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judgement day

Will he make it?
My dad’s birthday was this past weekend. My cellphone even went off to remind me, and I snoozed it telling myself to send a card. But, alas, I missed it. That puts me at three missed-birthdays for my folks (two for mom, one for dad). And yeah, it really makes you feel like shit. Having spent years perfecting my avoidance strategy with respect to uncomfortable situations – I’ve yet to call my pops and wish him a happy belated. What kinda kid chronically forgets his folks’ birthdays? One in his late-20s you say? Well yeah, that’s what I’d like to think too. My negligence is a product of my self-centered age bracket… where my life hinges on my friends and my job. I swear dad, I knew it was your birthday, and I mean to send a card… I even went downstairs at work to pick one up. Who knows what happened. Put another tick in the “terrible son” column and go back to loving me unconditionally OK? Thanks.

Today I came home all motivated to put in another 6hrs of work, but as it turns out I fell asleep on the couch and am now writing instead. I think I’ll get to some work tonight, but perhaps not quite as much as I did yesterday. Now, tomorrow evening at 5pm is my big pre-conference review meeting, where I get to debut my far-behind-schedule materials. I’m less concerned than I was previously, mainly because I’ve come to terms with the fact that it’s just gonna be a photo-finish. I’m OK with that, I just hope I don’t get torn up over it too much in the meeting.

Wait… no one wants to hear about this, right? What do you want to hear about instead? What’s in-vogue with bloggers these days? Music?

So, the Desaparicidos were a one-off thing. As much as I loved that album, I can live with the fact that there’ll never be another one. Sometimes it’s better that way, like with the Unicorns’ Who’ll Cut Our Hair…, I don’t think the could’ve followed up that record. But, even tho I’ll never hear Connor with the Desa’s again – this new album by Little Brazil works nicely as a stand-in. A little bouncier and less afraid to slow it down, but it elicits the same rockish excitement when I hear it. Vintage sounding, with catchy phrasing and hooks, I’m all about it. Check it out if you’re not a pussy. Oh wow, I just read up on this band – and the bass player is the bass player from Desaparicidos! I swear, I didn’t know that before writing this paragraph. He either plays a super distinctive bass (hard to do), or has a lot of creative influence on his bands.

Roughly three months to go and this website turns two. Two years of writing. That’s a lot of writing. Some of it is good, some of it isn’t. I like to use the “random entry” link on the sidebar on occasion, just to see what comes up. It’s fun to remember writing certain things. I’m actually happy I’m still doing it, I couldn’t really have known I’d keep up with it back when I started. Based on the page’s statistics, I still don’t have a very big readership, and even less of what I do have are what you’d call “regulars.” But, I do see some IPs pop up pretty frequently – so thanks for sticking with me when I was boring, or when I was drunk, or whatever. I sometimes surprise myself by finding the time to write every day… but I’m glad I do it. Two years… man, that seems like forever. I tell you what, I’ll keep writing if you promise to check back every now and then and keep reading, OK? Deal.

Stumbled across this the other day online, and I love it. What a cool idea. This is the kinda stuff I love the internet for.

Goodnight.

Posted on

the crunch

Nose to it.
There’s not enough room on this Post-It note to write all the things I have to do. This is a problem. If there was room on my Post-It note of problems-to-be-solved, I could add it too the list. But, that’s my week this week. I’m 100% balls-out on this work though… like now, it’s 20-till-10pm and I’m still chuggin’. Sure, I took a 40min walk around the block with my wife to clear my mind (clear my staring-at-the-monitor headache, really), but other than that I’ve been working solid since 8am. It has to be done folks, this is crunch week and I just have to knuckle under if I want to have a successful month of presenting. Speaking of month, June won’t be much of one… at least not one at home. Percentage-wise, I’ll only be gone 23% of the month – but in my head it sure seems more inconvenient than that. On the upside, I’ve never been to New York City, and I think I may have been to Denver when I was a kid – but I sure don’t remember anything about it. So, the travel may be cool…

If you can’t tell, I’m slightly (and I do mean slightly, ever-so, ever-so slightly) less screwed-up about my presentation. My work-overdrive has made me feel a little more confident that I’ll be prepared and ready to go. I still have guilt for not being on the “schedule,” but when I’m this up against the wall I just don’t care. If I get done the night before, I’ll consider that “meeting the schedule,” regardless of what the real schedule was. I just want it to be over… can it just be over? It’s midnight now, and it’s not over yet… But you know, I totally get off on being able to get serious when the conditions demand it… so this is as much ego-stroking as it is burning the candle at both ends. You mean you worked until midnight, downloaded the newest tunes for perusal tomorrow, and managed to pay bills, take a walk, and do dishes tonight? Yeah I did… and I didn’t even have to take that much speed to make it happen, I’m just half-machine.

