September 2004 Archives

What can I say? I feel like a little kid on Christmas morning. I FINALLY have a (mostly) up to par computer at work. OS X Panther is lovely. The Apple Cinema Display is breath-taking. The G5 is... slow because it only has 256MB of RAM, but hey-- it's a start. At least I know it'll get faster.

But I love it... job satisfaction just went up a few notches, and the designers still on OS 9 w/ G4s are quite envious of this sleek beast.

You know I'm mesmerized because it's 7:20pm and I'm still at the office. Who does that?

iChat is a little funky compared to AIM but it does the job. Yay, I'm happy!

Fortunately Jerilyn is now on my AIM buddy list as of this week. Someone who understands the beauty that is the G5, hehehe... not to mention that she's seen Napoleon Dynamite a few more times than me.

"It looks really sweet. It's awesome! It's...it's incredible!"

Ok so I'm hopping on the bandwagon. Miss Laura otherwise known as Llew, is one of the authors at the Chubby Girl Brigade web site. The site pretty much speaks for itself, but they're having a contest to see which site can direct the most traffic to the CGB site.

Now, the prize is a CGB t-shirt. Though it'd be hilarious if a guy won it, I don't have any expectations. I'muh just suportin' the CGB by whoring out what readers I have that don't come from other sites that have already linked this contest, hehe. All's you have to do is click this link to the contest and leave a comment under that entry referencing that you came from Sloanie.com.

If for no other reason, leave a comment on that entry just because WE BLOGGERS LOVE COMMENTS, hehehe. You can say things like "this is the coolest web site ever", or it can just be as simple as "Sloanie sent me.". In any case, "I think it's hella tight." It's a hilarious, well written web site and you should visit regardless of the contest. Ok? One of these days I'll get some links up on the side of my web site and include the CGB site there.

What are you waiting for? Go already! And consider yourself pimped.

p.s. If I win I'll post a picture of yours truly wearing the shirt, hehe.

So this morning I went through my usual routine of getting up and getting ready for work. When I got upstairs I noticed my Canon SD10 (re: the camera I take all these pics with) sitting on the kitchen table. I didn't recall leaving it there, so I grabbed it and scanned it for teeth marks... didn't find any. Turned it on and it worked fine.

When I got home this evening I was told that Bobo must have had that thing all night-- I'm really not sure how he got it. Steve said that when he came upstairs this morning Bobo's head jerked up like he was guilty, so Steve turned on the light to find him licking my camera. Hehehe... he hadn't bitten it or chewed on it at all, he'd just licked it. He must have thought it was too pretty to chew on, heh-- either that or he knew I'd give him hell if he did. It's more like it was some sort of trophy, his precious.

Last week Mom couldn't find her purse. My dad suggested that she check out back in the northern section of the yard (where Bo takes his trophies)... sure enough, he was out there with the purse dangling from his mouth.

A week or so before that, the hairy little thief stole my iPod Mini!

He brought it up to my mom like it was a present (or another trophy)-- maybe he'd have licked that too if he'd gotten it out of the little purple cloth bag I keep it in.

I'm almost afraid to see what he'll make off with next!

This is from a few weeks back at Costco. Christmas stuff already! Not even October yet-- halloween season isn't even in full swing yet, though it will be shortly.

Last year I attempted to compile a list of Halloween movies which I never ended up watching. I should watch some of them this year, hehe. This year, however, I'm collecting some film scores from such films to make a good creepy mix. Maybe I can upload some compressed tracks to give background music to the site...

Mom was saying last night how this guy is the sweetest dog she’s ever known. He sticks up for the little guy and he’s got such a loving temperament. He doesn’t like it when Bo harasses Gus, and even as big as he is, he loves to crawl onto your lap like he was small enough to be a lap dog.

Poor guy is not yet a year old and has hip dysplasia (A condition where the hip joint is not formed properly), which usually leads to other problems like osteoarthritis. I thought something had to be wrong because sometimes he’d just sit down and whimper for no apparent reason, and sometimes he acted a bit stiff when getting up to move around. I’m sure it doesn’t help the way Bo rough-houses with him and what not.

Some of us kids are helping chip in for surgery so that he doesn’t have to be euthanized. They’ll fix one of his hips that’s still repairable… the other is too far gone and the vet doesn’t recommend hip replacement at this point (who knows how expensive that would be if just fixing the less-damaged hip is going to run $2k).

