skipping class

Lazy is good.
A good weekend, felt nice and slow – like I like ’em. I must’ve caught a awful sleepin’ in bug, because I didn’t wake up until after 10am on both Saturday and Sunday. It didn’t seem to suck the productivity out of the weekend though, as I got a lot of yardwork done on Saturday. I’m trying to get the backyard as prepped as possible for the upcoming work-season (when the weather turns). I really can’t wait to get back out there and get to work. I hope to have the sprinklers, sod, and patio done this summer. We’ll see.

While in Taiwan, I realized that my laptop bag is way too heavy. I mean, I was carrying around so much random and unnecessary junk, all of it heavy. I had all sorts of cables and cords and converters for every country in the world. As well as my old TI-89 graphing calculator and it’s 100+ page manual. I decided that when I got home I would give it a thorough cleaning and slim it down a bit. After said cleaning, I was left with my calculator and manual and the link cable for it. Well, after reminiscing about all the good days of LaPlace transforms, differential equations, and 8-bit grayscale Mario Bros., I decided that I’ll never need the horsepower of that calculator again. So, onto Ebay it went. Hopefully it will fetch me a bit of money to help pay for the Garbage Pail Kids I just ordered (shhh, don’t tell Sharaun).

On Sunday, I spent some time redesigning and putting the finishing touches on my Pac Man pages. I wanted to create a nice menu system, and finally add all the pictures and content I’ve needed to upload. I used a free DHTML menu builder to create the nice rollover menu system, and took some new pictures for the results page. I think the final product came out really nice. I still want to add a few things to the pages, but they’re now the most complete they’ve been since I launched the site. I seem to be getting more and more feedback on them lately, and people seem to be enjoying them.

This Wednesday night is the Unicorns show, which I’m really excited about. Since this week is Noise Pop, we’re staying overnight in the city on Friday to catch a triad of shows. I used hotels.com to book a hotel in the city hall district which is in walking distance to the GAMH. We should be able to hoof it to the show on Friday night, and then figure out the best way to hit the double-feature on Saturday. Should make for a fun weekend and some good music.

I have several very vivid memories of college life, but one of my most vivid is of one single even that, for whatever reason, got stuck in my brain as a particularly enjoyable one. It was around noon one day, and I was walking around campus by the engineering library. My next class wasn’t for another few hours, but I didn’t want to leave campus because I had no car and the bus trip back and forth wasn’t worth the amount of time I’d be at home. So I was sitting in the sun reading. A couple buddies of mine spotted me and we chatted for a while when we realized that none of us had class until later that afternoon. So, we decided to walk across the street to a little bar/grill called The Swamp and get some lunch.

The weather was so nice, and The Swamp had a big-screen TV pulled out into the courtyard area and was playing a mid-week football game (as they often did during sunny warm days). We ordered some sandwiches and a pitcher of beer. Because the Florida sun can get hot, they had these awesome pitchers with a frozen core that kept the beer nice and frosty to the last drop. Halfway through the sandwiches, we ordered another pitcher – and we’d gotten pretty tied up in watching the game. And, as that cycle replayed itself over and over, we found ourselves watching the sun go down. Having missed our classes, gotten completely off our heads, and watched a game and a half – we just decided to stay. We hung out until 8ish, then caught buses to our respective homes. Full of beer and sunburned, I remember being so content. What a great day, and far better memories than what I would’ve picked up in whatever classes I missed.

Until tomorrow, did you know the corn nuts are just deep-fried corn?. See ya.

grooming our replacements

Lazy is good.
This week went by really fast. Guess it could have something to do with the holiday, but it was also a really busy week at work for me. I’m glad it’s over. My pre-planned weekend activities amount to nothing save mowing the lawn and doing some housecleaning, which is good – I like unplanned time better than planned. I like to be able to choose nothing as something to do, and not be tied to anything. If I’m not committed to anything, the prospect of spending a Saturday working around the house or tinkering with a web page is almost too great a temptation to resist. Also, I kinda think it’s more fun to plan things at the last minute. I like when people call up and spur-of-the-moment plans are made to meet and do something. When you look back on things, spontaneous fun events always seem to be remembered as “funner” than planned ones. I think because there’s that extra bit of “good luck” in the fact that something last-minute worked out so well. Also, I’m lazy and always like to have the “do nothing” option.

