Category: blogging

Where write about writing, and my website sounds familiar.

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good enough forever

....purrrr....
This weekend I was a cat. I did all the things cats normally do, and nothing more. I ate all that was put before me, full or not. In my spare time, I slept. I slept without guilt, often thinking that I might be coming down with something, as tired as I was. In between eating and sleeping, I used the toilet, and in between those – I played. I played at a city park with my family, throwing frisbees and reading in the shade. I played at the waterfall park too. Man, it was an awesome weekend… relaxed to hilt, at ease to the nines. On Monday, my pop and I tried, unsuccessfully, to program his car’s built-in garage door opener to open his garage door. It’s the second time I’ve tried to make one of those built-in things work, and from my experience you’re just better of using the transmitter that came with the opener. Tonight (being as it’s still Monday), we’re going to meet up with Ben and Suzy and the family for fireworks in the park. I’m excited, I love fireworks.

The Bleat is what I aspire to as a “personal” blog. Posting every day without exception, each day with compelling comment and colorful, interesting wordplay. The ‘I’ -less style of writing is good, and I’ve even caught myself slipping into it the more I’ve been following the page. The guy writes for a living (and must do so all the time, considering the amount of content he regularly posts), so he kinda has an unfair advantage out of the chute. My paycheck, however, comes from doing something completely unrelated to writing… so you’re gonna have to weigh that when considering the quality and quantity of my material. Owell, I dunno if I’d enjoy writing for my food anyway – I’d have a huge fear that I’d “dry up,” like I know I tend to do when things get busy.

My dad isn’t active in the music scene, neither is Sharaun’s, nor anyone else’s parents that I can think of off the top of my head. In fact, you expect old people to like old peoples’ music. They have radio stations dedicated to music as the aged remember music. A child of the 60’s? Tune into Kool 105.9 to get your dose. Standards your thing? Lock KSWG 104.7 on your dial for the best of the swingin’ 50’s. What I’m getting at is that, at some point in their lives, peoples’ tastes in music get encased in ice. No longer are you stalking the aisles at the local record shop looking for your next favorite album, no more keeping up with what’s drawing the critics’ praise or riding the underground buzz. At some point, what you already know is good becomes good enough forever. I wonder when that point is? Right now I can’t imagine keeping one eye peeled for the next groundbreaking record. Is it just that, at some point as you grow older, the current generation’s music changes so radically from what you were weaned on that you simply can’t grok it any longer? What makes people turn away from discovering the new hotness? Maybe it doesn’t happen as much with die-hard music lovers, the kind of people who’ll bed an LP for a week and then leave without offering even a cigarette or phone number. The real users and abusers. Who knows.

11:11pm. Sharaun alseep on the couch, me in the back room writing and listening to music. We’re back! It feels good too… I can’t lie. Although I have to go into work tomorrow, it’s good to be home sleeping in our own bed. And now, I think that’s exactly what I’ll do…

Goodnight.

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scrobbin away

Under the gun.
Ahhh…. I took Thursday and Friday off from work, which, coupled with the Monday holiday, made this weekend seem blissfully long. With family (sister- and brother-in-law) in town, we had a busy time trudging from coast to mountains. And now, although it’s Monday, and I have the day off, and I have a myriad of things I could be doing, I’m sitting here doing nothing. It’s been a good do-nothing day though, since we got up at 6am to take our visiting family to the airport – making it feel like I’ve already slacked for a full day when it’s not even noon yet. Of course, I have the appropriate guilt that’s associated with this level of laziness. I just don’t care. I’m not motivated to do anything… how crappy is that? Ugh…

Let me tell you what’s been keeping me up at nights lately. I have a pretty big-scale conference mid-month at which I’m a presenter. This is a pretty big deal for two reasons. First, the topic of my material will be a very high-interest one, and in fact the two times I teach the class are already booked to capacity. Second, I am woefully behind schedule in regards to developing my content. Normally, I wouldn’t be too worried – I am, by nature, a procrastinator, but I also work well under pressure, so it’s normally not that bad. The difference here is, I am teaching a class about a subject I’m really unfamiliar with. So, in addition to the normal task of developing the material, I also have to educate myself on everything. I have roughly two weeks to do this. However, per the development schedule for the conference, my material should be at 95% this week. People, my material is at roughly… 5%. For the first time in a while, I’m worried about pulling something off. Not that I won’t have the material ready in time – that’s just not an option, my real worry is making a fool of myself.

