Category: self

Introspective thought on my own behavior or actions.

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the mountainfolk of wal mart


Long entry today, some boring some not. Hit it:

This weekend I up and torrent’d the entire Dick’s Picks series, which I already own, but figured would take longer to rip than just download. I wonder if that’s illegal? Likely so. Anyway, now that my “big storage” has evolved to 3/4 of a terabyte, I don’t mind holding multiple gigs of Dead shows – it was harder to stomach previously when >10% of my entire drive was live Dead shows. The Dead have always been pretty progressive with their intellectual property: allowing taping, abiding trading tents, restoring and releasing live shows on CD and radio broadcasts, etc. They even offer digital downloads on their website, in multiple formats – including FLAC and WMA-lossless. Pretty much anything you can buy, you can download (prices are equivalent to buying the actual discs). Not bad dead, hopefully we’ll see more of this. I’d honestly think I’d be more likely to purchase digital copies of albums than buy CDs – maybe it’s because online money seems all “virtual” and just spends easy…

New dads out out there, especially those of little girls, I got a question for ya: How’d you get back into… taking care of business? I mean, dang… the third trimester was… slow, at best; and the doctors, in their infinite wisdom, mandate a six week moratorium post-baby. So, how? How? When? Where? For crap’s sake, I have trouble when the cat saunters into my action – I can just feel those judgemental green eyes on me whenever she’s in the room. Aware of even cat eyes, you can imagine what having an infant daughter in the house is like – it’s just not fair. I’m reminded of the opening scene from American Beauty: a father, starting off his day in the way I’m sure many fathers occasionally do… at least that gives me hope that one day I’ll learn to live within these strange new boundaries which have been imposed upon me. There, I wrote around the whole thing – had that drafted for a couple weeks and was just trying to find a less-sensational way to do it. I think I managed it, eh?

This weekend, I lost a good bit of the hate I’ve been harboring in my heart for Wal Mart. I hate Wal Mart, get the “creepies” simply walking those carny-filled aisles, staring up at the double-overhead stacks of cheap, Made in China, merchandise. I’d be willing to wager that even the Wal Marts in the Hamptons is full of gut-over-pantline, sparsely-toothed, barefoot mountainfolk (I don’t know what “mountains” have to do with this, but the word “mountainfolk” was too awesome not to get into this sentence). Anyway, let’s move off my hatred (lest it return with a vengeance), and get onto my newfound appreciation for the small-business-raping beast.

Sharaun and I have several family members who are computer… challenged. All the digital pictures in the world mean nothing to someone who can’t check e-mail. These people can’t be bothered to log onto the internet, they’re probably too busy getting up to flip their LPs over, filling their iceboxes from the truck that comes by, and hauling their wash back and forth to the stream. Making fun of old-timers aside, it really is a shame that we couldn’t get some visual aids to our kin, and I figured, in this digital age, there must be a way to transmute these new-fangled “paperless daguerreotypes” into something our dinosaur relatives could enjoy. Wal Mart to the rescue! Wal Mart allowed us to upload pictures of our choosing and print them at any store across this great nation. Our e-nothing family could then crank over the horseless carriage, strap on their motoring goggles, and sputter right in and pick them up – pre-paid for by us. The prints are excellent, and the price is right. Using Wal Mart’s handy service, we were able to get photos in the hands of our family in hours, thus moving Keaton from their imaginations right onto their refrigerators.

Wal Mart, I take back (some) of those nasty things I said about you. Who cares if you smell like Filet-o-Fish because there are McDonalds’s inside of you? And, where in the rule book does it say cashiers should be able to make complete sentences with their mouths? Nowhere, that’s where. Anyway, I hope you’ll forgive me… I don’t know what I’d do if I couldn’t buy 1000 nightlights for 17¢.

