Posts

Posted on

yellow photos

Minorpixels.
Evenin’ folks. Happy Thanksgiving to you all! Sorry for missing yesterday, family in town and just a general vacation malaise prevented me. Enjoy today’s simple, but done, entry.

I was thinking the other day about photos. I can remember looking through old photos of my brother and I, or even older ones of my folks when they were small. Often yellowed with age, the colors had been faded or muted by time – and the even older had no color at all, pre-personal color cameras, black and white. That got me thinking about the current state of personal photography, which can be pretty much summed up with one word: digital. In a generation or two, no more will kids look back on faded yellowed photos of their parents’ younger days. Every picture will be as pixely crisp as the day it was stored as a series of ones and zeroes.

I want to talk a little about baby gear. Sharaun and I went to the local baby superstore today to register for everything the expectant parent could dream of wanting. I was blown away by the multi-function baby gear. Nothing has a single function, everything is Swiss Army Knife style: the high-chair is a rocker in case baby dozes while eating; the Optimus Prime playpen magically changes into either a bassinet or changing table; even the cribs can extend their lives by being reassemble-able into beds. Everything is so fancy, so complicated, so extreme. They have “special edition” cribs that have been stylized by famous designers: the Gucci Edition diaper bags and Coach cribsheets are particularly fetching. I found it all pretty overwhelming, and, rather than get me excited about the coming tidal wave of baby gear, I found myself feeling materialistic, over-sold on things of questionable need and over-marketed-to.

As often happens when I feel pressured or pushed into something, my rebellion-reflex kicks in. The double-overhead shelves piled high with Diaper Genies, Table Edge Protectors, and baby video surveillance systems made me itchy; made me want to skip all the fancy crap. People didn’t have remote-controlled, transforming playpens that played nature sounds and gently vibrated while replicating the woosh of the womb back in “the old days.” (Note: I often refer to “the old days.” This is an idealistic time which exists only in my head that I imagine to be some Utopian mix of Mayberry and the time when dads used to smoke pipes after work in their study while their wives made a roast and their kids were at Scouts). People had high chairs built of wood, cribs built of wood, they changed their baby on any old flat surface rather than an EverSterile, singularly-purposed, Governing Council of Happy-Babies Approved “changing table.” People got along fine without buying straps that tie your tall furniture to the walls in case baby decided to pull them down crushingly. It made me want to go purposely simple, old-skool baby care.

I had a third paragraph, but it was the suck. Goodnight, Dave out.

Posted on

i guess you’ll need that soon

All that hard work pays.
A day spent working, not at work, but working still. Brushed sand into the paver porch as a joint stabilizer, poured some river rock on the new pad where we erected a shed the other day – Frank helped out with it all. It was good, working in the sun with my brother, smoking my pipe while we rocked an Allman Brothers show from the Fillmore that’s some thirty years old. After that I mowed the lawn and cleaned the shower – a good working Monday, none of it in a cube or in front of a monitor. Breaking a sweat outside is good, especially for the good of your own property – makes a guy feel accomplished, worth something.

Sharaun’s folks get in tomorrow (today as you read this). For the first time in five years, Sharaun’s gonna do Thanksgiving dinner here at home. We’re serving six: her folks and her little brother, and my brother as well. I’m actually excited, we’re always gone for the major holidays – so we’ve never really had the chance to “christen” our house with a good Thanksgiving meal or Christmas morning. It’ll be nice, one more step towards us being a full-fledged family; a family who stays up late on Christmas putting together Castle Greyskulls and Ewok Villiages while their children sleep. I dunno, I guess I’m somewhat obsessed with what I perceive to be our “transition” to parents, to a “family” moreso than we were before just the two of us. Frank and I were sitting in the backyard today, admiring our work, when he asked me what I planned on putting in a largish open area of grass. “I dunno,” I said, “A swingset maybe.” “A swingset,” he repeated, “Yeah, I guess you’ll need that soon, huh?” Yeah, I guess I will.

Right here, where you’re reading this, I had three different paragraphs started – and subsequently deleted. With that as my track record, and considering it’s late and I’m tired – I’m calling this match here. Blank page-1, Dave-0.

‘Nite.

Posted on

paid vacation

Put 'em in the wind.
The first person I told that Sharaun and I were having a baby was the drummer from the band Autodrone. I told him as we were in Manhattan, walking down Broadway I think… heading to Smith & Wollensky for a fat steak. It sounds more glamorous that it is. The drummer is Ben’s brother Dave, and I was in New York for work. Still, on it’s own, that first sentence sounds totally awesome.

Last Thursday night I was getting ready for bed, thinking about my vacation next week. Thinking about my India trip after that, my trip to Oregon after that, and my trip to Florida after that. Then I started thinking about my “bonding leave” after that. For the past two weeks, I’ve been agonizing over that schedule; fretting. See, I’m a little terrified. Terrified that, after being away from work for what will amount to months, I’ll become irrelevant, lose touch, fall out of respect as a contributor with an opinion that deserves to be heard. I’ve shared this fear with some, and they maintain that it’s irrational. “Not all that much changes in 6wks,” they insist (see, I’ll be “gone” twice, each time about 6wks long), “you’ll fall right back into the swing of things,” they say. And, while those assurances do lend some small comfort, my issues with earning workplace respect still gnaw at me – poking me, chiding, “They’re all gonna forget you, you’ll simply cease to be relevant.” So, I still have some hesitation, and it was in the throes of mulling that hesitation that night when I had a revelation, when I saw the flipside of the coin.

I’ll embrace the second-order effects of my very own fears – I’ll give up. I’ll trust the well-wishers, believe the re-assurers implicitly. Things will be the same. Afterall, I’m not delusional enough to think I’m in-expendable; or that the organization will fall apart in my absence, void of my wisdom and guidance. I’m not that puffy-chested. So, regardless of any lingering doubt, I’ll assume I’ll return from all this away-time as if returning to work on any Monday like today. I’ll imagine I’ll walk right in and pick up where I left off, that my time away will in no way effect my impact. This will be a forced belief, of course, as I truly think quite the opposite – but it won’t matter. Wanna know why? Because taking this approach, I get one very clear benefit – I can rest on my laurels for a bit and enjoy a very fortuitous alignment of travel, holidays, vacation, and “leave.” Who cares if I become irrelevant. I have the skills to become relevant again. So, let’s do this; bring it on – I’m ready to not care like I’ve not not cared before. And believe me, I’m the king of not caring.

Mind you, I can’t really do this… my self-confidence-centered paranoia will ensure that. I won’t let myself sabotage what I’ve strived to build up, either nature or nurture instilled me with too much common sense to just waste what makings of a career I’ve already managed. Still, it’s a nice counterpoint to salve my nervous fears, and it gives me a sort of rebellious comfort. Through some twisted thought process, becoming irrelevant by being an absentee is somehow sexy to me – a bucking of the system in some sense. Reconciled internally by me as an outward show of hubris; me hanging my nuts in the wind for the world to see. Oh yeah, sexy.

Anyone else think the only way the OC is remotely watchable these days is by fast-forwarding through the crappy grownup segments? God that show sucks, and how I used to fawn over it. Who spliced a storyline from Days of Our Lives in between the indie-rock kids drama? They should be fired.

Goodnight, I’m out.

Posted on

sometimes you just write

Add it up, add it up.
Friday y’all. Friday and I don’t have to wake up tomorrow. But now, Thursday night, it’s getting late and I have only the Lindsay Lohan and World of Warcraft paragraphs done (read on, you’ll see what I mean) – and if that’s all I can muster, you’ll never read this. I have no real original content tonight, just links and link commentary.

My new Maxim came with a free 14 day trial of WoW, and I am so tempted to install it and give it a shot. So many people I know are obsessed with it, and it does seem to be right up my alley. See, these are the things my sedentary lifestyle allows me to think over: whether or not to install a free game and invest some sitting-on-my-ass time in running around in it. I’m no gamer, but I have a feeling I could become addicted to a large fantasyish MMPORG like WoW or EverQuest. And… why I’m writing about this, I have no idea. Let’s move on then.

Found an interesting link today while doing random browsing of del.icio.us, a free online book (in PDF format) written by Scott Adams of Dilbert fame. But, this is no comic strip, just what Adams calls “… a 132-page thought experiment wrapped in a fictional story,” and recommends that, “For maximum enjoyment, share God’s Debris with a smart friend and then discuss it while enjoying a tasty beverage.” So, I figured I’ve got plenty of smart friends, and the premise of the book does sound interesting: Imagine that you meet a very old man who—you eventually realize—knows literally everything. Imagine that he explains for you the great mysteries of life—quantum physics, evolution, God, gravity, light, psychic phenomenon, and probability—in a way so simple, so novel, and so compelling that it all fits together and makes perfect sense. What does it feel like to suddenly understand everything? Compelling, no?

