Author: Dave

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hairyguy30


Wednesday! The day I take my trash down to the curb at night, and wake up to it being gone! America is great, it’s that kinda freedom-magic that makes terrorists hate us so much. Sitting here rooting around my super-secret leak-friendly haunts like a pig hunting truffles, looking for some new Justin Tenderlegs songs for Sharaun. She’s always so happy when I can grab a couple more tunes off his upcoming album – tonight I got two, maybe I’ll get laid. Keaton fell asleep on my chest tonight, I didn’t want to put her in her crib – but my arm fell asleep and I figured she’d be more comfortable there anyway. Good dad.

First off, let me say how happy I am that yesterday’s co-op mega-post drew the comments it did. You guys had some great input. Hunting, fishing, biodiesel, and a ram pump are great “misses” on my part and make me think that one of the requirements for my “ideal” fantasy scenario should be a piece of property with flowing water. Now, having rights to fish or impede that water is another thing altogether, but, who knows, I’m sure there are still parcels of land available somewhere in this great country that come with limited water rights.

I found the biodiesel and ram pump comments most interesting. In fact, I’m somewhat ashamed to say I’d never heard of a ram pump prior to stinkmeat’s comment yesterday (go here for more info on this beautifully simple piece of engineering). These things have some impressive specs, from the Ram Company website:

We have a customer in Montana using our 3″ cast aluminum pump ($2100), pumping water 270 feet vertical lift and over 1,500 feet from the pump and is getting 2 1/2 to 3 gallons per minute. They have a 33 foot drop into the pump with a 100 foot drive pipe.

After reading about them, I’ve now decided I want one for the co-op. Also, the biodiesel thing was something I initially chose not to touch, but it’s conceivable to just go all-out and spend the cash up-front to convert vehicles and equipment (the notion of a biodiesel generator is very interesting). While I’m not 100% convinced on the ease of manufacturing biodiesel (my hangup comes mainly from the source of raw, unrefined material), I think it’s worth considering (not officially part of the fantasy, but flirting with it pretty hard).

Yes, my friends, all good points indeed. I wonder if I could take a tax writeoff for traveling around the country scouting plots of land for things like an elevated water source, proximity to hunting and fishing, soil conditions for planting, and average sun-hours and windspeed? Because seriously, when I see this place in my head it’ so awesome. And, before I leave the topic – I stumbled on this link today and found it pretty interesting (and germane). Hippie crap over now, all you conservatives can take off your blinders and start reading again.

The saga of WordPress eating my posts while I’m still working on them continues. It’s so unpredictable now that I’ve been cutting and pasting my posts into a text editor prior to hitting the “save and continue editing” button (the button which seems to shuffle 2/3 of my posts to the nether regions of the internet). It’s actually really pissing me off. Seems to happen on bigger posts more than smaller ones, but I haven’t really “studied” it or anything so I’m not sure. All I know is that it’s been making writing more difficult and less enjoyable.

It got so frustrating when it erased my co-op post the other day multiple times that I started searching for it. After much hunting, turns out it’s a Firefox bug – not a WordPress bug. It’s a known, reproducible bug with Firefox – and the only decent workaround right now is to either use Internet Explorer to edit long posts, or install the Firefox IE Tab plugin and have your WordPress “Write Post” page default to opening in IE. Only problem I have there is that, for some stupidass reason, a carriage return in the “Write Post” window using IE gets automatically double-spaced. What a sucky solution, but I’m now doing it rather than risk losing reams of writing.

I’ll admit it, I’ve been totally engrossed over the past week with the whole lonelygirl15 thing. And yes, I realize I’m about a month late to the party here… what can I say, I’m way out of touch in my old age. I name-dropped her the other day, but was too embarrassed to admit the sheer level of my interest by writing an actual paragraph about it. After watching all her videos, and Daniel’s responses, a week ago – I’m pretty convinced it’s some kind of orchestrated fake. Fake or not, it’s sure been getting attention lately – making the cover of the New York Times website is nothing to poop at.

But just what is lonelygirl15? A viral marketing campaign for the Thelemic Church of Satan? (Don’t worry, you’ll get it after you get rabid enough to start following the LG15 “dissection” threads out there and come to the “Crowley photo” bit.) Some NYU grad student’s thesis project in meta-trends and media manipulation (a theory straight from the pages of stereogum)? Teaser to get the MySpace crowd pre-hooked on a new MTV show? I love this kind of online mystery, in the same way I love the Lost Experience and once love the Smashing Pumpkins Machina mystery. Mixed-media clue-hunting and puzzle-solving have always been fun to me. Can’t wait to see how this one ends up.