I’ve been feeling a bit pretentious at work lately, perhaps unjustifiably so. I mean, I feel like I’m working hard; really hard, in fact. And… I admit it: I feel important. However, I also see this is a risky way to feel. I don’t think I lack humility, but I’m very wary of ever getting to that point. In some cases, I think I’m a bit over-conscious of being humble. I tend to shy away from conversations where I would come off as patting myself on the back, at least – I like to think I tend to shy away from them. To give you an example, I had to take a phone call on the way to lunch today – a work-related phone call. Sitting in the backseat, ignoring a carful of my friends, and talking shop on the phone – I felt bad. I felt like I was somehow “showing off.” This is probably paranoia on my part, but my lack-of-love for self-important people makes me think like that. Problem is, taking charge and forging ahead actually requires some level of self-import. I guess what I’m worried about is crossing the seemingly thin line between self-confidence and ostentatiousness. I’m probably concerned over nothing, but it’s just something I think about sometimes.

So that’s it. Work all day, and blog about work. I’m truly one-track right now. Rock on.

Posted on

scrobbin away

Under the gun.
Ahhh…. I took Thursday and Friday off from work, which, coupled with the Monday holiday, made this weekend seem blissfully long. With family (sister- and brother-in-law) in town, we had a busy time trudging from coast to mountains. And now, although it’s Monday, and I have the day off, and I have a myriad of things I could be doing, I’m sitting here doing nothing. It’s been a good do-nothing day though, since we got up at 6am to take our visiting family to the airport – making it feel like I’ve already slacked for a full day when it’s not even noon yet. Of course, I have the appropriate guilt that’s associated with this level of laziness. I just don’t care. I’m not motivated to do anything… how crappy is that? Ugh…

Let me tell you what’s been keeping me up at nights lately. I have a pretty big-scale conference mid-month at which I’m a presenter. This is a pretty big deal for two reasons. First, the topic of my material will be a very high-interest one, and in fact the two times I teach the class are already booked to capacity. Second, I am woefully behind schedule in regards to developing my content. Normally, I wouldn’t be too worried – I am, by nature, a procrastinator, but I also work well under pressure, so it’s normally not that bad. The difference here is, I am teaching a class about a subject I’m really unfamiliar with. So, in addition to the normal task of developing the material, I also have to educate myself on everything. I have roughly two weeks to do this. However, per the development schedule for the conference, my material should be at 95% this week. People, my material is at roughly… 5%. For the first time in a while, I’m worried about pulling something off. Not that I won’t have the material ready in time – that’s just not an option, my real worry is making a fool of myself.

I’ve given bad presentations before, and I know from experience that it is a low, low feeling to not know your subject matter – and to have that fact be painfully obvious to your audience. Oh, I can still remember the searing embarrassment and desire to run and hide under a rock for the rest of the day. I do not want to experience that again… I’ll do anything. So, I’ve set myself a strict regimen this week. I’ll not only work during the days, but also log hours at night doing as much time-clearing work for the following day as I can. I’m dedicated to reading several pages an evening on the material I’ll be talking to – to get myself properly educated for any probative questions from the peanut gallery. From now until I leave this next-next Monday, I’m going to try and be the world’s most effective worker, cranking out not only my daily requirements but producing a top-notch presentation, as well as a sponge for information that may help me pull off the required feat. I realize that, in doing this, the blog may suffer. But hey, this seems to be the month of the suffering blog… so I might as well roll with it.

Sunday my truck broke. Yeah… just wouldn’t turn over. It’s not the battery, and I only know that because the extent of my car-problem knowledge is what happens when you try to start a car with a bad battery – and this wasn’t it. The thing would sputter and sputter like it was trying to come to life on a winter day, and when the engine finally bit and started to turn over it’d run for all of two seconds before just shutting back off. Perhaps the cracks in my exhaust manifolds that have gone long-unrepaired spontaneously turned into full-on ruptures and I have no back pressure. But honestly, I have no idea what that last sentence even means and the only reason I said it is because I know there’s some key relationship between exhaust pressure and the whole engine bit. So, painfully ignorant to the inner workings of my prime method of conveyance, I left that thing in the parking lot. And that’s where it sits today… waiting for me to play my AAA card and have it towed to some shop so I can be taken advantage of. Stupid truck… what did I ever do to it? Why can’t all machines be like refrigerators? Seriously, when’s the last time your fridge just up and broke down? I don’t care how exponentially more complex a machine an automobile is – that’s no excuse.

