On May 4th, the University of Alaska Southeast held its commencement ceremony.  After almost two years of hard work, Oksana finally received her fake Masters of Business Administration diploma.  Fake?  Yes, well, see… the document they handed out on stage was actually a placeholder.  She still has a couple more electives one capstone and one elective to go and won’t officially qualify for an MBA until the end of August…

Still, I’m mighty proud of her.  When she started the program back in 2006, it seemed like a great idea.  She had her day job pretty much under control and we could get free tuition through my university benefits.  A quick two years of evening homework assignments and she’d have three new letters to put after her name as well as a head start on the educational requirements for a CPA.  Unfortunately, we soon realized that the “free tuition” didn’t cover the inexplicable $400 “super tuition” fee that was appended to every class, and when her job’s workload doubled last year, she had far fewer hours in the week to tackle homework.

Me?  Thanks for asking.  I’ve been playing a lot of World of Warcraft.  Sometimes, if she manages to keep all the plates spinning, I get to see her on Sunday evenings.

I wish I could say that we finally see the light at the end of the tunnel, but I’ll let you in on a little secret:  I’m only going to give her a small break at the end of August before pushing her to study for the CPA exam.  If she doesn’t do it now, while her study habits and time management skills are sharply honed, I think it will be much more difficult in the future.
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This is so cool!  I just received my blog-turned-book in the mail from Lulu.com!  It turned out better than I’d dare to hope!  Exclamation points should be reserved to represent forceful dialog, but who cares?!

Seriously, though, A Midgett Blog, Volume I: 2003 has been published and I couldn’t be happier.  It’s a 166-page, perfect-bound, 6″ x 9″ trade paperback.  It’s somewhat of a hybrid between a full-size hardback and a mass-market paperback.  I put so many hours into learning all the ins and outs of self-publishing and spent so much time designing the layout of the pages and the cover that I worried that I would be disillusioned by anything less than printing perfection.  Even with heightened expectations, Lulu doesn’t disappoint.

Technically, I suppose you would have to say that this book is “printed,” rather than “published.”   I looked into the two publishing options offered by Lulu:  Published by Lulu and Published by You.  In the former, Lulu will reserve an actual ISBN for your work, effectively listing it worldwide in every major bibliographic database.  Walk into any bookstore, do a search on Amazon.com, and you’ll be able to order your book.  With the Published by You option, you’d be listed as the publisher, which would be cool, but you would also have to go through the hassle of registering your own ISBN through the US ISBN Agency.  Both options add at least $100 to the cost of printing.  I decided to just print it.  Who’s going to be looking for my blog at a bookstore?

Having a book “published,” with all the acceptance that the word implies, would certainly be something to be proud of.  I would have thought I’d have experienced some niggling disappointment when I passed on the whole ISBN thing.  Turns out, not even a little.  I have an artifact now, a physical thing that sits on my bookshelf.  For some reason, that’s just so much cooler than digital bits flitting around in cyberspace.

A single printing cost me about $30, which I don’t think is terrible considering that a book of this size would probably have a retail price of $15.  The cost would drop all the way down to $8 or so if I were to print the interior pages in black and white.  However, I wanted the freedom to color some of the text, not to mention keeping the original color photos.  If I really wanted to pinch pennies, I could have reduced the number of pages by shrinking the font size of the body text style, too.  Actually, I think the default font size came out a bit too large, anyway.  A good thing, too, considering the rough draft of Volume II is clocking in at 450 pages ($72!).

Besides the slightly large font, there’s not a lot I don’t like about my first printing.  The glossy black cover attracts fingerprints, but I can live with that.  The dark blue text box on the back cover doesn’t seem to be differentiated from the black background at all.  The edge of the spine is worn down to white in a couple places, but I think that probably happened during shipping.  I did notice one typographical error while flipping through the book, but I’m not about to proof-read the material yet again just to see if there are more.  Easy fixes, if I decide to order another copy or two.

