brettsing

Movin’ On Up.

Wow, I haven’t blogged in a long time… and I haven’t written a real entry in almost a year.

Harold got a new job (which he starts in July or August) so we are leaving Irving Park and moving to the South Loop. We’re really excited about our new place! It is on the 17th floor of a high rise at 900 S. Clark.s

We’ve really liked living in our current apartment, but faced with the prospect of NOT having to deal with its little inconveniences I am becoming acutely aware of how annoying they actually are.

I think while I’ve lived here I’ve tried really hard not to think about them too much, and to just focus on fixing the problems I can… making the place as livable as possible.

I have done a lot to this apartment and it has served us pretty well. I installed custom curtains in the Living Room, Bedrooms, and Dining room. I installed custom wood blinds in the Master Bedroom and Kitchen. I replaced all of the drawer and door pulls in the kitchen. Replaced 4 ugly light fixtures. Replaced a broken closet-system. Replaced a broken kitchen sink faucet. Installed several shelves. Installed a permanent shower rod (there was no shower rod when we moved in) Replaced all of the (really ugly) yellow brass towel bars, tp bars, etc in the bathroom with clean brushed nickel ones. Custom paint colors and job. Installed a programmable thermostat. Fixed broken window locks. This list goes on and on…

As much as I have done to this place, there are just so many things that I absolutely will not be missing. Little things that if you owned a place you could fix, but in a rental are just beyond what is practical to replace. (though I’m guessing many would say that several of the improvements I made already are beyond what is practical)

So here we go, things I will NOT miss about this apartment (in paragraph form, thankyouverymuch) Wires running the entire length because the cable isn’t installed into the walls. Hardwood floors that are impossible to keep clean. Years and years of layered paint causing much of the trim to always look dingy. Damaged finish of the doors. Bathtub that is up too high combined with showerhead that is too low. Hooking the dishwasher up to the sink to do dishes. A dryer that vents into the house (this is only really bad during the warm months). Broken closet door in the guest bedroom. A back gate with a chain lock that is almost impossible to open. Back stairs that don’t get cleaned off when it is snowing causing us to accumulate garbage and recycling during the winter months. A kitchen with little cabinet space and only one tiny drawer, causing us to have to store many of our kitchen things in the small amount of cabinet space we have. A back porch with no light. A living room light fixture that sometimes works and sometimes doesn’t. The unfinished trim in the bedrooms. The creeeeeepy dual-key-sided deadbolt locks on the guest bedroom which has no windows. Hallway and closet doors that don’t open, don’t close, don’t lock, or stick. Hallway closet not deep enough for hangers and with a rod that is very crooked. Windows that don’t open. Windows that don’t close. Windows with no screens. And then of course there are the projects I wasn’t ever able to finish… for example the curtains I never hemmed… that’s the only one of those I can think of right now.

*stuff I’ve thought of and added since this was originally posted: Front door to building has to be manually locked. Buzzer to let people in does not work. Have to park on street around corner and either a. park far away or b. move car by 9am every day (even the weekends) Sidewalks in this neighborhood do not get shoveled well. Graffiti. Living in-between two bars. Stove w/o vent hood which constantly causes fire alarm to go off. Kitchen Sink drain leaks in the right sink, bathtub drains slowly, mailbox lock is broken*

Yes I can’t wait to move… and hopefully this business that could potentially require us to not be able to get out of our lease early will be resolved and we can move downtown sooner rather than later. Keep your fingers crossed!

In the meantime, dreaming of the new time will get me through the rest of the old time.

Brett Patrick Casey :o)

Headaches & Frustration & Sondheim

“Look what a little Catholic rebellion will lead to… Paul would kiss me and I would think: Oh! I’ve got my very own Jew!” -from Company

I’m writing this from my old MacBook Pro that Harold now uses.

On Sunday we saw “A Little Night Music” in Evanston at Light Opera Works. Like the last Light Opera Works show we saw, this one was also fantastic. If you haven’t seen “A Little Night Music” and like clever, funny, sophisticated, and musically complex shows, I think you’ll like it.

