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a windows-open weekend


Sunday night went long at a social event, so I didn’t get time to do my normal writing nor my normal posting of pictures. This didn’t bother me. In fact, as the clock approached midnight and we were just settling down to a dessert of apple pie and ice cream, the realization hit me: “I’m not writing tonight.” Usually, if I’m out somewhere and know I haven’t written, I’ll get preoccupied thinking about having enough time to get something posted after getting home. Letting it go, so to speak, is nice. As soon as I square my OCD-self with going outside of routine, I get all rebel-proud and cool-calm. Yeah, so, being that I didn’t post Monday I suppose I can do the in-brief weekend roundup right here and right now:

It was an “open windows” kinda weekend, with the weather pleasantly warm and sunny. (This was a stray sentence, but I like it so it made the cut.)

There’s no more sleeping in at my house. When Keaton gets up, the family gets up. This new trend often finds me up and about before 7am on weekends, something that, until now, was rather foreign to me. In fact, I’m writing this paragraph right now early one Saturday morning. Sharaun left for Wal Mart at 8am, as by that time we had both been up and ready for some time. Strange, you know, how things work like that.

Changed the brakes on the Ford this weekend, and flew completely solo for the first time ever. I know, changing the brakes is literally six screws and a jack – but I was extremely proud of myself nonetheless. Being incredibly not mechanically inclined, any successfully mechanical task is belt-notch worthy for me. In fact, my success in this simple task has ignited a small fire of desire within me to get to know my vehicle more intimately. Indeed, I find myself pursuing the Chilton’s manual and trying to “learn,” soak up some information. I go back to the long exhaust manifold job that’s been in “I gotta get that done” phase limbo for a couple years now, I catch myself checking local Pick-n-Pull hours of operation and thinking about scavenging a new bucket seat or center console lid or passenger-side mirror. Some day I’d like to know what a differential does, or how to realign a transaxle (I have no idea if you can “realign” a transaxle… it just sounded all “gear”). Hell, I even added a TiVo season pass for Two Guy Garage I was so passionate about the grease under my nails and finally getting to use that economy-sized jug of Fast Orange I bought years ago.

Switching gears to Keaton, she had her six-months checkup at the baby-doctor last week. And, in case you were thinking of picking her in the fantasy baby draft, here are her latest stats: weight: 25th-50th percentile; height: 50th-75th percentile; head: 90th percentile. So, if she can manage not to pull her neck holding up that massive melon of hers, I think she’s got the makings of a strong season ahead of her. She’s definitely got the head-size advantage over most of the field… although she could stand to put one some pounds.

I also got her gallery updated, albeit a day late. Unfortunately, I moved to allowing only registered users to comment until I can create a better spam filter, so you’ll have to register (one-time only) should you desire to comment. You can check out the new pictures right here.

Today the iPod did some bizarre “random” shuffling. Back-to-back I heard Donovan’s “Lalena” and Deep Purple’s cover of the same song. And, as if to mock the rand() function even further, later in the shuffle set I heard Al Kooper’s “Season of the Witch” followed (no joke!) by Donovan’s original version. Insane.

In closing, did you know that, per capita, if America’s national debt were spread across the population, each person would carry a balance of -$2778.07 (balance/per capita and balance/GDP data). Ouch. The logic of us being dead-last on the “balance sheet” of all the countries in the world confuses me. Someone care to explain?

Oh, and this just in, LG15 is busted. A 19 year-old New Zealand born actress who recently moved to LA to jumpstart a career. Looks like it worked.

Goodnight.

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full of stuff today


Thursday, my head hurts. There’s some big fire somewhere out there in the part of the world within wind-reach of me, and it’s blanketed the lands as far as I can see with smoke. The smoke bothers me, even though I was only out in it briefly as I shuffled to work, lunch, and the like. Full of stuff today, and it’s a Friday so I’m super happy for the weekend. Let’s do this.

Sharaun always makes fun of me because when I’m around people with foreign accents, I tend to subconsciously appropriate their accents in my own speech. I always feel somewhat disgusted when she calls me out on it, since it seems to me to be some sort of “pandering.” In reality, I think I may have developed this ridiculous tactic as a part of my larger “making people comfortable” approach to gaining confidence. I’ve long been able to observe and simulate or respond to body language in order to give someone an unspoken message that we’re on the same page. I also consider myself pretty good at pegging a person’s personality and likes/dislikes quickly enough upon initial meeting so I can be sure to subtlety work within the confines of their comfort. I’ve never been a used car salesman, but I bet if I went on a reality TV show where it was my task to study under the tutelage of one of the best some of the first lessons he’d teach would involve honing techniques much like the ones I’ve already described. Small, seemingly insignificant verbal and non-verbal actions which serve to make a person comfortable, to ease their natural defenses and give them the impression that you’re a good guy – all based on reflecting little bits of themselves back to them. Because, after all, who’s everyones most trusted person? Themselves of course. The more you’re like someone, the more they relate to you.

