Category: halloween

The best holiday ever.

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eating & prioritization

corn at the ready!
When I sit down to eat a meal, I subconsciously prioritize the food items before digging in. I mean, if there are several types of food on the plate, my goal is to have my last bite be of my favorite one – therefore I finish the meal with the best taste in my mouth. This practice involves a certain amount of “pacing” and forethought. Say for example there are three items: corn, mashed taters, and steak. Now, Dave loves steak, and taters, and even corn… but within seconds my brain is taking stock of the grub and spitting out my strategy. One bite of steak, maybe dipped in taters, then two or three bites of corn. The corn should shrink at approximately a 2:1 ratio compared to the steak and taters. It’s hard to decide between the steak and taters for who gets to finish last, but usually the steak will be smaller, so you have to gear ratio them correctly to each other in order to make them finish simultaneously.

Sometimes, however, certain “sleeper” foods require on-the-fly, in-meal, re-prioritization. For instance, let’s pretend I start my three-part meal mentioned above, and dig into the corn. What’s this? There’s some kind of spicy thing in this corn? And it also has little baby potato pieces in it? Man… this corn is awesome! Now the brain takes over and immediately begins running a secondary meal endgame simulation. Is this corn good enough to shake up the current food standings? Now we shift gears, suddenly I begin eating potatoes over corn at a 3:1 ratio. Mind you, this kind of re-prioritization can occur several times during a meal. I mean, it would have to, wouldn’t it? There’s nothing worse than ending a fine meal on a sour note of refried beans or something… you always want that last hunk of chimchanga to be the last thing delights your palette before pushing away from the table, fully satiated. At mealtimes, my brain is just a statistician for my gut, and a pretty accurate one at that.

Last night Ben and I worked on the Halloween display. I “aged” some tombstones using spraypaint, water, and other means. We spread Woolite on the fabric for the flying crank ghost, and we made more progress on the cemetery fencing. I also carved another tombstone epitaph with the Dremel: “Sharaun. She’s gone.” short and sweet. The projects are progressing nicely, and I am on track to have them all set up by next weekend.

OK, that’s enough for me for today. I gotta stop writing so much, blogs are getting long!

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how i graduated

i'm educated... this paper says so! where do i pick up my check?
We (Anthony and I) completed some more for the Halloween display last night. We finally decided how and where to hang the flying crank ghost motor assembly. We used plumber’s tape and screwed right into the stucco on my porch roof (it will hang in front of the window on the right in this pic, taken when our house was still being built). We also mounted a blacklight so that it’s out of sight and shines on the ghost. The whole idea worked out great, the motor assembly is out of view, and all the trick-or-treater sees is the moving ghost, bathed and glowing in UV light. Now I just have to build the ghost! We also built a fog chiller, which neither of us was too impressed with… so I may change the design; as well as cut PVC and began drilling boards for the graveyard fence. I plan to have all the decorations up by this weekend, so I can at least get a week’s worth of use out of them before Halloween. Sharaun and I also need to get a pumpkin and carve it. Can’t forget that! Owell. In the middle of hanging our FCG, I got a phone call from Zeb. OK… who is Zeb? Rewind to college, my three closest buds are Thanh (10), G.C. (Greasy Cuban), and Chris (image courtesy of G.C., unfortunately Chris isn’t pictured). Zeb is Chris’ friend from way back, and he and I occasionally chat. Anyway, he’s in the Navy and has something to do with the Blue Angels…. which is totally cool to me. I always forget to call people back, sorry Zeb.

I was thinking the other day about college, and how the heck I ever got out of there.. I kinda managed to pull one over on UF…. ummm… or pull a few over, I guess. I got that extra 1 credit for an “independent study” with Dr. Carnes, which was actually nothing – I did absolutely nothing on that, didn’t even move a muscle in effort or fire a synapse in thought. My senior project was an absolute joke, although I spent a good deal of time on it – it was really very simple. (I desinged a Bike Safety course for gradeschool kids, using Macromedia…. with like 5 other people.)

Also, we managed to get that “Navigating the Internet” class accepted as a technical elective. We knew that several technical electives fall under one generic course number, and without actually going back and researching it – there’d be no way for them to tell whether that number on the transcript was “Advanced Data Structures in C++”, or “Navigating the Internet.” (Heard they changed the numbering system the very next semester though!)

