Willo O'Brien

I’m STOKED! I finally played with my new iPod this weekend and I’m totally LOVING it!!!

Hooking it up was the easiest thing, my iTunes automatically updated it with all my music on there and blammo, I have over 2,500 songs on my new iPod. woohoo!!

Now 2,500 songs really isn’t that much consindering I only have maybe 100 full albums on my HD. Let the ripping begin!!!!

Turns out iTunes has this super cool setting where you can just tell it to automatically import a CD when you put it in, which is super handy for the hard core ripping session. I’ve now officially set a huge stack of my favorite CD’s (that were actually conveniently all put in my main travel binder by DJ Ricky G for my bday, so that’s handy – thanks babe!) and one by one I put them in, I get to even hear a few songs play (since I have it set to play while importing) and then it ejects automatically when it’s done – which is perfect cuz it prompts me to put another one in! Awesome. At this rate I just *might* have my collection in there in about a week!!

I also tried out my Monster iCarPlay FM Transmitter/Charger for the first time today and it works great! I finally figured out how to do it and found a station, and that one only had a teeny static at first and got better, so I kept it there. But then later futzing around with it I think I even found a clearer station. So far so good! I’d really heard some bad reports, but it works and I’m psyched! Talk about a reason to rip aaaall my CD’s now, plus I need to clear out some random stuff in there I’ve had from way back in my Napster downloading days – bad quality and/or just old stuff I’ll never care to listen to.

Oh also something I found tonite: I was trying to import a CD that didn’t have the track info – and iTunes couldn’t find it in the CDDB database… so first after searching I found & tried this small app called iCDc. This program might be cool for getting all my genre info correct, etc (do any of you use it?) but it couldn’t find the track listings for this particular CD that way, so I kept looking around.. and what I found totally did the trick!

Instead of having to search for the song tracks, you can use one of Doug’s Applescript for iTunes: Get CDDB Track Names. Awesome!

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While I’m talkin music, I’ll tell you what we did Saturday night:

First I met Rick, Jee, Jim and folks over at Scott’s BBQ. If you can believe it I didn’t take any photos there! WEIRD! hahaa But it was great fun. A keg of tasty Fat Tire, lots of cool peeps and yummy pork loin. I mean, we’re talking TASTY. Lyne showed up later and even my friend Aaron stopped by, which was cool!

Then Jim, Rick & I headed over to the Hemlock for The Pony’s show my friend Meg had told us about. Jim had heard of them too & had planned to hit them at BoTH on Sunday night, but rallied with us instead. Jim’s awesome!

We ran into Missy thereand I think by that time the Fat Tires had caught up with me, so I was having fun talking to her. She’s a huge music fan and I’m stoked to talk to her about bands. AND believe it or not, I’ve finally found someone who’s more of a lipstuff addict than I am! She has this sneaky technique, too. I was impressed and couldn’t wait to tell Rick who practically tried to have an intervention when he witnessed me needing re-application of my DCT every 10 minutes at Coachella. Hey, it was 106 in the scorching sun for christ’s sake! :)

The Hunches opened for The Pony’s and we weren’t that into them, and even went so far as to go back out into the bar and sit it out. They were really punk/loud and I thought I’d be into it – but somethin about it just wasn’t moving me.

The Pony’s were good – I liked em and they kept me movin the whole time! I just downloaded their album off emusic, too, so I’m glad I liked them live and am psyched to listen to their CD some more.

Speaking of kick ass Chicago bands, New Black is coming!!!! I’m stoked.

Oh! And I sorta updated my concert calendar on yahoo. I haven’t even cross referenced the ones I have on my homepage yet as I sorta updated that and NOT the calendar a while back. But moving forward I think I might go _all_ calendar & stop listing it out on my homepage. It’s too time consuming to do them both (even though I like being able to link to the venue and band) I need them all on my calendar anyway – so people just need to use their googling skills :)

Ok, I gotta go to bed, but I have a whole nuther post to write tomorrow to catch up on today… big stuff, but it’s late now. NIGHT! :)

Friday night our friend (who we know through my friend Rebecca) Jonathan Grubb was showing at Lola Gallery. We’ve met Jonathan at a few shows and have been hangin out with his brother Moses here & there so we went out to show our support and have a few drinks.

Jonathan makes these wild creations that are basically stuffed animals turned inside out… and then he does additional stitching or adding parts to them that make them really freaky… some more than others :)

Looking up the show on Friday, to pass the info onto some friends, I realized Jonathan was actually just one of a couple artists in this show “San Francisco Safari”. The main artist being Merikay MacKenna who does these amazing stuffed animal creations that are basically like an alternative to taxidermy trophies. Sounds weird, but they’re awesome! You can check out her work here:

AnimalHead.com – How to Get a Head Without Hunting

It was great to see all of Jonathan’s work and talk to him more about the process. As well I was able to chat w/ Merikay and she was really nice to talk to… she’s been doing this for almost 30 years! The cutest thing was that her husband was dressed up in full safari gear and she was wearing zebra stripes. It was kind of a costume party, which will explain some of the (well the ONE photo) where you can see a couple who arose to the costume occasion with full flair. :) There were a few other fun costumes there, but not many so we didn’t feel that out of place.

