From this week's Onion:

First-Generation American's Job Taken By His Father
READING, PA—Miguel Martinez, 48, who immigrated to the U.S. 30 years ago, last week lost his leather-cutting job at GST AutoLeather, Inc. to his 66-year-old father Roberto. "I came to this country in 1974 to make a better life for my family," Martinez said Monday. "But in December, they moved the factory where I've been working for 22 years down to Nuevo Laredo, Mexico. I love my father, but that goddamn beaner stole my job." Martinez's $18-an-hour duties will now be performed by his father for $7 a day.

Sheer brilliance.

The algorithm that some spammers are using to generate random sender names is starting to really push the bounds of reality. Tonight, I got an email from somebody named “Deng F. Quadruplicate”. I thought that was a rather interesting name.

With a name like that, who *wouldn't* listen to what he has to say?

It's snowing like crazy in Seattle right now. Looks like they're going to close the office and send everybody home. I was actually able to make it in to work this morning, but only because I live just few blocks away from my office and was able to walk. Driving right now is *not* a good idea.

Coming from Denver and Chicago, snow is not really a big deal to me. But out here, it's a completely different story...

It seems like every time that I blog some post about “hey -- i'm not going to be blogging much in the near future”, I always end up doing exactly the opposite. Thus, it follows that the best way to ensure that I *actually* take a break from blogging is to just drop off the face of the planet. Which is what I've done for the past few days.

Today is the first day that I've booted up my laptop in 5 days. It's nice to unplug every once in a while.

I realized something while I was travelling to Denver for the holidays. For a given airport, the length of the line in front of you is inversely proportional to the amount of time you allotted to spend in it. Sort of a corollary to Murphy's Law.

My friend Ben was out here from Chicago, which is the primary reason why I was actually able to unplug for a while. We had a fun time just chilling. Saw Return of The King again yesterday @ Cinerama -- gets better every time I see it.

I'm going to take off for a few more days for the new year, so it's going to be pretty dead around here until then. Hopefully by then I'll have something interesting to say :)

I just got back from a 6-hour shop-a-thon at Park Meadows mall in Denver. Judging by the length of the lines at the checkout, the American economy has nothing to worry about.

I was pretty proud of myself for starting a day early this year.

It's not that I'm a procrastinator per se. It's just that my holiday shopping engine is lazy-initialized. Yeah. That's it. Right....

I'm leaving bright and early tomorrow morning to spend Thanksgiving in Florida with my extended family. I doubt that I'll have much to blog about while I'm down there, so this is probably my last post until Friday.

Of course, it seems that everytime I say something like this it ends up to be untrue. We'll see whether history repeats itself.

This is a note to the now-disconnected Brian Vargas, who is probably somewhere in Washington, DC waiting for the DSL guy to come and hook up his internet access. He's in that void, where no one can reach him.

So this is a shout out to him by the only means I have. If you're not BrianV, you can stop reading this. If you are Brian Vargas, send me your email, dude -- I have random anecdotes to relate to you.

I was ego-surfing Google tonight, and ran across this alternative implementation of Steve Maine:

http://www.606club.co.uk/musicians/stevemaine/stevemaine.htm

He lives in the UK, and is apparently the tenor saxophonist for a band called Burnt Orange.

Three wierd things about this:

1) I used to play saxophone (alto, though, not tenor)
2) He has almost the same glasses as I do
3) He sort of looks like me.

It's wierd to see a picture of someone who has the same name as you.

Apparently, there just wasn't enough magic left in the world. The Cubs lost.

The Cubs...lost.

I watched the game tonight at Jillian's, which is really about the only bar I know in Seattle right now. Turns out that it was packed with Cubs fan, all of whom either left in a mood grayer than the Seattle sky or stayed to drown their sorrows in yet another microbrew. In a wierd fit of synchronicity, I sat at the bar next to a guy who works for Accenture and currently lives in Bucktown -- spitting distance from where I used to live before the Great Apartment Fire of 2002. It was, at least, nice to have someone to commiserate with.

It's just too damn bad. The hopes of literally two generations of Cubs fans died tonight -- at least, until next year...

I apologize for all the noise in my blog lately. I'm sure you have better things to do than read about my moving adventure.

I promise I'll get back to blogging about interesting things in the near future. Lots of good stuff in the works.

The rest of my stuff arrived from Chicago today. Now, instead of an empty apartment, I have an empty apartment filled with boxes.

Due to a minor mix-up with my moving company, the movers showed up here expecting the rest of the money I owed the moving company. The company in Chicago was supposed to charge my credit card, but didn't. To make a long story short, I made two very large (and very disgruntled) movers stand outside my apartment in the rain while I ran around frantically trying to find about 600 bucks in cash.

Thank god for credit card advances.

Once that was settled, they dropped my stuff off and left. I tipped them well, lest they beat my face in.

Guess I officially live here now.

All settled in to my new place. Well, not really, since most of my stuff is on a truck bound for Seattle and won't be in town until late next week. Right now, it's just me and the Three Giant Duffel Bags From Hell that came with me on the airplane.

Did a little bit of driving around this afternoon in an attempt to discover some familiar territory. I suprised myself by remembering the way to the mall at Redmond Town Center, even though I haven't driven there in over two years. Navigating in Seattle is going to take a little bit of getting used to. Unlike Chicago (which is built on a pretty consistent grid system), Seattle doesn't seem to be very easy to navigate on first glance. The streets are a big Dali-esque mismash of one-ways and dead ends. Plus, once you get on the freeway, the right lane has a nasty habit of spontaneously turning into a carpool lane. That will take some getting used to.

