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Posted on

but it’s free money


Wednesday night and I’m half asleep and have a headache. Just finished the Vonnegut books Ben got me for Christmas, nice books those: Cat’s Cradle and Slaughterhouse Five. I enjoyed both very much, so it goes.

I already took out the trash, did it right when I got home so I could ignore the annoying reminder that my cellphone will screech at me around 10pm. Cleaned out the catbox too (I don’t call it a “catbox” in real-life, but it works better on paper). We watched a movie tonight, and I left the laptop powered-down until now so I could enjoy it. We don’t watch movies much, so that was fun. Feeling better today too, not 100%… but better still. Good enough to do a day at work, blech.

Check out the targeted spam-comment I got on Keaton’s (dust-gathering) gallery recently, right here. Gotta be a one-man effort, congratulates us on Keaton’s arrival, and then tosses us a link to his Ebay-front golf supply website. Hey, if they guy went to all the trouble of entering in the captcha and doing the BBcode to make the link clickable – he deserves all the traffic my modest site can send him (but watch out Mr. Golf Supply, the flood of visitors could bring down your server). Ha!

I don’t talk about my family much here, I guess there are things I tend to keep out of the spotlight. I mean, you know how it is. But, I spoke to my brother today and had an interesting conversation. The VA assessed him as 60% disabled, and now the Army is going to give him money every month – for the rest of his life. I guess it’s not relevant exactly how much money, but you may be able to guess based on the details of our conversation. “Yeah, 60% disabled.” “Wow,” I say, “I guess that means you’re a little more than half fucked-up, huh?” “Ha, yeah. But the Army is going to give me amount every month, tax free, for the rest of my life – and they’re backdating payments back to last year.” “Wow,” I say again, “You know, you could totally live like a king for that much in some coastal village in Mexico; never have to work a day again in your life.” “Yeah,” he says, “I already thought of that.” “Cool, I guess,” I summarize, “Cool except you’re 60% fucked up for it.” “Yeah,” he says, “But it’s free money.” “Yeah,” I say.

Before I go, I wanted to mention a question Sharaun asked me tonight. When we saw an 11 o’clock news teaser teasing “California may ban incandescent light bulbs in favor of compact fluorescent, because they use a quarter of the power,” she said “Power. Where do we get out power?” I guessed a bit first, “Hoover Dam, maybe. Maybe Shasta? I think we have reactors too. I think we also get some from Oregon and maybe Nevada.” Anyway, my desire to validate my own guesses led to some fascinating (to me) research on the ever-awesome Wikipedia, where I learned about the completely rad-sounding Pacific Intertie and the X-Files sounding “Path 66.” Check it out if you’re a nerd, you’re sure to enjoy it.

Goodnight.

Posted on

who got my digits?


Stayed home sick again, blah.

I know I’ve been remiss in posting pictures to Keaton’s gallery, but that’s because our camera is kaput, busted. I have, however, managed to scour the web and find some semi-recent pictures of our little darling which were hosted at the websites of friends. Here then, courtesy of Suzyness, is the joint 30th birthday party I shared with Kristi, where Keaton makes several cute-as-can-be appearances. Enjoy. There, hopefully that will help quell the nastygrams from friends and relatives hungry for a Keaton fix.

Everyone keeping an eye on The Universal National Service Act of 2007? It’s a new bill introduced in the house, and its purpose is stated as follows:

To require all persons in the United States between the ages of 18 and 42 to perform national service, either as a member of the uniformed services or in civilian service in furtherance of the national defense and homeland security, to authorize the induction of persons in the uniformed services during wartime to meet end-strength requirements of the uniformed services…

OK. Sounds straightforward to me. A draft+ kind thing. Not only is there compulsory service in wartime, but apparently we must all perform “national service” for the “furtherance of national defense and homeland security.” I hope this is something as simple as being prejudiced against Muslims or towelheads, that sure would be easiest on me. Anyway, keep an eye on this one, it’s bound to make some news if it makes it through the first set of hoops.

Sharaun and I both got new debit/credit cards today, along with a note that our old ones “may” have been “compromised.” So, I had to go onto every bill I pay via auto-pay and update the card details, not to mention change my pin number. What a pain in the ass. And, I’m sure that “may have been compromised” means someone hacked into their database somehow, since it seemed to be a blanket mailing thing. I check our account pretty regularly, and hadn’t noticed anything out of the ordinary (aside from Sharaun spending a bit too much at places like the Gap, Marshalls, and TJ Maxx), but I downloaded the statements and went back through them using AceMoney as a fine-toothed comb. Nothing seemed amiss, so I guess we’re cool now that we’ve got things all changed up. Stupid identity thieves, scourge of the internet age.