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Friday, February 9th, was the day that the social group I’ve been a part of for almost five years sort of imploded. But that was the same night that the gas station next to our apartment almost exploded, so I don’t think my brain will dwell much on the former memory.

It was midnight and the last two people were just about to head out when we heard the sirens. Someone remarked, “Weird. I can’t tell which direction they’re going.” Turns out that was because they started up at the fire station across the street and drove all of 100 feet before stopping alongside the gas station.

It was cold out, hovering around 0 degrees Fahrenheit. Our landlord had left a note on the door earlier that evening warning of the 80mph gusts and -30 degree wind chill factor. Inside, we set both sinks to run with their requested “pencil-width” streams to prevent the pipes from freezing.

We crowded out on the deck, watching the fire crews set up. They couldn’t find the fire hydrant that was almost beneath us, because some asshat had parked his car directly in front of it. Only after we got the fireman’s attention were they able to find it, hook up their hose, and snake it around the car. Out in front, they had the street cordoned off, turning back traffic from both directions.

It was far too cold to stay outside, so I placed my video camera on the railing and went back inside. We pulled the sofa out, swiveling it around to face the windows, and watched the show while pointedly disregarding the implications of sitting in front of a plate-glass window while a gas station burned 100 yards away.

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In planning our trip to Australia, it didn’t take a lot of brain power to realize we were not going to be able to see everything in three weeks. Australia is huge. Imagine if someone asked you for a three-week itinerary for all the points of interest in the United States. Planning a visit to a continent is like that.

After much discussion, Oksana and I decided to constrict our movement to just two locations: Sydney and its surroundings and Cairns and the Great Barrier Reef. Of course, three weeks is barely enough to explore either spot in depth, never mind splitting our time between the two. It worked for us, however. I only wish we could have made the trip out to Uluru.

While in Sydney, we managed to plan a quick jaunt out to the Blue Mountains. While still pretty close to the city – a couple hours by train – it was far enough away to almost be considered a third stop on our trip. If nothing else, the rugged landscape would be a nice change of pace from the city and ocean.

Everything I knew about the Blue Mountains came from a book I’d read years before called In a Sunburned Country, by Bill Bryson. Two facts stood out in my memory. The first, that the “blue” in the Blue Mountains was actually a visible blue haze in the air from all the eucalyptus trees’ exuded oil. Second, that the mountain range was considered impassible by every explorer to make the attempt for the first 100 years or so after Australia’s colonization. I suppose the reason I remembered each was because I had trouble believing both.

As our train left the city behind and the Sydney suburbs gave way to forests, I found myself peering out the window, looking for a gap in the hillside large enough for a view to the horizon. Was the famous blue haze only visible when the weather was just right? Worse yet, could it be seasonal? I tried to convince myself that the tiny bit of haze I could see beyond the trees was actually blue.

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So, 2008.

Yeah, I didn’t get as much writing done over the break as I’d hoped. Instead, I fiddled around with WordPress a lot, both on my own sites and someone else’s. If you’re the type of person that likes to read this via the RSS feed – And why shouldn’t you? The new version of WordPress tried to stop me from including the whole entry, but I fixed it. I got your back! – you might click through and take a quick look at the new design. I frittered away a lot of time on it while procrastinating. Hope you like it the one time you see it.

Looking over my blog’s web statistics for 2007 was enlightening, though I doubt any of you care. Just a hair shy of 50,000 “unique” visitors last year. Well, not really. That statistic resets every month, so there’s no telling. But still… scary on so many levels. Who are all you people?

On a related note, I did an ego search on Google the other day for the word “midgett.” This blog is third on the list after Midgett Realty and the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter! That’s insane. “Arlo” shows up on the second page, but I doubt I’ll ever climb to the stratospheric reaches of Arlo & Janis and Mr. Guthrie.

