The Following is Based on a True Story

Are you looking for a time to visit Colorado? Here is a piece of information that will help you greatly in deciding on a date:

We plan to move all of our stuff from our apartment into our new house on Saturday, August 15. We're closing on the house July 31 and taking a couple weeks to move little bits over, to do any cleaning that will be more pleasant without furniture, and anything else that makes sense before we crowd the place with stuff.

So how should this affect your plans?

1. If you'd like to help us move, please come join us on the weekend of August 15!

2. If you won't be coming on the weekend of August 15 (who would with a pitch like that one?), you could come AFTER August 15 and enjoy our new and exciting guest room. Visitors for the last 3 years have been stuck on the couch, but no more. If our quick and dirty measurements work out, then we'll be able to stuff a queen sized bed in there.

3. If you're really excited, we will have two homes from July 31 through the middle of September (unless we can manage to offload the rest of our lease). You could have your very own unfurnished house or apartment if you time it right! We do have a high-quality air mattress, so you wouldn't even be on the floor. This also means that we can house a ton of people. Frankly, I wish there were enough people close by to set up a LAN party during this time.

So think about coming out to visit - the time is right for it!

If all goes well, we'll be buying a house at the end of July. This is the first house we will have owned and I expect that we'll be lacking some necessary items for owning a house (luckily, not furniture). I was hoping that you might help me come up with putting together a list in advance (so that there are fewer surprises later on). So, tell me, what do you need to own for a house that you didn't expect?

I have these items already:

• Some tools, including screwdrivers, hammer, wrench, ratchet set


• flashlights (though I will possibly need more powerful ones if I do much in the crawl space)

I expect to need these items, but do not yet have them:

• Indoor ladder (tall enough to change lightbulbs in a vaulted ceiling)


• Outdoor ladder (tall enough for a 2-story house)


• I'd like to get one of those electrical outlet testers


• More doors means more floor mats (front, back, garage probably)


• Lawn/walkway care items (snow shovel, outdoor broom, shovel, lawn mower, weed whacker) - thanks Ramona and Sarah

I really SHOULD have these items, but either don't or need to replace them:

• broom/dustpan


• mop/bucket


• extra clock (for the guest room)


• extra fan(s) (to use instead of air conditioning if possible)

I'll continue to add to this over time.

I put some pictures on the internet from the trip:

http://damonthebold.org/gallery/v/djcook/road_trip_2009/

If you were around at any point and took pictures, I'd love to get copies. I don't know about you, but I love to see the different perspectives that people had of big events.

If you can identify people in the pictures that I did not identify, please leave the name(s) in the picture's comments or email the info to me.

I got a couple nice scenery shots and a lot of bad indoor shots of people...

Sunday, June 7: Cleaned up The Chalet and prepared to leave. Tried to come up with interesting notes to leave in the guestbook ("We prefer 'Dial' soap"). Stopped for pasties on the way to Grand Rapids. Michiganders claim it as a Yooper food. Missed seeing the Chicago folks we were planning to see. Checked in to see if Z and R had learned to say "Yo Mama" and "So Fat" successfully. Realized that the Superman Festival in Metropolis was a different weekend.

Monday: Arrived in Jonesboro. Hung out with Grampa, Gramma, and assorted relatives.

Tuesday: Diana discovered the wealth of gardening books in my Grampa's book collection. Was asked various times about when we were planning to "start a family". Cake planned for the day was repurposed as a birthday cake.

Wednesday: Left Jonesboro for Oklahoma City. Got niece and nephew extra hyper. Kept sister and brother-in-law up way too late. Stole prescription drugs. Slept in a bunk bed.

Thursday: Left Oklahoma City for home. Arrived with a cough starting up.

I won't bore you with all the details of the trip, but I'll bore you with some of them.

Saturday, May 30: Hit the road with Diana and a rental car, crossed Kansas (who knew they still made such a big deal out of The Wizard of Oz there?), and arrived in Kansas City to spend some time with my aunt, uncle, and cousin. Purchased phone charger for the car at a gas station. Purchased connector ipod-to-car at Radio Shack.

Sunday: Was unable to get in touch with two of my cousins that were along our route. Got to hang out with my grandmother in St Louis, and had dinner with her and another aunt & uncle. Arrived in Champaign late at night and invaded Matt and Jaime's guest room.

Monday: Hung out in Champaign, including lunch at a park with a bunch of mothers and children. Also got to hang out with Andrew and Vernita, who chose the exact same wedding day as my cousin. Read the program for their wedding, including the scriptures they used about how you need to satisfy the sexual needs of your spouse.