So, now that I’ve admitted I use manipulative techniques to win friends and influence people, let’s get back to the point of this paragraph: my fake accents. I don’t know why I do it, and I usually don’t even realize when I’m doing it. It can range from a subtle Latino-tinge to full-on broken English approximations of my good buddies from Taiwan. So, if you ever hear me do this – call me out. Help me break this embarrassing habit. Thanks.

Even though I sit at a computer and type most of the day for a living, I still come home and type some more for pleasure. Usually though, I don’t like sitting at “the” computer, you know – the one in the back room with a big ol’ desk and CRT monitor and comfy office-type chair. No, no, that’s too much like my work environment. Kicking it with a laptop on the couch though, for some reason that’s different. Dunno why, but it is.

Went through the mail tonight, pretty much a bi-weekly (if that’s the incorrect term for “once every two weeks,” I’m sorry, I have a hard time deciding if it means that or twice per week) thing now. The “snail mail” is of almost zero value to me these days, it’s 90% advertisements and wasted paper and the actual “need” for it has been almost entirely eclipsed by e-mail and the internet. Who the heck needs paper these days anyway, I tell all my bills that will allow it to “stop sending paper statements” and go all-online. I don’t keep a check register, just check in online every few days to make sure things look right. It’s the new generation folks, better hip up.

Well, looks like the lid is juuust about blown off the whole Lonelygirl15 thing, all signs are currently pointing to it being a new form of Blair Witch derivative viral marketing – with most lines of thinking pointing to it being an advert for a Halloween-timed horror movie (perhaps even a mockumentary). With the whole registered trademark and cyber-sluething IPs to Beverly Hills talent agencies (not to mention a potential admission from “the creators”), it seems inevitable we’ll get the entire story here soon. Hey, it was fun while it lasted, and almost carried me through to the new season of Lost where I can once again assume my role as armchair detective. At least now I’ll quite writing about it, and spare you that small thing. (And damn, BoingBoing scooped me and once again made it look like I wrote this in response… I gotta start considering real-time posting if I wanna be hot on the shit.)

On the politics tip, I had a hearty guffaw reading this story over at the America Weakly website. America Weakly is a “satirical newspaper designed to give voters a glimpse into the future if Democrats take control of Congress this fall. Set in September of 2007, the newspaper reflects the condition of the America one year after a Democrat takeover of Congress.” In the story titled partly “Dems Celebrate End of Bush Security Measures,” the GOP Onion wannabe invents a hilarious fictitious statement from a House Democratic leader about the current administration’s NSA “wiretapping” goings-on:

“This program was a clear violation of due process,” House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers said. “I don’t care how many attacks it might have stopped. Even if there really are sleeper cells in this country, we have a careful and deliberate process to stop them. Yes, it might take a bit longer, and we might not get every single bit of information, but that’s a small price to pay.”

Get more funny-’cause-it’s-freaky-not-because-it’s-funny Democratic-House endtimes GOP paranoia over at America Weakly. And, for some we-swear-it’s-not-pandering donkey goodness, head over to FaithfulDemocrats.com and count yourself shocked to see that it’s (purportedly) possible to hate guns and still love Jesus.

Goodnight.

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fun to do


Wednesday night, got here blessedly fast thanks to the long weekend. Spent most of the evening helping Pat try to install a new water heater (flashbacks to the beginnings of sounds familiar). We got it installed, but didn’t leave much time for writing. But, after I sat down, things worked out and I got all the crap below. Let’s get to that crap now, huh? Good.

Some (more than) one-liners:

Sometimes, in the morning on the way to work, I turn the music up so loud it hurts my ears. This morning, I had the iPod on shuffle and “The Good Life” from Weezer’s Pinkerton came on. That album ties to a lot of great memories for me, so I turned the knob to at least eleven and ground my teeth in defiance as my ears protested the deafening sharp tinny cymbal. I know this is a dumb thing to do, but I enjoy it.

