Category: general

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

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rock renaissance

Cool at 12. Even cooler at 70.
$1700. That how much damage a stupid dump truck spilling gravel can do to your car. I mean, I’m sure it could be worse than that – but that’s how much damage a stupid dump truck spilling gravel did to our car. A while back though, I got smart and lowered our deductible to $250 for comprehensive – it used to be $500. It only raised the rate by a buck a month to do it, and it’s way worth it. $250 is not a break-me unexpected out-of-pocket expense, but $500 is a lot closer to that break-me limit. So, now we drop $250 on the stupid deductible. Not only that, my brother called today asking for money… again. Last year we sent him about $1200 that we’ll never see again, and this year Sharaun told me no more. He only wanted $100, which to me isn’t even worth the wire fee to get it to him. Wes suggested I tell him to check out one of those Check-and-Go paycheck advance places, I think I’ll do that. Money sucks sometimes.

I’ve been experiencing somewhat of a classic rock renaissance lately, pulling out all the music that taught me to love music. Right now I’m listening to Sgt. Pepper, perhaps the best album ever made – certainly the most influential and probably the most important. I can remember the first time I heard it, on the way to the Merritt Island Mall one summer night. Middle school was all about going to the mall for no reason. We would walk around, go into stores and not buy anything, stop at the arcade and maybe play a game or two, and get a slice of pizza from Sbarro and a smoothie from Nature’s Table. It was all about just “being there,” making the rounds, talking to the other cool kids who had perfected the art of loitering. Yeah, so sometimes we’d cash in our dollars for rolls of pennies to throw at old people, but that was a rarity.

Anyway, Kyle’s mom was driving Kyle, Kyle’s sister, and myself to the mall. I was madly in love with Kyle’s sister (well, as “in love” as a guy can be in the 7th grade). The song “It’s Getting Better” was on, and I remember thinking it was the best thing I’d ever heard. Combined with a feeling of 7th grade puppy love and a burgeoning sense of teenage independence, Sgt. Pepper was the perfect soundtrack. I had the album on vinyl, and would often put it on the stereo in my room at top volume. I’d open all the windows, lay down on the floor in the middle of all four speakers for the best stereophonic effect, and fall asleep in the sun. How could things get any better? For a few years there, my life was wholly consumed by music and girls – no debt, no job, no responsibilities. Bow my head slightly, tap my fist twice against my chest and raise a peace sign to the sky – that’s for you middle school.

To the present day, the weather is once again awesome today. I’ve heard tell that it may rain this weekend – but I can’t believe it when it’s so nice out. Honestly, it’s hazardous to go out for lunch – just getting out in the sun and seeing the sky propels my “I wanna go back to work” stores to critical levels. What, I’ve said that same thing nearly every day for a week now? Damn. Hoping that my upcoming trip to Taiwan and day off this Friday will help balance out that feeling a bit. Speaking of Taiwan, looks like I’ll be there for just over a week this time. I’m excited, since several people I know will be in town around the same time – and since I always like to travel. I only hope that I can make the most out of the trip, maybe see something I’ve not seen before. Plus, one more trip and I’ll just about have enough flyer miles for a free ticket to Europe.

I have more, but my fingers just aren’t willing. Dave out.

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second guessing

OD'd.
Both a relaxing and productive weekend, the perfect mix really. Spent Saturday on the lake, in the first “taking advantage of friends with boats” outing of the year. The weather was really nice, but the water was frigid – so we mostly just enjoyed being out there, although some of the hardier did do some wakeboarding (not me). Sunday was spent doing subterranean sprinkler repair in the front yard. Got a lot done, and got a lot of nothing done too – the ideal balance.

With the dirt now cleared from the backyard, I’ve been doing some serious research into the project-completion budget. Right now the big one is the patio. Been looking at pavers and concrete, and estimating cost. I think with concrete we can get away for just under a grand, not sure about pavers – but I suspect they’d be more. I guess the patio will have to wait until we save up a bit. I estimated the sprinklers and irrigation at about $300 after supplies and tool rental, so that seems a lot more attainable. I think I’ll mark off the porch area and run sprinklers and drainage this weekend. Sod, trees, and foliage come last – but those are still a few paychecks off. If Sharaun gets that afterschool tutoring gig for an extra $400/mo and our refi nets us $400/mo as well – things could move faster than expected though.