Probably going to call it an early night, since I'm still on Chicago time.

It's good to be here.

Hrmm...I should thank my neighbor for the free wireless access...or at least teach him a bit about WEP keys :)

It's cold and rainy in Chicago today. The weathers getting colder, as the short-lived Chicago autumn begins to slip away. Soon, the city will be firmly clenched in winter's icy fist and it won't be warm again until May. It's a little bit strange that I won't be around to experience it this year.

Today is my last day in the city in which I've spent the last 6 years of my life. While I never had myself pegged as a life-long midwesterner, I have to admit that the city has really grown on me since I moved here from Denver. Chicago really is a fantastic city.

I'm sure Seattle will grow on me, too, given time.

Well, here I go, off into the excitement of the unknown. Next post: from my new home.

Just got back from a 2-day business trip to Las Vegas...had a blast. Having never been to Vegas before, it was quite an experience. That place is like heaven if it were run by people with ADD.

I doubt that I'll have much time to blog for the next several days. Now that I'm back from Vegas, it's time to get my things packed up and get ready for the move to Seattle. I can't believe this is my last weekend in Chicago...

My move to Seattle just got a little bit easier, because now I have somewhere to move to. I have an apartment in downtown Seattle, a couple of blocks from the Avanade offices. I'll be able to walk to work!

One thing's sort of wierd: I didn't have time for a househunting trip before my move, so I got this apartment entirely over the Internet. It did help that I was somewhat familiar with my new neighborhood before initiating this whole thing, but I made made decision more or less entirely electronically.

I love the Internet.

Of course, there's a possibility that I'll get totally screwed. But, I think I've taken some steps to mitigate that risk (I'm only commited to living there for six months -- and having a 5-minute on-foot commute is enough to make me tolerate living anywhere for six months). Time will tell, I guess. At this point, though, optimism runs high.

The mary-kateandashley(TM) Brand Introduces Toothpaste Co-Branded with Aquafresh(R) --> First Kids Toothpaste Featuring Live Celebrities

The Olson Twins have their own toothpaste. I am not making this up. Believe me, I wish I were.

"We're thrilled to have the opportunity to introduce a toothpaste aimed at our younger audience," said Mary-Kate. Added Ashley, "Now kids can grow up with us, and learn to have fun brushing."

Sigh.

(Thanks to Jason Tucker's blog..)

Well, it's done. I'm officially moving to Seattle at the end of this month.

Starting in October, I'll be working for Avanade's internal Engineering group helping to build version 3.0 of our ACA.NET asset. ACA.NET is a set of core technologies that help our consultants deliver .NET-based solutions to our clients more quickly.

I'm pretty excited about this move. The team is small (5 devs, including me), the work is cutting-edge, and the environment is fantastic. I'm really looking forward to getting out there.

Right now, my Seattle to-do list looks like this:

1. Find an apartment.
2. Find a car.
3. Figure out how to get all my stuff from Chicago to the location determined in (1).

Nothing big. Fortunately, I have a few leads on (1) and I'm making decent progress on (2). (3) is still totally up in the air, though...

Anyway, it's going to be great to be out west again. Maybe now I can make one of those weblogger dinners Scoble's always talking about...

One year ago: running around in total panic after The Great Apartment Fire of 2002.

This time last year, I was frantically trying to find a new place to live after some asshole thought it would be cool to set my apartment building on fire three separate times in one weekend.

Man, that sucked.

According to Google, my blog is the third most authoritative source for information relating to the terms "squelching noise".

If that search is amended to "bug squelching noise", I'm suddenly the world's leading authority on that subject. Always nice to be recognized :)

There is a giant green bug somewhere in my apartment. I'm not really sure what it is, or where it came from. I'm pretty sure that I don't have any holes in my window screens big enough to let this behemoth in. Where did it come from? Good god, has it been growing in here?

From the looks of it, it's a big grasshopper thing. Maybe its a katydidnt.

It's been sitting in the unreachable corner of my kitchen for a while now, where it know that I can't reach it. Periodically, it chirps at me, daring me to throw another roll of paper towels at it in a vain attemtpt to dislodge it from its perch. None of my past efforts have succeeded.

I'm not sure what I'd do if I actually could reach it. I don't really want to smash it, as I'm afraid of the squelching noise and the mess that would inevitably follow.

That's life in my apartment right now. Just me, my roomate, and the bug. It's like some sort of Beckett play.

Update: the insectoid menace has been neutralized. Farewell, bug-thing -- you have left your mark on history, as well as my wall.

I'm a quarter-century old today.

Went to go see Freddy vs. Jason with one of my best friends this afternoon. Tonight, some of my buddies are throwing me a bit of a birthday bash in honor of my auto insurance rates going down.

Good times.

Amazingly, Star Wars: Episode III has already been reviewed!

This contains possibly the funniest line I've ever read in a movie review (real or otherwise): "Like an uncomfortable bowel movement, the pain is now over with, but with a little bit of pleasure mixed in, and an odd feeling of pride at the spectacle."

You know it's what we were all thinking.

On a whim, I stopped by the bookstore tonight to pick up Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. I started reading it at about 9:30. Now, about 4 hours later, I've finished the book and I'm ready to move on with the rest of my life.

I really enjoyed it. Nothing like 4 hours of mindless escapism. It's certainly not high literature by any means, but those books sure are entertaining.

For some reason, I thought it would be a good idea to have four pints of Guinness tonight instead of dinner.

No, really. It's OK. I had a salad for lunch yesterday.

Steve Loughran has a really funny post-mortem document on the Alien films.