 february 23, 1999 web design and airplane food design have some things in common. on the web, one often designs for 640x480 and on the plane, one has to make the food tray, beverage, and utensils all fit on the little fold-down tray.
i'm back from mexico. two things: i'm very sunburnt. very. very very. it's hurting me to type this. i am not kidding. i am also not going to lay out in the sun for a very long time...possibly never again. we got a ride from cancun's very own techno cabbie. soon after getting in the cab, he popped in a techno tape including, among other things, the armand van helden remix of c.j. bolland's sugar is sweeter. very cool.
i'm off to mexico for three and a half days. three and a half days without my computer. three and a half days without email. it's gonna be great. maybe i'll tell you all about it when i get back.
so, when did the whole share-a-penny thing at the local gas station become an industry? i would imagine that a long time ago, somebody came up with an idea to put a little cup by the register so that people could drop their pennies in there for other customers to utilize when they were short a couple cents. other people adopted the idea and now there's a share-a-penny cup at pretty much every gas station one goes to. In fact, the share-a-penny idea has advanced to the point where there are specialized cups made especially for placement on station counters. let's stop to think about this for a minute. this means that somewhere there's a machine (or possibly a whole factory of machines) punching out these custom penny cups. there are engineers designing bigger and better share-a-penny cups. teams of marketing people are trying to build share-a-penny mindshare in the heads of gas station owners. share-a-penny cup salespeople are out there going gas station door to gas station door selling their product. An army of delivery trucks are delivering these cups around the globe. does this seem odd to anyone else?
my car won't start and i don't know why. that's gotten my day off to a bad start.
nichol and i went to the cardigans show at first ave. last night. pretty good show. nina persson's voice was amazingly good...she actually sounds like she does on the album. plus, she's hot, hot, hot.
i'm listening to a live realaudio broadcast of the impeachment vote. it's over. he's been acquitted. yay!
i'm off to mexico in a week and a half. excited? yes! i'll tell you all about it when i get back.
the crap week from hell continues. i fell asleep whilst reading my book in a mall food court over my lunch hour and got rousted by a police officer who told me to wake up and move along. i don't look that much like a vagrant, do i?
i'm tired and cranky. i'm going home.
i'm sure most of you have seen this by now, but ebay didn't accept their csoty award for cool shopping site, someone else stepped in and accepted it, and it's now up for auction on ebay. it's a thing of beauty...one of those absolutely perfect moments.
used books are cool. same great content, low low prices. i picked up 5 new books this weekend, all for about $30. i got a great old 2 volume copy of outline of history by h.g. wells, an old copy of darwin's the origin of species, full house by stephen jay gould, and a crazy book called techniques of revenge, published by loompanics, a company that publishes books on all sorts of strange topics, from guerilla warfare to bypassing burglar alarms.
i started reading again today. i'm going to try and read a little each day over my lunch break...real books, not magazines, newspapers, or web zines. the barnes & noble down the street has a great "bargain books" section that i will hopefully be raiding from time to time. today's selection was a hardcover copy of michael crighton's the lost world for $6. thank god it's nothing like the movie.
where the heck did vh1 come from all of a sudden? "behind the music" and "where are they now?" are really neat shows. is it that i'm getting older and moving from mtv's demographic to vh1's? or is it just that vh1 is just getting more interesting while revealing what we should have known all along: that mtv is too mainstream and "hip" to be timely and relevent. oh well....neither one of them plays music videos anymore. is that good or bad? also, while we're on the subject of mtv, they should sell their realworld and road rules shows to hbo or skinemax. instead of a bunch of people getting on each other's nerves, they could have a bunch of people just plain gettin' it on. now that's a show.
the premise of the movie "she's all that" is that a boy starts dating the most unpopular girl in school on a bet. have you seen the woman (rachael leigh cook ) playing the unpopular girl? she's a teen supermodel for crying out loud. she can't look bad, i don't care how ugly her glasses and clothes are. i don't know about you, but the most unpopular girl in my school didn't bathe, didn't comb her hair, had pretty bad acne, had a weight problem, and had trouble saying more than three words to anyone. i realize that these movies are supposed to be crap, but couldn't they even try to find someone that could look and act even a little unpopular?
saw "the thin red line" yesterday; it was very good. i can see why it doesn't have the mass appeal that "saving private ryan" had though. it's slow, it makes you think, there are no great battle scenes, and it's hard to understand in parts. my favorite thing about it is that it gives the audience a variety of things to think about when they leave the theatre; it's not just "here's the point of the whole film, stupid."
to me, the best thing about being young and alive during a century switchover is that when i get older & i'm telling stories to my grandkids, i can begin them thusly: "you think that's bad? why, back in aught-three, we didn't have..." i'm just really excited about being able to use "aught-three" in everyday conversation.
pi is out on video & dvd. i saw this movie in the theatre and didn't much care for it. the music was good and the black & white was quite nifty for a change, but i just didn't get it for some reason. and being a former physics dork and current computer dork, i think that i was supposed to like it. maybe i'll give it another shot. also, here's everything you ever needed to know about calendars.
well, i was right, but i'm not too happy about it. the vikings got beat. their offense sputtered, and their defense couldn't hold. just goes to show you that the best team doesn't always win...just about the only thing you can count on is that the winning team wins. well, maybe the minnesota fans & media will have more humility next year if the vikings make the playoffs again; perhaps treating the playoffs like a step-by-step process and not a forgone conclusion.
i was helped by the singing cashier last evening at the local grocery store. he wasn't really singing...he was just very melodic. it sure cheered up the toddler with the couple in front of me in line, but it really didn't do much for me but annoy me. bad singer and wasn't funny, even though he thought he was both.
it snowed here this morning, a noise-snuffing snow. the city was actually quiet for once. it was kinda eerie...like the world of the future in 12 monkeys. i felt like bruce willis exploring unknown territories. the bruce willis in 12 monkeys, not the bruce willis that banged liv tyler on the set of armageddon. i doubt that liv has any unexplored territories.
come one, come all to the metababy chat on friday, jan 15 at 3pm cst. just send email to metababy@metababy.com to participate. it'll be fun...tell your friends.
i'm addicted to the old school games. dig dug, burgertime, qix, donkey kong, and my personal favorite: mr. do. mame lets you play games ported directly from the arcade machines. evidently, the ports are pretty good: brian showed me the "monkey's feet" trick in donkey kong...and it worked. anyone know any good cheats in burgertime or mr. do?
like an idiot, i put a (really) cold quarter in my mouth this morning. guess what? it stuck. luckily, i realized my mistake before it got too attached...just a little bit of my lip came off with it.
well, the nba season is finally on. for the most part, i'm happy. i'll be even happier if michael jordan plays. some people aren't happy, and i can relate to that. i think the one thing the strike did in the eyes of the public is group both the owners and the players into one big mess of greedy, whining brats. the only difference is that the players are a greedy, whining bunch of millionaires and the owners are a greedy, whining bunch of billionaires.
i'm playing around with stylesheets a little bit so this page should look a slightly different. but it shouldn't look bad. if it looks bad (worse than normal), please let me know.
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