Front

ATM located on front of building.

On the south west corner of the intersection of SE Bybee and Milwaukie Ave., there's a bank. The building occupies about a quarter of the lot; the rest is parking, mostly. There are entrances on three of the buildings sides - the east, north and west sides. The drive-through is on the south side of the building. The ATM shares the east wall of the building with one of the entrances.

I walked past and spotted the sign, and, because I'm an over-thinker, I immediately wondered what the sign author meant by "front". The sign was in a door that led into the interior of the building. Why wasn't that door the "front"? Was it because it was above the main floor, so that once inside that door, you had to walk down a stairway to reach the main lobby?

The doors on the north side of the bank shared that wall with lots of glass, windows from about knee-high up to the ceiling. Why wasn't that the "front"? It looked like a "front" - it fronted onto the sidewalk. The teller's booths, inside, faced that way. Seemed like it could be a "front".

The door on the east side, next to the ATMs, and apparently labeled the "front" of the building by the sign's author, led to a short hallway, and then to another door into the main lobby. I suppose it could be considered the "front" by virtue of it having a vestibule before the main bank floor.

Still seemed a bit of an arbitrary label to me, though. • 3:29 PM 0 comments

So close

TRIVIA:

"A squat grey building of only thirty-four stories" is the first line of what novel?

I stared at the words chalked onto the board next to the cash register in my favorite coffee shop. J was filling my mug with Brazilian Top Sky roast, her back to me.

The words were familiar. I'd read that book. My first impression, floating up through the layers of my consciousness, faded into view: "Nineteen Eighty-Four" by George Orwell. Was that it? I thought.

"Grey" seemed familiar. Nothing like a dystopian work to make a virtue of colorlessness. So did the mention of the building only being thirty-four stories high. In many cities that's a smallish skyscraper. That mention made the novel in question almost certainly a work of science-fiction.

But the folks here try to be tricky. On the Fourth of March they had a question whose answer was "March forth!" (the question was "What's the only day of the year that's also a command?") They'd asked for Paul McCartney's middle name (which is Paul). Tricky folks, these. Almost never did they go for the obvious answer.

Was there anything in the news lately that would make "Nineteen Eighty-Four" topical? Besides the Bush Administration, of course, imprisoning people without a trial or due process or recourse to even legal representation; invading a country that posed no threat to us; allowing polluters more latitude under legislation called "Clear Skies Act".

As J. turned to give me my mug, I furrowed my brow, pointed at the sign, and said, "Nineteen Eighty-Four? Is that it?"

She leaned to the side so she could read the answer, stuck on a Post-It note to the cash register. "Nope!" She waited for me to keep guessing.

...

Nothing came to mind. I gave up. "I give up."

"You give up?" she confirmed.

I nodded. I was smiling in my defeat. "What is it?"

She read the Post-It note again to make sure. "Brave New World."

"Argh!" I mock-growled. "I was so close!"

J. nodded and handed me my coffee. "You were!" • 9:36 AM 0 comments

Not telling which

Presented for your amusement (and potential death-defying): a list of 60 things worth shortening your life for.

I've done a few of these... Looks like I've got some work to do.

Feel free to incriminate yourself in the comments.

Me? I'm a bit too self-preservation-y to do that. • 5:22 PM 0 comments

I want one!

A lady in nearby Milwaukie, OR fell for a scam involving a cashier's check for $2950. Scammers sent her a check, asked her to wire that amount back to them as some sort of security, and they would send her $50,000.00 in return as a prize.

I want one of those - what's to stop me from just cashing the check and finding some reason the wire back won't work? What are they going to do - sue me because I didn't play along with their con-game?

I guess they could come beat it out of me. But beyond that... what? • 5:05 PM 0 comments

Blogging and pure first drafts

One of the best things about blogs, at least for me, is that I can get new material from writers I like, and much more often (daily or even more often) than waiting for a new book by them (every few years). And almost all of my favorite authors blog. I'm not sure that should surprise anyone - writers write, and blogging is writing, and since most writers write because they want readers to read their writings, it's a marriage made in some heavenly (though material and scientific) place.

And so today I read Neil Gaiman (though he calls it a "Journal" and not a "blog"). Fans of his have noticed that he writes his first draft out longhand, in some beautiful Italian leather-bound book, and to the fans' surprise, Mr. Gaiman has not made any edits to his copy - no cross-outs, no line-outs, no scribbles in the margins. They write to him, and he replies:

If I'm writing fiction by hand I'll put a loose line through something that I'm definitely not going to use (but I'd never pull it out, and I'd normally want it to be readable in case I change my mind, or in case there's something there I can use). But for me the important thing is that it's pure first draft, straight out of the head and onto the page, sort of like this blog. The important thing is moving forward, for me: editing, fixing, tidying, leaving stuff out, that's all for when I put it onto the computer, that's all for the second draft.

