Posts

Posted on

the streetlights come on in two days


Today (Friday) is the last day of my sabbatical. My last true day, although I do have the weekend before I have to actually punch a timecard again. It’s a sad day for me… the end of what now seems like an impossible dream that went way to fast. The non-working, still-paid, man’s life… the life that I fantasize about. But, alas, the life that just ain’t too realistic. And now it’s over. I guess all good things… bah… let’s do this.

Let me tell you about a time I was embarrassed (for no other reason than the story came to me). I think of it often, actually, as it was a fairly recent occurrence, and I think it does a good a job deflating me when my head’s grown too big for its own good. Here goes: For work, I had traveled to a customer site for an important “face to face” meeting between their higher-ups and our higher-ups. Of the higher-ups from my sawmill, I was the lowest-up; but I had a good handle on the pulse of a certain program which was likely to become a topic of conversation at the meeting, so I was included. We all sat in a larger room, seated randomly at a large table in the form a 3-sided square/horseshoe (carefully staggering ourselves so as to not appear a single “front” to our customer, gotta be aware of that, y’know!). I am a pooperface.

The conversation was driven off a presentation on the big screen at the front of the room, but was all largely organic and free-flowing, as presentations to higher-ups tend to be. At one point, the highest-up who’d traveled from the sawmill with me was making a statement about when our customer would get something we’d promised them, and that something was part of the program I manage. The highest-up said something like, “And, you’ll be happy to know that you should be getting ThingZ on….,” and paused as if thinking. Taking this as my cue, and thinking him pausing for the “expert” to jump in and not make him look like he was unaware of the date, I jumped into the conversation with, “I’m pretty sure your ThingsZ shipped on Friday.” What I hadn’t heard, however, was the highest-up completing his own thought shortly after his pause – I had spoken right over his own date with my own, unknowingly, thinking he needed help. The highest-up most definitely did not like this, and apparently took it for the lowest-up trying to trump his piece of good news. The date was earlier than our customer would’ve expected, and I’m sure he thought I was trying to clutch at the glory of that announcement.

Without even looking at me, the highest-up stated, in an arrogant, no-nonsense tone, “Don’t argue with me. I think I know my own ThingZs.” It was like he was a mother on the phone with a friend, and I a child tugging on her apronstrings whining “Mommy! Mommy!” That was the tone he used. I heard his words more like, “Shut up, you know-nothing underling, we all know who’s in charge here.” The words stung immediately, but I was able to react quickly enough to laugh out loud, hoping to play it off as some good-natured ribbing between coworkers. It worked, to a degree, the room joined me in laughing, as did the higher-up, perhaps slightly embarrassed himself at calling out one of his own ranks so in front of customers. Oh but did I replay that quip in my head on the flight home, feeling the snub every single time. Seems a small thing, I know, but it was terribly embarrassing at the time. It does me good to think on it at times, to reign in my ego, get my head in check – even if it was a mistake on my part and no real vie for notoriety. Still sucked getting called out, though…

Nerd stuff coming, beware.

Oh man… I found the coolest thing online today, by pure happenstance, too. Seems that my torrent client of choice, µTorrent, has a plugin called WebUI that allows you to access the client over any standard HTTP connection. I know, this seems kinda nerdy, but I’m’a tell you what it means here next. See, I use BitTorrent to download all sorts of things. Mostly legal stuff, of course, like live concert recordings from sites like archive.org, Dime, Tapecity, and the Trader’s Den, as well as TV shows Sharaun and I follow yet may have missed from sites like EZTV or shareTV. I’ve also occasionally used it to download a Linux LiveCD or two.

Anyway, suffice it to say that µTorrent is open on my home PC, sucking up my broadband on a regular basis. the WebUI plugin for µTorrent allows me to remotely login to the client software which is running on my home machine, from anywhere that has an internet connection, through the standard µTorrent port (which is open on my router). I supply a username and password, and I get a slick-looking web interface where I can manage all the torrents I’m seeding/leeching, as well as add a new torrent, delete a torrent, stop or pause a torrent, etc. You’d think this may be something you’d never want to do, but you’d be surprised when it may be useful to login to a torrent client and delete all your seedings every once in a while. WebUI is awesome. If I wanted to, I could find a cool new torrent online while I’m away from home, logon to µTorrent and add it, and it’d be waiting for me when I got there. Sweet.

