Category: lil’ chino

the coming spawn

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so long, long weekend


Sunday night coming off an extremely short-seeming four-day weekend. Shame, really, I enjoyed myself so much at Ben and Suzy’s wedding that the time flew by. Saturday was largely spend loafing around the house catching up on a night of little sleep and letting my stomach recover from fried food, wine, and clove cigarettes. It’s Sunday morning now as I write, I’ve got a Twilight Zone episode playing on TiVo while Keaton plays on her blanket on the floor and Sharaun’s getting ready for church. After she gets out, I’ll strip the baby down and take her in with me so we can both get cleaned up for the week. Gameplan for today is short – work on the finishing touches of the new Halloween prop and maybe grill some burgers if the weather holds.

Today I finally bugged Sharaun enough that she let us all sit down and attempt teaching Keaton to feed herself some small solid food. Sharaun is deathly paranoid of her choking, and I think if it were up to her we’d hold off introducing small solids until she had a mouthful of molars. But, in the face of my prodding, she relented and we laid out a smorgasbord of cheese bits, sweet potato puffs, and smooshes of pear on her highchair tray. While she’s good at picking up most everything and putting it into her mouth, she didn’t show much interest when it came to things actually edible. Instead, she pushed around the food, picked it up and looked at it, and nudged it around the tray. Finally, I helped her by plopping things into her mouth, all of which she dutifully chewed and swallowed with nary a gag or cough. It was cool – that baby is getting biiig.

Speaking of Keaton, I just barely managed to not get her week thirty-two photos up before heading off to dreamland sometime after midnight – but (much to your pleasure, I’ll go ahead and assume) I’ll pledge now to get them up tomorrow night just as fast as I can. Apologies. To tide you over, go ahead and reminisce with me as we look at just how much she’s grown up since her internet debut.

It’s been a massive couple weeks for music, a virtual opening of floodgates, the amount of new and potentially exciting stuff to listen to being almost too much to handle. But, some how, I’m managing… pulled on my waders and walked right into the deluge to sort the flotsam and jetsam for the good stuff. So far, I’ve been digging the Fratellis, Malajube, and with the recent Shins and Mogwai leaks it’s shaping up to be an awesome year-end rally. I’m especially looking forward to sinking my teeth into the Shins album, and with it not seeing the streets until January, I should have plenty of time to form an opinion. For now, though, I’m completely hung up on the Malajube album… it’s simply outstanding, even if every word is in French and I can’t understand what’s being said.

You guys see Obama’s verbal dance around his previous assertions he wasn’t considering an ’08 bid? Seems he’s changed his mind, and I find this extremely interesting. Spent some time last night wading through the Digg comments on the news to see what other “young hipsters” had to say about the whole thing. If any crowd represents the tuned-in youth of today, it’s Digg, although that’s honestly quite a small percentage of voters (remember the digital divide?). Anyway, check out the comments yourself if you’re interested – I, for one, think it’d be a heck of an interesting race of he did officially cast in his lot.

Well folks, I’m off to bed – that’s enough for “an entry,” even though it’s less cohesive than that one glue that those 3M scientists accidentally invented while trying to invent a “super” glue that was so weak it was deemed useless until one scientist started using it to temporarily stick notes around the office and was then subsequently marketed as PostIt Notes and made millions.

Goodnight.

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mostly pictures


Sunday I decided to organize the garage, partly because the house was in such disarray that I wanted to clean something. We had some folks over Saturday for football, Halloween prop-building, and smoked pork butt. Borrowed Pat’s homemade smoker, woke up at quarter to four to take the meat from it’s brine, dry-rub it, and put it in. So, Sunday morning found the house a little untidy – hence my OCD urge to clean and organize. Managed to make some more room by shifting things around and moving stuff up into the rafters. I’ve written before about how better utilizing the space we have makes me feel good, and today was no exception.

Not gonna write much today, don’t have much to say. Basically, I’ll just point you over to Keaton’s gallery – which has been updated with her week thirty-one pictures. I also added back the ability to comment, although with a little captcha style confirmation code. So, comment away again please.

Goodnight lovers.

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champagne and scallops


Sorry for yesterday’s lack of words, it was just an uninspired evening. I had one paragraph and figured it wasn’t worth it. Right now, Sharaun’s out and Keaton’s asleep and the Halloween prop timer just kicked on and I’m sitting here listening to Muddy Watters (sometimes run-ons just feel right, y’know?). Now Skinny Puppy’s Addiction from the 12″ collection came on, what a track. It’s a good night. Oh, and, rain either got into the coffin popper’s wiring today, or the motions sensor is shot – because that thing just started flipping out tonight… turning off and on with such rapidity that the corpse looked like he was having a postmortem seizure. I had to disable the solenoid to the pneumatic cylinder, bummer.

