Wednesday, January 31, 2007

Serendipity

We’ve been looking at apartments and various houses, duplexes, townhomes and guest houses for rent. Man there’s a lot of crappy places out there, especially when compared to a nicely fixed up house like ours.  We found endless teeny weeny bedrooms, old run-down appliances, and outlets so dated they don’t even have the third prong hole. (Enter Beavis and Butthead: Uhh huhuhuhuh… you said prong hole.)

Anyway, we finally found a really nice place for just under $2000, and in a nice area to boot. The landlord said someone else was hoping to apply there too, so yesterday I rushed the application over and was pleased to have beaten her by 10 minutes. It wasn’t as cheap as we were hoping for, but it was manageable (unlike our mortgage).

That same day I got home from work and the first thing out of my sweety’s mouth was, “I found us a house!”

I was dumbfounded. I kind of stared at her, probably slackjawed, like a jock in trigonometry class. “A house?”

“Yes! A house! for $1600!”

“What? Where? How?” I was still trying to wrap my brain around the possibility. Thus far everything we’d looked at that was under $1800 was unacceptable or unavailable.

She went on to tell me that someone had told her about a house for rent a few blocks from our current residence. Upon arrival it had already been rented, but as she was driving away she noticed a For Rent sign posted on the lawn of another house. Turns out it was really nice inside, and cheap! We get the impression that it’s the home owner’s first time renting, so the way I see it, both sides were very lucky to have found each other.  And it’s only two blocks from our house!

Tuesday, January 30, 2007

Uh, let's not stop here

Over the weekend we were driving around various parts of town looking at apartment vacancies. Some parts were better than others in terms of “would you feel safe living there”. Well at one point we encountered this on the road:

We were moving so my sweety was only able to get one shot using my cellphone. Let me describe what you are looking at little better. This ugly-ass van had a set of those “wannabe spinners for wannabe pimp-daddies”. Maybe you’ve seen them, they look like little propellers better suited for model airplanes than a vehicle. To complete this bizarre interpretation of ghetto fabulous, the steering wheel had a cover on it. I had to squint to make out what the design was, but I was positive it was Tinkerbell. This big, hispanic, hairy male, who was blasting bad Ranchero music from his cheap stereo system, had his hands on a Tinkerbell steering wheel cover.

Not surprisingly, we said, “Let’s not stop here” and moved on to the next listing.

Monday, January 29, 2007

I feel so guilty

The furballs are spoiled completely rotten, I know, and it’s mostly my fault. They live the life of doggy luxury. But this morning I had to lock them in the guest house because an appraiser was coming to the house to evaluate the premises. There’s no carpeting, furniture or anything hospitable in there. Plus it’s kinda cold too.  I did bring all their blankets, bedding and a few little treats, but it isn’t home for them. They’re going to be so freaked out. They have to stay there all day until I get back from work. I feel so guilty. It’s like locking your children in the closet because “guests” are coming over. But the nice thing about dogs is that they always forgive you.

Thursday, January 25, 2007

It is what it is

You know that phrase, “It is what it is”?  I hear it way too often.  Every time someone says it, I think, “Well what else would it be??” It is what it is, unless of course it’s something else.   

Wednesday, January 24, 2007

Sing with me... At the car wash! Woo!

I felt sorry for my poor car covered in filth, so I took it to the nearby drive-through car wash. Now, this isn’t your average cheapy 30-second car wash at the gas station. This is a fully automated car wash that lasts almost 5 minutes, and leaves your car mostly dry at the end. Considering how much I enjoy watching rain, it’s no surprise that I love staring through my windows as the car goes through the wash. I’m going to give you a picture tour, but unfortunately I didn’t remember to start taking pictures until after I was inside. Also, these photos were taken with my MP3 player, which is only marginally better than my cell phone’s picture quality. Anyway, first an overview…

This is the view of the car wash from my cubicle, 13 stories up.

As soon as you put your car in neutral, you are propelled inside, squirted with soap and hit with multiple spinning soft-cloth brushes.

Then a rack of big chunks of spongy-looking cloth zig-zags across your car.

Then you go through rinse #1. Wouldn’t it be funny if there was a spin cycle? Whoawhoawhoawheeeee!

If you paid a little extra for it, you get some spray-on clear-coat polish stuff that makes the water slide off your car more easily. It’s neat because it’s multi-colored foam.

I like to open the sunroof cover (not the actual sunroof!) to see what’s going on up there. I tried to take a photo of it, but it came out looking like proof that the moon really is made of green cheese. Behold the awesome cheapness of this camera!

At the final rinse you can see the light at the end of the tunnel. You’re never all that far off from the car in front of you.

Finally you pass through The Wind Tunnel. There are about 15-20 giant industrial hair dryers up there, blowing air with enough force that you can hear it clearly from my floor inside the office building. It seriously sounds like freeway noise.

Wasn’t that fun? Don’t you want to go again??

Tuesday, January 23, 2007

A sign that you no longer love your job

Coworker: Good morning! (chipper voice)
Me: Good morning. (not so chipper)
Coworker: How are you doing?
Me: I’m okay.
Coworker: Only okay?
Me: Well we’re here aren’t we?
Coworker: Good point.