I can’t believe I have to go back to work…

Oh, lord… I have to go back to work. It’s over.

Posted on

maybe get sick on candy


Happy Halloween friends and enemies! Let not your modern-day Protestant church rob you of the good times this holiday affords the world! Forsake that “Harvest Festival” or “Fall Celebration” for some good old trick-or-treating with a scary mask and some fake blood! Maybe get sick on candy like you were a kid again. If not tonight, when else?

Tonight (which is last night as you read this, should you know nothing about when/how I blog) Keaton sat on my lap and watched It’s The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown with me (on DVD, of course, since it’s such a classic). To my surprise, she sat right down with me and truly paid attention. I think it’s because she’s able to recognize so many things: pumpkins, ghosts, the moon, a football, a dog, hats, trees, leaves, and mail – just to name a few. Her sense of recognition and memory impresses me on a daily basis, and her vocabulary, word usage, and phrase-building ability boggles my mind. She says things like “Keeper, out, room!” to the cat; “Daddy, reading, book,” to me; “Mommy, cooking, dinner, hungry, eat,” all together like she’s really trying to make a coherent thought. I know it’s like just the beginning of her “grouping” the words she knows around a single binding action or concept, but it’s still pretty amazing. Pretty much every day she says a word I hadn’t even thought she’d known… it’s pretty impressive.

I went to lunch with a fellow manager from work today, and even though I don’t start back there until Monday, I couldn’t help but use our time to begin gearing my mind for the return. I asked about the usual: what’s going on, how’s morale, how are the politics, who’s doing what, what’s coming up, what happened while I was out, and what of the latest rumors and soap opera goings-on. It was a good conversation, but, in the end, it more than reinforced my dream of winning the lottery Saturday night so I just don’t have to go in at all. I’ve waffled here before about my job – which I truly do enjoy, and feel I’m good at – but also on the other hand wouldn’t mind seeing being swallowed up whole by the Earth in some freak geological event. It’s a fine balance, a knife-edge thing of sorts. I fear, however, that I will be going back… that much, at least, is rather inevitable. And, if I’m to go back and continue to do well – I figured I better start those long-rested hamsters a’running again before I walk in on day-one. Sigh… it begins.

Tonight I watched most (not all, I’ll admit, as it began wearing on me) of the Democratic debate on MSNBC. Ugh… people… we’ve got another whole year of this. I don’t know that I can take it. I’m a fairly well-established social liberal, so I like to think I identify with the general current of thought of these people, their platforms. But man, I’m already weary. Anyone else share in my apathy? I hate how politics can just suck the life of out seemingly everything sometimes. Why, when I watch these people, do I take on such an air of doubt… why do I find it so hard to assume they are being honest? What have you done to me, George W. Bush? You’ve ruined me. You’re such a fucker. You’re a fucker and you’ve made me ashamed of my country’s truckballs-style John Wayne politics on the world stage. Ugh… another year.

Finally, before I go, a snippet from a recent interview with Trent Reznor (Nine Inch Nails frontman and a proponent of various forms of the “new thought” regarding music distribution), where he admits he was an OiNKer (see my earlier entry if the word “OiNKer” means nothing to you), and talks a bit about the former site:

What do you think about OiNK being shut down?

Trent: I’ll admit I had an account there and frequented it quite often. At the end of the day, what made OiNK a great place was that it was like the world’s greatest record store. Pretty much anything you could ever imagine, it was there, and it was there in the format you wanted. If OiNK cost anything, I would certainly have paid, but there isn’t the equivalent of that in the retail space right now. iTunes kind of feels like Sam Goody to me. I don’t feel cool when I go there. I’m tired of seeing John Mayer’s face pop up. I feel like I’m being hustled when I visit there, and I don’t think their product is that great. DRM, low bit rate, etc. Amazon has potential, but none of them get around the issue of pre-release leaks. And that’s what’s such a difficult puzzle at the moment. If your favorite band in the world has a leaked record out, do you listen to it or do you not listen to it? People on those boards, they’re grateful for the person that uploaded it — they’re the hero. They’re not stealing it because they’re going to make money off of it; they’re stealing it because they love the band. I’m not saying that I think OiNK is morally correct, but I do know that it existed because it filled a void of what people want.

