check this shiznit out

gavin really likes blue’s clues.

he’s started finding clues throughout the house.  he says “A clue! A clue!” when he sees something paw-shaped around the house.  this is a really post-modern experience for me and brings up an interesting question.

what is this thing that we’re finding clues for?  i haven’t written down all the clues in my Handy Dandy Notebook or sat in my Thinking Chair to Think.  Think.  Think. yet, but still…

i also think we’ve found more than 3 clues.  this is definitely an elaborate game of blue’s clues.

so there we were.  playing guildwars.  trying to get some new characters to a high enough level that we can beat the mission which will unlock the ability to go from the nightfall campaign back to the original prophecies campaign.  we’re running aroung collecting XP from the quests we just finished, when, all of a sudden, click, my computer shuts off.

at first i think it’s the monitor.  i have this old 19″ from when we were at college and the color is going which has caused us to a) shop for new lcd flatscreens (cuz I can’t just get on and then be jealous!) and b) swapped monitors so i have the big, but slightly off-color monitor and erin has the color accurate monitor (she seems to do more interesting things with color in graphic design — choices for specific colors when i would go more basic. i decided she needed accuracy more than i did).  so i fiddle with that a bit, and eventually i’m staring at the monitor test thing bouncing across the screen saying “your monitor is working correctly.”  no it’s not, i tell the computer, but it doesn’t listen.

in reality, it is working correctly.  well as correct as it can.  because as it turns out, my character drops off the network in her game and when i try to reboot the computer it does…nothing.  literally nothing.  no happy little beep saying it booted or anything.  i start to get concerned.

first, i try using an ubuntu live cd — i figure if the hard drive went, then i should still be able to boot off the cd.  but after powering the box on, i can’t even get the cd tray to eject.  nothing happens.  i don’t get the pre-operating system self test (POST) screen up, even.  that means there’s something fairly serious wrong along the main brains of the system, the motherboard/processor.

good thing we have the media center, i say, and proceed to pull the new computer that was being used as media center over and swap hard drives.  i figure, the hard drive should still get me into windows and i can just rejoin the game as soon as i swap drives.  but as soon as i swap drives and boot up the new computer with the old drive, i get a bluescreen flash and then reboot.  flash of bluescreen, reboot.  it’s not even up long enough for me to read the error.  so now i’m looking at a bad mobo/proc and hard drive.

so for now the media center is acting as my backup computer until i get new hardware.  i put the original hard drive back in and installed the software i need to do my work.  the only thing lost in this fiasco is just the apps i run, since everything, all my files and everything for web design work, is saved on my server.  ’cause, you know, that was the whole point.  and the server has backups done weekly, so yeah, no harm no foul, just an annoyance, and you know, money.  money that was previously going to my macbook.  /sigh.  i really think the fates are against me in getting this laptop.  i’m going to perservere, though, if it takes every piece of electronics in the house out in the process of getting the laptop.

in completely random other news, however, damn this is a nice machine i built here.  vista runs like a charm, which, you know, is ironic since when i last installed it, it completely trashed my hard drive and led me to vow to never install that piece of trash ever again ever.  this is a much better machine, of course, and newer, and probably really built to run vista (actually, it was precisely built to run vista because the original remote i had only ran on vista, but i ended up having to reinstall it and replaced it with a stripped down vista which didn’t include the requisite driver and i couldn’t get the requisite driver from the manufacturer).  still, it never fails to surprise me to see vista running the way it should.  and fast, too.  so i’ve perhaps changed my mind that it is the spawn of satan.  perhaps…

just a quick update for those who care about my crazy eye issues…

i went back for my followup appt. for my contacts. if you’re just joining us, previously i had talked about my keratoconus and that i will be wearing contacts for forever (or until it’s down to eye surgery or nothing) to counter the pointy-ness of my eyeballs.

fast-forward >> i went in for my followup. my left eye had been bothering me when i was wearing the contacts, but overall, my vision seems better when i’m wearing them (read: when i can stand to wear them). i tell the doc that it’s been bothering me so we do another exam for the prescription and tweak it a bit and try a different style lens, which feels better. but it’s as i’m wearing this and he’s staring at my eyeball through the crazy contraption thingie and he says to the student who’s in the room observing “oh, he’s a half-blinker.”

……wtf?

