this phone is awesome. it’s the sexiest piece of machinery i’ve ever held in my hands. it’s thinner than i thought it would be and the screen looks amazing. the menus are easy to navigate and although the flat keypad was a little weird-feeling at first, i’m already used to it and in love. in love with a phone. now my tibook will have something to talk to about its aircraft-grade hotness. i can’t believe i actually ordered a different phone first. how wrong i was. considering getting/making a case for it similar to ben’s sunglasses-bag trick for his sony ericsson. i feel both wonderfully decadent and ashamedly disgusted with myself for owning this phone. ah, guily pleasures.
Archives for the month of: March, 2005
ever see a new gadget and you think to yourself, “it’s the future!” and get all misty eyed about the days when there were two star trek shows on the air at once? no? well, maybe this will change your mind.
redTaction is at the forefront of a new kind of data transfer technology. the data is transferred…with your body. redTaction and similar technologies take advantage of the human body’s own electrical field to send data at up to 2Mbps.
» reprinted article via liberypost.org (couldn’t get the original to open)
currently trying to straighten out the cluster fuck that has become of my efforts to switch mobile companies and get a new phone. in summary: i’m going for the razr even though i don’t need it. all of the rebates were too good to pass up and i don’t want to waste my new-customer discounts on a phone i feel ‘meh’ about. i don’t feel incredibly excited about the relatively feature-less razr either, but at least it will be really thin so there is a distant hope that it’ll comfortably fit in my pocket and it’ll look cool. it will come tomorrow and after i play with it a bit i’ll write about it and THEN i’ll get to processing the (not many, sorry) pics from the vegas trip and writing a little something about my impressions of america’s playground.
also, a reminder to check out the a/v club (first item in top menu) to see what movies/books/music i’ve been enjoying lately. changes as often as i see/read/hear something new.
update: i guess i have a couple of christmas pics and some random stuff too so i’ll include those in the photo dump.
is there anything sadder than an animal cracker with its head broken off? does anyone else feel as bad as i do when i pull the decapitated little guy out of the package and see his condition?
did i mention that i think biting off limbs or heads one at a time is cruel and i believe the only ethical way to eat an animal cracker is to shove the whole thing in your mouth and chew as fast as possible (you know, to get it over with quickly)?
…no? anyone?
…i’m the only one?
it’s times like this that make me wonder why i’m not a vegetatarian.
…or why i’m not in a mental hospital.
…or…why i still eat animal crackers.
at the end of february was jon’s birthday party at delilah’s. it was a good time – matt made cupcakes! – and there was a lot of drinking and a lot of drunkenness. the birthday boy left after apparently lapsing into unconsiousness in the middle of conversations and yelling at people in spanish. at the beginning of march was cecile’s masquarade ball/lechon party. everyone wore formal attire and masks so it was pretty surreal. that and the whole roast pig sitting on the kitchen table. one guy came as strongbad! strongbad in a suit!
last week was the first annual chicago printers’ ball. my company was a sponsor and aaron designed the fruit stand that held all of the free swag. swag that was completely decimated after half an hour. it started at 6, eric and i got in line at 6:30…and i do mean in LINE. around the block. after an hour and about 5 people cutting in line directly in front of us (people from a certain magazine beginning with ‘p’ apparently have no manners) we finally got in. there were some people dancing on the stage and a couple of people i knew so we hung out past 9 and watched the band set up for the event that was going on afterwards. matt showed up too, which was surprising because i thought if anyone i invited would come it would be jon or kate or andrew. after the ball matt, eric and i walked all the way from hot house up to the bennigan’s (the first open restaurant we found) and had some food and iced tea. we had an interesting conversation wherein i probably revealed too much about myself then called it a night.
friday we went to a costa rican restaurant for a coworker’s last day. it was AMAZING! we all had shakes – i had a mamey shake (warning: picture is huge). mamey was described in the menu as apricot/raspberry flavored. it is delicious. i also had some potato tacos with mole and fried plantain. i recommend irazu to anyone!