Man, that sure sounds like it was a cool website… too bad I never got the chance to check it out. In summary: I was never a member. But, if there was some some bizarro world in which I was – I most certainly would’ve only reveled in the site’s groundbreaking role in digital content distribution, and never partook in it’s tainted wares. I’m to straight and narrow to put my neck out there like that… don’t y’all know me at all?

Goodnight.

Posted on

Master Lieabout von Housebound, Esq.


A few times today and once last night I heard thunder; even saw lightning. I enjoy hearing it; it reminds me of the rainstorms we’d get most summer afternoons back in Florida. Back now from Hawaii, I settled right back into my pre-trip alter-ego, Master Lieabout von Housebound, Esq.. Today was spent reading, listening to music, wrestling with Keaton, and monitoring a few choice IRC channels. I know, I know… you (nor I) haven’t used IRC since, like, highschool, or something… but I have decent reasons (all legit and legally kosher, mind you). Anyway, Sharaun’s at the gym now and Keaton and I are dancing around to In Rainbows (I didn’t get to jam to it much in Hawaii and was getting the shakes). We like our alone-time, it’s good for our relationship and stuff.

If you’ll cast your memories back with me for a moment, you’ll perhaps recall that, before leaving for a week in the Pacific Islands, I had torn down my summer tomatoes and sown in a goodly sized crop of “winter” wheat – all part of some idea I got in my head about wanting to “understand” the real “cost” of a piece of bread. While I was away, modern suburban scheduled irrigation dutifully watered my crop for me – and, while drinking coconut-infused cocktails astride the pool in Maui, I often wondered if there’d be any noticeable growth upon my return. I hoped for growth, of course, results from untended efforts are some of my absolute favorite results, but I was careful not to get my hopes up. When we had finally pulled into the driveway, fetched the luggage and baby, and were walking towards the front door, however, I made sure to get on my tippytoes for a second so I could peer over that little dip in our fence where the gardenbox is visible. I was ecstatic the view greeting me home:

Not bad. Now we’ll see if it’ll make it to seed.

Moving on, I feel I would be remiss were I not to note the fact that today is All Hallows Eve Eve. If you’ve been following my blog here at sounds familiar for any length of time, you know I’m an absolute nut for Halloween – have been since I was a kid. Every year since we bought our house, I’ve constructed and displayed elaborate props for the occasion, and we’ve thrown an annual bash for the past four years. Originally I figured, with Halloween falling during my sabbatical this year, that I’d have even more time to repair the brokenness of last year and maybe even make some super fantastic new props. But, the way things landed: our week in Hawaii right up against my favorite of all holidays, the run-down state of the existing props, and me being worried about repeat thievery with a yardful of props and no one home – I just decided to blow the whole thing off. It sucks, and I’ve had three neighbors ask me what’s up… but I vow to be back next year with a vengeance. It just doesn’t feel like Halloween without all the preparation and work, I’m a beaten man.

Goodnight.

Posted on

suddenly rudderless


Back from Hawaii, and today marks the t-minus one-week mark for my waning sabbatical. I gave up trying to post regularly last week, the draw of the beach and the pool and the nothing was just too strong. I wrote some here and there, but nothing good enough nor substantial enough to publish. Hawaii, though… Hawaii was great. Such a relaxing getaway, and a fitting “closer” for my nine week vacation. We all of us had a great time, and I look forward to going back one day. Anyway, I’m back, and the sense of dread about my return to the sawmill is welling within me. One week left means I need to start training my brain to think work again… to care again… to “turn on” again. I don’t think it’ll be hard to do, rather hard-fought to do. To be clear: If there was a way not to, I wouldn’t.

