Bumper Sticker Humor.

Seen on a bumper sticker this afternoon: MY GAMER FRAGGED YOUR HONORS STUDENT.

Green Thumbs and Open Spaces.

Hurricane Ernesto is going to dump a few gallons of water on us this weekend, so we took some time after lunch to shore up the plants in our garden. The cucumbers, which were coming on strong in the early part of the year, are getting long in the tooth and not producing as much (they were averaging about four cukes a week). However, the tomatoes are now in their prime and absolutely bursting with fruit—a rough count of six plants totalled at least 150 tomatoes in various states of completion. The basil Jen planted among the tomatoes is now waist-height and full with leaves.

We’re already planning the addition to the current garden—I’m thinking it will roughly double in size. We’re adding eggplant, red peppers, more soybeans, and pole beans to this year’s lineup, as we know that it’ll all do well here.

Further to the west, our neighbors engaged a landscaping company to wrestle control of their yard back from the weeds, brush, and poison ivy that have slowly been choking it to death. This week two men have used chainsaws, trimmers, clippers, chippers, and a Bobcat to haul off at least four trailers worth of yard debris, including the majority of our shared treeline. What was once a tangled “hedgerow” running the length of our west property line is now an open plain of dirt punctuated with a few startled-looking trees. Our cherry trees are intact, as well as a few sugar maples on their side of the line (and not the ones I’d have picked—I prefer trees that grow straight up and down), but all the ivy on both sides of the law has been scraped off with the blade of the Bobcat.

(August, 2003)

What was once a private, enclosed (and somewhat untidy) side yard is now a public space, visible and audible from the road, which has us concerned. Because the driveway side is less than aesthetically pleasing, we’ve been using the west side as our outdoor getaway, but that’s a thing of the past. It’s looking now like our plans to add a fence along the treeline just got bumped up in priority…

(April, 2005)

(August, 2006)

And, Fuck Citibank too.

When I went off to college in the fall of 1989, one of the many things I packed for the trip took up little space, but was one of the biggest lifesavers of all. It wasn’t the cofffee machine I never mastered, or the heavy dishes I never washed, or the metric tons of cassette tapes I lugged up and down flight after flight of stairs. No, the lifesaver was a little plastic card issued by Citibank for shlubs like me, entering into the prime target demographic the hallowed halls of higher education like an innocent lamb. Many life lessons were learned there, from banal (don’t mix lights and darks, no matter how desperate the need for clean underwear) to life-threatening (don’t climb the Howard Street Bridge after three 40′s of Crazy Horse) to common-sense (art chicks are crazy) to survival (First Thursdays=free dinner and cheap wine) to painful truth (I can draw really well, but I can’t paint worth a damn). One of the best lessons I learned was how to be smart with money, and how not to abuse a credit card. I would—and still do—scoop up change off the sidewalk to afford a beer at the Tavern, dive through dumpsters for furniture, and buy all my best leisure wear at the Goodwill.

For awhile, during the heady days of the Internet Boom, and when I was loosely affiliated with the prosperity that wheezed through Maryland, I lived pretty large. I had a nice little house in the city, a toy truck to play with, and spending cash to have fun with. Somewhere along the way, I started using my credit card for stuff, and got pretty cavalier about it. To the point where I realized one day that I was carrying a balance that was alarmingly large. And this coincided with one of those periods where I wasn’t getting paid on time. (You may already know where this is going.) After doing what I could to save money, and missing one payment along the way, I was able to pay the card off—but not before my interest rate was hiked to prime plus 20%.

I vowed never to have this happen again, and went back to my skinflint ways—only buying what I could afford with my debit card from my checking account, and retiring my credit card to the back of my wallet, behind my library and Sam’s Club cards. The last time I carried any balance at all on my card was April of ’05.

This afternoon, in preparation for booking a flight to California, I pulled it out to see if I could have the APR reduced. The nice lady on the phone cheerfully told me that my account was closed.

Closed? I asked. For what reason?

Because the account has been inactive for a year, she replied. Can I help you with any other services today?

…

So let me get this straight. If I carry a balance of $.01 on my card, Citibank charges me a “handling fee” each month, plus interest. If I don’t have any activity on my card at all, for a year, my APR still stays at Prime-plus-anal-rape, and Citibank closes the account without notifying me after I’ve been a customer of 13 years? Fuck you, Citibank.

Mini Survival Kit

I’m paranoid, and I like to be prepared (We were kept out of Independence Hall this past weekend because of my Leatherman, something I carry with me everywhere), so this mini survival kit HOWTO is very, very interesting to me.

Philadelphia Freedom.

We’re back from the City of Brotherly Love and our third vacation weekend of the year. We started our weekend in Delaware at the Chadds Ford winery for a Pinot Noir tasting and class, which was given by a very nice man who knew a lot about wine. We sampled a flight of seven bottles, ranging from Tazmanian to French, plus two local wines. After getting on a respectable midmorning buzz, we drove up the street to Longwood Gardens to walk the grounds and enjoy the fresh air.

