Category: grindstone

All about breadwinning.

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choke on this silver spoon


Monday night, just got off the phone with Pat, telling him I was about to go outside and pull weeds. Sharaun then walked out the door headed to the gym and, rather than haul the baby monitor outside with me into the 100°+ degree twilight, I decided to save it for another day. Another day on pins and needles at work, where the current climate is all headmen and falling axes. Without going into the whole story about my ongoing flirtation with the breadlines, suffice it to say that things have been a bit stressful and the atmosphere isn’t the most work-conducive. In fact, I don’t think I’ve done a “real” bit of work in three days now – ever since my employer raised the threat level to orange. It seems however, that I have, for now, weathered the storm – once again proving my indispensability. Chance has once again enabled me to grow more undeservedly self-assured and pompous. One day I’ll choke on this silver spoon, it’s a sure thing.

You may notice the “double posting” for today. You’ll see the entry below this one is dedicated to one of this year’s Halloween projects. I intend to document my projects a little better from now on, and will have a static, living post for each where updates will go. Not that you care about this, but it’s just easier for me to document the projects in a living post rather than setup an entirely new dedicated page. Besides, how can I one day hope to get some projects listed on the Monsterlist if I don’t document them properly and publish on the internet?

Today, while cleaning out my My Documents folder at work, I came across a curious Word document called “South Side of the Island.doc.” Not recognizing the file by name, I opened it to investigate. Inside was written only the following:

South Side of the Island

Counting myself (a librarian by former trade), the population of our little island stood at a proud six bodies:

  • Ms. O, who, it was said, was once a fearless sea-captain, and whose house had a mast sprouting from its center, complete with crow’s nest atop.
  • Mr. & Mrs. U, both schoolteachers by former trade. Their grey hair always a little wild, and both of them given to being easily surprised or even skittish.
  • Mr. T, a brilliant scientist and inventor.
  • Mr. H, who was once a police officer. Made a body feel right secure to have a former man of the law nearby.

I read this over and over again, trying to place it. Did I write this? Had I downloaded it or copied/pasted it from somewhere? I quick Google search turned up nothing. I read and reread it, and ever so slowly started remembering… I think I did write this. The date on the file says August of last year; you wouldn’t think my memory would fade that fast – but it seems it has. Maybe I was going to write a story about my #1 topic: an island. I think I was most surprised to realize I’d written it because it actually sounded interesting, and when I thought it was something I’d stumbled on rather than my own craft I actually wished I could read more.

I don’t know what it is about my “work smarter, not harder” post that attracts the whackjob comments, but it sure seems to be accruing them slowly. Check out this doozy and the one below it for an example of what I’m talking about. The other day I thought I might be imagining that the number of “random” comments I get here on sounds familiar was increasing, but with some great out-of-nowhere ones cropping up this week, I think it’s out of the realm of imagination and into the realm of fact. Maybe I’ve penetrated Google deep enough that I’m now getting a “second wave” of search-driven visitors. I say bring ’em on, I gotta believe I’m writing for someone…

I much prefer sitting here listening to music than sitting here watching TV. Let’s face it, I’m rarely sitting here without this laptop in front of me anyway, and listening to something multitasks a lot better with writing than watching something does. Even if Sharaun is home (she’s not now) and the TV is mandatory, I’m usually only listening anyway. The only watching I’m doing right now is the watching of Keaton’s video baby monitor, showing me some flickering, washed out, ghostly-grey bird’s-eye shot of her resting peacefully in her crib. Looking more like a wobbly kinescopic view into some past era than a representation of real-time events, I can barely make out her tiny form in contrast to the other shapeless grainy wiggles. This thing cost $200? It almost works like something I’d consider paying $40 for when you wrap tin foil around the antenna. Wow, that little nothing-sentence turned into a whole paragraph… now if that ain’t God’s bounty then I challenge you to show me what is.

I got more in me, but I’ll call this one done and put it in tomorrow’s so I have to write less then. Brilliant, nay? Goodnight my lovers and haters.

