FlasshePoint

Ah, the middle of summer… the morning light is in flux… the queenly flux, eternal light…

Don’t know if I’ve ever brought this up here before. Seems like I must have, since I enjoy talking about my sleep patterns so much. Forgive me if this is a repeat. After over 4 years of blogging (and nearly 9 months of continuous daily blogging) it’s sometimes hard to remember what I’ve talked about and what I haven’t. Sure, there’s the Search function and all, but it’s hard to know what to search for, and too many entries come up no matter what I put in. And who wants to go back and read through that many entries? Certainly not me. They make me cringe.

Anyway, this is that weird time of summer when the days are getting shorter again. I kind of liked how it was back in June when the sun would come up really early. That way, when I woke up and saw the light, I could still pretend it was going to be a long time before the alarm was going to go off. (I set the alarm for 5:25a on most work days, so that I can go running. Or so that I can get up and do other things like avoiding running.) But now with the shorter days, it’s getting so that if I wake up and there’s some light, the alarm is going to go off real soon. And then I can’t fall back asleep.

When I wake up in the night/morning, I don’t like to know what time it is (even though my superpower usually lets me know). I always like to think there’s plenty of time left before I have to get up. This is especially easy to do in the winter when the sun rises long after I get up. I can more easily fool myself and my exquisitely honed senses. But in the spring and summer, it’s vexing. I hate thinking it’s the middle of the night and then opening my eyes and seeing the light. I have blackout blinds in my bedroom, but that doesn’t stop the light from poking in around the edges. Plus I usually have the bedroom door open at night and light seeps in from other parts of the house.

I especially don’t like those early light summer mornings on weekends, when it’s been light for awhile and I know I should be up. Makes it hard to rationalize sleeping in. I wish we had more cloudy days in Colorado, but cloudy mornings are even rarer than cloudy afternoons.

At least the pre-alarm phantom music seems to have stopped. So either something in my psychological makeup has changed and the audio hallucinations have decided to abate for the time being, or it really was something like my neighbor playing music loud in the car as she left for work in the morning. The neighbor’s house was foreclosed on some months ago, so no one has been living there for awhile.

Okay, I really should be going to bed soon…

Latre.

Jogged Today: Yes (@ 64°F)
Songs That Came Up On The iPod While Jogging:

• “Get Your Hands Off My Woman” (The Darkness)
• “Tangled Up In Plaid” (Queens Of The Stone Age)
• “Wooden Legs (Reprise)” (Trotsky Icepick)
• “This Scene Is Dead” (We Are Scientists)
• “First Of The Gang To Die” (Morrissey)
• “The Song (We Go)” (Ultravox)
• “Michael Caine” (Madness)

Pet Peeve of the Day: People asking me if I’ve seen The Dark Knight yet. No, I haven’t. Just because it’s the movie I’m most looking forward to, that doesn’t mean that I went to the midnight showing last night. I’m getting too old for that. Heck, I may not even see it this weekend, as there are some roadblocks to that (work issues and other things). But I don’t mind. Anticipation makes it all the sweeter. I also sort of want to watch Batman Begins again first, and I just got the Blu-Ray of that. And if I can talk N into going with me, which looks likely, she’s never seen BB and would want to see it first also. So it may be awhile before I can answer “yes” to everyone. It’s nice to have things to look forward to.

Poignant Search Term Of The Day That Led To This Blog: “alien probing games”. Note: 35% of the searches lately have been either “taco bell coupon” or “taco bell coupons”. And this just started the last few days, even though that blog entry has been up for weeks. Anyone know why people are suddenly searching online for Taco Bell coupons?

Question for my readers: Do you tip for takeout? And if so, how much? I always tip for delivery or dining in, of course, but I’m always unsure what to do in the various takeout situations. Tipping didn’t used to be much of an issue for me. I’ve always been a generous guy and would usually tip (too much) for pretty much every circumstance. But lately with the economy the way it is, the high price of food and gas, and an uncertain job situation, I’ve been pinching my pennies and making lifestyle changes.