Well, sorry I strayed from my normal high standards of academia to scrounge around in pop culture. I promise I’ll be back to my regularly scheduled programming just as soon as I finish reading my brother’s blog (he really has one, I found it last month – must run in the family) and watching the last lonelygirl15 video again to analyze how “professional” the lighting is.

And, as a parting shot – one more interesting post to relay: The Most Isolated Country In the World. Goodnight.

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livin’ off the land


Tuesday night, and I’m taking a break from the great “is lonelygirl15 for real” debate to bring you another installment of sounds familiar. Keaton is asleep in her mom’s arm on the couch, and we just finished a fine meal. I’m tired of writing (this part actually gets done last), so I’m just gonna toss it over the fence.

I almost cried last night when WordPress once again lost more than half of a huge, detailed entry I’d been writing for hours. I’ve never had this problem before, but recently, while saving entries, I’ll scroll down to pickup writing where I left off only to recoil in horror as I notice the bottom 2/3 of my entry have bee lost – disappeared into cyberspace. Sometimes, this is not that big of a deal, other times, it’s devastating. Tonight, for instance, I was putting the finishing touches on this long, drawn out piece (something I’d been working on for a couple days now) when it was zapped. Man, I was pissed. So, here goes the 2nd attempt, which I’m sure is not as good as the original. But hey, maybe you think neither is good – deal with it. Oh, and this is looooong, sorry.

Sometimes I wonder about how “real” my co-op could be. So, I decided to take a good-natured stab at what the outlay would be for getting such a venture off the ground while equipping it well enough to give it a fighting chance at success. So, let’s see then, I decided to break the analysis into what I consider to be “major” and “minor” needs, the distinction based both on the cost and the necessity of the items. The goal here is to try and make an educated guess at just how much “up front” funding would be required to start living the co-op life. To further qualify that, I mean the amount of money needed to establish the co-op and change my primary occupation to co-op “employee.” Here’s what I think it would cost “drop out” and get things up and running. Here’s my initial swag. The big items:

Property
According to the Department of Agriculture’s National Agricultural Statistics Service, in 2005 the average cost of “rural” property in the US is $1,150 per acre. This number varies depending on location, being as low as less than $300 per acre in places like New Mexico and as high as more than $10,000 per acre in places like New Jersey and Rhode Island. California is on the high-end, about ~$4,000 per acre on average for a piece of rural property. Although I’m sure you could find high- and low-side aberrations. For this exercise, however, I’m going to use the nationwide average of $1,150 per acre.

Deciding on what acreage is needed to sustain a small co-op is not easy, several studies have been done on the subject, with varying results. If we’re talking about just a self-sustaining operation which can feed those who live there – something as small as 5 acres might be enough. For argument-sake, though, let’s assume we want a 10 acre operation. This should be plenty of land for enough a small-scale operation needing living space, storage space, crops, eatin’-animals and stock. Using the national average, that puts our property cost at about $115,000. Remember that’s just land. To add a dash of realism here, I searched parcels for sale right now in Montana, where the Department of Agriculture’s study said the price per acre of rural land is about $500. Turns out the estimates are pretty accurate, as I found several ~10 acre parcels for sale in rural Montana for right around $100,000-$150,000. Based on that, I’m going to assume a $150,000 outlay for land alone.

Land, however, is largely useless without some resources. We’d need water, and I’m assuming there’s no existing well we can use, so there’d be drilling costs there. We’d also need a septic system, and leveling and grading for construction and accessibility. I chose to budget for these land “usability” steps separately, rather than include them in the property or construction costs. For this, I’m swagging $50,000. This includes an large engineered septic system (sand/peat or aerobic), a drilled well, and clearing/grading/access earth moving.

Power
Following the “modern pioneer” method (the instant-on off-grid approach), I’m targeting a 100% green powered operation from the getgo. The only real reason this wouldn’t be possible is money, but since I’m working on a cash estimate for my dream situation – I’m going to account for the off-grid scenario right up front rather than opting for what may be a more realistic “stepped reliance” approach to cutting the electric company cord. But, how much would it cost to go green up-front?

In his excellent paper, An Off-Grid Primer, Bill Kemp gives the perfect amount of information and detail about the 3000sq/ft off-grid home he and his wife built in Canada. Powered by a hybrid system of wind, photovoltaic (solar, or “PV”), and a diesel generator – the system he’s using sounds like it would be just about perfect for a small-scale self-sufficient farm. Mr. Kemp and his wife are able to enjoy all mod-cons, albeit with careful consideration to outfit the house with power efficient appliances and electronics. There are hairdryers, big TVs, computers – everything the modern kind of co-op I want could wish for (even enough to do some co-op-style web development on the side for extra scrilla, if need be). Anyway, I suggest reading the entire thing if you’re interested, but the million-dollar question comes at the end:

But is it economical?

