Kick all sorts of groovy ass! I just wrote a little script that will let you know what I’m listening to on iTunes on my workstation. Actually, it will display whatever anyone is playing on iTunes on my workstation, so I take no responsibility for what friends might be listening to or what might be displayed.
If anyone is running a webserver on OS X and wants to know how to do this, let me know and I’ll hook you up with the code.
“In the last couple of weeks, I have seen the ads for the Wonder Bra. Is that really a problem in this country? Men not paying enough attention to women’s breasts?”
-Jay Leno
“For years, many governments played down the threats of the Islamic revolution, turned a blind eye to international terrorism and accepted the development of weaponry of mass destruction. Indeed, some politicians were happy to go further, collaborating with the self-proclaimed enemies of the West for their own short-term gain - but enough about the French.”
- Margaret Thatcher
“The problem with America is stupidity. I’m not saying there should be a capital punishment for stupidity, but why don’t we just take the safety labels off of everything and let the problem solve itself?”
– Unknown
The power went out in my neighborhood this afternoon, making SXEL unavailable for more than 3 hours. This happens every year when we get the first heavy rain or snow. Sorry for the inconvenience but I can’t control the weather or my unprepared utility company, EWEB.
Don’t get married. Er, well if you are going to get married, get a damn pre-nuptual agreement. Just do it. Don’t let your hope and optimism erase 20+ years of life and dating experience. How many people have you dated who turned out to keep secrets? How many people have you dated who cheated on you or just weren’t who they appeared to be at first? Well, it’s not all magically going to change when you get married. But when you are married the cleanup is way more ugly. First off, there needs to be a cleanup. It’s not like you can just run away and find a new girl. Nope. Your property is her property. And that applies to EVERYTHING you ever aquired, ever. 20 years before the marriage even. Everything.
Good God almighty. I just witnessed a “dancer”, her partner (male) and a third man have a 40 minute conversation about her new employment as a
call girl. All the rules and regulations of the trade, a few of the ins and outs, and a little bit of advice. First off, this was a slightly odd conversation to be having in public. Public conversations afterall, are public and I figured this was sort of a private conversation. But whatever, so I listened to the entire thing; doing what I could to maintain the appearance of a guy studying java and sipping cocoa.
The whole conversation was really interesting. She filled out a bunch of forms talked with the boss man about her specialties (domination, girl-on-girl, and fantasy fetish). He was impressed and happy that she
would be expanding his range and potential clients. Said something to the effect that he wouldn’t have to turn away folks looking for that stuff.
He also said something like, it’s ok for the guy to masterbate. He’s going to masterbate. 9 out of 10 guys want a girl there to do her thing while he’s doing his thing. It’s ok for him to touch you if you want him to. It’s ok for him to give you a body rub, if you want that. It’s also ok if you don’t ever call me back or take a call. Then he started to crack a couple of jokes to lighten her furrowed brow. She was obviously nervous about the whole thing. Eventually the girl’s partner, a big bulky looking dude, piped in and helped lighten the mood a bit himself. Obviously he wasn’t too tripped out about meeting with what will essentially become his partner’s pimp. I kept thinking, isn’t this one tiny tiny step away from being a prostitute? Maybe it’s not even that far.
The entire conversation was about what I expected I guess. Entirely unexpected, suprisingly civil and frank, mildly exciting. The funny thing is that I probably wouldn’t have even started paying attention to the conversation if she hadn’t been somewhat cute and I hadn’t heard the word “masterbate” in clear and fairly loud tone. Crazy eh?
It’s not B&H but it’s enough to turn a good man into a materialistic pig. Cameraworld. You walk in the door and the first thing you do is pay respect to the glass encased, spotlit, 500mm F4D AF-S ED-IF beauty, the 903SWC Hasseblad and the Leica R8. From there it’s straight to the digital desk where you can get your hands on an EOS 1DS, a D1X or any one of a number of DSLRs. Maybe something smaller, a 4GB flash card perhaps? Or, ooh, a 12-24mm F4D AF-S zoom? Lovely. I hate who I become when I’m in the presence of expensive camera equipment. I mean really? It’s terrible.
I’m still all flustered and shit. I’m a gear head, what can I say? And now that I’m not shooting for a living anymore it’s much much much harder to even think about justifying spending the kind of money I would need to spend to get the kind of gear I want. This trip was hijacked by visiting cameraworld, but the point of it was originally just to get out of Eugene and chill for a bit. Mission accomplished. Ann and I wandered around downtown, hit Powell’s, the Columbia store and a few others (not spending anything really) and grabbed dinner at an Indian restaurant, and yes, I will be reviewing it because it was quite good, and then came home. Exciting eh?
