Author: Dave

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northwise by autocoach


Finally home, post 12hr drive where it was either raining or snowing the entire way. All twelve hours of driving in some kind of precipitation, our little greenhouse killer doing its part in joining the other bits of vehicular plaque clogging the holiday-weekend highway arteries of our nation… each of us fatter and slower for the turkey feast afforded us by virtue of our number one spot (as countries go) on this orb. Yeah yeah, it was a good weekend. I’m not entirely sure, though, that the drive is worth it anymore… certainly not with a little baby… it’s a long dang way – and although Keaton handles it like a pro traveler, it just takes too long. But hey, we’re home now. Let’s move on.

Despite the fact, however, that it was a great weekend – it was, as far as electronics are concerned, a complete bust. My laptop harddrive checked out, I’ve only got it running now because I smacked it just the right way and got it to work. It’ll have to be replaced tho, which will be a timesink. Then, my cellphone decided it was also tired of working, and gave up to meet the harddrive at some pub in tech-heaven. Not to mention that, ever since Sharaun dropped it into the cat’s water dish at the Halloween party, the digital camera eats through a battery in about 10min, making it nearly unusable. Finally, when I got home, my trusty had-since-college CRT monitor crapped out and I have to stretch the image so much to fill the screen that it’s hardly usable. Yes, my friends, it was a maelstrom of electronic failures… thank God the iPod’s still working.

Although I don’t have much more than the preceding readied for today, regulars may be happy to know that I did post Keaton’s Monday pictures this week – sorry for missing last week, but the digital camera issues and a general lack of pictures taken just didn’t produce a crop worthy enough to cull from. Going in weeks, the albums are now up to week thirty-seven – which makes no sense to me since Keaton won’t be nine months old until tomorrow (which is today, as you read this)… the whole weeks = months thing always messes me up. But, enough of that – here are the pictures, enjoy.

Goodnight folks – look for a more cohesive entry tomorrow, when I’m not so dead-tired and road-spent.

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football and leftovers


Despite unfavorable weather and seemingly interminable traffic, our family arrived in Oregon safe and sound after a 9hr drive that ended up being a 13hr drive. Yes, it was long, and frustrating to no end, but, in the end, it was worth it. A long weekend spent relaxing, reading, doting on the baby, drinking wine and eating. There’s small better pleasure than sitting inside a comfortably warm room while the cold and rain press outside, reading a book and nurturing a nice merlot buzz. It’s hard to believe, although glorious to be sure, that it’s only Friday, as I’ve got a lot of atrophy yet ahead of me before having to pack up the truck and head south through the snowy passes back to northern CA. Today it’s football and leftovers, tomorrow: leftovers and football – just to switch it up a bit.

Keaton has been an absolute angel since we’ve been here, having soldiered through the much-longer-than-intended drive like a champ – sleeping for about 95% of it (although I must admit I felt a bit like a bad parent forcing some sort of car-induced narcolepsy upon her). She’s been the picture of a cute granddaughter for mom and dad, keeping them entertained with giggles and smiles. Since we’re heading to Florida for Christmas, my folks did their gifting last night – heaping box after carefully-wrapped box on the table near Keaton as Sharaun and I tried to entice her into tearing them open. She tore, a little, but she mostly needed assistance to get to the chewy centers. When all the paper was ripped and piled around her, and we’d taken a few obligatory bow-on-head pictures, she ended up a nice cache of spoils. There was an awesome circus train toy which moves and sings, and several baby outfits which are the kind of cute that only miniature-people clothes can manage.

That should be enough for today I think. I wasn’t even intending to write. Hope you all had a good Thanksgiving and as nice a weekend as ours is shaping up to be.

Good afternoon.

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off again


Tuesday night and I know I said I probably wouldn’t write – but Sharaun’s out running errands and I’m here at home having already packed and made some scant preparations. So, I decided, after being harassed by relatives for not yet posting a weekly installment of Keaton’s photos, that I’d post some. Turns out I have nothing! I culled a weak two, count ’em, two, pictures from last weeks batch which I thought were good enough to post. So – no photos again, for the third day of what is becoming the 1st week since her birth that I’ve nothing to post. I’ll make amends though folks, I promise. We’re sure to take plenty of photos over Thanksgiving at the grandparents – so you’ll have to wait until the weekend. Sorry!

