Rock out with your cords out tucked quietly away

Sometimes I think "why doesn't somebody make X?" then I look on Amazon and it's there. Short, grounded extension cords with a flat head? Yeah, got it.

Woo! Flat headed cords! Woo!

And why do I need this? Ok, if you must know.

The wiring in my place is on the outside of the walls. The old wiring from the 60s was apparently not user replaceable. Now we know where Apple got it from.

At any rate, the outlets are properly grounded so they won't catch the place on fire. This is more than can be said for my last building; I shouldn't complain. But I will.

That's a lot of look

You see, the outlets stick out from the wall a couple inches. Then the big, chunky power strip cords that I insist on plugging in stick out another couple inches. It's like I've got div.room { padding: 6in; }* in my style sheet.

Well no more. I'm one fed-ex delivery away from having my wiring situation sorted. Rock!

* CSS jokes? Really? I've got to get out more.

driving the mini cooper

I got to drive a mini cooper (new style) this weekend. I rented one for the day from zipcar to take Rakka on her birthday twin peaks odyssey. It's so cute, but it's actually kind of painful to work with.



The biggest problem is me. I'm too tall for it. At 5 foot ten, my head is up in the rafters, so to speak. I had to sort of duck down to see traffic lights. I think what happens is there's not enough room to stretch out the foot well, so the seats have to be high.



My other major complaint is that the dash controls were designed for form exclusively. The engineers came in later and figured out which switches to hook up to which functions. We had to pull over to find the window switches (yes, I said switches). The stereo controls are in the speedometer, except for the volume/power which is the second thing below.

I like retro styling as much as the next guy. But I also like things to make some sort of sense. I had hoped that they would have found a better balance.



Complaints aside, it was really fun to drive on the curvy roads around snoqualmie falls. It's sticks to the road. It's responsive. When there's no traffic lights, and therefore no hunching over, it's a joy to drive.

seattle assblowing studio

seattle assblowing studio, originally uploaded by leff.

I came to a strange realization this morning. I take pictures of 4 types of things.

1. Plants/flowers
2. Landscapes
3. Food
4. Assblowing
   

Which of these things is not like the others?

it's days like this that make it all worth while

Winter in Seattle is so long I almost forget how fantastic the summers are. Days like today I sort of wish I was rich enough to own a house up the hill. Maybe this one.

rather a nice house, west queen anne, seattle

Or the really modern one down the street that I didn't photograph. Or the other modern one around the corner. Or this one, or this one, or... oh, you get the idea.

Really, I don't really need a 2 million dollar house. Though it would be nice to have a place to grill out or sit in the sun. For now, just being able to get to places like this so easily is pretty great.

the olympic mountains, from west queen anne,
with a view of magnolia

Parsons Gardens, seattle, wa

The lushest street ever, right next to Parsons Gardens

The wisteria is out in force today. It's everywhere. I love it. It makes the whole place smell like grape cool-aid.

Wisteria

So, in conclusion, Hooray Seattle!

[where: upper queen anne, seattle, wa]

just checking in

Normally I hate crowds; last years cheese festival sucked for that reason. But the great thing about it is that everybody goes. That means the rest of the city is mine for the taking. Rakka and I went to Mai Phim, which is like two blocks from the market and it wasn't crowded. We had SAM to ourselves. It was awesome.

Since then Rakka had to have an emergency root canal (hooray for dental insurance!). Our new dentist is awesome by all accounts. I'm not even nervous about my checkup on friday.

So, other than that, my back is threatening to go out, and I finally opened up the middle part of the city in GTA.

That is all.

Are you excited about indiana jones and also naked ladies?

the lusty lady is excited about indiana jones, originally uploaded by leff.

I have the perfect place for you. It's the Lusty Lady. As everybody knows, they have captured the hearts of seattlites, and therefore survived gentrification efforts, by punning up their marquee.

At their best, the puns are naughty and topical. These are pretty good examples (IJ4 comes out on thursday), though not the best.

[where: 1315 1st Ave, Seattle, WA, 98101] [map]

weirded out a bit

Rakka's brother is having a kid. He's apparently planning on naming it after a barbecue restaurant, which is almost as bad as that kid named Urine (pronounced \yər-een-ee\)*.

Rakka, quite naturally, thinks this is stupid and wants to put a stop to it. There's also the general desire to combat the uncool upbringing that inherently goes along with being named after a place that slow cooks meat.

That's not the weird part; the weird part is coming up.

The brother and the fetus (and the mother too, I suppose) are 2-3 thousand miles away. This means the primary way to combat the uncool is to shower cool baby stuff on the soon-to-be-born. Since the news of the name came in, I've been hearing every day about cool baby stuff from my GF.

