i have always been under the impression that there were three acronyms that were comparitve and superlative to SNAFU, which were comparitive FUMTU and superlative FUBAR, but it turns out that there is a fourth abbreviation, TARFU, which doesn’t appear to have a place in the heirarchy, despite (or, possibly, because of) it’s similar provenance. more investigation is necessary.
All posts by przxqgl
푚??
the new Ganesha The Car is back in the shop because of a fuel leak. it should be ready today (ETA: it’s ready, i just have to go pick it up). i drove it for two days and went through a tank and a half of gas before i figured out what the problem was. hopefully it will get slightly better mileage now that it’s not leaking fuel all over the place. jack said he didn’t notice it because when he put gas in it he only put about a quarter tank in, and apparently the leak was higher up on the tank.
the moisture festival has started for me. i had a show last night, and i’ve got a show tonight, two shows on saturday and either one or two shows on sunday (typical moisture festival scheduling chaos), then there’s one or two shows(?) next saturday, a show the following thursday, friday, two or three shows the following saturday and the closing night performance on sunday 4 april. hacki’s back. he couldn’t get a visa last year, but he got one this year. this is the first year since the first year that we’ve had opening night somewhere other than the palladium. this year, opening night was last week at ACT theatre. we’ve also got four different venues this year – i get the impression that this is the beginning of the actualisation of the fantasy that they were throwing around last year. this year we’re having the comedie/varieté acts at the palladium, the burlesque (read "titty & ass") shows at ACT (because mike hale is a “christian” who doesn’t at all approve of exposed tits, despite the fact that the burlesque shows bring in the most money), and we’ve also got shows going on somewhere in georgetown and some others on vashon island.
i have been having a sharp pain in the joint of my left thunb for about a month. i went to see chris who spent several days poking me with needles, and that seemed to help, but once he quit, the pain came back over the course of several days. i went to see a hand specialist yesterday who said i probably have arthritis – i’m genetically predisposed to it; both my grandmothers had arthritis in their hands. she (the doctor) recommended that i take ibuprophen and go to a specialist that makes splints for when the pain gets intolerable. getting old sucks.
The Man In The Dark Sedan
I’m the man in the dark sedan and I have come to take your hand
I was sent down here to be sincere, truthful and steadfast
I came to say that judgement day of man has come to pass
I’m the man in the dark sedan and I have come to take your hand
You can follow me and I guarantee to take you far away
But we must leave before the eve of everlasting gray
I’m the man in the dark sedan and I have come to take your hand
You will leave this place and soon replace the names of those you know
With a brotherhood that has withstood the leeches and the snow.
doobie dumb
today i took the old Ganesha The Car up to the shop to get the stereo and PA speakers removed. it actually started, which is better than it was behaving a few weeks ago when i took it out for a spin. i’m taking the new Ganesha The Car to get the stereo and PA speakers installed tomorrow, and then i’m going to the DOL to get the license plates switched. at the same time, i believe i am going to inquire about getting a disabled person permit, since i do receive disability benefits. also i’m going to inquire about “collecter” license plates – i believe the car isn’t eligible for them yet, but it seems to me that any car that is older than 20 years can have collector plates, which basically means that the car is exempt from emissions inspection and doesn’t have to pay for yearly tabs.
i have an appointment with ned on wednesday and an appointment with a hand specialist on thursday (despite feeling a good deal better than it did a couple of weeks ago, thanks to chris and his needles, my left thumb is still painful enough that it is difficult for me to hold my trombone), and then i have a week of performances for the moisture festival starting thursday.
a few weeks ago i went out to woodinville and retrieved a freezer from moe’s friend diane, which works, but has broken hinges on the door. i determined that it was a kenmore stand alone freezer, and found a number to call for the sears service center. i got a number that rang and rang and rang but nobody answered, so i called the sears toll free number, and after bouncing back and forth through automated “if you want parts and service, say ‘parts and service'” menus for about 45 minutes, i finally called the sears store at southcenter and ordered the parts from them. they’re supposed to get here, according to the moron helpful customer service engineer on the phone, by 23 march, and then i have to figure out whether or not i have the correct tools to replace them.
π day!
today is one of two π days (the other is on 22 july). to celebrate, here’s one million pieces of π.
bouncy squee!
40,811.4 milesi got the new Ganesha The Car today! it’s a white 1993 mercury tracer station wagon (keeping alive the tradition that i never own a car that is newer than 15 years old), which aches for new sanskrit artwork – there’s already plenty of plans for that – and it has a roof rack, which means that i can pile more stuff into it when i go to the fremont sunday market. and it’s got less than 100,000 miles on it, despite the fact that it’s older than the previous Ganesha The Car by 3 years! as soon as the moisture festival is over and the weather gets a little nicer, i’m creating a new art car! 8)
more
more car problems. the jeep (a “temporary” car that belongs to moe’s friend micah’s father, curtis, who has it registered in florida, but keeps it here so that he can use it when he visits his property in the channel islands during the summer, and we – read “i” – can use it whenever else we want apart from that) randomly dies for no very obvious reasons, and last night on my way home from rehearsal, i noticed that the oil pressure gauge was fluctuating wildly. it didn’t go below 40, but when i was accellerating, it would go up to 80, and when i started it up this morning, it went straight up to 80, pegged, and stayed there. along with getting lousy gas mileage, it makes me seriously wonder how curtis, who is reputed to be a car “guru”, managed to get this one… but, then again, curtis is a person who owns a large warehouse in florida, full of cars and motorcycles and other stuff that he never uses, while he lives a good portion of the year in philadelphia, so maybe i shouldn’t expect genius from the guy.
i put what is probably the first of the finishing touches on the new sedentary sousa web site, but i’m still not going to post a sneak peek at it yet. if you’re really inquisitive, you can look at this, which is a web site that uses the same overall theme. i’m still waiting on some final content, editing, pictures and other graphics, and there are a few finishing code touches that i’m still in the process of learning about which are yet to come, but it will make the whole site a lot easier to deal with, and most of the updates can be done by pretty much anyone who can type, rather than by me… which is, in my opinion, a very good thing.
it’s really cold today: i have on a long-sleeved warm shirt, a hoodie, a scarf and a hat and i’m still cold enough that i’ve popped out a hand-warmer and have that in an inside pocket to keep warm. it’s really difficult to type with my right hand not working the way it used to, to begin with, and the fact that it’s cold enough that i’m shivering doesn’t help that much.
虋紡跉䘈㝔
okay, the server interruption seems to have settled down. i was in the middle of updating the sedentary sousa web site, and i get this email saying that within 24 hours i’m going to be moved to another server, and before i was able to get in touch with them to find out exactly when, the server went down. it came up again, breifly, yesterday, but then there was some sort of SNAFU at drizzle, and the server was inaccessible to me for most of today. i appreciate the move, but i could have used a little bit more precise notice.
i’ve made about as many changes in the sedentary sousa site as i can with plain ol’ html, and she keeps demanding different functionality, so i’ve brought up the possibility of a wordpress site, that she can update herself. she hasn’t said no yet, so i’ve been researching how to do stuff with the default theme that is more what like what she wants artistically. i’ve got a BSSB rehearsal on tuesday, so i’ll probably end up talking with her more either before or after the rehearsal.
i took the picture on the right on my way to rehearsal wednesday. i didn’t actually take the picture from the location that i wanted to, but everything else was just right. i’ve been driving to rehearsals and seeing that combination of lights and sky for years, and i’ve finally got it together to take a picture of it.
okay, 2010 has actually started now…
the busy season started about 2 weeks ago. i’ve had a rehearsal for the fremont philharmonic, and a rehearsal for the fremont players every week, plus i’ve had a banda gozona rehearsal every other week, plus i’ve had a snake suspenderz rehearsal and/or performance about every other week (next performance is thursday at smokin’ pete’s barbecue, in ballard), the BSSB is starting rehearsals every other tuesday starting next week, and there’s a BSSB performance coming up in may, the moisture festival is coming up in a couple weeks, and after the moisture festival is over i’m going to have two rehearsals for the fremont players per week until the oregon country fair, which is in july.
on top of everything else, i’ve had an order of business cards to print, an order of stickers to print and i’m doing yet another re-design of the BSSB web site, which is about half done. i’m not gonna post a sneak peek until i get approval from the boss lady, liz… at which point, it may be a live site anyway. there’s not an awful lot of actual re-designing going on. more just moving stuff around and making it look “more grown-up” – whatever that means.
cloud computers and me
seriously, i wonder how conscious even the computer geeks are with this one: we are moving towards a “cloud” computing environment, where “computers” are basically fancified “dumb terminals” and all of your data, all of your information, all of your applications and even your operating system live online, on computers over which other people have control. this is for a variety of different reasons, the most public of which is so that you the individual, and frequently un-savvy end user, don’t have to spend as much money on a computer, and you don’t have to worry about whether you remembered to update your system when something needs updating. it also has the added benefit of making it so that you can synchronise your phone, music player, computer and whatever else people sync, all from one place, and it makes it so that if your computer dies for some reason, your data will still be safe.
all of these things sound like they are exactly the kinds of things the general computing public has been clamoring for, but there are some devious, sneaky, and definitely privacy ignoring facts about “cloud” computing that i don’t think people have realised.
first, and foremost in my mind, is the fact that every inroad that i’ve seen (including moe’s new “smart” phone, which is why this rant is coming out now) to make “cloud” computing more mainstream has been with the condition that whatever data you store on your “cloud” (read “gmail” or whatever) account is, essentially, public data. it has the air of privacy – you are assured that your data is your data, and not someone else’s – but because of the fact that it is living on google’s (for example) computer systems, any data that you store there is automatically a part of google’s covert attempts to data mine your information.
which means that if you are friends with a terrorist, someone who might be a terrorist, or even someone who the police think is a terrorist, but they’re wrong, google, and google’s allies – which includes the police, homeclown-land security, the CIA and who knows who else – knows about it.
what moe says is that google already has all that information anyway, but it doesn’t stop with terrorists. google has data mining access to any document stored on their systems whether it is in their terms of service or not, and my guess is that, especially these days, if someone has a document stored on google docs that makes them look like a terrorist, that somebody in the law enforcement community will find out about it.
i have a gmail account, but i never use it. i don’t use google docs, and i use google maps only when i have to. i don’t want a “smart” phone, i just want a phone that works to make telephone calls, and possibly to send text messages. it would be nice if it were a decent music player, as well, but if it’s only a crappy music player then all it will do is make me frustrated, and i already have enough of those kinds of things in my life anyway.
“cloud” computing also takes a big bite out of software piracy, because instead of having a disk for a program, which can be copied, the program actually lives on someone else’s computer, and you access it, as long as you have paid the requisite fees. the owner of that program can make changes in the program, change the functionality, upgrade or even delete that program and you have no say in the matter, even if you have paid the requisite fees. and, at this point anyway, you have no recourse.
it’s getting to the point where i’m probably going to have to be satisfied with the computers i’ve got, because when it becomes illegal not to use “cloud” computers, it’s going to be too late.
i like that word ‘kleep’… it’s sort of like ‘telp’…
so the US copyright lobby is petitioning to put indonesia on the list of potential software pirates, because of the fact that its government supports open source software… if you don’t have your copy of linux and wordpress now, better get it soon, in case the US government decides that open source equals piracy.
i broke down and bought a price gun marker – $125 for a little gadget that prints two lines of numbers on a price tag, and is designed to be used at inhuman speeds. presumably it will work, but i won’t be able to find out until after the weekend, because my mother-in-law is visiting for the weekend and her bedroom is also where i store the incense.
i’m playing for the “Vicars & Tarts” party at the palladium tomorrow (yes, we are taking my mother-in-law with us, which should be amusing). i am playing with a whole bunch of musicians i have played with before in various other configurations, but we have never played in this particular configuration, and there’s one guy, colin, who i’ve never played with before. it’s going to be colin on trombone, me on e-flat tuba and greg on b-flat tuba (two tubas! 8) ), roslyn on clarinet, joseph on saxophone, stuart on guitar and a drummer who stuart says i have met before, but i don’t remember who he is.