Right now it’s 7:30pm. My intent is to be in bed not much past 8pm and wake again around 3am to hit the road. Until the next post then, take care.

Goodnight.

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three days off


It’s Monday night of an abbreviated work-week. Sharaun and I are intending to hit the road early Wednesday morning (which I tend to think of as Tuesday night, since it’s the same dark that came at 7pm the previous day), sometime around 3am. The thought being that, while it’s still dark outside, Keaton might get some sleep in her carseat. I’m hoping she can sleep until 6-7am, which would at least kill a third of the long trip for her. I hate the thought of her having to be stuck in a carseat that long – but you gotta do what you gotta do I suppose. Forecast through the mountain pass on the way up is rain, and on the way back is snow. It likely goes without saying, but getting stuck in the snow again, this time with Keaton, would particularly suck. I’m hoping for the best, at least. And, being that we’ll be on vacation Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, I’m not sure how much, if any, I’ll be writing those days. Two days might be I’ll this week’ll get out of me.

Today work seemed interminable. With a good bit of the troops out for the holiday week the place felt like a ghost town. The volume of e-mails and calls and meetings was also down, making for less of the “filler” I rely on each day to get me from task to task. For me, switching focus every so often is essential to doing a thorough job on a single task. Rarely do I ever do my best work in one sitting, my real genius only comes with revision and revisiting. So, it’s good for me to take an hour meeting and break up my flow of work on a presentation – it makes me go back and start from zero, re-read and re-think and, most of the time, make things better. But, today was without those interruptions… and it was boring. When the office is abandoned like this, motivation is hard to come by.

This weekend, I spent Saturday my morning downloading and organizing music. A while back, I scored a membership to a private tracker site known for lossless live music (no, not that other private tracker I’ve mentioned before), and last night I decided to take some time and really browse the repository of FLAC-encoded shows that were available. I ended up downloading some vintage performances by Mike Bloomfield and Delaney & Bonnie (with Duane and Gregg), both of which are outstanding shows that have never seen commercial release. I’ve mentioned before how my musical leanings seem to go in phases, alternating between nouveau indie rock and good ol’ classic rock ‘n’ roll. I guess, lately, I’ve been getting back into the classic mindset. I attribute this to the recent release of a 1970 Neil Young & Crazy Horse show at the Fillmore East – which, by the way, is outstanding.

Goodnight, until whenever…

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the saigon turtle


Sunday we set out to do our Christmas shopping, but before we hit the merchants I took advantage of Keaton’s nap and headed up to get my haircut. A while back I switched hair cuttery from the Singaporean-run place I used to frequent to a place closer to home. As I’ve been going there for a while now, I’ve developed likings and dislikings for certain members of the staff there. For instance, through the luck of the draw, I had learned that one of them in particular, an older Vietnamese gentleman, was super-slow and not very friendly. (Now, I swear, I really don’t have anything against Southeast-Asian cutters-of-hairs… this just happens to be a coincident.) Needless to say, when my turn came up today and he was motioning me to sit down in his chair, I was disappointed.

Now, let me give you a little side-info about me and haircuts (haircuts and I?). For me, the “goodness” of a haircut, or haircutter, is measured in speed. I am willing to get a slightly less-than-perfect haircut if it only takes me 5min from door to chair and back to door again. It’s not that I hate haircuts, I just see them as a huge waste of time. I’ve often thought I should learn how to give myself the ridiculously simple haircut I request each time I go in, and save the time and $16 every other week. So, you can see how, speed being my chief concern, getting saddled with the Saigon Turtle was a crushing blow. Despite this though, I reacted as a gentleman and sat down for what I guessed would be a ~20min “#2 on the sides, #8 on top” trim.