This is a tough question, because the answer is not straightforward. The entry level for a turn-key (i.e. you do none of the installation work) PV based system running house loads similar to ours is about $25,000 to $35,000 (Canadian) for all of the materials and installation labour. Do some of the work yourself and it can be lower. Add a wind turbine and it will go up. Can you work with used equipment and tinker some? Our fairly large system based on today’s costs would be approximately $50,000.

Being that this paper was written ~3yrs ago, I’m going to add 15% to that $50,000 quote for inflation – giving us a utility-company-reliable off-grid hybrid power system for roughly $60,000. This is encouraging, going from a piece of land with no native power source to a completely off-grid reliable system for only $60k. Of course, there are things I’m not really getting into here like average windspeed and sun-hours per year at our chosen co-op location – both which will be determining factors in just how efficient the hybrid system will be in using nature as juice. But, for the sake of the exercise, let’s move on.

Shelter
Rather than going through the same detailed analysis above for shelter costs, I’m going to instead give a blanket estimate of $500,000 for living quarters and amenity-outfitting. This includes the home itself and all the stuff that needs to go in it. To a California native lie me, this seems just about right for not only a domicile but the amenities – but looked at compared to the national average it’s more than enough. I’m assuming here that the house would be constructed and outfitted to take maximum advantage of the green power which will run it, and that involves possibly paying a little more for the most efficient appliances. Even with this considered, I think you could get an acceptable multi-family living space with a decent amount of privacy and breathing room for our $500,000 guesstimate.

Other Structure & Equipment
Another $200,000 seems fair for any outbuildings, storage, and necessary equipment. This may seem low, but remember we’re only talking about 10 acres and I’m not planning on buying all modern farming equipment. We wont be needing threshers or laser-guided GPS plows, but a small front-end loader or baby 4×4 ATV might be in the budget. I don’t want to fall victim to the “big red barn” syndrome that bankrupts plenty of small-scale operations by seeing them build a traditional-looking farm rather than a function-for-what-they-need farm. Again, this may seem like a lot – but I want to ensure we have some padding here.

Sustenance
Since it’s unreasonable to expect fields full of yummy fruit and veggies, fattened pigs, and cows giving milk upon moving in – one has to consider the startup cost of subsistence as the co-op gradually becomes more self-reliant. There will of course be some period of time where reliance on the local grocer will still be key. Not to mention, there are costs associated with bringing a the co-op into a working food-producing cycle, things like irrigation, planting, buying beasties for eating and and stock needed, etc. All these things need to first be acquired or kicked off, and then need time to start producing. Surely there’ll also be some tweaking to the whole production cycle to hone and time output based on needs and conditions, and nothing ever works out perfect. I think it’s logical to assume that the co-op will need at least a year to “proof,” during which everything will be felt out and built into routine. During this year, the co-op “employees” will be weaning off outside provisions as production increases and is perfected. So, it’s a year-long non-linear expense which hopefully declines as the co-op begins to function as intended. I’m swagging another $20,000 for this.

Operation
Although the plan is to be nearly 100% self-reliant, I’ll concede that it’s nearly impossible to escape certain outside expenses. For instance, the co-op will still have to pay annual property taxes, the co-op will still consume fuel for things like vehicles and generators, and, since I don’t intend this to be a crazy commune, the co-op will still have expenses like sending kids to school and buying clothes, toothpaste, and toilet paper. I’m not suggesting we move into a teepee and start wearing the furs of the animals we both eat and make soap from their fat. I’m not suggesting we don’t go into town to get haircuts, socialize, or see a show. I don’t intend to home-school the kids or not invite friends over for dinner. This isn’t a walled-off freak-farm, it’s just a group of folks who desire to reduce their reliance on commercial goods and services. And, since it’s not a walled-off freak-farm, it’s safe to assume there will be a normal set of “living” expenses associated with having a “normal” lifestyle. Of course, living within the means of the co-op will be a must, but you still have to account for these expenditures. So, for both pure operating costs and the cost of “maintaining normalcy,” I put the cost at about $25,000. I realize that this expense is more of a regular, or annual, thing rather than part of the up-front investment – but if I’m looking at the co-op as coming online within a year, I think it’s a good idea to include on year’s worth of this expense as part of the initial outlay. This way, if we have this funding up-front, we can be more assured that the co-op can be the sole focus for that important initial “ramping up” year.

