Author: Dave

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freeze-camping

It's a GIS for "writer's block."
I guess I just haven’t had much time to write, and there’s been so much going on in my head. I keep thinking of fun things to write about, but keep running out of time to write them down. Hopefully now I’ll have a little more time to keep up with things, it was just an insane weekend… really.

So yeah. A long, and well received, weekend. Paintball on Friday, freeze-camping and hiking in the snow in Yosemite on Saturday and Sunday, and a Sacramento-to-Oakland yacht trip on Monday. I learned I like bloody marys, Sharaun and I took shelter from the snow under a rock, I found out I’m either OK at, or got lucky at, paintball, and I’ve still got it. Indeed, it was a fine weekend. Being so busy, the blog suffered some. I don’t really mind though, as it was nice to have an extended break from writing – gives me a chance to build up something to actually write about.

You know how some people change the letters on the back of their pickup trucks to say things like “toy” or “yo” instead of Toyota? Well the other day I pulled up to a Ford F150 Lariat Edition at a stoplight. I was thinking, if you took off the ‘T’ and completed the bottom round of the capital ‘R,’ you could make it the F150 “LABIA” edition. That cracked me up for a good minute or so.

More better to come this week, I promise. Dave out.

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you did it

Where my droogs at?
Sitting here ripping my CD collection, listening to some great stuff that I haven’t heard in years. Tonight we’re on the Bs. We listened to everything from Ben Folds Five to Black Sabbath to Badfinger. Sometimes I’m torn between wanting to write every detail of my daily stuff and wanting to write down stuff from the olden days. Sometimes olden days are more fun.

One day I was playing “doctor” with the girl from next door. I must have been in the 5th grade. It was her, my brother, and me – and we were hiding out between our two houses. My mom was out and about somewhere, and my dad was home. Since we were so young, I really had no idea how to play doctor – I just think I wanted to see something I’d never seen before. We were in the middle of the proceedings, and the little neighbor girl was in a compromising position – when my mom drove down the street on her way home. The picture looking out the car window must’ve been pretty telling. Two boys and the neighbor huddled in the corner between the houses, she’s striking some unnatural pose or lifting something that shouldn’t be lifted? while the two boys look on intently.

We saw mom drive by, and immediately canceled the game of doctor. I think my brother and I headed home, hoping that mom wouldn’t suspect us. Bad news for us, the neighbor told her mom about the new game she played with the brothers from next door. Bummer. While my mom was in the living room talking to the neighbor’s mom, I put my plan into action.

I went into my brother’s room, and told him “you were playing doctor with that girl.” “No I wasn’t, you were,” he replied. “No, you did it,” I answered. Then, without giving him enough time to answer – I kept drilling it into him. “You did it!” “You did it!” “You did it!” “You did it!” Over and over and over and over again. Finally he stopped protesting and started crying. “I did it,” he whimpered through tears. “That’s right, now go tell mom.” And, he did. He went out and told mom that he was the one who was playing doctor with the girl.

Never have I been more ashamed of my treatment towards my brother. I’m sorry Frank. I know you didn’t play doctor with that girl. Oh, and I’m also sorry I brainwashed you into “admitting” you were the one who scribbled all over the toilet seat with mom’s mascara – I know it was me. I’m also sorry I threw the cat on you while you were taking a bath, and that I shot model rocket engines at you out of a homemade PVC pipe “bazooka.” Oh man, no wonder?

OK, so I posted Thursday’s and Friday’s at the same time. Sue me, Dave out.

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old navy and ross every day

The printing press why? I think because of the whole flier thing.
Whoa, sorry guys. Things have been hectic both at and away from work this week, and the blog has suffered as a result. I promised myself that I wouldn’t let the blog fall like I did my journal when things got busy in college. So I gotsta write.

I guess halfway through Tuesday’s article I decided to start spelling “flyer” as “flier.” It’s cool though, because apparently English is stupid enough that both spellings are accepted. Still strange how my brain decided to start spelling it differently somewhere in mid-writing.

