Category: general

Where I put something when I’m too lazy to categorize it.

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angels and devils

Tuesday's... here!
My internet was down last night (and still is this morning, for that matter), so I didn’t get to write. Luckily, I had the following 3-paragraph bit stored away in my “drafts.” While that usually means I’m not quite happy with it and want to do a “rewrite,” circumstances today dictate that I just press “go” and get a free entry. Stupid broken internet, I have a sneaking feeling it’s my router… it’s been acting way funny lately. Anyway…

Over the years, I’ve learned that I really don’t commit things to memory that aren’t important to me. I’ve also learned that there are some common things which most people do deem important enough to keep in memory, judging by the number of those I’ve met who can call them up at will, which I certainly don’t have memorized. This tells me that I should probably know these things offhand, but I don’t. Reviewing them, they certainly seem pretty important – memorization-worthy even. For example:

I don’t know how much money is in my bank account on a daily basis. I don’t know how many miles-per-gallon our vehicles get. I don’t know what my coverage limits are on my homeowners or car insurance are. I don’t know the interest rate on my house. Sometimes I don’t even know how old I am. I don’t know how much we spend every month. I don’t know how much gas, or milk, or bread costs. I don’t know how to drive to places I’ve driven to been to before.

Looking at it, seems like most of these items are finance-related. I don’t know whether that’s a good or bad thing, and I’m sure there are two schools of thought there. The hippy in me tells me it’s a good thing that my mind isn’t bogged down by materialist, capitalistic creeds and ideologies. The yuppie in me, however, tells me that I should know what’s in my 401k to the penny and have a running balance sheet for every dollar I spend. More often than not, I tend to hang out with the hippy in me. He and I sit around smoking dope in me, listening to Skynyrd in me, and throwing eggs at the yuppie in me’s Escalade from the front porch of his trailer in me.

OK yeah, that was it. Come in and write a few sentences above and a few below, and start the presses. I’ll talk at ya later, until then. Dave out.

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stop off to top off

GIS for yuppie
The president is still the president, and Americans voted him that way again. No matter what is said about “stealing” the election last time – this time it’s not up for debate. The country prefers Bush, simple as that. I think the democrats made some key mistakes, one of them the fact that they are constantly calling Bush “stupid.” Perhaps not outright, but be it either inferred or insinuated – the impression one would get is that he is too dumb, or inept, to properly lead. Maybe, without knowing it, the dems shot themselves in the foot with this… My bet is that there are plenty of Joe Americans who can identify with Bush’s situation, and view the dems’ assertion of his ignorance as a mocking of their own brainpower. They can give Bush their votes as a big middle-finger to the nerds that made fun of them in school, the jokes that go over their head on Saturday Night Live, and the pretentious, how-can-anyone-think-he’s-funny-compared-to-hilarious-shows-like-Jackass John Stewart. Whatever, be it religious fundamentalists, gun enthusiasts, rich folks, who cares – he won. We, the United States, voted for him, so that’s all she wrote. And that’s all I’ll write about it too.

Woke up this morning to the sound of rain in the downspouts, which for some reason sounds like it’s fed through and amplifier and piped in through hidden speakers in the wall – so dang loud. That means rain on the way to work, and of course, umbrella usage. I mention this because, this morning, as I was walking into work using my umbrella, I realized something: either umbrellas suck, or I never learned how to use one right. (Man, check out all the commas in that sentence, but I think it’s still grammatically sound, right?) I mean, an umbrella has never performed as billed for me. It’s more cumbersome than protective, and I still get wet. I get wet because water rolls off the top and drips on me, I can’t get the angle right to protect my back and front, and it does nothing for my legs/shoes. About all an umbrella is good for is keeping my head dry… and who cares about that. I should invest in a good hooded rain slicker… seems much more (I never remember, is “much more” OK to say?) sensible. Maybe I’m just inept.

