This summer I saw Pirates of the Caribbean for the first time and then its sequel the following weekend. Two weeks ago at mine and Eddie’s birthday dinner, they forced us to wear stupid pirate masks at Claim Jumpers for our birthday dinner. This was after a random pirate-themed evite went out from Kim. My co-worker, who started back in April, we tease all the time that her boyfriend is a pirate, and finally, today was National Talk-Like-a-Pirate-Day. Pirates seem to be a big theme for me this year… and boy do my co-workers get into the whole pirate thing. They were so excited that today was talk like a pirate day that they made me dress up with them in stupid newspaper hats and cardboard cut outs and take a picture to be submitted to some pirate dude’s flickr site where all sort of pirate freaks submit their pirate pictures. Yes, I look retarded but I guess that’s part of the fun. Argh Matey! Hope you had a Good National Talk-Like-a-Pirate Day too!

Today I went to our downtown office to take pictures of our brokers for a magazine article to be printed in November. I ended up staying all day working on odd little jobs here and there.

Since I have a dead moment right now, I’m posting this picture of me in one of our downtown conference rooms. Woot.

And as a follow up to my McDonald’s story last week, on Saturday night, after a dinner with Bryan at Chicago for ribs, i stopped at three different McDonald’s looking for extra hammer toys to bring to the office. The one on Western in San pedro didn’t have it. The next one on Western and PCH didn’t have it either. Finally the McDonald’s next to PV Bowl… they didn’t have it either. Today though, the McDonald’s here in downtown still had them. I got two! Now me and my co-workers in my regular office in Universal City can each have one to wreak havoc with. Muhaha!

In case you need reminders that I’m a big kid, let me share with you something that happened to me this past week. After my usual carpool route with Josh, I wanted to pick up something quick and small to eat before heading over to the gym. From his place to mine, there’s basically just the McDonald’s on 190th St and Del Taco on Hawthorne. If you know me at all, then you know I HATE Del Taco so I opted for McDonald’s. Much to my surprise (since I don’t get to watch TV), the latest toy in the Happy Meals features everyone favorites Italian stereotype Mario! I quickly bought a Happy Meal and got this stupid Yoshi toy when what I really wanted was this inflatable hammer. I was saddened but figured I’d get it eventually from another McDonald’s somewhere else.

The next day, i carpooled with David Ting (because Josh couldn’t carpool that day) and told him to get me a Happy Meal from the McDonald’s at Wells Fargo Center and that I’d pay him for it (which he’s still entitled to). When I picked him up that evening, he had gotten the hammer! I was so happy as I tried blowing it up while driving down the 110 (probably not one of my safest ideas). The whole ride back I was hitting my dash board, my radio, everything within reach with the hammer. I know–I’m stupid.

Anyway, the next day I was going to bring it to work to hit my co-workers with (yes, I am THAT professional!) so I had it in the car when i picked up Josh. As we were going down Redondo Boulevard, I was holding the hammer in my right hand and tapping myself on the shoulder while waiting at a red light. Next to us some trash men in a big garbage truck saw me and started making lewd gestures and sounds towards me in reference to my hammer (I believe I saw some crotch grabbing and pelvic thrusting via the side rear-view mirror). I thought it was more amusing than embarrassing but I think Josh was disgusted. The light turned green and then they were long gone behind us. The moral of this story is that Happy Meal toys can help you (or your children in theory) get the attention of perverted sanitation engineers. What an unsaid bonus! McDonald’s should proudly advertise that on their commercials.

After tweaking the desert theme a bit, i was still having problems with the CSS… and the header looked really big… and this… and that… blah blah blah… So then I removed the side bars/rules, changed the header again, and hopefully I’m done now with the tweaking of this site. I just wanted to make it feel more like me and it sorta does now, but I’m tired and done with it. It takes so much time now for me to analyze and understand the code before I can begin anything in Photoshop or Illustrator because I want to understand the constraints I’m working with before I begin, but alas, the process is never that easy and I’m more or less just “satisfied” with the way things look now. No, i wasn’t inspired by the Wynn and my friends will tell you I’ve taken quite a shine to the color brown for almost 2 years now. Although I will always like navy blue, I do go through these phases of “favorite colors of the moment”. A while back it was baby blue, and then burnt orange, and now its brown. Let’s see how long it lasts.
I think I’ll go relax now and listen to the new John Mayer Continuum album I picked up tonight from Tower Records on the way home. Stupid mods are now done here… Tomorrow it’s tackling the comics section… and then I get to play around and test with different Photo Gallery aps. So far, the best looking one I’ve found lets you upload a zip file of images and it sorts, tags and databases the images for you. Of course you still need to go back and edit each tag with descriptions, but that sort of automation will save me a lot of time. I bet they’ve had that stuff for a while but I’ve just been so out of it… Time to work smarter and basically not try to think anymore. There are plenty of smart people out there giving away their code for free after all. :)

BTW - Every, please update your blog links to this page: “blog.jsmind.com”. Thanks! I’ll eventually just put up a splash page at jsmind.com to redirect people to the blog, comics or photos sections.

How sad and yet ironic. I was tagged by Joy a whole month ago but have been so busy doing nothing on my website or blogging I failed to notice it. Anyway, here’s my 10 Simple pleasures… posted for you on the 10th of September… in no particular order…

10. Lying down in soft, freshly washed linens that smell of Febreze
9. Looking through old photographs
8. Catching up on Mega-Tokyo or any other of my favorite comics after a long time of not reading.
7. Reading design/photography magazines at a bookstore
6. Doodling j’s mind comic sketches that I hope to convert into comics one day… provided I actually have the time
5. Listening to the latest video game remixes on Over Clocked Remixes
4. Baking something sweet and fattening or broiling something salty and fattening
3. Sitting in the pool on a hot day or hot tub after a tiring work out… basically lounging while submerged in a body of water feels good
2. Eating anything FRIED… chicken, potatoes, squid, possums… ok… maybe not potatoes
1. Dreaming about what I want to be when I finally grow up

I tag the following (if you haven’t already been tagged)
Gimpy
Bryan
Ricky Ra
Big Landlord Kev
Wendy who Won’t be an Old Lady (I know you’re reading this!)