We had a great time though, as you can see:

view full album

The best part of the night was when we decided to purchase something! My honey bought me a baby giraffe head! :) I’m so excited! Here’s what the baby & momma looked like:

All the eyes she makes herself, and most of them – especially on the giraffe, are big and round and have these long eyelashes that make them look so cute and endearing. I have to wait till July 17th to pick him up, but as soon as I get him home I’ll take a pic!

FYI I just updated my business cards page. Nothin big, but if you’re paying attention you’ll notice they now all have drop shadows, and are reflecting my new phone number (that’s really not so new anymore :)

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Lastnight Rick & I went over to a friends for a little dress up (for fun) dinner party. We had a BLAST!! We love it when we meet other cool people who like to have a good time – and have a good time we DID!!! We had some amazingly delicious apps, lots and lots and lots of wine, an incredible melt in your mouth dinner… all to great music and good company! Super fun!

Plus Rick & I hadn’t seen eachother in a couple days (ha, yes all it takes is 3 and we’re really missing eachother!) and so it was *extra* nice to see my sweetie. And GUESS WHAT?!??!!? He gave met the rest of my birthday present… and guess what it is?!?!!?

A roundtrip ticket to Vegas, Baby, Vegas!!! :) aaaaw yaaa!!! We’ve been wanting to go for a long time – and I haven’t been there in EIGHT years! So I’m stoked!!! xoxox

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Today I’ve been battling with a font issue. My dang Fireworks won’t recognize this Avenir font I’ve installed – and instead it only has these really odd Avenirs sprinkled in with all the fonts [screenshot]. All my other programs are seeing it normally (listed with the A’s where it should be) but for some reason FW is screwing up. ARG. I’ve posted something on the Macromedia forums and James is helping me a little, but overall it’s been a major time suck today!! blah!

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SpamSieve update: I emailed with the developer and think I have it working a bit better – Now I just have to train it so it catches more. We’ll see if this works, otherwise I’ll have to change my email for sure!

Happy Friday everyone!

Alright, remember how I was telling you about that camera crew that made their way into my little home about 2 months back?

Well, I’ll tell you a little bit more, since it’s starting to air here & there… I’m on TV!

It’s actually a news story, so if you watch the news and you’ve got some kind of show like “Kurt the CyberGuy” or something, you might just see this 2 minute piece.

They profiled me, my illustration business and my blog, asking me how blogging has helped me personally and professionally. I saw it last week and even though it’s weird to see yourself on TV, it all came together pretty good. There’s more on there, so you’ll just have to wait to catch it for the full scoop!

Pam from LA wrote me & said she saw it, which was cool (thanks Pam!) and my Mom hilariously had a friend call her at like 6:30 in the morning yelling “your daughter’s on tv!” and my poor Mom still half asleep fumbled frantically with the remote to get the TV on, but ended up missing it. haha so cute (Mom, I promise I’ll get you a copy as soon as I can :) My Mom’s so supportive, I love it!

So anyway, I think it probably won’t be played very much over the next month or so, so you actually might not see it till like August or something, but when you do please let me know! :)

hmm… i dont know if i’m not doing something right – but because I have several subfolders in my inbox, every time I go to another folder & then come back to the original inbox, it changes all my inbox emails to the spam color – even though I’ve already added them as good. Does anyone else use this program?

Anyone know of a spam arrest type deal that works w/ imap?

Ok, I just couldn’t take it any longer… I get SOOO MUCH SPAM and there are some days (like the last couple) that I literally clear out a good 15 in a row. LAME!

Thing is I’ve had my email address for a long time, and it’s all over my site, comments, forums, etc so spambots have harvested the f* out of it and I get all their lovely porn emails. Not exactly the content I like to wake up to!

I debated changing my email address, which would obviously be the easiest solution – but I’d really rather not… It’s such a pain to change it everywhere… So I’ve decided to just up my spam blocking techniques.

I thought my host was taking care of it well with Razor, but lately it’s not catching ANY of these – nor are my 30 some filters! – to get them moved to my Add-Spammer folder.

I wanted to use Spam Arrest, but it doesn’t work with IMAP. SO… I’ve downloaded & started using SpamSieve, which is designed specifically to integrate with OS X Mail. SWEEET. It’s tough because I like the Spam Arrest idea a bit better, but this will atleast (as I have it set up) color all spam (better than Mail has been), will activly learn good/bad emails – and then I can still use the Razor Add-Spammer reporting with my host.

