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bank error in your favor


I’ve been writing and rewriting the topic-major of this entry over the past two days, and I realized it’s as good as it’s going to get. I wanted to convey more, but I couldn’t seem to get the words right… or maybe I don’t have the spirit or attention span to make it happen. Here goes anyway.

We’ll be taking Keaton on her first camping trip this weekend, hoping to infuse her with a love of the modern version of outdoor life. We’ll be packing it in and heading to the coast for a short overnight sleepover in the tent. We’re heading down with a close knot of folks we run with on a regular basis, including those ones with the twins (important, as we’ll not be the only folks with babies on the trip – potential relief from that “baby’s gonna ruin it” apprehension). Sharaun went out and bought a little bug-net cover thing for Keaton’s stroller, and got her some baby sunblock and a cute floppy camping hat. If we can pull it off without all three babies protesting the entire time, it stands to be an awesome adventure – I’ll let ya know how it goes.

The comments on my powderkeg entry this week really pleased me, especially the one from my own mom. I don’t know when I officially became a “grown up.” Maybe it was when I got my first job, or moved out of the house, or bagged my first vagina; maybe it was when I stopped smoking weed, or asked Sharaun to marry me; maybe when I bought a house or started my career – who knows. What I do know, though, is that, with the arrival of Keaton, I feel like I have passed that milestone for sure now. Regardless of how drawn-out and blurry the transition period may have been, I’m now comfortable saying I’m on the other side of it – crossed over. And, along with “adulthood” comes this feeling of wisdom-gained, not to mention shame of things done prior to the metamorphosis. My mom’s comment brought to mind one moment in time I remember from my youth that’s always given me that sense of shame, only more acutely now – now that I have my own child and am beginning to realize just how kids can effect parents. Read on…

I don’t remember how old I was but I’m guessing under 10. I do remember it was my family: mom, dad, me, and my brother all spending a week or weekend or whatever with my mom’s folks up at a cabin on a lake we frequented. I loved that place, they had those plastic paddle-wheel big-tired tricycle-looking contraptions you could take around the lake and a rustic hunting-lodge-esque building overlooking the lake where you could get three meals a day. The cabins were surely rentals, and were small if I remember, but nice. My story takes place with the entire family playing a game of Monopoly on a picnic table outside the cabin one evening. Multicolored money splayed across the table and little green and red plastic houses and hotels cluttering the gameboard – we were deep in the throes of a game and, I, I was losing. It was time to start mortgaging properties, and anyone who knows Monopoly knows that’s a player’s last raspy breaths before death.

Valuable information about me as kid you’ll need before proceeding: When I was a kid, I was a manipulative brat. I had well-formed methods by which I attempted to get my way, mainly through emotional plays and tantrums. These weren’t things which I did subconsciously, but things I’d thought through on a very conscious level, best-known-methods which I’d honed over time for maximum results. Despite how calculating and “grown up” this might sound, it was really nothing more than a bratty, stubborn kid trying cheap tactics to get his way – and breaking down into plain fits when they didn’t work. And folks, that was my endgame strategy – if I wasn’t getting my way, I’d scream, cry, kick, punch walls… whatever it took. I know all kids do this to some extent, but I’m pretty sure I was different, somehow more “extreme.” So much so that I remember my folks taking me to a “family therapist” about it, although my memories of our “sessions” are mostly of me sitting around trying to make the perfect paper airplane. But, that’s another story altogether… and you’re now properly setup for me to continue.

So here I am, something of eight or ten years, losing badly at Monopoly and not wanting to mortgage Mediterranean Ave. to stay afloat. So, I lost it; went completely berserk. I don’t remember all the details, just remember putting all I had into the effort. I’m not sure what my intended results were: the family declaring me winner by default, the banker cutting me a break and slipping me some yellow $100 bills under the table… I don’t know. I do remember, however, that the situation was such that I realized I mustn’t back down from the tantrum – in order to maintain the strategic advantage I perceived I’d built with such fits. So, I escalated, and things got out of hand. Now, the part that brings me shame, the one thing that sticks in my mind and makes me shy away from the memory… is something I overheard my grandmother say to my mom after we were all back in the cabin and things had died down:

“You don’t have control over that boy,” she said to my mom, “What are you doing with him that he thinks he can act like that?” Sure, I’m paraphrasing – but the gist was that I had caused my mother’s mother to question her child’s parenting skills. Even then, young as I was, I knew that must be a crushing blow. Now, as a self-conscious new parent – I can’t imagine how devastating it would be to hear my own mom question how I was raising my daughter.

Sorry mom (and dad), I didn’t really mean it…

Posted on

pure evil


Can you guys actually believe I write on this dang thing like pretty much every day? Sometimes I can’t believe it. You know, it does take time, however easy my consistency may make it look (or, however easy my lack of substance and poor writing may make it look – two sides to every coin). Every day I get a complete entry together I surprise myself. Some days are easier than others, some days I just skip straight up because it’s not in me, and some days I publish something short and off-the-cuff thinking it’s just a notch on the blog bedpost – and it ends up being something I’m really happy with upon reflection.

Browsing my blog stats the other day, I noticed a strange, seemingly inexplicable spike in which entry is the “most read” on the year. Surprisingly, the satanic flier has been sounds familiar’s most popular entry this year, being read a “whopping” 432 times since March (when I reinstalled my stats tracking). Digging deeper, it’s interesting (to me, at least) that that same entry has topped the “daily” most-read stats for an entire month now – being consistently read by visitors between 10 and 15 times each day in April. Odd, right? I did some searching, and turns out the flier is a page-one return for a Google image search on the word “satanic.” Just what I want to be famous for.

I know I’m waaay late to the “Colbert lays into Bush at the White House correspondents dinner” party, but these videos are just too good not to share. So, for those of you who somehow missed the tsunami of internet attention this thing generated this week – here are the videos (the more user-friendly YouTube versions were removed late last night due to “copyright” issues, so I have to just use plain old links to some other website). Watch the 1st part here, and the 2nd part here. Or, if you’d rather, download the entire thing as a Windows Media file here (clocking in at around ~20min).

Made two appointments for Lasik evaluations in the next couple weeks, can’t wear the contacts prior to the consultation – which means glasses only for couple weeks. I’m so dang excited, and the ballpark prices I got over the phone fall right in line with the money received from my CD dump. Eyes! Eyes that can see!

I’ve got nothing… goodnight.

Posted on

toting around a powder keg


Luckily, my customer meeting in the bay ended early enough that I was able to catch an earlier flight home – putting me on the ground and at home with enough daylight left to mow the jungle we call our lawn. Blissfully isolated from the cacophony by virtue of my new headphones, I trudged around in the so-tall-it’s-seeding green stuff, stopping every minute and a half to empty the dang bag. It’s high time I got a new mower… it could make the job so much easier.

Before having a baby, I never realized how self-conscious parents can be. Having one myself now, I can tell you that, for me, at least, toting around my powder keg of a daughter can, at times, be very nerve-wracking. The minute she tears off into a crying fit with people around, I immediately feel eyes on me. Some people, likely parents themselves, flash knowing smiles – but in my over-thinking head those same smiles come with hinted undertones and accusations: why can’t you quiet your baby, why’s your baby always upset, are you not a good parent? I know most of these fears are likely unfounded, but I have them nonetheless. I can actually understand why new parents often end up cloistering themselves with other new parents, as they likely feel none of these “all eyes on me” fears when in similarly self conscious company. May sound odd, but I bet I’m not the only one to have felt this way… am I?

No more writey, sleepy.

Posted on

hey! all i have to type is ‘y’

Monday, and a hectic one at that. One of those stupid-busy days where you get a invitation at 8am to a 2hr meeting that starts at 8:30am – and every usable minute of time until 5pm is otherwise booked. A frustrating day where you can barely run one task to completion before getting derailed onto something else. And now I have only an early wakeup and flight to the Bay to look forward to… not much in the way of comfort. OK… OK… get ready for some boring crap, you can glaze right over if you don’t care about music and MP3s and whatnot, but you’re not gonna get much otherwise.

As I sat thinking this past Sunday night about my recent CD offload, my mind drifted back to the amount of work that’s stiff unfinished in my CD ripping project. Thus far, I’ve converted nearly 600 CDs to MP3 format, subsequently selling off the now “redundant” physical discs. However, I’ve got that many over again, slightly more actually, left to rip – consisting entirely of bootlegs (the majority being Beatles bootlegs). I chose to rip commercial CDs first because they are commonly available and their information can be located online, merged into most CD-ripping programs, and auto-added to the resultant MP3 files’ ID3 tags. This automated tagging process is great. Bootlegs, however, are by nature unauthorized recordings and therefore not commonly available – and they just don’t auto-tag nicely via CDDB or any other large online database. This leaves he who desires to rip his bootlegs to manually add ID3 tags to his bootlegs – a grueling, arduous process to which I was not looking forward. However, back to my Sunday night thinking…

I started thinking how great it would be if I could auto-import ID3 tag info from the great bootlegzone.com website. Bootlegzone contains album details for nearly every Beatles CD in existence, bootleg or not, as well many other artists. Too bad common MP3 tagging softwares can’t parse that database and grab information… or can they? The Godfather, a completely freeware MP3 tagging application, supports Delphi script add-ons which can be used to parse webpages and import information over already-ripped albums. Could I write a Godfather add-on that could parse bootlegzone.com pages and import the data onto ripped bootlegs? You bet I could, and did. Four hours of tinkering later, and I had a script that reads in bootlegzone.com pages and imports album title, artist, song titles, year, label, and even album artwork in JPG form. You have no idea how much time this will save me. Now I can just give a disc a placeholder title (for later ID) when I rip it, and run the resulting folder through the Godfather/bootlegzone script as post-processing – and all my files are tagged instantly. Sure beats entering song titles and information one-by-one off the back of the CD.

If you’re interested in my Godfather script to read in MP3 information from bootlegzone.com, you can always get the latest version by clicking this link. Note: Before you use this script, please read the 11/11/06 update below and make sure you grab the “automate.scl” file that solves a potential Windows-related filenaming problem.

A general update history for the script is as follows:

  • 5/2/06, Script complete; grabs artwork, track number, track name, album name, artist name, comments, year, and label information from bootlegzone.com disc pages.
  • 5/3/06, Fixed the script to remove the trailing periods after track numbers, tracks now tag-up in the preferred ‘0x’ format. 5/3/06, Fixed an issue where not all tracks were being grabbed (ambiguous string compare), and added some extra error handling to track string ops.
  • 5/4/06, Added “intelligent” support for ‘various artists’ albums. Script will compare album artist to each track artist, and determine if the album is of the ‘various artists’ type. If so, tracks will be named accordingly (i.e. artist_name – track_name).
  • 5/9/06, Fixed a bug in “intelligent” support for ‘various artists’ albums where a track could be skipped if no track artist was specified.
  • 5/14/06, Added support for medley-type tracks (track titles which are simply placeholders for multiple sub-titles). Track grabbing now comprehends sub-tracks of a single track, and combines them into a single track name string. Looking at adding a switch to turn this and the various artists feature off, in case that’s desired.
  • 5/23/06, Added a bit of code to strip underscores from track titles (bootlegzone’s automated entry system relies on underscores, but they do ugly things to TGF’s tag/file case matrix).
  • 11/11/06, Discovered and interesting issue with the script. If you use the bootlegzone.com grabbed ID3 info to rename the corresponding file under Windows, and the combination of the number of characters in the filename and its containing folder are greater than 256 (for NTFS filesystem) – you’ll get a completely unusable file. It’ll rename itself to be longer than 256, and then you won’t be able to rename or delete it. I fixed this bug by changing the “automate.scl” script that I run on the “post processing” after scraping the tag info from bootlegzone. So, here’s the important bit: If you’re going to be renaming files as well as ID3 tags – make sure and use the modified “automate.scl” to avoid the >256 character filename issue. You can download my modified “automate.scl” by clicking this link.
  • 03/12/07, Sadly, www.bootlegzone.com is dead. Unfortunately, all my work is now for naught. I hope that you got some use of the script while the great site that was bootlegzone was around. Thanks for the good years, tilleul.
  • 04/14/07, Bootlegzone has risen from the ashes, and my script is once again useful. Enjoy.
  • 06/01/07, Just a little helpful hint for basic Godfather configuration. I like to name my files with a “track# tracktitle” formatting – no dash, no artist name, no album name. Whatever your preference for filename (we’re not talking ID3 info here), I encourage you to incorporate the track number. This way, you’ll avoid “unable to rename file” errors when an album may contain two ore more versions of the same song (especially common with bootlegs). You can set your renaming mask preference in the “Use Variables” entry-box under The Godfather’s “Rename” tab. I know The Godfather can be overwhelming at first, but this should help avoid confusing errors.
  • 11/25/07, The script now grabs two additional pieces of BootlegZone track information: the “version” and “sub-version” strings (when available). This is a nice improvement, as you’ll get detailed information about the tracks, such as take-number, live venue, etc., embedded in the ID3 tag and filename. The version/sub-version information is appended to the track title string in parentheses. An example of the improved information this addition provides would be as illustrated below:

Previous naming scheme:

01 I Am The Walrus
02 I Am The Walrus

New naming scheme, with version/sub-version data included:
01 I Am The Walrus (Take 2, Overdub)
02 I Am The Walrus (TV, David Frost Show)

Grab the latest version from the link above to get these changes.

