Gaming, Misc Projects, Jobs, and Media (a.k.a. I Suck At Making Relevant Post Titles)
My current site project right now involves bunches of icons, and I wish I had more time for it. I’m also trying to get myself in gear with the Amazon Breakthrough Novel contest. I’ve never written a pitch before and it’s a tough slog at this point. My writing tendencies are entirely too stream-of-consciousness for their own good, and I need to focus more on a decent packaged whole when I write. In other news, I’ve eaten Mexican food every day this week except yesterday.
I finally beat Oasis on Insane. Were this 2004, when the game actually came out, it would likely be much more exciting. Nonetheless, Oasis has provided me with months of gameplay, and was totally worth the $6 I paid for it. On a similar note, rumors have it that a version of Civilization will be coming to Facebook this June. Aside from my occasional Scrabble obsession (and whenever someone flings a Pathwords invite at me), I’m not a big Facebook gamer. Yoville got tedious, and I haven’t logged into my account in months now. There’s a bunch of others (Mafia Wars, Farmville, etc.) I signed up for, played once, and then promptly forgot about. I think a problem with these games is that they’re mostly about doing the same thing over and over to acquire more stuff and build your character. None of which is all that interesting to me. One thing that is immensely interesting, however, is Civilization.
Job prospects = still slow. Didn’t get the job I interviewed for this past Friday. They might have a temporary use for me for a project that may or may not happen, however, which would be nice. I’d like to get more hours at Liberty, as though the pay is meager, it’s actually pretty fun to jump around by the side of the road all day long. Also, I don’t think I’ve ever felt this healthy in the middle of winter before.
I wish another Chick-fil-a would open up out here. This is because I want to do another First 100. Preferably without the blizzard this time around. I also really just want to eat chicken constantly, because it is so freaking good.
I finished reading “Jonathan Norrell & Mr. Strange” by Susanna Clarke recently. It was fabulous, a very British early 1800’s take on magicians and magic, quite long and involving with quirky characters, I highly recommend it. I’m currently reading “Nature Girl” by Carl Hiaasen, which is quite funny.
Finished watching Evangelion. Apparently the ending was poorly executed due to budget issues, and I thus need to see a movie called “The End of Evangelion” for proper fulfillment. I really liked the concept behind the ending, and we can hopefully get our paws on the movie sometime soon. Started watching Bleach, am enjoying it but with mixed feelings. The more it veers away from the “I need to kill this giant Hollow” plots, the more I like it.
Oh yeah, I totally scored some free fabric off of Craigslist. Giant bag, some scraps and some decent-sized pieces. I’ve got a pair of black shorts with a drawstring that never really fit me right, and I’ve got this great idea to convert it into a skirt, adding some fabric to the bottom in ruffles or something. I’ve got plenty of fabric to do this, now it’s simply the matter of locating said shorts. There’s this black hole that follows me sometimes, and likes eating things I’d prefer not to have eaten. I picked up a tank top from Old Navy with the final dregs of my gift card, and as a tank top it’s entirely too long, but with some fabric on the bottom it would make an awesome dress. I need to find a fabric really similar to the tank top’a fabric to execute this, however. Now, once I have made these items, I need to find or create circumstances where I would actually wear a skirt or a dress. Pants are just such a nice default, but it’s a shame that I keep making all of this crap and never wear it anywhere for the most part.
Oh yeah, crispy chocolate in my near future. Old Towne Arvada is having some sort of chocolate festival, whereupon I will enter items into their cookie contest and, with any luck, will win a giant pile of chocolate. Which would be good timing, as our Christmas chocolate is slowly running out!
My life as a statue
I’ve found employment. Not the employment I was really expecting to find, mind you, but employment nonetheless. Indeed, I am now one of those people that dresses up as the Statue of Liberty and dances around at the side of the road, trying to convince you to go get your taxes done at Liberty Tax. Part time, $8 an hour. But it works for now.
