Owner: Living in Small Sizes URL:http://livinginsmallsizes.com Join Date: Sun, 04 Mar 2007 20:47:24 -0600 Rating:0 Site Description: A journal of (mis)adventures, transformations and observations from one man who moves his family to a small rural town. Site statistics:Click here
Urban Behavior 2007-03-20 14:06:30 The commercial goes something like - “Move from a large city to a small town and running low on urban behavior?”
Read more:Urban
, Behavior
Office Space Gets Real 2007-03-21 21:56:29 Right after our new water cooler was delivered to the office today, Mike said something like, “wow it’s like a real office now”.
About an hour later as I was standing in front of the cooler, enjoying a fresh cup of chilled spring water, and I realized that yes, this is a “real” office now. I think that should be the definition of an “office”.
of·fice noun
1: a place where a particular kind of business is transacted or a service is supplied that has a water cooler.
Read more:Space
, Office Space
Tough Choice 2007-03-23 18:06:36 Would I rather be back in Seattle right now, or here in Fairfield? Cold and rainy, or warmer with lightning. This type of choice reminds of voting in America.
Read more:Tough
, Choice
Interesting Report 2007-03-24 18:25:23 Was the Death Star attack an inside job? New report asks some uncomfortable questions.
My New Toy 2007-03-29 03:09:09 Last month I had enough Amazon Reward dollars accrued to by myself this Tamron 90m Macro lense for my Nikon. I’ve wanted a quality macro lense ever since I had my first 35mm in grade school.
I took some test shots this afternoon on my back porch in natural light. Focusing will take a while to get used to - the slightest movement will bring the subject out of focus. Time to dust off my tripod.
Mistaken Identity 2007-03-28 17:47:37 Attention shoppers of the world - this is not Urban Behavior’s website.
Time Out 2007-03-28 16:59:26 I haven’t been blogging as much as I’d like to lately - no time.
One of my business partner’s was in town for the past 7 days and we worked pretty much non stop from before breakfast till past dinner.
Contractors have been in my home demolishing and now constructing a bathroom - everything in the house is covered in a thick layer of dust.
I have no toilet upstairs and have been taking showers at the pool, in a locker room swarming with 6th graders.
To top everything off - I have (another) flu. That’s two flus in about a month.
Totally unfair. I’m calling a time out! Maybe for the rest of the week.
Joost Beta 2007-04-06 22:09:14 After getting screwed on ebay (some guy in Russia owes me $5), I finally found someone to throw me a Joost
invite. Joost, an application that delivers TV over the Internet, is funded by the creators of Skype and Kazaa. I have little doubt this app will blossom into something big.
I’ve been playing around with it for about 30 minutes. The interface is nice and the themed categorization of content is refreshing compared to normal TV. But like normal TV (and the reason I don’t watch TV) there is still a ton of crap: it took me less than a minute to find myself scrolling by several items of content featuring Paris Hilton.
The quality is better than YouTube (not difficult to do) but still well below the DVD mark. I tried watching some Green Day videos and got several time outs. But hey - it’s early, it’s beta, and I can see the huge potential here. There are a handful of community style widgets you can enable which allow you to do things like chat with other v
Got Fiber? 2007-04-06 03:31:34 The day the jack hammers and earth movers showed up in the alley outside my office I was annoyed. After a day of deafening noise, I left for home and passed the crew on the way to my car. When I asked them what they were digging up, they responded that they were laying fiber optic to service the square - the downtown area.
My annoyance went away. “Dig faster!” I screamed, grabbing a shovel. I jumped into the nearest ditch and started tossing out dirt . . .
In spirit anyway.
I cannot wait for my gigy! (that’s 1,000 Mbps for you non nerds)
Read more:Fiber
Netflix’s “Watch Now” Hates FireFox 2007-04-11 05:48:49 I’m a long time Netflix fan - more than once I have stated that Netflix is the best thing on the Internet. I’ve been waiting for weeks now to get included in &ldquo
;Watch Now&rdquo
;: Netflix’s implementation of video on demand.
So tonight I noticed for the first time that the “Watch Now” tab shows up when I sign in . . .
Yaaaa! I immediately rescheduled all my activities for the night and planned for several hours of Netflix fueled videotainment. I said goodnight to my wife and clicked THE TAB.