Say, for example, you call your local pizza joint and order a pizza for takeout. You go down there to pick it up. There’s a tip jar on the counter. If you pay by credit card, there’s a line for tips on the slip. What do you do? I usually don’t add anything if paying by credit card, though sometimes I’ll add $1 if I’m in a good mood. If paying by cash, I’ll usually throw the change in the tip jar. And then there’s the case where you order takeout from a chain like Domino’s or Black Jack, and there’s no tip jar on the counter, and yet they’ll still have that tip line on the credit card slip. I figure that in this scenario, it’s not unreasonable to throw in a little extra money above the price of the food, because I called in the order and it was prepared in advance.

Or what about when it’s your turn for Treat Day at work and you phone in a big order of breakfast burritos to the local Mexican joint the night before? I figure if the order is there and waiting (and still hot) in the morning at the time you specify, you should probably kick in some extra dough. But how much? If the order consists of different types of burritos, and the workers labeled each one, then that probably deserves some extra bills as well.

Okay, but what about when you’re just dashing into your local Chipotle or Starbucks or some chain place like that for a quick burrito or coffee or something. You stand in line at the counter. You make your order, you get your food, you leave. There’s no other contact with the employees. Do you tip in that situation? I don’t think Chipotle, for example, puts a tip line on their credit card receipts, but they do usually have that tip jar out. And sometimes I’ll throw some change in there if I pay in cash and get some back. But it doesn’t feel right. It almost feels like tipping at a grocery store or 7-11 or Target or something, even though I guess the various food-preparers involved go to a little extra trouble to serve you personally than your standard store clerk. But you certainly don’t tip at fast food joints like McDonald’s or Taco Bell, so why should you tip at these slightly more upscale eateries? Even though I just don’t feel the burning need to tip in those situations, I’m sometimes willing to tip when there’s a tip jar present if the people are pleasant to me. But with all the people involved in preparing the order, how do I know who the tip is even going to?

It gets even more complicated when you go to a restaurant that is not really fast food, like Chili’s or California Pizza Kitchen or some place like that, and where you didn’t call in the order and you have to wait a little while for your takeout. I always feel a bit odd standing or sitting there waiting 10-15 minutes for my order. Again, there’s no tip jar but there is that line on the credit card slip. I don’t order takeout from those types of places very often, but in the past I don’t think I’ve added much of a tip, if any.

If it’s some place I go to often where they may start to recognize me, like the local pizza joint in the example above, I’m more likely to tip in the hopes of the food being ready faster or prepared better the next time. Or to prevent the employees from spitting or peeing on it the next time.

I’m sure I could look up the opinions of numerous anonymous web denizens and etiquette mavens, but I’m more interested in what my buds do. So, how do y’all handle the takeout tipping dilemma?

Latre.

Poignant Search Term Of The Day That Led To This Blog: “what do roses smell like”.

Katy Laveaux and Johnny McCain
Used to play on the hallowed ground
Back in the time you could find peace of mind
And not be down
Johnny McCain, a growing boy
He never felt this way before
He told pretty Kate they were now on a date
As he pulled her to the hallowed floor
She said “That ain’t no way to behave now, Johnny
That ain’t no way to behave
You got a dirty mind but I think you’re kind
And it ain’t no way to behave”

Katy Laveaux and Johnny McCain
They got married in the spring
Two little boys, one little girl
A little bit of everything
He’s working one night, she gives him a fright
And pins him up against the door
She looks in his eyes, he’s touching her thighs
As she pulls him to the kitchen floor
He said “That ain’t no way to behave now, Katy
That ain’t no way to behave
You got a dirty mind but it sure feels fine
And it ain’t no way to behave”
She said “That ain’t no way to behave now, Johnny
That ain’t no way to behave
I’ll be your loving slave ’til I’m in my grave
And it ain’t no way to behave”

