So they’re in the mail. I spent the other night completing the second full application (actually a set of two) I’ve made to the FAA. The first one (again, there was actually two) won me the chance to send more applications. It’s a little confusing. Anyway, I’m being considered for a VRA appointment to either Denver Center or one of any of the terminal facilities in Colorado.

So you may now consider me an official fan of the city of Denver! I just hate the waiting game, send the application, wait to hear back… blah, blah blah. It’s nerve wracking. I just want to get back to work, and for my money the FAA is the only game in town. Fingers are crossed, but I’m hedging too, there’s another appointment cycle that ends at the end of this month. I’ve got two applications there too. Can’t be too optimistic.

I’ve been in search of a decent RSS reader for the last month and a half. The problem is that I’m not willing to pay $20 - $30 for an RSS reader, but I’m not willing to compromise on quality either. Of course this puts one in an odd spot. You could go with an open-source reader, that looks and behaves like shit (Shrook) or you can download a trial version of a better reader and deal with their restrictions and nag screens.

My problem really wasn’t the restrictions on the commercial readers. I can’t export OPML. Fine. I can’t have more than a certain number of feeds. Again, fine. But every time I open you I have to look at a bunch of nag screens? I just can’t stand that. So I’ve gotta find an alternative

Of course the first thing that came to mind as an alternative to a desktop client was Google Reader. A lot of people like Bloglines, but I just can’t stand the interface. Google Reader feels like a “real” app, plus I’m a Google fan boy, so it seemed like a good fit. And, it was. I have no intention of getting rid of Google Reader, it’s keeping it’s prestigious first-spot on my bookmarks toolbar, but I still wanted that desktop app.

Enter MacApper and Vienna. Vienna is the fully featured, open-source RSS badass that you see pictured above. For some reason I never stumbled across this gem until it ended up in my Google Reader (via MacApper, get it?). Gotta love the irony there.

Vienna sports just about every feature you could expect from an RSS reader. Only drawback I’ve seen so far is the inability to adjust the refresh time to lower than 30 mins. This simply means that I end up hitting the refresh dialog on the dock more often. So be it. Since it’s opens source, I have the source code, so I’ll be looking for a work-around.

I’m still toying with Vienna, but so far I’m incredibly pleased. If nothing else, it’s just a very pretty app that gets done what it promises to get done.

This is a couple (12) shots I took on my Kodak while I was very, very drunk. I’m not much of a photographer to begin with, but the keg of beer and the poker game in my garage didn’t help much.

I told Bobby I’d have these pictures for him in a few days. That was two weeks ago. And, he already left for Turkey, so I’m kind of a dick.

I’m fine with that.

I took this shot as a response to a post on 9rules. The Flickr page has notes as to what all the little goodies are. I must admit, I am very proud of this setup.

This is basically a test post for me. I just want to ensure that psoting from Flickr is a snap (as it always has been before) with this new layout.

Anyway, this picture is from the Flickr Blog, which as far as I can tell is one of the most vastly unappreciated blogs out there.

Aside from commenting on Flickr development and whatnot they also feature wonderful artists and groups either established or attempting to become established within Flickr’s gigantic community.

As for the image above, I don’t know anything about it, and it’s so perfect that I hope I that I never learn anything about it. I’m happy just knowing that it’s there.

After one year and three months of living in Vegas I finally made it down to the Hoover Dam. On a Sunday. A holiday weekend. We’re retarded.

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Oh, for the love of all things holy stop changing the site around. I hope I’m done. I’ve got this site plugged into the queue over at Browsershots to check to make sure that this silly thing still looks like tha sexx in IE6. I hope it does, I’m tired of doing all this crap.

In other news, I’m very nearly done porting the theme from Rich’s site to a releasable WP theme. For the most part it’s just been cleaning the code and CSS up and adding template tags to fill in stuff that Rich had hard coded in. No big deal at all. I would be done already, but the weekend took a few interesting turns, so I haven’t had much time to sit in front of the Macs and veg. I’d talk about that more, but I’m not sure if this is the right blog to do it in.  Moreness after the fold… (more…)

So I’m going to leave the site like this for 24 hours. All the content is still here, it just hasn’t been styled. Enjoy, and if you have the chance, join in the naked party!