Dead Soda’s Check out this list of old sodas and what not. Very cool. I remember most of them… lol. It’s funny to look back and wonder what the hell these people were thinking!
Great list of MacOSX apps… My new fav is VirtueDesktops. Which is so cool! The beta has lots of bugs, but I can live!
It’s sad that this stuff is real… and that so many UK/European people will see the US like this. UGH!
I completely forgot to write about what happened at the office last Friday. I was working up in SM and these two girls came by handing out stickers with our names on them. I asked what these were for and they said “The move happening this weekend”…. “WHAT!?” Whave move?! This was the first I had heard of any move! I knew that they were planning a move sometime early this year to across the street, but I hadn’t heard ANYTHING about it in months! So I messaged the guy who manages me there and ask what’s going on. He gives me the DL and that apparently the dolt that’s managing the move forgot to notify me at all. They are only moving the people off the second floor into temp housing till the REAL move next month.
So then about 2 hours later, after I’ve packed up all my shit and freaked out and what not, because NO ONE knows where my shit is being moved to, or ANYTHING the dolt who’s organizing the move comes down and is like, “we’re not moving till NEXT weekend.” UGH! Can’t these people get ANYTHING straight!? What the fuck. Very annoying.
Monday was a 13 hour day at the office… Lots of stuff going on and what not. I have to learn Joomla now. I’ve been meaning to play with it and see what’s going on, but have just never had the chance to do it. I was given the task on Monday to completely redesign the corporate website… By next Tuesday.
Tuesday morning I slept in and headed to the office about 10ish and worked the day away on that stuff. Tuesday night was my first class. It was HORRIBLE… I’m really debating about if I want to go back or not. The prof seems nice enough, he was joking around and making it funny and stuff, but I just don’t know if I can deal with a class right now. Plus when I signed up work was dead. Now I don’t think I have the time or energy to spend 5 hours a week in class, plus the time it’s going to take to do all the homework/etc.
After that I headed over to Ben’s house and hung out with him we went down to Venice Beach and had coffee and just chatted. It was really nice.
It’s so wierd saying.. “I have to run to class now”.. It’s been 2.5+ years since I’ve said that! Ugh. I’m soooo old! haha.
This week has been hectic crazy. I’ve been putting off so much stuff and have way to much to do.
I’m really scared about this 100 mile ride yesterday. Its going to be in the 50’s when we start and in the 70’s midday, plus the whole riding 100 miles. UGH!
So lets see. Tuesday the trio ended up going out to Beige again, so that was exciting. We were standing like 3 feet from Lance Bass. Very exciting. Of course you know who was there, we ignored him again. I will not let him run me out of the place I enjoy hanging out at.
Wed I slept in a little and then got up and went to work in NB. Didn’t get in till 11 again and worked till 7pm. It was a crazy day and for some reason everything on my mac kept freezing and dying randomly! I think it’s probably because I had nearly every application open! I talked to the boss about getting me more RAM again, but he didn’t seem very enthused about doing it. That night I went home and crashed right away. I was so tired. I didn’t even bother taking my laptop home!
Thursday I was back in NB at 6am, and it was another crazy day of website changes, etc. That night Ben came over and we hung out for a while. That was nice, he even gave me a massage! 🙂
I even have an actual V-day date for the first time in years! 😀 Yay!
So, I’ve been trying to avoid this, but Anna Nicole Smith is dead! Kinda random, out of the blue. But really not a big surprise. The annoying thing is though that my RSS reader has about 800 stories about it.
Today I’ve got so much to do before heading out to PS. Ugh! I’m out. Later.
I love my MacBook Pro. Everyone knows that. I would be LOST without her. But I have to admit I’m getting REALLY annoyed with Apple Mail lately.
For some reason spam has just been FLOODING me! HARD CORE flooding me. And it’s really getting annoying. I wish that Apple would build in some of the technologies that spam assassin uses. I sure hope that the next version is MUCH better at catching spam.
It’s also been crashing nearly every day! I’m not sure what the problem is. I’ve tried rebuilding my mailboxes like everyone says to do, and that just doesn’t help at all! Hopefully Apple is getting sick of all my bug reports and they will fix whatever the issue is!
I downloaded a preview of Leopard a while back and have to say that I love it. I used it for a while off my external HD, I’ll be out there the day it comes out buying the new version!
Friday night Robert came over about 9:45ish and we hung around here. Invited my neighbor girl and then headed out to Weho. Met up with Jason there and then later Mayko. It was a really good time. The neighbor girl and Mayko REALLY talked like the whole night away, it was funny. Either way, we hung out and ate pizza and had a great night. Sadly I kept forgetting to take pictures! 🙁
Saturday I got up and went and did laundry and then baked my cake. It didn’t turn out very well. 🙁 But it still tastes good. I spent the night at home alone….