I’ve got to start writing more interesting stuff for you all to read. Unfortunately there’s not all that much going on in my life these days. I’m already grumbling because I don’t much enjoy the upcoming holiday season. I’m busting ass trying to drum up more work? Anyone need a blog software package? But really, I promise to write more intesting stuff as soon as more interesting stuff starts happening. Fair enough?
Well it’s Saturday night and I’m at home teaching myself Java. I should be studying for my MySQL certification, but since my test date isn’t set, I’m procrastinating as much as possible. At least I’m constructively procrastinating. If that isn’t a contradiction in terms. I’m sure when I’ve got a test date set I’ll hop on it. Er, well, when it gets close to the date I’ll hop on it. Have I ever mentioned that I’m the son of a journalist?
I went to see Master And Commander earlier today. I’ve written up a review if you all are interested. Tomorrow I’m heading up to Portland to chill with Ann, do some window shopping at Camera World (Oh how I could spend $100,000 in there in about 15 minutes) and stop by Powells to sell some more books. So, that’s my weekend. Party.
What’s this? Russel Crowe talking humbly about the greatness of another man? It can’t be. Impossible. Well, it’s true, and this one scene in the captain’s dining room is just enough to help me forget about how much I don’t like Crowe and sit back to enjoy the movie Master And Commander.
I don’t want to give away too much. I’m going to recommend this movie to you. That much should be obvious already. And maybe that’s all you need to know. From the previews you already know it’s an epic sea battle between the French and the Brittish with Crowe as captain of the Brittish ship. I’ll only go as far as saying that the battle itself plays a distant but supporting second to excellent character development and acting. Everything, even the battles themselves, support the characters. The characters, in fact, make up the real plot of this movie.
Don’t worry, you’ll get enough action to keep you happy. You’ll see enough good and dramatic photography to keep your artistic eye sparkling. You’ll see plenty of good costuming, excellent and realistic shipwork, and even a bit of humor.
All told, this is one of the best movies I’ve seen this year. Go see it. Full price or matinee, it’s worth it.
JIWIRE is my favorite hotspot finder on the web.
I’m thinking about getting out of town again. Leaving with a big L. I can work from anywhere, so why don’t I do that? I’ve been talking about this for months; now there’s really nothing holding me here. There are a couple of people who are making it hard to think about just taking off… but Eugene is horrible in the winter and I want to go. I’m considering a life on the road for the winter. Heading south maybe. Somewhere warm. Wherever there are wifi hotspots I will go and work while sipping cocoa and watching the sunset. Is this such a bad thing? God I want out of here.
That’s what my financial advisor said it’s going to take to get my debts paid off. Damn. I’ll be turning 33 around the time I finish if I stick with our plan. Crazy.
If anyone feels like helping me out, feel free to buy some photos from my trip to Yosemite. I can produce a gorgeous archival print of nearly any size. Although, they do look best at sizes smaller than 24 inches. Great for holiday presents. Office walls?
Well, anyway. I’m not too depressed about my debt situation. It sucks, but it’s the bed I’ve made for myself and I’m resigned to sleep in it until I’m free of financial burdens. Patience and control.
Expensive hobbies, and starting a business is more like it. Oh, and marriage and divorce. It all adds up. Ironically, about the only thing I don’t have is a lot of school debt. It was the subsequent periods of unemployment that have been causing problems. Along with the other things. Buy prints! Just contact me and I’ll set you up with whatever you want.
The decor at the taste of India on Hilyard in Eugene is a lot of fun. You probably have to go there to understand what I mean. The entire open dining area is set under a forest of faux trees. It’s a remnant of a previous restaurant in the same location but it works really well in an Indian restaurant.
There aren’t any other indian restaurants in Eugene to use as a comparison, but I can use my life in Boston as a great reference point when examining Taste of India. Taste of India is good. The menu is broad, with all your favorite dishes, and everything I’ve had has been excellent. This is also the case with everyone I’ve taken there. And I’ve taken quite a few people to Taste of India. They have a number of vegetarian dishes and their rice is pefectly cooked.
I can’t afford to go there very often, as the prices are a little high, but for my money this is about as good as it gets in Eugene. They have a lunch time buffet that is at a reduced price, and that’s a good thing. I just never wake up early enough to eat lunch. 
I’m in training. Self imposed training to help me manage my ridiculous tendency to freak out. I got an email this morning saying that one of my best clients is putting our project “on hold for a while”. It’s not like I don’t have a couple of other clients. It’s not like I don’t have other leads for contracts. No. I’m doing ok. I’ve got enough invoices processing that, assuming they actually pay me; I will be ok for a month or so even without work. But shit, for all the things about being a contractor that I love, there’s still this evil and exhilarating unpredictability about it that can make life too exciting. And when that happens, I freak out. I act before I think when I’m stressed like this. So, I’m training my brain to take it a bit easier. To think rather than freak. To remain calm no matter what.