“i’m a half-blinker, eh?” i say, amused. apparently part of my problem is that i am a half-blinker. he tells me a lot of new contact wearers will blink halfway thinking (probably subconsiously that it will hurt/bother them less and apparently i’m one of these people. the fact that there’s a term for this, and that that term is “half-blinker” still strikes me as incredibly odd. but it explains a lot about why my eyes have felt like they dry out really fast and why the eyedrops only help temporarily.

the good news is that my right eye is 20/20 again with the contact with not much distortion

so i’m getting one new lens with a (hopefully) better prescription.

also, this is a reminder that TOMORROW IS DOWNLOAD DAY! so get your download fingers ready and go to http://spreadfirefox.com.

nick cave is my hero.

i can’t get this song out of my head and when it is stuck in my head i end up doing his crazy strut. this album is fantastic. you should all buy it NOW.

we recently netflix’d two movies in a row with “-proof” in their title: Quentin Tarrantino’s Death Proof (one half of his and Robert Rodriguez’s Grindhouse) and Adam Sandler’s Bulletproof. A brief review of these stinkbombs…

Death Proof

the only thing this flick proves is that Quentin Tarrantino is working on his talentless hack title. seriously. i was a Tarrantino fan. i was even ready to forgive Kill Bill on merits of artistic integrity. (the truth: there really wasn’t any — he sold out on that one when he cowtowed to the studios by splitting the movie in half rather than releasing it as the 4 hour mammoth he had originally intended.) it was cheesy, but it was supposed to be cheesy, so that made it okay, right? and anyway, resevoir dogs is really frickin’ good.

the fact is that everything that has been released subsequently since that first seminal, mind blowing film has been not-as-good — pulp fiction included. pulp fiction is a damn fine film, but it’s still not as edgy, not as intense, and the characters not as memorable or archetypal as resevior dogs. plus, there’s no steve buscemi.

death proof follows kill bill in what can only be described as Tarrantino’s worship of other people’s shit, henceforth described in this blog as WOPS. (i’m italian, i can redefine the word wop if i want.) the problem with Tarrantino’s WOPS is that he’s not even WOP(s)ing anything good. it’s crap that he’s trying to remake. in kill bill it was really bad, old kung fu movies, which, you know, are still kind of badass. movies like the ones from which the rap group Wu-Tang Clan lifted their name. death proof seems to be the result of the following line of really bad thinking: “gee, i really like that old movie Vanishing Point. but there was already a remake made in ‘97. i’ll just make a new movie that wants to be like vanishing point and talks about how great vanishing point is and keeps referencing vanishing point and pretty much try to remake the really bad 70s car chase movie archetype because vanishing point is so cool. and it’ll make everyone who hasn’t seen vanishing point feel so stupid that they’ll want to watch vanishing point.”

quick death proof plot synopsis: there’s a mass murdering badass stuntman who goes around ramming his dodge challenger into people because he thinks it’s cool. his name is stuntman mike. he has absolutely no established motivation other than how incredibly bad ass he is and that he’s got a really big scar. oh, it’s hinted at that “it must be a sex thing,” since he only hunts women, but that’s really as far as the character probing goes. we follow one group of girls, switch to another, single, girl, watch stuntman mike give her a ride (which means throw her in his death trap passenger seat and drive really erratically) and when he’s through with her, hunt down the previous trio of girls. when he’s done with them, we jump to him doing it all over again in another state. if you didn’t follow that, don’t worry, it wasn’t really important anyway.

somehow, all these girls are always on a girls-weekend-out trip to some remote location, and they’re invariably talking about making out with guys and distinctly not having sex with them with a sort of 80s movie high school girl kind of prudeness, even though these girls, or women actually, are not in high school, and are definitely not established as prudes. (one death proof low point: the 5 minute lap dance interlude on aforementioned, scarred, lunatic, badass stuntman. i wish i could say it was the only low point.) still, it’s the not having that’s the point of the conversations. this second group of girls, however, is equipped with two in-house, badass stuntwomen of their own, and wacky car chase hijinks ensue.

i will say that the stunts in this movie are impressive — probably the only impressive thing in this movie. most notably, the two stuntwomen decided to “do something really stupid” and take out none other than a “vanishing point dodge challenger” for an incredibly high speed test drive for the purpose of having the crazy aussie stuntwoman to strap herself to the hood, which they call “ship’s mast.” it is of course then when they are attacked by stuntman mike, and the overly drawn out car chase that follows is arresting in that it’s obviously actually done at high speeds with an actual human strapped to the hood of an actual car while another actual car slams into it a whole bunch of times.

the main problem here is that the thing that Quentin Tarrantino does best (aside from hiring washed-up actors and recharging their careers — okay, aside from hiring John Travolta, and recharging his career…) is interesting and, for the most part, believable characters and great dialogue. which are pretty much the two main things lacking from this movie. i realize the intent was the replicate bad 70s movies, but, well, maybe someone ought to rethink their objective. i won’t give away the (abrupt) ending, i’m just going to say that when this movie ends, you’ll wish someone punched you in the mouth…for renting this movie. it’s like getting to the end of “the clown joke.” (a notorious, often several-hour-long joke from my high school past which ended in the anticlimactic punchline: “f— you, clown. f— you.”)

