desl

 http://www.facebook.com/notes/dan-lennon/in-search-of-a-graphic-designer/10150151517327901

Are you a graphic designer? Or maybe you know one. I need help having sweatshirts made for a fictitious sports team as birthday gift my my Mom and Aunt (twins).

If you know my mom or aunt you are duty bound not to share this with either of them. This is a surprise.

The backstory:

When I was very young, my mom and her twin sister played on a recreational basketball team. They managed to find a local company to sponsor the team for uniforms and things but still needed to come up with a team name. They wanted something that related to the town that we lived in (San Diego) and sounded like a sports team. During a brainstorming session among a number of the normal kinds of ideas one would have, my mom blurts out "THE SCRAPPY TUNAS!".

Nobody remembers what name the team actually chose, but everyone remembers the Scrappy Tunas. I think it's time to have some Scrappy Tunas jerseys or sweatshirts made as a celebration of it have been immortalized in the family for so many years.

This is where I need the help. I'm not a graphics person and don't think I'm likely to achieve anything in that arena anytime soon. I'd like to pay someone to do a logo for this team so I can make sweatshirts for the whole family (my mom & siblings + my aunt's family) for their birthday in early July.

Design inspirations are the logo for the San Diego Clippers basketball team and the mascot for Starkist Tuna. I imagine the tuna dribbling a basketball and looking like someone dressed up as an only half street-smart gang member for a production at the local junior theater. (Think S.E. Hinton's books The Outsiders or Rumblefish.)

Obviously this doesn't have a corporate budget behind it. I don't really know what fair compensation for this kind of thing is so I'm open to guidance.

If this might be you, get in touch! This is hilarious and you'll be proud to have been a part of it.

Finally, if you've read this far and think this is a good idea (of course you do), please consider liking or leaving a comment so the facebook propagation algorithm shows this to as many people as possible:

 http://www.facebook.com/notes/dan-lennon/in-search-of-a-graphic-designer/10150151517327901

I had thought I'd be taking a long (2 week) international trip at the end of February, but now that's been called off. But it did get me thinking that I'm capable and interested in something like that. It must be time to start planning something.

Makes me think about riding the motorcycle across the US again. This time, the southern route, and possibly exploring some of the east coast. It's been a while since I did something adventurous like that, and it turns out that once you have the bike taken care of, this sort of ride isn't very expensive*

Yes, I think I shall have to consider this.

* when compared to a plane ticket abroad and that sort of thing.

Reading mr_chip 's thoughts on his personal archives of media and got me thinking, or perhaps wanting to expand on some of those ideas as they apply to me.

I don't have same affection for tangible books, music, movies, and video games that many people have. My media selection is easily constrained to one one bookshelf. Also, and probably much to the chagrin of my very good friends neurodancer and sashasana , I no longer own a television (sent it home with my mom when she was visiting over the weekend, where I'm sure it will be put to good use for the super bowl). This is in no way to suggest that I don't value or consume media (I do!) or think less of those who do; just ask my about any Top Gear UK series episode. The point of this being that media archiving is not something that interests me much.

As a counterpoint here is something I do have affection for: the oxford comma.

But...

I have a bigger problem. If I had my druthers and no checks and balances, I would archive modes of transportation. Fortunately, this is hard to do, in that it takes a lot of space. I've seen what this can do to others. I know people who have the same thing going, and never stopped. It often ends with a few acres of land, some zoning problems and 100 cars, of which 5 are drivable at any given time. Probably another 20 are the proverbial Saturday afternoon away from being roadworthy and the rest in various states of rustoration (not a typo).

BTW, if this describes you, I love you guys and am better for knowing you. Also, I can't do it, and need to make sure I reverse my direction before I have a real problem.

It is this nagging at me, and again realizing that I wasn't finding the saturdays to deal with this small projects that caused me to make a big shift this year. This may be the first year in the last 5 that the fleet was reduced. I sold 4 vehicles this year. I still have 60% of the fleet left, and intend to cut it another 20% (from the high) this year. Having had one car for three years that was a Saturday away from being in the state I wanted it to be I realized that finding that Saturday was no longer a priority for me.