Speaking of the greens, seems my rule about money stills holds true: “There’s no such thing as extra money.” Why? Sharaun was driving behind a truck on the way to work today and it let loose a bunch of gravel. Cracked her windshield top-to-bottom and chipped/dented the hood all up. Right as I’m thinking we may have a little extra scratch in the next coming months too. Figures. Total estimate for backyard completion – $4000. That means the whole backyard will have cost me about $8000 when it’s done. Not too bad I guess, but not the cheapest thing in the world either.

This weekend I re-read my last entry – and decided that I don’t like it. It ended up sounding like some glorification of my stupid youth. Sounded to me like some high-school kid writing about some “awesome drugs” he took last weekend at a party, and how he was “so effed up.” Anyway, I want to steer clear from using those stories as a crutch for filler – and make this thing more topical and relevant to today. Sure some of them are funny, but reading back they kinda make me look like some recovering junkie. Anyway, that stuff is old ‘n’ busted, today is the new hotness. So shape up blog! I got plenty of stuff to write about: I own a house, I’m opening up an online retail store, I have a wife, there should be plenty to keep the entries coming.

Dave out

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pigs: can’t catch a frisbee

We don't need no education!
The other day I got a letter in the mail from the Oxnard, CA police department. Seems that I double parked my grey Toyota in the 600 block of Mendoza Ave. last November. Now they want the $60 I owe them for the violation. Only one problem, I don’t own a grey Toyota and I’ve never been to Oxnard. So, I called them up and explained, and they dismissed the ticket. They explained it away as the ticketing officer’s fat fingers miskeying my plates. Whatever, that guy with a license plate close to mine sure got lucky. And I was thinking, couldn’t I just call up on any ticket and say I don’t own this car or this plate? I mean, he didn’t ask me a damn thing – not my name, not where I’m from, not anything. Just said “OK,” and dismissed the ticket. I’ll have to remember that, because it seems a lot better than actually paying a ticket.

I’ve been mapping out my plan of attack for the backyard, updating my backyard layout file and reading up on irrigation and sod. It’s amazing how much you can learn on the internet. I learned how to build my retaining wall on the internet, how hydraulics work on the internet, and how to make a Flying Crank Ghost on the internet. I also buy movie tickets, make appointments at the DMV, pay my bills, and balance my checkbook – all on the internet. I’ve made camping reservations, hiking reservations, airline and rental car reservations, hotel reservations – all on the internet. I’ve bought all manner of goods on the internet, I’ve found long out-of-print books and albums on the internet. I’ve even used the internet to sell stuff I no longer want. The internet has replaced maps, phone books, travel agents, long lines, middle men, newspapers and magazines, textbooks, checkbooks, and the embarrassment of renting porn. What would I do without ye, o’ glorious net of inter?

Did you guys know that a cow can go from a walking animal to a refrigerated side of beef in less than six minutes? I know people who have seen how meat is processed and gone vegetarian because of it. But really, I wonder when in the cow-to-meat process they find the product acceptable and not disgusting? People are fine buying packaged meat in the store, steaks and ground beef placed on white styrofoam and wrapped in cellophane. So at what point in the cow-to-steak transformation does the product become palatable to most?

For me, I could care less. I actually have a strong desire to learn how to properly clean an animal. I’m sure that somehow relates to my crazy need to feel equipped for a “desert island” survival scenario – but the point is that when I see a cow walking around, I can see a steak that’s not cooked yet. I have no problem associating the walking breathing four-legged animal with the meat that I cook and eat. I think some people see a cow as a cute animal, and a steak as something that comes from the grocery store. They forget all the blood and skin and muscle that used to be around that meat. It may as well have been formed spontaneously in a “meat machine,” where nothing with eyes had to die to create it. But something with eyes did die. It died when they shot a nailgun into it’s head, hamstrung it and slit it’s throat to bleed it out, and then sliced it ass-to-throat to let it’s entrails spill out into a huge drain in the floor. Still want a hamburger for lunch? See, I do.