I have a sneaking feeling I’ve espoused on this theme before, but I can’t be bothered to look for it among the previous entries – maybe this one will be better. I think it’s funny that we’re at the time now where the Lollapalooza set is starting to settle into their married lives and have children. My idea of what parents should be was, of course, shaped by my parents. And let me tell you, the parents of my generation are definitely removed from that breed. More and more of the parents I meet today have shaggy hair and ten-gauge hoop earrings and tattoos. These are “kids” in their mid-thirties who’re still holding onto bits and pieces of the fads that defined them as youth: grunge, hip-hop, etc. I think it’s hilarious to see a dual-childseat equipped minivan rolling down the road with the Cure or Front 242 drifting from the speakers.

I realize that my personal realization here is likely not unlike the realizations of the generations before me when they stopped and noticed: “Hey, I’m not young anymore… folks my age seem to be hemorrhaging babies, getting divorces, and not being able to sit on the floor without their ‘joints getting sore.'” I’m sure that there comes a point (right around thirty, I’d suspect) in most people’s lives when they realize that their age bracket has moved to the “next phase.” I’m just at that point, and my “age bracket” makes for an interesting menagerie of a parents and children. In fact, I bet when my parents became parents, it was hard for them to imagine a bunch of thirtysomethings in poodle skirts and saddle shoes chewing Blackjack gum and raising kids. Every generation must go through that shock of “we’re not kids anymore, we’re raising kids now.” (Have I restated the same thought enough times yet?)

Get ready geezers, shape up grandparents – we’re the new generation of families, we’re the new parents.

Booked tickets for our trip home for Florida for Christmas this morning, ended up going with United at a premium of about $150 so I could use my “class of service” upgrades and get the mileage. Sucks to pay a grand just to get home before we can even start spending money while there, but I guess it’s a lesson learned for me. Next year, I’ll be putting away a small amount each month in preparation. Anyway, I was able to use my languishing 100k upgrades to get us 1st class for the entire itinerary – which, I suppose, is some small comfort… and perhaps justifies the $150 adder. At least we’ll be flying in style, maxin’ and relaxin’ with champagne and scallops. Sigh… next up: Thanksgiving tickets. Good thing I’m stinking rich. Oh wait, I’m totally not… sigh x2.

Last night I was on one of the message boards I frequently lurk on (I’m a member of nothing, but a reader of a lot), and a well known boarder posted that he was going to commit suicide. Some boarders told him not to, lots cheered him on. I wonder if that guy was serious?

For some reason, the TiVo’s been missing more shows than usual lately (I suspect some mega-conflict with the sheer number of programs we’ve set to record). Sharaun realized it missed a show she likes, and exactly 12min later I had it downloaded and was playing it in perfect quality on the TV via the laptop. It’s times like that, when I’m “stealing” TV shows, that I really value the coolness of the internet. When I stayed in Taiwan for a month last year, I was able to watch any US TV show I wanted.

Goodnight.

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good enough to print


Sunday night, eve of another week of work. I managed to get all the Halloween decorations up and operational this afternoon, from the witch to the graveyard, from the crank ghost to the coffin popper, even down to the little twinkly lights in the house fixtures. I’m completely satisfied that everything went up as easily as it did, and everything was 100% operational when I turned it all on. Every year, as my decorations multiply and get more complicated, I fear it’ll be the year I’ll get a taste of the real spirit of Halloween – and someone will wreck my stuff. Having put so much effort into creating it all, it would really be a bummer to have to try and rebuild. But, for now it’s up and it’s not wrecked – and this is actually the earliest I’ve ever got it up.

Before I get to the mediocre stuff, cruise on over to Keaton’s updated-weekly galleries to see her latest installment. Go ahead, don’t be shy… click right here.

Sharaun and I live right next to a local college, within walking distance even. For a lark, I decided to see what kind of evening classes are offered, and how much they charge. Turns out a class is dirt cheap, sub-$100, and they have a pretty decent bunch of classes. I’ve decided that, come spring, I’ll take a philosophy class one evening a week. I never got to take any philosophy classes in college – and it’s always been something I’ve been interested in. At such a price, I figured I might as well do it. Who knows, maybe I’ll be unwittingly equipping myself for a career as a deep thinker when the whole engineering thing falls through.

Time to head off to bed folks, we’ll call this good enough to print.

