who uses real wooden pencils anymore? imagine my surprise to see that the supply room is stocked with #2 pencils. seriously, who in the tech sector still uses a wooden pencil. it seems to outdated… that didn’t stop me from picking up two pencils, though. they came pre-sharpened so i started using them right away. it’s been a few weeks now and they are pretty dull so i went to sharpen them. but then i realized that i don’t have a pencil sharpener because, you know, who uses wooden pencils anymore?!

but for someone to stock pencils means that there must be a pencil sharpener in the building somewhere…so i went to seek out the pencil sharpener.

maybe it’s in the supply room? nope.

maybe one of the ASIC machine supporters have one. nope.

i was just about to give up and i checked my mail. it looks like there was actually quite a bit of junk mail in my mailbox so i cleared it out and recycled it. then, next to the recycle bin i spotted it. it looks like it was made in the 80s but it still worked so i stuck my pencil in it and it sharpened away. now…i just need to find some paper to write on…

it is only in the past few days that i’ve become all too aware of what kind of food i’m eating on a daily basis. well, it’s alarming i guess because i’m remembering what i’m eating. so looking back now, the taco and quesadilla dinner plus the taco bell lunch day might not have been one of my shining dietary moments. is it bad when i consider a lee’s sandwich lunch a healthy lunch? i mean, they are pretty healthy, right? there are vegetables in my sandwich. i have to say that maybe the sandwiches were the most healthy things i ate this week. and now that i’m thinking about them, i’m starting to get very hungry…

so starting next week (because christi’s out travelling this week) i’m going to try and eat healthier. maybe i should start by trying not to eat quite so much fast food. i have eaten at l&l a few times already this week and i’m sick of them.

*sigh* the next thing you’re going to be hearing from me is that i need to exercise more or something. when is this silliness going to stop? i kid, of course. i would never say that i need to exercise more.

speaking of moving more, i’ve been working on the yard off and on the last few weeks. i’ve tried to weed the front yard and it’s looking a lot better. there’s a huge pile of trimmings that i need to put out for the city to pick up. next project: the backyard.

the backyard has been overrun with weeds and the rose bushes that i thought i had trimmed to satisfaction are actually out of control! i’m going to take a pretty aggressive prune to them and we’ll see what they have to say to that.

kristy lee, you were by far the most attractive of the bunch. some say stunningly beautiful. though i feel like your performances have been getting better each week, they just didn’t seem up to par with the rest of the super talented bunch. you’ve had your exposure and country seems to be your niche. not quite my cup of tea, but you have a pretty decent shot at it.

you broke the top 10 too, so you’ll be touring around the country with the american idol tour. who knows, maybe this year i’ll try to go to the concert. your farewell performance to simon was fantastic, you’ve got some spunk in ya.

as far as the rest of the bunch, my favorite keeps changing. i’m torn between david cook and brooke white. i think both are fantastic in their own right, but it’s hard for me to imagine that brook has never seen an R-rated movie. how does that happen??

david cook’s version of always be my baby was fantastic. he is by far the most original and creative of the bunch. it’s down to 6 now. each elimination at this point is going to be a surprise.

whoever casted randi as a beauty in this show was out of their mind. beauty? hardly! when compared to hawaiian tropic models and playboy models, randi doesn’t even compare to the other beauties. in what i consider to be ugly both outside and in, i’m glad that she’s out of the running.

sure, the girl’s got some spunk, but they should have found spunk in someone who truly deserved to be called a beauty. i think it just goes against the namesake of the show! speaking of miscasting parts, whoever decided that it was fair to have greg a gay geek compete in the show was wrong. yes, i know, that it’s probably a twist that they wanted to add, but i think that the traditional role of beauty and the geek were not properly represented. i feel bad for greg for having to be stuck with randi, though. he added some great comedy into the show.

i can’t believe that it is already time to air the season finale of eli stone. in what is probably this season’s best dramedy, eli stone has managed to capture a soft spot for my heart. it feels a little ally mcbeal-ish with some of the insanity that comes about in the law offices, but at the end of the day eli stone takes hold of you and opens up a world of possibility.

yes, some of the storylines were a little hard to follow and watch early on, but the last few episodes where eli has really started to come to grips with his visions have really tapped into the potential of the show. sure, the silliness of george michael references is a little overboard. sure, the fact that every episode is named after a george michael song seems a little suspect, but this show is not a vehicle for george michael to kickstart his career. that’s just a happy consequence.

if you have not seen the show at all, go watch them. it is fantastic and worth every minute…even with commercials.

