Category: general

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

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all the way to the horizon

Never coming down.
Today on the way home for lunch (baby-budget, remember), I was listening to Menomena’s new three-track (thematic, if not full-blown “concept”) EP/album, Under An Hour (which it is, just barely, at 54min). Of the three tracks, which are each near the 20min mark, I’ve rarely gotten to the final one. So… liking the first two tracks so much, I decided to flip direct to the last track. Turns out, the third track begins with a buzzy droning sound, completely unaccompanied; something like a small plane sounds like from inside the cockpit.

Wait, if you skipped that last paragraph because it started out about music, go back – I’m actually going somewhere with this and needed the music to set it up. Go ahead, I’ll give you a second…

Anyway, with the windows down and that drone droning on in my ears, I started to imagine I was in a plane. Flying over the same roads I was driving, watching myself down there. If you’re having a hard time picturing this, pop in Kubrick’s The Shining DVD and watch the opening sequence as the Torrances make their way up to the lodge, shot from a helicopter tracing their winding path up the wooded road.

Suddenly, being up in the sky and far above the me driving down below, I felt all at once alone and free. I could just keep flying, stay airborne, take it to the mountains or even over the ocean. Stay up in the cold thin air with nothing but the drone of the engines outside. I could look down on little people like me and their purposed motions, heading home for a quick sandwich because they’re about to have a baby and a pound of deli meat is cheaper than a pre-fab sandwich at the cafeteria. But not me. I’m up here in the sky where there’s no turn I can’t take, no direction I can’t point myself in. Aimed into the blue all the way to the horizon.

When I was a kid, in 5th grade or so, I used to daydream about jumping out of my swing at the very top of the arc. I’d spread my arms and fly away, circling above the playground looking down at the upturned heads of my amazed classmates. That, or the one where I could walk on the ceilings, my feet stuck to the top of the walkway coverings – just out of reach of the kids below. Oh, and there was the one where I could walk through walls… that one was mostly used to get into closets other such places where I could spy on girls undressing. So, aside from the pervert one, I guess flying away type escapist fantasies have been with me from a young age. There’s something alluring about looking down on everything, as a supreme being would on his creation. They’re down there, you’re up here – and they can’t even throw a rock and hit you. Money.

Finally, and added early this morning after I’d already auto-published at midnight, some non-abstract writing (and darn good news). Sharaun, who wins so much stuff on the radio that we get W2s from Infinity and ClearChannel, this morning won a 60GB video iPod. She promptly called and told me to get out of bed and tune in for the call-in contest responsible. Oh yeah, and she won some Globetrotter tickets too, which I’m actually pretty pumped about… but the iPod I’ve been dreaming of, and it’s within the baby-budget… free-ninety-free. How she does it, I have no idea.

Goodnight.

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pinks

Would look sweet on the side of a van.
Happy Thursday to you, this week is going fast. To start: some pictures, as I finally got around to taking some of the nearly-done nursery, in all its two-tone pink glory. I’ve added them to my media page, and attentive readers may also find the online debut of Lil’ Chino’s real name (it’s a big thing).

Tonight is the Wolf Parade show in San Francisco; it kinda snuck up on me, and it’s a late one too… doors at 8:30pm and there’s three, count ’em, three opening acts… meaning the Wolf likely won’t even start parading until like 11pm. Looks like it’s going to be a late one, current pillow-ETA estimates coming in at approximately 3:30am. Of course, the show is sold out – two nights actually, so it should be fairly well-attended and, hopefully, high-energy.

I had to replace the headlight on my truck; I’ve done it before and remember it being dead-easy. So, I bought a headlight, and flipped open the manual to the headlight maintenance section to jog my memory. This time though, the burned out headlight was on the driver’s side, previously it was on the passenger. Turns out the driver’s side assembly is a good deal tighter, and not really made for fat hands. Replacing a bulb couldn’t be easier in theory: unplug it, twist the locking ring to the right, pull out the bulb, put in the new one, twist the ring to the left, plug it back in. I failed at the “twist the locking ring to the right” step, as my fat hands couldn’t fit in the tight space well enough to give me sufficient twisting power. Why do things I’m bad at have to be so hard? Anyway, I got smarter than the tight space and went to the trouble of removing the entire battery so I could approach the twisty thing from the rear – that did it, twisted that defiant mofo right off and had the new bulb in lickety-split. Plus, as a bonus, after the hood was closed and tools put away, my hands were stained with suet and grease – to the casual observer I could’ve passed for someone who works on his car because he knows how. Pretend-skills… I got tons of ’em.