I stayed home from work Yesterday, which I rarely do. I had (and continue to have) such a terrible sinus headache, that I can barely stand the thought of moving. I spent most of the day on the couch. Yesterday morning I was still able to sleep so I slept until about 10, then woke up and watched movies all day. He’s Just Not That Into You, then The Breakup and then switched to a couple of Sondheim musicals while slicing up the new design for this website. (Hopefully you’ll like it, I do)

I upgraded to the newest version of WordPress and got about halfway done converting the Photoshop file into HTML & CSS before stopping to quickly set up the backup disks on our new Airport Extreme to function as drives for Time Machine. I couldn’t get this to work so I decided I would run the firmware update on the router. This opened up ‘Software Update’ which kept locking up around 20% into checking for software… not downloading it… just checking for it. I noticed earlier in the day that any new files I created were not coming up as searchable in Spotlight…. I decided a restart was definitely in order, maybe it would fix all of these little issues. It didn’t. I restarted and my computer got stuck on the gray apple with the spinning spokes screen. About 20 minutes later I shut it down, cleared the PRAM, and as of yet have not been able to get it boot back into OS X.

Harold ran the firmware update on the router which then had to restart itself. He didn’t realize that I was watching something on Netflix on TiVo. Having lots its connection during internet play, TiVo locked up. Upon restart, the audio track for the movie I was watching loaded about 1 second before whatever was happening on screen. It was about then that I lost it.

I decided I must leave the house. I needed to go see the pretty lights of downtown, take in a little bit of night air, and get out of the house and away from all the non-functioning electronics. While out, I stopped by the Bad Times Burger King for a diet Coke. Naturally, they gave me regular and I had to go back through the line to exchange it. We returned home and I checked one more time to make sure my computer still wouldn’t start up, took some pills as instructed by Harold, and the moment my headache went away was finally able to go to sleep around midnight.

The medicine must have worn off around 2pm, b/c that’s when I woke up. The busy noises of Irving Park (we live on a pretty major road) which usually are my comforting friends who help me sleep, are now my enemies. Its no matter though, with my two hours of sleep I’m now wide awake.

I would work on my website some more, but I can’t get to the files. How I wish I had thrown them on a network drive. I decided to put on Stephen Sondheim’s ‘Company’ on Netflix on TiVo (which Harold was able to fix) and try some more things on my computer

I’m pretty sure the hard disk on my new computer may have failed. In addition to not booting to the hard disk, my brand new 17″ MacBook Pro also will not boot to the TechTool Deluxe CD. I was finally able to get it to boot to the Mac OS X Leopard install disc. It ran through normal setup procedures (you know, it checked the CD and everything) and when it finally tried to install the operating system to the hard disk…. I got this fantastic “Install Failed’ screen. I’ve been through this before on my old PowerBook G4. Basically these are the same events that happened when its hard drive failed.

I’m pretty sure I’ve lost all of the work I did on my website yesterday, which totally sucks. I noticed that if I hold T while starting up, it will boot into transfer mode, so I thought perhaps it might be worth a shot to see if I can pull the files off of it that way, however I don’t have a FireWire 800 cable, and the new MacBook Pro does not have a FireWire 600 cable. My guess is that it doesn’tmatter though, if the Hard Disk really has failed, I’m sure it wouldn’t actually work.

On the plus side, after trying for about 10 seconds on this computer, I was able to get it to see the network drives for Time Machine Backup. Yay! The other positive here is that I haven’t had the computer for very long. The only files I don’t have on this computer are a few Musicals I downloaded since I got that comptuer and those website files. Who knows, maybe I’ll hit an odd spur of luck and actually be able to get them!

Additionally, on Friday the blower motor for my cars A/C stopped working. I found out it I didn’t have to drive to Mid-Missouri and that it could be fixed here in Chicago so I made an appointment. It promptly started working again, and has not stopped since. I figured they probably couldn’t fix it if they couldn’t see how it was broken, so hopefully if this issue decides to manifest again, it will happen sometime during the next 6,000 miles… because after than my warranty runs out and then it would be expensive to fix.

Well, that’s all for now. Wish me luck!

Brett Patrick Casey :o)

2 in a 7 day . Not bad considering my recent record.

The last post I had was kind of hurried. Plus it was whiny. Perhaps I can drag this one out a little longer and explain things a little bit better, without being irritating.

We’ll start over.

I moved to Columbia. At this point I’m not sure if I’m going to be staying here or not because I drive to Jefferson City several times a week to hang out with people. I know you’re thinking “But why? Loads of your Columbia friends must be lining up at your door for the chance to hang out with you now that you live near them!!!” It turns out that they are busy. The time-tested, kid approved ”washing of the hair” will suffice as a general explanatory excuse regarding their prior engagements.  Naturally, I’m a little bit surprised as I’d always planned to hang out with people, and part of the reason I moved up here was because I figured I’d be less lonely.

Not so.