  • 06/17/08, Fixed a small bug in the medley track naming routine for the case when there are more than 10 sub-tracks in the medley.  Also refined the naming scheme to account for some bootlegzone medley naming irregularities.

Enjoy it!  Goodnight.

Posted on

and thus was slain the king of the weeds

Sunday
Great weekend. Took advantage of Saturday as a “comedown” day from the Germany trip – not that I truly needed it. Laid around the house and did nothing of significance. Well, I guess I did some stuff, just not significant stuff:

1) I uploaded some more pictures from the Germany trip – including snaps from the beer festival and our visit to Dachau concentration camp (the new pictures begin here, if you want to skip the older ones). Pat also posted his pictures, which are essentially the “raw” set from which I drew mine (we shared his camera), but with nicer captions. What a great trip, ranks up there as one of the best “working” trips I’ve had in a long while.

2) I redesigned the pharaohweb.com splash page, removing my music pages from the links (a bittersweet thing for me) and replacing it with the “media” page. I wanted to do another imagemap with rollovers, since I loved that cloudy/sunny thing I had before – but I think I may have been too ambitious, if I hate it too much I’ll take it down.

3) I spent a good deal of time working on a completely new layout for sounds familiar (one with fancy web 2.0 rounded corners). The stylesheet looks good, but there’s a few more finishing touches I have to make before it’s ready to go live. Occasionally, over the course of the week, you may get sneak previews as I work. But, don’t get too excited, it’s still going to be two-column and green.

4) I booked our two upcoming vacations to Oregon and Florida, so Keaton can meet her grandparents, extended family, and friends. With the miles earned a day earlier on my return flight from Germany, I had enough to comp the two tickets to Florida, and I combined a work-visit to Oregon for me with tickets for Sharaun to get that one on the cheap too. All told, ended up spending about ~$250 for both vacations.. not bad at all.

Yeah, Saturday wasn’t a total bust I suppose. Sunday, after we’d paid our respects to a jealous and avenging God, a God that takes vengeance and is filled with wrath, I decided to exact my own vengeance and wrath on the weeds in our backyard. Now, sometimes when I do things like pull weeds, kill bugs, mow the grass – anything that, to me, happens at a level I’m safely above – I like to pretend I’m a supreme being, lording over those who are unfortunate enough to be down at the level where my actions cause chaos. The ladybugs rent to pieces in the blades of my massive death machine; the green caterpillars left without their weed-foodsource lifeblood; the wasps kicking and seizing as my poison attacks their nervous system…

Whoa, let’s rope this back to the stuff about weeding. Anyway, here’s the proof – I’ve slain the weed kings and their court:

... and thus was slain the the king of the weeds ...

Tuesday this week (tomorrow, as you read this) I’m off on a quick jaunt over to Silicon Valley, doing the customer tour again. Not an overnighter, thankfully, but a long day with two flights, a rental car, and a presentation. Next week, I hit the skies again – with Pat again, no less – North Carolina on Wednesday, Oregon Thursday through Sunday. Sharaun and Keaton will meet me in Oregon Wednesday night, after Keaton’s first flight – a thing which Sharaun, unfortunately, has to do solo. I wish I could be there to lend a hand, but at least we’ll get to fly back together. I can’t wait until Keaton gets to meet her yet-unmet grandfathers – I want to see their reactions.

Before I go, I thought I’d drop this link that my dad sent me, as it’s pretty rich: Christians Against Hip Hop (possibly not safe for work). Good stuff.

Goodnight folks.

Posted on

fo rth e skae of th bolg


Beeeeerrrrppp Pfestttivaaal!!! Tlonighjt my went ot the beer ffestiveal in Germany!!! Oh people, I had such a grea time in the beer festivea;. IUt really was aewesome to tbe bone. Yoiu gon’e take to me about nthe beer festiveal, becauese it was something so good.. that ytou woudl have to be their to be able to talk to me abiut it. Right’ now i’ts in the AM time in Gernamay and I just got balc from the festivitues. Pat and i dtanlk a lot of enbeers and had a realy,. tood time. Now i”ve somc home to the hotel and I am ready to go to ebd… but I wanted to post a Dridat enry before I did. So, here is what I wil post – some was weritten before the beer festival, some was bwtiiten after the berr fersive. Enogu.