I mentioned earlier that I was “chosen” at work to participate in a class in Mandarin. Some college prof is coming to teach us “survival Chinese,” where we learn things like how to talk money, directions, small-talk, and business stuff. According to the official notice I got for the class, I was “identified as a strategic participant” for the course. Now, I don’t know if that means I’m being shipped to China soon or something – but I am excited about free learning (as someone who currently owes tens-of-thousands to the government for education, free learning is appreciated). Anyway, the course is supposed to be “challenging,” and we were urged not to commit to doing it unless we’ll be able to be dedicated in our studies and “homework.” You know how long it’s been since I’ve had homework? Then, down near the bottom of the notice, there was a line which stated something like “… failure to complete the course with a passing grade will result in corrective action.” Corrective action? Now I can get fired for a B, what pressure. Just like I’m from an Asian family! Y’know, like my wife’s kids whose parents make them sleep outside when they get anything less than an A? (Yes, for real.) Apparently we’re learning the culture as well as the language…

Well guys, I’m on my own. Dropped the wife off in front of the airport around six, and began my brief bachelor weekend by grabbing a burger and hanging out at Anthony’s. Later, I think I’ll go home and stay up late watching TV in my boxers. Actually, since I wrote that last sentence at Anthony’s… it fast became 1am and I find myself at home in front of the PC, after a nice evening at the local brewpub. That’s right. As I was passing said brewpub, Ben called me to inform me of a gathering at the very place… so I did a u-turn, and joined the fracas around 10:30pm. Much talk of the election and war and other less-hotbutton topics later, and with two pints downed, the final holdouts called it a night and headed home. ‘Twas good, talking, drinking, coming home at 1am on a “schoolnight.” What a life I live… pubbing it up on a Wednesday night with friends… coming home with that nice ale-inspired-edge to the evening’s writing… and totally abusing ellipses while at it.

I think this is one of my best entries, found it the other day while trying to search through old entries and fix the commas-turned-into-question-marks problem from my WordPress migration. Not to toot my own horn or anything, but y’know what I mean. Or, maybe only I know what I mean. Seriously… I write as much for me as for anything. I can only hope that someone, somewhere, reads this shit with interest…

Sorry if I pissed off any Asians with the Asian family comment, but you know how I do. All of the sudden I want to write until dawn, but I realize I’ve got a pretty decent wordcount for an entry – and I don’t really have much to say anyway. Until I can’t string words together anymore, Dave out.

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sportin’

On my blog?
So, Sharaun bought me a bunch of new shirts recently. Y’know, the kind that all the “cool” guys wear? To me, they look like 70s relics for the most part, but apparently all the cool late-twenty-somethings are wearing them. She’s also stocked my hangers with some “cool” jeans, apparently defined by looking orangey-dirty and being a half-inch of flare away from bellbottoms. Now, I don’t profess to follow any fashion trends, or to even pay attention to such things, but when I wear these new clothes – I do feel nice. Somehow, be it the magic of haute couture or whatever, I actually feel a little cooler when I wear them. You can probably see it in my cocksure swagger – and read my thoughts on my face: “these clothes make me more socially acceptable.” All kidding aside, I am kinda glad that she buys me stuff in efforts to keep me hip. I mean, I’m not gonna be a presenter at the MTV whatever awards anytime soon – but I can almost pull them off without resultant hilarity.

The only problem with the cool clothes is the stark dichotomy between them and my usual accoutrements. (Yes, this is a thesaurus contest). This night-and-day effect almost always elicits some kind of comments from those who see me on a regular basis. Things like, “Dang Dave, why so dressed up?, ” and, “You clean up nice.” Not that these comments bug me, I guess I just get kinda shy under the focused attention. I’m mean, as you can probably tell by the way I keep a freakin’ journal on the internet for the world to read – I’m pretty coy. Who am I kidding… I’m the dumbass with the lampshade on his head. Regardless, it’s amazing what a few small comments and a change of clothes can do for your bravado.