Not only that, but I was able to swing getting that COBOL programming course accepted as a tech elective. I mean, writing COBOL programs never took over 10 minutes, no matter how complex, and I got an easy A in that one. And then there was that summer course at UCF, it was a 4000 level course taught under the Mathematics Department, but it was called “History of Mathematics” (actual syllabus from when I took it! I love the internet.) and was mainly for future education majors. Thing is, UF doesn’t see anything but the course number, so it’s their guess as to what class it might have been. Could have been “Galois Theory and Elliptical Curves” for all they know. Got a fast and easy A in that one as well.

Then I also got that 1 credit for my so-called “internship” at Raytheon. Which was really nothing more than me coming in late and leaving early for 5 days (sometimes 4) a week. I wrote one DOS batch file during that “job,” nothing more. What’s more, I got paid good money to sit at that desk and download Grateful Dead mp3s all day (note: most proxies block that link, since you can grab gigs of mp3’s there so easily – not Raytheon!). Also, I managed to “recalculate” my GPA based on BCC and UF courses being weighted equally, giving me a nice round 3.01 overall average… when my UF GPA was a little lower. Looked much better on the resume.

I am glad for that Internet class though, for my final class project – I had to “create” a web page, so I retooled my Beatleg site using CSS and Java, and made it much more accessible and readable. Still using that redesigned page today. And, although I don’t sell them anymore, I wrote my cd sales customer database during my “internship” with Raytheon. So at least I made some money off of all my loafing…

Having just outed myself as a charlatan, I must say in my defense that I worked very hard in school… no… I’m for real… I did. Honest.

Dave out.

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talk to you tomorrow, when i’m rich

Gort! Klaatu barada nikto.
Strap in, I’m gonna jump around from subject to subject here…

Kristi was nice enough to do an Evite for our upcoming Halloween Bash. That way we can track who’s coming and whatnot. It’s a pretty cool service, I wonder what they get from it? Obviously they harvest street addresses and phone numbers for junk mail/calls – so I guess that’s how they make their money. Anyway, I thought it was super cool of her to hook that up.

Holy crap this cracks me up. Some of my favorite lines would have to be Remember, you will sleep with the hat on. and Some abductees report success with helmets using only 5 sheets of Velostat but 8 sheets are recommended as the aliens transmit a tremendous amount of energy. Good thing the only major skills you need to make the “screen” were learned by most in kindergarten: Dexterity, use of scissors, adept at cutting and shaping paper… because the aliens may have taken away your mathematical faculties. Something else I find funny is that the “inventor” of this “hat” has chosen to use tape to secure the telepathic-thought-blocking Velostat liner to the hat. Dude, could you at least do the abduction-paranoid a small favor and make their insanity a little less obvious by maybe suggesting they sew the junk into the hat liner or something? The guy who owns/runs this site also maintains another site which hosts tons of creepy images drawn by children who have supposedly been abducted by aliens. To me, it’s a sad site. (Sorry for the B-List Benz)

My God, I’m listening to 3wk’s classic feed right now, and “Friday on My Mind” by the Easybeats is on. Talk about a serious flashback. I can remember listening to this song in 7th grade, when Kyle had moved to Cocoa. It was the first day he met Amber, she was babysiting near there – and we walked the couple miles to go visit her. Hearing the song, I can almost feel the sun on my back as we walked… almost hear the road crunching under our feet. So insane how music can bring memories back like that. Music and smells really work for me.

I know none of that makes much sense to anyone who doesn’t know anything about Kyle, Amber, etc. So lemme give y’all a lightspeed primer. My family moved to FL from CA in ’88. The real estate agent who sold us our house had a daughter that was my age, Robin. Robin and I began dating; I met, and formed friendships with, Kyle, Joey, and Andy. Amber was Robin’s best friend. The boys met Amber, Kyle dated her first, then Joey, then Amber and I simultaneously cheated on Joey and Robin with each other. Everyone broke up (well, Andy never dated anyone), and I started dating Amber’s friend Charla. There ya go, the soap opera of my pre-teen romances – from 7th grade through 9th. (Here’s a flowchart for those who were confused by the Friends-esque hookup party we were having.)

