Meet the new resolutions, same as the old resolutions.
Since 2007’s resolutions went so well, I’m not going to bother with new ones for 2008. I’m just going to keep working on the unfinished business from the previous set.
Since 2007’s resolutions went so well, I’m not going to bother with new ones for 2008. I’m just going to keep working on the unfinished business from the previous set.
What am I thankful for?
So of course my sinuses have chosen this moment to crawl up into my forehead and amuse themselves by making the room spin around me.
I think they intentionally build airports to be energy-sapping, soul-deadening centers of frustration.
Another thing I don’t miss about Minnesota.
You can put just about anything out on the curb with a “FREE” sign on it, and it will be gone before you can say “scavenger.”
SFO isn’t a terribly exciting place to hang out, even by airport standards.
Next thing you know, you’re no longer walking in Noe Valley, you’re climbing Noe Freaking Mountain and tumbling down the other side.
Minnesota Nice, feeling short, weather, and a few other gripes.
I’m not especially homesick for Minneapolis, but there are things that I was sad to leave behind.
What rat’s nest of random bedding have I been rolling around in for the past week and a half?
Why am I going to write all of this month’s posts in the form of lists?
I’ve moved to San Francisco.
Having barely recovered from my last, laptop-less, cross-country cruise, I already have to start packing for this week’s Austin GDC.
Sometimes the real world crumbles and falls apart, and we need the virtual world to help us keep our shit together.
Now that my credit card and I have done our part for the economy, I can go around awkwardly trying to hide my iPhone when I’m on the street or on the bus, because who really wants to be That Guy With The Really Expensive Gadget?
“User Experience” can be a pretty hazy term. Ulius-Sabel’s talk helps to solidify my understanding of what it means.
Children have always pretended to use tools that older folks won’t let them mess around with. It’s only the tools that have changed.
Some personal to-dos for the year 2007, sorted from most to least concrete (that is, from most to least likely to be kept).
Now I can have my cake and watch it, too, even when I’m away from home. My parents have broadband access.
Is it wrong that the first thing I did after getting my hair cut was to update my Mii?
I don’t remember many of my dreams, but I had a nightmare last night that stuck with me, if only because it was so unbelievably dorktacular.
Postmodern angst at The Gap.
Sometimes spam is spam, and sometimes it’s a digital Rorschach blot, allowing us to read any number of meanings into an object that we know is meaningless.
My home is invaded.
Work’s been awfully busy, and I’ve gotten to that annoying point in a job where I spend significant amounts of my non-work time thinking about work.
Mark your calendars, denizens of the Twin Cities.
Just a quick test of YouTube.
It seems like every other guy out there shaves his head on a regular basis to hide his receding hairline. This galls me.
Josh gushes over his new computer, because after paying for it, gushing is about all he can afford to do.
It’s no wonder I never go out anymore: All the places worth going to are closing down.
After going a measly 2-for-7 on my resolutions for 2005, I’ve given up on making any for 2006.
More evidence that Josh is a big dork.
Apparently, late in the year 2005, people can do amazing things with their cell phones that I couldn’t imagine doing on my old 1998 model.
Once you’ve lived somewhere long enough, you get used to certain irritating regional habits, and eventually forget that really, they’re just not healthy.
When the rain started hardening a couple of nights ago, I didn’t think it would stick.
Forty years of racial inequality and a political establishment that mistakes burying its head in the sand for color-blindness have backed up on the French.
Other than a few pre-recorded messages from the Mayor on my answering machine, Election Day 2005 came and went pretty quietly in Minneapolis.
I am a lazy slob. But you knew that already.
The Summer of 2005 will heretofore be known as my Summer of Overcommitment.
I had a Sixteen Candles moment this morning, staring at myself in the mirror and trying to figure out if I looked any different.
I think I finally understand why people buy houses.
I am on the verge of declaring a total ban on news and politics in my apartment in anticipation of the piss and vinegar that’s going to start getting sprayed all over the place.
The closer my 30th birthday comes, the more I think to myself, “y’know, maybe I should make a big deal out of it.”
When we hunker down in our seats with a book or a newspaper, we erect a forcefield around our bodies, focusing all our attention on the sports section or the movie reviews.
I spent an hour stumbling around in the dark, using the backlight on my iPod as a lamp while I rummaged around in the closet and tried to find my friggin’ flashlight. At least I knew where my hand-cranked radio was.
