A Whole Lotta Nothing

Today/Tonight/Tomorrow I'm at pb's wine

Today/Tonight/Tomorrow I'm at pb's wine party, which has its own blog.

Today was a day that

Today was a day that reminded me of the old days. I worked for 12 hours, and enjoyed every minute of it. I can't remember the last time I did that...

heh. look at the file

heh. look at the file name, then look at the picture.

Sorry AP, the cat's

Sorry AP, the cat's out of the bag.

I finally took a few

I finally took a few minutes to add the long-overdue contact, about, and photo pages. I'll hook the photo of the day scripts up (finally) in a day or two. I need to make more page headers (the "what's on my mind today" tagline was meant only for the main page), and write some longer things for the more section.

I'm this close to buying

I'm this close to buying a Rio 500 or a minidisc player, but then I see this and know I could get ten hours of music for a lower price (and same size package) as the Rio or an MD player. Unfortunately, it's not out yet, but they claim to be starting their production run this week. I want one of these mp3 CDR players so bad I can't stand it.

I spent time with my

I spent time with my family down in LA this weekend and it was great. I tried to avoid the TV and cnn.com as much as possible, as the Elian overload was too much to take (I did enjoy the exchanges on MetaFilter though).

I could write volumes on the subject, but I'll try to be as concise as possible: be skeptical. Be skeptical of everything you're seeing (especially what you're seeing) and reading, as the whole thing smacks of a perverted election-year political game. Put even more simply, the spin doctors are tugging your heart strings for a vote. Both sides of the political system, the newspapers, and the television news are all guilty of doing it, and I find the whole thing revolting.

Be skeptical.

After hearing everyone I know

After hearing everyone I know rave about Kozmo, I finally decided to give them a try. About a half hour after I hit "submit order," I had some cookies, ben and jerry's, and a copy of the 20th Anniversary edition Caddyshack DVD.

So I've got that goin' for me...which is nice.

The delivery was perfect, quick, and easy. I have a feeling I'll be using Kozmo a lot in the future.

ugh. I wish I could

ugh. I wish I could write something bright and cheery here today: things are going fine, and I got to hang out with someone I really admire today, but I feel like crap. For the first time in my life, I have allergies. After spending the last three years indoors in hyper-filtered, air-conditioned, sterile comfort at UCLA, I'm now prone to pollen. It's funny, but something that's just slightly irratating by itself, like a never-ending runny nose, can make everything worse.

blah. make it stop.

Today's lunch with the deepleapers

Today's lunch with the deepleapers was terrific, I've never had really good sushi before. We passed everything around and I got some yellow tail, eel, spicy tuna, scallops, avocado, and shrimp tempura rolls. It was great, makes me want to learn to make it.

All this week: I'm blogging

All this week: I'm blogging at the Improv. Thank you! I have another show at 9 and 11, be sure to tip your waitress!

Denise (I hate do the

Denise (I hate do the cross blog talk thing, but feel I should clarify something I said earlier), I know that the "those that get it and those that don't" may sound exclusionary and "us vs. them" but I think there's a slight misunderstanding. Anyone writing anything for the fun of it has all my respect and admiration. Yeah, that includes everything from Athens to Zeldman. I'm trying to think of an accurate analogy here, and I guess one would be driving. I'm saying some people "get it" and drive for the fun of it, and I'm constrasting that against people that get paid to drive, or only drive to get to work. So think of a person in a porsche boxster driving along a mountain road for the sheer thrill of feeling the g-forces, and constrast that with someone who is a chauffeur that drives people around for a living and doesn't even think about driving while doing it.

Maybe that's not the perfect analogy, but meeting someone that works for USWeb/CKS or iXL, and hearing that they don't have a personal site, and haven't touched one since their days in college back in '96 makes me think that they don't get the web. They build commerce sites because their employer tells them to, and they don't understand the greater scheme of things, how wonderful it is that someone in Australia, Africa, and India may be reading something you wrote and might email you their opinion. The internet is a significant technological invention, on par with the Gutenburg press. Anyone can write an email to anyone else on earth, anyone can put up a page and share their knowledge, and if everyone did this, the collective information would be an accomplishment that would have far reaching benefits.

