Kids today have no respect! (I know, I know, I’m hardly an old geezer) I mean, look what this 12 year old did to this gorgeous painting! Sheesh. Seriously though. The poor kid. I mean, 12 is old enough to know better, when I was a child my parents and I travelled all over Europe, and by the time I was that kid’s age I had been through the Louvre, and to the top of the Eiffel Tower, to a genuine Oktoberfest in Germany, bought a pair of wooden shoes in the Netherlands, and been deemed the “cutest thing ever” by a Dutch milk maid, which I think is not only a crowning achievement, but definitely something I’ve considered putting on my headstone when I die. I know, sounds like I’m gloating, and to a degree I am, but the point here is that when I was 12, I definitely knew better, so don’t give me the “he didn’t understand” argument. I think plenty of 12 year olds know better; but I will leave the door open to him just not understanding how severe what he did was. That’s a little different.

Anyway. Hazelnut coffee is love, and the day has flown past ever since. I spent a good chunk of time on a few lengthy stories over at Gears and Widgets and Not So Humble which certainly helps pass the time.

In other news, looks like Comcast is up to its old tricks and overselling bandwidth. That figures. I wonder how much of that they do around here, considering it’s got to be making them a killing to do it. Worst part is that they’ll continue to get away with it even if people complain-as long as their call center agents refuse to let you speak to a supervisor, ask you a dozen times if you’ve restarted your cable modem, and your letters to Comcast go unanswered or worse, like mine were, responded to with a ridiculous little “We’re sorry” card, then we’re all screwed for net access. Seriously, between this kind of behavior, the obvious unwillingness of telecomms to bring fiber and higher speeds to customers, and then above all interfering with municipal wifi by pressing the federal government to outlaw it unless they’re involved, I envy government-owned ISPs more and more. But then you wind up worrying about what you get to see and what you don’t get to see through the eyes of state-owned ISPs. Can’t win for losing, I suppose.

So. Resolution update behind the jump, for those interested in such things:

Web //
** Split up Pleasant Tingle into two (or more) blogs
(COMPLETE; TRANSFERRING ARCHIVES?)

** Migrate Millennium Winter to WordPress or EE
(COMPLETE)

** Update the Novawerks.net homepage
(80% COMPLETE – IN PROGRESS)

Media //
** Begin digitizing the media collection

** Build a MythBox for DVR Goodness

Personal //
** Create a comprehensive budget
(COMPLETED :: BUDGET CREATED; START TRACKING EXPENSES)

** Create a diet and exercise program that works for me

** Cook a lovely meal at least once a week
(IN PROGRESS – COMPLETE TO DATE)

** Find another school and subsequent doctoral program
(90% COMPLETE)

Werk //
** New job
(IN PROGRESS)

So there we go. I’m still sniffing around for a new job if things don’t really turn up here, and I’ve found a few doctoral programs I’m interested in, although they’re a bit cost prohibitive and I won’t be able to look into them immediately after finishing my Masters. The ones with no notes underneath them I obviously haven’t started, but that’s easy enough to fix. The redesign of the Novawerks homepage is kind of on hold now that I’ve changed the font so it’s at least legible for my Macintosh friends. I might see if I can smooth out the header image while I’m at it. If I can do that, I won’t bother redoing the whole page…unless I get bored. I was also thinking about redoing Plastic Bohemia at some point…I even have a wordpress theme all picked out for it.

And Apple’s Announcement of a new Intel Mac Mini that can be connected to your TV just made me very very happy and, providing there’s some DVR software for the Macintosh, might resolve my DVR woes in a very attractive package. Then again, I really should build one myself. So conflicted. In the meantime though, I think it’s time to rip some CDs to my music collection and tag/rename the other mp3s I have. That’ll be quite the project.

Oh, and the butterflies? I just emailed one of my tech journalistic heroes, Xeni Jardin to ask her how she does what she does; that is to say, how she managed to become such a prominent tech journalist. She probably gets tons of email, especially tons from people like me, and I’ll likely never hear from her, but it was definitely cool doing so. There were butterflies all up and down my stomach when I hit “send.” I’m such a dork.