Author: Dave

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other than that, i’m out


So disinterested tonight, I just want to sleep. I fear I’m coming down with something, as I’m not typically this tired all the time. This weekend, I just wanted to sleep. And now, I swear I could go to bed and yet it’s only 7pm. Sharaun seems to be stricken with the same affliction, maybe we’ve both caught mono or something. Maybe I’m so tired because I’ve been reading all these gushing reviews of the new Joanna Newsom album that I just can’t get into. I mean, this thing’s done been leaked ever since I wrote this, and it still hasn’t gotten any better.

So, I don’t have much tonight… spent a good amount of time uploading pictures and movies to Keaton’s gallery. If you’d like, you can view said media by clicking this link.

Other than that, I’m out. Goodnight.

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bits of ham at christmas dinner


Both Saturday and Sunday I was tired; too tired. I also had that tight-muscled feeling. Both those things together usually mean I’m coming down with a cold. As a first response, I decided to see if a Sunday afternoon catnap might help. Not sure I was able to stave off any sickness, but it should felt good to take a nice long nap. I put the new Shins record on the iPod and drifted off while Sharaun watched Home Alone on TV and played with Keaton.

Speaking of Home Alone being on TV, “they” (the powers that be) sure are starting the Christmas stuff early this year. I went to Home Depot on Halloween day to pick up some last-minute needs and they had already taken down the Halloween stuff and were busily assembling the glut of Christmas lawn decorations and green extension cords. I can remember not being Christmas-marketed until after Thanksgiving, seems now that’s moved to after Halloween. When my kids grow up, they’ll start making their lists in August.

Speaking of Christmas, I’m all kinds of excited for Keaton to experience it for the first time. Although I realize there’ll be a limited amount of actual “experiencing” going on, at least that she’ll be able to remember, it doesn’t really matter because I’m also excited about us getting to experience Christmas with her. I’m excited to give her something to tear into on Christmas morning, excited to see her reaction to the Christmas tree, and excited to be back in Florida with friends and relatives to tell us how cute she is. I’m excited to dress her up in warm clothes (although not too warm, as Christmas in Florida is generally shorts and flip-flops weather), excited to feed her bits of ham at Christmas dinner… excited about all that.

Alas, my friends, I’d’ve liked to have followed up that Keaton-based paragraph with a link to a new gallery of her pictures – but I just didn’t get it done. I’m shooting once again for a Monday night posting this week. Oh, and I’ve also decided that this weekly posting thing will more than likely turn into a monthly one after I get to the 52nd week. I’ll try and keep it up for the entire first year, but after that it’s anyones guess. After all, I don’t want to back myself into a corner in terms of precedent when kid #2 comes.

Well, I guess that’s a lot of nothing for tonight – but it’s an entry. Goodnight.

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plasma-nuked by bleepblorkians (an iraq exit strategy)


Wanna know my exit strategy for Iraq? Just leave. Get the fuck out. Go.

Now, I know, you’re all saying, “Dave, that’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard. How can you call yourself a bleeding-heart liberal and not want to stick around to fix what those bloodthirsty republicans did to that poor, poor nation?” Well, I’ll tell you how – I just don’t give a shit. We fucked up, we lost, everyone already hates us – let’s just pick up stakes and ride out. Oh sure, I don’t mean leave here today gone tomorrow, but let’s get a seriously accelerated and real timetable for leaving. Something like, give the new government money to rebuild all the infrastructure we wrecked, maybe give some humanitarian aid, and then bolt.

“But Dave, those corrupt Iraqis will spend that rebuilding money on corruption!” So what? Fuck them. If they want to do that, so be it.

“But Dave, we went in there and tore up these peoples’ country and now you want to just abandon them to their own internal warring factions, complete lack of stability, and shit quality of life?” Yeah, that’s right, I kinda do.

“But Dave, what about spreading the goodness of Democracy?” What, our new-fangled version of Manifest Destiny? Give me a break. Is it really a “gift” if you have to give it with bombs and tanks?

“But Dave, what about our strategic role in the Middle East? How will we control our oil interests if we don’t have any presence there?” Easy, we don’t. Hows this trade sound to you: money and spilled blood spent on war vs. money and no spilled blood spent on alternative fuels. Not bad, right? I wonder if, over these past three years, instead of fighting this sham of a war, we’d taken the entire expenditure (some $340 billion dollars) and instead devoted it to developing a viable gasoline alternative – where would we be now? In fact, let’s talk about that last one a bit – partly because I know there are several large and obvious holes in it.

