I’m thinking about taking up knitting. It’s become all trendy, which has several advantages; the main one (possibly) being that I can meet new people.

I don’t know anyone in this town anymore—especially girls. In fact, I generally don’t gravitate toward females, but I feel like the only girl who doesn’t have any girl friends to hang with.

Because this knitting thing is so popular, many cities have their own knitting groups where people meet on a regular basis to knit and talk and do whatever else it is that women do when they gather together. I’ve found the blogs of a couple SB knitters and they look like pretty normal girls—and they are both in their 20s, which is a plus. So anyway, I was thinking that maybe I could learn this new craft as an excuse to join a group.

Is it lame that I want to start a hobby to make friends? I mean, it’s one thing to have a passion and then join a group of other like-minded individuals, but it’s another to take up a passion just to fit the niche of the group. Because, I don’t even know if I’ll like knitting or if I will be good enough to make anything useful. For all I know, I’ll give up in frustration.

Anyway, if I actually decide to go through with this, some of you can probably expect lots of hats and scarves and socks in your future.

Posted at 12:14 PM | (4)

About 2 hours ago I got a call from the receptionist saying to come out to the front desk. She didn’t say what it was about, and so, having absolutely no idea why I was summoned, I trotted out to the reception area.

She grinned as I came out and was like, “They are for you!” It was then that I saw a large vase full of a dozen red roses.

But, there was no card! So I had to ask to make sure they were for me, since I haven’t ever gotten flowers for no reason before—after all, today is not my birthday or a holiday.

Anyway, they are of course from Steve (which I suppose is a good thing, because if I asked him if he sent them and he said “no” I’d be VERY confused. Not many people know exactly where I work, and I’m not sure anyone else would shell out the money for such a bouquet!).

They are very pretty and several people have come over to admire them. Pictures of them are included below (since I’m at work, all I have with me is my camera phone, so please excuse the poor photo quality and composition).

Anyway, I think these flowers are “just because”, which is really sweet. Although, um, if they are for some occasion I SHOULD be remembering, then, um, I TOTALLY remember! :)

Posted at 3:42 PM | (1)

Last night I picked up a couple items for Steve at the grocery store. There was a pair of guys directly in front of me—a middle aged guy, and a somewhat younger guy. While younger guy went off to obtain an additional item, older guy decided to be nosy and inspect my purchases.

I had picked up two 1 gallon containers of milk, and as you are probably aware, most stores have some sort of deal where it’s cheaper to buy two. This is nothing new. The cap on the milk said something creative like “Buy 2 and save!”.

“Buy 2 and save,” he carefully reads. “Hmm…”

I pretend to be fascinated by the magazines on the rack proclaiming Britney’s baby to be a girl and listing off which celebs have the best and worst bodies. I hoped that he would keep his observations, already a bit intrusive, to himself and not involve me, a perfect stranger.

Older guy then moves on to my only other item of purchase—some Oscar Mayer turkey lunch meat.

“Hmm!” he notes with astonishment, “I didn’t know they made that kind of meat! Is it any good?”

The meat isn’t even for me, and I’m not sure I’ve even had this particular type, but ok. “Umm, yea, I guess it’s all right,” I manage to say, hoping this would satisfy his curiosity.

“So it’s pretty good, huh?” he persists. “How much does it cost?”

OMG, he is obsessed with this lunch meat! I could see if it was some gourmet, exotic brand, but I guess he is easily impressed. I’m not much of a comparison shopper to begin with, and since I was only buying the brand specified to me, I didn’t look at the price. I have NO idea how much this meat costs. None. I can’t even begin to provide an estimate.

“Umm, I don’t really know…” I start to say.

“So is it pretty cheap? How much, like $2, $3??”

“Umm, I really don’t know, you’d have to look.”

Luckily younger guy returned and older guy finished in line and left before I had to tell him exactly how much this amazing turkey meat costs. This is a good thing, because I still can’t tell you the price!

Posted at 1:11 PM | (0)

I usually TRY to make it in to work at a decent time—at least before everyone else gets there, but that doesn’t always happen. It’s sooo easy to find excuses to stay in bed a little longer.

Today though I had to make sure I arrived by 9am, as we had our quarterly company meeting. It was shorter than last time, lasting only an hour. Because people complained last time about the healthiness of the food provided, in addition to the Costco muffins and croissants, we also had fruit salad (I’m assuming also Costco). I had a blueberry muffin, along with some fruit salad, although personally I wouldn’t mind if they brought in some good donuts. Good thing tomorrow is Donut Wednesday! :)

Not sure what the point of this post is. Maybe it’s to say that donuts should always be an option!

Posted at 11:51 AM | (5)

The last couple days I’ve been on a kick to tweak minor code details on my site. I cleaned up a tiny bit of clutter, and also took advantage of plugins and Smarty capabilities. If you want to be potentially bored with the details, I’ve put them in the extended entry.