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the mojo is totally genetic


Friday, eff that noise they call the “week,” it’s time for the girls to pull the bottoms of their shirts up through the necks and tie them off in sexy 5th-grade playground faux-bikini knots. It’s time for boys to gingerly unbutton buttons that are on an alien side of the shirt to them. Time for the smell of Malibu Musk lingering on my lips, time to have to change my JC Penny boxers because we held hands on the way home. It’s the weekend and it’s gonna be massive. Me and the guys are going to hide in those bushes at the front of the subdivision and blindly shoot BB guns at the road when we hear the whine of passing cars. After that we’re gonna try and score some beer and on Sunday I swear I’m gonna fuck Tina… no, I swear guys – I am totally, totally, fucking her this time. Shut up; just wait.

I have this amazing Hold Steady album to thank for that 1st paragraph (well, that and the Steel Reserve I’ll get into below). Listening to this album and its sordid tales of drinking, drugging, and general teenaging… the words are like poems about the very debauchery I once embraced. You call it glorifying irresponsibility, I call it conjuring memories with style.

Bear with me folks, Pat and I hung out tonight and he bought two Steel Reserve tallboys for us to drink. And at 8.1% alcohol by terrible-tasting volume, one Steel Reserve tallboy is enough for anyone on a weeknight. All that malt liquor has had a couple effects on me which will be noticeable to you, my blog readership. 1. I don’t care so much about sentence structure and that kinda crap. 2. I’m going to write about some neato stuff that normally be hard to explain (i.e. I’d have to write a lot to get the idea across) because I won’t care that I’ve not established proper background. Here goes.

When I was a kid, I always thought my parents’ bed smelled odd. More specifically, my dad’s side of the bed. It’s not a smell I can describe, but it’s something unique and immediately recognizable. Also, I would not, then, have classified it as particularly pleasant. Now, however, that I’ve aged into a man myself – I know what this smell was. It is the patented family sleep-induced pheromones. That’s right, we’ve got our own special blend of aromatic excretions. Let me elaborate…

I first realized I had the family pheromones sometime in college. During these years, I slept on a waterbed. Every so often, when I’d wash my sheets, I’d notice an interesting “mark” on vinyl waterbed mattress directly under the area where I normally slept. Perhaps “mark” is a misnomer… a more accurate description might be “stain.” I’d always known that I “slept hot,” being prone to nighttime sweating and overheating – but this “stain” appeared to be more than just sweat. The defining moment came, however, late one night around 3am when I was up late coding a VHDL project with my lab group. As we pulled our all-nighter, I was the coder who happened to be manning the computer, while the other members of my group huddled behind me watching. One of the guys in our group, an outspoken Cuban who’s bluntness I respected, said, as he hovered close to my head, something like, “Dude, has anyone ever told you that you emit a ‘funk’ late at night?” “No,” I replied, “I’ve never head that… but now that you mention it, I think you might be right.”

It took a few more years (and an equally outspoken but much less Cuban wife) for me to realize that this was not some random observation. I not only emit some olfactory “funk,” but also some palpable one. An intoxicating mix of sweat, oils, and raw, raw man-scent. So strong is this “funk” that Sharaun actually complains about me ruining sheets. Apparently, I ruin pillows, sheets, and even mattresses with this incredible genetic advantage. I maintain that these “juices,” as they are, are the secret to my stunning success with women. Sure, I’m fat and balding… but one whiff of me at night and the ladies are reduced to quivering masses of “do me.” Sharaun gets mad at me because I call this my “mojo.” I have nothing else meaningful to say in this paragraph.

And guess what folks? Know how I can tell regular old fussy Keaton from “I’m dead-tired put me to bed” fussy Keaton? If she’s “I’m dead-tired put me to bed” fussy Keaton, her head will have a thin sheen of oil and sweat on it. I’m not joking, she’s got the mojo too… the mojo is totally genetic.

I told you I wasn’t going to care about structure or grammar… this thing is going up just like I wrote it, only spellcheck – no proofread for flow or even sense-making.

Damn… that Steel Reserve gave me the most awful headache. Goodnight.