As with our last two visits to the area, the sky was cloudy and overcast, but there was a light breeze blowing and low humidity. I brought the TLR setup and embarassed myself by walking around with a black and blue cardboard box, pointing it at flowers and attempting to get some good pictures, until I got tired of being a dork. There wasn’t enough control over the light metering or the focus to get consistent results.

We walked the entire length of the gardens and through the conservatory until evening, and then stopped in at the Terrace restaurant for a light dinner and a bottle of wine.

After dinner, at 9pm on Saturdays, there’s a fountain light show set to music that lasts for a half hour, which was a beautiful way to cap off the evening.

Sunday, we drove into Philly and checked into our hotel, then went for a walk through the Rittenhouse Square area, where a bench called out to us. Heeding the bench’s call, we sat and listened to the city around us, peoplewatching and enjoying the afternoon. I had read an article online about the Rosenbach Museum and Library, where the original manuscript of Joyce’s Ulysses lives, as well as an entire floor’s worth of rare and priceless first-edition books. (Jen wrote her senior english seminar on Ulysses, so I figured this was a slam-dunk.) We were shown in by a dour woman, paid a small fee, and got an hour’s tour of the museum by a big man who knew a lot about books, antiques, and art. The book collection is immense; we could have spent hours ogling the bindings and titles on display. (besides Joyce, there’s Shakespeare, Conrad, Melville, Milton, and a hundred other famous names I can’t remember now.) We were, however, somewhat disappointed with the selection of Ulysses on display—two chapter title pages and a pair of envelopes. Later, we made reservations for one of Philadelphia’s many BYO restaurants, and we were delighted with our choice: Twenty Manning, an upscale asian-flavored bistro a few blocks off Rittenhouse Square. The food was delicious, our waiter didn’t sneer at our hoopty wine, and after closing the restaurant down, we walked halfway home in a light rain (before better judgement kicked in and we hailed a cab.)

Monday, we made like good tourists and drove down Market Street to Old City, and followed the crowds to the Liberty Bell (where Jen did not get in trouble for getting inside, like she did in 1976), and after being turned away by the screeners at Independence Hall for my Leatherman, which I’d left in my messenger bag, we walked over Ben Franklin’s house, through Christ Church, Betsy Ross’s house, and down Elfreth’s Alley. Before leaving, we capped off our walk with a light meal at a quiet Afghan restaurant by Penn’s Landing, which made us both sleepy and sated.

My impression of Philadelphia is a lot more favorable than the last time I’d visited; the vibe is young and lively, and there’s a ton of history there to be had (and not just revoutionary history.) The city is full of architecture, old signage, and excellent food, and we’re already talking about going back for a photo expedition when Jen gets her digital SLR.

What Patents Cost.

This page gives an idea of how much patents cost, along with a pile of other good information about copyright and trademark. (via)

Do The Numbers.

Here’s some head-to-head research on the new Mac I’d love to buy myself. (I have a dream, and it’s a simple one: One Machine To Rule Them All. One machine, two monitors, two operating systems. No multiple machines on my desktop, with 3X the cabling, power supplies, keyboards, etc. etc. In this dream, I’m able to run all the apps in Windows on one screen, and all my Mac apps on the other. In full, 1280dpi or larger glory.) Here’s my wishlist:

• Support for two monitors (non mirroring), with one at least at 1280x 1024
• DVI output
• Dual-bootable OSX/Microsoft
• Portability
• 2Gb of RAM (preferably cheap)
• At least 100 GB of hard drive space
• iSight camera built-in
• Firewire and USB ports (preferably FW800 and USB 2.0)

I had no idea until today that the new iMacs support dual monitors. That alone is worth the price of admission. Plus, twice the hard drive for almost half the money, two FireWire ports, built-in iSight, and cheaper RAM sell me on the deal. Portability? Well, I’ll just fall back on the iBook. And with the impending change in my hosting plans, I’ll merge over to IMAP mail service, which means threaded mail on multiple machines so I don’t need to worry about synchronizing.

The winner: the 20″ iMac by three lengths.

Battery Recall

Chicken Little! Chicken Little! It’s funny how Dell got slammed last week with this story, and now Apple’s getting front page news about it. Seems to me like Sony is the company who should be getting a kick in the ass. Luckily, my battery is not in the affected serial range.

Random Thoughts.

• I haven’t been writing much around here lately. Most of the stuff I’m posting goes over in the interesting links section, because I don’t have enough time to write a full post about something, or I can’t get coherent writing together about whatever it is I’m thinking.
• Project Runway was halfway surprising last night—basket-hat guy won, which was a big surprise, neck-tattoo guy almost lost (and continued to be a dick—no suprise), and boring barbie-guy got kicked off—again, no suprise.
• I haven’t been taking too many pictures lately either. Having an office in one’s house and living in the suburbs means you’re taking pictures of your cats or nothing at all.
• Having a PC laptop with a dead clock battery is kind of like knowing the main character in Memento; just when you’ve fixed the BIOS settings, the clock settings, and rebooted twice, it’s time to go to bed, so you have to shut it down and go through the process all over again because it won’t sleep like a proper computer should (see: Apple.)
• Looks like I’m heading west again sometime in September. Details to come.

