I don't know what day this was, but must have been in the summer...

Offered Without Comment

I must not have slept well that day...

Maybe a little surreal...

KITTEEEEEEE

My Two Phones

Since it came up yesterday, yes, my new phone is bigger than my old one - wider, taller, and a touch thicker. For all that, it feels lighter, and more ephemeral. Not sure if it's actually more fragile, or just comes across that way when I'm carrying it around.

I need to get me some screen protectors and a case. >.<

So I got into work this morning...

...and unsurprisingly, the goddamn sun was glaring straight through my window onto my screen, glaring on it. Like it does every damned day. I started to close the blinds, and Cheryl asked me not to, because "It's too dark" with the two blinds closed and "we have the best seats in the building".

First, if it's too dark with two of the four blinds closed that light our area and the overhead lights on full, you need your eyes checked. And second, I've been asking to move since I got given this seat. I'd gladly be somewhere else - somewhere that doesn't have a direct damned line from the sun to my computer screen. You can enjoy your seat all you want, I've been begging for months to be somewhere else.

Fuck this day.

Bacon is a killer!

Credit where credit is due...

...Modern companies really know how to move shit when they want to. Ordered my new phone at 8:40 yesterday morning; it was boxed and labelled in Google's warehouse (Mountain View, CA) at 12:21 AM this morning; UPS picked it up and scanned it in at 2:01 AM; at 7:15 AM, it was scanned in to Latham, NY; and at 11:30, it was at my door. Less than 27 hours from hitting "Confirm" on the web site to its being delivered. I know that "next day" is common enough these days, but actually seeing the timeline for some reason makes it more impressive to me... Especially the 5-hour window from warehouse on one coast to warehouse on the other.

Way cheerier than I typically feel!

Incoming mail!

Goldfish have terrible memories, you know!

A small musical interlude...

Outbound Postcards!

Outbound Mail!

Outbound mail!

Incoming Mail...

...complete with awesome home-made bookmark!

Incoming Mail!

Incoming mail!

All stick figures should have hats...

A volcanoooooooo!

I'm pretty sure this was meant to be something at the time...

...but for the life of me I can't remember what it was.

I know, so boring...

In other news...

...I wish I'd had the foresight to set up buzzword bingo cards with my coworkers. This talk is choc-full-of buzzwords. "Continuous Monitoring!" "Advanced Persistent Threat!" "Big Data!" "Cloud!" Gaaaah.

I hate to say it, but yesterday's talks were far superiour, at least so far.

Good morning!

Trying to wake up, some days, is far more difficult than it should be. I've been sleeping very poorly all week, and it doesn't help that I had to get up earlier than normal today. It took me a good hour to wake up, and that was right up against the point at which I'd meant to leave... So of course I left late - complicated by the fact that I needed to stop to put air in my tire again.

Have I mentioned my tire before? It's got a slow leak. I feel like it says something about me that when I went in for an oil change/maintenance (3500 miles and several months ago), I totally forget to get it looked at. What does it say about me? I dunno. That I'm forgetful at 7:30 in the morning, while still not fully awake? I see a theme here.

It confused me at the time, of course, that the leaking tire moved. It wasn't for a couple of days I remembered they'd rotated the tires. >.< Either way, the next oil change is due, as well as my NY inspection, so it needs to go in sooner than later as it is. I'll just have to remember to ask them to look at it while it's in.

As an aside, while leaving my parking lot this morning, I drove past one of the other folks in my complex with a Shih Tzu - in this case, an old lady. Her dog, compared to Jasper, is downright tiny, and has extremely fine hair. The more I see other Shih Tzus, the more I'm amazed that Jasper's built like a brick and with very coarse hair.

The fact that he's not the brightest? Seems right in line with every other Shih Tzu I've met...

All my drawings are online now, FYI - they're scheduled one per day, which brings them out pretty much to the end of April. If I create anything new, I'll just schedule it to post up at the end of that stream, if I actually draw anything before they've all posted.

Anyway... I'm more or less awake now, caffeine or no. And willing or no...

More random testing...

More playing around

Pen Mail Call!

It was suggested to me I should post pictures of the mail I got. Well? Okay. Here's most of the mail I've received so far in the course of finding pen pals online.And yes, those are ketchup packets. :-P

Drawings - The Randomness

So one thing I've done on and off in the last two years since I got my current iPad, is draw things. Some of them were pointless; some of them were strange; and some of them were actually reasonably good. Some had stories behind them, and some were utterly random. Either way, none are particularly secret or anything; so I'll post them.

And the first couple were entirely me playing around with a new app:

Why do I do this?

Uhhh...

On Chopped I'm watching a Japanese guy with a hybrid Japanese/English accent trained in classical French cooking. It's fascinating. I kindof hope he wins...

Paper

It occurred to me yesterday, I have a large number of things - mostly of rather low quality - that I've drawn. A few of them at least have made it onto my blogs - I couldn't tell you how many - but I don't have backup copies of them anywhere... Just the originals in Paper on my iPad.

That's not a great situation.

I should really fix that...

So the biggest problem with my blogging...

...is that my blogging urges usually go something like this:

1) I come up with an idea. I'm at work in a meeting, and can't do anything about it.

2) I forget about it, and continue my work day.

3) I leave work to pick up Aidan. Remember the idea. Can't do anything about it because I'm driving.

4) Consider typing it up on my iPad while I'm at Tae Kwon Do with Aidan. Give up on it because I'm not on the network.

5) Get home, having forgotten about it.

6) Remember, and don't do it because I feel weird blogging with people watching.

7) Forget again and go to bed.

8) Rinse and repeat the following day.

In other news, the fastest way to my heart is apparently using curry and delicious, delicious crusty bread:

http://honestcooking.com/lamb-and-potato-bunny-chows/

Say something...

So there are really four things about songs that make me like them. First, I like songs that affect me emotionally; second, I like songs that interest me musically; third, I like songs that I can sing and enjoy singing; and fourth, I like songs that I can relate to. Most songs only hit one or two of them, occasionally three. A very, very few hit all four.

The real wildcard there is the second one; "interesting me musically" is both unpredictable and a moving target... But is also the biggest factor.

It came to mind, because "Say Something" (by Great Big World and Christina Aguilera) managed to hit all four, and is currently up there with "Love is Love" and "The Moon Song" as one of my couple favourite songs. I'm enjoying it. You should go listen to it if you aren't familiar.

So I'm terrible at this "blogging" thing...

...But I don't want to dwell on it. Recently, someone linked to this in their own blog:

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/38065/38065-h/38065-h.htm

And it occurred to me that those rules could just as easily apply to blogs as well. More specifically at this moment, spending more than a page and a half apologizing for not writing in so long isn't recommended.

Though to the point, I'm not planning on putting my full name and address onto the top of each blog entry.

Also, it amuses me how randomly sexist one of his comments is. I suppose it may have been meant as tongue-in-cheek, but still.

So one of the big things I've been doing the last few days is cleaning the pictures off of my phone. A chunk of them are ones I just am now hiding on my computer for the moment (things which are... Ah, not appropriate for publishing to the world at large), but things like pictures and videos from vacations and martial arts events are going up.

If you didn't know, I made red-and-blue belt at the end of January. I'm also doing Tae Kwon Do at the moment as well. Now if only I wasn't so tired...