Tonight, taking a cue from the only blog that I regularly read, I checked into audioscrobbler.com and setup an account for myself. Audioscrobbler is like a natural extension of what I was trying to do with my “currently hearing” section on the sidebar. Except, audioscrobbler is much better. It gives you infinite history as opposed to my sidebar’s puny “last 7” or whatever, and it also assembles your listening habits into meaningful (at least to music buffs) data that can show trends and favorites. For someone like me, that’s a pretty intriguing idea. Not only does audioscrobbler scrobble together your personal listening habits, it offers aggregate stats for all the users of its service. So, you can track trends, and even get suggestions from other peoples’ playlists for things you might like based on what you tend to listen to. It will take a while to build up any meaningful data, but I think as a long-term thing I’ll replace my simplistic “currently hearing” output with some more interesting statistics.

And, once again, rather than wracking the old brain for more stuff to write – I’m calling it a night. Oh, and before I go – some pictures from our weekend hiking-season break-in hike up Pyramid Peak. We didn’t make it to the top, lost the trail in the snow, but it was a great day outside and a good way for me to remember how horridly out of shape I am.

Goodnight friends… goodnight.

Posted on

not old enough

The best babysitter.
Even though work is, for me, probably more busy now than it’s been in… well… in forever, I’m taking today and Friday off. My sister-in-law and her husband are in town and we’ll be doing the standard Northern California tourist jaunt. Today is San Francisco, this weekend is Tahoe. Tromping around the state is a sure-fire way to not get my work done… and although I have some level of guilt, I’m gonna do it anyway. But before that, I wanted to try and at least get an entry done.

There’s a certain CD that plays every single night in Henry’s Bar, Taipei. It’s a solo piano album; nice, quiet, uppity-sounding background music for an up-scale bar. I know this CD by heart. I can whistle every refrain of every track. I’ve heard the songs so many times, drinking Taiwan Beer while talking to the staff, drinking Taiwan Beer while talking to friends, and sometimes just drinking Taiwan Beer. Today, I was making travel reservations for my upcoming trip to Denver, and a very similar sounding piano number came on as the on-hold music. My brain was immediately taken back to Henry’s Bar. I got that familiar lonely-cold feeling in my gut, knowing I’m a world away from home but somewhat comfortable in a place I’m very familiar with. I could almost feel the just-a-little-too-cold air conditioning on my skin, and here the glasses clinking over shouts of “Hello! Good evening!” in stilted English. I even missed my wife and felt a little homesick. It’s amazing what music can conjure up in terms of vivid memories. I’ve heard that smell is the number one memory-associated sense, but hearing must be a close second.

When my family first moved to Florida, I was in the 6th grade and my brother was in the 3rd. During that first summer vacation, I guess our folks didn’t feel we were quite old enough to fend for ourselves all day while they were at work. So, we had a babysitter. Every day, we had a babysitter. Over the summer I think we went through two: both in their 20s. The first one was short with red hair cropped to her head like a boy’s, and I can’t remember exactly what the other on looked like, other than she very much not boyish. Me being in the 6th grade, it wasn’t very long before I had developed a crush on the second. She would lay out in the backyard in a tiny swimsuit, and I would sit safely behind our tinted sliding-glass doors and watch. She used to tote along her stuff in a largish beach-bag, and she’d leave her changed-out-of clothes in it when she went outside. I can remember ever so carefully peeling apart the top of that bag to glimpse the stringy white underwear inside.

Over her time babysitting us (which was considerably less than the time the redhead did), she began to talk to me more and more. Alas, when summer ended, she was gone. Then, one evening, maybe a week after I’d last seen her – the phone rang and I answered it. It was the babysitter, calling to talk to me. She wanted to tell me that she’d been in Miami the night before, and caught a 2 Live Crew concert (a band we’d talked about together before). I remember her calling me by my name: “David, blah blah 2 Live Crew blah blah…” How odd… a 20-something babysitter calling a 12-something kid to talk about 2 Live Crew. The conversation lasted less than a minute, but at the time, was a huge deal to me. All that, and I don’t even remember her name.

Not much, but I think what there is is OK.

Posted on

walking over graves

Brrrr....
I don’t know what’s with me lately. Sunday night I passed out not long after 9pm. Just passed dead-out on the couch. I was so firmly asleep, I woke to my alarm Monday morning not knowing what day it was. After shaking out the cobwebs, I had dim memories of brushing my teeth and getting into bed – but man, I was seriously out. And tonight, I feel tired again. I think I could sleep right now in fact, just curl up in bed and be out. I mean, it is 11pm – so I guess it’s not that odd. I wonder, could my body still be protesting the time change a little? I mean, I’ve got the awake-in-the-day part covered, but maybe the night-owl in me will come a little less easily. Either way, I’m trying to shake the fatigue… so bear with me.