What else is new? Hey, remember my idea to create a hard-bound book out of all these blog entries? Well, once I got to work on it, I realized publishing is harder than it looks. Specifically, proofing, editing, and designing the layout for a manuscript is a bitch. I scaled the project back, however, and I’m almost ready to try self-publishing a volume encapsulating just the first year of the blog. If it turns out, I’ll move on to 2004 soon. Right now I have a nice, big Word file – boy do I love Office 2007, by the way – with copious footnotes, a table of contents, and 4 or 5 appendices. Only thing holding me back is the foreword. Anyone want to write that for me?

Also, with the end of 2007, my first timeline was officially complete. I slapped up a new one for 2008, but my life has been boring so far; nothing to report. I went ahead and archived the old one, though it makes me feel bad that I didn’t write about many of the things on there. Guess it’s time for a quick synopsis:

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Right around the holiday season last year, I noticed that HDTVs on the market were finally starting to combine all of the best features. Full 1080p resolution, low-latency/burn-in free LCD panels, built-in HDTV tuners, 1920×1200 RGB support; it looked like it was almost time for me to enter the market. Oksana always said I could get an HDTV when the price dropped to $1500…

I decided that 2007 would be the year we upgraded, but we had to wait until August 20^th before we found the model with the right price/performance ratio.

Months before, Costco had sent out a mailer with upcoming coupons. There it was, finally! $200 off a 52-inch Vizio with all the features above and more. Waiting three months was torture.

I researched everything I could about the Vizio and its competitors. There were few other 52″ models on the market and the only other two I entertained buying were from Sony and Sharp. Both were probably better than the Vizio, but they both cost at least $1500 more, too.

As the magical date neared, I began seeing reviews of the Vizio appear online. Apparently some Costco warehouses were selling the TVs before the coupon went active. On Friday, August 17^th, I went to my own Costco for a look-see. Sure enough, on the top shelf, four giant boxes sat wrapped in cellophane – they had the 52″ in stock three days before I could use the coupon.

I decided to see if I could pull a fast one. I talked to one of the floor managers, asked him if I could buy one that day and then “price match” it the following Monday with my coupon. In effect, I would pay $200 more, but get that $200 refunded after the weekend. Unfortunately, not only wouldn’t he do the price matching, not only wouldn’t he even sell me the TV, he wouldn’t even let me reserve one! “I’m sorry, we only have 4 of them in stock and if they’re already sold out when the coupon drops, my customers will kill me.” His suggestion? “Just be there when the doors open at 10am and you’ll be sure to get one.”

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We’ve been back from Down Under for about a week and a half now, but I’ve been consistently busy catching up with work and friends.  I plan to write a lot about our experiences in the Southern hemisphere once I sort through the 2500 photos and six-and-a-half hours of video we took.  I’ve got a month off from work beginning next week, and I suspect I’ll devote some my time to that (as well as belatedly writing down any thoughts on the unnoted items in my 2007 timeline above.)  In the meantime, I’ve jotted down a few observations on our experiences in Australia:

New Words
Australia has a great collection of new words for familiar things.  Dangerous jellyfish are ‘stingers;’ the Portuguese Man-o-War is a ‘Blue Bottle.’  Saltwater crocodiles are ‘Salties,’ which I think is a dangerously precocious name (like calling a grisly bear ‘Teddy.’)  I could probably sit down and think of a dozen more I picked up, but the only ones that come to mind right now are the decidedly British ‘rubbish bins,’ ‘fish and chips,’ and ‘lifts.’

How Ya Goin’, Mate?
“G’day, mate.  How ya goin’?”

He’s a mate, she’s a mate, everyone can be a mate!  I knew that Aussies said ‘mate’ a lot.  What I didn’t realize was that mate is gender agnostic. Which makes sense, really.  My mate is a girl.

I got used to mate, but “How ya goin’?” always sounded like someone couldn’t decide between “How ya doin’?” and “How’s it goin’?”

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