Chopstork

Now you can add your very own Buddy Icon / Avatar to include in your posts and comments on chopstork. To get started, go to your profile and click on the “Your Avatar” tab. Follow the instructions to upload a wackie image and crop for the best fit.

Let me know what you think: larger, smaller, left, right, black border, blue border? If you run into any problems, leave me a comment below. Enjoy!

…and I’m getting older too.*

I always thought I’d turn into my parents when I became a parent. But it turns out I’ve already turned into my parents. For the better part of the past year, I’ve chosen to eat lunch at my desk so I could read the Wall Street Journal on a regular basis (like my dad). I can’t watch TV unless I have a crossword puzzle on my lap, and I won’t buy anything at the grocery store that isn’t on sale (those I get from my mother). I still have yet to go to Las Vegas — where 20-somethings like to go wild and party all night — but I might go in 3 weeks. To visit my parents. They don’t live there, but they’ll be there at that time. So instead of breaking out my slut attire from college to dance the night away in trendy clubs, revved up on vodka-red bulls, I’ll be doing crossword puzzles by the pool with my mom, and discussing the stock market over gin and tonics with my dad. And I’m actually really looking forward to it.

Speaking of the stock market, I’m usually somewhat conservative with my choices, although I do go after trends (I recently made a few hundred bucks related to my love of White House | Black Market). But today I took my bit of caution and threw it to the wind when I bought $1,000 worth of stock in a company I know very little about (and couldn’t find much on). The reason? I’ve noticed a bunch of ridiculous vending machines popping up in stores and airports — selling anything from iPods to Proactiv solution. No coin return button on those babies — they work with credit cards only. And a few other companies that sell cheaper products in vending machines are looking at CC-friendly machines in the near future as well. So I found the company that makes a majority of those particular credit card readers, and bought stock. It’s an interesting idea, but it could cost me some bucks. Time will tell! I guess since I never go to Vegas, I’ve got to get my gambling kicks in somehow, right?

*nothing makes you feel older than quoting Fleetwood Mac. except maybe having a stroke.

Courtney’s all grown up. Here’s old for you—Laura and I spent an entire two hours tonight watching a Charlottesville Planning Commission meeting on the C-ville cable access channel. And even getting fired up about it. Listening to NPR we could blame on San Francisco. Taking an interest in local government…we’re just getting old.

A couple years ago I heard about C89.5 somehow. It’s a dance station up in Seattle run out of a high school by high school students. Luke can probably tell you all about it. I was bored that weekend so I downloaded some songs that were on their “top songs of 2004″ or something. Most were too “techno-ish” for my taste, but these are more mellow ones that I liked. Since I’ve had it sitting on my iTunes, I figured I’d put it up here. I think I threw in a couple random older songs too.

A Blue Angels jet crashed. Those guys are so awesome, I didn’t think it was possible.

UVA held a candle light vigil Tuesday night, “to honor the memories and lives of those killed and injured this morning and to express our support for our counterparts at Virginia Tech, for their families, and for their friends.”

The secret societies at UVA have their symbols painted all over Grounds. Yesterday the Z Society had their symbol at the amphitheatre painted orange and maroon—Tech’s colors. It’s pretty neat, since they are our rival school … probably the only time you’ll see Hokie colors painted at UVA.

More pictures here.

[Update 4/20]: The UVA front page used one of my pictures for orange and maroon day today.

This one is for all you math/economist/business types out there (You know who you are). The best part is that this guy teaches at the best school in the country (Go Dawgs!).

Now that you’re done watching, check out some other Power Point Humor.

Just in case the west coasters are wondering, Laura and I are fine. The shootings happened at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg. We are in Charlottesville, about 2.5 hours north-east, and Laura goes to the University of Virginia. I know you guys get the two confused sometimes. Tech’s the one with the good football team. UVA’s the one with the good every other team that no one watches. I hope if any of our Hokie friends have friends that are still at Tech that they’re all ok.

Since it’s the debut of streaming music on Chopstork—and because it’s just fun—here is some more music. Turbo Hero comes to us from the DC area with such hits as The Night, The Itch, and The Rose that are The Raaawwwwk!!! You can pick up their debut album at… you can’t. Here’s their demo.

Sweet. The bulk uploader for Faces’ TuneFeed works in Safari. Guess I should update my Firefox. Since Faces is the only one I’ve gotten to work so far, here’s a TuneFeed for the Kooks album I just got. I digg.

Don’t be shy. Don’t be lazy. Share your music with the rest of us!

Dammit, gotta figure out how to keep it from playing automatically. That’s gonna get old really fast. I hate websites with sounds.

[update]: Just set “autoplay=1″ to “autoplay=0″ in two places in the huge code they give you.