Cliff Chiang is an illustrator and comics artist whose style I like very much. His style is an interesting mix of subtle realistic touches and interesting graphic touches. Take a look at some his commissioned sketches from Heroes Con.

Also in comics and fine art is the flickr stream DECONSTRUCTING ROY LICHTENSTEIN. I am a big fan of Roy Lichtenstein, and have been since I was a teenager, and this is the kind of wonderful resource that the internet enables.

I’ve been thinking a great deal about how the internet inherently changes things like scarce information or difficult connection. Jason Scott has a thoughtful, deeply personal post about his own fanhood, obsession, appreciation for The Art of Noise. His description of always seeking Art of Noise product at every record store he went to resonates with me. That means I DID THAT TOO. Not for The Art of Noise, but for Talking Heads, New Order+Joy Division, They Might Be Giants, and the like. The last bands I did this over were Christina Aguilera and Frank Zappa. Of course now Tower Records went defunct, and record stores mean almost nothing. It’s an entirely different world of music and fandom. My the media I consumed in my teen years and early twenties would have been entirely different had I had ready access to the utilities and fansites and retail venues on the internet. Once again I’m reminded that we live in this future.

Audrey Kawasaki has a new print called Okimiyage, and in her post about it she includes some closeups and photos of the process of getting it made. Check out this post about the printing process as well.

Comics blog “The Beat” notes that Kansas City Barbeque, in downtown San Diego, burned. Big bummer! The post on the KCBBQ website is pretty heartbreaking.

Another post on The Beat is R Stevens goes back to sticks with the web, about Diesel Sweeties moving away from print after moving toward it. Sounds like being a webcomic can be an end unto itself.

More art and process: go visit PUMML: Artblog of Drake Brodahl. He is doing some wonderful work, and I intended to mention his own post on process some time ago. So now I am.

I’m not vegan, but I like the idea of a Vegan joint map of Los Angeles.

I had no idea that the Boys & Girls Club Gym here in Moorpark was damaged beyond use, but I’m glad it was repaired: Club gym opens after 6 months of repair . I’m also happy to see that the Moorpark Acorn moved to color photos on the web. I still don’t read the print version.

This vintage ad for Brylcream is awesome.

Cubecraft has paper models you can print and assemble into many cool characters. I like MODOK, Dr.Zoidberg, Dr. Manhattan, Mario, and The Prince from Katamari Damacy.

Did you notice that after a long hiatus, Leah blogged? Nice to have her post again, if only for a minute.

Doc Searls, a person who I look up to as a blogger, has been blogging about the Gap Fire. He’s also twittering the gapfire at twitter.com/dsearls. The sunset when viewed from Thousand Oaks last night was very pretty—I think partially because of particulates from that fire.

When Jason Calacanis criticizes Nick Denton, that’s noteworthy to me. Background: At one time, I thought I wanted to be one or both of these men. Now I don’t. I’m no blog impresario. Unlike Charles Foster Kane, I don’t think it would be fun to run a newspaper.

I also think Rachel Maddow is super-awesome.

The other day I got a comment via email about Evil GIFs: Partial Same Origin Bypass with Hybrid Files is a taste of the nastiness that’s available. via Simon Willison.

Interesting comparison of shots in Raising Arizona and No Country for Old Men. via John Gruber

That’s enough for today.

Cracker, which is a follow-on group from CVB, is a song I’ve enjoyed for one song, the long, cynical, sad, wonderful song Euro-Trash Girl.

With that prep, I invite you to watch and listen to the wonderful Take The Skinheads Bowling:

There’s a Princess Bride Game, and I can’t quite tell if the thing is serious.

These primitive sketches for some notable web sites are interesting.

These four calendar pages are Surfrider Foundation. The pages make their point pretty well.

Surfers versus Paparazzi. My bet would be on the surfers.

John McCain has a load of credit card debt. That’s just so dumb.

Also, his website is bad.