Sunday I got up early and headed over to Mayko’s picked him up and we went out to the outlet malls. I got some good purchases, but I was hoping for more shirts, pants, etc. But I really love the few things we did buy. I still have $100 left of what I was going to spend out there. I need to buy new sandles for sure yet. My parents also called me to say Happy-Bday.
Drove him home about 4 and then came home and spent the night hanging out here.
So yeah, it was a pretty good birthday weekend, could have been more fun. But alas. Happy B-Day to me! 😀
My scope for today says this: “But we are subdued by an isolating opposition from warm Venus to cold Saturn that challenges our self-esteem and makes us wonder if we are truly loved.” So true…
You know, I HATE when people call me up and ask for advice on electronics or computers or what not. And then they do the exact oposite and come compain at me when what they did breaks something.
IE, Evil Aunt is buying a new computer.She asks me what she should do. I say go to the dell.com website and find the best computer you can for what you are willing to spend. What does she do? Instead she goes to fucking QVC and buys a computer off there! UGH! She sends me the specs… She spent $900 at QVC, dell.com is selling the EXACT SAME COMPUTER for $359!! hahah
IE#2, nearly 6 years ago the G&G bought a desktop computer. I kept saying, get them a Mac, get a Mac, blah blah blah. I knew I would have to provide support for them, etc. The Evil Aunt kept saying, “No, I’ll help them, get them a computer I can help with, blah blah blah”. Well they got a dell, right off the bat I had to teach the Gma how to do everything. Some of the other family helped a little, but most of the stuff she had to learn I had to teach her. And of course now that things are really starting to get fucked up… She calls me up all the time with her problems! And it’s not EASY to talk her through things.. “You see the ‘File,Edit,View’ buttons at the top”? …. “No”. OMG! I don’t USE windows. I honestly have no idea how to do most of the steps in windows any more. If I’m sitting there using it I can do it, but trying to talk someone through deleting an Outlook Express account from memory is basically impossible for me to do over the phone. If we had got her a fucking MAC like I suggested years ago it would be NO PROBLEM!
Remember sex guy upstairs, the one that MOVED OUT!? Well the new guy is having loud sex at all hours of the night as well… And I’ve YET to figure out who the hell actually lives there. I Swear every day there’s a new guy walking in and out of there… There was one hot 20-something that was going in and out one day. YUM! But no matter who LIVES there, I’ve only seen MEN coming and going!
I am officially signed up for Tour De Palm Springs Yay! This will be my first Century (100 miles in one day!) Wish me luck! Anyone want to come out to Palm Springs for the weekend with me??? I’ll be gone all day Saturday, but Friday night and Sunday morning we can do something. Perhaps shopping at the outlet mall?
You know what’s amazing about SoCal in winter? You can ride your bike down the strand and see people wearing:
A) Laying on the beach wearing a bikini
B) Playing Volleyball in board shorts
C) Walking on the strand in shorts/t-shirt and flipflops
D) Sitting on a bench wearing jeans and a sweater
E) Walking the dog in a heavy jacket, stocking cap, and gloves
F) All of the above….
People are crazy!
I’m REALLY getting sick of people ditching me at the last minute for things. Ever since the New Year, I’ve been trying to schedule things for EVERY night of the week, be it staying in and chatting with someone, going to coffee, or hitting up a club.. I want to get out of my house. I’m tired of being stuck here.
Now, go back through and count the number of nights that I have actually gone out. It’s not near every night. Infact, it seems that MOST of my week-day activities get cancelled at the last minute. And I’m SICK of it. Chiba really pushed me over the edge on Tuesday night. He and I had made plans LAST week to go out to Beige. So I txt him at 3:30 to see if he’s still wanting to go. No reply. He gets online at 7ish and messages me… We talk for a while and after a bit I ask him if he’s still going, he says he will see…. So anyways, 9 comes, and he still doesn’t know, then 9:30.. He’s just now starting his HW…. So at 9:50 I tell him. I need to know if you are going or not because if not then I am going to bed or or if we are then I need to change. Anyways, so we got into an argument about it because it was very annoying and I just snapped because I’m so tired of people cancelling on me!
He called later that night and we had like an hour long discussion about it and how I’m so much more managed in my life then nearly everyone he or I knows here in LA. I manage my time, I manage my money. The only thing I can’t do is manage my social life! I also don’t double schedule things, so if someone cancels on me, I’m screwed. And double scheduling is a VERY LA thing to do. I’m sorry, but I’m not going to turn into an asshole just because I live here. Either way we talked and it was good, I wish we could have more in-depth convos like that to connect. It’d be nice at least. He called me again like an hour after that, I’m not sure what he wanted, but I was pretty sleepy so we just basically said Hi and then Bye. lol
Mayko said he really wanted to hang out for my Birthday, so that was nice of him. I’m thinking that Sunday I can head over his way and we can go shopping or something. I figure I can afford to spend like $300 on myself for my birthday. Maybe take a trip out to the outlet malls or what not, and I really like his style of dress, so that’d be fun!