Paris, Then And Now.

This is a website with then-and-now pictures of Paris, side by side. I’m fascinated with time-lapse and comparison photography, history, and imagining places the way they used to be. This is beautiful work. (via)

Untitled

HOWTO: Change brake pads.

HOWTO: Change your own brake pads. Not for the mechanically uninclined.

Aether Shifts Direction (again).

This makes about as much sense as I’d expect: “Aether cements strategic shift”. Because when one business model doesn’t work, try anoth—nevermind, we’re going to try this now.

SanDisk Cruzer Titanium

Gizmodo reviews a SanDisk thumb drive and it sounds pretty nice. Except for that Mac-incompatible part.

5 Steps To Being Photogenic.

5 Steps To Being Photogenic. Some good advice here. As a guy who typically looks like a frightened tree weasel in 90% of the pictures he takes, this will help me become the underwear model I’ve always dreamed of being. (via)

Hooky.

Don’t tell my Dad, but I’m not at school today. BG&E cut the power to our block to work on the treeline that runs parallel to our poles, so I’m at the local Panera taking advantage of free wireless and warm coffee. It’s not the same thing as sitting at my own desk and an orange cat curled up in the corner, but it’s not bad either. Unfortunately, I can’t send out e-mail from my main account (something to do with the DNS lookups here, grumble grumble) but otherwise I’m online.

Bandwagonesque.

I stayed up Saturday night and made a hood for my Duaflex II to try the through-the-lens trick, and these are the first shots to test out the rig. Obviously, the lens(es) on my Duaflex need to be cleaned. The G3 is not the best camera to use for this trick, as I need a lot more control over the focus than I currently have. But, not bad for a first try.

Y stands for I’m Late

The Y entry for the Alphabet Project is live. Because this is a week overdue, it’s a two-fer, in Orange Revolutionary goodness. (Well, except for the guy’s skin. But, he was poisoned by Bad Guys, so it’s not his fault.)

Another Good Reason To Get Paid.

Hey! I just looked thru the latest City Paper and saw that Massive Attack is playing at the 9:30 Club on September 28th. Tickets, however, are a bone-crunching $40. Let us all hope I get paid quickly, because I’d like to be able to pay the mortgage, my tax bill, and see this show. (Tricky is playing two nights afterward, so it’s a good bet he’s on tour with them, or at least able to show up and play these two gigs.)

Political Activism.

From: Bill [mailto:XXX@XXX.com]

Sent: Wednesday, August 09, 2006 7:07 PM

To: XXX@martinomalley.com

Subject: Where can I get some yard signs?

Hi XXX,

I’d like to get some O’Malley yard signs so that I can battle the

Ehrlich machine here in Catonsville, but I haven’t heard anything

back from your campaign yet. You’re getting your butts handed to you

in this town, and I’d like to do my part to even out the score in the

Battle Of The Lawn Signs. I live right on Frederick Road on a main

thoroughfare, and I think it would be great exposure (the current

ratio is about 10/90% O’Malley/Ehrlich.)

Let me help!

Bill D.

__________________

XXX@XXX.com

From: XXX@martinomalley.com

To: Bill [mailto:XXX@XXX.com]

Subject: RE: Where can I get some yard signs?

Date: Thu, 10 Aug 2006 09:57:27 -0400

Thanks for your support Bill.

We will have one out to you by tomorrow.

Thanks,

XXX

XXX XXXX ~ O’Malley/Brown Campaign

Volunteer Coordinator ~ XXX-XXX-XXXX ~ XXX@martinomalley.com

From: Bill [mailto:XXX@XXX.com]

Sent: Tuesday, August 15, 2006 3:26 PM

To: XXX XXXX

Subject: I’m beginning to think you don’t like me.

Hi XXX-

I haven’t heard anything from you guys yet, and I’m beginning to get

jealous of my neighbors who have spiffy green and white signs on

their lawns. Any word on signage?

thanks-

bd.

__________________

XXX@XXX.com

From: XXX@martinomalley.com

To: Bill [mailto:XXX@XXX.com]

Subject: RE: I’m beginning to think you don’t like me.

Date: Wed, 16 Aug 2006 07:19:34 -0400

Sorry Bill, we were out of signs last week so we got a little backed up.

What is your address, I will send one this week.

Thanks!

XXX XXXX ~ O’Malley/Brown Campaign

Volunteer Coordinator ~ XXX-XXX-XXXX ~ XXX@martinomalley.com

Postscript: As of yesterday, we have three shiny green and white signs on our front lawn. I was half-hoping they’d erect one of those big-ass billboards instead, but I’ll take what they gave me. We’re not the only ones, either—the O’Malley machine sent word out and suddenly green and white signs have sprouted up all over the area, including *sniff sniff* two of those billboards, at last count.

On the next street over from us, someone covered the “ER” in Erhlich with “BUTT” on both sides of one of the billboards. Good times!