Have you recently moved to mass transit from driving in the L.A. area? If so, the L.A. Times wants to talk to you.

Only 73 percent of American atheists don’t believe in god.

Interesting quote from Douglas Crockford: There has been a lot of news recently about mismanagement at Yahoo. It is good to be able to point with pride at something that Yahoo does that is extremely smart. The Exceptional Performance Team is one of the things that makes me proud to be at Yahoo.

Adriano Santi, a fellow 3ones member, opens an online store to show and sell his work. If you’re moved, buy something!

Code Rush is a documentary about Mozilla which I downloaded and intend to watch.

How do I get John Kricfalusi to draw caricatures at my parties?

Regina Lynn’s blog SexRev 2.0 launched a few weeks back with some tech help from me.

Anil Dash’s piece about the philanthropy of Bill Gates is worth a read.

This graph of oil prices from Forbes from 1861 to today is quite interesting. via Paul Kedrosky

Track the shuttle and international space station in realtime!

That’s it for today.

But that tornado does move the plot along rather well.

It’s been hot here in Moorpark, very hot. This is rather inconvenient for us because our central air conditioning broke down over a week ago. We’re using a backup system of every-room-gets-a-fan and take-it-easy-during-the-day. The landlord is working on this issue for us. I’m hoping that we get a new AC unit soon, though it sounds like in the meantime they’re going to replace the compressor.

Also on the home care front, we have ants. On Sunday we had a full scale invasion in one part of the kitchen. We dealt with that one, regrouped vulnerable foodstuffs, placed the Grant’s traps, and we were good. They came back somewhat, and on Monday night we placed some foundation chemicals around the perimeter where the ants have been originating. They came back, escaping our chemicals by choosing to go up walls and along the ceiling before coming down toward the main kitchen area. I find this rather innovative, but I don’t have enough admiration to let them be. So this is how last night I ended up mounting some of the traps along the ceiling.

Also on the home front, Devon, oldest of the four kids at age 19, has moved in with us temporarily before he moves in with some buddies in July. It’s a rather nice surprise to have one of the kids with us 100% of the time. He also has two baby feline companions with him, which is really the reason he’s here. They were banned from his Dad’s house, so here we are. I was a bit worried about him earlier this year, but he seems to be getting it together rather nicely and I’m proud of his progress toward adulthood.

Work is busy, and complex, and good. I don’t really want to say more than that at this point. My contract will be up at the very end of July and I’m not sure what I will do next.

Financially things are going well. We had that hiccup about getting paid earlier this month, but at the moment we’re where I want us to be. We always could be doing better, but this very month we retired two smaller (one less than $1K, one for $3k) two debts. Retiring a debt is always a great thing. The IRS debt looms largest, because they are the dog with the most menacing teeth, but for now we’re paying nice and regularly and we’re on track to be ahead of the game for 2008’s taxes as well. Just barely, but we will be there. That’s rather exciting for me. Obviously life will intrude on such declarations, but I think even if Murphy’s Law visits us, our emergency fund is there for such things. We’re still on “step 2” of Dave Ramsey’s Baby Steps.

Strange as it may seem, the most profound spiritual sustenance I get these days are in listening to Dave Ramsey, swimming, and looking at the ocean. I also have embraced some of my more theistic attributes in quieter ways, though talking about it here may not be something I’m ready to do. I’ll leave it at that.