I will say, in my defense, that I had one car project that included taking the engine apart over a year previous that got finished this year in time to go to Monterey for the big car weekend festivities (and a huge thanks to my hosts emdiar and rednikki for lodging and shenanigans).

The lesson learned from this, or at least the lesson I'm taking from this, is that I actually do choose my battles/priorities, but I need to work harder at  making sure that when my priorities change, I keep the inventory of things/projects in my life in compliance. The trick is that I have a weakness for the things that I might have been able to save and make into great things (who doesn't want to be able to execute a perfect FIAT x1/9 project?) even and especially when I have a "I could have saved that one" mentality about it. I want to be the kid from the children's story saving all the starfish by tossing them back into the ocean when the water has receded, but I need to be the adult who suggests quite rationally that you can't save them all.

I may have turned into an adult, and that kills me just a little. Fuck.

The other day, I got tired of ads on the internet.

I don't usually begrudge most ads, and I'm sort of fond of the text ads that tend toward the relevant.

On the other hand, if an ad includes stealing focus, loading slowly while preventing the content I actually want to see from loading, video, or audio, in desl 's America, you'd be tarred and feathered. (This is hyperbole, but seriously, I have strong opinions.) That slow loading thing triggers a lot of spite from me, as I'm pretty good at ignoring anything visual. Audio still bugs the shit out of me.

So I broke down, after being started by some "Congratulations, you've won..." audio thing that I didn't want to hear and installed adblock for the chrome browser, which is my browser of choice on my personal laptop. (It's my browser of choice because it loads everything faster, and I like getting at things faster. I do not suffer fools gladly, especially if those fools are bloaty bits of browser software. (I find, in my highly in no way scientific study that Chrome loads pages faster than firefox + adblock or safari in any state).

So hooray adblock for chrome. It's made my life that much better. So I donated to the author, who apparently just went full-time on that project to the exclusion of other work.

If you're so inclined: chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/gighmmpiobklfepjocnamgkkbiglidom

BTW, donating felt great!

Just for fun, I thought I'd post this pic of some insulation I did during the kitchen remodel (it came up in conversation).

How's it going out there in livejournal land?

Whereas livejournal has become a bit of a ghost town, i'm not bothering with a cut. It's time to send the old refrigerator a way, now that a shinier one is here.  Now is the time where I remove all of the magnets in preparation of sending it off to it's new home that I begin to feel a sense of loss as I sacrifice the carefully written refrigerator magnet poetry on the altar of modernity. To commemorate these great works, I have documented them. If you remember writing one of these, I'd be very amused to know:

Geek downloads a luscious john

incubate tiny puppy to eat 

good wine is languid programmer compatible

I'm so brilliant I rock all eternity

RAM it Cybersex

manipulate apparatus

cook stop read leg

my juice moon

lake leave sea

swirl legs

favorite valley

sausage suit

weak code rains templates

wired meaning

repulsive dialog
forest rust

the open fruit

celebrate his need for a glass of chardonay

grape yard

death bomb

near after him

sing joy and...

the great love to enter home

favorite spirited cheers soothe

to take away memory

men should always elaborate

what online oak
poured aroma
on microsoft
bottled some
sweet bubble
must there
be sordid beauty
bite the hot red italian tongue

near after him

enjoy! enjoy! enjoy! enjoy! enjoy! enjoy! mature french woman

smooth fleshy symphony
chocolate scream garden
together will pop-up like summer
why paste repulsive moments

easy knife
elaborately bare men
watch over graphic window
click stop

we is a must

fiddle with breast
palette of rich delicate white paste

Adobe
I cant taste your typeface

don't buy my dry chat filter

rase a spicy mouse for data

did an irony mouse spray toast

worship external
undo dress
delicate control
essential
i would but her macintosh is meat

savor your desire to harvest convivial bacchus

imbibe lots of delicate buttery romance

Let's chill man and sip crisp champagne

languid knife apparatus

you justify yer output mode

frantic keypad searching cycberspace
like a storm beating life in to the sky

shine on you

Quickly.

On Saturday I took a multi-pitch rock climbing class through Outdoor Adventure at UC Davis. Although it was logistically challenging, the class was really fun, if intense, as hanging by ropes a few hundred feet off the ground is likely to be.

