Gas broke $3 a gallon today in Los Angeles. The cheap grade, not the premium one. Apparently it’s done the same all across America. I didn’t get a chance to take any photos on the way home from work, but I’ll do it tomorrow. Because I know you are all interested in seeing it.
Switch hosts. Immediately.
I sent in two cancellation forms to Ehostpros over a month ago, and on Monday morning I received an automated email saying my credit card was charged for the next year.
I posted a message on their support forum and was advised to contact their billing e-mail and the matter would be resolved ASAP. No apology. Two days later, and I haven’t heard back from tham at all.
Not only that, but my thread on the board has grown, with two other people complaining about the same thing.
Get out. As quick as you can. I think there’s some really shady shit going on at Ehostpros.
Brian, Mike, and Matt - if you need help switching I can help you do it over the weekend.
Regul has just announced the launch of the New Exciting Gas Game. Head over there and check it out! So far, I am winning, but gas prices are expected to jump, so get your cameras ready.
Over the past couple of weeks I have been farting around with Template Toolkit. It started when we had to re-skin one of the sites we’re working on. I was bugging the developer at work to give me access to the templates, and finally he did. I am used to coding templates in PHP and ASP but wasn’t really familiar with the Template Toolkit syntax at all. He went to Starbucks to go get coffee and by the time he got back, I was done re-skinning the entire site. So now I get to do template development as well.
Anyway, Template Toolkit is pretty cool from a UI designer’s perspective, pretty much because you can ask the developer to make more data than necessary available on a page, and then do all the display manipulation you want with it without having to ask for functionality changes. Templating itself, however, is pretty dull work (although sometimes I like working on stuff like this because it has a definitive outcome and I can go home feeling like I accomplished something). At my last company, we had a whole squad of fools just working with that. That must have been boring as hell.
I think I might have made a pretty decent programmer except that I can’t remember syntax worth a damn. How am I supposed to know when to use single quotes instead of double quotes, and if I don’t, the entire Website goes down? That’s dumb.
There’s been a frozen apple pie in the fridge for a couple of months. I think it’s time it gets warmed up.
I pooped out early on the run today. It was kind hot out but I’m not so sure that’s an excuse. I guess that means I need to run more during the week.
I also saw Daredevil today. It had been sitting on the DVR for awhile. The cool thing about the DVR (and DVDs and all that time-shifty stuff) is that you can fast-forward past the lame parts. Daredevil was okay. I also watched seasons one and two of 24 last week in fast-forward mode. Didn’t really want to see the part with the cougar again.
I hope this week is going to be good. Good luck y’all.
Yesterday was the last day of work for one of the people who work in my group, so we all piled in the car and went to Shakey’s. I hadn’t been to a Shakey’s before. For $3.99 you can get all-you-can-eat pizza and soda. The pizza was actually okay - it was kinda like Pizza Hut under heatlamps.
I played a game of Cruisin’ World, and then we went back to work.
I went to the new Zankou Chicken in Santa Monica last night. Zankou is one of the few things I miss about living on the east side. Just give me a half chicken plate with extra sauce, please. The falafel is pretty good too. The new location is nice - on Sepulveda just south of Santa Monica - it’s shiny, new and clean, and they have a parking lot. It’s not too too far from my office so I’ll probably add it to the list of dinner takeout.
I’ve been running Google Talk for the past couple of days. I don’t hate it, but I don’t love it either. It’s basic, and it’s lacking some features like file transfer, being able to customize the font windows, and being able to automatically minimize new conversations in a window. Cloning the Mac interface (minimizing the bar, pseudo-Mac styling) is pretty annoying as well.
The biggest problem is, it’s yet another IM client I have to run to keep in touch with people, which is just plain dumb. (Well, actually it’s not that dumb, because once everyone at work took a look at it, we were like “eh” and I’m pretty much the only one running it.) I’ve got co-workers on AIM, Yahoo!, and MSN - thank god nobody that I have to work with is still on ICQ. The other problem is, it’s a new UI that I have to learn to do essentially same functions I’ve been doing all along.
I’ve already whittled things down to just running Trillian, so I guess I could get Trillian Pro to connect to the Jabber server. It doesn’t look like the IM landscape is going to move to any kind of unified platform anytime soon, unfortunately. Weakery.
In other news, I’ve been screwing around with Konfabulator in my spare time over the past few weeks. I created a couple of quick widgets for work, but more important, I have one that’s in the queue that’s rightonbro.com-related. When it gets released I’ll tell you, so stay tuned. It’s gonna be the coolest widget ever.
I was going to write about something meaningful today, but this is more important. Tonight I went to El Pollo Loco to pick up dinner to eat at home. When I got home, I found out they didn’t include any tortillas, salad dressing, or a fork.
Of course I’m too lazy (and it would be a waste of $3-a-gallon-gas) to drive back and complain, I sent a note to them via their website and they sent me back a note saying they are “currently investigating the situation.” So I’ll be sure to report back on the results of their labor.
Anyway, moral of the story: Don’t trust El Pollo Loco. Ever. It’s too bad, their chicken is pretty good.
I’m done ripping my CD collection. 3,881 songs, 10.5 days worth of music, 19.58 gigabytes of space, all in 192 kHz MP3 format. Cool.
I still listen to the same 100 songs, though.
Welcome to the digital music lifestyle, where choice means…what you already have.
As evidenced by the mobile blog, gas broke $3.00 a gallon here in Los Angeles. In the words of Jon Regul, “Gas Armageddon is coming, bitches!” Amen to that. We (as in the United States) need to do something about our excessive fuel consumption.
Weekend was pretty quiet. On Saturday I went to the Ballona Fish Market in Marina del Rey with the aforementioned Regul, but they turned out to have some grilled fish dishes, so I got that instead. It was good, maybe a place I’d take a chick on a date, if I actually had one. We also saw a dude getting arrested right outside the restaurant, which was free entertainment.
Today we went running in Manhattan Beach again. We’ve been going every week for the past month, from pier to pier (17th Street to Pier Avenue in Hermosa). It’s a little over two miles, and today I actually made it from one pier to the other without stopping. So that means, in three months, I’ve gone from just barely being able to make it down the block (being a smoker and all), to running a couple of miles around the neighborhood 2-3 times a week, plus the Manhattan Beach run on the weekend. Progress is good.
I got most of this site up and running again. It was a pain in the ass. But you are worth it. Yes, you are!
For those who wanted automatic notifications, I re-installed it, but you’ll need to sign up again (sorry). The box is down below on the right.
Also, I’ve got my new phone working with the mobile blog. They’re larger and of better quality. Word.
Enjoy!