I am alone almost all of the time when up here. At work I am surrounded by people but my job involves very little in the way of teamwork and much more in the way of sitting by myself and doing research to answer e-mails from schools and on occasion, from students. At home, I sit in my room alone – usually online in a desperate attempt to find someone to hang out with – until I can no longer stand it at which point (for the first couple of weeks) I go to one of the bars. The bars of course offer only a lonely session of sitting on a stool and since I’m not really drinking all that much lately, very little else.

So now you’re thinking: “But Brett, what about your new roommate… why don’t you hang out with him?” Well, my roommate is nice but I think our personalities don’t really click. Actually, they don’t click in most ways. He’s coridal and friendly and all, we don’t so much butt heads, we’re just not the buddy-buddy type. We couldn’t have all kinds of inside jokes like Tim and I, we couldn’t be snooty about certain things together like Ryan and I, we couldn’t obsess over health food and stuff like my mom and I. You get the idea. We’ve just not got much in common.

Having exhausted all of my searchable outlets for someone to hang out with up here in Columbia, I go to Jefferson City. In Jefferson City I have family… they hang out with me no matter what because they love me… I also have several friends who actually don’t mind spending their time with me. Tim and Debra and Shawna are there, and (the last couple of evenings) we’ve all been hanging out together.  

I guess when living in Jefferson City it was easy to fall into a rut by just hanging out with my family, and coming up to bar a lot. Without really wanting to go to bar, which I had been less and less even before I moved, I was just spending a lot of time with my family. Moving to Columbia has made me want to reconnect with my friends more than ever. Especially some of the ones I no longer see, like Kody and Ryan and Lexy… however they fell out of the “hang out with frequently” list because they, like my friends up here, have other people that they like to spend time with… perhaps a signifant other or friends that they have standing plans with, et cetera. Debra and Shawna don’t seem to mind Tim (and now me) being there all that much. Tim likes to hang out with all of us.

In Chicago I often felt alone, but it was different. There were possibilities, there was always someone new to meet, and there was always a ton of people to hang out with. If someone was busy, I could call someone else. Plus, were a million people everywhere and I could still be alone, even in the middle of them, if that was the need that wasn’t being met at that time.  

So, now you’re thinking “Well, why don’t you just move back here already?! It seems that you’ve learned something new about yourself from this, and perhaps you should just go back and be with the people who want to be with you.”

Well, to you I would say that I want to. Actually I want that very badly right now. However, and I’ll bet you saw this coming, its not quite that simple. First of all, my job is up here. I don’t mind driving back and forth all that much, but it does take up a larger chunk of your day than you would think. With traffic and in/out of the city its less like 25-30 and more like 40-45 minutes each way. Blocked off, that’s almost two hours of time. Of course, if I’m driving back to Jefferson City for people to hang out with anyway… I suppose I’m not saving that much time or gas. However, I’m not driving during rush periods so traffic isn’t quite so bad at the times I’m traveling.

I also have a job interview up here with one of the newspapers for a graphic design position. ["What, why didn't you tell me? That's so exciting for you! Ohmigod I hope you get it!"] Thank you, I’m keeping my fingers crossed. I’m working hard to make sure I’m all brushed up on everthing that they need… and everything else. <blockquote>Sidebar: I’m told that for a part of my interview (which btw is with two people… and I think they’ve been looking for quite some time… this is the second time I’ve submitted my resume to them for this position) I will have to design a graphic layout and/or advertisement using color correction and clipping paths in photoshop and using Quark for layout. </blockquote> So of course I’m curious as to if I’ll get that job, and to how much money I’ll be making… if I could afford my own place… etc. .

Right now everything is all about unknowns, and naturally that makes me really uncomfortable. Will I get this job? Do I want a place in Columbia? If I had one, maybe Tim could come up here and live with me once he got a car. Does Tim want to come up here? Why do I need to be around people so often; why am I not okay with being alone?  Should I try to move to Saint Louis? Should I move in with my friend who offered to let me live with him but he already has a roommate I’m not sure if I like; wouldn’t that put me in the same situation I’m in now? Will I ever get out of Mid-Missouri? Will this thing where I have to be around people prevent me from doing this in life? It seems to prevent me from getting design work done that I should be doing… and that’s something I love. I just like to be sitting in a room with other people when I do it. Is that stupid? Should I go to college when I’m 24 and can get loans on my own, or will I have a job that I should stick with for a while for experience? Could I do both? Should I try to grow my business and do that instead? How come everyone else can get the cracks to work on their iPhones but mine just locks up? Shouldn’t it be easier on mac? I want a prettier dock on my screen! Will I have enough money to visit Christy in spain? So you see, it goes on and on… and I just don’t know.