I also think it’s interesting which animals we deem edible and which ones we don’t. When it comes down to it, I’m sure horse meat and dog meat and cat meat have a taste all of their own – and maybe they’re yummy. But I think as humans, we tend to not eat animals that show some form of intelligence or can be “affectionate” to us. Horses are smart, dogs are smart, cats are dumb as rocks but they show affection just like horses and dogs. So we don’t eat ’em. They can recognize us when we come home from work, they remember us – so we spare their lives. Cows are infinitely dumb, so they get turned into food. Chickens: dumb, turkeys: never purr when you pet them, pigs: can’t catch a frisbee – you’re all on our list. We’re gonna kill you and eat you. Take a hint from the lucky ones and get smart or start nuzzling us – then maybe we’ll elevate you to “don’t eat” status.

Soylent Green is people! Dave out.

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an honest-to-goodness dump truck

I saw this old guy on the web, and he needed some more exposure. Here he is.
Another gorgeous day in Northern California. If I don’t get some camping and hiking in soon I think I might lose it. This weather is just taunting me to get outside and get things done. Speaking of getting things done, the dirt-pile is gone! I thought it would never happen, but every last bit of rock and dirt is outta there. Before I go into the story, I just wanted to let you guys know that, as I write, I’m listening to one of the best albums ever made. Once upon a time in 1968, Mike Bloomfield, Al Kooper, and Stephen Stills got together to make a record. What resulted is, to me, a freakin’ masterpiece of free-form blues rock awesomeness. Honestly, I could listen to this album over and over and over. 1968 must have been amazing. The White Album, John Wesley Harding, Disraeli Gears, Super Session, Led Zeppelin (yeah, I know it was the first week of ’69, but that’s close enough), Sweetheart of the Rodeo, Traffic, Electric Ladyland, Astral Weeks, Bookends, Spirit, and so many more I’m probably leaving out. Yeah, what a year – and the Bloomfield, Kooper, and Stills album Super Session is just dripping with that sound. Turn it up.

So back to this weekend and the great dirt-removal project. All my planning and orchestration was wasted. I schemed with friends to borrow wheelbarrows, 2-ton trucks, dump trailers, shovels, and other implements of destruction. The plan was to use manpower to fill up the dump trailer, then drive the whole thing to the landfill and repeat until done. We got out there at about 8am on Saturday morning with shovels and picks and wheelbarrows – and starting filling up the trailer. After about 2 hours work it became painfully apparent that the shovel and wheelbarrow route wasn’t going to cut it. Around 10:30am I rented a Bobcat. I swore I wouldn’t rent one again, because I get nervous driving them around in my backyard. But the size of the project made it a necessary evil. The Bobcat filled up the trailer right quick. We hopped in the truck and headed to the dump. The trailer was extremely heavy, and the brakes on the truck could barely stop us. It was a little scary. Once at the dump, we backed into the dirt-dumping area and hit the hydraulic lift switch on the trailer. Of course, nothing happened. Turns out the trailer couldn’t handle the weight of the dirt. So Anthony and I spent the next half hour shoveling ? of the load out by hand. We were finally able to get the trailer to dump, and we took of back towards home.

One the way home, the realization that we wouldn’t be able to finish with the Bobcat/trailer model began to sink in. We dumped 9100lbs of dirt on that 1st run to the landfill, since a yard of dirt weighs roughly 3000lbs – we had only gotten rid of 3 yards? and by the looks of what was left that was only about a 10th of the entire job. Not to mention a round trip to the dump was an hour and a half excursion when you counted waiting in the line of cars to get in. It was obvious we’d need something with a bigger hauling capacity to get the job done right. So, I called up and rented an honest-to-goodness dump truck.

You know they let just anyone rent a friggin’ 10-ton dump truck? I mean, I was thinking – why not rent one and fill it with bombs and blow something up? Or go on a Vice City style rampage through the city streets? Anyway, the dump truck held 5 yards and could handle from 20-30 bucketfulls from the Bobcat. We were furthered screwed by the dump’s weekend hours – they closed at 4:30pm. By the time we got the dump truck filled up for the first time, they were already closed. That’s when I got the idea to call a buddy who had mentioned that he needed some fill. Turns out he wanted anything I could bring him, so we took it all up to his place. The trip was quicker than the dump too.