Sharaun got selected for jury duty this week, seems like it could be a lengthy trail too? bummer for her since it’s her off-track time and she wants nothing more than to do nothing. Maybe good for me since it will keep her out of Old Navy and Ross every day. Now I’m gonna get beat up for saying that. I think the trial doesn’t start until sometime later this month, but she has to be there next week for something or other – which means she’ll miss the boat trip on Monday. She was pretty bummed.

So, apparently the wording from that book that I read in high school (and used to create the satanic flier prank) is an “actual” satanic ritual from La Vey’s “Satanic Bible.” It’s the “Satanic Baptism,” the Children’s Ceremony no less. Guess that book I read plagiarized La Vey’s stuff or something. Maybe those youth group leaders were familiar with the actual stuff and it lent credence to my prank. Awesome.

Sorry. Dave out.

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the satanic flier


I wonder if there’s anyone who reads this that I don’t know about? I know of a handful who still read it every so often, but I wonder if there are any random people who read it – kinda like me reading the other online journal I frequent. Just a random person reading all about another random person’s daily events and stuff. I guess there’d really be no reason for someone to just “happen” upon the site – so perhaps not. This will be my 168th entry in about 8mos of writing, not bad. (I know that because there are little “hidden” direct-links to each entry next to the date up there, and they have the post number in ’em). It’s a habit now, so I keep going.

The SMUD people came out and did a tree-survey of my backyard. They give free trees in an effort to conserve energy through shade they make. It’s a cool program if you want some free trees, and they have a lot to choose from. The lady mapped out my backyard and then suggested some tree varieties and placements. In all she recommended seven trees, four of them medium-sized flowering pears and three different kinds of larger maples. I don’t agree with her planned placement 100%, but I’ll stick to it for the most part. I just don’t want to eat up all the grassy space with trees. Would be nice to have some shade on that back part of the house though. They deliver the trees sometime next week. Pretty soon my backyard may look somewhat backyardy… with sprinklers sticking up from the dirt and baby trees growing among the rocks. Awesome.

This weekend is our first Yosemite trip of the season. We’ll probably do a couple short hikes on Saturday and Sunday, and just the one night of camping Saturday. Well, provided we’re able to get one of the 1st-come, 1st-served sites in the valley. Should be fun as we’ll rendezvous with my folks Saturday night, who’ll be there celebrating their anniversary. But the weekend won’t end there this time, not for me. I’m taking Monday off and taking a 40ft boat from Sacramento to San Francisco. One of our buddies works at a boat shop and they take their big ones to the boat show in SF each year, they put in on the Sacramento River and take a nice slow trip all the way over. The weather should be great, so I’m really looking forward to a nice relaxing day on the river – and more importantly, not at work.

When we were freshmen in high school I was reading a ridiculous book which I’d borrowed the book from a girl I was dating. It was a fictional account of a woman who was involved in some manner with satanic ritual abuse. It was an awful book, but I was into that whole occult thing. Being a more exploitive rip-off of the Rosemary’s Baby theme, the book delved into rituals and even contained some mock satanic-speak from the supposed events.

As I said, at the time I was big into the whole occult thing – and I had also been reading these reference books at the library which were like “encyclopedias of the occult.” Each volume of these encyclopedias had a huge Baphomet on the outer jacket. For some reason, I got the idea to make up a fake event flyer for a make-believe satanic gathering. Using a photocopy of the very authentic-looking Baphomet from the encyclopedias and a mixture my own words and the satanic-speak from the book, I created a mock “promotional flyer” for a supposed satanic gathering in my town.

My plan was to pull a prank with the fake flier. I gathered my usual crew of trusted friends and let them in on the idea. An ambitious plot for four freshman, we were going to sneak onto school grounds late one Sunday evening and stuff the folded fliers into as many lockers as possible – concentrating on the “senior” lockers. We ran off 100 copies of the flier and somehow got up to the school around midnight one Sunday evening. After scaling the gates to get inside, we split up and ran down the halls stuffing pre-folded satanic ritual invites into as many lockers as possible. We must’ve made too much noise, because the groundskeeper/security-guard ended up rolling around the grounds in a golf cart. Luckily we all scattered and managed to escape before being caught, and we planted most of the fliers.