G’nite friends.

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cups

Not a bad deal.
OK, I just had to write about this. Have you guys heard about the AirTran Airlines, Wendys, and Coca Cola deal? Until last week, I hadn’t – but I know all about it now. AirTran airlines, a newcomer trying to drum up business and not yet in debt like most established carriers, teamed up with Wendys to offer a free round-trip ticket to anywhere in the continental United States; all you have to do is collect 64 Wendys cups, which have coupons for the flights. Sounds too good to be true, right? I thought so too, and so I didn’t give the whole thing much thought. My brother-in-law actually told me about the promotion while we were in Florida last week. He jokingly suggested how easy it would be to collect 64 discarded Wendys cups and earn loads of free flights. We laughed, and I forgot about it.

Then, tonight, he called again – having just returned from a multi-Wendys dumpster-diving run where he and a buddy collected 256 cups in one evening. Turns out his buddy has been doing this every single night for near a month now, and he only found out last night – with just two nights left in the promotion. What’s more, his buddy has collected over thirty free flights in the past month. Yeah sure, you can only redeem two per name, but he’s given two flights to nearly every member of his extended family – some of which have reportedly already redeemed the cups for flights and actually flown AirTran. Sounds crazy, but a quick Google shows he’s not alone, and these things are all over Ebay and Craigslist. One article quotes an AirTran representative, “… the airline anticipated a black market for the promotional cups, Mr. Hutcheson says, but ‘when we looked at the pros and cons of it, the cost of getting exposure for AirTran outweighed the bad.'”

Amazing… just amazing; free flights for nothing more than a romp in some fast food trash. For the record, the deal is over now. Meaning, no new cups are being distributed to Wendys locations. However, you can continue to redeem cups until February of 2006, and some Wendys will continue to give out cups while their existing supplies last. So, if you’re adventurous… dive in!

Three-day weekend!! Goodnight.

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mr. miles

Book's late.
Near the end of our Denver to Orlando leg of the flight to Florida, one of the flight attendants stopped by our Economy Plus exit row aisle and turned to me, “Well Mr. Miles, is this your last flight of the year?” Somewhat surprised, I replied, “Yeah, but this one isn’t business… how’d you know I have a lot of miles?” “We know things,” he responded, “they let us know when the 100ks or million-milers are on board.” I can’t explain to you how awesome this made me feel. Status, baby; notoriety, son. Somewhere, on that dot-matrix printed flight manifest that shows passenger names, seat locations, and who wants kosher or vegetarian meals – there’s a little asterisk or “100k” next to my name. And I had chalked up the extra snacks, attention, and cups of water offered as we boarded to a particularly good flight crew. Next time I’m gonna expect dark-skinned bikini-clad women dropping rose petals in front of me as I take my seat. Right on.

Merry Christmas y’all!!

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me agin the bees

Bzzzzzzz....
By the time you’re reading this, I’m no longer in India, but whizzing through the skies bound home. That’s OK though, because through the magic of scheduled posts – I could have entries lined up for weeks (if I could write that much, that is). So, if you don’t mind the Pulp Fiction timeline, here’s something written Thursday in India, which is Wednesday in the US, and posted Friday – figure that out, Tarrantino.

