Posts

Posted on

grammar is hard

So long, farewell.
A productive Wednesday for me, how about y’all? Hit the bermudagrass with round-two of the Turflon today. Did it while at home for my lunch break, since I had the evening booked with getting a haircut, paying bills, and mowing the lawn. Check and check, I’m firm on the path to being ready for my flight to Taiwan Friday morning.

I know this thing really isn’t a “music blog,” or anything… so I’d guess that most folks who read this simply skip over my frequent musical musings. That’s cool with me, really. I’m just trying to give you a heads-up, I’m about to talk a little bit about music right now.

As 2005 draws to a close, my mind moves toward Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and that favorite annual staple of all music fans: the year-end “Best Of” lists. As much as I love hopping around the web for all the ‘zine and personal best-ofs, I enjoy putting together my own list more. This year’s list will be sounds familiar’s third annual Best Of list, such and accomplishment. And this year, I went about it a little different. The two years prior, I simply sat around sometime in December and cast my mind back over the musical landscape that made up the year. It’s often tough to remember what had me singing and smiling ten months earlier… but I think I’ve done a fair job at it so far. This year, thanks to the beauty of WordPress’s “draft” feature, I’ve been keeping a running “candidate for the list” list (WordPress’s? WordPress’?). As an album becomes endeared to me throughout the year, I jot it down in my draft entry. The way I envision it, I’ll go back and sample each candidate album as I sit down to write the list… heck, I may even do a “Top 15” this year since I may have some help remembering, what with the draft and my use of audioscrobbler (or whatever it’s called now). Draft entries are cool for all sorts of reasons, take for example my running draft: “If I die, please post this.” How cool would it be to “pen” one final entry from the grave. Mwuh-ah-ah-ah!!

I likely won’t write Friday, and this hardly counts as writing today. So… goodnight.

Posted on

output enabling

Patterns... mmmm...
Wednesday already, wow. Two more days and I’m off to Taiwan [cut to stock footage: Dave wants to go, but also doesn’t want to go]. Sitting at home and having a beer after a strange day of “now I’m a manager” realizations at work… where I’m finally realizing I have to “let go” of the stuff I used to covet and start focusing on more intangible things. For someone that craves the little gold stars on the top of good work, it’s a tough transition. Scary, actually, when your goals shift from a personal-output-based model to an output-you-enabled one. I take heart, though, that I at least “get” that, and that I’m cognizant enough to recognize and do my best to address it.

So yeah, I’m late to the Cloud Room party… dunno what happened there – guess you can’t be first to every party. Another one of the out-of-the-bowels-of-NYC wunderkind, their debut single is impossible to hate… seriously, listen to it try to think nasty thoughts about it. Put it on your headphones and think about punching it in the face, see how impossible it is. Give it a spin and try and make a disparaging remark about its mother, you won’t be able to; the dang thing is disarming. I say we give this track to the Army, have them aim humongous loudspeakers at Al Qaeda training camps, and play it over and over again. Then, rather than ascribe to extremist Muslim theology, prospective terrorists will instead clasp hands and dance around euphorically in a circle, smiling ear-to-ear while singing “… we’re goin’ downtown, take the bus there, pay the bus fare!!…” in broken English. It’s OK terrorists; it’s OK that your body wants to bounce around in its seat, OK that you “duh-duh-duh” along with the bassline, it really is OK – Allah said so, he digs the Cloud Room too – I saw him at the show at CBGB last week… he really knows how to let his turban down.

This weekend, I was finally able to see Sharaun’s pooch. Wow, that sounds massively dirty… but I assure you it’s much more academic than that. What I mean is, I can now see the beginnings of Lil’ Chino’s expanding 9-month lease. To me, this is huge; this is what I’ve been waiting for – even more validation than the indisputable ultrasound images we got weeks ago. Her growing belly is the physical evidence of progress that I’ve been craving! It puts my mind at ease, and makes me tingle with a heady mixture of anticipation and pride. It really is impossible I explain, I think, what a brick-wall realization it is. Lil’ Chino is more than halfway here… 55% here, to be exact. Thinking about February, it still seems interminably far away… but more than ever I’m realizing it’ll be on us in a flash. I guess I won’t even fully understand it until it happens, 5-months and counting in some semi-disconnected state of shock and no sign of the fog lifting in time. Bring it on, Lil’ Chino, bring it on.

