Mitch (has a blog)

"Telephone" - Lady Gaga & Beyoncé

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:09:32 -0700

Summed up:

Gaga is in jail for lighting her boyfriend on fire with her boob-fireworks in Bad Romance.
Nice uniform.
Oh look, Gaga is on the radio.
Are her sunglasses made of cigarettes?
Gaga is a lesbian!
Product Placement Alert! Virgin Mobile!
Now her hair is made of XXL beer cans?
Catfight!
That jacket is the least form-fitting thing Gaga has ever worn.
Nice bedazzled bra.
Obligatory group dancing/seizure having.
Crime scene tape instead of clothes! Genius!
Product Placement Alert! Virgin Mobile!
Beysus feeds Gaga.
Some talk about a cow. And a burger. And a broken mirror.
Beysus drives like a maniac, Gaga takes polaroids.
Beysus poisons her man-hubby.
Gaga is in the kitchen (she IS a woman!)
Beysus borrowed Britney’s outfit from the Circus video.
Let’s make a sandwich!
Kitchen dance party!
Gaga shows us how to make a poison in 30 minutes or less.
Man-hubby steals all Beysus’ honey. Dies.
Most of the people in the diner die.
Gaga and Beysus dress up like Miss America and do some thriller-esque dancing.
Beysus has a seizure in her Circus outfit.
Thriller dancing continues.
Gaga is a leopard.
PUSSY WAGON.
Gaga and Beysus are wearing bathrobes made of see-through fabric.
They drive away together in the Pussy Wagon.
They’re both lesbians!
To be continued.

To jailbreak or not to jailbreak

Tue, 09 Mar 2010 21:05:00 -0700

That is the question. I got an iPhone 3GS a couple of months ago and I absolutely love it. Before that I had an iPod Touch which I had jailbroken, and I fell in love with the themes, and SBSettings turned out to be a huge part of my everyday usage. When I went to my iPhone, while everything was shiny and new and amazing, I missed SBSettings.

There are lots of reasons to jailbreak the iPhone, and lots of reasons not to:

Slow downs.
For a first gen iPhone, having these unofficial apps kind of bog down the system. It’s not immediately noticeable, but contacts take a second longer to load (with Cyntact installed), and the home screen has a little delay (CyDialer Cydget). It’s all bearable, but fact of the matter is your phone gets slower.

Vulnerabilities.
If you install OpenSSH and don’t immediately change your root password, you’re in for some worms that have recently started floating around. This is as of right now; who knows what holes are found as the platform becomes more popular. Some argue that the iPhone by itself might sport vulnerabilities, but having the phone jailbroken only adds to those issues.

Hassles while upgrading, possible bricking.
Jailbreaking is risky business. You always have to watch out for updates from Apple, and keep a ear out for notices from the dev team. There’s also a considerable wait involved after Apple releases an OS update to the time the hacker tools are ready. You might even brick your iPhone.

Jailbreak, yes or no?

I redesigned miiitch.com. You should go check it out.

Tue, 09 Mar 2010 12:03:51 -0700

I redesigned miiitch.com. You should go check it out.

Breakfast.

Tue, 09 Mar 2010 08:54:00 -0700

Breakfast.

First Impressions

Mon, 08 Mar 2010 23:32:30 -0700

Today I bought a Canon Rebel XSi DSLR. Not exactly on a whim, since I’ve wanted this camera since Bakerella said it was almost the same kind she uses.

The camera came as part of the “Ultimate Starter Kit,” valued at $200. It included the camera itself, an 18-55mm EF-S lens, an air blower, a card reader, screen protectors, a 4GB SDHC memory card, a cleaning cloth, a “LCD Cleaning Kit,” and a few DVDs and even some photo editing software. As if I would ditch Photoshop.

I also got a Joby Gorillapod SLR, with a neat $40 taken off by the guy who helped me out. All of this came in at less than $1,000, which was nice. I was expecting the camera, lens, and gorillapod to add up somewhere in the $1,300 range.

I’ve only snapped a few pictures (okay, 45), but so far I’m very impressed. Such a huge step up from my mom’s old point-and-shoot. The camera is light enough to carry around, but not light enough that I feel like it’s breakable or liable to blow away. I’ve barely touched the different settings, and I have a feeling that I’ll be sticking with Full Auto mode most of the time, at least until I learn much more about ISO and Aperture and all that stuff.

I can’t wait to take it out and get some really fantastic pictures. Maybe I’ll take it for a walk tomorrow and snap some.

Right now I use Time Machine to manage my backups. I only backup...

