erica's joys :)

I wanted to make a quick post before my birthday is officially over so here it is...happy birthday to me!

A quick recap of my day:

5:35 am - Landed in Atlanta. The red-eye flight from SFO was packed so I didn't get very good sleep. Maybe 2 hours or so.

7:00 am - Arrived at home. Found Happy Birthday balloons floating around inside the apartment. Found a package on the kitchen counter from Circuit City. Inside was the digital camera I wanted. Thanks Dad! Also found a male person on my couch. Male person turned out to be Will, friend of mine and the boyfriend.

8:00 am - Got in the bed after playing with the camera.

10:00 am - Was informed that it was time for me to get up by my boyfriend. Apparently I was going to breakfast. Went back to sleep.

10:30 am - Was told to get up again. Got out of bed. Ugh.

11:30 am - Out the door to IHOP, Will in tow.

12:15 pm - Arrived at IHOP, boyfriend made reservation for 10....10?!

12:45 pm - Happy Birthday to me! Surprise breakfast with the boyfriend, Sara, Amanda, Will, Greg, Warren, and Jerome. Too bad IHOP kept screwing up my order so I didn't eat much

1:45 pm - Departed IHOP with the boyfriend, en route to Six Flags.

2:00 pm - Pit stop at home, had to pick up the Pink DS Lite from the apartment office.

2:30 pm - Arrive at Six Flags.

2:30 pm to 6:30 pm - Rides, rides, and more rides at Six Flags. I rode the Goliath, the Mind Bender, Batman, Free Fall, the Georgia Scorcher, and the Georgia Cyclone. There were some coasters I didn't get to though. So many G's, so little time.

7:15 pm - Hit up Wal-Mart for Super Mario Bros.

8:00 pm - Stopped by Ippolito's for some dinner. Chicken parmigiana, mmm mmm good.

9:00 pm - Arrived home, ate, and here I am.

So that was my birthday. No cake though. Doh! Oh well, time to figure out how to change the language on my DS. Have a good week all!

Ahhhh, the weather is much nicer in Mountain View right now. It is no longer as hot as the basement of hell, its actually quite pleasant. The trip has been pretty cool thus far, cool enough to make me consider moving here. Ah but then the nephews would be all the way across the country and we can't have that. If I could only convince my sister to move...hmmmm.

Yesterday was fun, I got to do lunch with Matt Jr. Adam (I kid Adam, I kid). Adam is a great guy (he didn't pay me to say that) and pretty funny to boot. The food was great as usual. Who knew curried salmon would taste yummy? Anyway, yesterday I also almost hit a Very Important Individual with a door as I was walking out from getting some breakfast. Tres embarrassing but they seemed not to notice and/or care. I apologized and we both kept it moving.

Well, time for me to start today's adventure. Oh and congrats and good luck to Liz! :) Later folks.

Holy wow. Why didn't anyone tell me not to come to California in the middle of a heat wave? Also, what is with the Bay Area's aversion to AC? When people are sleeping outside because it's too hot inside, it's time to invest in better cooling methods than multiple fans.

That being said, good morning Mountain View! I'd planned to go exploring and take cool pictures of things but as I said before, it's HOT. Somehow I don't think visiting Alcatraz when its 100+ degrees would be a pleasant experience. I'll try to get some pictures at some point but I'm not promising anything.

So added to the DS Lite waiting for me when I get home, there will also be a new digital camera, courtesy of Dad. I love birthdays!

I went ahead and bought the 1gb Zen V from Fry's yesterday. I figured for a semi-minor purchase, it couldn't hurt to check out the Zen. It's really going to take some getting used to, to say the least. The positioning of the volume button (on the side) isn't really the best idea. It seems like they tried to borrow the styling of the iPod but the non-functional plastic click wheel look alike is just a tease. I will say that the display is very pleasing to look at and the size is great. While not as slim as a Nano, its still small and cute. It actually fits nicely into the palm of my hand with room to spare.

Anywho, I decided I wanted to experiment a bit to see if I could get it to work with my Macbook. Plugged it in and nada, the MBP didn't even recognize it as a hard drive. That really sucked and I thought I was going to be confined to using my Windows box just to put an audiobook or two onto this thing. I was quite wrong. It turns out there is this very yummy application called XNJB written by Richard Low. Thanks be to Richard for XNJB is awesome. Its a nice GUI interface that lets you manage your Creative device from your Mac. Its much slower than transferring to an iPod but its not drag-ass. That the software even exists more than makes up for the slowness.

