Month: January 2005

Posted on

hate and bass

I just don't get it.
Midnight now, definitely time to go to bed. I do this all the time… stay up for no good reason. Just sitting here, surfing the net, reading about this and that.

Related to my entry yesterday about comment spam, it seems Google heard the blog-collective’s cry and has decided to do something about it. I’m hesitant to call it a solution, because all it does is remove the “reward” spammers get from putting links in comments (Google calculates a webpage’s “PageRank” by the number of other pages on the web that link to that page, so getting your URL on as many webpages as possible yields an elevated PageRank and the resultant higher prominence in search results). I guess, eventually, when there’s no direct benefit from polluting comments with spam, comment spam will cease. But for a while, those bots will still be running… and the spam will still be there. Still, it’s cool to see that WordPress has signed on to support the feature in a future version, I love WordPress.

On the way home from work today, I arrived at a red light in the middle lane of three lanes. Shortly, I was flanked on either side by teenager drivers. The new Decemberists album was on the stereo, filling the truck with high-pitched, warbly, folky nasal crooning backed by soft acoustic guitar. The two sideways-hat-wearin’ teenagers were having a good ol’ fashion whiteboy bass-off, trying to outdo each other’s bumpin’ – and I was caught square in the middle. So there I was, entombed in bass and poseurs… realizing how un-young I am. I had a brief urge to flip on over to the frequency modulated bands and put on 97.1 BEAT or 101.5 BLNG or whatever’s hot with the yunguns these days… but I resisted. Wait… I’m old enough to joke about not being a teenager, right? I mean, for Jah’s sake… I’m pushin’ 30 y’all.

I dunno how many people know about Google’s Zeitgeist, I read about it a couple years ago. It’s really awesome to watch internet search trends over time, or maybe it’s just me. Statistics are rad, there’s a voyeuristic feel about them – not the crazy statistics I took in college that was all triple integrals and 4th order differential equations; nay, that kind of statistics sucks. Anyway, they’ve got some cool data that’s kinda fun to poke through. To round out this paragraph of two unrelated thoughts: I exchanged mail again with Bob from yesterday, you know the guy who runs TWOBITS.com? He sent me a link to his personal webpage. Check out the “Roadie” story, it’s a fun read – as are they all. And, we’re done.

Goodnight peoples… until tomorrow.

Posted on

put your hands up!

Drop that hammer! We're haulin' you in son.
Hey guys, welcome back. Sorry if any of you encountered a 404 error while checking sounds familiar yesterday, I was mucking with the .htaccess file in an attempt to block the glut of referrer spam I’ve been getting lately. Long story short, it didn’t work quite as I’d wished… since it effectively took my site offline. But now I’m back, by the shack of a soul boss most turnin’, stormin’, sound o’soul!!

Tonight when I got home, I fired up Thunderbird to check my oft-neglected “primary” e-mail address. Among the usual spam messages and “FW: FW: FW: FW: FW: FW: FW:” prefixed messages from my uncle, I saw something potentially interesting. The mail was titled: http://www.pharaohweb.com/pacman/files/pacman_repro_underlay.zip, which I recognized as the URL to a file hosted on my Pac Man pages. Some background: some time ago, a visitor to my Pac Man site used his Adobe Illustrator skills to create a reproduction of the Pac Man cocktail cabinet underlay artwork. The reproduction was outstanding, a dead ringer for the NAMCO original. The kind artist offered to let me host the file on my server, and asked for nothing in return. He figured, as I did, that we were doing the MAME community a favor by offering the file freely. Now, onto the e-mail that flickered back at me from my monitor:

Dear Dave,

While I appreciate the plug on your page at:

http://www.pharaohweb.com/pacman/itemized.html

there is a link to your page at:

http://www.pharaohweb.com/pacman/hardware.html

where you are offering a free copy of our copyright artwork:

http://www.pharaohweb.com/pacman/files/pacman_repro_underlay.zip

Please remove the link as soon as possible to avoid further action. For your info, we sell the MsPac-man CT underlay pre-cut for a Pac-man table.