Wait wait wait – I started this whole “we can print pictures from Wal Mart” deal to talk about some great new software I found. Let me explain: when there’s not enough natural light for photos, most people like to use the flash. I hate the flash on my camera, it’s too “flashy,” and paints the photos in some eerie, undead glow. So, I tend to turn on all the artificial lights in the room and take the photos in manual mode at a higher ISO speed equivalency. This works great, but the indoor lights tend to make the photos yellow (a white-balancing issue). I used to live with this, because the yellow tint isn’t all that unattractive, I had no idea how to fix it, and it’s still worlds better than the flash. Just recently, I discovered the “tungsten” white-balance setting on my camera. This special white-balancing mode for indoor, tungsten-type, bulbs completely eliminates the yellow tinge to my flashless photos. Using manual mode with white-balance in tungsten mode, and the ISO speed set to 400 – I can take great flashless photos that mimic natural light and are well balanced in terms of color. This makes me extremely happy.

Wait wait wait – I started this whole “I found the right way to white-balance” deal so I could talk about some great new software I found. Since Sharaun had grown tired of yellow-tinted baby photos, the tungsten-balancing was just what I needed to appear a baby-documenting genius. Problem solved for the future, I now wanted to try and address the yellowy images we’d already taken. Used to be, back in the day before I got clean, I’d use my pirated copy of Adobe Photoshop and choose “auto levels” and “auto contrast” to do quick fixes on poorly shot photographs. However, since I went all freeware and open-source, I don’t have a “one click” photo fixit app. Enter the app that spurred the last four paragraphs of tangential blather: PhotoFiltre. Talk about a full-featured photo editing application, this thing does things both novices and experts would expect to pay dollars for – and it’s completely free for personal/non-commercial use. Installing it merely for its automatic level/contrast controls – I was blown away by what all it could do. If you’re looking for a nice, free photo retouch/editing tool (not necessarily a Photoshop replacement, for that use the GIMP) – this is it.

By the way (nerd stuff ahead), that “Dave goes freeware” thread I linked above is pretty out of date. CDBurnerXP Pro is still great, but the Cheetah software is probably just as nice and slicker looking. There’s now a completely viable free alternative to Norton Ghost by way of DriveImage XML installed on a WinPE bootable disc (try Bart’s WinPE) – although TrueImage is still good if you want to make runtime backups. And, turns out the K-Lite stuff has some bootlegged junk in it, but it doesn’t matter because you don’t need it if you run VLC Media Player. And FileZilla is better than WSFTP LE. So, there you go – a little freeware update for the conscientious nerds out there.

Goodnight.

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guided by the divine


I completely kicked ass at work today, and feel damn good for doing so. In fact, today was one of the best work-days I’ve had in a long time – the planets all seemed to align for me, and things just kept falling into place as if guided by the divine. Coming off a day like that, and arriving home to this brand new food-to-poop-converter Sharaun and I gave life to, puts me in an exceptionally good mood. As I tick off items on my to-do list, my confidence grows. Taking time off for Keaton’s arrival put a more significant dent in that confidence than I’d originally thought.

You wouldn’t think two weeks away would be able to cause much pause, but for me, that feeling of being “out of it” that I described the other day really gnaws at me. I don’t feel right as a “manager” until I’m holding all the reigns of that team of horses before me. I know I’m to blame for my confidence waxing and waning in relation to relatively unrealistic factors, after all, I’m the one who sets these fairly ridiculous OCD-like requirements for myself (i.e. having to have “closure paths” for all the tasks before me before I can sleep easy), and they’re largely unnecessary – but I live and die by them regardless. For this obsessive behavior, I blame my dad. Thanks pops, I still love you.

I suppose it’s all related back to my self-confidence, or lack thereof. I’ve come to understand that my sense of self-assuredness and feeling of being “tied in,” or “in control,” is fairly brittle. Things that wouldn’t be specks of dust in the path for others can topple my cart. I’m not sure where this comes from. Since I was a kid, I think I’ve consciously undervalued myself out of a desire to seem humble. Understating achievements and strengths in front of an audience is natural for those attempting humility, but I think I actually undervalue myself to myself – which is different altogether. That little part of me that knows I’m smart and talented, and “better” than a lot of other people is shut-up tight in a cell at the back of my brain. I know it’s there, I let it have a little time in the yard every now and again – but for the most part I repress it, for whatever reason. This is just me: the not-so-subtle fake-humble guy.