This annual cost brings up an interesting point – somehow, the co-op will have to bring in money. There’s no way around it. That means there’ll have to be some kind of business plan to bring in what we need to get by. Whether this means selling some of our bounty at the local farmer’s market, doing some computer work on the side (I expect my co-op to be populated with a few cubicle-jockies turned naturists), selling things on Ebay, or making soap – we’ll have to have some way to generate revenue. Of course, revenue means taxes. But it’s important for me to admit that, as cool as it sounds to shun money, we’ll not be able to escape it. Part of forming the co-op would be working out this business plans with the folks who’d be going with me.

Let’s tally, shall we?

$500,000 – home and outfitting
$200,000 – other structures & equipment
$150,000 – land
$60,000 – off-grid power system
$50,000 – land usability
$25,000 – operation (one up-front year)
$20,000 – startup sustenance

I realize that a million dollars may seem like a whole heck of a lot of money just to “drop out” and start working the land. Can it really cost that much to cast off the fetters of reliant living and get back to basics? I don’t know, my estimates say it’s probably about right, at least to do it the way I’ve dreamt of. I’m sure you could go all Walden and find somewhere to squat in middle-of-nowhere Montana for much cheaper – but I’m trying to achieve something a little different than a Grizzly Adams recluse lifestyle. My fantasy is to have most of the luxuries and amenities I’ve come to rely on now, but without having that reliance be on anyone but myself (or, in this case, the co-op). Utopian? Pie-in-the-sky? Sure, of course it is. That’s why it’s my fantasy. Anyway, I think a million dollar startup fee for a multi-family co-op is OK. It’s just a rough, padded estimate. If I were really going to go through with it, I’m sure the co-op could put their heads together and figure ways to get it rolling it more economically. Even if we do assume a million though, that’s five couples at $200,000 each. These days, leveraging $200,000 from a home sale isn’t at all out of the ordinary.

Now, I realize that the plans laid out here may seem overly complex or “ground-up.” I’ll concede that a lot of this can be done in one fell swoop buy simply purchasing an existing small-scale farm parcel with all the buildings already erected. You’d likely get an existing well and utility hookup – and could take time converting to green power later or make the initial investment outfitting the place up-front. A simple search of property right here in Northern California shows that there are several pieces of property which would likely work, and most fall somewhere right between $600,000 and $1,000,000 (helps to confirm our “ground-up” estimates). There are several reasons why an instant solution like this is attractive, but other reasons why it may make things more difficult. Existing structures may be subject to more restrictive easements or restrictions – some even regulating what kind of green power can be used and if you have to sell back to the main grid, etc. Out in the country, I feel like you have a better chance at calling your own shots, and are less likely to be told you can’t erect that 300ft tower for your wind turbine because there are rare condors around which could be killed by it. And, anyway, my fantasy is a “ground-up” fantasy; it wants me to plan everything, decide things, and make it from scratch. That’s just the way my fantasy goes.

I’ll close this up by admitting I know absolutely nothing about running a farm, taking are of animals, or much of anything related to “living off the land.” For this reason, my estimates above could be completely off-base and entirely wrong.

Goodnight.

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bad dad


Monday night, didn’t feel like I got to see Keaton much at all tonight – made me sad to put her down knowing I really won’t get much time with her again until tomorrow night. Got the Ford washed after work today, the first time in nearly six months (I know because of the dates on the pictures of the ski trip Pat borrowed it for). Driving it around afterward, it was amazing how different it is to be able to see clearly on my periphery. No more dust-clad windows. Varied topics today, I actually split this up into two – as I got off on a very detailed “co-op” tangent which I think deserves its own devoted entry (tune in tomorrow for that). And, we’re off:

Lately, I’ve been doing a lot of “feeling good” about the house Sharaun and I bought (and currently live in). With real estate prices here in the streets-of-gold utopia of Northern California soaring to the realms of insanity, I think we did a good thing buying what we did when we did. At first, as more and more of my friends began purchasing their own, larger-than-ours, homes, and our little family expanded with Keaton, I felt a little bigger than the place. Even entertained the idea of moving in the not-so-distant future to accommodate our growth. I mean, ~1,500 sq/ft isn’t exactly a palace, y’know. More recently, though, I’ve developed a sense of “job well done” in our purchase. Instead of lamenting our lack of closet space compared to the walk-in jobs that our friends have, I decided to put up more shelves. Instead of worrying about the guestroom-to-nursery conversion leaving us incapable of proper hospitality, we got a sleeper-sofa and are considering repurposing the “computer room.” What’s more, as I trod the short hallways and modest living space – I begin to feel good about not living beyond our means. Not to insinuate others are, it’s just that I feel a bit better about the realism I now see in our choice.

