I’m moving to a real interweb

That about sums it up.

Find the new blog here. Just a default setting for now. Bear with me while I practice my CSS skills.

New Year’s Resolutions

Well it’s a new year so we all should be thinking about what we want to accomplish for 2009. I’ve been making a mental list for things I would like work on for myself for the next 365 days. Here’s a brief list of my resolutions for the new year.

1. Be better about energy consumption. This is my big one for 2009. I’m going to work at watching how much energy I use/waste throughout the year. This includes turning off lights when I leave a room, turning off my laptop when I go to work for the day, only have my chargers for my laptop and cell phone plugged in when I’m using them, and turning my Wii all the way off more often.

2. Work at being cleaner. I’m a cluttery person. My apartment is riddled with random papers and receipts and I need to get more organized. This year I’m going to try and be more organized in my personal life.

3. Save 10-15 percent of my paychecks each month. Just a smart thing to do all around. I’ve really enjoyed buying things these past few months, but now it’s time to start putting stuff into savings for things I really want/life’s unexpected surprises.

4. Go to the gym at least four times a week. Saying “lose __ pounds” isn’t much of a goal and it’s totally cliche. My goal is to double my gym visits a week and the pounds will melt away from having a more active lifestyle.

5. Study Japanese more. With me starting Chinese classes in a few weeks through work I want to tie in what I learn from those classes and apply it to further my study of Japanese. P.S. The Chinese characters for “panda” literally translates into “bear-cat” and I think that is the best thing ever.

Well those are my resolutions. What are yours everyone? Blog them and let’s encourage each other to reach our goals for 2009. And as they say in Japan …

明けましておめでとうございます！

Happy New Year

The most useful thing I’ve seen on CNet

For anyone who is tired of only bein able to sync their iPod to one computer:

Sync Your iPod to Two Computers

This hack works for the iPod, iPhone and for Mac and Windows. It’s incredibly useful for people like me who have two computers (work and home) with two different types of music on there.

Sure I could just put all music on one computer, but where’s the hacking fun in that?

It’s snowing

Or rather is snowed for about an hour on Friday. But here are some pictures of Saturday of Pica trying to figure out what all this white stuff is. He’s gone outside in the snow a couple times, but promptly decieds he doesn’t like it and meows at the window to come back in. Then he contemplates it from his lookin’ spot as showcased below. Also I threw in a photo of Pica holding a teddy bear just for fun (it’s his mauling bear).

So many Rolling Stones

My parents’ Christmas gifts to me were subscriptions to Time and Rollin Stone magazines. Coupled with my own subscription to Newsweek, I shall soon have a magazine collection to rival any doctor’s office in town. Rolling Stone has been doing its part by sending me four seperate magazines in two days. The ones that came today seemed like two completely different music magazines. Take a look at the covers and tell me which one you think I want to read more?

or

I’ll be going with Cover 2. Though I am curious about those green sex toys.

Excess you say?

This was a nice little treat to read at the end of A.O. Scott’s review of Cadillac Record:

“Cadillac Records” is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian). It has smoking, swearing, sex and mayhem in excess, which is just the right amount.”

It’s the little things like that that make me smile. However, nothing will ever compare to the rating description given to Twister by the MPAA:

Rated PG-13 for intense depiction of very bad weather

Gotta reign in that spending

So I’ve been spending a lot lately. Quite a lot actually. Not enough where I can’t pay my bills, but I can’t put in the 15-20% of my paycheck into savings like I’ve wanted to. On the plus side I just bought a Mac (which is part of the reason why I had been saving money so I guess it’s not so bad that I’m broke). It’s going to suck for people for Christmas though. I won’t be going home for Christmas so I’ve made the decision to not buy gifts for my family until afterward to try and put some ease on my December credit card balance. That way my brother can bring them home to everybody when he visits in January. 

But I sat down tonight and made an action plan for how I’m going to cut down on spending. Here’s the jist:

1. Stop eating out/going to bars. Estimated savings: $100 – $150 a month
2. Drive to work a maximum of once a week. Estimated savings: $150 a month in gas and parking fees
3. Limit fashion purchases to $50 a month. Estimated savings: $100-$150 a month
4. Buy only the fresh food I need for the next few days. Estimated savings $10-$30 a month
5. Stop James from guilting me into going out in Spokane and then guilting me into paying because he drove up here. Estimated savings: $20 – $60 a month

Anyone who has any more ideas is welcome to comment below.