Continue reading i like that word ‘kleep’… it’s sort of like ‘telp’…
urk, kleep, pumg
i booted up my computer this morning and firefox told me it had an update for one of the addons, so i let it install, instead of starting firefox, it looks like it’s going to start, flashes a white screen for a moment and then crashes with no explanation. tried it a number of times in different ways, and no firefox. so i used another browser (konqueror) and i upgraded firefox (it’s supposed to tell you when there are updates, but it never has for me). now it looks like it’s going to start, flashes a white screen for two and a half moments, and then crashes with no explanation. i updated my software sources and updated my system (something which i haven’t done in about 2 months) and, lo-and-behold, there’s a new firefox in the updates, but it still doesn’t work.
i tried my mac, and it said “oh, look… there’s a firefox update. you want to install it?” to which i answered “yes” and it’s now installed, running, and works fine.
as much as i like linux, there are times when it can be really frustrating. i only hope that bill (my older, brain injured helpdesk client who is also running linux) doesn’t have the same problems i am having.
i tried running firefox from the terminal, and it gives me a whole bunch of UNKNOWN and ABORT errors that probably mean something to someone, but only indicate to me that i’m going to have to dig deeper to get to the source of the problem. 😐
i ran firefox -safe-mode from the terminal, and disabled all of my addons, and firefox started right up. i think it was the thing that looks up the flag of the country where the server lives, but it was a good excuse to dump a whole bunch of themes that i don’t use any longer, and a few addons that i used once and have been hanging around ever since version 2, and that sort of thing.
i got email from my router this morning, which says “TCP Packet – Source:63.245.212.23,54375 Destination:216.162.193.190,8081 – [DOS]”… i don’t know what it means, but judging by the fact that it says “[DOS]” (which i take to mean “Denial Of Service”) and there’s only one of them, i’m not going to worry too much about it. the drizzle guy said that IP space belongs to mozilla, so i am officially not going to worry about it.
regarding the NYC Musical Saw Festival, i actually got email from the Saw Lady, who is, apparently, the motivating force behind the musical saw festival, and i pointed her towards my saw case pictures. she said she’d add my name to the invite list, so that, on the off chance that i’m actually in new york city, and have my saw, i can come to the festival.
imogene cunningham
we had two people in the audience. thad’s new wife, ada, and halfway through the show, macque came in. there were more people on stage than there were in the audience. apart from that, it was a really fun rehearsal with a live sound system and a real sound guy running the board. if you didn’t come, although you could have, shame on you, and you missed quite a show. hopefully (for your sake) there will be more in the future.
FSM today. i started with $120, i spent at least $60, and i still ended up with about $160, so all in all, i would say that it was a fairly good day. i’m definitely going to have to do something about my boxes. i ripped out the handles of 3 of the 6 boxes of incense i brought today. the ideal boxes would be similar to the cardboard boxes i currently have (which are cartons intended for packing 12 tall glasses), but they would have stiffer inserts, so that things don’t get all mixed together at the bottom of the box, and they would have sturdier handles that aren’t so likely to rip out as the boxes are used. also i’m going to have to break down and invest in a price gun, because having to look up everything all the time is a royal pain in the ass, and i end up selling incense that should be $7.50 for $2.50 because i can’t find it in my price list, like what happened several times today. also i have to remember to bring stock for everything that i display, so that some guy doesn’t come in and ask for a Niruta Ganapathi, and the only one i have to sell him is my sample, like what happened today.
Snake Suspenderz at Hale’s Palladium!
Snake Suspenderz at Hale’s Palladium
8 – 10pm tonight only – 4301 Leary Way NW – $10 at the door
come have a beer and listen to hot jazz for a couple of hours tonight.
the difference between God and “normal”
my raîson d’étre has caused some difficulties for some people who have very strongly held opinions: i would say that they’re strongly “christian” people in general, but i’d very likely be wrong. and i’ve been thinking, once again, about how i am more drawn to people like radical athiest skeptic evolutionist p.z. myers than i am to spiritual teachers or groups in general, in spite of the fact that i am a lot more spiritual than most people realise. i attribute this to the way that i think – my raîson d’étre – which, admittedly, doesn’t make a lot of sense to people. basically, the way i think, it is perfectly normal for me to say that A is exactly equal to not-A, in every way, despite the fact that “normal” people would say that A can’t be equal to not-A because not-A is the opposite of A. the easiest way i have to describe this difference is an aphorism i learned when i was in the seminary, which is that the opposite of a “small t truth” is a falsehood, but the opposite of a “big T Truth” is another “big T Truth”.
in the same way, when i think about God, i think about It (here is the reason for that pronoun) existing in spite of the FACT that God doesn’t exist.
i know that God exists, despite whatever proof p.z. myers and his cohorts may drag up. if they were to pull something out of their pocket and show it to me that would conclusively prove that God doesn’t exist, i would still KNOW that God exists. i know that God both exists, and doesn’t exist, because if It were to only exist, or only not exist, then It wouldn’t have the necessary attributes to be God. “if you ‘know’ something, you are confident because of familiar experience or clear perception of the veracity of a particular fact (regardless, i might add, of whether other people agree with you or not), whereas if you ‘believe’ something, you are taking someone else’s word that it is true, having not experienced it for yourself.” i know that God exists, because i have personally experienced Its presence. and, no, i can’t describe what It was like: it is impossible to describe that which is indescribable. you either have to experience It for yourself, or you’ll never know what i’m talking about. if you have experienced Its presence, you know exactly what i’m talking about.
that’s the only difference.
at the same time, i find myself agreeing with the rationalist p.z. myers a lot more than with dinesh d’sousa or bob larson, although i get irritated with all of them more or less equally, because i see where all of them are wrong about what they believe (i.e. “taking someone else’s word”) because they all have not personally experienced God’s presence. i don’t think that makes them less human beings than people who have experienced God’s presence, it just makes them “different”…
and i, the “different” one, am completely normal! 8)
as i have said to people before, if you have a problem with the way i think, you are cordially invited to think of me as that guy with the hole in his skull who believes things that aren’t logical. you won’t be the first, you won’t be the last, and i don’t care.
rant
ever since my injury, i have been unable to distinguish between a sneeze, a yawn and a cough until they happen. essentially, what that means is that i will be all ready to sneeze, and a yawn happens instead, or i’ll have a tickle in my throat that feels like it’s going to be a cough, but when it comes out it’s acutally a sneeze. furthermore, a sneeze will turn into a yawn, or a coughing fit will end up being a run of five or more sneezes.
all in all, i would say that i have more or less recovered from my injury. i still have problems getting my right hand to do what i want it to about half the time, and i still require a lot more sleep than i did before my injury, and moe could probably enumerate some other things that aren’t as obvious, but biting my tongue and not being able to tell sneezes, coughs or yawns apart are the most frustrating aspects of my injury that still haunt me.
musical saw festival!
New York City Musical Saw Festival – someone commented on my saw case picture and mentioned the NYC musical saw festival. i’m on the other end of the country, but if anything ever tempts me to go, this will definitely be something that i will be attending when i get there.
miscellaneous
yesterday i went to moe’s friend diane’s sheep ranch in woodinville and picked up a chest freezer that diane didn’t need any longer. now we’ll be able to get lamb from diane, when she has lambs for sale, later on in the year. moe is a currently a vegetarian – although i have seen her eat bacon recently – and i have been a vegetarian in the past (and i’ve been the rabid rabble rouser who knew all the reasons why you shouldn’t eat meat, so cool it with the rhetoric, because i’ve been through it all, already), but at this point, i figure God is perfect, being an omnivore is more likely to ensure my survival in the event of a global catastrophe, and besides all that, lamb just tastes so damn good… and because of the fact that i actually know where it’s coming from, i’m getting a lot closer to eating real meat than i would be if i ate the anonymous, corporate beef that most people eat most of the time.
but this is all, undoubtedly one big excuse to make me feel better because i’m sinful and eat meat, despite my claims to being a hindu. i know a bunch of american hindus who eat meat, and they don’t worry about it, so why should i… especially when lamb just tastes so damn good… 8)
today i went to a place very close to the hospital that i was housed at shortly after i had my injury (and was amazed at how much new construction was going up since i was there) and got a bed to put in what was the office, and is now the guest room. now we have a room for people to sleep in when people come to visit… which, apparently, we’ve got a few of coming up later this year, including my mother-in-law within the next two weeks or so (i’m still not exactly sure when, though).
i got an email list set up for the fremont players, which is exactly what wouldn’t have happened if i had stayed with the old host provider, whose “tech support” goon specifically said that i was “kicked off” their server for having – although he also, specifically, said that he was the one responsible for having me kicked off their server, because “he didn’t like me”… 😛
i’m having some trouble with my email, and i’m not sure whether it’s my email client, or my new router. it seems like, sometimes, i don’t get any email, but when i reboot the router, i get hundreds of emails from the past three days or so, and other times, i don’t get any email, and when i reboot the router, nothing happens, but when i restart the email client, or reboot the computer, i get hundreds of emails from the past three or four days. either way, it doesn’t happen with enough regularity to make it very obvious what the culprit is, although it doesn’t appear to happen as frequently when i turn my computer off, rather than leaving it running all night. i seem to recall drizzle saying something about having me on DHCP, despite the fact that i have a static IP address, so maybe that’s got something to do with it.
i had a whole bunch of links that i was going to dump, as well, but my browser crashed and when it came back, i chose to start a new session, because i think one of the links crashed my browser, and i don’t want to foist any of that nonsense on to anyone else. one of them was more stuff about how google is really evil, though…
linque dump Ⅴ, rants and others
i got a spam comment from Anonymous – Operation Titstorm this morning. while i agree with anonymous’ motivation for such action, i am not part of the australian government and not in a position where i can do much of anything except agree with their motivation for their actions. go anonymous, but please go do it somewhere where it’ll make a difference, okay? mass spamming of random blogs is a really good way to make a lot more people not want to deal with you any longer.
Google shuts down music blogs without warning – this is the same company which has recently announced a “1GB bandwidth internet connection to every home” deal that is in the works. making it even more likely that, whether you like it or not, google will have access to all of your data. the fact that google already has their hands in pretty much everything from where you’re going to be to who you’re going to be there with and everything in between, their Gmail was marketed with “never delete another email, EVER” propaganda (which nobody seems to remember these days), and they are in bed with the CIA and have a team of specialists ready to scan every bit of information the unwitting public feeds into their jaws makes their “Don’t be evil” company motto a bit of a malapropism.
People browse by search (or ReadWriteWeb faces the Facebook Login problem) – of course, the problem is confounded by the fact that people don’t seem willing to actually learn what this computer-thingy on their desks is for to begin with. a very good example of this is one of my clients, who regularly calls me because he thinks his “anti-virus software is tired” of zapping viruses on his windows machine, or the fact that he can’t type into his computer because the keyboard is unplugged and he didn’t realise it.