–”Ain’t No Way To Behave” by Ian McNabb, from his 2002 solo album The Gentleman Adventurer*, which I just recently downloaded off of eMusic. (Note that eMusic says the release date was 2006, but it really came out in 2002 originally.) I am not making this up. I couldn’t find the lyrics online, so the above is my own interpretation, but I think it’s right. McNabb sure likes putting little twists into the last verse of his story songs, and this one is certainly no exception. I’m having trouble figuring out the point of it, but that’s not why I posted it…

(McNabb was the main guy in the 80’s band Icicle Works, whose big hit in America was “Birds Fly (Whisper to a Scream)”. Since going solo, I think he aspires to be the British Neil Young, even going so far as to have Crazy Horse backing him up on an album. Despite that, or maybe because of it, I generally like his stuff a lot. * - The Gentleman Adventurer is a great album title! It fits McNabb well. It also sounds like an album title Bill Nelson would use. It would make a great band name too.)

Latre.

Jogged Today: Yes (@ 62°F)
Songs That Came Up On The iPod While Jogging:

• “Master” (Graham Smith)
• “Live For Now” (Velvet Crush)
• “The Popular Choice” (The Wonder Stuff)
• “Nobody Knows” (Jason Falkner)
• “Homeland” (Stellastarr*)
• “Not Waving But Drowning” (Julian Cope)
• “No One’s Watching My Limo Ride” (Loud Family)

Pet Peeve of the Day: I got cut off in traffic on the way home today by a blond woman driving a convertible BMW. She then proceeded to make several turns without using her turn signal. The cool thing was that “Pampered Pop Star Millionaire Miserabilist Blues” (from the McNabb album above) was playing on my car stereo at the time.

Poignant Search Term Of The Day That Led To This Blog: “phobia of spines”.

This is the week of E3, the Electronic Entertainment Expo, being held in Los Angeles. It’s the big American video game trade show of the year, and it’s when all the video game companies make their upcoming hardware and software announcements. Many sites, like Joystiq, are publishing reports from the show floor.

One of the big announcements was that Sony is going live with its video download service tonight, with support from many major studios. So now you can download SD and HD movies and TV shows directly from the PlayStation Network (PSN) to your PlayStation 3 hard drive and watch them from either the PS3 or the PlayStation Portable (PSP). There are different pricing options for renting and purchasing. Seeing as how it takes me a very long time to download game or firmware updates from PSN due to my apparently slow wireless and DSL connections, I don’t see this as a service I’m going to be using any time soon. The thing would be downloading all night. I’ll stick with NetFlix. But it’s an interesting idea and undoubtedly the wave of the future.

It looks like Microsoft and Sony had a lot of interesting things to announce, but Nintendo not so much. They’re resting on their Wii and DS laurels. There’s still not much in the way of interesting third-party games coming out for the Wii, and their announcements do nothing to nudge me any closer to purchasing a Wii. The most interesting (and unexpected) Nintendo announcement was the unveiling of Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars for the DS. Nintendo finally gets a GTA game, and it’s on the DS instead of the Wii! Bizarre. It’s likely I’ll be picking that up when it comes out, especially if the gameplay and use of the stylus is innovative.

Which brings me to a Pet Peeve of the Day: The useless divisions in video game fandom. People, especially younger people, seem incredibly invested in supporting a single company, to the point of endlessly slagging the others. Really, you people reading this who have no exposure to the video game world (probably most of you) wouldn’t believe how strong the vitriol is. I’ve never quite understood it. If I could afford to, and had time to play more games than I do, I would own a Nintendo Wii and a Microsoft Xbox 360 as well as my Sony PS3, Sony PSP, Nintendo DS, and Microsoft Xbox (I recently traded in my PS2, since my PS3 will play my PS2 games). The main reason I bought a PS3 instead of a 360 or a Wii was because of the Blu-Ray drive. The second reason is that despite the lack of games, it seemed to me like it had the most potential and longest lifespan. That doesn’t mean I don’t see the value in the other machines. The 360 has an incredible library of games and the Wii has some really innovative and fun gameplay. I did actually consider the 360 before I made my PS3 purchase, because it was also going to get GTA4 and Bionic Commando like the PS3. And though the PSP is a more powerful handheld machine than the DS, I still find myself playing the DS more often because of the interesting design and because there are more of the kinds of games I like to play on it.