These were the routes.

www.supertopo.com/rock_climbing/Lake_Tahoe_Lover%27s_Leap_East_Wall_Pop_Bottle

and

www.supertopo.com/rock_climbing/Lake_Tahoe_Lover%27s_Leap_East_Wall_East_Crack

As anyone who has dined with me in the past six months has noticed I've been eating a bit differently of late.

 

Essentially I'm high-protein, low-carb, low-fat, low-calorie though surprisingly not all that low-fun. It  does seem to to make dining with vegans a it of a trick if you like variety since the overlap is quite small: sauted veggies anyone? I must also say that I'm absolutely thrilled with the results, so well done there.

 

Since I'm eating such different things, and arguably more healthful* things in greater quantities I've become that guy in front of you at the Berkeley Bowl with a shopping basket full of fruits, vegetables, tofu, and a bit of meat like I should be on the cover of a yoga magazine. On the other hand I'm also that guy in front of you in line at Trader Joes buying 5 containers of cottage cheese, because it's good stuff and I eat a lot of it these days. I wonder if it comes in 5 gallon buckets? Seriously, I'm personally keeping the cottage cheese industry alive; pun intended.

 

I've never really known how I've felt about that guy (the one with the fruits and veg in the basket). Sometimes it's a "good for you" kind of feeling and other times I think he's lording it over the rest of us with our potentially more flavorful but ultimately less likely to lead to a long life basket contents. Now that I am that guy I'm often feeling "go me!" for making awesome choices at the grocery, but sometimes that competitive element shows up and I get just a little bit smug as though I'm lording it over the person behind me in line.

This morning, I heard a story on morning edition (www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php) about Safeway doing innovative things to control healthcare costs. I'm generally in favor of what they've done, as I subscribe to the idea that we should encourage what we want and discourage what we don't want.

However, and this is a pretty big however, one of their methods of determining health (risk, meaning expected cost) is BMI, a measurement designed to measure the "health" of a population and should not be used as a diagnostic tool for individuals (see the weekend edition story here: www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php).

Since I've been losing weight recently, I'll give you some statistics about me to possibly shed some light on this:

At the start of my program, my stats were:

BMI: 33.9
Body Fat: 25%

Interestingly,  I knew someone else in the program who I had always considered to be the same size, shape, build and strength as I am. He is the same height for certain, but I learned something very interesting, his bodyfat percentage was 35%. Our BMI was the same, but by bodyfat, one of us was in much better "health".

For fun, my current stats are:

BMI: 27.1
Body Fat: 13.5%

The healthy range of bodyfat, at least according to the worlds largest opinion encyclopedia, included my starting point. and puts me currently in the athlete category (I expect by next week I'll be measured at 12.x%). (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_fat_percentage). So I'm an athlete, which, if you took a look at my level of physical activity is a conclusion you'd likely agree with: yesterday was a "rest" day, so I played a few games of volleyball at the gym, with elliptical trainer in between, ending with 30 minutes on the elliptical for good measure.

If you're getting the same picture I am, you're concluding that I'm pretty fit these days.

Now we delve into BMI. According to the Department of Health and Human Services (www.nhlbisupport.com/bmi/), Here are the ranges for BMI:

• Underweight = <18.5
• Normal weight = 18.5-24.9
• Overweight = 25-29.9
• Obesity = BMI of 30 or greater

My BMI, coming in at 27.1 is smack in the middle of overweight. Wait a minute, I thought I was an athlete, now you're telling me that I'm overweight? I don't get it. Let us go back to the creator of BMI suggesting that BMI is an instrument useful in measuring the health of populations in aggregate and not very interesting in individuals.

So, to Mr. Burd (CEO of Safeway) perhaps you'd consider changing your program incentives to be based on body fat percentages?

A few other things to know:

• Levels of body fat considered to be healthy differ for men and women
• I'm sorry I cited wikipedia, they cite the American Council on Exercise

(that's me on the left)

(Seriously the diet has been paying off and I'm starting to like photos of myself).

Also, cowboy hat is a good look for me, I think.