Bulletproof

In the same year that Happy Gilmore came out, and a couple years before The Wedding Singer, Adam Sandler costarred alongside Damon Wayans in Bulletproof. the quick synopsis is something like: archie moses (sandler) is a con-man whose partner turns out to be an undercover cop (wayans). when the bust his pal sets up for archie’s drug dealing, crime lord boss (james caan) goes south, wacky hijinks ensue. alternately, you could do an even shorter synopsis: midnight run with adam sandler and damon wayans. it’s billed as a buddy movie/comedy and the short synopsis and wayans/sandler combination might make you think that this is going to be a typical hilarious adam sandler movie.

you’d be wrong.

in actuality, it’s not really all that funny. the former in living color star plays the straight-man in this and the movie is more of a hard-ass, urban, action shooter. that randomly has adam sandler walking around in it. his presence often seems so grossly out-of-place, you find yourself wondering how did adam sandler wind up in this black movie? unfortunately, i took the bait, thinking this would be a standard happy madison production (actually, as it turns out, happy madison didn’t get started for another 3 years, kicking off with a film starring his buddy, rob schnieder, in deuce bigalo: male gigolo) and needing more sandler in my life. instead, bulletproof is a movie with adam sandler in it, rather than an adam sandler movie. this becomes an important distinction. much like if you rented punch drunk love expecting 50 first dates.

adam’s incongruous screaming makes a couple of appearances. his crude sex jokes make more. that’s about the extent to which his presence affects this movie one way or another — he could just as easily have been swapped with, oh, john malkovitch, for example, for all the difference it would make on the overall feel of the film. bulletproof has several failings: it’s not funny enough to be a raucous comedy — which you sort of expect of adam sandler (although maybe in 1996 you didn’t); it’s not buddy enough for a real buddy movie — sandler and wayans’ on-screen chemistry works in a way that’s really not; the script is very poorly written — it’s predictable and the dialogue is atrocious; and the gunplay is clumsy — the shots of the bad guys getting shot are stupidly grotesque and sandler looks awkward holding a gun. it’s pretty much like it was written to appeal to 13 year old boys, who would likely get the most enjoyment out of the scene in which there’s a major gunfight at the motel sandler and wayans are staying in the middle of nowhere while the sounds of a mexican porn play loudly in the background — for most of us, that’s just not all that amusing.

then again, looking at the other stuff the writer, Joe Gayton, has done, bulletproof is the first, and last, attempt at comedy he’s written. so, presumably he realized that he can’t write a joke and decided not to threaten us again with his horrible attempts at humor, and, instead, sticks to the familiar territory of bad action plots, where dialogue and complex characters really don’t matter nearly as much as explosions and shooting.

so just about all i blog about these days is how the web design gig is going. that probably has something to do with the fact that i’ve been dreaming CSS lately. well this post won’t be any different. and i’m still f’ing dreaming CSS…

we recently hit a landmark accomplishment. when we were first figuring out how much money we’d need to make off the graphic design gig to be able to maintain our current standard of living, I threw out a figure of $600 base. that wasn’t including insurance or taxes. We figured, when we could, we’d put away about $200/week for taxes, which would bump that number up to $800, and after looking at insurance plans you can get on your own the grand total was about $1000/wk. Well thanks to my benefactors at Whole Foods, I have insurance for myself and the kids (and erin after i hit 400 more hours worked) for somewhat less than $200 a paycheck (which is every two weeks). the 20 hours a week at WFM has been netting me about $200/wk. now, the medical benefits are brand new, and i haven’t seen my cards yet, but presumably that’s more or less settled. the last piece was being able to make a minimum of $600/wk from the freelance graphic design gig.

