Why it’s best to delete all Craigslist-related emails with poor grammar
So I found a lot of sushi plates on Craigslist for $35. Twenty single serving roll plates in three different styles, plus a bunch of bowls for soup, salad, and sauces. For $35! I’ve been wanting to have something more appropriate for serving sushi, so I emailed the person. I get a one sentence response. Or rather, a one line response, containing 2-3 sentences, nothing punctuated or capitalized. The post in Craigslist was written just fine, strangely enough. I’m generally wary of dealing with people that can’t write a decent email, but I really wanted the sushi set. So I wrote back, suggesting we meet at 10:30 today, and she writes back giving me her phone number and the intersection to meet her at. I still wasn’t sure *who*, given the only thing besides the intersection and the phone number in the email was this chunk of text: “should be fine, i’ll have somer meet you”. Somer? Is that a person? Is that “someone” typed incorrectly?
So I get there just before 10:30. Glad to make it on time as it’s a 45 minute drive from where I live up to Boulder, where this person is. I park semi-illegally at the intersection – poor parking options as the intersection is just on the edge of a campus, and there are students everywhere. I don’t see a person obviously standing around with a box of dishes, and she never gave me a description of her car (I did give her a description of mine, though), so I call her number at 10:35. No answer, no indication of who the phone number even belongs to in the voicemail (which is a default voicemail that just repeats the phone number). I say I’m at the intersection, leave my number, tell her to call me. After 10 more minutes of sitting there, I give up and go home. It’s been several hours since that point, and still no word from her. So much for my sushi plates.
Apparently I need to remember the lesson of “Never deal with illiterate people on Craigslist.” I can handle semi-literate – a few misspellings happen (myself included here), and some people really do type like they talk – but in general, I have the best luck with people that type like me. I was once getting rid of some aloe plants, got a bunch of responses, and picked the one who wrote her email pretty much how I write emails. She was prompt, nice, and I ended up having a several minute conversation about plants with her. Also useful is people with emails that are job related. If they use a work email, it means they’re capable of showing up on time for a job, meaning they’re capable of showing up on time for you. Maybe the fact that my sushi person was using an AOL email address should have also clued me in, oh well.
My search for cheap and fabulous sushi plates continues on, I suppose.
Procrastination Station!
I’ve been wanting to go on a bike ride for awhile, but I keep finding reasons to not do it! I want to paint too, but I keep getting distracted! As soon as I start working again, I’ll suddenly *really* want to do both of these things. But as of right now, when I’ve got time stretching out empty in front of me, I’m all like “I’m gonna play on the internet and read instead!” I’ve been reading 2-3 books a week though, which is better then my previous hobby of “I’m gonna play video games all day!” Oh, silly free time.
8 days until Salami Day. Gotta figure out something for that. Either buy a couple tubes, and Drew & I can have a salami extravaganza, or find people that want to go out and get salami with us. Or find people who want to have a home salami celebration. I’ll get Drew to bug people at his work.
Got a fabulous pair of late-90s sorta wide leg pants from the thrift store recently, haven’t figured out if I’m gonna sew stuff to them or wear as-is. Finished sewing my ill-fitting bright blue Hostel Loki shirt, it is now a better fitting bright pink and blue shirt. Should take pictures and post them at some point. My vinyl corset’s zipper pooped out on me, got a new zipper to replace it only to realize that a.) vinyl against fabric puckers awfully and b.) I didn’t get the sort of zipper that separates at the bottom. So, need to go back to Hancock and get a new zipper, then figure out how to sew it right. If I’m feeling really ambitious, maybe I’ll do some hand-sewing. We shall seee.
I really want to sew me a petticoat. Or a tu-tu. I’ve never owned either, and that could be fun both as club clothing as well as to wear under skirts to make them floofier. I *think* they’re supposed to be easy to sew, and I’ve got a giant pile of old netting just begging for me to try it out. Skirts are usually the things least likely to get screwy for me. I’ve more or less accepted that 1/2 of all things I sew end up like crap, but the odds are a bit more in my favor for skirts.
I was going to buy a pair of shoes from JC Penney with a $10 off $25 coupon, but we played Axis & Allies for 2837489374 hours on Saturday and ended up not finishing until the mall closed, and the coupon expired that day. D’oh! What’s unfortunate is that I played America in a game where America can’t even attack anyone until the end of their 3rd round. And in a game where each round takes about 2 hours, the wait gets quite tedious, especially as this game day was held at a location that didn’t allow you to bring in any food or drink, and only sold candy bars and chips in the vending machines. Not even pretzels or granola bars! My teeth were already melting from the 24oz Dr. Pepper I had, they didn’t need any more melting! I did also play China, but they were teeny. Apparently I need to try playing one of the several 2 person A&A games Drew has, might be more satisfying.