Christians claim hate crimes law an effort to ‘eradicate’ their beliefs – no, hate crime laws are an effort to crack down on hate crimes… if your beliefs are the direct cause of the hate crime, then you’ve got something to worry about. if not, claiming that hate crime laws are an effort to eradicate “christianity” just makes you appear to be really, REALLY stupid, regardless of where you obtained your law degree. even a fifth grader can see that constitutionally protected speech does not apply, when it is clearly written into the law to begin with… ☹
New National Security Distraction: Arabic Language Students – a white-bread american physics major from pomona college is a terrorist, according to TSA officials and the FBI, who spent several hours handcuffed, under arrest and being questioned by no fewer than seven law enforcement officials, but unable to obtain legal council, because he tried to board a plane with… wait for it… not liquids, not matches, not a bomb. arabic flash cards. TSA Supervisor: You know who did 9/11? George: Osama bin Laden. TSA Supervisor: Do you know what language he spoke? George: Arabic. — therefore, you are a terrorist, because you are learning arabic… WHO TRAINS THESE PEOPLE ANYWAY?!? it’s a wonder that i am as nice to strangers as i am… 8/
finally, Security patch results in BSOD – i think this may actually be an improvement in windowsdoesn’t operation. at least now you go directly to the BSOD, rather than thinking your computer might actually be doing what it is supposed to before you go there. this is exactly the reason i don’t use microsoft products any longer. they’re releasing internet explorer eight with the same unfixed bugs in it that i reported to them before they released IE three, and they still haven’t even made an attempt to fix them. why people think that microsoft cares about anything other than making as much money as possible while exerting as little actual work as possible is totally beyond me.
miscellaney
so far, the new-old host provider has been doing an outstanding job, although he just installed suPHP (ostensibly to keep an eye on potential spammers) which requires all of my PHP files to be set with their permissions at 644. unfortunately, that leaves the two configure.php files in my store open to attack. hopefully he won’t object to a couple of PHP files that are set to 400, otherwise there’s going to be yet another host provider switch again in the near future. i applaud his keeping an eye on potential spammers, but opening everything up like that is another thing entirely. all in all, though, for a guy who i moved away from because he was going to raise my rates by over 300%, he’s doing an exceedingly good job.
i’ve got an appointment to meet with bill, one of my clients, this afternoon at 3:00, and i’ve got a fremont phil rehearsal at 7:30.
supposedly the soon-to-be Ganesha The Truck is going to be handed over to me at some point in the next few days. it’s red, which, naturally, means that i’m going to paint the names of Ganesha in blue, so that it will be the most difficult-to-read colour combination. i’m going to try to get all 1008 names of Ganesha on the car this time, which means i’ve got to figure out how to write smaller, but i’m not 100% decided on what it’s going to look like yet, because i haven’t actually seen the truck yet. there’s also a possibility that i’m going to use a range of blues and purples. the truck currently doesn’t have a canopy, which is going to be one of the first things that changes once i get my hands on it, and i’m probably not going to start on the artwork until the canopy is in place. it’s a good thing i’ve got another car to drive temporarily (moe’s friend micah’s father, curtis, is keeping his jeep at our house while he winters in florida, or philadelphia or some place like that, and he said we can use it as much as we like as long as we look after it and wash it every now and then), because Ganesha The Car apparently decided that it really is dead: i was going to drive it around the other day, and i got in and turned the key… and nothing happened. so i turned the key off and on again, and there was a dismal clicking noise, followed by more silence. so i cycled it again and there was more clicking and this time it started. i figured, as long as it was running, i’d drive it around, so i went up to the post office in milton, about five miles down the road. i went in to the post office, and when i came back and tried it again, it was the same thing – nothing, then clicking, then, finally, it started up. i just had it tuned up a few weeks ago! this is not supposed to be happening! fortunately there’s the jeep, so i don’t have to figure out some other way to get to my rehearsals. at the same time, i find it really interesting that the mechanic said that it wouldn’t pass inspection, and practically the next thing that happens to the car is that it decides to give up the ghost. it’s been a good car, and i’m very strongly thinking about attending the electric vehicle workshop at south seattle community college and turning Ganesha The Car into an electric car, so that the artwork will continue on the road for a while.
further information about snake suspenderz @ the palladium so far is that we’ve been confirmed for the 8:30 to 10:00 slot, but we’re supposedly going to be sharing the slot with another band (Bakelite 78) and we haven’t heard back from them yet, so we don’t know whether we’re going first or second.
Snake Suspenderz at The Palladium!
yes, that’s right, the newly-converted-to-a-FULL-TIME-theater(!!!), Hale’s Palladium, has opened up on friday nights for informal performances, and Snake Suspenderz is one of those performances! ❗
i don’t know a lot of details yet, but the show will be on friday, january 19th, between 6:00 and 9:00 pm.
HAH!!!
HAH!!
❗ i’ve “won” after all… it took a little bit more time than i thought, but my will has triumphed over the forces of those who would use the internet against me, to their own advantage. yay me! down with the internet bullies who don’t know what they’re talking about anyway!
while it may not be worth fighting for, the fact that i have solid proof that i originated it, and have provided that proof to everybody else that you have bullied into believing your story must be a blow to your ego, if nothing else, Dr. Michael S. Elliott, M.D. and fighting in support of a copyright and winning is one of the ways that future generations determine who is right and who is wrong. keep that in mind the next time you try to change history. ❗
now that the mysterious comment to people who most of you don’t know anyway is out of the way, i’ll procede with another MINI-LINQUE DUMP Ⅳ⅝
Saudi’s Reject Pakistani Diplomat Whose Name Translates to ‘Biggest Dick’ (here is the article in the original language). i would say that life imitates python, but i think that’s already been used…
You don’t have to be bipolar to be a genius – but it helps – … um… no comment.
Father Still Has Complicated Series Of File Folders With Grown Son’s Name On Them – another one from The Onion. i can’t figure out what’s funny about this one, though… i still have a huge folder of stuff with my son’s name on it…
picture
⁂ ✬ ⨀ 文
along with all of the other SNAFUs i’ve been forced to deal with over the past few days (an itemised list would prove too exasperating to compile at this point), and despite any actual evidence that it is true, i have become relatively convinced that i may have H1N1, otherwise known as “HEINEY”. i felt fine on saturday, but, on sunday, the closer i got to the time (7:00 pm) when i had to go to a fremont phil rehearsal i was feeling more and more sick. i didn’t actually feel nauseous until i had already decided not to go to the (essential, required) rehearsal, and about 8:00 i turned into a geyser for about 2 hours. then i had a fever and chills for about 24 hours, whereupon the coughing started and has been going on more or less ever since. i feel more-or-less normal at this point, despite occasional fits of coughing. at this point, i’m so through with being sick… 8/
i bought a new wireless DSL modem/router, because the old modem/router apparently doesn’t work with OsX version 10.6.2 (snow leopard), which is what i am running on my mac now that i’ve upgraded thanks to St. Fred. of course i didn’t find out about it immediately, because when i got home with my newly-upgraded computer and turned it on, it found internet right away and i didn’t think to check where it was coming from. of course, as soon as i tried to connect with the mac from linux i discovered the problem, which was that the mac was wirelessly connecting to internet through the neighbour’s router instead of through mine, and when i tried to switch to my router, it simply wouldn’t connect. of course, moe’s temporary windows7 laptop connected to the old router without a problem, but she got her new mac today, which also runs snow leopard, so i went out and bought a new router, and, after having to call qwest once, drizzle three times, and having to make an adaptor and a cable (fortunately i had the tools and materials in my workshop!!) i finally got it working the way it’s supposed to.
of course, then i had to figure out that the new router makes a difference between networking with or without “wireless access control”. “with” means that i can’t access my mac – wireless – from my linux machine, which is connected with a wire, without jumping through a bunch more, different hoops that i haven’t figured out yet. i still haven’t figured out the right hoops to jump through to secure my wireless network so that my neighbours can’t log in to my network the way i can log in theirs. when i enable “wireless equivalency protection” (WEP), it takes longer, and the password doesn’t work the way i think it should, which means that only the linux machine gets internet, but can’t connect to the mac at all, the mac gets no internet except through the neighbour’s router, and i have to “sneaker net” files from the mac to the linux machine, which is do-able, but not ideal.
on the positive side, i haven’t had to switch host providers again, i got ALL of the data off of moe’s old hard drive, in spite of the fact that her old laptop is well and truly dead. i’ve got the chassis for sale on craigslist, and supposedly there’s going to be somebody come by and pick up the old router this afternoon. also, i’ve become the default insider tech-guru for the *NEW* fremont players web site – http://www.fremontplayers.com/ – which currently points to twankey.com. the “job title” reflects the fact that, despite the fact that i will be designing, hosting and doing maintenance for the site, i will not have to come up with content, which is exactly what i was hoping for.
and now, to clean up my browser a little and give you an idea of what i’ve been reading recently, here is MINI-LINQUE DUMP Ⅳ½
Supreme Court Allows Corporations To Run For Political Office – in spite of the fact that there is a glimmer of hope in the fact that we no longer have a far-right-wing nut-job as president any longer, my general impression is that the country is as broken as ever, and there are certain ways that it is broken now that it wasn’t broken before more level heads took over, which doesn’t say much about the glimmer of hope that i spoke of earlier. The Onion is the only way i’ve been surviving these days. if it weren’t for the onion, i would probably have sworn off all news reporting a year ago.
Nation’s Strangers Decry Negative Portrayal Among Children – once again, from the onion (see, i told you so) this is yet another example of why: ever since i was as young as i can remember, i remember people in the position of authority (my parents, the parents of my friends, teachers, etc.) telling me to be wary of “strangers”, and my thinking that the same “strangers” had something compelling about them. i was determined to find out what it was. now, i am a “stranger”, and i know what they’re talking about: kids, in general, are a lot less concerned about the world in general than adults are, and have a tendency to imagine quite a bit more than adults do. now, as an adult and a “stranger”, i just want to be that innocent again. it doesn’t have anything to do with “your weiner”. “the man” gets a little nervous when “strangers” and kids mix too much, though.
The Phallic Monuments Of Love Valley – who says God doesn’t have a sense of humour?
by the way…
if you didn’t already know, i experienced a brain injury (a ruptured Arteriovenous Malformation, or AVM, on the left side) a few years ago, which has severely affected my short-term memory, my ability to type, my emotional lability, and other things that make a big difference in my day-to-day life. one of the primary reasons for this blog is to keep track of things that i would otherwise be likely to forget.
if you want to read it, i can’t stop you (well, i could, but, in general, i don’t want to alienate my friends), but if you don’t like what is said, for whatever reason, you can go fuck yourself with a rusty pointed pole, Dr. Michael S. Elliott, M.D.
bleh
i suppose that i’m going to get sick even sick eventually, so it shouldn’t be any surprise to me when it happens, but it’s really irritating when it feels like i’m going to get sick, and then it doesn’t happen, but it does happen sort of, but not really. that’s the way i’ve been feeling for the last 24 hours: my ears are plugged up. i can clear them, but they plug right up again shortly afterwards. i don’t have a headache, but i’ve got one of those things that feels like it’s going to be a headache really soon, and i’ve had that for 24 hours. as long as i’m sitting at my desk, i feel sort of all right, but as soon as i get up i start breathing heavily and i get cold all over, which feels sort of like a fever, but as far as i’ve been able to tell, i don’t have a fever… and it’s 3:00 in the afternoon, and i’m hungry, but whenever i get up to make something to eat, i lose my hunger almost immediately, and go back to the “when i’m standing up” feeling lousy almost immediately…
and to make matters worse, i have a fremont phil rehearsal this evening, and i’m unsure enough about the way i feel that i don’t know whether or not to call and tell them i won’t be there… 8/
…
i’m speechless…
i wonder how long they’ve been carrying this product, i wonder how if it’s "different" from a "regular" ouija board, i wonder how many “christian” parents have complained specifically about this product… i wonder what marketing genius came up with the idea…
prophylaxis!
i figured that, since i got paid(!) for the panto, and i got paid(!!) for first night, i would arbitrarily do something for both my wife and myself, keeping in mind that we have both fought valiantly in the battle of several computers recently, and we have both bought (or are buying) new computers recently, so i went out and bought a 2 terabyte USB hard drive, and i’m going to start making regular backups of all the computers in the house, so that the next time one or more of the computers goes tits up, we won’t have to run around like the proverbial chicken.
i hope you don’t mind sweetie, i did this without checking with you first, but i’m sure you’ll agree that it is $150 well spent, and Hybrid Elephant paid for it.
but while i’m at it, i want to marvel in awe, once again, at the place we’ve got to, technologically. i was raised around computers that talked in bits and bytes, before anyone ever dreamed of a personal “hard disk”… the first actual hard disk i ever worked with was an 80 megabyte monster, easily four times as big as the model currently on my desk, with a fraction of the capacity, and at the time, i was under the impression that it was an electronic “black hole” into which i could throw data forever, and never fill it up.
i remember when i couldn’t afford more than 16 megabytes of RAM (on a mac LCII), because it was $150 for a 1MB SIMM chip, which was about the same size as my cell phone… and now they make things like the one seen on the right, which is a four gigabyte memory chip that goes in my cell phone. when i was working at openwave, a few years ago, i worked on a solaris machine with a 4 terabyte hard disk array, which was a box about a quarter of the size of my desk, and sat in a corner of the santa barbara office (i logged in and worked remotely, from an office in bellevue), and this 2 terabyte disk i just bought is the size of a small book.
i’m not gonna claim that this is an electronic black hole, but i can’t imagine how i will fill up a 2 terabyte disk, except for backing up multiple computers, multiple times, for several years…
harping
once again, The Onion, asks asks the same question i have been wondering about ever since the earthquake in haiti became news: why are we helping haiti now?