well, we just got a check for last week that was $602 and the next check is $600+ also. I prefer to see this as a trend rather than a fluke. for one, erin’s been kicking a whole lot of arse. her designs are awesome, and she’s getting to be almost as fast as me, sometimes faster because i work in the PC 3 days a week. We’ve also been taking a lot of E-Comm sites which pay more. This next check does have a 10 page E-Comm site which is a rare occasion, but erin took the design and is highly amused that the guy offered me a job for the work i/we did. how many times is that now? (i think 3, maybe 4…) the challenge at this point will be to nail that goal every week and then we’ll be in really good shape.

in other news, i’m still using safari. i switch back and forth between safari and firefox — mostly because i have some pages that have the passwords saved in firefox and i don’t know them…well, and i just figured out a couple days ago how to get safari to save passwords…but also, i like being able to open firefox and restore my last session by default. also, there’s some specific pages that i load regularly that are designed specifically for firefox (for work), and i need the web developer extension in firefox for the e-comm stuff. but for everything else i use safari and safari is my default browser. really, the only thing, other than the plugins, keeping me from using it more is the restore last session feature.

also, i think wordpress doesn’t like safari…

and the xbox debacle…

so many moons ago, i started talking about building a media center to consolidate the tower of stereo equipment that gavin liked to play with into one computer that did all that. at the time i was at albertsons’ and my friend, mike, talked me into building an xbox media center. after getting all the equipment needed and doing research on hacking the xbox OS to allow non-microsoft software to be installed by both using a modchip or a “softmod” (requiring a specific game and memory card and game save), i decided to order a modchip. i googled, found a vendor, picked out a reasonably-priced chip that does not require soldering and waited for it to arrive. and waited. and waited. while waiting, i attempted to use the xbox as we had been using the ps2, as a dvd player. often, it would freeze and start skipping and having errors at night. i decided that this was most likely due to the xbox overheating, and some microsoft support docs and stuff i found on the internets seemed to confirm this. so i started to “ice my xbox” — wrap an icepack in a towel and place it on the hottest part of the xbox — with mixed success. in the end, i submitted a complaint to the better business bureau after many attempts at trying to get ANY KIND OF RESPONSE AT ALL from the vendor who i paid for the modchip i had not received and what did the BBB say? that they had been unable to contact the vendor either. so i called the CC company to reverse the charges. meanwhile, there’s no point in looking for another chip because the xbox is a flaming pile of crap! we aren’t going to be able to use it as a media center if we can’t leave it running (albeit unused) for a couple hours while gavin naps or does other things. so i listed it on ebay in an attempt to recoup my losses and get some funding for a real media center computer.  well that busted.  2 listings and no bites.  so i listed it on amazon, where it sits now.  i’ve gotten two inquiries thus far.  when you get a message via amazon marketplace it has a form-generated message saying to never ship to a different address than what is listed for the customer.  so my first message was “will you ship this to someone else in germany.”  riiiight.  the next one seemed innocuous and seemed like i might actually get a sale.  in fact, i did get an email saying it sold and then a followup email from the “customer” saying ship it asap, please.  the problem was the address was in nigeria.  that was the first signal.  the next was that the email said they were giving me a $115 shipping credit — to my knowledge something amazon does not do — as i understood it, they either give you 3.99 or 6.99 for expedited shipping, so that was the second red flag.  the third was the email said something about payment not going through until a tracking number was supplied for shipping.  that sounded odd.  then, when i went to my amazon seller account, oddly enough it said i hadn’t sold anything recently.  THOSE DAMN NIGERIANS WERE TRYING TO SCAM ME!  so i politely sent an email back saying if you would like to purchase the xbox please do so at this address and copied the link to where it still sat for sale.  i then did all the spoof/phishing/scam reporting stuff that amazon has available.  so i’m in the market for a media center.  again.  my estimated cost before shipping is a little over $600.  which is more than the xbox was (which was the reason we got the xbox instead — cost).  still it’s not so bad, but we need to wait until this thing sells.  but thanks to the nigerians, it’s all boxed up at least…

so it seems totally contradictory that now that i am home all day i actually have less time to blog than when i was working at albertsons.  that probably says something about my job.  but that also says something about having kids around and being a parent.  and, you know, that part is cool.

