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woooork…


Work before work, work at work, and work after work… woooork…

Came home for lunch feeling harried, pushed from a million different angles, tugged on all my corners. But, damn, does it make me productive. Nothing makes me buckle down quite like the fear of public humiliation. Somehow, if I’m working against a deadline, I rarely question my ability to make it – I just adapt to whatever schedule enables me to. I suppose that I’ve never really been so under the gun that I just wasn’t able to make it, so I usually just suck up the extra effort and get it done. I think this is a good quality… although it does make for some stressful cram sessions. It’s just how I work.

Keaton’s been fussy the last couple days, maybe she can sense her dad’s stress levels and is reacting in kind. Sharaun says she’s been squirmy during her meals (or, boob-suckings), and she’s been eating more frequently. Sharaun mentioned this at Keaton’s recent doctor appointment, but the doctor didn’t have much to say – “nothing abnormal,” which I believe is the baby-doctor’s catchall. Either way, it doesn’t seem to be impacting her – doctor says she’s gotten 2″ longer, her head’s gotten some percentage larger in circumference, and she’s nearly a pound heavier. All good signs which apparently put her in the 50th percentile of other babies. That’s my Keaton, middlin’ like her daddy already. This baby is my favorite new toy, I stare and stare and stare…

Work, running me – if I want to be in by 6am I need to call it a night.

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solace in the shitter


Nothing to write about today, nothing happened – I feel it appropriate to warn you that there won’t be much here today. Fingers to the bone, 6am to 5pm; feeling better for the effort but dreading getting up and doing it all over again tomorrow. I’ve decided that I’m doing 6am days this week, at least until I don’t have to anymore… which, considering next Monday is the debut of the material I’m working, will likely be every single day. Thing is, I don’t even present the material next Monday… in fact, I don’t present it until next Friday – I have the luxury of watching two folks present the thing before I even have to get up and talk to it. That, my friends, will be the biggest bonus – will make things much easier. The only snag in this plan is that the person debuting the presentation Monday isn’t as well-versed in the material as I am, and a good portion of the questions will likely end up being deflected onto me. Even still, I won’t be the one up in front when the tomatoes are loosed – at least not at first.

Sometimes, when this baby cries, I just smile. I’ll pull her little face close and feel her warm breath on my cheek. I don’t know why, but just hearing her “voice” makes me smile. I interpret little gurgles or blurps in her cries as attempted communication: “Dad, my diaper’s wet.” “Dad, I’m tired but I can’t get comfortable.” “Dad, please bounce me, I’m only happy when my head jiggles like jello.” “Dad, where’s your boob?” Sure, I’ll try to console her, sometimes after smiling down at her for a minute or two… but, those screams can pierce at times. The swing’s usually a good bet, if not that then I’ll take her into the bathroom and turn on the exhaust fan. Closed in the tight space with the lights out, the whir of the fan motor reverberates and fills the room with loud white noise – works like a charm. Must look funny, me standing with baby in arm in a dark toilet, exhaust fan humming above.

You guys know what it’s like to write every night (hint: you have to press the “play” button; context here)? I had a friend (and reader) mention once, in jest, of course, that they feel personally affronted when I don’t write. I know it’s a joke, but there is some sense of responsibility that’s been associated with the whole thing. I have no idea how many folks visit the page “daily,” or at some other regular interval – but I like to think I write for them. Those that log on and read every week or so, sure, I write for you too – but I wouldn’t bang out an entry every evening on schedule if I didn’t think someone was wanting new content on a daily basis. I like to write funny stuff, or interesting stuff, but sometimes I just write boring stuff: stuff to make paragraphs and fill boxes. Tonight is one of those nights.

All of my entries are pretentious and self-serving, aren’t they? Sucks. I have to go to bed now, I want more sleep than last night. Until tomorrow, friends.

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all the better to see you with


Sunday afternoon and I’m done mowing both lawns before wunderground.com tells me the approaching clouds plan to loose their loads. Mowing with haste under the threat of grey skies makes a man sweat, warrants a shower before he heats up some leftover fajitas for lunch.

