Congratulations, Eileen and Richard (and Aidan, too!)…

…on the purchase of your new house. You’re in serious grown-up territory now.

Unfortunately, you’re also in another kind of territory, according to this article in The Onion:

According to Kiplinger’s senior writer Peter Akkaf, in addition to buying more homes, lame-o’s are refinancing existing mortgages to take advantage of lower rates.

“Lame-o’s across the country are making appointments at financial institutions to ask men in ugly neckties and women with hairstyles 10 years out of style to adjust their mortgages to a slightly more favorable rate,” Akkaf said. “When that’s done, they return to their homes, where they stare at their $12.99 Monet prints from Target and listen to Andrea Bocelli on their mini-stereos. What kind of life is that?”

Asked if the recent warm temperatures could have goosed the market, National Realtors’ Board president Maggie Zadora rolled her eyes.

“God, if that’s true, that’s sad,” Zadora said. “It’s like, ‘Ooh, Mary, it’s 10 degrees warmer outside! Instead of going out and doing something fun or creative, let’s all pile into the minivan and search for the bland colonial of our dreams!'”

(The full article is here.)

But seriously — it’s a lovely looking place and any house that has Aidan’s approval has mine.

Friday

Great day today.

The weather, once again, is summer-like. I went out for a quick walk down Queen Street to get some AAA batteries for my Visor. During that four-block trip, the following happened:

• I ran into Sandi and Karin, whom I met at the March Kick Ass Karaoke. They were having lunch at the Rivoli’s patio and chatted with them for a while. Good fun.
• Played some music beside Johnathan and Michelle, who were having a slow panhandling day. It helped net them about ten bucks.
• One of the girls who works at HMV, where I went to buy the batteries, asked if (a) I could actually play the accordion and (b) if there was some off chance that I might happen to know any Radiohead songs. I haven’t memorized the lyrics to their more recent stuff, so I went with a number I could play in my sleep: Creep.

  “As you can see,” she said with a shocking wide grin to her co-workers and the end of the number, “I am paralyzed with joy!”

  Brining joy and merriment to the world is one of my primary goals in life. That and getting toasted. Nicely toasted.

• A block away from home, a woman hauling a lot of beer to an office party asked if I could give her some accordion lessons. She bought a Hohner accordion at a yard sale a year ago and has always wanted to play, but has no idea how. I made arrangements to drop by her office — she works at Bruce Mau’s design firm, just down the street from me.

(Check the Hohner link in the above paragraph. One of the tag lines on their accordion page says “the resurgence of the accordion”. More proof that this is the Millennium of the Accordion, folks.)

I’m also having a good time working on this programming contract, an “Are you depressed?” quiz that runs on Palm and Visor handhelds. I’m doing it in NS Basic and should have it nicely wrapped up for the end of the afternoon. Once again, I’ve got the door that leads from my room to the back deck open and the stereo playing some old school funk as I’m coding.

Big date tonight. Have to make myself all purty soon.

All in all, I’m having a great day. Much better than the guy below:

The gorgeousness continues

It’s another summer-like day here in T-dot.

For those of you who’ve never been to Casa di AccordionGuy, the entire south wall of my bedroom/office/pleasure dome is glass — a wall-sized window and a glass door leading to the back deck. I’ve got the back door propped open so that I can catch some of the nice air outside as I type this. Once I get the back deck cleaned up, I should be able to take the laptop out there and even have wireless Internet connectivity, thanks to our AirPort. I’m at the computer with Flaresound’s Deep Beats on the sound system and a lemonade in my hand. For an unemployed guy, I live pretty well.

Actually, I’m not quite unemployed anymore. Today marks my first steps into the Land of PDA Development (that’s PDA as “Personal Digital Assistant“, not “Public Display of Affection“). It’s also my return to contract work, something which paid my bills between 1997 and 2000. Dave Groff, a friend of mine as well as one of the partners and creative directors at the first place I worked after graduating (Mackerel Interactive Multimedia — here’s a story Cory wrote about the place), dropped me a line the other day. I’m now on contact to develop some apps for him, the first one being some kind of Palm application for a drug company. I’ll be doing it in NS Basic, and I’ll write about my experiences with it soon.

Those daily trips to the gym are beginning to pay off. My pants seem a little bit looser and the accordion sure feels a lot lighter. Two months ago, I’d have called you insane had you told me I’d be hitting the weight room every other day. I may have to cultivate an accent like Arnie’s.

I just had a phone conversation with a cute girl who makes me laugh more than anyone in recent memory.

It’s good to be the king.

More on the dearth of singles

One dirty trick the record companies use to squeeze money out of customers — I’m really beginning to loathe the term consumer — is to entice you to buy the same album over and over. The Arbiter Online explains how it works:

The dearth of commercially released singles is bad enough for hits that are available on albums, but worse when the version that hits the radio is not the version available on the album. Ricky Martin and Christina Aguilera’s hit duet “Nobody Wants to be Lonely,” is not the version on Martin’s album – which features a lackluster solo vocal by Martin. Same with the percussion heavy version of Enya’s “Only Time,” a far cry from the traditional rendering of the song featured on the album. Anyone who wants to purchase the last two hit Jennifer Lopez records will have to shell out another $20 for her latest remix anthology, the R&B versions of her songs popular on the radio are very different from the dance pop versions of those songs on her album.

Remixes, too, are increasingly unavailable to consumers even as expensive maxi-singles. The remixes of Dido’s songs, often better than the originals, though huge hits at clubs, were not released to consumers at all. To get a hold of those, fans would have to buy an expensive reissue of her “No Angel” album featuring a bonus disc of dance mixes. Recently, Mary J. Blige’s latest album was also repressed and re-released with bonus mixes. So much for people who already bought the albums in their original forms.

It’s a clever trick. The costs of creating the original tracks in a re-issue have already been covered, yet the re-issue costs the same as the old album. Money for nothing and chicks for free!

Here’s my favourite line from the article:

I can see buying a whole album by some critic’s darling or classic act, but it’s not as if I’d purchase the $20 Baha Men CD just for “Who Let the Dogs Out?”

Woof woof!