I know Lil’ Brudder only has one leg and Indy will still have 3 good legs to walk on, but I can’t help but be reminded of that Strong Bad e-mail…

Oh Lil Brudder!! That lil’ guy! He's got the heart of a champion! You can make it Lil’ Brudder! You just keep scrapin’ along!!

That e-mail made me laugh pretty hard, but when you see such a lovable dog in pain for no other reason than genetics it does really tug are your heart strings. Poor lil' guy...

Anyone who's played around with Photoshop realizes this, hehe.

Aside from the latter picture obviously being cleaner and sharper, you can see they've taken Anakin's eyebrows off.

Ok, I had to get this entry in before the official Star Wars DVD release (tomorrow). Most of you have probably heard this by now, but at least I have some pics to do a comparison, hehe.

George Lucas has made yet more changes to the beloved Star Wars trilogy. Normally I'd just swallow them like I did with the Special Edition. It was much prettier, but a few changes bugged me. For example:

In Empire Strikes Back, when R2 is spit out of the swamp on Dagobah, Luke says "you're lucky you don't taste very good." In the 1997 SE, he instead says something lame like "you were lucky to get out of there." Whah? What's the big deal, I liked Luke's corny humor. Now he's just dull.

Then, in Return of the Jedi, when Han is hanging from that sail barge and aiming his blaster at the tentacle grasping Lado's leg, Lando says "no wait, I thought you were blind!" to which Han originally replied "It's alright-- trust me." In the 1997 SE this was replaced with an awkwardly hasty "It's alright, I can see a lot better now." Why George, why? He's reduced an intense moment of faith and trust to "I can see a lot better." Bah.

Of course the one most people seem vocal about is how Lucas changed the scene in the Cantina in A New Hope so that Greedo shoots first instead of Han. Not only does it look less convincing than when Han shot first, but it's out of character for Han. Gah.

I bought these movies on VHS anyways, because I loved Star Wars-- I couldn't wait to get them.

Now we find out Lucas has made additional changes-- and well, these don't bug me as much as the SE changes, in some cases they're legit improvements. From CNN (thanks Mel for the e-mail forward):

5. Jedis don't scream

But the most noticeable change -- and perhaps one some "Star Wars" diehards will have a tough time stomaching -- is Hayden Christensen (who plays young Anakin in the prequel trilogy) now appearing in the scene where the "force ghosts" of Anakin, Obi Wan, and Yoda smile at Luke. One thing's for sure, there's plenty for fans to debate -- that is, until the trilogy comes out yet again on another format in the future and Mr. Lucas makes his inevitable changes ...

Alas, Lucas didn't really fix any of my major gripes. Oh well. I'll probably go pick up this set of DVDs tomorrow anyways... but some geeks online have had me seriously seeking DVD bootlegs of the laserdiscs of the original trilogy, which I will have in a matter of time, on the bet that Lucas never releases the original, un-enhanced trilogy.

I mean really, he could make all the fans happy by changing those things fans don't like back (like the dialogue I mentioned and the Greedo scene), and just clean it up and leave the other additions... ah well.

hehehe... see what I mean?
This pic of my brother
STILL makes me laugh...

Well as far as I can tell I have survived "talk like a pirate day", aka "the day bad things happen to mikie", without damage.

It was stormy Saturday night... thunder and lighting. I wasnt messing around, I unplugged my computers from the wall so there would be no chance of power surge to damage my hard drives or any other components as I suspected had happened 2 years ago.

I also refrained from driving anywhere.

I haven't plugged my computers back in yet (the laptop is wireless, no worries) so I can't rule out some sort of problem there, but as far as I know I'm fine... thank goodness.

Tomorrow is a bad day, for no other reason than that it's September 19. I mean, it's cool that it's "Talk Like a Pirate" day, but for the last 2 years I've had fairly bad luck on the 19th of September, it's amazing.

I started working on getting my old archives online... it's going to be a bit more of a chore than I had originally anticipated, but I thought it'd be appropriate to get the blog entry from September 19, 2002 up in memorial of the last 2 years of bad luck. Of course the entry is actually from September 29, 2002, because that's the first I was able to get back on to update my web site after that hard drive crash. But it was written for the events of the 19th...

Here it is... September 19, 2002.

And last year's mishap after Mar's reception...