So, really… I don’t know how I found it – but I’ve started reading someone else’s weblog, a random person I’ve never met, for that matter. Just the other day, I was waxing on about how I’m not the “typical” blog-reading, blog-writing, blog-eating-sleeping-drinking blogger… but it seems I was wrong, at least, a little bit. When you get mixed up in this lifestyle, it sucks you in man…

I put some awesome green floodlights on the graveyard last night, ones that are truly meant for outdoor use (the indoor ones I started with popped in the previous night’s rain). These are true 100W floods, not the piddly 40W low-voltage crap I was using before – so they really light the place up. Enough so that they cast an eerie green glow on the front of the house. The entire effect is really satisfying – the blacklight, moving, crank-ghost, the green-lit flying witch, and the shadowy-green house and graveyard. Can’t picture it?, check it out:

Horror, bathed in green.

Anyway, one time I found this link on the intarweb – and I clicked it – and it took me to a pretty interesting, and definitely creepy page. By creepy, I mean worrisome – so why didn’t I just say “worrisome?,” I dunno. That link, the one I clicked a couple sentences ago, was this one. It talks about, and even coins a term for, a person getting fired from their job for content on their weblog. Now, I usually try to stay away from talking about work in much detail here, and I don’t even think I’ve really ever said what I do for a living (other than be awesome). But, just doing a quick mental search (binary, of course, because my brain is efficient and elegant) of my past entries – I think I probably have some “dooce” fodder on these pages.

Frequent pining for vacation, less-than shocking admissions that sometimes I don’t do anything, sordid tales of business trips to the Orient, all these things could probably be used as evidence against me. I really do think about things like that, y’know. Getting fired because I posted a picture I drew while in a customer meeting, something dumb like that. That’s why I’m generally leery about people at work knowing about this thing – even though I know there are some occasional readers, I try not to spread it around. Hopefully I’m non-specific enough that I’ll never have to worry about getting “dooced,” but man, that would suck. Hard.

Looking at other blogs, comparatively, I write a lot. I see a lot of one-sentence stuff out there. That’s cool I guess, but for some reason I don’t feel like I’m “writing” unless there’s a couple paragraphs. Granted, sometimes my “couple paragraphs” are just rambling – but it makes me feel better to see the words I guess.

Somehow, someone was referred to my blog by Googling “whale sounds in water pipes.” I swear, that’s what the stats say. Dave out.

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are you being served?

GIS for lawsuit.
I can finally breathe a sigh of relief, because the Halloween decorations are up. Sunday, I put up the ghost, the graveyard, and even the witch. I completed the witch’s broom using a gnarled old stick and some twig-scrub-stuff I bought from Wal Mart. The finished thing looks really good, too bad she’s not flying around the yard. I did, however, put her up and focus a green spotlight on her, which is timed to come on at the same time the ghost and her blacklight do. All in all, I ended up being really impressed with the results – the complete display looks awesome. If the small green floodlight on the ghost ends up looking good, I’m going to add a couple to the corners of the graveyard – and get some chilled, ground-hugging fog drifting through. Should be really cool. I’m just glad it’s up, and, although I’d’ve liked to have had it up earlier, I at least feel a little better having finally done it. I am disappointed I didn’t work on the backyard at all… too many projects.

Friday evening after work, I decided to do some picking up in the garage. Since the driveway’s been blocked with pallets full of pavers for months now – I’ve just been letting things pile up all over the place. Nearing the end of the pavers, I thought it would be a good time to clean up for the eventual return of the cars. So, I found myself working in the garage with the door open as the sun was going down.

As I worked I noticed two girls walking down the street, each with a handful of newspapers. Knowing I was about to be solicited, I kept working as one of the girls broke off and walked up the driveway towards me. “Good evening sir, ” she said. “Evenin’, what can I do for you?” I asked. Turns out she was hawking some free-trail of the local newspaper, and she already had 49 subscriptions. What’s more, if I would just be her 50th subscriber, I’d be directly responsible for her hitting her quota and winning a trip to Disneyland. Now, let’s talk about this girl: I figure she’s about 15 or 16 years old, how much motivation is a trip to Disneyland to today’s youth? Anyway, I told her I thought she was lying about the 49 out of 50 thing – telling her I bet they taught her to say that to everyone. I wasn’t mean really, just joking with her. She stuck around trying to convince me for what must’ve been 5min as I continued to clean. At some point, I said something like, “If you really wanna go to Disneyland, you better hit the street and get that 50th subscriber – because it’s not gonna happen hanging out in my garage.” She laughed, thanked me for me time, and turned to leave.