The more I find inventive ways to improve and get the most out of what we’ve got, the better I feel about our purchase. Really, only in America do you have the luxury of wondering if your family of three needs more space than the quarter-acre, 1,000+ sq/ft house with central heat/air and running water. The more I think about it, the more I’m convinced we should continue to enjoy the space we have until it really does become unfeasible (which, conceivably, could be never). I mean, I don’t think the house I grew up in with my brother and folks was near as big as where we are now – and we coexisted peacefully just fine. I look to things like the ample space we have for all our stuff, and all the amenities we need to stay healthy and happy, and I feel proud for living within our means… for not going overboard. Who’d’ve thought I’d have a sense of self-satisfaction having a smaller home than the Joneses? Now, I just want to convert to solar power…

At Sharaun’s birthday party at our house this past weekend, both of us ended up imbibing a little too generously. When I woke up in the morning hurting, I was pretty disgusted with myself. I didn’t really let on to Sharaun, but the fact that we were both not quite in our right minds as Keaton slept peacefully in her room really got to me. I felt utterly irresponsible, and mentioned to her that, from now on, even if we’re at home there’ll be only one of us drinking. It really got to me, running through the what-if scenarios in my head… made me feel painfully selfish for putting myself before Keaton in some way. Of course, nothing bad happened, but that’s not the point. The extent of my punishment this time was simply a day wasted to recovery as I lay useless around the house trying to sleep of my self-inflicted poisoning, and I don’t intend to give the fates another chance at some assigning grimmer consequences. Bad dad; bad, bad dad. No, seriously… bad dad.

After years of spending frustrating hours on the phone with my dad attempting to help him when he has a computer issue, I finally wised up and worked out a more practical solution. To be fair, pops has become increasingly computer literate, but being that he’s still not a worthy apprentice to my mastery I still struggle with things that, while basic to me, are not so natural and simple-seeming to him. To make things easier for us both, I walked him through signing up for a logmein.com account and had him add me as a secondary user of his PC. Now I can access his PC remotely from anyplace with a connection and a browser. The acid-test was on Sunday though, when I remote-troubleshot (and solved) a particularly nasty iTunes issue he was having. Logmein worked like a charm, I shoulda done this a year ago.

Goodnight my friends.

2006-08-20.jpg
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hump on meth


Sunday, pre-noon, so.. morning, I suppose. Listening to the Dears new record, and the second time around it’s sounding really good – don’t know what happened on the first spin the other night, wonder if this’ll hold up or if it’s got something to do with the open windows, sunshine, and breeze. Maybe I should put on the new Decemberists too, see what a gorgeous Sunday can do for the sad state of “initial judgement” I heaped on it. I just put Keaton down for a nap, Sharaun’s playing soccer (2nd game back since torn ACL, surgery recovery, and pregnancy). Last night we had our 1st “date night” without Keaton (not counting the anniversary dinner back in FL because it’s not “here”). With Keaton dropped off safely with very generous friends, we set about some fine dining and a movie. Saw Descent, damn… that was a truly scary movie. Of course, the majority of the 2hr+ fondue “experience” was spent talking about the baby, but I think that may be normal or something.

Speaking of the baby, she’s officially teething – and not happy for it. Stinks to see her hurt, especially when there’s nothing you can do about it. Not only that, stinks that her hurting means her crying… and that inconsolable sort of crying that’s just no fun all around. Some times she’s off, sometimes she’s on, but the books are right when they say that those little tooths can affect everything from her sleeping, to her eating, and even, bizarrely, the consistency of her poo. No visible teeth as yet, but you can bet they’ll be on the web as soon as the erupt.

And, more of the kid-related… Sharaun had the “Teen Choice Awards” on tonight while I sat here blogging. Normally, I’d just tune in when the choice teens are on screen – but as I listened passively, I began to hear some interesting stuff. Drug references, alcohol references, and plenty o’ sex. I sat there, “tsking” and shaking my head, thinking of my eventual teenager sitting and watching the stars they love glamorize all the things that stars do – I found myself surprised. Sharaun, “tsking” and nodding right along with me, stopped to ask “Do we think this is bad because we’re old, or because we have a kid now, or both?” “Both, I guess,” I offered. Anyway, after I finish writing this I’m gonna exercise my geriatric-parental rights to fire off a stinging missive to Fox, in which I will condemn them for their too-adult “teen” show (and maybe their rightwing nutjob cable news network too, depends on how much of my dad I can channel at once without passing out). Man, I’m way old… do all kids hump on meth and Grey Goose these days? What do you wanna bet this is somewhat of a hot topic online tomorrow, I’ll preload some blog searches here and here to see if I’m psychic.