This is very good advice, and not just for writers. Just do it, just start; take that first step; start now. Begin and see what happens. Say "yes", and shelve your worry and tell your negative inner voice (the voice of "Mom", saying "No") to pipe down.

There are no mistakes, in a first draft. There's pure thought becoming pure action. Save everything. Judge nothing. Later, when the thought has run its course, you can go back and collect the things you like and set aside the things you don't (but you may still want those things for different projects, and even if you don't, they still stand as examples of what you tried).

For instance, I've had an idea of collecting and posting links to my favorite authors' blogs, and calling out the ones who don't blog (Tim Powers, you rascal; why don't you blog?!), the ones who do, and the ones who might blog a bit too much (Bruce Sterling, I'm lookin' at you - You write so much, that it's theoretically possible to keep up with everything you write, but there are practical limits to how much one fan can do).

But that post idea became this actual post, and on the whole, I'd rather post actual posts, rather than think about potential posts - and I hope that anyone reading this feels the same! • 6:55 AM 1 comments

Crap

I just broke a lamp.

Well... I knocked it off the stand by the door with my messenger bag, grabbed Smacky and tossed him in the bathroom before he could sniff around the broken glass, got a plastic bag to put all the larger pieces of glass in, put that in the trash, hauled the vacuum cleaner out of the closet, plugged it in, vacuumed, surveyed the area with a flashlight to make sure I got all the glass, put the vacuum cleaner away, put the remains of the lamp in the garbage, and let Smacky out of the bathroom.

Does that count as "just" breaking a lamp? • 5:58 PM 1 comments

OK

I've seen it a bajillion times, said it a bajillion-quadrillion times, and made use of it eleventy-bajillion times.

But until now, this very moment, I have not paid much attention to the OK button:

It’s universal, ubiquitous, friendly, decisive, connected. It’s on your screen, it’s in your pocket. It’s everywhere. It’s you and the machine having a casual conversation. "How’s this?" "OK!" We probably say OK dozens of times each day without realizing it. It’s a word that requires two people, the speaker and the listener. OK is connection.

All interaction with technology is a conversation. You ask a device to do something. It responds with a question or some choices. In most situations, your simplest response is to simply say OK. The OK button is the handshake. You and the device have worked together to a mutual agreement. "Do you want to save this phone number?" OK. "Do you want to print your document two-sided?" OK.

It’s the one button that requires nearly no translation. Luckily, it’s also one of the most compact words available. OK. Two letters that will fit on any button. OK is not just a word anymore. It’s an icon. A wordicon.

• 12:15 PM 1 comments

Start now

Whatever it is you want to do... start now.

The advice is the same, whether it comes to us from ancient China ("The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step"), from a blog about finances, those concerned about the environment, a progressive talk radio show host, or an athletic shoe company.

• "How wonderful is it that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world?" - Anne Frank


• "The successful person makes a habit of doing what the failing person doesn't like to do." - Thomas Edison


• "Iron rusts from disuse; stagnant water loses its purity and in cold weather becomes frozen; even so does inaction sap the vigor of the mind." - Leonardo da Vinci


• "Try not. Do or do not. There is no try." - Yoda


• "When a problem comes along, you must whip it." - Devo


• "Travelers, it is late. Life’s sun is going to set. During these brief days that you have strength, be quick and spare no effort of your wings." - Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi

• 11:41 AM 1 comments

Tiger, Tiger, burning bright

...in the forests of the night.

I "borrowed" the system restore discs for an iMac G5, to try to upgrade the OS on my G4 Mac mini. I tried every crack and hack I could find to get the iMac Tiger discs to install on my Mac mini. Unfortunately "every hack and crack I could find" amounts to two - modifying the .pkg and using a program called XPostFacto. Neither one worked. In both instances, when I tried to actually install, it would simply recognize that my mini was not an iMac, and refuse to install.

So I realized I was being a pirate and decided to do the honorable thing and buy a damn copy of Tiger. I looked at craigslist to see if anyone was selling a copy for cheap. No go. Then I checked other online retail stores. The best I could do was Amazon - I'd save $10, not including shipping. $10 and I'd have to wait?

That did it. I headed down to the Apple Store, plucked a copy of Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger off the shelf and stood in line. The tall and lovely black-shirted C. rang up the sale.