Since I like to be honest with those of you who donate precious minutes of your time reading this page, I’ll tell you straight-off that this is only Friday’s entry because of WordPress’s ability to schedule entries. I actually just pressed “publish” on Thursday’s entry – which won’t go live until 2pm PST on US Thursday, and immediately began drafting this entry for a midnight Friday auto-post. Not a bad way to blog an entire week in a condensed way. I’m sitting now in Pat’s hotel room (I don’t like to link Pat’s name to his site, ’cause it has my last name on it and I strive to keep that off the web – hey Pat, fix that), which is infinitely bigger than mine, listening to some Built to Spill on the iPod and contemplating taking a dump here instead of going to my own accommodations – his room has a bidet. It’s still Thursday morning in Germany as I write, and my belly is still pretty full from breakfast. We plan to head down the cobblestone street for a lunch outdoors, accompanied, of course, by some beer – y’know, to prep us for the 3pm customer meeting… get our minds nice and limber and whatnot.

Tomorrow we leave, but not until something like 4pm, which puts us in San Francisco around 6pm – a mere two hours later. Since we have most of the day free, we’re planning to stop over for a tour of Dachau, which I’m sure will be a sobering experience.

If you couldnt/ tell, those tw apragraphs were rtinne berfore the beer frestival – and this paragraph and the opener were wtrittn after the beer festival. The beer feasstialv was sooo awesome. Pat and I had soe much berr, that we ceased to know how mhch eer we actualle had – and ckept treindking beer depstitea out ob vious frunkeness. I want you to know that this entry was a bithc to sprrell-chjeck cbaezues I prupsoely left the drunbken fat-finerge erros intact for comedic reason.s I trulyu hope ytou enjoyed my writings from ermane. It’s like 1ma here nand Pat just called me from his hotel room (rone foloor benath me) to tel me he was “fdrunk.” CNo craop Pat, we’re both frunk…. we were, after all, at the same beer fieagvl. Until the USA poeople, I love you … please forive me.

Thhis is no koek… I really am stpyting this wayu b ecuae os the b eer. The beer has done nast y thing to my coordingaton… my finger are not doing waht my brain is telling themt o di… althog I will akdmote that I’;m playing it uup (jsut a little) fo rth e skae of th bolg.

O(MFG this new Sufjan dong is carrygin me through Germanbu… one sogn can make an entire trip… this song is sooo good.

I love tou all and I miss you alll… going to bed now.. Dave is… ooooooooooooooooty.

Posted on

all mod cons


Y’know, were I in the US and staying in this hotel room, I’d likely be complaining about it. It’s small, cramped, and very European-feeling to me. A tiny cot-like single bed, a shower like a vertical glass coffin, and nowhere to set down my bathroom kit aside from the toilet with the lid down. To be fair though, it’s got all mod cons – and I don’t really need much more than a small cot-like bed, or a shower that can accommodate me. So, rather than complain about it, I’ll instead dub it “quaint” and say it’s “practical.” It does suck though, that you’re allowed to smoke in the rooms – as the person next to me tends to fire up around 6am each morning, filling my room with the stuff. I actually didn’t think I was going to be able to post today, but, as it turns out, Pat and I got a reprieve from going to the customer this morning – only being required attendees after 3pm. That gave me back my morning, and is the reason you’re reading this now.

Sharaun’s making a solo trip to the baby-doctor with Keaton tomorrow, time for her two-month set of shots. I’m pretty bummed that I won’t be along with her for it, and I know she wishes I could be there too. Poor little Keaton, having to get pricked. Monday, as we were walking around Munich city center, my eyes couldn’t help but wander onto the babies being pushed around in prams – wearing little pink outfits enjoying the German sun in the shade of the Glockenspiel. Made me miss that little girl of mine – and I guess it’ll only get worse as she gets older. The next few weeks are pretty full as well, mostly one and two day travel, short jaunts within the confines of the great nation of America – but time away from home all the same. Pat and I will travel again to North Carolina and Oregon in a couple weeks, and I’ll be trekking over to the bay only three days after returning from Germany. But then it’s over, no more travel for a while – one hopes, at least.

Got the final tally for my CDs from the trade-in shop today: $1185. Forty-two of the discs were deemed “unacceptable” due to scratches (less than 10% of the batch), which I pretty much expected – they were likely ones that Sharaun had borrowed, she’s like a CD shredding machine. I actually expected more, but accounting for the bum discs I feel I made out OK. I still plan on putting the money towards Lasik – which I expect I’ll start shopping around for once I return to the States. I’ve heard about some “next gen” version of the surgery – but have also heard from those with experience that it comes with “next gen” prices – so we’ll see. Despite not having written about it in a while, my excitement at the prospect hasn’t waned – I’m still completely up for the whole thing. Just think, no more worries about not being able to see when I finally do get stranded on the desert island I keep talking about.

Seems like I made Thursday, now if I post Friday I may impress even myself. Until later, peace be with you, blog-people. Dave out.