Don’t take this as an attack on you or your great website; I get people referencing it to me all the time and I see that you haven’t done anything with your pac page in a while, It’s just that we pay the rent off graphics sales and NAMCO gets their pound of flesh on every piece. The ONLY thing we get from them is protection from counterfeiters.

Drop me a line and let me know your thoughts.

Bob

PS Please don’t blog our correspondence; it’s for your eyes only.

Read more about the current NAMCO lawsuit.
http://www.TWOBITS.com/sued/

I was kinda caught off gaurd, but I’m not going to say that I haven’t wondered before if I’d eventually get a “cease and desist” letter regarding the copyrighted artwork. I always figured that if there was a letter, it would have come from NAMCO directly. A quick check of the TWOBITS.com website shows they do indeed proclaim that their “officially licensed graphics” are “Manufactured by TWOBITS.com under license from NAMCO Ltd.” Taking a minute to re-read and digest the note, I realized that it wasn’t really threatening at all… and seemed more like one man appealing to another to stop doing something that was impacting his bottom line. I immediately called Ben to tell him I was famous… and he agreed with my position, which is summed up in my response:

Hey Bob,

No hard feelings… to be honest I wasn’t really aware you guys were paying any royalties on the artwork. Not to be accusing, but I figured you were in the same boat as the rest of us – using the graphics without permission. I mean, everyone and his brother says their graphics are “licensed,” even the guys at the booth in the flea market. As much as I like being able to offer the file as a service to the MAME community, I’d hate to take money from the pocket of someone who went to the trouble of getting permission and is paying to do it right.

So, to sum it up – the file is gone. I didn’t mean any harm by posting it.

However, there is one part of your message I find haaaard to abide… how can I not blog about my encounter with big brother? Seeing how we see each other eye-to-eye here, would you still deny me the retelling of this story?

Thanks, take care.

dave
www.pharaohweb.com

So, that’s that. I took the file down tonight, and have replaced it with a link to this entry. In the end though, I guess my rebellious side had to make a concession to my empathetic side… because while I managed to comply with the request to remove the file, I simply couldn’t resist documenting the exchange on this page. In the end, I’d still recommend taking your business to twobits, for underlay artwork or any other of the rad DIY arcade accessories they offer. I can’t ding a guy for working to protect his income. And even though the file I hosted was in no-way pilfered from their graphic (it was painstakingly re-created from scratch), I don’t think that’d hold up in court. And yeah, I do feel kinda bad for writing about it against Bob’s wishes, but I’m hoping that since the whole thing was settled amicably he’ll be willing to shrug it off as “what I do.”

One last oddity that came from tonight’s events, the mail I got from twobits was addressed to myself, and Sharaun, and had our last name to boot. Not that big of a deal maybe, but I pay fee to “mask” my personal info from the prying eyes of WHOIS. I asked twobits about how they got the info, which I’m assuming was obtained by querying my WHOIS proxy service, but I thought it was interesting. I guess if you have a legit need to contact the registered owner of a domain (such as that owner is using something you hold the rights to without your permission), the proxy service is bound to cough up.

Pac Man talk over, website admin nerd-talk coming.

Migrating to WordPress as my blogging tool of choice was a great move, the system is easy and works great. The only drawback is the fact that because WordPress is so popular as a blogging system, it’s become a huge target for all kinds of spamming. Comment spam is the number one problem, where bots scour the web for the PHP submit methods of WordPress and input spam comments with links to poker websites and whatnot. Luckily, there are some killer plugins for WordPress which block comment spam based on keywords and IP addresses, all the while becoming “smarter” with each piece of spam identified. Each “holdem” ridden stream of consciousness, each “viagra” peppered extract from rare philosophical texts, each “low mortgage” and “weight loss” laden nonsensical rambling… they all work to make my comments even more spam-free.

