I'm sitting in my almost finished new room listening to Blind Lemon Jefferson sing songs about Jesus and uploading a few more photos to flickr from the Griffith Park fire we had yesterday. Over 800 acres burned and these new pics are the aftermath, as close as I could get anyway. This pic in particular shows just how close the fire got to the houses neighboring the park. The entire area still smells like a back yard fire and there's a good coating of ash on just about everything. Apparently this was the biggest fire in the city since 1960. We rode our bikes up to the park to try and see what we could see but there are guards on just about every street keeping people out and we didn't feel like off roading to try and sneak in so those distanced shots are all you get at the moment, from me anyway. When we got back I jumped in the shower and just sat on the floor for I don't even know how long with the water pouring on my head. It's crazy how close so many of my friends came to losing everything - I know a handful of folks who live just a few blocks from where those photos were taken and I'm barely a mile away myself. A little extra wind in a different direction and things could have been very different yesterday night. And today it's back to business as usual, I still hear sirens in my bedroom but it's the normal "you live in a city, there's always shit going down" kind of sirens, rather than the "OMFG FIRE!!" ones I heard all last night. Funny how things bounce back like that.

I just got a note that this completely insane bill was passed just now in Thailand which makes it illegal to do anything that anyone might find offensive online, which will pretty much make it impossible to be a blogger in Thailand. This is a really scary issue for a lot of folks.

This afternoon I did an interview with the Washington Post today about escaping from e-mail and using autoresponders to help break the cycle. I think it went well, but we'll see. I'm already noticing a decrease in e-mail volume, though maybe people are just sick of me which is an entirely plausible theory.

I've also been preaching the webapp gospel to anyone who will listen and believe it or not some actually are. I just got all of my "todo" items into Google Notebook though was a little disappointed at how it was kind of just a list and didn't really have too many functions - and just like that I came across Todoist. Wow, what a difference actually designing it to be a todo list makes. Google Notebook is just that, a notebook for taking notes - todoist is all about todo lists. I love it and will be converting all the boring lists I just put in GN over to that ASAP. The other thing I'm really digging that I'm not sure I mentioned or not is Twitbin - a Firefox plug in that puts your twitter feeds right into your browser as a side bar. So bad ass.

It's officially 2 weeks until I should have my new dressers. I sure am glad the salesman and the website told me I'd have 'em in a week! Viva la backorder.