I’ve been spending a lot of time working on webpages lately. If I’m not working on the t-shirt site, I’m working on the Pac Man Project pages. I’ve been concentrating on both really. I really need to update the Pac Man pages and get them on “auto pilot” so I don’t have to mess with them anymore. I guess now it’s down to a minimal amount of content that I still need to write, but the major work is in re-arrangement and making it look pretty. So, I’ve been fixing the layout and flow and making the whole site easier to navigate and read. I don’t really know why, since there’s no reason really… I guess I just like the project. For the t-shirt site, my motivation is profit. I think Shaine and I (partners in this enterprise) stand a really good chance at making some dough from that project.

I read a really interesting article in Wired magazine on the plane over to Taiwan. It was about the current state of “outsourcing” software jobs to India. While I’m not a software person, being in the high tech industry I am well aware of the outsourcing craze. While the software jobs are going to India, hardware jobs are going to China. Right now we’re on an “accelerated hiring ramp” in Shanghai, and we have yearly percentages of headcount we need to acquire there. The company line is that they’re not actually moving jobs from here to there, but “growing the workforce” to help with some global economy or something. My direct boss-man says he doesn’t buy it, and thinks they are grooming our replacements. I’m not sure how I feel, but I definitely got a whole new perspective on the issue from the Wired article.

I mean, I suppose the whole outsourcing cycle has been going on, on a more basic level, for a long time. In human history, strong people move in and exploit weak people. Eventually, the weaker people learn to be stronger, and at that point the original strong people move on to yet another weaker people and exploit them. I’m no economist, but it seems like: move in to a place, exploit a weaker economy and workforce, drop that place as soon as the weaker economy and workforce strengthen as a result of being exploited, find a new place and repeat. My job seems safe for the time being, but I can foresee a time when I may have to alter the way I think and do things to make myself more valuable than some alien dude who can do exactly what I do at a 6th of the cost. For now, I’ll just keep getting fat and living my American dream-life while they starve. What?

Well, I guess that’s it for me. Dave out.

freezeweeding

Where my grass at?
This morning before work I was staring out of my sliding glass door into my backyard of dirt and rocks, and I got a bug in me. I mean, I was looking at the bumper crop of weeds that all the rain has brought me, and started getting really antsy to get back to work on the backyard again. I was feeling all bummed about the progress in the last few months, which amounts to nil because the weather has been against me. I think these feelings were compounded by the fact that it was a beautiful sunny morning. The kind of morning that makes me want to skip work and get some “real” work done around the house.

I succumbed the best I could without skipping work, I went outside and did some weeding. It was freezing out there pulling weeds at 7am, but it made me feel like I’d at least accomplished something regarding the house. While I was out there I came up with a little experiment too. Noticing I had some grass growing where I don’t want it, and knowing I have no grass growing in spots I do want it – I attempted my first grass-transplant. Instead of throwing out the rogue tufts of grass growing in my mulch, I deftly “planted” them in the bare areas of my sideyard (the forklift that brought the retaining wall stones ruined the grass there). We’ll see if my front-yard-Frankensteinery works or not.

Tonight I finally pushed “submit” on my taxes. I was spurred to action when I overheard one of my coworkers mention he’d already got his refund back. Hopefully with the electronic submission, the refund will get here fairly fast. And, after some more research into the whole “supplemental tax” thing from yesterday – things don’t seem quite so bad. I’ll have to pay a fraction of the amount, but not now – so that’s great news. Hopefully we can use some of the tax money to help finish the backyard. Ahh… so many things to spend money on, so little money to spend.

