Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category

I ditched the family the other night and went to the theater. I watched “Extremely Loud And Incredibly Close”. Wasn’t disappointed at all with the differences between the movie and the book. There is a part in the book where Oskar finds his Dad’s handwriting in an art supply store on those little papers they have next to pens so you can test them out. That’s one of my favorite parts of the book because it’s a big piece to the puzzle. Even though it wasn’t in the movie I wasn’t disappointed in the slightest. A little more narration from Oskar would have been nice because it would have filled in a couple of small gaps for the people that haven’t read the book. Oh, and I was hopeful, but I just knew the part about the old man that lives in the apartment above Oskar wouldn’t be in the movie. And it wasn’t, but I love that part in the book. Of course, one must be realistic. If they put every scene in the book in the movie it would be six hours long. At least. Anyway, I thought the movie was great and when I was walking home I was trying to figure out what I would say about it when I walk in the door and Coral asks me if I liked it. What I came up with was this. It’s not that it was “cool” or “funny”, even though there are cool and funny things in the movie, but to really pin it down I’d have to say, simply, that it’s just a really good story. That’s it, plain and simple. It’s a really good story.

If there is anything you need from the gallery please come by between now and Friday, 12-5pm. We’ll be closed on Saturday and will reopen for our regular business hours next week. That’s Wed-Sat, 12-5pm.

See you soon!
- Jeff

I’d say “Extremely Loud And Incredibly Close” was my most favorite book I read in all of 2011. When I’m in between books (because I’ve become a super picky book reader over the last couple of years) I find myself rereading parts of “Extremely Loud.”

At Costco the other day I noticed the book with a new cover. It was a movie poster book cover. I didn’t even know a movie of this book was coming out, so I was very excited.

The trailer doesn’t seem to show any scenes with the grandma though, so I hope she wasn’t cut out of the movie because she was kind of a big deal in the book.

At the end of the trailer it says “December”, but I think the actual release date is January 20, 2011.

Wow!

I’d like to give a big thanks to all of you that check out this blog and visit my site! You never leave comments, but at least I know you’re looking.

I’m just a one man operation here, so this is a pretty big number to me. That’s 156 people a day and I don’t even post photos of naked people.

Thanks again!
- Jeff

please excuse this post. i’m just trying to figure out the photo posting options when using the WP app on my phone.

I haven’t tried this app for a long time so i’m taking it for a test drive. The last post a few minutes ago was done using the “quick photo” feature, which is something I’ve never noticed before. I haven’t looked at it yet so I’m anxious to see how it posted. With my blog layout I can’t have anything bigger than 600 x 600px or it will go behind all the stuff on the right side of the screen.

I noticed using the quick photo feature I wasn’t given a choice on the size of the photo. Posting a photo using this part of the app I am given a choice, but only generic choices like small, medium, large, original and custom. What I need to know is how many pixels tall and wide. Here’s a little experiment. I’m going to post the same photo using the different size options going from smallest to biggest.

OK, after I uploaded I was able to see the actual size, but i figured I’d co tinue as planned. I have no idea what order these photos will show up in. Also with the custom option I chose 600×600 and it came out 600×800 so I’m guessing the app just uses the smaller of the two numbers and figures out the rest.

This whole post was done entirely on my phone. Let’s see how it turns out.

(Yes, “discovery girls” is in my bookmark bar because Little Miss Evy was trying to win tickets to Taylor Swift.)

I’ve been experimenting with Tumblr this past week. I don’t think I could ditch this blog for it, but there are certainly some things I like about it.

Do any of you use Tumblr for your blog? If so, what are your thoughts and opinions about it and did you totally ditch another platform to use Tumblr exclusively?

You can watch me tumble at jeffclaassen.tumblr.com

< rant >
Am I the only person that wants to hit iTunes in the face with a sledghammer?