Though I downloaded it long ago, I never realized how awesome the MT-Compare plugin is! It’s a great way to use if/else statements and control output. I’ve also come to appreciate the MTElse tag, which I somehow overlooked before.

Since most of the plugins available aren’t formatted to be used on dynamic templates, one has to resort to either using PHP or taking advantage of the built-in Smarty engine. Chad Everett posted a few weeks ago on how to get the same effects from popular MT plugins by using Smarty. If I ever get especially prolific, I may implement his version of Pagination, but for now I’ve just used his Smarty equivalent of the Compare plugin.

I used it in my Individual Archives under the Comments. Now the “Comments” header says “Comments” when there are none, “1 Comment” when there is one comment, and “X Comments” when there are multiple, where “X” is the number of comments on that entry. Similarly, if there are no comments, I have posted a little notice that says “No comments yet”, just to break up the space and make it obvious that there are no comments.

Using the MTElse tag I have added a condition where if comments have been closed on an entry, there is now some text that says “Comments for this entry are now closed”. I’m sure people have been able to figure this out in the past, but it can’t hurt to be more clear. Plus displaying conditional information is cool!

I am liking the dynamic pages more and more, especially knowing that with these conditional tags I can mimic behavior that appears on other dynamically generated blogging systems such as Wordpress.

Posted at 2:41 PM | (1)

I swear, every time I write a post about having nothing to write about, something comes up shorly thereafter.

Today I came home to find something exciting in my mailbox…my certificate from UCSB Extension!! I am now “officially” certified in Graphic Design and Visual Communication.

I’m glad that I am finally done. Sitting in a class for 3 hours (with the occasional 8 hour Saturday session) starts to get to you after awhile—especially when you already know most of the stuff being taught. I did learn a few things though, and more importantly, I made some connections.

I think the thing that sucks the most about the program is that none of it was discounted. UCSB employees get a discount on Extension classes…UNLESS they involve a computer lab. Since ALL of my classes were in a lab, I had to pay full price. I think this makes no sense—with as many less-than-competent employees as they have, you would think that the University would want to encourage people to improve their computer skills. Instead, they discount classes that teach you things like how to make your own vineyard.

Anyway, I now have another piece of paper worth a few thousand dollars. Time will tell if it proves to be useful…

Posted at 7:03 PM | (2)

I’ve got a cold. :(

This cold, while not the worst one I’ve ever had, has apparently rendered me unable to think of anything to write about. Perhaps my coughing has jarred loose a few needed brain cells. Although, while it may look like I haven’t been active on my blog this week, I did go ahead and install v3.16 of Movable Type. It supposedly fixes a lot of things, so if you use MT I guess you should upgrade too.

Ok, well, maybe I’ll think of something more interesting to say soon.

Posted at 10:07 AM | (0)

Friday’s Edhat contest was to guess the most popular brand of shoe worn by people participating in Saturday’s Santa Barbara 10 Miler. It seems that they were originally going to count EVERYONE’S shoes, but wound up only counting the top 50 finishers.

Regardless, I figured that I had this contest in the bag because Steve won the race and he told me what he thought would be the most popular shoe type. He believed that Adidas and Nike would be the top brand, so I was a bit dismayed to look around on Saturday and see a bunch of Asics and New Balance. Steve was even more dismayed as I don’t believe he considers New Balance to be a real running shoe. Of course, one guy ran barefoot, which I would think hurts more than wearing a bad running shoe.

I was amused to read that “Ed” had a few minutes tacked on to his time last year because he got stopped by a train. This year, the same thing happened to Steve and Todd (the second place finisher). It’s a good thing they both got caught, or else it wouldn’t exactly have been the fairest of races.

Anyway, for the contest, there were quite a few people who guessed correctly that Asics was the most popular shoe, but I was not one of them. So much for inside connections! If only they had asked who we thought would win the race…that would’ve been easy! ;)

Posted at 9:58 AM | (2)

Today is the 3rd anniversary of my blog! It’s hard to believe that I’ve been doing this for so long—I don’t usually keep hobbies for this length of time.

It’s kinda funny—I wasn’t at the forefront of the blogging movement, and yet, blogs are JUST becoming known to the world at large. This of course is due to the political bloggers during the last Presidential election, though I’m not sure how many more people read these type of sites nowadays.

Anyway, I think the site has evolved a little in 3 years, but one area I sometimes wish would alter is my style of writing. There are a lot of blogs out there that contain witty posts, making clever references to various aspects of pop culture. I can never remember to do this, so my writing tends to come out more matter-of-fact—a cross between somewhat intellectual and “OMG dude, that was like totally cool”.