In the end, we removed about 28 yards of dirt. Five dump-trucks full and one dump-trailer full. Managed to get all the rented equipment returned on time, and finished the project to the tune of ~$450. More than I wanted to spend, but less than the $1k+ estimate I got from some professional hauling companies. Plus, it felt good to get it done under my own (and Anthony’s) power. As I was pulling out of the driveway this morning, I stopped, put the truck in park, and went to take a peek over the fence at the dirtpileless backyard. It just feels good to look at it. Next on the list is forming up the patio and trenching for drainage and sprinklers. If only we had unlimited funds? ’cause I can always come up with another project.


Pat pushes dirt around while I drop a load.		        
Anthony drove the ‘cat most of the time, here he is on break.

One thing I like about owning a house is that it’s given me the opportunity to learn how to do a lot of things I would’ve otherwise probably never tried. I’m not saying I’m a Mr. Fix It or a DIY posterboy, but I have gotten a little better with my mechanical skills. I’m nowhere near some people I know. A buddy of mine at work recently bought a house too, an older one that he’s really doing a lot of work on. Talking to him, it seems like he’s not afraid to do anything – he just takes a run at it and it normally comes out great. He recently redid the kitchen, and is talking about rewiring the whole house. Crazy. Maybe I’ll get a little more confident as I get some more completed projects under my belt. The backyard thus far has already done wonders.

Listen to Super Session y’allz. I implore you. Oh, and I don’t care what you think about the Stills – I love that album. Dave out.

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drinking wrong since day one

GIS for sunshine.
Today a buddy at work sent me a news story about the Hubble telescope’s latest findings. The folks who run the telescope had it do it’s “deepest” probe ever of the universe. Looking as far out into space as possible and gathering data from that point allows scientists to see light from events that happened just a few hundred million years after the big bang. It’s pretty insane to think that we’re looking out across a massive amount of distance to point X, to collect light that has itself traveled a massive amount of distance just to get to point X – and this effectively enables us to see back in time.

After chewing on it for a while, and thinking I understood for a while – I think I totally out-physics’ed myself. If the universe is constantly expanding from the big bang, then that’s the reason we’re so far away (distance-wise) from that point of origin. So now we’re using a telescope too look back over a long amount of distance towards that point of origin. However, light from the events that happened billions of years ago at that point of origin have been traveling outward since the events happened. So as we look back over distance to point X, we’re capturing light that has managed to travel to that point X from the point of origin. The farther back in distance we can look, the earlier we can intercept light emitted from events that took place at distances even farther away. Right?

But, we were also a part of those early events right? In some way, at least. How did we manage to get so far away from them that we can look back on them? Why did we get to our current point in the universe before the light that we’re now looking back on? To simplify it, let’s say that the big bang happened and our galaxy as we know it now was created right off the bat. We’re right at the point where everything exploded into stars and energy, surrounded by those events. How did we then manage to drift so far so fast to some point that we can now look back on the light of those events? How did we so well “outrun” the light from those early events? My lack of understanding comes from a severely physics-challenged mind.

I do know that listening to Godspeed You Black Emperor! and A Silver Mt. Zion puts you in the perfect mindset to think about the beginning/end of the universe. You know, confronting your own mortality and insignificance and whatnot. Good music that most people would hate, or as Sharaun calls it “that stuff you listen to that makes me want to kill myself.” Can you guys believe we can look back in time?! Jumping to what Sharaun’s essay trumped for yesterday.

Sunday afternoon and one of the most beautiful days I’ve seen in a while. Not a cloud in the sky and the perfect temperature. I’ve got all the windows in the house open and some Stills‘ “Logic Will Break Your Heart” on the stereo. I know, britpop is old ‘n’ busted, but for some reason I love this album – even if it is Canadian britpop. It reminds me of my brit-soaked last years of high school – and hints somehow at Nada Surf’s underappreciated “Let Go.” Wow? the OC is playing Death Cab and I’m listening to britpop again? maybe my whole musical microcosm is turning inside-out.

