bloggie blog

For about as long as I’ve had this site, I’ve used Textpattern as the software that controls it. I log in, make changes to the site, or more commonly, post an entry. All well and good, but it requires being logged in and having a live internet connection for anything at all to happen.

Well, I’m experimenting now with MarsEdit, software that you install on your Mac, a way to access your blog not via a browser like Safari. So I’m typing this now on my Mac, and it doesn’t matter if I have an internet connection. This could be a big improvement. We shall see. This is a test. This is only a test.

The Christmas trip to Utah is ending with a whimper — up early to catch a morning flight, but Delta was overbooked, so right now as I type this I’m earning a $400 voucher by just hanging out in Terminal C for 5 hours. Further, some plans for tonight back in LA have fallen through. Oh well. Here I sit earning some voucher money and using the ol’ laptop to type a little. Since I have a year-end laptop task to do that will require a few hours, this is good. The flight here was so short compared to most flights I’ve taken in the last few years from Boston, that I unexpectedly ran out of time. Now I’ve got plenty!

Over the past days, we’ve watched A Christmas Story and It’s a Wonderful Life, staples of the holiday. Watching Jimmy Stewart and Lionel Barrymore was different this time, in light of our current economy and the way its woes are connected to housing, and it really got me thinking. Maybe in the past I noticed the romance more, or nostalgia. Not this time. No nostalgia, that’s for sure, given how current it seemed.

Our economic woes were on my mind and particularly the greed and gains of many key players. I swear, most of the people who are to blame got rich in the process. And don’t forget their employees who figuratively push them around in their wheelchairs, watching silently as they steal an uncle’s and nephew’s life.

Though I’ve seen It’s a Wonderful Life many times, I noticed something for the first time yesterday. In the montage where we learn about brother Harry’s war heroism and George’s homefront duties, we see George spit at somebody. From Stewart’s reaction, it’s clear he only spat on himself. What a contrast between the plight of a good soul, and the life of Potter, George Bush, bad mortgage pushers, and so many other people on this planet whose shit don’t stink. Good people spit and they spit on themselves. They wisely abstain from buying that house, they don’t get bailed out by the government but end up bailing out the foolish and the evil. Or, back to the movie, they lose a few thousand dollars and they’re bound for jail, but not so the stealer of those thousands. He’s miserable, but there’s no further ramifications — how much more black can Potter get? None more black. A good way to avoid jail on this planet is to lose/bilk millions or billions, not thousands. Be bad through and through, don’t be a good person who makes a mistake. Same with murder. Kill one person or a handful, go to jail. Be responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of people, and you’ll never even see a trial. I’m talking to you, Rumsfeld. And McNamara. And so many others.

I stepped out during the time where George goes to throw himself off a bridge. I couldn’t watch the whole thing — which has happened before because it felt too corny, too dated, too hackneyed or some completely different reason. Sure, I know that for me there are no George Baileys, no idyllic towns like Bedford Falls, no guardian angels. But there are plenty of Potters out there, and their wheelchair pushers. And tramps like Vi.

Enough! It’s the holidays, and I’m not letting these things get me down — now that I’ve gotten it off my chest. Thanks for listening. Back to joy, snow, family, food, and many other good things in this life of ours, this life that’s … you know … what’s the word? Exactly.

In my quest to be sure to select the best photos of my 1,019 headshot options, I decided to get prints made of 116 that I like. Digital deciding needed to give way to analog analysis of the details. Thought about going over Walgreen’s, but instead I clicked “print” in iPhoto to get it done.

The iPhoto print process is easy, of course, and straightforward except for one thing — when will the prints arrive? Well, let me tell you.

I started my order on Thursday 12/11 at 3:20pm, it took a couple three hours to upload (some internet issues on my end included), the shipment and confirming email were sent to me some hours later after midnight, and now it just arrived today 12/15 at 2pm. This was with me paying for fast delivery (which bumped up the effective price of each 4×6 to 21.6¢). My photos originated in the Bay Area and came via the kind of UPS that doesn’t keep moving over the weekend.

Like many other things I’ve posted on my site, I post this in part because I could not find out this information from Apple before I ordered. They were vague on how long it would take, where it would ship from and via what method. But now you know what to expect, if you live in LA. Now that they’re here … I’m off to stare at photographic details … till I go blind.

UPDATE: Filenames don’t appear on the back side of the photos. And they don’t arrive in the order you sent them, but at random. Sigh, and sigh.