Sun, 07 Mar 2010 16:02:04 -0700

Right now I use Time Machine to manage my backups. I only backup my computer about once a week, but Time Machine is getting bloated. It’s saving copies of things it doesn’t need to save, including multiple copies of the same file. It’s just taking up too much room on my HDD.

Any alternatives?

Ups & Downs

Sun, 07 Mar 2010 02:27:45 -0700

Early warning: This is going to be a long one. I won’t take it personally if you skip right past it.

“Dear roommates: The dish fairy does not exist! Please put your dishes in the dishwasher!”

My roommate wrote that on the pantry door mirror (it’s where we write everything, in dry-erase markers). It’s pretty obviously directed at me—our other roommate is obsessive about keeping a clean house, and has never once failed to put her dish in the dishwasher.

This particular roommate and I are less obsessive, and we’re both guilty of leaving our dishes on the table, or on the counter, or in the sink. We’re both clean people, but we grew up in families where you eat dinner, put the dishes on the counter or the sink, and worry about them later. For my family, dinner was sort of a ritual—we ate together, and for the next hour or so we’d sit at the dinner table or on the couch and talk. It was never awkward, never too personal… just a nice conversation about anything that popped up, until we turned the TV on or went our separate ways.

Dishes were done later that night, or the next day. Someone would get to them, eventually. It wasn’t something you had to worry about.

It’s not that I’m against keeping the house clean; with a new puppy around, we have to be pretty vigilant to keep things out of her reach or they’ll become a new chew toy. We have to vacuum once or twice a week because the dog gets into the turtle’s cage and gets woodchips all over the house.

I’m usually the one who ends up vacuuming.

The night before my roommate had written that on the mirror, I had brought my glass into the kitchen before going to bed, looked at the (sizable) pile of dishes on the counter, and made a note to do the dishes the next day. I woke up and they’d already been done, and the note was already written.

Thursday night I painted my room. We went out to Home Depot at around 8:30pm and I started emptying my room and cutting in and painting. I didn’t finish until 3:00am. I had had to move all of my furniture into the spare bedroom to paint, and I still had to do another coat of paint before I could move the furniture back in. The next day they asked me if I planned on getting all of my stuff back into my room.

Then they left, and I started moving my furniture back in. I got about halfway done when I got a call from my mom and had to meet her. I left the furniture the way it was, jumped in the shower, and walked out the door. I came home to “Still haven’t gotten all your stuff put away?”

Today, I was exhausted. I couldn’t sleep last night (that’s happening more and more) and I looked forward to a quiet Saturday with the dog. Instead I got ready, and got on the bus to pick up a couple of things I needed. On my way there I found out my roommates had taken the dog for the day, and I returned home to find woodchips all over the floor, which I vacuumed.

At about 5:00pm, I texted one of the girls and asked if they were getting dinner while they were out—do I need to get my own food? Are they bringing some home for all of us? What’s the plan? No response.

At 7:00pm I decided to just order some food. They got home at 7:15, and had already eaten dinner. They wanted to go to an 8:00 movie, but my dinner hadn’t even arrived yet. We would have to go to the 10:45 showing.

After I ate my dinner, I got a very strained “Can you please go clean your stuff up before we leave?”

I went upstairs and moved the 2 things that were left in the spare bedroom into mine.

I went back downstairs, and we all started talking and laughing and hanging out. I made a joke, and one of my roommates goes “Oh my god, that’s so funny!” which would be good, except for the fact that it was totally sarcastic.

Then I paid for all 4 of us to go to the movie ($50). My roommate bought me a bottle of water, $4. Then we came home and I unloaded the dishwasher.

I mean, maybe it’s just that time of the month or whatever, but can everybody relax? I cook dinner at the very least twice a week, I go to the grocery store nearly every single day, and I pay for all of it. I’m the only one home during the day so I have to take the dog for a walk, and clean up after her. I’m constantly paying for all of these little (and not so little) treats for all of us.

These girls are my best friends, and I love living here. But sometimes I feel like nobody realizes that even though yes, I’m at home all day, I still take care of all of these little things that keep the house running. Could you imagine if I didn’t go to the grocery store tomorrow to get Coke and parmesan cheese, which we’re out of? Next time we had pasta there would be a huge problem because we don’t have parmesan cheese, and what are we going to do next Friday when we’re starting to pre-drink and someone wants a rum-and-coke?

No, I don’t go to work or school all day.

But that doesn’t mean I spend all day sitting on my ass in front of the computer. It doesn’t mean I do nothing all day. It doesn’t mean I’m not pulling my weight.

