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February 28, 2005
Close, but no cigar
originally posted on Metroblogging Chicago
Lately, I seem to get nothing in the mail except notices that "Bank One is now Chase". And the last time I was in New York, I used a Chase ATM which cheerfully told me "Hello, Bank One customer -- you're now part of Chase! Have (your own) money for free!"
So... I made an assumption. And you know what happens when you assume, don't you?* That's right -- you're often wrong.
Last night I mailed out the mortgage check and this morning I got on a plane for New York with my roommate's check for his half of the mortgage in my pocket. Over lunch I walked over to my convenient Chase Banking Location and cheerfully presented that check and was cheerfully told that Bank One "still has their own databases" and that the check was, to Chase, so much scrap paper.
Boo.
(And when they replace my Bank One ATM card with a Chase one, it'd better still have the Chicago skyline on it, like it did when they made the switch from 1st Chicago to Bank One five years ago.)
Posted by Fuzzy at 3:12 PM
February 27, 2005
Pick 3
originally posted on Metroblogging Chicago
The convenience store near Erica's house identifies itself in three languages ("First Foods", "La Primera", and something in Polish(?) I don't remember) so we made a dinner from the snack foods of three or four cultures:
- two frozen Stouffer's dinners (me - turkey and mashed, Erica - Salisbury steak and
cornmac and cheese) - Cockta - a soft drink imported from Slovenia ("caffiene and phosphoric acid free"). It was flat and the taste makes Erica gag (I thought it just tasted like flat Pepsi).
- Plantain chips from Miami
- Sabritones - "Authentic Mexican Chile and Lime Flavor". (Frito-Lay's Mexican brand Sabritas controls 81% of the snack food market there.) Tangy!
Posted by Fuzzy at 2:55 AM | Comments (0)
February 25, 2005
The Sun-Times thing, #2
originally posted on Metroblogging Chicago
That's OK Pope, Bush and Putin scare me, too.
Posted by Fuzzy at 5:06 PM | Comments (0)
Last minute show action
Tonight, Chicago Comedy Company will be kicking it at the Playground, with special guest sit-in Erica Reid. (Jovial Hayes, Atticus Finch, and Inside Vladimir also perform.)
Tomorrow night at a quarter past midnight Ms. Reid and I will bring our urbane variety of vulgar comedy to the Belmont Burlesque Revue.
You should come see these shows.
Posted by Fuzzy at 2:26 PM | Comments (0)
February 22, 2005
Chicago Photos
Metroblogs hooked up with Flickr, the first effect of which is that the photos across the top of the, for example, Chicago Metroblog page are drawn from the photos in a Chicago Metroblog Group on Flickr. So... I went through my 2004 photos and uploaded twenty-something photos of my Chicago. You can check them out on the group page or on my photostream.
(Free registration required to use Flickr. Lemme know if that sort of thing bugs you enough that I should put those photos here on FuzzyCo.)
Posted by Fuzzy at 11:28 AM | Comments (0)
Music meme
- Total amount of music files on your computer:
According to iTunes: 34474 songs, 106.3 days, 165.02 GB. I just completed merging my collections from 3 different harddrives, so there's probably 10 GBs or so of duplicate songs in there that I need to weed out (thanks iTunes' Show Duplicate Songs feature). - The last CD you bought was:
Andrew Bird's The Mysterious Production of Eggs. (Lemon Jelly's '64-'95 and Latyrx's Album came in the same box from Amazon, but The Mysterious Production of Eggs was the last one I added to the shopping cart.) - What is the song you last listened to before reading this message?
Hmm... here I'll have to confess that I read this meme a few days ago and saved a draft post with the questions until I had a few minutes to get around to answering it. Before sitting down to write this, the last song I heard was Sarah Hudson's "Girl on the Verge," from Epsiode 4 of Project Runway, where they design a rock-star outfit, because Erica and I were catching up on the early episodes we'd missed before the big finale on Wednesday. - Write down 5 songs you often listen to or that mean a lot to you.
- "Romper Stomper" -- Dogrocket. My friend Phil, of Ruth Buzzy, recorded an album and a half of nifty cut-and-paste-and-sample songs that I just keep listening to over and over. I love them all, but I've used Romper Stomper in a couple of video projects because it's so upbeat.
- "1999" -- Asylum Street Spankers. "Life is just a party and parties weren't meant to last."
- "Low And Sweet" -- Green Keepers. Sometimes a song, usually a cheerful one like this one, just gets stuck in my head and I listen to it over and over over. A sweet little electro-swing number.
- "Jump Around" -- House of Pain. This is the official Bare theme song, partly because it's one of the few songs Shaun and I can agree on.