I have a deck of cards I keep at my desk at work, I am constantly shuffling them around in my hand as the time passes. I’m not sure why, but I like having something to manipulate while I think or work. I use them so much that I’ve had to retire two previous decks, and am thinking it’s about time to ditch my current. I went from a generic-backed deck to a Hawaiian hulagirl deck, to my current Harley Davidson deck. The edges get saturated with oils from my hands, and the cardstock begins to swell and flare. There’s a faint yellow outline creeping inward from the edges towards the center of each card, that oil beginning to take over. Sometimes cards stick together as their raised edges hitch on each other. I like the way the well-handled cards smell, I know this is odd. Time for a new deck, I think I’ll open the Beatles one.

I’ve always been a fan of thinking-puzzles of all kinds. From watching HBO’s BrainGames as a kid to solving weekly “lateral thinking” puzzles in my “gifted class.” I absolutely hated those ones where six people had two traits each and you had to fill out some huge cross-referenced matrix using the process of elimination to decide who had red hair and a puppy; what’s the fun if you can just stumble on the answer visually? I think that’s part of the reason I get so intrigued by these online “alternate reality games” like the Lost Experience and, now, LonelyGirl15 (if that’s indeed what this is). I can remember when I bought the game Myst for my old Packard Bell. I sat for hours playing that game, eating up the logic puzzles and secret passages. I can recall sitting at my PC late one night, navigating first-person style through a series of mine shafts. I had realized that, at each multi-tunnel junction, the game would make a different sound. I started associating the sounds with directions, north, south, etc. Turns out this was the right approach. So there I am, sitting at my desk listening intently to discern a “dink” from a “donk” from a “poing,” when I’m nearly scared out of my skin by someone knocking on my bedroom window. Turns out it was a girl, come for a late-night encounter. Myst was awesome, but I had priorities…

Every time we go camping up in the hills I notice the sign posted at the campground that reads something like “14 day maximum stay.” It always makes me think about camping on a longer-term basis than the typical city-folk weekender trip, perhaps even taking up a nomadic style of life bouncing from one max campground stay to the next. It’ well known that I have an obsession with “lean” living like this, although I’m not the most exemplary of the lifestyle – it’s nonetheless attractive to me. I remember when a buddy of mine bought a house from a workplace acquaintance, the now displaced fellow moved into a tent at a local public campground. He was still getting up in the morning and going to work, still doing the daily grind, but at night he’d head home to a tent. Something about that was very woodsman-romantic and Thoreau-ish to me, and I always thought it would be fun to do.

I’ve long realized that I outfit myself with a regularly recurring set of clothing. Each week, my limited array of ensembles repeats itself in some way. I don’t even wait two weeks. Oh, sure sometimes I “mix it up” and wear the green shirt I wore last week with jeans with khakis instead, but the variation doesn’t get much more varied than that. I don’t mind this, actually… it doesn’t bother me. I have probably six pairs of shorts which I wear, three pairs of jeans, two khaki longpants, and maybe fifteen to twenty shirts. That’s it. Nothing more. So, I recycle. I mate that grey company polo with the jean shorts and the khaki cargos, sometimes I’ll tuck in that avocado-colored one, sometimes not – all depends on what kind of fashion statement I feel like making.

Goodnight friends and lover(s). Marinate on that parenthetical ‘S’ for a while.

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trite green halloween


Happy Tuesday my friends, it was a fairly mundane day at work – just the same old routine of answering e-mails, attending meetings, and finding time to pee in between. Came home, fed the baby and put her down while Sharaun was out getting her hair did. Poked around the net for any new leaked albums of note and caught myself up on the LG15 goings-on. Not a lot here today, I’m still in feeling something of a slump in the inspiration department. That’s how it’s gonna be, so that’s how it is.

With my Keaton “featurettes” becoming more and more complicated, I decided I need to take it all to the next level and figure out how to greenscreeen her into different sequences. Since my movie-editor of choice thus far, the free Windows Movie Maker, can’t do chromakeying (the official term for blue- or green-screening something into other footage), I once again turned to the freeware program Wax. After reading a tutorial online, the whole process sounded almost braindead simple so I decided to bust out an old blue sheet we have and take some test footage of Keaton on it. With the test footage on the PC, I loaded a static image behind it and then keyed out the blue. Amazingly, in under 5min I had some very nice chromakeyed footage (you can see it here if you’re interested – it’s DivX-enocded so you may need something like VLC to view it). Putting live action instead of a static image behind the “cut in” items is trivial, and Wax supports advanced techniques like scaling and moving the bluescreened items around the frame. So, as soon as I can dream up a worthy concept, I’ll be cutting Keaton into all sorts of scenes. My first thought was to actually have her running from a real charging bear, thus bringing to life one of my better static goofs, so maybe I’ll start with that.