Welp, its time for me to start packing for my trip. Oh, by the way, can someone tell me why the website of a major airline has been down for the last 16 hours? I'd really like to see if I can upgrade but damned if their site will behave for me to do so. Ugh.

I just got the email update about my Pink DS Lite. It was shipped! Unfortunately it is enjoying its stay at the Hong Kong airport and won't be here before I go to Cali. However, it will be here waiting for me when I return. Mario and I will be spending some serious quality time and woe unto anybody who interrupts us. ;)

Update to the previous post about me buying an iPod for my flight. Yeah, no. Adam asked me why I was only looking at the trendy music player instead of all my options and quite honestly, I'd never thought about or investigated any others. So today, after doing some online research, I'm going to Fry's (yeah we have Fry's in Atlanta..aren't you jealous) to check out some of the other players. I'm already attracted to the Creative Zen V although it sucks that I can't use it on my Mac. That little thing is sexy looking though. I'll post what I decide on later on today (maybe).

Have a good weekend folks. :)

First, whoa.



Hi Digg readers! I'm glad some of you are finding my sidebar tip useful. :) I'll get to responding to comments after this post.

Moving on, yesterday I started my day reclined in a massaging chair watching TV. Ah bliss...the laughing gas was nice too. :) Yes, I had a dentist appointment at the best dentist in Atlanta (possibly the world).

Yes, TV's and massaging chairs at the dentist. Honestly, it was really quite nice. Mind you I'm one of those that has always liked going to the dentist so take the previous statement with a grain of salt. However, given that I was quite out of it due to the nitrous oxide (side: OMG what a feeling) I don't remember much of the actual appointment. Highlight of the morning: the Dentist looked at my X-rays and checked out my teeth and said "Wow you have dental health people would love to have..me included!" Yay for dental health! :)

Also good news, I'm no longer sick, save a few sneezes and coughs when I wake up in the morning. Thank goodness, I'll be 100% better by my birthday. Speaking of my birthday, here's a random fun fact about July 30: it;s Alton Brown's birthday too. I pointed this out to him on Facebook but he kind of ignored it. Oh well! Also speaking of birthdays, I think I'm going to buy myself an early birthday present in the form of an iPod. I can't stomach the thought of a 5 hour flight without an audiobook to listen to.

Have a good day folks. :)

Today I got an e-mail alert that I'd gotten 3 comments on an older post. Very interesting, I thought, so I went to go check them out. They turned out to be comment spam along with a whole lot more that I wasn't aware of. Shame Blogger doesn't have a listing of all comments that have been made on all posts. Anyhow, while going back to check older posts for more spam, I ran across a comment I hadn't seen before.

AG said: "Tell us more about landing a gig at Google w/o being a programmer or hardcore geek. Inquiring minds want to know ;)"

It's pretty simple. Be smart. Be passionate about what you do. Be good at what you do (doesn't hurt to have documentation of this). Be able to demonstrate that you're good at what you do. I think the Google Jobs page sums it up quite nicely:

Our most valuable resource is our people: energetic, innovative thinkers who care equally about doing great work and developing a culture that's great for all our employees

I hope that answers your question AG. :)

Whenever I'm on my Mac or Linux box, I miss the functionality of my Google Desktop Sidebar. I like being able to have a to do list, my Google calendar, and other various useful things right at my fingertips. I got to thinking about the Firefox Sidebar yesterday and how I could use that along with my Personalized Google page to make a sidebar I could use on any OS. Once I did it, I couldn't believe I hadn't done it sooner. I'm quite sure some enterprising person has already done this and it was posted on Lifehacker ages ago, but once again, its new to me. Anywho, here's what I did.

1) If you don't already have it, install Firefox.
2) Using Firefox, browse to http://www.google.com/ig
3) Line up all your Gadgets on the left, putting the ones you'll use most at the top.
4) Once you've got everything arranged, bookmark that page and give it the name Google IG.
5) Open Bookmarks in the toolbar and select Manage Bookmarks.
6) Highlight the Google IG bookmark and click on the Properties button.
7) In the Properties dialog check the box next to "Load this bookmark in the sidebar" then click OK.
8) Double click the Google IG bookmark and it should load in the sidebar.
9) Close the Bookmarks Manager and enjoy. :)

To make your Google IG book more accessible, your can put it in your Bookmarks Toolbar.