But you see a lot of very immature and vulgar rantings in the forums and blogs and such about how one particular box is the best and the rest are crap. It doesn’t make any sense. It takes brand loyalty too far. They’re all good systems. It’s like someone’s choice of a video game system is a reflection of who they are, and so they have to defend it to the death. Well, we are talking about teenagers here, for the most part, and they’re still trying to find their identity.

I pay particular attention to the Sony announcements because my main machine is the PS3. But I also keep track of what’s interesting in the other worlds. It’s all connected. Someday there may be a killer must-have 360-exclusive game that will make me run right out and buy a 360 system. Heck, I bought both a PS2 and an original Xbox. And if Wii’s ever become readily available, I may pick one up to use as a party machine. It’s all good, as someone once said.

So, can’t we all just… oh, never mind.

Latre.

Jogged Today: Yes (@ 69°F), though it was a short run with no tunes since the iPod battery was dead. It’s been awhile since I last ran because I managed to pull some leg muscles or something when I was doing yardwork, pulling weeds, on the 4th of July weekend. Yes, I’m pathetic.

Poignant Search Term Of The Day That Led To This Blog: “hate my prius”.

In the comments to a recent post on DMR’s “stuff reduction” blog detailing his CD storage solution, a discussion ensued about how I store my 4000+ compact discs. Always on the lookout for posts for my own blog, I thought I’d go into more detail here and post some pictures on Flickr. It’s so much easier to talk about it when there is visual reference material.

A number of years ago, I went through my entire CD collection (probably more than 3500 CDs at that point) and replaced all the jewel boxes with double pocket plastic (poly) CD sleeves (Prod Code SCDDPJ) from Bags Unlimited. The price per sleeve is reasonable when you buy them in massive amounts, which is what I had to do. The replacement job took several months, but it was worth it. I was able to sell the jewel boxes for a nickel a piece to a guy who ran a music transcription service and apparently had a lot of CDs of data to send out. I doubt I could find a deal like that again any time soon. A mutual friend who was in the media storage business hooked us up. Anyway, here is how the CDs go into the sleeves (click on the photo to go to the Flickr page, where you can view it in larger sizes):

The sleeves have a resealable flap, which initially has a white plastic strip over the sticky part that you peel off and throw away. I put the CD booklet and the CD in the front part of the sleeve and the tray card in the back. The sleeve is not quite wide enough to fit the tray card with both spines spread out, so I have to fold one of the spines over. It’s nice to have one spine showing, since it makes the CD easier to find on the CD shelves - I usually don’t have to pull out the CD to identify it. Some of the bags, especially in the early days, varied in width and some of them were too narrow to have even one spine not folded over. I think quality control wasn’t too good. The last few batches I’ve bought have been better though. So, some of the CDs don’t have any spines showing, which does make them hard to identify. Whenever I run across those in my listening or ripping, I’ll replace them with a newer, wider sleeve. I’m thinking it’s been maybe 10 years since I did that replacement task, and the CDs don’t seem to have suffered any degradation from being stored in the poly bags.

Once I replaced all the jewel boxes, that reduced the shelf space required to something like one fourth or one fifth of what it was. Before the replacement project, my father had made me a series of wall units for storing the CDs, which eventually got up to four and covered my entire dining room wall. Once I converted to the plastic sleeves, I was able to keep it down to one unit. I still have the other three sitting in my basement unused. Here’s what the collection looks like these days (again, click on it to get to the original larger photo on Flickr):

The CDs are in order by artist, and in chronological order within the artist. In order to facilitate identifying the CDs, I cut up some comic book storage backing boards, pasted some A-Z labels on them, and stuck them into the wall units in the appropriate places. Even though it looks pretty full, the CDs are not packed very tightly and there’s lots of room for more. Plus there’s some empty space at the end where I store mix CD-Rs people have sent me, spare jewel boxes, and other music-related paraphernalia. I don’t anticipate ever filling up the one wall unit and needing to bring one of the other ones back up. I’m focusing more on (legal) downloads these days (mostly from eMusic) and trying not to buy many CDs. And I’m also trying to get rid of the ones I never listen to. The collection grows very slowly, if at all, these days.