"So..." she said, curly brown-haired head hunched over her little handheld computer, stabbing at the screen with the stylus (I have it on good authority that the handheld POS boxes run Windows CE - that authority being my own eyes), "...you're buying Tiger. That's exciting." Her flat tone added irony to her statement.

"Yeah."

"What do you have?" She asked, marginally more interested.

"A Mac mini," I said.

Her head jerked up, her brow furrowed and her brown eyes darkened as she mentally paged through Apple's product line. "But that... that should run Tiger already?"

"No," I said, sadly, "It's got Panther on it. It was one of the first ones sold. It's two years old."

"Oh." She nodded. "Oh, right."

"There's too many applications that require Tiger now. Time to upgrade. And since Leopard is going to be late, I might as well bite the bullet now."

The fact is, the main application I want to run on my mini is HamachiX, a Mac OS client for the Hamachi VPN network. It will let me access my home computer over the internets, a very valuable tool. I can then set up secure browsing, have my music and videos available everywhere I've got a net connection... and... and... well, that's all I can think of right now. I'm sure there's more I can do.

I'm sure of it! • 7:06 AM 2 comments

Money rollin' in

Of late I've been interested in the idea of passive income. The idea and implementation of it, actually. I think I've blogged before about alternative sources of income, and it turns out that several of those ideas on that list are also considered passive income: any of the ones that involve writing something and selling it, for instance. Royalties on a novel would be passive, after the hard work of writing and publishing it, the sales of the book over time will generate income.

Other examples would be interest income, or investing in stocks or bonds. Or investing in someone else's business - another way to earn interest is loaning money out to others. Of course, the hard part of all this is having enough money to loan it out to others. Takes money to make money. And unless you have a large amount of money to spend, even getting 10% return isn't going to replace the day job.

This all ties in to my epiphany about collecting capital in a capitalist society, as well. The largest form of capital for most Americans is their house. Once the purchase is made, typically the value of the property rises over time, and hopefully rises faster than you're paying interest on the mortgage. Once the value of the house is greater than what you owe on it, you're making money. So home ownership in, in a very real way, a common form of passive income.

My sister's husband once talked about a friend of his from high school. This friend was renting an apartment in a small complex, and managed to purchase the whole complex. He could then eliminate or drastically reduce his main living expense by applying the rents he collected from the other tenants towards his mortgage. Clever. I've thought about that, too, but I'm not sure that the building I'm living in is worth it... or even for sale. There's also the whole maintenance and upkeep thing to consider. Ugh. Still, rental income is another form of passive income, to a certain extent.

Another idea for generating ongoing income without much actual work is my idea of starting a web hosting company. If I'm going to maintain a server for myself anyway, why not rent out disk space, bandwidth, and software services, too? In fact, on my to-do list is a note to look into what it would cost to rent a tiny office somewhere that can get DSL or bandwidth that I can re-sell. Stick a server and enough hard drives in there, configure it for serving web pages, learn a bit about using Apache and creating virtual domains, and see how many customers I could get. Again, it wouldn't replace my current income - it would supplement it, and it would always be coming in, as long as I kept the servers running and connected to the intertubes.

Combining several of these would enable me to rely less and less on the day job. At the very least, the plan would reduce the stress I feel about my day job, and would give me vital contacts and skills in areas I very much value.

Plus most of them seem like fun. I love writing. I love tweaking computers and fixing them. I love playing with numbers and spreadsheets and calculating returns. And who doesn't love playing with other people's money?

Of course, it would all be so much easier if I could just win the freakin' lottery already. Until that day, I have to make do with the foldin' green I got, not the foldin' green I deserve... • 9:08 PM 1 comments

Fashion

Fashion is the art of looking good. Now, that means different things to different people, but in Western culture, the basics of fashion is this: dress so that you look tall and thin. Make use of color and pattern and various optical illusions to draw people's eyes away from whatever it is about you that isn't tall or thin.

When I was in my 20s, I paid a little bit (not too much - I was cynical at an early age) of attention to fashion. I was, however, operating under a handicap; a self-inflicted one, perhaps, but still... I didn't realize I was short. I thought 5'6" was OK. I didn't realize that I would be considered a "short man". I just assumed my male friends were all "tall" and that I was at, or near, the average. It should have been a huge clue that all of my male friends were taller than me. Objectively, that put my height somewhere to the left of the bell-shaped curve. Ah, the delusions of youth.