Lately though, I’ve noticed an interesting comment spam phenomenon – an increasing amount of “benign” comment spam. I made up the term “benign spam,” but it seems to fit here. These are comments that usually say something like, I like your website I will share this with friends, or, Wow, this is a great web site. I am so glad I found it, thank you. It is funny, I was just talking to my friend about their web site, and they said they like your site too! And that’s all they say. They contain no links to porn or gambling sites, and usually list no author other than “Anonymous.” Being that they’re not linking to any websites, not pitching any product, or redirecting traffic – I have no idea what their goal might be. A simple Google search shows that these are not just a sincere comments from some English-as-a-second-language reader, but some kind of template comment spam.

I can only guess at their intent, but I’d say they are probably testing the “strictness” of my spam filter; seeing just how innocuous the structure of the comment has to be before it gets through the filter. Once they do this a thousand times on a thousand blogs, they’d have a pretty good idea of what most filters qualify as “spam.” Then they can restructure their spam messages most like the comments that didn’t get filtered. Otherwise, I have no idea what they’re all about… unless they’re just scouring the web for open and spammable commenting scripts. Maybe there is no motive, maybe these are just pure evil people wanting to pollute my database with inane comments about nothing. Stupid spammers, scourge of the internet.

I guess I’m an extremist – who thinks we should ban all mention of penis-enlargement, low interest rates, texas holdem, and xxx-teen from the ‘net. OK, we may need some of those xxx-teen sites… to… keep the teens from being exploited and all. Poor teens.

Website admin nerd-talk over.

And that’s it folks, enough for tonight. Before I leave you, you should check out this site. It’s totally amazing… you can play every video game for NES, Genesis, Gameboy, and MAME (arcade) online via Java applets.As for me, I’m going to bed… and hoping I don’t awake in the morning to some kinda slander lawsuit or something. I mean, it’s late… and this new Radio Dept. EP isn’t doing a whole heck of a lot to keep me awake. Plus, it’s lonely back here in the “data center.” G’night, until tomorrow.

Posted on

man this entry blows

Vote Shiite, Sunni sucks.
Good evening blog, glad to see you in good health. What’s that? You’ve been plagued lately by online poker and Viagra spam? Well, not to worry blog, although you may get ~20 “holdem” and “bigger member” spams per hour, I’ve installed some nice anti-spam features that prevent all but the craftiest spammers from getting a comment through. I know, I also wish that your usage stats were once again meaningful, rather than a record of spambots trying to post comments. It’s the nature of the internet, blog, that’s just the way it goes.

Argh… why does the “war on terrorism” have to look so much like a war on Islam? Word around the web is that we’re posturing against the next member of the “axis of evil,” Iran. It was interesting that the rumour of covert US forces in Iran was this morning’s story, and this afternoon the “Americans evenly split on how they feel about the Iraq invasion” story was the lead headline. But have no fear, the orderly and completely representative democratic election this month will set Iraq squarely on the road to non-barbarianism.

Sorry for the sarcasm, but I’ve lost all faith that this vote is anything more than a sham, a parade by the administration for the sake of perceived progress. The news is rife with stories of polling places kept secret out of fear of violence; 60% of voters think they’re voting in a new Iraqi president (they’re not); candidates can’t campaign for fear of death; and more than one million absentee voters are registering from over fourteen countries. This election is nothing more than a dog and pony show, I don’t understand how it will accomplish anything at all. Not everyone can vote, people who are voting don’t know what they’re voting for, and the candidates can’t get their message out even if they did. I guess I’m pessimistic.

Enough about it already, I realize there’s nothing for complaining.

Having my entire music collection here at work with me is awesome. I can listen to such a wide variety of stuff during the day. I’ve got about 80% of my CDs ripped to MP3, so I have almost my entire collection on-hand. I need to get around to ripping that final 20% (which consists mostly of Beatles’ bootlegs), so I can be done with it. After I’ve got everything ripped, there’ll be a period of “cleaning” up the tags and directory structure. But for now, it’s awesome to be able to pick from the same selection I’ve got at home while at work. Just tonight, for example, I got the complete Miles Davis Montreux recordings (a 20CD boxset clocking in at almost 2GB when digitized)… how cool is that to have on-hand when I feel like rad jazz? (Ugh, after downloading this beast it seems like it’s all from the 80s and is with Miles’ electronic band… I dunno if I can get into this…)

