Apartment Interior Design
Living Room
Sectional Sofa -- Crate and Barrell City Collection [bought]
This is a fairly decent representation of the sectional setup that I have currently in place except that I employed the chaise section instead of the corner look. The entire sectional configuration ran roughly $3,000. I love the look of the couch the colors are very light and easy on the eyes. It's also a very comfortable piece of furniture.
Lounge Chair -- Eames Herman Miller Lounger + ottoman
My goal is to find an original / nice replica for a good price. As this piece of furniture is no longer in active production from my understanding the originals are hard to find. There are plenty of knock offs running around where the better knocks offs are made by plycraft and can be had from anywhere between $100 - $1500. It's much better than dropping $5,000 at room and board for on of these setups. All I can say, is that I sat in one at Room and Board and I want one more than anything for my living room.
Coffee / Side Tables -- Undecided at this point
Entertainment Center -- Ikea Bresta Configuration
Dining Room
Dining Chairs - Vintage Knoll Bertoia Chairs
The Bertoia wire chair has earned its stripes in the design world. Its been featured in countless interiors in countless ways and has proved itself as an enduring, versatile design classic. As the photos I've chosen below illustrate, the chair can be paired with any table; you can even mix and match it with other chairs. This is important to me when dealing with a classic, because the likelihood of finding more that one or two originals is low, so it has to be versatile. How is this an eco choice? Well, vintage is always eco, and if you should choose a new one, its made of recyclable materials. I've seen this chair in a few kitchen table setup's and every time I've seen it I just LOVE how it looks so I have to have these chairs be the center of my dining room.
Kitchen Table - not decided on yet
Buffet / Sideboard -- not decided on yet
Office
Desk Unit - Elfa Freestanding
Chair - Knoll Pollock Chair
Novels and Novellas
To Kill a Mockingbird (1969), Harper Lee
The Great Gatsby (1925), F. Scott Fitzgerald
Catcher in the Rye (1951), J.D. Salinger
Old Man and the Sea (1952), Earnest Hemingway
1984 (1948), George Orwell
Fight Club (1996), Chuck Palahnuk
On the Road (1957), Jack Kerouac
Slaughterhouse Five (1969), Kurt Vonnegut
The Sportswriter (1986), Richard Ford
Catch-22 (1961), Joseph Heller
Kindergarden Chats and Other Writings (1901), Louis Sullivan
The Fellowship (2009); Friedland & Zellman
Into the Wild (1996), Jon Krakauer
Devil in the White City (2003), Erik Larson
The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind (2009), William Kamkwamba
The Hunt for Red October (1984), Tom Clancy
One Hundred years of Solitude (1967), Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Auto Biographies-Biographies
In Cold Blood, (1965) Truman Capote
Into the Wild (1996), Jon Krakauer
Kitchen Confidential (2007), Anthony Bourdain
Dreams of My Father: First Publish (1995), Barack Obama
Poetry
Wilderness: Writings of Jim Morrison (1989), JIm Morrison
Chicago Poems (1916), Carl Sandburg
Book of Sketches (2006), Jack Kerouac
Pandora 40 hour monlthly listening time limitSo here I am doing my normal Saturday morning cleaning of my apartment chilling to a nice pandora channel mix that I had going (Them Crooked Vultures, Atmosphere, Muse, and The Roots), and poof the tunes stop and there is a nice message displayed on the screen saying "You've reached your monthly listening limit of 40 hours. If you would like to continue to listen you can pay 99cents an hour." Seriously what the hell is up with that... First off Pandora has a screen full of advertisements and not to mention they are super intrusive to their site. Secondly every three or four songs you have an advertisement blip to interupt your mood. Ok, I know I'm not paying for their PandoraOne service, but if you are going to pollute the experience with ads, and then impose a listening limit... you're getting the finger and none of my attention nor recommendations. Saying that, I've ventured out and found 3 valid alternatives that are as good if not better than Pandora.
File Bucket Review
I'm not sure how relevant this is to anyone else out there, but here recently I've been doing some spring cleaning on my storage array with my music, apps, movies, pictures, and document archives. I found this nice little utility for Windows (Yes I know, none of my machines run Windows so this didn't help me any making my process any quicker) I downloaded it and played around with it on my Windows 7 VM, and I was very surprised that something like this hasn't been around for longer than it has. It's very useful in finding all your obscure downloads and consolidating them into a single directory. The copy speeds were fairly decent and it handled transversing the 255 character file path limitation inside Windows alright. So if you want a little bit more feature/functionality than teracopy this is an app for your storage spring cleaning needs! Nothing is better than a useful portable app that doesn't need any installation.