And yet, subconsciously, perhaps I knew that I was below average in height for an American male, because I made up for height with weight. I, like many who aren't paying much attention, gained and gained and gained in weight. I became a blocky, squared-off shape. And the bigger I got, the more I started to dress to hide that weight. Baggy clothes, dark colors, long coats, heavy shoes.

Several years ago, as I began to bring my weight under control, I slowly re-learned all the basic fashion tips that fashion experts give for men. And I quickly realized that there are separate tips for short men, and big men.

And they tend to contradict each other. It's impossible for someone who may fit into both categories to follow all of the advice.

This makes sense on one level; short men are trying to look bigger, and heavy men are trying to look smaller. The advice is working at cross-purposes to each other.

Since I fit both categories, I had to pick one or the other. I went with the "big man" advice.

But the more weight I lose, the more I can start to incorporate the advice for shorter men: lighter colors, snug fit. And my friends are starting to notice... • 12:59 PM 0 comments

Been busy

I've been away from my blog for a bit. Couple of days, but I'm sure there are people out there eagerly awaiting an update or seven from me.

I'm sure of it.

What have I been doing? Learning that there really is nothing you cannot do with teh Google. Check it out: you can text searches to Google and they'll text the answers back to you! I could have totally used the movie listings on Tuesday night, when a friend called me on the spur of the moment, and wanted to see a movie because he didn't have the wife with him. I didn't know about Google Mobile that night, and so I had to sneak into the Apple Store at Pioneer Place Mall to use their internet connection to find out showtimes.

I could have just texted something like:

movies 300 97201

and had the showtimes sent to me for all theaters in that zip code.

And I've taken my surfing to a whole new level with Google Reader. It's a page that collects all the new posts for all the many sites I normally surf manually. There are hitches - some sites don't have "feeds", which is a way to tell when a new post has arrived.

And speaking of texting, I can text my Google Calendar to create new events, and it will text a reminder to me about the event. This makes the anemic calendar on my phone pale in comparison... but possibly only because I'm now a wiz at texting.

There's other stuff going on in my life that don't involve Google, but things like the above is probably why Google reported waaaaay better sales last quarter than anyone expected. • 9:23 PM 1 comments

And now for something completely different

A man getting shot in the stomach, at close range, with a cannon ball. • 2:07 AM 1 comments

Brianiac

Why, yes, I am in fact up at 1:52 AM in the morning.

What am I doing? I'm taking the Pew News IQ test.

I scored a perfect 9 out of 9 questions. How did you do?

Just so you know, if you tend to watch local news, or listen to Rush Limbaugh, or Fox "News"... you probably won't do so well.

However, if you tend to watch "The Daily Show" with John Stewart... you'll do fine.

Note to my friends: Don't worry, I'll still love ya no matter what your score is. • 1:52 AM 3 comments

You say jump, I say how rude

As Bucky Katt says: "I don't need constant adoration and ego stroking to feel good about myself. I'm not a dog."

If you're not seeing some of me in Bucky... you're not looking hard enough.

Even Tracy sees it. Really, really well. Especially today. Click through the link to see what I mean. • 2:27 PM 2 comments

Coffee, black

Perusing the Sunday paper and digging in to my reward breakfast (reward because I ran a personal best time in the Race for the Roses 5K this morning - 27:12! 8:45 per mile pace!) in a window seat at the Limelight. Home-fried potatoes, scrambled eggs, French toast, sausage.

And coffee. Lots of cream and sugar, and I'd just gotten it to the perfect combination of temperature and flavor. The cup was half-full.

Lydia approached the table, asked me how I was doing. "Great," I said, smiling. She carried a coffee pot.

She started to turn away, saw my coffee cup, turned back. Poised the coffee pot over my cup. "D'you want me to top it up?"

I didn't answer right away. I sat there, looking at the cup, mentally still tasting the flavor of cream and coffee and sugar, feeling the hot-but-not-too-hot-to-drink liquid splashing over my tongue and warming my tummy.

The moment, silence... lengthened. Grew.

I looked up at her. "...ok" I finally said. She flipped her blonde bangs from her eyes, and her normal polite smile shifted into an amused sly grin.

I felt compelled to explain: "It's just that I've got it to that perfect state -"

She laughed. "Oh, no, I remember!" She filled the cup, the milky tan fluid darkening to a rich medium brown.

"- and I didn't want to have to do it again, but I figured the cup -"

"It's a delicate balance," she agreed.

"- was half gone already, so..." I trailed off. She knew. She understood.

