Raving Amicks

Mindy and I were able to catch up with Mason today, so we interrogated him a bit and I’ve added it all to the “Mason’s Whereabouts” link on the sidebar. Keep in mind that the link will not work unless you are logged in, for obvious reasons. Here’s a picture to whet your appetite:

And he’ll be coming with Dieter and Mindy and I for Thanksgiving.

Hey, Fellow Amicks! I hope all has been going well for everyone. Tyler doesn’t really fill me in on the latest details (but is that really surprising?), so for all I know the old home is full of cobwebs and bats and you added five more dogs to the pack. Though I must admit, a pack of eight dogs would be pretty awesome. Who needs cars when you have eight crazy spaniels?

So what’s happened with me? Well, a lot of small, boring details. Nothing that fun. You’re not really missing out on much. Oh, but I did get my first ever 100% written-by-me article published at MSN Shopping last month. It’s not a big revenue-driver, being about container gardening, but it was still exciting to have the opportunity to write about something fun and have it promoted on the MSN homepage last month. In case you’d like to read it (even though it’s designed to sell a product rather than blow your mind), here’s the article: “Itsy Bitsy Gardens.”

Oh, and that title—not mine. Something along the lines of “5 Themed Container Gardens” was apparently too boring. The same goes for “Fall Fashion 2008 Preview” or “Fall Fashion 2008,” which goes live in a few hours under the name “Sneak Peek: Fall Fashion 2008.” But at least this bad boy will most certainly be a huge revenue-driver, and I can soon brag about how I wrote an article read by x thousand people that made xx thousand dollars.

It’s titled, “How Not to Talk to Your Kids” or “The Power (and Peril) of Praising Your Kids”. While the article focuses on studies done with children, it’s pretty obvious that everything in there applies to people of any age. It’s an incredibly eye-opening investigation of praise, and I think it will make a lot of sense to anyone. Read it, or you fail!

Good Design is Green

Most of my genius ideas happen in one of two places: while in the shower, and while bored to tears when waiting for the bus. On Monday, while I was bored to tears when waiting for the bus, I was hit by one of my genius ideas. The idea? I’m convinced that a key part of being eco-friendly relies heavily on good design. Dieter, take note (even though most of this is a joke).

I shall use my current place of employment as an example. I know, I know. It’s just too easy to poke fun at them since everyone knows their design is horrific—be it program interfaces or hardware. But don’t worry, I’ll take my example a step higher than the easy-to-make-fun-of products they create. I’ll take it to the women’s bathroom!

Let’s begin our journey at the very essence of the women’s bathroom: the stall. And more specifically, the toilet. Women, you see, have the misfortune of needing disposable paper toilet seat covers to do any of their business. And trust me, if you’ve seen some of the people I work with, you’d definitely not take your chances without the seat covers.

Herein lies the problem: the toilet seats at my current place of employment are sharply curved so as to point immediately inwards to the bowl. These aren’t the standard toilet seats found in a typical home, mind you. They are special poorly designed grade A utility seats. These seats are so special in their poor design that when I place said disposable seat cover on the seat, it slides down into the toilet bowl. I must then attempt to place another seat cover across that foul curved seat of environmental doom, trying to position it just right so it does not join it’s comrade in the bowl. If I’m lucky, this might work. Most of the time, however, the second cover will quickly slip down the angled seat and crumble into the watery abyss. And often the third. And sometimes the fourth. I must continue to place seat cover after seat cover until the covers already crumpled in the bowl provide enough of a buttress to keep the last one in place. Then, and only then, am I free to use the toilet for my bodily needs.

Think of all this waste! Anywhere from two to five toilet seat covers must be wasted before I can safely use the toilet! (more…)

Instead of working due to adverse weather conditions, I stayed home and made this tasty pumpkin bread. I also braved the insanely cold weather and took some pictures our puny dusting of snow. Despite the small amount of snow, it’s really treacherous out there. While I was wandering around, I encountered a few poor idiots who thought they could drive somewhere. I guess they didn’t realize all the roads were completely covered with ice—some with more than an inch.

Meanwhile, Tyler “telecommuted.” Of course meaning he sat around and read stuff on the internet and sent the occasional instant message to other coworkers who were doing the same. Ah, if only I could be paid to stay at home and make tasty food.

More on the snow/ice conditions in Seattle later.

So currently Chelsey attends school at Clark College where she also works in the campus bookstore. The bookstore just got a bunch of new sweatshirts, shirts, and jackets in stock and subsequently needed them to be modeled on the school website. So Chels and two girls working in the bookstore took the opportunity to model some of the clothing. Here are a few shots of chels, other than the sweatshirts being massive i think she looks pretty damn cute take a look->