My perfect Christmas Wishlist

It’s been awhile since I made myself my own little Christmas wishlist but there are a few items I have been lusting over for quite some time. This isn’t my actual Christmas wishlist to anyone but myself. I try to refrain from asking for big ticket items from my parents as I feel that I should pay for them versus making them buy it for me. I think my last big gift from them was back in 2004 when I was surprised with my own desktop versus having to share the family computer.

Drobo S by Data Robotics – $899


I have had my eye on the Drobo S for quite some time now. I regularly backup to an external Seagate backup drive but it’s down to 50GB now, so I’ve started to backup to a Western Digital 500GB SATA drive that I’ve got in one of my bay drives in my desktop. While this is feasible, I prefer to backup to an external device that I can easily upgrade to without having to spend more money. Granted, this is an $800 backup solution but given how invaluable the data is that I’m storing it’s not a concern for me.

The biggest advantage is being able to toss in any SATA drive into the 5-bay network storage. This version also includes eSATA for connectivity so I wouldn’t need to rely on crappy USB 2.0 speeds or fireware (although it still is an option.) No installation required! All I have to do is pop in a drive and I’m done. I don’t need to setup any kind of RAID config, format, screws or anything. The Drobo will do it all for me. My other favorite features are the glowing status lights which when more space is available more blue lights are available, the less space there is the less blue lights you’ll see and when near full they’ll be red. But the best feature is that it is self-healing. If it sees that there is a disk failing, it will automatically start pushing the data to the other remaining disks so you don’t lose that data on a disk crash. Perfect redundancy ftw!

X-Files: The Complete Collectors Edition – $175.99


I have been an X-Files fan since the show first aired back in 1993. I remember being so excited for Friday nights to eat Chinese food and watch the X-Files and be completely creeped out by some of the episodes. Heck, some of them are still pretty creepy when I watch them over 10 years later. I used to own seasons 1-4 to grow my collection of them but unfortunately an old roommate of mine had stolen them. I lucked out with these because I bought them for $75 for all four seasons from a discount I had when working at Best Buy. Since then I’ve yet to replace them or buy physical copies. I have watched them online on streaming websites but it’s not the same. This is probably the only physical form of entertainment that I want to own. I need to have this on display AND so I can watch it at anytime without lag or loss of quality. I love me some Duchovney!

Tilt-Head Stand Mixer – Kitchenaid – $399


Here’s the domestic in me coming out! The stand mixer I used that belonged to my mom bit the dust a few years ago when the neck snapped so if I use it, I have to stand there and hold it. So I usually resort to getting a large tupperware bowl out along with a handheld mixer and use that when I have recipes that require intense mixing. It’s annoying since I have to turn the bowl, hold the mixer and also use a spatula to feed it towards the mixer when it gets spun to the outside of the bowl. I have been dying for a stand mixer for awhile and red happens to be my favorite color. I’m not partial to any stand but this one I loved because you can use attachments with it for putting out pasta, and who knows what other apparatus’ to do whatever you need. Now I don’t need to hold off on a recipe because I don’t have the right tools.

The world’s cutest pug


Anyone that knows me knows I have two obsessions: Pugs and Cupcakes. The biggest being with pugs. When I was in the hospital a lot of my little get well items were pug related like “Pugs and Kisses, Get Well!”, my life-like 2 foot Pug that sits in my room, a Pug statue, a Pug beanie and more. I’ve also got pug thank-you cards I found on Etsy, pug stationary, and pug address labels. I’ve also get a few Pug calendars that I’ve saved so I can frame them into a little wall display for shiggles. A pug is the one thing I have wanted for years now and will always want a pug until I have one. I love the fawn breeds and would prefer a male puggy versus female.

I’ve been partially joking and teasing when I ask Steve to get me a pug for Christmas but in reality I know that’s not going to happen. I drop my parents hints every chance I get; When I see a grocery list laying around I’ll add in “Pug and pug toys” in either of their handwriting to make it look more realistic ;). When I was in the hospital my mom was seemingly serious about getting me a pug around the time I started walking but I’ve yet to even really see any sort of notion that this would happen so I guess this is one present where I’ll have to just settle for trinkets and other oddities in lieu of an actual pug. *sniff*

What’s on your Christmas list?

