Archive for Personal
When Is Procrastinating Kismet?
It is always fun to find new art that you can enjoy.
I love Edvard Munch. I once travelled to Vienna primarily to see The Scream painting that was part of a large Munch exhibit they had at a newly renovated art museum there. As others flitted through the installation stopping for more than a few seconds only in front of the iconic Scream painting, I slowly tore myself away from in front of numerous paintings only because I knew that there was a finite amount of time I could stay. That discovery of new works that I felt that much sticks with me as one of my top experiences.
The Denver Art Museum has a painting called New Year’s Eve by Alex Katz that fascinates me. It’s basically a light pink painting with the light of windows and the outlines of some buildings faintly visible. To just look at, there is really nothing there, but for some reason, it stimulates my brain and I can hear the sounds on the street below, and feel the mist of a cold night. The really funny thing, is that just by looking at it differently I can hear the calm of night after the partiers have gone home and the cold mist is replaced by the thick haze of a warmer eve.
Anyway, while I constantly find visuals I like, the occasion to stop and enjoy new art doesn’t present itself as often as I would like. Sometimes, I just can’t get into the works. Sometimes, I just don’t understand what the artist is trying to do, and in all fairness, sometimes the artist just isn’t as good as he thinks he is.
So it was with a grin on my face that I found myself procrastinating this morning by playing around with my iGoogle Theme and I came across this theme:
I liked it so much that I went back through to find the developer link. Unfortunately, there is no link to a webpage or anything, but I’m a resourceful fellow and followed the domain name of the email address back to the artist, Osnat Tzadok. I think I really like her work. The flowers like the theme are particularly intriguing, but there are some landscapes that are really fascinating as well. It’s a definite bookmark.
And how good of an idea is this? Her site displays her art on different color walls so you can see how it would look in your space.
Now, I can tell myself that I wasn’t procrastinating. Instead, the universe realized that I had spent too many days doing too much of the same thing and it was time for me to drink in something new and different and colorful to revive the spirit. – Now, I’ll do some work 
But, next time I’m procrastinating, maybe I’ll buy some art.
Visual Web Developer Express Locks Up All the Time
I wanted to try Microsoft’s Visual Web Developer Express. Frankly, I think that Adobe Dreamweaver CS3 might be a little bit like using a sledgehammer to kill a fly based for many of my daily website development tasks. Sure, if I’m building a new site from scratch, or doing a major site overhaul, Dreamweaver’s tools can’t be beat, but if I’m going through a dozen small sites to update the copyright notice to include 2009, it seems like a bit much.
But, I never got to try Visual Web Developer Express. It kept freezing up. I never got far enough to even see what it looks like other than the home screen which uses feeds to make sure all of the latest Microsoft headlines are there front and center. Too bad I already have an RSS feed reader capable of viewing feeds from places other than just Microsoft.
This morning, I clicked Website on the toolbar. That is it. Nothing too exciting. Of course, I’ve typed this whole post up to here, and Visual Web Developer Express still hasn’t finished processing the click. I don’t even know what the menu items are.
I’ve done some troubleshooting, but this is the sixth or seventh time that I’ve tried to start up the program when I had a little bit of free time, and every single one of those times I have tried to do something different, and every single one of those times, I have had to give up and end it with CTRL-ALT-DELETE and terminating its process in Process Explorer.
Frankly, I should be able to look at the menus no matter what is going on with my computer, so me and my PC are now going to be rid of Microsoft Visual Web Developer Express and Microsoft will have missed out on a chance for me to evaluate its Internet development product for another six months or a year.
Unless I find another application I like in the meantime, in which case, it may never get another chance.
FAIL.
A New HP Laptop, for the Keyboard
I need a new laptop. No, really. This isn’t one of those guy things where I say I need a new laptop and that means that I want a new laptop. My hard drive is failing. I get those semi-random blue screens when I boot that say something about bad sectors and running CHKDSK, which I do, and it fixes it, for now.
I know what you are thinking. I could replace the hard drive. I checked into it, but it will cost me a $100 or so to get a reasonable one that I trust enough with my data, and since I’m talking about buying a $400 or $500 laptop on a smokin hot deal, a new hard disk is 25% of the replacement cost. That just flat out does not make sense.
Now, here is the part that keeps bugging me. I went through Best Buy and a couple of other places and pretend typed on the keyboards of pretty much every laptop brand there is. I like the keyboards on the HP laptops, the real HP laptops, not the Compaq laptops, which I know are made by HP, but which have much different keyboards.
Now, there is no shame in buying an HP laptop except that I can get a laptop with similar specs for cheaper by buying another brand. Theoretically, my choice could be justified by things like build quality, or “intangibles” or other things, but frankly, I haven’t looked at new hardware in so long, I have no idea what the deal is with those things anymore.
So, I feel like a sucker for buying an HP laptop. I never, ever, ever, pay for brand names. I think that people who wear designer clothes are morons (I don’t care if was hand stitched by Marcus Ameriachus in Italy, there is never a reason to pay $800 for a shirt!). Whether HP makes superior laptops or not seems to be a matter of opinion, so in the back of my mind I feel like I’m paying for the name.
In the end, I will buy the HP laptop because I am a writer which means that I spend way more time than the average bear pushing my fingers down on those keys and I want it to be nice, or more specifically, I refuse to let it be irritating in even the slightest way.
And so, I wait, for the killer sale that sends an HP laptop with my desired specs into my price range. Common’ recession!
New Year’s Resolution 2009
It is a few days after New Year’s Day, but I think I’m close enough for it to count. My resolution this year is different than previous years, and reflects my evolving thought process regarding improving my self, my life, and my world. So this year, my resolution is:
Do 100 Little Things.
More specifically, to do 100 little things to improve my self, my life, and my world. I did the first this morning.
The utility company here in Colorado is Xcel Energy. They have a program where they supply free heat to people who can’t afford to pay their bills. The program essentially takes money out of Xcel’s own pocket to match dollars from the government to help those who cannot pay their heating bill. It beats the heck out of someone freezing to death in an “advanced” society such as ours. Of course, the program is always short on funds and the list of qualified people is longer than the availability.
In keeping with my resolution, I will not agonize over the situation, nor try and solve it on my own. However, I will do one little thing to help. In this way, I can continue to contribute to the world around me, while not losing my ability to focus on the things that are central to me and my loved ones. So, I added $1 per month to my utility payment to go to the program. Granted, that is just $12 extra dollars, but as they say, if everyone did one little thing, we could solve the whole problem.
If you live where Xcel Energy provides your utilities I encourage you to add $1 to your monthly payments as well. If you setup auto-pay, it will happen each and every month without you having to even remember it.
Here is to a great 2009.