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tomorrow’s yesterday


I finally motivated myself enough to get out in the front yard and pull the weeds from the planters after work today. Turns out it wasn’t that bad a job at all, I was finished in well under and hour. Some live Dead shuffled on while I worked, and it sounded so good. Sometimes there’s nothing better than a noodling Garcia guitar solo in the sunshine. I stopped short, however, of busting out the hedge trimmer and trimming me some hedge… not because I ran out of daylight, but because I ran out of caring. Tomorrow, maybe…

The more I analyze my trends in motivation, the more I’m convinced I have an excellent intuition. Historically, it seems I’m almost prophetically unmotivated – slacking most on things that end up being unimportant in the long run. I seem to “know” what to apply my resources to, and what to push down to the bottom of the pile. In the moment, my choices often seem damning – deprioritizing something that, it seems, would put me behind or cause my overall performance to suffer. But usually, later down the road that item I put on the back burner falls off the edge altogether from some directive on-high, and I look awesome for having diverted resources to other things when all the while I wasn’t paying attention to begin with. I’m convinced that this psychic ability to know when and what to work on, coupled with my ability to apply methamphetamine-like speed and productivity to important immediate tasks make me the ideal worker. I’m thinking of bulletizing this and putting it on my resume:

Personal Traits

  • Team player; works well with diverse groups.
  • Experienced in conflict resolution and teambuilding.
  • Possess a psychic “tasking” ability; can prioritize current tasks by future relevancy.
  • Fastidiously groomed; sparkling teeth, very little dandruff.
  • Well-filled shorts.

Yes… well then, let’s move on.

No sooner did I decide to make Wolfmother’s eponymous album my #1 pick of 2006.5 did I catch their single “Love Train” on the new iTunes ad during prime-time. Great, just great. How is one supposed to stay elite when iTunes and M&Ms and Chrysler keep employing good music to appeal to consumers? No longer will people stare blankly when I tell them I’m listening to Wolfmother, they’ll instead go, “Oh, you mean the iTunes band? I heard they fucked Lindsay Lohan with a trout… or something.” Nah, I’m only messing with you guys… the more people at the good-music party the better, welcome to what’s rad world, welcome.

Lately, I’ve been fascinated with the Swapatorium blog – which I ran across via this mysterious and super-interesting (to me) BoingBoing post. I have my own personal obsession with wading through inconsequential history, whether it be mine or someone else’s, and Swapatorium’s posts are right up that alley. While browsing the archives, I ran across the “Diary of a Girl” feature that ran from January through February this year: An entry from a young girl’s late-1960s diary, which covers everything from sewing dressed to the sordid affair between her older brother and her best friend. There’s no easy way to link the entire thread as a cohesive story, but if you’re interested in reading it (and why wouldn’t you be?), the best way is to start here at the January archives (scroll to the bottom of the page and read up), and continue on here to the February archives (again reading from bottom-to-top). What a great feature.

Goodnight.

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my bid


Hey Maygsters, I think it was you who once told me you sometimes check this page multiple times a day to see if I wrote late? That one statement was enough to motivate this late entry; thanks. Sorry it sucks anyway.

Going on 10pm Thursday night and I was fully planning on not writing an entry for tomorrow. Yeah, I had some canned stuff I could slap together – but none of it seemed exciting enough to make an entry out of. Work had me frustrated today, to the point where I called it quits around 11am and headed home to sit on the couch and do e-mail and conference calls. Let me tell you, nice weather wafting through the windows and the iPod on shuffle make for a much more enjoyable working environment than 3 and 3/4 shoulder-high grey fabric walls and a grey desk. In counterpoint to my normal “working from home” days, I actually got a good bit done.

I’m such a procrastinator. It’s an trait I think I developed as a natural second-order effect of my desire to be lazy. I don’t consider my laziness a laziness of thinking, or creating, or reasoning – just a laziness of convenience. When things aren’t what I want to do, I drag my heels. Even when I want something done, but don’t want to put the effort forth to get it done – my laziness steps in and takes over. It’s a bad trait, one that has me constantly putting off things that are simple tasks – but it’s the way I’ve learned to work. In the end it all boils down to being extremely self-centered (I do feel I maintain a line between my self-centeredness and my caring for others before, but I won’t try and make the point here). Anyway, this paragraph doesn’t fit… it’s now over.

Last night our company (remember, my first girlfriend and Sharaun’s college roommate?), Robin, inquired about the whole “blog” thing. And, being that she represented a major milestone in my adolescence, she is fairly well represented here – and I think she was surprised to find that out. Anyway, I ran a search for her name and handed her the laptop. She read through the entry about her birthday, the reminiscing over one of her notes, and the time I cheated on her with her best friend. At some point, she turned to me and asked, “Did you ever think we’d be here, on a couch in California, reading about this?” Hell no I didn’t, not in my wildest dreams. But… I’m glad it worked out that way, kinda cool.

Anyway, in the end she said the entries helped her remember what a dick I was. So, if nothing else, at least the blog serves the purpose of reminding people of my past-dickness. Which is good if I ever want to be inducted into the “Dick Hall of Fame” after my demise. I’ve heard written record of dickdom goes a long way as testimony in the judges eyes, so I figure I’m a lock.