In any case, the ball is rolling on getting the old archives up and running-- it's fun looking at what my blog used to be like, pre-comments, pre-Movable Type, pre-blogger, when I did everything by manually... things have come a long way. I think it was more fun back then, but that's probably because it was new and often more interesting things to write about. Man, in a month, Sloanie.com will be 2 1/2 years old. Crazy...

This is from the calendar that hangs in my cubicle. The other designers got these "Food Services of America" calendars as freebies from one of our printing companies. One of them got tired of looking at last month's not-so-appetizing-looking hot dog picture and hung it in my cube. I promptly changed the month to September, which had a much more mouth watering picture-- enough to make me salivate whenever I walk into my cube, hehe.

So I was surfing the net gathering some nutrition information this morning (seeing what I can get away with eating with the diet and all, heh). KFC has the Twister with a Pepsi for $2.99 again, so I thought I’d check it out to see how many calories it has, since I’ve been hankering for some form of chicken lately. I notice on KFC’s front page a link to information about a “Pilgrim’s Pride” incident. I’ve heard of KFC being singled out by PETA before with animal rights shenanigans, so out of curiosity clicked the link. I was actually more surprised at KFC’s response to PETA than I was about the information on this Pilgrim’s Pride incident. It paints both PETA and the media as deceptive, misleading pieces of ish.

(click below for the KFC link and the rest of my rant, if you're bored enough to read it, heh).

A few stills from the movie "Hero"

One of the things I loved about this movie's production design was the use of color-- it's beautiful. I still need to watch it again to give the use of color some analysis.

This morning I found myself in the middle of a strange dream. The thing is, I can only remember the last part of it, so I can't remember how I got into the situation I was in. I was in ancient China or something and somehow I was doomed to be executed by some evil Lord or Emperor. It wasn't just any execution though, I was to be eaten by these kung fu executors (random, eh?), and it involved swords (I think that's how I drew a connection to the movie Hero-- the setting and martial arts involved).

At first I had no fear. I felt like "ah, bummer", but I think I also had this Obi Wan Kenobi feeling of "if you strike me down I shall become more powerful than you can imagine", hehe. It was a clear, quiet night and I was returning by foot to the castle where I'd meet my doom. "Too bad I'm not a kung fu master like everyone else around here." The dream would have been much cooler, hehe.

On my way I remember the thoughts that went through my head. Though I wasn't really afraid of losing my mortal life, as I drew closer I began to fear something else-- pain. I started imagining slow and painful ways they could cut me apart to eat me, hehe. Bizarre, I know, but this was a dream. Then I started to wonder "should I be so comfortable with death? Have I done everything on earth that I was meant to do? What if there is a way for me to avoid getting killed, should I run?" I had no confidence that I could get away, I guess, and I apparently had no powers like the people around me.

When I arrived at the palace I found someone there fighting my enemies. For a moment I had some hope, a few of my executors were taken down by some people I didn't know. I saw one of these strangers die-- he got chopped into slices like a ham. I thought "oh, if that's how they kill me it should be a fairly quick death", hehe. It was much less torturous than what I had imagined. I recall seeing the mastermind behind this evil and he wasn't armed nor was he dangerous looking-- he just looked like an old Asian grandpa. It didn't matter, he had enough henchmen to do whatever he pleased.

Anyways this is one of those dreams where you wake up right before you die or whatever. My alarm went off and hence there was no resolution to the conflict within the palace walls, but I think I did wake up feeling relieved. Even if I had slept long enough to be executed, my dreams are random enough that I'd probably have suddenly been in some other place and time with different people-- and it would have made no sense whatsoever, hehe.

Anyways, dreams usually are surreal but this one was coherent enough for long enough that I could remember and write it down. So there you have it-- one of mikie's twisted dreams. I need to go watch Hero again.

Shawn was hard at work playing with his new toy. He put me to shame this weekend with how many pics he took. I may grab a few of his and post them later. At any rate, people are noticing how he seems to be taking after me these days...

It just dawned on me that Jesse was playing miniature golf and racing go-karts in his swimming suit. Hmm....

Usually people make small talk at work by asking how your weekend, "did you do anything this weekend?" Usually I respond that I don't remember, hehe.

This weekend the Aldriches had the condo and invited the Sloan crew to hang down there with 'em-- what this really amounted to was the Sloan boys, Mar, Mel, Uncle John, and then Saturday Jon and Joel showed up.