Halloween’s creeping up. I finally broke down and ordered my PicoBoo today, I splurged and got the one with AC outlets instead of fiddly voltage posts. I intend for it to control the wolf prop, but I’ve had some renewed interest in doing the “scarycrow” project of late – being that I think I can do it rather cheaply and easily (the motion and activation of course being the chief cost-drivers). In honesty, I’d still ideally want the prop to be a hanging man – but I’m just too much of a politically-correct coward and am concerned about what a animated “lynching” on my front lawn might come off as to the over-sensitive. Sitting today thinking about it though, I came up with another idea which I absolutely love. Right now I’m calling it the “guillotine/headman” prop, because it’s one of those. The basis of the prop would be a prone figure with his head on a chopping block or in a guillotine. In the “headman” version there would also be a standing figure holding an axe, and the whole falling-axe head-chop thing would be animated via pneumatics. The guillotine would work the same way, but not require the second headman dummy. Problem is, altho it’s an outstanding idea – it would require two-to-three pneumatic cylinders and as many solenoids, plus a PicoBoo to get the timing right. Too much money for this year, maybe filed away for next year with the “pulling his head off” man idea.

Check out the Democrats gettin’ all MySpace with their new social networking tool, partybuilder. Fancy.

Goodnight.

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officially good


Three-day weekends are officially good. Managed to mow the lawn, do some long-waiting-to-be-done “fix it” stuff around the house, and attend three barbecues. Back to work tomorrow, not something I’m looking forward to at all. I keep thinking about my weeks upon weeks of state-funded “bonding leave” coming up in December, and the blissful days spent not going into the office. Yeah, I’m way ready for that. Mostly music; deal.

Oh, I did update Keaton’s gallery Monday, check it out (and yes, I added this sentence late, post-publishing).

I am chomping at the bit to see the movie Jesus Camp ever since catching the trailer on YouTube and reading David Byrne’s blog entry on his thoughts after seeing a screening. I have to see this movie, it looks ultimately compelling. Hopefully, it’ll make the rounds at one of the local artsy joints here in town.

Seriously, all the hubbub about the Pitchfork leak of Joanna Newsom’s new album made me positively itchy to hear the thing. The indie crowd is in a state of multiple-orgasm over it, leaving me perplexed. See, I couldn’t for the life of me get into her previously lauded effort, The Milk Eyed Mender. I’ll say up front that I’m not a huge fan of this whole “psych folk” or “freak folk” movement that’s been so hot over the past years – the sound is just a bit too “weak” for me. Anyway, I used my leak-locating superpowers and tracked down a YSI link for the album (which was just a rip of the “oops’d” shared PF directory).

What do I think about this album? What the hell? The message boards of the thick-rimmed set are lighting up, already proclaiming this five-track effort “album of the year.” Seriously? I’ll admit it’s interesting, the lyrics are somewhat engaging and there’s no denying an abundance of songwriting talent here, but it’s about as unapproachable to me as Natalie Portman – I’ll never get it. With lush orchestrated background approximating a Disney score and Newsom’s fragile annoying voice warbling out in a worse-than-Bjork timbre, I just don’t get it. Best album of the year? You’ve got to be effing kidding me. You guys can have your gay-ass freak folk, or whatever you call it. Give me something like The Figurines or Midlake or The Islands or The Decemberists… you can have this pansy crap.

By the way, I’m gonna get like tons more chicks than you when I’m blasting Wolfmother from my open car windows in response to your dainty Newsom “Monkey and Bear” harpischord balladry. That is, unless you want to date the Lilith Fair. Personally, I’d rather date Ozzfest.

Goodnight.

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wasted time


Been feeling particularly uninspired this week, don’t really know why. Maybe it’s some sort of “senioritis” type anticipation for the extra-day weekend. Seriously, this three-day affair couldn’t have come soon enough for me… I’m ready for a “free day” from work about now. So, should we run down the normal pleasantries? Thursday night, blah, Sharaun and the gym, do tell, Keaton asleep, no kidding, and I’m sitting here typing. Right. That’s about what I figured.

But, despite all this nothing… I did manage to find, like, five or so free hours to slap together a “thank the Lord for the three-day weekend” Keaton bonus video. You can surf over and watch it right now, by clicking these words.

Tonight was some kind of awards, and Sharaun was making me watch them. Nah… I can feign ignorance, but I’ll admit I knew it was the MTV ones. Anyway, most of the show consisted of me asking “who’s that?” as the MTV roving cameras panned to someone in the audience. “That’s so-and-so whats-her-shit, I can’t believe you don’t recognize her… she’s only like the most famous who’s-it-now out there right now,” Sharaun would exclaim. Ahhh… I should’ve known, I feel so ignorant know. First thing tomorrow I’m going down to the community college and signing up for a class in pop culture… I wonder if I’ll have to buy my own “grill” or they’ll issue one to me?