I relented from my hardline stance of not doing work-work in the evenings (my much cherished off-time) tonight, mainly because I didn’t make full use of my time at work today… and I’m once again pressed for time this week. Finally made my reservations for the first of my two upcoming trips to Taiwan, the initial jaunt commencing in late February and lasting a week. The second trip comes sometime in late March and lasts 2-3 weeks. I got worried at first, because it looked like my favorite swank hotel was completely booked up the week I was going. The thought of not being able to stay in that now familiar environment really bummed me out… I like that hotel, I feel like the king of the castle there. Anyway, I did manage to book a room for the week, and am now looking forward to the trip, and subsequent sky miles. Too bad I couldn’t arrange something where Sharaun could join me…

Man this entry blows. Goodnight.

Posted on

poor horatio

Let's go down to Myer's Lake for a picnic.
Dear reader, a varied post lies ahead… written at different times throughout the weekend. I make no claims about its contents being interesting, or even cohesive for that matter. I only offer what I write, and I tend to write a lot of crap. Please bear with us here as we strive for some decent content, but for today – we’ll take what we can get. And now onto the stuff.

If you know me, or have been reading this wordy webpage for a while, you know that The Andy Griffith Show is “pretty much my favorite” television show. As much as I like it for it’s bumpkin humor or Aesopesque underlying messages, I like it more because it’s a glimpse at some kind of utopia… at least, a utopian vision that closely aligns with my own. Simpler times; a close-knit community of friends; a rural existence based firmly on morals, a desire for peaceful clean-living, and a common-sense respect for others. A place where people are still close to the things that make them happy: the land they work, the friends they have, and the beliefs they share. No… the show never really goes into any of that, those are just my extrapolations. That’s my Mayberry, as stupid as it sounds.

In the tradition of last weekend’s “what I’m listening to” sidebar addition, I spent 10min Saturday adding a “random post” link at the bottom of the “archives” sidebar section. Used a nifty little WordPress plugin to get the job done, pretty cool. Even I get a kick out of clicking it sometimes, I write some stupid stuff. So check it out, and remember – if you see some whack formatted posts that got messed up in the WordPress transfer, lemme know so I can fix ’em. Yeah, that’s what I’m talkin’ about.

Sunday, I got what I thought was a great idea. I’ve had this 120GB external hard drive sitting around for a while, not really doing much with it but copying the occasional thing over to it as an extra backup. Double-checking the current size of my digital music library and finding it to be 106GB, I decided to copy the entire thing over to the external drive. Then, I setup a script that can compare the two drives and keep them in sync, always ensuring that the external drive is up-to-date. I plan to take the drive to work with me. Now, instead of having to sift through piles of DVDs to find something to listen to at work, I’ve got it all on-hand. I’ll bring it home every few days to sync it with the master collection on my RAID array. Now… if I could only find a way to plug it into the car stereo and be able to take it on the road…

When technology really gets smart, here’s how I see it going down: I’ll have a central repository for digital media in my house, it will be large capacity, redundant, and fault-tolerant (RAID5). I’ll have a small iPod like device, but based on flash memory, which will also be large-capacity, enough to hold a mirror image of my entire collection. Vehicles will support the standard interface to this portable device, a plug-in interface that supplies power and signal-out and will be as ubiquitous as the 2.5mm headphone jack is today. The portable device will have built-in wireless capability, and will use my sleeping hours to keep in sync with the central collection. Physical size is important, the current iPod form-factor and weight being the largest that’s acceptable. Storage size must always seem to be overkill, 500GB-1TB if it this thing were real right now. As a rule of thumb, it should always be about 30% larger than what’s thought of as “big,” because if you just aim for “big,” it’ll without a doubt be too small within a year. The advantage of flash vs. moving spinning disks is essential, and when unplugged from a power source, the battery on this device will last 24 hours.

