I’ve been keeping busy with work. I’ve got a lot of projects I’m working on, almost all of which are ExpressionEngine related. Projects range from simple design conversions to custom modules, extensions and plugins and everything in between. I find I don’t even want to deal with upgrading my own site when work is done for the day. I guess that’s kind of sad, but that’s where I’m at.

Not a whole lot has been happening besides work. I’ve started meeting up with a group of people on Wednesday evenings and have made some new friends, which is always good. I’m not a super outgoing kind of person, but I do need some kind of social interaction or I think I’d go mad.

I also just got back from my unexpectedly long Thanksgiving break yesterday. My car needed some work done on it, and my brother-in-law said he could do all the work it needed for about half the price of any local mechanics. So I drove it up last Tuesday and gave it to him the following Wednesday morning. It was needing the 90k mile checkup and all that involved, a headlight had a short and was constantly burning out bulbs, my ABS light was staying lit, it needed an oil change and I was finally going to deal with the rough idle it’s been having for a couple years now.

My brother-in-law has his own shop and is a certified master mechanic so I wasn’t worried he’d do a shoddy job. He didn’t really get to it until Friday though, and it started throwing him curve balls left and right. He was able to fix the headlight, change the oil and do everything that was needed for the 90k mile checkup (which is a lot), but the idle problem turned into a nightmare. He tried several different things to fix it, and managed to minimize it but not completely fix it. It looks like I’ll be replacing my idle air control valve, which Hondas apparently have problems with.

The ABS problem turned out to be a simple relay. Unfortunately no one carried it in the area, so I decided I’d skip it and fix it in Austin.

On top of that, once he finished putting the engine back together, the harmonic balancer started acting up. It was moving around way too much. If it went out on the trip back, I would be stuck in the middle of BFE with two small dogs to deal with. No one in the area carried the part, so he had it overnighted from Austin (how ironic is that?). So my Thanksgiving holiday was extended by a couple of days which would’ve been kind of nice except I had no car and work was piling up back home.

Once the part came in, he popped it in and everything seemed ready to go. I hopped in the car and drove about half a mile down the road when my check engine light popped on and the engine starting revving wildly. I threw it into neutral and pulled off on a tiny dirt road. Of course, no one was answering their phones for about 10 minutes. I finally got a hold of my dad who got in touch with my brother-in-law. He pulled up a few minutes later and eventually figured out that a wire to my idle air control valve wasn’t completely plugged in. Once that was fixed it ran great.

“Why didn’t you just walk back the half mile, you pansy?” some of you might be asking. I would have except I knew my brother-in-law had just left for town which was several miles down the road.

Later that day, when I went to check out the work he had done on it, I tried to open my door and the freaking door handle broke! This car hasn’t given me any real problems all this time, but now that it’s approaching 100k miles things are starting to happen. The door still worked from both the outside and inside, so I decided I’d drive back to Austin and get it fixed there.

I’m glad to be back home and have started chipping away at the pile of work waiting for me.

I didn’t really do anything special. I ate lunch with my aunt, uncle and a couple cousins. I had planned on going to the lake with a few people, but everyone backed out. So lame. So I ended up watching some TV, taking the dogs for a walk and fixing some things around the house.

When I was a kid, birthdays were like second Christmases (Christmasis? Christmasi?). Presents were to be had, and friends were over to play all day until everyone’s parents came to pick them up. Now birthdays are a minor blip on the calendar. I’m not sure when birthdays became non-events for me, but the last several birthdays have been the same.

Oh well. Here’s hoping that this year is a special one, and that I end up finally meeting someone I can spend the rest of my life with.

Songs are the same price as iTunes, but if a song is in the top 100 most bought, it sells for just $.89. Albums are also the same price as iTunes.

A major plus for Amazon is their music is DRM free and has better encoding than iTunes music. The Flash-based samples you listen to on the site don’t do the actual song any credit, but are good enough for you to figure out if you want it or not.

One thing I don’t like is that in order to download a song, you need to run the Amazon MP3 Downloader app. I don’t know why you can’t just download the MP3 directly, but I’m sure they have their reasons.

Overall, I think the Amazon MP3 store is a good thing. More competition will keep the price down and our options up. I’ll definitely be checking it regularly for new music.

