How am I just learning about this now? A wedding cake built with layers of edible Nintendo fondant… complete with Mario and Princess Peach cake toppers. Awesome amazing awesomeness!
Edit: The cake was created by Gateaux, Inc. in Minneapolis.
About a year ago, I installed the Dvorak keyboard layout on my system so that I could start learning it. I started, then quit, but I want to keep the keyboard layout installed because I might decide at any point that I want to start learning again.
To toggle between QWERTY and Dvorak on a PC, you press Ctrl+Shift at the same time. As one might expect, I have accidentally toggled between them many times. Once I figured out what was happening, it was an easy fix and actually a nice occasional reminder that I still want to learn Dvorak.
BUT. I’m working in Adobe InDesign (CS1 on my PC) right now, and in order to resize an image while keeping the ratio the same, I have to hold down Ctrl+Shift while moving the cursor. So I’ve inadvertantly switched between QWERTY and Dvorak and hundred million times. Not a huge deal, just annoying… until I tried to cut some text using Ctrl+X which, under the Dvorak keyboard, is actually Ctrl+Q.
Which quits the program.
A confirmation box appeared and, before I could read it, my muscle memory clicked “No” as my brain was realizing that the box was asking if I wanted to save changes before quitting. Whaaaaa? SHIT!
My internal organs stopped working for a moment as I watched InDesign close itself and I tried to remember the last time I saved my file. DON’T REMEMBER was the answer, which was not a good sign. I bit my lip and reopened the program… and it appeared as though I’d saved my file about an hour before I shut it down.
So I lost an hour’s worth of work. And I can’t blame anyone but myself. I should probably uninstall the Dvorak keyboard while working in InDesign, huh? And just reinstall it when I’m good and ready to learn it.
There’s a little bit of irony involved in this whole thing, too. When I first started playing around with Dvorak, I was dismayed by the fact that it would seriously screw up my reliance upon left hand hotkeys (Ctrl+B, Ctrl+V, Ctrl+C, Ctrl+X, Ctrl+F, Ctrl+T [Firefox, Baby], Ctrl+A, Ctrl+S, Ctrl+Z [omg what would I do without Ctrl+Z]). But I NEVER intentionally use Ctrl+Q.
When your resume and email address are searchable by employers, another type of spam pops up. Here’s a real email that I got today from “Duffy Jacob,” whose sender email address is different than the email address listed in the email.
Company is currently looking for a Sales Assistant! Selected individual will demonstrate ability to think on his/her feet.
Duties may include but are not limited to the following: managing sales processes and reporting, Responsible for providing feedback to the marketing group concerning communication needs, product development and pricing.
We offer excellent salary, commissions, benefits and 401K with a first year potential of $60,000-$70,000.
If you are interested in knowing more about these positions please send your resume to$ If you are interested in joining us, please contact us position.to.increase.income@gmail.com
Okay, it really should just be filed under targeted, Are You For Real spam. This type of scam spam may not be Snopes-able, but there are so many things wrong with it that I can’t believe anyone would actually fall for it. And yet, we know that someone out there probably will.
Sigh.
How many times a week does your inbox flood with mail, and yet you’re disappointed and feel like none of it is worthwhile?
I’ve noticed this happening more and more with the dozens of emails I receive every day. I eagerly scan the incoming subject lines and who they’re from, and more often than not, I sigh and lean back in my chair because it’s all junk. Maybe junk I opted in for, or junk that I am sort of interested in but just not in the mood for at the time. In any case, I find that they mostly fall into one of these 5 categories:
I think my inbox apathy really mirrors the allure of personal snail mail; The best kind of mail to receive has a familiar return address and your name hand-written on the front.
When’s the last time you sent a handwritten letter to someone? I sealed up a letter to my teenage cousin a couple hours ago and will send it out tomorrow. It definitely takes more time, thought, and effort to write a letter the old-fashioned way… but as a recipient, that’s what I value the most.