The lottery is up to 60-some-odd million tonight, I am so winning. Nevermind that I haven’t bought my ticket yet – I’ll get some on the way home. Talk to you tomorrow, when I’m rich. Dave out.

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a dusty lunch

i love halloween!
Not a bad weekend. Spent a lot of time working on tombstones (I’ll post some pictures eventually). The hot tub arrived at Steve & Ragan’s place, so I pitched in a little to help erect the gazebo that sits around it. No work on the backyard this weekend, as I was occupied by other projects. I did, however, finally find a suitable strobe light for the Halloween display. And I stole some large pieces of cardboard, which Steve’s gazebo roof was shipped in, to make a lifesize knife-wielding man cutout. The cutout gets reinforced with some wood and painted black, and the strobe light goes behind it – the effect should be pretty creepy. Speaking of Halloween, the invite for the Halloween party went out today… watch the blog for full details of the celebration.

In a musical roundup, there’s a sweet article about DCfC over at the Onion’s AV Club (conservatives: beware the Dan Savage column). Also, I found a really interesting Radiohead-related item. Stephen Malkmus (of Pavement fame) and his band, the Jicks, opened for Radiohead on some of their North American gigs recently. Malkmus is known for keeping a tour diary when he’s out on the road, and it’s a really interesting read for a Radiohead fan. I just thought it was totally cool to hear someone who I consider to be super musically talented talk it up about someone they consider to be super musically talented. Also on a musical-slash-Range-Rover note, Ben and Anthony took the Disco out 4x4ing again this Saturday and, true-to-form, Ben has already whipped up a nice video montage of the outing, with one of the best cuts from the new Snow Patrol album as the soundtrack. That about does it for the music roundup. Oh, I forgot to mention my Steve/music story. Steve is often stuck riding in my truck and being subjected to indie-immersion. One of his favorite comments in reference to any singer with that telltale indie-falsetto voice, is: “I bet this guy got beat up a lot in high school.” That cracks me up, and it’s probably true too…

I got a story for ya. Today, I was happily enjoying a thrifty lunch of leftovers at Steve’s house. We were just finishing up with the eats, and watching the Fresh Prince of Bel Air – when my cellphone rang. “What’s up Anthony?” “Dude, we got stuck.” Yeah… so let me debrief y’all. The 4×4 video from that I linked above was taken by Ben on Sunday. He and Ant headed out to the local 4×4 park and put the Disco through the paces. Apparently, they were pretty rough on it (as evidenced by the video), and they actually broke off some of the plastic on the undercarriage. So, today at lunch they headed back out to the 4×4 park to retrieve the broken pieces. After the successful reconnaissance mission, they decided to get a lil’ 4-wheelin’ in before returning to work. Seems that they managed to high-center the truck, and had no hopes of escape. So, they called me. Steve drove me to work, where I got Ben’s keys from his desk and drove his Ranger out to the rescue. We hooked up the Rover’s winch to the Ranger, and you can see the rest below:


Hooking up the rover winch to Ben’s Ranger.
High-centered! Anthony using the winch remote to power free.
It took some wheel spinning, but eventually he got traction.

Climb for the sun Rover! You’re almost free!.
More Ranger-to-Rover resuscitation.
Anthony disconnects the winch, the Rover is free.

1st person view of the drive off the slope.		  
Free at last! Rover thanks Ranger and we head back to work.

Well, it was an exciting lunch at least. I did miss a meeting, and get a little dusty – but I still count it better than sitting in my cube for those 30min. With the Rover, you never know what’s going to happen.

Dave out.

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kiling ants

if i'd'a known it was gonna be this kinda party...
I wouldn’t say Sharaun and I are big partiers (is that a word?), but we enjoy hanging out with friends and having a good time. Yesterday I had an itchin’ for some kind of social gathering. So I crafted up an e-mail and sent it to the regular crew. Surprisingly enough, everyone on the invite list showed up. So the night began with two cases of Beerman’s Lincoln Lager, four 2lbs tri-tips, and some tasty appetizers (courtesy Sweet Grass Dairy). All indicators pointed towards an impending good time.