I’ve given bad presentations before, and I know from experience that it is a low, low feeling to not know your subject matter – and to have that fact be painfully obvious to your audience. Oh, I can still remember the searing embarrassment and desire to run and hide under a rock for the rest of the day. I do not want to experience that again… I’ll do anything. So, I’ve set myself a strict regimen this week. I’ll not only work during the days, but also log hours at night doing as much time-clearing work for the following day as I can. I’m dedicated to reading several pages an evening on the material I’ll be talking to – to get myself properly educated for any probative questions from the peanut gallery. From now until I leave this next-next Monday, I’m going to try and be the world’s most effective worker, cranking out not only my daily requirements but producing a top-notch presentation, as well as a sponge for information that may help me pull off the required feat. I realize that, in doing this, the blog may suffer. But hey, this seems to be the month of the suffering blog… so I might as well roll with it.

Sunday my truck broke. Yeah… just wouldn’t turn over. It’s not the battery, and I only know that because the extent of my car-problem knowledge is what happens when you try to start a car with a bad battery – and this wasn’t it. The thing would sputter and sputter like it was trying to come to life on a winter day, and when the engine finally bit and started to turn over it’d run for all of two seconds before just shutting back off. Perhaps the cracks in my exhaust manifolds that have gone long-unrepaired spontaneously turned into full-on ruptures and I have no back pressure. But honestly, I have no idea what that last sentence even means and the only reason I said it is because I know there’s some key relationship between exhaust pressure and the whole engine bit. So, painfully ignorant to the inner workings of my prime method of conveyance, I left that thing in the parking lot. And that’s where it sits today… waiting for me to play my AAA card and have it towed to some shop so I can be taken advantage of. Stupid truck… what did I ever do to it? Why can’t all machines be like refrigerators? Seriously, when’s the last time your fridge just up and broke down? I don’t care how exponentially more complex a machine an automobile is – that’s no excuse.

Tonight, taking a cue from the only blog that I regularly read, I checked into audioscrobbler.com and setup an account for myself. Audioscrobbler is like a natural extension of what I was trying to do with my “currently hearing” section on the sidebar. Except, audioscrobbler is much better. It gives you infinite history as opposed to my sidebar’s puny “last 7” or whatever, and it also assembles your listening habits into meaningful (at least to music buffs) data that can show trends and favorites. For someone like me, that’s a pretty intriguing idea. Not only does audioscrobbler scrobble together your personal listening habits, it offers aggregate stats for all the users of its service. So, you can track trends, and even get suggestions from other peoples’ playlists for things you might like based on what you tend to listen to. It will take a while to build up any meaningful data, but I think as a long-term thing I’ll replace my simplistic “currently hearing” output with some more interesting statistics.

And, once again, rather than wracking the old brain for more stuff to write – I’m calling it a night. Oh, and before I go – some pictures from our weekend hiking-season break-in hike up Pyramid Peak. We didn’t make it to the top, lost the trail in the snow, but it was a great day outside and a good way for me to remember how horridly out of shape I am.

Goodnight friends… goodnight.

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what brings you here?

Seemed appropriate for some reason.I’m just gonna get right down to it and say I’m not happy with this entry. I had all weekend to write it, and I ultimately came up with nothing. But I’m under pressure y’all. Last week’s blog performance was hampered by travel and catch-up sleep, and the weeks prior weren’t much better while I was in Taiwan. I guess I wasn’t motivated to write this weekend either though. Hopefully this week will change that. But for now, try to enjoy this crappy entry…

It’s the weekend and I’m writing as a procrastination tactic. I woke up early to maximize the day, and then spent two hours watching family guy and eating breakfast. Stupid traveling. I’m behind in everything that matters to me. Mowing the lawn, keeping the house clean, finishing the backyard, everything. Plants are dying and shower doors are becoming obscured with soapfilm. It’s really frustrating to me, mostly because of my compulsive nature. I start to freak out if things aren’t right, and I think I have my dad to thank for it. I try. I try and tell myself that stupid things don’t matter, but it’s ineffective if those stupid things really do matter.