Just because you come up with an alternative fuel, it doesn’t end your need for gasoline. There’s a huge transitional period you’ll have to go through. OK fine, can’t we offset that too? I don’t know how much any of this would really cost, but I’d bet we could get creative with that $340 billion and not only develop a viable alternative fuel, but also help offset the gasoline-to-whatever transition in the places where it would hurt the most (like industry, shipping, etc.) I’m betting the $340 billion would fall significantly short, but it wouldn’t be a bad start. We could define the gas-to-whatever ramp with our own crude supply capabilities in mind, wean off at a rate we could handle entirely on our own reserves and active drillings.

We are industrious people. We built the best damn nation in the world from the ground up. You’re telling me that, were the world’s supply of oil to completely dry up, we wouldn’t be able to figure something out? You bet your ass we would. You’re talking about the nation that invents things like fast food drive-thru windows so we don’t have to get our lazy asses out of our cars to get our cheeseburgers, Segways so we don’t have to burden our legs with the act of transporting us around, and remote controls for ceiling fans. Trust me, we can figure it out. Now, back to the “But Daves.”

“But Dave, what about terrorism!! You want to just abandon that whole area and leave it the most fertile breeding ground for extremism and terrorism thought on Earth?” Terrorism-schmerrorism. As I’ve said before, terrorism is here to stay. Right now, it comes in the form of Islamic extremism, but it’ll always be around. Right now, it comes from the Middle East, but it’ll aways come from somewhere. In fact, in 2079 the United States may live in fear of hovercar plasma-nukings at the hands of the devoted followers of Martian God Bleepblork. People of 2079 will think back to quieter times when all they had to worry about was a 3,558,000 square mile bit of land on Earth with an extremely small number of extremists who were trying to kill us one airplane at a time with their sneakers and Gatorade. Yeah, what we call terrorism today will be some piddly nickel-and-dime ham-and-egger bullshit compared to what the legions of extremist Bleepblorkians will be capable of.

The here and now is always scary. But, much as we now look back in disgust on our “Jap”-interning days gone by, so will we eventually recall our outside-the-Geneva-Convention “hostile combatant” prisons. There will always be a new hotbed for hatred.

Anyway, there it is without my usual self-criticism and admittance of shortsightedness. Pick it apart in the comments. And we’re done with that.

Before I go, I wanted to say that I totally love the raw, unbridled anger in the latest comment on my (rather popular) iTunes is Crap entry.

Goodnight.

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invite the terrorists to dinner


Wednesday night (I’ve decided that it’s kinda my “thing” to begin my blogs with a simple statement of when I’m writing. I don’t care if you saw it somewhere else first, it’s still my thing) and I’m over at Anthony’s. At the moment, everyone has left me here to go somewhere else – and I’m all alone in the house save for my sleeping baby and Anthony’s sleeping daughter. Seeing as this is, understandably, not the most exciting of times, I decided to write to pass the time.

Today work was a regular blitzkrieg… an assault on all fronts. One of those days spent mentally juggling task after task, all the while driving to get as much done in the time available. I’m actually proud of my efforts today, I got a lot done – and allowed only a few distractions to sidetrack me. It’s at times like these, these “peaks,” that I feel like I earn my pay. It kinda makes up for that time I lied and said I had a dentist appointment and instead went home to take a nap, or that time I hid out down in the cafeteria reading, or when I purposely don’t answer the phone when the caller ID tells me it’s someone with whom I’m going to have to have a long, drawn-out conversation. Yeah, totally makes up for all that.

Big day today for the left-leaners out there today, the house, the senate, the don’t-let-the-door-hit-you-on-the-Ashcroft. Yes, big day indeed. Methinks, though, with all the fanfare and media coverage, that those dems better get to workin’ like, stat. Someone needs to get a platform, someone needs to do something, make something happen. Because, I’m of the opinion that, If the party of the ass decides to rest on their laurels for two years expecting their “Bush is dumb, Iraq is a mess” message to carry them in ’08 – they ain’t gonna win no elections. So, let’s see what ya got, guys and gals – get out there and raise taxes, take guns, invite the terrorists to dinner, and turn our children into godless homos. Yay!

What’s up with the Colbert Report lately? This Tek Jansen crap is boring and unfunny. Get with it Stephen.

Goodnight y’allz.

