• Read the first so that I know would know what all the hype was about. It was terrible.
• Started the 2nd (New Moon) because I wanted to laugh at it
• Kinda liked the New Moon, until it got stupid at the end
• Hated the 3rd (Eclipse) because nothing happened in it, like at all
• Hated the 4th (Breaking Dawn) until for a brief shining moment I thought that maybe it would redeem itself by having everyone die in a savage bloodfest suddenly making it all worth it
• Then hated it again when they all lived happily ever after

And now it’s over and may it never be spoken of again.

Say what you will about their choice of album covers, I think it fits well with who Weezer (and Cuomo) really are.  A big bunch of nerds.  They aren’t in it for the irony. They feel with their heart on their sleeves, enjoy pop music because it’s catchy, and pop culture because it’s engrossing.

From the interview:

Pitchfork: Did you work with Ryan Adams in the studio? Did you guys bond over obscure metal albums?

RC: We were mostly so excited with what we were writing that we didn’t have a chance to talk about old metal. In any case, I think his knowledge of metal lore is deeper even than mine, so I was out of my league.

If you think about the nerds you knew growing up, the truly dorky people who were outside the accepted circle, what was it that made them so?  Other than awkwardness and maybe a lack of hygiene, what really made them stick out was how much they LOVED something such as comics or Star Trek, or whatever.  Their true feelings were out there, while “cool” people were conveniently detached.

Nerd celebration has been a fad lately but I don’t think we’re really celebrating the nerd, we’re just celebrating the nerdy.  Those who get too involved and care too much are still vulnerable, while the weekend comic reader and metal enthusiastic can be “ironic” about, and still be cool.

Weezer are nerds, they love stuff without detachment or irony, and that will frequently (see Pinkerton) not make them popular.  But that’s what makes them authentic. I for one hope they never get “cool.”

“Alex Chilton” by the Replacements is an homage to him and if Wikipedia is correct (who knows) he actually played with the band for another song.  Either way, this song proves that including claps makes a good song great.

There were a lot of compromises made in the final result, and some of our really expensive pieces were damaged during installation.  This means that while I am totally relieved to have a clean and decent place to prepare for the day, the idea that this is a “dream” bathroom is out the window.

I was also thinking of having a before and after series on the reno, but the pics of the old bathroom are so embarrassingly disgusting that I want no record of them to exist anywhere.  So here, then, is just the new bathroom.

Ironically, the best part of the whole thing are the “clever hooks” we bought at Design Within Reach. They look like dinosaur jaws and when you hang something on them, they clamp down to grab it.  Then to take it off, you just lift up.  I sometimes play with them for a few minutes at a time.  It’s ironic that they’re the best thing, because they were also the absolute cheapest.  At $10 a hook, they’re a steal.

Created by Oatmeal

Now, a few things might be happening here. I might go on sketchier sites at home (very likely), but it also might be true that I’ve been cookied by the ad servers at work and they know that I actually click on ads. While at home I surf click free.

Because they know their clients are looking for clicks, they serve the good stuff to “clicky me” at work, and the crapy to “non-clicky me” at home.

I have no proof. But the experiment begins now…. cache cleared!

With all of that said, the programs could be so much better! The feature that seems like the biggest missed opportunity is SmartArt in PowerPoint. If you’ve never used that feature before, basically it’s a little menu that will help you make the nice graphics that make bullet points so much easier to digest. The problem is there are only 88 that come by default. After 2 years in school, I had pretty much exhausted all of the good ones.  For people who make presentations as part of their full time jobs, I imagine they got sick of them within months.

But there is an easy way to fix this. If they had included a way for a person to build their own SmartArt and then share it with others, then we could all design our own, or for the less image-inclined, browse a site with thousands of them. Open source or creatives commons licenses lead to free exchange and lets users “remix” to customize their experience.  Who would have thought that PowerPoint had a potential social media angle, albeit an unexploited one?

However, MS is so controlled with their products that they don’t have the imagination do this.  I’m not an MS hater, but I wish they would take more chances on their products in favour of openness. I think in this case we’d all be better served.