Recently in fun stuff Category

Mon. 05.05.08 - Happy Cinco de Mayo!

Greg & Leah stopped by this evening in "Ojitos - Hecho en Nuevo Mexico", a fun 1927 modified hot rod owned by Greg's friend Thomas. Thomas wants to sell Ojitos to Greg, Leah is wary, so they have Ojitos for one day/evening.

Ojiotos, she was the toast of Seal Beach. And danged loud, too.

No, obviously not. Eight is not ten, especially when one skips seven. Seven may possibly be the new thirteen.

Speaking of numbers, this Thursday is the birthday I am not having. Last year was my last birthday ever. Hmph.

On to better numbers, very late on this upcoming Thursday and/or very early on Friday morning will be this blog's 5th birthday.

Oh, and, Happy Earth Day to you.

Ha! Dave got me... Good thing I was keeping up on my feed reading... So, here it goes, my Eight Random Things...

1. Let others know who tagged you.
2. Players start with 8 random facts about themselves.
3. Those who are tagged should post these rules and their 8 random facts.
4. Players should tag 8 other people and notify them they have been tagged.

*******

Fact #1: My two childhood passions were volcanoes & whales. One year, when I was 8 or 9, I convinced my Mom that we needed to do a roadtrip to visit all of the major volcanoes in California & Oregon. Good thing my Mom is cool.

Fact #2: In commemoration of my childhood, I am planning a road trip to Seattle for Bumbershoot this year and I plan on driving by and stopping at all the major volcanoes along the way in CA, OR, & WA.

Fact #3: Major West Coast Volcanoes of Note: Mt. Shasta, Mt. Lassen, Crater Lake, The Three Sisters, Mt. Jefferson, Black Butte, Mt. Hoot, Mt. St. Helen's, Mt. Baker, and Mt. Rainer. Now I have visited/ walked about / climbed: Mt. Shasta, Mt. Lassen, Craker Lake, The Three Sisters, Black Butte and Mt. Rainer. So that leaves Mt. Jefferson, Mt. Baker, and Mt. St. Helen's left for this August / September.

Fact #4: I am a rice-a-tarian. I have Celiacs Disease and rice is always the safest option.

Fact #5: Once I placed #3 for my age bracket in downhill ski racing for the whole of the West Coast. I also had the chance when I was 19 to ski a whole weekend with the US Olympic Ski team recruiters who afterwards told our mutual friend that they thought I had the "prettiest" skiing technique that they had ever seen. But the truth of the matter is that I was simply not competitive enough or aggressive enough to ski for the A, B, or C teams. Glad for that now.

Fact #6: I learned to ski when I was 2. Yep, 2 years old. My Mom & Dad met when they both worked at or around Mammoth Mountain. My Dad was on ski patrol at Bear Valley on the west side of the Sierra's when I was 2 and he put me in ski school.

Fact #8: As a child, my Mom's dad was obsessed with technology and pushed me constantly to learn how to program computers. I rebelled by not touching a computer at all until I was 19. Now he has the last laugh. Still does.

Fact #9: The area I live in is 6 feet below sea level and 1.5 blocks from the Pacific Ocean. Luckily, we did not have a storm surge at the same time as an extra high tide during one of the storms this winter , otherwise I would have been 3 feet under water at my apartment. This happened at our area in 1983. While I love being near the beach, am thinking that I should move back to Orange.

Fact #10: I have a book addiction. While the rest of the world loves their TV or gaming or sports or whatever, I love books. I am currently trying to decide where I should put another bookcase as to free up floor space currently taken up by stacks of books. I did make a positive step to break the addiction today by going to the Library to check out a book rather than order it on Amazon...

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Now I am supposed to tap 8 other folks, and to follow Dave's example, I won't email them but let them find this post via my feed:

1) Sandra Daly-Mendoza
2) Allison Hahn
3) Devin Ballentina
4) Tink
5) George Kelly
6) Rita El Khoury
7) Elizabeth Perry
8) Colin Mercer

Today was spent in two ways: the Dog ways and the Interaction Design ways.

Belle was a hair ball beyond Polar Bear status and desperately needed to visit a groomer to get shaved. Given that all the pet salons that I knew of were booked up due to predicted weekend hot weather, it involved me driving up PCH in this morning a bit looking for dog salons and walking into Purr-cision Grooming in Sunset Beach and begging for Belle to get a slot at the grooming table.

I have in the past noted that Sunset Beach has a high percentage of Psychics (2 or 3 in 2 miles), 3 Happy Ending Style Message Parlors (of the Rub & Tug variety), and 3 Tattoo parlours, and one just one dog groomers. Many thanks for Mark Anthony and the crew at Purr-cision for making Belle a dog again rather than a mini-polar bear.

The second part of my day was doing my least favorite activity: wireframing. Wireframing in my book is right up there with doing one's taxes and cleaning the toilet. Just say no.

Now I know that some folks consider wireframes to be the be all and end all of web design.

In my 12 years of designing and developing for the web, I prefer to first think about the task extensively, sketch & makes notes, and then just do it. This is much the same process I use when making art, esp. painting. I think, mull, turn things over in my mind - sometimes for weeks, make sketches, and then start the task.

In today's case, I already had fully envisioned the finished web interaction in my head and worked out the steps, but I needed to explain it to a programmer who would help me with the perl code. First I tried to explain it in an email, but that was not full enough. So I made two diagrams in photoshop with arrows to show how the behavior/actions would happen. But that was not enough either, so I started to make a html/javascript plain version of the interaction, when I realized... gasp! shock! horror! I was wireframing. blech.

Silly me.

Sun. Feb. 10, 2008 - I had the pleasure to join up with the Chennai Photowalk Flickr Group folk to participate in the 4th Chennai Photowalk up Mount Road (Anna Salai) . Good fun, great photographers & conversation.

Video captured by Ms. Jen in Chennai, India, with a Nokia N82.

Uploaded by Ms. Jen on 26 Mar 08, 8.53PM PDT.

Mon 04.07.08 - Local tree looses most of its white blossoms in favor of light green leaves. News at 11.

What I have done in the last 32 hours of my life:

* Drove from the Calif. Poppy Reserve to home.
* Went grocery shopping.
* Made dinner.
* Worked
* Walked a sick Scruffy.
* Slept. Had a bit of insomnia. Went back to sleep until about 8am.
* Walked a sick Scruffy. Dealt with a big pooh blow-out due to a sick Scruffy.
* Hosed Scruffy's backside down.
* Dried Scruffy.
* Went to the Sunday morning Farmer's Market at the Long Beach Marina.
* Went & took care of some essential errands.
* A bit more work.
* Bleached the front bit of my hair. Worked on re-sectioning the bleached bits on the front of my hair for new hair color that will be completed tomorrow.
* Downloaded the last week's worth of photos & video from my Nokia N95 to my computer. Over 200 MBs of photos.
* Started dinner. Realized I was out of charcoal, walked up to the corner store. Scruffy continued to have intestinal distress.
* Note to self - Do NOT let Scruffy drink out of the Owens River EVER again. Nor let him drink out of the cattle watering area. City dogs do not have the intestinal flora to deal with exciting country bacteria.
* Hang out & have BBQ with the Electric Arms neighbors (Ryan & Tammi, Earl & Sharon).
* Walk Scruffy all the way to Main Street & back to make sure all the distress is out of his system.

What I did NOT do in the last 32 hours of my life:
* Take a photo.

I guess it was the sabbath...

;o)

Fri 04.04.08 - As seen in the Wagon exhibition at the Laws Railroad Museum.