Tuba Christmas

Tuba Christmas
Originally uploaded by tallasiandude.

Thought I'd mention that we went to this thing called "200 tubas" which is apparently an annual event that's held at Faneuil Hall during Thanksgiving weekend. It's basically an all-tuba orchestra that plays a 1-hour concert of Christmas carols. They did a headcount and apparently there were actually only 103 tubas this year, but it was still fun.

Really, really cold. (can't-feel-my-feet-cold) But fun. But cold.

And then we went to Wing's kitchen and had Pork as big as your head.

A good day.

Except for the cold part. Did I mention that it was cold?

I guess it's just been a little confusing since it hit the low 60s on Thanksgiving Day.

Travel Planning

We decided to punt on the deferred New Zealand honeymoon because things never did quite slow down enough for us to actually plan the trip. We're settling for two weeks and change in Hawaii tacked onto some holiday travel in California -- life could be worse.

We scored some frequent flier tickets on American, so we just needed to book the inter-island flights because we're planning on flying into Lihu'e, but out of Honolulu.

My mother pointed me to a travel search engine called Farecast which purports to track the trends in airfare prices in order to help you decide when it's a good time to buy your plane tickets. Seems like a pretty clever tool -- I had been googling for exactly that kind of information for the New Zealand trip. Unfortunately, it only seems to hit the major hubs in the major markets -- so LAX, not Burbank. O'hare, not Midway. (well, sometimes) Honolulu, not Lihue or Hilo or Kona.

But still, it did a pretty good job finding flights for us. And I thought the user interface behaved a lot better than Sidestep, a fare aggregator that the SOOTTAD often uses. The filters responded quickly and didn't make the page jump around. I also liked that it sends you to the airline website (or at least, it did for me), when it figures out that it's cheaper. As an aggregator, Sidestep would often send the SOOTTAD to some discount site like CheapTickets.com (no link because it's N/G) that she vows she will never use again because of all the headaches it created when we had to change a ticket over the summer. When she uses it now, she finds the fare and then manually goes to the airline site.

Anyway, Farecast found some good prices on Mesa Air for our island-hopping and sent me to their reservation site. Which was very considerate, except for the part where Mesa only seemed to operate within the central plains of the continental U.S. I had to poke around before I found Go! Hawaii, one of the subsidiaries of the Mesa Air group. I wandered through the Customer Care page in order to find it because I missed the direct link the first time around.

Anyway, cheap tickets. Couldn't figure out how to sign up for their membership program, but that probably isn't a big loss since I don't think I'll going to be flying there all that much. (nice thought though, huh?) Now we just have to hope that nothing funny happens to this airline or our flights between now and when we get to the islands.

Ketchup 1: Crap we found under the deck

Crap we found under the deck
Originally uploaded by tallasiandude.

So a few weeks ago we finally found some time to do some yardwork. We were planning on just doing a first pass of leaf raking, but once I got going on the leaves under the deck, I pretty much had to clear out all the other crap that was down there.

Somehow I thought this post was going to be more interesting. Oh well.

For what it's worth, we're keeping the crab.

Ketchup?

Hide
Originally uploaded by tallasiandude.

I had every intention of doing Art Everyday Month this year, what will all the craziness of the year theoretically behind us -- moving into the new house, finishing school, setting up the new business, selling the old house, getting married. Y'know, stuff. But I guess it wasn't really *every* intention, seeing as I got as far as starting the above drawing on the first and only just got around to "finishing" it this afternoon. (and by that I mean that I've done enough for it to be presentable, even though it doesn't really feel done.)

Life often seems like a never-ending sequence (an infinite series?) of "almost there" moments where things are largely sucking and it seems like you just need to turn a corner and everything will fall into place and it'll just be smooth sailing from then on. (you mean like in Iraq? No, not like that. Well, yes, kinda... in the never-quite-turning-the-corner way as opposed to the unfailingly-optimistic-in-a-delusional-if-not-cynical-way way)

Anyway, things keep feeling like they're going to settle down and get back to "normal." Except that they're not. There's always something coming up on the horizon. Things are good, but invariably there's always something that's a little crazy going on in the background, some crisis we're managing or some crazybomb that's about to go off.

Shit happens.

But, you know, things are good. Always with the step back and the happy sigh. And it still feels like we're making progress. Maybe it *is* fair to think of it like a mathematical infinite series. As in, mathematical convergence.