Ramsey is a very smart communicator, and his experiences (getting rich, going bankrupt, getting rich again) give him the kind of wisdom I respond to well—hard won intelligence and compassion. Had you told me that I would enjoy the financial radio show (I listen to the free podcast) of a Christian Evangelical Conservative I would not have believed you. But the Baby Steps make good sense. Whenever he talks politics or government I disagree, unless he’s saying “don’t look to Washington or the Presidential candidates to solve your problems” which I agree with. I think he ignores the public works projects this country has done which have done good. But no matter, what he’s best at is talking to real people—single parents, twenty- and thirtysomethings, young marrieds, middle-agers, retirees—and helping them deal with good and bad decisions to help give them financial peace. The short version is that debt is almost always a poor choice. The only debt he likes, and only begrudgingly, is a mortgage for a home—and only if you can put down a big down payment and get a 15 year fixed mortgage. All other debt – credit cards, car loans, student loans, borrowing for a business, borrowing from family, are bad. When people call in with trouble and confusion asking “why am I not able to make ends meet” he’s able to turn that call into an opportunity to dissect what’s not working in broad strokes and give practical advice. It’s rather marvelous. Some people’s problems are relatively easy—bought a car you can’t afford, get rid of it—but for some it’s a layoff and health problems compounded with an adjustable rate mortgage that has kicked in bad. He is able, somehow, to deftly advise these folks to get traction on their finances. In the most desperate situations, he tells people how to prioritize what they can do—yes pay rent, utilities and food, no, don’t pay that stupid credit card, yes sell the car. Yes, not paying your credit card will ruin your credit, but that’s where you are anyway, so you have to get your income up and run your money, rather than letting your money run you.

When I think about how long I let my money run me, not being proactive about the decisions I took, I get a little shocked by how ignorant I was in the ways of money. Budget? What’s that? Financial future? What’s that? But I must say, Ramsey put it all together for me as I got my life back together.

I didn’t mean this post to get so financial, but it’s what’s on my mind now.

Time to get to work. Remote today. Have a great day.

Here’s a photo of my little sister and her husband on their wedding day.

• artlung.com: 3,160 posts on my personal blog (posting since 2001).
• sandiegoblog.com: 698 posts from me on my old city blog. No longer posting there much since I sold it.
• ronny vardy fan: 75 posts, mostly just images
• rhonchi.com: 73 posts on my Respiratory Therapy blog.

Total: 4006 Posts as of today.

Work is busy right now, and I’m enjoying it a great deal. It’s stretched my OO skills in PHP5, and stretched my understanding of REST and lots of other stuff too. It’s enjoyable and maybe sometime I’ll talk about it more in depth.

Dev is staying with us for a while. We’re turning into a packed house. Though two of our houseguest and Leah are in Utah. They’re sisterizing. I look forward to the safe return of all of them.

Got paid, which I whined about on twitter and here. We are again able to meet our obligations. I’ve no idea if dayjob is going to be late with their checks again, but we’re ready if they do it to us again.

Yesterday tried to swim, but Camarillo changed their dang hours on me! I was confronted with water aerobics ladies instead of my normal lapswimming. Add that to the fact that it was four-to-a-lane on Monday night for swimming at Calabasas, and the ocean is looking pretty attractive for usual swimming habits. That, or dawn patrol.

I mentioned already that my swimmer’s ear is gone, right? Well, it is.

Sunday night we watched the Tonys and were delighted that Stew won Best Book of a Musical. We watched the whole Tonys and had a good time. Who knew that I’d eagerly look forward to the Tonys? It defies rational explication. Well, maybe it can be explained, I do love Stew.

I mentioned that I won a Chumby right? Still can scarcely believe that.

Okay, time to begin the day.

Today’s bad automated email starts like this:

Hello Elderberry

The following position is open with one of our largest billion dollar clients.

Please review the requirement below with our direct client.If you are interested, please send an updated resume in a word document format and we will call you to further discuss.

NOTE:

I want to apologize in advance if you are receiving this e-mail and it does not match your professional expertise. We utilize a search tool that does its best to match required skills with your skills and in most cases; it is approximately 90% accurate. Resumes that are searched are located on one of 4 major job boards.

If the requirement below does not match your job expectations or your skill set, you may still want to e-mail your resume with the type of position desired. We work on positions throughout the USA and abroad.

Search Engineer
Location: North Hollywood, CA
Job Type: Contract
Duration: 6 months with extension. (potential temp to perm)
Rate: $35 hr.

No, my name is not Elderberry, either. I did live on Elderberry Avenue a little while back.

DATA MINING FAIL.