Goodnight folks, love ya all.

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don’t blog for no suits


Another Monday done gone, workin’ for the man.

If you’ve been reading me for a while, you know that I talk a lot about my work without really talking about where I work or what exactly I do. That’s not gonna change, but I did want to talk about a fairly recent development at “my work” that has caused me to think. At “my work,” the corporate intranet this year added a dedicated space for employee blogging. Much like wordpress.com offers subsites that come preinstalled with the WordPress blogging backend – our corporate blogging area has it’s own custom backend and offers a working blog to any employee who wants to write. Everyone at “my work” can read these company-sanctioned blogs, and from what I can tell – there are no boundaries on content other than the standard stuff like no porn, etc. Meaning, these company-resource-supported blogs don’t force employee bloggers to write about company stuff. In fact, upon browsing many of the employee blogs I’ve noticed the posts are often just as banal and random as my own.

This is where I get to thinking. These blogs are hardly anonymous. Not only do they contain the employee blogger’s name, but the time and date of the posting. Every comment is also timestamped and tagged with the commenter’s name. I browsed these blogs a bit today and found ruminations on clogged gym shower drains, commentary on articles seen on Fark and BoingBoing, and all other sorts of non-workish type content. Not only that, there were employee comments on the stories, and comments and stories alike contained links to non-corporate-intranet URLs. This corporate blogging thing is definitely not for me. Not just because a lot of my content is “gauche” at best, but moreso because I’d worry these employee blogs could be used as accurate records of company time wasted. Why tell everyone you work with that, at 3:23pm on Monday, you were typing about the nice sunny weather rather than whatever the hell you’re actually being paid to do at 3:23pm on Mondays.

I’ll stick to my external blog, thank you. With full knowledge that it’s out there on the internets for anyone to read – but also a guarded tongue at work as far as publicizing it goes. I don’t need the man breathin’ down my neck trying force some “rules” on my blogging. I don’t blog for no suits…

Folks, I have to say I was worried. About what? Why, about this new Thom Yorke album. Yes, I was worried. When I downloaded it, and had run through it once on the iPod, I was worried that I’d be underwhelmed with it. My first impression what that it started and ended strong, but got all blurry and drug-out through the middle bits. Alas, a couple more casual listens didn’t do much to change that initial impression. Then, I got some focused one-on-one headphone time with the album, and things began to get clearer. Swirly keyboards and understated beats, Thom’s sing-song phrasing full of unexpected changes in timing and key… yeah this thing is good. I still think it’s strongest while opening and closing, but now the middle seems more supportive than weighing. It is worth mentioning though, that, in my opinion, this isn’t as good as what these tunes could’ve been would they have been collaborated on by Jonny, Phil, Ed, and Colin.

Anyway – I’m glad it leaked, and boy did it – nearly two months in advance. Following in the tradition of the last Radiohead albums, all of which have leaked considerably prior to street. XL, the label the album will be officially released on, had some interesting things to say about the leak at a recent Eraser listening party:

Given the nature of Radiohead’s audience, and the history of their albums leaking, it has generally happened a lot earlier. Any label at this point expects that an album is going to get leaked. It definitely happened earlier than we had anticipated. I think it [the listening party] would have had a lot more punch if it was truly the first time that anyone had listened to it, but my assumption is most people in the room last night had already heard the record.

Leaks are just a given now, I suppose. I’m not sure there’s a way anymore to not have an album leak prior to street. You can restrict access to the studio during mastering, but things will still have a tendency to fall into the janitors pocket; you can watch the mastering plant where you cut the discs, even the assembly line where you package them; you can even embed digital “fingerprints” into advance listening copies sent to journalists and media outlets – but nothing is gonna stop that thing from making it onto the ‘net before you can buy it in stores. I’d wager that, if there’s any amount of pre-sale interest in an album, that there’s close to a 100% chance a release group will beat the street.

In the midst of an abysmal “funk” at work, I begrudgingly do my work each day, suspended in some perpetual state of limbo while my project gasps and sputters the longest death rattle in recorded history. But, work is work. Lumbering, wounded project or healthy, shiny-new project… it’s what I do for a paycheck. I keep telling myself to just shut up and get done what needs to get done. That kind of tough-love motivation does work, but it doesn’t come close to replacing genuine enthusiasm.

Goodnight my friends.