Anyway, I'm feeling a bit out of it these days, but I haven't been able to put my finger on what the dealio is. The head feels like it's in a funny place. I've felt a bit disconnected. Things seems strangely unfamiliar. Maybe it's just that my routines are gone and I have to develop new systems.

So I went to the well. Although it's really more like I found myself in my well, and I've been trying to find a pause between all the stuff that's been going on to take some time to process things a bit.

The well isn't really a bad place. It's a concept I took from Haruki Murakami's "The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle" where it's something of a reoccurring theme. It's a place for introspection. A quiet place, hidden away, separated from the systems, the chaos, the crazy of everyday living. Maybe it's its own little crazy, but it's at least in a more manageable form-factor.

So it's the start of the Turkey day long weekend. I figured I'd have some free time while we're at the SOOTTAD's parental homestead, although we've been put to work for a good chunk of the time we've been here already. But I may still have a chance to find that pause. Hopefully I'll at least get a few of the catch-up posts out to let you know what I've been doing and thinking about recently.

And, of course, if not, hopefully this'll do for some of the explaining.

Vampires

Corny, but they have a point:

"Some 'Vampires' Prefer Energy Over Blood"
The latest estimates show 5 percent of electricity used in the United States goes to standby power, a phenomenon energy efficiency experts find all the more terrifying as energy prices rise and the planet warms. That amounts to about $4 billion a year.

Contemporary Criminal Activity

A few weeks ago, my friend JBar thought she had been the victim of the stupidest thief on the planet. Someone had apparently stolen her credit card number online, but all the stuff they had ordered with it had ended up at her house. The connection was made when she started receiving a bunch of random shipments, including a package of "colon flow" supplements, a bunch of Disney DVDs and nine bottles of wine. She was annoyed because she had to deal with getting all the charges reversed (fortunately, she didn't have to actually pay anything -- go AmEx), but we had a laugh about our incompetent constipated and alcoholic pedophile.

My brain clicked briefly with the memory that both the SOOTTAD and I had recently had our credit card numbers changed out from under us because Citibank had apparently discovered that some retailer had had their records compromised. Yeah, changing all my automatic bill-pays was fun. Anyway, I guess I figured it was going around, but other than that I didn't think much else about it.

And then the SOOTTAD got an unsolicited order of multivitamins. No idea where that came from, but she didn't have any time to deal with it, so it sat in her office for several days. And then while she was away on business earlier this week, another package of vitamins showed up. And a book order from Scholastic -- apparently she was added to some Scholastic book club.

So it looks like it wasn't an isolated incident of incompetent crime.

The SOOTTAD spent most of the morning talking to customer service representatives (arguing with some that were exceedingly more incompetent than others), calling up retailers, having charges reversed, dealing with shipping packages. In the process, she even discovered that someone apparently even created a fake gmail account with the standard FirstnameLastnameNumber@gmail format.

Just some annoying, juvenile hackers who are having a laugh? Or maybe they're manipulating the market by increasing sales of particular targeted businesses. (Or driving them to ruin by tying up their customer service or eating the costs of return shipments.) Or maybe it's just theh trial run of some more systemic attack... on the nation at large! Terr'ists!

Bah.

Seems like some crazy movie plot: an underworld organization plotting to undermine the American Way of Life(tm) by disrupting our system of commerce.

But, of course, I'm only kidding. Well, half-kidding.

Meanwhile...

Playing with Twitter. You should be able to see it over on the sidebar, or you can head over directly.

It remains to be seen how much I actually play with it given that I presently only know two people who currently use it. I'm apparently hanging with the wrong demographic, whether it be socially, chronologically, geographically or some combination thereof.

Good and Bad

It's 6:28pm and I'm the last person left in the office.

Reminded...

...why we don't have cable and don't watch network television.

We've been following the Sox game on the radio and internet and there were several plays that we had heard described that we were hoping to see -- Ellsbury's big catch in left field in the 9th (apparently a huge diving catch). Matsusaka throwing Martinez out at first. Some of the errors.

So we turned on the tube and surfed the few local channels we could get. And what do we get? Well, we did get one highlight reel which covered all the hits and the final catch by Coco Crisp to end the game. Ok, anything else?

Well. A lot of coverage of the crowds outside the park. A lot of talking about the crowds. Police presence in riot gear keeping the crowds under control. Ok, now they're showing the players celebrating. Interviews -- those guys love the interviews. Wow, that WBZ correspondent covering the guys on the field is annoying. He just angrily shushed some guy off camera while he was interviewing Terry Francona. More talking. Lots of talking about nothing. More interviews -- players in the dressing room. More talking. Gobble, gobble, gobble.

