NOTE: Sorry for the length, it’s a Sunday evening rant.
Initially my thought this year was to purchase everyone on my Christmas list the same thing this year. Not because it would make my life super-easy but mainly because I feel that no matter what position you are in financially, it’s a good read and something I know we have benefited from going through. Ultimately though, I decided against it. It is a sensitive subject to approach and it would be far too easy to have somebody think I was calling them out.
One of the things that we have been striving for since taking the class is to live differently than how we use to live (much less how 70% or more of America lives). Accruing debt. Sadly, I could have used the lessons long before I entered college and we surely would be much farther ahead at this point in time.
Either way, one of the things both the book and the class talk about is being a slave to the mindset of “we’ll always have a car payment.” While not easy, we are working towards training ourselves to think differently than this approach.
It’s not a statement that many of you will find surprising. For some reason, I can’t get enough of New York City. I regularly read about it, follow people who live it, look at pictures both old and current of it, and even let my mind wander far too often about daily living and how it happens there.
Many of the shows I’ve watched regularly over the years on television are based in or around the great city. The Cosby Show, Seinfeld, Friends and Mad Men come to mind. Whether its 2008 or 1940, I enjoy consuming it all. The subway, skyscrapers, Central Park, Lady Liberty, Broadway and the list could easily go on. As it gets closer to the holidays my thoughts turn even more towards ‘the greatest city in the world.’
Sad thing is, I’m not sure I could make it there.
Some of you know that it was on our short list for a while before we moved to our current large metropolis. We had a place to stay lined up, but no jobs to justify selling most of what we owned and moving cross country. The cost of living is astronomical. My values in life hardly line up with the mass majority. The idea of raising a family there is foreign to me (though it is done by millions every day). I’m almost positive I wouldn’t be able to do what I do here, there. But it doesn’t stop me from dreaming.
I suppose if there was an endless supply of money in our account, we would own a place in NYC. Manhattan, to be exact. But since there is no endless supply – and there isn’t a voice inside me that is confident enough to think I could make it there the old fashioned way – I settle for impressive works like the following shots from Paul Goldberger. Images of locations revisited around the city in 2008 that he took pictures of 30 years prior for a city guidebook. The pictures are decent but the presentation of them really sets them off.
Similar to owning a house, in the web business, you become easily tied to your web host. Fortunately, I bought good when I got in. In both house and web hosting.
Unfortunately, being tied to my host as much as I am, I don’t have a whole lot of choice when places like Media Temple offer what they do. I really don’t have any idea about their service or up-time (both key ingredients in the web business) but I do know that they do their best to look like the best hosting company out there. And offer things I have never seen from a web host. Like gift cards for the holidays. (more…)
When I am slightly more coherent, my plan is to make a little bit longer of a write-up. Until then, welcome to my new Internet home. It has been a long time coming. Far too long. The freedom I speak of was the ability to create what I wanted, exactly the way I wanted it. I was the client.
The quick skinny:
Built from the ground up. No template here.
Minimalist design with the possibility of small tweaks coming here and there.
Haven’t even touched IE6 yet to test. Please don’t look at it in IE6. Better yet, quit using IE6
No, your eyes aren’t bugging out, the posts actually fade in color as they get older.
Fair amount of JavaScript, CSS, JQuery and magic dust to get everything the way I wanted it
More changes likely. It was at a usable stage and I was tired of the other one, so I posted it.
I haven’t forgotten about you. Actually, I’ve been quite busy working to clean up your place. Please bear with me a few more days, I promise you’ll like the new digs.