In addition, if I’m in a music store with the device, I can “purchase” an album and zap it through the ether onto my drive; same deal at the video rental store. If I’m at a show, I can purchase a board recording of the event at the end and beam it on. The device will support a “friendly” mode, where it will wirelessly seek fellow devices with similar tastes and enable file-sharing between them, integrated GPS will even allow two “friendly” enabled device owners to meet in real life if they wish. DJs at clubs will be able to offer their entire sets to be immediately “beamed” to paying customers. It will interface with PVR devices to take the kids’ favorite TV shows on the road. If you like a song you hear while in a store, you’ll be able to purchase and beam it to the device.

I spent a good bit of my weekend freetime reading Beside Still Waters, a book Pat loaned me thinking I’d be interested, mostly based on my writing from the other day. It’s a good book, if a little wordy. In fact, it’s a great book… seemingly targeted to what I’ve been thinking about lately. I wanted to write more about it, but I’ve not finished it yet – and wanted to reserve judgment until I was done. If you’re at all curious about that kinda stuff, I’d recommend checking out the book. And, I’m sure I’ll have more uninteresting stuff to say about it when I’ve finished reading it.

Goodnight.

Posted on

doubts

YIS for election.
I can’t honestly believe that anyone thinks there can be a successful election process in Iraq just two weeks from now. Some facts about the election process: There are more than 120 recognized parties who are eligible to run no more than 275 candidates each. The people are voting in 275 members to the general assembly. Yes, you read that right, voters are expected to pick two-hundred and seventy-five people off a list of somewhere between 20,000-30,000 names. There is no formal registration process; in fact, eligible voters are being culled solely from a decade-old list of people, which was drafted under Saddam’s regime. In the past weeks, there have been multiple attempts on the lives of candidates and election officials.

I understand that democratic elections have been held under less-than-ideal circumstances before, post-revolutionary war for one… but this Iraq situation seems ridiculous. As a voter, I have a hard enough time educating myself on the 30 names on my ballot… can you imagine trying to sort 30,000 people? How would you even go about preparing to vote intelligently? You wouldn’t. You’d vote down party, religious, or social lines. Can you imagine how daunting it would be to stare down at a ballot filled with tens of thousands of names? I wonder how many pages the thing is. It seems like a farce to me… an elaborate charade. I guess it has to happen sooner than later though, because the of ousting of a government to install another just isn’t “cool” anymore. Would that we could return to the days of “sponsored” governments and US backed coups… y’know, maybe roll the USS Nashville up into the Gulf everything goes smooth. Where’s Teddy when you need him?

I think I know why they call it getting “tight.” After a couple $30 shots of tequila, the skin on your face actually feels tight… stretched, or something. I didn’t mean for tonight to end up like this, I had scheduled a meeting for 6am tomorrow. Luckily, the guy I scheduled the 6am meeting with is crashing in my spare room… a victim of the same tequila and beer cocktail that brought me down.

I’m going to bed. Goodnight.

Posted on

turfwar

Take that, unrecognized papal authority!
Remember the six extra paragraphs I mentioned on Tuesday? They were mostly a boring narrative about the history of the Catholic church, and where other major world religions came into the picture. Don’t ask me, some overreaching effort to aggrandize mankind’s role in defining the divinity of popular faiths. Problem is, it was boring and soap-boxy… and I’m hardly educated enough to point out the mortal makings of supposed God-breathed dogma. But, I couldn’t bear to get rid of so much writing, so I condensed them into a one-paragraph analogy to rap feuds. Seemed like a good idea at the time.

Religion is full of interesting history. For instance, did you know that the whole “eastsiiiide” vs. “westsiiiide” thing started with Christianity? That’s right, the Pope was throwin’ up the westsiiide ‘W’ with his fingers, and the Emperor in Constantinople was flippin’ it sideways to show he was down with the east like four flat tires. The result was much like the divisive rift that developed between Biggie and Pac, ‘cept instead of simply polarizing rap fans by the US coastlines, it effectively polarized world religion into two major camps. I guess you could say that Leo IX was the 2-Pac of the Great Schism… spittin’ vicious rhymes dissing Michael Cerularius (the Schism’s Notorious BIG, or Big Poppa, or Biggie Smalls). Pac was only emulating history when he dropped the notorious east-coast dis “Hit ‘Em Up.” A history established when the pre-Schism westsiders penned a fiery dis-track called the filioque clause, to which the east responded to by refusing to unleaven their bread. It was a confrontation, y’all, be sure of it. Too bad the rap-world equivalent of excommunication is to have several caps popped in thine ass. Dirt nappin’…

Ahem… well then, now that that’s over.

