Jodi Speaks Her Mind

I wonder who else lives here… 1/31/2002

It turns out that Bil Keane, creator of The Family Circus, lives in the Valley here. Coolness.

I have always enjoyed his cartoon. And not only is he a fellow Arizonan but he also uses a Mac! He uses a blue and white G3 with a FileMaker Pro database to archive every strip he’s ever created. I’m told he can search by keyword, date, characters, etc. Very cool! He just moved up a notch in my estimation!

Sadly, I did not get to meet Mr. Keane myself. But here’s a nice bio of him and a good interview as well.

his 15 minutes of fame… 1/30/2002

Steve went out with Wes Felter last night and got his picture taken. Frankly, I think it’s a nice pic! He’s kind of cute… can I keep him?

Justice to be served… I hope 1/24/2002

For those of you who follow Speaks Her Mind regularly, you may remember this little rant I posted awhile ago. Well, through some info gathered from one of Steve’s co-workers, we found out about a wonderful little resource known as the Arizona Tenant Association. I called them up and shared our story and they actually laughed when they heard where we live! They said they have done 5 lease terminations with our apartment complex in the last 6 months alone! So we just pay a fee ($65) to join the association and then authorize them to process a lease termination and we will be free from the nasty stipulations in our lease (which as it turns out is unenforcable due to some non-compliance issues with certain Arizona laws).

Boy, is it going to be satisfying to get out of there without dishing out gobs money to the apartment complex. We’ll have to pay 60% of one month’s rent to the Tenant Association to process the lease termination but that is significantly less than the penalties stipulated in our lease. It is a day of good news!

New dwelling

Yep - we bought a house! Well, okay, it’s not ours yet, but the contract is signed, so in about 30 days it will be. We are so very excited! After toiling to renovate a Victorian style house built in 1910 when we lived in Virginia, we are buying a much newer house in Arizona - this one was built in 1996. The stylistic differences are dramatic! We are very excited about our new home. Here’s a picture of the front. Once we can get inside again with a camera we’ll post some more pictures. For those who care to compare, here is a picture of our house in Virginia that we renovated. The pictures on that site are pre-renovation pictures. I’ll see what I can do to find some post-renovation pics to post also.

If you visit the above link, you’ll see that we started a weblog to chronicle the renovation projects of our house. Unfortunately, we didn’t keep it up, which is a shame. We had many stories that we could have shared. Oh well… our sincere apologies for those of you who checked back time and again only to be disappointed.

pleasurable computing 1/19/2002

I got my work computer today - a brand new 500 Mhz iBook. Ever since I first laid my hands on one of those, I have thought it a lovely and sensual experience - and said as much. (Note that there is a difference between sensual and sexual. It’s amazing what comments one can make that friends or co-workers won’t let you retract or clarify.)

MacWorld highlights 1/17/2002

I know Macworld was last week’s news, but I took some cool pictures I want to share, so I have been waiting for them. Unfortunately, they are delayed a couple days more. For now, let me just say that Adele and I had a blast and the new iMac really is a work of art as well as a beautiful deal. I really look forward to the day when all of us can afford to burn our own DVD’s. Thanks to Apple, that day is closer than I imagined. WooHoo!!

Segway in action

Cool. This CNN article tells how several cities are testing out the Segway Human Transporter. I still wish I could try one out.