Somehow, I think this is a problem very few people have. Don’t let your kids grow up to be collectors!

Latre.

Poignant Search Term Of The Day That Led To This Blog: “frozen vending machine has no buttons”.

Movie Review Sunday!

I don’t have any movies to review today. Haven’t seen any this week, at home or in the theater. I do have a backlog of flicks I’ve been meaning to mention, but I don’t feel like getting into any of those now. They are fading from memory.

So… hmmm… what else to talk about?

Pet Peeve of the Day: The State of Colorado. Well, remember back in this post, I talked about how I applied for a permit to allow me to travel in an HOV lane in my single occupancy Prius Hybrid? Well, I got a letter from the State of Colorado on Friday telling me that I’ve been granted the permit. Hooray!

The only problem is that apparently in order to get the permit, I have to apply for an ExpressToll transponder. This is supposedly because the single-occupancy Hybrids are going to be allowed in the HOT (High Occupancy Toll) lanes of I-25 and not the HOV (High Occupancy Vehicle) lanes. The transponder is supposed to tell the toll machines that I have the permit and am exempt from the toll. But you still have to give them your credit card and put the $35 on the transponder and all that. This is sure a lot of trouble to go to. I am especially miffed because I anticipate like never wanting to use the HOV/HOT lanes on I-25. I never drive on the Valley Highway during rush hour. I only wanted the permit so that I could drive in the Santa Fe HOV lane when I go to visit my dad in his nursing home after work. Santa Fe Drive is like a parking lot during the rush hour, but a parking lot with very large trucks every third vehicle. Being able to go in the HOV lane would speed the drive immensely and allow me to spend more time with my dad.

But I don’t want to have to get the frickin’ transponder. Gad, I wonder how many other Hybrid owners this will discourage from actually going through with obtaining the permit? (Hopefully all of the Hybrid SUV owner.)

This is just another typical example of the way the Colorado state government runs things. And it’s far from the worst. As a taxpayer, I’m very frustrated. Here it took them three years to actually get this Hybrid HOV thing off the ground (it’s been conceptually legal that long, they just didn’t have the permits thing worked out), and then they make it more complicated than it needs to be.

Latre.

Bonus Pet Peeve of the Day: I haven’t had much time to download third-party apps to my iPhone yet, though I have tried out a few free ones. One of the apps I installed is actually an Apple app called “Remote” that allows you to control the iTunes library on your computer through the WiFi connection on the iPhone/computer. This is very cool because I can pipe iTunes into my living room stereo via this wireless Logitech dongle thing I have. I hate to have to go running to the computer to switch songs or albums or playlists, so having the iPhone act as a remote would be fantastic. Unfortunately I can’t get the thing to work. The iPhone and the application pairs with iTunes and the PC okay over the WiFi network, but when I go to actually choose the library on the iPhone, it times out and says it can’t locate it. And yet it was able to locate it enough to pair with it in the first place.

According to the Apple discussions forum, it appears that other people are having this same problem, and the only commonality is that their iTunes libraries are stored on external hard drives like mine. Since my library is so huge, I don’t feel like moving it temporarily to the internal hard drive to test this theory. Guess I’ll just watch the webs and see what other people come up with or what Apple says.

Update: Wouldn’t you know it? Right after I posted this entry, I tried the Remote application again, and it worked. Must’ve been because I rebooted the computer or rebooted iTunes or something. Anyway, it’s totally awesome!!

Poignant Search Term Of The Day That Led To This Blog: “i’m becoming a hermit and i like it”.