Monitorium

Well, I'm a bit disappointed only six people have expressed an opinion on my monitor survey. Given that I'm friended by about a zillion people, some of whom I don't even know, I'd have expected a bit more turnout than that.

Still, folks have been overwhelmingly in favor of the outlay for the new monitor. (And one fellow thought I should go ahead and get an LCD monitor. I'd like to have one, if only for the amount of desk space it would save, but given that an equivalently-sized LCD costs $900 instead of $200, that's something I think I'm gonna have to put off for a while.)

And events seem to be conspiring toward nudging me into getting one, too. For one thing, I'm going to be going down to visit with my parents over the weekend...which means I could use my Dad's vehicle for transportation to bring the thing home from Best Buy. For another, this very upcoming weekend is Missouri's first-ever state sales tax holiday for certain items—including computers and computer parts up to $2000. Which means I could save about $10 in state sales taxes by buying the monitor now, instead of later.

I suppose I'll talk it over with my folks. Meanwhile, I'm going to try to take care of any outstanding bills I happen to have online or in person today and see where that leaves me financially. And see what my paycheck tomorrow amounts to.

Thoughts on essay journalling

Well, I've gone ahead and updated my essay journal again (also available as an LJ-friend RSS feed at allivegottosay by the way, though my ego would tend to prefer you visiting the site itself also for hitcount :) with a post about the Olympic branding thing that was on BoingBoing earlier today. I'd drop links in here, but hey, the links are already in my journal essay, why be redundant?

I like writing little essays where I can do more than just link to a single news URL and say "look at this." I mean, that's all most of the people out there do, and if you've seen one of those stories you've seen them all. I prefer to tie a few other links in and say, "Hey, look at this other thing and see how it relates to this first thing, and see how they look when viewed in light of each other." I think it's more useful, and it feels closer to "legitimate" journalism somehow.

Sonic Drive-In Food Thoughts & Safety Tip

It's funny...I really dislike Sprite (and similarly-flavored clear sodas). I mean, next best thing to abhor it. It may have something to do with 7-Up being the beverage of choice for keeping energy up (and inducing burping/vomiting) during flu times as a kid, dunno. I just find that lemony-limey sweet taste to be utterly cloying, and have a hard time drinking it even if nothing else is available.

This completely fails to explain why I like Sonic's "Ocean Water" beverage, which is just Sprite with blue coconut flavor syrup added. I mean, I should find it even more cloyingly sweet than plain Sprite since it's got the sugar of Sprite plus the sugar of the coconut...but it's like it's a whole different beverage. The citrus flavor is still there but much milder, and mitigated somehow by some effect of the coconut flavoring. All I know is, I can drink "Route 44" (44 oz cups; probably works out to about 25-30 of soda considering all the ice) cups of it with no problem, whereas I have a hard time forcing down even a swallow of regular Sprite. Weird.

Food safety tip: when eating Sonic's "cheddar peppers" (a sort of really delicious jalapeno popper-type thing that's one of the best food dishes they make), it is important to hold it with pepper side down, cheese side up, and bite in slowly. To do otherwise could cause a large glob of molten cheese to be ejected out the back or bottom onto your hands (quite painful if the cheddar pepper is still very hot), clothes, table, car seat, or floor, depending on how and where you're eating it.