Seriously, have I been hiding under a rock or something? Pixar has a new movie coming out May 29 and this is the first time I’ve seen a trailer! Click here to see the trailer for “UP” in other sizes, including HD.
I can’t believe that I JUST found this clip of Obama scoring some major on-camera geek cred. It’s from October 17.
Several months ago, I learned that Neil Gaiman was going to be the keynote speaker for the Vegas Valley Book Festival. This is the closest he’s come to visiting Utah since I moved here, since I live only 5 or 6 hours away from Las Vegas by car (depending on how many times I stop to stare at the weird and magical-looking Yucca trees along the way because remember, I’m from the Midwest).
I have a major literary crush on Neil Gaiman. His English accent is also wonderful, and listening to him read his own writing delights me in a very primitive (yet somewhat highbrow) manner.
I made a hotel reservation and hoped that Ben and I would be able to take a long weekend to Vegas… spend some time at the Book Festival with Neil Gaiman on Thursday and then galavant around the tourist-ridden city of gamblers and 3am steak & egg breakfasts.
But lots of little things contributed to canceling the trip altogether. Vegas itself isn’t that thrilling for us anymore, we have more pressing needs for our cash right now, Ben is still a little sick and would have to take time off work for a guy on whom his wife has a literary crush, etc.
I even briefly considered going by myself just for a day or maybe overnight, but ultimately decided not to. I consoled myself with the knowledge that as much as I love Neil Gaiman, and would love to meet him someday, there would surely be tons of people at the free festival and I didn’t really want to drive 10-12 hours for a quick keynote and to stand in line forever for a brief encounter and book signing.
And then Neil Gaiman posted this on his blog yesterday from Las Vegas:
Just did a lovely signing — only about fifty people altogether, which meant that I got to talk to everyone and draw in their books, admire their tattoos and so forth. Really pleasant.
DAMMIT DAMMIT SONOFABITCH DAMMIT! I should have been there.
I had lunch today with a former coworker who is undergoing chemotherapy for stage 4 cancer. She’s doing well, all things considered. I hadn’t seen her for a couple months, so we gossiped about the (screwed-up) company that laid us both off, touched on politics, and caught up on life in general.
I listened to my friend, who is only a couple years older than my mom, speak optimistically about life even when faced with hard statistics around the term “life expectancy.” She plans to be around much longer than her doctors expect, and not to accept an ounce of pity along the way. It made me contemplate the complaining I’ve done recently about the virus from hell I had (which seems to be 99% gone at this point) and threw things into perspective.
She lives closer to me than I realized, so I plan to take her some food once in a while and visit more often.
***
Today would have been my grandmother’s 83rd birthday. Even though she probably would have voted for McCain, I still wish I could have sent her another belated birthday card and maybe said something sarcastic over the phone that made her laugh and/or want to pray for me.
It was unseasonably warm on Halloween* this year. On Saturday, November 1, Ben raked leaves and I spent some peaceful time lying in one of the piles before we shoved them into bags. The sun was extraordinarily bright, as you can see from my squinty eyes in this photo.
Then we had beautiful fall weather for a couple days, and a cold front came in with some rain. It snowed in the mountains, and then last night the rain turned to snow here in Utah Valley. I woke up on the Day After Obama Won to see a soft blanket of snow, only an inch or so, covering the yard. It was really beautiful. It mostly melted by the afternoon, but not before Ben took this sweet photo of a wilting, snow-covered jack-o-lantern on our front porch.
*Oh yeah, Halloween. I Twitter my thoughts but then sometimes forget to expand those thoughts into blog posts. Some friends came over and we ate chili (Ben made an amazing Beer Chili that I have demanded he make again soon) in pumpkin-looking bread bowls and drank hot mulled apple cider (that was spiked with rum for a few of us). Tons of kids came to the door, so it’s a good thing that our friends brought extra candy. Read more…
I pulled out my Utah voter’s guide yesterday and went online to do some final research on the local candidates before heading to the polls. I tried to create a sample ballot online, to make sure that I was covered on all the local issues… and discovered that the County Clerk didn’t think that I was a registered voter. Whaaaaaat!?!
