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Archives for January 2005

January 31, 2005

Almost 2 weeks ago, my beautiful Mexican mom-in-law Cruz and her boyfriend Paulie embarked on a 4-week travel adventure through Mexico and Guatemala.

Paulie has been faithfully updating his friends and family with email reports from the road since, and while they always reflect his exquisite sense of humor, this last one had me rolling on the floor. Here's an excerpt I thought truly worth of broadcasting to the world (and if you've ever been to Mexico, you'll instantly grasp the truthfulness of his writing):

It was time to move on, but first a comment on Mexican bathrooms.

I don't know about the rest of you - but I have never used a Mexican toilet that worked properly, except in a luxury resort in my past life. They either never flush or never fill or some such malfunction. The plumbing in the sinks are never secured either. They wiggle every which way and usually the water trickles out. There is always a bucket under the sink.
And the urinals are always too high. I mean most Mexicans are shorter than me! What are they thinking? I usually have to stand on my toes!
I had a first the other day. I went into a bathroom that seemed in amazing order for Mexico. I sat down and immediately found that the toilet seat was a size too small for the toilet and it fell through with me on it.

I know that all is true, because we are now in Guatemala and the toilets all work fine.



January 28, 2005

Blogger can be such a pain in the ass sometimes.

I run my other blog with blogger's software, and while most of the time it works just fine, when it doesn't, it can waste hours and hours of my time without any reason at all.

Take last Wednesday for example. After a small too-much-work-related hiatus, I decided to put up a new blog post to keep the site fresh. I labored away at it for about half an hour, then trustingly pressed the "Publish Now" button.

Instead of the happy little green twirly thing, I got an error: 001 java.net Connection error, Connection refused.

Instantly I thought that the ftp server my site sits on was being whacky and refused access for some reason. I went and doublechecked all the publishing settings in Blogger, and made sure the username and password were correct. All was well. It turned out too that I was able to smoothly login to my server via SmartFTP and the server's control panel - without any problems at all. So this couldn't be it.

Scouring the already pretty thin online troubleshooting guide Blogger maintains turned up - yepp, you guessed it - absolutely nothing. If they have codes like 001 for their error alerts, shouldn't they have some sort of knowledge base for them, at least with an explanation what the error means and why it occurs?

The brief thought of emailing tech support at Blogger crossed my mind, but that was quickly discarded in light of a recent email exchange with them regarding another problem that only wasted my time and never brought a resolution. Not to mention that it took them 2 days to respond to my initial email, asking for help.

So I did the only thing left to do: I abandoned my quest to update the blog, and let it just be for a couple of days. Time heals everything, right? In this case it did. Logging back into Blogger today, I was able to post new stuff without a single hitch. No more error messages.

Odd.



January 26, 2005

Movie buffs around the globe will have heard the news by now: The Academy has announced its nominations for the 2005 Oscars.

While my pick for best actor is 100% on Jamie Foxx for "Ray", I presume the Academy is going to be sentimental again and give it to DiCaprio for "The Aviator" (they love mentally challenged characters....). And after all - it's a big-budget studio movie with plenty of star power and 3 hours of running time, dwarfing all other movies nominated. Booh. It was good, but not *that* good.

"Ray" however was great. And Jamie Foxx didn't just play Ray Charles - he *was* Ray Charles. Bend-ites can catch the movie right now at McMenamins Theater. If you haven't seen it, get down there and take it in.

Movies that were grossly ignored by the Academy this year:
Fahrenheit 9/11
Hidalgo (I know - unlikely, but still a very good movie)
Hero
Spiderman 2 (which really was an excellent movie in all aspects)

Performances that were ignored:
Colin Farrell in A home at the end of the world
Dustin Hoffman in Meet the Fockers (funny, funny, funny)
Jim Caviezel in The Passion of the Christ (let's face it: the movie was one big guilt trip, but I still admire Jim's performance in it)

Movies I'm rooting for:
Ray
Super Size Me (I'll have to be starving to ever set foot in another McDonald's again)
The Incredibles (mainly due to the best animated character to come along in a very long time: Edna Mode)

The year's biggest cinematic disappointments (and rightfully NOT nominated):
Troy (sure, Brad Pitt was beautifully buff, but overall, the movie just didn't pull it off)
Alexander (Colin Farrell with cinematic history's worst wig job)
Van Helsing (looked like it might be an awesome video game though)
The Life Aquatic (this movie just plain sucked)

And 10 points go to the "Queerer-than-thou" Bravo for airing the Golden Globes so even people who don't get NBC (thanks, DirecWay) can see it (albeit a week later).



January 17, 2005

Following up on last week's Stupidest joke in the World post (and admittedly for lack of yet again more significant writing fodder), alert reader Chelsea Bothwell has contributed the following bad joke to the arsenal:

A grasshopper walks into a bar.
The bartender says, "Hey, we have a drink named after you!"
The grasshopper says, "You have a drink called Phil?"

Actually, I think on a scale of 1-10, this one could score somewhere around 2. It actually made me laugh - not at the joke itself, but rather at its utter stupidity.