Anyway, it’s a gorgeous warm weekend. In the mid 80s with sunny blue skies. And I’m writing about the weather… which is about as good as admitting ya got nuthin’…

Saturday I got the urge to do some web tinkering… the end result being a redesign of my index page. I’m pretty happy with the result, which uses an original image I took for the purpose, and an imagemap/rollover effect I pieced together from some tutorials online. Anyway, I’m happy with it. It’s much more stylized than my old design.

My TiVo got the 6.2 software update while I was away this week, which is awesome. The menus are 100% faster, and I can group shows into folders – making organization much easier. My one complaint though, you can’t delete a group. Now, why would you group shows if you can’t bulk-delete an entire group? What idiot at the TiVo company thought, “Lets give users this awesome feature where they can sort their shows into folders. It’ll simplify and speed up the interface, and make things much more intuitive. Oh, and if they want to delete an entire program group, let’s make them have to go into the folder and delete each one individually. Y’know, temper the rad with the suck, so they don’t get too much user-friendliness all at once.” Stupids. I hate them.

Also, on the upgrade theme, I successfully upped “sounds familiar” to WordPress 1.5.1.1 this weekend. Muddled through some bonehead “oops!” style accidental deletions and some CSS issues, but with a little work and the help of my pre-upgrade backups I was up and running shortly. You won’t see much of a change from the front page, but the backend has some small updates for me – namely a faster loading dashboard when I first enter the behind-the-scenes area. Nothing major seems to be broken, but lemme know if you see something not working right or looking funny.

I know I told you how much I love this Architecture in Helsinki album, but my affair with it has become even more heated in the last week. I daresay it’s my favorite album in a while. And do you think I care that I’m still dirty and sweaty from mowing the lawn? No! I sure don’t! I still sit here listening to this album at deafening levels, windows open so the sun can stream in and I get a nice breeze. I mean guys, I know, as albums go, this one is young… but, man, I love it. I don’t care what you say, we are in love – I know it’s 20 some-odd years younger than me, but we are in love I tell you! We could get married. We could! Age ain’t nothing but a number, and we’re in love… with each other! No, I dunno, I mean, it makes me feel good about myself – is that so wrong? Why are you so prejudiced? You can’t fight the feeling. You keep stifling us like this and I swear I steal away with it and elope. Don’t test my feelings, this is real.

For grins, some of the best search queries from my referral statistics. I’ve done this before, and the explanation is the same – these are words/phrases that people typed into search engines for which my blog was returned. They are naturally funny, so I don’t feel the need to dress them up with additional commentary. Enjoy.

www. ass massage
bathtub meth recipes
alaskan whore house
depressed lonely college blog
bipolar husband and infidelity
monkey riding an ostrich
self hogtie story
dudes saggin balls
swallowing my hot pants
ass wiping techniques
Molly Hatchet naked
“I know you have to pee” dick boy

Molly Hatchet is a band. People want to see anything naked I guess. If they were clued in, they’d really be looking for that homemade porno Molly Hatchet shot on her honeymoon with Jethro Tull. You get my joke? You get it?

Dave out.

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e

Brought to you by the letter E, and the number quatro.
I went to the bar tonight with Sharaun, she goes most every Wednesday night to meet up with the Wednesday night soccer crew. I’ve been a few times, but usually the prospect of sitting at home on the couch is more appealing to me. I don’t know why that is, because I actually enjoy going to the bar a lot. Wednesday night is “pint night” and you get to keep the glass. It makes me wonder how many other things I miss out on because I’m just unmotivated. She wants me to buy her some pepper spray (we’re talking about Sharaun now). She says she’s deathly scared when I’m away on travel and she’s home alone. So, I guess I will buy her some pepper spray. I could just get her some shells for the .22 – but she’d hate that, and there’s a chance she’d have better luck with the pepper spray anyway… a misplaced .22 round might be less incapacitating. It makes me feel kinda bad, y’know? I mean, I consider the opportunity for travel to one of the awesomest perks of my job. It kinda bums me out that she doesn’t like it. I can understand though, I guess, being that I’m the one off on exciting adventures while she’s left to fend for herself.