A while back, I stated that I believe a large part of growing older is being able to realize that I don’t have all of the answers. I’m unsure. I don’t know.

All I know is this: I want to be happy. How do I get there? What does it look like? How will I make the right decisions to lead me to that goal?

I won’t: I’m going to screw it up.

What I will do, however, is admit when I’m wrong, and learn from my mistakes. Because if I don’t make them, how else will I know they were mistakes? Preparedness and (attempted) objective thinking can only take you so far. Things either feel right, or they don’t and usually I can’t know which until I’m doing them.

What I will not do is let being afraid of making the wrong choice keep me from trying things and therefore shaping me as a person Then I don’t grow, and I go nowhere. I’m all about growth and going places (cool and fun places that is.)

Well guys and gals, I suppose that’s all for now.
Brett Patrick Casey :o)

They’re High.

Jefferson City is such a moronic place.

I’m going to start with a quote that has stuck with me very strongly ever since I first saw it.

“I’m an architect in a city with no architecture…”
– Jorge Garcia, Mexico, Dwell, Oct/Nov 2005.

Depending on how you look at it, this is either horrible, or wonderful. The fact that the city has none leaves it open for lots, however… why might a city not have any architecture? Lack of funding, lack of interest, lack of development, all of the above? It tends to lean more toward the horrible in my opinion.

I really feel for this architect in a way. I’m a designer, in a city completely unconcerned with aesthetics. What’s worse is, the better I get– and I’m always trying to become better, the less necessary I seem. Also the less interested people seem in my services. Here, even my current level of design is superfluous. No one wants it, no one needs it, and sure as hell no one is willing to pay for it.

In most places, especially in America, consumers are driven toward more upscale things. Our peers and parents and experiences teach us to want to better ourselves, its the American way… right? Unfortunately for me, Jefferson City and most of Mid-Missouri (on the whole) is perfectly content being a giant shithole of ugly.

Brand image means almost nothing here, unless your brand is McDonalds. Actually, that isn’t true… Brand image is important here. Its important that you don’t let your brand image get too good… WHY could that POSSIBLY ever be a PROBLEM? Well, here… especially in Jefferson City, its a huge drawback. If people think your business is nice, they automatically decide it’s too expensive, and therefore will ignore it completely. Never mind your greatly superior customer experience, ambiance, product, and overall customer satisfaction. Why the hell would those things matter if you’re not SELLING your product for the ABSOLUTE LOWEST PRICE.

I once asked my mom about why the buildings here were all so terribly ugly… even the brand new ones are made so cheaply. I noted that in other places we frequently go, in Wisc. or wherever, the strip malls are ALL really varied and nice looking. They’re built with quality materials (not EVER stucco!) and they attract interesting and cool businesses, and customers. She pointed out that if developers did that here, no one would go to their strip-malls…. or shop in their stores. She’s right, they wouldn’t.
I told her that I didn’t want to have to look at that ugly cheap crap, and shop at stupid stores, and drive by their ugly “architecture” daily. “They’re not trying to attract your business, they’re trying to attract the business of the people in this town…. they don’t want you!” She’s right. They don’t.

Its Wal-Mart culture, and I hate it. You buy crap, you treat it like crap, it wears exactly as you would expect crap to, and then you throw it out and replace it with more junky crap. Don’t save your money and buy a nice set of pots and pans and take care of it, and use it for 25 years… buy Wal-Mart… tear the shit out of it, and replace it once a year… yeah, that’s MUCH better.

When I worked at Cole County Residential Services, I was constantly annoyed by one thing, (actually by many things, but only one in particular relevant to this story) the fact that most of the staff people, when refering to a product or store, would say: “They’re high.” or “That’s high.” in liu of “That’s expensive.” This always drove me crazy… aside from the fact that its vague, and the syntax of the English language has been completely thrown out the window, (much like the writing in my journal entries) It was also just a constant reminder of that CHEAP CHEAP CHEAP thing, which I hate so much.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for saving money. I’m just never for saving money at the cost of quality, or experience, or service, or durabilty, or any of the other countless things that always buying the cheapest item or service can exclude.

The point of all this… I’m a square peg, trying to fit into a round hole. I don’t belong here. I’m incredibly unhappy. I haven’t felt like myself for months, and it gets worse all the time. If I have to live in this area, where the conscentration of this terrible attitude toward quality is so great, I don’t see myself ever being happy. However, I feel incredibly trapped. Financially, I’m completely unable to get the fuck out of here. If I have to live here, in this terrible place, and I can’t ever get out, I don’t see the point in living. Living here isn’t living. Challenges and culture, experiencing new things, taking risks—failing! That’s living. I used to have that. And I miss it. And I want it back. I don’t want to live, if I have to live here. THIS is unacceptable.