Bedtime. Goodnight.

Posted on

nuggetless

Eureka!
Happy long weekend people… hope it was enjoyable for you. We had a great time, and made sure to temper any “word” with plenty of do-nothing relaxation. Looking forward to another short week now, leaving early Friday morning for Taiwan. I’m excited, although I haven’t really prepared for the presentation I’m giving… I guess it’ll be another last-minute cram thing – at least I’m used to it. Bring it on.

Gold mining this weekend was a bust, but a fun bust. Camping was awesome, the weather was great and there weren’t many others out there so we had some privacy. I think everyone enjoyed themselves. There’s a certain draw to car-camping… being able to throw all the amenities in the truck and drive right to your spot. We had the big tent, the air mattress, camp-chairs, soap, etc. You get the good food, the coolers full of beer, all the luxuries of home. I brought my pipe, wore my ridiculous (but dearly beloved) crushable felt cowboy hat, and spat sunflowers seeds while dozing under the sun. As for the mining, after some trial and error, the pump and motor worked perfectly – pumping large volumes of water. I, however, had chosen to leave my grandfather’s true sluice at home, since it was nearly 30ft long and somewhat cumbersome being made of heavy tin. I opted, instead, to bring a small plastic store-bought sluice which I knew would likely be too small for the volume of water moved by the pump. I was right as, even on the lowest throttle setting, there was too much water on the sluice, and it washed away everything you dumped on the sluice. For the sluice I brought, we’d have been better off just bucketing the water ourselves. So, although Pat and I were particularly happy with the pump assembly working, in the end we resorted to simply panning on the shore. Panning is fun, it’s got the same sort of tranquil attraction that fishing does. If we decide to do it again, I’ll bring the full sluice and set it up right… it’s a big operation. For some action-shots with the equipment, you can browse through Ben’s gallery.

What do you guys think about Kanye’s little ad-lib on the NBC benefit show for Katrina victims? If you don’t know what I’m talking about, you can watch it here. Watching the video, it looks to me like Kanye had likely thought about what he wanted to say before he got up there, but his nervousness in actually going through with it was evident. It looked to me like he was fumbling at first, seemingly forcing out the words. After he got rolling and picked up a little steam, he was fine (although it still wasn’t the most polished speech). The plainfaced delivery of “George Bush doesn’t care about black people,” was pretty stinging. For me, simplifying the situation to black vs. white is shortsighted and dangerous – I’d say it’s more poor vs. rich; an issue of class, not race. If you order an evacuation of a city, it somewhat stands to reason that that city’s poorer and less fortunate will likely be the least able to leave. With perhaps no money to travel or stay somewhere else, and perhaps nowhere else to go – it’s conceivable that those who struggle with poverty would simply not have the ways or means to get out of harm’s way. I suppose any administration would expect a good deal of criticisms in the aftermath of a national disaster – some of which may be legitimate gripes, others just using the situation to their advantage. Just seems to me that this country should have some sort of infrastructure in place to be able to respond to worst-case situations like this. Whatever; I could be wrong, too.

Installed the latest Gallery2 release candidate last night, and am very pleased. The install process is 100 times better and easier than the previous 1.x versions. The administrative features look simplified and more organized too – and things just seem to “work” more than they did in the previous versions. Now that things are chugging nicely, and the program isn’t so tough to use and optimize – I’m hoping to utilize it for all my upcoming photo uploads. I gave up using the 1.x versions because there was just so much heavy lifting involved. Oh, the old version worked, and looked pretty dang slick, but I didn’t have the patience to take the time and put in the effort to use it right. So, I gave up posting images to the web really… just didn’t do it. We’ll see what happens.