And I know I’m getting better at it, if only slowly, and if only in comparison to a few of my friends. I don’t get in nearly as many arguments, and when I do, when it’s justified, I’m better prepared to defend myself. Which is another good thing. Notice that I said “defend”. I’m not on the offensive anyone. But there’s still a long road to follow in my quest for inner peace.
My biggest challenge is myself. Do I really want to be at peace completely? Doesn’t peace imply stagnation? The last thing I want is to lose my passion, to be “settled”. To sit still quietly while the world destroys itself around me. Imagine how I ended up being a punk. 
This is just a part of who I am. I am compelled to act based on the insanity I see around me. Often radically. I can’t imagine that I will stop agreeing with those who take direct action against environmental criminals. And I’m not sure whether I want to purge these parts of my personality simply to be less stressed. But for every injustice and act of insanity taken by the corporate universe, I see an injustice in people losing friends, lovers and family members because of stress. I see them drinking, fighting, going to war, committing genocide and destroying their own land because of stress. Too much work, too little money, too much pressure from surrounding countries, etc. It makes me wonder if we expect too much from ourselves.
If we expect that “progress” is necessary for survival are we making the right kind of progress? Is technology exceeding our needs? Has it all become a part of a self-fulfilling cycle of development? Is it doing us any good? I don’t know. All I know is that I see the kinds of things that nations and people are capable of doing to harm each other, and I would rather appear stagnant than take part in it. It’s part of the ongoing contradiction of being a punk. Passion and anger mixed with a great concern for the world around us.
Alright, I’m ready to give a more complete review of Panther. Well, I’m ready to add a few things to my first review of the beta of OS X 10.3 Panther a couple of weeks ago. I’ve been using panther on two machines (an ibook and a powermac desktop) doing all of my programming and design work on it since it came out. I haven’t run it through a battery of benchmark tests or compared it apples to apples with Jaguar. I just worked.
The changes apple has made to the finder are not, in my humble opinion, improvements. At all. In fact, my second most favorite feature of Panther, Expose, is nearly negated by the clumsiness of the new finder. Expose ends up being a necessity if you ask me. And that bums me out. I don’t mind the brushed metal appearance. what bothers me is that it’s less efficient in it’s use of space. If you use Column View, you lose your left most column by default. And adding items to the title bar of a finder window is clumsy and far less responsive than in Jaguar. IE: slower. It took me a while to figure out how make Panther’s Finder behave like Jaguar’s finder and I’m happy for the most part.
One part of the finder, the dock, has been improved. Now, when you command - tab your way through open applications, a icon list displays on your screen to make your target application selection much easier. Remember when you had to watch the dock itself to see which application you were tabbing to? Gone. It’s a nice improvement.
Expose is the bomb. But be careful when you set it up, especially on a laptop, because it will freely screw up function keys in most of your applications. I’m still sorting that problem out. Overall, it’s a good feature though, and I wish it could be made available (hacked) for Jaguar because it is extremely useful on smaller screens.
Mail, as mentioned in my first review of the beta, is vastly improved. Threading is excellent. I can’t believe nobody has brought this feature to an imap / pop3 client before. I think Bare Bones’ email client has some kind of threading, but it lacks even the option of HTML support which is silly. The fact that Safari’s engine has been integrated into the new Mail is nice. It’s fast and matches what I see in Safari exactly.
Ok. Again, fast user switching is nice. Also, for some reason USB printer sharing seems more stable. It actually used to crash the server machine in Jaguar. Hasn’t done it yet in Panther.
Of course, I’m happy with Panther’s speed. Oh my how it has breathed live into my 600mhz iBook. I was about to bump up to a G4 iBook before I got 10.3. I can’t quantify the difference but it feels like the system is optimized all the time. Like I just de fragged my drive, or did my prebindings. Really, it’s faster. Especially on my slower hardware.
And now, my favorite new feature of 10.3: File Vault. In my opinion this is the most significant new feature in Panther. Like most of you, my data is sensitive. In fact, my data is damn sensitive. I don’t keep credit card numbers of my social security number on my machines at all… what I’m talking about is client data. Stuff that can not fall into the wrong hands. Stuff that needs to be physically guarded as well as encrypted, etc. Stuff that I spend 50% of my day working to protect in the applications I build. Not to mention the uncompiled source code of the applications I build. Until Panther I have not found a convenient way of working with data that needs to be encrypted on my laptop. This meant that when I travelled I either brought compiled apps and couldn’t work on source code at all or I didn’t bring any client data period.
I’m not totally “safe” with File Vault, and you aren’t either, and I doubt that I ever will feel totally safe with any solution that I didn’t actually build myself, but it gives me a pretty good sense of peace. It’s a little slower on shutdown because it reclaims space on the drive, and it’s a little slower (marginally) when you are working. But it’s a very, very nice feature to have. Thank you Apple.
