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KEEP IT IN THE PHAMLY


Beans are the best. Green beans are my favourite but I also love baked beans, mung beans, black beans, kidney beans, canellini beans, bean bags... My newest favourite bean thing is Things By Bean. In particular, this Hamburger poster designed by Bean that's decorating my new work station (yes, that's four desks in four months so far).
Things by Bean also makes greetings cards with the perfect combination of personality and good humour. Two things you don't find enough of in greeting cards. I'm not into rude/crude humour or dad jokes so Things By Bean is the perfect fit! I bought a bunch of my fave designs to cover a bunch of hypothetical situations where I may need to give people cards.

Like now. I'm off to send a friend the pie chart birthday card for her birthday on the weekend. It will be a surprise because by the time I publish this post in my Diablo 3 scheduled outage from blogging her birthday will have come and gone. Y'all should stock up on Things By Bean so you have a card handy for every semi-probable occasion!

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Since my current work contract got extended to the end of this year, I've been on a bit of a spending spree to celebrate continued income and consumerism. To be fair, I ordered the new 15" Macbook Pro with Retina Display when I thought I was going to join the unemployment line with all the other Queensland Government temp staff who lost their jobs on June 29th and wanted to spend 1 hour a day looking for work and the other 17 waking hours playing Diablo III.

Let's see... in the space of two weeks after learning the good news, I bought a compact treadmill, Karen Walker sunglasses, serviced Luigi, got me some new dresses, tops, shoes. Oh, and hundreds of dollars worth of baby things for Baby Pham to be. Most of those purchases are common (read: you won't care) but I did find something awesome that I have to share with you: the Columbia River Knife & Tool iNoxcase for iPhone 4/s.
Industrial designer Ryan Glasgow develops movable, modular houses and prosthetic hands in his spare time so I'm glad he thinks awesome iPhone and iPad cases are also ways to improve the quality of (my) life. While I really wanted the iNoxcase 360, which is much more self-photo friendly, I couldn't sacrifice the rainbow stainless steel finish that only comes in the 180. Who wants to see my face when they can look at the rainbow case anyway! Now that my phone is heavily protected from world, I need to figure out how I'm going to protect everything in my bag from my phone. My best idea so far is bubble wrap... I need more ideas.

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I gotta keep this short and sweet for two reasons. Diablo III is downloading in the background and as soon as it's installed I will disappear into a gaming vortex and will emerge several weeks later looking like a disheveled vampire (picture yourself after 28 hour flight/travel then times that by four). Also, I have to try and pre-write as many blog posts as I can so Keep It In The Phamly doesn't fall victim to the Hell overlord.

For the first time in Phamly history, Big Brother Pham told me to "save money" and buy the regular 15" Macbook Pro without retina display and flash drive. While Little Sissy Pham, the best with money told me to spend the extra $500 and get me the fancier 15" Macbook Pro. 

Now, for some reason I'll spend money on others before the dropping hat reaches the ground (messing up metaphors is part of Asian-Western culture, I believe) but I always need someone to give me permission to spend money on myself. Like the time I asked Little Sissy Pham if I could buy new Karen Walker sunnies but she didn't get back to me within the hour so I asked Misty-chan if I could and she said yes so I did. I also wanted Big Brother Pham's nod of approval for the new treadmill even though he knows nothing about exercise (he does physical building work so thinks it's funny that my lower belly pops out whenever I eat a meal).
So with Little Sissy Pham's tick of approval I went and got me the 15" Macbook Pro with Retina display and boy, am I in love. So sleek, so shiny, so new. So fast, so light, so advanced! I walked around hugging the laptop for half an hour before I unwrapped it because I couldn't get over how light it is compared to my old 13" Macbook. Sure, I don't have a disc drive anymore but since Diablo III comes in a digital download I don't need one to install it.

The machine hardware is impressive but my favouritest new features are all OS related. I love to multi-task and currently have Photoshop, Image Capture, iTunes, Excel, Chrome and Word open for blogging, tax time, synching old stuff with new stuff and life admin purposes. The track pad and magic mouse capabilities make zipping between  and within apps soooo much fun - I feel like Iron Man with his whizz bang technomonology!