Weekend!!

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mostly politics


So I took a day off, can’t a brother get a couple days off per month? I had intended to write last night, but got caught up working on my Akismet plugin for Coppermine and lost interest. If it means anything, I got a lot done with the plugin… but… let’s be realistic, it doesn’t mean anything. Mostly politics today, sorry.

Been looking for tickets back to Florida for Christmas lately, prices are insane. Every year it seems to get worse. I remember being able to get Sharaun and I there for under $500 round trip, and now it’s hard to get it under $1,000 – and Keaton still flies free on a lap, I can’t wait until I have to purchase a 3rd full-fare ticket for her. Soon enough we’ll have to putting into a “Christmas in Florida” fund every month. Not that I don’t love my Florida peoples, but dang your state is far.

I’ve linked to the Political Arithmetik blog before, but more and more it’s becoming a part of my daily online regiment. I’m a data-whore by nature, as I firmly believe that knowledge truly is power, and I enjoy increasing my understanding of the political machine. This site combines those two things into one neat politicarithmetical package, perfect for civic-minded slide-rule jockeys like me. Of the regularly updated features, I think my favorite are the Bush approval ratings trend and the so-called “generic ballot” trend. Lots of political trending sites report on the generic ballot or Bush’s approval ratings, but I like Franklin’s statistical approach of charting these things over time and fitting trend lines as predictors. It’s interesting to see most political blogs showing Democrats with a lead in the 2006 generic ballot polls for the Senate and them compare this with Franklin’s line of best fit trend. Hope the aren’t getting too overconfident, American opinion, as tracked by pollingreports.com, gives them only a 10% lead over the GOP – and you better believe they’ve seen the numbers too. Bush ain’t just sitting around doing nothing about it, he’s flying around doing something about it. I wonder if the Democrats will ever get a platform solid enough to make a real run at it… one can only hope (that is, if “one” is Blue).

What sucks most about this next paragraph is that I actually wrote it on Tuesday, intending to post it Wednesday. However, I slacked Tuesday night and and didn’t come up with anything other than this sole paragraph. Figuring it wasn’t enough to justify and entry, I decided to just roll it into Thursday’s entry (I really liked the writing, or else I may have just scrapped it altogether). Then, come Wednesday, I see CNN has picked up the whole WWII/Fascism thing – and thus my story, once just a bit stale, now seems completely trite and pre-chewed. I’m still posting it though, and you’ll just have to pretend you heard it here before CNN, OK? Thanks.

I read with interest a few days ago this article which puts forth the notion that our administration is slowly changing the name of our “terrorist” enemies. In what the article refers to as a slow “linguistic makeover,” what we were previously calling the “war on terror” is now being referred to as the “war on Islamofacism.” When I first read the article, I thought it was an interesting commentary, as I too had noticed Bush’s out-of-place-ish reference to “fighting the Islamo-facists” in a recent speech (I think it was the newness of the term that caught my ear). However, I didn’t give the whole thing much thought – until I read this article today about Rumsfield’s recent “history lesson” speech. Reading excerpts from that speech, peppered with references to “a new kind of fascism,” I started to wonder if the administration really is doing an branding do-over on our enemy.

I imagine some young political strategist working in a small windowless office, pulling out his hair after being tasked with finding a way to turn the tide of America’s perception of the current “war on terror.” Slowly, he begins studying past conflicts and the support they received from the populous. Soon, he’s got a plan to re-cast the current “terrorist” enemies as “Islamofacist” enemies – a brilliant turn of the tongue which instantly evokes imagery of some of history’s most cruel, evil, and heartless regimes and leaders. Suddenly, we’re not just fighting a faceless verb, we’re fighting the scum-of-the-earth bloodlines of those universally-perceived devils of the past – none other than the prodigies of Mussolini and Hitler. By spinning the poorly-defined and impalpable “terrorist collective” as understudies to universally-loathed Fascist alliances from history, the administration can stir up long-dormant but pre-existing emotion and perhaps reinvogorate waning support. While fighting “terror” may seem endless and futile, fighting Islamofacism may seem like a shining example of America’s indomitable democratic spirit. All with a turn of a phrase; brilliant. Anyway, read the article – it does a better job than me.

And, before I go… will Lonelygirl15 be outed by botanists?

Goodnight.