So then, that’s it. I have nothing else to write and I’m tired. Late entry, barely made it on Thursday at all. Until tomorrow.

enough to pay taxes

Declare the pennies on your eyes.
Well, yesterday was a fine example of Dave’s First Axiom of Finance: There’s no such thing as extra money. Ever since we moved into the house, I’ve been getting property tax bills from the county. When I set up my mortgage, I had them open an escrow account that I pay into each month to cover my taxes and homeowners insurance, I assumed everything was OK. After getting and immediately filing several bills, I got a little paranoid once and contacted my mortgage company to make sure the escrow account would pay the taxes as promised – they confirmed that all was OK. So, I went on happily filing the now-familiar tax bills in my unread “property tax” pile. Around December-time, I even got a statement from my escrow company which showed that they’d paid my taxes and all was well. I was happy.

Happy until, on Monday, Anthony mentioned just got stung on some kind of “supplemental property taxes.” Apparently, he had been blindly filing his tax bills in some drawer as well – thinking his escrow account would take care of them. I guess he’s a tad more observant than I am – because he noticed the word “DELINQUENT” on one of his bills. He opened it to find that, whatever these “supplemental taxes” are, they were marked “unpaid” and had a $100 penalty attached. He told me to take a look through my pile and make sure I wasn’t getting hit with the same thing. It was funny, because I had just gotten another one of the bills upon getting back from Taiwan this past week. Which, Anthony said, was right about when he got his.

Upon getting home, I found that I was indeed in the same boat as Anthony. My supplemental taxes are marked “unpaid” and there’s a $100 fine attached. So, I now owe the county some $2000… not a nice unexpected bill. Ugh. After a thorough review of my escrow account and property taxes due, I arrived at the conclusion that taxes suck ass. And not only that, the people that put together these statements are sadistic idiots of a breed unknown to me, who can read gibberish legalese and use a numbering system which is foreign to this planet. On top of that, they use old dot matrix printers and some Fortran script to print what’s possibly the most illegible and cryptic missives known to man, sprinkled with words like “anticipated disbursements” and “targeted cushion amount.”

Anyway, the whole point of this story was to demonstrate Dave’s First Axiom of Finance. Rewind a couple weeks to find me sitting in my comfy computer chair, doing my taxes with TaxCut. After an hour so, I happily announce to Sharaun that we’ll be getting $2000 back this year! Wow, having a house really paid off – writing off that interest put us in the “itemizing” range, and we’re finally getting some cash back. Oh, but wait… I now owe exactly $2000 in “supplemental property taxes.” Funny how having a house enables me to get just enough back from my taxes that I can now afford to pay… my taxes. I shoulda never thought of that money as “extra,” that’s the kiss of death. If you get unexpected money, try your hardest to think of it as a curse… maybe then the God of Breaking Even won’t smite you as he smote me. Good luck.

Enough about dough. Last night we watched the movie Thirteen. I had been anticipating it, since it got such rave reviews. Turns it out is based on a true story of one thirteen year old girl’s desire to be popular – and the self-destruction that comes from pursuing it. I was expecting something shocking and interesting. I guess it was a little of both, but I kinda felt like it wasn’t as well done as it could have been. At first, the whole thing was a little too over-the-top for me. Kind of like a souped up after-school-special, and just a little too Go Ask Alice-ish. But as the movie developed, I ended up accepting it for what it is: a decent statement on what some girls go through during those initial teenage years. Yeah, so they chose to profile an atypically extreme example, but I wonder how atypical? I guess that’s the point. So yeah, it made me think – but it was nowhere near as riveting as Spellbound.

Loving the Modest Mouse album more and more… the song “Float On” is genius, a real foot-tapper. Dave out.

the hunter-gatherer part of my brain

...or you'll freeze to death!
Not much to report today, first day back at work after a week abroad. They recarpeted the entire floor I work on, so before I left for Taiwan I had to box up everything in my cube. Had to empty all drawers and shelves, take down all wall-hangings, pack and box and label everything in site. It was a pain. And then this morning it took me an hour to setup the thing before I could get any work done. Not exactly what I wanted to do on my first day back, but whatever. The boss man said we need new carpet, and I do what the boss man says. It is nice and springy though, but my chair doesn’t roll around as well as it used to. Owell.