Here’s the thing: it’s pretty freaking disillusioning to spend large quantities of your time applying (and failing to get) jobs. Eventually you start wondering what the point is in the first place. My veeery sllooowly moooving job building the router site is, well, slow. Doesn’t take up a huge amount of time. And, I need money. Even if I’m earning a rather paltry sum, at least I’m earning something. There’s also the fact that winters are infamous for making me lazy and get no exercise. So, it’s like I’m getting paid to go to a gym/club. In theory, I’m also boosting my confidence, by waving at complete strangers and having them wave back. There’s the occasional middle finger, but for the most part (when people respond, at least), people are friendly and some downright bizarrely happy to see me. It’s also pretty fun to wear a costume. I would take on a job as a Chick-Fil-A cow in a heartbeat, incidentally.
I also find it easier to organize my time when it’s broken up into chunks. Now that Drew is at work all day, my day stretches before me like a vast plain, all to be spent in front of the computer doing *something*, in theory, that will propel me to the next job, or give me another thing to slap on the ole resume. With this part-time job, I *have* to get work done in the alloted time available. Also, dancing around for several hours in a row makes it much easier to sit in front of the computer for long stretches of time. I’m rather restless for the most part, and like to wander around, and the fact that I eat more then my fair share of sugar during the day does nothing to ameliorate this tendency. So, being exhausted helps with this. And, if things go well, I’ll be super-toned by springtime!
And that’s that. Here are other things going on in my life right now, in list form:
- Have more or less gotten the hang of Drupal hooks. Am looking forward to trimming up my new shiny module and maybe getting it published on the Drupal site.
- Have decided that, as we don’t have friends out here in Denver yet, it’s time to start watching more anime. I never saw Evangelion, so we just started watching that last night. And will apparently need to finish watching it very soon as well, as I’ve now got Bleach sitting at the library waiting to be picked up.
- We’ve been eating free Chick-Fil-A for several months now, at least once a week. We thought we’d get sick of it at some point, but no. I still crave it as much as ever.
- Did you know you can stick slices of tofu in the toaster? It’s pretty neat.
- At some point, I need to get a phone with decent web-browsing capabilities. I mean, how am I supposed to make sure websites are designed to look good on mobile browsers if I don’t even have a mobile browser in which to look at them?
- I got all extravagant recently and bought a cactus for $3.50. It’s succulent and adorable. There’s the best shop ever in Manitou Springs with a greenhouse-type room filled with cacti/cactuses/cactodes of all shapes and sizes. When I go in there it’s like I go into a pet shop. Even better, actually, because pet shops make me sad. I feel for the plight of those poor Betas trapped in those teeny little glass bowls.
- Grilled cheese sandwiches are the Fruit of the Gods.
Job stuff, rabid illness, etc.
So here’s the job situation: I have picked up a temporary job working at Liberty Tax to tide me over until I (hopefully) hear back from the Census people (apparently it might be a bit of time, I’m hopeful though as I scored 100% on the test), and that will tide me over until either the freelance web stuff picks up or I can land a more permanent web job. I am moving forward on my current Drupal project, though, went to a meeting last week and checked out some CNC routers. Once that’s done, I’ve got a giant list of side projects to work on portfolio-building until I can land something else.
And, I’m sick. Came down with it yesterday. Might be cold or flu, not really sure. Headache, fever, chills, fatigue, sore throat, occasional cough. And I threw up today. Feels really weird to have things in my stomach. I think that my stomach’s weakening with age. I didn’t use to have stomach queasiness with illness, but lately I’ve gotten that. Also, in the last few years I’ve started experiencing queasy stomach after roller coaster rides. No good at all! Also no good is my period this time around. It’s really awful to have bad cramps while also sick. I’m still playing around with giving myself doses of zinc to help out. I wish zinc didn’t make me nauseas, and I need to drill into my skull that 15 minutes of nausea for a few days is a lot better then days of devastating pain.
Oh, and that avocado contest I entered? I did not win. Well, I did win a cookbook and a t-shirt, both of which should come in the mail at some point, but no dollars. It’s all good, though, I felt like I learned a great deal of Flash, which is something.
