My friend who'd been in Iraq is now back. Him being on the left cost and me being East means I havn't gotten stories yet, but I've heard his voice, which is very good.
I was in Boston yesterday. It's a really cool city; I miss living around there. I got to see my brother's appartment and such, as well as visit tmrc.
I've been thinking, we are told “drive defensively”. I think a more appropriate motto would be “drive decisively”. I have no data to back this up; it's just a theory. Still, would you rather be on the road with someone going 90 but using their blinker to change lanes, or with someone going 60 in the middle lane with their left blinker on? Similarly, enterance ramps are for getting up to speed to merge. I suspect it is much safer to get up to speed and perhaps have to break to enter traffic than it is to stop for a gap in traffic.
After commenting to Snapfish that they didn't do as well as Shuttefly with a print (mentioned in an earlier diary entry), they said it was a fluke and that I should try again. I did, but with the same results. The pine tree is grass-green and there are chromatic issues around small details. Shutterfly continues to do well, plus it ships faster and integrates with Gallery.
I've started reading The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. Having always seen it as a self-help book, a genre I've had a poorly-grounded distaste for, I was a bit aprehensive. However so far the ideas it expresses are sitting well with me. It does have it's down-sides. In particular it was written in 1987, so the words it helped to popularize like “proactive” and “paradigm shift” seem a bit dated now. Still, it appears to be a good book so far.
I have found many parallels between Seven Habits and Fight Club, particularly with regard to the “human sacrafice” scene in Fight Club. I'll have to re-read and re-watch Fight Club. It just keeps getting better. :-)
I saw 13 Conversations About the Same Thing. It was reasonably good and reminded me of Magnolia in some ways.