Fall is in the air folks, it really is. Did I say that already? I know it because, today, I bought the first ingredients in the makings for Halloween 2005. Oh man, I’m pumped. Unlike last year, there are no major new purchases, really, just some more black lights (you can never have enough black lights). Like last year, there will be a new “major” prop addition – this year’s being a variation on this theme. (I plan on modding some of the setup, maybe making a different looking coffin.) Ahhh… Halloween… Wal Mart has its candy aisle up already, and the Halloween store is moving into the outlet mall this week. I took a look at my three-year-old gravestones and graveyard fence today, and decided it’s time to make a new fence and touch up the old tombstones as well as fab some brand new ones. Now I just have to get off my butt and actually do some stuff.

‘Night.

Posted on

look timmy, a mountain! do you see the mountain?!

Hey man, is that Southern Rock man? Well.... tuuuurn it up man!!
I don’t even know if this entry makes sense… I’m delerious-tired.

Skirting Portland means a freakin’ maze of intertwined highways, crawling along on half of them with your foot on the brake. I’m pretty dang tired, 4am wake-up this morning and not much rest on the flight up. All-day meeting requiring my attention didn’t help. Now I’m back in the aeropuerto waiting for my “on time” flight to get here on time. I just want a nap, I’m tired.

The blog spam has been “shock and awe” style lately, over 100 items a day. I must say, though, WordPress stops nearly every single piece – every so often, a single piece gets through and I have to manually delete it. Most of the spam is for online hold’em, with viagra and phentermine running a close second. I tell you what, people must buy a whole heck of a lot of viagra and phentermine online… something’s making the marketing worth it.

The plane home was the flight from Hell. To my left, a young man, perhaps 21 or 22. Across the aisle to my right, a young mother with two young children, perhaps 3 and 4. I would soon come to find out that these two seemingly normal folks were, indeed, two of the most surreal people I could’ve possibly run into when I all I wanted to do was grab a nap on the way home.

The young man was a devout Seventh Day Adventist, he told me, out of the blue. He was also a “plane talker.” You know, those people who, for whatever reason, feel like they have to talk to you every second of the flight. He regaled me from the moment he sat down. “So, what about gas prices?” “Can you believe this hurricane?” He went on to tell me that he was coming home from college, to visit his folks for a while. He was double-majoring in Theology and Fitness Management, with a minor in Piano. He said he didn’t want to be “tied down” to one job. Yeah, because the market’s wide-open for Christian school PE teachers who play piano. Obviously intelligent by some of his comments, his unfortunately baritone, droning, and slow, stinted speech made him sound like the vulture from the cartoons: “Duhhh, which we did he go, George? Which way did he go?”

The woman with the kids was worse. Her voice went to eleven. She was a full two decibels louder than anyone else on the plane, and she was one of those people who is her kids’ best friend. “Get ready Jessie, we’re about to pull out on the runway! We’re about to go fast! Hang on!! Are you ready to go fast?! Get ready, we’re about to go. Watch the wheels, here we go!” “Look at the clouds! Do you see the clouds? Sit still, do you feel those bumps? That’s called ‘turbulence.’ Feel it? Look at the mountains! Can you see the wing? Isn’t this fun?!” Oh. My. God. This woman never shut up, never took a breath, every annoying pointless bit of childlike banter seemingly screamed through a megaphone. This back and forth went on for the entire flight, her children talking as loud as her – following her example.

At one point, while feigning sleep to avoid dealing with it all – I realized how insane the stereo picture between my two ears was. Babbling loud mom on my right, and babbling spiritual Adventist on my left. That’s when it hit me, no one would ever believe this – I was obligated to record it to prove my story. So, I snuck out my cellphone and, against FAA regulations, began recording as the two loonies’ ranting crescendoed. And here, folks, I present the audio proof of my flight from Hades, complete with my own transcripts lest you have a hard time understanding what’s going on. Keep in mind, I sat my phone on my lap while recording this – so this is the level I would hear if my ears were on my hips… helps to establish the levels we’re dealing with.

[audio:Record011.mp3]
Seriously, listen to this guy ramble (with absolutely no response from me, completely unsolicited):

… But umm… yeah… I have a hard time… ahh… being able to listen to… something that just, is the same four chords forty times, literally forty times in a song. It’s like, man do something else. This is an insult to human intelligence to say, that, it’d be like saying – and they say it the same way to – for me, y’know, repetition is OK but, they [add it?] a different way.. with your innuendo, and even when you’re talking you don’t talk like that. Over and over again, y’know, just talk in a monotonic way [Howdy Doody?] and all that. So, I don’t know, I think… some… I mean repetition is an essential element of music, but it’s not… it… uhh.. it has to be done right; or I mean it has to be done in a real… it needs to be done with thought, as well as emotion. All the songs really are too… just… uhh… what; most everyone’s been to church and heard hymns played in a lifeless way, y’know, and so I can see different extremes to somewhere where all their years – it’s, umm, there’s all, it’s all emotion but no.. [??] y’know. And then you have… thought but no feeling, so. … Different songs are gonna have different amplitudes and different elements… It’s so amazing because it’s a holistic language. It’s, umm, it effects the body and the mind and the spirit, y’know, it effects every facet, y’know.

[audio:Record012.mp3]
Here’s a good idea of the stereo effect I was getting.. with the Monotone Saint on one side and Cheerleader Mom on the other. There’s something about the “animal kingdom” in there… I swear. What a flight.

I feel like I wrote this thing so fast, I’m sure it’s full of typos – and I’m not going back to proofread.

Goodnight.

Posted on

dressed in cobra

Who cares, I'm going to bed.
Gonna try and make this an early-to-bed night, I have to be at the airport tomorrow for a 6:20am flight… which means leaving the house before 5am. Bummer. Another there-and-back-again one-day trip to Oregon, work crap. Then, we’re off to camp this weekend in the Sierra foothills of Northern California. Hopefully, we can get the gold equipment working: highbanker, pans, etc. Should be an interesting weekend if nothing else, and I’ll be glad to get away for a bit – even if the lawn does need mowing something awful.

I dunno; I’m not wholly opposed to rap as a form of music. But I’m not 100% why the new Kanye album is so good. Sure, there are some good tracks – but I’m not sure why it’s gush-worthy to the level of the reviews it’s been getting. I can appreciate things like stellar production, I really can. I like to think I’ve got an ear for an extremely well put-together album… something where the production is the keystone of the whole thing’s success. But I dunno, while the production on this album is indeed stellar, some of the tracks aren’t so noteworthy. Call me a hater, whatever you want, I guess I just can’t get as full and appreciate for rap as I can for more “rock ‘n’ roll” type jams. Sorry Kanye.

This page’s two-year anniversary is coming in a little under two weeks. The approaching milestone got me thinking statistics, and I looked back over the entirety of my written output – since I’ve been writing. I started my original journal in 1995, and wrote fairly faithfully through 2000 (exactly 100 pages worth). I started a new journal upon graduating college / getting married / moving to CA, that one covered 2000 to late 2002, clocking in around 200 pages. Then I guess I took a break. That 2nd journal goes through September 2002, and this page didn’t start until that same month, 2003. A one-year gap. I don’t remember taking a year off, I guess I just got wrapped up in other things. That would’ve been my “growth” years at work, where I was likely coming into my own in my role there. Who knows how long this one will last, two years is a good start. I’m sure I’ll have more to write about when Lil’ Chino gets here… so no worries I suppose.

Tonight I bought tickets to see Architecture in Helsinki at Slims in the city. I’m so pumped.

Goodnight.

