./janella.com

I haven’t posted anything personal lately.  I’ve been a bit busy with little things here and there.  Plus most of the things I want to vent about deals with work.  If you’ve read some of my past posts you’ll know about reasons for my hesitation to vent about work.

Farrah and I have been planning our concerts to see this year.  So far on the agenda there is U2, Tori Amos and Jack Johnson.  The Tori ticket buy was just as hectic as the U2 buy, as described earlier.  Jack Johnson went without a hitch because it is a general admission event.

Last week, March 12th, we went to Santa Cruz to celebrate Rex’s and my birthday.  We had some great ribs, and crab for those who didn’t want ribs.  I packed away my share of ribs, stopping at 9 - though I could have continued.  There are some digital pictures of the dinner, but I want to wait and get the film photos developed as well.

Gordon’s birthday was also this month, the 9th I believe.  Sorry for the check mix up Gordon.  Guess I was thinking of those [Girl Scout Cookies] that Tessie still needs to send!

Ok, I couldn’t stand just having the Spring Fairy theme as an option.  So I implemented the [Theme Switcher] plug-in for WordPress.  In order to switch the look for [janella.com] simply choose from the pull-down menu on the right.  The default theme for now is the Spring Fairy theme.    Janella Default is the theme with the rotating banner images.  WordPress Default is the standard theme.  I’ll be adding more, tailoring the theme for  [janella.com] when possible.

Well, spring is just around the corner.  So I decided to use a spring theme on the site.  Don’t worry, it’s only temporary.  It’s a girlie-type theme, and since I’m the one who mostly updates the site I probably wouldn’t normally use this theme.  But it’s springtime.

I’ve been thinking of allowing different themes on the site.  What is a theme?  Well, for WordPress purposes a theme gives a blog a certain look.  WordPress has a theme changer plug-in that will allow a visitor to see the site in various ways.  I haven’t had a chance to work on implementing it, but I think I will in the future.

Anyway, back to doing some other work.  Hope everyone enjoys their weekend.

It looks as if [Friendster] has joined the blogging craze! I just did a test blog at http://giron.blogs.friendster.com/my_blog/ It seems simple enough.

The blogging engine is provided by [Six Apart] who also does [TypePad] and recently bought [livejournal.com] It looks like Six Apart is trying to take over all of the blogging community!

• The deal with Friendster provides them with a very good user base and exposure to revenue
• TypePad is a pretty successful subscription service
• livejournal.com is probably not too far behind in becoming (partially probably) a paid service. I think they will probably use livejournal.com more as a test environment, beta testing a few things out on that community then porting those changes over to TypePad and perhaps Friendster, depending on how that deal is structured.

All I have to say is that it’s interesting.

I haven’t been feeling too well, especially since last night. I had that itch behind my nose feeling on last Saturday. Sunday it was the same as well. I took my Claritin but no use. I think it’s a cold, because others at my work (in my row!) are sick. Great.

Visit the [Baby Name Wizard] for a visual historical look at your first name’s use. Just enter your name in the upper left corner, next to the flashing cursor. You will need to launch the link in Internet Explorer as it requires Java and some other Internet Explorer aspects. At least I wasn’t able to use it with FireFox. Link provided by Steven.

Insight / joke forwarded by Tage (and worth sharing):

A Spanish teacher was explaining to her class that in Spanish, unlike English, nouns are designated as either masculine or feminine.

• "House" for instance, is feminine: "la casa."
• "Pencil," however, is masculine: "el lapiz."

A student asked, “What gender is ‘computer’?” Instead of giving the answer, the teacher split the class into two groups, male and female, and asked them to decide for themselves whether “computer"should be a masculine or a feminine noun. Each group was asked to give four reasons for its recommendation.

The men’s group decided that “computer” should definitely be of the feminine gender (“la computer”), because:

1. No one but their creator understands their internal logic;
2. The native language they use to communicate with other computers is impossible to understand for everyone else;
3. Even the smallest mistakes are stored in long term memory for possible later retrieval;
4. As soon as you make a commitment to one, you find yourself spending half your paycheck on accessories for it.

(No chuckling… this gets better!)

The women’s group, however, concluded that computers should be Masculine (“el computer”), because:

1. In order to do anything with them, you have to turn them on;
2. They have a lot of data but still can't think for themselves;
3. They are supposed to help you solve problems, but half the time they ARE the problem;
4. As soon as you commit to one, you realize that if you had waited a little longer, you could have gotten a better model.

The men won.

… for Latin American Spanish (la computadora). In European Spanish, it is masculine (el ordenador).

When I found out the weblog wasn’t resolving, I looked on [wordpress.org] for answers. There I found a new version of Wordpress available. I downloaded and installed it. Now the thumbnails included in some posts (mainly the reviews) are not appearing. Hmmm… need to figure out how to fix this problem.

