./janella.com

Ah another me site.  I heard about [43 Things] some time ago, but never really took a deep look at it.  It is a web site where you can list your hopes and dreams in life for all to see.  When you accomplish your listed item, you then check it off the list.  You can then add more.

The site goes hand-and-hand with [43 Places] where you can list the places you want to travel to or where you have traveled before.  On both of these sites you can see who you share the same dreams and aspirations with and share comments and some photos as well.

Check out my still growing list at [http://www.43things.com/person/sithkicker], which of course you can also access later through the [Me Sites] link to the right.

Just finished watching [Hitch] on DVD.  The movie stars the likeable Will Smith as a matchmaker for men.  Hitch puts his clients in the best possible situation to succeed in having the women of their dreams fall in love with them.  “The rest is up to you”, he says.

The movie has some pretty good pacing the cast (Smith, Kevin James, Eva Mendes, and Amber Valletta) are very likeable and funny in their own way.  There are predictable portions of the movie, but they are pulled off well.

[Must Love Dogs] on the other hand has two likeable actors in a poorly scripted movie.  We find Diane Lane playing a recently divorced woman who is being pushed by her family into the dating scene.  To help her along, one of her sisters posts Lane’s character’s profile on an online dating service.  It is through there she meets a slew of men, including the recently divorced John Cusack.  From there the fun begins.

What doesn’t work in this movie is the writing.  The actors are likeable enough, oozing charisma off the screen.  If only they had some smart words to say, as they would in real life, and not the dribble that pours out of their mouths, it would make this film a much more pleasant experience.

Hitch: B+

Must Love Dogs: D-

Anyone check out [http://maps.a9.com/], the Amazon map search engine?  If you haven’t, pop on over there and see if you can find where you live.  There may be a photo of your front door!

What?

The thing about A9’s map engine is that it shows street-level photos. Steven says he can see his place on the map, and even a local merchant walking on the street!  I guess a rolling van drives by taking digital images of the street.  So watch out!

Just downloaded [Fiona Apple’s O’ Sailor] from iTunes.  It’s good to hear her voice again, but the song sounds like something off her first album.  But hey, I’m craving some new stuff.

Speaking of new stuff, anyone hear the new [Goapele] cd?  Man, I like some of these artist’s web sites that allow you to hear album tracks.  Granted you can’t download them - listening to the album through a Flash player (I’m sure there is a way around this), but it’s good to know they want to make their music accessible.  (Ok, her site says her album comes out December 27th, but on cdnow.com it says it’s already out.  Confusing.)

Ok,  back to Madden 2006.  What?!?!?  Yeah, Farrah bought me a copy yesterday :)

Farrah and I went to San Francisco this morning, going to [Paper Source] to look at paper products (of course). While there we had breakfast at the local [Noah’s Bagels] on Fillmore. I’m not a big bagel person, but I had the Egg Mit with Turkey Sausage.  Not too bad.

After spending time at Paper Source, we headed down the street to Japantown to look at the [Nihonmachi Street Fair]. We arrived just in time to catch the taiko drum performance by the [San Francisco Taiko Dojo Rising Stars]. A quick walk around, then after some malasadas and a chicken rice bowl lunch, we headed back home.

Very nice day.

As you can see, I’m at it again.  I’m changing site pages here and there, trying to keep up with some technical skills.  I am hoping it helps me on my next job.

Next job?

Yeah.  If you don’t know already my time at my current position is short.  In about three months and a week I will be in the unemployment line.  It seems it’s cheaper to have a customer care workforce out of state then it is in state.  I understand it was a business decision, but it sucks nonetheless.  Suffice it to say I need to brush up on some Internet skills in hopes of landing another technical/Internet job.  We shall see.

I’m back to the rotating header bit.  Refresh the page to see what’s up!  My [LiveJournal] page will still be up, serving as a backup to this site now.  As I think I stated before, I enjoy the community aspect of sites like [LiveJournal] and [Yahoo!’s 360].  The only thing that turns me off is the lack of customization, though LiveJournal has more of this than Yahoo!

I may be trying some other new layouts here at [Janella.com].  If the page changes suddenly while you are on site, from one look to another, it’s just me f-ing around.

What Else

Since I haven’t posted much of late I’ll recap some of this weeks events.