My site needs a refresh

I haven’t even had this design up for two months and I’ve hated it the day I ended up launching it. Tired of the colors, the huge size of it and the fact that it still isn’t making me want to blog more often. So I’m considering working on a new design for it but yet again I’m not even sure that I want to keep it on icupcake.org. I like the domain but I was contemplating moving everything over to jordanriane.com (or even trying to get ahold of riane.com but not sure if that will happen.) Who knows what will happen because I’ve got a million ideas for some other projects I’m working on so I’ll end up pushing it back.

In other news, in four more days I’ll have been walking for a month. I started off using a walker for a couple weeks and eventually moved to just using a single crutch on my right side. Now I can pretty much walk without it although I did have an issue sprout up on Thanksgiving. My tendons are moving over the knee whenever it bends thus causing it to pop. There isn’t any pain involved but it’s very awkward walking. I’ll find out Thursday at my orthopedic appointment on what I can do to help it.

I also graduated to being able to walk up and down stairs although I’ve yet to accomplish this feat at my house (excluding the patio stairs which are only 5 steps total.) My house stairs are both wooden so it’s a little more difficult to use without the fear of slipping. Otherwise I’ve got not problems at Steve’s house or the movie theaters (which we’ve gone to twice for New Moon & The Blind Side.) Now it’s just a matter of getting more therapy (done by myself) to be able to squat without needing any kind of support and gaining mobility with my hip and knee.

Trying to be normal

A few weeks ago Steve and I finally started going out versus staying here at my house. I’m able to transfer into a car with ease versus being unable to previously. We haven’t done too much yet as I haven’t wanted to go too crazy. We’ve done the usual like driving around aimlessly, going out to dinner (Oh Chilis how I have missed you!), grocery shopping at Walmart or Target, or running to Tiger Direct to replace a mouse of mine.

I haven’t been too enthused to try going to the movie theaters yet. I already get bitchy enough when people stare at me. Oh boy don’t even get me started on that! I’ve had people literally just stand and stare at me while I’m getting into/out of the wheelchair and car… It’s an awkward feeling but at the same time ridiculously infuriating. Unfortunately not much I can do about ignorant folk but just deal with it for a little while longer.

Aside from the general woes my only issue right now is my financial status (read: broke). I’ve been busting my ass off with trying to land some remote gigs but have just not been able to hook any real good offers. I’m laying myself out there for just about everything but as I should have expected the job market is still bleak. I would just like to be able to have money in my pocket to ensure that I’ve got cushion should I have an emergency I need to fund.

Please 2 be given me j0bz peeps!

Breaking out of the mold

For almost a year I have been relying on premade themes from places like WooThemes and Elegant Themes for my personal site. I just didn’t have the time nor patience to devote development work to my own website. It definitely showed as I just didn’t feel like updating my site.

A few days ago I randomly felt inspired to work on a new theme and I actually stuck with it. I’m known to work on something and get as far as coding out the header and then quitting on the rest of it. I just don’t like working for myself as I start to hate it a few days later. I’m very pleased with myself as I’ve finally gotten a theme done that isn’t just tweaking a premade.

I decided to go more on the CSS3 route with some features (eg: rounded corners) as I am an ass backwards developer. I am still trying to force myself to work in Photoshop to get a PSD going then to code it up. Unfortunately I prefer the code out the framework then shove in colors and images. Truthfully it’s a method that’s worked out okay for me so I suppose that’s why I still stick with it.

Oh I almost forgot! I have finally? switched domain names. I was ridiculously bored and hated atourworst.org. I had registered a few other domains along with icupcake.org, but ultimately this was my winner. Atourworst.org should now entirely redirect to iCupcake.org; There are going to be some errors here and there but I have it set to log and email them to me so I can fix as I see them. The biggest will be images in posts, so I’ll get around to that momentarily. If you spot any problems, let me know. For what it’s worth, this was not designed to support >IE7. Don’t bother checking in there 😉