There’s this huge beehive clinging to one of the branches of an immense, sprawling tree just outside my window at the hotel. I’m fascinated by this beehive, I don’t know why. Maybe because it’s easily the biggest beehive I’ve ever seen, I mean, this thing is rockin’ big… like bee Los Angeles or something. When I first saw it, I thought it was just one of those tree-tumor things, a large growth or abnormality in the branch – but upon closer inspection through my camera’s zoom, it was clearly a bee metropolis; a sagging mass of squirming bees, busy doing whatever bees do (humping and making honey?). I don’t know why, but I have the strongest urge to chuck something at this bee city. Every day my hotel room comes stocked with three thick-skinned Indian fruits that resemble oranges or tangerines or something – these, I figure, would make the perfect beehive ICBM.

This morning, on the way down to breakfast, I tried to mentally gauge the distance from the balcony to the hive – just to see if my poor throwing arm may even have a shot at a direct hit, and I convinced myself that, yes, I could hit it if my aim was on. What’s more, the distance is great enough that I think I could upset the bees and still have ample “run away” time before they even knew where the projectile came from. So, I’ve imagined the scenario in my head: A direct hit, and thousands of disturbed bees swarm out in search of vengeance. Meanwhile, I safely retreat back into my room. The only way I’d really do it was if there was someone here to film the event – since one of my chief concerns in life, for whatever reason, is documenting crap like that and posting it to my blog as if people would be interested. Alas, there is no one here to film it, and when I mentioned my fantasy to my wife she didn’t really understand, “stupid” is how I think she chose to describe it. So, in place a super-cool video where I successfully smack a huge Indian beehive with an orange – here’s a picture of a huge Indian beehive:

Stop taunting me!

If you were here with me, you’d understand, right? You’d film me as I hurled fruit at this hospital-visit-waiting-to-happen, right? Yeah, that’s what I thought. If there’s one thing I know, it’s that I’ve managed to surround myself with friends as retarded as I am who would happily watch me put myself in harm’s way for a cheap laugh.

Goodnight.

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bathrooms the size of coffins

Applies to the tech tag, or something.
You’ll have to excuse the terse entries this week – daily writing is competing with travel arrangements and the probably-getting-too-much-love “best of 2005” entry. On the bright side, I think I’m still on track to publish that next week, so it won’t be sucking all my resources. Be ready, it’s bound to include luminary passages of prose unparalleled by any other “best of 2005” list; oh, and it has little pictures of album covers, too. Seriously, wait for it.

In preparation for my trip this weekend, and ultimately to my dismay, I sat down today to review my flight plans. I knew the trip to India wasn’t just a hop, skip, and jump – but I guess I wasn’t really aware of just how abysmal it really was. I began adding up the time: four hours to Chicago, wait an hour and a half for eight more to Frankfurt, wait two and a half more in the terminal for another eight and a half in the air before landing in Bangalore. All told it’s twenty-five hours of travel, not counting the time getting to the airport and awaiting the initial flight. The way back is worse, courtesy of mean headwinds and a tacked on trip to visit my folks in Oregon: twenty-eight hours. That’s a lot of flying and sitting and pooping in bathrooms the size of coffins.

Ever since I decided to kill our landline phone, my DirecTV TiVo has been nagging me daily with a warning that it’s not made its daily call in X days. Back when I was researching adding an extra hard drive to my TiVo, I remember reading about a way to hack the thing to work wirelessly – and in the process enable all sorts of cool features like extracting recorded programs to your PC for archive purposes. Back then, I was paranoid enough about just adding another drive to increase my recording capacity – I didn’t want to brick my beloved TiVo – so I stuck to just the drive upgrade. However, the daily call nagging got me interested again and I began hunting down information on hacking my box to enable all the cool features that standalone TiVos have: networking, USB, recording extraction, and thankfully – no daily call nag.

So, I proceeded to scour forums and pages on hacking my particular box and software version. Turns out it’s dead-simple, or at least it seems to be from the various guides out there. I was super impressed with the ease of the hard drive upgrade – the hackers are extremely industrious and have spent their own time making their labor-of-love tools really user-friendly and pretty idiot-proof for someone with a modicum of PC skillz. So, I guess I shouldn’t have been too surprised when I found a detailed website showing exactly how to do exactly what I wanted to do to my TiVo in a few relatively simple steps. I downloaded the utilities I need, bookmarked the step-by-step instructions, and plan to call my TiVo-hacking alumni buddy Erik over when I get back from India to actually take apart the beast.

