The Official Site for the Lackluster Goings-On of Michael Kaiser
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Galactic Surprise
Oct 13th
The Girl turned 30 this week. Or, as she puts it, she celebrated her first anniversary of being 29. We celebrated on her actual birthday with a little party at our house, so that The Kid could participate. My mom and in-laws were all in attendance. Then the plan was to go to Outback on Saturday, but (insert nefarious mustache twirling here) the REAL plan was for her mother and sister to take her out shopping so we could set up a surprise party at her sister’s house. Totally worked, and she got suckered. I was sure she was on to us, but I guess not, though now her hindsight is 20/20. Good thing I’m an excellent liar! (“Hi honey!”) And even though she has told me she doesn’t like surprises, none of us were maimed or killed, so I guess it worked out. This was my first planning of a surprise party, and while it was not my idea, and I did have help, gotta say it’s not all that fun! Found it to be a big source of stress, actually. Ultimately worth it of course, but I think on her 2nd anniversary of being 29 I’ll plan something out loud. The Girl handled turning 30 much better than I did. I had a real crisis of DC proportions, but she seems to have cruised through it. I guess it helps when you’re pregnant and have bigger things to worry about.
Next day, went to Star Wars: In Concert with my Best Good Friend at the San Jose Pavilion (home of the Sharks). The crowd was pretty good, though not sold out, which worked for us because we moved up a couple rows to give ourselves some elbow room. The music was, of course, amazing and it was great to hear it live. Sometimes the videos set to the music were equally amazing and moving, but sometimes it seemed like whoever made all those up was just mailing it in. But it’s hard to beat a stadium full of persecuted people all loving the same thing, cheering for all the same things that make you cheer. It’s very energizing! And unlike conventions, no discernible B.O. that I noticed! Aside from the concert itself, there were a bunch of Star Wars props in the lobby, but the crowd and lighting were too intense to score any decent pictures. What was really cool was, even though it was a 7-10 show on a Sunday night, many delinquent parents brought their kids anyway. It’s awesome to see that something I loved as a kid is still going strong for the next generation and it warms the heart to see a bunch of little dudes holding lightsabers and head banging to the Imperial March!
I created a site for myself called Desktop Geekery, so that I have somewhere to put the wallpapers I make for myself, instead of discarded them after I get bored. It’s also my first Wordpress theme. Even though it looks like the Default them (and essentially is from a style perspective), I learned all kinds of fun stuff about built in Wordpress functions to get it to automatically display the Wallpaper thumbnail and download links the same way for every post. Ginchy! Well I think so anyway…
Internet Explorer and Wordpress
Sep 21st
They both annoyed me today.
Internet Explorer
I don’t normally use it, but every so often Firefox is a big fat failure when it comes to printing (especially the transactions in my checking account) so I opened it today and decided to stick with it to see how IE 8 runs. Meh, about the same as what I remember. Every page I went to view caused some sort of installation request or gave me to Yellow Exclamation Point From Hell in the bottom left hand corner. The latter doesn’t seem to actually affect the page I’m looking at, but it’s still annoying to see the error, especially on my own site, which I decided to test while I had IE open, and yep, big fat failure. It also didn’t like the flashy social links I had in my sidebar. And you can’t right-click an image to view it! I must be wrong about this, it seems like such an obvious function, but heck if I could find that option anywhere.
Wordpress
I just wanted to swap out the images from my previous post. That’s all. Is there any easy way to do that? I couldn’t find one. I manually uploaded over top of the existing images, which works, except it doesn’t’ fix all the thumbnails Wordpress generates for each image too. So then I installed a plugin that is supposed to update all thumbnails, but it only updated some thumbnails, for whatever reason, so that didn’t work either. I ended up manually going through and reinserting all the images to that post (which I wouldn’t have bothered doing except I had broke all the thumbnails trying to swap out the images) and that of course wreaked havoc on Wordpress’s HTML Guessing Game program, so I pretty much redid the entire post, at least the table portion. Oh well. I decided to switch my theme to Default too, after encountering my site with IE, as mentioned above. No more Yellow Exclamation Point From Hell in the bottom left hand corner anymore, so that’s good. It manages to do ordered and unordered lists too. Kinda on the simple and generic side, but then so am I. It doesn’t appear to be W3C compliant, which makes me scratch my head (in confusion, not because I have lice), but I don’t think any of the other themes I was using complied either. Maybe I’ll keep shopping…
UPDATE: Actually now I’m trying the F2 theme. Whattya think?
