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On Vox: Travelog: Las Vegas, NV
It was late Sunday night when I checked into the Rio, and as luck would have it, they upgraded my suite. This place is friggin' huge! There's a huge living room, dining area, and the bathroom itself is bigger than some other hotel rooms I've been in. I also have panoramic views of the strip and beyond from the floor-ceiling windows that wrap completely around one end of the Masquerade Tower. That's what I'm talkin'bout:
Originally posted on mirvana.vox.com
I <3 fish tacos
Happy Cinco de Mayo!
Buddha B-Day
Happy (belated) birthday Buddha!
QotD, 2
Typos are very important to all written form. It gives the reader something to look for so they aren't distracted by the total lack of content in your writing.
- Randy K. Milholland
QotD
It only takes 20 years for a liberal to become a conservative without changing a single idea.
- Robert Anton Wilson
Grumble
So I'll be in Las Vegas next week for the umpteenth time, and I am broke. I spent nearly $1k last month making some repairs to the car, and I've been throwing money at other problems lately. I'm not usually ever broke, ever. However, I always seem to be strapped when I'm due to go to LV for work. That way, I am totally stuck with the food and entertainment provided, and paid attractions are completely out of the question. The positive side: I will do alot of walking. I won't be able to spend a lot on an indulgent dinner. I will enjoy the spacious hotel suite.
Personal boundaries
No one can make you feel inferior without your permission.
~ Eleanor Roosevelt
Since I started using Google Reader to aggregate my newsfeeds, I've been discovering some new and interesting blogs to read, such as UrbanMonk.net. This article is third in a series about personal boundaries---How to Deal with Critics.
Happy May Day!
Addendum: Der Erste Mai photo blog! http://blog.flickr.net/en/2008/05/01/der-erste-mai-international/
Advice to new grads
After graduating from college umpteen years ago, I somehow managed to find a successful career. It's had itse ups and downs, but I can safely say that I'm happy with it now. I make enough money to keep a roof over my head and pay for my hobbies and indulgences. I get enough time off and flexibility with my schedule to have a life outside of work. How did I get there? Well, I didn't realize it at the time, but I was following the advice in this article, on Get Rich Slowly. Some Excerpts:
"Treat your time as an investment. It’s more important to invest your time wisely than to invest your money wisely."
"The people you work with are more important than the company. You want to work with people who have high integrity, people you can trust. It’s nice to work for a great company, but it’s better to work with great people."
"What you studied in school does not matter. Students should major in subjects they enjoy. They should pursue learning. One of Ron’s colleagues is a brilliant lawyer who has a degree in music. He knows a judge with a degree in pharmacology. Your degree does not matter."
"Self-discipline is the common denominator among the successful. In order to get into college and to earn a degree, one must exercise delayed gratification. This doesn’t end after school. Delayed gratification and self-discipline are necessary for continued success in life."
"Be willing to do grunt work. By doing the entry-level jobs, you’re building skills necessary to move up. As you progress in your career, find things in each job to be passionate about."
"It’s more important to be happy than it is to be rich."
An apple a day...
...Apples contain acetone, isopropanol and cyanide. It's the dose that counts. (Found on diet-blog.com)
Other interesting food facts here (link).
Organimization
...the ongoing saga continues...and I know I've been blathering on and on about Jott and Sandy and Google, but I just figured out how to add a feed directly from Sandy into Google Calendar (and Tripit also feeds in as well) and now all is right with the universe. It wasn't obvious because Firefox does not want to recognize the "subscribe" link in Sandy, but I just worked around that, and now it's all good.
Jott-->Sandy-->Google Calendar - I talk to my phone and it ends up in my calendar, and I get SMS reminders.
Tripit-->Google Calendar - I make travel arrangements and it ends up in my calendar.
I still haven't figured out how to sync Google Calendar with the Windows Mobile calendar on my phone, but I can access Google on my phone, so it doesn't matter much.
What's still broken is that I'm not getting SMS reminders directly from Google Calendar. I gave it my mobile info but I'm not getting the confirmation code.
In other news: I gots me a shredder. It does 20 pp. at a time, credit cards, and CDs. Bye-bye records from 2001 and older. And from now on, I will now be shredding all my junk mail. Anyone need compost?
I just consolidated three boxes of old photos into one. I ended up finding lots of old photos of my grandfather and his side of the family. Some of them are really old, like Victorian era. Amazingly I could identify a lot of the people in them. Funny how much a face can change in 80 years, but you still know who it is. I might bring some of these with me when I visit next month.
Yesterday, I started a major overhaul of my fabric stash. This is non-trivial. I was a pro seamstress for years, and I'm still an avid costumer. So far, I managed to sift through several years worth of scraps and start a big pile of stuff for the trash. The task continues tonight. My goal is to have everything contained in plastic bins, and to see the unobstructed surface of my 6' x 6' cutting table.
QotD
Remember, Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did, but backwards and in high heels.
- Faith Whittlesey
OMG New York Dolls!
"The music lineup for the Three Rivers Arts Festival in June has been released, and the first name that jumps off the list is the New York Dolls, the legendary punk band which reunited in 2004, more than 25 years after splitting." Full article here - http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/08119/877297-100.stm?cmpid=news.xml
tripit, tripit good
In addition to Google Calendar, Sandy, and Jott, I've also found tripit.com to be useful for organizing my itineraries for my trips. Basically all you do is email it your itinerary, and it accepts a lot of different formats, and then it parses it into a more readable format. The other cool thing is that it creates an iCal feed that you can import into Google Calendar. I can also access it from my mobile.
Another Web tool that I would add to the "useful" list is Google Notebook. If you do any kind of research, it let's you clip snippets of web pages and organize them into "notebooks." Kind of like virtual note cards.
