I really shouldn’t be allowed to shop at Ikea. I don’t remember the last time I walked out of there with at least 4 or 5 impulse buys. I can’t really blame Ikea. I do the same thing at Costco and Fry’s. Glad I don’t seem to have that problem at I dunno… Tiffany’s?

So on my most recent trip to Ikea I spotted Ikea cotton napkins in off-white and red. Next to them were cheap Ikea face towels. All stuff I “need” so I grabbed a few sets of each. As soon as I got home I threw them all in the washing machine. Yes, I threw them in together and I’m sure you know what happened next (which I knew too but of course wasn’t thinking). The red napkins all bled into the white face towels. Strangely the off-white napkins are all fine. Ikea, you mystify me.

Another item on the list of what not to do… At least I didn’t wash the Shroud of Turin too like the Pope just did.

Shroud Of Turin Accidentally Washed With Red Shirt

VATICAN CITY—The damage occurred when Pope Benedict XVI, who was on laundry duty, did not notice a brand new bright-red Hanes Beefy-T in the Holy Whirlpool washer.

Not that any of my old posts were actually entertaining or exciting or even intelligible but I’d like to think that there’s an excuse for not having blogged much at all lately. It’s probably because of twitter and my ever diminishing attention span. For now I will offer up 10 reasons I haven’t been blogging, most of which are complete or amazing exaggerations of the truth, but probably just a lie.

1. My life has been just that boring and I’d rather spare you the pain
2. I’ve been working way too hard
3. Brazilian hackers broke my blog… again (too bad this isn’t a lie)
4. I was blogging way before it was cool so now that it’s cool to blog the only way to be cooler is to not blog, but that didn’t seem to work so fuck, I’m now less cool than before.
5. Guitar Hero doesn’t just play itself you know, it takes time and dedication.
6. I’ve been busy finding other stuff to do to keep me from doing what I should be, unpacking
7. I was stuck in Reno and forced to play every hand (neither of these are at all a lie)
8. icanhascheezburger doesn’t just read itself you know… neither do xkcd, engadget, gizmodo, woot, valleywag, and fleshbot (okay the last one I don’t read. seriously I don’t, my friends do though)
9. the local cafe only knew me as “soy latte”and I was determined to work my way up to “soy latte, scone or a brownie today?”
10. No one told me the writers strike was over and I was supporting my brethren oppressed by the industry. VIVA!

Now back to watching NASCAR on my TiVo.

It’s back. I owe Brian Doom a whole lot for writing a custom import script to revive all my old entries from years back. I will now spend the next hour reading over years of old posts, wondering WTF I was thinking and reminiscing over things like the tuna diet.

Oh I used to be so full of the best bad ideas. I gotta get back to work on those. The best ideas are always the worst ones.

This is just a little bit of “awesome”

and a whole lotta “OMFG I NEED THIS”

http://www.engadget.com/2007/11/09/aots-builds-worlds-largest-arcade-machine/

at some point a sprint is no longer a sprint… it’s a very badly run marathon.

At risk of seeming like a crazy cat person… My cat got himself “stuck” in this paper bag for a few minutes. It was funny until I realized he wasn’t struggling to get out of the bag as much as he was to get further into it. Shit, my cheeseburger was probably still in there.

WAS still in there.

It’s about 10:19pm and I’m about 5 minutes into this new show called Dirty Sexy Money (yeah math doesn’t add up because I’m using my TiVo) and I’ve decided it’s awesome… so far.

Just wanted to throw that out there.

I’m a self-admitted coffee snob. All I ask for in the morning is a cup of coffee before work. Of course I have to make it complicated so here’s my problem(s):

1. Starbucks is expensive. Yeah that doesn’t exactly count as quality coffee but it’s convenient. Anyway, to buy a latte every morning adds up.
2. My poor little overworked espresso machine, as loyal as it’s been, isn’t quick either. The warm-up then pulling a shot then warm-up then milk steam….
3. All I really want is good coffee, nothing fancy, just a good cup of coffee.

So what to do? Blue Bottle has the answer, filter drip. Now a new problem, where to get the gear? Actually the bigger problem was that the solution was too easy so I had to make it difficult. I had to have a porcelain one and must have Chemex filters.

After a long search I came across Sweet Maria’s. Though they seem to focus on micro-roasting and selling roasting gear they have a pretty good selection of other coffee items. I picked up a plastic #4 cone filter holder and a porcelain one (of course).

The result? A cup of coffee that made me say g’damn… so I had 3, back to back, leading to my most productive day of work in quite a while. I highly recommend the solution but cannot recommend having 3 cups in 30 min.

And yes, I use Blue Bottle coffee.

G’DAMN!

So today is Talk Like A Pirate Day. What does that have to do with anything? Not a g’damn thing. I just figured it worthy of being mentioned in the first post in my new blog, which is in no way an improvement over my old blog which went up in flames after Brazilian hackers (from Brazil not hot-chick-hackers-who-shave) took the server down one night.

Good news for those of you interested in the new Treo 650.

I hear that it can survive being dropped from a height of 5 feet onto an ice road then slid across the parking lot into a a snowbank.

But that’s just rumor I heard of course.