i mean, it’s not as though their lives (those of them that actually survived, that is) were going to be significantly worse because of the earthquake… they were a poor nation with no natural resources before, what’s so “special” about them now that they’ve had an earthquake that we have to rush over and help them out. when they get back to their standard of poverty that they had before the earthquake, are we going to abandon them again, or does the fact that they’ve had an earthquake mean that we’re going to try to help them out of the poverty that they once had… and if so, what was so special about the earthquake anyway?
and what must the haitians think about us “rich americans” who are sending food, water and medical care (now, but weren’t sending any kind of help to speak of, last month), and are also sending solar-powered bibles and “volunteer ministers” trained in “touch assist”? if they didn’t already, i’m pretty sure that haiti has universally decided that the united states is full of crazy people. i know i have… but then again, i live here.
and gay marriage… i’m gonna harp on that subject, while i’m in a harping mood. it seems very odd that we’ve got two, essentially warring factions, the anti-gays and the gays: we’ve got states which now allow gay marriage that didn’t before, and different states that have decided that they won’t allow gay people to get married, where, once upon a time they could. we’ve got one state that used to allow marriage and then decided that it wouldn’t several times, and is now in the process of changing its mind again… and on top of that, we’ve got at least two federal legislators who have said that any law that prohibits gays from getting married is unconstitutional, as well as more than a few who would like to see the constitution amended to prohibit anybody from getting married except one man and one woman. and along with everything else, we’ve got ENTIRE COUNTRIES which have decided that gay people are, if nothing else, people, and yet we’ve got other countries which want to kill all people who aren’t exactly like the people who are making the laws.
it’s times like these that i remember what one of my first spiritual teachers, Dr. Elizabeth McDonald Burrows said about issues becoming “more dualistic”, more “black-and-white”, and how, at these times more than any other, it is important to become aware of the fact that there are A LOT of different shades of grey.
it’s also times like these that i seriously wonder if i am really decended from the same monkeys everyone else is… 8/
link dump ? for a change
now that i’m finished frantically trying to put out a raging forest fire with a watering sprinkler (for the moment, anyway), i’ve got the time to post a whole bunch of things that i’ve been reading recently, that make me go everything from “hmmm” to “AARGH! *#%&!!?!”…
first up, in the “AARGH! *#%&!!?!” category, Religious Tefillin Prompts Scare On Plane – the way i see it, a 17-year-old jewish kid was putting on his tefillin (“phylacteries“, for the uninitiated) in preparation for morning prayer, while at the same time, one of the flight attendents, who thought he was a terrorist, diverted the plane, where he was met by clown homeland security and a bomb squad. there’s so many levels of stupid here… my mind boggles… 😐
continuing to boggle my mind, in more ways than one, Slime mold validates efficiency of Tokyo rail network – more evidence (as if we needed it, which apparently we do) that the creationists are wrong… in more ways than one.
which brings me to the fact the following symbol, a full colon followed by a dash::–is called “dog’s bollocks” by typographers (much in the same way that the name for the symbol that represents “the artist formerly known as ‘Prince'” is called “bruce” by typographers: they’ve got to have something brief to call it), according to the Oxford English Dictionary. the interesting part is when someone delves into The Secret History of Typography in the Oxford English Dictionary… it just goes to prove that you can read the dictionary and find vulgar, 60-year-old emoticons. the only thing remaining is to see how long it will be before the L33T kiddies figure it out and start using it themselves…
there’s a rare (she’s been spending all of her free time studying these days) post from moe, about her new birthday present – yes, another dog. we are now, once again, officially a four-dog family. and the new one is obsessed with staring at the cats, in order to try to get them to move… it’s really funny… or frustrating, depending on whether or not lucy’s been at home all day.
and finally, this evening, Man Stuck In No-Man’s Land – a story from right around here… and it’s from the onion. it’s good to see the onion doesn’t ignore the little people… 🙂
host service bathroom
now that (touch wood) the host provider fiasco is behind me, at least for the moment, i can focus on much more mundane things, like the fact that today is the day when the contractor comes by to remodel our bathroom, take out the existing, but broken “garden” bathtub, and replace it with a new shower stall. pictures will be coming when the batteries on my camera are recharged.
i still haven’t gotten refunded by the old host provider, but it’s not that much, so if i don’t get refunded it’s no big deal, apart from the fact that it further cements in my mind the fact that they really offered some of the worst customer service i have ever experienced in my life (further information can be found here). the fact that the “support” guy who has been part of this whole deal from the beginning (and, oddly enough, is apparently the cause of the whole thing) is, according to his vehement ranting, "a Web API/Software Developer… I know these things more than you!", he apparently doesn’t even know enough to avoid logging in as root on his linux machine, which has been making a hair-tearing fiasco amusing enough that i’m actually pretty calm at this point. it would be nice, however, if all of these people were in the same time zone. the fact is, the “support” guy is in bangladesh, and the host provider itself is in virgina or some place like that, means that most of the “discussion” on the WebHostingTalk forums goes on while i am still asleep, and when i wake up and check my mail, i get riled up about what they’ve been saying before i’ve even had breakfast, which makes the rest of my day sort of interesting.
that didn’t take long…
so on 10 january, i filed a support ticket with my new host provider, cpanel-host.us, that email wasn’t working the way it was supposed to. two days later, i learned that my clients’ email, and the BSSB mailing list wasn’t working at all, and i filed a support ticket about that, as well. on the 14th, they (finally) responded saying that the mail servers had been fixed. then, on 15 january, i got an email saying that mailing lists were now forbidden, and if i had a mailing list on my account on the 17th, my account would be suspended. i wrote back to them, asking if they were serious about suspending my account two days after they had helped me get my mailing list working, and their response was “yes”…
😡
but at the same time, i got email from my previous host provider, IsMyReseller.com. apparently he felt guilty for saying that he wanted to raise my rates almost 300% (from $5 a month to $18 a month). i wrote back to him saying that it was all well and good that he was feeling guilty, but what was preventing him from doing the same thing again in a month, or five, when he, once again, discovers that he isn’t making enough money from me. his response was to send me a .pdf of a document that says he will charge me $6.50 a month for the life of the account.
so i switched back.
the thing that’s really amazing is that he took me from a backup to being up and running in a little more time – 15 minutes or so – than the time it took him to download the backup from my old host… and that includes all of my databases, my email addresses and my mailing list.
i find this somewhat unusual. nobody has ever tried to get me back as a customer. usually if i decide not to be somebody’s customer any longer, it is for a very specific reason which the person has no intent of changing. this guy said that he actually felt guilty for asking to raise my rates, and as soon as he had a way to continue running his company without raising my rates, he emailed me immediately.
cpanel-host.us (the second to the last host) was saying that my email address was sending mail to 50 addresses at once (which is true) and that this was causing unusual server stress. i know from my days at openwave that 5,000 emails a day isn’t uncommon (i’ve even still got a script that sends anywhere from 100 to 100,000,000 emails to any address or addresses you put in to it, but it only works with openwave mail server software), especially for a mail server that has a lot of users, so i was sort of wondering why it was a problem, to which they responded that they were afraid some spammer would gain access to my mailing list and have their IP address blacklisted. they obviously chose the wrong person to accuse of being a potential spammer.
and the fact that IsMyReseller.com on top of the email problems which were what the previous host provider was balking at doesn’t hurt his chances either… 😉
now as long as it stays this way for a few months, maybe i’ll have the chance to wind down from this semi-permanent state of panic that i’ve been in ever since december of 2008, when i decided to switch from drizzle to 1&1…
in other news, i went to check my PO box today and found this very amusing letter:
L.J.M. Steijn
Juliana van StolBergstraat 30
2805 CN Gouda
The NetherlandsCHURCH OF TINA CHOPP
P.O. Box 1864
Milton
WA 98354
USAGouda, 10 January 2010
Dear Tina Chopp,
My name is Leo Steijn and I live in the Netherlands.
I have look at your very interesting site, and for more information must I be contacted the Church, What I now do.
Please, gife me if you will more information about the Snake Destiny and what he is theach, also the secrets about bizarre sex.
Another question, is your church also be present in the Netherlands? If so, than I like it to come in contact with your members. Can you please bring me in contact with them. I will be very thankfull for it!
I hope to hear soon of you.
With kindest regards,
Leo Steijn
P.S.
i don’t have e-mail
gee, where do i even start with this letter…? i know a couple of people who live in the netherlands, but i’m not sure if they would be willing to contact this guy about the Church of Tina, and even if they were willing, i’m not sure they’re properly prepared to be representatives of the Church, but at the same time, what other choice do i have?
snake suspenderz at the can can!
Thursday, January 28th
Snake Suspenderz — 9:00 – 10:00
In The Drink — 10:30 – 11:30
Bakelite 78 — 12:00 – 1:00
Location
Can Can
94 Pike St
Seattle, WA 98101
http://www.myspace.com/cancanseattle
Price
$5.00 general – $10.00 VIP
Tickets available from Brown Paper Tickets
Contact
206.652.0832
GROWF!!
the PHBFH is reaching out and tweaking me from three counties and 15 years away…
i responded to a freecycle advertisement for a shower chair – the kind that disabled people use so that they will be less likely to fall in the shower. it so happens that i have one, left over from when i had my brain surgery. it’s been sitting at the bottom of our property and vines have been growing over it for the past three years or so, but being as how it’s made of aluminum and plastic, it’s still perfectly useable, once the vines are removed. i did so, and responded to this lady whose email user name is “meowphhtkitty”. she didn’t seem particularly motivated to come and pick it up, and i didn’t seem particularly motivated to take it to her, so i arranged for her to pick it up last weekend, and when she didn’t show up the first time, i just let it slide…
but then she wrote back yesterday and said that she was going to be working in auburn, fairly close to my house, and was going to come by to pick up the chair after she got off work. this time i went out – in the rain – and picked most of the vines off the chair, so that all she’d have to do is wash the brown leaf-stains off it and it would be ready to go…
she didn’t show up again.
this time i was more intrigued. i wrote to her asking why she hadn’t shown up, and – this is where the PHBFH comes into it – she wrote back from a different address: one from DSHS, where she is, according to her signature, a “Support Enforcement Officer” at the “Seattle Division of Child Support/DSHS”.
she made some lame excuse about how her boyfriend forgot to pick her up and her phone battery being dead, but she’s the DSHS drone who took the call from the PHBFH and had the police come over and roust me and my son out of a deep sleep at 3:30 in the morning on a sunday, 12 years ago, because the PHBFH wanted to make sure that she got her check from DSHS on time (which meant that she had to be in custody of my son), but my son wanted to stay and be the best man at my wedding…
i’m not 100% sure of this, of course, because i never actually learned the names of the DSHS people that were involved, but i know for a fact that the PHBFH was ripping off DSHS, she was crazy as a loon, i was taking care of her child and paying child support so that the PHBFH could get away with not having a job, and i couldn’t get anybody to pay attention to the problems I was having with the PHBFH.
and, of course, after my son turned 18 and i was no longer required to pay child support, the PHBFH went certafiably nuts and was involuntarily committed to the state mental institution, which is what i had been trying to tell people ever since my son was about seven years old. of course, by then it was “too late” – my son was already 18, i was already relieved of my child support obligation, and there was nothing anybody could do about it…
i haven’t been this angry at someone for a LOOOOONG time… and it is very likely that “meowphhtkitty” has no idea who i am or what my circumstances are…
but if she thinks that she’s going to be a no-show twice, AND be associated with the place that let the PHBFH step on my balls, she’s got another think coming.