Using CSS3 text-shadow to create fun text effects
So I’ve been playing around with new CSS3 tags, and I just realized a fun effect you can make doing text-shadow. If you set the color of your text the same as your background color, you can create an outline effect. The following uses ’style=”font-size: 24px; color: #000; text-shadow: 0px 0px 5px #e82aff;’.
Yay for text!!!
Or, even better, offset either of the first two values in text-shadow enough, and you can completely remove the text and only have the glowing shadow left:
Glowing is fun!
Especially when it’s super fuzzy!
“Glowing is fun!” uses this: font-size: 24px; padding-bottom: 30px; font-family: Georgia, serif;color: #000; text-shadow: 0px 20px 3px #54ff00;
“Especially when it’s super fuzzy!” uses this: font-size: 24px; padding-bottom: 30px; font-family: Georgia, serif;color: #000; text-shadow: 0px 20px 5px #fff;
How about using multiple shadows to make an outline?
Fuzzy outline?
“Fuzzy outline?” uses this: font-size: 24px; font-weight: bold;text-decoration: blink; padding-bottom: 30px; font-family: Georgia, serif; color: #000; text-shadow: 0px 20px 1px #000, 0px 20px 3px #fff;
How about some Matrix-style text?
1 0 0 1 0
0 1 0 0 1
0 0 1 1 1
1 1 0 1 0
1 0 0 0 1
0 0 1 0 1
1 1 1 1 0
0 1 0 0 1
The code for this baby is as follows:
<p style=”font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; letter-spacing: 40px; font-family: Courier, serif; color: #000; text-shadow: 18px 3px 4px #fff, 51px 14px 2px #fff, 90px 8px 3px #fff, 20px 2px 2px #1cf200, 33px 24px 9px #1cf200, 52px 0px 4px #1cf200, 89px 5px 4px #1cf200, -19px 19px 3px #88fa98, 54px 15px 7px #88fa98, 73px 19px 4px #88fa98, -7px 5px 7px #329d42, 88px 9px 4px #329d42, 18px 29px 2px #329d42, 70px 5px 5px #329d42; 16px 5px 9px #329d42;”>1 0 0 1 0 <br /> 0 1 0 0 1<br /> 0 0 1 1 1<br /> 1 1 0 1 0<br /> 1 0 0 0 1<br /> 0 0 1 0 1<br /> 1 1 1 1 0<br /> 0 1 0 0 1<br /></p>
Incidentally, if you are using Internet Explorer (or Firefox pre-3.1), you probably don’t see any shadow effects, and in fact just see a lot of black all of the boxes above. Unfortunately, this means that unless you feel like adding some CSS hacks to add a font-color just for IE, text-shadow isn’t at useful as it could be. Hopefully IE will start supporting text-shadow sometime soon.
The long drive back from Tennessee
So, last Wednesday night we ended up leaving for Nashville at about 2 in the morning. Errr, we left for Nashville early Thursday morning (somehow, it doesn’t seem to be the next day until the sun actually starts rising). I drove first shift, and got to see a fabulous sunrise in Kansas before attempting to conk out in the folded down backseat of Drew’s car. There’s enough room for a person to stretch out and sleep, but it doesn’t work so well when the car is driving and I’m used to a glorious mattress. We got to Nashville at 11:00 central time. Unfortunately for us, most of the people there were East Coast elitists, so they had just finished watching the ball drop when we went inside, declared it a new year, and went to bed. New Year’s Central Time went unnoticed, and we were conked out in bed by the time Mountain Time New Years happened.
Now here’s something I’m curious about: New York has the ball drop and all, but what about the other time zones? Seems to be that Chicago should have a ball drop for the Central time zone, Denver for the Mountain time zone, and I suppose Seattle for the Pacific time zone. Don’t let New York get all the glory! I’d suggest more southern cities, but it seems that people have this idea that the holidays should be all gobbed up with snow, even though many parts of the US don’t see snow around the holidays at all. However, I’m open to a ball drop in
We were there 2.5 days, whereupon I received stuff and ate stuff and hung out with Drew’s relations. We decided to split up the drive back into two parts, and ended up getting a motel room in Topeka after having eaten some incredibly delicious BBQ in Missouri earlier. I need to either make or get ahold of some St. Louis style BBQ sauce, as it’s really good. I’m a sucker for some sweet and smoky. We might have driven further that night, but at some point the roads got slushy, then icy, and it would have been a waste. It’s interesting to observe weather driving west. It was really cold in Nashville with no snow, bitterly cold in Topeka with bunches of snow, and the further west we drove across Kansas the warmer it got, and it’s gonna hit close to 50 in Denver today.