While listening to some music at work today, I got a really cool idea for a mixtape. It’s a shame really, that there aren’t really mixtapes anymore… “compilation CD” sounds so much less cool than “mixtape.” Anyway, I was listening to the song “Ain’t Gwine Whistle Dixie (Any Mo’)” by Taj Mahal and, as always, the song gave me chills. See the idea? Yeah, that’s right; a mixtape made up of songs that give me chills. When I say “give me chills,” I really mean that shiver thing that goes on when you hear a particularly awesome part in a song. I can think of several songs off the top of my head that would go on the tape, and I think overall it would be a totally bitchin’ comp. Anyway, I’ve got a running list in my head – maybe one day I’ll actually put a playlist together one day or something. But for now… let’s just start a running list… because… well, why not?

Ain’t Gwine Whistle Dixie (Any Mo’) – Taj Mahal
Over the Hills and Far Away – Led Zeppelin
The Concept – Teenage Fanclub
Summertime in England (live) – Van Morrison
Friday on My Mind – The Easybeats
Lucky Man – ELP
Wave of Mutilation (U.K. Surf) – The Pixies
Thorn Tree in the Garden – Derek & the Dominos
She Sends Kisses – The Wrens
Please Be With Me – Cowboy
AT&T – Pavement
Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right – Bob Dylan
Woyaya – Osibisa
To Forgive – Smashing Pumpkins
New Life – Depeche Mode
Samba Pa Ti – Santana
Julia – The Beatles
New Year’s Day – U2
Pearly Queen – Traffic
Everything In Its Right Place – Radiohead

I could go on, but you get the idea. It’d be interesting to me to loan this mixtape out and see if any of the tunes have similar effects on other people. Hmmm….

See, things like that may make for extremely boring and poor blogging – but they are fun to write, and I’m all about doing what’s enjoyable. That’s when the writing’s good for me, y’know? As much as I write in hopes of an eventual audience, the main motivation is still some small enjoyment gained in doing so.

Hey, that’s all I’m going to write. Rather than tax myself and not have anything else, I’m calling it a night. Maybe later this week I’ll be over my writer’s block and actually be able to come up with something interesting. Ahh… who am I kidding? Sharaun’s sister and her husband are coming into town on Wednesday night and, if I had to guess, I bet I don’t write from then until the weekend…

‘Night.

Posted on

what brings you here?

Seemed appropriate for some reason.I’m just gonna get right down to it and say I’m not happy with this entry. I had all weekend to write it, and I ultimately came up with nothing. But I’m under pressure y’all. Last week’s blog performance was hampered by travel and catch-up sleep, and the weeks prior weren’t much better while I was in Taiwan. I guess I wasn’t motivated to write this weekend either though. Hopefully this week will change that. But for now, try to enjoy this crappy entry…

It’s the weekend and I’m writing as a procrastination tactic. I woke up early to maximize the day, and then spent two hours watching family guy and eating breakfast. Stupid traveling. I’m behind in everything that matters to me. Mowing the lawn, keeping the house clean, finishing the backyard, everything. Plants are dying and shower doors are becoming obscured with soapfilm. It’s really frustrating to me, mostly because of my compulsive nature. I start to freak out if things aren’t right, and I think I have my dad to thank for it. I try. I try and tell myself that stupid things don’t matter, but it’s ineffective if those stupid things really do matter.

Anyway, it’s a gorgeous warm weekend. In the mid 80s with sunny blue skies. And I’m writing about the weather… which is about as good as admitting ya got nuthin’…

Saturday I got the urge to do some web tinkering… the end result being a redesign of my index page. I’m pretty happy with the result, which uses an original image I took for the purpose, and an imagemap/rollover effect I pieced together from some tutorials online. Anyway, I’m happy with it. It’s much more stylized than my old design.

My TiVo got the 6.2 software update while I was away this week, which is awesome. The menus are 100% faster, and I can group shows into folders – making organization much easier. My one complaint though, you can’t delete a group. Now, why would you group shows if you can’t bulk-delete an entire group? What idiot at the TiVo company thought, “Lets give users this awesome feature where they can sort their shows into folders. It’ll simplify and speed up the interface, and make things much more intuitive. Oh, and if they want to delete an entire program group, let’s make them have to go into the folder and delete each one individually. Y’know, temper the rad with the suck, so they don’t get too much user-friendliness all at once.” Stupids. I hate them.