I’ve been working on the website I’m doing with my old friend Shaine. We’re gonna try our hand at hawking t-shirts and other assorted gizmos online. We registered a domain and I’ve been working on the inventory database and shopping cart system. Right now I’m cautiously optimistic about the whole thing, not really sure that we’ll make money. But to put it together costs nothing, and we’ve got the merchandise, plus I love making webpages – so for me it’s a win-win. And hey, if we start to turn a profit – all the better! I think there are some good margins in t-shirts, so we’ll see what happens. I plan to have the site live by next weekend. It’d be great if I could finally turn my web-tinkering into a profit-generating enterprise. Only time will tell.

Tonight I think we’re gonna watch movie “Thirteen,” which is kind of a documentary I think. A documentary about rebellion in teenage girls, and I’m pretty sure it’s based on a true story. I wanted to see it when it was at the Crest downtown, but missed it. I’m kind of bracing for a depressing reality-type look at modern teen depravity – but hoping it’s not quite as bad as Kids. I figured it’d fit well with the growing-pains-of-American-youth documentary streak I’ve been on. Speaking of visual entertainment, I was ecstatic to learn that PBS is doing another period-type “reality” series. This one’s called Pioneer Quest, and it sounds similar to their previous efforts on Frontier House. I happened upon the original season of Frontier House one day and was hooked right off. It’s speaks right to the hunter-gatherer primal fantasy part of my brain. After that I got engrossed in their England-based 1940 House series, and I apparently missed two whole other installments. I’ve got big hopes for the new series, and my TiVo is on the ready.

The Notwist show was great last night. It was my first time going to Slims, which turned out to be a rather large place – with really good acoustics. The opening band was some crazy group called Themselves that combined some very beatsy alt-rap with a kind of performance art. The rapping/vocals were completely annoying to me, mainly because they were too fast and too shrill and too nasally to comprehend, but the beats and musical accompaniment was superb. In other concert news, we recently added to our upcoming show stable with an indie thoroughbred and a scrappy up-and-comer in the likes of Death Cab for Cutie and the Stars/Dears combo. I’m really excited about both. It’ll be the third or fourth time I’ve seen Death Cab, a second for the Stars, and a highly-anticipated first for the Dears. Good times. Oh, and in further music news – Modest Mouse’s new album leaked this morning… and it is superb… just superb.

OK, I’m outta here. Gotta work on some inventory databases and ASP pages. Until tomorrow then.

Taipei to Tokyo, Tokyo to San Francisco

Miles, gimme more miles.
Goodbye Taiwan, you were good to me. Now I’m once again airbound, hurtling over some kinda Asian sea, or maybe even and ocean (my geography is terrible), on the first leg of my journey home. Taipei to Tokyo, Tokyo to San Francisco, San Francisco to Sacramento.

The flight wasn’t so bad, slept most of the way and we had a 100mph tailwind bumping our groundspeed up to a breakneck ~680mph. Now I’m sitting in that ratty United Express commuter terminal waiting for the stupid flight back to Sacramento. Funny thing is that I was all bummed about having to take Benz home after getting in, since I still need to get Sharaun a super-last-minute Valentine’s Day gift – but I don’t have to worry about that anymore. See, while we were in Taiwan, Ben lent his truck to the recently wheels-less Pat – who promptly got it impounded by parking it in front of someone’s driveway. Owell, at least I don’t have to take his ass home. Good times.

Several people have told me recently that I would dig The Da Vinci Code. I’ve heard the name of the book before, but I thought it was another one of those Bible Code books (which I totally dug). Anyway, apparently it’s not like that at all. After reading the review on Amazon, and realizing it’s fiction – I’m not so sure. I thought it was some kinda non-fiction piece about religious sects and stuff. Maybe I’ll give it a shot anyway.

Man, with Noise Pop coming up, I’m in concert overdrive. Tonight is the Notiwst show, and then in the next few weeks we have: The Unicorns, The Wrens, Vanderslice, Pedro the Lion, The Decemberists, and potentially the Strokes, Stars, and Dears. Should be an action-packed month. Maybe I do download scores of albums per month, but I can half-justify it by thinking about the show revenue I give the guys… right? No? OK, so I’m a concertgoing thief… I can deal with that. I mean, on average, our show crew numbers four or five. The least would be two. So that’s not minimal, especially for indie-types, whose income comes primarily (at least I think) from live shows. Whatever.