"I drink mine black now, but I remember the ritual of preparing my coffee, back when I drank it with waaaaay more cream and sugar than almost anyone I know," she continued. She'd moved to the next table over, and was clearing away the leave-behinds of the previous patrons. "But then I went camping -"

"Oh," I interrupted "and you had to!"

Her eyes were focused on another time while her hands moved in the present. "Yes, exactly. No cream, no sugar. But I couldn't go without coffee. So I learned to associate the good feelings of being in the woods with the black coffee. It's just so" her hands left her task in the present and folded themselves around an imaginary mug while she leaned her face over it and took in the scent "rich and dark and strong."

"That's awesome," I said. My mouth twisted into a smirk. "But that's not gonna work for me. I hate camping." • 6:42 PM 1 comments

Good rules for people who hate rules

b!x at Furious Nads! had been covering the teacher in Sisters, Oregon who was fired for teaching Creationism in public school science class. He mentioned that one EMALman was questioning b!x about his coverage.

I took a look, and decided to jump in to answer at least one of EMALman's questions. After two tries, it seemed obvious that the discussion was going nowhere so I politely declined to continue the discussion. I didn't want to get angry over the massive amounts of miscommunication going on (on both sides, admittedly) and figured I'd call it off. I didn't want to troll his site, I only wanted to present my own point of view. But EMALman's follow-up questions showed that I would have to literally start from the beginning of my philosophy, which would take waaaay longer than just a comment or two. Not worth my time, and though he may find it interesting to discuss, I'd rather put those posts on my own site, actually.

At any rate, keeping all that in the back of my mind, I read in this week's Ask Marilyn column some tips on keeping political discussions friendly:

Rule No. 1: Don’t expose weaknesses and flaws in the political beliefs of others. It provokes defensiveness, because everyone believes they are right; it makes people mad, because everyone hates to be called wrong; and people who are both defensive and mad are going to be ready to quarrel. Plus, showing people the error of their ways doesn’t make your ways right.

Rule No. 2: Explain the positive basis and evidence for your own political beliefs. People are more likely to adopt new beliefs than to drop old ones; also, people are more receptive to other ideas when not annoyed, and they will listen longer to pleasant, well-grounded comments and points. Plus, your beliefs needn’t be “right”; they need only to be a better choice.

Marilyn vos Savant is apparently the smartest person in the world - based on her scores on several I.Q. tests. I like her take on things, and in this instance I think she's hit on a brilliant way for people to talk about so-called "touchy" subjects and still keep things civil. In spite of her disclaimer I think this would work for religious discussions, too - except for really aggressive evangelical-types, who would tend to not see a difference between talking about the benefits for themselves and their ideas of the benefits for others... though perhaps Rule No. 1 would mitigate that somewhat. • 1:21 PM 0 comments

Whole Wide World

Don't ever let anyone tell you dieting and exercise "don't work". When you stick with them, they work wonders.

I used to be big. That picture was taken in 1998. I was wearing 40" waist pants at the time (in that picture, even - I hadn't planned well that day, I was on vacation in Mexico, and I wore regular walking shorts to that aquarium, instead of swim shorts). Within just a couple of years after that, I was wearing 42" waist pants - snug 42" pants.

Dig back into the archives for the most recent dieting and exercise updates, but, long story short, today I did some clothes shopping and I came home with a pair of pants with a 33" waist.

I haven't worn pants that small since... well... probably since I was twelve! And I've got a bit more to lose... • 3:09 PM 1 comments

I love words

This post at the Language Log makes me feel much, much better for not having read Dan Brown's "The Da Vinci Code":

I am still trying to come up with a fully convincing account of just what it was about his very first sentence, indeed the very first word, that told me instantly that I was in for a very bad time stylistically.

The Da Vinci Code may well be the only novel ever written that begins with the word renowned. Here is the paragraph with which the book opens. The scene (says a dateline under the chapter heading, 'Prologue') is the Louvre, late at night:

Renowned curator Jacques Saunière staggered through the vaulted archway of the museum's Grand Gallery. He lunged for the nearest painting he could see, a Caravaggio. Grabbing the gilded frame, the seventy-six-year-old man heaved the masterpiece toward himself until it tore from the wall and Saunière collapsed backward in a heap beneath the canvas.

I think what enabled the first word to tip me off that I was about to spend a number of hours in the company of one of the worst prose stylists in the history of literature was this. Putting curriculum vitae details into complex modifiers on proper names or definite descriptions is what you do in journalistic stories about deaths; you just don't do it in describing an event in a narrative. So this might be reasonable text for the opening of a newspaper report the next day:

Renowned curator Jacques Saunière died last night in the Louvre at the age of 76.