I’m about 40 pages into it and already it’s struck several chords with me, Divine omniscience vs. human free will, the odds of choosing the “right” religion, what exactly quantifies “belief,” etc. The narrative style reminds me a lot of Daniel Quinn’s Ishmael, actually. To temp you even more into reading, should you be the temptable type, an excerpt I particularly liked:

“Let’s say that you and I decide to travel separately to the same place. You have a map that is blue and I have a map that is green. Neither map shows all the possible routes, but both maps show an acceptable—yet different—route to the destination. If we both take our trips and return safely, we would spread the word of our successful maps to others. I would say, with complete conviction, that my green map was perfect, and I might warn people to avoid any other sort of map. You would feel the same conviction about your blue map.

“Religions are like different maps whose routes all lead to the collective good of society. Some maps take their followers over rugged terrain. Other maps have easier paths. Some of the travelers of each route will be assigned the job of being the protectors and interpreters of the map. They will teach the young to respect it and be suspicious of other maps.”

“Okay,” I said, “but who made the maps in the first place?”

“The maps were made by the people who went first and didn’t die. The maps that survive are the ones that work,” he said.

“Are you saying that all the religions work? What about all the people who have been killed in religious wars?”

“You can’t judge the value of a thing by looking only at costs. In many countries, more people die from hospital errors than religious wars, but no one accuses hospitals of being evil. Religious people are happier, they live longer, have fewer accidents, and stay out of trouble compared to nonreligious people. From society’s viewpoint, religion works.”

Scott Adams, God’s Debris

And we all blog about the same things in the end, don’t we?

Finally, while I’m not a big pop-culture fan, I did get a chuckle out of Stereogum’s relating of the Lindsay Lohan / Jason Lewis thing (although, I must admit I didn’t even know there was a “Jason Lewis” to impersonate). I think I like it more for the 007 famous-people-infiltrating aspects than I do for any vicarious thrill from this guy’s brush with Ms. Lohan. You can read it, and then when you’re done you’ll feel like my blog today was full of good stuff – it’s the power of linking.

I thought you were gonna start a blog, pussy.

Give up Dave, you obviously have nothing to say. Goodnight.

Posted on

hope your ship turns around

Gotta come back to port sometime, it's where there's shelter.
Ever experience something that smacks you in the face and makes you realize how brilliantly lucky you are to have what you have, live how you live, and be as happy as you are? I had that this week. My permanent grin, fat belly and quiet complacence long-since taken for granted and damn-near expected, I was reminded in the most humbling of ways that my life, as I’ve made it thus far, is exceedingly better than many, many others’. When you get down to it, this is no revelation; but you know us meek, we never go about trumpeting our treasures. We don’t talk about it; don’t meet strangers and ramble on about our various successes. No, revelation it’s not; no not by a long shot. But I’ll be damned if those of among the blessed like to be reminded that there are others our there who aren’t happy at all. Those in dire straits, one step out of sync with our blissful fairy tales; suffering. No, it’s easier to ignore all that that nasty business – you end up with less guilt for feeling so awesome in comparison. So, troubled of the world: please hide yourself from my sight – for it makes my perfect life just a little easier. Thanks for understanding; hope your ship turns around.

Flew back in from Oregon with little fanfare, decided not to go into work despite having the afternoon available to do so and no real reason not to. Travel compensation, I’ll call it, when no one asks because no one cares. It’s an awesome sunny day out, but all I’ve managed to do with it thus far is lament over my lack of internet and waste time doing nothing. I did manage to muster a half-assed trip up the road to the local warehouse store, where I made a circuit of the impossibly wide aisles, shielding my eyes from the fluorescents, scouting the vast landscape for one of those pre-fab sheds they sometimes sell. My search impeded by stroller-laden stay-at-homes and big-TV-droolers, I gave up when there was no shed to be found. Somehow, the whole five minute waste of a trip was indicative of my mood this afternoon. Unmotivated; torn between doing and not doing; stuck in some limbo state between being constructive or being lazy; depressed for reasons that aren’t my own.

That’s all, but I like it. Goodnight.

Posted on

vacating

Vacating.
Wrote some of this for the never-happened Tuesday entry, and some of it for an intended-to-happen Wednesday one… but I’m not gonna go back and change verb tenses or preface stuff by when it was written… you can figure it out. Seems crappy to have a solid week last week and then to fall off completely this one… but that’s how it goes. In Oregon today, returning early tomorrow – fast trip cutting into my normal weeknight sleep allotment. Bah.

