My Nabaztag has been replaced (and works)

I received my Nabaztag back from ThinkGeek late last week. On Thursday, I spent about 15 minutes to get my bunny back to working mode. Tested the microphone and it works flawlessly. What is weird is that I think the original might have been a second-hand bunny. When I logged into the Nabaztag website and registered the serial number, there were already options listed under the bunny. When I registered this newest bunny, it was a clean slate.

For now, he is proudly seated on my black side tables. He doesn't do much yet, but I know what he's capable of. Once again, I begin down the road of a happy Nabaztag-er.

Viva Nabaztag!

My weekend mistress....

I remarked to someone that my weekend mistress was taking all my time. This mistress is an event called the Winter Wonderland. When I volunteered to do glass, I thought, "It won't be that much time." Was I wrong.....

While the event is fun, it is time-consuming. Every Friday, Saturday and Sunday night, I spend time in a little house doing lampworking. I am finally able to create what I want to create, design new product and interact with the audience. (Even though at times, I feel like a fish in an aquarium.)

If you're interested in visiting me, feel free to drop by. My hut is one of the four labeled "Bay Area Glass Institute" and is located between the two sections of the Fairmont Hotel. I'm "on display" from 5:00pm - 9:00pm on 12/14, 12/15, 12/16, 12/20, 12/21, 12/22 and 12/23.

Will It Blend?

I've been doing some things in the office (where I can), but mostly, I've been sitting around doing nothing. Does the term "lame duck" ring a bell? Earlier today, through a string of links, I ended up at at the Will It Blend website. This is a site run by Blendtec, the blender manufacturer.

Can I just say, "How did I miss this?" They blend all sorts of stuff. (And, it's nice to know that Chuck Norris does not blend.) For the most part, this site shows that if a company has a little humor, it can go a long way. (Go Go Viral Marketing!) Great job guys, it was really enjoyable.

Today....... I quit my job.

This morning I went to my boss and I resigned. Right now, there are mixed feelings rolling around my head, but all-in-all, I did the right thing for me.

A post on "Creativity"

Right now, I'm pretty drained. Drained of energy. Drained of life. Drained of creativity. Now, that might not be a major thing for a cube-living technology guy, but for me, it's an issue that must be dealt with.

You see, I'm a cube-living technology guy only at work. While at home, I like to create stuff. (Stuff is jewelry, glass and other assorted things.) What happens now is that I leave work completely "drained". I am a shadow of the former happy guy.

Creativity, according to m-w.com, is a word that traces is genealogy back to 1875 and is defined as the quality of being creative or the ability to create. Last night, I was at BAGI trying to create some test items for the booth I will be manning. I first created a ribbon cane, then a box and combined the two. What appeared in front of me was a box with a ribbon. Nice, and the ribbon cane needed some work. Next were candy canes. Easy enough. I created 20+ small candy canes and realized something. I was a bit stressed out. Next came Christmas trees. Nah, they sucked. Back to the boxes and a complete failure. I went home to de-stress.

A call from a friend beckoned me over to a smoked turkey dinner. There, I was introduced to some new acquaintances and said "hey" to some old ones. Turkey was eaten, then came the Wii. A little Dance, Dance to ease the mood. Then, some bowling. By the end of bowling there was the husband/wife hosts and me. I asked if I could see Super Mario Galaxy. My friend handed me the remote. Little did I realize that the second remote was useful. It was a jump enhancer. It was a mob stunner. It was a star collector. And, it was a mischief maker. I could either help or hinder my partner in the game. (It was a lot of fun!) At the end of night, I could feel the stress begin to melt away.

In the end, what does it really mean to be "creative"?

The Nabaztag is Nabaz-broken

This past week, I played around with the Nabaztag. It is 100% a gateway device for the Internet. My expectations have been met and with an API, I think will be exceeded. During my introduction, I thought perhaps that the microphone was a bit odd. After looking at it, I have found out that it is not even working.

Back to Think Geek you Nabaztag! Bring me a replacement gender-neutral bunny!

Rabble, rabble, rabble! What happened to my holiday.

This has been growing over the past few years and this year, it hit the fan. Halloween, straight to Christmas. What ever happened to Thanksgiving? I'm surfing the web, Christmas adds. I go into a store, Christmas decorations are for sale. Where did you go, Thanksgiving? You're still on the fourth Thursday of November, aren't you?

Why is Thanksgiving my favorite holiday? To put it bluntly, I was born around the holiday. Yep, my birthday occurs around Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving, the turkey and football holiday, means a lot to me.