This is a WHOLE other lecture, and I won’t discuss in great length today but, another quote I’m fond of:

“I don’t know why people hire architects and then tell them what to do,” Mr. [Frank] Gehry says. “Architects have to become parental. They have to learn to be parental.” By this he means that an architect has to listen to his client but also remain firm about what the architect knows best, the aesthetics of a building. This, Mr. Gehry says, is what makes an architect relevant in the process that leads to a completed building. “I think a lot of my colleagues lose it, lose that relevance in the spirit of serving their client, so that no matter what, they are serving the client. Even if the building they produce, that they think serves the client, doesn’t really serve the client because it’s not very good.

-Wall Street Journal

Again. Dead on. Why hire someone to make your project creative, when that isn’t what you’re really looking for? I’ve run into this again and again in the past. (Though less lately… most of the time the projects I work on as of late, are mostly about letting me do my own thing… MOSTLY… which believe me, turns out better for everyone involved.) Just like he says: What a disservice I’m doing for a client to let them take over and give them a compromised product that is low quality.

Well, that’s all the bitching for tonight.
Brett Patrick Casey :o)

They’re High.

Jefferson City is such a moronic place.

I’m going to start with a quote that has stuck with me very strongly ever since I first saw it.

“I’m an architect in a city with no architecture…”
– Jorge Garcia, Mexico, Dwell, Oct/Nov 2005.

Depending on how you look at it, this is either horrible, or wonderful. The fact that the city has none leaves it open for lots, however… why might a city not have any architecture? Lack of funding, lack of interest, lack of development, all of the above? It tends to lean more toward the horrible in my opinion.

I really feel for this architect in a way. I’m a designer, in a city completely unconcerned with aesthetics. What’s worse is, the better I get– and I’m always trying to become better, the less necessary I seem. Also the less interested people seem in my services. Here, even my current level of design is superfluous. No one wants it, no one needs it, and sure as hell no one is willing to pay for it.

In most places, especially in America, consumers are driven toward more upscale things. Our peers and parents and experiences teach us to want to better ourselves, its the American way… right? Unfortunately for me, Jefferson City and most of Mid-Missouri (on the whole) is perfectly content being a giant shithole of ugly.

Brand image means almost nothing here, unless your brand is McDonalds. Actually, that isn’t true… Brand image is important here. Its important that you don’t let your brand image get too good… WHY could that POSSIBLY ever be a PROBLEM? Well, here… especially in Jefferson City, its a huge drawback. If people think your business is nice, they automatically decide it’s too expensive, and therefore will ignore it completely. Never mind your greatly superior customer experience, ambiance, product, and overall customer satisfaction. Why the hell would those things matter if you’re not SELLING your product for the ABSOLUTE LOWEST PRICE.

I once asked my mom about why the buildings here were all so terribly ugly… even the brand new ones are made so cheaply. I noted that in other places we frequently go, in Wisc. or wherever, the strip malls are ALL really varied and nice looking. They’re built with quality materials (not EVER stucco!) and they attract interesting and cool businesses, and customers. She pointed out that if developers did that here, no one would go to their strip-malls…. or shop in their stores. She’s right, they wouldn’t.
I told her that I didn’t want to have to look at that ugly cheap crap, and shop at stupid stores, and drive by their ugly “architecture” daily. “They’re not trying to attract your business, they’re trying to attract the business of the people in this town…. they don’t want you!” She’s right. They don’t.

Its Wal-Mart culture, and I hate it. You buy crap, you treat it like crap, it wears exactly as you would expect crap to, and then you throw it out and replace it with more junky crap. Don’t save your money and buy a nice set of pots and pans and take care of it, and use it for 25 years… buy Wal-Mart… tear the shit out of it, and replace it once a year… yeah, that’s MUCH better.

When I worked at Cole County Residential Services, I was constantly annoyed by one thing, (actually by many things, but only one in particular relevant to this story) the fact that most of the staff people, when refering to a product or store, would say: “They’re high.” or “That’s high.” in liu of “That’s expensive.” This always drove me crazy… aside from the fact that its vague, and the syntax of the English language has been completely thrown out the window, (much like the writing in my journal entries) It was also just a constant reminder of that CHEAP CHEAP CHEAP thing, which I hate so much.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for saving money. I’m just never for saving money at the cost of quality, or experience, or service, or durabilty, or any of the other countless things that always buying the cheapest item or service can exclude.