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or write poetry


Thursday night mofos! Tomorrow I’m attempting to head out of work a bit early to head for the hills and begin our two-day camping trip. Keaton’s 1st multiple-day outdoor experience, I’m pumped. Sitting here watching the TiVo’d finale of the National Spelling Bee, which I’ve been hooked on ever since the year I caught the possessed Rebecca Sealfon on take the crown on ESPN. Now it’s moved to prime-time on ABC and it’s all glitz and glamour, and I love it to death.

Things are work right now are so “maybe, maybe not” that I find my strictly logical mind floundering amidst all the ambiguity. I’m OK at making contingency plans, any good engineer knows that’s key – but making a multi-headed hydra of contingencies and outcomes, each relying on each other to form some twisted, writhing, tangled knot of possibilities is something I don’t enjoy doing. When each action relies on three other actions which all may or may not happen, each with their own “likelihood probability”, my brain immediately tells me, “This is stupid! Something bigger is wrong here if you have to ‘plan’ like this! Stop now and go back to stone-one, figure out where the grand eff-up was and fix it.” Thing is, I think my brain is right. If your “plans” start to sound like the horoscopes in a women’s magazine, where you can interpret them however you want and they say nothing of substance, you’ve got more fundamental problems than just too many variables. In that case the basis of your plans, or your planners, or maybe even your motivations and goals are faulty.

The 411 on your project today…
Embrace the program you’re working on, honesty sparks even more happiness. You’ll have to guard against saying too much today, especially if you get into a conflict with a friend, your guy, or someone you have to work with one-on-one. Avoid the urge to be like Donald Trump. Swallow any tendencies toward pomposity or ambition. Instead, sit around eating ice cream and talking to your friends, invent a new project – or write poetry. This program is full of turbo-charged energy and sweetness, so just ignore any trash-talk you may hear in homeroom. Relax! Remain open to the possibility that a combination of self-sufficiency and outside assistance could work for you.

It’s been far too long since I reviewed some of the better search engine phrases that’ve led folks to this blog. Let’s check some out and try to respond to them where appropriate, shall we?

  • how to keep a mantis prawn as pet
    Easy: Don’t.

  • rebel flag bathing suits
    … look great at Klan rallies?

  • nobody like stevie ray vaughn
    I disagree.

  • origin of the phrase “dry hump”
    Actually, I invented it. It, and all kinds of humping.

  • home remedies for singed hair
    “Remedies?”

  • I think my girlfriend is scamming me
    And the internet is definitely the right place to confirm it.

  • i deserve a beer
    Yes; yes I do.

  • i hate itunes
    Yes; yes I do.

  • forgot moms birthday
    Shamefully, so have I.

Before I go, chew on this: I took the 4,000 spams screenshot on yesterday’s blog at 8:30am on May 31st (according to the file creation time). At that time Akismet had trapped 35,471 comment spams during the time it’d been installed on my blog. Tonight, at 9:12pm on June 1st, a mere ~36hrs later, Akismet has blocked a total of 42,373 comment spams. That means that over span of not even two days, my site was hit with 7,000 spams. At this pace, it’s looking like the 5,000 spams a day record might be less of a “high water mark” and more of the new normal. Praise to Akismet for blocking all but one or two pieces which I’ve had to manually filter.

Goodnight and good-weekend to you, biatches.

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how not to ride a bike


Welcome to my Tuesday night folks. Wanted to get a haircut on the way home from work, but the place looked packed to the gills on a driveby so I opted out. Figured I’d mow the lawn instead, but Sharaun had dinner ready nearly as soon as I got home. Boo-hoo, I had to instead sit on the couch and spend my time uploading pictures to the internet for your viewing pleasure. For those of you who are picture-whores, I’ve uploaded the latest batch of pictures to Keaton’s gallery. And then, as an added bonus, once you’re done marveling at the cuteness of our daughter – I’ve finally completed (or, made current, rather) the huge gallery dedicated to the three-year long project that is our backyard. From breaking ground to yesterday, all in photos – waste some time and watch it change at the backyard gallery.

When I was a kid, I had a book called The Bike Lesson, featuring the Berenstain Bears. The story followed Junior Bear getting a new bicycle, and Papa Bear attempting to teach him all the important lessons he’d need in order to safely enjoy it. Only thing was, Papa Bear made for an awful example. He ran over big rocks, rode off a cliff, even ended up in a tree. Because he was so terrible, he ended up turning most of his lessons for Junior into “how not tos” instead of his intended “how tos.” That’s what I feel like my program at work is like right now: How not to run a program. Everything that could possibly go wrong on a program has gone wrong, and the morale of the larger support team is suffering as a consequence. I’m not talking random, act-of-God, type things going wrong – I’m talking about shortsighted people making stupid decisions and classic planning and execution missteps. It’s so frustrating to be at the helm of a floundering ship, to have to stand there and proclaim “all is well” while you’re secretly wishing the whole damn thing would just go under.