Today I logged on to CNN to see a headline about how we (the USofA) arrested some Colombian drug badguys, which the US authorities have dubbed “narcoterrorists.” No, those aren’t the kind of terrorists that fall asleep suddenly and randomly, rather they are so named due to both their narcotic and terrorist activities. I think this is awesome. We’ve discovered a way to take someone who may be considered as a “vanilla” criminal, and equate him immediately with the likes of Al Qaeda. By simply by appending the root-word “terrorist” to their moniker, we knock the layer of ho-hum dust off their crimes and recast them as glamorous international fugitives. In celebration of our newfound way to arrest anyone we want using semantics, I terroristed up a few more common criminals – just to demonstrate how powerful a tactic this actually is. Check out these cutthroat thugs and tell me you don’t want to go all Operation Carpet Bomb on they asses:

  • jaywalkerrorists
  • atheierrorists
  • litterrorists
  • public intoxicaterrorists
  • terrorespassorists

Awesome, let’s round ’em up and send ’em to Gitmo, stat.

Nite.

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easin’ back into it


I’ve got a pretty random entry today, stuff I binned over the weekend that’s non-baby, and the obligatory baby. Here we go, short and sweet.

Grandma (on daddy’s side) left Sunday, and we had to check her carry-on twice to make sure she wasn’t trying to smuggle baby Keaton away with her. Grandma (on mommy’s side) arrives Tuesday – so Keaton won’t be doting-deprived for too long. Oh, and to satisfy the masses, I’ll go ahead and link Keaton’s gallery straight-away. I’ve updated it with some new pictures, and even some moving pictures (the future is now).

I half-wrote the following the day before the baby arrived, and wanted to be able to finish the thought.

I was thinking today about life-before-baby. Those post-college, marriage & career years, those before you decide to procreate. You settle into a complacency, because you’re ultimately familiar with the drill. My pre-child career years have conformed to a well-defined mold; so much so that I’ve kinda developed the feeling I’ve mastered things, know the ropes as well as they can be known. Not a conscious thought, I’m not that conceited, but a subconscious thing – a level of comfort with the established routine, a tried hand that knows how to execute the defined motions it’s practiced again and again. I suspect, though, that this baby thing is really gonna shove my perceived wisdom in my face. I have a sneaking suspicion that I’m gonna find out pretty quickly that there’s a lot I don’t know. Time to learn new routines, to stumble and fall and curse the fact I wasn’t even given training wheels to ease me into this one. I think about this, and I actually get excited – excited about the new challenge, the new learning, the chance for new mastery. Bring it on little Keaton, I’m ready.

While I’m usually not one who makes a habit of stealing movies, I did download a screener of Brokeback Mountain last night (don’t tell the MPAA, OK?) – the hype just got to me I guess. Sharaun and I plan on watching it today (Monday), and I hope to at least have some kind of opinion formed to write about it tomorrow. I’ve wanted to see it for a while, dude-humping or not, as the story does admittedly sound pretty compelling. Not sure how much I’ll buy into a love story about two rugged cowboys – but I have a sneaking feeling that, if I do, I’ll know what the hype’s really about.

And, to end this entry – let’s get to some bloggin’ standard fare, eh? Link rodeo!

