flights of fancy

In December of 2009, I upgraded my phone. I went from a Razr to a Cliq, which just happens to be a smartphone running Android 1.5. At the time, it was the best T-Mobile/Android offering within my budget; I also took advantage of their 0% financing/installment payment plan, which is a fantastic deal. Interest-free, I'd pay them $20 a month until the phone is paid off. With my particular plan, this option was better than a 2-year contract and its subsidized phone (I actually did the math). This netted me an awesome Android phone running Linux (yay!) with a neat slide-out keyboard.

I think I should be blogging. Yeah. Time hasn't waited for me; it's been almost a year and a half. But first, I must apologize to Tom Scholz.

Big changes in my life. Over the next few days, I hope to update on these changes. To wit: I'm now living in Alpharetta, GA. I accomplished this in two moves. The first move was from Boston to temporary lodgings in Roswell, GA. Now I'm settled into a nice little home office in a condo (with a garage!) in Alpharetta. Still trying to adjust to living down here; the weather, ironically, has helped, as it has been colder than normal, which for me equates to just plain normal.

Today is (was, if you're reading this FROM THE FUTURE) International Talk Like a Pirate day. So wake your inner captain, growl at the nearest serving girl, and demand some rum (or liquor of your choice). I'm rocking my pirate bandanna and a pirate shirt, but the eye patch was just too much; your mileage may vary on this last.

I forgot to mention that I finally got my DVD copy of the British sitcom Spaced. It is like geek candy. In a similarly geeky vein, I've been very much enjoying the third season of Venture Brothers.

Between Venture Brothers, the novel Soon I Will Be Invincible, and Dr. Horrible's Sing-along Blog, which is one of the best things I've seen this summer, I've been covering the root-for-the-villain angle quite well.

I sacrificed some of my hearing to see Brendon Small and Dethklok live. I've also managed to go to the drive-in. Yes, there are still drive-ins.

Hello, Internets. It's been a while.

I've had quite a busy few months. I've installed a photo gallery that embeds in Drupal (but I think the standalone version is nicer). More photos to come there, but likely at my typical posting pace, which can charitably be described as glacial.

It's probably cold when you can legitimately confuse your car's gear indicator with the temperature display immediately below it. In this particular case, when I left the office, the temperature was only a couple of degrees higher than the number of gears in my car. I shudder to think what the temperature will drop to in a couple more hours. Or maybe I'm just cold.

I wanted to see how difficult it would be to update using my Wii, and while challenging, the auto-match makes it easier than I would have thought possible. Coolness.

ETA: space to my title. Also, Gmail is manageable on the Wii, but you really have to play with it to get it to work properly. Still, the Wii got the job done.

I think Silversun Pickups is my new flavor of the month (last month it was Feist). I'd been hearing about them on various blogs I read, and after the umpteenth Wil Wheaton name-drop, regarding how Lazy Eye should be on the Rock Band set list, I decided to check them out. Thanks to YouTube, I heard the song while watching the video, and thought, "eh. A bit Smashing Pumpkins. Not bad. Let's check out the rest of their stuff, see if it's better." And it was. My favorite song: Little Lover's So Polite, followed closely by Waste It On, All the Go Inbetweens, Booksmart Devil, and Creation Lake.

Speaking of Wheaton, his latest book is pretty good. Too short. But like they say, always leave them wanting more.

Oh, Intarwebs! I didn't mean to abandon you! I owe you Puerto Rico pictures! And Thanksgiving pictures! See, I've just been playing with your cousin over at rpg.hackwater.com, doing some theme hacking. In fact, this week has been my best programming week so far, solving problems and applying fixes left and right. After finishing a medium project at work that had me doing some cool Drupal hacking, I turned to various small issues in my queue that had been getting no play thanks to my focus on the larger project.

I impulse-bought this a couple of months ago: