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pleasantly longer than usual


Good Sunday evening my friends, coming off a weekend that seemed pleasantly longer than usual. I’m bringing you quite a disparate entry today, written off and on over the weekend to ensure it doesnt tie together at all. I did manage, however, to stick to tradition and post another (small) batch of photos to Keaton’s gallery. Last week, a friend asked me if I plan to post new pictures every week for the next eighteen years. Fair question, I suppose. I have no idea how long I’ll be obsessed enough with this baby to post weekly – but for now it’s become something of a habit, and, besides, I think you secretly like it. So here they are, Keaton’s gallery.

Sometimes, when I sit around on a Saturday doing absolutely nothing, wasting time, be ultimately nonconstructive, simply gaining weight – I get this feeling that all my friends are busy doing something with their time. I imagine them pulling weeds, cleaning house, gardening, washing cars, or spending their time doing something else equally as useful. I’m about 50/50 torn between loving being able to completely lose a day to sedentariness and hating the fact that I can be so lazy. Often, a thousand thoughts will run through my head: useful things I could do, things I’ve put off during the week which I could now devote hours uninterrupted to. Like now, it’s noon on Saturday and I’ve done nothing with my day but cook breakfast and play with the baby. I mean, I downloaded some music, messed with the iPod, and finished off some dirty dishes – but I feel like none of that matters because I haven’t even put on a shirt yet. I’m obviously not serious about today if it can’t even motivate me enough to clothe myself properly. Doomed to a day of sitting on the couch, listening to music, and writing… I’m 24hr useless.

But folks, as a result of that paragraph… I got the spirit. I went up to Home Depot and purchased some supplies to build some shelving in the garage, as well as the beginnings of the Baying Wolves project I have planned this Halloween (one of the two I hope to complete). Sharaun and I braved the 100+ temperatures to clean out and reorganize the garage. If you know me, you know I love organizing and tidying, and if I can do it in the garage while kicking some tunes on the iPod all the better.

I am positively in love with about 2/3 of this new Guillemots album – which means mostly the numbers with a decent tempo and a couple of the slower tracks. Some of these songs are so lushly done, with strings and rising chorus, plenty of cymbal crash to fill up the background, and unexpected falsetto. I recommend it, as it sounds like not much else I’ve heard out there right now. Also part of my playlist right now is an album by the group Midlake, which, while being slower and more muted, is crafted with extreme care – not to mention it’s not just 2/3 good, it’s 3/3 good. And, since we’re in the music paragraph – I’ll go ahead and say how excited I am about getting the new Ratatat album this weekend. Seeing as I liked the last one so much, I’ve got high expectations.

Looks like I’m not the only one who thought that CNN’s coverage of the current Israel/Lebanon/Hezbollah conflict is lacking. I’m finding that it’s really hard to get a “balanced” article on the current events over there, and I still stand by Wikipedia as the best checked-and-balanced telling of the tale as it’s unfolding.

Goodnight.

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yesterday i saw you kissing tiny flowers


Thursday night and I mowed the hadn’t-been-mowed-in-two-weeks lawn after work. Sometimes I swear the shuffle function on the iPod is actually powered by some mood-psychic gremlin living within those pearly white walls. Work today was quite the wringer, and I was a bundle of emotions and thoughts upon coming home (more about that later in the week, I think). The iPod, however, knew just how to talk to my troubled mind. First, it hit me up with some obscure Simon & Garfunkel, “A Most Peculiar Man” – just the right kind of snide “fishbowl” social commentary to get a busy mind thinking. Later on it ranged from Led Zeppelin’s “Rain Song,” a paragon of songmanship in my mind, some excellent Siamese Dream era Pumpkins, Bowie, and Son House singing about the blood of Jesus. It was an outstanding mix, and fit my tumultuous mood to a tee. Way to be, iPod. Way. To. Be. Oh, but mowing the grass blew… it was long and thick and the heat made me sweaty.

We had a momentous night Wednesday night: Keaton slept her first night in her nursery. That’s right, in her own crib in that two-tone pink room – not in the Pack-‘n’-Play parked next to the bed in ours. I must say, it was all my doing… Sharaun was reluctant but I had maintained for some weeks that the post-Florida timeframe should be the cutoff. Part of me is sad she’s not right there with us, where we can satisfy our paranoia by peeking in on her or placing a hand on her chest as it rises and falls. I’d been thinking for some time now how nice it would be to have our bedroom back, uncluttered by her sleeping and changing stuff, and once again safe for nighttime humping. But, when I packed out the last of her baby gear, I paraded first by Sharaun in the living room. We both looked at that neatly bundled Pack-‘n’-Play with a little sadness, like a chapter of our daughter’s life was being stuffed in the back of the nursery closet and a new phase was beginning. It may sound stupid, but I don’t think it’s an entirely foreign thing for new parents to experience. I’m not sure when “most” parents make that move, or even that “most” parents opt to have the baby in their room to begin with – but I’d wager that four and a half months is pretty late as “mosts” go. Good for us then, taking the plunge.

I’ve been trying to follow the piss-poor coverage of the Israel-Hezbollah/Lebanon conflict on CNN.com, but the reporting is disjointed, hard to follow, and lacking enough background to educate me on the situation. Frustrated because I felt ignorant reading and not following, I struck off on my own to my favorite reference site – Wikipedia. Turns out they’ve already got a great educational page about the current conflict, and it’s chock-full of links to other relevant entries offering tons of historical insight and information. I think I’ll just follow the conflict on Wikipedia rather than one of the major news outlets, as it’s easier for me to follow. Check it out here if you’re similarly stumped by the motivation and history behind the escalating violence.

Oh yeah, oh yeah, oh yeah…

Well, I’d better run. I’ve need to put up our unpacked suitcases and finish off tonight’s dinner dishes – which I’ve been cleaning in spurts for hours now. Love you fuckers, goodnight.

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the opposite of downhill


Entry today is heavy with the stuff that drives away readership, but so it goes. Rode my bike to work today for the first time in a long while. The ride in was great: iPod on, weather still morning-cool, and mostly downhill; the ride home was awful: hot as hell, no water, and the opposite of downhill.

The power of suggestion is massive, we all know that. For me though, the power of suggestion from those I respect is even moreso. For instance, while in Florida, my longtime buddy Kyle and I discussed new music, as we’ve been musical partners going waaaay back. He ended up mentioning the new Destroyer album, which had been sitting, relatively unplayed since my first impression, on my iPod for weeks. He hadn’t actually heard the album himself, but a mutual friend had compared it to Bowie (quite a germane comparison, by the way) and just hearing Kyle’s interests piqued got my itching to spin the album again and reevaluate it. I put it on as I went to sleep that night, despite Sharaun’s permanently lodged complaint about headphones in bed (I’m supposed to be “paying attention” to her as we fall asleep). Anyway, I’ve got to admit – either I’ve been lemming’d into a fondness for the album, or I misjudged it to begin with. This album is good, and getting better the more I hear it.

Folks, it was just a month and a half ago that I blogged about the incredible increase in comment spam this site was seeing. That’s six weeks ago, for the months-to-weeks conversion challenged. Six weeks, and my comment spam count is now sitting above 70,000. Doing a little arithmetic, that means I got 40,000+ pieces of spam comments in that time – amortize that as if they were coming in at a regular rate and you end up with a figure of ~6,000 spams per week, or ~1,000 per day (rough math). That’s insane… right? I guess when your blog has been around for nearly three years (w00t!) and you’ve got a butt-ton of entries you’re just a spam-comment honeypot and it’s to be expected. Thank God for Akismet.

Speaking of Akismet – I’ve long dreamed of adapting the Akismet API for use with my spam-ravaged Coppermine photo gallery. And, after an hour or so of tinkering – I actually did modify Coppermine to work with Akismet, using Bret Kuhns’ PHP4 library. Right now, the hack is incredibly rough – but basically doesn’t allow comments which are suspected as spam by the Akismet screening. The “disallowance” is a horridly ungraceful Coppermine “die” error, but it works for now. The only guidance I give the Akismet server at this point is the comment author and text, which is just scratching the surface of spam-evaluating criterion which may be passed. Also, I did not bother to modify the Coppermine database to enable tagging comments as spam, nor did I implement a way to submit false positives back to Akismet for training. Since both of these things are essential functionality for “conscientious” Akismet usage, I feel like I should work more to make this thing better. Eventually, I’d like to make it into a full-fledged Coppermine plugin – but for now it’s a complete hack (I even waxed about my grand intentions on the Coppermine boards).

The proof is in the pudding though, and I’ll have to monitor things for a week to see if the hack actually stops spam (although I don’t see how it won’t). The things I do for fun…

Oh, and a message to all the hecklers – yesterday’s post-accompanying picture of Keaton was chosen specifically for its… beauty. I’ll have you all know she is still, and will always, = cute.

Goodnight.

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no shirts, no shoes, no problem


Back in California, fresh off our extended Florida hiatus. Keaton was once again outstanding on the long two-leg flight: sleeping, keeping herself entertained, or flirting with passengers and crew. She once again proved my fears unfounded. I’ll be honest, I didn’t really feel like leaving; things are nice in Florida, but I think a large part of that is because I don’t live in Florida – and it’s associated with vacation in my head. I kind of feel off the blogging wagon while there, skipping some days due to lack of desire, and then yesterday lost to travel – I’ll do my best to make up for that by whipping my typing fingers back into shape over the next couple weeks. Dreading going back to work, of course, frightened of the load that will stretch out before me. Not wanting to catch up on lawn mowing, or unpack the suitcases United had to tag “heavy” due to their seam-bustingness.

I must warn you that I have nothing to offer today. However, before I close this thing prematurely – I did finally make a belated update to Keaton’s gallery, adding a series of pictures from the latter half of our Florida visit. And, what’s more, I managed to upload a short set of non-Keaton-focused Florida images which you can check out right here.

Deal with it, goodnight.

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tropicasual


Been a week in Florida now and my thoughts of returning to work next Wednesday are slowly creeping into my head. I don’t want to go back to work; wouldn’t mind staying here another several weeks actually. We’ve been having a good time, once again doing the packed-schedule vacation that I both love and hate. Love it for the vacation part, sorta hate the scheduled slots of visitation and obligatory visits – sometimes you just want to do nothing. But, we got to see nearly all the friends and relatives we wanted to, and even had some decent down time. Whatever, I hate writing these show-and-tell bits. Let’s move on.

Maybe we’ll do some one-liners.

  • Had a terrible dream last week, one of my coworkers told me they were considering suicide and I shrugged it off. I later walked into a room to find him shot in the head. It was a graphic scene, the kind that, upon waking, I feel a bit queasy for inventing. Woke up with a stinging feeling of guilt and sadness, like I could’ve prevented something awful.

  • Earlier this week I talked about the lush-jungle that is Florida’s natural foliage. While Kyle and I drove around last week, we wondered at the dense growth just 10ft off the side of the road. The greenery is not unlike a wall, solid and thick and double-overhead in height. You can’t see one foot past the first rank of trees and vines and bush. We began imagining the landscape back before humans clear-cut to put in roads and shopping malls. What the state must’ve looked like to conquistadors and early settlers: An impenetrable stand of swamp and jungle and sand filled with beasties like snakes, alligators, and mosquitoes. Baking in the humid heat of summer, the place must’ve seemed a green-choked Hell.

  • Friday my old, old, old friend Kyle and I took a “nostalgia roadtrip” around our old central Florida stomping grounds. As an aside to the trip, we decided to stop at one of the many flea markets that spring up around the bigger highways. The market we chose is one of the larger ones, comprised of one long central row and several fingers jutting from it both east and west – all of them filled with shops on either side and down the center. Walking the aisles, I couldn’t help but think about how similar the place looked to a “night market” in Taipei or Shanghai. Random cellphone accoutrement’s piled high, cheap toys and tools with Chinese characters on the packaging. Many of the vendors at these cheap-goods booths appear to be native Taiwanese folks, unloading vanfuls more of junk.

  • Been getting buckets of comment spam on my Coppermine image gallery lately, and I have no obvious recourse aside from disabling anonymous commenting altogether (which, in my opinion, has a detrimental effect on commenting in general). I did see a catchpa plugin for an older version of Coppermine, but haven’t invested any time in seeing if I can adapt it or if an updated version exists. Stupid comment spam; right now I’m just deleting them as they come.

That’s enough for today, first Monday I’ve missed a gallery update for Keaton in a long while. Look for something tomorrow. Goodnight.

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sustained, i have to assume


Spent some time early Wednesday morning reading over the various “half” best-of lists on various music ‘zines and blogs. Queued up a bit of the more intriguing sounding stuff and now have a folder of “prospects” sitting on my desktop just waiting for me to listen to it. I’m hoping there’ll be a few gems in there. I think I’ll fire them up tonight at bedtime. (These are the things I look forward to.)

My dad called me today, asked me sarcastically “David, when are you gonna quit smoking?” Obviously, he’d read my thick-headed lament over another bout of social smoking gone wrong. “I thought you had a college degree,” he chided, “Thought you were smarter than that.” Yeah… I should be. I don’t smoke, I just sometimes get caught up in the moment when out throwing darts and flipping beer mats. I had promised myself that, when Keaton came, I wouldn’t “indulge” anymore… and I’m still working on that. Thing is, in reality, even a cigarette or two once a month can likely eff up my lungs – so it really does make sense to stop joking about it like it’s an accident every time. Maybe I’ll make a half-year resolution to end the social smoking tout de suite.

I remember when my family moved to Florida, I had just completed the 5th grade in California. Someone had told my mom that there were no trees in Florida. I had visions of some flat, barren beach landscape – void of green. As soon as we got on the ground, I knew whoever my mom had spoken to must’ve visited a different Florida. Florida’s thick with growth; like a green jungle. Trees crowd together along the roadside, some clad with vines and what the Floridians call “airplants.” There was more green in Florida than I’d ever seen in the brown summers of California. Driving around now, I can’t imagine a place this wet being anything but lush. The air is so heavy with water the sun-bleached fenceboards have green blooms on them – sustained, I have to assume, by the humidity alone.

I think three paragraphs is good for vacation, no? Until tomorrow then.

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family ties


Lazy Tuesday spent July 4th’ing it: grilling bulk-purchased burgers and hot dogs, walking down to the river for a front row seat to the shuttle launch, taking a dip in the 80° pool, and otherwise sitting around watching television. American to the core; I even drank a Budweiser in honor of Florida. It was cool seeing a shuttle launch, I’d forgotten how neat it is to watch. I had planned to take Keaton down to the river to watch the launch, having artistic visions of a picture with her looking skyward and the smoke trail winding upward in the background. Alas, she was down for a nap when the countdown hit four minutes and it was time to start walking.

At night we walked back down to the river (it’s just down the road here) to watch the fireworks show. Keaton slept through the entire thing, clutched close to mom’s chest in her sling. It was a great time, felt very “family” sitting there with my wife, daughter, and inlaws. The only thing that could’ve made it better would’ve been if I’d not knelt in a fire ant hill to snap some pictures of the festivities. After the finale, we headed back to the house to play around with some of those supersized sparklers, which resulted in some really cool pictures that I’ll post later.

That’s it folks, don’t much feel like writing.