Tuesday: Hung out in Champaign, including lunch at Papa Del's. Ended up watching Drag Me To Hell with Nick and Kyle (happy birthday, Kyle!). Realized it was a metaphor for dating and marriage. Played Shadows Over Camelot and won as the traitor.

Wednesday: Ate at the Original Pancake House in Champaign, drove to Michigan. Cousin Mike's wedding is a few days away, so we met up with him, most of his immediate family, and his bride-to-be. Watched Diana tour Aunt Debbe's garden. Drove up to The Farm.

Thursday: Hung out with Mike, Sarah, and Heather, toured The Farm and surrounding area, "helped" set up for the wedding. After the rest of the family arrived, we moved into The Chalet (pronounced cha-let). Played the bean game. Met my first cousin, once removed.

Friday: Hung out at The Chalet, "helped" set up for the wedding, ate way too much food at the rehearsal dinner, narrated a few games of Mafia. Sadly, the groom was killed off quite early.

Saturday: Wedding, reception, dancing in a barn, maid-of-honor angry about what happened to the groom's car, more Mafia. I died many times as a result of the previous day's mispronunciation of Michigan geography.

To Be Continued...

We are in Michigan and celebrating the halfway mark on our trip. Things have changed over the years. We have 4 laptops set up at this table on our vacation. I guess we've all become nerds.

Now it's time to play the bean game, so I'll leave you with these pictures:

Tomorrow, I'll be doing breakfast at the Champaign, IL Original Pancake House if anyone wants to come along.

Every once in a while I get an interesting email from a stranger. These things happen when you have a website, I guess. One time, someone offered to buy one of my domain names, but only for a small amount. Another time, someone offered me an expletive-filled (but otherwise nonsensical) response to a negative concert review I posted. Today I got a new one. I have a list of quotes that have struck me as hilarious - mostly from people I know in person. I got an email today from someone with the same name as one of the people I quoted asking that I take her name down since she didn't like the quote and didn't want it associated with her name. I never know what to do with things like this. Do I just ignore it? Do I give in to random strangers with even stranger requests? Do I tell them no? Do I explain why their request is ridiculous? Usually, I just ignore them. However, this time I pretended to misunderstand and said not to worry because I was quoting a different person with the same name. I doubt that will be the end of it. I probably should have just ignored the email to start with...

In other news, I saw the Star Trek movie. I'll say a few things about it that I don't think are spoilers, but feel free to skip the next paragraph anyway.

The movie was pretty good, but there was something that bugged me the whole time. Now that I've slept on it, I think I know what it was. Are you ready? Here it is: the entire premise was a giant plot hole. The movie was about Kirk leaving the academy and going on his first mission. But the premise was this: all the main star trek characters as their much younger selves but in the same roles as in the classic show. Clearly this is problematic since some positions take much longer to achieve than others. How can you have the captain, first officer, communications officer, and ensign all graduating the academy at the same time (or did they even graduate yet)? And even harder, how do you get them all on the bridge when they're the most junior people on the ship? The answer is: through a series of amazing coincidences. I won't go into any more detail than that, but it was pretty ridiculous.

Edit: Lots of spoilers in the comments though...

On the Netflix front page, it gives movie suggestions based on what you've rated and put on your list of movies to get (if you're logged in). The movie suggestions on this front page are really category suggestions with some examples from each category. I find the categories fascinating and love to share them every now and again.

Here are today's Netflix categories for me:

1. Anime
2. TV Shows
3. Action & Adventure from the 1980s
4. Witty Comedies
5. Talking-Animal Children & Family Movies

read this related discussion

Since I don't have kids, I'll point out that the discussion linked above applies equally to marital infidelity.

This is why I try to respond to other people's web stuff. Or maybe it's just to encourage them to continue posting (I do find that I put less effort into responding to people that get lots of other responses already - like anyone with a child under age 3).

We've been on super savings mode since Diana didn't have a job when she expected to. I have to admit that I'm sad about some of the concerts we've missed (like a Vienna Teng show in Boulder that had a special format where she mixed it up with another band somewhat like the Modern Troubadours show we saw in Indianapolis). Luckily, with Diana starting up a job in a week, I can start looking for concerts to go to again. Sadly, this realization came too late and this concert is already sold out.

Here are three shows this month that I'll be investigating further:

one
two
three

Anyone know of any bands coming through Colorado that I should be watching for?

Also, stay tuned next week for updates on summer plans.



PS Since when does Albuquerque get so many good concerts? (Is that seriously Over the Rhine west of the Mississippi?) Must be some kind of cyclical thing.