Sometime over the course of the past week, our camera’s compact-flash memory card took a nosedive, and it now maintains it does not exist. Luckily, I was able to scrounge up an old 256MB replacement – but the downtime didn’t really have an impact on Keaton’s weekly upload. I still managed to come through in the clutch with another quality weekly offering. But, don’t take my word for it – head on over right now and check it out for yourself.

Remember last week when I talked about compiling the Pitchfork “Top 200 of the ’60s” list in MP3 format? Turns out someone beat me to it. Download to your heart’s content my friends, to your heart’s content.

Goodnight, hopes for a good Monday.

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b-to-the-l-to-the-o-to-the-g


Late Thursday night, didn’t plan on writing at all – no inspiration. Sometime around 10:30pm I killed the lights and decided to head to bed, Sharaun pre-sleeping me by about 30min already. Tomorrow’s her birthday, you know (today, as you read this). Anyway, I ended up in the computer room sitting at the desk – sometimes that works better for writing than the laptop/couch combo. Queued up the Andrew Bird album, longing to remember last Christmas – what it reminds me of. So now I’m listening to it, sitting here without a shirt on, my hair freshly cut. I’ve noticed I started going shirtless around the house more in the evenings. This is a good sign to me that my old age is beginning to blind me to the true shock-value of my body hair. I always wondered if the hairy dudes at the beach had an iron-clad sense of self assurance, or were just oblivious. As I get older, I’m thinking it’s more than likely oblivious… as I am slowly ceasing to care. I could talk about this forever, you know. Let’s not let that happen, for the good of the… b-to-the-l-to-the-o-to-the-g.

Not a bad week in terms of stuff-done-getting, or something. Mowed the lawn Wednesday, got my hairs cut Thursday, and on top of it all had a prideswell of a week at work. Y’know, even though it’s a good chance to get to listen to a couple hours of unadulterated music with ample time for a wandering mind, I still think I hate mowing the lawn. Oh sure, I talk about secretly liking it somewhere deep within me – but mostly I hate having to do it. I wish my lawn was goth, so it’d cut itself.

It freaks me out when I look at myself in pictures and I realize I actually brush my little tuft of bangs to the right, instead of how I see myself doing it every morning in the mirror.

More on photo fraud (you’ll need sound).

The more I look at Keaton’s face, the more I’m convinced I’m getting closer to seeing what she’s going to really look like. You know what I mean, baby’s faces are poor indications of their aged appearance – but I’ve almost convinced myself I can catch a glimpse of the bits of permanence hiding under all the furiously growing bone and muscle. Sometimes, when she smiles, I can almost picture it – catch a glimpse of her as a young woman: strong-willed and intelligent, athletic, impeccable taste in music and well versed in its history, cautiously optimistic. Then I think, “I have no idea.” Nothing I think I see is any real indicator, most of those traits are more like projected hopes. But man, when I hoist that little girl overhead in a Superman pose – my huge hands wrapped around her body where I can feel her tiny ribs under my thumbs – and she lets loose with a smile so pure it opens her mouth pelican-wide, stretches her pink lips thin, and pushes her cheeks up into her eyes… it’s magic in my heart people; pure magic.

You’re smiling at me, aren’t you?

Happy birthday Sharaun, I love you. Goodnight.

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at least i got the blog


Wednesday night and I’m sitting here trying to be anything but unimpressed with the new Dears leak, so far it ain’t workin’. I’m also fast at work grabbing the new Decemberists LP, which I learned also leaked a couple days ago while searching for some new song about “ghostriding the whip” for Sharaun. Speaking of workin’, I put in a good effort today – felt like I dug around and made some stuff happen… I like that feeling. Now Sharaun’s watching some eight-hour dancing-show extravaganza and I want to tear my eyes out – but at least I got the blog to keep me busy.