- "I Only Have Eyes For You" -- Lester Bowie's Brass Fantasy. I think this is my favorite song ever. The way it builds. The slow, sassy, subtle horns. Damn. I put it on just now and the first 30 seconds just get me, and then it keeps going and building for 10 minutes more.
- P.S. You can see all what I've actually been listening to on my AudioScrobber profile.
- Who are you going to pass this stick to? (3 persons) and why?
We have to pass it off? Umm... Kittyloaf, because she's my meme-buddy. And Erica, because she cares about music a lot. And, umm... everyone on the Chicago Metroblog, for no reason at all. Whew.
[saw it via Warren Ellis, did it after I saw it at Laurenn McCubbin]
Posted by Fuzzy at 3:00 AM | Comments (4)
February 18, 2005
Andrew Bird
originally posted on Metroblogging Chicago
We're sitting in Erica's living room listening to Andrew Bird's new CD, The Mysterious Production of Eggs for the third time. I had pre-ordered it on Amazon so we should have had it February 8 when it came out, but they shipped it UPS, which screwed everything up.
[UPS side rant: UPS is useless to me. I'm never home (and I don't live in a big building with a doorman or anything) and then, to add insult to injury, when they've tacked the dreaded 3rd notice to my front door and I have to go pick up my package at the UPS office -- it's in Northbrook! I live in a major city precisely so I can use public transportation and don't have to own a car. I had to wait until my roommate was in Las Vegas so I could borrow his pick-up truck, which meant that I got my package tonight literally minutes before it was put on a truck to be shipped back to Amazon.]
[Disclaimer: don't bother telling me about package redirect requests or having stuff shipped to work or whatever. I know how to get UPS packages, this time it was just a cascading series of problems that led to having to drive to Northbrook at rush hour on Friday. But we did get to eat tooooo much food at that suburban delight, Steak N' Shake.]
Where was I? Andrew Bird. Amazing. This new CD is a collection of songs that have been fan- (well, Erica-) favorites in concert for years but haven't appeared on any of his earlier albums. A lot of these songs have evolved quite a bit over the years as Andrew has experimented with different sounds, and I think they're great here. [Erica: "They're perfect! This is already my favorite Andrew Bird CD!"]
And it's got everything you'd expect and want on an Andrew Bird album: Kevin O'Donnell (dreamy), Nora O'Connor (Erica: "Smouldering!"), a CD booklet chock-full of Jay Ryan art, two songs whose titles are little pictures, whistling, and haunting, beautiful, rocking songs.
Andrew's on tour right now opening for Ani DiFranco, so the CD release show won't be until April 16 at the Metro. I'm sure I'll be raving about it in April. And Andrew will be backing Ani on her appearance on the Late Late show with Craig Ferguson on Monday (February 21).
If you'd like to hear some of these songs evolve, there are 50 different Andrew Bird concerts available from the Live Music Archive (it was a fun weekend once going through a spindle of 50 CD-Rs making Erica a instant collection).
And here's A Nervous Tic Motion Of The Head To The Left from the new album (from Andrew's Listen page).
Posted by Fuzzy at 10:33 PM | Comments (0)
It's an honor, but...
... when will the Hollywood studios stop ripping off ideas from independent movies?
[Thanks Matt for pointing this out]
Posted by Fuzzy at 10:07 AM | Comments (0)
February 17, 2005
OMG, House rocks!
originally posted on Metroblogging Chicago
We just came back from The House Theatre's Curse of the Crying Heart and it ROCKED!
Let's see, it had comedy and tragedy and epic action and martial arts and wire work and a rock band on stage (with the dreamy Kevin O'Donnell on drums) and it addresses fundamental questions of what it means to be a hero, and 500 Clown's Molly Brennan is in it (also dreamy) and did I mention the fights?
Curse is the second in a planned trilogy of plays called the Valentine Trilogy, but you won't miss out on a lot if you haven't seen the first play (San Valentino and the Melancholy Kid) as it's something of a thematic trilogy -- the first play was set in the Wild West, this one in feudal Japan, and the third play is set in Chicago of the 1930s. And when you do fall in love with this play and want to know more, they have DVDs of San Valentino for sale.
For more, you know, coherent reviews, the Sun-Times and the Tribune have both reviewed the show. And if you want a behind-the-scenes look, House has a new blog.
Posted by Fuzzy at 11:24 PM | Comments (0)
Ripping!
http://j-walkblog.com/blog/index/P18861/
Posted by Fuzzy at 4:08 PM | Comments (0)
February 16, 2005
My Miami photos
Spurred on by Jill's note today that Jesse had posted some pictures from Miami, I got off my duff and put up a gallery of some of the shots I (and Erica) took at the Miami Improv Festival 2005.