so, let’s see.  i’m possibly getting some thinktank webdesign gigs.   (that’s a bit of search engine optimization there…search engines like google use hyperlinks to sites that have text links like that in how they arrange search results for various queries, which is why it’s better to say this site is really purple, rather than there’s a red site here….i decided to wiki it a while back in research for the thinktank stuff since, you know, people get paid big bucks for SEO) one is for the salt lake theological seminary, erin’s dad’s work, and one is for a nonprofit a friend i work with at whole foods works with.  so that’s exciting.  the other webdesign gig is a real time suck.  it’s cool and it’s still fun, but it can be stressful trying to get things in under the deadline (even just the deadline to get invoices in) knowing that my paycheck is riding on someone else and this last week i had 4 accounts all of which were almost impossible to get a hold of anyone.  i guess to make up for it, though, this week i got a 10 page site whose owner is readily available.  i’ve been doing a lot more ecom sites because they’re easier to plow through, we got thrown way off our schedule a couple weeks ago when we all had the flu and had to take a couple days off to recover.

erin is an equal partner in the web design now and, while she may be a bit slower with the technical stuff, is coming up with design concepts that are hawt and stuff that i wouldn’t have thought of.   so it’s good that there’s two of us, and it’s good that we’re both working, and it’s good that we can help each other out, and it’s good that we’re both in the thinktank thing together because if we are ever able to get enough work doing that on our own it means that our sites will be twice as good, and i’m banking on the quality and creativity of our designs being the main selling point.

design tips of the evening:  gradients are good.  bevelling can be good.  drop shadows are nice when very subtle.

so the problem is that we’re literally working all the f’ing time.  especially now that we’re behind.  and when the kids are fussy, it just makes it worse.  meara calls up erin and says “what are you doing?”  “working on websites.”  “so, what are you doing later?”  “…working on websites.”   and that’s seriously what we do.  i try to set a cut-off time and save weekends (or at least days) for weekends, at least one day off, anyway, but it’s tough when there’s deadlines and the utility bills and food ride on how productive we are.   and customer revisions are a bitch.  imagine building something that you’re happy with, and you think is ready to meet the world as it is and having someone say “i really would like it to be a different shade of red” or “can you make it more like this over here?”  and thus begins the long and painful process of revising ad nauseum until the site looks like crap.  it’s rough.

we both are painfully aware of not being able to do things.  like talk to people, go outside, watch movies, blog about the kids, etc, and we both think about it but there isn’t much we can do at the moment.  gavin is doing some cool stuff lately.  he seems to have learned how to read numbers which is pretty f’ing awesome, and he says his numbers and abc’s.  he surprised me one day by opening this counting book we have to the last page and pointing to parts of the page and saying “eight.” point.  “nine.” point.  “ten.”  but he’s done it since and erin says he has done that with the whole book.  i guess the sesame street we’ve been playing is doing something after all.  erin also tells me that there are other older kids that don’t know colors, which gavin’s known for a long time.  among other things.  which pretty much proves the theory we’ve had that he’s really smart even if he isn’t talking a lot yet, it’s just because he’s busy thinking about other things.

like how to read harry potter.

next week i’m going to teach him html and he can help with the web sites and maybe then we can start blogging and posting pictures more.

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Now playing: Soul Coughing - Screenwriter’s Blues
via FoxyTunes

so i went in to what i expected to be a routine eye exam before my albertsons’ insurance was up to get some glasses.  i knew i needed them or at least that something was up.  driving at night sucked, i have a hard time reading subtitles, and things are, in general, blurry around the edges.  so i schedule an appt. at the local lens crafters.  i go in the initial pre-screening and i tell them my last exam was probably 4 years ago and i left with a prescription that was +0.50 and barely did anything, so i never really wore the glasses i got out of that. the first thing the tech said was “yeah, it’s changed since then.”  a bit foreboding but i figured as much.  then he mutters something about astigmatism.  i ask about it later and he said i had astigmatism and explained what it was to me, and said “and you’re only a little myopic.”  been in the place 15 minutes and already i’ve got 2 conditions.  okay, fine, no problem, i knew i needed glasses.

