blog, blog.. blog blog blog; blog.

Happy new year, but nothing much else going on.

I finally got the news of what my raise is. I asked for more, and settled on the apparent maximum raise allowed.

wut a blog

So, my roommate told me last night, about the third Underworld movie, Rise of the Lycans, which is already supposed to be running in theaters next month. My jaw dropped, I was literally speechless, like, where did that come from?! Definitely want to go see it.

Unrelated, I have been brushing up on my knowledge of Crohn's Disease, which I was diagnosed with in high school, and it's under control and in remission I've recently had a little flaring up and trouble with it though, and so, I'm looking to change my diet in the new year. Apparently, smoking cessation is strongly encouraged, for sufferers, so, no garantees, as this is short notice - but I'm starting to finally think seriously about quitting for good after the new year. I know it's a shitty attitude going in, but I think I have to stop at this point gradually. It is what it is, and I'm going to leave that note, after researching and writing for several hours, by breaking for a cig.

Upon thinking about it, I can easily start by cutting back drastically. I've been actually really careless with the habit lately, smoking a lot - and a lot for me means two or three packs in a week, which is five to nine cigarettes in a day. I usually start by smoking in the car, sometimes two, on the way to work, and have a few during the day on breaks, and another regularly on the way home. I smoke a lot less on days off, so I think the simple routine part of the habit can be managed most easily, especially since it doesn't revolve around my eating or sleeping routines - and then I can work on nullifying cravings.

Back to the topic of Chrohn's, though, and the writing and research I've done today, you can read it all here. 

It's long and dirty, but hopefully insightful.

Also, I want to start publishing a regular comic, an idea that I had when I re-registered my site, almost a year ago.

How do you say it in America... blog.

Day off today, I cleaned up my room after the holidays' aftermath of gifts and last minute tidying before company arrived, which consisted of throwing shit out of the way, etc. etc.. Yay! I found the outline I printed and presented during my promotion interview, and I'm looking over it to form some solid planning on what I'm going to do in the near future to shape up some things at work. A lot of the stuff, though, I've already started on, as my promotion went into effect about a week ago, Sunday the 21st.... Still don't know what kind of a pay raise I'm getting yet, they were saying that there's some new paperwork in effect that changed the scale I guess, though the new rate will have been pro-rated, effective immediately, same day.

Oh! I almost forgot, Phil and I were gonna start a project on the new year to take a picture of this tree outside our apartment, from the same mark, every day for a whole year, and I think I'm gonna use this to post them daily. Why not? I'm gonna go take a trial picture right now to post...

Looks like the lens needs a little cleaning. This should be fun and interesting, though. I didn't realize just how close the first was until I dated this image. Throughout the six months that we've lived here so far, this tree has gone through a lot of really pretty stages. We want to make a small mark on the top stair landing railing, and I think we can use the street lamp to line up the shot, and eventually make an animation out of it.

In other news, I found my Human Genome Landmarks poster, that you can order for free and read more about here, and am flattening it out to hang on my wall. Decoding the human genome has been one of the top scientific breakthroughs in the past couple years, and is a study that is said to be a ferocious step towards personalized medicine and finding specific cures for a wide assortment of disorders, including cancers.

Blog on blogging

Not to copy my biggest fan, but I've got a beard adventure as well. At work, we try to hold competitions at least for the all holy Moustache March

I haven't trimmed this beard for, I'd say about six months now. I'm pretty sure I never shaved the chin since I've been in New York, which means he's been growning since June. He's like my birthday beard then. I can't lose the stache, I've had it for too long - over a year now. Though I have offed the ends into short and trim instead of exuberant curls like I had last year.

We'll see, though, what's in store for Just Grow It January, to build and play with a style in Fuzzy February, and I think I'll start up my sideburns again for Moustache March.

I had the sideburns going pretty long for a while, but cut them and I like them trim, though I do go back and miss the side fluff that I had.

I had a random guy at a fast food place, at one point in that sideburn era, strike up a conversation about my mohawk and tattoos, and he said, "the sideburns gotta go man, they're not coming in too well. "

So I quickly ended the conversation, letting him go off into the world, uninformed that he had a huge wad of snot hanging on his moustache.

blog among blogs

I have a fan!

He's probably the only one who will see this!

Ok, so I just got off of work, Mondays are always busy as a sack at our store for some reason.

(Some person calls about an issue they're having, and miraculously gets ahold of a tech:)

"I was trying to install iTunes but I can't get my computer to turn on and it sounds like it's laughing at me. What should I do?"

"I can't really solve that over the phone. Would you be able to bring the laptop in?"

"Uh sure, do you need an appointment, or when's the best time to come in?"

"Nope, just don't come on a Monday. And make sure you bring your charger," (I avoid the technical term AC Adapter).

"What's that?"

-_-

But anyway, I left the guys at work with quite a few customers. Because of the crazy Monday line we always get. But big deal, I've dealt it alone when people've called Mondays out before. And besides, tomorrow's my day off. And it's time to play! Or I like to begin sentences in this paragraph with conjunctions!

By the way, I'm either hearing shit, or there's a faint... church bell?

No, it's really distracting, like I can barely hear it but I just sat there confused for a minute because I can't tell if it's outside or in my room... or in my head...

