Prangster in Chicago

The kids have stopped fighting

When I bought my black Macbook, I knew it would make me look very cool.

Okay, I'm totally kidding.

I'll start over.

When I bought this Macbook, I knew I'd have to install Windows on it.

(Are you bored yet?)

For the first four or five months, I would start up with Windows and rarely dipped my toes into the Mac pool. Every geeky thing I did on a day-to-day basis was in Windows. The handful of times I ventured into the Mac world were to change up the banner of this blog using Pages, which is the Mac version of Word but only a hundred times better.

Then one day, probably a month or so ago, I realized something really obvious. The Windows part of my Macbook only takes up a small proportion of the full hard drive, and by only using Windows, the bulk of that room was going to waste. (Yeah, you freaking idiot.) Some might point out this is similar to how I'm staying in this nice studio with the great view, and yet I'm perfectly content with sleeping on the floor. I really am. It's like I'm camping in the sky.

So after a week or so of going back and forth between Mac and Windows, I made the executive decision to change the default start up system to Mac. (Whoopee. Like anyone cares!) And I started uploading my photos straight to iPhoto, installing the Mac versions of Skype, Messenger, BitComet and VLC Player, and copying my Firefox bookmarks over too. It was a big change for me. A change that I didn't share with anyone in my life and only wrote about in my journal. (Oh, I just lied. If that were true, then I could've just pasted that journal entry here instead of writing all this.)

The only problem was -- now stand back and get ready for this death blow -- my external hard drive doesn't work with the Mac side for whatever uninteresting technological reason. I can read and grab files from it, but I can't "write" or throw anything in there. Which is just dumb. I finally decided to do something about it tonight and spent an hour earlier trying to troubleshoot it, but I couldn't figure it out. So, to cut an extremely uninteresting post short...this is the news:

I ordered an Iomega 160GB external hard drive tonight. It's silver. And it'll arrive in two business days.

After it comes and I back up all my files, I'm going to delete Windows for reals.

Shrug.

Sorry I bored you. I totally bored myself too. Wanna flip through a magazine?

Jessi: If you made it down this far, go on and try to relate the content of this post to the ramen photo. Let's see what your a-holer's imagination comes up with.

No luck

No one wants to sublet my place yet :(

The office

Here's a photo of the interactive department, taken by Jessi, my coworker who has a fancy Canon SLR camera. I'm way in the back, sitting by the elevator to the left.

Hm, I've been working in Chicago for almost 4 months now. It feels way longer.

It's crafty time

It's the Renegade Craft Fair this weekend in Wicker Park. Yesterday I went with Katie and Jessi from the office to awww at cute things. And trust me, there were many cute things. I got a canvas bag with a K on it. The K is so cute I've never seen a cuter K in my life. Jessi got one with a J on it. Her J is okay cute. She knows I'm not a diehard fan of her J so I won't lie here about it because she'll probably call me out with a nasty/funny comment. Jessi also got a special-order camera strap with ponies on it. And Katie got a really pretty necklace and some of these postcards for her friend.

On the way to the bus station, I saw this, which was cute in its own way kinda.

Look! Look!

I have a letter holder! I got it in NYC at the MoMA store. It's so great and I love it so much never mind that it cost $25...

NYC with the Hoshues

I spent five days last week visiting the Hoshues in NYC. It was a great holiday made even better by the fact that Roger won the US Open. I wish Djokovic had won a set since I think he's a really exciting player -- that match with Monaco, woah -- and I was a little annoyed that Roger was just playing okay and won because Novak made so many errors. Sigh.

Here, Jess and I are both wearing our H&M dresses. Ray's just looking cool.

The Hamptons

New York Fashion Week!

From the front row of the Reem Acra show at NYFW. Crazy, eh? The clothes were awesome. The models didn't look that great in person though, but they look really good in photos, as you can see. Jess said they hire models that are photogenic first and foremost since the show lasts 15 minutes, but the photos last forever. One model even tripped right in front of us! She didn't fall though.

Errands, yay!

Some of you who don't exchange emails with me up to 10 times a day may not have been aware that it was Labor Day yesterday so it was a long weekend here in the States. And those same disadvantaged people probably didn't know I took the rest of the week off from work. So today -- a Tuesday -- was the fourth straight day of no work for me and it was a good one. I did a lot. You will hear about it...now.

