Author: Dave

Posted on

vehicular violation

Cool picture of something.
Another day. Thankfully, work went by fast enough and relatively painlessly. Now it’s already 11pm and I’m just starting to write. Won’t be a long entry tonight, but at least I have some media to post – which in my mind somehow makes up for a lack of verbiage. Here we go.

As work has been moving forward on the Halloween props, I’ve been spending a little time at each big phase thus making little “teaser” videos for this year’s haunt. It started with the witch’s test flight video the other day, but now I kind of like the idea of creating a series of short teasers for the props and whatnot – it satisfies the nerd within me. So today I whipped up one from the footage Ben took during our lunch-hour test of the new fog machine. Watch it by clicking this sentence. More teasers to come, stay tuned.

Anyway, we got together tonight to work on the Winch Witch. Keeping with our run of luck and productivity, we completed the entire costume portion of the prop, and she now looks like a full-fledged witch. We were also able to do a couple “real life” tests of her drop path from the roof, to judge speed and crap. I think she came out looking pretty dang good, judge for yourself:

Awesome ain't she?!

I installed a new script on this page the other day that let’s me see when people visit. Since my readership is pretty limited, I can, for the most part, know who is looking at the page, when, and how often. It’s really cool in a voyeuristic kind of way, and there’s always those tantalizing IPs that I don’t recognize, which just fuel my thoughts of closet readers. I guess I need to start spicing up the entries, or providing some kinda service, if I want readership to increase tenfold or something. Owell, I’m cool with writing for writing’s sake.

That’s it all, I’m tired and out of junk to say. Watch the video again or stare at the picture, they’ll have to take the place of the words that aren’t here.

Dave out….

Man, I am so angry right now. The fact that I’m writing this postscript to last night’s entry can vouch for it. I dunno man, the insurance industry must have gotten together and realized we hadn’t paid them a deductible in a while or something. First, Sharaun injures her knee playing soccer. Next, her windshield cracked top-to-bottom this weekend when she was washing her car (hot glass, not-hot water). And finally, shortly after leaving for work this morning she comes back in the house sobbing that her car’s been broken into. Damnit! I absolutely hate car break-ins. She had parked it outside last night because Ben and I were taking up the garage working on the witch project.

Anyway, one night outside – one night! Looks like they tried to slim-jim the door first and then either gave up and shattered the window, or inadvertently broke it while slim-jimming. All they took was her teaching tote-bag full of books and papers, which happened to have $41 in one-dollar bills she’d collected from her class for something. It just pisses me off, and mostly because we’ve already been through this twice at our old apartments in the ghetto – and I don’t like to think that kinda crap goes down in our new suburban utopia. The peace and quiet, not to mention perceived security, of having our own house has fleeced me a bit, sheltered me from the car break-ins and overheard domestic disputes of an apartment complex. Man, really pisses me off.

For real this time…

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dustin’ smokies the whole way

Sorry if this is your kid.
Just got back from the “urgent care” clinic with Sharaun, but let me tell you, there ain’t nothing urgent about it. Those people move with all the urgency of an turtle. Anyway, Dr. Professional at the clinic diagnosed her injured knee as.. an injured knee, and said she should get an MRI. Mission accomplished though, she got a quick referral to a specialist who’ll really be able to figure out what’s wrong.

Saturday Kristi walked into my place and held out a couple smallish paperback books, offering them to me. Looking at them, they appeared to be graphic novels. Since I’m not really a comic book person, I didn’t know what to think. Turns out these books, called Maus Parts I & II, are part graphic-novel, part memoir, and part history lesson – all about the life of the author’s father, a Holocaust survivor. Finished the first one tonight while the doctors at the clinic must have been using up all their urgency on some other patients, and I’m anxious to start Part II. Interesting stuff and easy reading.

Sitting here listening to some A Silver Mt. Zion, frantic apocalyptic violin and percussion sounding really rad right now. Sometimes I just need to kick back and get my instrumental on, y’know? Words can wreck a song sometimes anyway, and instrumental tunes make for great thinking and working soundtracks. You know, blaring in the headphones as you pound away on the keyboard for your paycheck? Cranking out PowerPoint presentations to give the flashy-graphic addicts their daily fix of 38pt drop-shadowed Arial text and multicolored block diagrams. Wait. Why didn’t I go to trucking school again? I could be smugglin’ an 18-wheeler full of bootleg beer across statelines right now, dustin’ smokies the whole way.

