On Friday, I wrote that it looked like I had found a roommate. Well, Mike and I went over to the leasing office and signed all the papers on Monday. So it’s official now — whew. Not that I was expecting any problems, but it’s a relief to have all the Ts crossed and Is dotted.

It’s also nice to have a couch once again — Jason took his futon with him when he moved out, so I had nothing to sit on for a while. But, Mike has a blue L-shaped sectional couch that is much more comfortable than my floor ;).

I’ve been looking for a roommate for a while now and I may have found one. Since Jason moved out, I’ve been signed up with several roommate-finding services (Roommates.com RoommateAccess and RoomieMatch, to name some of the more useful ones).

As usual, the services would send me matches every day based on my location and the apartment’s rent. I’d look over of them, and send messages to people that I thought would make for a reasonable roommate.

So, among those, I sent a message to Michael yesterday afternoon. He stopped by to check out the apartment yesterday evening and today we’ve agreed to become roommates. We’re going to the leasing office tomorrow to fill out the paperwork. It all seems too easy ;).

If all goes to plan, Michael will be moving in this weekend (since he has to be out of his current apartment by the end of the month). I’ve offered to help him move, so this may be the second move I’m helping with this weekend. It’ll be good exercise, so I don’t mind.

Since buying my new camera (Nikon Coolpix 5700), I’ve been reading various books on photography as well (including the National Geographic Photography Field Guide), which I’ve found very useful).

In that book, they mentioned what should have been obvious to me: many cities have camera clubs. So, I checked Google for “Dallas camera club” and, what do you know, there is a Dallas Camera Club. They have meetings every 1st and 3rd Tuesday of of the month. The 1st-Tuesday meeting is for their photography competitions, while the 3rd-Tuesdays are regular meetings.

The meetings are held at one of the rooms of Parker Chiropractic College, which is just at 35 & Walnut Hill. So, as yesterday was a 3rd-Tuesday, I decided to check it out. The Chiropractic College was easy to find, and it only had a few buildings so finding the room wasn’t tough either.

When I first stepped in to room 226, I noticed that more than half the room were retirees. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised, since the field of photography has been around for over a century. But I guess I didn’t expect to have many interests in common with older Americans.

Before the meeting, there were snacks and drinks. The drinks were all 2-liter bottles, but even included Kroger-brand “Caffeine Free Diet Cola” — ahh, the guilt-free brown water I love. Of course, there were also cookies, which probably counteracted any carb-savings I got out of the soda ;).

For what it’s worth, the cookies were of three varieties: those Snackwells Devils Food cookies (ehh), and soft chocolate chip cookies in two sizes (one set about Chips Ahoy sized and another set of about 3” each). Perhaps the cookies are different each month.

The meeting itself was well run and interesting. As with any club of this type, there was the occasional nervous banter of the President between introducing speakers (but, I can live with that, I suppose).

The first presentation was a PowerPoint-based slideshow (using a projector connected to a laptop) of the club’s recent fieldtrip to a Dogwood Farm (it was like a botanical garden for trees, or such). Pleasantly, the slideshow was set to auto-advance evey four or five seconds (woo, no chit-chat between every slide!). As I understand it, the slideshow was made of contributed pictures from club members; so, some were great while others weren’t quite as good.

The second presentation was on creating simulated multiple-exposures using Photoshop. This one amazed some of the Photoshop-newbies, but it basically consisted of sandwiching two photographs over separate layers and varying the transparency between the two. I didn’t mind that so much, but the information wasn’t something that I’d regularly use.

After the meeting, I talked with a few of the members. They were all very friendly and, of course, rather knowledgeable about photography (I counted at least two people who had bought a Canon EOS-10D, which impressed me). I thought the meeting was worthwhile and I’ll probably try to go again.

There’re Meetups for all kinds of things, but I’ve been mostly to Slashdot Meetups. I went to one Linux Meetup back in January (to California Pizza Kitchen) but there hasn’t been one since then (they’re automatically cancelled if less than five people sign up).

However, there’s another Linux Meetup tomorrow (Tuesday), at the Cafe Brazil on Elm Street. I'm not sure what I'll order, though I often order a make-your-own omelette with sun-dried tomatoes, feta cheese, and chorizo sausage. Hmm, yeah, that could be good.

