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Monday Mash-Up, 3/17/08

Post author:Guy LeCharles Gonzalez
Post published:March 17, 2008
Post category:Personal
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1) I am swamped. Between the start of the new job only one week away (which kicks off with a trip out to Cincinnati) and the [mostly good] stress of our impending house purchase (attorney review is winding down; inspection is on Saturday), I’m a week behind on Spindle‘s March update and am going to have to burn the midnight oil tonight, after attending a Little League Coaches meeting, to get it done for tomorrow.

2) I am thrilled. This will be the oddest and coolest job transition I’ve ever made as it’s effectively a promotion but with a change of employer and scenery. The additional responsibility is a welcome challenge, even with the sharply raised stakes, as is the opportunity to put my stamp on two more magazines. Coupled with the success of Spindle, and my not-always-clearly-thought-out career goals are starting to come to fruition. Throw in the new house, our dream house by almost every realistic definition, and the fact that in general, things seem to really be falling into place all of a sudden — ie: as I’m typing this, our lender just called me to say rates dropped and we just locked in for 5.5%! — and I find myself looking both ways 5 times before I cross the street!

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Spring Cleaning

Post author:Guy LeCharles Gonzalez
Post published:March 15, 2008
Post category:Personal
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I spent the morning updating the backends of this site and Spindle’s — WordPress 2.3.3 and Joomla 1.0.15, respectively — as well as a number of the plug-ins and modules that had new updates released recently, and finally found a new WP template I liked better than my previous one which had a couple of cosmetic bugs I never could figure out how to fix.

~~The picture up top is temporary, at least in size, because I ran out of time, but~~ any feedback on the readability and functionality of everything else would be most appreciated.

PS: Yes, thanks to a hectic couple of weeks, I’m behind on the latest Spindle update which was scheduled for 3/11 but am hoping to have it ready to go on Tuesday morning!

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The Ideal Woman

Post author:Guy LeCharles Gonzalez
Post published:March 14, 2008
Post category:Personal
Post comments:4 Comments

Men’s Health reports on an “ideal woman” survey by some British dating website:

There’s no accounting for taste. Some guys go for Salma Hayek, others for Jessica Simpson.

A British dating website polled 66,000 men about their female ideal and came up with someone who sounds closer to Jessica than Salma: blue eyes, long blonde hair, 5-8, 130 pounds, extremely fit, etc.

(Yes, we know Jessica has brown eyes. We were speaking generally.)

The Brits also said they like her to wear glasses sometimes, have a wacky, optimistic personality, not smoke, drink occasionally, and make less money than him.

Never mind that anyone who thinks Jessica Simpson is more attractive than Salma Hayek is crazy in my book, and we’ll ignore the apparent libidinous librarian fetish (mainly because I kind of understand that one!), it sounds like British men are a bit insecure on the financial front, what with preferring their ideal woman make less money than they do. That makes no sense to me.

Interestingly, British women are apparently superficial golddiggers, so that might explain things a little bit:

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Toys R Us Kid no more

Post author:Guy LeCharles Gonzalez
Post published:March 12, 2008
Post category:Personal
Post comments:5 Comments

One of the primary things that separates the men from the boys is home ownership. More than marriage or fatherhood, buying a home is arguably the biggest commitment the average person can make, because you can always get divorced and disown your kid(s), but hell hath no fury like a mortgage payment scorned!

I’ve never bought into the real estate as investment theory because first and foremost, a house should be a home, so I would never take out anything other than a traditional mortgage. (A VA loan, actually, officially the best thing to come out of my service in the Army.) Way too many people are paying a hard price for overreaching a few years ago when their ~~sucker~~ adjustable rates adjusted sharply upwards and the promise of easy re-financing turned out to not be as easy as they were told it would be and their homes were suddenly worth less than they paid for them. When you buy a house to live in it, and buy one that’s within your means, barring some unexpected life-changing event, you’re going to be all right.

With our lease up at the end of June and the market in New Jersey having tanked compared to three years ago when we were looking last time, we decided to give it another shot and spent the last two weekends checking out more than 20 houses, an enlightening variety that ranged from good solid maybes to “good luck that with that!” We put a lowball bid on one last week but didn’t like the counter-offer and, after a second viewing, had some serious misgivings about its short-term prospects and didn’t put forth a second bid.