I really need to buy a coat. My current one has tears and stains, no good at all. What I want is a fabulous London Fog trenchcoat from Macy’s, I’ve just got to fork over the $100 for it. I also want an awesome rice cooker, of the sort that you can also use to slow cook things, one that keeps your rice fresh infinitely long. Which also looks to be around $100. You know, while I’ve got this really great non-existent income flow right now, all of the sudden I want to blow my slowly dwindling savings. Oh wait, I do have some income! A few people bought Salami Day t-shirts. Not enough for me to get a check yet, but it’s progress. Google Ads have seriously slowed, which is too bad.
Anyhow, I should make myself go bike ridin’. Or Reich Biden. Toodles!
Feed me, Seymour!
So I use LJ to read blog feeds. And I had a new one to add. However, you can only create new feeds if you have a paid account. Which I no longer have, as I just don’t use LJ nearly as much as I used to. As it is, the majority of my LJ posts are grabbed from my WordPress blog. I should probably start using another feed reader, one I can actually add new blogs too. I know there’s still plenty of people that post on LJ, and I wonder how tedious it would be for me to add all of these people’s journals as feeds to a feed reader. Thing is, then I miss reading the friends-only posts. I wish there was a way I could just add my friends feed to a feed reader, and magically have me logged in. Or I can just check both LJ as well as a feed reader, it’s not that big of a deal, I’m just all about being super efficient.
Efficiency! I’m so proud, I have finally achieved a state where I can go infinitely without showering. Nevermind, that sounds gross, let me reword it better. See, for the longest time, I would feel gross and awful if I didn’t shower every single morning. This is a pain, though. It means less sleep on days I need to get up early. I also don’t get that dirty every single day, and I really hate that if I wake up too late for a shower, I’d just feel awful the rest of the morning. It was psychological, and needed breaking. It was a big pain at first, but I have acclimated myself now to being able to get up and throw on clothes and leave without bathing, and to not feel like I’m super gross for doing so. It usually makes more sense to shower at night anyhow, since I can wash off after I’ve done something super sweaty/dirty, rather then waiting for the next morning to do so.
I’m applying to be a part of a sleep study. I would disappear for 2 weeks into a lab, and get paid around $2,500. It’s not like I’m doing any other work right now! Looks like there’s a lot of testing to see if one qualifies though.
Pretty sure I’m headed to another Drupal meeting tonight. I’m growing bitter with Drupal, though. I mean, I know I’m asking a lot of it in what I try to do sometimes, but it’s just not very well organized. I just use WordPress for blogging, so it’s not like I’m stretching it’s limits very much, but it’s so nice how easy it is to upgrade things. Just a button click, and it’s taken care of. Magical! No such simplicity in Drupal. It’s all “download this, then dump this thing here.” And this is why Drupal shall never have the market share that WordPress has. There is a way of simple module upgrades, but it’s command-line interface. Which is fine for most developers, but this sort of thing helps guarantee that Drupal will make little headway into the non-developer world.
Boy could I use some pizza right about now!
Hoo Boy do I suck at updating this thing!
I am so tired, like giant sponge tired. See, we went to this club this past Friday. I’m all like “Goth night at a gay club, I’m there!” I start sneezing uncontrollably after one too many inhales of the ole fog machine. The next day, it’s still going, except I have a headache. While I have my doubts as to if one can catch colds from fog machines, I’m pretty sure one can catch colds by being in the vicinity of drunk and sweaty people. The nose has calmed down a bit, but I’m stuck with this headache and some of the worst kind of fatigue.
How convenient, I suppose, that my temp job has slowed to nothing? I’m due to come back in at *some* point to fix something, and then there’s still hope of future projects, but it’s pretty sporadic, which is unfortunate for those of us who like paychecks. I’m trying to take advantage of my time off, at least. Last week that mostly involved too many cookies and a serious time investment into the long-forgotten Civ III. There were progress nuggets buried in there somewhere, though, mostly consisting of continued work on the Pak’ma’ra painting, plus some planning for the (hopefully) visionary new Salami Day site. We’ll see.
A chunk of Drew’s relatives came to visit last weekend, and left in their wake a vast array of uneaten Indian food. My new favorite thing is Korma. At this point, I’ve only had Lamb Korma, but I’m sure all of the other varieties are just as delightful. My Other New Favorite Thing is Bhakti chai, which I desperately need to write a tastyniblets post about at some point. It is everything chai should be and more. I apparently need to seek out a Natural Grocers where they sell Bhakti chai ice cream, it sounds incredibly magical.
