If your mother ever comes over for dinner and makes some yummy homemade applesauce in your favorite glass pot and manages to create an unholy and unbreakable bond between your pot and some burnt sugar... here is what you do:

DO NOT bother to soak said pot in searing hot water.
DO NOT bother to scrub with your most heavy-duty of scrubby sponges.
Neither of those things will work.

DO grab your trusty box of Baking Soda and dump a bunch on the sugar.
DO add just a wee dribble of water to make it a little pasty.
DO use your fingers to rub said "paste" onto the evil confection for upwards of 45 minutes straight.

When finished, the pure white Baking Soda will have turned brown from absorbing the sinfully tenacious treat little by little... sacrificing itself to set your pot free.

Also, your fingers will be really smooth!

...NOT because of the "CD of the month" thing or the ridiculous shipping & handling fees. Actually, BMG Music Service is going away and being replaced by Yourmusic.com. You pay $6.99 per month and get a CD every month and you can buy as many additional CDs as you want for $6.99 each with NO shipping & handling fees. Since I was a BMG Music Service member, I qualify for a special deal to join Your Music without having to pay the monthly fee. Sounds like not too bad a deal, right? WRONG, and here's why.

The following quote can be found on the "Learn More" page of yourmusic.com:
"No matter what type of music you're looking for, you're guaranteed to find it at yourmusic.com."

Of the 26 artists I have listed on my Facebook profile under "Favorite Music", there are exactly ZERO albums available on yourmusic.com from the following:
The Pixies
They Might Be Giants
Bjork
Peter Gabriel
Moby
Tori Amos
Tom Waits
Damien Rice
Frank Black
New Order
Erasure
Philip Glass
Randy Newman
The Bobs
Freezepop
Front 242
Symbion Project

And many of those who were represented were done so poorly. For example, the only The Cure albums they have are the 2 most recent.

I understand not having some of the more obscure stuff (symbion project) or even some moderately obscure stuff (Frank Black), but not having ANY music from Bjork, Tori Amos, Tom Waits, Peter Gabriel, etc.? These are HUGE names in music.

Ugh.

I find it amusing that even though I'm listed as the "Primary Borrower" on our home mortgage (Jim is the "Co-borrower"), every single piece of junk mail we now get as a result of having just purchased a home is addressed to Jim.

I love my TV. It was our first big purchase as a married couple and we had been planning on it for a long time. It was kind of our wedding present to ourselves. We knew we wanted to go high-def (this was in 2004 when it was still kinda new), and I knew I wanted the best picture quality I could find.

I never liked plasma TVs with their muddy images and crappy viewing angles. I'm such a quality snob that the picture itself means more than size, and at the time, the hands-down best image you could get was with a tube TV. So we got the newest and largest tube HDTV Sony had -- a 34" monster weighing in at over 200 pounds. To give some perspective on the market at the time, it was one of (if not) the first televisions ever equipped with an HDMI hook-up. It has served us well, and over the years when typical home televisions have gotten larger and larger, I've still been happy with my baby and its gorgeous image.

But in the past year... I have finally seen flat-panel technology come to market whose image quality is just as gorgeous, or even better than the tube. And they come in huge sizes! And the have great viewing angles! And they don't weigh over 200 freakin' pounds!

I've been looking at them for a year now and I keep saying to myself, "By the time I'm really ready for a new TV, the technology will be even better and they'll be a fraction of the price," but I'm really starting to feel that itch to trade-up. I have the beautiful fantasies of watching movies with gorgeous blacks and bright, vibrant colors on a huge screen in the comfort of my livingroom.

Perhaps it's good that the only TV's that meet my high standards are still ridiculously expensive. Perhaps I can stave off this itch for another couple years and, yes, perhaps then the technology will be even better and it will cost even less.

... sigh.

As many of you know, watching movies is probably my favorite hobby. At one point in my life, I thought I'd make this hobby a living (the whole going to film school thing), but that didn't happen (by choice), so now it's just a hobby I can appreciate even more. It wasn't a bad year for me for watching movies, but it wasn't great either. Either way, it's all summed up here after the cut. It should be noted that my year in review is for movies that I watched in 2008, rather than movies that were released in 2008.