Anyway, I guess it’s time for bed. So until then, when the next the world hears from me will be the customary sounding of my “morning claxon” as I trumpet my own response to the alarm clock’s horrid beeping.

Dave out.

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the winch witch

May not look like much yet, but I got the vision.
A good weekend. Football at our house with friends on Friday night, dinner at Benihana and a night at the bar on Saturday night, and all the while work forged ahead on the Halloween prop during the days. I’m slowly working on a page dedicated to this year’s Halloween project, the Winch Witch, but it won’t be ready for a while. Anyway – it was a good weekend, involving just the right mix of hangin’ out and gettin’ stuff done.

I don’t think I’m going to write much, as I’m not really in the mood. Sharaun hurt her knee pretty bad at soccer this morning and we ran over to a friend’s place just now to borrow some crutches so she can try and make it to work in the morning. I don’t know quite what that has to do with my mood and writing, but it felt like the right time to write it. This paragraph is pointless anyway, so why try and make it cohesive or anything.

Saturday I helped Kristi and Erik move some furniture into their new place, and then we all convened at our place for some college football. With everyone around, I took the opportunity to bring up the current plans for the Winch Witch. I figured with a bunch of smart people we could have an ad hoc think-tank and maybe brainstorm up a good idea. Turns out it worked, and we collectively not only greatly improved on the original idea Ben and I had, but also managed to really simplify the planned implementation.

We moved away from the original track idea and settled on suspending the witch from a wire strung above. Also, she’s no longer up on the roof, she just starts her run there and ends up nearer the ground before being reset and ascending again. Even the name I gave the project is now somewhat misleading. We’re not using a winch-winch, but we’re still “winching” the prop back up the wire to it’s pre-drop position. The cool thing being that we moved away from something uber-complicated to something really simple: a fishing reel.

We went up to the sports store and picked up a $10 el-cheapo fishing reel, which will act as the “winch” that hoists the witch back up her wire path to be dropped again. With the fishing line attached to an anchor on her back, we’re using a small DC motor to reel her back up after she free-falls on the wire-track. The reel will hold her in place at the top, and when someone breaks the infrared beam we’ll fire a solenoid to depress the reel’s “cast” button, where line can be freely fed. No longer held by the reel, gravity will send her flying down the wire-track toward the trick-or-treater, while an eerie flood light turns on and illuminates her. On the same circuit as the light and solenoid, a cackling soundtrack is played during her descent.

We managed to get everything but the motor and solenoid this weekend, and I’d say we’ve engineered about 70% of the project. We still need to figure out the whole beam-activation and motor on/off timing, and I’m sure once we get her up and running there will be little things we never even thought of that we’ll have to deal with. The good news is that Ben and I were able to make the armature for the prop’s body in one day, with only about $20 worth of material. Now all we need are the electric parts and a good old-fashioned witch mask. I want to string the whole thing up as early as possible to get a good amount of “proving” and debug time in before she actually has to perform on Halloween. We did some initial testing today, and you can watch the results here. People think I’m crazy, but I’m also pretty sure I’m adding this secondary prop to this year’s display – as I can’t see it taking more than a few hours to construct (‘cept I’m planning on using a cheaper and easier windshield wiper motor to power the prop, implemented kinda like this).

OK then… I guess I talked about everything I really wanted to talk about, now I better hit the sack. Until tomorrow or something. Dave out.

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one years old

Thanks to all my people.
A rare weekend entry to say happy one year anniversary to the blog.

So, “happy one year anniversary blog.”

365 days in a year, 104 of those are weekend days, and we’ll estimate 10 for non-working holidays – that leaves us with 251 days. This is my 242nd entry. 242 out of 251, or 9 non-writing days.

Pretty dang good if you ask me.

Dave out.

Posted on

i actually called nintendo power

Moo?
I don’t even feel like writing right now, so apologies if this sucks. Seems like all my people back in the F-L-A made it through the hurricane OK – only to face another one a mere week later. I’m with ya Floridians, I’m with ya.

