www.theblogbitme.com | June 11, 2006
It's official. I have my own domain name. After much debate over domain names, the new blog will be at www.theblogbitme.com. We set it up today and it is live. I will now be writing on the new blog, but wanted to give you my forwarding address. The new blog is the standard design, so I will be learning quickly how to style my new blog. Yesterday I learned how to add YouTube links into my blog. Today I learned how to move this blog to the new domain name with the new software, so each day I am learning much on this cyber journey. C'mon and enjoy the ride at the new site!
p.s. please don't comment on this post---go comment at the new site (then we won't have to move over your comment!) thanks!
Evolution of Dance | June 10, 2006
Tonight I went to have dinner with my girlfriends. One of my friends showed this video from YouTube. It is absolutely great. It is one man's rendition of generations of dance moves, with the appropriate music---so funny. You can check it out below.
Lightbulbs | June 10, 2006
Today PJ and I went to Costco. We try to only go every couple months as everytime we go we spend way too much money. It is also insanely busy at the San Francisco location, so the less time you spend there, the better. But, today we went to Costco and came home with new energy efficient lightbulbs! We are very excited. Later as we were shopping for more items, an older Chinese woman stopped us and pointed to our lightbulbs and asked us in broken english how much they cost. It was so great to talk to her about the lightbulbs--everyone is buying the energy efficient lightbulbs! FYI--for a pack of 8 60 watt lightbulbs, it cost us $7.19. A pack of 4 100 watt lightbulbs is only $3.99. PJ has already risked his life to change the lightbulbs in our kitchen which are hard to reach with 10 foot ceilings. We are excited to try out our new lightbulbs tonight :)
Get out there and vote! | June 06, 2006
Did you get a I Voted sticker today? I didn't and am frankly a little bummed about it. But, I sent my absentee ballot in last week. For those of you interested in the California elections today, check out the preliminary results at the San Francisco Chronicle. For those of you who didn't vote---not naming any names of persons who may or may not live with me--you can register to vote at: League of Women Voters of California or at: California Secretary of State.
I know, I should have probably have posted this earlier to help remind people to make the polls, but since my readership is a slightly less than the San Francisco Chronicle, I think it will be OK. But, please, please, please make sure you are registered to vote for the November 2006 election.
Inconvenient | June 05, 2006
This past weekend PJ and I went to see An Inconvenient Truth with our friends (you know who you are). You can check out the official website at www.climatecrisis.net.
What does the word "inconvenient" mean?
The following is the entry from Merriam Webster's online dictionary.
Entry Word: inconvenient
Function: adjective
Text: 1) causing difficulty, discomfort, or annoyance; i.e. the unexpected visitors showed up at an inconvenient time 2) hard or impossible to get to or get at; i.e. for some reason, they placed the dishes in an inconvenient cabinet
Synonyms: awkward, discommoding, disobliging, incommoding
Related Words: bothersome, burdensome, onerous, troublesome; annoying, exasperating, irritating
Near Antonyms: acceptable, bearable, tolerable; advantageous, desirable, good, helpful
Antonyms: convenient
It seems to me that the meaning of the word inconvenient is subjective in some regards. What is convenient for me may be inconvenient for you and vice versa. So, how do you determine if something is convenient or inconvenient for you? Is there an internal set of criteria? Does it just depend on how you feel that day?
PJ hates crowded buses. PJ has to transfer downtown and take yet another MUNI to get to work, so his frustration with MUNI is easy to understand. If you have lived in San Francisco, you know that taking the MUNI downtown is a necessity as the parking is near impossible and will cost you a fortune. So, everyday we trudge to our bus stop and take the local MUNI downtown to work.
Today was a classic example of the our daily commute. We were packed in like sardines and the bus driver kept stopping at all the stops to let people abroad through the back doors. I love looking at other driver's expressions as they look over and notice how crowded our bus is as they nonchalantly drive downtown in the morning. I can almost read their minds as they shake their heads--poor bastards. This morning, however, as PJ grumbled about the mass of humanity on our bus, I just smiled, leaned over and whispered in his ear, "it's inconvenient". My comment at least made him laugh.
We loved the movie and recommend it highly to anyone interested--and even those who aren't interested! We are ashamed to admit that we still don't have the energy efficient lightbulbs. They are now on our shopping list. We also bought a TerraPass. But, that's another article.
A great sentence | June 04, 2006
"T[he] telephone and the PC are ubiquitous desk mates, separated by a few inches and about a century."
I remember sitting in a classroom while my teacher explained how to write the basic 5 paragraph essay. She advised to start out with a sentence that grabbed the reader's attention so that they would continue to read the rest of what you wanted to communicate. First lines of famous novels include:
"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way- in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only."
~Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities
One of my favorite authors is Jane Austen. Here is one of her most famous opening lines from Pride and Prejudice:
"It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.”
Unfortunately, I live in a small San Francisco apartment and my humble library is boxed up and in storage at my parents house. So, I had to google these quotes to reproduce them verbatim. I found this site which is a little quiz to see how many famous first lines you know. Check out foldedspace.org and see how many you know.
So, if you have read to this point in this entry, you are probably wondering, but where did she find the opening quote? The answer---The NY Times of course! You may find this sentence at Internet Phones: Please Wait for the Next Available Opportunity . I love that an article about evolving technology is written by an author who takes such care to craft such an opening sentence.
Let me know if you have found a good sentence lately (opening or otherwise).
Memorial Day | May 29, 2006
I love waking up on days where I have the day off from work. I wake up happy to make a big pot of coffee and sit in my apartment surfing the internet on my Mac. Today I was reading the NY Times online, a staple to my daily internet surfing, and found this article about children who have lost parents in war. I was reading, wiping tears from my face and thinking of the children on the other side of war, who live in cities destroyed by bombs and chaos, without the opportunity to go to counseling, living without the support of lost family members. I then watched a NY Times video on Arlington--about how Arlington is running out of space for fallen soldiers. Will it end?