Hey, look – a blog post!

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Will the Unpacking EVER End?!
That was supposed to be a primary goal this weekend, but we sorta fell short by … well, a lot. We’re still making progress – the home theater is now setup and the kitchen is almost finished except for a few pictures to hang – but I just want it to be DONE with no half-empty boxes lying around so that I can try to focus on doing something else for a change!

Light Up the Night!
Something else like start setting up Christmas lights!!! I haven’t really been able to decorate since I moved down here four years ago because I’ve always lived in apartment complexes, so I’m really looking forward to being able to put lights up on the house this year. I’ve got to take it somewhat easy, as I used to spend ridiculous amounts of money on lights when decorating Mom’s house and we don’t have the money to blow hundreds of dollars this year, but I think I can still make it look nice without going too overboard! I’ve been told that I’m not allowed to start decorating until after Thanksgiving, so the countdown officially begins…

The Great Ant Invasion of 2007
Yeah, we’re at it again. We moved out of one ant-ridden home and right into another! It’s calmed down considerably since we first moved in – literally, there were dead flies everywhere when we took possession of the home, not to mention the fact that it wasn’t at all uncommon to find little millipedes roaming our carpet throughout the house. The latest pest has been ants – both little fire ants, but worse are these huge, red ants roughly the size of Buicks, but much more menacing. We spent part of yesterday afternoon spraying around the house and also dumping some ant-killer-stuff on as many hills as we could find, so in retalliation they attempted to lay siege to our kitchen last night. Fortunately we returned home just in time to properly fortify and defend our food preparation area, but ultimately this could be a long and devastating war with many casualties…

Operation: Dinner and a Movie
Last night we finally had to get out of the house, so we went into town to have dinner at Bahama Breeze because I had a gift certificate to use up, and it was actually pretty good. I ended up getting some sort of caribbean chicken with an awesome side of sweet potatoes, and despite the noise, I think I’d go back. Afterwards, we took a cruise through my old neck of the woods to pick up birthday cards at Wal-Mart, then went to see Martian Child at the theater … very good movie! The movie instantly had three things that never fail to appeal to me – John Cusack, the main character was a struggling writer, and themes of space. It was a bit sad at some points, but overall I thought quite intellectual and quite good.

On the ride home, we retardedly drove with the top down (in November … cold!) in hopes of seeing part of the meteor shower, but it turns out we were off by a day. Too bad, because that would’ve been really cool to see and Sara’s never seen one. Next time, though…

luckiest man alive

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Yesterday was a really long day at work. Not insanely hard, mind you, but very long and tedious … probably the first time I’ve worked any amount of overtime in weeks. So needless to say, I didn’t have time to do anything that I wanted to do when I finally walked out the door just before 11:00pm – Supercuts was long closed, I wasn’t about to commit an hour of my time to picking up four things at Wal-Mart, and it was going to be too late to do any housework by the time I actually got home (damn commute!)…

But when I did finally arrive home, the stress just sorta disappeared as Sara ushered me into the bathroom to find the bubble bath that she’d prepared for me, complete with candles and a very full glass of wine that didn’t last nearly as long as it normally would with me! The timing couldn’t have been more impeccible. We chatted until the water was almost cold and the stress just seemed to melt away. What can I say … I’m a lucky guy…

a Floridian bloodbath…

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A little post-Halloween fun for y’all – I was all ready to do a little blogging last night while Sara was bathing, but when I came in to find the tub looking a little something like this, that pretty much put the cabash on those plans!

And although blood was the first thing that came to my mind last night, right out of your favorite Halloween horror flick, looking back now the first thing I hear in my head when I see this pick is, “Oh yeah!!!” Thankfully no brick walls were harmed during this visit from the Kool-Aid man…

(P.S. For those curious, the coloring is actually from a “bath bomb” that Sara picked up at one of those fancy bath & body stores. The last one made the water look like pee, this one blood – either we’ve mistakenly been shopping from their Bodily Fluids Collection or they need to go back to the drawing board with their dyes!)

Also, this is awesome!

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http://blog.wired.com/geekdad/2007/10/olafur-eliasson.html
(also http://www.lego.com/eng/info/default.asp?page=pressdetail&contentid=16016&countrycode=2057&yearcode=2005&archive=true)
Some Danish artist dude makes a habit of donating literally tons of LEGOs to communities to let their kids go wild and build their own cities. Amazing pictures…

much ado about unsolicited e-mail…

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I came across this very interesting post the other day from Chris Anderson, the Editor-in-Chief of Wired Magazine, that seems to have a whole lot of people in a tizzy:

Sorry PR People: You’re Blocked
http://www.longtail.com/the_long_tail/2007/10/sorry-pr-people.html#comments

Apparently Chris receives a ridiculous amount of unsolicited e-mail from PR people who include him on mass press release distributions without his consent – either the releases don’t even pertain to something that Wired would cover or they should be directed to a more specific person within the organization, but either way, they shouldn’t be sent to the guy at the top just at random without putting at least a little thought into what the e-mail says. Well, to combat this problem, Chris simply blocks any offending addresses in Outlook so that he won’t see the unwelcome mail anymore, but he recently rocked the boat by publishing that list of over three hundred addresses in his blog!

This made a lot of people angry – especially those whose names are on the list! – but I can’t say that I entirely disagree with the man and his intentions. I still get random e-mails from marketing people for Just Laugh and we never covered that sort of thing in our issues, so it’s no secret that far too many PR agents simply catch that keyword (humor, technology, whatever…) and throw your name into their list of people who clearly would be interested in whatever remotely-related product their client might be offering. Of course, in the comments – and there are hundreds of comments already – many PR agents have argued that they’re, in fact, doing a valuable service and should be thanked for their efforts because of course, the publishing industry wouldn’t exist without them! This is just an absurd cover-up for people being too lazy to do any research before sending out their press letters – hell, one early poster even admitted to getting Chris’ name off of a list that he bought from a PR company.

Sure, the underside is that the folks whose e-mail addresses were posted might get a little extra spam because of the post, but chances are if these were addresses that are posted anywhere else on the web, they’re already getting tons of spam anyways so I really don’t think that’s much of a shield to hide behind. Besides, spammers receiving spam don’t really get much sympathy from me, and if you don’t think that your unsolicited bulk e-mails are spam, you really need to take a look in the mirror – unsolicited is unsolicited. I really liked one particular comment about how to tell who your releases should really be going to – just go down your distribution list and highlight how many of those names you would spend $50 on to pitch your idea to, or even how many you’d be willing to actually just pick up the phone and talk to. It might not be the preferred method in today’s fast-paced, yet somehow lazier society, but I’m still a firm believer that a bit of research and thought holds a much better chance for success than simply throwing as much at the wall as possible and hoping that something sticks…