New Site

I have moved my blog to http://catherineweiss.com.  New posts!  More frequently!  Come check it out.  Thanks for reading.

I’m also doing some stuff on twitter.  You can follow me by going to twitter.com/catherineweiss

circa december 2009

I cleaned out my fridge today.  This was once tuna with pesto.  Sadface.

Dear Facebook

Dear Facebook,

In our six years together, we’ve had some laughs.  But ultimately, the good is not enough to outweigh the bad.  Facebook, I’m breaking up with you.  I bet you didn’t see that coming, did you.  Well, I did it.  It’s done.

Part of it is me, Facebook.  I would spend my time on you clicking through pictures of myself, of my boyfriend, my friends, random people I went to school with, people my friends went to school with, the list goes on.  Frankly, it’s embarrassing that you even offered me a way to do this, and what’s worse is I partook.

As much as it pains me to tell you this, part of the problem is you.  You’re a time suck.  You’re boring.  You want me to “like” corporations and I want no part of that.  You want to redefine what people view as private vs. public.  Who do you think you are, Facebook?!  I don’t need this.  I don’t need you.

So I decided to end what we have together.  And then you put up that offensive screen showing me pictures of my best friends and me together and saying “so and so will miss you.”  But you know what facebook?  They won’t miss me.  Because I’m friends with them OUTSIDE of you, you know, in REAL LIFE.  And you made me tell you exactly why I wanted to deactivate my account, too, so you could attempt to rebuff me.  But it didn’t work, Facebook.  I’m too strong for you, but you certainly showed me that you won’t take our breakup lying down.  Which, ultimately, is kind of sad.  Goodbye, Facebook.

I’ll do my best not to come crawling back.

Catherine

iPad: That Thing People Won’t Shut Up About

I have been reading a lot about Apple’s much ballyhooed contraption the iPad.  And yes, I bought one.  Here is my non-douche review of it.

Part One: The Thing Itself

When you first see it, you go holy crap it’s enormous.  Yes, it’s a big awesomer iPod Touch.  It’s a little too heavy to read like a paperback with one hand so you’ll probably be best off propping it up on your leg or holding it with both hands or putting it on a table.  It comes loaded with about what you’d expect: a movie player, iTunes, safari, notes, a calender, contacts, youtube, mail, photo app, and maps.  You can change both the background and the lock screen–on the iPhone you can only change the lock screen and the background stays black–so I like that.  There’s no camera, which is stupid, but whatevs.  There’s also no third-party multitasking which is a legitimate annoyance for some but a discussion of that would start to sound douchey so I’ll just say it and move on. It has a long battery life (like ten hours of actually using it) and the speakers sound kind of shitty but about how you’d expect.  The app store is cool but you have to be careful because a lot of the apps on it are for the iPhone and look really small in the center of your screen or can be blown up to full size but crappy resolution.  Stay away from that B.S.

Part Two: How To Use It

So far I’ve watched movies, streamed TV shows, read a free book I downloaded from the iBooks store (some old ones are free), updated obnoxious things ABOUT the iPad on facebook, read news articles, looked at pictures, attempted sudoku, zoomed in really far on a map of my house, wrote a note, chatted on gchat, and streamed music from Pandora.  It’s great for everything but chatting online.  Typing on the iPad is actually better than you would think it is, but chatting means you’re typing in short bursts and then waiting for a response, whereas typing on an iPad is more of a slow-and-steady endeavor.  I’ll do it when I don’t have a computer handy, but it’s annoying.

Don’t get the 3G.  It’ll be expensive and you probably already have, if not an iPhone, than another smart phone.  If you don’t, get an iPhone too.  I don’t know how you get around without GPS in your daily life, because I would probably perish.  Wifi iPad is the way to go.  Also, this can’t be your only computer.  Why?  Well it’s not a computer.  It’s alllllmost a computer, but it’s not.  In order to use it, you need to plug it into iTunes first, and then transfer all your music, your movies, your photos, your documents, etc from your computer onto your iPad.  So if you give your non-computer using grandparents an iPad, you’re going to have to set it up for them and bring your linked laptop over to their place all the time.  The iPad is really meant to be a secondary device.  Because IT. IS. A. TOY.

