State of the Adman

Some quick hits…

Allison is still growing and going strong. Diana took her to the pediatrician for a second opinion after the whole ear infection thing, and they too pronounced her healthy and doing fine. She doesn’t appear to be eating as much as she used to, but she’s still going through diapers at a good clip, and that appears to be the de facto measure of performance. Perhaps she’s just gotten over a growth spurt. In any case, she’s still as cute as ever, and my favorite time of the day is getting home from work and seeing my girls. Her latest trick is making a new sound with her mouth: she kind of growls like she’s clearing phlegm from her throat. She thinks that’s pretty cool.

I’m starting to get a little warmed up to the presidential races. I haven’t done a whole lot of reading about the various candidates, but it’s fun to watch the horses race. I do, however, remember watching Barack Obama speak at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, and being totally impressed. I specifically remember thinking to myself that if he ran for president in 2008 that I would vote for him. At some level, though, I can’t help but think that no matter who is voted into office, they can’t possible do a worse job than Bush, right? (Here’s hoping, at least).

Which kind of leads me to a brief rant: Radio talk show hosts who complain about “the media”. I mean, come on.

In other news, how about those Chargers?! Diana and I had a bunch of people over for the game, and I was stoked to see them win their first playoff game in a long time. It’s going to be a big test this weekend, though, as they face the Colts. A winnable game, for sure, but definitely not a gimme. I hope they win. I have very little faith in their ability to beat the Pats, though it could happen. As they say, that’s why they play the games.

I’m still figuring out how to balance work, family, play, and sleep. Work has been busy lately, and I’ve continued to put in overtime, but things are starting to lighten up, and we have a meeting today where I’m hoping it will be decided that we can return to normal work hours. Those extra two hours in my day will go a long way.

My personal playtime, while important to me, has been prioritized behind work and family time (it sometimes ties with sleep). To that end, I haven’t been able to justify the cost of a new PS3 and Rock Band (in spite of the fact that we WANTS it, precious!). I already have a small stockpile of Fry’s gift cards from Christmas and my birthday, and I’ve decided that I’m going to earn the rest of the money. And by “earn”, I mean “eBay shit I don’t want any more”.

About 10 years ago, I decided I wanted to learn how to play the drums. Rather than going out and buying a full drum kit, I bought an electronic drum module and some pads and a kick drum trigger. You hook up the pads and kick drum to this module (a little computer), and plug in headphones or speakers, and you can do cool electronic drum stuff. Turns out that it was going to take a lot more money, time, and effort to get it set up in a decent way (I’d need to buy more pads, a rack, etc), and I never followed through. As I said, that was about 10 years ago. These things have been sitting in a box in my garage since then. About a year ago, a workboy sounded interested in playing the drums, so I loaned these things to him. And they sat in HIS garage for the last year.

So I’m selling ‘em on eBay, and they’re actually doing pretty well. In fact, I think they should do a pretty good job making up the difference.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=180203726508
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=180203727313
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=180203727935

The other factor involved here is the recent Blu-Ray vs HD-DVD news. I’ve been long lamenting the state of suck of the high definition DVD world. Different movie studios putting out movies in different formats pretty much paralyzes me from making any sort of decision for fear of making the WRONG decision. I briefly explained the situation recently to Diana, and after listening to and understanding the situation, she responded with “That’s dumb.” That’s dumb, indeed. However, with the recent news of Warner Home Video moving exclusively to Blu-Ray (and even more recent rumors of Universal and Paramount soon to follow suit), people are really saying that Blu-Ray is going to “win”. So that makes buying a PS3 (with built in Blu-Ray player) even more attractive.

So, there you go. The State of the Adman address. With that, I’m off to the dentist.