It was a relaxing getaway, I've always loved the red rock mountains in Southern Utah. It was a weekend of sleeping, swimming, mini-golf and go karts, football, food, and just relaxing in general. It was the kind where you kinda feel rested when you get done, not tired.

The only thing that could have made it better is if the In-n-Out Burger were open and we'd eaten there. Alas, it's apparently still under construction. Maybe next time.

As I said above, Shawn's camera got a million more pics than mine, probably due to his excitement and the fact that you can fit a buttload of pictures on a 256mb card when you're using a 2 megapixel camera. More later...

I brought my laptop in to work today to rip some mp3s and stuff while working, but didn't bring a mouse with me. I had this Apple mouse hanging around so I plugged it in, and it works of course... but man. Talk about style over substance. On an Apple OS you can press ctrl+click to get the same effect as a right-click, but... no such thing in Windows, which obviously was made for at least a 2 button mouse.

Honestly, using this mouse and trying to navigate programs and perform usual functions on my laptop I felt like someone had cut off my middle finger. I kept having to use the file menus and stuff. "That's so lame!" "Yeah! It's the lamest thing I've ever heard!" The one button mouse is taking style and simplicity too far... Mac users say "but you can plug a 2-button mouse into a Mac and use it just fine." So? That's not what Apple is packing with the computers you buy from them! Hehe... /rant

Man. I can't believe it's september already. Where did summer go so fast? On the positive side for fall:

- trees changing color
- weather cooling down
- football (NFL kicks off regular season today)
- Halloween

I'm sure there's other stuff but those are the main points, I'd think. I'm already enjoying football this year-- nothing beats kicking back and watching a football game.

Halloween-- good excuse to eat too much candy and watch scary movies or read scary stories.

I've added a counter just out of curiosity... just to see how many lurkers there really are at a site such as this. Of course, I'm sure half the reason people don't comment is because I post a weeks worth of back-dated posts at once... it's just not as interesting when it's old, hehe. Oh, the counter is stat-padding-proof. I can't jack up the numbers by hitting reload, or even visiting another site and then coming back. Interesting, eh?

Man do I need to get up the motivation to beef this site up and get all my old sloanie.com archives up and running, as well as get some other projects off the ground. Cross your fingers. Latest word is that due to manufacturing issues with Apple my work rig is still another 10-14 days away. I've come to expect the worst, so no biggie... but it will rule when it arrives, even if I only have a little bit of RAM for the short-term. The iPod Mini will become my way of carrying web site stuff between work and home, yay!

The other day I recieved a photo on my cell phone, sent by my younger brother:

I thought it was an awesome shot of the dog, pity it was taken with a camera phone. I laughed even more when I found out that the dog had just been sleeping like that-- with his head drooping off the armrest of the couch so it was facing the ground. This dog specializes in being cute, to his advantage.

When I saw him doing it again at home I decided to try to get a pic myself. If only I had a steady hand... I didn't get quite as funny of an angle as Shawn did, and it's a bit blurry, but you still get the idea, hehe...

Blurry again, but so you can see how he was sleeping.

It looks like he was hanging even farther off the couch in the picture Shawn took-- man it still makes me laugh.

So I tried something different at Yoshi's today:

Spicy Hawaiian Chicken bowl (with the sauce on the side, obviously). The sauce was like a sweet & sour sauce with a bit of red pepper powder mixed in to make i spicy. It was tasty-- I'll be getting this one again.

Ok, few people who read my site will give a crap about this, it’s a bit on the geeky/techy side for a rant, but I have to get it out of my system.

So the 20” Apple Cinema Displays arrived today and yesterday. No computers yet, though, they’re on the way... so I won’t be using a cinema display till my new machine arrives.

But in talking to Mike (the Mac guy in I.S.) about these power mac G5s, I find out that they will only have 256MB of RAM. WTF?! This old POS I have now has 512 MB and that’s pushing it, considering I run Photoshop 7, Illustrator 10 and Quark often at the same time, in addition to e-mail and stuff. I don’t know that I believe that Mac OS X is THAT memory-efficient. Combine this with the fact that I’ll be running the Adobe Creative Suite (Photoshop CS, Illustrator CS, and InDesign CS), and I’m not looking forward to the memory issues I’ll be having. I could use a gig of RAM for Photoshop alone…