WTF! It doesn’t support Firefox? I am speechless. There’s a reason I don’t use IE6 - it blows. There’s a reason I don’t use IE7 - it blows, and then it crashes. I like choices. I’ll wait until “Watch Now” supports Firefox.
Bad Netflix.
Read more:Hates
That Singer From The Psychedelic Furs 2007-04-10 18:09:35
I spent most of the 80s on a skateboard plugged into a walkman playing one of several 120 minute Maxell cassette tapes packed with punk bands like 7 Seconds, Minor Threat, Youth Brigade and of course U2’s anthemic Boy. I never owned a Psychedelic
Furs album, but I had their “President Gas” song on one of my lighter mix tapes. It’s not that I wasn’t a fan of the Furs, but their music was reaching saturation on the radio and MTV (back when they had two dozen videos that playing continuously) and they didn’t make a good soundtrack for the half pipe.
I recently stumbled across Richard Butler’s (lead singer of the Furs) self titled release which came out last year while listening to Rhapsody’s “Down Tempo” channel (check it out). Hearing Butler’s distinct calm and soothing baritone was immediately serendipitous. I usually recall the 80s as a time of unparalleled teen angst: a time of constantly running (skating) away
ScribeStorm’s First Release 2007-04-14 03:05:59 After two weeks of shared stress between our Burbank and Fairfield offices, ScribeStorm shipped it’s first release today! I cannot reveal the details until it hits the streets - other than it is a disc for a highly successful ‘alt’ rock band. This release implements the first taste of our interactive media management system.
Monday we continue work on releases for two more major recording artists due out before the end of this month. It’s getting pretty exciting around here. Now if I could just fill our three open positions.
The arrival of our office XBOX 360 was well timed - nothing like fragging your co-workers to celebrate a release.
Read more:First
, Release
A Whole Town of Neighbors 2007-04-18 03:09:17 Before moving to Fairfield, I lived on a cul-de-sac with twelve other homes on Bainbridge Island. I lived on that street for just over three years and can only tell you the names of five of my neighbors. It was rare that I would find myself in a conversation with a neighbor, and when I was the topic was almost always about a conflict someone on the street was having with someone else. It seemed like everyone had at least one neighbor they were not on speaking terms with due to a disagreement.
Let’s see, there was:
The raccoon killer (shotgun in the middle of the night).
The barking dogs that started as early as 530am.
The basketball court light that was installed next to a neighbor’s master bedroom window and stayed on till midnight sometimes.
The tree cutter who had his entire green buffer of Douglas Firs cut down with no permit and no permission from neighbors.
The family of 15 living on a septic system for 4 - a frequent problem for anyone living downhill.
The dog wa Read more:Whole
, Neighbors
38 2007-04-17 07:39:52 Today Ben and Jerry’s is giving away ice cream, taxes are due, and I turn 38.
The Faces Of Global Terrorism 2007-05-01 04:29:44 My family flew out of the Cedar Rapids airport a couple weeks ago. Since 9/11 I’ve been through LAX, Sea-Tac, O’Hare, Sky Harbor, Denver International, Lambert and San Francisco International. Up until a few weeks ago my perception was that O’Hare and Sea-Tac had the tightest security.
Then I went through Cedar Rapids, a small airport just north of the University of Iowa. The security was surprisingly tight. As I went through the screening process, the only thing keeping me from thinking that the country wasn’t on condition Red, was the lack of police dogs or machine guns.
I make no secret that I think the whole airport security system has become a complete joke - I mean a policy that doesn’t allow you to take on a bottle of water that you purchase at the airport but does let you bring on a laptop is either retarded, or a complete farce (or both). However the Cedar Rapids TSA take their job very seriously. Check out this sign “The Faces of Gl Read more:Global
, Terrorism
Funded! 2007-05-01 03:47:37 There’s a reason my chat status has been set to “busy” and I have not updated this blog in two weeks. On the heals of ScribeStorm’s first interactive DVD release earlier this month, we’ve been asked to do nearly a dozen more! Then last week our funding went through.
After the funding was finalized I had a restful night of sleep, only to wake up the next morning and realize that the past eight months was the easy part. Now, in half that time, we have to hire half a dozen people, support and build out a quickly growing interactive DVD business, build a fully interactive demo for three next generation platforms (HD-DVD, Blu-Ray and IPTV), and sell our secret sauce to the next round of VC so we can go the distance.
