Month: July 2007

A web design job got passed around among a couple friends and me. None of us really wanted the job because 1) the assumption was that there wasn’t a whole lot of money alloted for the job and 2) there’s not a lot of time for side projects.

I was hesitant about getting an iPhone the day they came out because I’m now sceptical about buying the first generation of anything, especially a phone manufactured by Apple, who is a new player in the mobile phone world.

John waited in line for four hours and bought an iPhone the day they came out. He called me from it and said it was everything it had been made out to be and it was the best cell phone he’d ever owned. He let me play with the iPhone the following Monday morning. My first thoughts, “Wow! This thing is friggin’ awesome!” While I was playing with the iPhone, our Systems Administrator had been IMing me with a bunch of urgent questions. I put him off and put him off. Finally I wrote him back and said, “Hang on, I’m playing with John’s iPhone.”

Within seconds I could hear Sully’s footsteps as he ran over to my desk from the other side of the office to check out the iPhone. I relinquished the marvel and watched as Sully gleamed with geeky enthusiasm.

“Dude, I HAVE to get one of these”, he said.

A light bulb popped up above my head. I asked Sully if he wanted to work on a web design project with me. The payment would be iPhones for the both of us.

I sold the client on the project for the amount that would afford two iPhones. We finished our work on Thursday evening and I purchased two iPhones at the Apple store on Friday morning.

Setting up the iPhone took a whole 2 minutes using iTunes and the thing is truly amazing. It is an awesome device that you could only expect from a company like Apple. I love my iPhone. It is everything that they said it would be. It is, however, very dangerous. Do not watch YouTube videos on your iPhone will driving down the highway to pick up pizza for dinner on a Friday night.

It’s beautiful, intuitive and simple to use. I don’t miss the clunky interface of my (now Elise’s) Motorola RAZR.

The iPhone is so easy to use that Maly immediately figured it out.

In case you weren’t aware. It’s been raining in Texas. A lot.

“Why are you eating?”

“Potato chips”

“No, WHY are you eating?”

“…”

“Is it because you’re hungry or just because you’re snacking?”

“Because whoever decided to put wasabi and mustard on a potato chip is a culinary GOD.”

The iMac has been out of commission for two months now. The only good thing about losing my job 10 months ago was that my boss let me keep the iMac that I bought for myself as my work computer.

The girls and I took the iMac to the Apple store this morning. The very helpful and knowledgeable genius quickly assessed that it wasn’t a drive or system problem. After another quick test, he gave me the news. “It’s a hardware problem. Your USB ports are bad.” Cool. I thought I could just get those swapped out. Then he followed with, “You’ll have to replace the logic board.”

$500 for the logic board and $150 for labor. $650 would get me an iPhone. So I opted to not get the iMac a new logic board. The helpful genius showed me how to start the iMac so it will act as an external drive and allow me to recover all of our photos, documents, movies, music, etc. I was happy that I was able to do that. Here’s instructions on how to use FireWire target disk mode in case you find yourself in a situation similar to mine.

Thankfully it was a “free” computer (it only cost me my job) so I’m not out any money. I’m in the process of transferring 60 GB of photos to the LaCie portable drive.

When I told Elise what the genius told me, she said, “I thought they were supposed to ‘just work'”. I then had to explain how hardware often fails and that it wasn’t really a “Mac” issue, just bad components. Nonetheless she was still keen on the idea of selling the iMac for parts and her HP laptop so we can get her a MacBook.

Rob and I just got back from watching Transformers. Wow. Wow. And Wow. Wow and wow because the movie was really, really good. When we came out of the theatre, I was tempted to ask Rob if he wanted to play Megatron and I would play Optimus Prime and we could pretend battle in the parking lot with guttural special effects and all – like we would have 20 years ago (had we known each other 20 years ago). The movie brought me back to my childhood days where someone else’s imagination inspired my own. That inspiration would then send me outside to run about the neighborhood, pretending like a was a F-15 that could turn into a robot and battle the enemy robot, which was usually played by our Labrador, Beau.

The third and final Wow is for marketing. Transformers was riddled with brands and their product placement to the point where I had to laugh out loud. Every scene had a big brand presence: Porsche, Microsoft, Mountain Dew, Burger King, Nokia, Panasonic, Apple, Ford, Pontiac, Chevrolet. And I probably skipped a few. I was seriously waiting for BumbleBee to whip out his iPhone to use Google Maps to find the quickest route to the Cube.

It really was a good movie that, unfortunately when it comes to cable in a year, you won’t be able to fast-forward through the commercials unless you want to miss the entire commercial movie.

I’ve been really, really bad about writing in the past nine months. I have reasons but I don’t want those reasons to be seen as excuses.