( A Year In Movies )

Midnight on New Year's Eve and what was I doing? Sitting on my couch watching Man On Wire, which I just got from Netflix. Jim and Damien asleep upstairs.

I've never minded not having a party to go to... but doing NOTHING at all is a little depressing. There have been many years past when Jim and I stayed home on New Year's Eve. We wouldn't make a big deal out of it, but we'd at least go to the store the day before and stock up on whatever junk food we wanted to "celebrate" for the evening. This year he had to go to bed early, though, since he's getting up at 4am to open the coffee shop. What a drag. Who's going to be up at 5am on New Year's Day wanting coffee anyway? Then again, if you're up at 5am on New Year's Day, chances are you're really going to need the coffee, I suppose.

I can't believe we're moving in 3 weeks. I really hasn't sunken in yet. I haven't even thought about packing, and the house is a mess. Ug. I don't need to be thinking about that right now.

Today was kind of a slow day at work. Many had returned from vacationing, but many were still gone and, due to the holidays, there weren't any major deadlines that needed to be reached five minutes ago. So a good-sized group of us decided to go out to lunch. We went to Mitchell's Original on Clybourn, a pretty basic diner-type restaurant with Greek influence. It serves breakfast and lunch foods whenever you want. It's not great, but it's not at all bad.

By the time I was supposed to place my order (which took a while, though this wasn't a bad thing), I had no idea what I wanted because I had spent the entire time amusing myself by the menu. Here are some highlights:

- The "Just Picked Omelette" -- I really should get myself an omelette tree. I think I might actually eat breakfast if I had one.

- The "Pizza-Cado Omelette", the "Bac-O-Cado Burger", and the "Breast-A-Cado" (a turkey sandwich) -- Not only do I find the need to title anything with Avocado in such a manner hilarious, but I am also highly amused that each incarnation is concatenated in a different way.

- "Don't forget that you can order any sandwich 'Hollywood Style!'" -- So what does this special style of sandwich mean? -- "Hollywood Style sandwiches are served with lettuce, tomato, and mayo." -- ... uh... huh.

- "Glorified Bacon & Eggs" -- this is the actual menu item name, not just what I called it.

- "Fresh, Light, and Beautiful Salads" -- Steve-o said he would please like to know which salads were fresh, which were light, and which were beautiful.

- Tuna Melt Deluxe, made with "our freshest tuna salad" -- ... as opposed to the normal tuna melt with gets the not-so-fresh tuna salad? Which menu item gets the day-old tuna salad?

... strike that. Reverse it.

We found out last Wednesday that our landlord has decided that he wants to put our house up for sale when our lease is up. This is despite the fact that when we signed the lease 8 months ago, he said that he "definitely wouldn't be selling it for at LEAST two years." Don't ask me why he would want to sell right now, as there is no way he's going to come close to making back the money he spent on the place when he bought it last December.

So our lease is up on March 1st, and the last thing we want to do is move right now... especially in the middle of winter... but we don't have much of a choice. What we want to do even less is to move into another rental and then have to move again in another year.

Soooooooooo, we're looking to buy a house. It's both exciting and it sucks. We'd be in a much MUCH better position to buy in 6 months to a year from now, which is why we wanted to stay where we are for another year and then buy. On the other hand, now is a GREAT time to buy for first-time buyers (i.e. For people who don't have to sell their current house first). It turns out that since the real estate market is so bad that we can actually afford to buy a place in Park Ridge, which is where we really want to be. Most people speculate that the market will go down even further in the next year (I keep hearing it will drop another 10%) and that's another reason it kinda sucks that we have to buy now. But again, on the other hand, when real estate finally does turn back around (and it will eventually), I think we'll get priced out of Park Ridge pretty quickly, so in some ways it's good we're being "forced" into buying right now when we know we can buy here.

Anyway. We already found a place we really like and will probably make an offer on this week, but we're going out tomorrow with an agent to look at a whole slew of other options before we commit.

So after living in the dark ages for way too long, I've finally decided to try online bill pay from my checking account instead of physically writing out checks and mailing them. Just so we're clear, I didn't hold out so long because of any fear regarding its safety. It's just that I've had a bill-paying system that's worked for me for years and changing that just makes me paranoid that something will get screwed up and something won't get paid.

I must say that it is rather convenient. Now I have no idea what I'll do with all my stamps!