Haven’t talked about music much of late, guess I really only resort to that when I can’t think of much else to write. After all, who really wants to know what I like by the week anyway. But, in the spirit of writing for me and not you, I’ve been listening to the new-to-me (but in reality, dirt-old) album (link contains lotsa streamy goodness) by the Shout Out Louds lately, stuck it on my cellphone for the flight and general listenin’ while traveling. Damn fine album I think… right down to the Pole Position “doot-doot-doot-deet” rip that kicks the whole thing off. You should listen to it, it’s radawesome. That album and the truly-new Joggers, both been occupying my eartime pretty exclusively.

Hey guys, back from slackin’… no time to write Sunday as I was completely overwhelmed with a late breakfast, mid-afternoon nap, and dinner at Pat & Cyn’s. But now I’m back, writing. Power musta went out at the crib today, welcomed home by blinking clocks and a dead internet connection. And, no doubt as you read this, I’ll be jetting my way up north for a meeting and an overnighter. Don’t want to go, of course, but will go anyway… for wont of paycheck-continuity and all. If I had time I’d go see my folks, but with a one-day turnaround and a quasi-work evening engagement, there just ain’t time. It’s not that I don’t love ya, moms and pops, you just gotta understand the life of a young billionaire CEO.

Was working on finalizing the December travel plans today; India, up to Oregon to visit my folks, then over to Florida for the in-laws. It’s a pretty quick pace… I scheduled the flight out to visit my folks on the same day I fly in from India (tried to change my return, but they couldn’t do it without a hefty penalty). I don’t even leave the airport… fly in after 15 hours, pick up and re-check my bags, meet Sharaun and fly back out. Extreme, yeah… but it’s the only time we had. After blocking off my work calendar to reflect the travel, I was pretty surprised to see that I’m only at work three days the entire month… and only in town about a week. Not bad for a guy who likes his time away from work. Yup; nearly a week off for Thanksgiving; and December’s gonna fly by. Then January, then February, then six weeks off to spend with Lil’ Chino. Bring it on. I won’t even remember what it is I do come April.

Whatever, OK… whatever. Goodnight.

Posted on

one-solid

Do it now.
Evening folks. With this I’ve closed out one-solid (that’s one entry a day for a week), and that makes me feel good seeing as I was convinced I had dried up just last week. It may not be good, or even mediocre, but it’s here… so read it; pussy.

So, I didn’t post it every day this week like I said I would – but there’s still time to make your mark on the sounds familiar Frappr page. Go there now if you’re not representing your zip code with pride yet, or, go there now to help me understand how this page gets hundreds and hundreds of hits a day but only has ten readers willing to admit it (I know, they’re all Levitra and holdem robots… bastards). Anyway, do it now pussy.

Been on an entry-fixing kick since last night, and re-motivated today by a comment posted on an old entry; an old entry full of crazy ASCII artifacts from my the database hacking I had to do to make the move to WordPress. Fixed that one, gave it a title, removed the funny characters – and was then inspired to go back and title/fix some more old entries. With an eventual goal of 100% titled and categorized… I’ve still got work ahead of me though. At least the first months of 2004 seem to be on their way… Anyway, do it now pussy.

9:30pm and I’m beat… heavy-eyes tired for some reason. I think, for the past couple days, I’ve been fighting off a cold, beneath the surface. I get little signs now and then, like fatigue or congestion in the morning, little things that just tell me my immune system is fighting a silent battle somewhere deep inside me… fending off whatever it is that’s determined to take me down. Way to go immune system, we’re all rooting for you; we’ve put little yellow ribbons on the back of our SUVs as a show of support for you and we pray every weekend for your safety as you protect our wellbeing.

Y’know (stay with me, it’s semi-related), I don’t just get Maxim for the babes… they occasionally have some decent writing. This month’s issue actually had a piece I really enjoyed, not for the writing style, which I found kinda hackneyed, pandering, and overly heartstring-tugging, but for the story. It’s a collection of sad tales about American vets, recently returned from our latest wars/engagements. For those of you thinking I’m trying to make some political point, I’m not; I’m sure there are just as many happy and triumphant tales of homecoming to balance these. I’m just saying I liked the article; anything that’ll keep me in the bathroom, breathing the stench of my own feces, has got to be a pretty compelling read. If you wanna check it out, they’ve got it online in its entirety here.

Guys I dunno… I just don’t think I have another paragraph in me. Now… go to the Frappr page, pussy.

Goodnight.