As she was leaving, dejected, she walked down the driveway and over the spot where I had a big pile of decomposed granite for the back porch last week. The DG is all gone, but I haven’t had the chance yet to sweep up the crumbs. While my back was turned, she slipped on the small loose stones and, as her feet flew out in front of her, she fell right on her ass. I turned when I heard the noise and saw her sitting on the ground, her friend had re-joined her and was helping her up as I asked, “Are you OK?” She turned to me, red-in-the-face, and said she was. As the two walked away, I started imagining the letter I’d be getting in the mail in a week. Sued by a 15 year-old girl for negligence, I’m keeping my fingers crossed.

I’m outta here, g’night.

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eminent domain

Exhausted.So, things are nearly 100% with the blog migration. I’ve migrated posts, comments, links, pictures, files, etc. There are still some… “artifacts”… that I’m working on, for instance, if you browse through past entries you may see some Chinese characters or find a broken link or five. But for the most part, it’s OK. I’m switching the domain over tonight, so by the time you read this it may have propagated to you or not. Anyway, I’m sure readers will find more errors than I already have by spot-checking, so drop me a comment if something’s not working for you. I’ll still be updating both sites for a week or so until the domain change fully propagates.

Honestly, I’m too tired to write. It’s 11pm and I was up ’til 2am the past couple evenings – I just don’t have any more staying-up in me. So, instead of writing something good… I’ll just tell you what I see right now. I’m sitting in the living room, Cold Case Files is on the TV but I’m not really watching, Sharaun’s asleep on the couch. There’s a cold pot of spaghetti sauce on the stove and some drying noodles in a double-boiler in the sink, our electric filtered-recycled-water cat dish is making the noise it makes when it’s low on water. There are too many lights on for being so late and only one person up, and that makes me think of how much money they cost – not quite enough to get me up and turn them off, I decide. The cat is curled up beside me on the couch, and Sharaun’s worked-too-late-to-cook meal from Kentucky Fried Chicken is sitting in a plastic dish on the coffee table in front of me. I’ve already made up my mind that I’m tired enough to not care that I won’t pick up that dish, or clean those pots, before going to bed. They can wait until tomorrow.

Sorry, that’s it for today. Too much webpage-makin’ and I’ve lost heart. Dave out.

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need more dirt

I talk about winter, check it out.
I didn’t write much about it yesterday, because I had to flush the blog buffer, but this weekend was kickass. I took Friday off to cut pavers for the porch, and got about 70% done with the major section, as well as cut all the bricks I’d need to do the sidewalk. On Saturday I formed up the sidewalk and filled it with decomposed granite – then did some eyeball leveling. Sunday it rained, but Erik came over and we worked anyway. Fine tuning the leveling and laying bricks, we completely finished the sidewalk and the rest of the non-cut porch. I have about three hours of cutting and the whole thing is done, 100%. I’m already at the point where I can bring in topsoil – which I’m planning to do this coming weekend. I just need to do the math and see how many yards I need. I want to get sod in before the rainy season really gets here – so that leaves me only a few weeks. It’s do-able.

Big things happening back behind the curtain here at sounds familiar. I’m nearly done migrating the whole blog over to a new system, the open-source b2 weblog system. Eventually, I’ll complete the migration – at which point the whole pharaohweb.com domain will be moving to a new server. If all goes well, the transition should be transparent to the outside world. Anyway, it’ll make it easier for me to write and edit my entries remotely, and the comments and search components will be better. The page will be laid out a bit differently, but it should look familiar enough. Also, the blog will have a different logo – and, t-shirts. Yeah, that’s right. I’m gonna make t-shirts, simply because I can. Even if I’m the only one wearing one, I’ll still think it’s cool. Anyway, that’s what’s coming soon in the blog department. This will be the first day I “double blog” on this site and the new one, in anticipation. Hold on for the switch sometime late this week.