Also, on the upgrade theme, I successfully upped “sounds familiar” to WordPress 1.5.1.1 this weekend. Muddled through some bonehead “oops!” style accidental deletions and some CSS issues, but with a little work and the help of my pre-upgrade backups I was up and running shortly. You won’t see much of a change from the front page, but the backend has some small updates for me – namely a faster loading dashboard when I first enter the behind-the-scenes area. Nothing major seems to be broken, but lemme know if you see something not working right or looking funny.

I know I told you how much I love this Architecture in Helsinki album, but my affair with it has become even more heated in the last week. I daresay it’s my favorite album in a while. And do you think I care that I’m still dirty and sweaty from mowing the lawn? No! I sure don’t! I still sit here listening to this album at deafening levels, windows open so the sun can stream in and I get a nice breeze. I mean guys, I know, as albums go, this one is young… but, man, I love it. I don’t care what you say, we are in love – I know it’s 20 some-odd years younger than me, but we are in love I tell you! We could get married. We could! Age ain’t nothing but a number, and we’re in love… with each other! No, I dunno, I mean, it makes me feel good about myself – is that so wrong? Why are you so prejudiced? You can’t fight the feeling. You keep stifling us like this and I swear I steal away with it and elope. Don’t test my feelings, this is real.

For grins, some of the best search queries from my referral statistics. I’ve done this before, and the explanation is the same – these are words/phrases that people typed into search engines for which my blog was returned. They are naturally funny, so I don’t feel the need to dress them up with additional commentary. Enjoy.

www. ass massage
bathtub meth recipes
alaskan whore house
depressed lonely college blog
bipolar husband and infidelity
monkey riding an ostrich
self hogtie story
dudes saggin balls
swallowing my hot pants
ass wiping techniques
Molly Hatchet naked
“I know you have to pee” dick boy

Molly Hatchet is a band. People want to see anything naked I guess. If they were clued in, they’d really be looking for that homemade porno Molly Hatchet shot on her honeymoon with Jethro Tull. You get my joke? You get it?

Dave out.

Posted on

USA! USA! USA!

Zzzzzz...
Hey hey hey, we’re back.

Excuse my two-day absence, it’s been a busy transition back to US time and goings-on. Not to mention that by the time this posts I’ll be sleeping in anticipation of another trip. So, I’m not sure what the rest of the week will look like, entry-wise… since I think most of my days will be consumed with this seminar thing. Made it back today to a constipated TiVo, overflowing catbox, two-week un-mowed lawn, and the prospect of a day’s rest in my own bed before hitting the friendly skies once again. Despite being bummed about the short-livedness of it, it really feels good to be back.

Right before I left Taiwan, I downloaded the new Architecture in Helsinki album. PF raved it up, but I had my doubts since downloading their last effort on recommendation, and feeling it was only so-so. Sitting in the terminal in Tokyo, I updated my cellphone with the latest tunes, including the new Arch album. The first real time I listened to it was speeding through the sky somewhere off the coast of Japan, and even though the whir of jet engines obscured the minutae a bit – I could tell this was different than the last LP. The band must have gone to a week-long “Making Your Music More Awesome” seminar or something – too bad Weezer couldn’t scrape enough cash together to attend, damn shame that one. If you’re in the mood for some random, hectic, and at times circus-ish whimsy tunes sung in classic indie-male falsetto – you gotta pick up this album. You can preview a track here, courtesy of me.

Wednesday at work was rough. Tuesday’s sleep was fitful and superficially restful at best, as I sort of had to force myself down. The morning started off OK, I seemed rested enough, but after lunch my body fought hard for sleep. Work was busy though, and kept me paced well enough to keep my eyes open for the afternoon. Work has been… different… of late. I’ve somehow stumbled into both increased responsibility coupled with increased autonomy. I guess the two do logically go somewhat hand-in-hand, but the sudden increase of both caught me a bit unprepared. It’s not that I’ve failed, or am failing, it’s just that I’ve been having to adapt faster than normal to change, since the change is happening faster than usual. So, I find I’m having to keep a tighter reign on myself than I previously had – laying out more structured groundwork and setting and keeping better goals. I’ve always been an adherent to the “just do it” mentality when it comes to work, and tend to not formalize things too much into processes and milestones. But, as things pile up, processes and milestones are becoming less and less avoidable, and are, in fact, becoming almost requisite for success. Less because I need the process and mechanics of goals as formal guidelines, but more so because I just freakin’ let things fall off the plate if I don’t have some organizational way to categorize and approach them.

Dude, this is bringing back more 6th grade memories than I can even describe.

I’m going to bed.