End rant.

portfolio.miiitch.com

Sat, 06 Mar 2010 16:24:04 -0700

portfolio.miiitch.com:

I’ve only been working on it for, like, 4 years. I’m the worst at making stuff for myself. It looks exactly how I want it to in Safari (and Chrome, too!), but Firefox is having type issues, and I have no idea how it looks in any of the Microsoft browser options.

If you can, care to share a screenshot? Thanks(ies)!

Watch me paint my room in under a minute!

Fri, 05 Mar 2010 23:53:59 -0700

Watch me paint my room in under a minute!

Confession:

Thu, 04 Mar 2010 16:01:01 -0700

jeremyjacks:

I try to move things with my mind. Constantly.

I’m convinced that I CAN actually move things with my mind, but I can’t do it around other people because they would think I’m a freak and put me in a cage and make me do tricks and stuff.

I also can’t do it when I’m alone because I would freak myself out too much.

But I CAN actually do it.

portfolio.miiitch.com: coming soon

Wed, 03 Mar 2010 21:36:43 -0700

portfolio.miiitch.com: coming soon

What do you wanna be when you grow up?

Wed, 03 Mar 2010 17:42:00 -0700

BFFs with Stacy London
Rich
A published author

Do you have a view about British politics? Do you know who Gordon Brown is? Would you prefer the Conservatives or Labour to win in the forthcoming General Election on (probably) May 6th? Please qualify your preference if you can. I'm very interested in an American perspective on British politics, and also to guage the level of awareness/interest (or lack of).

Wed, 03 Mar 2010 16:51:51 -0700

Um, no. And no. And I don’t have a preference. I’m Canadian. I have a severe lack of awareness.

But I also know next to nothing about Canadian politics. I just don’t like politics.

Ask me legit questions.

Wed, 03 Mar 2010 01:24:00 -0700

Ask me legit questions.:

Seriously though, I’m only answering legit ones.

It's yoga, in a sauna

Tue, 02 Mar 2010 23:19:49 -0700

Tonight we went to Bikram or Hot Yoga, which is basically yoga done in a sauna, so that’s supposed to help your muscles stretch or something. We got there early and were some of the first people in there. It wasn’t a huge studio, only enough room for maybe a dozen mats, so we were a little worried with five of us but we got in fine and I put my mat on the ground and put my towel over it, and waited for the teacher to start.

She was a very tiny woman, I forget her name, wearing lululemon from head to toe. We started our breathing and then we were off, and it started out pretty easy, but I was still pouring sweat, in no small way thanks to the high temperature of the room, but I kept up. The poses started getting harder, and my muscles would start shaking, and I sat in downward dog and TRIED to lift my leg up but it only went a foot or two off the ground, and she wanted it HIGHER, LIFT IT HIGHER, and I’m like Yeah, no, definitely not happening, but I kept up.

And then we kept going for like a century and I was like I’M DYING CAN WE STOP NOW but I didn’t want to stop to take a break because nobody else was stopping to take a break, and then finally after I had grown old and died we did the final breathing exercises and we were done.

And then we walked out and the air was freezing cold but it felt super nice so I didn’t bother putting my pants back on until we had gotten home. Then my roommates and I decided to turn the basement into a sauna so we can do that all the time.

It was awesome.

I’m cute when I eat, no?

Tue, 02 Mar 2010 14:24:00 -0700

I’m cute when I eat, no?

Jason Derülo | In My Head In my head, I see you all over me. In...

Mon, 01 Mar 2010 20:24:31 -0700

Jason Derülo | In My Head

In my head, I see you all over me. In my head, you fulfill my fantasies. In my head, you’ll be screaming oh! In my head, it’s going down.

Our father, who art in Vancouver,

Sun, 28 Feb 2010 13:17:00 -0700

Hockey be thy name. Thy will be done, the GOLD be WON, for the women, as well as the men. Give us this day, an American loss, and forgive us our penalties as we forgive those who cross check against us. Lead us not into silver, but deliver us to victory. In the name of the fans Gretzky, Lemieux, & Gordie Howe. Amen.

There is a guy here who looks like JawnCharles.

Sat, 27 Feb 2010 00:01:14 -0700

Kind of weirding me out.

Creek Bend

Fri, 26 Feb 2010 16:54:00 -0700

Love the fact that IKEA is a 5-minute bus ride away. Picked up four of these. This weekend I’d like to paint my room:

I’ll be sure to post before & after (& during) pictures.