Anyway, I’ve decided that I’m gonna wake up and head into work early tomorrow, give myself a couple “bonus” hours on the day. I don’t like to do this, but the week ahead dictates it I’m afraid. I’d planned on working some tonight, getting that head start, but I have fundamental thing against using my weekend to do work. I know, if my issue is with work cutting into “my time,” the weekend or pre-8am are the same. I don’t think it’s that though, it’s more: work for five days, rest for two. Don’t work on those two, just don’t. So it ends up being that I don’t mind pulling longer hours during the “work week,” as long as I can sufficiently atrophy over the weekend.

Folks, I’ve decided what I’m going to do with the loot I’ll get from selling off my CDs (a shoddy, never-finished, out-of-date and incorrect webpage explaining this can be found here). Yup, that $1300 was calling all kinds of things out to me: HDTV, Keaton’s college education, downpayment on a new vehicle, etc. But, while showering Saturday morning it hit me: I’m going to use the money to get Lasik surgery. Last time I went to the optometrist, he casually mentioned that I’d be a great candidate for the newest Lasik procedure (apparently even less invasive, or something), and that piqued my interest. Plus, it seems that, within the past year, my eyes have grown less and less tolerant of contact lenses – I used to not even know they were in, and now I can’t stand them after ~12hrs.

Anyway, ever since the idea graced my brain, it’s been all I can think of. The thought of camping or hiking or going to a concert and not having my contacts dry out and bug me, not having to deal with my eyes tiring of them each evening – I’m so pumped. I think my vision plan will actually match a certain percentage up to an amount, and I plan on checking into it tomorrow (today, as you read this). I’m actually really excited, and would do this before I left for Germany if there was any way to… but I doubt it. As it is now, I really am going to try and get something scheduled as soon as I get back – this bug has really bitten me. I keep thinking how awesome it’ll be to be able to wake up and see again, no more worrying about fumbling for my glasses when that burglar breaks in before I can aim my gun and cap him.

This weekend, I set out to make my mp3 collection all the better. By normalizing the volume not just of individual files, but all my files relative to each other. Most MP3 normalizers just adjust individual mp3s to a peak level within each file, but not necessarily relative to other files in that album, or other files from other albums. This used to confuse the crap out of me, I’d normalize my files to 89dB thinking now I wouldn’t have to adjust the volume on the iPod when switching from the Moody Blues to Nine Inch Nails… but t wouldn’t work like I wanted it to – the Moody Blues were still half a spin of the knob quieter than Trent. Then, this weekend, I discovered the open-source MP3Gain, which allows you to normalize all your albums to an average 89dB while preserving each file’s relative album volume (i.e. it doesn’t just “amp” all the songs on an album to a certain volume). This little program is awesome, and it’s volume adjustments are not only lossless, they’re completely undo-able should they break something (MP3Gain stores some undo info in the mp3 tag itself). I also used Zortam to auto-import album cover art from Amazon for my entire collection. Took all weekend, but now I just have to completely empty the iPod and repopulate it with the volume-corrected albums… bummer, but worth it.

It’s nearing the end now, running out of steam. Let’s finish this off with a random bit I wrote Saturday.

I thought the local Tapei newpaper’s April Fool’s joke was pretty good. They pretended to “out” a top-secret government weapons program based on betel nut spit, or Operation Bin Lang Fen Nu. I’ve written about betel nut before, so just the fact that I “got” the joke made it funny for me. The device is described as “an aerosol-dispersal device to shower enemy positions with red betel-nut juice, leaving enemy personnel feeling slightly ill, while possessing them with an uncontrollable desire to sing at a KTV.”

Goodnight.

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wouldn’t trade the memories


Not much today, an update to Keaton’s gallery, in which I tickled myself by creating this short video out of some random footage I shot. After that, I didn’t have all that much, I’m afraid.

Umm… how do I usually start these things… Oh yeah…

Thursday night, glass of wine in hand as I watch a TiVo’d episode of the Simpsons. Got a lot done at work today, booked all the travel I mentioned the other day. What started as a three day trip to Germany morphed into a full week. Not excited to be away Keaton and Sharaun, but kinda excited because I’ll be there with a couple close buds from work… and have some free time to boot. First time to Europe for me, so that’s another tick in the “pros” column.