It’s been raining the past couple days here, and getting colder too. With the gray skies and rain, it’s really sending me into a wintery mood – which I love. It’s coming up on my favorite time of year, the holiday trifecta, the cool of winter, the strange desire to be around family or go “back home,” and the perceived “slowing down” of things in general. At least, that’s how it is for me.

And, I have nothing more. Really, I suck. Dave out.

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the gyrating women of sabado gigante

Bible-stuff.
Went out to lunch the other day for Afghani food (no, not in celebration of the recent election in which the first person to vote was a nineteen year-old woman). I’d never had it before, and it sounded intriguing. That’s one of the things I like about California, it’s so much more diverse than Florida. Sharaun notices it more than I do though, she’s always amazed at how diverse her class makeups are. I know, it’s silly to call it “diverse” based on the cuisine choices – that’s just what kicked off the idea in my head. Well, I’m happy to say that the food at “Taste of Kabul” was yummy. Too bad my $10 lunch probably paid for some terrorist-camp recruit’s standard-issue pipe bomb, or maybe the poppy-seed startup costs for a budding opium venture. And that folks, is good sarcasm.

Anyway, I didn’t intend to write a paragraph about the restaurant and food, I wanted to write about the conversation. Had a really good conversation, covering the two most “taboo” topic you can think of: politics and religion. It’s awesome when you can have intelligent conversation with someone willing to be objective about things. I guess, to a psychologist, that’s probably the equivalent of saying “It’s nice when you can have a conversation with someone who has a similar opinion to yourself.” I mean, you’re naturally going to think of someone who more or less agrees with you on things as someone with their “head on straight,” or “in his right mind.” What’s intelligent and objective to one person could be ignorant and close-minded to the next, that’s the beauty of opinion I suppose. Anyway, it was a good conversation – and good spiced yogurt-covered dumplings too. Those Afghanis may be terrible at making peace, but they’re not too shabby at making lunch. Sarcasm, again, it’s good to close on a laugh.

Yeah, so, I did watch about half of the third debate the other night? it all seems like rehash now though. Kerry’s a liberal, Bush is bad, I get it. I wasn’t too impressed overall, I kind of just want it all to be over now. No more stupid misleading commercials, no more character-attacks, let’s just vote and be done with it. I was, however, disappointed in the way Kerry (and Edwards, for that matter) brought up Cheney’s lesbian daughter. I mean, how thin is that veil? Everyone knows you’re only mentioning his lesbian daughter because you want to make sure every knows he has a lesbian daughter, not for whatever false premise you’re supposedly talking about. “By the way America, and particularly you, Bible Belt: your incumbent republican VP has a Satan-loving lesbo of a daughter. Do you really want a vice-president who’s seed is so accursed by God that he can father such a moral abomination? I think not. Vote Kerry.” Stupid politics.

Ever since upgrading the TiVo to a ludicrous 140hrs of recording time, I decided to re-enable the “TiVo suggestions” feature. TiVo suggestions is a feature that lets the machine record shows it thinks you might like, presumably based on intelligence gathered from what you watch and what you already choose to record. I decided to enable it mostly as an experiment, y’know, to see how intelligent the thing really is. I thought it would be fun to see what kinda stuff it chose to record, perhaps it would even give me some insight into my own mind. But, alas, I think TiVo suggestions is mostly whack.

It’s been on a little over a week now, and man does it record some odd stuff. This morning I woke up and there were two episodes of some Spanish soap opera it had recorded off Univision. What? I mean, other than stopping on Univision for a minute or two while channel-surfing (gyrating women on Sabado Gigante pretty much stop you in your tracks), I’ve never watched a Spanish show in my life. It recorded two hours of infomercials – what in my viewing trends keyed in on that? It does, however, sometimes get it right – with things like I Love Lucy (it sees Andy Griffith and Leave it to Beaver), COPS (duh), Futurama and the Family Guy (probably based on the Simpsons and Aqua Teen “season passes” I have set). Of course, it’s skewed from purely “my” habits because Sharaun also watches TV. So the “suggested” list is rife with MTV “real life” shows and “making the video” and crap like that. Yup. Paragraph over.

Enough, Dave out.