  • First off, and may be somewhat old as it’s been making the rounds on the ‘net for some weeks now – the compelling story behind one of the most sampled drumbreaks in history: the Amen Beak. Who’d’ve thought that a single drum breakdown from a ’60s track could’ve fueled an entire musical genre some 30yrs later.
  • Next, and continuing with the music theme, I ran across this hilarious little film about indie record store clerks the other day on videosift. Turns out it’s hosted at stereogum, and I must’ve missed the original post – but watch it – they’ve got us indie snobs pegged.
  • Now, check out this awesome “civil obedience” experiment by some GA State students, where they form a 4-lane front of cars going the legal speed limit and film the results.
  • And, second-to-last, some non-music links: these couple links about a hilariously overstuffed “Ebay house” and not-so-hilarious (but thematically related) pictures of folks dealing with depression-induced squalor.
  • Lastly, and equally unrelated – the results of treehugger.com’s “waste of packaging” contest – pretty shameful.

That’s it folks, lots of nothing. Goodnight.

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egorgasm

Patiently... patiently...
Due-date came and went (well, technically, since I write the next day’s entry the night before – at the time of writing we’ve got about 5hrs of due-date left). Not too big of a surprise, since “they” say most 1st-time moms are late – but it does make the itch of waiting that much more acute. But, wait we will.

Ready for me to flex some advice on ya? Here’s a little thing I’ve transformed from common-sense into words, just for the sake of filling a blog. It’s something I do subconsciously at work and elsewhere – and I think it’s had a big impact on how much “wisdom” I’ve viewed as having. I’ve written about it before, but never really formalized the thought as well as I did today for someone at work (which made me want to write it down in that form, to remember it better). Here goes:

Knowledge is binary: You either know something, or you don’t. Despite the apparently grim coin-toss odds, you can do something extremely simple to give yourself an edge over the average body.

To break it down a bit: When someone asks you a question, there’s 50% chance you’ll know the answer, and a 50% chance you won’t. If you know the answer, you look good; if you don’t, there’s potential for you to look bad. But, people, I’m here to tell you’re wasting 50% of your brain on stuff you don’t know, when it could be put to much better use. How? #1: Fill it with knowledge of the stuff you don’t know, i.e. learn. #1 requires significant effort on your part, and isn’t as easy or intuitive as #2. #2: Fill it with a list; a list of people you know, and, more importantly, the things those people know. That way, instead of being helpless when a question falls into your “I dunno” category (50% of the time), you can reference your list of “what the people I know know” as a backup. Sure, you may not be able to answer the question on the spot, but maybe all it requires is a discreet 30sec phone call, or an e-mail.

The goal here is not to pull a “who’s that man behind the curtain” bit, convincing others you’re a sage when you’re just a good networker pilfering others’ wisdom. You’re not taking credit for answers you got from someone else, you credit them when you need to. On the other side of coin, when you run a question you don’t know by someone and get an answer, playing the middle-man between asker and knower – you’ve just added that answer to your arsenal, your repertoire. In essence, you just moved it from the “bad 50%” to the “good 50%” in your brain. Congratulations, you’re now smarter because of who you know. And, next time you get that question – you can produce an answer on the spot.

Part of the reason I like the internet, and projects like Wikipedia, is because they embody this idea of communal knowledge. A central repository of shared knowledge, everyone getting smarter from what everyone else knows – the slow infusion of little fractured pieces of knowledge to the masses, to be used and possessed and improved upon by all. In my previous entry I put it like this, “…strive to know where knowledge is – even if it’s not in your own head.” I couldn’t have said it better myself, or something.

The other day I somehow found myself looking for an old entry to reference in one I was writing, and I ended up re-reading this one from July of last year. And, far from the usual feeling of ho-hum I get when I peruse my past writings, this time I was actually impressed. I really like that entry, and wish I could write more like it. The style is engaging, and I like the detail. Also on the “me” tip, I found the comment Pat attached to this picture of me from a past camping trip pee-your-pants funny. Oh… wait… right there… that’s it… almost… yeah! Sorry, my ego just had an orgasm.

Where are you Keaton? You don’t love us enough to come out? We’re ready, and I think we’ve been waiting pretty patiently – so why do you keep standing us up? Goodnight.