Sharaun and I have decided that we are going to have our annual Halloween party this year. Keaton will spend a few hours with a babysitter. We actually debated this quite a bit, as my first tendency was to feel selfish and guilty wanting to be able to have the party as usual – but the more we talked about it the less negative I felt. She’d only be away for a few hours, and in capable hands, and dad would get to show off his new prop (an animatronic scary scarecrow, as I’ve already decided). We’ve also got a family-themed costume idea, although Keaton likely won’t be around to show it off by the time people start arriving. I’ve always wanted to strike a balance between being a protective, involved parent and one who’s not obsessive about never being away from their child and can’t enjoy their adult-time. It’s amazing though, how much you don’t want to be away from them… part of the plan, I suppose.

Goodnight folks, the media makes up for the lack of writing, OK? OK.

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oh how i’d miss the porn


Lasik tomorrow. Ben asked me if I was nervous about putting my eyes nuder the knife/laser. My immediate answer was “no,” as I’m actually not that nervous about it. Perhaps naive considering it’s elective surgery and has inherent risks – but my confidence has been so bolstered by the successes of my friends who’ve undergone the procedure, and the success rate overall. The only time I do get a tad “concerned” is when I think of it in terms of putting my vision on the line – more specifically, when I think that the worst possible result could be permanent blindness. I know this is incredibly rare (one out of millions, according to the stats), but boy… would that blow. As small a concern as it is, I have caught myself shutting my eyes tight for brief moments over the past week, in an attempt to get an idea what it might be like to be sightless for good. I know it’s a bad point of comparison, as I can simply open my lids and have the world once again revealed to me – but it does provide a bit of realism to the thought. At least, if I go blind, I’ll still have music. But porn, people… oh how I’d miss the porn.

Funny how things can change so much from day-to-day. It was just yesterday I wrote about being frustrated at work, and then this morning I went in and reopened stale tasks with a new vigor. Maybe writing about it was my own form of catharsis or something. Whatever happened, I just went in this morning and grabbed the reigns again. The afternoon was largely made up of meeting with various folks to inform them of the new direction I’m pursuing – all of which went well. For the moment, at least, I feel like I’m back in the game and contributing again. I guess it really could be as simple as being a work-only manic-depressive…

Let’s do a quick-bits roundup: Sharaun talked to her mom today, I guess all the ladies she works with now have a picture of our daughter being chased by a bear as their Windows desktop wallpapers. This makes me happy. Have successfully ripped and tagged over ~14GB (~4000 files) of Beatles bootlegs with my best-use-of-wasted-time Godfather script. I’m now on the home stretch, having nearly all my discs completely digitalized. It’s taken a couple years, but it was worth (or will be) worth it. Been working my “best albums of 2006, so far” list (a new “thing” I’ve been wanting to do here), and it’s coming along nicely. Aiming for sometime in June (y’know, to kinda reinforce the whole halfway thing). OK, done with that stuff.

I know I’ve written about edgewoodhospital.com before, but it’s inspired at least another paragraph. Let me first reiterate how much I love the site. Not only is it a timepiece for several generations, it’s gained quite a following of regulars who are digging up old pictures and posting them. These snapshots of parties past at Edgewood elicit the best comments from the site’s readers. People recognize people, recognize events, relive and share memories… I only wish I had some pictures like that from all the stuff we did as kids. We didn’t have an Edgewood where we’d go drink Budweiser and smoke Marlboros, but we did have several other “hangouts” where we could safely indulge in the excesses of youth while remaining relatively free from “the man.” Our main ones were: the pits, Skyview, the tracks, Barton extension, Hoo-Hoo, and BP. We had some good times at all those places, even spent the night at one of ’em a couple times – camped out in our cars, too stoned to want to leave. I wish I could make a site enshrining our teenage haunts, something along the lines of edgewoodhospital.com where folks could create accounts, upload old pictures of of kids being kids at those sacred places… comment on photos and carry on conversations. I would do it, but I have doubts I’d be able to properly publicize it – and it’d stagnate. But it sure would be fun to work on…

Any old cronies from the Rock read this? Anyone down? Leave me a comment if so.

And, before I go, just so Sharaun doesn’t read this and give me grief for talking about porn where anyone and their brother can go read it – I wouldn’t really miss the porn. I’d miss the internet, but the loss of porn would be an easy tradeoff. OK? Summary: Dave = not into porn as much as the tongue-in-cheek title may insinuate (it’s comedy, remember).

Goodnight.