This video is especially for anyone who’s been to my apartment and doesn’t believe I have two cats. MisStick is the more silvery looking smaller cat on top, Harry is the darker, larger cat on the bottom. And Harry’s the kitten – he’s nearly 1, MisStick is his aunt, and she’s just about 3.

Meet my cats!

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Some of you may have already seen over in my brothers’ blog, but if you didn’t…

Last week, on 2/5, Heather and Jason brought little baby Alice into the world. She is an adorable little baby, and we’re all wondering, who will get all the toys from now on – Jason or Alice? It will be fun to watch.

And, of course, she has a blog over at AliceBergman.com. Go say hi and check out the pics!!

For what I think are obvious reasons, I have no comment on this.

However, here’s a link to a blog entry Ben Metcalfe wrote on it!

My life has been a little hectic lately – we’ve been ramping up for the Developer Platform launch at MySpace, and, as expected, things have become slightly insane.

My cats seem to love that I’m spending so much time on the couch with the laptop, though, they’re fascinated by my typing, and the mouse moving around the screen. They’ll sit and stare at the arrow moving around the screen for hours, it’s hysterical. (note to self- I so need to upload pictures of the kitties and write an entry about them!).

Anyway! We began taking pre-registrations for our Developer Platform this past Tuesday, and are launching with a sweet party in San Francisco this upcoming Tuesday. The platform site is for developers interested in working with the MySpace APIs (including Open Social).

It’s kind of sandboxed right now – it’s not out to members, but applications created can be installed on live profiles for testing. It has everything a developer needs to begin building applications…documentation, sample code, test harnesses, forums where our developers will be hanging out to help, and a team blog (I’m blogging there too).

The site will remain as is for a while – long enough so anyone who wants to can create an application and have it ready to go live on day one. Even playing field for all, no “first mover” advantages, no “launch partners.” If you’re interested – you can prereg now, or just go to the site on Feb 5th – it’ll be wide open to everyone.

I’ve written here before about how the world is changing, and it’s a blast to watch. Wanna be part of it? You could be an application developer, independently working with our api’s, OR, you can work with us. We have two openings, and I know exactly who I want. I just have to find them, and I’m hoping maybe they’re reading this blog. The job description is below. If you’re interested, go to Fox Careers and search for req FIM10590 – it’ll show up as Fox Interactive.

Product Specialist MySpace

As a Product Specialist, you will be responsible for reviewing application submissions for the MySpace Application Platform. This will include, but not be limited to reviewing all application submissions for both security and technical quality, communicating with partners and independent submissions, analyze business data to identify trends, advance our application offerings, and build partner-integration and partner-management of applications.

- Programming Experience in JavaScript, Flash/Flex/Action Script, PHP, Python, HTML, CSS, AJAX
- 2+ years experience in Internet Software Development
- Previous experience in direct communication with outside vendors/clients

Those of you who’ve read this blog for a while know that earlier this (well, now last) year, my cat passed away due to acute renal failure. She’d been in kidney failure for years, but took a very quick and sudden turn for the worse. This was right as all of the pet food scandals were happening, and she had been eating one of the brands that was recalled. Of course, I’ll never know if it was the food or not – my vet registered her as a “possible” with the FDA – but I’ll always wonder.

When I got the new kitties a few months ago, as you can imagine, I was obsessive about what I fed them. California’s a great place for obsessive cat owners. I bought the way high end organic stuff from the specialty stores, I mail ordered a few types, and I tried the more generic organic versions petco has.

And my cats won’t eat a one.

Not that I can blame them. I don’t know what it is about “organic” that translates to “crap” in the land of kitty wet-food, but for some reason, all of the wet food I tried was the same. One solid chunk of what kind of looks like meat-mousse. They also smell totally foul, every single organic food I tried stunk up my apartment. Now, if I can’t stand to even smell the stuff, how can I expect my cats to eat it?

Compare the organic crap with the regular cat food. High-end, but major label, I’m still not buying cat food at the grocery store. The food smells and looks like actual meat, and the cats can’t get enough of it.

Organic cat food also can go bad. I had mold growing out of my garbage can when I went out of town and the pet sitter threw the leftovers in there for a week. Regular cat food does not. From that, I gotta assume that there are chemicals keeping the regular cat food good in the can, and the mousse crap is the only way they can keep meat good without chemicals. I’m happier with chemicals than moldy mousse, though.

Pet food companies know that suckers like me believe that money is love – we don’t think we should ever buy cheap things for our pets. More expensive is therefore better, and I could easily spend a small fortune on organic pet food. I think this is just another way to sucker more money out of me. I normally fall for the tricks, I fully admit that, but this time I’m putting my food down. My checkbook will thank me too.

If someone has an organic cat food brand that 1) is actually recognizable as meat, 2) does not smell worse than a litter box, and 3) does not grow mold after a few days, then I’m all ears. Until then, I’m sticking with Purina.