Craigslist Deal of the Week - Plycraft Lounge Chair + OttomonLinkage: http://chicago.craigslist.org/chc/fuo/1638422498.html
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**7 Excentric Boozes for the collection**
For something a little different this time we're going to take a
quick look at some interesting, expensive, and damn I just gotta try
bottles ranging from Bacon infused Vodka to $150 bottle of beer..
Bakon Vodka - $30/bottle http://www.bakonvodka.com
A new premium-quality potato vodka infused with a savory bacon
flavor. Distilled from Idaho potatoes and possessing a perfect hint of
peppery bacon flavor. Great in a bloody mary, good when paired with
scotch, not so hot in a white russian
TY KU White Sake - $150/bottle
http://www.trytyku.com/tyku08/new_w.html
I'm not a huge sake fan in the first place, but the bottle looks
awesome and is supposely one of the better sakes around.
Cruzan Single Barrel Estate Rum - $30/bottle
http://www.1-877-spirits.com/spirits/cruzan-single-barrel-estate
I'm a huge rum fan, and this has replaced my bottle of capitan and
bacardi in my cabinet. It's a very smooth drink, but is not a mojito
mixing rum by any means.
ri 1 Whiskey - $50/bottle http://www.ri1whiskey.com/
Pronounced "rye one," this 92 proof rye whiskey from the makers of
Jim Beam features a slightly spicy, peppery flavor when sipped
straight, revealing more strongly its dried fruit and cinnamon notes
when cut with water. - Yeah, not a huge whiskey person but hey it
looks good and decent.
Casa Dragones Tequila - $330/bottle
http://www.1-877-spirits.com/brand/Casa-Dragones-Tequila/UncrateLP
Handmade in small batches, Casa Dragones Tequila is not your average
booze. Each bottle is finished by a Maestro Tequilero, mixing platinum
tequila with a dab of extra añejo for an incredibly smooth taste.
Delivered in a handcrafted, reusable crystal decanter, it's meant for
sipping, not shooting.
Mansithe - $56/bottle
http://www.absinthe.de/en/shop/all-absinthe/article/mansinthe/
Leave it to Marilyn Manson to come up with a stellar brand of
absinthe. Mansinthe ($56/bottle) is the result of a two-year
collaboration between the Antichrist Superstar, Absinthe.de, and the
Swiss speciality distillery Matter-Luginbühl AG
Sam Adams Utopia - $150/bottle http://www.samueladams.com/
Yeah, not your normal bottle of suds, but most certainly the most
expensive Sam Adam's I've ever seen. Supposely it's quite good. The
2009 batch is the strongest yet, with a staggering 27% alcohol by
volume rating (a standard beer is about 5%). The rich, dark,
uncarbonated (and world's strongest)
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**Current Music Addiction - Them Crooked Vultures**
So I've been needing some new quirkly background noise that wasn't
CNBC or FoxNews, so I've turned back to my good friends Pandora,
Last.fm, and Slacker. I've been listening to the "Them Crooked
Vultures" channel religiously, and have found that I've really grown
attached to them. My favorite song thus far is Mind Eraser, No Chaser,
definitely worth downloading their entire albumn as it's a good
listen.
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**Netflix OnDemand Must Watch**
Steel Toe - An American History X type movie really good though
Senseless - Saw meets Fight Club sorta kinda
Boot Camp
Miller's Crossing - Old movie, but very good.
Spartacus: Blood and Sand
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**Webapp of the Week - Hootsuite**
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Since I've been having such a crappy time getting Adobe Air to work
right on my laptop I've had to search out other ways of getting my
twitter fix. Hootsuite gives a very competive interface to that of
Seesmic Web. Though I like Seesmic Web better than Hootsuite, there
are some features such as link analytics that Hootsuite provides that
I like better.
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**Sysadmin Tool of the Week - Fully Automated Nagios**
Fully Automated Nagios (FAN), is a CentOS based linux distro that
installs and preconfigures everything that you need for a complete
Nagios installation.
Here is the list of tools provided by FAN:
Nagios <http://www.nagios.org/>
: Core monitoring application
Nagios plugins <http://nagiosplugins.org/>
: plugins to monitor servers
Centreon <http://www.centreon.com/>
: web frontend for Nagios (Centreon is one of the better tools for
that!)
