Category: general

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

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can’t put brown down

Wisemen... not wiseguys.
Merry Chrimma all! It’s that time of year for family and wrapping paper and ham and making the universal mistake of buying sweet potatoes for the sweet potato casserole instead of the required yams. Actually, the term “sweet potato” in the casserole’s name is most accurate. If you do your research, the things that stores commonly sell as “yams” are really a type of sweet potato (there are two varieties, the whiter-fleshed kind which the stores accurately call “sweet potatoes,” and the orange-fleshed kind which stores wrongly label as “yams”). In fact, true yams aren’t potatoes at all, they’re roots. I think because so many people refer to the orange sweet potatoes as yams, the stores must do it too. Either way, Sharaun makes this awesome casserole every year – so we’ve learned the difference the hard way. However, since mom and dad did the shopping this year before we got here – we ended up with the wrong thing again. Damn you, you confusing sweet poyamoes, yamatoes, potams… Wait, can I say “damn” on Christmas?

The non-sweet potato part of Christmas went swimmingly though, the gifts were a’plenty, a’thoughtful, and pretty a’awesome. I got some clothes, new shoes, and even a laser-guided parking system so I can accurately park my truck in the garage to within inches. Not to mention a two-year subscription to Maxim, a razor, socks, underwear (yes, with iron-ons), and some of the little things I always enjoy: silly putty, a Duncan yo-yo (butterfly style, bitch), and a Wacky Wall Walker. Can I say “bitch” on Christmas? Damn. Sharaun seems to like her gifts a lot, I think I did a better-than-usual job of buying this year (thanks Kristi) – and the list she gave me was only part of the reason. Even mom and dad made out pretty well I think. We all had a fine time tearing into gifts and posing for pictures with the cast-aside bows on our heads. As a plus, my folks really seem to dig the copy of Brian Wilson’s SMiLE I got ’em… good music.

Around noon yesterday, while sitting on the couch at my folks house having just finished Christmasing up the blog, I spied a copy of The Da Vinci Code on my parents’ bookcase. Over the years, so many people have told me I would like this book – based on my existing interest in theology, alchemy, Masonry, Illuminati, and countless other things that end in the “ee” sound. With nothing much to do on Christmas eve, I decided to give it a go. Before I knew it, it was dinner time and I was already halfway through the book. Already being familiar with some of the history featured in the book (the Templars, the canonization of the Bible, the Gnostic gospels, etc.), I found it fascinating. Eventually, it was 11pm and I had under a 100 pages to go. I made the call to finish the book that night, and turned the last page around 12:30am. It was a good book, the religious history and theory and code-crap talk right to the guy in me who voraciously read The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross.

With the passing of Christmas day, our short vacation in Oregon is over – and we hit the road again tomorrow to head back down into sunny, and almost inconceivably less-liberal than here, California. Whereas the Gods smiled on our journey north and did not hamper us with snow, it seems we must have angered them over our short stay, and they plan to blanket the mountain passes with white stuff. I’m totally cool, I got the snow chains (never used ’em, and only the slightest idea how to put ’em on), and I’ve been practicing driving on ice. Not really, I’ve never driven in real snow or anything. Either way, I know tomorrow means another ten hours on the road… and perhaps even another buffet and embarrassingly-awful cabaret show, who knows.

Well folks, I think that’s my entry for the day – time to Christmarelax instead of writing. Suzy’s Christmas entries were particularly good today, I’d recommend them if you’re hard up for more blog-reading on this, the day of Christ’s birth. Since I don’t normally write on the weekend, I think I’ll take tomorrow off (convenient, since we’ll be on the road all day long). Until Monday, safe and back at home…

Merry Christmas!

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santa’s coming

I don't care what you celebrate.
Christmas Eve morning, I read President Bush’s Christmas message in the paper today… full of hope and the Lord and whatnot. I’m fresh and clean out of the shower, in some dark jeans that fit well but are of course too long in the leg and a brown sweater in response to the cold, gloomy Oregon weather. We’re waiting on some of my family’s Oregonian kin to roll by for some Christmas drinks and holiday cheer (around Christmas, we drink a drink called Tom ‘n’ Jerry in our family, have as long as I can remember). It should be fun, one of those family get-together things with stories and a few awkward silences. Ahhh… holidays.