Posted by Fuzzy at 8:00 PM | Comments (0)
Mommy, I feel dizzy...
This is from the display case of the Miami Museum of Science store. Should they really be selling things to kids that have to have an antidote?
Posted by Fuzzy at 6:41 PM | Comments (1)
4 stars
Photo by Erica Reid
I'm working my way through my Miami pictures to make a big gallery, but here's one I quite like, me chilling in my Gapers Block shirt. (Am I the only one who notices how the GB shirt looks like the GTA shirt?)
Posted by Fuzzy at 5:21 PM | Comments (0)
Awww
Baby otters are the new kittens
Posted by Fuzzy at 11:48 AM | Comments (2)
MIF Photos
Jesse Parent, of JoKyR and Jesster, has posted some photos from the Miami Improv Festival.
Posted by Fuzzy at 10:36 AM | Comments (0)
February 15, 2005
At least I have productive friends
Bare's own Shaun Himmerick is interviewed by Game Chronicles Magazine about the forth-coming Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks videogame.
And my coworker Kyle Kolbe has an article in this month's Playboy (March 2005 -- with Paris Hilton on the cover) about putting together a $200,000 stereo system for $20,000. Bargain!
Posted by Fuzzy at 5:16 PM | Comments (0)
February 14, 2005
Choo-choo-choose me!
Happy Heart Day!
[valentine from deconcept]
Posted by Fuzzy at 12:02 PM | Comments (0)
Presents
And speaking of birthdays, Erica's parents noticed how taken I was with the Illinois Monument, so they gave me this Illinois Monument jar (a giveaway from the Vicksburg Bank Centennial) for my birthday.
It's filled with peppermint bark and pecans, which are not 100 years old.
Posted by Fuzzy at 11:10 AM
Surprise!
I spent my birthday out-of-town and so did Kate, so for the last couple of weeks I've been trying to organize something with her to have a joint birthday-in-Chicago thingy. She's been really lame about getting back to me, so I had pretty much written it off. Turns out, she was avoiding the issue because Erica had organized a surprise birthday dinner for me on Friday night.
Surprise!
It was in the Pope-room at Buca di Beppo, and OK... I knew something was up, and when we got off the train at Belmont and started walking south I remembered that Erica had asked me out of the blue a few months if I liked Buca. But I was expecting a table with 4 or 5 friends, not 16 people jammed around a huge table with a lazy-susan-mounted pope bust. I got to sit in the throne-chair and drink lots of 3-liter bottles of chianti. (Like Mark said, "You can tell it's good, because it's cold.")
Thanks Erica, thanks friends, thanks pope.
Posted by Fuzzy at 7:37 AM
February 11, 2005
What's on your Treo 600, Fuzzy?
Sean Bonner asks what software he should be looking for the Treo 650 he (whistle, look at feet) might get for his birthday. I'll answer here with a list of what I have on my Treo 600:
AA Flights -- American Airlines is my company's standard airline, so I figured it'd be useful to have the timetables with me. Hasn't been useful yet, but you never know. (And I know it'll be even less useful to Sean.)
AIM -- it's nowhere near as nice as the AIM client on the Sidekick, but you can download a Palm version of AIM from AOL.uk
BackupBuddyVFS -- I was religiously syncing my Palm everyday, and then it died and lost all its data while I was on the road and so I couldn't restore for days until I got home. So I got BackupBuddyVFS Pro and the Palm auto-backs up every night at midnight to the SD card.
Bejeweled! and Bookworm -- hours of fun
Blocks -- Tetris for Erica.
DopeWars -- you know, I never really got into this game, but I keep reinstalling it on every Palm I get.
FileZ -- for moving files to and from the SD memory card.
Galax -- I love me some Galaxian.
Kinoma -- a video player. The Pro version of the player plays mp4 files.
Klondike -- I'm pretty sure this came free with the Treo. I think it's a law that all platforms ship with a free version of Solitare.
MetrO -- a free, extensible public transport guide.
MovieRecorder & SoundRecorder -- I've never really used them. But I might!
mp3ringer -- because it is VERY important that I have Banana Phone as my ringtone. (I think I read that the 650 will have mp3 ringtone functionality built-in.)
NesEm & Phoinix -- I installed these, but I never really use them since I carry my GBA everywhere anyway.
PalmaSutra -- a naughty classic.
PocketTunes -- I mainly got this to make mp3 ringtones work, because I have an iPod.
pssh -- so I can SSH into fuzzyco.com to read my mail in PINE.
Qset -- to adjust the compression quality of jpegs produced by the built-in camera.