It’s almost comical what’s taking me so long.

I can’t decide on a web host.

My domains are split between GoDaddy and Joker, and neither of them are really going to be appropriate for hosting. I’ve found a few different hosts I like, from large to small, and just can’t decide. They all cost pretty much the same, anyway. Some walk you through setup more than others (copying entries from an older blog, preinstalling templates, etc), but I’m not even sure how much THAT matters, given how flexible wordpress is.

It’s a stupid reason, isn’t it?

But I WILL get it done, moving over is going to be my “project” for the holiday break. New blog location, new year. I swear.

Anyway – if someone has a web host they adore, lemme know, I’d love some recommendations.

Lookie! Pictures of my pregnant sister-in-law.

I’m going to be an aunt! And even more important, Jason and Heather are going to be parents!! Eek!

People are weird.

Yesterday on my way to work, I was cut off by another car coming into my lane. They didn’t signal (I swear, half of LA doesn’t seem to know they have turn signals), and I’m guessing they thought I could see that their lane was blocked. I couldn’t – my car is pretty low to the ground, and I can’t really see over other cars.

The car started to move into my lane…where I was…and I honked. Then the driver actually rolls down his window, leans out, and turns around to look at me. Because I honked??

(And meanwhile, maybe 40 feet away, people were honking as they drove past the picket lines at CBS. It’s not like I was the only one in the vicinity honking.)

Now, there were two bumper stickers on the car. “Give Peace a Chance,” and “Remember Humanity.” So, when the guy looked at me, I just started laughing. I mean, come on…don’t put bumper stickers like THAT on your car and give in to road rage. Practice what you preach, maybe?

I’ve written about bumper stickers before – I personally hate them. But I unfortunately don’t have that entry online at the moment, when I cleaned house earlier this year, I yanked the public entries down along with the friends-only ones. But, I have been blogging here since 2002, and at the moment, I wish I still had that entry to link to. I think I will have to see if I can get a bunch of those entries back up when I move to wordpress this weekend.

It’ll be a fun weekend, though, who knows what this thing will look like on Monday!

Until then, drive safe, and remember the humanity, dude.

I spend a lot of my time at work on the phone talking to various people about various things. A good number of those calls involve me “meeting” someone for the first time, and it’s always just a little weird. The phone is great, since I refuse to do this kind of thing over email (I’d use IM before email – some type of real-time communication), but it’s still not the same as meeting in person.

I had a call scheduled with someone this afternoon – let’s just call him Brad (Pitt, of course, he’s in my head since he was on the Today Show this morning. mmm.). Brad’s phone number was in his email signature, so when the time came for the call, I dialed that. And the conversation went like this…

me: Hi, may I please speak to Brad?
(male voice, sounds around the same age as Brad): Brad?
me: Did I dial the wrong number?
: There isn’t a Brad here, what number were you trying to dial?
me: 555-555-555
: That’s my number, but no Brad.
me: Oh, ok, thanks
: What, did you have a date? Did he stand you up?
me: Yeah, I guess so. Damn that Brad!
: Brad probably thought you were just another date. He didn’t realize that you’re a keeper.
me (by now, I’m positive it’s either Brad on the phone, or a roommate): I guess you know Brad, then?
: No, there isn’t a Brad here. But you had a date, huh.

And here’s where I’m flat out laughing, trying to end the conversation, as he goes on and on about my date with Brad.

Conversation finally ends, I email Brad, apologize for trashing his rep, and ask him to call me.

Brad calls a few minutes later, and never mentions my weird email about ruining his reputation.

Wouldn’t you have at least asked me what happened when I dialed the other number? You know, the one at the bottom of multiple emails as his signature? Why was I talking about his reputation?

But nope. Not a word about it, and we talked for a good 15 – 20 minutes. So there was certainly time to ask.

I find the whole thing very amusing, and am now fascinated by this mystery. If that guy didn’t know Brad, why on earth was he going on and on and on to me? Everyone gets the occasional wrong number where the person on the other end won’t shut up, but this was a little too, I don’t know, familiar? I was near positive the guy on the phone knew Brad. I STILL feel like he must have known Brad.

I highly doubt I’ll ever learn more about this, although I fully intend to ask Brad about it again. There may not even be anything to learn – I could have just dialed a wrong number Brad happened to write in his emails again and again.

Logic says it’s nothing. But you know? I just have a feeling it’s gotta be something.

(found via Digg) – Top 150 Graffiti Artists on Facebook. It’s pretty amazing the art these people are doing. I can barely draw a smiley face! Well worth a look even if you don’t hang out on facebook. Well worth the blog entry too. Preview here if you realllllly don’t want to go to facebook.

And on another, sadder note, da, I believe I shall be moving to WordPress soon. I’ve had this account forever, it’s permanent and all, but this is probably the last straw for me.