Oh well, at least the site is up and running again.

The weblog has been down most of the day due to database issues. Hopefully they’re resolved now.

Well, I’m no longer an AT&T Wireless customer. I’ve made the switch to Verizon. It wasn’t as painless as the [previous experience] for Farrah’s phone, but I think it went as smooth as possible.

The main selling points with Verizon for me were (1) the good rating for Nationwide reception, (2) the good rating for customer service, and (3) it wasn’t Sprint or AT&T. I’ve never considered T-Mobile or Cingular for service. I don’t have a good feeling about them, though Dave is on T-Mobile and he finds it good for his use.

Of course I wanted the latest and greatest phone. Problem was the Verizon stores don’t get them for a couple of months after their release, but they are available online. The phone I wanted was the [LG VX8000]. I wanted this particular phone because (1) it was new, (2) it was bigger than my current phone - which to me is a little small, and (3) it has a color screen. I didn’t necessarily want to take pictures with a phone, but it seems almost impossible to find a phone that doesn’t take pictures.

I tried to order the phone online, along with another phone for my mom. I kept running into a problem with porting over the two phones. It was ok to port a single phone/single phone number, but the ordering flow didn’t accommodate moving over two or more phones. Time call and test their customer service.

I got a really nice sales rep on the phone who understood what I was trying to do, and was able to answer any question I had without a single hesitation. Do this phone include Nationwide long distance? Yes. Do the IN-Network minutes apply to all phones in the family plan? Yes. How long does it take for the phone to be delivered to me? Two days by FedEx. Again, so the IN-minutes aren’t restricted to the primary phone? Yes, that’s correct. Simple.

A day and a half later the phones arrived at my work. I had them up and running later that night. I did run into a little delay on the phone in activating them. I was on hold for about a 30 minutes with apparently no end in site. But my subsequent call to customer services was another good experience.

I wanted to analyze our phone usage for all three phones to determine if were were on the right plan. The rep was helpful in suggesting the right minute plan and also said I could save a little more by being under the family plan. And if it didn’t work out switching was too difficult.

What this whole experience has boiled down to is just good interaction with a large company. As long as this level keeps up, and the phone services is good, I don’t see switching phone companies for a while. But if that comes to that I need to I do like that you can bring your phone number with you now. No more telling family and friends, “Hey my new number is….”

More random thoughts:

Here’s a list of things I’ve heard said or were said to me:

• "It's good to see some CEO's here today." - Said by a priest to his parishioners (as relayed by Evan - because I don't really go to church myself). CEO means Christmas Easter Only church goers.
• "Stuck in the pad." - Said by anonymous. Literal meaning: a fart that is trapped in a menstrual pad. Other meaning: thoughts that can't be converted to sentences properly (see also brain-fart).
• "No, there is no room for advancement." - Said by my supervisor, regarding movement into a different position.

Rating: ***1/2 (out of 5)

Quick Shot: A blind masseur is more than he seems.

What I liked about the movie:  There are about three or four subplots in this film, woven together with Zatoichi in the middle.  It’s done very well.  Plus you can rarely go wrong with Beat Takeshi.  Just remember, it does get a little bloody in this film.

What I didn’t like: It took me a while to get adjusted to the cinematography/look of the film.  It was very ‘clean’ and modern, not helping to take the viewer back in time which made it distracting.  Once the action started it was an after thought.  The dance number - yeah, there is a dance number - was a little out of place for me as well.  After reading the [IMDB trivia] about this movie, it made a little more sense.

Recently I saw a long preview commercial of NBC’s [The Office], which premieres in March. The original version, which you can watch on [BBCAmerica] or on [DVD], is a very hilarious comedy, with uncomfortable comments and silences being an important part of its charm. I don’t think the American version can compare, but I am just basing this on what I saw in the commercial. Then again, there is past evidence that translating shows from BBCAmerica hasn’t worked before:

• [Coupling] is a smartly written comedy about a couple and their friends. Sexual frankness is part of the reason for it's success, and it's lack of frankness might have been why it failed in translating in it's American version on [NBC]. Other people's comments on the [Coupling differences].
• [What Not To Wear] is a much better show than it's [TLC] counterpart. On BBCAmerica it is a half-hour show with two women helping out those who are inept when it comes to fashion/style. On TLC it is an excruciating hour of annoying hosts trying to help others. As you can tell I'm not a fan of the TLC hosts. They just don't have personality and lack the same frankness that the BBC hosts do. I know there are only a few shows of the BBC version, but it is a much better show overall.
• [Changing Rooms] had a change of titles when it made it's way across the Atlantic. Over here its American counterpart is called [Trading Spaces]. Trading Spaces is the most successful translation of the BBC shows I've mentioned. Some of the designers I enjoy (Vern and Genevieve), but again the BBC version has a better overall feel to me.