Hello World

I found a place to live in Washington--a classy studio in Cleveland Park. I'm going to the Uptown four times a week.

Hey guys. I'm just stopping by to make a plea. I'm going to be working in Washington, DC this summer and I need a place to live. Ideally, I'm looking for a place of my own--a furnished studio or 1br--from mid-May to mid-August. If you happen to know of anything that might be helpful to me, please pass it along. Thanks internet buddies.

There's a crappy little bar near my apartment that has a pretty sweet dinner deal--two-for-one burgers and appetizers every evening. So if you go with an even number of people, and everyone gets burgers, dinner's half price. They offer lots of different burgers, all for reasonable prices (even before the discount), and if you want to substitute a chicken breast or a veggie burger you can do so at no extra charge. And, shockingly, their burgers are pretty good.

As a student without a whole lot of equity, cheap eating is a priority for me, so I've been a frequent two-for-one burgerer. It's a great deal and two blocks away--sure beats cooking. My favorite burger to order is the grilled cheeseburger, which is exactly what you would expect--a burger patty in the middle of a grilled cheese sandwich. It's a real insider order, too, since it's not listed with the rest of the burgers (I guess because it's not on a regular bun)--it's under the "Sandwiches" heading instead. Anyway, it's freaking delicious, and you don't have to waste any valuable chewing time on vegetables.

Okay, so on to the story. (Incidentally, this story is pretty boring for a while, but I encourage you to stick with it. Two-thirds through I turn into a real dickhead.)

To read the rest of this post, click here.

Often I think to myself that when I buy something--an iPod case, a new winter coat, some highlighters--that it will make me happy. But it usually doesn't. And I finally figured out why. I'm not increasing my happiness, I'm merely lessening my unhappiness: I no longer have to be annoyed by scratches on my iPod; I don't notice the cold so much; and I don't have to complain about how quickly these newfangled Bics run out of neon yellow ink. But while life is, at times, easier, it's not really any better for all that. While these material acquisitions do improve my quality of life, they don't actually raise my level of happiness.

So what am I getting at, here? Is it possible that buying more crap actually doesn't make me happier? No, that's not true. Lots of crap does make me happier. Books make me happier. Music makes me happier. Electronic equipment that I'll have to replace in two years makes me, inexplicably, happier. Good food (either in the Vichyssoise category or the Bagel Dogs category) makes me much happier.

So what's wrong with the other stuff I've been buying all my life that it doesn't make me happier? Would it be better if I had some more tax cuts? I don't know. I think the problem is that when you buy something to fix a problem it just emphasizes the fact that life is filled with small annoyances, and these little stopgaps don't do much to address the fundamental problem: you spend most of your time dealing with problems that you don't want to have. So the occasional item that does more than try to fix a problem another possession created--be it a baguette, a Justin Timberlake album, or a pair of jeans that have been artfully "pre-weathered" such that they appear to have actually been worn by a steamboat coal-shoveler for twenty years--demonstrates how big and interesting the world can be.

Of course, friendship and family and the sheer exhilaration of new experiences make me happy too. But c'mon. Actual stuff is pretty great, too, sometimes. You know you love surround sound and ice cream.

In a related story, it's Sausage Week over at Dethroner and I couldn't be more excited.

I'm not even going to TRY to catch up on all the posts I've missed in the last 10 days.

Happy new year!

The Redskins still can't play defense, but Duckett averaged over five yards per carry and Campbell was good. This means, of course, that I'll have to start next season with high expectations yet again, and almost certainly have my hopes dashed by week seven again... but I can live with that. Just please, please, please, leave Brunell on the bench forever. It's sort of liberating to not have to worry about winning or losing (since we're completely toast, playoffs-wise) and just get to think about whether we're getting better in the big picture. Maybe Clinton Portis will have enough time to actually be healthy before next season starts, and our receivers will learn to make catches, and our offensive and defensive lines will learn to block, and our cornerbacks will learn to cover receivers, and, and, and Joe Gibbs can ride into the stadium astride a glistering unicorn!