I’m gonna talk about comment spam and scripts and robots and other nerd-stuff now. Feel free to tune out.

I have no earthly idea what my latest plague of comment spam is all about, but I think I’ve got it under control. Let me explain: Beginning, oh, about two months ago I guess, I began getting strange comments. They were posted with the name field blank, and contained no content other than the letter ‘E’ as an e-mail address. As far as I can tell, there is absolutely no purpose to this kind of comment spam, other than to annoy me and fill my database with crap. I mean, unless it’s some secret spamvertising campaign for the letter E perpetuated by the nefarious Sesame Street gang – I have no idea what the motivation behind such spam would be. There are no links in the comment, no text, no real e-mail address, just one single stupid letter. What’s worse is, because they really aren’t screaming “spam,” they were getting through my comment filters. The other day, I just broke down and added the “word” ‘E’ to my spam-block list in WordPress. I’m guessing this only blocks “whole words” of ‘E,’ and not any comment containing the letter E – and so far it seems to be working.

There are a few things which tell me that these are indeed bot-driven spam comments, and not just someone’s idea of messing with me. They are always on older, seemingly random posts, which is a sure sign that you’re dealing with a spambot. They come in rapid clumps, multiple comments within seconds of each other on different entries. And, they all seem to come from the same stinkin’ IP address: 24.2.95.195. Whois tells me it belongs to a Comcast block in Utah or something – but I’d bet it’s forged anyway. You know, I can understand spam comments that hype penis pills or poker or whatever… but the letter E? Even if your comments got through, what the heck are they doing?

The only possibly explanation I can dream up is that it’s some method the robot spam machines use to test the “strength” of my spam filtering. I would imagine some algorithm that first posts several E-only comments via an automated script. Next, it would parse my pages to see if its E-only comment actually posted where the public can see it. If so – it would then step it up a notch – this time perhaps posting an E-only comment where the E is actually a URL linked to some poker site (I’ve actually seen these “next-level” E-only posts). Parse again, if it made it through – uplevel the comment to full-fledged spam. Then, using the information it’s managed to gather on where a blog’s comment filtering kicks in and starts blocking comments – the robot can effectively mark a “filter strength” field in its site database. Every few days, go out and do the E-test again to keep the “filter strength” field up-to-date. This way, spammers can categorize blogs by how susceptible their commenting scripts are to spam.

And, if the blog-commenting spam business model operates anything like the e-mail spam industry, where people sell DVDs full of harvested, “guaranteed working,” e-mail addresses to potential spammers – then this kind of “guaranteed spam-accepting” list of blog URLs list might fetch a higher price than just a raw text list of URLs. I mean, if the URL harvester can give you some guarantee that your spam robot will get it’s comments through on 80% of the blogs on their harvest-list – as a spammer you may be more likely to fork out the money for their list over another that’s just a bulk harvest of open blog comment-script URLs. So that’s my theory on the E comments. It’s a filter-testing scheme to add value to a harvester’s comment-script URL list. If that’s not right, I have no idea what they are – other than malicious and annoying and taking up space in my database. Stupid spammers, why don’t you leave me alone? I hate you so much.

OK, I think I’m done with that. Believe it or not it’s 11:12pm right now… I should be hitting the sack, but I’ve been staying up later lately. Maybe my brain is subconsciously preparing my body for the timezone switch or something.

I was perusing my server logs the other day, and looking at who’s linked to my pages. I found an oddball reference to one of my 96 Tears pages from some girl’s blog. Thing is, the entry from her site that linked to my pages was great – kind of my idea of what epitomizes a good blog post. Read it, I think you’ll dig it.