Just thinking about it completely blows my mind, and many other people I know feel the same way. But then, I'm meeting people that don't share that feeling. They're working for a web company, but they're not participating in the "global conversation" (if you'll allow me to use cluetrain marketing-speak), they're just following orders and hope their stock splits soon before they vest.

I guess that's what I mean by "getting" the web. I hope everyone someday understands what we could be doing with this thing, the Internet, and doesn't dwell on the immediate financial benefits from the recent explosion in internet development. The "getting it" crowd isn't exclusive. Anyone is invited, everyone is welcome, and I know more people are "getting it" everyday.

Ack. It's becoming clear that

Ack. It's becoming clear that this page's design is at the mercy of MetaFilter's posts. I don't know of any way to force word wrap in a table cell, so I'll probably have to do some funky scripting to force line breaks every 50 characters or so.

My favorite geek rock band

My favorite geek rock band is doing one more. Too bad I have to wait 6 months to a year to hear it though.

Ryan's post about Metallica

Ryan's post about Metallica suing Napster features a quote from one of my favorite artists:

"I'll try to paraphrase something that Chuck D said a while back when an interview asked if it bothered him that his music was being freely distributed on the web, earning him no money-- The music that I create will always be mine, and making a copy or giving it away wont change that. If my creations aren't getting my message across, or they aren't earning me enough to make a living, then I've just got to work 2 or 3 or 10 times harder to create more. You can't download me."

Chuck D is the greatest...

Amen sister. It sounds more

Amen sister. It sounds more coherent than my ramblings on the issue. There's definitely a dichotomy out there between real web enthusiats and your everyday dot com worker.

Great work Nikolai, the new

Great work Nikolai, the new design is magnificent! (except for the goofy pointer on mouseover, don't mess with the UI! :)

The good news: the

The good news: the web-based TurboTax app/site is incredible. It's easy to use, the help system is great, and there was never a problem going forward or backward in the application. I finished my somewhat-complex taxes in about an hour.
The bad news: I owe over 3 grand in taxes. By Monday. And I'm still waiting for over 8 thousand in consulting fees to be paid to me. Hellllooooooo late fees! :(

Man oh man. I've been

Man oh man. I've been sitting at my computer for basically the last 48 hours straight, working on new designs for a project, and I forgot how mentally exhausting it is. I'm throwing paint at a canvas, trying to get it looking like something I want, but it's not coming close to my vision, so I keep trying, and eventually start over with a new canvas. There's a pile of discarded canvases, and even the ones I'm keeping need a lot of work.

Over the past few months, I've done design when I wanted to, and basically worked in photoshop only when I felt the inspiration to do so, I had forgot what it was like to design with a deadline in mind. Of course, on every project I've done in the past, the first 90% of my work is a wash, and only in the last 12 hours before a due date do I get some amazing idea that I end up going with. I guess I should calm down and ride it out until that last day...

Ev put some pics up

Ev put some pics up from last weekend's party (I'm too lazy/busy to put mine up). This one's definitely my favorite.

Kickass! jack joins Pyra. That

Kickass! jack joins Pyra. That place is going to start feeling like some sort of Superfriends Hall of Justice.

I'm glad to know that

I'm glad to know that this site is at the cutting edge of fashion style. heh.

While reading spiralgirl tonight (thanks

While reading spiralgirl tonight (thanks brig), I came across Tibor Kalman's manifesto. Amazing stuff. His book has been on my wishlist for a long time, looks like I'll have to pick it up this week.

This week's {fray} story is

This week's {fray} story is all about stupid things you did as a kid. I did so many stupid things, it was hard to come up with just one. I read a bunch of other people's stories, looked down at my finger and remembered one especially dumb moment in my life.

