Domestic Geek

*sigh* I would've been at the Police concert right now if I had won tickets. *sigh* My friend Russ went and had a good time last night.

I am not looking forward to work this week. My supervisor is on vacation and those who will be covering for him leave a lot to be desired with their managerial skills. I'm just hoping our work pace will be slow so they have little to freak out over. I can always find something to do back in the archive room to hide out if things get ugly. I am actually hoping that I can just sit with some operators and learn stuff. I did one small project all by myself last Friday, so I know I can do it, I just need to learn the specific things that need to be done for each type of job.

I saw one of my old teachers last Friday. She stopped in to chat with one of my coworkers about some freelance work he had for her. I really miss a lot of my old teachers. I must find a way to keep in touch before I lose contact forever. They were just too neat of people to lose in my life forever, y'know?

I am going to attend the Denver Media Group function on June 20th. There is going to be a presentation about Photoshop CS3 and since we just upgraded to the CS3 suite at work, it will be good to see if the presenter has any good information. I'm hoping the door prizes will be cool and I'll win one this time.

While at dinner last night, Nina and I were talking about the real possibility of taking a group vacation to Orlando, FL in 2010 to check out the new Harry Potter theme park I wrote about the other day. Before we go, I'll be checking out a site called OrlandoFunTickets.com to make sure I find the best prices for tickets to the various theme parks, attractions and shows in the Orlando area.

While there we will definitely go to the Magic Kingdom and there are all sorts of discount Disney Tickets available through the site. I'm not sure yet if I want to take in the other Disney attractions such as the water parks, Epcot or the Animal Kingdom park, but if we do decide to visit them, there are "Disney Magic Your Way" ticket package variations that allow access to multiple parks. You can also get tickets to places such as Medieval Times, Universal Orlando, Islands of Adventure, the Kennedy Space Center, Sea World and even shows that are currently running in the area.

It will be much easier to get discount tickets to those things in advance from the comfort of home rather than trying to waste precious vacation time procuring tickets and spending more money once we are there. I'll definitely be getting tickets through OrlandoFunTickets.com for my Orlando vacation. If you're gong to be vacationing in Orlando, make sure you check there first, too.

I've had the most interesting day today. Since Marcus was out mountain biking with Mike, I decided I was going to go browse a couple of my old shopping hangouts.

My first stop was Album Memories, an independent scrapbook store at 64th and Monoco St. in Commerce City. The woman that owns that store is one of the neatest ladies I've ever met. She and I have a lot in common and she even used to be a pizza manager. I haven't been to visit her since right after I lost my job last July and I was kind of afraid that she'd no longer be in business. Fortunately, she was still there and open, so I stopped in. She doesn't have the biggest variety of things, but she does carry things I don't see in the big chain stores. She's also the biggest Sizzix dealer in the country and she does the best demos of what those products can do. I'm in love with the new machine that's out and want to get it. Unfortunately, I don't really have the money to spend ($100 for the machine plus the dies are extra) on something crafty like that. I will one day, though. Those things are freakin' cool. I noticed that there is a die to cut out those cardstock embroidery floss bobbins that I use to wind my cross stitch floss. Anyway, I felt really good and positive after leaving her store. Talking to her about how different and better my life is now than when we last met really made me grateful for where I am now.

The next stop was Black & Read, a cool independent music/book store over at 80th and Wadsworth. My purpose there was to get some used Stephen King books and start working on my summer goal of getting and reading all of my missing King novels. I love browsing that place. I also found an Orson Scott Card novel I was missing. I was chatting with the guy at the counter while he was ringing up my purchases about Stephen King. He was quite knowledgeable about the dude. He asked if I had seen King on television recently in his band. I hadn't, although I knew that King performed in a group consisting of other writers. The woman behind me told me the group was called The Rock Bottom Remainders, so I made a mental note to look that up when I got home. I didn't realize Dave Barry was in it, though. I was watching some videos they had posted on YouTube of the band interviewing with Steve Martin. I'll have to watch more of that at a later date. Funny stuff.

When Marcus got home later in the afternoon, I was telling him about how I had a list of missing King books that I had made that I took with me when I was looking for books. He asked if I kept a database of my books or something and I told him that I had gotten the bibliography off of StephenKing.com and had made myself a checklist in a table in Word. He then asked if I had ever heard of a program called Delicious Library made by the company Delcious Monster. I hadn't. It's an Apple award winning cataloging program to keep track of books, music, movies and games. The company and program are the product of programmer Wil Shipley, founder of The Omni Group, makers of some really cool Apple Mac apps such as Omni Graffle and Omni Outliner.

He told me the program uses an iSight camera as a bar code scanner to input your items into the database. I was intrigued and so I downloaded the trial and I'm hooked! I can't believe how freaking awesome this program is. First off, the interface is really slick. It looks like you're looking at a bookshelf. The icons are relative in size to the actual item they portray. You have the ability to keep track of who has borrowed your stuff via your address book. You can group your stuff into collections (similar to playlists in iTunes). You can view similar items to one you select on Amazon. I'm just blown away by this thing. There is a third party program called DeliciWeb that allows you to publish your library to a web page. You can see a test file over at the Domestic Geek Library. There's also a third party program to bring your iTunes Library into it. I'll have to wait until I raise the $40 to purchase a license before I can try that one, though. I want this software so bad!!!!!



Anyway, I guess that's enough about my day today.

You know what service would be really cool? A place where you could rent specialty baking pans.

I'm on several recipe mailing lists and I got an email for a really cool cake pan that I would love to have. It's from a company called Baker's Secret in the shape of those awareness ribbons.

The problem is: How many times would I really use this pan? Probably not more than once or twice. That's the problem with these novelty cake pans. I have a Winnie the Pooh one and a teddy bear sculpture one that I've used only once each. I don't know if I'll ever have use for them again, but I don't want to get rid of them, either. I've wanted to make special cakes for Marcus' birthday before (like a Scooby Doo head), but talked myself out of it because it would be a one-time thing and then it would take up space in my cupboards.

It would be great if I could just get them for the one time I needed it and return it.

I was expecting a movie that I wanted to see again called What the #$*! Do We Know!? to be in in my mailbox from Netflix for viewing this weekend. I had an email in my inbox when I got home yesterday that said they had received it back and was sending out the next one in my queue to arrive Saturday. WTF? How the heck did that happen? I'm guessing it got delivered to the wrong person and they sent it back. Anyway, not cool. So, instead of thought-provoking quantum physics type of entertainment, I guess I'll be watching Happy Feet instead. Yeah, I'm a little bummed about that. Oh, well.