You were three years my junior, but I still wanted you. Now, I’d consider you out of my league: younger, attractive, voted homecoming queen of your Baptist highschool; but back then, I had drive, game. I had a girlfriend who I’d cheated on already, and didn’t want to do it again. When I realized I’d made up my mind to pursue you, I ended it with her. I told you, and you were surprised – but I could see the knowing in your questioning smile. In a blink, we were walking a wooden boardwalk at the beach. I lifted you up to sit on the railing, and we whiled away an hour while my shorts strained. After work, we drove to the river’s edge, where we kissed in the darkness. You always wore the bras that hooked in front. I felt guilty when we were in my room, thought you wore those fancy ruffled panties to impress me, it made me feel exploitive. But the soft crop of your hair against my chin veiled my guilty conscience. In my journal dated 8/10/96, I wrote this embarrassing poem about you:

Wandering through plush lust
On the carpet blue is you
Let that skirt drag dirt
I won’t watch your crotch
I’m a good boy
I’m a young man
I’m mature enough to take a stand
Let my head roll takes toll
See your eyes feel highs
Laugh please then freeze
The face you make I’ll take
I’m an old toy
I’m your left hand
I wish things went the way I planned

And then one day I found myself walking with you on a busy downtown street, holding the hand attached to the end of your swinging arm attached to your shoulder attached to your neck attached to your face, split wide by a broad smile. To you, this was a relationship; to me, it was fun. And all at once I felt pitiful, sorry, homesick: you were not my girlfriend. I gave up my girlfriend for a few weeks with you, and as exciting as it was to have you in my bed, you were a poor substitute. So, I turned on you, left you no sooner than I’d snared you, used you. I was angry with myself, felt cheap. I hated facing you each day at work, pretending nothing happened. I’d see your face and be taken back to my room, remembering you smile coyly down on me; see your hips as you turned your back to me, wordless, and remember the feeling of them pushing against my face. I am sorry Liz, I really am; I was a ponytailed punk, you were a homecoming queen – and I’m sorry. But, I wouldn’t trade the memories.

Enough of this filth… again…

Really debating including that “poem,” actually I hate this whole entry. Just go look at Keaton’s pictures, OK? Goodnight.

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invested


I love my blog; I really do. Sometimes, I just point Firefox towards it at random times during the day. I’ll re-read my own posts maybe three times during each given workday. Sometimes I do it under the guise of “looking for errors,” but really I just like reading my own stuff – I’m that full of myself. Every night, I check the day’s blog stats: who visited, how long they stayed, what they’re reading and searching for; I eat it up. During the day, I’ll take quick notes on my cellphone, things I want to write about (yesterday my cellphone chirped at 6pm, flashing a cryptic two-word reminder: “island sex”). I like to imagine people reading it and smiling or laughing, I like to imagine the little green s|f icon sitting in peoples’ favorites. I like to imagine people thinking, “I wonder what Dave wrote today.” I like all these things because I’m arrogant, conceited, and self-centered – traits which I think a good portion of bloggers likely share (blogs are for an audience, after all). I don’t care though, I still love my blog – and see no end to it, even as we march onward towards three years together.

This weekend, I sent off a note to an online used CD store. In it, I included a text list of all the titles I’ve ripped and verified from my extensive collection – and asked what kind of price they’d give me for the lot of ’em (some ~500 discs). Their original offer came in a tad low, so I countered and raised by about ~$400. In the end, it looks like I’ll be lucky to make ~$3 per CD upon selling them. Surprisingly, this doesn’t disappoint me that much… I mean, I’m done with these plastic things, they’ve served me well, and certainly given me $15 worth of entertainment over the years – if I can get 20% resale on them after all this time and use, who am I to balk at it? So, in the end, I’ll be dumping nearly half my collection (the other half being mostly Beatles, bootlegs, or CD-R copies of albums I accumulated via online trading) for roughly ~$1500. That’s a $1500 windfall, as far as I’m concerned. Plus, I get rid of ~100lbs of plastic and paper and can sell my specialized CD racks on Craigslist. All in the spirit of simplifying, well that and a corrupt “make a copy and then sell it” sense of capitalism.

