My new monochromatic look for Infobhan is now live. It will look like crap on Internet Explorer 6, but it’s not worth recoding just to work with this out of date browser.

I’ve got a new design in the works that’s going to redefine blogs as we know it.

Get ready.

You ready yet?

Okay, I’ll give you a little more time.

But not too much more…

While we’re waiting, where is Snow Leopard? This thing was supposed to be GM last week. No release date, no nothing.

I’ve been MIA on this blog for a couple weeks now, but it’s not my fault. I’m homeless. No, it’s not the economy. In late July I finally bit the bullet and used the excuse of low mortgage rates to buy a house and move out of my a-little-too-cozy condo. The plan was to move in the weekend following the simultaneous sale/purchase. However, things didn’t work out that way.

The previous owners had left us with some lovely pinkish-purple carpeting that, while bringing me back to the 70s, clashed with my 2009 wardrobe (never mind that having a two-year-old dominating my life means that I haven’t actually bought any clothing this calendar year). So a few calls to New Lucky flooring (whom I highly recommend, by the way, if you are in the Boston area) and the carpets were promptly removed and the previously-disguised oak floorboards were restored to the polyurethane-coated greatness that was their destiny.

But you can’t just leave glorious floors surrounded by peeling, dated wallpaper. So next week the painters will descend upon my home and bestow upon it a brilliant color scheme that is being planned, with any luck, over the next few days. Hopefully, I won’t end up cowering in fear of commitment to color and end up painting each room a different shade of white (as my parents have done).

In the interim, I’m camped out in the parents’ attic, siphoning their Wifi when I can.

Aw, how nice. Macy’s includes a little computer to let you surf the net while you shop…

…or maybe their price check system crashed. Oops!

There was a reason I chose not to live in Seattle. What was it again?

My gym just replaced all the water coolers with these:

Yes, it does indeed have a hot water option. Because, you know, it’s always useful to have hot water when you’re at the gym.

Socks are one of the most frustrating pieces of clothing ever invented. What makes them particularly frustrating is the need to be used in pairs, which necessitates the need to find two equivalent items in the morning, when I’m usually half awake and can barely see anyway. They are somewhat unique in this regard. Shoes also requiring matched pairs, but it never seems to be much of an issue: since they don’t get washed, they can easily be stored together.

Socks are a different story. I often find that a pair ends up split between two loads of laundry, leaving me searching in vain for a companion to my selection. Other times, as in the picture above, one member of the pair develops holes while the other remains intact (why is this? it’s not like I use one foot more than the other!). I keep the undamaged sock out of the often vain hope that there’s another pair in my drawer somewhere. The reality is that it will most likely serve as a decoy during my morning rummage.

I’ve tried a few approaches to this problem. At one point, the strategy was to buy only one type of sock, so there would always be a match. This only really works if you get rid of all your other similar-but-not-quite-the-same socks and buy a whole boatload at once. Whenever I do this, however, I inevitably need to replace a pair at some point and can’t find the same model. My most recent strategy is an algorithmic approach – take the first acceptable sock out of the drawer and search stepwise until a match is found, removing each sock as it is encountered.

Usually this ends with a pile of unmatched socks on the floor and a great deal of wasted energy.

Is any ARRA money going to solving this problem?

I’ve long since made the jump from Apple’s Aperture to Lightroom. For the most part, I think it’s been worth it. Lightroom is considerably faster and I seem to get better results from my editing. However, I still find Aperture had a better system of organizing photos and I preferred the interface. What it really needs is some evidence of ongoing development, which I’m just not seeing. My hope is that 3.0 is dependent on Snow Leopard, which won’t be out until this summer. I’m still interested in giving it another look.

“Snap.”

There really aren’t that many situations where “snap” is a good sound. Come to think of it, I can’t think of any. It’s certainly not something you want to hear coming from your lower back while you are standing in the gym in a semi-seated position with a loaded barbell on your back.

If you talk to people who are serious about weightlifting, most will enthusiastically extoll the many virtues of the squat. But those people were nowhere to be found yesterday morning while I crouched awkwardly trying to calm my fears of imminent paralysis.

Everything seemed surprisingly intact. At first. I slowly rose up and returned the weight to its resting place before confirming that my legs could still move. Having just (nearly) recovered from a wrist injury acquired nearly six months earlier, I recognized that plowing onward would probably not be a good idea. But, I mean, I couldn’t just stop my workout. The squat was my first exercise, after all. As I made my way around the gym and completed most of my routine, I found my back slowly tightening, pulling me into a clumsy position with my chest hyperextended. I tried my best to avoid looking like a peacock. I thought I was having moderate success at achieving a normal gate, but several passerbys shot me sympathetic glances on my way to the office.

“Why would you ever do squats?” asked Bill, back at the office. “The only people who do squats are bodybuilders. And you’re not trying to be a bodybuilder.”

I gave him my “whatchu talkin’ about Willis?” look, but he didn’t seem to notice, and instead continued to rail against the squat. I was still mulling the question over why Bill would assume I wasn’t close to fulfilling my bodybuilding dreams when he tossed over a couple tablets of ibuprofen. I muttered my thanks and shuffled back to my desk. “Not trying to be a bodybuilder…I’ll show him!” I thought, straightening up with pride…when a sharp pull in my lumbar region reminded me that I needed to find some water to swallow these tablets.

Well it’s one day later and I’m much better, really. I can almost get out of bed in less than a minute if I don’t make any sudden movements. I can feel myself getting stronger already.

Watch out, Bill.

• AKI from PTLD at conference = need for more coffee http://twitpic.com/1nzid #
• Downloading the Safari 4 public beta #
• Oh yeah, chocolate peanut butter for lunch today. http://twitpic.com/1o1cl #
• “every American…wants this country to succeed”…a dig at Rush? #
• Bobby Jindal is kind of annoying #

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