Get To Work!
May 28th
Things I Worked On
The account for our wedding site through eWedding.com was going to expire, and rather than renew a site we do nothing with, The Girl asked if I could convert it to a family blog. I have done so, and she has not used it. Bug her. (Have I already plugged this? I feel déjà vu.)
Things I Am Working On
Running, running, running. Not sure what the next event will be, but something next month probably, and it will be a 10K. I can run that now, but I’m pretty slow. I’m currently at three days a week, hitting a treadmill across the street and following a program I found at Runners World. I was going more than three days a week, but my right heel kept hurting, and slowing me down even more, so the new schedule seems to be giving me the right amount of healing time for my aged carcass.
Worked on cleaning the garage last weekend. Got the garbage and donation stuff out, minus funiture. Have to borrow a truck for that. Now I just need to sell or organize the remainder. Almost there. I can see the ground, at any rate, so that’s a good sign. Hopefully The Girl will be able to park in there by the time the weather starts frosting up windows in the morning again.
Been updating the genealogy site more frequently. Love that new Family Tree Maker!
Things I Want To Work On
Drawing, drawing, drawing. God I’m lazy.
I want to make a Wordpress theme. I feel ready.
My Wittle Blogs All Growed Up!
Feb 20th
Eh, not really, as I’m still the writer, but I did change the theme to something less geek-tastic. I guess I’d rather brand myself these days, rather than Paramount properties, especially when I’m not feeling said properties lately, anyway. Why plug something that hasn’t excited me for some time, eh? Besides, this way I don’t have to pay LiveJournal for the pleasure of customizing my theme and allowing me mucho userpics. Wastes of money in these trying economic times must go. Just ask the news, they’ll tell you!
Well it’s February already, and I almost didn’t post. Whoops! The in-laws were staying at our place for a while. They worked on our place while we were at work. Part of me feels guilty that they didn’t just relax, part of me is happy that there was less laundry and the crown molding got painted. Hey, I didn’t ask them to work, so I guess I’m guilt free!
My birthday came and went. I don’t feel different, except maybe more lethargic, but that’s lack of exercise more than lack of youth. My parents and uncle came over and The Girl cooked everyone a great dinner, then we showed off wedding pictures for the umpteen time. (We should have had a wedding pictures viewing party or something.) On Valentine’s Day, both sets of parents, myself, The Girl and my sister’s family went to a fancy grill across the street from my house. Good food, good booze, a nice time was had by all. Maybe next year The Girl and I will do the more romantic route with just the two of us, but the goal this year was to be thrifty and sociable.
Got money back on taxes this year, so w00t! But daddy needs a new car, so boo. Seems like this is going to be the year of money issues, but then we’re not alone on that front. Just ask the news, they’ll tell you! My goal this year is to be smarter and tighter with the wallet, but then I say that every year, so what do I know?
The Girl is thinking about going to wedding planning school, or whatever it’s called. Apparently planning one wedding created a junky and now she wants to do it all the time, only with other people’s money, so that’s good. I’m thinking about going back to school too, but per usual, am torn as to what I would like to accomplish.
I think I might be abusing the comma.
Stuffed and Other Stuff
Dec 1st
So what have I been up to?
Had to attend the American Academy of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation convention to hock wares for work. Sounds pretty cool, huh? But no, not really. Fairly boring, especially when the show was slow, which it was often. Didn’t see much of San Diego either, but it seemed like an interesting town. My hotel room had an ocean side view, but also came with a train that had to blow it’s horn every time it came by my window, which was every hour or so all night long, so it was a sleepless weekend. But at least food and drink were comped, and my co-worker and I went to town the day before we had to leave, so that was fun.
