Goat World Has Moved

I've made two major switches in the last couple of days: I've moved to using WordPress to publish (which should hopefully eliminate a ton of the ftp problems I had with Blogger), and I've switched the blog to an easier-to-remember link.

The new address of the blog is: http://www.ellenshapiro.com/blog.

For those of you who need to update your RSS readers:

The Main RSS Feed is here.

The Comments RSS Feed is here. You'll see a few comments from my brief attempt at using Blogger comments, I'm still trying to figure out if/how I can import all my Haloscan comments.

So come on over and join the fun! Or at the very least, the time-wasting.

Technology Will Be The End Of Me

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.

How To Write Off Both Your iPhone And Your Trip To New Zealand

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.

The Most Complicated Evil Plot I Have Yet Devised

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.

Caption Contest

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).

How To Increase The Chances That I Will See Your Horror Movie

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.

I Can't Feel My Legs

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

Also, I need a better seat. Ow.

Happy 4th of July!

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:



Hat tip: Consumerist.

Damn You, Elliptical

First, your distance calculator decides that I'm running a thirteen minute mile.

If I could run on a treadmill without incurring extreme pain, I feel like it would be maybe an eight or nine minute mile. Nothing to write home about, but certainly not as horrifyingly slow as a 13 minute mile.

Then, you arbitrarily reset sometime after I've gone a mile and a half into the 3.1 miles I need to finish my gym triathlon, and I have no idea how much further I have to go.

I wound up doing another mile and a half after I noticed it had reset and still coming in at 1:59, but I probably could have made it to 1:55 if I had actually known how far I'd gone in the few minutes between when I saw I'd crossed 1.5 miles and when I noticed it had reset.

Bah. I'll probably do one more of these before I try my Batshit Crazy Plan of doing a full Olympic-length gym triathlon during the Olympics. That'll be double the distance I've been doing, and will therefore probably take about four hours.

At least I was able to verify that I've dropped my swim time to just over 15 minutes to do 15 laps from just over 18 minutes to do 15 laps. Yay, progress!