Wow, what a random entry. Goodnight.

Posted on

the doctor is dead


Stayed home sick, slept most of the day, tended work e-mail over VPN when awake. Went to the doctor around noon, which of course means went to the “nurse practitioner.” Not that I have anything against RNs, but why even call it a doctor’s office if you can never see the dang doctor? In the imagined past that lives in my head, I remember when doctors used to come over to your house with their little black bags. You had a family doctor, he knew your history, knew your family, you could go see him if something wasn’t right. Nowadays, I have no doctor. Sure, there’s a name on my insurance card, but I’ve never even met the guy. Five years and I’ve only ever seen different RNs. They get the job done I suppose, but it seems like the notion of the “family doctor” may be dead. Anyway, I got a standard antibiotic so it went pretty much as I’d expected.

What is it with the doctor’s office and waiting? I got there, I’m the sole guy in there, and I’m still left sitting in the lobby reading some article about Wal Mart’s risky gamble in expansion into China. Fifteen minutes later, I’m taken back, weighed, and transfered to a little room where I’m once again waiting – this time for twenty minutes. I know no one else is in the whole place, when they walked me back to my room I passed the open doors of empty rooms, saw scrub-wearing lackeys eating lunch. It was just me and an office full of people who were making me wait. I hate that, bugs me.

I’m way up in the double-digits on the times I’ve spun Neon Bible now, and I must say it’s held up well. I was a bit worried that the here-and-there style leaks may have ruined the whole “flow” of the album, but not so. It’s good, really good, can’t wait to get an proper rip (the full leak was still a dodgy 160Kbps max) and eventually the real disc. Sharaun and I agreed we’ll likely break our concert moratorium when the ‘Fire comes to San Francisco. Yeah. Get a babysitter, convene the crew, and go see them live in the city. Damn, I’m old.

Goodnight.

Posted on

so little rain


Damn, the new auto-save feature of WordPress 2.1 screwed me. I had this entry open on two computers, wrote a bunch on one, which was subsequently erased by the auto-save of the still-open entry on the other PC. Anyway, it’s Sunday and I’m feeling sick – the same congestion crap I’ve been dealing with for a couple weeks at least now. The TheraFlu seems to be working now though, thankfully. I felt so bad earlier today, I considered not going into work tomorrow, but then I figured that may have been a little premature.

We’ve had so little rain thus far this winter. I miss a good rainy week. Usually, the rains start around Halloween, I know this because they’ve often hampered my don’t-wanna-grow-up decoration efforts. The usually stick around, making the colder months here somewhat expectant of gray skies and showers. This year, though, we’ve had so little. Maybe it rained while we were in Florida for Christmas, I don’t know – but I kinda wish it would rain a little now. I mean, I had to turn on my sprinklers, something I’ve never done in winter since being here, because my lawn was looking a little bit too much to the “dead” side of it’s winter hibernation browning. But, I do love the sun, and something about a chilly day that’s sunny makes me want to use adjectives like “crisp” and “bracing.” Those adjectives, right? If it’s not going to rain, I wish someone would let me know – I mean, I could pull the hammock out and take a nap in the “crisp” sunshine… or something similarly literary.

There’s a little pile of tiny dead ants on the floor in our guest bathroom, there’s another pile in the shower, on the edge of the tub. I killed them, sprayed them with death-spray – you can buy it at Wal Mart. Anyway, the pile of long-dead ants is a like a lesion, an outward sign of the terrible state of our house right now. Ant lay in waste on the bathroom floor, clothes litter the bedroom, the scraps and drips of past lunches mark the floor below Keaton’s highchair. We gotta get our act together, we gotta clean this place up. I go onto Sharaun the other day, gave her the same old, “You have to change this, Keaton’s going to learn by what you do, and then I’ll have to pickup after two slobs.” You’d think that was a paraphrase and that I might’ve applied a bit more tact in reality, but no, it’s relatively faithful to the dialog. Anyway, I have to do my part too – but starting from less-than-spotless, it’s hard to strive to maintain spotless. If things could just stay clean, I’m convinced Sharaun could learn to maintain. But, alas, there’s a pile of dead ants on the bathroom floor and I’m here typing.

Man, the Fratellis sure are blowing up lately. Looks like the advertising firms must read my blog, 9th place on my list apparently gets you Safeway and an iTunes ad. Get the album though, you’ll love it. Oh, and man, how on Earth did the Band of Horses album not make my Top 10 for 2006?! I call fraud, who made that damn list?

Hey, it’s clouding over, maybe it’ll rain.