But Brown packs such details into the first two words of an action sequence — details of not only his protagonist's profession but also his prestige in the field. It doesn't work here. It has the ring of utter ineptitude. The details have no relevance, of course, to what is being narrated (Saunière is fleeing an attacker and pulls down the painting to trigger the alarm system and the security gates). We could have deduced that he would be fairly well known in the museum trade from the fact that he was curating at the Louvre.

The writing goes on in similar vein, committing style and word choice blunders in almost every paragraph (sometimes every line). Look at the phrase "the seventy-six-year-old man". It's a complete let-down: we knew he was a man — the anaphoric pronoun "he" had just been used to refer to him. (This is perhaps where "curator" could have been slipped in for the first time, without "renowned", if the passage were rewritten.) Look at "heaved the masterpiece toward himself until it tore from the wall and Saunière collapsed backward in a heap beneath the canvas." We don't need to know it's a masterpiece (it's a Caravaggio hanging in the Louvre, that should be enough in the way of credentials, for heaven's sake). Surely "toward him" feels better than "toward himself" (though I guess both are grammatical here). Surely "tore from the wall" should be "tore away from the wall". Surely a single man can't fall into a heap (there's only him, that's not a heap). And why repeat the name "Saunière" here instead of the pronoun "he"? Who else is around? (Caravaggio hasn't been mentioned; "a Caravaggio" uses the name as an attributive modifier with conventionally elided head noun "painting". That isn't a mention of the man.)

My apologies for the long quote from the original article. It's just that I love words, and especially well-crafted words, words used in the service of snark.

And if you give me well-crafted words used in the service of snark about other people's poorly-used words, well, sir or madam... I am delirious.

So, yeah... Dan Brown's a hack. I'm glad to have had that confirmed. • 10:22 AM 0 comments

Note to self: Dr. Google

Note to self (and any nervous parents out there): do not try to diagnose yourself, or a loved one, via teh Google. You'll only freak yourself out. • 9:08 AM 0 comments

Hi-ho

Celebrate the living. Celebrate life.

The world was better for having Kurt Vonnegut in it.

The world is a bit sadder without him.

Goodbye, Mr. Vonnegut... goodbye. • 9:17 PM 0 comments

Got Nothin' Day

I scanned the list over at Wikipedia that shows all the events on this day in history. Although some of the events were intriguing (birthday of Anton LaVey, founder of the Church of Satan? Ill-starred launch for Apollo 13 mission to the moon?)... still I found no inspiration there.

Where do ideas come from? What do I write about when there's nothing leaping to mind?

I could put up an awesome quote.

I could talk about my day via the alphabet.

I could go on vacation and never come back (yes, I am linking to the most recent post, as of the morning of April 11th).

...so many options. I could rant about my day; I could complain about some poor service I received; I could rhapsodize about a shiny new object that will finally (finally!) make my life complete.

There's ideas for blog posts in the everyday and the extraordinary; the personal or the political; small posts and large posts.

...and then there's the kind of post that just tosses a bunch of stuff on the screen, as a place-holder until another better idea comes along. I call these "montage posts". It feels like cheating, or being lazy... But it's still blogging.

Welcome to "Got Nothin' Day". • 6:21 AM 2 comments

Sticky

Keyboards are nasty collectors of food and gunk. Want to clean it?

Try this.

Don't try this, unless you can talk someone else into doing it. • 6:50 AM 0 comments

Happy Music

Sitting at the very back stage at the world-famous Acropolis, Tracy and I watched the slender, clever S. dance to some very heavy metal music. On a rockin' Saturday night, the music all four dancers shake their moneymakers is chosen by the dancer on the very front stage, and apparently the girl on the main stage liked the dark stuff.

Tracy turned to me, leaned close and spoke directly into my ear. "I hate this music. How do they" she nodded towards S., writhing on the rail in front of a mixed-gender bunch of trucker-cap wearing young hipsters "dance to this shit?"

I just shrugged.

S. danced her way over to us. She smiled when she recognized my face. I introduced her to Tracy and they said hi to each other.

"Hey, lady, want to boink?" I said.

S. looked puzzled, which went well with her half-nakedness. "Boink? You mean hump?"

We'd had a discussion a couple of weeks ago about hump being the funniest word for sex. In the time since then, I'd been reminded of the word boink, which, by one of the rules of comedy ("words with a hard C or G sound in them are funnier than words without") is funnier than hump.

"Boink is funnier than hump," I said.