I registered to vote when I was 18 in Ohio, where I voted in two presidential elections. I registered again when I moved to Utah in 2005.
I called the Clerk’s office and spoke to a very friendly guy who confirmed that I was, in fact, a registered voter in Utah. However, my old apartment address was still listed in the system. Whaaaaaaat!?! I had filled out the required paperwork to change my address and sent it in (stamp and all) in July!
Well, they never received it and/or never processed it. I was pretty mad, to say the least. Ben was exasperated because I didn’t check my status before Election Day, and I promise that if/when I move in the future I will not make that mistake again.
The guy at the Clerk’s office was sympathetic, but obviously there was nothing he could do to make it better right away. He told me that I could go to my old precinct to vote or fill out a provisional ballot in my actual precinct. Because I wanted to vote on a bond for the new public library, I decided to take a chance with the provisional ballot.
So I went to the new elementary school down the street around 3pm and found my Place of Voting in their adorably tiny gymnasium — with no line! There were several electronic voting machines set up and a few people voting on them, but I had to stand at a familiar portable voting booth to fill out my paper provisional ballot.
In a way, I’m glad I did. It felt amazing to manually fill in that circle next to Barack Obama; I smiled to myself and felt a wave of giddiness. 
Even though I live in one of the most conservative parts of a very conservative state, and my vote for Obama would surely be smothered by other Utahns’ votes for McCain, I still felt connected with everyone else in the country who was filling in a circle or using a touch screen to Vote for Change.
Sure enough, I was one of the 18% in Utah County to vote for Obama instead of McCain. Many thanks to the rest of the country for choosing, in my opinion, the best candidate. I hope that my friends who preferred McCain will eventually feel the same way. (Even if you don’t, let’s just stick to being friends despite our differing opinions on politics and/or religion, okay? There are lots of other things we have in common.)
But don’t mistake me for being a straight Democratic voter, because I’m unaffiliated. I will vote for the Republican, Democrat, Libertarian or Independent who is the best candidate (or, if none are available, I’ll pick the one who’s least crazy). Thankfully, I think that my reasoning behind my political choices has improved over the years.
In 1988, I was aware of the election but I don’t remember my parents talking politics. I secretly supported Dukakis because I had a 4th grade crush on a boy whose family supported Dukakis. In 1992, my 8th grade best friend and I rooted for Perot because he was the little guy (literally and figuratively) and had heated discussions with the mayor of our little town who was also our social studies teacher — arguments based on what, I don’t quite remember. In 1996, I watched the election coverage from my host family’s television in Norway but didn’t know enough about the candidates to prefer one over the other. I felt an increased sense of patriotism because I lived outside of my country that year, and I felt that it was important as a maturing teenager to at least be aware of major political events. And it was okay for me to stay up until 3am on a school night to do so.
In 2000, I watched the presidential debates and voted for the first time. I was confused and disappointed when Bush won the election. In 2004, I voted a second time, participated in the collective groan across the nation after Bush was re-elected, and wondered what was wrong with my country.
November 4, 2008 marked the first time I’ve voted for a candidate because I truly believe in him as opposed to voting for the candidate who is Dear God Anyone But George W. Bush. I was truly grateful to at least have a choice this year between two people who can form complete sentences and pronounce difficult words like “nuclear.”
Ben and I stayed home and watched NBC’s election coverage on and off throughout the evening (broadcast HDTV is still beyond delicious, btw) and gleaned more details from CNN.com as votes continued to be tallied. When Obama surpassed 270 electoral votes and McCain conceded the election, it was a unique feeling. My candidate won the election.
Thank you, America.