Overall it’s pretty lame we all have to fight spam so hard. And eventually I’ll be changing my email address – but for now I’m hoping this helps me filter it better.

Comments/Suggestions are welcome.

Ok, I uploaded the fun bday bbq photos!

I was so psyched to hang out with all my friends! My little home is pretty cozy, but I think we managed to fit in maybe 30-50 people inside & out! :) A ton of us were even down in the garden for awhile, too which I thought was so fun cuz I hardly go down there myself!

I was way psyched my brother, Max & Kyle came up from Santa Cruz. They know how to party somethin fierce :) Ricky G was SUCH a huge help, all day helping me shop (aww yaa, costco card!), clean up and get everything ready – and even helped clean up big time the next day (thank you baby! xoxo).

I got to see an old roomate of mine, Sabra, who looks fantastic and I hadn’t seen her in so long I practically wanted to glue myself to her all night. Of course I ended up flittering around the party, having the time of my life. It’s so awesome to be surrounded by so many people you love! :)

David, Elana, Marissa & Zach stopped by quick and I got to snuggle those cutie little kidlets for awhile. They were really excited to see me, too which just melts me :) I’m in love with those munchkins!! I was also WAY psyched to see my old coworker and friend, Gradiva with her sweet lil’ boy Jonah. Wow, has he gotten big – and he is just CUTE as can be. He loved all the toys and stuffed animals in my house! :)

I was psyched to see all my girlfriends: Kat, Jee, Jane, Lucia, Rachel and Sarah. I’ve got to start getting together with “the girls” more! It was really good to see them, it’d been awhile, since we haven’t done our full moon get together in quite some time. Jane probably stayed the latest, giving me a bday gift that only she knows how to give me: Whoo-ee does that girl know how to shake it. I have to stop everytime, it’s *too* hot. :)

A few of the Google/Blogger boys came by, which was cool. I really hadn’t hung out with Eric since a year ago, but we’ve IM & emailed a lot since then. And my buddy Darren showed up for a bit, which was RAD!

Nancy (who I know from my days at Care2) & Paul came and partied like rockstars :) and Scott, Jim and Lyne are ALWAYS making me laugh and having the best time. They’re awesome.

Stig left early but then did his classic come back later and raid the fridge for 2nd’s… This boy eats like it’s Thanksgiving year round :)

Brian came over with his friend Dave – who quickly realized that my effusive hello was because I was so tipsy I totally mistaked him for someone else. *blush* Sorry Dave!!! I think I tried to babble my way out of that faux pau, but I don’t think it helped.

My bestest concert buddies (besides rick) Jem & Tania showed up & STOKED me with a subscription to Venus Mag! woohoo! It was great to see them! Lucky for them, they showed up just about right when I started smooching everyone. ha

As the night wore on we danced and partied – several pitchers of margaritas were made and jager shots went down smooth :) and by 1am I really wanted to have us try to hit the bar (for some reason, change of scenery, I guess?). Everyone was nice to oblige the birthday girl & we all troupsed over to the El Rio for one last drink (that none of us really needed :). Cameron pulled out the irish car bombs right at last call! I wasn’t needing anymore at that point, but I did sip on the creamy shot before they took em! mmm baileys!

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The next morning (my actual bday!) Rick & I cleaned up the house and hit breakfast with Max & Kyle at Boogaloos where I got my favorite: Huevos Rancheros!!

The rest of the day was super chill. Rick & I watched a little Tivo’d Reno 911 on the couch, ate some dinner and then headed out to a movie: Saved! – which turned into being a double feature and we hopped in to see: Dodgeball

Honestly by the end of the 2nd movie I was so tired I couldn’t even muster up a laugh :) I slept GOOOOOOOOD that night!

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Thanks again for all of you who came out to help me celebrate “29 years and gettin better all the time“. As my sweetie friend Lyne says: LUFF YOU MADLY

xoxo

I almost have the photos ready – I just finally downloaded them lastnight! I will upload tonite after BAM and then the gym!! :)

Here’s a few fun ones though to tide you over:

me and my favorite little girl, marissa :)

willo gets tagteamed on a birthday smooch

aww yaaa, concert buddies!!! this is tania, ricky g, jem & me, the birthday girl

kat, me & jee! it was great to see these girls, it had been awhile :)

and lastly, the psycho lemon girl. this is one of a few in this “series”. i had a lot of lemons! :)

love this guy’s sketches: http://www.frankstockton.com/

Do you know I don’t have ANY chocolate in this house? No ice cream, no cookies. Bout the sweetest thing is gum or mints. But I dont want gum or mints!!

You know what I do have though? Kettle Corn Microwavable Popcorn and some marshmellows from way back when I made Rice Treat Krispies.

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Crap, I almost forgot I have a ton of bottles to take out tomorrow for recycling. Crap! blah.

Well I better go to bed anyway.