After roughly a year of procrastinating about learning ActionScript 3.0 due to other projects always being on fire and... well... procrastination, it is finally my prime directive at work to learn the sucker. All projects going forward will be using the new version of our in-house authoring tool, which is built to use a brand-spankin' new version of our proprietary engine which uses AS3!

I've been reading about AS3 for a few days now, but just today I got around to how working with XML is handled. Pardon me while I completely nerd out for a minute here and say that working with XML in ActionScript 3.0 is freaking awesome!!!

It's so easy and intuitive and simple that I actually cannot wait until the next project comes along where I have to pull in a large amount of XML data. I used to hate it -- the way ActionScript 2.0 handled XML was cumbersome, ugly, and more trial and error than anything to get up and running. It required buckets and buckets of code to parse all the information out of an XML file and into a workable format. But not anymore -- the need to parse is completely gone. You can just take any old XML object and easily pluck the information you need right out of it with no fuss.

Awesome song, awesome music video, hilarious take on it (no pun intended). I thought this was just great.

This has been many, many years in the making, but I think I've finally found my new digital camera: The Nikon D90 DSLR

I love and adore my Sony DSC F-707, but I've been wanting to step it up for several years now. I've been waiting and waiting for a camera to come out that I can get more serious about photography with when I want to, but one that is versatile and easy to use as a point-and-shoot as well. Primarily, I need great low light performance, because I think that a flash is the best way to ruin a photograph. To make things worse, my F-707 has not been performing up to snuff lately. It still works, but the pictures it produces are non-specifically just not as good as the pictures it used to take.

Looking at DSLRs was an obvious choice in order to step up to more professional photography, but it's tough to get that balance between high performance and ability to just take a shot with the auto setting and have it look great. I wanted to stay with Sony, but all the photographic comparison shots over on dpreview.com clearly showed me that, while I still prefer Sony's style of image processing, both Nikon and Canon out-performed at high ISO settings. Since low light performance is my highest priority, I had to start looking at other brands.

With the birth of my son, the quest to find a really great camera has become a much more urgent task, but everything I've looked at seems to fall just a little bit short. The entry-level DSLRs don't have all the features I'm looking for, but the professional-level DSLRs are (aside from being way out of my price range) don't have the versatility for no-fuss everyday shots.

In comes the yet-to-be-released Nikon D90. Basically, it has the user-friendliness and ease of use of Nikon's entry-level DSLRs, but with the better sensor and several added features stolen from their professional line. Not only does it have the highest available ISO I've seen on such a camera (6400), but the pictures taken at that ISO actually don't look like crap! So I'm clearly sold on the low-light performance. But here's the REAL kicker. It has the world's first DSLR movie mode. Yep, you can shoot video up to 720p HD quality with this sucker.

I can honestly say that I've never had a strong desire to have a video camera for personal at-home use -- I had wanted one for professional use when I was serious about filmmaking. But now that Damien is here, there are so many precious moments that I really want to capture on little snippets of video. I don't think this justifies buying a video camera, though, so the addition of movie mode to a DSLR, which I already really want/need, makes this my hands-down winner.

I... am... so... happy... that I've finally found my new camera. I can't wait to get it. I hope it's released soon!

To the right is an image of my Sick Cobras t-shirt. I was pleased when I tried it on this morning and found that it fit me again, so I am now wearing it proudly. Why am I writing about this t-shirt, you ask? Because I LOVE it. Besides being really comfortable, having a really flattering cut (makes my waist look thin and my boobs look great), and being a great color for my skin tone... I just adore the graphic. I bought it a couple years ago when I had a coupon for the online boutique Blood Is The New Black. This was the only thing at the site that I liked, but boy did I like it a lot.

Admittedly, it's weird, kinda stupid-looking, and makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. I really couldn't even tell you why I like it so much, but I just do. There's something about it that I honestly can't explain. And apparently I'm the only one who thinks so. A typical exchange I have about the shirt with people: "What's that supposed to be?" "I have no idea, but it's SO COOL, isn't it?"          ... "I guess."

...would there be a weekend cycling event like this: BIKE THE DOG

I would be really curious to figure out if, after biking the entire circuit and eating a dog at each stop, you would come out ahead on calories burned or behind on calories consumed.

