The road that is built in hope is more pleasant to the traveler than the road built in despair, even though they both lead to the same destination.

From PCWorld:

Graphics chip developer Nvidia plans to lay off 6.5 percent of its workforce, the company announced Thursday.

About 360 people worldwide will lose their jobs by the end of October, Nvidia said. The Santa Clara, California, company plans to offer severance, counseling and job placement services for the affected workers.

Before I go any further, Ben still has his job.

This news was a total shock to me (to Ben too but I’ll let him expound if he feels like it and this will be MY reaction). If freaks me the hell out. 24,000 people at HP laid off, Ebay talking about laying people off, AOL, AMD, even small companies like BitTorrent. The really scary part about this is that the Bay Area job market is becoming saturated with qualified people geeks looking for work so the jobs that are out there are going to be snatched up fast.

I’m not even sure what more to say… I can’t imagine what all these families are going through. I’m scared for them and I’m scared for us and for you and for EVERYBODY. As we watch the stock market crash more every day, retirement accounts fail, house after house foreclose and thousands of people getting layed off I’m really hoping that there is a turning point soon because how much more of this can happen before desperation sets in?

I dunno, I’m sorry this is so down and depressing but it’s been weighing heavily on my mind all night and I’m just not sure how to work through this. Usually writing is helpful but even that hasn’t worked so I’ll just sign off here and say to all the families out there that have seen a loved one fall to one of these layoffs: We are thinking about you. I can’t offer you any more than that. We are here, we are worried, we are behind you, we care, stay strong.

Every man has a right to be wrong in his opinions. But no man has a right to be wrong in his facts.

I get pretty annoyed when a blogger presents completely skewed and misrepresented facts then closes comments because OMG somebody might not agree with them. If your opinion was solid and you honestly believed in it, then it wouldn’t be necessary to hide behind censorship and moderation.

Okay so lets start with this:

Now, if it were Obama’s daughter, we all know based on his voting record and the statements he’s made (don’t take my word for it, go look it up) that he wouldn’t want one of his daughters to be “punished with a baby” so I’m sure she would be skipping off to the abortion clinic by now. Wouldn’t want to ruin Daddy’s image. Since when did babies go from blessings to punishments?

That block of text included a video of a speech that Obama gave. If you watch the entire video it’s pretty clear that he NEVER mentions abortion. Not even ONCE. Doesn’t even IMPLY it. He states that if his daughter “makes a mistake” (SEE: has sex before marriage) that he doesn’t want her to be “punished with a baby” (SEE: if she knows about hormonal birth control, condoms, etc, her chances of getting pregnant are nil).

Lets move on to this:

Oh wait, I forgot. Babies are only blessings if you want them. Otherwise, just partially birth them, stick a knife in their neck, and rip their spinal cord out. Problem solved, right? Well if that fails, just leave them in a dumpster or something to die.

Ummm, I’m not even sure where to start with this one. Maybe go read the wikipedia article about Intact dilation and extraction because your idea of partial birth abortion is clearly WAY off base. Knife to skull: Yes. Ripped out spinal cords: No.

Let me also state clearly I AM VERY AGAINST LATE TERM PARTIAL BIRTH ABORTION. VERY.

BUT! At least when I speak about it I do so FACTUALLY. I also make sure to track down the opposing candidates rebuttal which explains his ACTUAL stance instead of just relying on what the right swinging media had to say about it.

I’m not about to sit here and say that Obama is the PERFECT candidate. He’s not. So far, none of them are. But you can’t just verbally regurgitate what the media has told you, or pick and choose the clips you want to use to prove your point, then expect that because you closed your comments down, that the truth won’t find it’s way to you. Or that there won’t be somebody from the “opposite side” that points out how wrong you are, even though you were unwilling to allow it to be addressed directly TO you. And saying that Obama would ENCOURAGE his daughter to get an abortion when your own clip to prove it NEVER even HINTS at the use of abortion, you make it pretty easy.