Why did I buy such a powerful machine when I will only use part of its brain for photo editing and writing? Diablo III of course!!! Speaking of, gotta write a bunch of other blog posts and schedule them over the next however many weeks so I can devote my life to gaming. Sayonara!

UPDATE 15/07/12: Diablo 3 works fine on Macbook Pro 15" with retina display. It looks quite awesome, actually, and I only experience lag when my internet connection is having a fit. 

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Brad Tweeters gave me my first pair of Karen Walker sunnies and I've never been able to look at another brand of sunglasses ever again. I never did end up getting my future KW sunglasses, which is lucky because I've had to evolve my style to include workwear options Monday to Thursday. I've fully embraced this human phenomenon called 'Casual Friday.' Mum and Dad Pham would be proud that they have the most casually dressed daughters in government. Sometimes, I'm one pair of neon tights away from wearing pyjamas to work on a Friday.

On the other days of the work week, I'm slowly adding bits of personality and colour for a very me look. Though, office me is girlier than sporty street me so I bought Karen Walker's delectable Super Speed sunglasses in plum. The cats eyes shape is feminine and classy, while the plum colour and pink/white detail around the eyes and on the rims gives them that nice touch of KW spunk.

Excuse the shoddy photoshop work in these photos but my bedroom is a total mess while I transition between macbooks and curtains and adjust to life with a treadmill next to my bed. Couldn't get a full body shot in because the treadmill means I had to move my bed closer to the mirror so now I can't stand far back enough to get a full body shot, but I'm wearing hot pink tights and my black and white I love Billy shoes in this photo. 

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The story of how I got the name jadestopthat is short and sweet. Well, it's not very sweet but it is short.

I went on tour with a band years ago to make a documentary (and website) to ace a university project. One of the guys got very sick of me pointing the camera in his face and he regularly told me so. From hours of footage I cut together a sequence where he says, "Jade, stop that. Jade, stop that. Jade, stop that. Stop it. Stop that. Jade, come on, stop that. Stop that! That's it, Jade, get out." It actually went on for a lot longer than that but I promised this story was short so I've edited it for your reading pleasure.

And that's all I have to say about @jadestopthat.

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Once there was a very dark (wardrobe) time in my life when I favoured black clothing, black hair, black underwear, black bras, black nail varnish and black socks. No, I was not emo nor Goth nor punk. I had just moved out of home and didn't know how to get food stains out of my washing, which sucked for two reasons - I love food, what a waste to have it on my clothes instead of in my gut; I love bright colour, what a shame food stained clothes aren't fashionable. So I never wore white and if I wore colours, they were dark and camouflaged specks of spaghetti sauce, curry or lipstick smears.

Life was like that for the first six months of independent life. Then I moved into a warehouse with 9 other boys and soon enough all my black socks migrated into the boys' wardrobes. And I guess this is where my adventures with coloured apparel, laundry techniques and increased food to mouth ratios began.

At first buying bright patterned socks that no one in their right mind would wear (pop colour wasn't fashionable five years ago, you know) was a way to keep my socks separate. Then as time went on and I moved into other sharehouses with a third of that population I kept up the colourful socks. My current set of ankle socks (don't like the shin-high socks, over my phase of knee socks) is the fluoro solid colours and white with fluoro stripes from Big W.

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I love it when I make a wish and some one (usually a nerd) grants it. Vodafone's mobile network experience helped me master the art of frowning during its 2010 vodafail year. Resetting a phone every hour to receive texts (usually about calling people back because their call wouldn't connect) helped me to overcome my pro-tightass ways and switch over to Telstra's mobile phone network.

Telstra is a dream. I pay $20-40 more a month for similar caps to Optus, Virgin and Vodafone but I consider it an investment in preventing stress and acne breakouts.  I haven't had any connection issues whatsover in the 13 months I've been with Telstra. The only minor downside is I have to pay for international texts. That is why I love WhatsApp so much.

WhatsApp is an alternative for SMS that uses internet to send messages (text, pics and videos). It costs $0.99 (the cost of two international texts on my phone contract) in Australia and now I get to stay in touch with traveling friends who also have the app on their smartphones (iPhone, Android, Blackberry, Nokia, Windows - this app doesn't discriminate) .

Who wouldn't want to receive a video of my cat while they're overseas? Probably everyone so just humour me and watch Tigger Pham loving life.
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