“Ready for the holidays?” He asked, his accent thick and unusually difficult for me to understand.
“Yeah, I am, how about you?” I replied cordially.
“Yeah. I’m going to ‘City X.'”
“Oh, that’ll be nice,” I say. “Myself, my wife and daughter are all headed to Oregon.”

Here he spoke two or three complete sentences in broken english over the buzz of the clipper, and I nodded and smiled having not understood a single word. As we continued to exchange niceties, his words gradually became easier to understand, as is often the case when talking with those who have accents. Soon I could understand him as easily as anyone else. Moreover, I began to enjoy talking to him. And, he wasn’t cutting my hair slow, either. He was smiling and laughing and making pleasant conversation, and I was enjoying myself. And then, he said the following, which is the whole reason I’m writing this:

“You know, I just moved here three years ago. From Vietnam.”
“Oh?” I ask rhetorically.
“Yes,” he affirms, “All my life my dream had been to come to America; this is the best country in the whole world.”
I smile at him in the mirror, and let him continue.
“In Vietnam, I was a lawyer.”
“A lawyer?” I ask, thinking I may have misheard him.
“Yes, a lawyer.” He pauses, as if remembering.
“People have asked me, ‘Why don’t you go to school here, become a lawyer here?’ I tell them, by the time I graduate, I would be 70. I’m 61 now.”

I’m looking at this man, cutting my hair for his share of $13 and my $3 tip, and imagining him in a suit and tie carrying a briefcase into some Vietnamese courtroom.

“You know,” he continues, “You can do anything here. In America, if you like to work hard, you can make money – anyone can make money.”
I smile, waiting for him to finish.
“Before I was a lawyer, I fought in the Vietnamese war. I fought against the South. Three years, I was a lieutenant. I was captured in 1967 and spent three years in a prisoner-of-war camp.”

Holy shit. Here is a 61 year-old former Viet Cong lieutenant, a POW-camp survivor, and former lawyer – and he’s cutting my hair. What’s more, he seemed so happy to be doing it. As I left, I wished him a good Thanksgiving in City X with his sister (who is a doctor), and he wished me and my family well in Oregon.

The whole exchange had an impact on me. I don’t think of America like that often enough, the kind of America you that the immigrants in movies and on TV talk about. For some people, that is the only America they know – and for the rest of us who’ve known no different, it can be easy to be blind to it. So, Lieutenant, I apologize for unfairly characterizing you as “that slow old guy who takes too long to earn my $3,” you deserved better. Thanks for telling me your story.

Goodnight.

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when i was bulletproof


Work today was another one of those sprints to five o’clock. Meeting after meeting, rushing to get one thing done before it was too late to do the next one. I don’t mind so much, but I hate the fact that, when I get home, I’m often so beat down that I’d just rather collapse than do something ultimately more enjoyable like feed my daughter dinner. Tonight, though, I powered through it – and went immediately from dropping my keys to spooning pureed chicken and apples into her perfect little mouth as she bopped around and babbled. At the time, I may have wished I was splayed out on the couch instead – but I think I made the right call.

Little by little these past few weeks, I’ve been working on my “best of” list for the music of 2006. I guess I’ll let it fly sometime in December, I’m imagining posting it while in Florida for the holidays. As part of the process, I go back and listen to each album I shortlisted throughout the year, and try to write something about it while it’s on the cans. Today I wrote a little bit for one album that I liked so much, I’m going to put it here – but without listing what album it was for. I justify this because a) I’m running low on material and I liked it, and b) I figure people don’t really read all the “best of” text anyway (who wants to read some dude’s gushing over rock ‘n’ roll, anyway?):

One night back in highschool, I found myself at one of many parties in the woods. Sharaun could never accompany me to these things, so I was flying solo. At some point, an upperclassmen girl I knew fairly well sauntered over and, her face lit furtively by the flickering bonfire, whispered close that she wanted to try some of what I was smoking, but that she was with her “straight” friends and needed to be discreet.

So that’s how this girl and I, our relationship already clearly established to me, her, and apparently others as being flirty enough to raise eyebrows, found ourselves quietly slipping off into the trees to get high together. I’m convinced I could’ve made anything happen under the shelter of those trees that night, but I didn’t. We smoked, laughed, enjoying our teenage moment, and walked out together into the crowd some five minutes later.

