fontosaurus

I recently reread Douglas Coupland's book, Microserfs. It's quite good. I have a feeling that it would be fun to do stuff the main character in there did with the funky formatting in his journal. And I'll probably do stream-of-consciousness stuff now, too, just for shits-and-giggles.

I've been cleaning up my area-of-occupation in the downstairs. Taking a break because, well, I'm tired.

Question: Why is it that my cats jump in the air and spazz when startled, but my parents' cats hunker down flat on the floor? Do they speak different dialects of panic?

Well, I woke up with a gem of a headache this morning. All these interesting posts from my friends and I can barely string together two complete thoughts...so I must refrain from commenting, lest I look like a jackass. (Not that I don't already. See earlier picture. Ha!)

Mooch is asleep on my pillow. I keep trying to break her of that habit, but it is impossible. It's nice to know that she loves me so much, but her snoring in my ear is really getting old.

mso, you need to keep popping those cough drops.

timmyeatworld, I will not bite off your toe. That's just sick. What did you do to it, anyway?

koroshiya, I totally understand your issues with dad. I have a hard time forgiving mine.

digitech, if you're the center of the universe and everyone loved you and you always got your way, you wouldn't be spoiled, you'd be that goofy judeo-christian god.

That is all for now. I must pursue and kill a bowl of raisin bran. Kellogg's variety. Yum

Man, I was at Barnes & Noble today, and I saw a book called Lost by Ian Phillips...had a kid's drawing of dog on the front. Picked it up, out of curiousity...it was nothing but lost pet posters from around the world... I got all choked up, especially at the posters drawing by little kids who lost their cats. Very sad. :-(

I got a sci-fi paperback, a sandwich from Subway, and came home. Watched about 5 minutes of the Harry Potter movie, but have no desire to continue, because I have my own vision of how the things in Rowling's world are...once I'm done with the current 4, I'll give the DVD a spin. Speaking of DVD's, I still have mso's copy of Snatch, that I have to watch...and I think I'm ready to burn my copy of Black Hawk Down...it's been giving me really fucked-up dreams about my stint in the Army. Yeesh.

Anyway, props to my kid brother for letting me use his digital camera today...I went around and snapped pics of various things -- the cats, my truck, the stuffed Spiderman I won at Valleyfair yesterday, and I had mah bro take a pic of me so ppl would finally get an idea of what my goofy ass looks like.

So without further ado...

( Shield your eyes, my picture's the first... )

Job. After sending my agent a "if it weren't for bad luck, I'd have no luck at all" email, asking her to keep her eyes peeled, she called about 30 minutes later with another potential position. Keep your fingers crossed.

Cat. My cat Mooch's birthday is tomorrow. She wants someone to send her a 10-gigabyte iPod. It is available on my Amazon.com Wishlist (see below).

Bored. Someone wanna give me a nice surprise and send me something from my Amazon.com Wishlist?

I lied. There's 4 things. I'm going to my mom's to fix her $%#@ing VCR. Who uses VCR's anymore? They're SOOOO 1994...

Pixel has rustled up a ping-pong ball from somewhere that looks like a basketball (orange with black lines). She has been knocking it all over the basement for hours now. Ah, to be a cat. So nice.

I had a dream I was a cat last night -- no lie. It was very Kafka-esque. My mentality was somewhat human, but I had hunt-and-kill instincts. But when I thought about walking or running with four legs I would stumble and fall and look like a cat with Down's Syndrome. (Not that there is anything wrong with Down's Syndrome...it was just an analogy. Okay, wait. That simian crease is kinda creepy.) I was not a very good hunter and would have starved to death quickly had I not awaken at 6 a.m. and eaten a couple of Archway cookies.

First Order of Business: I used to think I was the bizity-bizomb when it came to shitty customer service. This one wins, hands down. Gord, you should drop the "r". You are truly deserving of the Randall Award for Lifetime Achievement in Dealing with Shithead Customers. You're an inspiration.

I Really Need to Start Designing Fonts Again: I've been kinda lagging on that lately. Depression from the fruitless job hunt is probably a contributing factor. I have some cool art deco fonts in progress and I owe Chank a few glyphs for a new flavor of Garamond we're (the ChankArmy) working on.

Fucking Bookstores: I bought the Cocoa programming book at the Apple Store in the Mall of America today. $35 + tax. Okay. I figured they needed the money on the sale more than B&N did. I like to be loyal to the people that returned my iBook fully fixed in less than 48 hours. But c'mon people, 1.) Amazon's got it for $24 + shipping, and 2.) if I'm going to be developing for your platform you ought to at least recognize that and undercut the cost a bit. I mean, shit, it's skimpy and not very useful and you're charging $35? Christ, $35 can get you some phat O'Reilly's books. (This one was from O'Reilly's too...why the price discrepancy? I have no clue.)

My Cat Rules: Mooch has been exceptionally cuddly today. I know not why, but I like it. She's such a sweetheart.

Know Anyone With Money? More specifically, know anyone with a ton of money that would be willing to invest in or be an "angel" to a bike shop? I need about $1.5 million to buy a building, get initial inventory, and hire employees. I have spent most of my life around bikes, raced, even worked in a bike shop for a few years. I want one of my own. I love it.

I'm Going to Bed Now. There's nothing more to this post. You can leave now. Someone send me a couple of hot pornstars (preferably Asia Carrera and oh...Sky Lopez, I guess) to keep me warm? Thank you, drive thru.

Have I mentioned lately how much I love thunderstorms? I do! They totally kick ass. I woke up to thunder and rain pattering against the windows last night...and it was relaxing. I just snuggled deeper into the blankets, laid there and listened for awhile before sleep overtook me again. A quiet moment of enjoyment without having to spend a dime. And incidentally, there's more on the way:


(Note that this is an updating image.)