Maybe it’ll be something to conscious work on—writing more creatively and telling a good story instead of merely recapping events in a post quickly composed in 5 minutes. But anyway, today is my blogiversary, so maybe I should go celebrate!

Posted at 5:53 PM | (4)

With the recent addition of satellite photos to Google maps, there has been a lot of talk about this search engine. Some people suddenly fear for their privacy, even though these images have been available through Terraserver for awhile now (in fact, the image of my house in Whittier is zoomed in A LOT more on Terraserver than on Google Maps).

Anyway, this leads me to the point of my post—I think that all the stuff Google has added is really cool! I’m lazy, so anything that saves me from having to go to 10 sites or clicking on multiple links to get the info is great in my opinion.

Google is my homepage at work, so it’s easy to use the new features. Now, instead of mapquest, I just type an address directly into Google and get a map and driving directions. Instead of going to IMDB and looking up a movie time, I just type the name of the movie and up pops the local showtimes. Instead of pulling up the calculator in Windows, I type in the numbers into the search box and get results. And now, instead of going to Yahoo Finance or logging into my 401k account, I can see how my stocks are doing by typing in the stock symbol, you guessed it, directly in the Google search box. You can also get the weather, bypassing weather.com. The local feature is pretty handy too.

Maybe it’s a bad thing that they are starting to take over realms formerly dominated by other companies who specialized in such things. But Google’s features work well and easily. Of course, I don’t always remember that they are there, but I think they are neat!

I don’t even have stock in them and I feel semi-evangelical. Does anyone else use the new features and find them as nifty as I do??

Posted at 10:11 AM | (0)

I’ve come to the conclusion that, unless someone new comes along, I’m probably not going to hang out with anyone from my office. The marketing people have decided from the beginning that I don’t exist, and I’m fine with that, because they do that to everyone it seems. But within the last few months, the two girls in my section have become closer to the point of pretty much excluding me.

So it seems not much has changed since I first started this job. I still eat lunch alone, which I am mostly fine with, but it would just be nice to be invited along when my two coworkers go to lunch together. What percentage of time do you eat lunch alone during the work week? How often do coworkers eat with you?

It just seems like I’m getting more shut-out from my two coworkers—they sit there emailing each other all day and I’m excluded. Maybe it’s just because I can’t relate to the topics they discuss most often—they both live with their significant others and one recently got married while the other is engaged and planning her wedding. But maybe they just don’t like me and think I’m weird. Or both.

I may never know. I haven’t decided if I care yet.

Posted at 3:36 PM | (5)

This evening I went to go drop off a library book in one of those large curbside bins, positioned so that you can deposit the materials without having to get out of your car. I’ve done this a few times now and every single time I’ve gone, a car immediately in front of me has had the same idea and messed it up for me. Every. Single. Time.

A couple times I actually had to go park my car in the nearby lot and walk my books into the building because the other car made it impossible for me to do what I wanted, due to its positioning or taking too long to do a simple task.

I was able to do it today, although with my car sticking out slightly for a few minutes, an attractive target for other cars looking to rear-end something. The minivan in front of me decided to take what seemed like an eternity just to drop off books. There were other people in the car too, so I’m not sure why the driver was unable to procure the materials in a timely fashion.

Anyway, I can’t imagine that there is a line of cars at all hours just waiting to drop off books, so why is it that I always get stuck behind someone with the same idea at that particular moment in time???

Now if I only had this kind of intuition when it came to remembering when my books were due, maybe I’d avoid owing a small fine every time I renew a day late.

Posted at 8:22 PM | (1)

It turns out that the power in half my apartment went out again the other day. My landlord came this morning around 11:30am to fix it, and I took off so that I wouldn’t be in the way.

I grabbed a couple books and headed down to the Alice Keck Park Memorial Gardens, since it is relatively close and I hadn’t been there before. I found a bench nestled among some nice green foliage and read for a bit. I also watched couples walk hand in hand, people walking their dogs, and amateur photographers capturing some of the pretty flowers and plants.

I walked around a bit and stood near the gazebo where the giant coy and little turtles swim around a large pond. Little kids looked on excitedly, and people on the grass across the way peacefully ate sandwiches.

It’s a nice little place, and a good location to relax and read in the sunshine. I saw a couple other people with the same idea, although perhaps not with the same motivation. All in all, it was a great way to kill time while I couldn’t be in my apartment—I spent over 2 1/2 hours there. I did even take a few pictures, before my camera battery died. I guess I will have to go back with a full battery and see what else I can take pictures of.

Maybe tomorrow, if the weather stays nice….

Posted at 8:13 PM | (2)

Taking a cue from Wordpress, which has a ton of different default RSS feeds, I decided to make individual feeds for each of my entries. The end result is that you can now subscribe to any entry for which you would like to follow the comments.