The white boards are filling up again.
Read more:Funded
Who Smokes at a Playground? 2007-05-01 03:22:29 I admit I’m pretty extreme in my views on smoking in public places, but come on - smoking at a playground? Moments later she was stomping out her butt at the bottom of the slide. No surprise though, littering and smoking are a marriage of bad habits.
Read more:Smokes
Netflix Plus Silverlight 2007-05-04 05:27:26 Several weeks ago I posted a short rant about Netflix’s Watch Now service being limited to IE and claimed that I would wait until there was support for Firefox before trying the service. I held out for about a week and then fired it up in IE7. I was quickly impressed: lag free, quick to load and sharp resolution on my 17″ monitor running 1440×900.
Brilliant. Under one subscription plan I’ve got HD-DVDs in my XBOX 360 player at work, DVDs stacked on my SD player in the bedroom, and right now I’m watching Night Watch on my pc while writing this post. Way to bring out the movie whore in me Netflix.
Despite the FireFox issue I’d be happy at this point. But wait there’s more.
While sifting through Mix07 coverage of Silverlight, I come across this a post titled “Netflix Uses Silverlight For On Demand Video“. Immediately I started writing my next blog post in my head - a rant about how Silverlight’s claim to be cross platform
Ready to Roquet 2007-05-10 07:46:24 Shortly after my wife suggested Fairfield Iowa as an option for our relocation project, I was Googling. I quickly found myself staring at this photo on Flickr, tagged with fairfield, croquet, laborday, 70s, babascroquet and the ZIP 52556.
I’m not going to say that this photo is the reason I moved to Fairfield. But seeing two guys hamming up a game of croquet and posting to Flickr was something that spoke to me. After all it was I who, before blogging and before Flickr, spent entirely too much time creating a website to show photos of me and my friends hamming up a game of croquet.
[My organizational skills came through just now - in less than a minute I found the disc containing those photos from 1998. Uploading to Flickr . . .]
So here I am, approaching my 5th month in Fairfield and I get an eVite from the same nutbars in the same croquet photo above that I Googled last summer, to join them for this summer’s tournament. I’m pretty stoked.
It get’s even
Spiderman 3 2007-05-09 04:38:05 Epic battles and epic crying.
But honestly, I’m ok with that. Man I hope we see the Kingpin in Spidey 4.
Read more:Spiderman
Art - The Kind You Hang On A Wall 2007-05-12 07:07:02 My wife Dawn has been visiting and talking about this tree painting she saw a couple months ago at an Art Walk. I didn’t like it the first time she showed it to me. And honestly that may have been partly due to the fact that I have never before been able to get over my own sticker shock to become an art buyer/collector.
After a couple visits the tree painting started growing on me. I came home today to find it in my living room:
After putting our daughter to bed we sat and stared at it for awhile. I finally stopped seeing dollar signs and was able to enjoy it with her. I like the visual balance between the branches and clouds, and the roots and stones.
Hi, my name is Will, I’m 38, and this is my first art purchase . . . the kind you hang on a wall.
Hummer Sighting 2007-05-11 06:57:25 I used to see Hummer
s on a daily basis when I worked in Seattle. Several times I found myself part of a crowd of pedestrians who were booing, showing a thumbs down and flipping off a Hummer as it rolled by (in shame). I mean, on some level, isn’t driving around in a Hummer akin to flipping off everyone in the world?
I’ve spotted two of these SUV abominations in downtown Fairfield - a yellow one and this green one. Unfortunately there isn’t enough critical pedestrian mass on the square to boo them much less flip a bird. So I’ll take it online:
Booooooo!
There’s something wrong with this picture if these things are still an option for personal transportation. The EPA and their mileage standards are a joke.
Rules of the Road in Fairfield 2007-05-10 20:44:38 Moments ago, heading back from lunch, I nearly collided with a BMW. I had pulled up to a stop sign and needed to cross a busy arterial. Already at the stop sign opposite me, was the BMW, with a left turn signal on. I’ve encountered this situation many times, especially in urban driving, and the way it has always worked in the past is, the car turning left must yield (this is not a four way stop).