I set up Janicek.com almost seven years ago as whatever I was thinking seven years ago. It became a personal journal and repository for photos that immediately became a “blog” when the word “blog” was invented by Al Gore. Or Orville Redenbacher.

In those seven years I’ve always thought, “who is my target audience?” The thought of monetizing has always been an idea but not something I wanted to focus my efforts on wholeheartedly. When it comes down to it, I’ve always written to myself with my Mom and Elise’s Grandma in mind. That’s why I don’t say “shit”, “fart” or “Girls Gone Wild”.

It’s emails like the one below that inspire me. A total stranger that took the time to write to us to say, “I care”. It’s people like this that help me maintain a genuine faith in our society.

I received this email on Father’s Day.

Dear Janiceks,

This is a random email, from a random woman who lives 1500 miles away from Austin. I’ve felt compelled to write your family for months now, and I’m just now getting around to it. I hope you don’t find this too crazy.

I discovered your Maly blog in January 2006 shortly after learning I was pregnant with my first child. As most first-time mothers, I was trying to gather as much information about what was ahead of me as possible. My first task was to look at as many ultrasound pictures as I could get my hands on so that I wouldn’t be freaked out by what I saw, or didn’t see, at my first ultrasound appointment. I did a google search, which eventually led me to the ultrasound pics on the Maly blog. At my first ultrasound, I mistook the yolksac for a head and thought I was carrying a two-headed baby, so it turns out all my research was for naught. In any case, I was hooked on the Maly blog for a few reasons. First, I had recently moved to California after spending 10 years in Texas, the last three in Austin at the University of Texas School of Law, so I was thrilled to read anything you had to say about the city I love so much. Second, Elise was three months away from giving birth to Maly at the time, so I could read the blog and know what I could look forward to over the next several months. Third, all the baby-related links gave me something to look at when I didn’t feel like working.

So, I regularly checked for updates on the blog, and when y’all had Maly, I was thrilled for you. Of course, I then began to regularly check the Janicek blog for updates on your first few months with Maly. I was always amused by what you wrote and touched by the way she changed your family. She is completely adorable, by the way.

After having my son, I no longer had hours and hours to procrastinate doing actual work by reading blogs. So, several months went by before I checked back in to see how things were going with your family. When I did and I read what happened with your dad, my heart broke for you. After all those months of reading about your adventures raising Maly and looking forward to my own time as a parent, I returned to your blog only to discover that on the day of the very event that led me to your blog in the first place, the birth of my son, you experienced the death of your father. My husband and I were celebrating the birth of our son when you were saying goodbye to your dad. We welcomed our son into the world the morning of September 26th. I don’t know why I was so affected by something that happened in a family of people I only know through pages on the Internet, but for some reason, knowing that you were experiencing such a profound loss at the same time I was experiencing the greatest joy and new life really hit me. The beginning and end of life suddenly became very clear.

I’m still not sure exactly why I felt so compelled to share this with you. But, I know that every year when I celebrate out son’s birthday, I will think about your family and your dad. It’s obvious from what you’ve written about your dad just how much he meant to you and what a significant part of your life he was. I guess I just wanted you to know that I, a complete stranger, was touched by his passing and continue to keep your family in my thoughts.

This past weekend was spent getting the house in order for company. We hit the HoPot and picked up baseboards for the bathrooms that we recently had tiled and mulch for the landscaping extension we did in the garden. On Saturday we worked in the yard and on Sunday I measured and cut all of the baseboards.

Maly and I split up from Elise and instead of roaming the store, we nestled into a nice outdoor living room couch. Elise soon found us and it was at that point where I pointed out that this outdoor living room furniture would be nice for our deck. Elise was quick to shoot down my idea.

Later that evening we were working in the backyard. Yours truly was spreading mulch in the garden and Elise was hosing off the deck. She then decided that she did like the deck furniture. With zero arm twisting she went back to the HoPot to buy the furniture but they were closed by the time she got there.

So on Monday Rob and I went to pick up the furniture.

On Tuesday Elise picked Heather and Juliet up from the airport for their annual visit to Austin. I came home from work and spent 3 hours putting together patio furniture.

The girls went to the grocery store just as I was finishing up with the furniture to buy groceries for our 4th of July get-together. When they got back, we all hung out on the deck on the new furniture until midnight or so.

Wednesday morning we got up and headed over to the Circle C July 4th Parade and got drizzled on (Central Texas has been subjected to a ton of rain this summer).

We came home and hung around the house and played with Maly and Juliet. Heather’s friend/ex-boyfriend, Randy drove down from Dallas to spend the 4th with us. Later in the afternoon, John, Christine, Jack and Grayson came over and then Rob, Julie, Luke and Jadon walked over.

The guys and I grilled fajitas and the girls fixed all the sides in the kitchen.

We all gorged ourselves and then watched the kids play in the inflatable pool. Yeah, we roll like that. But we all had a really great time.