this week diana was in town from vancouver! we hung out last night. we all went to reza’s for dinner and had an insane amount of food. somehow diana, asli and i got into a weird conversation about birth control pills and egg donation while jon desperately tried to go to his happy place. afterwards we hit carol’s, a country-western bar with live music. the band was awesome – the guitar player was so incredible! they took requests and played everything from old-school country to the blues.
today i had to pick up my new earphones from the wicker park post office (long story). we ate at the grafton in lincoln square where i had the best shepherd’s pie since will’s homemade in london. i also had to take my new pants to be altered – hopefully they’ll work out for the vegas wedding next weekend. while there we’re going to see a penn & teller show and see the star trek experience (of course). after the actual wedding, pat wants to go to the stratosphere tower to ride the roller coaster and the insanity swings.
monday is eric’s interview at apple, so he’ll fly to california tomorrow, fly back on tuesday then fly back out to vegas on friday. the rest of today is devoted to messing with my new earphones, reading my new popsci and watching some back episodes of numbers and monk.
eric: can you hear? [covers ear with hand]
kara: yes.
eric: can you hear? [presses harder]
kara: yes.
eric: can you hear the tv?
kara: yes. my other ear isn’t blocked.
eric: how about now? [sticks finger in ear]
kara: ew! gross! don’t stick your finger in my ear!
[struggle ensues]
kara: no! get away!
eric: what’s wrong? is my finger diseased now that it’s been in your ear?
[menaces with finger]
kara: no, but…ew! stop! don’t…touch…! unclean! unclean!!
eric: i washed it!
kara: what? your finger??
eric: my whole hand!…BOTH of them!
huh. this isn’t as funny written out. guess you had to be there. sorry. i’m lame.
two weeks ago i had the Best Day Ever but i haven’t had time to write about it until now. actually, it was really the one thing that put me in an awesome mood and everything else was just gravy.
a few weeks ago i wrote a php cms application for a website my new company had built awhile ago. dawn and i hit the road for indiana to meet with the client; she was taking photographs of their newest piece of equipment doing its thing and i had to present my app’s user guide and do a little training. the company in question works in the recycling industry and has developed some processes to make aluminum reclaimation much more environmentally-friendly. i had never been to an industrial facility before and i was excited – my appetite whet by previously-taken photos of giant aluminum-melting furnaces and yellow-hot metals flowing and sparking like something out of T2.
one of our contacts at this company is an incredibly sweet german guy named karl (*name changed to that of two of my friends’ older brother’s name to keep me from getting dooced, even though everything i have to say is basically about how awesome everything about this company is and you could totally figure out who/what i’m talking about if you really wanted to, but hey – i’m making an effort here.). karl had a friend in from germany who was also visiting the plant for the first time. dawn got her camera ready and we put on our hard hats (!!!) and followed karl out into the cold drizzly rain.
the company’s buildings are arranged in a big U and we emerged from the inner right arm of the U. our destination was the building at the base of the U. the entire space inside the U is filled with rows of hundreds of pressure gauges and huge pre-fab parts of as-yet-unknown metal structures. on the far side of the yard were about 6 tall perfect white cylinders, their bottoms fenced in with lots of pipes snaking everywhere between them and a tall dark grey rectangular building on stilts. the air rumbled with the muffled sub-bass of giant machinery – a steady grating throbbing of moving parts and rushing air like an old steam train idling in a station or a giant bellows being pumped by one of those cave trolls from lotr. we wove our way between 6 foot tall sections of pipe as thick fog billowed across our path and clung to bottoms of racks of gauges and our ankles.
seeing that fog is the most surreal moment i think i’ve ever had. it was cold outside – maybe 40° – and i couldn’t feel any heat emanating from the plant’s opening (door or hatch doesn’t sufficiently describe how gaping and huge it was) so the fog felt like…magic. like the beginning of a story where the characters journey to a strange new land and see things that no one has dreamt of before – the moment just before an explorer realizes he’s found a place that isn’t on any map. this was my mindset when i stepped out of the gray rain and into the plant’s black interior.