Life of Marcos

Intruder alert (Part II)

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If you haven’t read the previous post, do so before you continue.

On top of the vertical blinds that cover the sliding door to the backyard, I see the furry beast in all its glory: this is the ugliest and biggest squirrel I’ve ever seen (and will be referred to as Brutus the Squirrel from now on). I slowly drop the bag full of deadly rat traps and grab a broom (and my camera, of course). My plan is to get to the sliding door itself, only a few feet away from the monster, and slide the door open so as to give it an escape route. Then, help him choose the escape route by using the broom as the instrument of persuasion.

Continue reading Intruder alert (Part II) →

Life of Marcos

Intruder alert

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I walk into my house from work this afternoon, through the laundry room which has a door to the garage. I notice something amiss: the little door to the water heater is open. Upon further inspection I see the piece of insulating foam that sits between the water heater’s chimney going up into the attic fell and pushed the door open.

“That’s odd”, I think.

As I walk into the living room, I could swear I heard something in the kitchen. Something. I go there, I look around and I see nothing.

“That’s odd”, I think again.

I spend the next few hours in the living room, watching TV, reading the news. Sitting next to the kitchen. No noises, no problems at all. Time to take a nap.

The phone wakes me up a couple of hours later. Then I hear some noises again: in the kitchen, then the vertical blinds in the living room (man how I hated having those in my room back in Riata), then I hear the distinct sound of little feet running around, the tiny claws hitting the pergo floor right outside my room. Clickity clack. Clickity clack. I must add it scared the sh*t out of me. I turn on the lights, put on shoes and open the door. And there it is. Continue reading Intruder alert →

From the tubes

Zack Reunion – Website

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The website for the reunion of the Zack family we had a few weeks ago is now finished. It’s cool, it even has a guestbook – have you left a note yet?. And a PDF with every birthday and anniversary in the family. And other wonderful surprises.Above is the logo used on the beautiful t-shirt we all received for the occasion (as seen here). I use it every Saturday night to go out to clubs. It’s a big hit with the ladies. For the few readers who cannot read Yidish transliterated using Spanish phonetics: You’re out of luck. I will leave you wondering what amazingly clever joke it says.

Reality Distortion Field

Computer Detox

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It‘s been almost three years since I bought my trusty 12″ Powerbook G4. It still is the best Mac laptop ever released in such a small form factor. That’s why they are still selling for decent prices on eBay.

With both Macworld and the end of my AppleCare extended warranty fast approaching, I decided to sell. The auction ended and I shipped out my computer this morning. My reasoning is that there is a very good chance Apple will introduce a new small Mac laptop (MacBook mini?) and when they do, the resell prices of the 12″ Powerbook G4 will drop harder than Edgar.

What this means for is that, for at least one month, I will not have a laptop at home.

Truth is, I have another machine at home. But there will be no browsing the news (yes – the news) over the internet while in bed; at least for a while.

If they release some super small portable next month, I will be very happy. If they don’t release anything, I will be dissappointed and just buy a 13″ MacBook. Keep those fingers crossed!

Around the world

The Lenny Kirsch® Wedding

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I will keep this post brief and to the point or I’ll begin to cry. My cousin Lenny (formerly Leny), with whom I shared all of my childhood and saw just about every day of my life since kindergarden up until after we came back from Israel, got married last Sunday to the beautiful Sonia Melamed. Of course the party was a blast, and there’s lots of photos at The MKX® Photo Central. I love you and I wish you both all the happiness in the world and many many

Note from censor: This post has violated the Strictly No Corny Stuff Policy of The Marcos Kirsch Experience®. We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused our loyal readers. Please click through to be taken to the photo gallery.


The Chupah


He can fly! Best wedding photo ever, by Jacobito.


Betito, Ricky, Leny, Annat,
Jonathán, Marcos: Generación CIMAC 1978


Lots of smoking hot women from Venezuela at the wedding

My Blog

The MKX® Photo Central updated

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I updated The MKX® Photo Central to the latest version of Zenphoto (1.1).

The template is newer too, and a little better IMO. One of the cool new features is the publication of an RSS feed, for that small subset of readers that a. Want to find out whenever new photos are added and b. Know what RSS is an use some sort of RSS reader (Google Reader is quite nice, you should check it out). There’s also a search box and the ability to tag. I don’t know how useful that’s going to be.

Let me know if you find any problems. So far it appears to work well, but it feels a little slow and I don’t know if it is Zenphoto’s fault or my hosting service’s. We’ll see.