The point of all this… I’m a square peg, trying to fit into a round hole. I don’t belong here. I’m incredibly unhappy. I haven’t felt like myself for months, and it gets worse all the time. If I have to live in this area, where the conscentration of this terrible attitude toward quality is so great, I don’t see myself ever being happy. However, I feel incredibly trapped. Financially, I’m completely unable to get the fuck out of here. If I have to live here, in this terrible place, and I can’t ever get out, I don’t see the point in living. Living here isn’t living. Challenges and culture, experiencing new things, taking risks—failing! That’s living. I used to have that. And I miss it. And I want it back. I don’t want to live, if I have to live here. THIS is unacceptable.

This is a WHOLE other lecture, and I won’t discuss in great length today but, another quote I’m fond of:

“I don’t know why people hire architects and then tell them what to do,” Mr. [Frank] Gehry says. “Architects have to become parental. They have to learn to be parental.” By this he means that an architect has to listen to his client but also remain firm about what the architect knows best, the aesthetics of a building. This, Mr. Gehry says, is what makes an architect relevant in the process that leads to a completed building. “I think a lot of my colleagues lose it, lose that relevance in the spirit of serving their client, so that no matter what, they are serving the client. Even if the building they produce, that they think serves the client, doesn’t really serve the client because it’s not very good.

-Wall Street Journal

Again. Dead on. Why hire someone to make your project creative, when that isn’t what you’re really looking for? I’ve run into this again and again in the past. (Though less lately… most of the time the projects I work on as of late, are mostly about letting me do my own thing… MOSTLY… which believe me, turns out better for everyone involved.) Just like he says: What a disservice I’m doing for a client to let them take over and give them a compromised product that is low quality.

Well, that’s all the bitching for tonight.
Brett Patrick Casey :o)

Cats fit on the window-sill, children fit in the snow…

Music: “A Big Black Lady Stops the Show” from Martin Short: Fame Becomes Me

Jefferson City is driving me Crazy.

My friend Michelle, who is a lawyer (which I only mention to indicate how impressive this makes me… to have befriended a lawyer) and I spend a lot of time at O’Donoghue’s which is a local restaurant (that’s actually pretty upscale for it being local) chatting with each other, the bartender, and the other regular customers. Last Friday night, it was sort of busy. Michelle was doing a logic puzzle and I was reading design magazines. Now, I was sort of pissy anyway because I wasn’t feeling any bit inspired or getting any ideas for this project I was working on (which could be attributed to the less than 8 hours of sleep I’d received all week to that point… but whatever) So this guy comes in, and he and his girlfriend go to sit down. She sits down at a barstool two over from where I am. He stands next to her and talks for a considerable amount of time. After about five minutes, I pull my head out of my self-doubt and design magazine worship long enough to realize that he’s waiting for me to move my foot so that he can sit down at the stool next to me. (My foot is a little bit over in that stool’s personal space… not much, but a little.) I realize this and go to move it, but my brain intercepts the signal on its way to my foot with another message: “What the hell is this guy’s problem, that he has to stand there for eight minutes instead of politely saying ‘excuse me’ and sitting down?”

So I leave my foot and continue looking through my magazine.

I decide that if he’d like to sit down, and for me not to be in the space that he can at least have the human decency to say “excuse me” or gesture, or acknowledge my existence, or SOMETHING! I’ve been told I don’t look like a very nice person and that I’m not very approchable… but come on.

Out of the corner of my eye, I notice the intensity of his antsyness increase and his mouth start to curl up a little bit out of annoyance. I couldn’t see it, but even imagining his angrily furrowed brow, I lost it.

I turned to Michelle and very matter of factly stated that I had to go to Target, and it needed to be right-now-at-this-very-moment. Michelle being who she is had absolutely no questions about this at all and so we paid our bill and as I got up to leave… of course having to move my foot… the man finally sat down.

On the way from the parking lot of Target (which was oddly busy for our Target) to the door a monsoon hit, and by the time I escaped into Target I looked every bit the disheartened soggy victim of it. The typhoon, and the thinking time I had during the car trip on the way over had only served to intensify my contempt for the man who had dared treat me with such disdain, as well as the anger I was feeling toward myself for not smacking the shit out of him for being such an asshole.

Michelle took one look at me as I walked through the interior set of air-lock doors and of course read all of this in my expression and suggested we get coffee. We stood in the short line, and the very friendly Starbucks-in-Target barista makes our order. Michelle gets hers and instantly appears more relaxed. I get mine and take a sip as we leave the counter. Its cold.