Monday morning the suspense was almost too much to bear. By third period the fliers were the talk of the school. Being relatively unknown as just simple freshmen, we managed to stay under the suspicion radar pretty well. By lunch the administration had been involved as several of the more concerned senior girls had shared the flier with the office staff. Near the end of the day, Sharaun and Natalie confronted Kyle and I to ask if we were behind the fliers. We of course denied all knowledge.

Over the next few weeks, there was talk of a satanic cult in the small city of Rockledge. The flier was shown to two separate church youth groups and touted as absolutely authentic in language and symbolism (supposedly even the correct demons were named). I know this because one of our conspirators, Joey, was actually in one of the youth groups where the flier was presented. The entire group of church teens was warned about satanic cults and their influence, the whole time the flier was being used as “proof” that this sort of activity was real and happening right in their own backyard. Supposedly the youth group leader sent a copy of my little prank to a “cult expert,” although we never heard any more on that. I always wondered how Joey kept it together during that speech… I remember he was almost exploding when he called to tell us what had gone down.

Being as the flier was an “invite” to a supposed satanic event, it gave a location and date and time to show up and participate (I kept the date and time non-specific enough so that we could’ve done the prank anytime without having to modify the flier text). Our ultimate goal was to actually stake out said location on the evening of the rumored event and see if anyone (would-be satan worshippers, cops, etc.) actually showed up. Unfortunately, we couldn’t make it and to this day have no idea if anything actually went down or anyone showed up. In my head, there was a huge turnout of police cruisers, vigilante youth ministers clad in white linens and wielding holy water, and high school senior wrestlers on a mission to defend their cheerleader girlfriends from evil satanists.

So, without further ado – pulled from the shoebox that is the paper archive of my middle through high school years:

The text, for the vision impaired:

In the name of Satan, Lucifer, Belial, Leviathan, and all the demons, named and nameless, walkers in the velvet darkness, harken to us. O dim and shadowy things wraith-like, twisted, half-seen creatures, glimpsed beyond the foggy veil of time and spaceless night.

Draw near, attend us on this night of fledgling sovereignty. Welcome a new and worthy brother/sister, creature of exquisite magic light. Please attend the dark rejoice in the name of our lord Satan this day before the Sabbath at midnight. Steal forth this night and meet by the start of the wood at the corner of Eyster and US1. Thank you and may the power of Satan fill and emanate from within your soul.

The wording at the top is direct from the book, the bottom is mostly my own.

Dave out.

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sweep it under the rug

Bath party?
Man, I don’t know about this war. The longer it goes on, the less and less progress I see. Now, I know that’s just me – and I’m not as educated on things as some may be. But the daily bodycounts reported on CNN and other news outlets seems to recall Vietnam just a little too closely. (I know you’re not supposed to start a sentence with “but,” but sometimes it just makes so much sense. “However” can get overused and there’s not really another easy contrasting lead-in. Anyway, Stephen King does it – and he makes millions, so I’m OK with it.)

I really don’t know where I stand on this war. In general, I’m against war – like I think any intelligent person would be. Then again, I realize that not all situations can be resolved in a peaceful manner – and that sometimes you need to take action. I think most people with a little intelligence would take a stance somewhere in the “fighting sucks, but I won’t just roll over” vein. Protecting yourself, or someone helpless, seems OK to me. But fighting should be used only as a last resort. I know, it’s an over-simplified outlook on the whole thing – but I’m not trying to solve the whole war and peace thing right here and now.

This war, however, seems a little less than “right” to me. I realize these people were under the rule of a tyrannical dictator. I realize that freedom to do and think as you please is important, and that all people deserve it. I realize that without that oppressive leader in place, the people of Iraq stand a better chance of gaining some of those all-important freedoms. However, I’m not entirely sure that our purpose over there was that noble. And I’m not so blindly optimistic as to think that those freedoms will be miraculously bestowed after a few months of military “house cleaning.” And will those freedoms now come with new strings attached?

