Sir Grump Munch

February 02, 2006

A Short One

Let's see, what's happened in the last few weeks... I'm still happily seeing Jennifer, so we've been spending a good amount of time together. I've also been uploading quite a few photos to Flickr, some new/old sign photos, pics from Ukranian Village, burning cars, nights out on the town, road construction, and more.

I'm also starting to work on the Ramblin' Man again after a few months of ignoring it, due largely to my own laziness, the coldness of the Genuine warehouse where it was stored and the inadequate lighting in the workspace, but now I've relocated it and hope to spend an hour or two with it most evenings after work and on the road for the spring rally season. Not sure if it'll be done in time for WKRP on April 1st, I hope so but even if it's back together it may not be broken in enough for that 11-hour ride! Jen has been talking about wanting to go to a scooter rally, maybe we'll drive down for that one in her truck?

In addition to the slender new monitor I've been enjoying the hell out of my computer speakers; they're just a cheap $25 set of satellites with a small subwoofer, but they can fill the room with sound with no problem at all, a world of difference to me who has no headphones (cats or friends destroyed my last two pairs years ago). If you're an idiot like me and you've just been using your computer's shitty little speaker, do yourself a favor and pick up some halfway-decent but cheap speakers, you'll be glad you did once you remember what a bass note sounds like.

Speaking of cool shit, a nice guy on Flickr named Joe Archie pointed me toward a great Chicago resource, the website of the Cook County Assessor's Office, which has a very cool property search feature for basically every taxable property in Cook County. If you've ever lived around here, punch in your address and (if all the info can be trusted, it seems suspect in some cases) see how old a building is, what its appraised value is, size of the lot, zoning, and the kicker: a photo of it (most I saw were dated from ca. 2000-2001, so it's like looking back 5 years in time). Since the city is changing so fast the photos could be different next time you look, so check it out now and download the relevant photos to your computer before they disappear forever. For instance, the photos showed my old apartment building when it still had an Old Style tavern downstairs (closed and all traces removed before I moved in, though Heather remembered it), my building on Malden "For Sale," before my slumlord landlord bought it, and even the building that used to be north of Scooterworks that is now a vacant lot. Very cool stuff.

Lastly, if you're a fan of The Office (I won't even stoop to differentiate the BBC version from its inferior American knock-off, which I don't even acknowledge as existing in polite conversation), you should listen to the Ricky Gervais/Steve Merchant podcasts, which are quite entertaining.

Posted by pj at February 2, 2006 10:44 PM