Well then, now that that’s out of the way, I’m going to bore you with a mostly music-related blog. But, before that stuff, I’d like to call your attention to a potentially equally ho-hum bit of news. Acting on a suggestion from one of my real-life readers, I’ve added a “view all comments by this person” feature to sounds familiar. Now, when you look at the comments on any post, you should see a link at the end of (nearly) each one which will allow you to view a page containing all the comments that user has ever made here on the blog. Unfortunately, the feature relies on a commenter’s e-mail address to pull the inclusive list – and we here at sounds familiar have never mandated that commenters include an e-mail address when commenting. But, I’ve worked to fix this retroactively by modifying the existing comments in the database to add e-mail addresses (where known) to existing posts from certain users.

Related: This also introduces another change for comments moving forward: the requirement of filling out the e-mail field. You can put a bogus address if you want, it’ll never be shown/shared anyway, even continue to use multiple usernames/aliases, but you do have to put something (and keep it consistent if you want to go back and re-read all your stuff someday). Anyway, it mostly-works now, and I’ll continue formatting and fixing it if I like it (I don’t like where the “View all…” link is butting right up against the comment end). Show me love if you enjoy. (Oh… and, if you’re curious, Pat has the most… at 98.)

Music. Let’s go.

The past few weeks sure have been an interesting few for online music-lovers. First, the Radiohead release, then, the OiNK takedown, and, finally, the leak of the Sgt. Pepper’s multitracks.

About Radiohead and In Rainbows, it looks like the band does plan to release official sales figures for their online album release – but not until sometime later this year. Estimates citing loose-lipped sources “close to the band” say that the average price paid was around ~$5 per download (including the $0 leechers, apparently), and that the band moved 1.2 million copies in the first 24 hours alone. It’s hard to actually guess at a take with such second-hand, not to mention dubious, data – but I bet the posted numbers will raise more than a few industry eyebrows in the end, especially since we’re talking about a much higher profit ratio than a “traditional” type record release. Should be interesting, stay tuned.

Next, I feel like I should write reams and reams about the takedown of the Pink Palace, but, having never, ever, been a member there, it’s hard for me to fathom the impact of the raid. I imagine that, for people who were unlucky enough to have been involved with the fabled music download site, the loss of such a resource must bring biting pain and a crushing sense of loss. I’d wager that those who illegally used the site to illegally download illegal music likely now feel suddenly rudderless, adrift in a sea of crappy P2P alternatives… with not a sound port to put into. I’m sure however, that something will rise to fill the void for those thieving types sooner or later – the internet is a dark world of crime and hate, afterall. Tsk, tsk, busted OiNKers… when will you learn that the only way to legally enjoy music is to trade money for physical product?

About the Sgt. Pepper’s multitracks, maybe you don’t care… but I do. Of course, for those born after 1967, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band was the Beatles crowning achievement, their 8th LP, and, as some believe, the up-until-now pinnacle of rock ‘n’ roll altogether. While recording Pepper, the Beatles’ engineers “bounced down” their layered instrumentation into four separate recorded “tracks,” or tapes. These individual tracks, when played together, “make” the entire song. It’s the old-timey equivalent of today’s modern multi-track recording techniques. Well, somehow, some collector (not a Beatles collector, funnily enough) in England got ahold of the Sgt. Pepper’s four-track multis… and… of course, with the internet and all, they eventually wended their way into the tubes. So then, the isolated four-tracks for some of the songs are now floating around the leaky interweb, and people at home can easily load them into Garage Band or Audacity or CoolEdit and make their own true remixes of actual Beatles songs. It may seem boring, but, for me, being able to hear Ringo’s isolated drums and Paul’s isolated bass from “A Day In The Life” is amazing. I just hope the entire album’s worth of tracks leaks soon…

This week I’m a homebody, so I’ll try and get some pictures uploaded from our trip to Hawaii sooner rather than later, and the blogging should come at more or less its regular cadence again from now on. Thanks for hanging in there while I took my break, and I hope to see you around as we finish out another fine year of writing.

Goodnight.