FEZOROCITY!
the first of two fezzes arrived in the mail today, which is surprising considering how large it is and the fact that i only won it on tuesday. it is, however, everything that it was advertised to be, and a whole bunch more: it comes with a support which is a gadget to keep its shape when it’s not being worn, and a rain cover(!)… and it’s from peoria! i’m not 100% certain of this (and, at this point, the only person who would know is my mother, to whom i have not spoken in 5 years, at her request), but there’s a very strong probability (≈95%) that my grandfather was a member of the mohammed shrine. it doesn’t have my grandfather’s name in it, but it’s not too difficult to pretend, especially when you have a hole in your skull to begin with… 😉
i now own two fezzes, and soon i will own three fezzes! it just goes to show you what you can accomplish when you put your mind to it… and have internet backing you up… 8)
also, i realised that my being #32 in the order of the fez is just another confirmation of the law of fives, which is the discordian concept that all things happen in fives, or are some how, directly or indirectly, related to the number five. i’ve always thought that Tina Chopp and Eris are good friends, if not two different names for the same being…
another day
another day without moe… one less day until i see her again… how much like an old teenage love song do i sound at this point…
i put a handle and feet on my saw case today. i went to a shoe and luggage repair place that was inhabited by a couple of old korean folks. i said i needed a handle for my instrument case – something that i could see that they had in their display case – and the old lady said that she had to see the case, so she could pick out the right handle. so i pulled out the saw case and she was so non-plussed by it that she had to roust the repair guy from his bunker. he spoke even less english than the old lady, pretty much restricting his communication to a series of meaningful grunts and two word responses, which were apparently in some language other than english. i don’t know for sure that they were korean, but there was an ancient (1970s era) calendar for a korean christian church on the wall. the repair guy came out, took one look at the case, and immediately started rooting around in a box on the floor from which he produced the feet, then went over to the display case and pulled out a handle from a pile of miscellaneous parts, and proceded back to his bunker with the old lady on his heels. there was a lot of talking, mostly from the old lady (the old guy preferring his grunts and two-word answers to pretty much everything she said) for about 10 minutes, and then the old lady came out and said that they couldn’t figure out what to charge me because they don’t usually sell these things. i suggested $15, which sounded good to her.
and the saw case really did need a handle. instead of being a large, unwieldy object with no handles, it’s got a standard instrument case handle in exactly the right place. when i placed it next to my trombone and trumpet cases, i realised that “real” cases have rounded edges, and the saw case currently has rough square edges, but that’s easy enough to fix.
while i’ve been waiting…
while i’ve been waiting for my ebay victims to die, i’ve been making constructive use of my new workshop (!!!) and building myself a case for my saw. i got tired of carrying it around in a cardboard box with the bow separate and exposed, shortly after i got the bow, and i’ve had nothing better to do the past couple of days. it doesn’t have any “case cloth” on the outside yet, and it doesn’t have a handle, but it’s as much an instrument case, and made in almost exactly the same way as most trumpet cases, and it came outta my workshop(!!!) with the help of a spare scrap of plywood, a few campaign signs, a coupla hinges, a coupla suitcase hasps and some screws. i’m debating whether it actually needs case cloth. it would definitely look a lot more like a legitimate instrument, but i can cover up the more obvious gaps with stickers and it’ll be just as good. it definitely needs a handle, though… 🙂
confessions of an ebay vulture…
that’s right, i don’t use ebay often, for buying or selling, but when i want something that’s on ebay, i wait until the last 10 minutes of the auction before i start bidding. that way i am more likely to win, simply because there’s not enough time to respond. i plan these strikes carefully, by selecting a whole bunch of potential items to watch, and then narrowing it down by price, whether it’s exactly what i want or not, and the time that the auction ends. the past couple of days have been a good example. i won a pair of cubic zirconia earrings, two fezzes, and a bunch of jeweled masonic emblems all for less than $50.
i wonder if the more experienced ebay junkies with higher feeback consider this cheating…
weird pictures
goe mont fumby
moe went to her annual conference in florida today. she will be back in two weeks. by then i hope to have a new shower stall where we currently have a broken, non-functioning garden tub. a guy just came around to size it up and give me an estimate. the guy the other day said that he would do it for around $700, which is about what i expected. i’ve got another guy coming on monday to size it up for an estimate, and then we’ll get down to the business of actually doing it.
i got a trackback from the guy who is blogging about the guy who ripped me off and his arguments about why it seems that i am the one who ripped him off. he’s got an entertaining story, but it’s basically wrong from beginning to end. i would correspond more with him, but it’s pointless, so i have decided that he’s not worth it. basically, the way i see it, i’ve got dated, hard artwork from 1975 – 1993 that proves i am the originator of the font, and he’s got a bunch of interesting stories about other commercial, shareware and hand-made fonts from 1995 on, that seem to match. we’ll see how far he can get with that.
also, Art Clokey died… too many cool people have been dying during the past couple of years. stop it.
linque dump Ⅲ
At 13,000 years, tree is world’s oldest organism – that’s incredible… something that has been alive longer than humanity as such has been on the planet… it should be a clear indication to the creationists that they’re wrong, but it’s not.
A Manifesto! The Time Has Come! – by bishop john shelby spong. someone who the “christians” would be wise to listen to… but they won’t.
Google’s Street View camera car hits a baby deer – and, of course, takes pictures of it.
why are people SO FUCKING IGNORANT?!?
Ugandan president urges softening of anti-gay bill – this is the ugandan president, saying – once again – that he is not going to allow the “kill gays” bill to pass. an admirable effort, if it actually happens, however, despite repeated assurances from the ugandan president, i still doubt will actually come to pass.
at the same time…
Witch-doctors reveal extent of child sacrifice in Uganda – this is somewhat of a surprise, considering their stance on killing gays. you get the impression from the first article that uganda is mostly a country of mortified “christians” who want to avoid the gay plague. there’s no clue from the first article that uganda is also a place where “crime is directly linked to rising levels of development and prosperity, and an increasing belief that witchcraft can help people get rich quickly.”
if they’re really just mortified “christians” then i would suspect them to shun “witchcraft” as well, but somehow these supposedly “christian” ugandans are more mortified about gays than they are child-murdering “witch-doctors”.
it’s as though they’re saying “it’s perfectly normal for us to want to kill gays, because they’re evil, but when it comes to getting ahead, a little child sacrifice, especially if it is someone else’s child, couldn’t hurt anyone.”
“(Homosexuality) is not allowed in African culture. We have to protect the children in schools who are being recruited into homosexual activities.”… but if there’s even the remotest chance that doing so would help us get a little bit ahead, we’re not above mutilating or killing children, either…
i’m not sure i even want to try to understand that one… 😐
i’ve been having a difficult time the past few days… and, also 卍 卐 ☹
i’ve been having a difficult time the past few days: the process of switching host providers again has gone pretty normally, with the normal SNAFUs which have been more or less worked out over the past four days. there is still the matter of getting my clients to update their nameservers to my nameservers(!!) (i finally figured out how to create ns1 and ns2.hybridelephant.com, which means that now, when i sell host services myself, i don’t have to give my clients the nameservers that belong to my host provider) which should happen soon, but it’s a little difficult to get other people to do something, even when it is important.
also, as an extra added bonus, as a part of switching host providers, my email has been down for a week, and i’m going to have to enter the 50 addresses on the mailing list by hand (once liz has reset her nameservers) so that it will work, because the new host service provider had “never restored a mailing list before” and didn’t know how to do it.
as i posted previously, somebody grafittied Ganesha The Car. i wrote about it in I, Anonymous, and, after an encouraging start, the conversation turned into the “why are you trying to reclaim the nazi symbol?” rant from people who are much more adept at pushing the buttons of a newbie than i am, and it went downhill from there. the day after it was grafittied, i took it in for a check-up, because the “check engine” idiot-light had gone from its normal “on all the time” to flashing, and i wanted to find out what changed. yesterday, i got the call from the repair shop. they said they had found out what was wrong – burned valves on the 3rd cylinder – and they said that it would probably need a new engine before it will pass emissions inspection the next time. 🙁
on the other hand, there have been some good things as well. i have been watching craigslist recently, and bought some swastika jewelry that i found there, which was decidedly not nazi jewelry. one is an american-made gold swastika hatpin with a diamond in the center. it came along with a whole bunch of other hatpins, and the lady wanted $25 for the lot, which i happily paid. the other is a silver native american swastika pin with a card that dates it to around 1907. the guy that was selling it wanted $25 for it and a nazi flag. i told him i was interested in the native american swastika, but i didn’t want anything to do with nazi stuff and he agreed. i took both pieces for an “appraisal” today (the guy said, and i agreed, that what i had didn’t warrant a “real” appraisal, which would have cost $50 per piece) and found out that the silver pin has a “niche market” collectible value of around $100, and the gold and diamond pin – 18 to 20 carat gold, and a 3-point diamond, by itself – is probably worth $150.
also, i bought a number of buddhist swastikas from a place in singapore, out of which i’m going to make jewelry.
and the fact that Ganesha The Car is dying isn’t as bad as it seems. it runs the same as it has been for the past few years, and there’s nothing really wrong with it other than it only runs on 3 cylinders. i’ve been thinking for some time about taking the class they offer at south seattle community college, where if you provide your own car they waive the $400 class fee and you get to participate in converting your car to an entirely electric vehicle. also, tom at the repair shop said that he could probably round up a rebuilt engine that has a 1 or 2 year warranty that would give Ganesha another 5 years or so. and if none of those turn out to be an option, jack (the guy i bought Ganesha from, who is moe’s employer’s father-in-law) has been turned on to watch auto auctions for another cheap car that will be turned into another art car.
and, on top of everything else, they took off the grafitti while they had it at the shop, and didn’t charge me for it. 🙂
somebody grafittied my car!
someone grafittied my car!
i was at Hale’s Palladium this evening for the last performance of Aladdin and The Magic Lamp. i parked there and went in around 1:30 pm, and when i walked out of the palladium at around 6:00 pm, there it was. the paint was dry, which, in my mind, means that the guy must have done it around between the time that i left it, and 4:00 or thereabouts.
i asked around and i learned that the guy who tags things with “SEEDR1” is around 30 years old, and was a student at cornish until he was expelled because of a conflict with one of the instructors (big surprise). he is known for his “photo-realistic” grafitti art, but he also tags (which is likely one of the sources for the conflict with the instructors at cornish), and he was probably drunk when he did it (big surprise).
i don’t know who he is — yet — but i’m already closing in on his identity, and it hasn’t even been 6 hours yet. i’m pissed at this guy, because his drunken tag is going to cost me time and money to cover up, but also because tagging a car — any car — is really a lame, juvenile thing to do. if i ever find him, i don’t know what i would do, but i do know that i’m probably going to file a police report regarding it whether i find out his identity, or not, and if it’s possible to get reimbursed for it, by whatever means, from him, it would be an awesome thing.
i’m going to get better pictures in the morning, when the light is better, but i really don’t understand why he did it… to my car doesn’t matter, i would wonder the same thing about such a tag on any car. the guy must have known that it wouldn’t last long, nobody would see it, and — especially because of the fact that it was on an art car to begin with — it is going to be covered up immediately, before i drive anywhere other than directly home.
and if the guy is an artist himself, what was going through his mind as he spray-painted his tag on my piece of artwork? how would he feel if i spray-painted a tag on one of his pieces of artwork? maybe, because of the fact that his artwork is mostly grafitti to begin with, he wouldn’t mind so much, but i would be willing to bet that if he created a work of art that wasn’t grafitti, and someone spray-painted on it, he would be offended at the very least, so why would he expect any less from me?
i’m not really surprised that someone grafittied my car, but what i am surprised about is why it has taken this long. i’ve been driving ganesha the car for 5 years, and this is the first time anyone has done anything nasty to it… and really, thinking about it, it isn’t really that nasty, except in a vile, putrid, disgusting sort of way. and the guy managed to paint on one of the few places on the car where i won’t have to repaint the actual artwork on the car in order to cover it up, so apart from being really lame and annoying, it’s not that bad.
i am writing in I, Anonymous about it, though, because i know a lot of people read it, and very likely the guy who did it will either find out about it personally, or from one of his friends.
and, by the way… the guy who tags SEEDR1 is an worse than an asshole. he’s an anal polyp and he deserves to be removed from society’s colon immediately. the guy i caught in the act of trying to rip a bumper sticker off of my car apologised and admitted that he was being an asshole, and he got forgiven by me, because he stood up, admitted what he was doing, and that he was an asshole. this guy is worse, and he is not getting forgiven. die in hell, scum!
oy… 8/
i’m having a tough time, and i can’t even blog about it! 🙁
i’ve selected a new host provider and begun the process of switching, but because of the fact that new host provider doesn’t feel comfortable allowing me ssh access, i’m forced to do everything the slow way, one file at a time, and “ask” for help, then wait up to 24 hours for a response, every time i find something that i can’t do with a GUI that i could do in 5 seconds with ssh access. as a result, i haven’t actually switched the DNS settings and now i’m going to have to export my wordpress database and upload it to the new server again because of this post… and there’s a problem with the blog on the new host server, which i could fix in 5 seconds using ssl, but because of the fact that he’s nervous about offering ssl, even if i do hit the “submit” button on this post, download the database from the old server, and reupload the database on the new server, it won’t show up at the new server… all you can see at this point is
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i got email about my Tengwar Sindarinwa font from the guy who plagiarised it (taking out some of the spacing characters that he didn’t understand, reversing some characters, etc., etc.) saying that i was the one who ripped him off, in spite of the fact that i have original artwork from the ’70s that proves otherwise. what he doesn’t realise is that you can’t “copyright” a letter shape, all you can do is copyright a font name, and my “Tengwar Sindarinwa” and his “Tengwar Gandalf” have different names. there’s nothing that he can do except be annoying, but he’s choosing a very difficult time to do it.