Turkey Day came and went, and was great. The Girl and I hosted it this year, which is to say that she cooked and I answered the door. I think I got the better end of the deal. I did clean the place the night before, so I didn’t get out of everything, but oh well. I was worried that our place would be too small to support everyone, but it worked out. Helps when half the cast is kids, I guess. It was crowded, but in a good way. I’m glad it’s over, but it was fun. Probably a good idea that it’s only celebrated once a year. Now on to Christmas and then a wedding. Gah. I hope 2009 is super boring. I need some boring.
As if Thanksgiving wasn’t enough, my car decided to go crazy the same week. First the ignition switch got stuck in the on position, so I had to kill the engine by pulling out fuses. Took it to a shop and of course the estimate to replace the ignition switch key escalated once they found all these other very serious problems that I should definitely fix. I drive an old car, of course there are serious problems. I should have just fixed the switch, but I let them sucker me and fix everything and…it drives worse now! Dumb. And of course it’s not their fault because the problem it has now has nothing to do with what they worked on but geez the coincidence of it all. I think they wired something wrong, or jacked with it on purpose to eek more money out of me. But forget it, I’ve put in more money on the Princess Beast than she’s worth, so I think it’s time to find a steep cliff and get to pushing. I would like a Lexus LS Hybrid. Help a brother out? I should find a donate button to put on this site.
Speaking of buttons, I took the W3C compliant buttons off this site. YouTube embeds are apparently not compliant, which means this site isn’t compliant because I like embedding YouTube videos. Oh well! (Actually there’s a way to make YouTube embeds compliant, but I’m not going to deal with that hassle every time I want to post a video. No one cares if I’m compliant, do they?)
On the geek front, despite being excited about the Trek trailer, the followup commentaries and articles I’ve been reading about the context of said trailer are still leaving me ho hum. The excitement has passed and I’m back to thinking the movie will blow. Maybe I should stop reading about it and go in cold turkey, but too late for that anyway. Plus, what else am I going to browse?
Saw the new James Bond movie, Quantum of Solace last week, as well. I brushed off Good Buddy so I could see it with my dad, and then my dad saw it with my mom while I was in San Diego, so then I was going to see it with The Girl but she felt the need to prep for Thanksgiving and brushed me off, so I ended up seeing it by myself. I wanted to see it, and I’ve never really cared about going to to movies by myself. It’s not like you talk to whomever you’re with when you go see a flick anyway. (Or if you are talking with the person you’re with…I hate you.) The movie was okay, but somewhat disappointing. It didn’t really follow up on the last installment, and the pacing was weird and a lot of the plot made no sense, or didn’t seem to matter. Not a great follow up for the perfection that was Casino Royale, but then I still left the theater wanting to be a secret agent for a living, so I suppose the movie did have a Bond-ness to it. I Except You To Die! wrote a great review that pretty much sums up why the film didn’t work for me without me having to write it all out myself, which I appreciate because I am lazy. So just read that if you’re interested in what I think, but beware of spoilers.
The Kid has a 5th birthday party this weekend. Her mum and dad are worried few will show up, but here’s hoping IMO because the less kids who show, the more likely I’ll get some bounce house action!
Presidential Cool
Oct 9th
I was browsing through Facebook pages the other day and came across a page each for both our Presidential Hopefuls. And then I noted they both had links to MySpace pages. So regardless of who wins, is this going to be the first time our President has a MySpace page? Maybe not, and I guess you have to do it from a advertising strategy standpoint, but kinda funky anyway. Like either of them are actually posting on their friends walls at 2am while watching Wings reruns.
Speaking of advertising, check it:
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VS |  |
Doesn’t the McCain ad look kinda creepy? Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t like them staring at me. McCain looks somewhat natural, Palin looks like WAY TOO SUPER HAPPY OKAY THANKS. Obama’s is better, because they aren’t looking at us, they are too busy to make eye contact because they are happy and thinking about the better future they plan to implement. Also they are surrounded by a mass crowd of supporters that we can kind of see, while McCain and Palin have a christmas tree skirt with a spanged pattern on it behind their head. I don’t know why, but The Right just can’t pull off cool. It’s interesting that they both have the same blue with white lettering style. I wonder if that’s a proven ad color scheme or something. “Blue makes people like you!”
Speaking of cool, those images load all super-cool-like when clicked on through my Wordpress site, but unfortunately this awesomeness doesn’t translate too well when exporting to LiveJournal. Ah well…