Around the world

Zack Reunion

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Click for full album

I was in Monterrey last weekend for the first (and so far only) Zack family reunion. The Zacks are my maternal grandmother’s family. We’re spread across three countries (which is not a lot, come to think of it).

Most of us made it, starting from my great grandmother Bobe Sonia (who just turned 95) all the way down to 2 great-great grandchildren (the third one was born last week and could not make it). I think a total of 74 out of 83 Zacks came.

The whole weekend was great. Lots of eating, stories, eating, laughing, and eating. I made my debut as a game show host. I did ok. People laughed whenever I danced, I could make fun of them on a microphone and I got to wear a tuxedo.

While I’ve seen most of the family in the last years, there were a few I hadn’t in a long time (almost ten years!) and four of the newest members of the familyI hadn’t even met before.

Moi collected all the digital photos from all the cameras. 1400+ total. I copied them to my computer and I’m supposed to sort them out and delete the duplicates (which is a vast majority of the pictures) so we can upload them to an event website we’re setting up. Unfortunately, my own memory card got corrupted and I lost most of my photos (I recovered only about five using a $20 utility called CardRaider – which is not great at all).

I started to look at them last night and learned a few hard facts about people and the way they use digital cameras:

  • Most people never erase photos from their cameras.
  • Most people never set the date and time on their cameras.
  • This make my life harder.
  • Everyone takes the same photo from slightly different angles at the same time, which leads to 10 identical terrible photos in which everyone is looking at a different camera lens.

I’ll post a link here whenever it’s ready. But I doubt it will be this week.

It was great seeing everyone! (except you-know-who).

Update 12/18/2007: The website is up and has all the photos.

Falafel and more

Hanukkah in the U.S.A.

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The Festival of Lights is here and I’m going to use this blog to wish you Chag Sameach and to make two observations regarding this holiday as I see it since I moved to the U.S.:

1. Most non-jews think this is the biggest, most important thing in the year for jews. This is obviously because it falls toughly at the same time as Christmas, so it’s gotta be very important. This perception is magnified because due to political correctness, no one ever says “Merry Christmas” anymore: G-d forbid you’re not Christian and are terribly offended by this terrible, terribe mistake (note to readers: no one in the staff of The MKX® will get offended if you wish him Merry Christmas). Instead, you see “Happy Holidays” written in cards and billboards, and the artwork that goes with it is often a Christmas tree and a Hanukkia. How inclusive. In reality, Hanukkah is a very modern (only about 2000 years old!) holiday. So there is no mention of it in the Bible, work is allowed and you don’t even go to synagogue for it.

2. In Hanukka, you light a Hanukkia. Not a Menorah. a Hanukkia. For the mathematically impaired, a Menorah has 7 arms (one for each day of the week) and was used in the Temple. Below is what is thought to be a very accurate depiction of the Menorah from the Arc of Titus (showing Romans with their loot after destroying the Second Temple). This Emblem of the State of Israel is based on this image. A Hanukkia, on the other hand, has 9 arms (one for each day that Hanukkah lasts plus one for the Shamash). Everyone in the U.S., Jewish or not, uses the wrong name and for some reason it bothers me.


is not the same as

3. Last, and I think I’ve mentioned it before, everyone spells Hanukkah differently. Here I chose to use Wikipedia’s spelling but you can go ahead and see the list they have for alterantive spellings. It’s insane. In Mexico, everyone spells it Janucá. Way easier.

So, in order to remain politically correct, completely inclusive and avoid offending anyone:

Happy Holidays! 

From the tubes

The AmazonMP3 Store

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I was looking for a game show theme song last night for a personal thing I’m working on (more on that next week). I needed to be able to convert to other formats, so the iTunes Store was a no go (they didn’t have it in the DRM-free iTunes Plus format).

So I decided to give AmazonMP3 Store a try, since all the music they sell is unprotected, plain MP3.

Overall the experience was very good. You browse the (limited, I hear) selection and preview the songs all through your web browser. I use Amazon a lot so I know my way around well.

Then, the first time you buy something, it makes you download a little application that handles your purchases (see image). This program is available for Mac and is surprisingly simple, Mac-like and works as advertised.

My song got downloaded and added to my iTunes library in seconds. I was pleasantly surprised by the whole experience and can see myself shopping there often. The track I bought sounds like one of those demos that come with your $30 Casio keyboard we all had when we were 10, but that’s a different story (and is the original album’s fault, not the MP3 format).

 

No ugly people were harmed making this blog.