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rampant breeding and sheer luck


Tuesday night, and it was a good one. Packed with things like building a new computer for Sharaun, voting, playing with Keaton in the backyard, and doing dishes. It was a good kinda busy though, the kind of busy where, after you’re done being busy, it’s earlier than you think it should be. Like, you got a buttload done and it’s only 9pm… still plenty of time to do things like blog and work on ripping MP3s and whatnot.

My favorite time of year is underway, the time I refer to as the “holiday trifecta.” I love this time of year, but it’s also a big “hump” for me in terms of day-to-day concentration. I tend to start focusing on things like vacation time, turkey dinners, Christmas trees, and family. Lately, in fact, I’ve been taken by the vision of Keaton dressed in warm, Christmasey clothes – maybe crawling around in front of a twinkling tree. I keep thinking about how we’re leaving in mid-December and not returning until the new year, and how excited I am to get that respite from the daily grind.

And, speaking of Keaton crawling (I swear I was, read back a sentence or two), she’s just about there. In fact, I’d actually qualify her as “there” were she able to crawl continuously – but as it is now she gets up on her hands and knees, takes a few “steps,” and flops back down onto her belly. She’s got the mechanics, I just don’t think she’s put together that she can generate constant forward motion through repetition. My guess is that she’s just days away from completing that neural pathway though, and when she drives that golden spike she’ll be motoring all over the place. We’ve taken minimal precautions in expectation of this eventuality, likely fewer than we should have by now: We have no cabinet locky things, only a few randomly-placed outlet covers, and we’ve covered nothing in foam.

Furthermore, if I were to make a prediction, I doubt we’ll do much of this “babyproofing.” I was telling Sharaun just the other night that I bet cavemen didn’t “babyproof” the cave, or the tree, or whatever they lived in while following game across the lands. Nope, caveman-times babies were exposed to the unprotected terrain. But, I’m confident they learned to avoid the magma, velociraptors, bottomless chasms, and razor-sharp crags just like the rest of us would – by watching other, stupider and less fortunate, caveman-times babies perish at the hands of these various obstacles and deciding they’d rather keep on living instead. Admittedly, I may be giving caveman babies too much credit here. I mean, caveman-adults had much less developed brains that moderntimes-adults, right? How much less cognizant, then, would a caveman-baby be? Perhaps cavemem were only able to advance the species via rampant breeding and sheer luck.

Goodnight.

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i am not voting for that dickface


Didn’t write yesterday, wasn’t in the mood. Also wasn’t in the mood last Thursday night, which explains Friday’s non-entry. So, after my long weekend, I thought I’d better get some words on paper. Had a great weekend, though, nice winesoaked dinners and rewarding fits of yardwork, some daddy-daughter time on Saturday and some manfire-stoaking metalworking with a freakin’ plasma cutter and mig welder. It was good, for sure. Let us, though, friends, get our heads out of the past and move forward into the here and the now. Three, two, one…

Today is vote-day. I know where I stand on the major state ballot issues, and the house, but I decided today that, rather than abstain from voting for the many ham-and-egger offices (school board, water rights, sanitation, etc.), I’m instead going to vote for whichever of the candidates I saw the least amount of roadside campaign vomit for. I’m serious, one of these dickfaces had supporters put literally hundreds of campaign posters along the road from the highway to our house. I am not voting for that dickface, just for that.

Remember all my hesitation about the new Shins album? Yeah, that turned out to be quite unfounded. All it took for me to hit the fainting couch with every falsetto croon was a deep-listening session afforded me while mowing the lawn Sunday afternoon. Since the album is a scant 40min, I was able to cycle through it twice and then some (found myself pulling weeds and trimming hedges just to get some more ear-time). The Shins’ music always sounds to me like it would be at home in the mid-sixties, and I like that. I love the way the Shins-singer-guy “turns” his melodies, always trilling up and down where you least expect it, sliding up the scale unexpectedly, it makes for interesting listening.

Continuing on the music tip, I’ve recently re-started (once again) my efforts to digitize my entire CD collection. Re-started is really the wrong term, since it’s been an ongoing thing… it just languishes when the wind’s not in my sails. Last week I did a big “rectify,” comparing everything I’ve ripped thus far to what I have – just to get a better assessment of what’s left to do. Oh, yeah, I have a spreadsheet for that which I was supposed to use and keep updated… but I also stopped updating that regularly enough during my last ripping bout. So, I cleaned everything up and took a fresh look at my progress. Seems I only have about ~100 discs left to rip, not too bad.

Well the, that’s enough too call it a proper entry, I do believe. Before I go though, I also got caught up on Keaton’s gallery, posting her latest pictures – you can check them out here.