In closing, I’m going to give you a shortlist of new albums I’ve been enjoying lately. Some you may have heard of, some not. Either way, here goes: The Cribs : New Fellas, The National : Alligator, The Ponys : Celebration Castle, Great Lake Swimmers : Great Lake Swimmers, Red Sparowes : At the Soundless Dawn, and Hal : Hal. Now, some of those are relatively new and untested – but some have already proven to be leaders from the outset. I’d recommend most all of them, but I need some more time on Hal and The National. Put it this way – if you’re going to buy an album this weekend – buy The Ponys; if you’re buying two – pickup The Cribs too.

Man, I’m fast falling asleep. Need to spellcheck, rearrange, add thumbnail image, and post. Goodnight.

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the first rule of boondoggle club

Got it? Good!
Sitting in a beanbag on the showcase floor, it’s Tuesday in Taiwan. And before I begin, I’m going to get right down to it – honest-style. This is probably the most purposeless trip I’ve ever made to this island. I mean, I love Taiwan. I love the people, the food, the work environment – but for real I have no reason to be here this week. It’s not so bad, I’ve been hobnobbing and palm-greasing and breeze-shooting, all of which are quite enjoyable to a closet socialite such as myself. I’ve even been spending my work days on the floor at a large conference, answering questions and smiling to strangers. So, there’s a lot I could write about if I needed to justify this trip – but between you and I, I’m using it more as face-time than anything. But, where is my mind? Afterall, the first rule of boondoggle club is: you do not talk about boondoggle club.

Now then, I didn’t write yesterday because I just didn’t have much to say. Oh, sure, I hung out in the hotel bar, ate great food, and even went karaoke-ing with the standard Taipei crew, but I’ve written about all that before… so when I sat down to write about it again, I thought better of it. The trip out here was nice, got bumped to business class on the Tokyo-to-Taipei leg of the flight, so I got to fly in style for a few hours of the long journey. The only thing bad about being here for only a few days is that there’s not enough time to hang out with the people I want to see. It’s small solace that I’ll be right back here again in a short two weeks… I’ve got the standard mixed feelings about that trip too. I am, however, really excited about bringing Sharaun out… I’m hoping she likes this place as much as I do.

I feel like it’s been forever since I’ve written. Maybe because it’s already Tuesday night here, I feel like I’ve missed one more day than I really have. Do you guys know how hard it is to come up with new things to write about? I mean, here I am, writing again about not having things to write about – that should give you some indication. For a while, writing about not writing works OK, but soon you get tired of it. So, rather than follow my drive and make a post every day, regardless of it’s merit – I’ve pretty much adopted a policy of: no substance, no entry. I know, this entry is questionable at best, but there’s some stuff in here that might be worth it.

On the plane over here, I was (for some reason) thinking about money. Nowadays, people never even seen most of the money they have and use. I mean, there is no “hard” money anymore. Our paychecks go into the bank electronically, and I trust some computer to sum up what’s in my account. I never see half the money I spend. I hand someone a piece of plastic and trust some computer to subtract it from my balance. All my money is nothing more than a number on a computer screen. My bills are automatically debited from my account, subtracted right off that phantom total. It’s kind of scary when I think about it. Makes me somewhat understand the stories I’ve heard about old-timers not trusting banks, and keeping lockboxes full of cash under their bed or something.

Well, another day comes to a close here in Taiwan. Goodnight.

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i still got it

FM 21-76.
Today I spent $45 on a tank of gas. That’s a lot of money for gas, right?

Four days and I’ll be back in one of those richly outfitted hotel rooms, looking out over the dirty sprawl of downtown Taipei. I sometimes get this crazy fear that Taiwan will just up and declare its independence during one of my trips. I imagine myself sitting in a cubicle while the Red Army swoops down on that tiny island to crush the rebel uprising. The fantasy goes on… usually ending with me riding on top of a tank, policing the streets. One thing about work is… thing can change pretty rapidly. When I wrote that sentence last night, I was preparing for a two-week trip. Today, I learned that, due to some circumstances beyond my control, the nature of the trip had changed. Turns out I’ll only be gone for a week, still leaving this Friday. Then, I’ll come back for two weeks, only to leave for Taiwan again in early May. The May trip will be the longest ever, clocking in at three weeks. However, since Sharaun is off-track in May, she finally gets to accompany me and experience Taipei. To me, there couldn’t have been a better change of plans. I’m hoping my work schedule while there is flexible enough to allow us some decent “exploring.” And, I feel comfortable enough in the city to act as a sort of “tour guide” for her while she’s there. Awesome.