Posted on

if i never work another day


Sunday in Hawaii. I debated over writing at all, labored over potentially ruining the “vibe” of the past couple days – but, in the end it seemed the right thing to do. I’m actually poolside now, committing that nerd’s sin of peering heads-down into my BlackBerry while vacation goes on around, and without, me. I don’t mind though, doing a quick lookaround I can see that I’m not the only technology-hobbled one here. But, I will use it as an excuse for brevity.

So, then, Hawaii: The trip here was a bit stressful, the flight long, the luggage plentiful and heavy, and the drive to the resort fraught with crawling traffic due to some roadside fire. However, the past two days have been nothing short of a relaxation goldmine. So much so that I find myself struggling to believe it’s actually been two days – time has been passing with a luxurious slowness, slipping by hour by blessedly long hour.

I sprung for a weekly rental rate on some snorkeling gear that first day, and am glad I did. Not but fifteen feet off the beach, which is not but a hundred feet from the room, the seafloor turns into a solid bed of coral. Stretching as far and wife as you can see are corals, crazy Discovery channel tropical fish, eels, turtles… It’s like swimming around in an episode of Nova. Now, Sharaun, who’s been snorkeling in Roatan, says that, despite how beautiful it is here, it’s not but a fraction of what she saw. It’s cool though, as we’re scheduled to do a “true” snorkeling trip Tuesday morning, and she expects I’ll be even more blown away then. I could go home happy just spending a few hours tooling around past the waves right here in front of the hotel. It really is something…

The week’s dancecard is filling up fast, with a luau and a dinner cruise, a snorkeling expedition and a “romantic” dinner, a trip ‘cross-island and glass after glass of overly-sweet rum-heavy drinks with slices of pineapple stuck to their rims. But still, I’ve managed to limit my wardrobe to a single pair of shorts and two shirts – and have worn nothing else save what I wear in the pool or waves (which is most of the day). I swear, if I never work another day…

There’s so much more I could write – but it seems pointless here when I could be doing nothing in the sunshine instead. Until later then.

Posted on

slightly more than usual


T-minus two days until Hawaii, and I’m getting truly excited. These past few days spent goldbricking around the house have been excellent, and have half-scared me by giving me a glimpse of what my life might be like without work. Doing nothing has merits, for a time, but even I begin to feel a mite guilty as one purposefully uneventful day blends into the next – so much so that I don’t even know, or care, what day it is. Now, that’s lazy…

I did, however, do a bit more than usual today. Well, sabbatical-usual, that is… and, only slightly more, at that. Got a bug and tidied Keaton’s room. It’s one of those rooms that folks rarely see, unless we escort them back there for a reason, so I don’t freak out about it being too untidy. And, Lord knows that, unless I’m the one tidying, it’s going to be a heap haphazard enough to make a hurricane jealous – with my wife. That room, and our master bedroom, are the ones in which I’m able to “tolerate” the most clutter. I still hate it with every fiber of my being, but I can at least keep my “areas” clear enough to keep my rage suppressed. Somedays I just lost it, though, and that’s when I tear through in a frustrated sweat, going a hundred miles an hour. I know this to be something my father “passed on” to me. I can recall when he’d reach the frustrated point where he’d sweep through the room, tossing anything he didn’t thing belonged there into the trash, or piling it in a heap on my bed. I used to hate it, then; now I find it completely gratifying, if rather ineffective. Anyway, that’s what I did today in Keaton’s room. A reverse whirlwind, cleaning with gusto, cleaning with a purpose.

Well, I had intended to post this entry last night – but before the preceding fourteen words, the previous two paragraphs where all I had, and the motivation dried up there. I stayed up late reading anyway, till sometime past 1am, when I finally decided I’d better hit the hay. So it’s Thursday morning now, we’re up watching TiVo’d episodes of the Backyardigans and Sesame Street – well, Keaton is, partway, at least… she’s never been a big TV person (good for her, I suppose). Regardless of all that – it’s the day before we leave for Hawaii. I’m sure there’ll be lots of planning and plotting and packing, and perhaps all sorts of other alliterative P-words too – you never know. Sharaun is freaking out a bit, true to form, asking me to do illogical things like call the concierge at the hotel ahead of time to find out where the closest grocery store is – as if having this piece of knowledge in advance will net us some material benefit. “We can ask when we get there,” I say. Women. Who’ll ever understand them?