I am curious about what happens when DirecTV rolls out it’s next software upgrade to the box, but considering that it took them years to rollout 6.2 I guess it’s not a huge concern. I also briefly considered upgrading to the new R15 model of DirecTV DVR – which no longer requires a “daily call” – but was somewhat dissuaded when I found out it’s not based on TiVo software but the same guts that run the Dish DVR. Dish’s DVR may be good, but since I’m so accustomed to TiVo, and I already have a working box I enjoy – I figured I may as well try my hand at hacking what I’ve got. Either way, the R15 is a $100 upgrade even if I do somehow manage to brick my current box – and I have an old vanilla receiver I can hookup in the meantime should the worst happen. So, like you care, I’ll keep you updated on the progress.

That’s it then folks, I think that’ll cap off the week; not sure I’ll be writing anything for Friday as I’ll likely be busy Thursday night packing and readying for the big trip. So, if no Friday, I’ll catch ya all in India. Peace out.

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i guess it’s better than malaria

Taking my chances.
Evening folks. Not that much tonight, just a single topic, but I make up for it with pictures.

Today I went to the doctor to get my anti-malaria pills for the looming India trip. Apparently there are several varieties of pills that can be prescribed to ward off the disease – and the doctor began by explaining that the one she’d chosen to dispense to me was one with “the least amount of adverse side effects.” “What kind of ‘adverse side effects?'” I asked. Well, this one can cause diarrhea and some patients experience “strange” dreams (can’t wait for that, based on some of the things I’ve been dreaming of late). “Hmmm…” I wondered aloud, “How much worse are the other drugs?” “Well,” she began, “Some can cause hallucinations.” Wow; hallucinations. How much good am I going to be to my customers if I’m up there, completely malaria-untouchable, but tripping balls and out of my head? For reals y’all, check this out:

A sampling of the various omens of doom stuck to the side of this “medicine”:

Take this medication at least 2 hours before or 2 hours after magnesium or aluminum containing antacids, iron, or vitamins/minerals.

Do not lie down for at least 30 minutes after taking this medication.

Prolonged or excessive exposure to direct and or artificial sunlight should be avoided when taking this medication.

Warning, do not use if you are pregnant, suspect that you are pregnant, or while breastfeeding.

This medication should be taken with plenty of water.

Do not play basketball or ride horses/donkeys, or play basketball while riding horses/donkeys, for at least 3 hours after taking this medication.

OK, so I made that last one up for comedic purposes – but, honestly. So lets get this straight – I can’t lie down, can’t go outside, can’t breastfeed (dang). I’ve never seen a pill bottle with so much instructional text and warning labels. When I picked up the prescription, I paid and began to walk away – but before I got to far, the cash register guy told me, “Wait a second sir, the pharmacist wanted to talk to you about this one.” “Great,” I thought, “this is some serious stuff.” The pharmacist basically just wanted to go over the various warnings, and give me the dosage directions: Take one pill a day beginning two days before arriving in malaria risk area, one each day while in risk area, and one each day for four weeks upon return. Extreme to me, but I guess it’s better than malaria.

Speaking of India, I broke down and went into work today. I had been on the fence about going into the office or “working from home” today, with both my brother and my brother-in-law both still in town – and my boss out. I know, however, that should I not come in, I’d get next to nothing, if not nothing, done with my time. So, I begrudgingly set the alarm for the standard 6:40am-snooze-snooze 7am wakeup and took up my week-forgotten pre-work routine. And, although I didn’t finish my India material, I did go from about 0-to-30%. More importantly though, I took care of a bunch of “housecleaning” activities that had been monkeys on my back this past week. So, while I’m still not 100% ready for this trip, I gave myself a heck of a lot more confidence that I can be ready before I have to get up in front of others and prove it. Not only that, but I’m otherwise “prep’d” for the trip and have taken care of the little things that you always need to take care of before international travel. Go me.

Done early; no late-night obsessing over an entry tonight. Until tomorry.