I guess our disappearance into, and subsequent reappearance from, darkness got folks talking though – and by Monday morning at school it was said that we’d bedded in the pine needles. I had a time explaining to Sharaun, but everything worked out in the end.

Ahhh yes, those sacred years… nothing like highschool when I was bulletproof.

Oh my, the “new” Beatles record has leaked and I’m 24hrs late to the party… gotta catch up… goodnight.

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we need more of those people


It’s 8:30pm already, Wednesday night. Tonight is garbage night, so I have to get the various garbages together and haul them to the bins, after which I’ll haul the bins themselves down to the street. After that, I need to clean up the dishes from dinner, and maybe try and pick up Keaton’s scattered toys from her busy day at home with mom. I hate nights where the late creeps up on you, like tonight… where it’s 8:30pm already and I’ve barely had time to do anything but get home and sit down. Nights where the late creep up on you are almost as bad as sleeps where you wake up 15min before your alarm clock is about to go off. Anyway… back to tonight – let’s write something.

I like friendly people. Today, as I was walking out the door heading back to work after lunch, a truck was parked outside my house and a guy was unloading some boxes from it. “Hey,” he said, “got some boxes for you here.” “Boxes for me?” I wondered aloud, “OK.” As I walked towards the guy, he must’ve seen my company-logo’d polo shirt and asked me, “You sill work for Company-X?” (I’ll call my workplace “Company-X” for this one). I told him I did, and he proceeded to tell me how he’d just been laid of from Company-X. Having worked previously in some shipping/receivables department, he’d been let go just weeks ago and was now delivering for FedEx (in a Penske truck, no less).

Anyway, he was quite the talkative fellow, asking me what the situation was like now at Company-X: was it still bad, heads still rolling, etc. The guy was genuine, if a bit of a jabberjaw, and sincere. And I stood on the curb for a good 10min just talking about this and that with him. For instance, I learned that his dad recently died, and he’d moved back in with his mom to take care of her. You know those people who get personal too quickly when you meet them, he was one. But, I enjoyed myself, standing in the sun there – me still having my cush position at Company-X and being able to look down on his now lowly profession of Penske truck drivin’, box lugging deliveryman. No, no, that was a joke. The point here is that sometimes it’s encouraging to meet people who are just straight up nice. We need more of those people.

Helped Sharaun work on her resume tonight, as she’s applying for some part-time work as a freelance elementary school textbook editor through a connection. Would be stay-at-home work done on the computer, but we sure wouldn’t mind even the part-time income. Y’know, I’m glad, though, that she decided to leave work and do the mom thing – I honestly don’t think I could do it full-time. Watching the baby is one thing, but I’d fear I’m just too selfish to do it long-term. You think spending all day “playing” with the baby and reading to the baby and feeding and changing and singing to the baby is easy work, wrong… for me I get caught up wanting to do my own things. The things I’m used to being able to do when I want to do them. Yeah, I’ve got a lot of respect for what a selfless act the full-time mommy gig is, and I’m glad Sharaun’s the one doing it the same way I’m glad some dude (who’s not me) drives a garbage truck and takes away my refuse.

Well friends, the CD ripping part of my CD-ripping project is about 99% complete. I don’t know if I ever figured I’d really get this far. What’s left now is to optimize the entire resultant digital files. Because, out of roughly 150 gigabytes of music, some 50 gigabytes were ripped from discs that wouldn’t auto-grab MP3 ID3 tags from the ‘net. This means I’m going through and attacking them manually to make them more usable. But through a combination of some scripting I’ve done with the wonderfully extensible Godfather tagger, and just good ol’ done-by-hand data entry, I imagine the entire library will be finished sometime in early December. Make no mistake though, it’s downhill from here. All my tunes are now stored as safe digital copies, on a redundant disk array – and I couldn’t be happier. It’s a good feeling, to see my mater spreadsheet (which I started over two years ago) finally be completely green. I have now arrived at the digital age, ’bout time.

There we have it then, goodnight.