Jason moved out last Wednesday and I’m still looking for a roommate. I’ve posted an ad on CraigsList and also on several roommate-specific services (RoommateService, RoommateClick, RoomieMatch and RoommateAccess).

If roommate-finding were like fishing, you could say that I’ve had a few “nibbles” recently (some people have expressed interest) but not much beyond that (none have yet filled out a rental application).

However, if more than one person goes as far as filling out the rental application and would like to move in, what would be a fair means of choosing? Preference in order of when they first contacted me? Preference in order of when they sent in the rental application? Or something else entirely?

I don’t necessarily expect to have to make a decision, since some people will probably drop out of the running and I may end up with just one person in the end. But, I can’t rule out the possibility.

Jason is moving out at the end of this month, so I’ll have a spare room in my apartment. The new lease would be for eight or up to ten months.

I live at 75 and Northwest Hwy in The Village (The Hill, specifically). It’s a 1244 sq ft two-level townhome with two bedrooms, each having its own bathroom and a walk-in closet (there’s also an additional bathroom downstairs).

There’s a washer/dryer right in the apartment, and the kitchen includes a microwave, garbage disposal, and a dishwasher. The floorplan is available online.

Cable-modem is already setup, and there’s a port in each bedroom (via a Linksys gateway). I’ve also setup wireless networking (Wi-Fi/802.11b) in case you have a PDA or laptop that can make use of that.

Rent is $1007 in total, or about $504 each. The utilities, listed separately below, add on about $100/month (of course, you could opt out of paying cable-tv or cable-modem if you didn’t use those).

• Water & Electricity - about $50/month each
• Phone - about $10/month each
• Cable-tv - about $23/month each
• Cable-modem - about $23/month each

I’m available on ICQ (3812078) and AIM (standardsfanatic). Or, if you would prefer to talk over the phone, my cell number is (469) 569-7421.

Earlier today, Leia mentioned to me about Traffic.com where you can get real-time traffic reports for many metropolitan cities. Of course, Dallas is there, but several other cities such as Pittsburgh are also listed.

My only gripe is that this would have been an ideal opportunity to make use of the “title” attribute on the accident-links — instead of including the incident report (or an excerpt of it) in the title tags, their text just says “Click here for more info” :-/.

From time to time, I have a hankering for a good pizza, and I especially enjoy Chicago-style pizzas (mmm, so much sauce and cheese — delicious!). But, are there any such restaurants in Dallas? (I don’t know of any yet)

After some brief searching, I found BJ’s Chicago Pizza & Brewhouse. They have a few restaurants in Texas, but I’m not sure if any are near here (Clear Lake? Lewisville?). Their Addison location is listed as opening “early 2003”, so maybe that’ll be available soon.

If all else fails, Pizza Hut also now offers Chicago-style pizza:

According to Evans, Chicago-style pizza is different from other pizzas: Chicago-style pizza has a flaky crust with tall sides. The dough is made with a hint of corn meal for taste and texture. The build of the pizza begins with a thick layer of sliced mozzarella cheese. It’s filled with an abundance of toppings, shredded cheese and then chunky marinara sauce is poured on the top of the pizza. […]

They talk-the-talk, but I’m not convinced yet. It’s not that I dislike Pizza Hut's pizza, but I’m concerned whether the cooking-speedups necessary for the delivery environment may have an impact on the quality or flavor :-/.

Is there a protocol for asking people out at the gym? Or, is there no means of achieving that while maintaining etiquette? There’s this cute girl that often uses the treadmills around the time I do, and she’s about my age (25-26, or so). Hmm.

Dallas city council members have voted 10-3 to ban smoking in restaurants, effective March 1:

City leaders snuffed out smoking in restaurants today, passing an ordinance that exempts stand-alone bars, pool halls and tobacco shops that have separate areas for smoking.

The ban approved 10-3 by city council members also bans smoking in various public places, including hotel bars and lobbies, country clubs, bingo halls, hospitals, libraries, schools and transit system vehicles. Many of those places already ban smoking or had areas restricted by the city. […]

I’m not sure how I feel about this one. I think it’s pleasant that I might be able to better enjoy restaurants without smoke, but I don’t think it was the right decision for the government to dictate that.