Oh look, more shots of Kenmore square and the thinning crowds. And they're talking about the police again.

Um, could we maybe get some more highlights?

Apparently not.

UPDATE: ok, WHDH is interviewing Theo and they just showed Matsusaka's throw-out play. Point to channel 7.

UPDATE(23oct2007): It occurred to me that this is largely my own fault for being too cheap to have cable (or to have even bought an antenna) to have been able to watch the game in the first place. So, my bad. Of course, it doesn't make the local sports correspondents any less annoying.

UPDATE(23oct2007-2): Yay, Internets! (And thank you, mlb.com.)

Geek Sox Nation

We're not crazy sports fans, and we don't have cable, so we're "watching" the final Sox game online while listening to the play-by-play on the radio.

Nerds.

Ps -- Go SOX!

F***, yeah!

"Swearing at work boosts team spirt, morale: research"

F*** a Duck

So it looks like I have to buy F'ing Visio, again. That's another $500 down the Microsoft toilet for the 2007 version, and that doesn't count the $200 I sank into the bad 2003 version just a few months ago when I had to start spec writing for the contract I'm on. Joy, joy. The original website where I bought it is now an empty GoDaddy-parked husk of an apparently fly-by-night storefront.

Sucks for me.

And I'd just like to mention how annoying the Micro$oft Office info page is -- full of stupid, unnecessary, bandwidth-hungry animations and dynamic pull-downs, and apparently ...films? ...on how awesome Office is? WTF?

Fear

I did a Windows Update and I got the blue screen of death.

That's a confidence builder, I gotta tellya.

This isn't actually the first time it's happened. I'm not sure when it started, but I've noticed it the last several times I've installed the latest set of Windows updates that required a restart. Consistent behavior, actually, for the three most recent installs. It's nothing like my first experience with NT in '99 when my machine would routinely crash 2-3 times a day (usually after a few hours of unrecoverable design code), but it's still annoying.

And maybe I'm just being paranoid, but it seems like the start-up cycle is a lot more sluggish, and I don't remember the icons refreshing halfway through. And can someone tell me why my volume control taskbar icon disappears every time I reboot after a full shutdown? I'm not sure how long that's been happening since I started routinely putting the machine into standby mode. (since it took so long to boot up cold.)

I was pretty happy with XP-Pro. But I guess just about anything would be compared to my experience with XP-home -- random shutdowns, strange screen refresh behaviors, driver incompatibilities and really kludgey file structure. XP Pro seemed to be much more stable, but that seemed to be a only short term condition. I suppose this is really just what you have to expect when you take a piece of software and add layer upon layer of patches month after month. It's inevitable that the software is going to become painfully inefficient.

I really need to start getting familiar with some of the new Linux distributions. My laptop is eventually going to die and I'm going to have to replace it at some point and I'm deathly afraid of having to switch over to Vista, or any other Microsoft operating system for that matter.

In other news, we just tested out our new HD projector, an Epson PowerLite Home Cinema 1080. The initial assessment? It's teh awesome. (not to be confused with "awesome") So far the only downside is that we haven't gotten the real screen yet and we got to bed around 3am last night due to, um, "testing."

except without the part about your mom

*sigh*

I think this is the fourth night in the last six where I haven't been able to fall asleep. Tired. Sleepy even. But I just can't seem to drop off to sleep.

Almost makes me want to try this, although the waking hours certainly aren't particularly useful if you're trying to participate with most of the world around you.

Have I mentioned BAH*?

UPDATE: to answer Leah's question in the comments, and for full disclosure, here's the list of things that I can think of that I've tried over the past few weeks:

• reiki
• meditation (which really is kind of like reiki. Or vice versa.)
• hot shower (I'm a life-long night showerer. I don't sleep well when gritty or sticky.)
• warm milk (with Ovaltine)
• staying up later
• visualizing the comfy feeling I have in bed in the morning when I don't want to get up
• being mindful of the images that play behind my closed eyelids
• visualize constantly dropping into deeper layers of consciousness/reality.
• avoiding computer stuff right before bed

I'd be happy to hear other suggestions.

* not to be confused with "baa." Seriously, does counting sheep actually work for anyone?

An Observation on Language

I'm finding that I have recently developed the habit of using the word awesome to describe a certain flavor of experience that I'm having or have had at a particular time. And generally in these instances, when I say awesome, I mean totally sucked balls or completely useless piece of shit.