Just to be clear, normally I LOVE reading your blog. I know that when you get to the end of this and read that you aren’t going to believe me or won’t care but I think you have a beautiful family, two adorable little girls, an awesome little shop full of equally adorable accessories… but I don’t agree with you here and the complete misrepresentation of fact you presented drew me to respond.

And with that, I promise that’s the end of the political talk for awhile. Stay tuned tomorrow when we return to our normally scheduled vapid talk of nothing important at all.

Growing old is mandatory; growing up is optional.

My birthday is in 13 days (September 10th in case you want to mark your calendar). I will be 30 years old. I guess there should be some big internal FREAK THE FUCK OUT going on right now but, surprisingly, I’m pretty much okay that I’m turning into an old decrepit hag.

I’m married to a wonderful man, have a beautiful daughter, a house, two cats, three cars and very good SSRI. I’m right where I always WISHED I’d be at 30 but never really where I THOUGHT I’d be and it feels REALLY GOOD. So I think that even the impending doom of wrinkly oldness can’t bring me down from that high right now.

We’ll see though, it IS still 13 days away. A lot can change between now and then. Like, mental stability could take a momentary vacation. It’s totally been known to happen to me before.

So, I’ve decided to make a little list of the things I’d be reallystoked to get for my birthday in no particular order of importance. Well, no wait. I REALLY want number 1 and 2 but beyond that they are random in the value of wantedness.

1) Apple iPhone 3G:

I’ve wanted this since the day they announced they were coming out which also happened to be a month AFTER my mom bought me a new 1st Gen because I’d lost mine. I was finding ways to scrounge up the $200 that Apple LIED TO ME ABOUT till I found out that because I was a previous gen user, I had to wait a full year OR pay $399 for the phone. Well, my birthday is the year mark. HOWEVER, I can’t pay for it till that date and then I have to wait 2-5 weeks to actually GET IT. But whatever, as much as I want to grumble about that, there’s no way that I’ll own any other kind of phone right now because, simply, nothing else comes close to it’s general awesomeness.

And also: GPS.
And also: Loopt.
And also: *drool*

PLUS! Ben can take my 1st Gen and start using it. Then I’ll post that he’s actually TOUCHING and USING an Apple and the flesh hasn’t completely melted off his hands in disgust. And I’ll put an Apple logo somewhere on his M3. And then hide for awhile.

2) Flip Mino In black:

I know I said the Ultra before but the Mino had a rechargable battery, is smaller, only $30 more and I’m fickle like that.

As you can see by visiting YouTube, Viddler, Vimeo or flickr I’ve been uploading move video lately but my current video camera kinda sucks a lot. I love love love catching stuff in video but I want to be able to manipulate it and spend time editing and not have the end result look like a pile of warm poo, ya know. My life is too awesome and full of BADASS to not be capturing some of it more.

Actually, that was a lie, I’m just looking for a way to better utilize my hulking vanity.

3) Black & Decker 22 In. Dual Action Hedge Trimmer:

I was REALLY tempted to insist we get this when we were at Home Depot buying the lawn mower but we opted for the cheaper long blade “do it by hand” sheers instead. That was fine when I just had to do that one hedge out front but I’ve realized after three weekends of heavy use and screaming pectoralis muscles I that we should have gotten them. Because “that one hedge” turned out to be TWO, then I realized there were hedges on the other side of the driveway so now it’s FOUR. I’ve also been trimming the neighbor’s hedge because the house is on the market and nobody else is doing it so now there’s FIVE.

At first I was just thinking hedges, now, SO MUCH MORE. There has been at least 87 times I’ve thought in the last three weenends, “I really wish we had gotten those dang electric hedge trimmers!” Then I sat down and tried to think of alternate ways to clean out some of the dead undergrowth in the back yard. Napalm is at the top of the list so far and I think for the sake of ALL OF GILROY, I should go pick up that trimmer soon.