Now, it may not be a popular Hallmark holiday. It certainly isn't a good gift holiday. It's a great family get together, stuff your face and everybody spend time together holiday. Thanksgiving happens to be when people used to get a four-day holiday to spend with friends and family. Unfortunately, now, the Friday after equals the largest shopping day of the year and most people are traveling on two of the four days.

For some simple sites on Thanksgiving, please visit:
Wikipedia
Holiday.net
History.com

People say that the American family is not as strong as it used to be. I'll weigh in and add that as the meaning of holidays erode, so will the family bond.

My Nabaztag arrived

My Nabaztag arrived. Unfortunately, I was laid up sick, so I didn't do much other than set it up. Pretty easy set-up.

This weekend, I'll be working on getting an API set-up.

When did it go commercial!?!

I decided to go and look at the state of PHP because of my new Nabaztag purchase. (Looking at OpenNab as an open-source API for it.) In the 2.5 years I've been away from any decent type of programming, what was a simple and free scripting language has become more commercialized. A simple search for "php script" resulted in mostly "buy my script, it's the best" websites.

I understand that it might have been my search term, but it amazed me what used to be a community of fairly open-minded and freely sharing people has become more of a money grubbing group. I also realize that there is still freshmeat.net and sourceforge.net. There are still a number of higher-level script sharing sites.

I'm just a bit surprised. Has PHP fallen to way-side? Have other languages taken that much business away from from the LAMP community? Or, did I just hop into the PHP world at a time when it was super popular?

Rock on Bunny!

Today while looking at the web, I came across a little interactive bunny from Violet. The nabaztag looked intriguing. After some research (and some disgruntled users comments), I went out and bought one from ThinkGeek.

Call me crazy. Call me insane. The bunny is probably the beginning of something or at least a new time-sink. And, if for nothing else, it's an alarm clock.

What intrigues me is the ability to make it do "stuff." All web-based, via WiFi, commands are passed to it. It appears to be the first commercialized form of many applications used to break down the computing barrier, albeit in the form of a stylized bunny rabbit.

A drip, drip, drip

Last night, Northern California (well Sunnyvale at least) got its first real rain of the season. I found something out about the home I live in. Next to the bedroom window there is a simple drain spout and it is LOUD when the rain stops. The rain drips from the gutter, falls about 10-12 feet and creates an incredibly loud THUD noise. This weekend, I'll be climbing to the roof and probably cleaning out the gutters if needed.

Fall has arrived

As there is a chill in the air (and my allergies are beginning to awaken), it has become apparent that we have entered Autumn. When I look on wikipedia, I see that autumn begins around September 23. I'd like to give everyone a cheerful, "Happy Autumn" (albeit a bit late).

Now, autumn also invites me to sleeping a lot. Sunday was spent sleeping 8 hours during the day, waking up to cook dinner, watch evening television, and then hitting my bed around 10:00 p.m. I could not believe it.

Another thing I did was cook. (gasp) I dusted out the pots and pans, put some rice on the stove, put the peas in the microwave, and then put them altogether. MMMmmmmm, rice-n-peas. Uncle Ben's rice is not the best rice for this, but it works. I need to start looking for Japanese sushi rice. That works much better for this recipe.

Now that I have started to cook, it'll be interesting to see how that affects my life (if at all).

Success (in the housecleaning)

While my walls were bare, people came over and said they liked the house. So, all-in-all, a total success.

The one thing I thought was a problem, and it was probably only me, was the seating. I'd love to find a way to fit a beanbag back into the set-up. I really only see this possible if I flip the room. Dining area becomes living room and vice-versa. I'll do some measurements and see how it fits.

My house is clean (sorta)

The big day has arrived. Why I'm blogging about cleaning my house still eludes me, but hey, might as well.

I've been waking up early each day this week due to the Italian time change. This has had a wonderful effect on my house cleaning. I am now stating that my house is clean (sorta). While the main room and kitchen are now presentable (but still lived in), the rest of the house (bedroom, computer room and garage) are about to burst at the seams. It still amazes me how much one person can acquire over the years.

My tasks were as follows:
1) Clean kitchen (done, but now with dirty dishes)
2) Clean mainroom (done)
3) Get people over (will happen tonight)

The continuing House Cleaning.....

One day away and the house is almost done. (Well, at least the main rooms.) The living/dining room area and bathroom will be clear of clutter and ready by tomorrow night. My bedroom is in a "lived in" state. The computer room is a disaster, but that's cool as it is a work room.

Cleaning the house has led me to a few observations:
- I hate to clean.
- It's amazing how much you accumulate over the years.
- It's a pain to keep cleaning week-to-week, but if you don't, it'll take awhile to get everything into a decent shape.

In addition, I've made the following purchases:
- New futon mattresses. (One of the futons was dead and needed to be replaced. I also replaced the second mattress so the two would match.)
- Some simple legs for some InterMetro shelving that I had laying around. (I'm amazed at how much life I'm getting out of these shelves.)