Got my unopened box of 15th series Garbage Pail Kids the other day, and promptly violated the collector’s code by tearing open each and every still-sealed pack. When it was all over, I had one complete set, one nearly complete set (lacking two cards) and one complete ‘B’ set, not to mention a pile of wax pack wrappers and a neatly stacked tower of twenty year old gum. I’ll sell the extra sets on Ebay to make back my outlay. Then there’s the gum… what do you do with twenty year old gum? You wonder about how it tastes, that’s what you do. You wonder and wonder and wonder until, finally, you just pick up one of the brittle pink sticks and poke it into your cheek. It won’t chew like regular gum though, it’s more accurate to say that it shatters like peanut brittle. Moreover, it’s age has made it impervious to saliva, and it never quite “gels” into one mass – remaining, rather, as a thousand tiny shards. Then you taste the bleu cheese, and you know it’s not right. Something in this gum has got the mold, and it’s like a fragrant fungus just bloomed on my tongue. Ick. Don’t eat twenty year old gum.

Some time ago, I realized that my pneumatic PVC-frame scarecrow prop I had planned for this Halloween was unrealistic. It’s not that the idea isn’t good, because it is, it’s that using air to power a prop that simple is just overkill. I guess I just wanted to do something more with pneumatics this year, but running a hose and buying a push/pull cylinder and solenoid seems like too much investment for an effect that could that could be realized with a small electric motor. All that needs to be done is to jiggle the joint strings to get the desired “electrocuted” effect, and I could do that with a windshield wiper or washing machine motor… something really easy. I mean, if I have to run power to the prop to trip the pneumatic solenoid anyway, why not just run power to a motor? The thought was that I was making the prop unnecessarily complicated just so I could use pneumatics.

Then… I stared researching it some more… and I’ve almost flip-flopped again. Air’s more reliable, and all I have to do is power a dead simple solenoid – no relays, no gear motors, etc. Still though, I run up against my long-time Halloween prop nemesis: timing/automation. I can buy a solenoid, I can get sound to come out of a speaker, but how do I make them happen on-cue or in sequence? This year, I debated buying a professional prop controller/timer – and I’m still undecided on that, although they are pretty affordable. Something else I stumbled on the other day, a Windows application that you can use on cheap PC-controlled timer/relay board. $50 for the software and $30 for the hardware (not counting the PC which will control the timer board) and you’ve got an extremely flexible complex prop automator.

At first I was excited, when I saw that the DIY jobs can support five inputs instead of the PicoBoo, where one PicoBoo = one input. This means that one PicoBoo could likely trigger only one prop (maybe two if you’re creative), while the Haunt Controller PC board could potentially power up to five. But, all is not as sweet as the first impressions, as those relays seem kinda weak… 12V and max out at 3-5 amps, and the PicoBoos have two straight up AC outlets on them (albeit offering only 8 amps combined). For my money, then, the AC-outlet F105 PicoBoo controllers are more versatile for amateur-type haunt automation.

Whew, glad that’s over, I was getting bored.

Before I go, here’s an interesting note written by a chemistry nerd on the plausibility of the London plane terrorists mixing and detonating TATP on a commercial airliner. Regardless of the plausibility of using this particular explosive, there’s always something that’ll work. I don’t remember who I heard say it but, if we can’t keep weapons out of prisons – how can we expect to keep them off airplanes?

Goodnight.

Posted on

floor ice cream


Tuesday, and I’ve got a mixed bag for ya. Had a lot of time tonight… thought about breaking this up into multiple entries to ensure a wall-to-wall week, but sometimes it’s good to knock down the cobwebs, clear house so to speak. If you could try and not get too wrapped up in any one paragraph, it may help ease the awkward transitions betwixt varied topics. Y’know, I don’t normally comment on my own blogs, but I got a comment yesterday from an old friend. I love getting comments from people like this – makes my day, actually. Thanks for the comment Sheila, I’m sure Andy will be interested to hear you’re still dreaming about him. Oh, and maygsters yes it was your husband – and… 12:16am? Sheesh.

Making a bowl of mint chocolate chip ice cream some time after dinner this evening, I spooned in a scoop and lost the bowl to the principle of physics known as “lever action.” The bowl tipped first up, then over, as it jumped off the kitchen counter and headed towards the floor. I watched in slow motion as it turned over, and braced my ears for the sound of shattering. When I heard nothing, I moved my eyes to the point of impact – thankfully the bowl had landed, upside down, on a pair of Sharaun’s flip-flops. The foam rubber providing a soft landing pad for the bowl, and the ice cream falling gently to the faux tile floor below. I did what any discerning ice cream fan would and snatched the scoops up back into the bowl. Floor ice cream is good.