S. laid on her back, along the rail, leaning on her arm. Her right breast was level with Tracy's eyes; only about 5 or 6 inches separated them. "No," S. said, with finality. "Hump is funnier." She looked at Tracy. "Right?"

Tracy nodded. "I agree."

I was outnumbered.

S. pouted. "I hate this music."

Tracy laughed. "Me, too! What kind of music do you like?"

"I like happy music," S. stated, as if that were the only possible answer.

Labels: stripclub

• 8:26 PM 1 comments

Do what you fear

On the scale of bravery, obviously the highest reaches are reserved for those who willingly and without hesitation give their lives to save another's.

Not at those lofty heights, and on a more manageable scale, are those who are dorks. Those who publicly and knowingly stumble, just because; those who make funny faces or wink or stick out their tongues; those who know that fart jokes are truly the great equalizer; those walk funny or talk funny; those with the gift of not caring if they're viewed as "adults".

Be a dork and you may not attain vast power over mighty empires and mind-boggling fortunes.

But you may end up rewarded with the infinite richness of smiles and laughter. And even if you don't - you won't care.

You'll be too busy having fun.

"You big dork" is among the most powerful of the Three Word Sentences that shape the world (the other three being, of course, "I love you", "Let me help" and "Dance with me"). Use it wisely foolishly. • 12:35 AM 0 comments

Open mind and mouth

Being an atheist, I may not celebrate the religious holiday of Easter.

I do, however, appreciate chocolate bunnies.

Especially dark chocolate bunnies.

Happy Easter, everyone. • 12:17 AM 0 comments

I love this song

...and the video is pretty snappy, too. Enjoy!
• 5:47 PM 0 comments

Smacky says hi

Smacky has somewhat disappeared from my blog. But he's still around, in that way of cats of demanding attention when he wants it, and being prickly and scarce when he wants to be.

Last week sometime he must've gotten into a fight with another cat. I'm guessing it was a white cat because Smacky had little tufts of white fur in his claws, along with a bunch of new scars on his left cheek and a nasty tear in his left ear. After a huge fight like that, Smacky sticks around the house and doesn't go outside much. I can't tell if that means he won, or lost. Maybe he won and he doesn't feel the need to patrol his territory; maybe he lost and is avoiding the winner until he heals up.

Mostly he sat on top of his cat condo, near the heater (hard to remember on this sunny warm Friday morning, but it was cold last week if you'll recall) or on my bed, curled up in the blankets.

This week I've been spending a lot of time catching up on "Battlestar Galactica", which translates into being curled up on the couch under a blanket, maybe a small amount of delicious white cheddar popcorn to snack on, while I watch TV for a couple of hours (3 hours of viewing time equals four full episodes minus the commercials).

Smacky would do one of two things:

1. Completely ignore the warm lap I was offering for a long time and stay curled up on his cat condo or in the bedroom... until about 5-10 minutes before I was ready to turn off the teevee and go to bed, at which point he'd wander over, jump up in my lap, curl up, and then growl and hiss 5-10 minutes later when I had to move him to stand up.
   
2. Or he would find me immediately, jump up, burrow under the blanket, and then growl and hiss and bite if I moved at all, even a little.

Cats are so random.

Last night I came home and my neighbor lady, Peggy, and Old Barfy were sitting on their front step. As I walked past them and said "hi", the lady laughed and said, "Someone's waiting for you!" Smacky was hiding in the bushes, but when he saw me, he came out, rubbed up against my legs, and meowed constantly until I got the door open to let him in.

It's nice to feel wanted. Even if it's a cat. • 6:44 AM 1 comments

On This Day In History!

Happy Ougadi! What's "Ougadi" you ask? Why it's the New Year holiday for an ethnic group in India, the Telugu people. It is also the birthday of Ganesha, the god of wisdom and "remover of all obstacles".

Today, the 5th of April, was also the birthday of Thomas Hobbes, the man who brought us social contract theory, which proposes that self-defense against a violent death is the natural right of all men, and is the basis of all human rights. Hobbes then proceeded to tell us that it's in the King's best interest to abide by the law. I guess Hobbes never counted on men like George W. Bush and Dick Cheney.

Others born on this day were Albert R. Broccoli, producer of the James Bond films; Ivar Giaever, a Norwegian physicist; and Pedro Rossello, the sixth governor of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico.

Today was also the day that Kurt Cobain chose to leave this mortal coil. Bye, Kurt. Kurt shares this day with John Winthrop, the Younger, the governor of Connecticut in the 17th Century (y'know, before the U.S.A. was formed); General MacArthur; and Saul Bellow, who was considered for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1974 but passed over, and who won it for reals in 1976.