NagVis <http://www.nagvis.org/>
: a great tools for configuring maps
NDOUtils <http://www.nagios.org/download/addons/>
: Nagios module to store monitoring data in MySQL
NRPE <http://www.nagios.org/download/addons/>
: the check_nrpe plugin (NRPE daemon is not provided)
NaReTo (Nagios Reporting Tools) <http://www.nareto.org/>
: a great tool for getting availabilty report
I deployed a fully operational and configured Nagios server in under
2 hours compared with this distribution, compared to the 5+ hours of
manually peicing it together. The absolute best thing about this
distrobution is that it keeps intact the proper Centos repos so you
can leverage this as a inclusive monitoring server by installing
Zenoss alongside Nagios and if you need any other Network
troubleshooting software like netcat, ntop installed you can do it out
of the box.
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So I wasn't tired and wanted to step out for a drink, nothing harmful in this thought process thus far. So I was out meandering around looking/thinking of a place that wouldn't be too crowded on a Saturday night and yet would have a decent enough atmosphere and if I wanted to grab a bite to eat I would be able to. So I ended up stopping at the Hard Rock and sat down at the bar upstairs which was a nice change of pace for that particular place. There was a live band finishing up when I came in and admittedly they weren't half bad. So I ordered my normal starter drink Capitan Diet w/ a squeeze of lime. I had the bartender my debit card and he asked me if I wanted to start a tab, and I was like ehhhh -- sure.. So the band finished up, packed up and in that time I finished my drink and really wasn't feeling like having another, but a beer sounded alright so I got a Corona just because I wasn't feeling anything else at the time. So I finish the drink and tell the barkeep that I'm done and want to close out. So I get my tab -- $11.59 or something like that, I leave a tip.. and today I log into my Chase account and look at my transactions over the weekend and I see a $50 charge from Hard Rock and my tab + tip in another transaction... I'm expecting the charge to come off, but seriously?!! I'm assuming this is to fight the people who skip out on their tabs but damn kinda annoying
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I guess I'm bored again so I'm spending a little time to dump out what new things that I've came around and been doing research on and of course the little things that are keeping me sane. For those who didn't know, I've moved out of my semi-large 1 bedroom apartment in to an enormous 2 bedroom combined unit condo, although I'm no longer on the penthouse level its still quite nice. I gave up most of my view that I had before since I'm only on the 25th floor instead of the 33rd floor. I have a great view of the Hancock center and the Drake hotel so that still alright.
For those interested here's the linkage for the Virtual Tour
http://tours5.vht.com/Viewer/PhotoGallery.aspx?ListingID=1176459&Style=PPI
Since moving I decided I was sick of paying for Cable TV and maybe finding one or two things on that I would like to watch, so I've joined the ranks of the non-cable tv people. Netflix OnDemand has basically replaced my cable tv for the better (and is a helluva lot cheaper) Here is the list of what I've watched that I was surprisely amazed on how good they were.
Spartacus: Blood and Sand: IMDB - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1442449/
Spartacus is a Starz original series trying to depict the most accurate version of Rome as a Gladiator / Warrior. It's very good, comparable to 300. If you liked 300 at all you'll love this.
Gattaca : IMDB - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119177/
An oldy, but definitely refreshingly good
On Hulu, I've been watching Caprica, Kings, and House M.D.
So in the effort to get rid of our Citrix environment due to increasing complexity and prices in licensing I've been out looking for a newer and better solution. I came upon a product called RingCube vDesk. It basically gives you the whole VDI experience but takes it further than what Citrix XenDesktop would give you. The biggest feature that sold me on the technology is that it supports Dynamic Roaming Profiles, so that I can provision customers running database driven applications with a single installation of the core application and use profiles to emulate the core application settings.
Video Demostration - http://www.ringcube.com/portal/content/products/vdesk/demos/vdi/vDeskOve...
Comes in at a very reasonable price, for 30 concurrent connections for right under $6,000 including knowledge transfer. They claim the deployment takes less then an hour to do.
So if you're in the same position that I get to be in sometimes and are waiting for the slow purchase orders to happen for a M$ key here is a quick and easy way to Rearm your Windows 2008 R2 eval.
Start > Run > slmgr.vbs -rearm > restart > back in business
This will give you a 60 day extension on your eval, you are able to do this 3 times.
For the lighter side and less techy side of the Rant and Raves ... Test your IQ a little with this question and the answer to the last question
Answer for the last question:
Which number is the odd one out?
3628, 2426, 4146, 1448
4146 is the answer.