I started out writing, but decided to do a Christmas-themed template for the blog instead… which took most of my time (holiday logo courtesy of the GIMP2.2). I wanted to add some snow-caps to the text boxes, but gave up because I suck at art. Owell, at least the red and green thing seem somewhat in the spirit. It’s the blog’s way of saying Merry Christmas to you, all its readers (even the closet readers).

Today we decided to do nothing. The main motivation, other than kinda just wanting to do nothing, was to stay out of the holiday traffic. The last thing I want to do right now is go out, the streets were bad enough yesterday. And besides, it’s nice and warm and quiet in here and I can see the grey skies from the windows, so I’m not missing much in the way of people and horns and cold air. Mom’s in the kitchen cooking, dad’s reading a book, and Sharaun went out to pick up some last-minute stocking stuffers. It’s nice because it smells like cooking in here, and I’m comfy on the couch drinking a beer.

I think I’m done writing for today… I mean, if I do write more, I’ll just make it tomorrow’s post. Until then, then.

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i don’t want to watch

Open road.
Vacation. Off to an “iffy” start though, as vacation’s defined at least. I’ve got two meetings to attend tomorrow (via cellphone, of course), so I won’t get that whole separation-from-work vibe until sometime well along the road north. It’s OK, I can deal with it I suppose. Tonight we got together to do another mini gift-exchange with friends, and when Ben ended up getting Napoleon Dynamite in said exchange – Suzy and he stayed over to watch it with the Mrs. and I. Man… what a great movie, right up my alley in terms of disjointed, sometimes squirmy, humor. I can’t wait to see it again. After that Sharaun and I were left to prepare for the trip: packing clothes, packing up gifts (we’re exchanging up there), and readying other bidness. This is the first chance I’ve had to write, and it’s nearly midnight…

The first real porno I ever saw was called I Want to Watch; I was in 9th or 10th grade. I was at a friend’s house hanging out on the weekend, and the subject came up. He said he had a real porno, that he’d borrowed from another kid we knew. Of course, once this info was out of the bag – there was nothing to do but watch the tape. There was no jacket, just an old VHS tape with a cheap white label. The video was old, at the time I pegged it for early 80s by the feathered hair and clothes strewn about the floor. The movie was light on plot (I guess that’s not really fair, considering it was porn). Anyway, the premise was that there were four sex scenes, and in each one there was someone “watching” but not participating. The watcher was always a female, and was perennially masturbating. Somehow, this tape was passed down to me. I kept it locked in a briefcase in my closet (why I had a briefcase, I have no idea). I don’t know where the tape is now. Perhaps, unbeknownst to me, the cycle began anew and some teenagers are getting their first look at the early 80s coke-fueled porn industry, and all the unkempt body hair it has to offer. I can only hope. Oh, and if you somehow have my tape – the 4th scene is the best.

Well, it’s Wednesday morning, my 8am meeting is over, and I’m officially on vacation. At least… until I have to call into my 10am meeting. Hoorah. I’m all packed and the bags are by the door, ready for Ben to come by and load up before we head out for a pre-road-trip breakfast. Then we run some small errands, and finally pick Sharaun up around 1pm. Then the tires hit I5 and don’t stop for 9hrs.

And with that, I’m done. I’ll write when I can.

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b-a-n-a-n-a-s

Dag yo, messy.
A cool and sunny Sunday afternoon; “crisp” even, although I’m unsure how that adjective relates to weather. The heat has been on now for almost a month, keeping the house a comfortable 70° for us warm-blooded folks. The sensation of being warm and “safe” inside a house while still being able to see the potentially unfriendly elements outside has always appealed to me. Like being in a tent in the rain, or sitting in a screened-in porch in Florida while a thunderstorm rages around you. Shelter; caves, Gilligan’s Island huts, Abe Lincoln log-cabins, whatever… it’s a known obsession of mine.