Monday, January 22, 2007

My poor frozen-to-death grass

I grew up in a perpetually temperate zone, so here’s a question for you folks in snowy/icy states: does your grass die every winter? My lawn is completely dead, except for a few patches under bushes and trees, as if I haven’t watered it all season long. I’m guessing it’s the unusually freezing temperatures, but I don’t know for sure. Does it just grow back in the spring?

Not that I expect to still have a lawn to worry about come spring, but I just like to know things. All the neighbors’ lawns appear to be the same way. However the grass around this high-rise I work in is still green. Like really impossibly green. How do they keep it from freezing to death? I think they paint it. Maybe I should paint my lawn green too.

Saturday, January 20, 2007

Sweet tooltip popups for acronyms and other notes

Like most bloggers, I sometimes get blog envy over some particular feature.  It’s been awhile, since I tend to be rather complacent and don’t like to change what is already working so well. But I’ve been seeing a lot of blogs that have these nifty little tooltips that look like this: (hover your mouse over this).

Although I’m rather fond of using parentheses (even though it’s a bitch to spell), this is just so much cooler and befitting of a geek. If any of you are interested in getting this feature for yourself, I found it here. It uses two JS files, a CSS file, and that’s it. Oh yeah, I had to add a little bit to the CSS to make it underline the word with a dotted line. Here’s what I added:

acronym {
border-bottom: 1px dotted #666;
cursor: help;
}

Simply add this to the one CSS file that they provide you and you’ll be all set.

Zippety doo dah!

Friday, January 19, 2007

Cajones

I went to a store today and parked behind a pickup truck. The first thing my eyes riveted on was this:

Needless to say, I was all, “What the- What is that?” I mean, they really look like some kind of anatomy, but I wasn’t sure which. Boobs? Butt? Balls? It had to be some kind of a B word.

When I got out of the car, a good look the truck told me everything I needed to know:

Yup, those are balls.

Thursday, January 18, 2007

It's the simple things

I received an email at work the other day with an attachment.  Outlook displays a large icon and wraps the text of the file name as it sees fit. So this is what I saw:

It was a very Beavis and Butthead moment. “Uhh-huhuhuh… you said anal.”

Can you put blog posts on a milk carton?

Hmm, it appears that some mishap involving the database has caused my last two posts to disappear.  No worries, I’ll just recreate them, although their corresponding comments will be gone.  I’m not whining though, because it still beats the last server I was on that had an uptime of about 60%. Please stand by… but don’t hold your breath. I don’t want to be responsible for your hospital visit because you passed out and hit your head on your cereal bowl. Nor do I want to be responsible for the computer bills for having to replace a shortcircuited keyboard that drowned in milk.

Wednesday, January 17, 2007

I'm such a nerd

Yesterday as I was driving home from work, I noticed the scum along the edges of my windshield where the wipers won’t reach. My car really needs a wash—it’s filthy and covered with likely multiple layers of dirt and grime. It’s made worse by the fact that it gets damp at night so the dirt sort of congeals into interesting patterns.

So I was thinking about this as I was driving home, and thought back to the frost from this morning. Frozen wet dirt… isn’t that pretty much what tundra is? I had tundra on my car! I actually said this aloud and giggled. I’m such a nerd.

Tuesday, January 16, 2007

Back to the grind

As I walked out to my car this morning, I was alarmed at the deadness that my front lawn appeared to be. There was barely any green at all. But as I looked more closely (and saw my car as well) I finally noticed that most of the haze covering the greenery was frost. Everything was frosty. With curiosity I poked a patch of grass with my toe. It stayed flat. I felt bad about that. I just permanently crushed a little patch of grass that now has no hope to recover because it was frozen solid and I just crushed it. Poor patch of grass. I’m sorry. Rest in peace and please grow back quickly so my house has more curb appeal, thank you.

While my car unfrosted itself, I made another Random Pointless Recording! (1:48 long, 745KB) Yes I know you were all eagerly waiting for another one of these because my voice is just soooo hypnotic and soothing to your soul.

Monday, January 15, 2007

It's a good day

It’s Monday. Yup, Monday again… AND I’M NOT WORKING! YEEAAAH!  Woot woot! 

We cleaned the house on Friday in a whirlwind of organizing activity, preparing for Saturday’s open house.  There was a pretty good turnout (we turned on the webcam’s motion detection to verify what the realtor was telling us, aren’t we sneaky?) There were a couple of interested parties, but the important thing is, we don’t have to do anything today because the house is already immaculate, wheeee!

Friday, January 12, 2007

Morning thoughts

I’m sleepy.
But it’s better than being weepy.
Or living in a teepee.
Or smelling like peepee.
Or being with someone creepy.
I really need this 3-day weekend-eepy.

Site Statistics

This page has been viewed 1008189 times
Page rendered in 0.7790 seconds
Total Entries: 642
Total Comments: 5769
Total Trackbacks: 0
Most Recent Entry: 03/23/2011 08:26 am
Most Recent Comment on: 03/26/2011 10:14 am
Total Members: 1
Total Logged in members: 0
Total guests: 8
Total anonymous users: 0
Most Recent Visitor on: 02/06/2012 03:01 pm
The most visitors ever was 781 on 03/02/2007 04:25 am