Some simple "cram into the garage" and dusting/vacuuming and viola, the house is ready.

A few things have occurred

I finally took a much needed vacation. It was split between two events.

The first event was helping out a few friends at a glass sale they were holding. It was great! Two days of troubleshooting point-of-sale computers and helping out the general public. A great time was had by all and a lot of hard work paid off for both me and my friends.

The second event was a bit larger. I took an inaugural trip to Murano, Italy. Yep, you read it right, I went to the islands. Now, one would think that it would be all fun and games. You would be wrong. The aforementioned glass sale was a lot of 5:00 a.m. - 11:00 p.m. days, so I was a bit tired from those. So, sleep played a major part of the trip.

I was contacted by a friend to check if I'd be willing to take a bag to Murano for a friend of hers. (The friend was grossly over the 50 pound bag limit a week before I left.) I said, "Sure."

Airport to airport to airport, I finally reached the Venice airport. After collecting the bags and waiting a few minutes for the mysterious bag owner, she greeted me with the greatest (and I mean greatest) hug I have ever received. After a quick "Hi, how are you?", we left off to the boat bus.

Now, you might be questioning the idea of a boat bus. In the island of Venice, Murano, Burano and others, everything is boat based. There is no need of a car, in fact, if you had one, it would be useless. There are boats for everything. If you can imagine it as a boat, it exists.

Now, I should be awestruck of an island of glass people, but unfortunately, I was a bit "ah, duh" from lack of sleep. Throughout the week, I had a few things to do: take a murrini class (the reason I was there), meet up with Afro (a glass blowing friend who lives on the island) and try to spend some time with Amy (the mysterious bag lady). Only one of the three items I feel was accomplished, taking a murrini class. Afro wasn't there at his studio when I dropped in the couple of times. And, Amy or I was too busy for any real hang-out time. This has a simple solution... I'm going back to Murano.

The class was great. It had a slow start, but met my expectations nearer to the end. It was held in the studios of Lucio Bubacco, an Italian flameworking glass maestro. Lucio was a great host. He made sure that everyone had everything they needed. The class was a Loren Stump murrini making course. We chose to do a picture of Murano (and make it authentic Murano). When it was all said and done, we got the whole thing to about 3/4 of the way done before class was over. A bit disappointing that we didn't complete it, but the class was still great.

Now, looking at things from the rear, I needed to spend more time in Italy. Everything seemed so rushed (because it really was). There was very little time, if any, for "fun". Everything seemed so scripted, making sure I was here, or there, at a certain time. As I mentioned above, I will be going back for a "fun" trip.

Cleaning the rest of the house...

If you haven't guessed, I'm cleaning my house. Why? Well, in a few weeks, my house will become the central meeting place for Thursday night TV watching.

My tasks are as follows:
1) Clean kitchen (done, but now with dirty dishes)
2) Clean mainroom (in-progress)
3) Get people over

The mainroom is the living room/dining area. It's a longish room that I started cleaning on Sunday. While I thought this might be an enormouse pain-in-the-butt, it has been otherwise. There are boxes everywhere and I saw that most of the boxes had a few things in them. Combine, close up and move to the computer room. (That's ultimately where they will be unpacked.)

Soon, my home will once again be a place to relax.

The weekend (aka THE KITCHEN IS CLEAN)

Saturday, I had a bead meeting to go to. This is a "re-introduction" to the bead meeting world as I have missed the last 5-6 months of meetings. The meeting was un-eventful. :(

Sunday, I spent the day doing stuff related to the house. Bought a tool roll-away for the jewelry supplies, collapsed what seemed to be too many boxes and continued on the house cleaning. The nice part about it, my kitchen is CLEANED! Yep, you read it correctly, I now have a fully functioning, counter-topping kitchen.

So, my countdown to having a small social get together is beginning:
1) Clean kitchen (done)
2) Clean mainroom
3) Get people over

House Cleaning :(

I've avoided this.... It's a pain.... So, I've began to "recruit" people to help me. This weekend, the kitchen. (Maybe the living/dining area.)

PMC classes - Yippee!

It took a few days to sink in, but in the end, I really enjoyed my PMC classes. My mind has been rolling around a few ideas of how to incorporate glass and PMC. Rings come to mind almost immediately. And, finally, ideas for my cuff links are coming to fruition. (I'm so happy about this one.)

For those who are interested, here's the quick rundown of the classes. Two classes. One in basic PMC skills. The other in rings. (I enjoyed the rings class more.) Three pieces where made. One non-descript pendant in the first class and two rings in the second. Instructor for both classes was Patrik Kusek.