So I really hate WYSIWYG editors. I need to find one that works for Drupal, though, as for some bizarre reason people who don’t know html really like them. I’m all like “learn html!” and they’re all like “no way!”. Sigh. I’ve crushed through the rather-generic one titled WYSIWYG, it looked messy and did little for me. Then I switched to WIZZYWIG, which I had high hopes for. Unfortunately, the admin panel was limiting, with poorly written textfields where the max size was far shorter than one needs. I poked the js to get around this, which was fine up until the point I realised I needed the ability to upload PDFs. On to CKeditor! Testing that out now, I’m hoping it’s the editor that will make all of my fantasies come true.
The State of Things
Boy am I sticky! I really shouldn’t be, since this is Colorado and it’s supposed to be super-dry, but sticky I am. My plan is to convince Drew to go swimming upon his waking up. Wish I had time to go tubing – it seems pretty big out here, what with all of these rivers out here that are really super-wide streams about 3 feet deep. Maybe one of these weekends.
Work is still super busy. Am slowly plowing through Job #2, and Job #1 has gotten a bit easier now that I’ve more or less figured out how to use a Mac, and how to use Codeigniter, and how to use all of the other stuff they have me using. It’s been educational – I’m still not sure how much longer this job will last, but when it ends I’ll have some good stuff to spruce up my resume & portfolio with.
On a completely unrelated note, all of the tank tops at Old Navy got stupid. I really like their ribbed tank tops – they’re comfortable and usually about $5-$7 each. However, at some point recently they decided to add a foot in length to them. I don’t see the point, I wear the shirt and have a giant pile of fabric bunched around my waist? So anyhow, I lost my tank top source, and need to find another one as my tank tops are slowly fraying apart!
Cow appreciation day last weekend was successful, we hit 4 different Chick-fil-as. The best one was in Larkridge, everyone was super excited, there were balloons everywhere and the employees seemed really into the event, and lots of customers were dressed up. We got our picture taken, too. The worst was some CFA in NE Denver (Brighton?), we drove through the middle of nowhere only to find unenthusiastic staff, very few people dressed up, and a few customers that snickered at our costumes. Not appropriate!
Just a quick update, mostly about work
I have no time for anything (except this brief post, apparently). Went on a 1.5 week trip, a vacation & funeral combo, to FL and VA and NC, got to see lots of people, make/eat lots of sushi, splish around in lots of water, and a good time was had by all.
My recruiter had an interview lined up for me when I got back, and it turned out that it was less of an interview and more of the guy having already decided he was interested in me based on my website, and just wanted to see if I was interested in the project. This still confirms in my head that I am bad at interviewing, since I didn’t really have an interview for this position. Also, there are other people working there who do both design and dev, so I was saved from the hated question of “which I like doing more”, which I think is only given by people who only do one or the other. Anyhow, it lasts a few weeks, since it’s just for a project, but assuming all goes well, it will make me more employable and give me money and all that good stuff.
I’m also in the middle of the DMS website (and by “in the middle” I mean, “busy hacking up Drupal and making a big ole mess”). Sometimes I’m uninspired for design, and I have that problem right now. So this is what I work on when I get home from the other job, since they want it done soon as well. I could also have a census job, the next round of followups, with training starting this Thursday, but I’m gonna have to call and cancel because I have no time. It’s like I went from famine to feast here. Not that I’m complaining, mind you, work is a good thing, it’s just exhausting when that’s all you do.
Also, this weekend I went to Drupalcamp Colorado, which was neat. I’ve got some fun ideas for new projects, once I have to time to get around to them, that is.
Pak’ma’ra, Netbook and Adventures
Headed out tomorrow morning at a vicious hour, and will arrive in Florida that afternoon. Tuesday, we’ll get to Richmond for a few days of wild excitement and sweating and hopefully AC, and then we head off to the Outer Banks for more sweating and excitement and AC. Might post, might not. My netbook is all happy with some 2GB RAM and a new 16GB hard drive, and I installed the Easy Peasy OS on it (partly because of the name!). I really want a Drupal development setup before I leave so I can get some work done while traveling, but my inexperience with Linux combined with Apache’s persnicketiness is leading me to suspect this may not happen. Which makes me a bit cranky. I’ll figure something out, I guess.
Also, have been working on my Pak’ma’ra painting, here is the progress thus far:
Kinda iffy on the curlicue clouds, and I really need a reference for those mountains. Aside from that, seems to be going well. I’ve got plans for metallic material in some areas, for bonus shiny. One thing that’s been annoying – turpentine stinks. I started to get a bad headache despite the open window and fan, and after gazing long and hard at the several paragraphs of health warnings in red on the turpentine container, I decided to switch to mineral spirits. Except that I made the mistake of getting super-green enviro-friendly mineral spirits, thinking it would be the opposite of headaches and brain damage. Which it is, but it’s a cloudy white rather then clear, and keeps separating from the linseed oil, which sucks. I may have to switch to regular mineral spirits. Anyhow, it’s been pretty fun to work on, maybe I’ll do more Pak’ma’ra art after this one, too.