That's the source of the weirding out. I know plenty of people with kids who are cool. But it's not for me. I know it's not for Rakka, either. I mean, it's really really not. For all the stuff we don't have in common, it's the really important stuff like this that brought us together. Still, hearing all the time about which hat would look good on the baby (mohawk or monkey ears), and the best bang for the buck in terms of onesies (rocker slogans, not withstanding)... well, it freaks my shit.

* True story, hand of god

no gta for you

I've been trying to blog more, as you may have noticed. The problem is all I've done lately is play gta4. And the thing is, anybody who's interested in gta already knows all about it. I don't want to bore you, so I've nothing to say.

Oh, I tell a lie. I did do something saturday. I put together this whopping great bit of furniture. Great in terms of weight and complexity. It's of rather low quality, actually.

It was cheap, it came from a rather embarrassing retailer, but it's the only thing that was even close to the right shape. A secretary desk. It's amazing how few of these sorts of things there are out there these days. I was willing to spend mad bank on something for this space, but it just didn't exist. There was this thing, but it's ikea quality and 800 dollars; no thanks.

The thing pictured is not ikea quality. The big difference? There were about a million different types of screws, clips and fasteners. It took hours to put together. and hours. That part sucked. I had to take several bits apart because I used the wrong screws or whatever.

It looks nice though. And it holds all my junk. Hopefully I'll have found a replacement by the time it falls apart.

xbox 360

xbox 360 early review (it came in yesterday).

It's loud. It sounds like freaking airplanes. Loud airplanes. I want to put the stupid thing in a different room from the tv. Need some noise canceling head phones or something. Did some research. This is apparently normal. Bah.

GTA is fun. It really does seem deeper than the previous ones. That's not to say the dialog is good or anything. I haven't played enough to comment on plot. So, more later.

the romans

no, not those Romans. The ones from the Louvre at SAM. Rakka and I went this weekend and it was absolutely mobbed. They're leaving soon, is why. It's ok though, we got memberships, so we can go back when it's less busy.

The thing that gets me about really classical roman art isn't the beauty (although it is beautiful). Rather, it's the fact that it's still beautiful after all these centuries. As a political tool the full size statues are a phenomenal success. These guys were saying, "look, I'm a fantastic ruler. I'll be remembered forever." and here I am, 1800 years later, staring the guy in the face.

They really built to last, those Romans.

[where: SAM, 1300 1st Ave, Seattle, WA 98101]

metroid prime 3 corruption

I finally finished metroid prime 3. I've been playing it for, what, three months. It seemed to take forever. Looking back though, it seemed kind of short. I only logged 18 and a half hours, total. Weird.

It was fun though. After I finally got over the controls. Yeah, yeah, I know, they're supposed to be so fantastic. Moving around was easy. But button on top shoots, and the trigger jumps. I was walking up to baddies and jumping up and down for the first week. Let me tell you, that didn't work so well.

There are also several points where there aren't enough clues and I had to resort to gamfaqs.com. The worst one was the first time you had to use the command visor. I fought that battle and died probably 10 times before giving up and looking at the walkthrough. I looked at everything with the special "investigating visor" and it said something like "you can pull that thing, then blow it up." No hint that it was your ship that had to blow it up, or that making your ship do so was a command visor function.

Maybe I missed some context by skipping prime 2.

One last point. It felt like they cut some features. Specifically, there's all this stuff in your ship that looks like it's for flying around and fighting. Plus there are all these ship missile upgrades. But I never found a point where I could fly around shooting stuff.

All in all, it was fun and metroidy. Glad I played it. Glad I rented it.

my old blog got borked

Looks like my old blog, j-san.net, got hacked and spambotted or something. And the hosting company, vizaweb, is more or less out of the game (but the servers are still on sometimes). Luckily the domain is registered somewhere else, so I was able to remove the dns records and have the domain point nowhere.

Thats enough for a friday night. I'll figure out what's next tomorrow.

hmm. 360?

I think gta4 is getting to me. I might finally get an xbox.

I started looking around for one last night, though, and the shit is confusing. Why are there 3+ different kinds? What is the harddrive used for, is it upgradeable? Most importantly, why do I have to know all this? I want to play some freaking video games, not run a research project.

I have this feeling that by the time I figure it all out I won't care anymore.

Thinking about this made me, once again, realize why I like my macbook so much. They're just so simple to buy. I'm actually happy to pay a premium for someone to make certain decisions for me. It's added value.

Anyway, I think I'll have to try mass effect and bioshock once I finally mange to pick one of these things out (and get tired of gta4).