Part Three: Do You Want One?

Yes.  It is Ender’s desk.  You want to live in the future, don’t you!?

Part Four: Do You Need One?

No.

Part Five: If I Have One, What Is the Best Way to Impress People With It?

Take it out somewhere in a public place and read a book on it.  When someone inevitably says “oh excuse me, is that an iPad?” say “Why yes!  Yes it is!”  Quit what you’re doing and demonstrate skimming through photos and especially pinching open and closed a photo album.  Have a photo album in mind that makes you look cool.  I use pictures from my trip to Africa.  Always have an internet page open to the New York Times because it looks great on the iPad but also makes you look literate and classy in case they want to see how safari works.  The iPad has a gyrosphinctor (I don’t know what it’s really called) that allows it to know which way is up so if you hand it to someone be sure that the image flips around where they can see it and be impressed.

So those are the most important things I could think of to write about.  If you have any more questions, google iPad and then read a real review of it.

new portrait

I made a new portrait of Luke a few days ago.  It came out pretty well.  Burgers!

one week

In one week I will be mid-flight over the Atlantic, heading to Uganda by way of Amsterdam.  Last night I woke up absolutely certain that my passport was lost in the move.  I spent 20 minutes tearing up my room – my mom even received a panicky call at 2 AM – before I found it… in my suitcase.  I’ll be spending this week obsessively packing and unpacking, making lists, losing things and buying replacements.  Hooray travel…

it’s mine, my own…

I moved!  Only 4 blocks north, but a move is a move.  Here it is with friends, without furniture.

Best thing about the apartment: FREE LAUNDRY.  I share a free washer/dryer with one other person on my floor and I can use it as often as I want.  There’s a part at the end of LoTR where gollum gets the ring, shrieks something like “it is for meeeee!” and then giddily falls into a precipice and perishes.  Anyway, the whole time I was doing laundry in my head I was saying to myself “laundry for freeeee!!”  And then I fell down the stairs.  And perished.  True story.

today i ate half a philly cheese steak sandwich for lunch and it was good but then i felt a little sick

This weekend Jackie and I took a bus ride to Philadelphia to see Kings of Leon play at the Wachovia Center.  A two hour bus ride was turned into a 6 hour endurance contest by getting stuck behind a horrendous 9-car pile-up which shut down the NJ Turnpike.  Thank god for iPods.

The show was pretty great – good enough to forget that I’m really tired of Only By the Night and don’t want to listen to it again for a long, long time – but I don’t know if I can say it was “worth” four hours of traffic limbo in NJ. I had a good time once I was there though.

An interesting cultural difference is that when The Walkmen opened for KOL, nobody at the concert gave a damn.  From what I understand, they’re concidered pretty hip in NYC.  Not so in Philly.

I was also reminded of another, more disturbing cultural difference: People in the outside world do not look like New Yorkers and they definitely do not dress like New Yorkers.  At rough estimate, I’d say they are 30% less pretty and 30% more naked.  Maybe it’s my age speaking here but a halter-top and mini-skirt doth not a lady make.

I figured they must have been in their teens because grown-ups would just know better but then I saw they were old enough to buy alcohol.  And they did, by the gallon.  So there I was in this big stadium teeming with Philadelphians who are celebrating live music by dribbling beer and nacho cheese down their fronts, and I was feeling way, way out of place, but in a nice, smug way.  That’s when I knew I am now really from “The City.”  No wonder everybody thinks we’re assholes.  We totally are.

craigslist lies volume V

In my latest craigslist hunt, I searched for “stunning” and found these three marvelous pictures of a chaise longue:

BAM.

Stunned.

April Twenty

There were more people smoking weed (in the rain!) in line for the Daily Show than you’d expect.

PS-I didn’t get in.  All the smokers did.  WHERE IS THE JUSTICE.  I’ll feel better if there is a shitty guest today.  Like Meg Ryan or someone equally irrelevant.  Maybe I’ll go check.