And if I sound a bit incoherent today, blame it on the Dayquil. My head is soft and buttery like candy cotton, my facial skin is oddly numb, and my eyeballs feel as if they were ready to abandon shop and peel out of my brain.

So hope for improvement tomorrow, or send me another joke that will prevent me from having to post anything a bit more coherent.

Thank you all for playing.



January 12, 2005

For pure lack of anything more brainy or creative, I've decided to post herewith the worst joke in the history of mankind. Being as it is that the Web has a weird way of circulating and archiving completely absurd information such as this, I expect to get a huge surge of visitors to my site ...

What makes this posting special however is the fact that I was fortuate enough to record the facial reactions of a few friends to this worst joke of all. Maybe this improves the funniness of the joke a bit - or maybe you just had to be there.

So without further ado - here it is:

A man hears a knock on his door.
He goes to open the door, but doesn't see anybody.
As he looks down, he sees a snail on his door step.
He kicks the snail across the street, closes the door, and goes back to his living room.

Two months later, he again hears a knock on his door.
As he opens the door and looks down, there is the snail again.
Before he has the chance to kick it again though, the snail yells at him: "Hey - what was that?"

[]

[]

Ha ha ha. See? Didn't I tell you this was the worst joke you've ever heard?



January 6, 2005

Just because I suck at something, does that mean I should never ever do it again? Maybe. But although I sucked at playing Donkey Kong sooo bad last night, I'll never give it up. I just love that game. Love it. That's my story, and I'm sticking to it.

Speaking of sticking to it: freaking Dane is apparently really sticking to his plan to move to Hood River. Last night, some of the Bend bloggers (namely Kasey, Jesse, Lance, and myself) threw him a little send-off party at the Cascade Lakes Brewery. There was lots of talk about Fargo and the eternal denial the people of Minnesota are in, how a certain local newscaster likes to text message her boyfriend during her live program, and of course how Dane is totally blowing it by leaving Bend. On the bright side, and as previously mentioned, there was also a lot of Donkey Kong playing.

But - I fully expect Dane to return to Bend within 8 months anyway. I'm not putting any money on it, but I'll bet a beer nonetheless.

One word, dude - MAYHEM.



January 3, 2005

After a long break for X-mas and New Year (and a bunch of photo work in between), I'm finally resuming this blog.

So much has happened, it's hard to even try and catch up.

The good:

- I got a totally new bathroom for X-mas from my boy! The old low tub is being replaced by a nice deep soaking tub, so I can hang out in the bath while he watches some mind-numbing Nascar race. Do I care? No! I also got beautiful oil-brushed bronze bathroom accessories, and I've already sort of picked out the new tile also. It's gonna rule when it's done! I cannot wait.

- eBay rules. For a miserly 100 bucks, I bid on and won an awesome copper sink for the new bathroom. Looking around online, those things are all running 300-400 bucks retail. Ouch. I'm so psyched.

- I got not one, but two, sets of kick-ass poker chips for X-mas. One from my boy who probably secretly hopes that somehow he's gonna have better luck playing against me with *those* chips than our old ones. The other set I got from my dad-in-law who tried to bluff me a few times at a game at Thanksgiving, and totally tanked. I suspect he's sharing the same hopes as his son ... So - anybody up for a game?

- I shot another assigment for ole' Bend Living mag over the holidays. The topic was fine woodworking, and I got to go hang out with a couple of really awesome craftsmen. They all treated me so nicely, it really was a joy. And I don't think that was just all X-mas spirit... Look for it in the March 05 issue.

The bad:

- I gave my boy a new Playstation 2 game for X-mas, and he's been totally obsessed with it. I fear for my sanity.

- Someone really screwed with my boy's business last year, and I can't find a freaking lawyer in Bend to even talk to, because the a-hole defendant has obviously already hired every damn guy in town at one time or another. They must have all gotten rid of him after defending him once, and finding out what a prick he is. New Year's resolution: I shall commence my quest for justice - and kick that guy's ass.

- I just lost a potentially very profitable photo ad job to a young rookie who (quote by the client) "was gonna do it for next to nothing". That sucks - for me *and* for the rookie. The only one who's coming out smelling like roses will be the client, and he will be spoilt forever, knowing that he will be able to get someone to work for him for very little money. And the rookie will never be able to charge the proper rates, because he sold out cheap in the beginning, in turn not really motivating himself to produce outstanding work ...Sigh ...
So another New Year's resolution will involve educating clients and peers on the value of paying for photography so the photographers can actually make a living - and afford to focus on creating outstanding work for the clients instead of having to go flip burgers.

And the ugly:

The tsunami disaster. How aweful. I silently weep every morning when I read the paper and see the pictures of the poeple who lost their families, their homes, their livelyhood. It's so sad. I'm just grateful I didn't follow through with last year's resolution to go to Thailand - I would have been there right now. And I'm also grateful that my friend Aubrey (who is travelling in Thailand right now) wasn't on Phuket, like she originally had planned, but rather decided to spend time in the Northern part of Thailand just before the wave hit. What incredible luck.