While I may not be "on the PMC bandwagon," I am traveling beside it.

Now, this opens up a new world to me that has been fairly unexplored, glass and PMC. While there are a number of artists who are doing a variety of things in this area, those numbers are few and far between. This appears to be a real opportunity.

I also have been asked to donate some pieces to the BAGI auction. It's probably about time I get off my duff and create a few pieces for the auction and finish the videos (Pulling Schott and Pumpkin Magic).

Game Night

I went over to a friend house last night for a chili dinner and game night. Chili was great! Game night (Settlers of Catan) was also fun, albeit a bit late. A few of us also played a bit of Wii Sports (Bowling) and on game 3, I bowled a 210+ game.

Settlers of Catan is different every time due to the board layout. Throughout the game, you build roads, settlements and cities. You also purchase development cards. Now, the goal of the game is to be the first to reach 10 points. This may not seem difficult, but it is.

The Muppets are here!

In my occasional check of the mailbox, I notice that something is jammed inside. After opening the garage door (seeing the rest of the garage is full of "stuff"), I see an oblong package. I grab the package and rush inside the house. After ripping the package open, there is Miss Piggy staring right back at me. Muppets Season 2 on DVD!

Now the question is..... Do I continue on my Doctor Who Dalek-a-thon or put it on hold and move straight to the Muppets?

The Weekend

I've recently had a really weird experience.... The experience of waking up so bloody early (e.g. pre-5:00 a.m.) Here's the real rub, if I'm not sick and the sun is anywhere in the sky, then I'm awake.

Saturday was spent with one set of friends. Very enjoyable, saw a movie and ate some food. Went home around 10:00 p.m. :( (I was extremely tired.)

Sunday was spent with some other friends. These friends I helped set up some computers and began to solve some issues they were having.

Both days were really early mornings.... One benefit to waking up so early is that I began to unpack after living in my home for 3+ months. Stuff gets put where it's going to be and empty boxes are stacked in the "dead box" zone. Now I have been offered by some friends (for each of my 3 moves) that they will help me move in. I don't accept the offer everytime. Maybe, I need to cash in some "friend points" to quicken the experience.

Days and Nights

This past weekend, I visited the Gilroy Garlicfest. It is a harvest festival that focuses on the stinking rose, garlic.

I woke up, slathered on some 45 sunblock and waited for my date to pick to me. We ate garlic fare, walked around the fairgrounds and watched some sideshows. It was enjoyable.

Unfortunately for me, my skin could not take the 45 sunblock, and OUCH! When I woke up on Monday, I had chemical burns on my arms, face and legs. (A shower was taken on Sunday night.) My skin cannot take the 45 sunblock. :(

Now (Wednesday), the chemical burns are beginning to heal and I am returning to normal.

Learning in Portland

I returned from a class in Portland. The class was held at Bullseye Glass and was taught by Ted Sawyer and Erik Whittemore.

The class was kiln forming and cold-working. While a 5-day class, it seemed to go by quickly. There were two projects, a boxcast cold-worked sculpture and a simple lost clay sculpture.

In the end, everyone was tired, yet excited from what they had learned.

A strange predicament....

So, today I have a strange predicament. Many people out there know I play some World of Warcraft.

I am trying to figure out why I can't get a 25-man together. And, how can I save a different struggling 10-man?

I've gotten plenty of suggestions from various folks and will see what boils to the top.

What am I to do?!?

This weekend, I had some time to spend with some other glass compatriots. It was nice to sit down and chat with them. Now the question is, "When do I have time to focus on glass?" I am tired.

Success! (Reposting blog pages)

When I began to look at my CMS and experiment within the pages, I noticed there was something called a "wrapper." Webpage wrapper...... maybe.

The short end of it (after too much brain power flung at this thing) is that wrapper is just that, a webpage wrapper. That's what I get for using something I haven't yet read the owner's manual for.

:)

Posting to another page?

I am trying to bring portions of this page to another web location. (e.g. www.andruanderson.com/pages/blog.php) Unfortunately, my practices appear to be going no where.

Fight!

So, in the morning, I usually spend a few minutes poking my nose into stuff I shouldn't. Today, came across Googlefight.com. It's fairly simple.... Put two words down and hit the fight button. Now the world is a safer place. :)

First

A few friends were sitting around coding one evening and stared comparing notes regarding me. It became evident that my life was a complex mish-mash of seemingly unrelated things. Miniature golf, glass and improvisational comedy to name a few.

One of those friends IM'd me and said I need a blog. That's enough motivation for me.

Friends, countrymen, lend me your ears.... Here's my blog in it's fullest glory.*

*There are no promises or guarantees that this blog will be updated regularly.