10 Thoughts for May 8, 2014

1. Who needs ESPN to watch the NFL draft, when you can cast a Chrome tab through your Chromecast, of the NFL's own live video?
2. Speaking of the draft, how can it be that, if you're picking first and the clock has started, you need the full 10 minute allotment to make your selection?  If there were any deals to be had, there were months available to make them.  If I had the #1 pick, I'd have taken Clowney too, even with doubts about his motor.
3. So Seahawks traded down just slightly.  There is a lot of talent still on the board -- Xavier Su'a-Filo, Marqise Lee, Louis Nix, Cyrus Kouandijo, Kony Ealy, Marcus Martin, Scott Crichton and David Yankey -- for the second round.  I'd call it a good move to trade down to the 2nd round, if they can get three of these eight guys in the next two rounds. Of course, I'd really love to see Marqise Lee in the slot, alongside Percy Harvin.  Remember that Lee's greatest productivity came when playing with Robert Woods on the field.  If you slot him next to or opposite Harvin, it's going to be crazy how much offense this team puts out.
4. This Pew survey in Ukraine is going to roil international politics, for sure.  It turns out, except Crimea, Eastern Ukraine overwhelmingly wants to remain a part of Ukraine and not join Russia.  More on this whole survey in a separate post, because it's a whopper and very long.
5. Once you start using a lot of open (i.e. expired copyrights) clip art, your eyes open up and see the wide use of it, everywhere.  In turn, it makes one appreciate original artwork, truly.  Same thing goes for stock photos, which is to say, no matter how much or little one pays for art, if it's not original it dulls the senses.  I like to grab clip art, but then to add and embellish them, such that they're not in any way, shape or form, resembling clip art.
6. Benghazi.  It wasn't enough that the House Oversight Committee, Senate Homeland Committee, House Committee on Foreign Affairs, State Department's Accountability Review Board and  Department of Justice all investigated Benghazi.  Republicans insisted on creating a special committee to investigate it, six times over.  Now remember, the whole dust-up here is over the question of whether or not the White House lied about the cause of the attacks, not because anyone committed malfeasance.  Well, unless Republicans have now declared that malfeasance shall be expanded to political messaging over the Sunday news circuit -- in that case, the whole of Congress should all be prosecuted, no?  This is how the Republican party wishes to spend taxpayer dollars.
7. I've been dragging my feet on building an online portfolio site for several months now.  The concept was to use a blend of custom HTML coding with pre-built, responsive jquery coding to create a minimalist site.  The thought of having to do so much learning of HTML5 to do the hand coding was the cause of my procrastination.  But I think I found a better solution: modifying a minimalist design HTML5 / CSS3 template to fit my needs and design preferences.  Here's the demo of the template I'm planning on using, although this one also caught my eye.  Personally, I'm a front-end designer, not a back-end coder, although at one time I was capable of creating Flash websites with Actionscript; once Apple declared Flash dead, I had no choice but to drop it, as I can't ignore half the world.
8. Speaking of online portfolio, shhh...I'm putting off working at an office.  I'm not a corporate kind of dog, I think.
9. Google Play Music Labs has a Chromecast Fireplace Visualizer which casts a video loop of a fireplace on your TV while you fire off music to your Chromecast.  That's nice and all for the months of November through January and especially around the holidays when you're playing a playlist of seasonal music, but I really want Winamp-type visualizations.
10. You know you're a grown up when: You actually spend the time to create an IRA and then access your other retirement account to reallocate to more aggressive funds.  Next thing you know, you'll stop wearing hoodies.  Nah.