Posted on

not really working

I'm sorry I worked late.
On her way home from a day subbing today, Sharaun stopped at Blockbuster to return a movie, and locked her keys in her car. Her keys, and her purse – containing her cellphone. Meanwhile, I stayed late at work, finishing up. I tried to call her several times, but with no way into the house and no cellphone – it wasn’t much use. When I finally decided to come home, around 7pm, she had been locked outside in the heat for over two hours. She spent her time walking around, and sleeping on the bare concrete of the front porch. I felt so sorry for her… I swear I was about to cry. Poor girl… I’ll never let her get a manual-locking car again.

Sitting at home, having gone into work for a couple hours before this appointment with the landscaper. He’s 15 minutes late; I wait, glancing out the window every few minutes expecting to see a truck. Passed the time unpacking from the weekend’s camping trip, making the dirty laundry hamper smell like a campfire. Lately, it seems that Fall is in the air. In the morning, the air is dry and cool, and I can even feel it sometimes in the day… when a cool breeze blows by or there’s a hint of something in the air. It’s coming soon, and I couldn’t be happier. It seems like we had the shortest summer ever this year, it stayed cool late and now I feel like it’s Falling-up early as well. Oh, I’m all for it – let’s not get that confused. The faster that magical season gets here, the happier I’ll be. Fall-thoughts got me thinking about February… when Lil’ Chino will arrive. Not Fall, but still part of the Fall-Winter cold-months… the time of year I love. Landscaper just called, gonna be another 20 minutes late; I’ll wait… work’s already bored me today.

I hate to say that albums “grew on me.” I always feel like I may be fooling myself; like I should trust my initial reaction and not “force” myself to get into something I didn’t like at first blush. To me, having an album “grow” on you is kinda like saying, “I didn’t like this album, but then everyone else did – so I listened to it until it was good.” It reeks of every-half-hour radio playlist mass-hypnotism type “hits.” But… then I thought about it in the context of beer. When I first tried beer, I hated it. Had to drink my first quart of Red Bull (the malt liquor, not the caffeine cough syrup stuff) over a sink, gagging a little with each gulp. But, everyone likes beer. Men drink it; it’s so cool. If you don’t like beer, you’re not right. So, I kept fighting down the beer. And now, years later, I’m gag-free, and often catch myself thinking how good a beer would taste in certain situations. So, likening an album’s “growing” on me to my coming-of-age taste for beer – I’ve somewhat legitimized the fact that the new New Pornographers album I spoke somewhat ill of last week has now become something I’m really enjoying. At times melodic enough to make me smile, it just keeps getting better. Dang… am I brainwashed?

Time to get another R.O.C entry and exit stamp in the passport, I’ll be boarding the plane before I know it. Off to Taiwan for another week of work and play. Work during the day, play at night, sleep when I can. It’s always like that I Taiwan. I have a small base of local friends there now, and I enjoy spending time with then when I can – which is always late-night. Tracy’s doing me a favor and getting me a local Taipei phone number, so I can pickup pre-charged SIM cards and have a local number people can call. That way, I can limit my transcontinental calls to the company calling card on landline phones… and avoid the highway-robbery international roaming rates the cell company charges – but I can still makes calls to local numbers. I think it’ll be a welcomed luxury. I wonder about travel after Lil’ Chino comes… I’ll likely want to do it less, and I’m sure Sharaun would want the same. I guess a week here and there isn’t too bad, but I don’t think I can keep up 2005’s pace. It’s OK really, I think the transition to management probably inherently means less personal travel, as you pass those opportunities onto the team; so, that fits. But I’ll still want to get back to Taiwan every now and again.

Noonish now, landscaper was badly late (is that proper English?). I walked around the backyard with him, pointing out what I saw as the remaining work, asking him to draw up the plan as a series of line-items, so I could pick and choose certain aspects of work if needed. Then I went inside and made a tuna sandwich while he measured and calculated. What surprised me the most, though, was that his plans to finish the yard were exactly what I’d planned to do. Modify the sprinkler heads, pour a border around the stones, bring in soil and add drainage, planter areas, etc. His plans were my plans, down to the last aspect. He also commented that my do-it-yourself work up to this point really wasn’t all that bad. My retaining wall had the proper drainage, was mostly level and true, and was set in the ground to a proper depth. My paver porch, although not 100% level, was properly sloped away from the house and crowned to the center – and would only get better with fill sand and plate compaction. My forethought to make the planter areas drip-ready (adding PVC “through” pipes under the pavers) was correct, and my cutting the downspout and routing it under the pavers was correct. My sprinkler heads to zone ratio was correct, as were my pressure calculations and water coverages per zone.