First, I had an early start. I headed out at noon to go to the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) to get my Illinois ID. My Sydney drivers license expired on the 24th. I don't think Chicagoans really care since I was still using it to enter 21+ establishments this past weekend, but it warms my heart to be legal. So I went to the DMV and there was a massive line. Massive. When it was my turn to get a number, I was told I needed my social security card. Crap crap crap. So I hopped back on the bus and headed home to get it. By the way, a social security card is just this flimsy piece of paper. It's not even laminated or anything. And it's meant to be one of the most important pieces of ID a person can have in this country. Yes, a flimsy square of paper. Go figure.

Sorry, let me get back to the whole point of this post. On the way to the DMV, there was a seat on the bus near me with semi-dried vomit on it. Everyone avoided it like roadkill. Everyone except this one lady in business clothes who didn't see it. And she sat right down into it. Which made 3/4 of it get all stuck to her butt. Her reaction was correct. She said, "Ew!" Then her male traveling companion proceeded to brush off the semi-dried, semi-chunky vomit from her black pants with his bare hands, probably not realizing it was freaking vomit! I almost gagged at the sight of this and my palms started to sweat.

Could I have said anything? I don't know. Was there time? Actually, no. Because it was like everything happened in slow motion the way all supremely gross things do. And I was inconveniently mute from disgust.

After the trauma of seeing someone sit down on vomit, seeing another person touch vomit with bare hands, and also seeing that same person pat another person's butt in public, I arrived back at the DMV. Two hours later, I was in possession of my new Illinois ID card! My face doesn't look very symmetrical for some reason. I wonder what's up with that.

Then I went to get my eyes tested for the sole purpose of buying more contact lenses. It was hard for me to accept that it's not like how it is in Taipei. That I couldn't walk into any optometry store in a random alleyway and buy contact lenses -- no prescription, no receipt even -- just a simple cash transaction. Almost like buying drugs on the street. Except not. Because I'm buying vision. So the freaking eye exam here cost me $99. And my premium insurance policy gave me a $5 discount. So it was $94. Yay. But it wasn't a total rip-off. The optometrist gave me some freebie lenses and lens solution which probably added up to $3.99 in total retail value. That too warms my heart.

I spent the rest of the afternoon shopping like a maniac at H&M...

When I finally got home, I showed my studio to a woman who's considering subleasing it from me. If she does sublease this place, then I'll have to move in mid-October, which means I need to look for a place again. Like hardcore look. Like seriously look without blinking. But I'll start next week because tomorrow morning I'm going to NYC to see Jess! Should be a mega fun 5-day trip!

Death and passwords

I came across something called MyDeathSpace.com a few weeks ago and was pretty shocked by the idea. The concept of a cemetery for MySpace accounts -- not to mention the scrolling black skull that appears next to the domain name -- seems really morbid, but then I guess, also sort of necessary. People put so much of themselves online these days, so what happens when they die? Who has access to their accounts?

In yesterday's Wall St Journal, the front page article was about a woman who was on her deathbed in the intensive care unit and about to be medically induced into a coma. Her last words to her daughters were, "Take care of my eBay." From snooping through their mother's email account and eBay account activity after her death, the daughters got to see glimpses of their mother's online life: the things she bought, the emails she kept, the people she corresponded with -- and sometimes confided in -- but never met in person.

It makes you wonder what the point of all this online stuff is. Would you want to give anyone else access to your email accounts? And something I've been wondering lately: would I want to give someone access to the journal files I keep on my computer?

The article also mentioned the importance of leaving password information and security codes in wills. Here's some interesting info about what Facebook and Gmail do under these circumstances:

When Facebook is informed of a user's death, the company puts the profile into "a memorial state," allowing friends and family to post and read mourner comments. The company will respond to requests from immediate family members to remove from the site a profile of a deceased member. However, "the login and password to the account will not be provided to anyone," according to a spokeswoman.

To access a Gmail account after someone's death, Google generally requires survivors to submit by fax or regular mail a death certificate, proof that the relative has been legally authorized to act as an administrator as well as an email showing that the deceased had contacted the survivor on any topic before from the Gmail account in question.

And FYI, I would've linked to the whole article on WSJ.com except it's only available to subscribers. For some reason I receive the paper on my doorstep every morning otherwise I probably wouldn't have found the article. There was also an article in Friday's edition about the chef of top Chicago restaurant Alinea who was diagnosed with tongue cancer. It's a good paper. I like it. Also cause it's free.