Goodnight beasties.

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it’s the little things


Wednesday night. I have a terribly boring blog tonight. A little about changing brakes, and a little about iTunes. Neither of which is that interesting. Sorry about that.

Saw a link for the new version of iTunes while browsing Digg today, and installed it immediately to see if it might rectify my iTunes 7 artwork issues. First off, why the heck is the iTunes installer 35MB? All it is is a shoddy add-on to QuickTime, which is a piece of software I hate for the fact that it offers me nothing and hooks into my system more than I want. 35MB of what? SharePod does essentially the same thing and is only 580KB – you’re telling me iTunes adds 34.5MB of “goodness?” I don’t think so. Anyway, about 5min into the thing’s ridiculously long installation time (you’d think I was installing a Windows service pack for as long as the thing takes), it pops up and tells me that I need to close Microsoft Outlook because it’s using some files that need to be updated. What?! iTunes is updating files that Outlook is using? Why in the world would it be doing that? I mean, I’m sure it’s some standard Windows/IE DLL thing… but still, that software is totally parasitic if you ask me.

Anyway, on a whim I plugged in the iPod, navigated to the Music setup screen, and did the famous “Display album artwork on your iPod” un-tick, apply, re-tick trick. Before iTunes 7 went to the new single-file artwork database structure, this used to fix artwork issues on individual misbehavers. But with previous versions of the 7.0 family, you were stuck if you 1) had embedded artwork in your MP3 files, and 2) manually managed your iPod (i.e. you drag and drop to get tunes on/off the iPod rather than using the library sync feature).

After some 20min of “optimizing artwork,” I unplugged my iPod and, with some anticipation, pulled up a track with known embedded artwork (a track whose artwork used to display perfectly prior to iTunes 7 and firmware xxx). You’d think that, after spending nearly 20min doing something, there might be some noticeable change, right?

(Note: While iTunes was “optimizing artwork,” I did a branch-predict and wrote the following paragraph. However, once you get through this paragraph and onto the next, you’ll see that my predictive writing was, happily, in vain).

Wrong! Stupidass iTunes just churned for the sake of churning, because not a damn thing changed. I still can’t see the album artwork which is embedded in my MP3s on the iPod itself. Oh sure, it still displays fine in iTunes, but not on the iPod. What I hate most about this is that it used to work fine, it was perfect… Talk about frustrating. Apple, are you listening? Fix this!!

(Now, what actually happened.)

Right! As I pulled up that first track (Michael Jackson’s “Beat It”), I was thrilled to see my artwork displayed proudly to the left of the ID3 information. The artwork is back! I can’t believe it, way to go Apple! Oh, and I’m sorry about that speculative paragraph above – but I just didn’t have a lot of faith that it would work.

Kudos for giving us manual users their embedded artwork back on their iPods, it was missed while it was gone. Let’s change subjects now, OK? OK.

This evening I changed the rear brakes on the truck. See, the truck’s been making awful, awful, grinding noises from back there – and a visual inspection the other day led me to believe that badly worn pads were the cause. I knew I needed back brakes anyway… but I didn’t think there were as bad as they were. And oh… were they bad. On the tire making the noise, I was actually into the steel on the pad, way past the squealer thing and way past the rivets. It was baaaaad. Being only the 2nd unassisted brake job I’ve ever done, not to mention really the only larger-scale maintenance I know how to do on a vehicle (aside from things like putting air in the tires), I’m no expert at what bad brakes look like. But even me, an auto idiot, could tell this was not good. So, I slapped on new rotors and pads, put the tires back on, and fired up the truck for a victory lap around the block.

The noise was ten times worse than before.

Crushed, I pulled back into the garage. I’d noticed while putting on one set of pads that I kinda bent the little squealer thing, and I thought maybe I’d bent it too far inward and it was rubbing. But, despite my best efforts to try and see without taking the tire back off, I just couldn’t tell. So, up went the truck on the jackstand and off came the tire. Turns out the squeal tab was fine, but being able to see the caliper assembly I immediately ID’d the problem. There’s this little “clip” thing, two of them actually, that sit where each brake pad clamps in. I don’t know what they’re for, they’re tiny little thin things that serve no immediately recognizable purpose to me. Anyway, I must’ve unseated the bottom one, and it had gotten lodged between the rotor and it’s housing. Off came the caliper, on went the “clip” thing, and the whole thing went back together.

The next victory lap was blissfully silent and smooth. Success.

Goodnight.