Edit: Hey 50th post! Where's the falling balloons and cupcakes?

Sorry I've not been coming with the posts lately my dear, loyal ~24 readers. Unfortunately I've been sick and haven't felt like doing much of anything that requires any sort of effort. I've never lost my voice before now so this is a new experience for me. How does one get sick in the middle of the summer though?

I'm still recovering so I'll make this post very brief.

- I got some new schwag as you can see in the picture. Thanks Valleyschwag.

- I'll be in Cali during the last week of July. Hopefully I'll get to meet Liz while there...hi Liz!

- My mom got mad at me today because I asked her not to sell my books that are in her garage. Does she not understand? Meanwhile, what's the best way to ship 2 very heavy boxes of books across the US?

- I did not vote for Ted Stevens when I lived in Alaska, TYVM.

- The Dave Chappelle show would probably be funny if Dave were actually there. Right now its just sad.

- Genealogy gets really sticky when you factor in burned census records, name misspellings, nicknames turning into given names, etc. By the grace of God, I'm back to my 7th generation on my moms side. Somebody needs to web 2.0/Ajaxify PhpGedView so its a little easier to use.

Okay that will be it for this entry. Time to go lay back in bed and cough up a lung.

Today, it really hit home that I work at Google. Why? Observe.



Mmm...


good!

What you are drooling at is a small portion of the selection we had for lunch yesterday. Yum.

I'm sitting at home watching British comedy on PBS, waiting for the real version of The Office to come on.

That being said, I am completely bored. Boredom leads me to do things online that I might not otherwise think/be bothered/have time to do. This time I decided to go on a Pink DS Lite hunt. For those who aren't aware, the Noble Pink DS Lite will be released in Japan on July 20, exactly 10 days before my birthday. The timing of the release is not coincidental. I firmly believe that Nintendo, knowing that my birthday is July 30, decided to release just in time for me to get one on my birthday. Thank you Nintendo, I always knew you cared.

Where was I? Right, PDSL hunt. So in hunting for where I can acquire a PDSL, I found 3 shops online that will import PDSL's. I will list* them here, ordered by the price they have listed for PDSL's.

Play-Asia.com - $179.90
Renchi.com - $198.80
Lik-Sang.com - $199.90

There you have it. If you know of any other places that will import PDSL's, please leave a comment and I'll update this post.

*Listing of vendors does not imply endorsement.

I <3 Gmail.

Yesterday I found out about this cool feature that I'm sure half the world has known about for ages. However, I'm just learning about it so here I am writing about it.

Anyhow, this feature is this "+". A simple little plus sign. Had I known about that plus sign ages ago, my spam box wouldn't have 6270 emails in it right now (not an exaggeration unfortunately).

How the plus sign works is like this. Suppose my email address is macbookpro@gmail.com (obviously this is not my email address). Imagine I want to sign up for some contest or whatever but I'm worried about this place selling my info and me getting even more spam. Well, I just sign up with the plus sign then. I use ericasj0ys+contest@gmail.com as my registration email address. The email still gets to me (don't ask me how, something to do with pigeons I think) but at this point, I have complete control over that specific address.

Now lets say the I didn't win the contest I signed up for and the contest administrators sold my information. Ericasj0ys+contest@gmail.com gets flooded with nasty spam and other assorted canned meat by-products. At that point I can set up a filter pointing all emails addressed to ericasj0ys+contest@gmail.com to the Trash. The spam never makes it to my spam box, let alone my inbox.

There are many other ways to play with the plus sign. Take these for example:

• ericasj0ys+mom@gmail.com filtered directly to the archive with the label "nag" (not seriously mom, I read all your emails the moment they arrive)
• ericasj0ys+potentials@gmail.com for giving out to random men (or women if that's what you prefer) in bars
• ericasj0ys+employment@gmail.com for resumes and job sites
  

The usages are limited only by your imagination.

While you're thinking about useful Gmail stuff, check out these Greasemonkey scripts.

• Gmail Saved Searches
• Gmail Colored Labels
  

Alrighty so I'm feeling extremely chatty lately so don't be surprised if more posts come today. :) Until then dear readers...