There is no way I am the only one. How is that Apple can make products so easy to use, or as they like to say, “intuitive”, that a seven year old can figure it out in a manner of minutes, but they can also make something like iTunes that makes absolutely no sense. I buy some songs on my phone and want to transfer them to my computer. I choose “transfer purchases” and it starts transferring some free app I have on my phone. Why the hell would I want to save a free app on my computer? Why don’t I see a list of “purchased items” where I can highlight which ones I’d like to transfer? Also, it was an app I deleted from my phone. There must be some hidden trash can on the phone where all deleted apps go. But they’re not really trashed because they all get transferred to your computer when you sync apps or transfer purchases. Why can’t I just drag the music files into a folder on my computer? Then I try to put a book on my iPad from my computer and I get a message that says something along the lines of, “Are you sure you want to do this? By doing this you will remove all books from your iPad.” Huh, what?! All books? Why? Why can’t I just transfer one thing to the iPad. It makes no sense that to put one thing on it has to delete everything else that’s in iBooks. That whole “Sync” thing they have going on is bullshit and is the cause of major headaches across the globe. When you plug in a devise it should show up in Finder just like a disc or a portable hard drive shows up there. Then you can just drag and drop stuff to your little hearts content. Would that be so hard?

Apple really gets you though because the Mac, iPhone, iPad and iPod are awesome. I love all of them. They are easy to use and fun and cool and all of that. It’s just iTunes is absolutely and ridiculously retarded. There’s just no freedom to do what you want with it. And don’t say, “just use iCloud” because that doesn’t really work as effortlessly as the video on Apple makes it appear.
< /rant >

When I posted this last year I thought it would be one of those viral things that everybody emails to each other, but that just didn’t happen. I like to think that maybe it was too close to looking like the real “Toys For Tots” logo and people just didn’t see that it was actually a “Toys For Tarts” logo. I decided to post this again in hopes that people spread the word about tarts needing toys this holiday season.

Like I said last year, I could have gone with “Toys For Tards”, but that seemed too inappropriate. Tarts though, who cares about tarts? They should be used to the ridicule by now.

What is up with all the spider webs? I mean, seriously! Everywhere I go there seems to be a pesky spider web waiting to greet my pretty face with a kiss. And it’s never a happy greeting, like when a stranger hands you a $100 bill and says, “Buy yourself something you don’t need.” It’s much more of the unwanted variety. The type of greeting that shocks you, like when an obese self proclaimed “detective” hands you a sealed envelope and says, “You’ve been served. Good luck in court.” Nothing makes a person embody obsessive compulsion more than feeling a web envelop their face. You start rubbing your hands sporadically over your head and face as if you’re brushing sand off your body after a day at the beach. Except for this sand might contain an eight legged creature with a thirst for blood. In some cases you even take your shirt off and shake it out like it’s a dirty rug. The uneasy feeling doesn’t go away until your next shower and you’ll swear that you can feel a spider crawling all over you, despite the crazy impromptu Aboriginal rain dance you did in an effort to shake the little arachnid off your person.

A few nights ago I went for a little bike ride and a block away from my house I found myself frantically doing the “get the fuck off me, spider!” dance. I even did that bit where I remove my shirt and wave it around “rah rah” style, like I was head cheerleader rooting for my hot quarterback boyfriend at the big game. A few minutes later what should smack me in the face? Another spider web! Only a few more minutes passed before I was greeted with yet another, but this one I felt wrapped around my arms. Had I been riding naked I surely would have felt the webs all over my legs and the you know where area too. Could I be such an unlucky person that every spider web in town wanted to hug my face? That just wasn’t possible. And at that point I had a revelation. The spider was on me. Yes, on me! And spinning webs all over me! That had to be it. There is still a slim chance that I’m paying off bad deeds from my youth in the form of karmic retribution. You know what though, I doubt that the whole rubbing Carmex down the side of a Scantron test actually confused the machine into not marking all my incorrect answers. So, perhaps this spider thing is simply retribution for me being a dumbass. Or better yet, it’s most likely payback from the Spider Gods for all the spiders that have met their demise due to my ruthless murdering of the little beasts.