Upcoming Adventures + Babylon 5
I’m apparently going to be traveling a bit coming up soon, meaning that it’s a very good thing that I’ve got a giant stack of free travel courtesy of Airtran. This Friday, we’re headed for Florida for Drew’s other grandfather’s funeral (we went to Drew’s first grandfather’s funeral 2 months ago, and then 2 months before that Drew wen’t to Neil’s funeral, so it has not been a good year for Drew so far=\). The current plan is that, on the next Tuesday, we head to Richmond, and stay there until Saturday when we leave with his Dad & co. to go to the Outer Banks where they’re rented a house for a week. We stay there a few days, then head back to Denver. However, it seems I might be needed out in California for family-related purposes at an unknown point in the future, and so I’m hesitant about scheduling all of this flight time. Helps to have the travel vouchers and all, at least. I do like traveling by planes, which helps.
So I ordered a bunch of laptop parts, I’m gonna upgrade my netbook’s RAM and hard drive, and then try installing Ubuntu on it. See, it’s becoming a hindrance that I’m trying to do all of this stuff with php and Drupal and am doing it off of my Windows XP computer. I haven’t used Linux much at all, but apparently it’s much easier to do backend web programming with it then with a Windows box, and it’s time I figured out how to do that. Assuming I figure it out in the next 4 days and get the netbook set up, I’ll have a teeny workstation to use while traveling to work on the Drupal site I recently started.
So I’m almost done watching Babylon 5 – we’ve got a few episodes left, and maybe a movie. I totally caved and ordered figures, which arrived today. They’re certainly not action figures, being that Sheridan is the only one where you can move both the arms and the legs, but they’re still cute. I’ve also got Delenn, G’kar, and Londo. Now I just need to figure out how to get the rest of the figures that I want via finding the internet sellers that are trying to unload them for cheap, rather then the sellers that think they’re super valuable and are pricing them accordingly. I found someone selling Ivanova and Vir for not too much, so they might be my next order. I can substitute some of my pre-existing figures for other characters. Aragorn makes an excellent Marcus (though I might still get a Marcus character if I see him), and Legolas makes an excellent Number 1. Honestly, I never liked Number 1, I kept thinking of her as “Mars Resistance Leader Hannah Montana.”
Season 5 hasn’t been quite as exciting as Season 4, but Drew warned me of that. All of the Londo/G’kar stuff has been excellent, at least. I didn’t care for the telepaths, and they took up most of the first half of the season. I also think there’s been a huge hole where Ivanova used to be, she was a great character and I don’t think Lochley was a good replacement. As much as I liked Delenn, her character stopped being as interesting once her and Sheridan became official, which happened around the same time the Minbari caste conflict ended as well.
It’s been a bit exhausting watching through so many seasons of something, so it’s good timing that we’re finishing up right before we leave, since I could use a TV break!
Wheels Within Wheels
My bike has a flat tire. The last time my bike had a flat tire, I spent an hour wrangling with it, getting saturated with dirt and grease, only to have the inner-tube not on correctly and need to go to the shop to get it redone anyhow. That was the back tire though, the one intertwined with all of the gears and such. The tire that is currently flat is the front tire. Given that it’s a simple procedure to get the tire off, I’m going to give it a go again, since I’ve got a spare tube and all. Hopefully it works. Even if I am successful, I think I’ll still take my bike to a shop the next time the back tire goes kaput, as a shop has much better equipment to deal with a persnickety back wheel then I do.
I’m going through a slight conundrum with my car. See, I just took it in for it’s 90K checkup, and spent a buttload of dollars getting it fixed up. Which I’d expected. The thing is, I really liked the shop I went to. It’s an oil change and car repair shop that also has a coffee house attached. While I sat and waited for my car, I down two different types of chai tea, one of them on the house due to my really long wait. The one I actually paid for was some of the best chai tea I’ve ever had. So, this shop has an oil change deal where, for $99 you can buy 4 oil changes + 4 drinks. The problem is, I’ve got my own ramps, and my own pan. I’ve been changing my own oil for several years now. It saves me money. But then again, it’s not like it saves me a huge amount of money. And it was also a huge pain to change oil in the winter, given that the parking lot was perpetually covered in wet slush most of the time. And I live in an apartment, so it’s also a pain just storing the oil changing materials (especially since I lack a balcony or backyard). In any case, I’m currently debating selling my oil changing stuff and just going to this shop. If I do this, I might hold off until the weather gets crappy again, since changing your oil in the summer is no biggie. That slush last winter sure was awful to lie in, though!
