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
It’s Dead Jim 2007-06-07 13:07:13 After being in Seattle for 16 years I had forgotten the frequency and showmanship of the good ol’ Midwestern thunderstorm. For a couple weeks now we’ve had them roll through daily here in Fairfield. As long as they continue to be unaccompanied by tornadoes I’m happy to have them around.
The other day at the office we had a power surge during a short but fierce thunderstorm: the electricity went out for less than a minute. No equipment was damaged except for the surge protector guarding the DSL modem and router. Surge protector dead, modem and router fine. I immediately plugged in an extra surge protector.
So is that how surge protectors are supposed to work - like the Secret Service, taking the bullet for someone else?
So long “CyberPower 525SL”, thanks for your service.
Fine Dining In Fairfield? 2007-06-15 21:43:18 I’ve had many great things to say about the food in Fairfield. It’s one of the main reasons I moved to Fairfield - access to good food. Having said that, I am about to say something negative about my food experience in Fairfield. Here it comes . . .
Vivo sucks.
Yes I know, it’s a small town and if I don’t have anything nice to say I should say it quietly over the fence to my neighbor.
And to my barber.
And to the cashier at Walmart.
Anyway.
Last weekend my child was at her grandmother’s house for the weekend and my wife and I were in search of a fine dining experience. Vivo seems to be the fine dining choice around here (the only choice I know of) and even though we have been there before and both had aweful meals, we made excuses for them and ended up there again, last Friday night.
We shared some bruschetta. I ordered the filet and a glass of Grigio. She ordered the Salmon and a water. The bruschetta was composed of dry and hard slices of bread (t Read more:Dining
Flickr: 1000 Photos 2007-06-17 22:36:54
I’ve been a Flickr
Pro member for roughly two years. Today while uploading photos I noticed I had hit the 1000 mark. That’s an average of about 2 photos per day. I think of the teenagers on Flickr, envious of the digital photo archive they’re building of their lives.
Or consider my daughter, and other kids of Flickr addicts; their childhoods being documented in quality that puts those faded Polaroids to shame.
I need to buy a scanner and make up for lost Flickr time.
The Large Yellow Lego 2007-06-15 23:10:09 This large yellow lego is living outside my office door lately. I’m tempted to put out a bowl of Lincoln Logs for it to eat. Every morning I find it in a different spot within five feet of my office front door. I think it is dying. Poor large yellow lego: people get these things when they’re small but don’t realize that it is a big responsibility to take care of a lego.
Read more:Yellow
Naked Babies - Call The Cops! 2007-06-19 21:10:30 There’s a story circulating around the town, being told mainly during play dates and gatherings of moms who have recently lost their free time due to the summer “vacation”. It goes like this:
A group of moms are at Water Works park. Some of the babies and toddlers are naked.
Ok so nothing shocking here. It’s hot, there’s sand and water, there’s babies and toddlers. It should be unnecessary to point out that there’s nudity as well.
At some point the fuzz shows up and tells the mothers to get their children dressed.
And that is all I know . . .
What I don’t know is - did the cop(s) take action due to a complaint from someone else at the park (a cell phone call placed to 911 - “naked babies loose in the park, come quick!”) or did a cop patrolling the park take action on his own initiative.
Either way, I cannot help but draw the stereotype of a bored small town police officer with nothing better to do than bust toddlers in the Read more:Babies
Best Movie Ever 2007-06-29 11:42:10 This morning I was cleaning up my unread RSS feeds and came across an announcement that the next Indiana Jones movie started filming this week. The exciting news that there will definitely be another Indiana Jones film, was overshadowed by the memory of the best movie ever made - Raiders of the Lost Ark. Maybe the release of Raiders was just perfectly timed with my youth, or maybe Indiana Jones was the best character ever, or maybe frantic run that Harrison Ford makes when being chased by a ten foot boulder made for the best opening scene ever, or maybe if aliens visited Earth and could only take one thing back to their home world, it would be a copy of the Raiders of the Lost Ark DVD.
I know this has been done ad nauseam, but give me your best shot - what movie is better than Raiders of the Lost Ark?
Google + Gliffy 2007-06-28 23:13:48
I have never found documentation to be an enjoyable part of software development, but rather a nuisance and hassle. Why? Two reasons.
First - my experience with larger organizations is that documentation requirements often bury great ideas by sucking up resources that should be spent prototyping, and always being a step behind the latest ideas and solutions flowing between the minds of the people involved in a project.
Second - Word, Power Point and Visio, the most commonly used tools for software documentation, are not agile tools. I’m not saying they aren’t good tools, I’m saying they are not suitable for an agile, collaborative software development process.
