I’m unemployed and gas costs $4.60 a gallon, so what better time is there to take a road trip to Idaho to see my dad?

Actually, I’m road-tripping for three reasons:

1. Changeable plane tickets are expensive, even more so than the gas to get the 861 miles between here and Sun Valley.
2. You could not pay me to fly into the itty bitty airport in Sun Valley in an itty bitty plane that has to nose-dive between GIANT mountains to land, and the closest normal airports are Boise (2.5 hour drive) and Salt Lake City (5 hour drive).
3. Given the general hassle that flying has become over the last few years, for a trip of less than 1,000 miles, I’d really rather drive if I have the time.

So tonight, I’m stopping in Vegas and, per my Evil Plot, going to see The Dark Knight in IMAX. Then I’ll get up and drive the rest of the way to Sun Valley, and all will be well.

Tales of fishing, biking, swimming, relaxing, and possibly hiking and rafting if my foot decides to cooperate, to come.

This whole WordPress bit is largely up and running now, so I’m going to start posting over here.

A few minor housekeeping bits:

• Here are links to the Main RSS Feed and the Comments RSS Feed. You’ll see a few comments from my brief (failed) attempt at using Blogger comments, but I’m still trying to figure out if/how I can import all my Haloscan comments.

• I am leaving the old version of blog up, if only for the simplicity of not having to go through and change all the damn URLs in the old permalinks.

• If there’s anything you particularly hate about this design, let me know, and I’ll see what I can work on. I’m going to futz with the size in the posts a bit since I spend too much time staring at a computer and am therefore starting to go a bit blind, so the font’s a wee bit smaller than I’d like.

• I’ve gotten about halfway through the draining task of updating the times on all my posts, but that shit’s going to take a while. The whole index page is fixed up, as is the April ’02-Oct ’04, but the rest will probably take me longer as I’m going to be traveling (more to come on that).

• One fun thing to come from having to correct the time on all my archives is going through and glancing at all my old posts and remembering things I’d forgotten. Like Chaplin is a year older than I remembered he was. I’d apparently been misremembering that he was between 1-2 when I got him, but this post from the day he came home says 2-3. Oops!

Anyway, that’s about the long and short of it for now, more details on my upcoming travels to come either later tonight or tomorrow morning.

Well, all the posts that imported seem to have reverted to GMT. I’ve got to figure out how to fix that.

Update: Yeah, I have to go through and hand-update all 1885 posts. At least it’ll kill some Unemployment Time.

Oh, Blogger. You make me crazy with your refusals to publish and your half-assed FTP impementation.

But oh, WordPress, trying to switch to you is making me EVEN FUCKING CRAZIER.

Why didn’t I learn something useful in school, like PHP programming? Then I could figure out what the fucking problem is.

More to come, possibly over here when I’m done tearing my hair out. In the meantime, feel free to tell me how fugly that design is.

1. Write a website that specializes in taking apart Apple products as soon as they’re released.

2. Realize that the first people in the world to get the new iPhone are in New Zealand.

3. Fly to Auckland to be fourth in line IN THE WORLD for your iPhone, so you can immediately take it apart and post pictures online.

4. Write the whole damn trip and the price of the phone off as business related.

5. Enjoy some gorgeous New Zealand scenery.

I think I’ve figured out how to land myself a job interview next Friday.

This theory came to me as I was waiting for my Chinese food for an hour and 15 minutes. I really had to pee, but I just KNEW the guy was going to come while I was in the bathroom.

Sure enough, I said “Oh the hell with this, I’m not waiting any longer,” and the guy came while I was in the bathroom.

This always happens to me: I wait and wait for what’s supposed to happen to happen, and then when it doesn’t, I start doing something else, and THEN what was supposed to happen happens.

Working from this trend, I’ve come up with a plan to have at the very least, a job interview by the end of next week.

My job finishes this Friday, and I had been planning (barring a sudden settlement with SAG) to try and leave town next Thursday for about a week and a half to visit my dad up in Idaho. I’ll be driving, so I’ll be stopping in Vegas on the way up next Thursday if all goes to plan.

I knew Dark Knight was coming out next Friday, and I really want to see it in IMAX, since they actually shot some of it in IMAX and I hear it’s brain-meltingly awesome.

So of course, I got online to see if there are tickets to the midnight IMAX screening in Vegas (and I’d like to pause here to note that IMAX tickets in Vegas are cheaper than regular movie tickets here), and there were.

So now, my evil plot: I bought my ticket to that midnight Thursday showing in Vegas.

By purchasing that ticket, I have close to guaranteed that something will come up in L.A. and I won’t be able to leave until Friday or Saturday, maybe not even at all.

Clearly, as I’m packing my shit into the car to leave on Thursday morning, I will get a phone call from someone who wants to interview me Friday morning, maybe even for a job that starts Monday.

And if my frustrating luck does not continue to hold…Well, I’ll get to see the Dark Knight in IMAX on opening night then spend a week in Idaho with my dad. It’s pretty much a win-win.

Chaplin likes to come sit on my lap while I’m trying to read things on the computer. Fortunately, my computer has a built-in camera so I can capture him making goofy faces like this one:

If only I could figure out how to make the flash less bright so it wouldn’t completely blow out his fur.

Now soliciting comments to improve upon the the title posted at Flickr (linked from the picture).

Start by calling it “Mutant Zombie Vampires From the Hood!“.

And actually, you can pretty much stop right there, because the title is just that awesome.

Noted: 35 miles is kind of a long way to bike.

Also, I need a better seat. Ow.

While you are barbecuing various items and drinking yourself silly, the Consumer Product Safety Commission (and whoever cut the CPSC’s video to the soundtrack) would like to remind you to use care with your fireworks this year:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-OcIwPx-SCs&hl=en]

Hat tip: Consumerist.