After nearly hitting this BMW, I realized that since moving to Fairfield I’ve encountered weirdness around this scenario dozens of times. Just last week I was in the BMW driver’s position, trying to turn left, and I was yielding to someone across the street who arrived later but was going straight through. I waited and waited and finally noticed that behind the sun glare on their wind shield, they were anxiously waving at me to go first.
Puzzled that perhaps the rules of the road were different here in Iowa, I laid out the scenario to my co-worker (from Boston) and he sa Read more:Rules
Peas and Carrots 2007-05-18 21:28:29 I have a basic litmus test to determine whether a Thai/Chinese/Vietnamese restaurant serves good food. Before sitting down or ordering, I look around for a picture or serving of fried rice. If the fried rice includes peas and carrots, then I leave.
I have no idea whether peas and carrots are an authentic part of East Asian food, and I don’t care. I hate peas and carrots (as a cooked pair, thrown into the mix). To me they stand out like flies in soup - they ruin the dish.
For lunch today I went to Noodle House (the local Thai diner) and ordered Phad Thai like I do 90% of the time I eat there. When the dish was delivered I saw them immediately - brightly colored peas and carrots poking out of an otherwise beautiful mound of noodles and chicken. I dug through the mix and quickly realized that saving this meal with fork flicking was too much labor.
I took the dish back to counter and asked for a new dish, without peas and carrots: explaining that I have ordered this dish dozens Read more:Carrots
International CXT - Leveling Up Idiots 2007-05-21 06:31:54 Last week I blogged about my surprise to still see people buying Hummers. My friend Sam just uploaded this photo taken on a California freeway.
This is not Photoshopped - there is actually some sort of super moron driving around California right now.
It’s worse though. This is not a custom job but rather a real product made by International
. This particular model is called the CXT. The marketing lingo associated with these eco killers sounds straight from Bush’s mouth (if you can imagine for a moment a President Bush that speaks proper English that you can actually understand).
International sells several models of SUV monstrosity, even one that can apparently be used to climb Mount Everest.
Read more:Leveling
, Idiots
Joost Getting Better 2007-06-02 22:14:33 The early release of Joost
(beta) pretty much sucked. Last week I downloaded the “Friends Edition” 0.10.3. Judging by the versioning number this must be Joost beta “ultra” (the next trend in web application versioning is to qualify the beta).
Anyway . . . I tried out the beta (ultra) and it rocks. For starters, the application doesn’t seem to tip over randomly and so far I haven’t had one video fail to start playing. The content has also improved - yes there is still plenty of crappy content (just like TV) but now there is so much of it that you’re bound to find something that isn’t crappy to you (just like TV). The key difference being that you can find the gems in the rough much more quickly than regular TV.
One of the cool features is that you can open up Google chat from inside Joost, and invite friends to a show. So in full screen mode you can watch a show and get incoming chat messages without alt+tabbing. Here I am getting m
Inside The World Of Fat Sex 2007-06-07 22:15:46 Last month United Airlines sent me a letter notifying me that my air miles were going to expire if I did not use them. They were kind enough to point out that I did not have enough miles to fly anywhere, but I did have enough to trade for any number of magazine subscriptions.
I’m not sure why exactly, but I checked the boxes on a number of magazines and sent in the form.
Last night I received my first issue of Details magazine. I admit my ignorance up front about the whole magazine universe - I thought Details was a magazine about Movies and Music. It’s not. It’s basically a gay(er) version of GQ. Not that there is anything wrong with that.
I didn’t get a chance to read my new issue of Details magazine; my wife snagged it and plopped down on the couch, making fun of me with every flip of the page about how gay my new magazine was.
“Oh honey, here’s a great article you’ll enjoy about botox injections to make you look younger and give you th Read more:World
If I Was A Jealous Man 2007-06-07 15:18:40 I came home yesterday after a long day at the office (sans grey flannel suit). As I emptied my pockets of cell phone, keys, wallet and coins onto the table in our entryway, I noticed a pair of sunglasses that were obviously left by someone who dropped by the house today.
I said to my wife, “looks like someone left their sunglasses”.
My wife says, “oh, those are Kristines, she forgot them”.
If I were a jealous (and paranoid) man I would have thought my wife was having an affair with a state trooper.
Read more:Jealous
Recommend Site To A Friend
