Gabe: sup alex

Alex: sup gabe. was happenin?

Gabe: not much. what about u?

Alex: nutin.

Gabe: me neither.

Wow, deep thoughts from teenagers! And to think that when I was a teenager, we didn’t have all this new-fangled communication technology. We had to have conversations like this in person.

I’m downloading a free app for my iPhone and apparently the terms of use have changed. Of course I have to agree to the new terms, even though the app doesn’t cost anything and thus shouldn’t need any of my personal information. Nonetheless, I have to login and read the terms… all 55 pages of them. That’s right: there are fifty-five pages of text, where each page is several iPhone screens long.

Naturally no one really reads those terms. Apple could insert whatever they want in there, and then later come back and say “But you agreed to them!”. Whee.

I’m looking to buy a new USB cable for a printer, and came across a great review. The user had rated it four stars but mentioned a few problems with it:

Sage advice. I don’t need pancakes and don’t have a dog or a 401k account, so perhaps this is the right cable for me.

According to NOAA, Thom and I should have some perfect weather for our backpacking trip…

Fingers crossed.

I may have set a new personal record for a crazy work day. I did work for twenty-one different clients. In one day.

Today a ten-pound package from Staples showed up at the door. I thought maybe Laralee had ordered a thousand pens or something. I certainly hadn’t ordered anything from Staples, although the box was addressed to me.

So I opened it and to my surprise it was full of… candy!

Then I remembered one of my clients saying they wanted to express their appreciation for our hard work on their web site over the past few months. They had asked me what they could get to show their gratitude, and I jokingly said a box of candy would probably suffice.

Next time I should ask for a Porsche.

Reading an online tutorial about encoding and decoding JSON data from a web site, I noticed a great ad on the bottom of the page.

Whoa. I’m not sure what’s worse: his grimace, his greasy parted hair, his creepy keyboard hands, or the fact that if he really worked in IT he wouldn’t be wearing a shirt and tie. I mean, come on… that’s so 1982 at IBM.

For fifteen years I’ve sported a goatee. I met Laralee with it. I got married with it. My kids have never seen me without it. Most of my friends don’t know what I look like without it.

But, it was time. Here goes…

Hmm, the Fu Manchu just doesn’t work so well.

Ouch, kind of painful shaving in a place that hasn’t felt the caress of a razor in fifteen years. But finally it all came off.

On the bright side, I look ten years younger. Or maybe five years younger. Whatever, but younger.

Yep, that’s my boy…

Today we spent most of the day ripping up our house. We moved everything out of the downstairs– shuffling furniture and pictures and all of the little things that build up over time into the basement, the garage, and the upstairs. Then we proceeded to rip the carpet out of the office.

Underneath? The like-new hardwood floor that we covered up when we moved into the house eight years ago. We’ve decided not only to de-carpet the office so it’s hardwood again, but extend the hardwood into the family room. That meant we had to rip out the carpet there too.

We’ll have new hardwood installed there, and then the entire downstairs will be re-sanded and re-finished. At the end of next week we’ll have a beautiful downstairs smelling faintly of polyurethane, and can move all of the furniture back in place.

Of course this means we can’t actually live in the house for two days next week, since the poly is so pungent and we won’t be able to do anything on the main floor (and thus can’t access the other floors). So it’ll be an interesting week…