This morning I caught up on some much-needed house cleaning while Sharaun was at her game. Now I’ve got to create an “instruction sheet” for using the hack on my Pioneer CD burner – since it sold last night for $250. Then it’s off to a matinee show here in town at Old Ironsides starring the Stars and Dears. We were actually supposed to do that same show last night in San Francisco, but Sharaun discovered on Friday that they would be in Sacramento the next day. Considering the cost of gas to the city and back, and eating out on the way there – we decided we’d actually make money by skipping the one we’d already paid for and taking in the show locally tonight. (From the future – the show was good).

I think I’ve been drinking beer wrong since day one. When I was in middle school and I got my first real taste of beer, I can recall thinking it was completely horrid. I think it was the bitterness of it that put me off at first, I just hated it. After much practice though, I came to love the beer as I do today. Last night we were enjoying some at Anthony’s, and my nose started getting stuffy – like it often does when I drink beer for some reason. I started thinking about why my nose would be affected from one beverage over any other, and I decided it had something to do with the way I swallow beer. And get this, I think I discovered that I’ve been drinking beer completely wrong for like 12 years. See, back in my na?ve youth, the bitterness of beer bothered me so much that I must have subconsciously developed a technique to minimize my tasting of it. When I drink beer, and only when it’s beer, I “throw” the beer right past the front of my tongue and directly to the back of my mouth. I hold it at the back and then let it drain down my throat more than swallow it. I think I must have developed this nasty habit in an attempt to let the beer bypass the front part of my tongue – which in my mind somehow reduced the bitter taste. I think the “draining more than swallowing” is also an effort to keep the front of my tongue beer-free. I don’t drink any other liquid this way.

So, I am now making a conscious effort to drink beer like I drink any other beverage. I mean, I’d hate to think that I’ve been missing out on a whole other element of beer’s taste. It would certainly be a shame if I were to go through my whole life never knowing what beer tastes like when you let it hit the front of your tongue.

Dave out.

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scoietal dregs need to drive too

It's a place you can go.
What a weekend. I don’t really feel like writing about all the shows, but I’ll just say that the Decemberists were the feather in the cap of a great musical weekend. They are so good live. I missed writing yesterday, things were just too busy and I wasn’t in the mood.

Yesterday I put my Pioneer CD burner on Ebay, starting it out at $200. I’m hoping that the little hack I did to the machine makes it more desirable, instead of less. So far there have been a lot of lookers, so that bodes well. I’m not worried about lack of bids at this point, things usually take of near the end. Hopefully I can make a buck or two on it, since it’ll be all profit to me. Actually, that thing has brought me plenty of money in the past. I sold Beatles bootlegs all through college for extra cash, brining in about $900 in a good month.

Today I had to go to the DMV to get new license plates (I lost one of them). Why is it that the DMV is so busy? I mean, surely there are other places that see as many people per day and aren’t so chronically backed up. There were nearly 100 people in there waiting for their numbers to be called. It was the same thing when Sharaun and I went to the Social Security office to get her new card after we were married. Not only do these offices for some reason move in slow motion, they always attract a very interesting crowd. I mean, “normal” people have to go to the DMV and Social Security right? When do they go? I’m just saying, it seems like the place is always chock full of… umm… people “from the other side of the tracks?” Oh whatever, you know what I mean. The DMV is full of single moms with kids running loose, barefoot rednecks, ex-cons, and every other societal dreg you can think of. Why is this? I did see a handful of regular-looking Joe’s… so maybe this is just my racism and stereotyping showing through.

I’ve half-decided that I’m going to start taking lunch at home whenever I can. Since it’s so close, and I have an hour to myself – I’m going to use that time to get things done around the house. As the weather improves and summer gets here, I can get a lot done in the 40min that I’m not eating or driving back/forth between work. I can even get the lawn mowed if I take an extra 15min or so. Not only is it a potential time to get some work done around the house – it saves me money in the long run by not dropping $8 every day on food. I can make a week’s worth of sandwiches at home for the same amount of money I spend daily on lunch now. Today was my first go at this new plan, but the fix-it man was there to do some house-warranty stuff, so I didn’t get a chance to get anything done. Hopefully I can stick to the plan.