POS as in Point Of Sale. i was at a mexican restaurant last night and i made my order and the windows-based touch screen register crashed. the register application failed and they couldn’t figure out how to relaunch the app. they get double clicking the icon and nothing would happen. this went on for a few minutes and then they called the owner of the restaurant.

the owner informed them that they should just double click the icon, but still, no go.

finally, they decided to reboot the register and after a fairly lengthy reboot, the cash register was working again.

you know, cash registers are one of those things that you just don’t expect to fail and once they do you have no idea what in the world to do. while waiting for my change, i ate half of my dinner that i was originally planning to eat back at home. i enjoyed their tacos though, they were delicious!

i know it’s a long time coming, but i’ve finally decided to start watching scrubs. yes, yes, i know that they are potentially in their last season and the show has been on now for 7 seasons, but i just couldn’t get into the show before. i think that it was just too off-the-wall for me, but now that i’ve started watching it, i’m really digging it.

i’ve just watched the first season and it’s been pretty good so far. what used to be too weird for me with all of the fantasy sequences is part of what makes the show special for me now. one season down, six more to go!

i usually try to stay with the upgrades of wordpress for the blog. most of the time they are security fixes so it’s a good thing. wordpress 2.5, however, has significant changes in its admin console. these changes have made blogging and managing the blog more difficult for me. it just doesn’t seem as intuitive as it used to be for me.

after my blog software upgrade is complete and it seems to be in working order, i upgrade cindy’s blog next. i’m reluctant to go with the upgrade to cindy’s blog, however, because i’ve found that blogging in the new software is just more difficult and i don’t think that i would want to inflict that upon other users just yet. i think i’ll ride out 2.5 for a while and see if they make more changes to the admin after some user feedback.

since the auto-saving draft feature of wordpress, i don’t think that i’ve seen any other changes to the blog that make it worth the while to upgrade. i guess i should read up on security fixes to see if any security holes have been fixed as a result of this major version upgrade.

my biggest gripe with the new layout is that i have to scroll down to make changes to the category that the blog falls under. forcing the user to scroll to access basic blog functions is a major UI issue in my opinion. there’s just so much wasted real estate at the top of the screen, too. can’t the space be better utilized?

desktoptopia is a wallpaper changing application. sure, this has been done before, but what makes this particular program difference from others is the selection of wallpapers. i think that this set of wallpapers are pretty compelling. there were some other programs that i’ve tried that have wallpapers that just aren’t that attractive.

what’s cool about this is that i have it changing my wallpaper every 5 minutes. it’s a nice change of pace and from what i hear it is now freely available where once it used to be a paid product. there’s a windows and mac version out and though the windows version seems to be in beta, it has been working for me just fine. the mac version feels a little more polished, though.

after doing a lot of research, i finally decided on an espresso machine. there seems to be a huge sea of options and it was difficult trying to figure out which way to go. it seems that one of the high end brands of automatic espresso machines is jura-capresso. part of what is important for an automatic espresso machine is the ability to produce consistent espresso in an easy fashion.

i was torn between a few brands, but after reading reviews online decided that i would try out the jura-capresso e8. there were some saeco models that i had considered as well, but after doing the research, i felt the jura-capresso model would be the one.

now, mind you, the company offers two models at this level, the E8 and the E9. the difference? one has a black plastic exterior, the other a silver plastic exterior. for $100 more, you can get the silver plastic model. i opted against it.

so we’ve had the espresso machine for about a week now and i’ve been making mochas and lattes with it. the one thing that i will have to say about this model is that consistency is pretty good between brews of coffee. i’ve been pretty happy with the performance of the espresso machine in those regards.

i have also ordered a frothing pitcher and a thermometer so that i can more easily gauge when the milk is properly steamed and frothed. my big fear is oversteaming the milk and having it curdle.

now the next step is to figure out how to make pearl milk tea with this thing…