Sitting here, around 10pm on a Thursday night – the most exciting thing I did tonight being take out the garbage for tomorrow and watch a TiVo’d episode of Reno 911. I just didn’t feel like doing anything, y’know? Put on T. Rex’s greatest hits and I’m groovin’, you don’t have this album? Man, you’re missing some dope, dope stuff y’allz. I mean, take a listen to “I Love to Boogie” or “Children of the Revolution” and tell me you just don’t wanna blare this indulgent 70’s glam out the open windows of your Ford Explorer while driving by the high school. What? Who’s cool!

Speaking of cool, Sharaun and I were in the mall a few weeks ago, and we ended up in a little store called Hot Topic. I mean, I’d been in Hot Topic’s before, you know it if you’ve been there – all employees are required to be goth teens (serious, it’s in the application or something), and they specialize in hot-right-now goods of all kinds. I mean, whatever is the nerd/goth/glam-chic of the minute fills the inventory. In short, it’s an awesome study in alterna-teen pop culture. And, I’m happy to say: according to what trendy-but-aloof teens think is cool right now, I’m the bees knees.

Seeing shelves stocked with shirts like this and this and this and this and this sent me into a near frenzy. So awesome. If they woulda had these back in my day, I woulda worn them while I played ultimate-universe-war with my action figures (you know, like when all of He Man fights all of GI Joe and Star Wars?). Only thing is, back then they wouldn’t have been cool – just nerdy. Who cares though, I left feeling empowered, actually having real memories of the things on those shirts – knowing. I am retro-rad baby, that’s right. I don’t need to pretend; I actually called Nintendo Power, we had Jarts, and I saw Gremlins in a theater. They say trends recycle every fifteen years – so right now I’m about as cool as I was when I was thirteen, which, and I gotta tell ya, was damn cool for thirteen. But for real, the one in the skull-shape of dungeon one in the Legend of Zelda? Oh man, totally off the awesome scale.

Oh, and I saw the FBI released some more info on a favorite case of mine from last year. They’re now calling it the “Collarbomber” case, and they released some of the notes that this pizza deliveryman was supposed to follow in order to remove the collar-bomb locked to his neck, before it detonated. Anyway, I dig stuff like that.

Dave out.

Posted on

what’s the number for green beans?

Snooooooore....
Don’t tell anyone, but I skipped out on an afternoon “teambuilding” event for work today and came home instead, to “yardbuild” alone. I needed to mow, and wanted to try and give the empire-building crabgrass a little bit of the business. I went mad, a little bit, I think. I mean, I just got so frustrated I started ripping up crabgrass, uprooting the stubborn creeping weed with a trowel, and leaving massive bare spots in my yard in the process. It’s OK, the grass was already dead there. My yard has gone from what was arguably one of the best-looking on the block, to one of the worst-looking. If I were just a tad more vain I’d consider paying to have the whole thing uprooted and re-sodded. But, in the end, it’s just grass… and I realized today that there’s no way to beat the crabs… I pull up a whole colony only to find that it’s sprung to life in another corner of the yard. So, I had a moment of realization, standing there in my patchwork yard, and decided that I can be happy even if I have an ugly lawn. Even if it’s all crabs, it’s still green.

Today when I came home from work (at noon, bwahaha!), I was kinda hungry and I started rummaging through the house for food. Well, the kitchen at least. Threw away a loaf of moldy bread that had been out since before this weekend’s Oregon trip, looked at the bleak offerings from the fridge, and moved onto the pantry. Upon opening the pantry, I was greeted with the strangest site:

Stymied.

A wall of labeless cans glaring out at me. What the heck is this? I picked up a can or two to see what in the world was going on, but was even more dumbfounded when I noticed that each can seemed to be hand-numbered in permanent marker. I checked a few more, and they all had numbers written on the bottom in marker. Now, under normal circumstances I would’ve found this whole thing to be extremely odd. However, living with a teacher, you get used to strange things being left around. I figured that it must be some project Sharaun was working on for her class, maybe some kind of recognition or memory thing… I dunno. The thought of a “list” somwhere that matched each numbered can to a description of its contents made me laugh a little – but I soon forgot about the cans after a nice tuna sandwhich (tuna from a pouch, no can needed) and half an hour of Cops.

