Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet...

Hey all,

Hope all's well. Just a few things to blog about today.

Tomorrow's going to be a pretty quiet day at work. More than half of the team is going to be out on vacation. Which is fine though, because I have to buckle down and get some work done tomorrow. Plus it's my favourite day, Jeans day. I think I may get paid tomorrow too.

I learned a a couple of things today, all quite interesting.


First:
I found out that the placeholder text (a.k.a greeked text) that I use in some of my information designs actually kind of means something! At my job, I always get comments from people regarding the Latin looking placeholder text that I use. Here's an example:

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet consectateur nonummy lorenzino. Interdum volgus videt, est ubi peccat. Si veteres ita miratur laudatque poetas, ut nihil anteferat, nihil illis comparet, errat.

At first glance, it looks like regular text, but then the comments usually roll in, like, "it's all greek to me," or "is this some secret code?" Seriously, I'm not making this up.

Anyway, so people usually ask me what it means. And I usually just tell them that it's fake, meaningless text that I put in to make a page layout design more realistic. Apparently, my boss's boss and her boss saw some of my designs and were asking me about it today. So I turned to my trusty (but quite possibly shady) friend google and looked up stuff about the story behind the text. Again, the internet never fails. Behold, a site dedicated to the Lorem Ipsum text! Just now, doing another quick search (to find the url), I found another site as well. Interesting translation, I tell you. Not sure why it's so standard-ly used though :)


Second:
I have this "guideline" if you will, of car purchasing. I figure that I should buy a car that costs no more than the decade that contains your age. So in other words, if I'm 27 years old, I shouldn't buy a car that's more than USD$29,999.99. When I turn 30, then my max will be USD$39,999.99, and so on.

I'm sure some of you may think it's a stupid rule, but I figure it'll give me something to look forward to as I get older. I've also felt strongly about capping my car purchase at say, $55k to $60k. I think I'd feel weird driving around / owning a car that was so expensive (and not on a car lot or the auto show). I'd always be nervous about people molesting or violating my car somehow.

Well after today, consider the cap lifted. Well, at least raised :)

One of my neighbours had a company car for part of this week (she has to turn it back in on Friday). A "competitive analysis"vehicle, if you will. How's that for competitive analysis? I look at websites, she looks at cars from other companies. Anyway, the car that was under analysis? A black Mercedes Benz CLK500 coupe. I saw this car yesterday on my walk around the 'hood, but I didn't see who was driving it. I was definitely impressed though.

My neighbour had IMed me last night, and I asked her about it. I got a chance to check it out today after dinner. Damn, it was a nice car. Totally hot. Complete with the AMGizzle kit. Everything about the car was just excellent. The fit, finish, the smell. All the techno gear, fun gadgets, etc. Loved it.

Base price? about $53,000. As seen? About $64,000. And I wasn't that uncomfortable being around it ;)

Seriously though, I would probab ly feel a little uncomfortable at first buying and driving around a car like that, but I'm sure I could get used to it :) It's not like it's going to happen tomorrow, so I'll have some time to prepare...

-Kirk