Then, completely unexpectedly, our realtor pulled a Ty Pennington and showed us a house that wasn’t on our list and was just far enough out of our price range to make us sad.

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Hello, March. You’re looking good!

Post author:Guy LeCharles Gonzalez
Post published:March 10, 2008
Post category:Media Personal
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This past Winter has sucked on a number of levels, not the least of which is the apparent Gonzalez Plague that’s been bouncing between the four of us for what seems like three months now. It was India’s turn this weekend — she stayed home sick today after not being able to sleep well with congestion, a sore throat and possible ear infection — while I’m still recovering from my go-round last week.

But March is slowly shaping up to be a banner month for the Gonzalez Clan as the house search — of which I’m not allowed to talk about any more until we have an accepted offer and signed contract — took an interesting turn this weekend. The upshot is we’re well positioned to find something a lot better than we could have hoped for three years ago, and have an outside shot at something particularly amazing if we can pull it off. Fingers crossed, please!

Of good news I can talk about, though, I put in my two weeks notice at the 9-to-5 this morning and as of March 24th will become the Advertising Sales Director for a trio of consumer enthusiast magazines, including the one I’ve been selling for the past year. (Yes, I was poached!) My first day at the new job will be almost 18 months to the day I made the move from marketing to sales at my previous job, a place which has seemingly slipped further into the toilet over the past year, and will put me three years ahead of the “5 Year Plan” I put forth while still there back in 2006, when the latest Marketing Director came onboard.

At that time, I said I wanted to move into sales within 2 years and then into an Ad Director position by the 5th year. Instead, I managed to pull off the former 6 months later and the latter in only 2 years! I’m still waiting for the high to wear off and the pressure to set in, but until it does, it’s celebration time!

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Know Hope

Post author:Guy LeCharles Gonzalez
Post published:March 5, 2008
Post category:Media Personal
Post comments:2 Comments

April 22nd is a long way off and my nerves are a little bit frayed right now so I’m going to step away from politics for a while here on the blog and focus on some other stuff (see below).

For a final bit of perspective on the meaning of last night’s results, I cede the floor to the inimitable Andrew Sullivan:

Obama supporters should not be dismayed.

Obama has a tougher, nastier opponent in the Clintons than he does in McCain. If he wins this by a long, grueling struggle, he will be more immune to the lazy, stupid criticism that he is some kind of flash in the pan, he has more opportunity to prove that there is a great deal of substance behind the oratory, he has more of a chance to meet and talk with the electorate he will need to win in the fall.

I think the argument for Obama is easily strong enough to withstand the egos of the Clintons. The more people see that her case is almost entirely a fear-based one and his is almost entirely a positive one, the more he will win the moral victory as well as the delegate count. In the cold light of day, the bruising news that the Clintons are not yet dead seems less onerous.

Know hope.

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Monday Mash-up, 2/25/08

Post author:Guy LeCharles Gonzalez
Post published:February 25, 2008
Post category:Personal
Post comments:2 Comments

1) Virginia was simultaneously relaxing and a bit of a disappointment as the weather sucked the whole time we were there so we didn’t get any outside time. I stayed home on Wednesday night intending to get to bed early but my empty-house-insomnia was in full effect and I ended up falling asleep around 2am. When I booked my 8am flight the week before, I hadn’t really thought about the travel time to JFK and ended up catching a cab at 5:45am to get there in time, passing out later that afternoon from exhaustion. The kids had a good time, though, as my mother pulled out all of the stops in the arts & crafts department, and my stepfather spent more time with them than he ever has, teaching Isaac how to play card games and hanging out with India watching TV. Also, Salomé cooked ox tails. Yum!

2) We caught Juno while we were there and absolutely loved it! I rank it up there with Say Anything and have tentatively penciled it in to my all-time Top 10 Favorites list. Ellen Page is adorable and sassy, reminding me a little bit of both Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz and Brooke Wacha, both in and out of character, and I totally related to Michael Cera’s understated Bleeker, who reminded me a lot of my not-cool, not-totally-uncool high school self. Interestingly, I picked up [Juno writer and Oscar winner!] Diablo Cody’s memoir Candy Girl : A Year in the Life of an Unlikely Stripper in hardcover off of the bargain table at Barnes & Noble afterwards, and am looking forward to reading it. I suspect any additional copies have been taken to a back room and the paperback edition has been placed on a prominent display table in all of their stores as of this morning.

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