Overall, I’m very happy with OS X 10.3 Panther. My default unix shell didn’t change from tcsh to bash unexpectedly as was prediced on rumor sites, ALL of my applications still work. My printer still works. The upgrade was painless, and I definitely advise that anyone who is thinking about it should do it. If you have an older machine, a need for added security, overwhelming amounts of email to sort through, or simply a need to use the best of the best, get OS X 10.3 Panther. I’m a very budget minded, want vs. need, kind of guy and I think it’s worth it. Apple has successfully challenged a number of the worst problems computer users face today. Small screens, email, security, and speed.
Got a message this morning from someone saying that I might be excluding gay people from my “straight edge” life style. Interesting. I assume it’s because of my entry about dreaming of making out with Ellen Degeneres. To be clear, I’m actually just trying to exclude gay people from the list of people who I date, since I, personally, am heterosexual. I’ve got an annoying history of falling for the ultimately unavailable women. Wonderful, amazing, smart, talented, driven, beautiful and gay women. Obviously that’s a wonderful way for me to get my heart broken. I’m simultaneously curious about and annoyed by this habit of falling for gay women. That’s it. That’s all.
Hopefully that clarifies things a little bit. But to clarify things further; the STRAIGHT part of straight edge doesn’t imply being hetero. Never heard that, didn’t mean to imply it, etc.
Cheap, accessible, friendly. I’m not overly fond of most of the food on their menu, but there are enough single items that it doesn’t stop me from coming back. The tomato cheese soup is excellent. I like the jelly they provide when they give you toast. Their burgers are consistantly good. The burritos are generally overstuffed and horrible. Far too many undercooked ingredients in the burritos. The wrong kind of beans. Their omlettes are hit and miss. Occassionaly excellent. Sometimes not. Their breakfasts are generally good. The hot chocolate, I like.
I’m not entirely sure what I should say about the Glenwood. I mean, what do you say about a place that you consider a staple in your diet? It’s like cereal for me. At least once a week I’m there chilling with friends or enjoying a bit of student watching (are they people yet?) or just grabbing a quick salad as I run around town. 6 out of 10 because their food is unpredicable. But it’s cheap and well-tuned to locals who know the menu.
It was about 10 years ago when Andy Nelson, famed Register Guard photographer, took me out to lunch at Burrito Boy. I was almost instantly hooked on their spicy green sauce. The place has strong memories for me so this review will be biased, completely.
The Burrito Boy francise has grown rapidly over the last few years. What was once one small taqueria on Franklin is now a five or six location chain with catering (or mobile anyway) services spread across Eugene and Springfield.
For $5.00 you can get a killer wet veggie burrito that will fill your stomach for a good 18-24 hours. Add .50 and you can get beef or chicken. Make no mistake, Burrito Boy is about eating. It’s the kind of place where the limited menu doesn’t bug you at all. You come, you eat, you leave. The food is good. It’s the same every time, no surpises. There’s often a line of people waiting, jamming the entrance. Customers watch for open tables like lazy yuppies in SUVs looking for parking spots near Nordstroms. The service is fast and normally very nice. Sometimes even cute. Almost too cute at times. But I digress… Iit’s quite common to see native spanish speaking families dining at all times of the day in any given Burrito Boy. That’s a good sign. Where the general tasteless population needs a tangible measure of authenticity to tell them whether their food is good or not it’s a good sign. For those of us who grew up with Mexican food it’s not so important.
Burrito boy does the job and does it well. Their rapid growth hasn’t affected the quality of their food or service. They still offer the same excellent burritos, tacos and tasty green sauce as they did nearly a decade ago.
I had a dream two nights ago that I was making out with Ellen Degeneres. Why? Because I watched Finding Nemo the night before and she’s the voice of Dori, a fish. And I liked it. Her voice is sexy. I’ve always liked it. But weird, eh? Just thought I would share that little tidbit with you. Nevermind the fact that I’ve dated 11 women who turned out to be gay. Nevermind that I’m now convinced that it’s a integral part of my subconscious mind when I meet women. Nevermind that I’ve had a grand total of 3 kissing dreams in my life and they have all been with gay women. I don’t get it.
“A Hippie is someone who walks like Tarzan, looks like Jane and smells like Cheetah.”
– Ronald Reagan (Second book of Insults, 1981, ed. Nancy McPhee)
“It may be that our role on this planet is not to worship God, but to create him.”
- Arthur C. Clarke
“Gay people should be allowed to get married. Just because somebody’s gay doesn’t mean he shouldn’t suffer like the rest of us.”
- Jeff Shaw
“I don’t drink these days. I am allergic to alcohol and narcotics. I break out in handcuffs.”
- Robert Downey Junior
“The 1960’s were when hallucinogenic drugs were really big. And I don’t think it’s a coincidence that we had the shows then like The Flying Nun.”
- Ellen DeGeneres