moe applied to be an animal behaviour specialist, which meant that she had to put together almost 1000 printed pages of records, logs, articles and so forth that she has been working on for the past 7 years. she was working on the last of it the other night and one of the dogs spilled a cup of water all over her laptop. we managed to get it shut down without obviously shorting out something, removed the battery and dried it off as well as we could, including leaving it upside down on a towel over a heat register overnight, and blowing it out thoroughly with compressed air, but when i tried to boot it up it gave me the “i can’t find the operating system” icon. i called apple care and explained the situation to them, and they said that if i took it in to the mac store that they had software that could look at the contents of the disk, and even made an appointment for me – the last one of the day – at the mac store in southcenter. i drove 20 miles to southcenter and waited almost an hour before someone finally talked to me (it was after closing time). he wouldn’t take my case ID number and wouldn’t even look at the computer. he told me that, in fact, they do have the software that apple care told me about, but that their policy was to “use it for our own purposes, and not to retrieve customer data”. when i said that apple care had told me differently, he said he would give them “feedback”, but there was nothing he could do. 😮
to make matters worse, i called apple care again this morning, because at least there i can give them my case ID number so that at least they will know what i’m talking about, but the first support goon i talked to said exactly the same thing as the one i talked to last night. when i told him that he was wrong and that the mac store wouldn’t help me, he passed me along to his supervisor who told me there was nothing he could do. 😯
i used to be a macintosh afficianado. i was a mac-head before most of the “geniuses” at the “genius bar” were even born. the first mac i used was a Lisa. but the customer service i received from apple, and from the mac store yesterday is enough to make me never want to see another apple product again in my entire life. i currently own, and am running a dual-core intel macbook pro, and the next time i have difficulties with it, it’s going to lose it’s apple operating system all together, and gain a new linux operating system. 😡
then there was the fact that i left my linux computer running when i went to bed last night, and this morning when i got up, it was not running and i couldn’t start it up. according to the people that i took it to (it, fortunately, is still under warranty), the power supply was laden with dust, and they speculated that it stopped working when it overheated. fortunately, because of the fact that it is still under warranty, i didn’t have to pay to get it fixed, but i drove all the way there and back twice before i had breakfast this morning.
it’s almost 4:00 already and i’ve gotten exactly NOTHING done for the past THREE DAYS. i’ve got a performance this evening at the rialto theatre in tacoma, a real, authentic, old-time vaudeville stage where i’ll be opening for Pearl Django, and i’m in such a bad mood that i’m not even excited about it. 😛
the shows, the bobs, and not being home on xmas
the shows went amazingly well this weekend. i’m getting the hang of playing my saw with a bow, but i’m not that good at playing actual notes yet. it may take a while for me to be that good.
we went to the bobs show last night at the triple door. because of the fact that i went directly from the panto and got there at 6:30, we got a table in the front row, which was extremely cool. amy bob stopped by before the show (and before moe got there), and moe got spit on by dan bob (who also said “don’t look up my skirt” to the lady sitting next to moe). they’ve been on tour for a month, so i haven’t seen matt that much since before the panto started, but i got the chance to talk with him after the show. i’d be willing to bet that, before we were married, moe had no idea that she and i would be hanging out with her favourite singing group… 8)
i wasn’t at home over xmas, which was okay (despite the fact that the window got stuck on the minivan and we had to drive home with the window stuck down and the freezing wind blowing in our faces for 3½ hours), but i really wish i had been at home, because the husons had a xmas party and i would have much rather go and hang out with the husons than where i actually spent xmas.
xmas @ the in-laws
okay, i’m sitting here in the living room of my mother-in-law’s house watching my sweetie and my mother-in-law’s roommate, anne, play wii tennis, after plugging in their new wireless router. strangely enough, having internet doesn’t make the fact that i’m sitting in the living room at my mother-in-law’s house any more than marginally tolerable, but at least it gives me something other than talking with the old fogies. there was some discussion of why “music notes come out of my head” which was sort of amusing. and the wind shear you’re experiencing is not because of the fact that you have the fan on your side of the room. this is a video game, get over it.
okay…
linque dump Ⅱ
Graphics of the Americas Exposition and Conference – i’ve been invited to this by the 4-colour printer that i use, but i’m not sure if i want to go or not.
Microsoft loses Word patent appeal – which means that microsoft will have to stop selling the current versions of Word 2003 and Word 2007… before they get started paying i4i $290,000,000, and altering Word so that it no longer contains the XML-rendering code for which microsoft didn’t pay…
Christian leader supports death penalty for gays – and the debate continues, only this time it’s in the united kingdlom…
The ‘green’ mayor? McGinn wants to legalize pot and tax it, too – we’re getting closer to making cannabis legal, and this guy is my home-town mayor on top of everything…
Swastika Christmas card with harmless message – it’s too bad i can’t show this story to the lady in my previous post…
this is the state of ermerika, not iran…
i was accosted at the coffee stand down the hill from my house today. as i was conversing with the barista (who burned my mocha, again) this incredibly fat woman (really, she was wider than she was tall. i don’t know how she was walking) came up and said “you have a swastika on your car!”
Incredibly Fat Woman: you have a swastika on your car!
me: yes, i have a swastika on my car.
IFW: that’s offensive, my husband is black.
me: i’m sorry you feel that way, but the swastika and the shatkona, the six pointed star design you see on the roof, is a symbol of Ganesha, the Hindu God of Removing Obstacles, and has been for ten thousand years! the nazi symbol you’re thinking of hasn’t even been around for 100 years…
IFW: i don’t know where you think you are, but this is the state of ermerika, not iran…
me: yes, and in America we have the freedom to worship the way we want, and display symbols that may be offensive to others. this is my way of getting back at the nazis who abused the swastika, by blatantly using it as a symbol of peace and goodwill.
IFW: … 😡
me: (as i’m driving away) how can a symbol be guilty for the acts of a madman?
i suppose i shouldn’t be surprised by things like this any longer, but this really affects me on a very deep level. what she said, "this is the state of ermerika, not iran", as though America is not "The Land of The Free", but instead the land of the intolerant bigots who refuse to accept the chance that there might be someone who thinks differently than they do… i’m tempted to go back and see if i can make friends with this woman and her husband, just to show them that the swastika is not to be feared… but i fear that if i show my face (or my car) around that particular coffee stand again, that i’ll probably be killed…
merry xmas… 😐
linque dump
Ugandan president committed to blocking anti-gay bill – while i am glad that somebody in ugandan politics has the balls to stand up to the crowd, i still think it would be better for gays in the long run if uganda passed this horrendous bill, because it would do two things: first, it would give everybody, even the “christians” who support it, a very clear idea of what killing gays really means, and second, it would give everyone, especially the “christians” who support it, a very clear idea of exactly how un-Christian are the “christians” who support the idea of killing gays in the first place.
Web 2.0 Suicide Machine – in spite of spreznib’s objection to JavaScript, i’m posting this anyway, for several reasons. among them are the fact that, despite the fact that “Web 2.0” has been available for a couple of years now, i really don’t see that much difference between the web now, and the web 10 years ago, except for the fact that it’s more crowded with people who either don’t know how to use it to begin with, or who are spammers. both of these are more than good enough reasons to have your “Web 2.0” personality commit suicide.
monday
now that the second weekend of performances are over, i can catch up on my real life…
while the servers were down, i got a business card in the mail from Mitnick Security Consulting, LLC… yes, that kevin mitnick. in order to get this business card i had to send him, among other things, my IP address and the password to my system. i think it was a pretty good trade, myself.
the performances went really well this week. the only frisson that we had was when stuart wasn’t going to be there for the evening show and he took off taking pam’s music with him, thinking it was his. after a few frantic phone calls and pam playing half of the preshow with charts borrowed from other people, stuart showed up and traded books with pam, and everything worked out grand.
i’m a little worried, though… now that clayton is playing with us, there’s more of a probability that eben will be able to copy music that jeremy wrote for the phil… music that he has currently said he doesn’t want the phil to play because he’s going through a publishing/copyright thing and doesn’t want to have extra copies of his music in places of which he is not aware.
after the show yesterday, i met up with hobbit, who is number 8 in the order of the fez. he and i (number 32) got together with jason (number 13) who owns Fez-O-Rama and his wife maya, and we spread some fezzerocity through downtown seattle last night… which basically involved meeting at the carousel in westlake mall, getting lost walking up to Von’s (a whiskey bar on 6th and pine) and talking about fezzes, internet, theatre and other stuff until 9:00 or so. i’m sorry to say that i had to borrow a fez from hobbit, because i hadn’t brought mine. also i need to get an “order of the fez” fez some day…
i’ve made some progress on finding a new host provider, but i’m still really mad about the fact that the current one wants to charge me almost 300% more, so i’m going to wait until i’ve calmed down a bit. i’ve found that, since my injury, if i rant about what i’m angry about when i’m angry i end up sounding like a drooling half-wit. besides, i’ve got an appointment with ned that i’ve got to go to now.
AAAARRRGGGHHH!
that’s A4R3G3H3 for those of you who are keeping score…
you may or may not have noticed that my web sites have been down for the past 24 hours. this was because at 4:00 friday afternoon, i got an email from my “new” host provider that he was going down for “4 to 5 hours (maximum 10 hours) for upgrades” and wanted to know if it was “okay with you if we start them this evening”… and then proceded to start the upgrades without even making sure that it was okay with me or not.
also, he informed me that my rates would be increasing by almost 300% because he is having trouble breaking even. 😯
needless to say, i have – once again – embarked on the task of finding yet another host service provider – my fourth switch in less than a year… 🙄 i will probably be switching in january, after the panto is over.
more stuff after the panto.
death for xmas…
the way i see it, the possibility that uganda is not going to pass the “kill the gays” bill, and instead offer the option of “counseling and rehabilitation” will make it far more likely that the “christians” in the united states – who have been slapped in the face by the ex-gay ministry folks who have recently been forced to break ties with a guy who has been their affiliate for decades because of his “bizarre and unorthodox” therapies, and who are up against the psychologists associatiation saying that being gay is not a disease and not a choice, and who are also, ultimately, behind the “kill the gays” bill in the first place – will use the fact that uganda is saying that “counselling and rehabilitation” is “preferable” to their original plan is more justification that “counselling and rehabilitation” are effective “treatments” for this “disease”.
much as i hate to say it, i hope that uganda passes the “kill the gays” bill, so that it will be made plainly, blatantly, horrendously obvious to even the most uneducated “christian” on the planet exactly how “un-Christian” this legislation actually is. anything less will just give the “christians” more fodder, weak and meaningless as it is.
are you smarter than a fifth grader?
this is another "advantage" to having a google alert for the term "swastika": i got up this morning and discovered a whole bunch of new articles, which included the following honeys.