Jay-Z's new album, Kingdom Come, comes out tomorrow. The first single, "Show Me What You Got," produced by often-namechecked Just Blaze, is pretty terrible. But the title track, also produced by Just Blaze, is pretty awesome. You can viscerally feel Danger Mouse's influence on hip-hop production, and it is a good thing. Word on the street (i.e. Amazon's editorial review) is that the last half of the album is a lot more experimental--collaborations with various people, including Coldplay's detestable Chris Martin--and I'm a bit apprehensive about that. But we'll see. I may write more about this album if I listen to the whole thing and determine that it is excellent or awful. You can interpret radio silence as a tepid review.

Tomorrow afternoon I fly to Denver, Colorado, to spend Thanksgiving with my family. I get back to Boston on Sunday.

My dear friend over at Supine Fever just wrote about a pretty nearly universal experience she's had with UPS (link here):

I ordered something off of ebay, and it was due to arrive last Friday. The UPS guy only delivers to my area during the “After 5pm” timeslot, and I was at work Friday night, so I got home to a yellow slip saying they’d be back at the same time Monday.

So, I looked forward to my awesome new ebay It all weekend. Monday came, and I rushed home a few minutes early from my internship so that I could be home at 5pm on the dot, and sweet Mary mother of God, the yellow slip was on the door, saying they had come at 4:45. I was incensed. Incensed!

This is, without question, a total mess--the kind of customer service disaster that I think really hurts big businesses all the time (see also: cable companies, phone companies, cell phone companies, banks, etc). Why aren't these corporations interested in doing the extra 5% of work it would require to make life better and easier for their customers? ESPECIALLY since doing so would make them stand up in stark contrast to their competition.

There's more.

I'm off to DC again tonight to grovel for a job. I'm there til Saturday, then I'm off to the windy city for a day with my lovely family. Then it's back to beantown. Just FYI.

I am going to be in Washington, DC from 9pm Friday until 12pm Monday. Just so you know.

As part of my unofficial evaluation of our flight security system, I'm off to spend a week in beautiful Denver, Colorado. I'll be coming through New York City next weekend, and then I'll be back in Boston.

I will be checking in online, I'm sure, since I'm a giant loser, but probably not that frequently.

I'll be in New York this weekend. I'm busy tonight and Saturday night, but I'm free all day Saturday. So if you will be there and want to hang out, let me know.

I'm going to be in New York City in a couple of weeks (July 28th or so). Will you be there as well?

Also, my desktop PC at home has been acting up lately--a Windows file got corrupted and I nearly lost all 60 gigs of music I have on that thing--so I just bought an enormous external hard drive to back everything up. Once that's done, I'm planning on wiping it clean and starting fresh. Just for fun I'm going to make a small partition for a linux distribution (probably Ubuntu), and then put a new XP installation on the rest of the HD.

Here are my queries for you:

1. What do you think is the minimum size for the Ubuntu partition?
2. Are there any top secret tricks for installing XP? Components I should opt out of, unusual components I should include? Settings I should change right away? Other stuff I can't think of?
3. Are there programs that you use and love that I might not know about (in the case of Ubuntu, any programs at all)?
4. What are your data backup strategies? I'd like to start backing up my data regularly, ideally in an automated process. Any thoughts there?

A bit of self-indulgent housekeeping (hopefully the last time for a while):

To mollify those of you who hate it, I'm going to stop linking to my other blog now. I mean, now. Now. Now. Okay, now. But I'm also going to stop duplicating posts both here and there. I'm going to continue putting some stuff here, mostly friends-only, and the rest of it will go over there. So if you for some reason want to keep up with everything I'm writing, I'm afraid you'll have to keep track of both sites (it's not too difficult--the RSS feed for the Other Place is here). But the good news is, those of you who already do that won't have to read the same thing twice every time I post.