Pulling an all-nighter when sick = stupid, stupid Amanda

Are you watching Ninja Warrior? Because you should be.

Ninja Warrior is a Japanese "game show" that really isn't a game show at all. It's a series of really cool, very difficult obstacle courses (think the final round of American Gladiators, except way cooler and more difficult) that 100 challengers from all over the world attempt to complete. There are 3 stages (obstacle courses) and then the Final Stage, in which the remaining competitors (if there are any) attempt to climb to the top of Mount Midoriyama in under 30 seconds. Even though most of the challengers are in peak physical condition, usually less than 20 of the 100 even get to stage 2. Yeah, it's that difficult.

This show has the added benefit of being the first really worthwhile show on the G4 channel. It's a good thing it's on all the time. Anyway, enough of my praise. If you have G4, just watch it. Trust me.

This news that Netflix is partnering with Microsoft to make Watch Now available on the Xbox 360 for free couldn't make me happier. I'm so incredibly psyched for this to be released.

I've always thought that Netflix's Watch Now was a great feature, but I don't use it because I don't like watching movies and TV on my computer. Because of this, I've considered purchasing the Roku player to easily access Watch Now on my TV... but have been putting it off because of the Xbox 360 rumors. I'm SOOOOO HAPPY that the rumors are now confirmed. =)

So I'm really happy that I finally have television again, especially since I'm home all day on maternity leave now and spend roughly 5-8 hours a day feeding Damien, during which I can't do anything except sit still.

As you probably know, we were forced to go with Comcast because we couldn't get satellite due to trees and AT&T hasn't laid their FIOS network in our area yet. While the TV service is sufficient (though not nearly as many HD channels as DirecTV had), the Comcast DVR sucks out loud for the following annoying reasons:

1) When you hit Play during fast forwarding, there is no automatic jump back a few seconds like both TiVo and the DirecTV DVR have. Because of this, it is IMPOSSIBLE to come back from a commercial before the show actually starts without guessing what commercial looks like the last commercial in the set. What you usually have to do is hit play when you see your show, then immediately rewind back to before the commercial break ended. Also, the rewind is much much slower than the fast forward, so this takes forever unless you do the double-rewind speed, which is way too fast and throws you back into the middle of the commercials.

2) The search feature just doesn't work for some shows. South Park is on every day... it's even in the Comcast Guide and listed as "South Park" (I checked), and yet, if you search for South Park, it never shows up. It's not a huge deal for this show, because I know where and when it's on, but this makes me worried that other shows I'm searching for that aren't showing up actually ARE in the schedule, despite the search feature telling me they aren't.

3) OK, this one drives me CRAZY. The "Season Pass" feature is INCREDIBLY CRAPPY. I have it set to record only new episodes of shows like Family Guy and The Simpsons... and yet, it just records all the reruns. For The Simpsons, that's like 5 episodes a day! The only episodes it doesn't record are the reruns that play during the time slot that the new episodes normally play. Also, for series that I am recording reruns, I have it set to not record the same episode more than once... however, (unlike every other DVR I've used) this DVR apparently has no memory of what episodes have been recorded, watched, and deleted and will record the same episode over and over again.

4) The hard drive is TEENY-TINY. It's a fraction of what my DirecTV DVR held and hardly sufficient when recording HD programming. This problem is only exacerbated by #3, since it keeps recording stuff I don't want.

Grrr... very displeased. It makes me want to just get a TiVo, but that's prohibitively expensive (even though it rocks) and will be obsolete if/when we manage to dump Comcast. I can't wait until AT&T is available here so I can get rid of crappy Comcast.

Check out the belated news over on my other blog.

The power went out for a couple of hours at work today. We played 3 rounds of Murder. It really is a fun game when you've got a large group of willing (because there's nothing better to do) adults playing in a committed manner.

Also today: went out to lunch with a few coworkers with the intention of getting Chinese at some new place we'd never gone to. We missed the turn for the restaurant and realized we were right by the Vienna Beef factory public cafeteria... so we decided to go there instead. Mmmm... Chicago style hot dogs and cheese fries. It was actually the first time in a LOOOOOOONG time that I've had a Chicago style dog that didn't come from Superdawg. It was good, but Superdawg is still way better, in my opinion.