Enter startup mode. Purchasing applications for an office of less than 10, on a startup budget, lead me to put the company on Google
Apps earlier in the year - despite the beta status (and the beta bugs). It was free, and it gave us email, calendar, storage, docs and spreadsheets all for free (it’s n
Daddy, How Old Are You? 2007-06-28 20:29:31
daughter: Daddy
, how old are you?
me: 38.
daughter: How old is mommy?
me: 40.
daughter: Wow, you’re a lot older than mommy. I want to count to how old you are.
me: Ok.
daughter: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 15 . . . how old are you?
me: 38
daughter: Ok, count with me and tell me when we get there.
both of us: 1 2 3 … 20 21 22
daughter: Is this the age that you are in?
me: No.
both of us: 23 24 25 … 30 31 32
daughter: Did we pass it yet?
me: No, we’re close though.
both of us: 33 34 35 36 37 *THIRTY-EIGHT*
daughter: (big smile)
Driving In Large Sizes 2007-06-28 10:53:15 Yes I know - I am obsessed with over-sized vehicles. I hate them almost as much as mosquitos. But here I go again . . .
I think back to just 5 years ago when friends (people who know how to push my buttons) would send me fake photos of semi trucks made into SUVs. Before I realized they weren’t real, I sit there in shock, wondering what this world is coming to. Now I receive the same photos and they are real. Like this set I received the other day:
What is this world coming to? I’m going to have to ride my bike to work several times this month to cleanse myself of this pornography.
Read more:Driving
Went to See Hillary Clinton 2007-07-05 23:41:43
I took the afternoon off and drove to Ottumwa with my wife and daughter to see HillaryClinton
. Mainly I was interested in seeing another Democratic Presidential candidate in order to put my Obama experience into perspective; but also because of the fact that if either Obama or Hillary becomes President in 2008, history will have been made. I want to be a part of that - I want to be able to tell the story with some first hand account.
Hillary Clinton did not impress me as much as Barack Obama did the other night. On one hand it was exciting to be in a non-descript school cafeteria, crowded mostly with older women who were braving stifling heat and standing room only to see a women running for President. On the other hand Hillary talks too much like Bill Clinton - you want to believe her, but you can never see her as something other than a politician. I think she’s just been around it too long. Even when she’s telling an interesting story you feel like you’re w
Obama 2008! 2007-07-03 21:40:11
I finally met my Flickr friend (and Presidential candidate - duh) Obama
tonight. Shook hands twice - before his speech and after. That’s a small town for you - at a big city rally I’d be lucky to get near him.
I’ll be honest, I decided to attend Barack Obama’s visit to the square Tuesday night primarily so that I could take photos and feed my Flickr addiction. I’ve been rooting for Edwards the past several months while hoping Gore’s announcement is just around the corner. Imaging that once Gore announced, a Gore-Clinton ticket would form to take back the White House. Obama was nowhere on my radar in terms of being a realistic contender for the Presidency.
I arrived at the square, already crowded with citizens, security and photo journalists, about fifteen minutes before Obama. My camera lens led me into and around the crowd, snapping photos as well as scouting out positions for Obama’s speech. I happened to be standing at one of the man
Barack Obama Speaking In Fairfield Tonight 2007-07-03 17:07:52 Wow, I’m totally out of the loop. I looked out my office window this afternoon and noticed the square being dressed up in red, white and blue. I thought - oh, 4th of July. Then I noticed a big van with a big satellite dish. Then I thought . . . well then I asked someone in the office what was the hubbub. I was told (with one of those “didn’t you know” looks), that BarackObama
is speaking on the square tonight.
I’ll try to get some photos . . .
Read more:Speaking
, Tonight
, Barack Obama
Arandas Mexican Buffet 2007-07-03 14:25:50 Fairfield loves their buffets. Actually it’s not just Fairfield, it’s the Midwest I’ve noticed. I’ve always hated buffets, mainly because it was usually a sign of bad food - quantity over quality. However, once in awhile you find a buffet that actually is delicious (as well as plentiful), especially here in Fairfield.
My wife recently discovered Arandas MexicanBuffet
, which is inside a gas station convenience store across from Everybody’s grocery store. It’s an unlikely place for good food - being in a convenience store that is. After eating there about four times she revealed her secret to me and now I’ve been taking the ScribeStorm development team there for our Friday lunches, and will continue to do so until they tell me to stop.
The buffet is split into two tables:
Table 1
The Arandas buffet serves fresh, chunky guacamole, and lots of it - none of the creamy grey-green guacamole here.