I’m not sure how many people will care, but every now and then there might be a use for it—especially on those rare entries that get an explosion of amusing comments.

So anyway, near the bottom of each entry (on its individual page—NOT the main index), you will see the familiar “XML” graphic—you can either right click it to copy and paste into your favorite feed reader, or use any auto-discovery methods.

It seems that Bloglines is a little slow on updating them, and I haven’t really tried them out with other readers, so let me know if there are any problems. Each feed should have the entire entry (mainly to provide reference in case you forget what those comments are about), and any comments that have been posted.

Probably just a waste of disk space, but hey, everyone else is doing it, right?? :)

Posted at 12:08 PM | (0)

A guy I know isn’t very good at making correct sports bets. It seems that almost every time he picks a team or a point spread or whatever, he ends up losing. It’s gotten to the point where I joke (though not in his presence) that it’s a surefire plan to make millions—simply ask him what his picks are and then…DO THE OPPOSITE!!

Take the NCAA Tournament. Because of his bad luck (or whatever you want to call it), he wound up placing second in the pool I was in. Ok, I know you’re reading that now and thinking “If he sucks so much, how did he end up winning money??”

The answer is simple. He wrote down the wrong team to win! He meant to write Arizona, but accidentally put UNC, thus ensuring his victory. So technically the streak still holds. It seems fitting that the only way he won was by mistake.

So, while I’m sad that I fared so poorly in the tournament, I was very amused by this turn of events.

Posted at 9:42 AM | (3)

If you recall, I got a speeding ticket 1 year ago. Because I went too fast, I was unable to take traffic school, and I was unsuccessful in trying to get it removed from my record. I also had a previous ticket from December 2001, meaning that I had 2 tickets on my record, effectively eliminating my good driver discount.

Anyway, auto insurance companies only count tickets against you for 3 years, which means that my old 2001 ticket was removed this last December. Unfortunately, I was under a policy until May, so I had to wait for the price drop to take effect.

I just got my renewal policy in the mail today and it appears that with my discount reinstated that I will be saving over $300 a year. I wonder if it will go down even more once I have a totally clean record (one can dare to dream—it hasn’t really happened yet since getting my first ticket back in like 1999).

So anyway, I suppose the moral of this story is DON’T SPEED—and especially don’t get more than one ticket on your record because it takes YEARS to reverse the effects.

HOORAY for saving $$$$!! :)

Posted at 8:31 PM | (4)

This afternoon Steve and I went to see Dave Barry at the Arlington. This was one of my Christmas presents to him, because I know that he is amused by Dave’s columns, and also because I figured it would be a nice non-traditional present (ie. not something he’d expect).

The place looked pretty packed, but because I bought the tickets back in November, we were pretty close to the front. Sitting two rows in front of me, I even saw two of the 20-somethings from my office who don’t give me the time of day; presumably because I’m not in marketing (what other reason could there POSSIBLY be?!).

Anyway, it turned out to be Dave doing a bit of a stand-up act for an hour and a half, with a bit of Q&A. Some of it was pretty amusing, and of course a lot (if not all?) of his stuff has appeared in his column. I guess there was also a book signing afterward, but we didn’t stay for that—Steve left half-way through the Q&A to do some work.

After I exited the theater I got a call from Steve asking if I’d bring him some food. I got him a couple burgers from The Habit and got myself a soda and hamburger as well. Since I couldn’t go into his office, I ate my burger on a bench in Paseo Nuevo, across from the movie theater.

There I saw a middle-aged guy on a bench across from me who was either merely pretending to read a book, or did not find it particularly engaging, because he kept looking up at the people walking by. It also seemed that every time I looked up that he was staring directly at me. I can’t be 100% sure, as he was wearing sunglasses, but there wasn’t much else to be staring at straight ahead.

I didn’t acknowledge him, and I’m pretty sure I had a bit of a scowl on my face, but I’m not sure that Sunglasses Guy cared. I may have stood out a bit in a lacy tank top and ruffly pink skirt, but still the guy could’ve at least pretended to read the book. Since I now felt self-conscious, I quickly finished the burger and walked the 1.3 miles back to my house. I walked because it was a nice day and I didn’t want to deal with trying to find parking on a weekend with both the Arlington event and normal tourist and shopping traffic.

Posted at 5:32 PM | (0)

Ugh, I am so embarrassed by how gullible I am. In the span of a few hours I managed to fall for at least half a dozen things verbally told to me. So now I guess I have to seek revenge. I already got in one kinda good one, so now I guess I just need a few more. :)

On another note, the radio station I normally listen to was doing their prank of becoming a country station—they tried to use their best redneck accents and played only country songs. Not sure if that’s an all-day thing or just the morning show. I put on a CD anyway, since I didn’t want to hear all country songs on the way to work.

Posted at 9:34 AM | (3)