I need to wedge my

I need to wedge my webcam image somewhere into this site, but I don't know where yet. Oh, and I need to finish my daily photo thingy, I have a million photos to post.

Last night's party at Ev and Jake's was a hoot, I'll post a few assorted pics later tonight.

One of the cool things

One of the cool things about working at Pyra is that I get to surf the new blogger blogs. One of these new ones is The Breast Cancer Journal, and it's the most moving thing I've read all week. I'll continue to check it out and sincerely wish Karen a full recovery.

There just aren't enough hours

There just aren't enough hours in the day. Once I get my personal computer up to SF, and a fast connection at my new home, I'll finally get to all the metafilter bugs and 404s on this site. I never knew how much I depended on a cable modem, 28.8k on a borrowed pentium 200 just plain sucks.

I'm very happy to say

I'm very happy to say that my girlfriend got a faculty job at the University of San Francisco. It's also good to hear she'll be coming up sooner (late June) than we originally thought (early August). The past few days without her have rendered me lonely and a bit unhappy, I hope I can make it through another couple months of it.

Everything always happens at once, did you ever notice that? I end a job, start a new one, move to a new city, we celebrate our four year anniversary, she gets the job she really wanted, and we might be moving into a house that's nicer than we ever imagined. All these things happened within a time span of five days. Odd, no?

Rule #1 of working at

Rule #1 of working at Pyra: anything you say (even as a joke) may be blogged.

Can I tell you how

Can I tell you how much I love the Caltrain? Five minute walk to the station, 40 minute ride to SF, cross the street, and I'm at work. It's dead silent inside the train too, not like many of my rides on BART, where people might be talking loudly, arguing, or yelling at each other. Two days of Caltrain commuting, and I'm already over a hundred pages into a new book (and learning a new computer language because of it).

Oh and I haven't touched my car since I got here on Sunday. I can't remember the last time I didn't have to drive in my car for a few days when I was in Los Angeles.

Note to self: read this

Note to self: read this while you wait for two freelance clients to pay their large bills (which you were going to use to pay your taxes from last year's clients)

So we're out getting some

So we're out getting some lunch today, and I'm thinking to myself "I wonder if there are enough notable web people in San Francisco that I'll see one walk by?" But after walking a couple blocks, I realized there are millions of people here, and the chances are slim that we'd recognize anyone or ever be recognized by anyone ourselves. However, as we're eating lunch, Jeffrey Veen walks by, talking into his cell phone and we all stop eating long enough to say "Oh look, it's The Veen!" in hushed voices.

Starting tomorrow, I'm the fifth

Starting tomorrow, I'm the fifth blogger:

Last night, I went out

Last night, I went out and saw High Fidelity, which if you've ever worked at a record store, knew someone that did, or hung out at one yourself, it was the greatest movie ever made. If you're not into music or the indie rock scene, you probably wouldn't enjoy it too much. I loved it because it reminded me that one of my close friends in college worked at a record store, a place we hung out at pretty much 7 days a week, regardless that he was only scheduled for 3 or 4 of those days.

Much to my amazement and enjoyment, Jack Black was featured prominently in the film. JB is half of the greatest band in the world, Tenacious D, and even got to sing a kickass song. I'm buying the soundtrack as soon as humanly possible just to hear him sing "Let's Get It On" again.

I've been working on a redesign of this space for the last day or two, and it should hopefully be online this afternoon.

Damn, now that this new

Damn, now that this new design has been up for a few minutes, I've already started hating it. There are a couple problems: one, the page is too long, and two, there's just too damn much going on. It was based on this mockup, and I think I'm chaning the background color like this mockup, so the text pops out more, but it will still be too long. Oh well, back to the drawing board I go...

Although I'm not 100% happy

Although I'm not 100% happy with this new design, I like it more than the old one. Not all the links are working now, but over the next couple days I'll fill out the extra content. Aside from the roomier layout, I'll have daily photos off to the right.