Category Archives: Personal

Life updates, reflections, and everything that doesn’t fit neatly into another category.

Mr Mailman

To the tune of Mr Sandman

Mr Mailman
Where could you be?
I’ve got to leave
Way before three
Your lousy schedule
While isn’t suprising
Is gonna make my blood pressure be rising

Mr Mailman
Give me a clue
I’ve based my day
Around the things that you do

Please get in your little Jeeeeep
Mr Mailman
Bring my mail to meeeee

Smarty

As SxSWi rapidly approaches, and my spring break zooms by faster than I could have imagined, I find myself knee-deep in Smarty, which I feel is the most pleasant engine/enviroment/platform/whatever I’ve used in a very long time. Everything is so elegant, extensible, and well thought out. It is simple at its core, but brims with power. Plus it absolutely flies with PHP Accelerator. It looks like I’m going to use this for everything from now on.

Spring Broken

On this delightfully dreary day I’ve decided to bundle up for a spell with some hot tea and get some serious coding done. In fact that’s much how my day has been so far: code, code, code, surf blogs, (4 hours later) code. We’ll see how this goes…

Open Keys Update

If you remember the plan was to distribute keys to my car to as many people as possible. Today I got started, giving keys to my parents, Sarah, Sarah, Josh, and Iram. Tomorrow (I guess today, dang it’s early/late) I’m going to mail out ones to Yale (Rachel), Berklee (Rene), NYU (Julie), and my favorite artist-whose-show-I-haven’t-seen-yet-but-will-ASAP (Elissa).

I personally test all the keys before sending them out, and I squeeze some writing onto them. If you want one I’m still taking requests.

Girl Scout Cookie Observations

I’ve decided that nothing disappears quite as fast as Carmel deLite Girl Scout Cookies. Here’s a little tidbit: according to Interbake, Carmel deLite cookies make up half of their total cookie volume and are also the hardest to make. According to the site linked above, the cookies should be $3.50 a box, yet when I bought mine the other day I swear they were just $3 a box, because I bought three boxes for $9. Is there some sort of vast Girl Scout conspiracy behind this? Is it because I was in a small town?

Open Keys

I could write about many things, but instead I think I will relate the fact that for the second consecutive day, I locked my keys in the car. The details are inconsequential, and it’s a story everyone has heard before, so let’s start discussing solutions. In computing the key [pun] to failsafe systems is redundancy, so I have decided to take the same approach with the entry system to my car.

I’m going to allow anyone who thinks they would be willing to hold on to a key to my car to apply by email to receive a copy free in the mail. Only requirements are a name, phone number, and meeting my secret requirement which I will not disclose here.

Now I’m sure many of you are concerned with the security model of having numerous copies of my car keys floating around, but the manufacturer (Chevy) of my vehicle already thought of this, separating the entry and ignition functions into two separate keys. This has its advantages and disadvantages, as evidenced by the Saturday lockout when I had my ignition key but not the entry key. Access to my vehicle is something I’m willing to allow because trustees of the keys will be people I trust not to steal something from my car in the first place.

I have a number of people “pre-approved” for keys, including my parents, Grandmother, sister Charleen, Josh, Sarah, Sarah, Rachel, Rene, Rebbecca, Elissa, Iram, Mat, Chris, extended family, and selected staff at Kaveh Kanes, Tropioca, and Get Wired, but like I said before anyone is eligible. These people have been carefully selected for proximity and accessibility—at any given point in my life, I am never more than 5 minutes from at least one of these people. So there you have it! A trade-off of security versus accessibility in real life. We’ll see how this goes…

These limited edition PhotoMatt keys will be accompanied by a Certificate of Authenticity and will be available in several styles to complement any key ring. They will also be hand tested by yours truly to verify that they truly work. Get yours while they’re hot. (Limit one per person.)