The evening went well, with the food turning out mighty tasty. We managed to polish off all the meat (and by the wee-hours, the last of the beer too). At some point during the night, it was suggested that I break out the fog machine and black light, to give the Halloween setup some “burn-in” testing. Who knew a fog machine could be so much fun? Our buddy (and close neighbor) Dan showed up near the tail end of the party. He had been working on constructing a covered deck in his backyard, and was returning some tools he’d borrowed. For some reason, he also brought along a level that was laser-equipped. The completely coincidental pairing of the fog and the laserbeam ended up producing a cool visible laser-line akin to Mission Impossible or something. Anyway, we played “fog-laser limbo,” “how high can you jump over the fog-laser?,” and “optics fun with fog-laser reflection.” That last game required that we bust out some mirrors to reflect the laserbeam around the room, we’ll get back to that later. Here are some pictures of the foggy good time (as always, you can click each pic for a larger version):


late night fog-and-laser play.		        
ben uses a blank cd to bend the laser in the fog.

After a successful evening, Ben took off in my truck on his way home. Shortly thereafter, I received a phone call from him telling me he had been locked out of his own house. So, Ben made the drive back and crashed on my couch. Sometime as the sun came up, Ben awoke to the smell of burning wood. Seems that the cosmetic mirror we had out during the laser-fun was left on the dining room table, and as the sun rose, it hit it in the exact right place at the exact right angle to burn a moving line in our table as the sun rose in the sky. Seeing and smelling the smoke, Ben thoughtfully moved the mirror. Below are some pix of the char that demands sanding and refinishing, as well as some general “aftermath” or “morning after” snaps. Enjoy:


what are the odds?		        
a closeup of the fiery results.

50+ beers ready for the garbage		        
midway through the cleanup process.

OK, that’s enough blogging for the weekend. I’m of to make some tombstones. Peace.

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terminal nerds

i chose trash, because this entry is mostly garbage collection to close the week
Well, I got a couple projects that are coming to a close. The Cast of Characters page is nearly done, with some rearranging, some new pictures, and more text, it’s right about ready to be published. I’m holding out for a couple more pictures and then I’ll pull the trigger and upload it. Also, Anthony and I nearly finished the FCG last night (with some help from Ben). While at Ant’s working on the ghost, I somehow (in the course of one weeknight, mind you) managed to: douse my cellphone in beer (I pulled the tap myself while holding the phone underneath… what?), pop myself in the stomach with a wire coathanger (I checked, it left a mark), and have so little fuel in my truck that I wasn’t able to start it until I coasted off Anthony’s sloped driveway and into the flat street. Anyway, we got the entire motor-assembly done (the marionette part), and I built the armature for the ghost itself. Now it’s up to my artistic side to craft up a nice apparition to fill out the armature. I say the project will be completed over the weekend.

Melissa didn’t get home until like midnight last night, and then went back in this morning at like 5:30am. Oh, for those who don’t know, Melissa is living with us while she awaits the availability of her new apartment here in California. Actually, I guess today is her last day, which means I no longer live with two women.. which is so awesome… I think I am crying a little bit right now. Either way, I’m glad my job doesn’t require that much from me. I’m all for working, but only as a means to an end. When I win the lottery, I’m done with the 9-5 scene.

In other news, I modified the ASP script for the comments page, so that the comments are now sorted from the top down (new comments added under the last ones). It now has the more familiar comment look of sites like Slashdot and Fark, since the whole “first comment at the bottom” thing was irking me. I know you probably don’t care, but I love projects… remember?! Speaking of Fark, I lifted this link from them for the blog, because I got such a kick out of it. I never even knew there was such a thing as “LARPing,” but let me be the first to say… “that looks kinda cool.” Oh no, I mean… what terminal nerds… yeah… yup.

OK, time to get ready for the weekend. I got a nice one planned. Some possible 4x4ing again, helping Steve and Ragan erect a sweet gazebo over their new spa, and fashioning some tombstones out of foam insulation sheeting. See ya on Monday.