College prof: Christian crosses like swastikas – Student: ‘I felt humiliated and that my spirituality was being demeaned’ – oh, boo hoo, you’re “not allowed” to make your religious emblem in a class where my religious emblem is banned as a matter of course, regardless of what you believe it means. now, maybe, you get the idea of what it must be like to have a religious symbol discriminated against because of stupidity!!
along the same lines, there is STILL IN PURSUIT OF THE DREAM, which is the story of writer who was originally scheduled to read from her book at a public library, and was then un-invited, because some person – not associated with the library – discovered that her book contained the images of “werewolves, vampires, and the swastika”. she invokes ray bradbury’s Farenheit 451, and i would tend to agree with her. this is definitely censorship based on an image in a book, and nothing less.
especially when you consider that high school students are being taught this stuff. there really should be no reason, apart from america’s bizarre aversion to the swastika, why people should raise anywhere near as much of a fuss about it.
but the one that really got to me, the one that makes me believe that we may actually have hope for a saner, less swastika-obsessed future, is the letter to the editor regarding an incident in which "I 卍 OBAMA" was carved into a massachusetts golf course last weekend, which was written by A SIXTH GRADER entitled Swastika predates use by Nazis. if a sixth grader has the requisite knowledge to correct a newspaper article, what does that say about the person who wrote that article? i’ll answer that, so that there will be no doubt in your mind what i am striving for here: it says that the person who wrote the article is either uneducated, or deliberately trying to pull the wool over our eyes. either way, it doesn’t say much about their integrity. we deserve better than that from our public news sources, and if it takes a sixth grader to set the record straight, then it’s time we took a closer look at who we are allowing to report our news.
the more you obsess about nazis and swastikas, the longer it will be until we disassociate nazis and swastikas! the way to get over the nazi thing is to have it be okay for people to use the 卍 symbol, and the 卐 symbol in ways that are not connected with nazis! it’s exactly the same thing your mother tells you after you skin your knee as a kid: the more you think about it, the longer it will be until it goes away. if the general world consensus is that we sould continue to think about nazis every time someone says 卐, then there are a lot of hindus, buddhists, native americans – and jews – who are going to be out a significant amount of their cultural history.
for more swastika pleasure, i invite you to peruse Sun Wheel – The Ancient Swastika and start thinking about something other than nazis for a change…
thanks.
here’s some ideas for xmas gifts…
Buy swastika online in India – this is what i get for having a google alert for the term “swastika”… why are people on this side of the globe so convinced that the swastika is anything other than a symbol of peace? i know that there was this whole thing with the nazis, but that was almost a hundred years ago, and i think it’s high time we should start thinking of other things.
the war on xmas
the closer we get to xmas, the more i am feeling like a jew at a nazi rally, and i am aware of the irony of such a statement a lot more accutely than those of you who may be shocked at the reference.
what i would really like, is to magically transport myself to somewhere where they don’t celebrate xmas for the month of december – and possibly the months of november and january as well – just to get away from the hype that is going on. the commercialism and the politics of the holiday are really starting to get to me, and i still have 10 days until it’s over for another year.
it’s not that i don’t celebrate xmas, and it’s not even that i don’t believe in the “christ” and “god” that are behind the current incarnation of the holiday so much (although that’s another part of the story). what is really disturbing to me is the combination of not being able to turn on the television or the radio without hearing either commercials for products that i know won’t work (like Windows 7), or seeing news reports of people complaining because the greeter at walmart said something, or didn’t say something that was offensive to them… or not… 😐
i was brought up in a family that celebrated the commercial aspects of xmas. we didn’t even have a regular church service that we went to that was on a day other than sunday, and the church services that we went to all the time were pretty ecuminical and inclusive of traditions and cultures that were not specifically “christian”, so when i grew up and learned that some people believed that xmas was for stuff other than getting loads of toys and candy, i didn’t quite understand, but i didn’t really notice that much when the checker at the grocery store wished me a “merry xmas”. as i developed more of a relationship with sanatanadharma (which is what “hinduism” is really called) i started noticing the discontinuity a lot more: the “peace on earth and good will toward men” compared to the war, hunger and poverty that exist in the world, the constant fighting between catholics and protestants, the constant fighting between the christians and the non-christians, and the growing furor over “the war on xmas” came much more to the forefront, and i find it quite distressing.
things like the reference to a woman who compared santa to a swastika take on a meaning that is not immediately obvious to people who believe the swastika is an evil symbol, for example. i can see how santa is a lot like a swastika, and i wouldn’t mind seeing both of them in more common usage, but if there’s going to be an uproar over whether or not to have a swastika in a public display, then there certainly should be just as much uproar over whether or not to have a public holiday that celebrates santa – even if santa is not the "reason for the season".
and, for that matter, if you think about it a little more than most "christians" have, jeezis himself is not the “reason for the season” either. people celebrated the winter solstice for a long time before jeezis showed up, and it’s really only been within the past 200 to 500 years that we’ve had anything at all like what is currently celebrated as xmas, so all of those "war on xmas" fanatics really don’t have a leg to stand on in the first place. but in general, i think that the hindus and jews and buddhists and muslims and animists and even athiests have gone out of their way to accommodate all of the fanatics who insist that they are to be greeted with the phrase "merry xmas" instead of the more ecuminical "happy holidays" in fact, the only reason we have been as accommodating as we have been is because the "christians" are a majority of our population and if we weren’t so willing to give up what we believe in order to make peace, most "christians" wouldn’t have the slightest problem killing us!
what would jesus do, indeed?
i keep feeling like i am totally alone in a society of people who would have no problem killing me if they happened to find out that i don’t believe the way they do, but at the same time, i feel compelled to inform these ignoramuses that they aren’t the only ones on the planet, and that other people – people who believe differently than they do – have just as much right to exist as they do, and what jesus would really do is get along with everyone… which is supposed to be "The Christmas Message" anyway.
aparajita again
i just got another inquiry about aparajita from someone who has bought it from me in the past. maybe i’ll be able to send him some eventually…
also i got my bow today. it was supposed to be delivered on wednesday. shar music is where i bought it.
fläwmp
the first weekend of alad’din performances are behind me, and i now have a few days free until next week’s performances begin, which will most likely be filled with projects like finishing the insulation on the workshop, working on xmas gifts and other artistic projects, picking up my business cards, doing laundry, washing dishes, random web surfing and hiding out until all of the VEWPRFs are behind me.
saturday’s performances were interesting. there’s definitely a different “feel” about the philharmonic now that stuart’s not an “official” part of it any longer – in spite of the fact that he’s been there for every performance so far. it hasn’t been made plainly obvious what is going to happen with the phil at this point, but the probability that we will be going to OCF this year is still pretty high. whether or not it will be the phil, or another group with many of the same members is still a question. there hasn’t been any talk of changing the name of the group, but it’s very definitely a different group. we’ve got kellan, who is a college student trumpet player who is quite good, but isn’t as sure of himself as some of the more mature band members. on the other end of the spectrum, we’ve got clayton, who is playing euphonium, who is also in the ballard sedentary sousa band, and in la banda gozona (that makes three groups in which clayton and i both play). clayton is also an incredible musician who plays many different instruments in many different bands. i originally met him at the moisture festival a few years ago. he also is part of the fighting instruments of karma. we’ve also got a substitute guitar player, jacque, but he’s only going to be there for one show, and i’m not sure whether he’s actually planning on joining the band on a more permanent basis or not.
i have been playing my saw recently. i decided that i would actually purchase a bow for it, which is a totally different way of playing it than i have been used to in the past. my bow won’t actually be delivered until wednesday, but i have been making do with kiki’s bow, which she’s not using at the moment. with a mallet you get a much more bell-like tone quality and there is more room for error where you strike it than with a bow. as stuart said the other day, using the bow is the most difficult part of playing a stringed instrument as well.
sunday’s performance was a lot better than saturday’s, but there was only one of them, which is probably a good thing for a number of reasons: i was really tired because of two weeks of intensive preparing for a number of different shows, and also it was beginning to snow and i wanted to get home so that i wouldn’t be stuck later on. it turns out that most of the snow melted over night, and it’s actually supposed to be getting warmer over the next few days, so i didn’t go to marysville to get my musical instrument repair business cards from troy yesterday after the show, but i will probably go pick them up within the next two or three days. it was really amazing to have clayton playing the trombone/euphonium parts for songs that haven’t had them since jeremy and fred left the band.
once again, i am performing on new years’ eve in tacoma for the most money i have ever made in my life. thad & ada are getting married on new years’ day.
grr… woof…
i bought a whole bunch of (the wrong size) insulation to flesh out the workshop, since it has been COLD for the last week or so, and even with the space heater going full blast, it’s not enough for me to work comfortably. as i said, the insulation i bought was the wrong size, but i think i’ll be able to make it work, however i won’t be installing it the way it is designed to be installed, because it is the wrong size. it’s 16″ wide, and the rafters are 24″, so instead of stapling it in place, i will place lath on top of the rafters to keep it in place – which, of course, means obtaining some lath, which i will probably do tomorrow before the show.
of course i didn’t actually discover the fact that it was the wrong size until i had already bought two packages of it, opened one of them and lugged a single piece, and a stapler, up the ladder to the ceiling, and, because of the fact that i’ve been running the space heater in the workshop since this morning, it was nice and toasty up there, which didn’t help much when i realised that working on the ceiling is a pretty warm job to begin with. i actually succeeded in getting two 48″ strips of insulation more-or-less adhered to the ceiling with a multitude of staples (most of which didn’t actually penetrate anything except the first inch or so of the insulation) before i decided that there had to be an easier way. i honestly don’t believe that it would have been much easier if the insulation had been the right witdh anyway, and it probably would have been significantly heavier.
HE is a terrorist! 8)
Colton Harris-Moore, the barefoot boy bandit, outfoxes sheriffs – i know people who live on camano island (like rev. chumleigh, for example), and i know that this is entirly likely, there are a lot of hippie survivalist types living out in that area, and it is fairly close to a place where i was thinking about making a homestead and surviving off the land many, many years ago. i am in awe, although i will say that he probably wasn’t stupid enough to shoot at the cop, he’s probably going to get blamed for it, especially with all of the other “cop-killing” uproar there has been around here recently.
VEWPRF, xmas, hinduism…
i’m getting fed up with the VEWPRF (primarily xmas) hype early this year. fortunately now i’ve got a gadget in my car that i can plug my music player into so i don’t have to listen to the radio. when i’m not listening to my own music, i usually listen to the classical music station, but even they are playing xmas carols far too frequently. i just got a package of CDs from india, including “Om Arunachaneswaraya Namaha” and “Ganesh Gayatri Mantra”, both of which are more than an hour of chanting, which should cover the period of time that i’m suceptible to going off on local “christians” too much.
speaking of which, Rudiments of Language Discovered in Monkeys – more indisputable evidence that evolution is real and the creationists are wrong, wrong WRONG, regardless of how much they claim that they’re “inspired” by “god”… if any further evidence was needed.
i feel a little guilty for going off at “christians” since i am a believer myself, but i accept that science probably has a lot more clear idea of what is going on in the world than the 2000-year-old myths of a society that i do not feel a part of. i don’t deny that those myths may have value to some people, but my impression is that they are far more detrimental to most people who claim to live by them than they would care to admit. and, largely, i can say the same thing about the myths to which i adhere, in spite of the fact that they are, for the most part, totally the opposite of “christian” myths. the difference, i think, is that i admit that my myths are myths, and act accordingly. sure, i occasionally do odd things like wear a tilak, but i’m not “religious” about it, and i certainly don’t let it go this far…
we played for the lenin lighting on friday, and it was cold, but it wasn’t anywhere near as cold as it would have been in new york. i dressed for it, and kept my mouthpiece in my pocket when we weren’t actually playng, but there were a lot of complaints that it was too cold. the emcee was pat cashman… who?
Artists’ lawsuit: major record labels are the real pirates – it’s about time, but i think that $50 million to $6 billion may not be enough to get the message across. remember, we’re talking about warner, sony and EMI… and it is only canada. let’s wait to see if it’s effective, and then try something like it in the untied states. definitely a step in the right direction, though.
i am a terrorist
Need to Sneak Across the Border "Safely?" – there’s an app for that…
Japanese man ‘marries’ computer game character – if the guy is allowed to marry a computer game character, then why aren’t two actual people who happen to be of the same sex marry, huh?
also, One Hundred Percent EDIBLE Googly Eyes! with which to make, what else, chriFSMas treats! you can guess what i’ll be doing later on… 8)
the sophisticated song
snake suspenderz should do this…
snake suspenderz at the gage academy of art
last night snake suspenderz played for the models at the gage academy of art’s 10th annual drawing jam. this was my second year at the drawing jam, but snake suspenderz has been there for five years, and “sketch” – our drummer – was an artist who wanted to “sit in” with the group at the drawing jam. a few years ago, snake suspenderz and the klez kats were sharing a set (as we did last night, because thad – our trombone player – is also the trombone player for the klez kats) and “sketch” was in the room drawing. when the klez kats drummer took a break, “sketch” asked if he could sit in with the suspenderz, and never left… in fact, last night, when our set was finished, “sketch” was off to find a room with still life models, or something like that. as we were putting our instruments away when we were done, i was presented with the picture at the right, which was drawn by Pat Haase – [email protected] – which was drawn instead of drawing the luscious naked model i was ogling instead of reading the music… weird… 😉
i’ve got another gig this afternoon at the phinney ridge neighbourhood center with the ballard sedentary sousa band. the weather is looking particularly frightful, and the weather report was predicting snow yesterday, which didn’t happen… but today looks even more frightful than yesterday, so the probability is high that i will be driving around in the snow before the day is through.