Addendum: Blogit via Facebook is like the "firehose" of blog/update posting. However, you don't have many options as far as locking posts and so on. And it doesn't do myspace.
I <3 PW
You can't expect much of a turnout at 11am on a Sunday, but the people wandering around the Art All Night warehouse space seemed very appreciative of our set, and it was fun playing in the acoustics of such a cavernous venue. Can you hear the echo? echo? echo? echo?
Synchro-connectivity
The circuit is complete! I have figured out how to connect everything to everything! I call Jott to dictate a reminder to Sandy. Sandy sends me an email to confirm. With one click in Gmail, I can add the reminder to my Google Calendar. Sandy also sends me an SMS alert prior to the appointment. My phone vibrates, telling me "why am I not already on my way to the appointment..." I am almost completely satisfied with this sequence of operations.
Note:
*I wish that Sandy (or Google) could update my calendar in Windows Mobile, too.
*I do not and never will use Outlook, which seems to be the missing component in linking everything in the universe together, but this is a good workaround.
UPDATE: Oh snap! Jott will update my Google Calendar, and in theory, Google Calendar will send me SMS reminders. However, for some reason it's not working with my phone. So I still need Sandy to send me the reminders.
ADDENDUM: Ok so Jott will actually send me SMS reminders, too. I think the only difference with using Sandy is that I can "tag" items, whereas Jott uses lists.
ART ALL NIGHT!
Art All Night in Lawrenceville is this Saturday and Sunday. Patricia Wake and I will be performing at 11 am on Sunday. Lots of other cool bands to see on Saturday night and Sunday. Check it out - http://www.artallnight.com/
QotD
Coming home from very lonely places, all of us go a little mad: whether from great personal success, or just an all-night drive, we are the sole survivors of a world no one else has ever seen.~John le Carre
Blah
Having trouble sleeping...check. No appetite...check. Apathetic...check.
On Vox: Books: The Jane Austen Book Club
I finished reading this one quite a while ago and just haven't posted it. I really liked this story. It's about a group of people who meet at one another's homes periodically to discuss Jane Austen, and if you like Jane Austen, you might appreciate this. However, this novel is about so much more than that. Each member of the book club has their own story and perspective on the group, and I liked how each character developed as the story progressed. The writing style and the characters are modern and people that you can relate to, but I think there are many other parallels with Jane Austen. For example, some of the characters must endure personal tragedy, but it has a somewhat unexpected "happy" ending.
Originally posted on mirvana.vox.com
On Vox: Books: Rainbows End
I haven't posted a book review in a while, eventhough I have actually been reading. I finally finished this one by Vinge. I thought it was ok. I had trouble following it at times, but I thought it was interesting as a work of speculative fiction.
It was a "time travel/fish out of water" story of sorts. The main character, who was stricken with Alzheimer's, is cured 20 years later, through the miracles of medical technology, and of course, the world he awakens to is very different. The main difference being how pervasive wireless/network/communications technology is at that point. Hand-held devices are a thing of the past and most people "wear" their computers and phones, which are built into their clothing. Extra bonus: you also have the ability to "overlay" different virtual realities on your view of the world.
If you are any kind of gamer or Internet-aholic, this novel is for you.
Originally posted on mirvana.vox.com
ART ALL NIGHT!
Art All Night is a grassroots event staged by an all-volunteer crew. A joyful celebration of the arts and
community, the show grows in popularity each year, bringing thousands of people from all over the region into Lawrenceville. Last year, Art All Night Lawrenceville featured work by 850 artists and was attended by over 7,000 guests. http://www.artallnight.com/
Date: April 26-27, 2008
Time: 6 p.m. Saturday to 2 p.m. Sunday
Location: former Roomfull Express Warehouse
# 2 57th Street in Lawrenceville
our largest space ever!
Patricia Wake and I will be performing on Sunday at 11 am.
Vote!
Remember to vote!
Remember to vote tomorrow
 Clipped from pghwomenbloggers -
http://pghwomenbloggers.blogspot.com/2008/04/no-matter-your-choice-please-vote.html
Airsoft...
Was fun today. We had to get up too early on a Saturday morning, and then we got lost and got there a couple hours late, but we didn't miss much---only the first game. Got to play until we both had enough. We played one scenario where a smaller number of people held the barn, while the rest of us tried to take it. The defenders could not "re-spawn," but offense had unlimited re-spawns. It was proof that a small number of people could hold a structure for a long time against the odds. Then we played another scenario where we divided evenly into two teams starting on opposite ends of the field and the goal was to take the barn in the middle and hold it for at least 20 minutes. I didn't like that one as much. If you got hit and had to walk back to the respawn point, by the time you got back to the barn, the game was over. I would have liked to stay for another game, but Stef had enough and my boots were starting to hurt my feet.
Although I did get hit a number of times, I think I'm getting better at this game. I might have actually hit some people. My new gear worked out really well. I have a carrier/vest for carrying mag pouches and stuff, and a camelback---all made a world of difference in my performance and enjoyment of the game. I was also wearing Under Armor---that stuff is awesome! Kept me very cool and dry. I just need better boots, and I already ordered a pair of Rocky's, but they haven't come yet. This is not too different than things I've done before. It's costuming and role-playing, combined with intense physical activity, with a bunch of other geeks. I like it.
Observations:
There seem to be two very different demographics playing this sport: young folks, under 18, who don't have good gear and don't really care. They just want to play and have fun. They like counting the number of "kills" they get and "pwning" their opponents. And then there are the older folks who are basically adults playing with expensive toys. These people (myself included) go a bit crazy with all the gear and looking the part. I don't think we are counting kills so much or even caring about the outcome of a skirmish. Our competition is in who has the coolest stuff. Two very different groups, but it's not unusual to see parents with their kids into this, because it has something for everyone.
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