the doc was busy with another patient so i waited around for a while.   he finally saw me and we did the whole “1 or 2″ deal.  he was patient and understood when i said there wasn’t a difference really on the occasions that happened.  at the end, he assembled the prescription on the crazy test glasses contraption thing and i couldn’t see at all.  i saw better without the prescription than i did with it.  so he did the whole routine again, with the exact same results.  so then he twiddled with the glasses contraption a bit to try to  make it workable but it never was totally clear.  so i’m thinking, well good.  i knew something was up and this guy can see that and i’ll leave here with a prescription that will actually work.  which is about the time he asks if i have ever been diagnosed with Keratoconus, and that he suspects i have it.  and that my left eye is shot to hell.
keratoconus is, apparently, a disease, hereditary, he said it seems more prevalent in males but the wiki says the opposite.  the wiki also says no one knows where it comes from and that it’s highly variable.  he said that going through the test the way we did and then putting that prescription on and it not working was symptomatic of keratoconus.  i also noticed as we were going through it that when i was looking at the letters i saw a sort of shadow or ghost image of the letters underneath where the actual letters were.  it was sort of a toss up whether i chose the lens that cut the shadow out or the one that made the letters clearer. i didn’t realize it at the time until going to the wiki, but that’s a major symptom.  i always thought that’s what it was like for everyone, but erin says it’s weird.  there’s a graphically reproduced simulation of what it looks like on the wiki, i’ve made my own to try to simulate how i see:

sometimes i see one ghost, sometimes two, sometimes — depending on how much i look at it — it’s like a mirror image, sometimes it’s blurry, but like normal astigmatism, i also get sort of double image stuff going on anyway.  and what i do see isn’t very clear.  so that’s fun.

he starts talking about “hard lenses”, you can get these hard lenses and most people will see 20/20 with them.  “what do you mean, hard lenses…like contacts?”  “yeah.”  i’m totally freaked out by contacts.  i’m totally freaked out by anything on my eyeball, in fact, i’m totally freaked out about eyeballs.  contacts has always been a deep seated fear i’ve harbored for a long time.  and him saying they may feel uncomfortable isn’t helping.  “this isn’t something that can be corrected by glasses at all?” i say, sounding stupid (and possibly desperate).  “no.”

he asks if i have allergies, and i said no, and he explained that he asks because sometimes people with allergies or construction workers who are outside all day will get it from rubbing their eyes a lot and really digging in when they do it and that that can damage the eye.  which i do, and have always done.  (so now, erin and i are freaking out about me rubbing my eyes at all)  so the end of the story is that a) my insurance only gave a $5 discount off the exam anyway, which, thankfully, was only 50 bucks, b) i’m to go get a “topography” of my eye done, get a printout, and take it to this lens crafters doc so he can look at it and then c) determine if i do hae Keratoconus and if so, recommend me to go to a specialist at the U. of Utah.  after i get new insurance, of course, which won’t be until after the new year.  he wanted to give me a prescription to just tide me over, but couldn’t make one that worked.  he also said that i was on the borderline of the legal driving limit, and recommended not driving at night.  yeah.  thanks.

so, yeah, that’s fun.  it didn’t surprise me cuz i knew something was up, but the fact that it was (of course) some crazy and horrible disease wasn’t so fab.  but he said my eyes were otherwise healthy, which, i guess is good, right?

 so i’m feeling kind of disoriented today.  i finished my last web site on friday, which was a half day since i was on call last week.  i deliberately did not ask for another project because by the time the site was approved it was close to 5pm and i didn’t think i’d be able to call another client before the end of the business day so i’d probably just be sitting on it all weekend, and i thought it would be nice to have a weekend.  so now, on this fabulous weekend i constructed, i keep checking my email, doing things on the computer for no apparent reason and generally waiting.  why am i waiting?  i have no idea.  it’s like i’m waiting for something to happen but nothing will because there’s nothing pending.  so the first real weekend in which i don’t really have anything to do, i’m too busy expecting to have to do something to just sit back and chill, like the intent was.  grrrr…

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i’m gonna start making more interesting and descriptive tags.  because, you know, that’s fun.

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i found some sesame street stuff to download before demonoid went down, the old school stuff, which gavin seems to like.  we read an article that was about stuff we already were starting to think in which the fast-paced and more violent (or at least depicting violence as funny, like the bop the guy over the head and laugh type stuff) kids programming is bad for attention stuff, so…sesame street and baby einstein and lots of other stuff like that it is.  it’s weird watching sesame street and it’s weird watching gavin get into this stuff that we both watched as kids, and occasionally some of the songs are so surreal and post-modern that it’s hilarious (like the crosby, stills, nash, and young-worthy “I Live in a Capital I” which has harmonies and minor chords like “A Horse With No Name.”)

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there’s some new pics i took today in the gallery and i uploaded some pics of us (and the same gavin pics) to flickr, cuz i decided it was time that there was at least some pictures of, you know, us.  on our flickr account. also, i did some updates to the forums, and since wordpress isn’t the best for having an actual conversation i encourage everyone (if anyone is listening) to head over there if ya wanna hang out in a virtual sense.