It's Sixty-Six Degrees!!!
Posted by Sam at 1:35 PM | tags: life, blogging

In an ongoing effort to annoy my housemate, the now infamous sandals have officially been pulled out of their winter hibernation. Yes, it's finally warm enough to don the Newport H2s. Hooray!

Ahh... my sandals. Truly the world's perfect warm weather footwear. Not only are they functional, comfortable, and mad stylish... but for some reason, they annoy the heck out my housemate, Carrie. And really, isn't that what it's all about? I just think she's jealous.

In all seriousness, my Keens have given so much and they ask for so little in return... just the occasional blogged homage every now and again. And honestly, where would sam bot dot com be without the Keens? I must have blogged about them three or four times now. Without my beloved sandals (and to a lesser degree, coffee and the Macintosh), what would I possibly have to write about?

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I Heart Flickr
Posted by Sam at 1:47 PM | tags: life

I just added the adjacent photo, titled The Hole to the Heavens (why does that sound dirty?), to the flickr photo pool titled Pockets and holes. Why there is a flickr photo pool documenting pockets and holes is beyond me. I guess the reasoning for such an obscure photo pool could be described as follows: "just cuz," or perhaps more accurately, "why the F not?" I mean, why did I start a (surprisingly successful) photo pool collecting photography of orange bicycles? Why the F not?

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Coffee... A Universal Increment of Measure
Posted by Sam at 4:49 PM | tags: coffee, life

I realized the other day that I measure things in increments of coffee. Okay... what? No, really. Hear me out...

I passed a smoker on the way into the library. My mind strayed, as it often does, and I found myself wondering how much a pack of cigarettes costs (I am not, nor have I ever been, a smoker... so I consider myself somewhat out of the loop when it comes to cigarette information). When I reached my desk of graduate superiority, I asked my undergraduate underlings how much a pack of cigarettes costs. No one smokes more than an undergrad... duh! Anyway, the resounding answer was "about five bucks" followed by a disgruntled "but you can't buy smokes anywhere on campus." My brain took the monetary unit, five bucks, performed a rapid calculation and immediately told my mouth to spit out the following reply: "Okay... so a pack of cigarettes costs three small coffees."

It took my brain no time to translate $5 into three small coffees. And interestingly enough, three small coffees makes more sense to me than $5. Hmm... then it occurred to me that this phenomenon goes deeper than just monetary calculations. I also measure volume in coffee... which might be a little more obvious (i.e. this bucket can hold six large coffees... and no, I am not often confronted with bucket volume issues. It's just an example). But get this, my brain measures time in coffee too:

"Sam, how long is it going to take you to finish that paper?"

"Oh, I don't know... about two cups of coffee."

Is that normal? Am I okay? Should I be worried? Well, regardless, I should end this post. This cup of iced coffee is down to its dregs and the coffee shop vultures have been eyeballing this table for about one and a half cups now. Geez... this place sure gets crowded at 4 cups o'clock...

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Okay People, Listen Up...
Posted by Sam at 6:56 PM | tags: apple, technology, life

Apple is not and will not be producing an iPhone... ever. They may put software on other phones (like iTunes on the miserable ROKR), but they will not produce a cellular telephone. Why would they? There are so many carriers and plans and compatibility issues... it would be a mess. A sloppy, sticky, beer-coated mess. Like the current state of my apartment. Really. My housemate and I were remarking, just the other day, on the fact that every surface in the apartment is covered in a fine tacky residue that smells vaguely of alcohol and brings back memories of the good times, the bad times, and of course, the drunken times (which, incidentally, are all the same thing). It's as if a 30 pack of Pabst Blue Ribbon spontaneously vaporized in the direct center of the apartment, coating all surfaces, ceiling included, with alco-glue. Hmm... alco-glue. I call dibs on the alco-glue patent. And the .com too!

So, where were we? Ah yes... When Apple released the iPod into the mix, there had been no truly successful portable MP3 players on the market. The iPod set the standard from which all other MP3 players would be judged. Apple brought the portable MP3 player to a mass audience. But the cell phone is already in the hands of the masses. And while I fully agree that the cell phone is a device that is in drastic need of a usability overhaul, I do not think that Apple is going to be the one to take it on. Why? Because Apple works alone. They make the hardware. They make the software. The cell phone carriers have so much proprietary crud embedded in their networks and devices that the likelihood of Apple being able to maintain the slick user interface and sexy hardware design that we've come to expect, would be nearly impossible.

