This past week has been pretty involved. My Grandfather passed away last week. It wasn't easy for me. I knew this time would come soon, but you can never prepare for such an event. My Dad flew to Canada to help with all the arrangements and was not able to be with us for Easter. Despite his absence, we had a lovely Easter. Sara and I went to my moms house, as did Michael, Kat and Sarah. We played Scene It and my niece was on such a sugar high, she was keeping all of us entertained all night. I was sick on Easter and took Monday off of work. It is like a bad cold, or feels that way, but hopefully I will feel better soon.Just thought I should give the quick update, since I haven't posted in a while. I hope you all had a great Easter, and a better Monday than I. "Whatcha readin'?" "Catcher in the Rye... I'm named after it." "What's your name? ...Catcher?"
UPS is kind of stupid. You see, my new phone arrives today. However, since I am a renter and not an owner, I never change my address. That is, I never change the address that companies have on file for me. My bank, cell phone provider, hospital, work, anyone important has my parents address on file so that I don't have to change it every year when I move. So my phone is being shipped to my parents house and will arrive today. However, my parents are out of town. I called UPS to tell them that no one will be home, so they don't need to bother with trying to deliver it. However, UPS policy is that they must make one attempt before they can hold a package at the station, or change delivery addresses or anything. But I am just trying to save them from doing extra unnecessary work here. Well, apparently they use failed delivery attempts as a filter. They don't want to go through tons of packages to find mine just to hold it back. Instead, they will wait for the 10% that come back as a failed attempt to look for the special cases. My question is this: With all the technology that exists today, especially in that industry, shouldn't there be an easier way? "Do you know him? Does he call you at home? DO YOU HAVE A DORSAL FIN?"
I need some advice. On Sunday, I ordered a new phone from Amazon. I did this because I don't like my phone, and I don't like being on Cricket anymore. The new service would be through T-Mobile. I called T-Mobile to make sure if I ordered through Amazon that they could port my old cricket number over to their service. The lady told me that they could and that gets taken care of at activation. Today I got an email from Amazon saying "We have been notified by T-Mobile Wireless that the wireless phone you recently ordered has been activated. Your new wireless phone number is (303)669-875#." Now, I am hoping that this can change to my current number when I get the phone, but then I thought, wait, is this new number better because it's a 303 number and my current one is a 720 number? Would it be worth it to switch phone numbers? So My question to you is, should I stick with the (720)364-724# or should I change to the new (303)669-875# and tell everyone I know? What would you do? (note: I am leaning heavily toward keeping my current number, but would like some other opinion)
Last night, Sara and I were driving to get some Boston Market after buying The Increibles. sara: Hey, do you remember pogs? I also forgot to mention that I encourage you, /mark reader, to send me links you find interesting for 5ivethings. I'm always looking for cool stuff, so if you see anything neat, IM or email me and I'll put up the link. "12:50, press Return."
I was a little disappointed when I heard that the trailer for the new Star Wars movie was going to debut on television during The O.C. I mean, for Episode's I and II I went to the theater to see the trailers, sometimes leaving the theater right after because the movie was gonna be so bad(read: Wing Commander). However, I realized today why showing the trailer on TV first was such a good move for Lucas as well as myself. I could be wrong, but I don't think a movie (like Wing Commander) can 'pay someone' to be the movie that has the Star Wars trailer come before it. However, I am sure that LucasFilm and Fox television were able strike up a deal to make the trailer happen during the O.C. This gives Lucas money that he otherwise wouldn't have gotten, gives Fox money (through their sponsors) that they otherwise wouldn't have gotten (I personally know five people who watched the O.C. that never do), and finally saved chumps like me from going to the theater and blowing 7 bucks on a crap film. Overall, I think it turned out to be a win win win situation. Other items of note: today I had my second nose bleed in the past week and my headphones snapped. Not cool.