Continuing my story of having dinner with our elders the other night: We were seated at the table and the conversation had, once again, turned to WWII (likely because I always subconsciously drive it there – did you know the target-audience of the History Channel is 80% male?). At some point in the conversation, our friend remembered a limerick the kids used to say at the time: “Frankie’s in the White House, eating pork and beans; Eleanor’s in the bathtub, shooting submarines.” She blushed and giggled like a little girl after saying it. Shooting submarines in the bathtub… that’s a scatological reference, right? Something having to do with torpedoes and pooping in the tub? Hilarious… especially from someone nearly ninety years old. OK, that counts as a paragraph, right? More than anything I wanted to get that quote on my blog in hopes of pulling in obscure Google searches (I coudn’t find it verbatim in reference to the Roosevelts, although it’s prevalent in what must be its original form about a judge and his wife).

Until next time, from somewhere on the beach and hopefully a few drinks in the black. Later.

Posted on

beans that go bang?


Hey, internet friends, before I even start trying to write – revel in joy. Why? Why, because I posted new pictures to Keaton’s gallery. This should catch us up to the present, if hastily. Check them out here, covering sabbatical times including September and October. I’ll try and upload some pictures from Oktoberfest later in the week, but you’ll have to make due with cute babies for now.

10:30am now, up since 7:30am when Keaton decided it was time. It’s sort of nice, having a reason to be awake early, something to kickstart the day, get the shower waters on me, the deodorant under my arms, brush on my teeth. On top of being up early, I got the morning to myself – to read and surf the internet and listen to music. I could’ve called people who are also on sabbatical, seen what they’re up to, maybe made arrangements to meet up and do something… but I didn’t Sometimes I just don’t want to move a stitch. I think it has to do with feeling “in control” of everything – which is easier when “everything” is practically nothing. I decide that I sit here; I decide when to eat lunch, and what to eat; I decide what to listen to; I don’t do anything I don’t want to do. It’s easy that way, it’s what sabbatical is all about for me – and I love it.

Tonight Sharaun cooked again for the older couple we occasionally do dinners with (the subject of blogs prior), and the conversation, as it did last time, turned to WWII-era times. It’s so fascinating to me to hear, firsthand, about those times in American history – right from the mouths of those who lived and fought during them. And tonight I heard something that piqued my interest. Our friend and meal companion mentioned that, during the war, her dad used to grow and sell black-eyed beans (which she says are the same thing as black-eyed peas, but that’s not what they called them then) to the US government for use in making gunpowder. This sounded strange to me, so I asked her more. Apparently, her dad used to profit more selling black-eyed peas to the government during wartime, for gunpowder, than from any of his other crops. Crazy, right?

Well, being the guy who hungers for knowledge about such things, as well as being the guy who was once the kid who was obsessed with all things incendiary – I just had to know how to make gunpowder from beans. So, as soon as we got home I hit Google looking for some reference to peas/beans along with gunpowder. After searching for a while and coming up with zilch, I hit Wikipedia to read up on the history of both gunpowder and black-eyed peas. Even armed with this information, I could find no reference whatsoever to the use of black-eyed peas, or any substance derived from them, in the manufacture of black powder.

I ask you, internet, help me figure this out. What the heck could the WWII-era relationship be between black-eyed peas and gunpowder, or guns, or artillery in general? Late in my searching, I found that sodium nitrate (archaically referred to as saltpeter), a key ingredient in black powder, occurs naturally in “leafy green vegetables” (Wikipedia source). I also found an obscure reference in one of Google’s online scans of a book called, Gunpowder, Explosives And the State: A Technological History, where they say that, in ancient Egypt, the “stems of lupine peas provided charcoal for gunpowder.”

Could it be that this woman’s dad was somehow selling greens to be processed for saltpeter? Or maybe he was selling the stems as a basis for the charcoal which is also a key gunpowder ingredient? I’m just dying to know…

Unrelated, except for being on Google Books, I found this “experiment” hilarious.

Goodnight.