TheLeong.com

I’m not completely sure how this or when this works, but you can get the Atom Sitefeed for my blog at:
http://www.theleong.com/blog/atom.xml
The only thing I know for sure this works for is the My Google, which lets you add different sections and things to your main Google site. Right now it looks like if you add my sitefeed, you can see the titles of my posts. So go ahead and add me to your My Google page or whatever you use Atom feeds for (I think it’s kind of like RSS). Then you’ll know for sure when I decide to update this baby.

First off, I don’t mean to confuse anyone, but NO, the title of this blog does not imply some kind of depressed mood, metaphor, or anything of the sorts. Sorry to all you emo cut-yourself dye-your-hair-black and cry-while-listening-to-whiny-music readers out there (I doubt I have any), but no this blog post is actually about glass.

So back in the old IUSTV Ashton office, there were these really old photo/poster frames with generic art and a few of weird sports themed pictures. These photos hung on the walls for absolutely no reason but to provide generic decoration. When we moved to Read, I took these poster frames with us, with the intention of replacing the generic crappy art inside with IUSTV-related decorations. Actually getting these to Read and hung up on the conference room wall took until about the end of February. You could definitely say this was not a project high on my priority list. Finally, mid to late February, I decided it would be time to print out some photos or posters on the library’s plotter for use in these photo frames. I grabbed one of the frames to measure it, etc and PROBLEM #1: these aren’t your regular poster frames, that can be opened and have the picture swapped out with ease like I was expecting. No, these are apparently custom made frames, that are screwed together with all sorts of doodads and whatnots, making them a huge pain in the butt to open and replace. So I left the 1 half-disassembled frame in my cubicle, where it sat for many weeks.

Last night, I got ambitious and said to myself “It’s time to finally do those photo frames.” So I go to the library late at night, and print out some nifty black and white IUSTV photos for use in these frames. Easy enough. I kind of miss working/goofing off in the library late at night. This afternoon, I go to start taking apart these stupid custom photo frames, which involved 8 small screws, 4 frame edges, many tension pieces (which hold the photo in place), and a huge sheet of glass. Problem #2: when you take the edges of the frame apart, the tension pieces fly out all over the place. These are curved pieces of metal, and I swear I could have lost an eye. I took care of two of these photo frame lobotomies, and took a break to get some cheap food at Kilroy’s. I came back, and later in the evening after a meeting, I decided to finish up. That’s when the biggest problems started popping up. After dismantling one of the next frames, I lift up the art and glass piece to lign up my replacement photo. And oh great. Problem #3 (and the worst of all): the glass has a huge crack in it. It wasn’t there when I started dismantling it, but yeah, it was pretty much useless now. This happened yet again, meaning I ruined 2 huge pieces of glass. GREAT. I was able to finish poster number 3, which meant I only had one left.

My last photo poster was also in the last frame I had, after breaking two of them. Now since I had originally measured and cut these posters to fit certain frames and never even thought about the glass cracking on me, of course the poster and this last frame don’t fit. For those keeping track (I think I stole that line from Nick’s blog), this is Problem #4. Vertically it was fine, but horizontally there was about 3 inches on each side that I didn’t have picture for. OK, so instead of having white edges blaringly standing out next to a black poster, I decided after a few minutes of searching for a solution that I would have to either use a black marker to color in the edges, or a black garbage bag. Either way was going to be way ghetto, but this was getting frustrating and I really didn’t want to have to re-print a newly sized poster for this stupid frame. While in the storage room getting a trash bag, I stumbled upon some black gaffer tape, and there was a much better solution. I used that, and it was looking fine. I replaced the poster, and assembled the last frame back together. I look at it, and of course it’s not right. Problem #5: the last poster was wrinkled or something, and looked really bad. GREAT. I take off one of the edges so that I can adjust the poster, and PROBLEM FREAKING #6: I hear the screech and scratch of glass. Yes, that’s right folks, I ruined the very last frame I had, meaning that there are 3 complete posters framed and hanging on the wall in the conference room, and there is one blank space now. Frustrated and tired, I hauled my shards of glass to the dumpster, cursing under my breath. I figure I’m going to just get the last one custom framed at the Hobby Lobby and eat the cost. It’s going to be like $20 or $30 probably, but hey, I guess I got 3 of them for free.