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oh my god there’s a human in my wife’s belly

Behind the iron curtain!
Evening folks. I was going to post some pictures of Lil’ Chino’s pink and pink nursery today, but other things came calling and it just didn’t happen – tomorrow perhaps.

Tonight was our first baby class at the hospital, two hours every week for the next six weeks. Tonight there was lots of talk about vaginal mucous and other such unsavory items – but, overall, I think I’ll enjoy the class. I’ve certainly got things to learn, so a class isn’t such a wacky idea. To kick off the class, the instructor played Bill Cosby’s famous birth/labor bit from his Himself standup – a classic through and through. At some point in the class, I think when the instructor was saying that some babies actually “play” with their mothers’ bladders like constantly inflating beach balls, I realized that this “thing” inside my wife isn’t just some fluid-breathing “growth”… no, this is a human being. While I know she’s not in there contemplating the meaning of life or doing algebra, it’s not like she’s a rock or some other inanimate object – she stretches, rolls, flips, covers her eyes when it’s bright, etc. Oh my God there’s a human in my wife’s belly.

Work today was furious-productive, which is good as I need a kick in the pants to get me going. It was one of those days where I decided to work smarter, not harder, and it seemed to pay off in the end. I always feel good when I have some measurable accomplishments at the day’s end – output really justifies effort for me. Also in work news, I got word late today that I’ve been tapped for a trip to Moscow and Prague in late April – two months post-Lil’ Chino. Now, normally, I wouldn’t really want to travel that close to the baby… but… Moscow and Prague?! I mean, I’ve never been to Europe, and something about Moscow has fascinated me for a long time. So, I asked Sharaun, and she grudgingly said OK. While not official yet, I’m leaning towards going – that could all change after the baby though, who knows if I’ll be interested in travel… maybe I’ll just want to sit around a stare at my new daughter.

Sometimes I hate how heavy-handed I am. I’m just not built for fine, detailed, or small work. I’m all forced, dumb-muscled motions, largely due to my severe impatience and low frustration-factor. I rarely eat something without some of it ending up on my clothes, I break things trying to fix them, and I cut-corners out of frustration and accept less than perfection just to “get the job done.” Now, that’s a generalized statement. When I really have pride in what I’m doing, I go to extra effort to ensure it’s 110% – the catch being that, for whatever reason, I have to care about the results. My backyard, certain tasks at work, etc. The amount of pride I have in, or effort I put into, something is directly related to how skilled I am at the task. I.e., if I’m good at it and/or it’s easy for me, I take extra care in making sure it’s done right. If I’m so-so at it, I put in so-so effort. Not a good way to build skills I suppose, I should work on that. Although I’ll never carve the alphabet on a grain of rice, perhaps I can hone some lacking skills.

Writing that last paragraph, I waffled between using the phrase “take pride in” or the phrase “have pride in.” Do those actually mean the same thing? Strange.

Goodnight my peoples.

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paid vacation

Put 'em in the wind.
The first person I told that Sharaun and I were having a baby was the drummer from the band Autodrone. I told him as we were in Manhattan, walking down Broadway I think… heading to Smith & Wollensky for a fat steak. It sounds more glamorous that it is. The drummer is Ben’s brother Dave, and I was in New York for work. Still, on it’s own, that first sentence sounds totally awesome.

Last Thursday night I was getting ready for bed, thinking about my vacation next week. Thinking about my India trip after that, my trip to Oregon after that, and my trip to Florida after that. Then I started thinking about my “bonding leave” after that. For the past two weeks, I’ve been agonizing over that schedule; fretting. See, I’m a little terrified. Terrified that, after being away from work for what will amount to months, I’ll become irrelevant, lose touch, fall out of respect as a contributor with an opinion that deserves to be heard. I’ve shared this fear with some, and they maintain that it’s irrational. “Not all that much changes in 6wks,” they insist (see, I’ll be “gone” twice, each time about 6wks long), “you’ll fall right back into the swing of things,” they say. And, while those assurances do lend some small comfort, my issues with earning workplace respect still gnaw at me – poking me, chiding, “They’re all gonna forget you, you’ll simply cease to be relevant.” So, I still have some hesitation, and it was in the throes of mulling that hesitation that night when I had a revelation, when I saw the flipside of the coin.