Today I finally broke down and installed SuSE Linux 9.2 as a dual-boot on my home machine. My thought was, since I’ve abandoned most of my non-freeware software on Windows, maybe this time the big “switch” would be easier. I’ve tried Linux before, but haven’t ever been able to stick with it. I always get frustrated and got back to Windows because I can’t do some ridiculously simple thing like change the screen resolution. This time though, I’m hoping the dual-boot scenario might help “ease” me into the switch. Ideally I’d love to run a completely no-cost system, but I guess time will tell. Right now, I’m happy because I’m trying it out, but I’m still not sure if I’ll stick with it. I mean, as it is now… it won’t see my RAID array and despite recognizing my sound card, I got no sound. Whatever.

Foggy this morning, the ground’s wet with it and the Christmas lights on the house won’t stay on for 30sec before tripping the GFCI circuit. This weekend was ultimate low-key for me, although we did host a meal and gift-exchange thing on Saturday night, which involved beers and champagne (toasting Suzy’s new job) and darts. I put on the Charlie Brown Christmas Special CD, what I consider to be the penultimate embodiment of Christmas music, jazzy and warm. Then we all played “adult” and sat around to open presents from each other. The rest of the weekend though, I sat around and did absolutely nothing. I practiced my dart throwing for a bout an hour on Sunday, watched some old Twilight Zone episodes, and did the dishes. The shit is bananas people, b-a-n-a-n-a-s.

Wednesday we set out on our trek to Oregon, I need to get the tires rotated and oil changed in prep for the journey. Checking this awesome page, the I5 pass into Oregon looks like it’s snow-free (click the little cameras for live shots of the road… the internet rocks). That’s not to say it may not snow between now and then, but at least we know it’s not snowed under now. I’m kinda looking forward to the drive, even thought it’ll be looong… but I kinda enjoy road-tripping, especially w/friends and an ample supply of good tunes.

That’s all for today, Dave out.

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if Good Morning America is any indication

No idea.
Guys, I don’t know what happened… I thought I missed one day of writing this week, but it turns out I completely missed two, count ’em, two days. Really, something happened to me, because I don’t even remember not writing on Monday night. I remember not writing last night (Tuesday), but that’s about it. Contrary to what my lack of posts may indicate, I have been writing this week – fragments of stuff not good enough to fill out an entire post… so I’m gonna do one of those “flush” entries where I get rid of a backlog of stuff.

7am on Wednesday morning, somehow ended up on the plus-side of time this morning… I dunno, got ready fast today or something. So I sat down and flipped on Good Morning America to see what’s happening in the world. Apparently, Laci Peterson is happening in the world… and is maybe the only thing happening in the world, if Good Morning America is any indication.

For the past couple days, I’ve been coming home for lunch and playing darts with friends. Anthony and I broke in the new dartboard and dart sets on Monday, which involved me playing my first ever “real” game of darts (y’know, not just the “hit the bullseye” version). While playing, I realized darts could be a pretty fun way to kill some time. Get some people over, have some beers, listen to some tunes, and play some darts. In fact, maybe coming home for lunch and drinking some beers and playing darts would be awesome too. Whatever.

Looks like I’ll be spending nearly a month in Taiwan come late February. I have mixed feelings about an extended stay… my longest trip so far has been two weeks, and I was more than ready to head home near the end. I think this stay will be somewhere between three weeks and a month. The only good part about it is getting to stay in that swank high-roller hotel for that long. I can look forward to an entire month of late-night bloody marys at the bar and lonely nights on fluffy sheets. Other people I work with will be coming and going over the time I’ll be there, so at least I’ll have that. So if anyone wants to make their way to Taipei in March, you can have the floor in the hotel room.

Saw a post on /. the other day about open-source GPL schematic capture and board layout software. It may seem nerdy, but it’s what I do. It’s so awesome that you can get free software to do most everything… even the things you do every day at work… bleh.

I noticed from my referrer logs that Suzy linked me on her “friends” page, many thanks. And now it’s time to head to bed, I’m up early to deliver friends to the airport. Sorry for the crap entry. Goodnight.

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nickel and dime

It even comes in a bag.
Monday come and gone, busy again at work. Got home and found my mother-in-law had sung me “Happy Birthday” on the answering machine, complete with custom lyrics (sounded freestyle, y’all) about missing me and whatnot. A nice thing to come home to, makes a guy feel good.

