Blog

Kitlers

In the "catblog" spirit of this day, I introduce you to Kitlers, that means cats that look like Hitler.

I mean, duh!

9/18/2006 12:00:00 AM

Princess in da house

Sometimes I feel like I've become one of those people that needs to post pictures of his cat because he has nothing else interesting to say.

Well, as it turns out, I do NOT have anything interesting to say today, so here's a photo of Astral, the house princess.

My job is done.

9/18/2006 12:00:00 AM

Apartment news

So I finally managed to decide and get a dining table. This purchase has the surprising side-effect that now, by virtue of owning a dining table, my apartment has a dining area as well!

Furniture's little miracles that we should all be thankful for...

Anyways, enough chat and let's see some photos!

This is the living room, on the media side. We can see a nice bookshelf, my Media Center computer hidden between the bookshelf and the TV table, the TV table itself (including HD DVR, some external hard drive, router/modem, the mandatory Xbox 360 and a Denon AVR-1084 receiver), the Samsung LS-N3241D TV, the Klipsch RB-15 bookshelf speakers and a random piece of art.

Above the TV, there are four frames. Inside these frames I put some used vinyl record covers that work wonderfully as art (from the left: The Orb - Perpetual Dawn 12", OMD - Genetic Engineering 12", New Order - Fine Time 12", The Orb - Orblivion)

On the other side of the living room, there's The Couch (tm). The wall is still bare, until I find out a piece of hanging art that I like. We can also see the dining table discussed above.

With a fancy reverse angle shot, we see again the dining table and the computer station. Across that, the kitchen.

I may want to point out the awesomeness of that chair. Well, I may point that out better with a nicer photo...

Anyways, this is a section of my apartment. I am very sure that nobody actually cares, but there may be some family member or friend or sworn enemy that will make sure I am completely aware of what they think about it :)

Life in an apartment is actually not bad. I am inconsiderate enough not to care about music volume levels or hours when to start the washer/dryer and the very small floorspace makes cleaning and generally tidying up a very quick and easy task.

Even Astral likes it.

9/7/2006 12:00:00 AM

Shopping

I went to a used record store in Capitol Hill Saturday to get some records to be used as art on my apartment's walls. Of course, I couldn't avoid a trip to Ian, a nice upscale clothing store for men (as opposed to the filthy basement to where men's fashion is relegated when in "multi-gendered" stores like Nordstrom or Macy's).

See, I am weak.

I fall easily to peer pressure.

So, after very convicing arguments from a couple of friends, I walked out of the store with a nice black cord jacket (see picture where I am not the model) and about $300 poorer.

But I want to point out that it fits me a lot better than the poor schmuck in the photo. I almost look good :)

8/31/2006 12:00:00 AM

1... 2... 3...

Is this thing on?

8/30/2006 12:00:00 AM

BSG and the power of addiction

I am showing Battlestar Galactica to a friend of mine. We started from the miniseries and now we're working thru season one. This friend of mine is absolutely, completely, utterly disinterested in anything remotely "sci-fi" looking.

And yet...

Now she's addicted.

My copy of episode 9 was somehow borked, so we had to interrupt the screenings last night with great pains. I managed to get another copy, so we'll see what's going on with the series tonight.

But the big question is: how come BSG manages to draw in a person who has never shown any interest in science fiction? How come this same friend will probably watch Firefly as well? What is it about these shows that makes them palatable to the general public?

8/30/2006 12:00:00 AM

Settling in in Seattle

Almost a palindrome...

Anyway, work is getting more and more interesting with each passing day, Astral is being horribly cute, the apartment is looking almost finished (still missing a dining table) and the social life is quite decent.

To add to all this, apparently there's a Dead or Alive movie in the works...

8/14/2006 12:00:00 AM

German engineering in da house

I was driving on the highway last night, around 9pm, and the car did a very muted "ptp", as to say: "hi Paolo, just FYI there was a pothole on the road and you drove right on it. Not that I care, but just wanted to keep you informed. Have a nice evening"
 
_The car _being my new silver Audi A6. It's hard not to like a car so polite...

6/21/2006 12:00:00 AM

Almost there

(Posted originally on LiveJournal on May 14th 2006)

Tomorrow is my first day on the new job. I should be absolutely pumped and excited.

The only thing I feel is like somebody carved something from my chest.

6/14/2006 12:00:00 AM

First blood

(Posted originally on LiveJournal on May 20th 2006)

First day, first wound. I just finished unpacking my Dell Optiplex GX620 when the GPM walks in and tells me he has a temp laptop for me. Anyone who barely met me knows that mentioning the word "laptop" (or even better, "Toshiba Portege M-series") in my presence causes me to start jerking moves and drool incontrollably.

So I quickly put back the Dell in the box and that's when it happened: the poor desktop was really disappointed to be unpacked for 30 seconds and never been powered up just to be put away like an old shoe; so he fought back and chewed away a sizable chunk of flesh between my left hand thumb and index finger.

The lure of the laptop made me totally oblivious to the searing pain, that being a good thing, because it was really painful. If I had felt anything. Which I didn't.

So yeah, got this laptop/tablet, and went on to order my proper one, a Toshiba M400 with all the toppings. Sadly that will arrive after I leave for Italy, so I just hope nobody else will take it.

Something that I've been warned about, but it didn't actually click until I've experienced it, is the email traffic. By the time I managed to log on to my account for the first time, I had 136 mail waiting for me. @_@

Then I finally understood. There is currently a fairly heated debate between supporters of browser based applications (think Gmail) vs smart client applications (think Outlook). There is absolutely no way in hell you can deal with enterprise-level volume of communication with a browser based application.

No. Fricking. Way.

Sure, browsers have their place to find and read information, but the act of producing information is not something a browser can do. At least when you're talking in high volumes. Even the aggregation process is something that I see more and more delegated to specialized applications; for example, why search using a browser when you could have a client side app that integrates the same web search results plus local results and rich previews and... uhm. I believe my NDA-implants are kicking in right now, I'd better shut up :)

Anyways. One week of crazyhectic ride. And I still have not figured out exactly what am I supposed to DO here or even what my actual position is.

Fun times :)

PS: Sorry for the Seattlelites, but 1.5hrs of commute both ways is not exactly my definition of fun. As soon as I can, I'm moving to the eastside.

6/14/2006 12:00:00 AM