Da Vinci

The San Jose tech museum is currently hosting a traveling Da Vinci exhibit. Because it's mostly about his work relating to machines and the anatomy, it's being hosted at the Tech Museum rather than the art museum. In fact, the two painting that they did have on display, and made a HUGE deal out of having (it's own special room! 24 hour security! Never let out of the Uffizi Gallery!) are not even painted by Leonardo. They're copies.

Cool things I learned:
-he was one of the first to draw a batman (see left) :p
-the notebooks we have right now is roughly 1/5th of DaVinci's work. Apparently he left all his notebooks to one apprentice (to the other apprentice he left the Mona Lisa), who left it to his son, who didn't treaure it so much of it is lost or destroyed. Given all the amazing stuff we know about Leonardo's work based on his notebooks, I can only imagine what's in the other 4/5ths.
-he was a bastard so he couldn't go to college
-he studied the human anatomy much like he studied machines. He looked at human joints and how they moved and tried to relate it to machines. Based on his studies, he might've built the first robot. (Maybe he was a cylon...)
-Apparently he did NOT rob graves to study anatomy. There were enough dead bodies around with all the wars going on that he could have just walked off with them.
-he didn't want anyone to steal his ideas. So he would often leave things out of his drawings or draw them from just one perspective.
-he wasn't appreciated until the last 100 years (who knew?)
-if you turn your head to the right when you look at the picture to the right, you can see his study of the bones and muscles that hold up and operate our heads. The drawing reminded me of a lot of a boat.
-he was really bad about finishing his work, almost as if he had ADHD (per the docent). Often one noble would write the other about getting DaVinci back to finish some project.
-when he painted he wanted to capture the motion of his subjects. There was a computer animation of the Last Supper that posited how each desciple would react to the news and hence arrive at their "poses" in the painting.
-he compared the nervous system to root systems for trees and the system of rivers and their tributaries and saw many connections between the way our bodies are arranged and the way things in nature appear.
-below is something i thought was kinda cool. On the left is his sketch of human arms, on the right is a picture of the Three Shades by Rodin, which I saw last week at the Stanford Art Museum. When I saw DaVinci's notebook I immediately flashed back to those statues.

Why WaMu is stupid...

in addition to their crappy stupid lending practices, that is.

So I'm running out of checks, and it seems like a good time to order them.

I tried ordering them through the web site, the link takes me to Deluxe Checks web site, only to be told that I can't place an order with them because this is the first time I'm trying to order from them. So I have to place my first order through my bank. Which is odd because technically I did try to place it through my bank.

Whatever.

So I do the old school thing and call. I navigate my way through the voice menu, only to be transferred to Deluxe once again, and told that I cannot order my first checks through them.

Then I email WaMu. The nice rep who emails me back apologizes and told me that I should just send them my address (which they should have on file), the codes for the checks I wanted, and how many. I wrote back and asked for the codes, which ended up corresponding to codes on the Deluxe check web site. I pick my checks and email that to the bank. And it was cool because apparently certain types of checks would be free for people with the free checking account, so I ordered the free checks.

This morning I got an email back saying that the checks aren't really free and they can't order it for me.

Whaaa...?

I know I can probably just walk into the bank and order it (that's how I started this process, I walked in, found out they were $20, thought I could get them cheaper through the sunday ads-type checks, but ended up just opting to try to get them from the bank). But this whole thing is so stupid I'm just going to change banks. And this is all for a checking account that doesn't even offer interest!

Choices Choices

In life there are many opportunities to make choices. From the big choices like where you live, where you work to smaller choices like what to eat, what to drink, what check design to use. And each decision you make reflects on you in one way or another (or at least you feel like it does).

Take the choice of check images for example. Who knew there were so many ways to express who you are through your chec stock? Do you express your inner child through Mickey or Bugs Bunny? Do you express your gravitas through simple designs? Do you express your love of nature through the beach or the forest themes? Do you express your support of causes by ordering Arbor Day (yes, Arbor Day) or Breast Cancer checks?

Do you judge other people by their checks?