Saturday night I spun a big wheel at the sushi joint and got a free bag of rice; Monday morning I got a hard rock in my chest, the kind I get when I feel bad about things… things like fucking over 9 people reveling in my honor. It’s lunchtime on Monday right now, and that sentence came to me on the drive home from work. I put “No Cars Go” on the wireless-thingy, made a yummy sandwich with Italian turkey and pepperjack cheese, and sat down to watch last night’s Arrested Development. Remember I said it was the anniversary of my birth this past weekend? And that we all went out for sushi? This morning I caught wind of some unhappiness within the group, seems the meal-ending activity of bill-settling had, in fact, unsettled some.

I hate settling bills from large group-meals, it’s tough, and people inevitably pay more than they should. It may seem so small, but I can understand the frustration of paying 4x the price of your personal repast to keep from making waves. Anyway, being that it was my birthday, I had decided to splurge and get four rolls between Sharaun and I (the breakdown of who ate what isn’t that important, but yes I ordered three and her just one). Beer, sake, and seared tuna appetizers also filled the table. In the end, people kindly decided to chip in and cover the expense of my meal (a very much appreciated sentiment). Come Monday morning, the birds were singing in my ears of discontent over the bill’s breakdown; and I was left feeling the summary heel for over-indulging and passing the cost onto the very people who had gathered to applaud me into another year of breathing.

Two paragraphs. Two paragraphs on the details of a weekend’s sushi meal and the fallout. Ahh.. the problems of the modern American man. No longer do I fret about being able to kill enough meat for the clan before winter comes, or dodging tyrannosaurus rexes while moving my nomadic family to greener pastures. No longer do I worry about my crops, polio, communist superpowers, nor the black death. Nay, what worries me, friends, what worries Joe America 2004, is the division of the damn multi-hundred dollar check from our gluttonous meal of hand-prepared delicacies and the alcohol of other countries. What’s that brain? You want me to write “fuck it” and be done with this subject? Well, let me consider that.

Fuck it.

Saturday Sharaun and I decided to go grocery shopping together. We don’t normally do this. But, I had been getting frustrated with the lack of food in the house. Not that there wasn’t food, if we were for some reason locked inside the house I’m sure we have enough provisions to last several months (we could live on rice alone for quite a while, thanks to the bag I won at the sushi joint. “Fuck it.”) My complaint, however, had been that there wasn’t any “easy-access” foodstuffs that I could enjoy for, say, a low-cost lunch or perhaps pre-dinner snack. So, we hit the local market together. In my mind, I was there to stock up on things I wanted – this was to be one trip to the grocer that I would do right. I wanted the makings for escape-from-work lunchtime sandwiches; breakfast materials; and small goods to nibble in anticipation of the evening’s meal.

Sharaun and I, however, shop very differently. For instance, did you know that, for some reason, you can only have one type of cereal in the house? Yup. And, it should be a cereal that you both can eat. Not Cocoa Pebbles, because I love it and she hates it; not Mini Wheats, because she loves it and I hate it; not Raisin Nut Bran, because despite the fact that we both like it, it costs like $12 a box. Nothing from the “Bed and Breakfast” line that looks so regal in its ridiculously small-sized and high-priced miniature boxes. Nothing with dried fruit, nothing that’s too sweet, nothing that leaves that nasty slick film on the top of your mouth (you know who I’m talkin’ to… Fruit Loops, Apple Jacks, and gum-rending Cap’n Crunch). Apparently, it’s against the law to purchase, prepare to recoil in horror at the mere suggestion, two completely different types of cereal – one of each that best suits the tastes of each eventual consumer.

I also was not aware that you are always, regardless of any rational reasoning, supposed to buy the store’s own generic alternative to name-brand foods. Even when you know beyond a shadow of a doubt that the “Sunshine Pride” version of Suddenly Salad’s “Ranch ‘n’ Bacon” pasta salad is repulsive in comparison, the $2 price differential is reason enough to buy it instead. I am not allowed to pay more for something that tastes better, which, to me, makes no sense. Sometimes, things cost less not simply because they are a deal, but because they suck butt as a product. There’s some truth to the saying “you get what you pay for,” even if we are just talking about mayonnaise.

