Living Is A Problem ...... Because They Are Already Playing Christmas Songs On The Radio

There is a still a major holiday to go here (Thanksgiving) and they are already jumping the gun.

Bah! Humbug!

Its not the only thing that's messed up.

Lately the weather in these here parts has been getting its freak on. Last week I'd wake up to a cold early November morning only to find that by 3 in the afternoon it would be getting close to a balmy 22 degrees Celcius. Back in the home country I'd be lucky to see that in the middle of August.

Its been quite frankly a weird fall. Even though the leaves fell from the trees a couple of weeks back in the canyon where we live, in the city, a few minutes up the road, they have been hanging on like there has been no hurry to hibernate. Its been nice to see those autumnal colours stretch on but at the same time its been a pain in the derriere to cut those old fruit trees back when the leaves are still on the branches. I had been contemplating putting that kind of work off for a couple of weeks but living in Utah I wasn't sure that was wise, sure enough yesterday, just two days after the mercury hit 22, it snowed. It could have waited until we went to Vegas in a week a half's time!

Ah well I suppose its given me the time to finally figure out how Jango works. No Christmas music until December 20th, thank you!

My Apple Dilemma

On Sunday we finally had some a few hours to ourselves, time that wasn't taken up by work, peoples parties, or sabotaged by cars that that like to play broke too damn much. It gave us enough enough to go on a shooting spree (photography shooting that is, I'm not that American yet).

I'm eager to have a look at the results of a day well spent but if I was to load the images from the card to the computer I'd fill up this Apple to the point that that it would refuse to do anything useful anytime soon. It's finally time I got around to buying something new. And so with that in mind its not worth me loading the images on to this computer when in around a week i'll be swapping all the images onto something new. Why give myself even more work to do? So I guess I'll just have to be patient and wait until I buy that new computer.

I'd love to buy another Mac but the Scottish in me refuses. On the one hand I love how Macs operate I've never had a single virus issue with a Mac whereas I have with windows based machines, I also love how they look, I think Apple products look beautiful, but those machines are damn pricey. And thats where my issues begin with Apple.

I really don't want to spend $1400 plus on a computer. I'm Scottish, its not that I'm stingy but I do like my money to stretch as far as possible. And with Apple it doesn't stretch very far. I don't like how Apple as a whole does its business. It seems they have a policy to take every penny they can from their customer. Its not just in the world of computers either where they build stylish but expensive machines that are twice of the price of their pc competition its in other areas too.

I've long been tempted to get an iphone since I first saw someone demonstrate to me how they were learning Japanese on it. I was smitten. I've always wanted to go to Japan and here was a seemly simple way to learn the language. But I had to stop and remind myself with the reality check that Japan is a notoriously expensive country to go to and live in, there's no way I could afford to go there anytime soon if I was paying $199 for the phone and $99+ a month for the service line. Now you could blame A&T for the service line, or you could blame Apple for keeping the price artificially high by only sharing their products to one phone company per sales region. Whatever or whoever is at fault it seems to me to be yet another demonstration of how Apple does not look after the best interests of their customers.

The product that Apple really should have had me hooked from the beginning is the ipod. I am a huge music lover I have tens of thousands of mp3 files, literally gigabyte after gigabyte of music stored on my hard drive. I get bored with cds very quickly so when the larger ipods started to get produced I was excited, I wanted one. Then I realised that Apple weren't satisfied with just selling the ipods themselves they wanted to make money from the selling of the mp3's from itunes too. Well that was me out. At that point I had a tonne of music and very few of which was downloaded with the help of itunes. I really didn't fancy having to start my collection again nor did I want to go to the trouble of hacking into a brand new ipod and breaking its code so that I could play what I already had.

It seems to me that Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple, has a a very old American West attitude to business. He spots his customer approaching from a far and can smell the notes in the wallet and he wants it all, but he once he has emptied that wallet he wants them to keep paying him afterwards too, until there is nothing left to give.

Whether its through itunes or apps there seems to be endless ways for Apple to continue to get your money once they have sold you the machine that you just couldn't do without. Most people don't have an issue with this I admit, I certainly seem to be making a mountain out of a molehill when there are a lot of happy Apple customers out there but it does leave me looking in at the Apple showroom window with drool dripping from my chin at all the shiny magical looking products that I know in my heart I would love to get my hands on but my head says a big fat loud "nawwwww."

Craigslist We Love You

Looking back on how this year, and then even further back, has developed it's fair to say that without the invention of Craigslist the lives of Scotsman and Some Chilean Woman would have gone on quite different paths.

For us it all started over two years ago. Back then I was looking online for some cheap second hand camera lenses, trying in vain to get something for my Sigma, in desperation I tried looking on Craigslist for the first time. Craigslist you have to understand isn't really big news in the home country but I tried anyway. Unsurprisingly though as the camera I have is in very few hands I looked in vain. However before I logged off that day I looked at the personals out of curiosity, and there little did I know I found Some Chilean Woman who was looking for a guide for a holiday that she was planning. Rather than ignore her I instead gave her crap for the wordage of her advert suggesting to her that she may want to reword it if she wanted to get the right type of response. I didn't expect to hear back from her after that but rather than ignore me she seemed to like the asshole like response. A few months later instead of her going to Scotland, I instead made my way to Utah. Less than six months after that , I returned to Utah permanently. 3 short months after that I found myself getting married and all thanks to a chance encounter on Craigslist.