Incidentally, next time we’ve got this kind of distance to go, we’re gonna try to fly instead. Driving is fun if you aren’t really familiar with the route so much, but we’ve both seen the 430 mile stretch on I-70 across Kansas waaay more then we need to at this point.
And here’s a few thoughts on hotels. I like nicer hotels, but only if someone else is totally covering it. As Drew and I were splitting the tab, we stayed at a Motel 6. In terms of cheap hotels/motels, it often seems better to choose chains over non-chains. With non-chains it’s questionable as to how livable the room will actually end up being. However, it doesn’t matter much for that chain if whoever stays there thinks it sucks, as they’re just passing through and so repeat business isn’t too much of a concern. So, if they’re sheisty or lazy, they can get away with lower standards. However, staying at a chain place, there’s a possibility that you’ll continue to visit their other locations when you travel. Thus, the Motel 6 was as bare-bones as the price suggested, but had the benefit of being appropriately clean and not being sketchy.
We got back last night around 8:30, and Estha was super glad to see us. We now have giant piles of crap sitting everywhere which we should probably deal with at some point. Also, so much junk food. My goal is to not eat it all today. Incidentally, my New Year’s resolution is to not gain too much weight. Screw losing weight. And screw not gaining weight. I’ve accepted the fact that, every winter, I put on lbs. Conversely, every summer, I lose those lbs. All I want is to not gain so many lbs that my bras stop fitting, as that is a royal pain. Mind you, I’ve got summer bras and winter bras for this precise purpose, but when I start outgrowing the winter bras things start getting really pissy for me.
Anyhow, we scored a giant bag of miniature candy (kisses and teeny Reeses cups and such), which pleases the little Martha Stewart part of me as it means we have stuff to put in our candy dish for the next month or so. Incidentally, we decided that we’re gonna keep our Christmas tree and lights up until the beginning of February. See, I get depressed in the winter. I think the excitement of the holidays helps, but January is generally pretty bleak. So, I shall experiment with leaving bonus Xmas light cheer up, to see if that combats seasonal affective disorder type issues.
And on a final note, today is Drew’s and my 4 year anniversary, yay! Unfortunately, Drew is currently passed out in bed with whatever disease he picked up on this trip. We’ll be hitting the Macaroni Grill later for anniversary dinner, whereupon I will gorge myself on sea life and exciting beverages. Until then, I will hang out with Drupal and try to figure out what the heck to get Drew for our anniversary that he hasn’t already received over this long holiday season.
Watch out for little rubber thingies when you change your oil
So we attempted to change Drew’s oil yesterday. I couldn’t get the up-until-now-machine-screwed-in oil plug off, but he could, so that was alright. The oil filter was located in a godawful place behind a bunch of various car innards such that I really needed a few extra joints to reach it properly. Our new wrench is also a pale comparison to the wrench I used to use. Again, Drew managed to get back to it and wrench it off. He also put the new filter on, tightening it as much as he could with his hand. I screwed the oil plug back in, it didn’t go in as smoothly as mine usually does, but seemed to tighten ok.
Drew starts the car, and there’s a “bloop” noise and gushing…then dripping. A bunch of oil slowly oozed out of the car. As it was getting on towards dusk and we had no idea what was going on, we stopped for the night. The internet mentioned a few possibilities, with a few curses thrown in the direction of Jiffy Lube and their ilk. I was able to snake my hand in from the top and grab the oil filter, and it seemed tight enough. Today, I peered under the car and tried to make out where the oil plug was. I couldn’t see it, and, reaching around amongst the oily patches, I thought I felt a hole with oil around it (neglecting to realize that the entire freaking underside of the car had oil on it at this point).