Diana accepted a job offer today and will start working on May 11. The job is about a 45 minute drive from where we live, so she'll have to deal with an extended commute at least until our lease is up in September (maybe we'll get a house after that - who knows?). But, it's still in the Denver-ish area and I'll be able to just stick with my job and set us up for a dual income. So that's where we're at.

If you have general questions, feel free to put them in a comment. If you have specific questions, just send me an email.

For those who are waiting expectantly for more information:

Yesterday, Diana finally got a job offer for a place that is located close enough that we would not have to move (though she would have a bit of a commute). So, she has 3 job offers in different states to choose between. Since I have a job in Colorado and not in the other two states, she is most likely to take the one here. I'll post more details in the next week or two when things are more finalized.

In other news, since we'll be in the area, Diana will be participating in the graduation ceremonies on Friday, May 8th. Apparently, the hooding ceremony is combined with a breakfast (I assume to make up for it being at 8am).

As for me, the biggest thing I have to deal with is the fact that one of my grad school friends is getting married on the same day as my cousin. Since family typically wins this kind of thing, I'm trying to figure out a way to visit the friend on the way to the cousin's wedding.

Every now and again, I find myself devising puns. Not little ones, but elaborate ones. For example, I was looking at this website and I happened to notice the position of the name "Hill". With no prior plan to do so, I immediately started crafting a pun that would end with the phrase "over the hill". I didn't finish, because I was so intrigued that I was doing so that I wanted to write this post, but you can imagine trying to fit in age and a common last name and coming up with something amusing.

Has anything like that ever happened to you?

I have this accidental Easter tradition. It goes like this:

Every year I vaguely know when Easter is but don't really keep track. Every year I travel for work and for pleasure. For approximately the last like 7 years, I have planned trips only to discover that they were over Easter. This means that I've spent Easter with completely different people in completely different places every year for quite a long time. This year is no exception. I've been working on some business travel recently, and finally got everything set up for a trip to Chicago on Monday. I have some friends in Chicago, so I naturally wanted to leave early and visit over the weekend. Only to discover...Easter is this weekend!

Diana finally got a job offer. Unfortunately, it's in a state where I do not currently have a job (or a job offer). We'll see what happens next.

I am now married to a black belt.

It's a crazy world we live in. We have a vending machine at work that charges $1 for a package of Ramen, but only $.75 for a package of pop tarts.

I always like to hear a non-hysterical assessment of something that I usually only hear about in a hysterical way (abortion issues, race issues, terrorism issues, etc.). Or maybe I just appreciate when people play the devil's advocate and provide a reasonable discussion of the other side of an issue that everyone somehow knows to be a fact. With that in mind, I found this article to be a very interesting read.


And maybe this goes along with that concept. I was reading a discussion about the bankers and other wall street types that have been responsible for lots of economic woes, but have walked away very wealthy. Here's a brief exchange between 3 people that made me pause:

--
This might not go down well, and I'm surprising myself by writing this, but, shouldn't we show the bankers a little more forgiveness?
--
i'll forgive any greedy banker who asks for my forgiveness. i'd have respect for anyone who repents. a bit of repentance in that ivory towered world methinks would not go amiss.
--
"while we were still sinners, Christ died for us"

I think sometimes forgiveness has to come first in the hope repentance will follow. The rich man...needs my compassion and my forgiveness and my call for him to change, whether he acknowledges any of that or not, as much as i need Jesus' compassion and forgiveness and call to change (whether i acknowledge it or not).
--

You may or may not agree with the religious basis for this sentiment, but the concept is worth consideration.

...buy tax software and deal with taxes before the deadline.

Also, I need to remember to send off money for last year's IRAs.

Please feel free to remind me about these things...

We had an all-employee meeting today that celebrated the launch of our newest product and also took a close look the potential impacts of the poor economical climate. I won't go into details, but the upshot for me is that I shouldn't be worried about layoffs in the next couple months, but after that the future is very uncertain in terms of how much we can sell (and if we can't sell very much, then layoffs might turn up).

As for Diana's job hunt, she's gotten a few interviews, so things are moving forward. She thinks that the economy is making companies much more hesitant to hire, but we're optimistic that she'll get somewhere in the next few weeks. The good news on our apartment is that we can just go month to month after our lease ends, so if we don't know what's going on, we'll still be okay. The bad news on our apartment is that if we do go past the end of our lease without renewing, the price goes up by about 50%.

So there's a chance that I'll be living in my parents' basement and begging on the streets, but it isn't anytime very soon.