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horde

well... some people collect 'em...
I think I’m an obsessive collector. I tend to latch onto something, and try to collect the hell out of it. Sitting back and taking a real look at it, I can remember it starting way back in gradeschool. When Garbage Pail Kids initially came out, I collected them in earnest. Before that it was Star Wars or He Man figures. In 4th and 5th grade the musical monster within me had been awoken, and I would hunt through record stores to find any Depeche Mode cassettes I could get my hands on. Progressing on to middle school, I met Kyle, and my eyes were opened to real music. I dove headlong into the Beatles (and classic rock in general). It wasn’t long before I had several hundred cassette tapes. The “rarer” and more obscure the band or recorded material, the more I wanted to own it. The obsession only increased in high school when I found out there were such a thing as Beatles “bootlegs.” The idea of owning unreleased recordings, of being among that elite few that have 40 minutes of Paul rehearsing Blackbird, had incredible appeal to me. So, throughout high school I dropped gobs of cash on illicit Beatles recordings, Radiohead “imports,” scarce Prodigy cd-5’s released only in Luxembourg, etc. The music phase of my collectaholism lasted all the way into college, and even trailed me out to California. I continued to trade cd’s online and amass an impressive (and quite relevant, IMO) collection.

The only problem with collecting music is that it was taking massive amounts of my time. I had to burn cd’s, go to the post office all the time, organize the new stuff I was getting, scan artwork, print artwork, not to mention actually find time to listen to the new junk I was getting. Eventually, the time it took to orchestrate trades just got to be too much for me, and I slowly let the habit taper. I crafted a “stock” e-mail which politely declined any new trades, and I pretty much pulled out of the Beatles bootleg “scene” altogether. I still have several unopened mailers full of cd’s sitting on my desk from the last few trades I did do, and several stacks of jewel-case-housed cd’s that are begging to have their artwork printed and be filed. I just lost the drive somewhere along the way. I mean, if a spectacular trade comes along – I might still jump at it (the last one I did was for nearly the entire Woodstock festival on something like 20 cd’s – the real Woodstock, 1969), but for the most part I’m done with trading in bulk.

As the music trading ebbed, I subconsciously moved onto obsessing over other things I could collect. Most of the time, I don’t even realize I’m “collecting” things, I just start amassing things – and for some reason get interested in all these variations, which inevitably leads to me wanting all kinds of something. After music/Beatles it was pipes, I scoured Ebay for estate pipes, buying them, cleaning and restoring them, and then smoking them. I even started collecting different types of pipe tobacco to smoke in the pipes I was collecting.

The phases come and go. He Man, M.U.S.C.L.E., cassettes, cd’s, pipes, etc. Now I’m back around to Garbage Pail Kids again, which is a collision of my collecting fetish and my get-back-my-childhood fetish (the latter of those two being a blog topic all of it’s own). Even the Pac Man project was tainted with my collect-’em-all mentality. I had to have every original game, which meant thousands. My Halloween thing? Just another way to collect and horde cool stuff. I dream of the day I can own every episode of the Andy Griffith Show on DVD. I started collecting the “History of Middle Earth” books that Tolkien Jr. published posthumously for his dad, just to gather very scrap of his writing. My PC at home contains every original NES, Genesis, SNES, and N64 ROM, and the emulators to play ’em. (Yeah, the video game industry outpaced my “gaming” skillz right around N64 and the intro of fighting/1st person shooters. If you have to use more than about 3 buttons and a D-pad, I’m out. Don’t ever ask me to “strafe.”)

Anyway, back to the topic at hand… I suppose the whole collecting thing goes deeper than just straight-up collecting. My theory is that it fulfills a two-pronged need. Prong one being more about elitism, notoriety, renown, etc. “Dave has the coolest music collection!” “Have you seen it, it’s insane!” “Tell us about your Garbage Pail Kid collection Dave!” “Where did you ever get so many pipes?” “This Pac Man machine is so awesome, does it have Galaxian?! It does?! Oh man, this is so rad.” Prong two being about my need to always have a “project.” Hence the Pac Man machine, the Halloween setup, the blog… Something I can work on, perpetually if I’m lucky.

Lately I’ve noticed my collecting has kind of changed shades. I get the feeling that it’s becoming less about concrete objects and more about “remembering” stuff. Probably because, for some unknown reason, my memory is crap most of the time. So I write stuff down, I take pictures, I make webpages, I keep journals. I collect stuff that’s in my head; collect it into words and pictures and stories, and document it all so I don’t forget it one day. Don’t get me wrong, I’ll still be good for a laugh because you heard I’m driving to some gas station 30mi away to get the last new Garbage Pail Kid I need to complete series 18b… but I’m just saying…

Dave out.