SFCave -- the world's simplest action game.
SnapperMail -- I only bought SnapperMail because the built-in Treo Mail app doesn't let you send an email without checking your email. I check with pssh, when I want to send an email I just want to quickly SEND it. I bought the Enterprise version because it does IMAP under the (see AA Flights, above) just-on-case theory.
Spaceward Ho! -- I used to play Spaceward Ho! for hours and hours and hours on my old Mac SE and IIsi -- often both, because it was the first multi-player game I ever played.
Strip -- to hold my passwords.
Vagablog -- promises to be a mobile blogging solution. I haven't gotten it to work yet.
VeriChat -- I'd probably use this if I used more than just AIM. But I don't. I should probably free up the space and delete it.
Web (Blazer 3.0) -- I just use the built-in browser and it's pretty OK.
I don't use Hand/RSS, because I just browse to Bloglines and they have a mobile-optimized version.
Hardware:
I got a 512 MB SD card for cheap with a rebate and it holds my backups and some time-shifted sitcoms for watching with Kinoma. And the combo USB cable/charger is much nicer to carry on the road than the cable with the wall wart.
In course of looking for the URLs for these products, I found a couple of other "what's on my Treo" lists and I'll probably be adding some of their listed apps soon.
Posted by Fuzzy at 2:02 PM | Comments (0)
MarsEdit autosaves!
I just found out the scary, oh-well-I-guess-I-lost-all-that-typing-way that MarsEdit autosaves. Ranchero rocks!
Posted by Fuzzy at 12:09 PM | Comments (0)
February 10, 2005
Crazy Town
originally posted on Metroblogging Chicago
I did, in fact, "remove this notice off from here," though I tried not to tear it (the letters in the lower corner said "77x7!" -- it was taped on pretty good). I guess I'll face the judge for it.
A weird thing is that this sign wasn't really close to any theaters. I took it off a utility box at the corner of Sheridan and Bryn Mawr. I guess the Actor's Workshop Theater is down the street on Bryn Mawr, but they're certainly not who comes to mind when I think of controversial theater. The other weird thing, for this kind of sign, is the lack of scriptural justification.
Huh, on a re-read, I realized, too, that this is really targeted at the office that hands out PPAs, so it should really be down in the Loop, to hit its target audience.
Oh, and it's loopy as a french horn.
Posted by Fuzzy at 10:12 PM | Comments (0)
February 8, 2005
Good to see you, Mr. Einstein
When we went shopping for a wig for Shaun to be the Fat Southern Senator, we ended up getting this Einstein wig and mustache kit at Fantasy Costumes. But please note that it is not a costume, it is a disguise. For all those times when you want to fool people into thinking that you are actually Albert Einstein.
Posted by Fuzzy at 9:59 PM | Comments (0)
The Sun-Times is doing that thing again
originally posted on Metroblogging Chicago
The Sun-Times is doing that thing again. That thing that I never had to come up with a name for because I'd just talk to my friends and say, "Did you see the Sun-Times this morning? They did that thing again."
The thing is where they have a BIG headline with hardly any text from the accompanying story ("see Page 3") and then a BIG picture that has nothing to do with the headline story, but they're both so big and jammed so close together that when you're glancing at the cover as you pass by a vending machine you assume that the picture goes with the story. With, dare I say it, often humorous juxtaposition.
What is that smoking clown so adamant that she did not do?
Today's is not an award-winner (my all-time favorite was a big headline about "Study links pollution to rising estrogen levels" and a big picture of Bozo the Clown) but it's just notable because after their redesign in November 2003 instances of the thing really dropped -- the big picture almost always accompanied the headline. (Check out this gallery of covers from 2004 from Sun-Times news designer Robb Montgomery. There are a couple good thingy ones, Bono in sticker shock and the excited swimmer terrorists, but most of them are, you know, well-designed.) Here's hoping this marks a return to terrible design for the Sun-Times.
Posted by Fuzzy at 9:31 PM | Comments (0)
February 4, 2005
Miami
We're in Miami! The Miami Improv Festival is ticking along and we're ticking along with it.
The best part is that it's 70°out! We sepnt the day walking along the ocean front at South Beach (it looks just like Vice City!). Though, come to think of it, we never actually walked over to beach. We had a great lunch, though.
Last night we did our show which, judging by the kind words afterwards, was pretty good. After the shows we all went out to a karaoke bar with half a live band (it was odd) and at 4:30 am Erica got to live the dream -- she sang "Miami"* in Miami. Woo-oo.
OK, time for a disco nap before the shows tonight.
Posted by Fuzzy at 4:05 PM | Comments (1)