My girlfriend has this co-worker who is one of those "time exaggeraters". We all know them. For some reason, it always helps to prove their point by rounding up (or down) how much time something took. But then they add (or subtract) an extra one. Most people naturally round up to make something sound longer, e.g. when the meeting took an hour and 50 minutes, people will naturally say "I was in a meeting for two hours!" where as an exaggerater will say "That stupid meeting took three hours out of my day." After hearing about how my girlfriend's co-worker gets in at "7am every day", but for some reason, she mysteriously wasn't there till 7:45 the day my girlfriend got there at 7:30, I was reminded of a story from one morning when I worked at Best Buy. It's a short story, but it goes something like this: customer: For Christ sake, can I please get some help!and... scene. Okay, so maybe I don't remember it word for word, but it went something like that. That's the big problem with the time exaggeraters. It just makes them look stupid. Also, after the guy left, we all were wondering why he was waiting around to talk to one of us, just to tell us that he was going elsewhere? Wouldn't he just leave if he was angry. Folks, sometimes the world doesn't make sense. "If you think that Mick Jagger will still be doing the whole rock star thing at age fifty, well, then, you are sorely, sorely mistaken."
Last night, after being unbelievably disappointed about Scrubs not being on, I watched one of the 18 Law & Order official spin off shows featuring guest star Martin Short. In the show, Martin Short played a psychic who was trying to help solve a case (which you find out later, that he was the perpetrator). Anyhow, It was a particularly nasty case with all kinds of messed up motives, definitely not PG type stuff, and Short played the part eerily well. Reminded me of Robbin Williams in One Hour Photo or Harry Connick Jr. in Copycat. It's just kind of weird how well comedy actors can play such demented rolls.
Welcome to the new /mark. This is a redesign I have been actively working on for the past 4 weeks or so. I have been wanting to redesign the site seriously for about 6 months. My big problem was I wasn't finding inspiration anywhere. I spent literally hours looking at "best of web design" type sites, as well as popular sites out there. I had a huge problem with how web design looks these days. Most web sites that are considered to be designed well these days are white. Everything is white and sometimes the font is even light gray. There is a very heavy lean toward these high-key designs and I do not understand it. I feel that the purpose of a design is to present your content in a good looking way. That simple. The high-key websites are good looking, but the content is very tough to see and separate (i.e. what is a post, what is not). Anyhow after screwing around a whole lot and almost scrapping my design a few times, I settled on this. Here are some cool things to check out on the site: 5ivethings - 5ivethings is a list of interesting links, phrases and thoughts that I find relevant enough to put on this site. 5ivethings displays 5 things at a time, but you can always look at old stuff you missed. Archives & Site Search - Google's site search customization wizard was broken, so I had to hack my own up in javascript. It works pretty well, I think. Try it out for yourself (Seriously, click the word search, it's neat). Also, the archives were revamped to be included in the main page, but as not to clutter up the page, I hid them behind a [plus] icon. Click to expand. About - That old bio I had was worthless, and now I have an about page which explains what I/the site am/is all about. Contact Me - The contact section of the sidebar is in real time, so you can see when I'm online whenever you want to, and not after every post. Also, I have a link for sending a text message. It is hooked up to a dedicated forward-to-mobile aim account (CaptnCelltacular) and so you can always send me a message online. Links and Other Reading - Links are all the websites of people I know personally, or have a personal connection to. They are the internet's version of a local band. Other reading are links to all the other sites I read regularly (most all have rss feeds). They would be the internet's version of a band that does stadium tours. Flickr Preview - Finally, I have use the flickr badge and DHTMLified and twisted the code to output a custom flickr preview, showing you a portion of the image as it is on flickr. Obviously, click it to see the full one. Also, it will always show you the 3 most recent photos I posted along with 5 more random images. Pretty nice if you ask me. I'm proud on how it turned out (note: looks good in internet explorer, but even better in firefox. So that is the new site. Please rip on it, commend me, correct my spelling, tell me what browsers it doesn't work in, any feedback is great. Just click inside the little comment bubble! I hope you enjoy the redesign as much as I will enjoy not having to stare at that "Photoshop: Layer Effects 101" design I had for 4 years.
So it is very late and I have been working on the new design for this page for quite some time now. I will tell you that it will be up very soon. Now, I know that saying a page will be up soon isn't saying much, as websites go, I actually am almost finished not only with the design, but with all the little bits and pieces, html, javascript, css, etc. I'm pretty excited about the new layout too. I think it looks pretty sharp. Once I do launch the new layout, I will be looking into changing this blog from a blogger blog to a wordpress blog. I keep hearing good things about wordpress, and think I could utilize the tool very well. I'm glad you have all been patient with me saying a million times "now that I am done with [blank], I will have time to do a redesign!". This time it its done. The design is finalized, I'm just making everything work perfectly. I think I might be tired at work tomorrow.
 
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