I’m not too sure what I’m going to do for it though. I really wanted to have a group of people and go out to dinner, but since no one can ever commit to anything and two of my better friends are in a bitter fighting match right now, I just said screw it. So Friday night I’m pretty much not doing anything at this point, Saturday day I am doing laundry, that night one of the guys at work is having a bowling party which I may or may not go to depending on if I go on a ride Sunday morning. And then as I said, probably hang out with Chiba on Sunday afternoon. I’m also thinking of baking myself a Pink Champange Cake. Which behind Ice Cream Cake, is my favorite!
This morning I really wasn’t in the mood to roll out of bed, so I slept in till 6. I was on the freeway by 6:30 and traffic was already at a dead stand still. Why can’t I just work from home. Seriously, I NEVER interact with the people in this office.
Forty year old Joyce Vincent had been lying dead in her London apartment for two straight years before the badly decomposed body was discovered by her landlord in April 2006. The story, quietly tucked away in British newspapers, profoundly upset readers around the world who saw her isolation as a failing of modern communities. As one outraged blogger put it, Two years. She lay there. Alone, dead, unnoticed, and unmissed. How is it possible that in a city of about seven million, not one person noticed that a neighbor, sister, cousin or friend was missing?
How, indeed: in an era of advanced communication technologies in which loved ones can be reached with a few clicks of a mouse or dial of a phone, it seems implausible that the number of solitary deaths have been on the rise in countries like the UK and Japan in recent years. Alienation, dubbed the great emotional sickness of our era by Italian filmmaker Michaelangelo Antonioni, remains a disease that even email, cell phones and online networking has been powerless to remedy. These days, some experts are even suggesting that our social bonds may be breaking down not in spite of these new technologies, but because of it.
A decade ago, when many North Americans were still just starting to go online, Apple, AT&T, Hewlett Packard and Intel funded a research project by Washington University to study the psychological and social effects of using the Internet. While most first-time users went online for social purposes, the studies showed a rapid decline in participation for social activities beyond the net and increases in depression and loneliness. While magazines like Fortune and BusinessWeek boasted the virtues of interactive sites such as MySpace and YouTube, most internet users were found to be joining fewer clubs, talking less in-person and hanging out with friends less often. While new tools were allowing people to network faster than ever, studies around the world have pointed to the shrinking social circles of tech-savvy consumers. A June 2006 study by Duke University concluded that the average American today only has two close confidants, while SwissCom Inc. found that 80 percent of all cell phone conversations took place with only four people.
Some critics have rebuffed the suggestion that technology has eroded traditional human bonds, noting that the interaction is simply taking place in different forms. What it’s really doing is shifting the means of socializing, says Barry Wellman, a sociology professor at the University of Toronto. In other words, the seemingly quiet and withdrawn teenager at family dinners could in fact be a witty conversationalist in online forums. This didn’t necessarily make her anti-social; it was simply a different mode of communication. While heavy internet users were spending less time with family and friends offline, they were keeping more regular contact through cell phone calls and email. The Internet has moreover been a godsend for some people who lacked opportunities for human contact, such as the elderly and disabled. Vilify it though we may, technology has so far played an invaluable role in keeping people integrated.
In themselves, email and cell phones are only a small part of the broader causes of loneliness in modern society. What these tools have done, however, is fundamentally change the nature of our communication with other people. While our new tools grant us the convenience of talking from a distance over a screen, they also exempt us from the intimacy that comes with face-to-face communication. The subtle nuances of facial expressions and body language are lost, and in return, we are spared the awkwardness and inconveniences of in-person meetings.
There is something trying, even exhausting, about human interactions, writes Laura Pappano in her book, The Connection Gap. Why meet when you can e-mail? And digital video makes it seem like you’re there. Right? While interviewing a terminally ill woman who chatted online to escape loneliness, however, Pappano discovered that the woman gradually grew cynical of the superficial interactions with her friends’ to them, she was merely a name on a screen, disembodied from her cancer and the world around her. They didn’t perceive the pain in her eyes or voice as she communicated with them. Her life and death had no impact on their conscience.
I don’t want useless sounds. I want to select them, complains Monica Vitti’s character in Antonioni’s 1964 film, La Notte. In today’s age of virtual communication, it has become all too easy for people to select and filter out the voices they don’t want to hear. It’s a world in which voices of isolated, impoverished individuals like Joyce Vincent all too easily lose their place. In the last hour before her death, Vincent surrounded herself with unopened Christmas presents and drowned out the silence with sounds from her TV set a parting reminder to herself, perhaps, that she was still connected to a society that had long forgotten about her.