Jamie and I are heading out with the fam to the San Diego Fair, aka Commotion By The Ocean. It promises to be a day full of turkey legs, funnel cakes, and Australian potatoes. I'm looking forward to trying this 'Australian potato' delicacy, but I'll wait to describe it until after I've tried one. I could tell you what I've heard, but then that would just be hearsay. We'll also be visiting some of the animal sections of the fair, as Jamie was in 4-H in junior high and used to show animals there herself. If I had a digital camera and a cool thumbnail generator like Mark, I'd post some pictures, but I don't, so you'll just have to wait for me to paint pictures with words when we get back.

Hey, Jamie and I are going to officially move in to our new place on Friday. By officially move in, I mean that we are going to spend the night there for the first time. We were up there all day yesterday getting it ready. We got cable and internet hooked up. The gas company was supposed to come out, but they never showed up. We got our refrigerator delivered, which didn't fit into the space by about 1/16". So, I'm taking Don's jigsaw, beveller, and electric sander with us on Friday to try to make some room. I don't exactly have a long history with power tools, so hopefully when I post something up here on Saturday, I'll have all my digits. If, however, I've lost one, I'm not going to tell you which one, and you are going to have to guess based on which letters are missing in all of my words. We got the bedroom in shape (it's a pretty tight squeeze), and now that we have the living room organized, it actually feels kind of roomy. I still have some work to do in my office, but less work thanks again to the Siebers, who outfitted me with some new equipment. They got us a new OfficeJet printer, and since I don't have a cable jack where my office is going to be, they got me a wireless router, so that I don't have to run wires all over the house. I have to rewire all of my stereo components, because the cable box didn't have the outputs on it that I was hoping for, and I got some new, longer wires so that we can arrange the components a little more flexibly. Once we get settled in, I'll take some pictures, so that you can get a little taste.

I went for a drive today, and I saw a bumper sticker on the back of someone's car that read, "War Is Not The Answer." I had to wonder to myself, "If war is not the answer, what is the question?" I gave it some thought, and here are some of the questions that I guess the question is not:

1. What does W-A-R spell?
2. What is it that anti-war protesters hate? (Look a little deeper into this one, and I think you'll find some humor in the expression 'anti-war protester'.
3. How did America earn its independence from England?
4. What is the name of that card game where you each flip over your top card, and whoever has the highest card gets to keep both cards?

I don't usually go on political rants, but this bumper sticker annoyed me, less because of the political statement they were trying to make, and more because of the blanket statement that without context is quite frankly nonsensical. So, for those who have that bumper sticker, I have one question: Are you so diametrically opposed to the concept of war that you would fight someone to end it once and for all? As much as I would love to avoid war, my take is that war itself is not the enemy.

Congratulations to our friends! While we don't have much space in our new apartment, we now have an inflatable queen size mattress to put out in our living room for those of you who come to visit us, courtesy of the Siebers. The mattress is courtesy of the Siebers, not your visiting us. Sorry.

OK, the way I see it, "blog" is a shortened term for "weblog", which is really not a word but two words: "web log". This makes senses as it is a log that is maintained on the web. In this vein, I'll try some of these others:

1) ejournal - Now I know that you're thinking that this would be pronounced "ee-Jur-Nal", but that's not what I'm going for here. I've taken online journal, combined them into one word "onlinejournal", and then dropped all the letters of the first word except the last one. And since you don't pronounce blog, "Bee-log", you take the pronunciation from the original word "online", in which the "e" is silent, so you are left with a pronunciation more like "_-journal". "_" means that you leave a slight pause for where the silent "e" goes. This name obviously isn't going to work because of this mass confusion, and I'd hate to have to explain this every time I used the word.

2) tdiary - (internet diary => internetdiary => tdiary, you get the point) Doesn't exactly flow off the tongue, and quite frankly sounds just as bad as blog in the sense that they both sound like things that would affect the bowels.

3) shapennin' (from what's happenin') I like the sound of this. It's a fun word to say. Say it out loud a couple times and you'll see. The only problem with this is that this does more than talk about what is currently happening, it also keeps a record of what has previously happened. So, it's a little misleading.

4) crecord (from public record) I like the full name 'public record' better than the shortened version. Boo.

 It looks like the search continues.

Jamie and I and her parents began the process of unpacking our boxes in our new Hollywood apartment yesterday. We got a lot done, but it's not quite livable yet, so we're back here in Fallbrook until Tuesday. That's when we meet the cable guy, and Jamie has her interview at Quiksilver and the Tony Hawk store in The Grove. We got the bed put together but not made. I got all the TV components hooked up but no cable yet. There's also the saga of the couch and chair and ottoman. We were shopping for a couch, chair, and ottoman for the new place, and we leisurely came across a set at Pier 1. We made a mental note, but continued shopping elsewhere. Little did we realize that in less than a week's time, this set at Pier 1 would become a discontinued item, and they would quickly be difficult to track down. So, we started calling all the Pier 1's between Los Angeles and San Diego. In the meantime, we also found out that the price had become drastically reduced! So now, we could get the chair, ottoman, and couch for the same price as just the couch! Finally, we found the chair and ottoman at the Hollywood Pier 1, but we are going to have to drive down to San Diego today to get the couch down there. Anyway, things are coming together, and we'll probably be living at our new place late next week. Also, I had some time to think while unpacking, and I've got some candidates to replace blog. That post to come shortly.

I just moved this blog from my local machine up here to Flatland Media!

www.flatlandmedia.com is alive and kicking. OK, maybe not kicking, but the domain is working, and I've put in my own default.htm.

Wow, three posts in as many days. I never expected to perservere for so long in adding to this blog. No, I still haven't come up with a new name for it yet, but it's coming, I promise. The reason I haven't been creative enough to come up with a new one is because I'm working on a contract that I started whilst in New York City. The guy I'm working for is leaving Friday, so I'm working feverishly to finish as much as I can before he leaves. How does this affect my near future, work-wise, a la the title of this post? Well, he's going to start marketing it out to his potential clients. If he gets some interest, it looks like I'll be working on further versions of this project for some time to come. Which would be great because it would probably mean a decent income with decreasing amounts of time having to spend coding. Otherwise, I'll start looking for some new projects next week after we get moved in. Well, back to coding...

The Siebers are returning from Nashville Thursday evening, and so Jamie and I will be going down to San Diego to pick them up at the airport. To celebrate their triumphant return, we are going to meet Jeff at The Field in the GasLamp District, where he is sure to get something besides the soup.

Read the post if you want a description of what this post is about