April | 2003 | mashby

April 30, 2003

Trading Spaces Behind the Scenes by Meredith Books

TLC’s Trading Spaces is like crack to a new home owner – you watch the show once and you’re hooked. At least that’s how it happened to me. 🙂 One Saturday afternoon, I was scanning the television and stumbled upon the show and instantly fell in love. For those that haven’t seen the show, two sets of homeowners swamp houses and with the help of a designer do a two-day room re-design armed with only a $1000 budget. As you might imagine things can go wrong as the designers pull and tug the homeowners into doing sometimes outlandish things to their neighbors spaces. It’s a great show that can give you a lot of inspiration and ideas for your own home.

I was in Home Depot looking for a book on Tiling for a project I’m working on, when I stumbled upon “Trading Spaces Behind the Scenes” book. If you love the show, this book is for you. However, if you’re looking for Tips and Tricks, then keep looking because this book is more about the “behind the scenes” than anything else. In it, you’ll learn about how the show is put together from start to finish. There is a chapter dedicated to each member of the cast as well as a large glamour photo. Fans of Ty Pennington the hunky carpenter, won’t be disappointed.

April 30, 2003

Bitten By The Male Obsession Bug

I’m out of control. I have fallen back in love with bicycling and I have a full-on outbreak of the ‘Male Obsession Bug.’ If you’re female, you’ve seen it in action and if you’re a guy, then you know what I’m talking about. 🙂 The Male Obsession Bug can strike at any time, on any subject. for some it’s sports, for others, it’s a recreational hobby. Regardless of the obsession, the affects of the ‘bug’ are easy to detect.

For one, the infected subject can’t stop talking about his new obsession. In my case, this is cycling. So, regardless of the conversation, I can find some relevance to cycling and will use any excuse to divert the topic to cycling. For example, let’s say that someone brings up the subject of the new Palm Zire 71 handheld. Now, how in the world could a Palm OS handheld have anything to do with cycling? Well, a man’s infected brain might mention the fact that there is a product called the Bike Brain that can connect a Palm device to the bicycle for recording all sorts of information. Then he might mention that he’s thinking about using Bicycling Journal to record his rides for posting on his weblog.

April 30, 2003

Damn Lights

I got started a little late on Monday. It was after 6pm before I left the house, but I had my light system mounted, tested and ready to go. So, I figured I was ok. However, anything could be farther from the truth. My plan was to ride to Brentwood, visit the REI store and […]

April 30, 2003

Magnolia

Magnolia
Director: Paul Thomas Anderson
Writer(s): Paul Thomas Anderson
Category: Drama
MPAA: R
Runtime: 188 min
Country: USA
Language: English
Year: 1999
Tagline: Things fall down. People look up. And when it rains, it pours.

Plot: From director Paul Thomas Anderson comes a mosaic of American life woven through a series of comedic and poignant vignettes. Through chance, human action, past history and divine intervention, an eclectic cast of characters (including Tom Cruise, Julianne Moore, William H. Macy and more) weaves and warps through each other’s lives on a random San Fernando Valley day, building an unforgettable climax.

Review: This movie is not for the faint of heart. I made the mistake of starting this movie at 10:30pm thinking that it’d be the usual 1.5 hour movie. I should have looked at the sleeve more closely, this movie is over 3 hours long. Not to mention the fact that Anderson pushes the boundaries of storytelling by interweaving a multitude of characters to tell one story, or message. This is a “thinking man’s” movie and not something to just flip through like so many movies released today.

April 29, 2003

City of Ghosts

City Of Ghosts Director: Matt Dillon
Writer(s): Matt Dillon and Barry Gifford
Category: Thriller
MPAA: R
Runtime: 116 min
Country: USA
Language: English
Year: 2002
Tagline: Where you go when you can’t turn back.

Plot: Jimmy Cremming (Matt Dillon) is headed to Bangkok, where he hopes to hide out after getting tangled in an insurance fraud investigation. While there, he discovers that his mentor and partner in crime, Marvin (James Caan), is in Cambodia with the loot. All Jimmy wants is his fair share ? but the closer he gets to Marvin and his world, the crazier — and more dangerous — life turns.

Review: I really wanted to like this movie, but it just falls flat. I had the opportunity to view this at a pre-screening in New York. Palm, Inc. was sponsoring the event and I was lucky enough to be invited. Given the pre-party and the potential for celebrities to attend (there were none), I was pretty hyped. Loving movies like I do, this was the one of the best of all possible worlds in which to see this movie – it didn’t help.

April 29, 2003

The Sterling Huck Letters by Sterling Huck

Unbeknownst to me, Bill has had a very active “other life” penning witty letters to companies under the pen name of Sterling Huck. One page into this most unique book and I was on the floor laughing uncontrollably.

April 27, 2003

Speaking Of Marketing Nightmares

South African Revenue Service At the end of my last post, regarding Maximus Herbal Blend, I made the comment that ‘I’m just glad that I don’t run a company like Maximus Management Services.’ To me, it would be a bit of a marketing nightmare to have your company name used for a male libido supplement. Can’t you see walking into a potential customer’s office and when you go to introduce yourself, you have to explain that your company isn’t the same company as the one that gives you, “improved stamina.” 😀

Well, that got me to thinking about some other marketing nightmares. One of my early jobs was as a clerk for Eckerd Drugs. I worked in the pharmacy department, and I remember a diet suppressant that was designed to be a small chocolate like candy. The concept I guess was for you to eat a little piece of candy that no only gave you a candy fix, but suppressed your desire to eat as well. The name of this little wonder? AYDS.

April 27, 2003

Training Day

I has been almost 2 weeks since my last ride. I’m riding in the Bike New York event next Sunday, so I figured I had to put on some decent miles today. We’ve been going to Bellevue Community Church out in Bellevue for the past few months and I figured that would make a good […]

April 24, 2003

Snake Oil Is Alive And Well

Recently, I’ve seen a bunch of infomercials and even received plenty of spam on the subject of ‘boosting the male libido.’ I’m sorry, but I just don’t get it. Since when do men need a bigger libido? If I took something like that I’m afraid Holly would make me sleep outside. 🙂

April 23, 2003

It’s The Little Things

Xenu Link Sleuth Work with any medium for awhile and you tend to get into a bit of a rut, or routine in how you do things. Once you’re in your rut, it’s rather rare when you come across something that changes how you do things. When you do, it’s a bit of a big deal. 😀

I’ve been in a bit of a rut when it comes to web development/web publishing. Granted, I learned how to use Moveable Type recently, but even then, I still tend to type out my entries in Edit+ first and use the rest of the tools that I’ve come to know and ~~loathe~~, I mean love. However, recently I came across a little program called Xenu’s Link Sleuth and it’s changed how I manage web sites.

For those that aren’t familiar with web publishing, publishing to the web is much like creating MS Word documents. The main difference is that you need to keep track of where you put stuff. Think about how you save your work now. I would venture a guess that sometimes you save your work to your desktop. Other times you might save it to your My Documents folder, or even a network drive. Now, what if you had to keep track of every file that you’ve created with MS Word? Could you do it? Now you can see how difficult it can be to keep up with a web site.

Month / April 2003