Tonight we finally finished the Christmas tree. And I gotta say, it looks awesome. While we decorated, we tried to listen to the year’s best album (IMHO) over the new wireless media-thingy. Much to my chagrin, the thing almost immediately began sputtering and freezing during playback. Several times it completely restarted the song only a few seconds in, only to freeze again. I didn’t do any comparison testing, but I think the “buffering” problems may have had something to do with the fact that I was downloading mass amounts of MP3s at the same time (the entire Trans-Siberian Orchestra Christmas canon for a friend). Not that I was in any way saturating the wireless connection in downloading, since it was all happening on the wired PC, but I can’t think of anything else. It did a similar thing yesterday, but not quite as bad… I’m gonna keep an eye on it – but I’m hoping it changes its attitude because it’s a really cool idea..

In the third letter Shaine has managed to scan in and send me (background here and here), it seems I have become a 6th-grade fireworks salesman. I can remember when we discovered that the fireworks store on the island about 15 min away would sell illegal fireworks to kids. We would ride all the way there (which was a daunting ride, over a huge causeway and probably taking an hour or more), and ask to see the “back room” where all the “boomers,” bottle-rockets, and roman candles were hidden. I guess I thought being able to score fireworks made me cool, so I decided to get into the resale business (across state lines and through the postal service, no less). I doubt Shaine ever really purchased anything from me, but the letter is hilarious nonetheless.

A lot of writing tonight. Time for bed now, midnight says so. Goodnight.

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just plain green

Heehaaw... am I really an ass?
Saturday night, just got half-done putting up the Christmas tree. Since it’s fake, there’s about an hour of setup time sorting, attaching, and “fluffing” the branches to make the tree look its best. Sharaun’s not been feeling well and has picked up a cough, so we only went halfway tonight and will finish tomorrow. Today was a day of Christmas shopping, Kristi lending me her chick’s-eye and helping me with Sharaun’s gifts. And tonight we all went to the local sushi joint for a meal in honor of my nameday. Some of the gang went in and got me an awesome dart set as a gift, with all sorts of interchangeable shafts and barrels and flights and other pro-sounding dart parts. I don’t know if I mentioned, but we brought back a really neat pub-style dartboard with us from Florida, y’know the kind that is inside a little wooden enclosure with foldout doors and chalkboards to keep score and whatnot. So, the dart set was particularly thoughtful and prudent.

I’ve almost decided we’ll never get our tree fully decorated. Sharaun’s sick, and when she’s sick she’s miserable. Not to be mean, she can be the “strong woman” and all, but when she’s sick she plays it for all it’s worth. So, we erected the tree yesterday and strung the lights today, then gave up due to sickness. We have boxes strewn about the living room, half-opened with ornaments ready to be hung. Maybe we’ll get to it one evening this week, I’m not sure. Sharaun’s pretty wrecked when she gets home from work. Ho-hum… despite all I do y’all, the place still looks like I live with a teenager. Clothes on the floor; half-hung decorations littering the living room; the cabinet from which the bowl, still holding the darkened-milk results of a mid-day bowl of Cocoa Pebbles and left out on the coffee table, was removed still hang open. Ahhh… whatever, I know the rest, you know the rest… no point in writing.

Back to the subject of my bday loot, I got some really cool stuff. Friends Kristi & Erik got me the Daily Show book, America, which has ousted the “Trump Girls” edition of Maxim from the tops of the bathroom reading list. The book is clever and hilarious, and the fact that a couple of pachyderms bought it for someone who tends to favor donkeys shows that humor can transcend partisism… or something else, I dunno. Sharaun got me this, which is really cool. Kind of like the portable jambox of yore, this thing uses my wireless internet connection to sync with all the MP3s on my computer, making them available to me anywhere (within range, that is). The portable speakers are passable for working-in-the-garage or grilling-outside scenarios, and it can also plug into the home stereo via optical or RCA when more volume is required. Not a bad invention, and from initial tests yesterday, it seems to work pretty well. An awesome gift, something I completely didn’t expect.

I guess that’s it for today, because I’m done with ideas. Tomorrow maybe, maybe it’ll be better then.