Go Team Venture!
Posted by Jason Cosper | Filed under General
When I realized my brand new Guild of Calamitous Intent tee from AstroBase Go! had a decent sized hole where one shouldn’t be, I decided to mail them about it. Fabric imperfections happen from time to time — especially on American Apparel tees. After a little back and forth with Venture Bros. series creator Jackson Publick — mostly to send photographic evidence that the hole existed — I ended up getting this reply:
We’re happy to send you a replacement shirt which contains only the necessary number of holes to qualify as a shirt.
Hah! Good one! Well played, Mr. Publick…
Drama Llama
Posted by Jason Cosper | Filed under General
I really wish Boing Boing would say something about what is going on with erasing every mention of Violet Blue from their site. Blog feuds — if that’s what this even is — are fucking retarded and I seriously thought the team over there was better than that.
I’ve had the pleasure of meeting Violet a few years ago and I’ve hung out with Cory, Xeni and Mark a number of times. From what I know, they’re all pretty reasonable folks. So if there’s a beef, please squash it. And put the posts mentioning Violet back or at least explain what’s going on. Your readers would really appreciate it.
Update: Boing Boing has addressed what is going on.
Movin’ On Your Left
Posted by Jason Cosper | Filed under General
One of the nice things about living in North Hollywood is that I’m less than a mile’s walk from the Red Line station. Because of this, I’ve been taking the subway into work every morning. There’s actually a few benefits to this:
- I get a nice walk at the start and end of my work day. And I’ll still continue to call it nice until Summer hits and the Valley gets over 100° F at 9 AM.
- Work pays for my metro pass. Well, they reimburse me for it whenever I get them the receipt. Still, the fact that they’re willing to pick up any of its cost is really nice of them.
- I find that I’m way less stressed when I don’t have to sit in traffic. Listening to a podcast or some music is way more chill when you don’t have to wonder why the guy in the other lane is drifting over for the nth time.
I do have one gigantic pet peeve tho — people who stand still on the left side of the escalator. Now I know that moving stairs are still a novelty to some, but most regular commuters know that the right is for standers and the left is for the folks who like beating those smug stair climbers out of the station.
I know it’s pompous for me to assume that Los Angeles is listening — especially when I have access to my site’s metrics and I know that my traffic falls well short of the city’s population — but please quit being part of the problem, left-standers. And for God’s sake, kindly get out of the way when someone says “excuse me”. I really hate getting pushy, but I swear that I will if I have to.
Introducing LAWPUG
Posted by Jason Cosper | Filed under General
Since a lot of my day job involves dealing with WordPress issues — which are mostly caused by 3rd party plugins or sites not being ready for the Digg effect — I’ve become really passionate about WordPress as a platform. Now I’m not to the point of being a hardcore zealot just yet, but I find myself getting closer and closer as each day passes. ;)
Inspired by Joe Crawford’s BOF at the last BarCampLA, I’ve decided to start a group for Los Angeles based WordPress users. The idea is to meet monthly for a meal and have a small, semi-structured talk (or Q&A) to get other folks who are passionate about WordPress to come together and exchange ideas.
The first one is going to be a little more relaxed tho. We’re meeting for a nice Sunday brunch at the Los Angeles Farmers Market near Starbucks and Lotteria in the southwest corner (3rd & Fairfax) on April 6th at 12:00 PM. We’ll use this meeting a chance to get to know the other people in the community before we start diving into the fun technical stuff at future meetings. All the important event info should be up over on Upcoming, so please try to add yourself there so we can know how many tables to try to grab.
I’m really looking forward to getting this jump started and seeing some new (and old) faces from the LA tech community. Please feel free to spread the word if you’re interested in helping get this subset of the larger community going and drop me a line if you have any questions.
Time To Get Away
Posted by Jason Cosper | Filed under General
I realize how funny it is to be complaining about needing a vacation — especially since things have been so quiet around here the past couple months — but I feel like I need to get away for a bit. When things get silent here, it’s because I’m in head down, super concentration mode.
I’ve got more than two weeks of vacation banked up at work and I’m itching to take my first real break in over eight years. No conventions, conferences or unconferences. No networking events or parties. Just me and someplace quiet where I can go for a week and reset myself.
The question is, where do I go? Anyone have any ideas?
Sunset at McWay Falls by kaiyen.
Wither Seven Grand?
Posted by Jason Cosper | Filed under General, Los Angeles, WTF
So last night I was informed that Seven Grand is going to enforce a dress code of “collared shirts on the weekends” for the dudes in the new year. I can totally understand why they’d do that — seeing as how it’s a really nice bar and you’d want to discourage the riff-raff from hanging out — but it’s a little dismaying nonetheless. Of course I say that because I’m pretty sure I’m the sort of scruffy riff-raff they’re trying to discourage. It also tends to make things a little less fun and a lot more pretentious.
I mean, watching “Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!” while listening to the Cramps and drinking some whiskey doesn’t really lend itself to the whole “strictly enforced dress code” experience, does it?
I guess Bar 107 just became my weekender when I’m downtown.
Wakey Wakey, Eggs And Bakey
Posted by Jason Cosper | Filed under General
I know it’s not spring yet, but I feel like it might be time to come out of hibernation mode.
While 2007 was okay overall — with a few highs and lows, just like most other years — I’m seriously ready for it to be over. 2008 is going to be absolutely massive tho.
So long as I stick to the plan, I have a distinct feeling that my life is about to get way more interesting.
P.S. There’s a new coat of paint on the blog. If you’re playing along at home, why not pay the site a visit for a change?
P.P.S. Just so you know, “the plan” doesn’t refer to any sort of resolutions or anything like that. I’ve just laid out a fairly aggressive personal roadmap for the next twelve months, that’s all.
The Last 5 Songs I Bought On iTunes
Posted by Jason Cosper | Filed under General, Lists, Music
One of the reasons I love iTunes is because it lets my sometimes questionable and eclectic music tastes be sated with a small handful of button pushes. Yeah, the DRM is a janky pile of shit — as all DRM is — but being able to scratch an itch right away is worth a buck or so to me.
So in the interest of both show and tell time and internet memes, I’m going to start something up. It might not make it any further than the bits and bytes being transferred here — but I’d like to think my few friends who I’m going to ping to do this will humor me at the very least. Who knows, maybe it’ll spread… *shrug*
So without further adieu, here are the last 5 songs I bought from iTunes:
- Dio - Holy Diver
- The Doors - Riders On The Storm
- Frank Black - Los Angeles
- Ol Dirty Bastard - Shimmy Shimmy Ya
- The Jesus And Mary Chain - Sometimes Always
And the 5 people I’m tagging for this (so long as they actually use iTunes to buy shit, that is) are:
Optimally, these people will do it and tag 5 other folks and the chain will continue. But if they don’t, whatever. I’m not going to be a hardass about it or anything.
Update: If you don’t “do” the iTMS, listing purchases from eMusic, Amazon’s new mp3 service, Bleep, or even the last few CDs you bought is totally fine by me. The emphasis is on sharing what’s been buzzing thru your skull so much that you had to get it is the point here.