Don’t tell anyone, but I bet I got at least 100 of those CDs by scamming the Columbia House and BMG music clubs. Back in middle/high school, I’d join up each service multiple times, under multiple pseudonyms with fake variation addresses of my folks’ house (y’know, Ian Ichamore in “suite B” and the like). I must’ve been a member of each club four or five times over, sometimes maintaining several memberships simultaneously, each one garnering my 12 free CDs. But Dave, what about the commitments you had to fulfill to get out of the club? How could you keep getting the free discs without buying anything? Easy, I had a few standard excuse letters that worked brilliantly each time. My favorite was the, “I’m in the US Navy and am spending the next 16mos aboard a carrier in the Pacific.” I also used the, “I’m in the Army and have been relocated to Japan/Germany/South Africa” bit – but usually my excuses involved compulsory military service – so as to lay on the guilt should I not be absolved of my commitments. Worked like a charm every time. (Dang! I thought I already wrote about this!)

Like the day I discovered I’d been spelling the word “won’t” wrong for my entire life, yesterday I realized that, in my some 30 years of writing, I’ve been using the word “desert” to mean both an arid, dry/hot area of land, and a sweet post-meal confection. Somewhere along the lines, the lesson about there being two Ses in “dessert” missed me. As of tonight, I’ve gone back through the entire blog and rid myself of this embarrassing faux-pas. Isn’t my face red.

Goodnight my friends.

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on the island, all bets are off


Keaton’s in her swing, wrapped loosely in a pink blanket that defines soft, watching the mobile spin above her head while hiccuping. Sharaun ran out to do some errands and I happily traded the babble of the TV for silence and some time to write. I’m kicked back on the couch in shorts and my house slippers, thinking about how I’ll do the dishes from dinner just a little later. Tuesday night, home from a busy day at work around 6pm – had to stay late to finish “just a couple” things before heading home. Every day at work I have just enough “just a couple” things to do before I leave to keep me around until morning the next day, you just have to draw the line somewhere and cash out. I’m pretty good at drawing that line in the sand and sticking to it, and more often than not it’s right around 5pm. What am I talking about?

It’s Springtime, and my backyard is a verdant bloom of weeds again, the unending rain helping them take root in otherwise non-ideal places. They blanket the unplanted hillsides that flank my house left and rear, growing in the damp mulch. They crowd the Japanese maple, blocking out the little plot of dirt I’ve been intending to plant pretty flowers in. They have taken over, and I hate them. My only solace is in the knowledge that the summer swelter will scorch their little leaves and stems; dry up the milky sap that is their lifeblood, and leave them as brittle, crumbling shells of their former thriving selves. I hate weeds.

I have this daydream thing I sometimes do, where I sometimes dream about getting stranded on a desert island (yes, I know I’ve done the island thing over and over and over, but this one’s different). It takes me as I am now, and puts me washed up on some desolate beach far away – only I’m not alone. I’m with a woman, one that’s not my wife. The fantasy really doesn’t do much else, it’s more of a setup for the line of questions that follow. I always wonder, if I were to find myself in this situation, how would my new island life with this person unfold? I’m assuming, of course, that I am a skilled enough survivalist to provide us with food and shelter and keep us alive, and we’d have each other’s company as a ward against insanity. With all the basics of life taken care of, you’re now left with an island existence, both of you living out your days together. It’s there that my mind begins to work, to twist and turn…

At some point, this woman and you would do it, right? I mean, you’re on an island, there’s nothing but the trees and waves and coconuts to eat… It may be slow in coming: you first erect a small lean-to for shelter, later you further the bond between you by perhaps bringing her a fresh-caught fish or starting a fire with a stick. She begins to trust you, depend on you even. In my daydreams, this woman is nearly always someone I know, a friend of mine or Sharaun’s. It’s all the better if, in real life, you could never imagine yourself having a relationship with the person. But, on the island, with just the crabs and gulls and wind in the palms, all bets are off. It may start as a simple compliment – how becoming her new grass skirt is; how the berries make her hair smell good. Yes, that’s where it may start, friends, but it’s not where it ends – only the island knows where it ends.