But what I was gonna talk about is Google Chrome. I just ditched Firefox for it because I love it so much - in that it's faster, has a tinier interface, yet all the tools I want are still right there, and uh, it frickin browses for you. I feel like I barely have to type or mouse to get to the places I normally visit the most - the way it tracks your use locally and jams it in a surprisingly wel designed shortcutty interface. But you have to use it. Personally, I wasn't impressed by just reading about it, but after I tried it on a whim, and then used it for a week, mostly to see if it would slow my system or crash, more or less than Firefox, I was pretty much sold. For free though. I mean it's Google. I win.

I will say that there are small bugs still, but nothing game breaking, and I was pretty disappointed when I installed it and it hung during import of my Firefox settings. I'll brush that off though, and assume it's because of the unkempt amount of favorites, cookies, and temps that it was going through. Once I got it imported, it was like I had been using Chrome for months, and it seemlessly had all my saved passwords, history, perfectly intact favorites menu with the icons, and the search engines, which would have been Google by default anyway. 

The only thing to learn is terminology with Chrome. the rest you don't need to learn - just browse. In Soviet Russia, browser use you.

Chrome terminology:

Startup Page = What we normally think of as home, the page or pages that open with the browser.

Home Page = Can be seperate from Startup, this is what opens with a press of the Home button (which by default is not shown).

New Tab Page = Chrome's default for both. This is the coolest part, and it's the part that learns your style and helps you get where you like to go most, fastest. There are four parts to it: Most visited sites (with thumbnails) , bookmarks (a bar that you can turn on across all tabs, plus a list menu), links to most recently closed tabs and bookmarked pages, and a search box for your history.

That seems like a lot, and it is, because it does so much more, but it seems so tiny (read as: non-intrusive-all-up-ons-your-businesses) while you use the browser... to... browse. That being said, I'm truly impressed with the extra amount of space available to simply show the page you're looking at. Again, I didn't give a shit about features like this just from reading about them, but I definitely do now. Going back to the small bugs I mentioned, there's one that forces me to go back to Firefox to use certain features in flash, as well as using other browsers at work constantly, and I now get pissed and antsy at the clunky slowness of that which is not Chrome.

That being said, I have to mention that I usualy start my session with one, then within seconds, about six open tabs (I have five now, one of which is streaming music with flash, at no noticably hightened memory or network cost, or skipping/lag, that I might notice on FF or IE), and I frequently have up to, say, thirty tabs open, if I'm browsing for research, web publishing, comparing prices for multiple items simultaneously, getting engrossed in a violent Wikipedia cycle of intrigue (this is totally true for me), etc.

...Here's what I actually changed from the defaults for personal preference, after installing fresh with Firefox imported settings:

Startup Page had to be defined by me, to the "homepage" I was used to. The Home Page button had to be shown, but I let my Home be the New Tab Page. And I use that all the cotton pickin time.

Last, there's incognito mode, opening a new window that doesn't track your moves. Google's description:

You've gone incognito. Pages you view in this window won't appear in your browser history or search history, and they won't leave other traces, like cookies, on your computer after you close the incognito window. Any files you download or bookmarks you create will be preserved, however. 

Going incognito doesn't affect the behavior of other people, servers, or software. Be wary of:

• Websites that collect or share information about you
• Internet service providers or employers that track the pages you visit
• Malicious software that tracks your keystrokes in exchange for free smileys
• Surveillance by secret agents
• People standing behind you

So, to my one fan, if you haven't tried Chrome yet, quit not trying!

http://www.google.com/chrome

Thanks, Dick!

ok yeah i'm a blogger

As with many things, this new part of my internet hobbying life will probably explode into an obsessive time consumer, and then be forgotten quickly, and then remembered, and then seldom updated, and then have the whole process repeated. So horray! Here we are in the make-several-posts-per-day stage!

First we have the books I got for Christmas, each of which is to the left of "The Universe in a Nutshell." (Effectively pretty much doubling my little book collection.)

These are all from my mom, Sherri, and Trish. I am excited to dig into them soon! Can you guess which book my mom slid in there?

These are the DVD's what I got, from Mom, Sherri, and Phil. I'm trying to record the third season of The Universe right now, but I keep forgetting. I'm psyched to get to watch the first two now. Hell - all these DVD's! Thanks a lot guys!

This fucking html is pissing me off, and I'm angry to try and use the default editor it's giving me, but overall blog input score, I'd have to give at least an 8.7.

It does, after all, do what I wanted it to do, and without me having to code it all by hand. But I'm curious how it's going to behave on different browsers, resolutions, etc... :-\

...And this is the desk I bought for myself. I'm liking it a lot - just the perfect size to hold both my laptop and desktop tower/monitor, without taking up extra space in my room. You can see I've got my wooden model man set up. :-) Also on the left are the hamper and end table that Sherri surprised me with after Christmas. I like they.

Now I go place do things.

who u some blogger

I want to put some frickin pictures in...

Here's some Christmas stuff. My new wooden man! I'd always kind of wanted one of these to sit on my desk - not really to draw with, but just to have as decoration and maybe play with different poses - though when I first wanted one just to have, I was actively into drawing, painting, and sculpting. It's an awesome surprise from Renee, and he's lounging on my desk now.

And here are my new shoes, from Mom. She sent a pair for both Phil and I, they're secondhand previously from a tuxedo rental place. Awesome.

And then here's my new pizza stone.

I'm pretty sure I'm gonna have to edit this photo and put in a devious sign or something. :-V

..I mean look at it.

I'm fuckin hungry, bye.