So we headed over to Advance Auto, where, along with dumping the old oil, we pick up some new oil plus an oil plug. In this fabulous overcast 30some degree weather with the parking lot still partially covered in snow (and the remainder now covered in motor oil, unfortunately), we rolled the car back onto the ramps. I get underneath, and the plug’s still there. Looking up, I can also see that the oil definitely came from the filter. However, I can’t seem to tighten it any more with my hand. So Drew gets under the car, and can’t tighten it any further, either. So then we switch tactics, and he removes the oil filter altogether. Oil filter looks fine. Then I decide to stick my hand down where the oil filter used to be, and poke around to look for any funny business. After I’d grown a few new joints in my forearm, I manage to get my hand into where the filter goes…and pull out a twisted little rubber ring, left behind from the last filter. Hooray!
Drew screws the oil filter back in, saying that it screwed in both tighter and easier then the last time. And the car is fine, now. Which is good, as that would have put a serious damper in our upcoming trip otherwise. Now all we have to go is go get a bunch of kitty litter and some newspapers to take care of the mess we left in the parking lot!
Drupal, the holidays, etc
I feel like I’ve cracked a major milestone, or something, regarding Drupal. I finally figured out how to write a basic module, and it works. Still needs a lot of finessing, but it gives me confidence that I can finish this project I’m working on without that pesky guesswork of knowing what I needing to do, but having no clue how to do it and no clue how difficult it is to do it. I’m really hoping that I can clean up my module and make it more user-friendly, so I can publish it with other modules and future people could find it useful.
I think I might go ahead and convert the Salami Day website to Drupal. I was originally using it as my CakePHP learning experience, but since not getting the job that I originally tried to learn CakePHP to impress, I feel like Drupal is just a better direction to go in, for now at least. That was an unfortunate job experience, anyhow. It’s really crappy when you go to an interview, find out that there’s something they really want you to know that they never bothered to tell your recruiter about, or bothered to mention in the telephone interview you’ve already had with them. Then, when you mention you’ve been thinking about learning it and can pick it up in the next week, they give a dismissive comment, as if they don’t believe you. Pretty much my entire design/development career has consisted of “Hey, I need to learn this program to do this thing. Guess I better do it.” I mean, that’s how you learn, right? Mind you, I didn’t have any sort of fabulous grasp on CakePHP, but after a week I’d rebuilt Salami Day and had a decent enough understanding of it’s structure. The job looked pretty nice, too. Oh well. Considering how many applicants they might have had who actually *knew* CakePHP, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that I didn’t get it. Nonetheless, I wish I could just jump up and down and flap my arms and scream that I’m a hard worker and love deadlines, and have them listen and fall in love with me and give me a bucket of dollars. If only!
In other news, I’m getting sick of ham + salad. We did Christmas with Drew’s aunt Pam, and as she was fortunate enough to get invited to a friend’s timeshare in Hawaii for the remainder of the holiday break, we got to take home all the food that Drew’s cousin Travis wasn’t going to eat. So, we have this gargantuan bag of salad, along with a nice pile of ham. Thus, ham salad! Goes great with Ken’s Steak House honey mustard dressing! Also, mmm, Christmas latkes. They went fast. We also have a metric ton of chocolate. Pacing issues with that, of course. Also, a post Christmas present – me finding a workout machine for free on Craigslist! It’s some sort of step resistance machine, nothing too fancy, but it’s free, and that’s the important part.
We leave for Nashville in two days. Drew’s family reunion and all that stuff. I get my sewing machine back, which shall be glorious. My butt will also get numb and fall off from the driving. Less glorious.
Also! On the 6th, I go in to take an application to become a Census worker. Could be fun! I have been spending waay too much time playing Oasis, which is this fabulous “Civilization meets Minesweeper” type game, which came out a few years back and I’m playing on my computer and is really cheap through the Amazon game downloads section. Andrew has been similarly productive, in that he just finished reading all of Dragonball. Which is a godawful quantity of manga.