Soon, as the reality of life on the island sets in, urges turn less survivalist and more animal. Glances are cast, body language broadcast: it’s about to be on. Then, one day (yes, it’s the bright of day – that’s the awesome thing about stranded-on-a-desert-island sex, there’s no one there to be bridled for… in fact, you can be as unbridled as you want on the island), the impossible happens: humping. Oh yes, there’s no question that the time on the island would lead to doin’ it; all desert-island roads lead to fornication – I’m convinced. The bond that the island can form is a unique one, and the island can get even the loneliest of men laid… provided they can build a fire and clean a fish. You’re Screech Powers and find yourself washed waywardly ashore alongside the fetching Kelly Kapowski? No worries my friend, the thick impenetrable layers of highschool social strata do not exist here on the island. Here, you are as boneable as AC Slater. All God’s children got game on the island.

Uh-huh, I’m aware that this is nothing more than a complex construct to daydream about humping unattainable women whom I know – and I’m OK with that because it’s not as direct as simply dreaming about an affair. At least my sex-fantasies are set in impossible situations and only happen after hard-won demonstrations of manhood and survivor/provider instinct. Only if all men had to jump through such a set of pre-daydream-sex hoops – maybe there’d be less indiscriminate humping. Sharaun’s pretty much guaranteed a faithful husband unless a friend of hers and I happen to land ourselves in the remote South Pacific… and even then I have to keep us both alive long enough for the island to make her want me. Those are pretty good odds, if you ask me.

Where that all came from, I have no idea. Goodnight.

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nap in a hammock


I can feel the weather starting to turn: a little warmer with each day, trudging slowly through Spring on our way to what’s sure to be another sweltering Northern California Summer. Every time I go outside in the evening to take out the trash, or, recycling, if you’re more eco-sensitive, I get a little more anxious for my first Summer with a backyard. Oh, and I’ve got plans; I’ve got hammocks to string up and benches to build, foliage and flowers and groundcover to plant, and garden-boxes to build and seed. I want strawberries and maybe corn and tomatoes and fresh herbs; maybe cucumbers and squash or maybe even a watermelon or two. I want summer naps in the hammock, beer in-hand while the iPod shuffles my favorite songs over the speakers and the sun shines. Am I dreaming? I can have this, right?

While reassembling my PC after dropping in my new RAID array, I took the time to throw in a friend-donated PCI card to parallel port (so I can use my trusty laser printer, which has been sitting idle since I upgraded to a legacy-free PC), and I took a chance and re-hooked up my old DVD burner which I disconnected long ago when thought it failed. Turned out, the drive is fine – and I’m back to having a decent speed DVD burner again. Not only that, I removed a PCI Firewire card that I never use, as well as the swappable drive bay hard drive caddy thing that I also never use. Stripped down and back to health, the machine is running like a champ again. Not only that, but the PATA drives that make up my new RAID5 array seem to run much, much cooler than the SATA drives of my old RAID0+1. Don’t know why, but I do know it’s better for the drives and everything in that case. Sorry for the nerd talk, I write what I do.

Travel coming up for work, taking me away from Keaton for the first time. I’ll be doing a US tour in early April: Texas, South Carolina, and Colorado. Then I’m off for a few days in Germany later in April, I think four or five once all is said and done. My first time in Germany, or Europe, for that matter – I’m pretty excited, but leery leaving Sharaun alone with the baby. I know she can take care of herself, I just feel bad taking off and romping ’round the world while she stays home and does the mom thing. I’m also a little worried about the material I’ll be presenting, as, for the first time in a looong time, I’m not the one developing it. Presenting something you created is one thing, but presenting something borne of someone else’s mind and organizational/content-flow preferences is another thing altogether. I just want to make sure I have time to get comfortable with the stuff before I’m up in front of a group of Germans parroting it. Germany!

I guess it’s time to go to bed, I’m not doing any good here anyway. Goodnight.