So the SOOTTAD and I finally got a chance to play with a particular undisclosed object we've acquired in the past few months, and I think you follow me when I say that the only way that I can adequately describe this object is that it was totally awesome.

What I've been reading

While I did recently finish rereading the first Chronicles of Thomas Covenant (which I had first read sometime during high school -- man, I missed a lot of details back then), I really just wanted to mention a few articles that I've stumbled across on the 'net over the past few weeks and wanted to mention, for one reason or another.

• A group is its own worst enemy
  
  It's largely writing in the context of social software development, which I find interesting in and of itself despite the fact that I'm not a social software developer, or even a regular old ordinary software developer, but rather because I find the whole massive online community phenomenon totally fascinating and a bit frightening as someone who only skirts the edge of social network applications and whose spouse harbors a significant distrust of the lack of privacy on the net.
  
  I also find it interesting because one of the things that I really value in life is the connection and community I have with other people, and I've fallen into the trap (if a trap is really what it is) of wanting to be inclusive and wanting things to be fair. And oftentimes, I equate fair with equal, which may not always be the case, but which is probably one of the simpler ways to deal with things because at its core, it at least *seems* fair. Even when it's not. But regardless, I've seen groups get too big for their own britches and implode, I've seen the inclusion/exclusion behavior, I've had the unfortunate experience of trying to "protect the group" when the group had no formal rules or protocols for doing so. It was helpful to read something that gave me some perspective on the social dynamics.

• Childhood TV viewing can cause teenage problems
  
  Not to vilify TV or anything, but I'm kind of glad we don't have cable right now. Still looking into buhgiant front projection systems, FWIW.

• How Callous are Republicans?
  
  National news just depresses me these days. Well actually, in general. And it seems like the politicos are all about Iraq, Iraq, Iraq and troop numbers, and staying the course or bringing them home. It's rhetoric, media posturing, politican partisanship and it's all bullshit. They fucked up. We're there. If we stay, it's going to continue to suck balls. If we pull out, it's also going to suck balls. It will probably suck even more balls, actually. In the meantime, ya think maybe you guys could maybe try fixing health care?
  
  Matt Miller comes up with the HCCAT, the "Health-Care Callousness Assessment Test":
  

  "Question 2: Do you believe individuals' buying their own solo health insurance can be the answer to the problem of the uninsured? The only noncallous answer is no. The problem with the individual market, as anyone with the most innocuous ailments can attest, is that profit-seeking insurers want to cover only younger, healthier people who don't need insurance. The very idea of individual insurance is an oxymoron, since insurance is about spreading risks across a group. Group coverage creates little socialized-health republics in which the young subsidize the old, and the healthy the unwell, with all those in the group paying the same premiums."

• Doctor Warns Consumers of Popcorn Fumes
  
  Yeah, I mostly stopped eating this stuff after I learned that it was full of trans fats.

• The 411 on High-Fructose Corn Syrup
  
  Too bad it's not actually the 411, it's more like a ... ok, I don't have a clever phone-metaphor. Basically, it's just saying: "ooh, HFCS is bad, whoOOOOOoooo!" It'd have been nice if they could have actually linked to the research or something. Not that I don't believe it or anything, just sayin'.

• Vitamins 'could shorten lifespan'
  
  More advocacy for eating a balanced diet rather than trying to make up for your deficiencies through pill-popping. Feeling pretty good about that soup that's cooking on the stove right now, made almost entirely from vegetables from the CSA community farm. (the onion and organic chicken were from the supermarket. And I think the zucchini was from the SOOTTAD's parental homestead.)

• Things that Running Teaches You About Life
  
  The funny thing about this article is that while I don't wholly disagree with the author's conclusions (I see value in what he's said), I feel like I take away a much different set of lessons. Running isn't about weight loss for me, although it is about staying healthy, both physically and mentally. Anyway, here's my take:
  

  1. This is not a race. Sometimes when I go running, I need to remind myself to slow down -- I'm focusing on conditioning, I've trying to avoid injuries. I time my runs, but it's really just feedback to let me know how I'm doing.
  2. Sometimes, even when it is a race, it's still not a race. Again, with the feedback. And the sense of accomplishment. My plan is still to run a marathon next fall -- when I hit, um, a particular age milestone. I wonder if this will still hold true if I'm trying to make a qualifying time.
  3. Enjoy the scenery. Look flowers! Critters! Whoops, car! (Have you smelled the grapes yet this fall?)
  4. Remember to breathe. In. Out. In. Out. Good stuff.
  That's all I got right now off the top of my head. I suspect there a few other things, but there you go.