Happy Thanksgiving and updates

Well, I’m back at my parents house in Renton and have been since Saturday. James and I have spent the whole week here to go to a friend’s wedding (with a codename I dare not write on the internet) and we decided to stick around for Thanksgiving. It’s been kind of nich, though I feel like I cheated the working world getting yet another week off for Thanksgiving like I did at WSU. But if it makes the working world feel any better, I had to buy a $130 dress that I’ll never wear again.

I’ve been doing my usual technical voodoo at home for my parents: uploading photos from their digital cameras to the computer (yes they still don’t know how to do this), Adding and Removing programs and defragmenting their dinosaur computer that they got when I was in 9th grade. After my technical witchcraftery was done, James and I spent our days going to downtown Seattle and Renton for fun and shopping. I’ve been taking advantage of the sagging economy and using all the coupons I found in The Seattle Times to get some early Christmas shopping done. I took James to the newly renovated Southcenter Mall and we didn’t get shot so I consider the trip to be a success. On a sad note, some of my mom’s students were at the mall the day of the shooting and they’ve had to bring in trauma counselors to work with the kids.

Work has been fine, we’ve made it through a “rough” period financially and are now back on track. Apparently all the departments are getting budgets and one of the items on the list is a new Mac for me. And not just any Mac this Mac. It’s so beautiful I want to fall asleep next to it.

Also everyone at work is equally stoked that Flash CS4 will come with bidirectional language support. I.E. We can do Arabic Flash presentations. We already were doing Arabic Flash presentations but now I don’t have to do the neat trick I learned that makes the presenations take twice as long to make, but it got us mucho dinero for our efforts.

I’ve been doing a lot of independent study of my Japanese. I’ve busted out my old Level 3 (my current Japanese level) textbooks and have been trying to work my way to understanding my Level 2 (a really freaking hard level) textbooks. I’ve been spending a lot of time brushing up on the basics. I changed my WordPress and Facebook default languages to Japanese (sorry if that’s confused anyone) to get some practice while I’m internetting. I’m also going to be taking some Chinese classes come January, which should also be a lot of fun and I’m hoping the readings will be easy since I already no a lot of the characters.

Well, that’s what’s been going on with me. I’ll try to be better about updating this more so I can keep in touch with everyone.

P.S. Kaci, if you’re reading this, we need to get together and soon. For realsies.

If it’s not a fact why don’t you say so?

Today I was listening to NPR at work while they were interviewing a McCain staffer about Barack Obama’s policies. The staffer went on to spout the McCain mantra that Obama is going to move us all into socialism. At this point the host interrupted the staffer briefly to remind the listener that they can sort out the truth of these claims by looking at the fact checking sub head under the Election 2008 coverage at npr.org.

Since when does a news organization not give us the whole story. I understand that with political reporting you have to be nice to both sides and let everyone have their  fair share and say their carefully scripted talking points. But if something is untrue and you know it’s untrue and you have the facts at your fingertips that tell everyone its untrue then why don’t you say something. Oh you might lose the uncredible source as a source? Damn. The campaign might not talk to you again? Shoot. It’s your responsiblity as a national news organization to inform your listerners (and readers) for innaccuracies as soon as they occur. Just like putting a correction in the newspaper, it’s your responsibility to say “Whoa, champ. The Socialist Party nominee is actually Brian Moore.”

I know that cultivating sources is difficult. It’s like becoming their best friend while at the same time remaining impartial. But if you know what they’re saying is an outright lie, untrue and will misinform your viewership it is your responsibility as a journalist to stand up and do what’s right. Call the staffers liars.

The other irony: I can’t even find this fact-checking page the host referred to. But it doesn’t even matter anymore.

Remember to vote tomorrow, every one!

Now that we’re all here … moo

Yes it’s true. My sense of decency was violated.

Our CEO came to town last week and it was very interesting to say the least. He’s a really casual guy and very easy to be around. I thought it would really stressful to have him there, but it was nice and (dare I say it) almost fun.

The weirdest part was when we had our all-staff meeting on Tuesday, which was prequeled by a number of smaller meetings the week before, and we had a “connection exercise.” First we all had to close our eyes and meditate for a little while. I was sharing a tiny leather chair with a coworker so all I could really focus on was how sticky the seat was getting.

Then my CEO said the words …

“Now I want you all to bark like a dog.”

What?

Yes it’s true we barked (or Jessica and I snorted to sound like another coworker’s pug). And then …

“Moo like a cow.”

You’re sick man. Just sick.