I don’t think I’m too hung up on the “Bush lied about WMD” thing, for a couple reasons. 1. He could have. 2. We would’ve gone anyway. Yes, I agree Bush may have used a lot of misdirection to try and gather national and international support for the war agenda. But if it wasn’t the threat of WMDs or harboring terrorists, it would’ve been another reason. Did he lie to his country and the world?, perhaps he did. But shit, you’re telling me that world leaders don’t bend the facts to suit national agenda? C’mon. Even the UN didn’t buy the immediacy that Bush placed on Iraq’s WMD prospects – so there was no way I’d be jaded enough to buy it. But, shock and horror, presidents lie too. Bush said Iraq WMD, Clinton said he didn’t sex up Monica, Reagan couldn’t recall if they sold guns to those contras, and Nixon wasn’t a crook. Problem is, people are dying.

Now we’re screwed though. We went in and fucked up that whole country. Shook the leaves off the Baath party tree and are busy installing a more “friendly” government. We exploded peoples’ houses and buildings, cut the power, changed the lives of a whole country full of people in a matter of weeks. We stirred up the beehive, and before things get any better – they are going to get really turbulent. Meanwhile, we’ve got people dying – not at the atrocious rates we saw in Vietnam, but they are still people. People from all over the world are there and are dying to help “rebuild” this country. I just hope it’s worth it. Saddam was bad, his ruling party was bad, and the people will be better off being out from under their rule… right? I’m just not sure which way the balance works out.

See what I mean? I can’t really articulate my position that well. We’re there now, and we better be committed to fixing what Saddam and we ourselves did to bring that country to the ruined state it’s in now. I’ve got asinine friends at work who think we should “turn that whole desert to glass.” Y’know, drop a nuke on all those “camel-jockeys” and be done with the whole dirty, evil, ignorant lot of them. I can’t believe there are people who think like this. As long as Anheuser-Busch keeps putting Bud Light in cans and there’s a Winston Cup race every week, the rest of the world can eat a big fat A-bomb. My God is more right and more just than your God, and the world would be a better place without you and your blasphemous country anyway. These are intelligent people too! Intelligent people who would actually support us annihilating an entire country full of people. Sweep that shit under the rug I guess. I can’t fathom that mindset. Ahh, but I’m getting off track now.

War is bad. Saddam was bad. Him being gone is good. People dying is bad. But what do we do now? Leave? That would be a worse fate than leaving Saddam in power. I’m just a dude with a very marginal knowledge of the politics and power that are in play here – but the previous paragraphs are my best attempt to categorize where I stand on the whole thing. What’s that? I didn’t clarify where I stand at all? Yeah… that sucks.

On to non-war talk. This weekend we went to see the movie “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.” Man, what a great film. I hate Jim Carey, but he did a great job in it. Really interesting. Since we didn’t go to Chowchilla as planned, I worked in the yard all weekend. On Saturday I bought all the parts for the sprinkler manifold and control valves for the backyard. Then put it all together and spliced it into the main water. Everything worked, and now I just have to connect the valves to the controller in the garage and lay the main pipe.

I had planned to rent a trencher and share it with Dan, since he’s doing sprinklers as well. We figured we could split the cost and save some money. Well, at the last minute Sunday I changed my mind and went ahead and rented one solo. It took me six hours of wrestling and fighting with that 400lbs beast of a machine to get all my trenches dug. And I still have another few hours of trench “cleanup” before I can actually put the pipe down. I’m physically drained from pushing and pulling that machine, it really beats you up. My yard is so unbelievably rocky that it’s akin to cutting through granite the entire time. There would’ve been no way Dan and I could’ve both got our trenching done in one day, so it’s a good think I rented it alone. In the end, I got all the trenches dug according to plan. I plan to use the light hours after work this week to clean up the trenches and layout the pipe for quick assembly.

OK, I’ve written a lot here. Time to sign off. Check out this CNN article about emulation and retro gaming. Now the secret’s out, as am I.

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are you her dad?