[Note: someone could open up a “Mexican”
Owner of Vivo’s Hires Attorney 2007-07-03 11:07:52 I have never gotten a thank you from anyone who owns a restaurant which serves food I have celebrated. On the other hand, I did just get a call from an attorney hired by the owner of Vivo, a restaurant that served me four meals that I found not to my liking, and blogged about it.
I never expect a thank you from positive reviews. The question is, what do I expect from a negative review? Honestly, I never expected a response from the owner of Vivo. And perhaps that is due to my ignorance of living in a small town - I assume I am still living in a larger urban environment where my blog, like most peoples online presence, is lost in the chatter. There are over 50 million non “A-list” blogs - what are the chances that any owner of a restaurant I write about will read my comments on their food? Answer: the owner of restaurant in a small town.
If a newspaper says good things about a restaurant, the owners of that restaurant will cut that article out and frame it in their en Read more:Owner
, Attorney
Fine Dining in Fairfield: Part 2 2007-07-15 22:22:40 Several weeks ago I claimed there were no good fine dining options in Fairfield based on my horrible experiences at Vivo. A couple people responded to that post with the advice that I try out Petit Paris. I ate there twice this weekend - Friday night dinner and then Sunday brunch.
The food is absolutely delicious! I ordered the filet mignon, and to the annoyance of my dinner guests, with every bite I made orgasmic sounds as well as repeating - “oh my god, this is an amazing filet”. Wrapped in bacon, the Angus steak is cooked a little past rare, with both sides seared just before the point that would produce the dry charcaol taste so common to grilled meats in the hands of men with tongs. I will never understand meat eaters that choose “well done”. This is something you do to meat that isn’t fresh, and so why eat it in the first place?
Everyone else enjoyed their meals, including a vegetarian crepe filled with brie and asparagus.
When I wasn&r Read more:Dining
The Social Networking Contract: Blocking Anonymous Users On Flickr 2007-07-18 00:01:23 Daily visits to this blog have nearly tripled over the past 3-5 months. The increase in traffic is mostly from image search, which I find fascinating. I’m not sure what the reason is. Is it because Google and Yahoo! are now optimized for Flickr
photos (which is where my photos are hosted)? Has Google recently optimized their image search for Flickr? Does the fact that Yahoo!’s completed their transition over to the Flickr photo engine mean that their own image search is optimized? Has that transition dramatically increased the number of Flickr users?
I have no answers.
What’s interesting about this is not the traffic itself, but where the traffic is going - it’s going to Flickr. Searches bring users to a photo posted on my blog, but they don’t drill down to the blog, they head over to my Flickr page. So to say the visits to my blog have tripled is really not the truth, what has tripled is the number of people that click right through my blog on thei Read more:Social
, Blocking
iPhone - Bling Bling For Nerds (like me) 2007-07-17 21:39:02 [Editor’s note: A testament to my expiring patience, my unboxing photo is upside down.]
My god the wait is over - the iPhone
has arrived!
Two Fridays ago I thought, look at how smart I am, I’m not going to stand in line to get an iPhone tonight, but order one online and get it tomorrow. Well tomorrow turned into an excruciating 246 hours later. Anyway, the new office toy is here and already I want one for myself.
It’s pretty awesome. Sure there are some minor bugs, but the UI is nothing short of art. The icons on the main screen are like eye candy, I find myself just turning on the iPhone to see them again and again. I’m serious - it’s weird, the thing is just so cute in that geeky techno sort of way. And pulling the thing out in a crowd - bling bling. It’s cool, I love it.
Did I mention how pretty it is?
Anyway, there have been countless unboxing reports and reviews of the iPhone (most of those were published 246 hours ago). So I add to t Read more:Bling
The Fountain 2007-07-20 23:12:19 Just finished watching The Fountain
. A movie full of dreamy imagery. Like the many scenes of Hugh Jackman, floating full lotus in a bubble, which is inside a star. However, and maybe I’m a total idiot, the movie made not one bit of sense.
I’m not sure what was more confusing, the plot, or my wife’s attempt to explain it to me during the credits.
My (Flickr) DNA 2007-07-23 17:36:58 Click the fancy button to view my Flickr
DNA. I thought it was interesting to see which of my photos have made Flickr Explore and which ones were labeled most interesting.
If you’re a Flickr user and have not checked out Big Huge Labs, go there now and lose about a week checking out all the different tools.