As you may have noticed, I didn’t really break any new ground with respect to my post-frequency this week. Leading off with a no-show doesn’t really set a good precedent. But… I’ve kind of accepted that I’m just in a slump right now. Whatever the reason… maybe I’m just not putting myself out there and hunting up good stuff to write about, I dunno. I mean, last week’s entries don’t amount to much more than the birthday present story fluffed up with a bunch of rambling. Lately, I’ve warmed up a little bit to the notion of “talking” about my writing. Before, I had this unspoken rule that I didn’t like talking about the blog in person. I mean, the blog is self-serving enough, but making it a topic of discussion was too self-indulgent even for me. Lately though, I’ve opened up a bit and don’t shoot people down as quickly when they bring it up. After all, when it comes down to it, I am proud of it. If half the reason I write is for me, the other half is surely so that people will read it. Anyway, talking about my writing doesn’t put me off as much as it used to. Although I still get surprised when I find out, through some twisted grapevine, that there’s someone reading this who I wasn’t aware of. Where was I going with this?

I’ve been having escapist fantasies again lately. Y’know, researching survival techniques online in case I do decide to abandon the modern world for a tent in a national forest or something. Tonight I learned how to dig a latrine. When I was younger, I can remember being fascinated with a secondhand copy of the Army Field Survival manual. I’ve always had a fascination with self-sufficiency… and I like to think I could handle myself on my own. Now, I’m not saying I actually could… but I like to think I could. I read that Field Manual over and over again, the detailed pictures and diagrams of shelters and snares had me in a trance. I can remember trying to commit things to memory: how to make a fishhook out of thorns, how to smoke meat to preserve it, how to build a lean-to. Just like I will never forget learning from a Hardy Boys book that you can escape your bonds if you flex your muscles while being tied up. Stuff like that has always stuck with me. I think it’d be totally fun to do one of those survivalist training “adventure” things… where they take you out into the wilderness and teach you how to live off the land. Right?

With all the pope-inspired news of late, I somehow stumbled across this vintage link from CNN – I’d never seen it before, but man… hilarious. Goodnight.

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craps was his favorite game

Luck be with me.
Someone give me a breathalyzer, right now. Do it. It’s only 8am but I swear I could blow at least a .05.

Being so multicultural and everything, Sharaun and I and friends went out to celebrate a day dedicated to the patron saint of Ireland. And, despite all the intelligence which pointed to it being a weeknight, I went ahead and invaded the beer tent anyway in a futile hunt for the weekend. I never did find the weekend, but I realized I’d been looking a little too hard sometime around 11pm. That’s when I found myself standing outside with some guy in a towering green felt hat which had a poofy green afro of fake hair attached. He offered me a cigarette and I accepted, a sure sign of drunkenness for me. Loopy already, I got the magic Marlboro and could barely stick around to hear the rest of my new friend’s story (something about a tattoo he got when his dad died: a flaming baseball and some dice). It’s always amazed me that the rare gravitational anomaly where you suddenly feel like you’re rooted to the ground and your surroundings are swirling around you only seems to happen when you’re drunk… there’s got to be some science behind that. Thankfully, I was able to master my emetic reflex and make it to bed.

Sometimes I wonder if my lulls in writing are because I’m so busy that I don’t have time to write, or because I’m so busy that there’s no time for anything worth writing about to happen. I think it’s a bit of both. I mean, after a 12hr day of writing e-mail, not listening to meetings, and staring at a computer monitor… there’s really not much to write about besides writing e-mail, not listening to meetings, and staring at a computer monitor – and that stuff just doesn’t make for interesting writing. On days where I don’t really do anything but work, there’s not much interesting stuff to talk about. As a semi-firm (like tofu) rule, I don’t get into too much detail about what I do for a living or where I do it… I mean, bloggin’ fools have been fired for that!

Until Monday.