This picture in no way means I'm about to be a dad..
Ahh.. only two days into the GDM project and already I’m discovering some problems. I decided to make doubly sure all my rips were perfect and error free, so I did some more random sampling of the albums ripped so far. What got me thinking was the behavior of the cd-r/w drive that I’ve been using to rip the discs. It’s been getting “hung up” when I put new discs in, almost like it’s having trouble reading them. That got me a little paranoid, so I started checking songs. Sure enough, there were bad rips in there. Some albums were ripped so bad that it made listening impossible. I had to start from scratch again using my dvd-r/w drive as the ripping source. I’ve also downloaded some tools to check MP3s for errors, so I can run a quick “check” after each album is ripped. It’s not perfect, however, since I found at least one error it didn’t by listening. So, the quality-control on this effort has to be top-notch or I could end up with a bunch of useless MP3s with no source to revert to. Changed my encoder too, yippee. It’s all on the page.

The other day I went up to Anthony’s daughter’s school to check out some big production all the 6th graders were doing for their “country reports.” They set up the auditorium with big props from their countries, and served regional foods from those countries. It was cool. Near the end of the event, Brontë was hanging out with Sharaun and I and one of her friends came up and started talking to us. At some point, she turned to me and asked “Are you her dad?” Now, it didn’t hit me at the time – I simply said “No.” But? am I her dad?! For real guys, I must be totally old if kids are mistaking me for the father of a 6th grader. Maybe it’s the thinning hair, or the way I carry myself with so much authority. Ugh? whatever, I’m totally old.

I was pumped to get the news today that the house appraisal came back extremely positive. The refi closes this month and then we get back $400/mo. Sheesh that’s gonna help with the house. It’s time to work on getting some furniture, finishing the backyard, painting, getting some pictures for the wall, and all other sorts of domestic-like projects that we’ve been to destitute to get into.

This has been a mediocre week for the blog. Lackluster entries that are short and not fun to read. Sorry. I guess I’ve been preoccupied with other stuff. We’re no longer going down to Chowchilla today, so I have the weekend to do some sprinkler prep.

Grateful Dead on 3wk, “… Jack Straw from Wichita…” Dave out.

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urticarian inklings

Still one of the best albums of this past year, I'm listening to it again.

I’m totally going to the doctor. Beginning last Wednesday, I started getting all blotchy-red and itchy at seemingly random times. At first I noticed it early in the morning on the way to work, now I’ve pinpointed it as coming on with temperature change. Every time I go inside from outside, get out of the shower or get wet going wakeboarding – my skin turns mottled red, and I itch like crazy. If I scratch, it only gets worse. Sometimes there are hives, but mostly it’s just the rash. It’s been consistently happening several times a day for over a week now – and I’m getting tired of it. WebMD wasn’t too helpful, other than suggesting it might be the HepB (don’t you die from that?), so maybe the doc can help me out. I’m sure he’ll just be baffled and give me some antihistamines, I have no faith in general practitioners.

I made some good headway in the GDM project last night, setting up the 120GB RAID1 array and ripping several discs. I’ve been spot-checking the resulting MP3 copies to make sure they’re not funky, and I’ve been totally impressed with the quality of the rips. I’m using the Radium-hacked Fraunhoffer Group codec instead of LAME, since I like it a little better. I expect the first batch sale to happen sometime next week.

Speaking of next week, I looked at making reservations for the semi-impromptu overnight trip to Yosemite – and of course all the campsites in the entire park are full that night. I swear, finding a campsite there come April is near impossible. We’re gonna take our chances with the walk-in camping in the valley. It’s first come first served, so we’ll have to roll in pretty early. But at $5/night per person, and up to 6 people per spot – it’s perfect for what we need. I think we can arrive early enough to snag a spot.

Seems I’ve hit a sore spot with my parents with my kind-hearted jab at them in the Cast page bio for my in-laws. Apparently they saw that write up when I linked it from an earlier blog this week and were shocked by my referencing them as the “AV club” compared to Sharaun’s folks. Well, first I had to explain to them that by calling them the “AV club” I meant they were nerds, you know – the Audio-Visual club from high school? Anyway, my mom wrote me an e-mail defending her coolness – and my dad called me admitting his nerdiness but telling me that mom was cool. I guess that’s right, my dad’s the true nerd. My mom has always been cool, and I think she was even cooler before the years of being with dad rubbed off on her. Owell guys, I wouldn’t like you nearly as much if you were bungee-jumping nudists or vegan hippies? so be glad for your nerdiness because it’s what I’ve come to love.

Dave out.