I get criticized a lot (mostly by Sharaun) because I say I wanna do something to get in better shape (eat less, exercise more, etc.), but I don’t actually ever do anything. I think the disparity in what I say I care about and what my actions show bothers her more than the fact that I’m not really doing anything at all to get fitter. I’ve always been like that I guess. Motivated, but not quite to the point of action… if that’s possible. Anyway, sometimes I’ll get frustrated and make a statement like, “I’m gonna eat less from now on,” and then renege on it moments later because I just really don’t care. I hate exercise that’s forced for some reason, maybe it hearkens back to my awkward uncoordinated days in middle school gym. I really enjoy things like hiking and… OK, mostly hiking. Any activity that’s a sort of exercise in disguise thing.

I get carried away sometimes. I sat down to write one paragraph about considering biking to work, and the intro sentence for that one paragraph morphed into the entire preceding paragraph. I guess that’s OK, since it makes my entries look more substantial. But back to the point: I was thinking today about buying a bike and using it as my primary mode of transportation to and from work. I live ridiculously close to work, a 5-10min drive. I’m not sure, but I’m guessing that’d be something like a 15-20min ride by bike. It’s not much of a time adder, and with some headphones on it would even enable me to get a few more tunes in along the way. Plus, I think I’d like having the time to think… or not think, either is just as well.

I haven’t mentioned my idea to Sharaun, since I know she’ll just write it off as another one of my un-acted-upon “get fit” whims. I can’t blame her, really; and that’s why I kinda just want to go do it, y’know? Go out and buy a bike and just bite the bullet. I suppose winter in Northern California isn’t the best time to decide you want to start biking to work, with the rain and all… I’m also worried I’ll invest in a bike and then never use it, the danger of knowing yourself too well I suppose. But, I almost feel like I could get into it… maybe not from the “healthy alternative” angle, but I figure more likely from the “non-polluting, hippie, holier-than-thou” angle. Maybe if I keep writing, I’ll end up convincing myself. We got a little bonus at work recently, and it would go nicely towards the purchase of a serviceable bike. Yeah… that’s the ticket.

Seems like this article made a much bigger splash in the international media than it did here. A Google news search today finds it running lead on several overseas media sites: the BBC, Turkish Press, Lebanon Daily Star, etc. To me it seems like a big deal, being that we voted for war based on the premise. If they were wrong, why not say so? People have been wrong before… it wouldn’t be the first time, although the stakes me a be a tad higher. I know we have to stay the course now… but isn’t this just a little bit more than simply an excuse for liberals to say “I told ya so?” I wonder sometimes what the history books of my grandchildren will say about this war. Will time uncover an alternate justification that was kept under wraps as a matter of national security? Or will time conclude that a nation voted to go to war based on bad intelligence, or worse, something that amounts to nothing more than utter fabrication and chest-pounding? Ahhh… time… you cloistered little bitch… you keep your secrets well.

Lets see now… we got religion and politics… maybe a paragraph about abortion next, or capitol punishment? Social Security solvency, Medicare? Welfare reform, gay marriage, NAFTA? Shit, who’m I kidding? I could care less about Medicare, I’m no geezer. Alas, I once again feel I’ve bitten off more than I can truly chew… and mayhap overburdened you, dear reader, with ramblings too thick with uncomfortable topics. I call for a return to levity (a bit of brevity wouldn’t hurt either, my good man)! Egad my writing hands are in a strange mood… schisms and rap, liberal huff-n-puff, exercise!!!

Great, now Sharaun’s gonna be mad I swore on the internet again. I can’t win.