I tried to do this once before but because I like getting comments I gave up on it and resumed posting everything here. We'll see if I have any more self-control this time. At any rate, this isn't a craven "I'M QUITTING LJ" attention-grabbing stunt--I'll still be posting some stuff here, and I'm certainly going to keep reading and commenting on your posts. You're great, friends, just great.

Your internet pal,
calamityjake

I just read through this hilarious email exchange, in which a guy convinces an email spammer to carve a wooden replica of a Commodore 64 keyboard and ship it to him. Check out that link for the full emails and a ton of awesome pictures, including my favorite, and a hilarious twist ending. [Boing Boing]

To read the rest of this post, click here.

1. I went to Fenway on Monday night to watch the Nationals commence part two of their anti-Yankees strategy. They did a great job. Fenway is, in fact, a beautiful stadium and I had a great time despite the extremely drunk moron who sat next to me and screamed horrible things directly into the ears of several toddlers. Fenway Franks are pretty good. If you sit in right field, you'll probably want to bring some sunglasses for the first couple of innings.


2. My iPod died yesterday, and today I went to the Apple store and they replaced it, no questions asked. I am excited about my opportunity to not allow the screen to get terribly scratched up this time. The bad news: 1) I had to pay $30 because it was more than 6 months into the warranty; 2) I had to choose between waiting 2 weeks for them to re-inscribe it or taking my replacement without one, so it's goodbye to my incredibly witty inscription.


3. I won tickets to an early screening of Superman on Monday, so you can expect a half-assed crappy review sometime thereafter.

Those were the Things You Should Know. I hope you enjoyed them.

What do you do when you need to install an A/C unit but your windows open side-to-side instead of up-and-down? Well, you do your best to jury-rig a solution:

Looks pretty good, right? Well, yeah, right up until you raise the windowshade:

If you're interested, here's a close-up view. Just call me MacGuyver.

Also, here's a picture I took of a goose under the Charles Gate bridge.

I'm on my way to DC, where I'll be until Monday. Updates as warranted.

P.S.: Top Chef finale tonight. I'm sorry guys, I like Harold too, but I think he's going to have to pack his knives and go.

I finally posted the rest of my pictures from Austin. Here are a couple of selections, click that link for a lot more.

p + j

I had tacos

A nice sunset.

If you want to be part of my spectacular NCAA pool, you need to fill out a bracket here and then join the "calamityjake" group. Although the official prize for winning is mere pride, I will buy the winner a beer at the bar near my house, where they serve dollar drafts.

And I don't mean to tip my hand here, but I'm guaranteeing a pre-first round win for Monmouth.

Sometimes I look back at old chat logs and read conversations I've had with people. Not for any particular reason. Just thought you should know! I also sometimes read old posts I've made and find myself very entertained by my writing. Vanity is pretty sweet.

Also, and speaking of vanity, law school finals are in about 6 weeks and so this Friday marks the beginning of the twice-annual beard-growing competition. Some of you may recall the last competition (links one and two)--I'm hoping that this time more people compete. Of course it doesn't really matter, since I will thrash all comers. Still, it's more fun to dominate a field of dozens.

If you have thoughts on what kind of ridiculous facial hair I should go for after the competition is over, feel free to let me know in the comments.

Listen guys, I desperately need an mp3 of the theme song from John Basedow's Fitness Made Simple commercial. Maybe you're familiar with it?

Lyrics:

He's John Basedow,
He's gonna show you how,
To reach your potential,
And turn your, whole life around!
It's Fitness Made Simple! (unh-hunh!)
Made for real people! (ooh yeah!)
It's changing real lives!

So yeah, somebody has got to send me this mp3 (and if I could get it as a ringtone that would be SUPER DUPER). It's hard to see from just the words, which don't even rhyme, but it's amazing. Really really good.

Added bonus link: John Basedow tribute video!

Update: you can listen to the song here, and if anybody has Quicktime Pro I think they can save the file (and email it to me).