Match 'em up.

Later, Sharaun called on her way home from school and asked me to check some ingredients for our planned dinner. When I went to the pantry, the cans reminded me to ask her about what kind of “project” they were for. Turns out, she had no idea what I was talking about. In quick order, I deduced that we had been hoodwinked. Someone practical-joked us, and now all our cans were labeless and their contents a mystery. What’s worse, Sharaun needed some chicken broth and green beans for dinner. Luckily, she’s familiar enough with the chicken broth cans to pick them out – but our jokester had even thought of that. Any can with identifying info on the top or bottom had been blacked out with marker… ingenious.

Oh, whodunnit? Well, if the engineer-sevens (y’know, those Euro-techy sevens with a little horizontal line in them?) weren’t enough of a tipoff – the fact that I loaned my housekey to Pat this weekend while we were in Oregon sealed the deal. Really, you think you’re doing a nice thing by letting friends mooch off your ESPN GamePlan… sheesh.

Tonight I got a mail from my pops, in response to my entry yesterday – or more correctly, in response to my thoughts on Ollie North’s letter to Kerry. Here’s what he had to say:

Hi David, I read your blog today and I would like to offer you my view as a Viet Nam veteran of what I think of the war as I look back after 30 years. Thirty years ago I was on the flight deck of the USS Coral Sea helping my ordinance buddies load napalm and 500lbs bombs. We lost many fine young men (two of them were my squadron’s commanding officers) who flew off the flight deck and never returned. These were men who I worked with, talked to, and met their wives and children on R&R. David if the war had not started when I was on the Coral Sea I would have went to Canada or Sweden after I found out what the United States was doing in Viet Nam.

I read Oliver North’s letter and I can’t understand his position. He says, ” Worst of all, John, you then accused me — and all of us who served in Vietnam — of committing terrible crimes and atrocities.” This statement is blatantly false, a lie if you will. John Kerry never accused everyone who served in Viet Nam of committing terrible crimes and atrocities. He stated the facts and some who wanted the war to continue don’t like the fact that atrocities were committed by US troops. Take a look at this and make up your own mind, http://quivis.com/tigerf.html.

If you, like Ollie North, can support this method of fighting a war, and justify it, then vote for Bush. If you don’t believe, as I don’t, that there is any justification for My-Lai or the murder of innocent civilians, vote for Kerry. Love you, your Paw.

And then, followed up 15min later with this:

Hi David, I was just looking at this letter I wrote you and I noticed it was 40 years ago, not 30, that I was in the Gulf of Tonkin helping give the people of South Viet Nam freedom and democracy. I was 24 years old, the same age as your brother John who is probably going to be going to Iraq to fight another war to give the people of Iraq freedom and democracy. I have never contributed to a political campaign before David, but I have sent a contribution to the Kerry campaign as I feel this is probably the most important election in my life. Love you, your Paw.

Hmm… I don’t even really have much to add or comment. I respect my dad’s opinion a lot, even if he can’t remember how many years ago he was in Vietnam… I mean, he is getting old and all. Thanks for the notes pop.

Lastly, I finally got a Gmail invite… so I now have an account. Yeah, so, I wasn’t really on the bleeding edge this time – but that’s cool. Now I just need to figure out who gets my invites.

Dave out.

Posted on

a community service, y’all

I was thinking more the Prisoner of War POW, but this was too cool to not grab.
Not that I think Ollie North is a man of great integrity or anything, I don’t really know enough of the details of the whole Iran Contra situation, but he’s penned a very interesting letter addressed to Kerry – which I thought was a good read. I like the fact that he didn’t get into questioning the whole award-validity thing, making it seem like he’s taking the high road, of sorts. Anyway, I found it interesting, and, if anything, it at least sounds less venomous and fanatical than most political attacks I’ve read. I tend to like things on an inverse scale to the amount of foaming-at-the-mouth political fervor associated with them. If you present me with a well-thought-out, rational, and most importantly calm argument, I’m much more willing to listen to you than if you’re one of a million boobs wearing purple-heart band-aids at a group masturbation for God incarnate. I guess, under the microscope, everyone has some pretty nasty crap in their past that they’d rather stay under the rug or in the closet.