Not icy cold… like perhaps she’d thought I’d ordered it that way… but worse. It was a very curious kind of a “my coffee has been sitting around all morning and I drank some when I came back from lunch” room temperature sort of cold.

I am incredibly displeased but decide not to go back and ask for her to heat it up in large part because she was the first person in the public I’d had to interact with since the evil-snubby barstool man. And though she messed my coffee up, at least she was pleasant and I felt she didn’t deserve to die. At that moment I was sure I couldn’t collect the kind, good-naturedness required to complain about something in a non-hateful way. So I went on with my cold coffee.

Michelle was checking out the dollar aisle as I was ignoring it altogether, I had a moment to lose myself in thought. I decided that by not returning my coffee, I was being the evil snubby-bar man. At that moment, a fate far worse than death or any other kind of existence. Therefore, the kind good-naturedness must be garnered for the sake of all pissed-off wanna-be designer-homos who’d been treated like shit that day everywhere. Nay, for all humankind!

I went back and waited quietly coffee in hand, with a pleasant look on my face through what now was a signifigantly lengthier queue.

While waiting I searched the counter for interesting products or foodstuffs and chortled at the cup-sleeve proudly displaying “Please be careful, the beverage you are about to enjoy is extremely hot.”

When again greeted by the barista I smiled politely and said: “I don’t want to be bitchy or whiny or anything, but this is kind of cold… could you maybe heat it up for me?” She apologized with all the pleasantness she’d exhibited before and instantly began working on a fresh cup.

After a few minutes when I was once again presented with a white chocolate mocha, it was hot… REALLY hot. I thanked her again, she apologized again, and I returned to the store to find Michelle.

Fifteen minutes, 12 aisles, and four really great clearance-shelf finds later, as I was enjoying the last few sips of my flavored coffee confection I couldn’t help but be a little impressed at how hot they still were. I swallowed them and thought how nice it was for me that my interaction with evil-snubby barstool man had led to personal triumph over my own social-deficiencies in the capitalist environment and how this allowed me to enjoy my coffee in a way that someone who wouldn’t speak up for themselves for whatever reason, like him, never could.

————————–

So, I should be asleep…. (A lot of journal entries through the years have started with that line)

Anyway.

I know I should be writing more, even though there isn’t shit going on. Michelle and I hang out pretty much every day, but we may have to cut that back a bit just so she can get some work done.

I’m still going out a lot, but gradually…. VERY gradually… its becoming less. At least I seem to be enjoying the frequent bar visits less than I used to. Its getting to be more fun like once a week. I know that seems ridiculous for a lot of you… but you have to remember I was a five times a week guy for quite some time. Yeah, I know that’s what’s really ridiculous.

Gay people in general… especially in large groups… are getting on my nerves lately.

It sucks that Ryan won’t return any of my calls or anything, I’m not sure what’s up there. I know he’s been really busy, but seriously… its not that hard to answer the phone once in a while… or to return a call on the way to the grocery store… or… whatever… I guess I’m just bitter. I don’t like being ignored.

I miss Josh, and Christy a lot.

Christy is getting married in June… (as is Debra) Josh is moving into a new place soon, so that’s exciting for him.

Work is strange, I like it, and the time seems to pass relatively quickly, its just strange with a lot of the stuff that is going on.

I’ve been working quite a bit on crap for a portfolio. Probably not enough though. I guess it’ll just come together as it comes together, but I’m trying to speed it up a little. Though sometimes forcing the creativity works, and sometimes it really crashes and burns. Currently, I’m working on a project for a business of a friend. That’s been exciting so far because having someone else’s ideas gave me a springboard for what I do and thus far has produced a pretty solid and attractive concept relatively quickly.

I think I’m becoming a better singer. I still enjoy that so much… maybe I should try to be in a play, or go to college for a while for it or something… maybe I can get a scholarship and it’d give me something to do for a while here… other than going to a bar or working that is.

I have no money, and I want to pay off this damned $3000 in credit card debt so that I can move the hell back up and out of Jefferson City.

Brett Patrick Casey :o)

Microsoft, I hate you so much.

To Microsoft: (whom I hate ever more each day with with a fiery passion that mere words cannot express and my physical being can no longer contain– without at least having a bitch session about it.)

I hate you so very much. You piss me off to no end.

I don’t mind that you copied 80% of your new operating system from my people. We borrow from you, you borrow from us, the whole world has computers that are safer, faster, easier to use, more secure, etc. It’s a good system because the competition keeps us growing and moving. Everyone wins.
I don’t mind that Vista’s style is basically all of the elegant details of Mac OS X on a mixture of crystal meth and cocaine. Take our elegant details, overdo with them as you will. It keeps with the windows legacy of “less isn’t more, more is more.”