Played some Roller Coaster Tycoon today -- the Volcania scenario is kickin' my ass. I've finally got 4 of the 5 coaster fragments finished, and I'd love to be able to ride some of these in real life. :-) I had to rebuild the suspended coaster from scratch because I only managed a 2.83 Excitement rating. Second time around, I managed a 7-point-something deal. Woohoo! (All the coasters have to be finished at 6.7 or higher.) So, I'm pleased with that. I've been stuck on this one for awhile. As I type this, it's running on the Win(D'OH!)s machine, so I'm building up some cash in there.

Mooch has been limping around a bit today, favoring her left front paw. Maybe she's having sympathy pains...my left wrist is killing me. Still. Even with their "it's not broken" verdict, the pain has remained pretty constant. Fucking VA hospital. Ugh. Anyway, if Mooch is still in her on-and-off limping tomorrow, I'll have to take her to the vet. Don't know how I'm going to swing the money for that yet. I worry about her. I love that cat like she was a kid...if anything ever happens to her I'm going to be a wreck. I was traumatized enough by her getting declawed (I'll never have that done to another cat)...and she was too. Basically, she was in for a one-day turnaround declawing, had the surgical sealant instead of stitches. The doc told me to make sure she didn't get up on anything where she'd have to jump down. He might as well have told me to follow her around 24-7...

So I'm in the living room of my place in Philly, about 30 minutes after bringing Mooch home, and I hear a squawk, and Mooch comes running into the living room, favoring a front paw, a huge trail of blood behind her. I panic and scoop her up, and she panics and pees all over the front of my shirt. I run out to the Civic and haul ass back to the vet... They decide to re-seal it and keep her overnight. I was crying the entire time...so much so I couldn't even drive home. I felt awful.

I never want to submit a cat to that again. Ever. (Yes, Pixel still has her claws.)

Let's see...I'm stoked to see that extreme sports thing at the MN Zoo IMAX. A lot of that was filmed at the X Games in Philly last summer, which I was there for. A good time was had by all. And the new Star Wars movie...ohmygodohmygodohmygod...it's going to be better than Empire! I cannot wait! mso ordered our tickets online last night...and we went to go see Changing Lanes. My advice: wait until video for that one. Star Wars we have tickets to the 10am and 10:45pm showing. I am so fucking stoked. I've been waiting since the end of Empire for a real Star Wars movie.

The soundtrack for it is nothing short of breath-taking. I'm convinced that Williams knew what was happened with the entire saga from the day Lucas spoke with him. Beyond "Duel of the Fates", the Episode 1 soundtrack was entirely non-memorable. With Attack of the Clones, it's a whole new story. You have this bittersweet love theme, a new battle theme, and Vader's theme all making appearances throughout the tracks...and the final track blends them all together in a way that gives me goosebumps. I am so crazy about this. I get weird looks for driving around in the XTerra with the "Confrontation with Count Dooku/Finale" track and the "Love Pledge and the Arena" tracks blasting. It kicks that much ass.

On the movie subject, mso and I went to go see Fellowship of the Ring -- my seventh time seeing it. I wanted to see the preview for The Two Towers at the end of it...and OH MY GOD. I must see that movie....whaddaya mean I gotta wait til Christmas??? My Xmas gift better be a ticket to that show! Holy crap. Dark, foreboding, and just downright bad-assed looking. The battle scenes look hella cool. I'm bummed about how the trilogy is ending though...I was talking to Batgar on Monday and he said that Peter Jackson left out the part where the four hobbits return to the Shire and have to liberate it. Damn! That's lunacy! It was a beautiful statement on the responsibility that citizens have to their community. I just can't believe they dropped it... *sigh*

Man, am I rambling or what? Yeah! Anyway, I have some fonts that need to be addressed, so I am going to go get to work on those.

Sorry for not posting anything of groovy substance recently. I'm a loser, I know. I've been riding too much and working too much (between my fulltime job and my bike-shop-part-time-for-the-discount job).

So I decided to bite the bullet this week and buy a new Mac. My current machine, which is the Fontosaurus Text workhorse was purchased in 1997! It's an old 8600/300, and at the time, it was considered "decked out" -- 160 megs of RAM, 4 gig hard drive, 24x CDROM, SCSI, scanner, graphics tablet, 17" monitor. I paid $6600 for the whole spiel. Since then, I've replaced the hard drive with a 9 gig (when the original started to die), added a few things to keep it up with the times. It still has the original processor in it, though...a 604e! Not even a G3!

So on May 1st, when Apple announced the new iBooks, and they didn't look as "foofy" as the older ones, I decided that I would go ahead and get one. It's on order. In some ways, this is a step down -- screen size. But in every way else, it's a huge jump -- 256 megs of RAM, 20 gig hard drive, DVDROM, USB and Firewire, portable, and Airport wireless networking, so I can work on my fonts from anywhere in the apartment. Fucking groovy.

In other fun, I had the younger of my two cats spayed this week. She had to wear one of those lampshade collars for awhile, and looked sad and pathetic the entire time. I couldn't think of anything except that mangy mutt in the movie One Crazy Summer. The next morning, I woke up and she'd slipped out of it, but she hadn't gone after her stitches, so I've let her go without. She seems to be recovering nicely -- kicking ass on all her toys and romping around with Mooch.

I discovered Mountain Dew Code Red last Friday -- interesting stuff. For those not in the test markets, this is cherry-flavored Mt. Dew, and it's bright red. Quite yummy, actually.

So again, we have a blog of limited substance. I'll try to get an excerpt from something I'm writing up on here sometime in the next few days.