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I will be leaving for the Big Apple on Thursday — my first return to the city after having moved out West almost 4 years ago (WOW!)… Sometimes I just miss that place for the energy and creativity that it offers (which San Jose totally lacks! Or maybe just a different vibe I haven’t able to jived with)…. So I’ve been looking up on the subway maps and stuff to see if there are any changes to the routes and just to familiarize myself with the whole system again. And then I came across the New York City Subway Smell Map:

WOW… Yes, many New York City subway stations stink… But this map is pretty damn accurate (according to my fellow NYC inhabitants)… I am so NOT looking forward to that part of the trip…

via [Gawker]

After having resisted learning Flash since the days of Flash 5.0, I finally had to budge and cave in to doing it again. But thanks to Lynda.com, the learning experience so far has been pretty positive, especially with the introduction of Adobe Flash CS3 and ActionScript 3.0. It seems like every other project referred to me these days wants something to do with Flash. So I guess having to learn it was only a matter of time. But really, Lynda.com makes it so much easier and effective.

The upside is, I am already pretty conversant with the back end and server side stuff. I am hoping by adding Flash to my arsenal of client side interactive design and scripting skills will make the overall combination of my skill set that much more demanding (since most people only know one thing or the other, client-side scripting or server-side, rarely BOTH). Unless, of course, you are Michael Murdza, who just knows too much about everything anyway…

I have no idea where these guys get their calculation methodologies, but the final hourly rate I came up with certainly isn’t realistic for the San Francisco Bay Area. But I can certainly see how one can live comfortably with that kind of rate elsewhere in less expensive metro areas like Atlanta or Austin or something.

For you artists out there… this is freaking awesome! Beats comments like “I wish my wife was this dirty” or “Wash me.”

I get a kick out of reading this support thread at Apple…

Obviously I didn’t read the whole thing, but what I’ve read cracked me up.

Those darn cats… Something is up with them…

Yesterday Bryan laughed at one of the jokes on Scrubs. We have no idea if he actually got the joke or he was just pretending to laugh. Nonetheless, it was really cute to see him just blast out laughing out of the blue.

Seems like Dell’s troubles are just endless these days. Now the State of New York is suing Dell for fraudulent practices… This company has sure gone downhills since its hay days in the late-90s when I used to recommend its computers to friends… and when its services were actually pretty top-notch.

A few friends have complained that they went to Dell’s website for some cheap deals Dell advertised. But the problem was, no matter how they configured their systems, there was simply no way to get it to the price that was advertised! I have tried it myself, and it was truly an amazing experience!

But I also find it funny that people expect “quality” when they don’t even want to bother to pay for it… Today’s Dell offers awful products that come with awful customer service. You know the old saying, “You get what you pay for.”

Last week was a long week; but the weekend seemed even longer… I got do play “wedding photographer” for the event. I even managed to play host without even freaking out…

Lessons I learned:

1. Wedding photography is a physically demanding job…
2. Sorting through and process 700+ RAW images requires a beefy computer — thank god for my MacBook Pro… It was relatively painless and fast…
3. Having to manually edit 400+ images makes you feel thankful of having a good camera with excellent auto white balancing and unbeatable skin tones — even the pro at the wedding said so!
4. Having the honor to document the wedding of a life time for someone who trusts you with the job — priceless (or whatever the total cost of the hotel stay was which the groom helped pay for)…