Okay? So leave this one alone, people. No iPhone. Not now. Not ever.

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From Slayer to Marvin Gaye
Posted by Sam at 4:54 PM | tags: life, apple, audio

With the MP3ing of the compact disc, Marvin Gaye Greatest Hits, I have closed a very important chapter in my life. Yes, mere moments ago, I concluded a monstrous, four year long project that began with the insertion of Slayer's South of Heaven into my drastically underpowered, yet oh-so-sexy, 400 MHz, first generation Titanium Powerbook (my very first mac... currently, I'm on my third). As of right now, I have no un-MP3ed music. None. I can access every song that I've ever owned with a quick click of a mouse. It's the end of an era and it's really weird. But I feel liberated... truly emancipated from the plastic shackles of optical media.

Want some stats? My iTunes library contains 8859 tracks, 786 albums, and 390 artists. Those take up a whopping 52.6 GBs of hard drive space. Which, in turn, allows me to listen to music, without repeating a single track, for 31 days, 4 hours, 8 minutes, and 48 seconds. That's over a month of uninterrupted music. Hot friggin damn!

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Maintaining the Accumulation
Posted by Sam at 3:50 PM | tags: blogging, life

I don't exactly know how it happens. It's definitely not intentional, but it gets out of hand, quickly... becomes unmanageable, instantly. It'll happen to you too. It happens to the best of us... the most diligent and meticulous of readers. It's the accumulation of blogs. Yep. It's the heaping piles of blogs congesting the ol' feed reader. And, as with my housemate's hair clogging the drain, you gotta stick your finger in there and remove the crunk every now and again.

The following is my theory of why/how the congestion happens. Let's call it The Theory of Blog Crunk Accumulation (henceforth referred to as TTOBCA (henceforth pronounced as tobca (henceforth not mentioned again in this post))): You read one interesting article from a potentially interesting blog and you think, "hey, this dude might have something worthwhile to say. I think I'll add this blog to my feed reader." And then, that dude never posts anything of value ever again. Yet, that dude continues to post. And post. And post. And you continue to read the first three sentences of that dude's posts and ignore the rest. This pattern drags on, and all of a sudden, you find yourself amidst a vicious cycle of adding blogs, half reading blogs, and ignoring blogs.

So now it's time to participate in a little spring cleaning. Currently, I subscribe to 204 blogs (yet, I'm a dedicated reader of maybe only 60 or 70 of those). When I wake up in the morning and check my feeds (yes, it is the first thing I do in the morning. Yes, before I pee. Yes, before coffee. Any other questions?), I can have anywhere from 200 to 400 posts to thumb through. That's way too many (I mean, sometimes I have to pee really badly. There's been times that I've nearly wet the bed just trying to get through the morning's news). I'm likely to miss something important while I'm ignoring something trivial.

And so, it's time to embark on a little blog pruning. I've got my overalls on, gardening gloves at my side, and pruning shears at the ready. My goal: a concise, manageable 100 blog subscriptions. Wish me luck.

As an aside (or more accurately, a below), I wonder how many reader's subscription lists sam bot dot com is guilty of clogging up. None, I'm sure. I mean, when have I ever blogged about anything less than extraordinarily fascinating? (The answer you're looking for is "never.")

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Sucked into the Caffeine-Free Vortex
Posted by Sam at 11:36 AM | tags: coffee, life

I inadvertently went the entire day (yesterday) without coffee. I don't know what the hell I was thinking. Apparently, I wasn't thinking. More accurately, I was incapable of thinking. The omission of coffee from my daily affairs affected everything: my goddamn dreams, my goddamn ability to form complete goddamn sentences, my goddamn attention span, my goddamn digestive system... in short, my entire goddamn life.

As I write this, the time is 11:19 a.m., and I am on my second cup o' the good stuff. Today's goal: make up for lost time. Because, let's face it, yesterday was sucked into the caffeine-free vortex.

They say space is a vacuum... without atmosphere... empty... cold... dark... lifeless... That's me, baby... that's me without my beloved.

empty... cold... dark... lifeless...

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This Li'l Pot is Making Me Exceedingly Happy
Posted by Sam at 12:14 AM | tags: life

My first batch of glazed pots came out of the kiln sometime over the last week. I picked them up today. And this li'l cutie is, for some reason, just filling me to the brim with merriment. It's lumpy, lopsided, and the glaze didn't quite come out how I had intended. But, I don't care. I just love it... and it's making me want to go out and hug things. Aren't you glad you live far, far away?

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