My phone finally seemed to give up the ghost, plaintively beeping at me with a flurry of “low power” warnings, then going blank and silent.
I’ve always been the guy who buys his clothes a size too big, because then everything is equally, safely ill-fitting.
A few things I plan on keeping in mind the next time I invite people into my home.
There are times when I wonder what the hell I was thinking when I signed up for this.
I don’t know if it’s the cold, or the light, or what, but every February, I have a single, overriding urge, and that is to sleep.
Sudden warmth and a heavy snowpack lead to lots of water everywhere: lying in puddles on the curb, flowing down gutters, dripping from my goddamn kitchen ceiling.
As the scene progresses, you feel that sinking feeling as our hero realizes that he’s way out of his depth: he’s unworthy, a phony, not even a pseudo-intellectual.
Quitting is a purgative for those trapped in this wearying cycle of “work hard, play hard.” It’s about breaking down the binaries of work/leisure or office/home and finding an in-between space where those structures don’t define us, don’t govern every minute of our lives.
This year, I’m giving up on vague directives and sticking to easy, well-defined goals that I can actually achieve.
Talking Head #349: “What do you think of when you think of Florida?” Everyone starts shouting at the TV: “Natural disasters!” “Disneyworld!” “Gatorland!” “Crockett and Tubbs!”
No, really, this is the last thing I’ll write about the whole moving-to-a-new-apartment thing. But first: pictures!
Moving sucks, but there’s a silver lining to being a pack rat: rediscovering your old toys.
For when you’re in the mood to be faced with your own conspicuous lack of immortality.
I signed a lease on a new apartment today.
In a move that I may yet come to regret, I registered to take a class at the University of Minnesota.
I woke up early today to the sound of the ceiling collapsing.
One day there was a public transit system, the next day, there wasn’t.
I can’t even count the number of ways in which this article from Details offends me.
Yes, it’s 1:30 in the afternoon, and I just got up, kicking the new year off right.
It’s a funny thing: no matter where you travel to, or what the amenities are like, you never really feel clean until you’ve come home and showered in your own bathroom.
There are few things more frustrating than sitting in a long Christmas Eve church service while having an anxiety-induced nicotine fit.
The problem with an extended period of unemployment is that I’ve spent so much time introspecting that it’s become repetitive: I find myself going through cycles of possible life plans.
I spent a wonderful weekend of indulgence and laughter with good friends, and all I can think about right now is how tired and sore I am after a ten-hour, overnight bus ride home.
Nothing more fun than being woken up by roofers working on your house, especially when “working on the house” consists mostly of banging on your bedroom window. Thank god I had the blinds closed.
There is no better scent than that of wet leaves and soil in autumn.
I went out onto the deck to have a cigarette, and realized it was snowing. Can someone remind me again why I live in Minnesota?
Sure, it’s totally geeky and gratuitous, but Google’s new calculator service is surprisingly useful.
I now have four entries in the “People I Actually Know” category of my RSS news reader. This pleases me more than it should.
I’m posting from the Heaven Cafe in downtown Portland, courtesy of the Personal Telco Project. It’s pretty nifty. But that’s beside the point. I can hear you all not asking, “How’s Portland? How’s the family?”
There’s probably a Home Ec manual from the 50s that gives idiot bachelors like me useful domestic advice, like “the day you’re flying out of town is not the best day to clean out and defrost your refrigerator.” Unfortunately, I’ve never read that manual.
Apparently, this sound had been no ordinary urban muzak; a large chunk of my house had been stolen. Mysterious.
The Supreme Court has struck down a Texas law forbidding gay sex, voting 6-3.
I know Minnesota’s not nearly as humid as many other places. All I have to say in response is: thank goodness I don’t live in those places.
Yes, I now have a Windows machine, and am now a tool of the man or whatever the Ufies and Slashdotters are calling them these days.
It’s not such a good feeling to be reorganizing your bookshelves afterwards and find piles of books stuffed in corners and cabinets all over the apartment.
Online comparison shopping is a lot easier when half the sites you go to won’t give you a price quote because either their Javascript-laden form buttons won’t submit anything or their server-side controllers fail to redirect you to the right destination, leaving you stuck at a blank interim page.
I guess the next step is to actually take some pictures of things, rather than just waving the camera around, pressing some buttons, and hoping for the best.
Between the pigeons roosting under my patio and the mice making a racket inside the walls, I’m starting to feel like I’m living on Noah’s Ark.