Holy cow, we rented the movie Spellbound the other day. It’s a documentary following eight kids on their journey to the National Spelling Bee in Washington D.C. I’ve been wanting to see if for a while now, ever since Ben told me about it when it was playing at the Crest downtown. What a great movie. On the top a nailbiter about the Spelling Bee and the pressure the kids (and their parents) go through. More than that, an alternatively heart-breaking and -warming look at smart kids in a dumb society. The emotions that come through from these kids, who wear most everything on their sleeve at that age, are intense. It’s a look a teenage awkwardness, parental pressure, American family life, and probably least of all – spelling. At several points during the film I was at the “if I blink a tear will fall” level of man-crying. I ripped a DVD to send to my folks, since I think they’d really enjoy it.

That’s it. Dave out, and it’s a holiday.

as wheat on the plain

Hard to look manly on these hogs.
Taiwan… oh man. People drive like absolute maniacs here. It’s totally legal to have a TV screen right in the center dash, so the cabbies are driving hell-bent around town while watching some Taiwanese beauty pageant. Nearly knocking over the thousands of scooters that dart in and out of the cars and trucks. There are lines painted on the street, and traffic lights too – but I think they’re more to make us white boys comfortable than for any real traffic regulation. I swear these people are perhaps the worst drivers ever, or at least on par with what I’ve experienced in China. Scooters are by far the most popular mode of transportation here. With hundreds of people driving them around, paying no attention to where they’re going. I’ve seen three people to a little 100cc scooter, with a 4ft stack of boxes roped to the back. They totally get everything they can out of ’em. Saw one lady who had a dog on there with her, crazy. But so far we haven’t died – so there must be a method to the madness I suppose.

One thing I found that I really do like about Taiwan is the fact that hairy men are totally respected here. Yeah, that’s right – dumb Americans with their prim and proper attitudes toward body hair. I mean, I’m pretty much ready for the next ice age… I have a permanent sweater with sleeves and all. Over here, since the men are hairless – body hair is seen as a symbol of power. That alone is almost enough to make me move here. Had I known, I would’ve packed some wife-beaters and walked around the street in full display. That’s right ladies, I’m a fierce warrior and a power to be reckoned with – flock to my hairy ass. In fact, grab some incense and start bowing – you worship me now… look at these locks, see how my whole body ripples as wheat on the plain? Look, but not too long lest you lose your vision for the sheer glory. Finally a country where I can go swimming and get a tan. Bless you Taiwanese people for your crazy mixed up ideas.

So yesterday I got back from presenting and had a few minutes in the hotel room to change and check e-mail and relax. So I tossed off my chinos (what are chinos?) and dress shirt and crashed on the bed in boxers and a t-shirt to check some e-mail and maybe surf a lil’ Fark. It was an amazing day here yesterday, despite the awful air quality the sun was out and the temperature was perfect – so I had thrown open the curtains to let some of the sun in while I relaxed. I’m sitting there checking e-mail when I catch something out of the corner of my eye. Looking over to the window, here comes some dude on a platform, hoisting himself up to wash my window. Great, I’m half-naked sitting on the bed with a laptop… umm… no Mr. Window Washer man, I’m checking e-mail. Anyway, I just pretended not to notice they guy – figuring if I jumped up and ran to change or put on clothes it would just draw more attention to an already awkward situation. I gotta admit, he didn’t let it throw him though. He did a full clean job, stretching the event to a painfully uncomfortable minute-and-a-half. Owell, at least I wasn’t stark naked. Right after that housekeeping busted in and turned tail when they realized I was in the room. I guess I should learn how to use the “do not disturb” light and keep the curtains drawn eh?

Not really excited about the 24hr journey home, but glad I’m getting back finally. Would be nice to have a fat American burger instead of effin squid pizza. Would also be nice to be with a good old American woman instead of bedding these Taiwanese chicks all the time… what? OK I’m gonna go take advantage of the nice weather and free time I have by walking around the city a bit. Then it’s lunch at a famous dumpling house, and off to my last customer meeting before I leave.

Dave out.