For all the numbers, the middle 2 digits add up to the last digit:
3628: 6 + 2 = 8
2426: 4 + 2 = 6
4146: 1 + 4 = 5 (not equal to 6)
1448: 4 + 4 = 8
19:7 Unscramble the following four anagrammed words and determine their commonality or relationship
ANTRUM
TRACER
RECIPE
DOMAINS
Drink of the week - Alhambra Royale
3 parts cognac
Hot Chocolate (1 Cup)
1 wide slice of orange peel
whipped cream (optional)
Fill mug nearly to the brim with hot chocolate. Twist the orange peel over the mug and drop it in. Warm the cognac in a ladle over hot water, ignite the cognac, pour slowly into the mug while still flaming. Stir. Top with a dollop of whipped cream
So I've moved into my new condo.. It's gorgeous, big, and almost perfect. It's missing some of the amenities that I was looking for such as stainless steel appliances and granite countertops. But it has been a nice step up from where I was at before. I did lose some of my view which sucks, but it will be worth it having Olga living here with me. Although the new problems that I'm having to figure out is something that I hoped I didn't have to deal with.
I'm having to toss around one of the hardest decisions that I've going to have to make in my life I feel. This move to the condo put a decent cut into my salary, and I made this decision for one reason and one reason only.. to hopefully help Olga get her life back on track and hopefully allow her to open her eyes to how much I care for you, but now I know that there is no possibility in that coming out of our relationship. So what I'm tossing around right now is something that I didn't want to do in maybe cutting Olga off completely from her latest decision... I know exactly what's going to happen if I make this decision, and I'm not sure if I want that.
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Definitely worth an interesting read -- http://www.lhj.com/relationships/marriage/sex/7-kinds-of-sex-every-coupl...
So for you overworked people out there I have a little extra time on my hands right now..
IQ Quizzicle
Which number is the odd one out?
3628, 2426, 4146, 1448
Drink of the week
"Pancho Villa"
2oz. Bacardi Rum
1oz. Gin
1oz. Apricot Brandy
1tbsp. Cherry Brandy
1tbsp. Pineapple Juice
Directions: Combine all the ingredients in a shaker filled with ice. Shake well, strain into a Martini Glass.
Nation's Nipples Severely Under-Clamped, U.S. Bureau Of Masochism Reports -- Source: The Onion
http://www.theonion.com/content/news/nations_nipples_severely_under
WASHINGTON—A new study released this week by the U.S. Bureau of Masochism has concluded that American nipples are critically under-clamped, bolstering long-held suspicions that the nation is rapidly losing interest in the thin, delectable line between pleasure and pain.
According to the study, which surveyed a wide swath of citizens who have been very, very bad, 78 percent of all U.S. nipples are not being pinched, tweaked, or otherwise constricted in a severe enough manner. In addition, the study found that nearly 90 percent of all Americans are not currently down on their hands and knees, begging for more.
"The vast majority of U.S. citizens are just not receiving the physical punishment they deserve," said Masochism Bureau director Geoff Knowlton, who was permitted by his mistress, Alexandria, to meet with reporters despite being unfit for anything but groveling at her boot heels. "Unless something is done—whether with a riding crop, a stiff wooden paddle, or a series of humiliating commands to bark like a dog—this problem will only get worse."
Read the rest of the article on The Onlion - http://www.theonion.com/content/news/nations_nipples_severely_under
First off SCREW the flute glass... use a regular wine glass. For the pouring ingredients-- 1 Tropicana Juice Box (Yes the little juice boxes for kids), Pour Korbel Brut Champagne until the glass is 3/4 full. For best taste. Chill the Champagne for 24 hours.
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For those who are not familar with the Eames Lounge Chair + Ottomon, its a interior design staple peice of furniture for almost every look ranging from the retro to mordern design looks that you can conjure up for your rooms. The only crappy thing is that not many of us have $4500 to $5000 to shell out for a chair and ottomon. Granted the chair is probably one of the most comfortable chairs I've ever sat in, but the pricetag is slightly unattainable or justifiable for me at this point. So I've been looking for a replica of this chair that push come to shove I can just put a little work or money into to refinish it. This is where this chair comes into play, Plycraft is the the premier Eames replica manufacture on the market. They produce a high quality product that looks very similar to the original that production stopped in 1956. They come around on Craigslist from time to time, but are hard to nab since they go so quick. This particular one sold for $50, which is much more reasonable than the $5k that Room and Board is selling the original Eames chair for down the street from me. Granted it needs a little work, but throw $200 - $300 max to get the leather redone and spend a little time sanding and refinishing the wood, and it'll be just like new.