And that's what happened on This Day In History! • 6:07 AM 1 comments

Beam me up

Jimmy Doohan, who played Scotty in various incarnations of Star Trek, will finally, years after his death, reach space, the final frontier.

His ashes will be launched into space. It was apparently his wish for after he passed away.

Bon voyage, Mr. Doohan. • 6:43 AM 1 comments

Music hath charms

Music hath charms to soothe the savage breast, to soften rocks, or bend a knotted oak.

It's so true. Ol' Bill Congreve knew what he was talkin' about.

I'm sitting here listening to my music, conveniently contained on my beautiful video iPod. I've heard Barenaked Ladies' folk-rock, to System of a Down's hardcore rock (I loves me some "Pogo" to get going in the morning), to Seattle band Harvey Danger, to Morphine's slow, jazzy rock, to Radiohead... It's all good. Because it's my music, and everything I put on there is something I like, for one reason or another, and I've got (I think) broad tastes.

Apple and EMI Music announced yesterday that they're going to start selling non-DRM'ed music in the iTunes Music Store, online, for download.

My personal thoughts on DRM, or encrypting music to lock its use to one or a few devices, are this: it's treating the customer like a thief, it's ineffective because there are always ways to crack it, and it's more about making the customer pay for the fair use that they should get for free. So I applaud the basic idea behind EMI experimenting with unlocking their music - but, again, they're charging more for the right that should be free. They'll still offer FairPlay (heh) enabled tracks for US$0.99 each, or super-special "free" tracks for US$1.29.

This comes after Steve Jobs said that Apple would drop DRM in an instant if the labels gave their OK (which I almost blogged about), and EMI stepped up, half-heartedly and still looking to siphon money from their customers in the process, but, y'know, still.

Once the music is available, I will likely, as a way to support the concept, upgrade any EMI tracks that I've purchased. Of course, since I only have a handful (maybe 40? 50?) songs that I've purchased from iTMS, it's unlikely that I will be dropping very much dough.

The vast majority of the 4400+ songs in my digital music collection is legally obtained from ripped CDs - remember those? Yeah, they're not encrypted or locked in any way, so it's easy-peasy to buy them (used, most of the time, so discounted), then use my computer to suck the songs off and then onto my iPod. I get to choose the quality of the songs, instead of being locked in to the 128kbps or 256kbps that iTunes offers - I can even listen to nothing but full-on, non-compressed digital music.

Another large selection of my library is made up of songs that the artists themselves have offered for free on the internet. Not all artists are locked into serfitude with one of the five major labels, you know, and most artists like the fact that people want to listen to their music, so they're open to distributing it in any way possible. Look at Harvey Danger's free digital distribution of their awesome third album, "Little By Little", for an example.

And most of the time, I'm downloading because I want to try something new, or I've been turned on to some new song or artist by a friend and want to sample them. If I like them, I turn around and buy their CDs (see two paragraphs ago) and attend their shows, maybe even buy the t-shirt or somethin'. It's like the free songs are advertising. Wow, where did that idea come from - letting people hear the songs for free so that they'll turn around and spend money on the band? Oh, right... that's the model for radio. Which is apparently so old-fashioned and 20th century that the major labels are just not interested. Except for EMI. Sort of.

I do have a few (probably less than 200) songs that I've either pirated off the internets, or

But, y'know, still... I guess that's my reaction to the whole announcement: "But, y'know, still..." It's great, but... • 7:09 AM 1 comments

Frak, it's good

OK, so I gave in to another teevee show that "everyone" said is really good. And it turns out that I like it, too.

Are you sitting down?

The new "Battlestar Galactica" rocks.

I know, I know... You're thinking "cheesy space opera" and probably "Star Wars rip-off" but, seriously. In the "re-imagined" new series, the writers have given us an awesome people-oriented drama. And there's this whole tension between the military commander (Adama) and the political leader (President Roslin) that makes for great political drama. Plus it's got the sci-fi aspects, plus the writers are doing the whole modern "continuing storyline" and how that has consequences for the characters.

Plus the chick who plays Starbuck is butch-y hot - and she's from Portland; a home girl!

I kept reading online about the Season 3 finale, realized I didn't want to be spoiled, and I decided to catch up on it. Turns out I like it. I found the disks at my local video lair (no, really - it's called Video Lair and it rocks) last week and have been going back for more.

I just finished Season 1 last night. I'll start Season 2 tonight. Don't nobody spoil anything for me or I'll kick your frakkin' ass! • 6:53 AM 0 comments