4) Garden pretties:

I have LOVED working on the yard. We are getting closer to having all the plants pretty much under control and I’d like to start adding things to make it pretty. Here are some examples:

	Looking glass hummingbird feeder
	Toad Hollow 21 In. Rumple Gnome Garden Statue
	Bird Brain Mod Pod Oval Bird Feeder
	Garden Treasures™ Polyresin Buddha Garden Statue

5) Lorem Ipsum Cuff:

I originally came across them when Chrissy Twittered it and I IMMEDIATELY fell in love with it. It’s geeky and girly and cute and either you GET it or you DON’T.

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Aliquam nec quam. Donec dolor. Suspendisse eleifend elit sit amet velit. Etiam lacus justo, lacinia suscipit, placerat id, placerat vel, odio. Vivamus eros pede, dignissim sit amet, dictum id, ullamcorper et, risus. Pellentesque ultrices justo lobortis odio. Aliquam non nulla eu ipsum consectetuer lacinia. Etiam magna purus, varius sed, varius ut, adipiscing sit amet, purus. Sed mollis suscipit est. Nunc interdum nisl ac nulla. Proin volutpat porta mauris. Fusce elit tortor, lacinia a, luctus sit amet, dignissim nec, tellus. Maecenas faucibus libero sit amet lectus. Pellentesque accumsan nulla vel eros.

6) Geeky shirts:

Like these ones from Busted Tees:

There was one more thing I wanted to add here but the site is down so if I can get there tomorrow, I’ll add it. You may now go forth and buy me things I don’t need. Or don’t, I’ll like you just the same. Plus, if you DO then I’ll, like, OWE you and I’m getting too old to be repaying favors.

Hard work has a future. Laziness pays off now.

I can’t get to aflux from home. I don’t know if it’s a DNS error or what but it sucks balls.

We’ve been busy, busy, busy working on the house. Ben’s been painting the garage and I’ve been trying to get the last of the unpacking done and the back yard cleaned up more. There’s pictures of all of it if you click on one of the flickr photos up there.

Other than that, things have been pretty much normal and everyday grind type of stuff.

Weekdays: Get up, work, gym, homework, dinner, sleep, rinse, repeat.
Weekends: Get up, work on house, eat, work on house, eat again, work on house some more, pass out exhausted on the couch, watch TV, sleep, rinse, repeat.

I kinda feel bad about not blogging as much though so I’ve decided to start video taping more and posting them here and there and all across the web for you awesome people to enjoy. Here is a little gem that happened Monday after school.

Happy Wednesday! FOUR DAY WEEKEND AHEAD! YAY!!

Das Ende.

Tonight we spent an hour and a half signing the final paperwork for the house which means NO MORE HOOPS!! YAY! The papers should arrive at the title company Monday morning then Countrywide can fund and we’ll get keys either Monday or Tuesday. I was REALLY hoping that we would get to move this weekend and have next week to unpack while Cassidy is at her Nana and Papa’s but I guess we’ll make it work.

OMG WE JUST BOUGHT A HOUSE.

Thank you all for the kind words and encouragement in the comments of the last post. I REALLY needed to remember that there was actually reason for all this misery because I was being a whiny brat.

Now I’m going to go drink a glass of wine. Or nine.

Stress: The confusion created when one’s mind overrides the body’s basic desire to choke the living daylights out of some jerk who desperately deserves it.

If you ever get the idea to buy a house let me just give you some advise right now: DON’T.

If anybody told me that it was going to be an stressful as it is, I don’t know that I’d have followed through. It’s one fucking hoop to jump through after the other, which in normal circumstances wouldn’t be so bad, and I’m so over hoops. And it’s not just, “Oh hey, we have this hoop we want you to jump through.” Instead it’s, “Hey we have this flaming hoop and we need you to jump through it backwards while doing a headstand on a three legged retarded giraffe, okay? No biggie. But if you could just get that done 10 minutes ago and fax me the proof? THANKS!”

We were supposed to close yesterday but instead we were thrown this curve ball and it’s been hoop after hoop after hoop today, and assuming that no other bullshit hoops get thrown in our path, we should be able to sign by Friday. Please keep your fingers crossed for us… We really need the extra love right now.