Now I just need to look into my cousin's research on solar panels and see if there's a bandwagon there that I need to jump on.

I'm sure some of you saw this already, but here's an article for all you "25 Things About Me" people: http://www.slate.com/id/2211068

I find the idea of putting 25 random things about myself into a post appealing (just like everyone else), but I hate repetition and I'm sure I'd have trouble coming up with 25 things I haven't already mentioned somewhere in this web journal.


In other news, I figured out the best way to dump someone.
"I got you some candy"

In other other news, it's that time of year again, when I start spending time at this fantastic website. Here are a couple samples from this year's fun:



And, for old time's sake:

I'm back from the conference. I may have one or two more thoughts to post about that come from the conference, but for now I'll just say that the free Sudoku and "Word Freak" games that I got for my iPod touch did a great job of entertaining me on the plane.

A few miscellaneous notes before I forget:

On a couple recent trips, I've channel surfed past a show that I took as a lower quality version of Nash Bridges, but with worse acting and more far-fetched technology. I don't think I ever watched a full episode of this show until this trip (when I couldn't find any Law & Order to watch). Imagine my chagrin when I finally realized that this show was the ultra-popular CSI. I guess that show must be better than VIP after all...

One cool thing that I discovered was the hidden restrooms at the Four Seasons in Vancouver. The restrooms are all hidden sneakily around corners that you can't see or up stairs that look like they go nowhere. Very cool. I love all hidden rooms and passageways, even if they're completely ridiculous.

I got a chance to see the new google android phone. I have to say that I don't think it quite matches the iphone (yet?). But definitely on the right track.

I met someone that works at Classmates.com - and they acknowledged that the payment model is exactly the same as bad dating services (profile is free, seeing messages from other people costs money!). I'm hoping to wheedle my way into getting my account updated on the sly so I can finally figure out which stranger once looked at my profile!

The talks at this conference are so different from an academic conference. It's almost all talks about things that people already know, but just reminding, giving specific examples, and talking about tweaks to the methods. It's a lot more useful for applying to your everyday life, but since it's not so much new stuff (research, whatever), it feels a little weird.

Did I ever even say what conference I'm at? It's the Interaction 2009 conference for the IxDA organization.

They have this interesting thing at this conference where if the projectors aren't being used for anything else, they show the latest photos posted to flickr with the conference's tag and the latest twitter posts with the conference's tag. It's actually pretty interesting.

The only thing I've experienced at a conference that I thought was cooler than this was a conference that had IRC "backchannels" set up for the conference and for each room at the conference. They even had a backchannels panel that showed the IRC for that room up on the wall behind the panel members (and the panel members all talked on the IRC channel from their own computers throughout the panel as well.

I always come away from conferences thinking about something other than what was actually talked about in the talks. For example, at this conference, I'm finding myself really thinking critically about the benefits of having someone in my role at a company and how to argue for or against that role in general. I don't know if that meets with the goals of the conference organizers or the people who paid for me to come on this trip, but coming away thinking deeply about a related topic can't be all bad.

There's an interesting theme at this conference that has to do with "sustainability". By that, I mean that they are making a big deal out of how we can impact things like reducing waste, reducing energy use, etc. It's very odd to me because I think almost everyone here is involved in software interface or web design, which has at best an indirect impact on those things.

In other news, I've been walking past the olympic clock a couple times a day. In just over a year, this will be the site of the 2010 winter olympics. It's interesting to be around during this time, but the city is a lot more subdued about it than I would expect.

I have never seen so many pairs of hipster eyeglasses in one room in my life. I feel so out of place with such traditional frames...

Also, I just learned that a typical grocery store hold only 3 days worth of groceries on-hand. Beware.

Vancouver is an interesting town. Here are 2 examples of why I think that:

1. I don't think I've ever stayed anywhere that has an umbrella in the hotel room as a courtesy.

2. Vancouver has some excellent views, with bodies of water, mountains, etc. However, all these views are blocked by giant skyscrapers that are right next to the waterfront.

I also saw something that I thought was pretty hilarious. Vancouver has a steam clock that is doubtless some kind of mechanical marvel, but really just looks like a clock with some steam coming out the top. I had the pleasure of seeing some tourist father attempt to explain to his young daughters how cool the steam clock was. He clearly thought it was cool just because it showed up in a tourist guide and otherwise didn't really have anything to say about it. Highly amusing.

Two things:

1. My bag showed up today. A cursory inspection shows that everything is there.

2. I checked in for this conference. I was confused by the fact that my badge was a different color than everyone else's. Eventually I discovered that I have a "volunteer" badge. I look forward to people asking me questions.