Thursday was my birthday. I’m 24 years young, almost ready for the quarter life crisis (assuming I live to be 100). Thursday was a great day. Esther woke up early and made me pancakes and let me open my presents. Most of all, though, she kept my present a secret! It’s really hard for her to keep my presents secrets, she usually gives a hint or two and from that I can divine what the gift is. This year, no hints, so I was shocked when I opened the large generic box that we keep to hide presents in and found tissue paper holding a new 30 gig iPod. Amazing!

Thursday at work was super busy. No, I didn’t take the day off from work, I couldn’t. After my incredibly busy work day, my social day kicked off. I had to run home and take care of the dog and then drive, with mother-in-law in tow, up to Williamsburg. We met Esther and our friends Kristi, Casey, Adele and Dave at a cafe there and ate, talked and had a generally excellent time! A jazz band was performing while we were there and unbeknownst to Esther, she had picked the prime table. Come to think of it, she might have known, that sneaky devil.

Part way through the evening, Adele snuck up to band and requested that they sing me happy birthday and while I’m sure they cleared the performance rights, it was fun to be sang to, especially when it’s not the staff at Applebees.

When the band wrapped up their performance we all dispersed and I came home happy and tired. What a great birthday.

About 4 or 5 months ago, I had some issues with my ipod shuffle. I was working in the garden, and it just wouldn’t play. The amber and green lights would flash back and forth. I had a good idea that it wasn’t going to be good. After trying to do the traditional apple “five Rs”. But it wasn’t working. Esther and I found the apple contact information to have them send me a replacement and a few days later I got a replacement shuffle in the mail. All in all it was a good experience.

Today, however, Apple released the “iPod Shuffle Reset Utility“. Why, oh why could they not release this when they first released the shuffles. It would have made my experience that much better. Darn you apple!

I love getting 419 scams. Maybe if you help me Mr. alija zongo will give you a cut of the money too!

Click after the jump to read the whole thing.

Read more »

One of the best short films I have seen about graphic design in a while!

In being buddhist, I follow the Eight-fold path. One of the elements of the eight-fold path is right speech. Right speech has a variety of actions that fall under it including

Abstaining from lying, abstaining from divisive speech, abstaining from abusive speech, abstaining from idle chatter …
Wikipedia

Here is dilemma. I was asked by a coworker (who also is my superior), to give my opinion on a large project they he/she has been working a very long time on. In the time that he/she has been working on said large project, I have had to take up the other projects that we have been assigned.

If I give my honest and critical opinion, my increased level of work will continue, due to the fact that he/she will be busy making corrections based on my opinion. If I am not forthcoming (read: lie) about how I feel about the project, the work load will balance itself out in a few days.

Am I wrong for not expressing what I truely think? Do I tell my coworker what I really feel about the project?