Since I’ve been making some money of late by selling things on Ebay, it’s made me want to work harder to get this t-shirt site live. I’ve been working on creating a functional web storefront where Shaine and I plan to hawk our t-shirt wares. The development is going a little slower than I’d like, but I think we’re pretty close to having a working website. From then on it’s all about marketing. If people start buying, that’s great. One thing that gives me some hope is the reaction I get to the Kiss shirt I wear to concerts. It’s one of the shirts we’re going to sell on the webpage, and I like to wear it to our shows (for some reason, Kiss has lots of indie-cred). I must get about ten compliments on the shirt for every show I go to. Right now I just say “thanks” when someone pays me a compliment on it, but I’d love to be able to say, “Yeah, I got it at angelsnot.com, you should check it out.” Yeah, the website is called www.angelsnot.com – it’s not live yet, so there’s nothing there… the development is going on at an unmapped domain. I’ve got my fingers crossed that we can turn at least a small profit with this thing – I definitely think there’s potential for it.

Today NASA was supposed to make a huge announcement about “significant findings” on Mars. There was a lot of speculation that they might announce they had found evidence of life, either by way of fossils or current biology. That got me really interested actually, and I was hoping that’s what they were going to say. I thought that maybe this Rotini-looking shape was a Mars-worm fossil or something. Turns out they just wanted to tell us that the place used to be “soaked” in water, which is something that most people already believed to be true. So it was kinda disappointing to me. I was really looking forward to hearing the fundies‘ reaction to an announcement of life on another planet. I don’t want to get into where I stand on religion, but I am always interested in religion’s reaction to new science. I would think the affirmation on life other than Earth might cause some interesting waves in the religious community, and with fundies in particular. Owell, the rovers are still there – so there’s still hope.

That’s it for today. I’m gonna cut out a little early and vote, since I’ve been more and more interested in how my opinion can matter lately. Dave out.

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angry at the urinal

I spit on your urinal!
What’s up with people spitting in the urinal before they take a leak? Is this some manly pre-pee ritual that I never learned about? Is it just a convenient place for chronic-spitters to fix without offending others by keeping a spit-cup at their desk? I’m lost. I only mention it because I actually find it pretty gross. Yeah, it’s a bathroom and all – so it’s probably the best place to do it, but some guys seem to do it with such contempt. I mean, they just spit to be spitting, almost like they’re angry at the urinal or something. Strange.

You wanna know what’s crazy, I thought I was the only person in the world who had ever noticed, let alone, thought about this. However, an on-a-whim Google for “spit in the urinal” came up with a whole mess of hits. Almost all the other links are from fellow bloggers. This tells me that either: bloggers like to examine the bathroom habits of others, or the spit-before-pee thing is really not that uncommon. This, this, this (may be NSFW), this, and this link prove I’m not insane.

Remember the pizza-neck-bomb thing from Pennsylvania? A pizza delivery man was called to deliver a pie to an abandoned building. Next they hear from him, he’s outside a bank he just robbed with a homemade cane-gun and wearing a homemade bomb-collar which is counting down to detonation. He tells the cops he’s been forced to rob the bank and has to follow an elaborate series of instructions to get the collar off before the time runs out and his head blows up. Bomb squad arrives a little late, man blows up and dies, and the FBI has no idea if he was part of some crazy scheme or just a pawn in one. Anyway, that story intrigued me so much – mostly because of the elaborate plan and orchestration, and because of the pictures of the collar and gun the FBI released. Every once in a while I do a Google news search for any updates on it. Turns out the FBI’s leads are running cold – so they released part of the nine pages of letters the guy was carrying. So odd, can’t wait to hear the ending to this one.

Tonight is the Unicorns show at the GAMH, I’ve been listening to “Who Will Cut Our Hair When We’re Gone” all this morning to get pumped. What a great album, and surprisingly enough – it’s good “doin’ schematics” background music. I’m really looking forward to this show, not only because I think they’ll be great live – but because it’s a return to the initial hard-core concert crew of just Benz and I. While that may sound gay, well, Ben is totally gay. Yeah… should be fun.

Dave is outta here.