Ugh.

Stupid not being able to fall asleep until after 3AM. It's probably the third night out of the last four. And now I'm waking up wicked late.

Or maybe it's the other way around.

*sigh*

Modern Consumer

We're looking into getting a HD front projector for our new "playroom" instead of one of those buhgiant flatscreen LCD TVs. I've been cruising some of the online forums and review websites, so I feel like I have a pretty good idea of what's out there and what our options are. The hard part now is figuring out which one to get.

Traditionally, you'd go to the store, compare how things looked on the different models, weigh the costs and then make a decision. The problem being, where do you go to actually SEE what the projected image looks like?

• The high-end audio store we went to for our new speakers didn't have any projector systems on display (although the sales rep had a recommendation for us).
• The SOOTTAD and I rode over to the Best Buy on Sunday to see what they had, and what they had was a shelf with FAKE display models and an apologetic sales guy who thought the only difference between different models was the number and type of input ports. (And a prospective buyer whose totality of experience with projection systems that was driving him to buy one was that he'd seen a projector setup and THE PICTURE WAS HUGE AND IT WAS TOTALLY AWESOME!)
• I went to a Tweeter store today -- they actually have a home theater demo room (Score!), but they only demo one projector, the 1080p Sony VPL-VW100. Which is better than nothing, I suppose -- at least I now understand that a high-end projector with the highest resolution currently available with a given throw distance and display size will give us what we're hoping for. Helpful, without actually being all that helpful. Like learning that it's dark at night, or that rain is wet.
• The local high-end audio store says that they have a demo room, but it appears to be, once again, a single model, and in their case, one of the senselessly expensive models. May go anyway -- it may be a 720p projector (or at least has a native resolution less than the max 1080), so maybe I can see whether the resolution is adequate for the screen size and viewing distance that we're hoping for. Perhaps their webpage is just hopelessly out of date.

Ugh.

So, does anybody know how one can actually see how well these things perform? Do people who buy them just buy them sight unseen and rely on the "expert" discussion in the online forums or online review sites? Are we being just soooo last cenury? Do these things not matter to "normal" consumers? Was the BestBuy guy actually speaking truth when he said the different models were all basically the same and we should just make a decision based on price?

What's the standard operating procedure these days for the modern consumer of the high definition front projection system?

Inquiring minds want to know.

UPDATE 01Sep2007: Did some Googling today, and this looks promising... (too bad their website doesn't actually tell you when they're open)

Eye of the beholder

Towards the end of my run yesterday, I was on a section of the Charles River Walkway that passes through Waltham as it approached dusk. The light was already starting to fade, but I noticed a short woman and her dog walking slowly along one of the larger grassy areas that bordered the path.

I assumed that she had just gotten up or had simply been standing motionless because I hadn't seen her until her movement caught my attention. And in my head, my brain immediately came to the conclusion that she must have been quietly taking in the sunset, admiring the late summer sky as the colors slowly faded beyond the trees. She walked casually, and I imagined that she was lost in thoughts about the transient beauty in the world, the value of each moment in the sea of moments in our lives.

I took a moment for myself to appreciate the failing light. And as I passed her, I noticed...

...that she was talking on her cellphone.

So I guess all that other stuff was just me.

POSTSCRIPT

A few minutes later I saw two girls walking together on the sidewalk who seemed to be engaged in a bubbly conversation with one another. (At least, that's how it sounded to me as I approached.) And as I passed... Nope. Just one girl talking on her cell phone, and her... friend(?) quietly accompanying her, destination unknown.

TECHNOLOGY: bringing people together.

Bah, I tell you.

I just spent over $600* getting the driver side seatbelt fixed in my car.

$600!

Seatbelt!

And apart from the whole money thing, it makes me feel pretty stupid and useless that I couldn't figure out how, if it was possible, for me to fix it myself. It's not like it's the fuel injection system or something; it's a SEATBELT! BAH! I thought about trying and then managed to convince myself that it was probably hooked into a bunch of stupid crash and braking sensors and that was the end of it.

On the plus side, we've been all ecologicalibly-minded and crunchy-granola and rode our bikes for all our errands on Sunday, which carried over to dropping the car off and then biking home yesterday, and biking back to the shop to pick up the car today.

And 2 days of working from home and not driving to the office. Bonus.

* And they also nailed me with a $5.94 hazardous waste disposal charge. FOR A SEATBELT!