I don’t even mind that as Apple continues to come out with new things, you laugh at us… until you copy us. You’re big, we’re the underdog… you get to do that. Fine. Microsoft CEO Ballmer laughs at Apple iPhone

For most of my life, I’ve wanted to be an interior designer. I love interior design, putting together a room makes me happier than almost anything else in the world. This sparked a love for design in general. I discovered that making things beautiful and using what tools were available to me creatively, utilizing new techniques, developing techniques of my own, whatever… all of these things make me sooo happy, which leads me in to Graphic Design, which I also love. If I can’t do interiors, I can do graphic, right? More people need that, so perhaps its more marketable. However, I live here… haven’t been to school for it, not-so-necessary here… and pretty difficult to break into. I’ve only recently discovered a couple of publications where I can oogle such creative works. Like How and Step so I build on the skills I already have to try to be able to use something that I can in the meantime. This brings us to web design. Its graphic design meets computer-technology. It needs to be flexible, the code needs to load quickly and be as light and easily changeable as possible, and also needs good technology behind it to manage things like content. Suddenly, I’m doing things like coding to make my happy little designs usable.

When I started in web design, like most people I used a PC… running Windows 95 at the time, I believe… and therefore designed sites that would work in Microsoft Internet Explorer. I didn’t really care if things worked in other browsers or not because “Hey, who doesn’t use a PC anyway, right?”

But times changed, technology and the need for a way to style web content in a more clean and neat and easier way grew and so now it was time to learn CSS. Very hesitant at first, I eventually moved on (with some help from Josh W.) and converted the site I had at the time into CSS. Still being an MSIE user, I wasn’t too concerned with the fact that my designs didn’t work all that well in a browser like Firefox, because… who uses that anyway? So now I’m coding HTML and CSS with a little bit of things like javascript mixed in here and there.

But, I eventually broke over to the other side and had to re-learn CSS. Designing for Firefox and other browsers that properly display CSS was different because since I’d learned the fix-hacks first, I had to learn the way things were actually supposed to be second. I’m making sites, my knowledge is expanding, my creative trick bag is growing and everything is going along fine. I’ve learned to design sites using proper CSS and then fix the things that needed fixing so that 90% of world, who still use MSIE 6 can view them correctly as well.

Enter MSIE 7. It is supposed to have such greatly enhanced support for CSS. We web-people weren’t fooled though… we knew that while some things would be fixed, new problems would be created and the cycle would begin again. When IE7 came out, horrified, we began to figure out what the problems would be. Because of security issues that IE7 supposedly had, right from the start… which were supposed to be a major fix from IE6, but were apparently worse, and also for several other reasons which escape my memory right now, the general population didn’t switch to IE7. Half of it did. Now we’ve got new problems, and old problems, and CSS standards. Suddenly, everyone wants me making a content managment system for them, and I’m having to start learning how to work my designs in with php. Now its: Make a site for Firefox, and other (mostly) web-standards compliant browsers. Fix for IE6. Fix for IE7. Integrate content managment (which at the moment is still usually WordPress or some other free php software I got somewhere online) into MY designs. Re-Fix for Firefox, IE6, IE7. Fixing things for IE6 created problems with things in Firefox sometimes, but mostly it was easily fixable. IE7 isn’t so easy. Fixing things for it seems to mess things up worse in Firefox, then trying to make it work in IE6 still is damned near impossible. I’m so fucking confused I don’t know what to do anymore, once I think I have something fixed, bam… it won’t work in IE7 anymore.

Microsoft, what I want to know is this: While you’re out photocopying every little thing from the people at Apple, why don’t you just open up Firefox, hit “copy” and give us a fucking web browser that just fucking works as well? Why does it have to be so fucking complicated? Why do I have to fix things for you in the first place, muchless fix them for TWO crappy shit-ass versions of your suck-ass stupid piece of shit web browser so that the people who don’t trust your buggy NEW version can still see things too.

Why the hell do you do this to me, and everyone else?

All I want to do is make the world a prettier place. Coding is NOT my thing, but I do it because I have to. Why do you fucking have to make it so much fucking make it worse than it already is? Why?

I just want to make things pretty, and make pretty things.

I don’t blame the users, their computers come with you. Why would they go download something else, especially when most of them probably don’t know any better or even care? Why can’t you just give us a good fucking browser?

Microsoft, it is for this reason… and no other… that I hate you.

Sincerely,
Brett Patrick Casey :o)