Before then I was skeptical of anyone finding love on the internet but having been converted first hand I started to wonder what else I could use Craigslist for. I soon found out that it had more than one use. My first job on US soil was found on Craigslist. Sadly it didn't last that long.

Earlier this year I started to place adverts for landscaping services, skeptical of its possible effectiveness.

The last time I started a business was back in 1998 and the internet was not as widely used. Then I mostly got my clients from flyers I delivered locally, people I knew and from word of mouth. In 11 years of working for myself I had never once got any work from the internet. In truth though I had never tried. This time around though we had little spare money for flyers, nor did I know enough people here in Salt Lake City in order to get my first few customers. Desperate times though called for desperate measures, I blindly put out my first adverts on Craigslist more in hope than anything else. In all honesty I was surprised to get my first response. But gradually bit by bit I got more and more customers from the adverts I was placing.

This allowed us slowly to transform our lives. No longer did Some Chilean Woman have to do all the working on her own, I was at last able to make a contribution. Soon after I was able to match her dollar for dollar, and it was all thanks to Craigslist bringing in the work.

Six short months later we were able to move into a new place. We looked on Craigslist, but to no avail, this time it couldn't take the credit. Piece of crap website!

But when we did find our new place we needed some new furniture and so we found a cheap dining table and chairs that might have needed some work but were still pretty much a bargain at the advertised price. As was the $60 exercise bike last week.

Love, work, and cheap exercise I've found it all on Craigslist and its safe to say that for us life would be quite different without it.

Here's to 30 more and then some

So the car couldn't have broken at a worst time for our dreams of San Francisco, but you know what I ain't going to shed a tear. It's better it did what it did now than in the middle of the Nevada desert because you know I love the Proclaimers as much as the next Scotsman but walking 500 miles to a mechanic in that environment would make me one cranky butt. 

Let's just take all the goods from all the bads. I'm not going to worry about money, or the 'what could have been's' because birthday girl I have you lying next to me in the mornings and that makes me happy. With you there morning and night I'm happy and I don't much care for whatever else the universe may throw at us, certainly not that car that's always hated me anyway.

With you lying next to me, even when things aren't going right, I've got a good feeling. Its been just 2 years we have been together but the distance we have traveled this year alone feels like it could have been a lifetime. Today though you turn 30, we still have more than half a lifetime to write. Let's make it a story worth reading. Now put a smile on your face for freaks sake.

Headaches Are Made Of This

It's the good wife's 30th at the end of this month. So I was thinking I should organise a party.

Then I realised I'd never organised a party before.

Shit!

Nevermind I set forth with my planning.

Should be fairly simply to inform everyone of date, place, etc I thought.

Then I remembered we lived in a canyon with poor cell coverage.

Shit, Again.

Then I realised that every party needs a game. Preferably something frivolous, silly and with little point.

Bugger

I settled on a mass game of Subbuteo between the invited guests thinking that a knockout game would involve a few laughs but then I remembered that this party is going to consist largely of latinos and latinas, a combustible prospect at the best of times but factor in the fact that the only 2 guests who might enjoy such a game (the father and step father) don't exactly like spending time with one another and its probably not exactly going to be a great success.

This might be the only party I ever arrange.

I should probably just hope that the subbuteo gear doesn't turn up on time. Or that noone gets the invites.

Its probably just as well I wasn't in charge of our wedding.

This Is The Life!

Its been a while, almost 5 weeks since we moved. We had been looking for a new place to rent for a few months. Without having much luck. For various reasons none of the places that we were looking at felt right.

Then for some peculiar reason I decided to look outwith our agreed ideal areas. I came across one property that just seemed to suit our lifestyle. But it was right at the upper echelons of what we wanted to pay for a rented property, and it wasn't just outwith the areas that we were previously looking at, but way out, neither me, nor the wife had much hope that we had found the place to move to. Until we got there.

The drive into Emigration Canyon, with the wooded hillsides and narrow twisting roads is seriously beautiful. When we arrived at the property I think its safe to say that we both fell in love with the place. It had everything that we wanted and more, we had been expecting to have to make some compromises here and there, but then we found everything that we wanted in the one place. In it we found a decent sized kitchen, which as we are both foodies that was important to us. A spacious living room area in which we could entertain the wife's family and friends. Ceiling fans to make those hot August Utah nights comfortable. A wood burning fire to make those long months of winter cosy. A garden to call our own, one where we can grow our own potatoes, tomatoes, carrots, peppers, etc and yet more space to entertain in. A safe place for the kids to play, no traffic to worry about unless you include the cyclists that like use the canyon as their playground.

It even came with its own bomb shelter in case Al Qaeda took a dislike to the Mormons of Utah.

A 10 minute viewing and we were ready to sign up there and then. Unfortunately there were a lot of people interested in the property and so we had a one to two week wait where we dared not dream that we could get it, and yet were were sick to the stomach in case we didn't. Fortunately, here we are 6 weeks later, living the dream.

In the summer it feels like 10 degrees Fahrenheit cooler than elsewhere in the city, and for someone who comes from my part of the world that makes a world of difference. Its so peaceful and quiet and unlike the rest of the city that its a joy to come home from work. We finally have that place that we can be proud of, I love hearing my father in law say "I freakin' love this place", he's been here 3 weekends already despite the fact it takes him over an hour to get here.

I would go outside and take a picture of the paradise that we live in but its raining. I'm telling you, its just like home!

So here's one from 15 minutes down the road, taken a few weeks ago.