priorities

Entertaining link of the moment (which I think I linked here from before but not sure): FedEx Furniture. It is the story of a guy named Jose who could not afford furniture so he built some of out FedEx boxes and tubes - literally. It's an entertaining and fun read.

I am in a similar but not-so-desperate situation concerning my own dwelling. At the moment my bed is an inflatable mattress, which by the way is quite comfortable. My computer desk is a tiny little wooden table I bought at Wal-Mart and my television stand is a plastic bin I used for moving when I traveled to Florida.

I basically need the following things at this point: A bed, a "real" computer desk, a table, a stand for the television and two more chairs.

The reason I haven't gone out to get these things is for two reasons. The first is cost. Good furniture isn't cheap, and it's better to save up a few bucks to get the better stuff - because I've seen what happens when people buy cheapo furniture and it isn't pretty.

The second reason is that at present I don't have anyone to help move the furniture into the apartment. Yes it's true I could go to a local Rent-A-Whatever and have it delivered, but everyone knows you pay way too much for way too little in those places.

The solution is to order furniture you put together, have it delievered and build it yourself. A good manufacturer is IKEA. I have built items from them before and the materials are sturdy and good.

A few examples of what I'm probably going to buy:

Aneboda (bed frame)

Klubbo (tv bench which I'll probably get in black)

Tovik (corner desk)

Ingo (dining table)

Stefan (chair of which I'll buy two in pine color)

The price adds up when you put all this stuff together, but fortunately it can be bought over time. The materials are decent and the manuals are easy to follow. No, this is not top-notch last-forever Ethan Allen furniture, but hey, it fits the budget and looks good. What more can you ask for.

Once I get a few more things paid off I'll spring for some of this stuff.. unless I get the sunroof for my truck first. Decisions, decisions. 🙂

060930

menga dot net is made of people

For those who I completely lost on the reference (since the site as of this posting is newly adorned in pea soup green) concerning the title of this entry, it's a joke on Soylent Green.

By the way, if the site looks messed up, just hit F5 to refresh.

Why the change? I was getting tired of the black/white/gray look thing.

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I'm fairly certain I will be famous in one way or another

As if it weren't enough that I'm featured as a demonstration artist for Alesis, and for the fact there are tons of clicks going thru to this site per the production stuff from Nerd Punk, now I'm doing videocasts and podcasts PC Mechanic. You can hear my first podcast here if you like, where I complain about Microsoft Internet Exploder Explorer 7. I yap for about twelve minutes.

Soon enough a vidcast will also be shot (this Monday actually) for IE 7 as well. Will I complain as much? Don't know. Maybe.

I might do some personal podcasts here later on. Maybe. I would do video stuff but won't due to the fact it takes up a huge chunk of server space, and for the fact the same effect can be given in audio.

060930

twenty shy of fifty

The plan this morning was simple. Head over to D.D. for a coffee, then head to McDonald's for two breakfast burritos, then head up to Inverness.

After getting my coffee, the Micky D's I went to in Tampa was closed. At 5:30am. They're supposed to open at 5am.

I headed over to another one a few miles away. No problem. They were open. Got my burritos.

The plan was then to get on to I-275 North. That didn't happen. I ended up on 589 instead. A toll highway.

Ugh.

Long story short: I hopped off an exit where there was a fifty cent toll. Two lanes, neither of which had attendants. They were the "throw your change in the bucket" kind of automated thing-a-ma-doo's only.

I looked in my cupholder and I only had thirty cents in nickels.

S--t.

Then I read the sign that says you'll be fined $100.00 if you run the toll gate, as all metro area toll gates are equipped with cameras that will snap a photo of your license plate if you run it without paying, then later you get a nice little note in the mail with a fine.

Fuggit.

I stopped at the gate, threw in the thirty cents I had and ran the gate. There wasn't any up/down bar thing to wait for so I ran right thru.

There are three possible outcomes from this:

a. The change processor hopefully "thought" about all those nickels long enough for me to get out of the camera's view, thereby escaping scot free.

b. The camera did get a shot of my plate, but hopefully will note that an attempt to pay is on record - and possibly may waive the fine.

c. I'll get a $100 fine in the mail in about a month.

I'm betting it's either A or C. Which one do you think it will be?

Today's lesson learned is this: Always have a roll of quarters at the ready in your glove box, else you run the risk of running a toll gate like I did this morning.

I'll be changing a ten dollar bill sometime today to do just that. 🙂

060929