By the way, I discovered Amy Winehouse while browsing through the store. I bought “Rehab” and “Love is a Losing Game”. She has an amazing voice and tons of talent, but like many talented singers before her, seems hellbent on destroying herself. It’s sad. Hopefully she gets her life in order again and continues to release more great music.

They weren’t kidding when they say it’s thin. It almost looks fake it’s so thin. It’s super quiet. They keys are flat, unlike most other keyboards, so it takes a little bit of getting used to. I was a little worried I wouldn’t adjust to it, but I was typing great with it within a couple minutes. I can actually type a bit faster with it now than I could with my old keyboard.

The one problem I’ve had with it is related to Boot Camp. For some reason, the alt key won’t work during the Boot Camp startup, so it’ll automatically boot up into Windoze. I’m not the only one with this problem. I found a couple other threads in Apple’s support forums dealing with the issue. Hopefully it’ll get fixed soon.

Other than that, the keyboard is amazing. I’m very happy with the purchase.

And finally, the iPod Touch, or as I like to call it, the iPod Rushed-To-Production-Major-Letdown. It’s basically a gutted iPhone. It’s ugly. It’s overpriced. Its storage capacity is a joke. It can’t be used with Skype or any other VoIP. It’s a complete and utter letdown for me. There is no way I’m going to be buying one.

Apple also announced that you can make custom ringtones out of music you buy. Oh you thought that would be free? Think again! You’ll have to pay the same price you paid for the song in order to make a 12-20 second ringtone out of it. What a bunch of crap!

The only good announcement made today was the rather large $200 price drop on the 8gb iPhone. It’s more tempting now to get one, but I still hate AT&T too much to make the plunge. Plus, I’d have to pay the $150 early termination fee to Verizon. Ouch.

One more thing… the Starbucks “feature” they’ve got going seems like a major gimmick to me. How often would that really be used?

Band - Song

• Cubismo Grafico - World Is Yours
• Greg Weeks - Made
• The Smiths - How Soon Is Now?
• The Cure - Firday I’m In Love
• Björk - Isobel
• Eva Cassidy - Fields of Gold
• John Prine - Clay Pigeons

To relax after a stressful day, I decided I’d make the EllisLab logo in Forza on my Xbox and paint a car with it. Here’s the result. I think it should become the official EllisLab office car.

It took me about half an hour to piece the logo together and then another half hour to get the rest of the car done. I think it turned out rather well, except the colors are a bit washed-out compared to how it looks on my TV.

Chris... this is absolutely freakin' incredible. Great idea. Now let's un-tint those windows and see who _really_ drives EllisLab

70% Geek

Esau Wood sawed wood. Esau Wood would saw wood. All the wood Esau Wood saw, Esau Wood would saw. In other words, all the wood Esau saw to saw, Esau sought to saw. Oh, the wood Wood would saw! And, oh the wood-saw with which Wood would saw wood! But one day, Wood’s wood-saw would saw no wood, and thus the wood Wood sawed was not the wood Wood would saw if Wood’s wood-saw would saw wood. Now, Wood would saw wood with a wood-saw that would saw wood, so Esau sought a saw that would saw wood. One day, Esau saw a saw saw wood as no other wood-saw Wood saw would saw wood. In fact, of all the wood-saws Wood ever saw saw wood, Wood never saw a wood-saw that would saw wood as the wood-saw Wood saw saw wood would saw wood, and I never saw a wood-saw that would saw as the wood-saw Wood saw would saw until I saw Esau Wood saw wood with the wood-saw Wood saw saw wood. Now Wood saws wood with the wood-saw Wood saw saw wood

It cracks me up every time I read it. Freakin’ genius!

Another great example:

Wouldn’t the sentence ‘I want to put two hyphens between the words Fish and And, and And and Chips in my Fish-And-Chips sign’ have been clearer if quotation marks had been placed before Fish, and between Fish and and, and and and And, and And and and, and and and Chips, and after Chips?

Band - Song

• PC Synergy - Drift
• Govinda - Love Glitch
• Badmarsh & Shri - Sajanna
• Mystical Sun - 2012
• Zka4T - Jesenice
• Special Branch - Balsamic Jihad
• M. Ward - Chinese Translation
• Marvin Gaye - “T” Plays It Cool