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weekdays are torture


Sunday night and it’s back to work tomorrow (“boooo!” jeers the crowd). This weekend turned out to be an exercise in laziness, both purposeful and unplanned. Wanted to mow the lawn: didn’t happen. Wanted to go to Wal Mart and invest in some of those “energy saving” lightbulbs: didn’t happen. Wanted to say home and do nothing both Friday and Saturday night: did indeed happen. Overall though, I’m happy with it. Found some time Sunday to work on this year’s “late breaking” Halloween prop with Ben, even managed to take some quick footage and assemble it into this year’s first “teaser” video. I’ve added it to the Halloween Teasers gallery, so go check it out. Found even more time after doing the teaser to upload some new images to Keaton’s Gallery, so go check those out too. And then, read this:

Downloaded the new iTunes and let it update my iPod to firmware 1.2. Had some issues with the actual update process, as iTunes just stalled out on “updating iPod” indefinitely. I let it go for half an hour thinking it really might be taking that long, but soon noticed the iPod’s screen was showing the “do no disconnect” message. I unplugged the whole mess and Ctl+Alt+Del’d the iTunes process. Went through this twice before the iPod actually got updated, and iTunes never did stop showing the “updating the iPod” message… I just had to hard-reset the iPod and kill the iTunes task again. Then iTunes took approximately 300hrs to analyze all my MP3s for “gapless playback.” I hope gapless playback is rad enough to warrant that. Stupid Apple software.

Friday night I stayed at home alone while Sharaun went to some pyramid-scheme party. While the party isn’t the point of what I’m writing here, I think I’ll go ahead and mention how it seems to me like these kind of things are really on the rise. Maybe it’s just that Sharaun’s now at the prefect age to be invited to them as a target buying-audience, but it seems like there are pyramid-scheme parties for just about everything these days: makeup, children’s toys, housewares, baskets, food, candles, etc. Oh, and I know the term “pyramid scheme” isn’t PC anymore and that I should call them multi-level marketing… give me a break. (Note to my friends who are gettin’ their multi-level on, I still love you… no pyramid could keep us apart.)

Anyway, where were we? Oh yes, I was home alone… and I took the quiet time after I fed Keaton and put her down as a chance to catch up on some of the week’s news I’d missed (work being fairly consuming of late, hence the spotty blogging last week as well). The major outlets were primarily consumed with the sex-toy highschool MySpace killer, but the indie guys were almost completely focused on the Military Commissions Act. Oh sure, I’d heard a lot about the “torture bill” over the course of the week, but the more I read the more inflamed I became. I decided I should probably read the thing for myself before I got too hot and bothered by potentially biased summaries of the legislation. So, I headed over to Thomas and grabbed a PDF of the final passed version of the text.

A lot of folks are up in arms over this legislation, and doubtless we’ll see some legal challenge brought against it in the courts as early as this week – I’m sure there were several groups working over the weekend to get their motions in order. Now, I’ll say right out that I don’t have much in the way of new or insightful information to offer about the bill, but you can go to any number of places to get some brainage on it if you’re inclined – here’s a good start. Anyway, I downloaded the thing and fired up my trusty laserjet printer (which made me realize, I hardly ever print anything these days) and printed off the entire thing. I stapled it together, and plopped the thing in the bathroom for some dumptime reading.

I’ll fill ya in once I’ve got the whole thing sorted, OK? Goodnight.

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back from the wilds


Good evening folks, Sunday nights make me sad because I know I have to go to work tomorrow. I don’t have much tonight, a terse summary of my weekend spent camping and 4x4ing with the guys in honor of Ben’s pending nuptials, and the twenty-eight week update to Keaton’s gallery.

This weekend was pure awesome. In what could’ve been a disaster, we had to scrap our original plan late Friday night due to a wildfire that had shutdown our intended destination. Whereas I had planned to pack Friday night, I ended up sitting over at Anthony’s as we poured over maps and books and websites for a new location. We ended up plotting three trail areas which were relatively close enough to each other that we could get from one to the other if we didn’t like one.

And that’s how we ended up four-wheeling around the Sierra butte country, deep-deep-deep in the backwoods and charging down paths unknown with the bold confidence that USGS topo maps and GPS can give you. We covered some 100mi+ of abandoned logging road, forest and fire service access roads, and some things I’m not even sure were ever defined roads as much as they were trails blazed by trucks before us. We didn’t do anything too insane, but we did have a few hairy descents down boulder-laden washouts and some… “accidents.” We ruined a muffler on the Rover, and wrecked the rear differential locker on the Blazer – not to mention both trucks ended up pretty scratched. (Oh, and I learned what automatic “lockers” are, what they’re for, and what they sound like when they’re shot).

We “stumbled” on an amazing campground tucked next to a river off some dirt roads, rebuilt the firepit with some large rocks, and gathered downed wood before we pitched tents and started cooking up a mess of steak and beans. Drank beer and port from my flask, smoked my pipe, and had breakfast burritos for breakfast. Some of the guys attempted to fly fish, but nothing was biting. Next day we pointed the trucks down random trails and ended up having to ford a river before we made it back to paved road. It was flat-out outstanding. I’ll have some pictures up in time to link to in tomorrow’s entry.

And that’s it. I’m beat-down tired and I’m ready to hit the sack. Goodnight.