Thank goodness I didn’t chop a finger off on broken glass or something. Lessons learned today: custom photo frames are ridiculously hard to use, glass is finicky and should be replaced everywhere by plastic, and a delicate craftsman I am not.

I have a feeling if I graphed out what time of day I write my blog entries, I would have over 75% between 1 and 3AM. Ah well. So today started off just about as easy as my days get. My “early” (ie, 2:30PM) class was cancelled for the day, so I had nothing to do until 4PM, my second class. I woke up around 11 or so, made am amazing Sakai-grade omelet, and watched both Family Matters and Boy Meets World on TV. Who knew that these stupid TGIF shows would still be airing on cable. I actually noticed a few weeks ago that all the shows on Nick at Nite are ones that I remember from my lifetime, which pretty much makes me feel old. I mean, I remember when Nick at Nite first started and they showed stuff like Dick Van Dyke and Welcome Back Kotter. Now, Fresh Prince of Bel Air apparently counts as “classic TV.” Wait, I guess it is. Yeesh.

So anyways, life has been good. Not that anything in particularly good has happened, I guess I’m just basing this on the fact that nothing particularly bad has happened. My classes are going somewhat well, although I need to get my online class assignments in on time (surprisingly this is the class that’s the most pain in my butt). My M405 Consumer Psychology class is turning into one of the best classes I’ve ever taken here at IU. It’s material that I actually am interested in, which I suppose helps out a lot. It’s funny hearing about psychological problems, etc (we really haven’t dealt much with marketing or business applications, but I think he’s doing that on purpose), then being able to so easily relate them to people I know. Things really do make a lot of sense; I knew I should have taken Intro to Psychology at some point. Oh well, I think this class probably covers most of that too. For the first time in a long while, I never get bored in class and actually enjoy listening to what’s going on. Weird, huh?

So I was in a pretty good mood after my one and only class of the day, and went to the office. Some issues there, nothing to really talk about. I’m starting to see a lot of hope for the organization next year. I hate to think that my role this year has been that of a segway in the life of IUSTV (from “creation” to “maturity”), but in some ways I think that’s true. Not to say that we’ve done a bad job this year, but we haven’t been growing and expanding as much as I would have hoped; too much other stuff had to be done. Overall, things are excellent and better than last year, which is indeed something to be happy about.

I’ve been on sort of a Retro Kick lately. This has been due to the website RetroJunk.com, which has pretty much killed many hours of my time, and to the rediscovery of classing NES and SNES games. Pat had both emulators on his XBox, so we played a lot last weekend. About 5 times this week after that, I’ve played SNES on my PS2 emulator, and seriously, these games are the greatest things ever made. Especially puzzle games. I really missed the competition and taunting that goes along with playing an otherwise kiddy game like Puyo Puyo or Tetris. I think I was raised this way, since as far back as I can remember both my parents (and my brothers) really get into these puzzle games. Games like Kirby’s Avalanche (same as Puyo Puyo), Tetris, Puzzle Fighter, Bomberman, etc have kept my family up many a night as we played games on end trying to beat and rematch each other. Good family memories. Some families beat each other; my family played Nintendo.

Old TV (especially theme songs) have been stuck in my head all week as well. Ninja Turtles and Heathcliff in particular. I have both songs on my phone now also. I remember watching TV as a kid, it was a lot different than now. Well, in some ways. In many ways I am still like a kid watching TV (ahem, Kamen Rider), but back then was still something different. That reminds me. I was telling this to Pat the other day, but I think the 4 Ninja Turtles really represent personality types pretty well (for males), at least in general. You can maybe tell a lot about how a person is going to act by finding out the order in which he liked the Ninja Turtles. Everyone had a favorite. The turtles were so different, so distinct. You could even go so far as to label people as “Raphael-types,” “Leonardo-types,” etc.

Personally, I liked Donatello the most, followed by Leonardo, then Raphael, then Michelangelo. Everyone post their turtle rankings (as comments). I shall call this the Leong Scale of Ninja Turtle Personalities. The exact scientific meaning will be discovered at a later date, I’m just claiming stake on the name. I’ll bet I can guess though which turtle was everyone’s favorite. Also this might not work as well for females, but give it a shot (especially if you watched the Ninja Turtles, which pretty much everyone did).