Did some WordPress tinkering tonight. Added a plugin to give some simple Google Analytics reports in my admin panel (helpful quick-glance stats without having to login to stattraq), and added a “most viewed” plugin and report-out data to the sidebar. The most wanted is interesting, as it tracks which of sounds familiar’s posts are visited most often (you can see how many visitors per post by hovering over the links). Also took the opportunity of mucking with the sidebar to remove the long unused audioscrobbler/LastFM link – as I listen to nearly all my music on the iPod now and Winamp tracking just doesn’t make sense anymore. Anyway, just another step in the embetterment of the blog.

Every evening, I’ll usually do a quick scroll though the blog comments that Akisment has branded as spam – just on the off chance it’s ID’d something incorrectly (almost never happens anymore). Tonight, I found a series of spams that intrigued me. For some background, there’s an oft-used spam technique where the spammer uses copied-and-pasted strings of text from pieces of literature in their missive. Sometimes the spam comment is just a few sentences from a book, sometimes the spammer replaces random words in these strings with the spam subject – yielding funny results like this:

All this obfuscation is merely an attempt to bypass the Bayesian style spam filters which are so successful in weeding out the comment wheat from the comment chaff. The random string of words is meant to fool the filter into passing the comment as legitimate. It hardly ever works.

The comments that caught my eye tonight, though, were hawking the comment-spam staple Human Growth Hormone (HGH, for short), and read like this:

I just realized that the whole point of doing interviews was to promote this movie, so see it three times.

I have a lot of real life experience with hustling and doing stupid stuff.

I had had a troubled past, but like most rappers they go out and talk about it to kind of help their career.

I had been approached by a couple of people as far as making movies because of my success in music, but it was always to play the white rapper in Sister Act 2, or something that would just kind of put the final nail into my coffin of my career.

To me, those sounded like real-life quotes. Indeed, copying and pasting one into Google revealed that there were quotes from Mr. Mark Wahlberg. That’s the once-famous “rapper” Marky-Mark, for those who don’t remember. Back in the 90s, he could be seen curling cinderblocks and parading around in his underwear while trying his best to sell a menacing swagger. Now his quotes are being misappropriated to sell Human Growth Hormone. Apparently, this stuff is marketed as being able to help you burn fat, build muscle, and prolong your life. Doesn’t sound like something Marky-Mark would need at all, I can remember how in shape he is because of the chin-ups he did in the “Good Vibrations” video. I’m still waiting for the C&C Music Factory spam hawking cheap propecia, or, Things That Make You Grow Hair.

Tech related, in an attempt to go completely anonymous with regard to my online activities, I once again tried installing Tor the other night. I have to say, the installation procedure and GUI are much nicer than the last time I tried out the applications. Firefox and µTorrent were setup and using Tor/Privoxy in mere seconds. Only one problem, the dang thing still slows your connection down so much it’s just not worth it. Yeah, I’d like the anonymity, but not at the price of my connection… sorry.

Let’s do some music talk, eh? Eh.

I’ve been eating up PF’s new 200 Greatest Songs of the 1960s feature, these lists always give people a lot to talk about. So far, they’re doing pretty good by my judging – even throwing in some obscure tracks that I’ve not heard of. My goal now is to create an iPod playlist of these 200 tunes, just for the sake of doing it. I have a lot of them, and can “find” the rest with little effort I’m sure. Heck, I bet there’ll be a torrent of the whole thing up on the major trackers before too long – such is the age of digital media.

I loved these two posts, here and here, over at marathonpacks a while back. What a great idea. One of the bits that really intrigued me was that this guy actually took a college course called “The Music of the Beatles.” Man, I would’ve killed for that in place of COBOL or Statics or something equally as gay (no disrespect, it’s not my fault the word is slang for “dumb”). Anyway, when I first read them way back I decided I wanted to do my own list – but soon gave up. It’s too hard, and anyway, it’s already been done. Besides, I’ve already covered music that gives me chills – so I think I’m good.

This post is spiraling out of control fast… I’m not sure I can reign it in anymore… Maybe we should poke fun at some of the recent search strings leading people to sounds familiar? OK then, why the eff not… we’re already past the point of repair with this mess:

masturbate with prosthetic hooks
Y’arrgh… don’t ye be doin’ that.

andre the giant penis when erect
Who is researching this statistic?

Easy South Florida Crack Whores
Yeah, I’m sure there’s a list of these on the internet.

there is someone in this school is it a human what is it
This one just gives me chilling visions of someone squatting in an old abandoned school building. An old abandoned school building with an internet connection.

“dave is a pussy”
WTF?

how do birds do it
I’m not the only one.

That’s it, I’ve wrecked it. I’m outta here. Goodnight.