Hmm, about time for another infamous ham salad. Hope everyone has a Happy New Year!
On jobs and programs and that holiday thing going on right now
First off, Drew has a job. Yay! He was supposed to be just part-time, but they want him to go full time. He’ll be doing recruiting for an online college. Another phone job, which is admittedly what he was doing before he got his degree, and doesn’t have much to do with political science. Apparently one of the people who interviewed him has a masters in international relations, so it’s not like he’s the only one being hired outside of his degree area. Being that it’s for a college, they had strong preference for people who had degrees anyhow, so it works out.
I’m still poking along, and am dealing with the slowness of people who need websites as a side thing to their real work. I’m gonna try to get a temporary job with the census, most likely as an enumerator. I can go door to door with a clipboard! I’ll need to take a test of some sort which will likely be ridiculously easy, and then see if I’m needed in my area (along with the gazillion other people who probably applied to do this as well). It would be evening and weekends mostly, so if my web work picks up, it would not interfere with potential meetings and such. Waiting to get a call back to take the application test currently.
As of right now, I’m back to learning Flash. I have high hopes for this time around, as I have an actual project I’m working on. Avocado animation ahoy! Making a video to enter to win $2,000. Going slow but steady at the moment, I’ll be sure to post it here when I’m done.
I am nauseous from mint bark. It is ridiculously easy to make, mostly involving smashing oreos and melting heaps of chocolate in the microwave. It is also ridiculously easy to eat too much of it.
Oh, and we’re apparently going to Nashville for New Years. Nice long drive, there. Drew’s got a family reunion dealio going on, and it will give me an opportunity to retrieve my sewing machine and paintbrushes, both of which I managed to leave behind in Richmond and both of which are quite necessary for my general well being. We’re taking Drew’s car, as the back seat folds down and has enough room for whoever’s not driving to nap. First, we’ve gotta get Drew’s oil changed. Looks like we’re getting about 6 inches of snow by tomorrow, so that’ll need to go away (or we’ll need to find a nice clear lot) before we can deal with the oil. I just really hope his oil filter and other bits aren’t in completely ridiculous locations. He’s always changed his oil in a shop, and I really hope they didn’t use a machine to screw and unscrew the plug (Jiffy Lube is particularly bad with that), cause that makes it a real big pain for those of us with weak arms to loosen said plug!
Anyhow, Happy/Merry/Kwazy Christmas/Yule/Hanukkah/Kwanzaa/Festivus/etc.!!!
Impending Christmas and such
So Christmas shopping is almost over! I got (mostly) everything boxed up and shipped stuff back to Richmond yesterday, we’ll see if parcel post comes through and allows things to get there by Xmas. If not, no biggie, it’s kinda exciting when you’ve got bonus presents to open after the 25th anyhow. Shipping was painful, however. It helps that the majority of the presents I’m doing this year are handmade (or pseudo-handmade, at least). Still need to do stuff for Drew, but that’s complicated as he’s here all the time as the Job Fairy has not blessed him yet.
Oh, Job stuff. I was employed for a day. I neglected to realize how freaking long it takes to drive to Boulder (and North Boulder at that) during rush hour (1.5 hours, to be precise). It didn’t pay enough to make it worth the drive. At this point, I’m keeping my eye out for something part-time, as I’ve got a web job coming up for a research center which should fill out the rest of my time OK for awhile.
Every two-three months, I get really dissatisfied with my personal site and decide to poke at it, which I’m currently doing now. I’d say that maybe someday it will be perfect, but I’d be lying. I’m also not sure if I design websites right. Seems the hip thing to do these days is build it entirely in Photoshop first and then begin hacking away at it in html/css. Thing is, as someone who fears clunky code, giant images, and the giant load time that goes along with it, I’m more inclined to build where all the content’s gonna sit, and then figure out how to make it look good from there. In other news, I really need to join one of these local designer/developer groups, as I lack friends to talk to who design/develop.
And on a final note, I have eaten a metric ton of sugar cookies in the past few days. This is both delicious and bloating.