I actually thought this might happen; the landscaper coming and telling me how much money it would take to complete the work would stoke the fire within me to get it done myself. I don’t know though, it just seems like so much work. He did give me one more option for the paver border, which I hadn’t thought of yet. He suggested a cheaper alternative to the concrete border may be running a 3″ thick “plastic” bender board around the entire porch, and using a sledge to butt the pavers in tight before staking it every foot-and-a-half with steel stakes driven into the earth. This was interesting to me… as I have lots of steel stakes that I figured would sit unused after I was done with the yard. The stakes would be driven in to just below the level of the bender, and then left in the ground permanently with topsoil and turf hiding them in the finished version. That got me thinking… I could likely do that pretty easily – and I’m sure my cost for the 3″ bender would be a heck of a lot cheaper than theirs. I’d still have to reposition the sprinklers, add some drainage, till in topsoil, grade, and bring in sod. It’s a lot of work, and the guy said I could pick and choose any of his line items if I wanted some help getting the thing to a state where I’d once again feel confident taking over. That’s good, because, if I chose to go with his entire package, I’d be looking at a >$10,000 bottom line. Ouch.

Goodnight.

Posted on

five months and counting

Babies...
Sunday night on the eve of a busy Monday. Landscapers coming to quote me some damage for a helping-hand in the backyard, a many-times-rescheduled appointment at the dentist, and sometime to squeeze in a bit of work if I’m careful. My day and a half vacation did me well, especially in the beauty and solitude of the Californian high desert… sleeping under the stars and not taking showers. With another long weekend coming up, I’m looking forward to a continuing recharge.

I can’t wait until Sharaun’s belly begins to show. At this point, the notion that we’re pregnant has pretty much sunk in – but there’s not much in the way of outward signs to confirm it for me. I think, when I can see her belly swollen with this new thing that’s living and breathing and growing… that’s what will really get me. I really shouldn’t have to wait much longer, a month maybe, and I’ll get this visual reward. Somewhere in one of the baby books we have, it talked about the child being able to hear inside the womb. I don’t think it’s until much later, but the thought of that blows me away. Lil’ Chino can hear us talking and laughing and singing and everything. And to round out the baby paragraph, another of our high school friends just had their 1st baby. That makes a uncountable number of people my age that I used to know that are new parents. I guess it’s that time or something, the babies-before-thirty thing perhaps.

This weekend most of the regular and extended friend/acquaintance collective packed it up and headed down south for Erik & Kristi’s wedding. Ceremony and reception were held on her ranch, which has been worked by their family for five generations, since the late 1800s. Surely this was one of the grandest affairs I’ve ever been to. Planned to a tee, and the whole thing going down in the most amazing of locations. Just walking through the tall pasture grass on the property, you get a feeling of history and hard-won homesteader success – the fruits of early westward settlers’ labor. Most of the “young kids” opted to camp on the ranch, in a makeshift shanty village dubbed “tent city.” We had a rock-rung firepit, babbling brook running through, and even a porta-john to relieve ourselves in. If you’ve ever read the Lord of the Rings, the chapter about Bilbo’s party – right in the first few pages – that’s what this thing reminded me of. An amazing outdoor celebration, abundant with food, song, drink and dance… lights on trees and candles on tables. The sounds of kids running around and champagne bottles popping. It was an affair to remember; and on top of it all we got to camp and stare into a fire each night – a universally enjoyed spectator sport which I’m convinced is hardcoded in human DNA.

‘Nite.