I’ll embrace the second-order effects of my very own fears – I’ll give up. I’ll trust the well-wishers, believe the re-assurers implicitly. Things will be the same. Afterall, I’m not delusional enough to think I’m in-expendable; or that the organization will fall apart in my absence, void of my wisdom and guidance. I’m not that puffy-chested. So, regardless of any lingering doubt, I’ll assume I’ll return from all this away-time as if returning to work on any Monday like today. I’ll imagine I’ll walk right in and pick up where I left off, that my time away will in no way effect my impact. This will be a forced belief, of course, as I truly think quite the opposite – but it won’t matter. Wanna know why? Because taking this approach, I get one very clear benefit – I can rest on my laurels for a bit and enjoy a very fortuitous alignment of travel, holidays, vacation, and “leave.” Who cares if I become irrelevant. I have the skills to become relevant again. So, let’s do this; bring it on – I’m ready to not care like I’ve not not cared before. And believe me, I’m the king of not caring.

Mind you, I can’t really do this… my self-confidence-centered paranoia will ensure that. I won’t let myself sabotage what I’ve strived to build up, either nature or nurture instilled me with too much common sense to just waste what makings of a career I’ve already managed. Still, it’s a nice counterpoint to salve my nervous fears, and it gives me a sort of rebellious comfort. Through some twisted thought process, becoming irrelevant by being an absentee is somehow sexy to me – a bucking of the system in some sense. Reconciled internally by me as an outward show of hubris; me hanging my nuts in the wind for the world to see. Oh yeah, sexy.

Anyone else think the only way the OC is remotely watchable these days is by fast-forwarding through the crappy grownup segments? God that show sucks, and how I used to fawn over it. Who spliced a storyline from Days of Our Lives in between the indie-rock kids drama? They should be fired.

Goodnight, I’m out.

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hope your ship turns around

Gotta come back to port sometime, it's where there's shelter.
Ever experience something that smacks you in the face and makes you realize how brilliantly lucky you are to have what you have, live how you live, and be as happy as you are? I had that this week. My permanent grin, fat belly and quiet complacence long-since taken for granted and damn-near expected, I was reminded in the most humbling of ways that my life, as I’ve made it thus far, is exceedingly better than many, many others’. When you get down to it, this is no revelation; but you know us meek, we never go about trumpeting our treasures. We don’t talk about it; don’t meet strangers and ramble on about our various successes. No, revelation it’s not; no not by a long shot. But I’ll be damned if those of among the blessed like to be reminded that there are others our there who aren’t happy at all. Those in dire straits, one step out of sync with our blissful fairy tales; suffering. No, it’s easier to ignore all that that nasty business – you end up with less guilt for feeling so awesome in comparison. So, troubled of the world: please hide yourself from my sight – for it makes my perfect life just a little easier. Thanks for understanding; hope your ship turns around.

Flew back in from Oregon with little fanfare, decided not to go into work despite having the afternoon available to do so and no real reason not to. Travel compensation, I’ll call it, when no one asks because no one cares. It’s an awesome sunny day out, but all I’ve managed to do with it thus far is lament over my lack of internet and waste time doing nothing. I did manage to muster a half-assed trip up the road to the local warehouse store, where I made a circuit of the impossibly wide aisles, shielding my eyes from the fluorescents, scouting the vast landscape for one of those pre-fab sheds they sometimes sell. My search impeded by stroller-laden stay-at-homes and big-TV-droolers, I gave up when there was no shed to be found. Somehow, the whole five minute waste of a trip was indicative of my mood this afternoon. Unmotivated; torn between doing and not doing; stuck in some limbo state between being constructive or being lazy; depressed for reasons that aren’t my own.

That’s all, but I like it. Goodnight.