Posted on

ready for the weekend


8pm and Keaton’s in bed so the laptop came out. Or, the laptop came out because Keaton’s in bed. My domain seems to be completely down, so I’m writing in EditPad in the hopes it’ll be up later and I can post. I could go on and put down my standard sentence about how busy work was today, using words like “whirlwind” and “crushing,” because it was – but I wont. Oh, just did. Anyway, I’ve got a glass of nice wine and have already done the dishes, and I’ve got a glass of nice wine. I did? Oh, must be the wine.

Recently, I traded in my Maxim subscription for a Newsweek subscription. This was partly instigated by Sharaun, although I don’t think it was any sort of edict. More of a suggestion, I think. Her logic being that Maxim may not be the right magazine to have around the house for baby Keaton. I’m not so alarmist, but do see the logic. I’d much rather Keaton see her dad perusing a Newsweek instead of a Maxim (actually, in order to see me perusing either, she’d likely have to catch me on the john… and that’s just undesirable all around). I sometimes think it’s silly to think of those kinda things when she’s not even one, but then again right now she’s learning action-for-action and word-for-word from us. So, I suppose sacrificing soft-porn ain’t such a bad idea. I mean, I’ve still got the internet for the real-deal.

Three more Arcade Fire tracks leaked tonight, that makes it just two shy of the entire thing. Thing is, the tracks are of varying quality and source. I’ve never seen anything leak like this, the randomness seems almost deliberate. Makes a guy wonder if it might not be the work of some savvy PR guy with a knowledge of the internets. Maybe leak a track every week or so in passable quality, something like a buffet of free-appetizers that always has a really long line and is only a front to sucker you into buying a full-price dinner at the end of your drawn-out, unsatisfied wait. Whatever, I’m happy to have what I have – I just want a proper!

Also in music news, the rumor mill is abuzz about the iTunes/Beatles deal. Apparently, it will be announced during the Super Bowl that all the original studio albums will be available, and remastered at that. The Beatles catalog finally remastered and available digitally… wow. I can only hope it won’t be some iTunes “exclusive” that’s not released on physical discs – I’d hate to be stuck with M4As.

I want tomorrow to go fast. I want it to be over before I know it. I’m ready for the weekend.

Goodnight.

Posted on

so, i’m set


Didn’t write yesterday, my normally allotted time was spent supping and drinking with customers. It was good though, lots of that “schmoozing” stuff that business is all about. Work blows. Buuuut, after work there’s home (or, to the overworked, “not work”), and, at home, it’s awesome. I get a few hours to play with my daughter. Tonight, I played with her on the couch – she likes to climb on me and I like to let her.

Speaking of Keaton, it’s been quite a while since I updated her pictures. This not because I’m lazy, I mean, I am, but it’s more because our camera finally completely gave up the ghost. So, Monday I ordered an SD700 IS, and we hope to be flush with pictures again in short order. Look for them. I was a little bummed that the camera came with a puny SD card, but then perked up when I read it could support MMC. A while back, I bought a 1GB MMC card for my cellphone, and I’ve since upgraded phones. So, I’m set. I just wonder if MMC is slower or otherwise suckier than SD somehow.

Sharaun’s got me watching American Idol again. And, once again, I find myself positively confounded by some of the “stinkers” they trot out on these first-pass episodes. I love watching these peoples’ hearts break. Sadistic as it is, I get a warm happy feeling inside when I realize that the person who’s up there singing so badly I think they must just be taking a piss is really and truly giving their all and firmly believe they are God’s gift to singing. To see that moment when it begins to sink in, that the gift they believe they are endowed with is no gift at all. It’s doubly enjoyable if the one taking the berating refuses to believe they are terrible, and decides to continue to live deluded. Seriously, I sit there and pretend not to watch (gotta maintain my “cred” with the wife), all the while rooting for these saps to bust out in tears. I honestly have a hard time believing these people aren’t acting, because they seem so utterly disconnected with reality. I wrote a good paragraph about it three years ago, check it out.

Sharaun’s been off planning Keaton’s first birthday, you’d think it was a coronation. We’ve got invitations, grandparents making the trip into town, and even a theme. I wonder what my first birthday was like? I’ll wager I didn’t napkins that matched the plates that matched the bibs that matched the invitations, I’ll wager there weren’t invitations at all, in fact. Kids are a great excuse to indulge, to join the consumers for the good of the economy. One day though, we’ll be able to show her pictures that prove how much we love her, monetarily, even.

Before I go, I thought I’d pass along this list of “gay bands” which Christians should watch out for. My favorite part is down near the bottom:

In Our effort to keep this list up to date we’d appreciate your help. If you know of a band that is Gay or propagating a Gay message please email us so we can update.

Hahaha! If I know of a band that is gay?! Wait.. John Mayer is gay?! Goodnight.