What’s The Hurry Fairfield? - A Message From A Pedestrian 2007-07-23 13:12:46 Those white lines at intersections? They are for pedestrians. A pedestrian is a fragile thing on the street - 70% water, and no match for hundreds of pounds of steel and glass.
So when you see someone in the middle of the street, walking between those white lines, you must wait your turn. It’s not a long wait, about 5 seconds (or 10 for those using walkers). But it is a wait that you must make by law (and common sense). So for instance the women in the white Jeep Cherokee that went through the intersection this morning on the square on her way to Revelations who passed within 10″ of me while I was just over halfway across the street . . .
What’s your hurry?
Nevermind that you’re being highly impatient and inconsiderate, but you put my walking bag of water and bones in danger. You effectively block me from site of other drivers and signal to everyone at that intersection that there are no pedestrians in the cross walk.
It’s bizarre to see this behavio Read more:Hurry
, Message
, Pedestrian
Planet Earth: A Million Ways To Die 2007-07-23 00:43:45 I’ve been breaking in my new TV with the BBC’s Planet Earth
on HD-DVD. It’s jaw dropping. It’s simply the best nature series ever produced.
The animals and locations aren’t just repeats from past nature shows either - half of the content is stuff I’ve never seen or knew about. The cinematography is unreal. It was actually hard to pay attention to the narration because I was continually trying to figure out just how they got their shots. The series is filled with great time lapse sequences. Like fungus growing out of an ants head. Ewwwww.
This series does not flinch from what is the average day in any part of the natural world - eating each other. That’s pretty much all plants and animals do - eat each other. When there not eating each other, they’re trying to find each other (to eat).
We humans have it really good (really really really good). I can commute to work and never worry about being snatched out from the crowd by a 2 Read more:Planet Earth
BFTV 2007-07-22 15:09:44 The last TV I bought was a 27″ ProScan from BestBuy in 1995. I remember thinking how huge it was. The “old” CRT design meant it was basically a 27″ cube. I had to remove it from the box in the parking lot and ask someone to help be fit it into the back of my old Volvo. I lived in Capitol Hill, Seattle at the time and I had to double park in front of my studio apartment on Broadway and have a friend help me get it out out of the car, which took a lot longer that getting it in. Fitting it through my back seat door was kinda like one of those Fisher Price square peg round hole type of puzzles. Expect the peg was a 70lb TV.
That TV was primarily used for video games, even after I moved in with my future wife (she loved Busta-a-Move). Then came Netflix in 2000 and we canceled our cable TV, which we have not had since. So for the past twelve years that TV has served largely as a monitor for DVD players.
I’ve watched all these beautiful flat screens go u
Please Don’t Vote For Rudy 2007-07-27 13:44:05 Caffeine fueled Rudy hate and post 9/11 conspiracies.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ic0_J55WzVw
Read more:Please
Lisco Fiber: We’re Live 2007-07-30 15:11:36 Fun day at the office this morning. After months of watching various contractors dig, bury and pull fiber optic cables from the street, down the alley, up the side of the building and into our office: we’re live on fiber optic. Without any further ado, here are the speed results.
Lisco - local. This actually tests your speed all the way from the Men’s room.
Speakeasy - Dallas, TX.
We need to work out some router issues. We tried a D-Link, which capped out at 15mb, then swapped in a Linksys WRT54G and that more than doubled our speed. Up to 32mb locally and 13mb to Bush country. However if we set up a laptop in front of the router, with only 100 ft of Cat5e between the fiber box and the browser, we get 95mb locally. I need to do some Flickr upload tests to see how this extra bandwidth locally translates to using the greater Internet.
Ok, so this photo below, uploaded to Flickr in 4 seconds. A task that normally takes sometimes over a minute. Sweet! Now I Read more:Fiber
The Real Food Foodie 2007-07-30 11:29:12 I have swung between both extremes in the diet world. There was a time when I ate deep fried tacos from Jack in the Box (3 for 99¢) several times a week, and another time when I didn’t go out without a bag of nuts and dried fruit in my pocket to sustain my vegan diet (between periods of fasting of course).
The one thing I’ve noticed in my travels between the worlds of fast food and whole food is that both ends love their substitutes. Country Crock and Velveeta (no that’s not cheese) on one hand, and soy burgers and facon on the other. At one time I was dining with some vegetarian friends and ended up at a restaurant that served mock meats - tofu or seitan shaped into things like shredded pork, shrimp, ribs and meat balls. I remember asking the question why would a vegetarian want meat shaped veggie foods, but no one answered.
What made me run away from bad food (things like margarine, msg, Miracle Whip, and Velveeta) was the desire for the real thing. The desir Read more:Foodie
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