While getting dressed this morning, I came up with my idea for today’s blog. I got struck with a the urge to write after reading the Ollie North letter, and whipped up the intro paragraph in five minutes. Then when I got home from work I got started on the media to backup my story. So, here goes.

Know how I know my wife loves me? She irons patches on all my drawers. Yup, whenever I get a new six-pack o’ boxers, she steals them away and irons little patches and crap on ’em. Some might say this is done, not out of love, but rather as a protection mechanism. The thinking being that, in the heat of the moment, when I’m alone in my hotel room on one of my many business trips and a cute girl has not only managed to Houdini her way through my triple-locked door but also to convince me to drop trou – the unmistakable insignia of a doting wife will convince the aforementioned she-devil to release me from her spell. I mean, for real, what man-ravaging vixen with even an ounce of conscience could continue seducing her prey once she notices a cute little bunny or stately giraffe on her intended-victim’s undies? No one, that’s who! Whatever the motivation, I’m glad my drawers are personalized.

But, what would a blog entry about iron-on patches on my underwear be without pictures of my actual shorts? So, overwhelmingly demanded by the silent majority, I spread before you the cornucopia that is my skivvies. Feel free to take a gander, but don’t stare too long lest you be called by the sirens of my underpants, only to crash unfulfilled on the rocky shoals of my manhood. Feast:


T-rex, my personal fave.
A poodle, with matching blue face.
Little pig.

Speak no evil. See no evil. Hear no evil.
A long-neck giraffe.
A pink bow.

N-I-C-E.
Yup, that does indeed say “Diva.”

And no, I am not embarrassed at the gargantuan size of my shorts – does not the elephant have the largest cage at the zoo? Has not Hollywood taught us that even the largest and mightiest of cages cannot stop hairy beasts from taking women, rampaging the city, and fighting off biplanes while scaling tall buildings? I liken my boxers to these cages, holding back a fury that will only be safe within confines large enough to house it. These boxers are doing a community service, y’all – we should give them a merit badge and put them in the newspaper. And to the overly-scrutinous, I have absolutely no idea what those stain-looking marks are on the giraffe and the bow – I pulled them out of the dirty clothes that way, I swear.

Being that I want my Halloween decorations up about two weeks prior to the actual holiday of holidays, and that it’s already the 2nd week of September – that only gives me one month to plan and construct this year’s Halloween display. So, today I set about the task in earnest. I picked up a 20,000cfm fog machine (nearly eight times the volume of fog from the machine I bought last year) on the ‘net, and Ben and I did some brainstorming on this year’s “big” prop. In the end, I think we’ve hit upon a great one: something I like to call a Winch Witch.

Think this mounted on a track on the roof, using the force of gravity to roll on a track down to the roof’s edge, all the while being lit by eerie light and accompanied by a cackling soundtrack. The “flight” of the witch from the roof peak to edge will be triggered by a garage-door light-beam circuit. When someone breaks the beam, the light will turn on, the soundtrack will play, and the witch will fly on her broom from her hiding place near the top of the roof right up to the roof edge near the unsuspecting trick-or-treaters. I’m most happy because the idea to make the witch prop dynamic is all our own, and we’re already acquiring the components to make it happen. I mean, with a plan like the one below (Kentucky Fried Chicken grease spots and all), how can it not succeed?

Genius in genesis.

Man I love multimedia-rich entries like this one, I wish I had the time and ideas to do them more often. Surf on over to Ben’s site to see pictures from our weekend excursion to Smith Rock, Oregon this weekend. But, I gotta ramble y’all… have to unpack and air out the gear from this weekend’s camping trip… there’s a new Aqua Teen Hunger Force on the TiVo, and I need another bloody mary.

Oh, and you guys know from my former rants that I’m not one to usually go for this kinda crap – but several respected message boards I fequent, as well as trusted publications, have huge threads where people are saying this is real. I’m not sure, but I’m gonna put a link here and see what happens. You have to sign up for some crap “trial” offers at the end, but maybe I can get a free ‘Pod. (I’ve heard ancestry.com is the easiest to cancel after the trial period, and I’m kinda interested in what data they’ve got on my fam anyhow…) Whateva.

G’night, Dave out.