Monday I found myself recovering from a long weekend of…shopping?!?!  Farrah, Yen and I went to the [San Francisco Giftcenter & Jewerlymart].  Let me just say this: if you aren’t interested in jewelry and other gifts you won’t like the place.  Well, let me rephrase that: they don’t have any cool electronic/computer stuff!  It was a total of about 8–10 hours of me watching Farrah and Yen look around.  It’s ok though.  I’m pretty tough (just as long as I had my coffee).  I took a couple of pictures and was able to try a new portable hard drive to transfer images to in the field.  I think it will come in handy on long trips, like to Hawaii.

Tuesday [Madden 2006] came out.    I’m not sure I’m going to buy it this year.  I mean are the improvements that great to justify the $49.99 price tag?  (Yeah, I ask myself that question every year).  Luckily Fry’s has it on sale until the 16th for $36.99 just in case I change my mind.

Two of the guys are work, Evan and Bert, got me watching [24]!  I mean really watching 24!  I rented, watched and finished season one in less than a week.  I’m almost done with season two which I find more interesting than the first.    If you don’t know what 24 is about pick up an episode and check it out.  BTW - Farrah will tell you how sick she is of hearing the title music from the DVDs for 24.

My other time has been spent working on getting the photo gallery back up.  It’s almost there.  Hopefully all will be well with it by the end of the month.

I received the following IM:

Lil' Gordon (8/1/2005 11:34:00 AM): i got my lisence
Lil' Gordon (8/1/2005 11:34:02 AM): license i mena
Lil' Gordon (8/1/2005 11:34:09 AM): how eva u spell it'

So congratulations Gordon on passing the driving tests.  And to everyone one else, watch out! (I’m joking…or am I?!?!?!)

I haven’t written anything of too much substance this month.  So let’s see what I can pull out of my butt right here.

First off, I added two new albums to the [Flickr] page.  The first is a long over due album from Skylar’s birthday celebration in May.  The photos were taken with the Sony T-1, before I got my Nikon:

I’ll need to go down and take some more photos of the kids, as well as Scott and Stefanie.  The other album added was during a Yahoo! Music on the Green.  The artist who was performing was [Brandi Carlile]  She did a fine job.  I’m not particularly happy with the photos I took of the event, wishing I was more aggressive, but that is something I need to work on.

This weekend not much happened.  Today Farrah and I tried the new [Lori’s Diner] in Cupertino.    We had a late lunch.  The service was a little slow.  Farrah ordered the Chicken Fried Steak (good) and I had the Southern Fried Chicken (good as well).  Our waitress did notice that our orders were taking a bit long, as the dreaded ’large party ahead of you’ was getting all the service.  So she gave us dessert for free!  We enjoyed a nice hot fudge sundae for a nice summer’s day.

I also managed to finish season one of 24, watching it because Bert and Evan couldn’t stop talking about it!?!?!?  Overall, season one was a satisfying season.  The characters and storyline does make me want to continue onto the next series, so season two of 24 is in my Netflix queue.

What else?  Well, a site update when sour when I tried to upgrade the Gallery application used for the site photos page.  I’m still recovering from that because I didn’t have a ’latest backup’ of the web site.  This should teach me to back up every week!  So those photos will be inaccessible for a while.

I guess that is it for now.  I’m going to head to bed.

I know it’s difficult to tell in the image above, but when searching for ‘janella’ on Yahoo! this web site is the first result now! This makes janella.com the #1 result on Google and Yahoo! now. Who was ranked #1 before on Yahoo!’s search engine?

The item currently listed as #8

"[ I Will Only Love You ] Open this result in new window

... Best Viewed In 1024 x 768. Name: Janella_Lee. Age: 19. ...

www.sweetangelmissyou.blogspot.com - More from this site - Save - Block"

You have 30 seconds to spare and Flash installed?  Then watch [this quick version of Pulp Fiction]

Also available:

• [Alien]
• [Jaws]
• [Titanic]

and others.

Ugh!  Bad update last night.  The [photos]janella.us is offline.  Any photos to see are only on the Photos@Flickr site.

It’s going to take sometime to rebuild stuff.

Ugh!

Met up with Dave yesterday to do our weekly coffee talk.  I had a chance to test out the replacement 50mm since I needed to get headshots of him for a web site.  Well, here they are:

Overall I think they turned out well.  I had to remember to enable the flash after the first shot, to fill out the shadows.  I think it worked out.  Man, I never noticed how much I like the 50mm.