Posted on

smooth jazz

Working, and dinner? Awesome!
I didn’t really intend it to be, but this entry ended up pretty much being a play-by-play of my day. That’s cool really, since I haven’t done that in a while or anything. And, today was a good day… got a lot done.

Today my phone at work decided that it would start playing muzak to whomever I put on hold. I have no idea why it started doing this, our phones aren’t programmed to play hold music or anything. In fact, I’d say at my job, we rely on our phones not playing music while on hold. A good portion of my meetings are comprised of attendees from across the USA, and the four corners of the globe for that matter. With so many people of varied location, the majority of the meetings I attend are phone conferences. Since I’m on so many teleconferences, I quite often have to put a meeting on hold to flash over and answer the other line or make a one-off call. If I’m on a meeting with twenty or thirty-off people, a Kenny G rendition of “Moondance” blaring for all to hear when I have to put the meeting on hold is not exactly cool.

As soon as I put the meeting on hold today, a coworker who sits a few cubes down from me and attends the same meeting shouted “Dave! Are you playing music?!” Since this particular coworker is insane to begin with, I shrugged off the seemingly insane comment. But – when I went to flip back over to the meeting I’d placed on hold, they had dropped me. Somehow, the operator ID’d the offending line and disconnected it. I have no idea how my phone got muzak, but a few simple tests with Sharaun and other friends at work verified that it did indeed. Such an odd thing to have happen, but also kinda delightfully hilarious to me. All day I wanted to flash over on meetings for no other reason than to liven up a particularly boring moment with some smooth jazz. Hell yeah y’all, nothing like some utterly vanilla and inoffensive Dave Koz to rile up a meeting. Who knows how to party? Huh? I said who?

After work, I had a “working dinner” scheduled to go over a presentation I’m preparing (and giving) jointly with a coworker. I’ve never really done a “working dinner” before, but when my co-presenter suggested it I jumped on the idea. A good meal, perhaps some tasty ales, and some time to sit around and talk candidly about our material. It also affords me the opportunity to look a bit important, or at least to feel like I may look a bit important. Both of us sitting in the bar, laptops open on the table as the keys click away. Later we both crowd around a single machine to work on “integrating” our material. It’s amazing to me just how much productivity with people can improve once you’ve invested some time in developing a non-work relationship. If you can chat as friends and also know how to get serious and knuckle under on pressing tasks – things go much smoother in a high-pressure work environment. In my “Working With China” class, they told us that the Chinese have a word for this very concept: guanxi. In this respect, I think the Chinese have it nailed. It’s all about the relationships.

Even though I felt pretty bad for abandoning Sharaun on what is only her 4th day after surgery, I really needed to sit down and get this work done without much distraction. Turns out she’s doing amazing in terms of recovery: already walking without crutches (only a pronounced limp), off the painkillers, and even driving. So she headed over to Melissa and Anthony’s for her repast, which worked well toward assuaging my guilt. So, after wrapping up what ended up being a really enjoyable meal filled with some 44-odd ounces of Fat Tire, I headed home. Only, when I got home, I remembered that Erik & Kristi still have my housekey (I lent it to them so they could do a stealth flower delivery before Sharaun’s surgery, thanks again).

Locked out, I called Sharaun and explained my predicament, and she agreed to head home. In the meantime, I was stranded in the garage. So, I fired up a little desk lamp for light, turned on the little jambox that lives in the garage to find Chutes to Narrow, and practiced my doubling-in on the dartboard. Four or five songs and a marked improvement in double-hitting consistency later, the garage door sprang to life and gave me a start. Even thought it was cold outside, and I kinda had to take a dump, and I had to pee out my beer in my own backyard – playing darts and listening to the Shins to pass the time while locked out of my own house was fun.

Check it out, I think I stumbled across Pitchfork’s “working” version of their delayed new site layout: http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/redesign/. I, my friends, am some kinda talented hacker. If this is indeed their new layout, I was kinda hoping for something more drastic. The dates on the files look right, but I dunno.

Goodnight.