“Exclusive indexing goes against the Web’s inherent openness. Companies that try to curtail that openness don’t last long on the Web.”
i have always been suspicious of bing (no, i am not going to link to them). part of it is because i’m suspicious about microsoft (not going to link to them, either), generally, which has turned out to be a good thing more often than not. but part of it is because microsoft has weasled their way into an unholy allience with rupert murdoch, who also owns myspace (not going to link to them, either), fox news (ditto) and several other large media outlets. however, apparently microsoft and murdoch have been dealing recently with the idea of paying web sites to remove themselves from google indexes…
what?!?
now google isn’t much better than microsoft, and google has it’s fingers in a lot of peoples’ pies, frequently without those people having the first clue that they’re feeding information to the CIA’s data mining team, but paying people not to be in google indexes is the first step towards requiring people to pay for material that would ordinarily be available for free on the internet.
my understanding is that the internet is supposed to make information freely available to those that would otherwise not have access to it because of cost. what they’re proposing is not only not in the public interest, but it is in the specific interests of murdoch and, to a lesser extent, microsoft.
therefore, i have taken it upon myself to block bing from indexing my sites. i have done this by adding the following to my robots.txt file.
User-agent: msnbot
Disallow: /
i have also heard that running iptables -A INPUT -s 65.55.0.0/16 -j DROP makes it so that any incoming request from bing will automatically be dropped before it even gets to robots.txt, but i don’t currently have access to iptables on my server.
and i’m not the only one. there is a growing movement to block bing – some have even suggested registering blockbing.org so there would be a convenient place to post and update information that would be available to everyone. i may do it…
aparajita
aparajita is one of the incenses that prompted me to go into the business of being an agarbatthiwala. it is an incense that is characteristically used by devotees of ravi shankar and george harrison. it used to be very common, and places like tenzing-momo and zenith supplies carried it as a matter of course, and even more obscure places carried it, along with a million other, less well known incenses.
that was then, this is now.
you would think that i could contact them through mavana dot com, but the first time i wrote them, about 3 years ago, there was no response from either of the two email addresses listed on their contact page, and the last time i wrote them, the message to one of the addresses bounced almost immediately. the last time i was able to find any aparajita at all, it was through an incense supplier i know in port townsend (who is also an old hippie, and beset by the health of an old hippie, which means that he has spent a large portion of the past 3 years in the hospital, thus making him somewhat unreliable as an incense supplier), who knows a guy in chicago who had a bunch of aparajita that he wanted to get rid of, and i bought all he had, which was 4 dozen boxes.
that was about 6 months ago, and i just sold my last box to a very disappointed customer in marietta, georgia, who had thought that i had more in stock.
to make matters worse, in my search for a reliable source of this smelly gold, i have discovered that there are at least two other indian incense manufacturers who have decided to take advantage of the situation by producing fairly sophisticated knock-off packaging which contains nothing like the authentic aparajita. the following is a picture of the packaging for one of the “knock-offs” which i bought a quarter kilo of before i realised that it was not the same thing:
i have been looking for a reliable source for this incense for around 10 years, and i know that my search is not in vain. i have heard rumours from a couple of different customers that aparajita is apparently still available in india, but the manufacturer doesn’t want to send any less than an 8′ by 8′ shipping container of it outside of india. also, i looked for another variety of incense (amber aromatics “sital flora”, which is largely a neem scent) for 25 years before i found some, whereupon i bought a kilo of it, and still have more than ¾ of it left, so i know that eventually a source will be found.
i just currently don’t know who it is. if any of you get a crazy idea to go shopping in india for incense, let me know and i’ll put in an order.
mump & stuff…
Samuel Langhorne Clemens (Mark Twain) was born on Nov. 30, 1835, in Florida, Missouri. my ancestors from that time period were from the area around knob noster, missouri which is about 150 miles southwest of florida.
whoopie…
in spite of my desire to avoid the news in general, sometimes it slams you in the face and forces you to pay attention. this happened 20 minutes away from my house, but after a similar incident in seattle not too long ago, which put the whole state in an uproar, as though the two apparently unrelated events were cause and effect. my personal opinion is that there are very good reasons to get that angry with police officers in general, and they are not “completely innocent” regardless of how good they seem to be from time to time, but if nothing else these kinds of things are further indications that the world is, in fact, going to hell in a hand basket and there’s nothing that any of us, as individuals, can do about it except to sit back and watch in horror. of course, as a society we could do something about it, and there’s always that chance, but i don’t hold out much hope that we’re all going to be able to, literally, change our minds about so many things all at once. some of us could, there is no doubt, but getting most, if not all people to just change their minds like that is almost impossible. i’ve been told, by people i trust, that it’s going to get decidedly worse before it has a hope of getting any better at all, and that’s the primary reason that i simply don’t pay attention to the news most of the time. it’s not that i don’t care, it’s that i’d rather spend my time thinking about more positive things.
i have a rehearsal tonight, a rehearsal tomorrow, a rehearsal wednesday, a rehearsal thursday, the lenin lighting at the center of the universe (except that music will be provided by the Fremont Philharmonic, not the yellow hat band) on friday, the drawing jam at the gage academy on saturday and a free day sunday. then it’s the same thing again except that there’s also a free day a week from friday and an acupuncture appointment followed by two performances of alad’din a week from saturday and another one a week from sunday. my guess is that it’s going to be a couple of weeks of carefully conserving and spending spoons, otherwise there’s likely to be a meltdown before then.
the end(?) of a holiday weekend
i just got done dropping my mother in law off at the train station for her trip back to portland. she got here on thursday and it’s been a little tough to handle her actually staying at our house for longer than a few hours, because she’s… well… my mother in law. it’s a lot better than having my parents stay at our house, in fact i would probably draw the line well before my parents actually were able to come to our house, but at the same time, i had to be really discrete about, for example, smoking pot in the privacy of my own house for fear of “offending” her – despite the fact that she used to smoke pot herself (as claimed by moe). it’s okay, though, because i get the very strong impression that if it weren’t for the sake of “keeping up appearances” there is a very strong probability that i would be getting my mother in law stoned – which, itself, is something that i am almost tempted to try (just once) to see what it is like.
another thing that i found really bizarre is that, once moe had gone to bed last night, my mother in law pigeon-holed me and forced me to talk about “spiritual” things for a couple of hours last night. usually this wouldn’t be a problem for me, but i had to choose some of my words a little more carefully than i would otherwise have had to, because i didn’t want to say anything that would either be misinterpreted – which, with her, is fairly likely under the best of circumstances – or offensive to her, which i probably wouldn’t hear about directly from her, but indirectly through moe, at a later time, when the offense had had the chance to sink in and become a lot more permanent than it would be if she just spoke up about it at the time. i ended up making reference to The Looby from The Book of Lies, and 777, neither of which i could find (although they were right in front of my nose all the time, which is probably a message of some sort) to a person who believes in a weird combination of catholicism, “spirits and angels” and “native american stuff”, without mentioning that the author of said books was pretty much the exact antithesis of the beliefs she holds. basically i tried to keep it as “light” as possible, but even then it was really difficult not to laugh when she told me about the “psychic” she knows, who has apparently been engaged by the local police department, or the other person she knows who teaches “crystal gazing” and how she has taken her class and has a couple of “crystal balls”. i know that truth is relative, that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, and that anything is possible, but at the same time, the idea of my mother-in-law getting spiritual inspiration from gazing at a crystal ball is sort of amusing.
in the midst of entertaining my mother in law (which was actually moe’s responsibility most of the time) i created www dot twankey dot com – laundry online – for the widow twankey (email address widow@twankey.com), as a part of Alad’din and The Magic Lamp show coming up in a couple of weeks, and Fremont Players dot com which is currently a mirror of twankey dot com, but will eventually be an easier-to-remember and more colourful version of this page. it was actually kind of interesting to actually buy the new domain – which had never existed before – and then create web space for it, design a new page, post it and have the page show up at the new domain which had never been there before. it’s something, i suppose, that people have been doing to the web for a while, but it’s something new and different for me, and it was really interesting to actually do the whole process and watch the non-domain name suddenly and magically turn into an actual, real-live domain.
my workshop, DVR and SSDI
so the clarinet is done and all that’s left to do with it is locate the person for whom i’m doing it. i wrote her an email yesterday and she didn’t respond. i wrote her another one today laying out my schedule for the next four days and now it’s up to her. if i don’t hear from her in a week or so, i’ll just freecycle it to someone else… or, for that matter, the fact that it was given to me and remains unclaimed means that i can legally sell it on craigslist or something like that. my impression is that there are always a bunch of people who need a clarinet, if you know where to look.
which reminds me, i need to make up some flyers that advertise woodwind repair services and distribute them to the local public schools and music stores. i figure as long as i’ve spent the money to create this workshop, maybe i can use it to make back some of that money. after all it’s not just a one way street…
i got an amusing letter from DVR today, referring to my failed attempt to convince them that my business plan was a sound enough investment that they should help me out by building me a workshop. it says “if you would like DVR to review updated records or if you would like to discuss your current situation” that i should call this lady. i really want to call her up and tell her to fuck off and die, because they weren’t willing to help me, but now that i’ve actually qualified for SSDI, i’d be willing to bet that they’re trying to get their fingers in my pie. i’m probably going to call and talk to her, and i probably will not be as blunt as i am here, but i’m not sure, which is the reason i haven’t called her yet.
fun
this has been a fun day.
i got a clarinet from freecycle, and i’m really glad that i got it before anybody else, because it has had a broken key that would have driven the cost of repairing it up over $100. this is also one of the reasons that i recommend people who “know a little bit about musical instrument repair” don’t try to fix their instruments themselves. the clarinet was worthless with the broken key, and the most common way of “fixing” it that i have seen on other instruments i’ve worked on over the years has been “superglue”… which not only doesn’t work, but then I have to clean up the superglue from the key and the instrument before i can get down to the task of actually fixing it. the progress has been posted, and the rest of it should be finished and posted tomorrow.
also, i found more erzatz “Tina Chopp is God” material on cafepress, so i sent them a DMCA notice last week – not expecting that they would respond, and not being sure what the procedure is once they didn’t respond – and today i got email from a “content usage associate” who said
Thank you for your November 16, 2009 notification regarding the possible infringement of your rights by a user of our service. In accordance with our Intellectual Property Rights Policy, we have prevented the user from using the images on products for sale through their store.
geez, if i had known that it was that easy, i would have written them a long time ago, because various people who aren’t associated with the Church of Tina Chopp have been profiting from our God for at least 5 years. it’s enough to make me want to see if it might be possible to market Tina Chopp myself, since i now can.
and there’s a couple in california who is using cannabis – very successfully, i might add – to treat their child’s autism. will wonders never cease…
taking it easy… for a change.
after the combined stresses of having my web server go down and the IPv6 fiasco on my local computer, i was feeling pretty wound up yesterday, but i’ve found that going to a gig with la banda gozona and playing some really difficult but energetic, challenging and fun music on my trombone (i’ve switched to trombone from sousaphone, becase another reliable sousaphone player showed up, and memo wants to “shame” the other trombone player into actually playing the written notes more of the time, especially during performances where he has a tendency to “take a solo” at inappropriate times), along with fixing the direct cause of that stress, would appear to be exactly the right thing to do to alleviate said stress. the result being that i feel more relaxed this morning than i have in a long time. my computers are working, i actually got an incense order during the time that the local computer was down, business is doing well, i’m playing a lot of music with a whole bunch of different groups, i’m caught up enough with the projects that have been on hold for 4 years because of a lack of workshop space, that now i’m coming up with new project ideas and thinking of things i can make for people as gifts. also, there’s a clarinet needing repair that appeared on freecycle, so i’m going to pick it up this afternoon, fix it, and freecycle it to some other deserving person.
and, to make matters worse, i’ve found a PDF-scanned “DIY” book from the early ’70s that has a whole bunch of ideas for simple, cheap, portable living spaces that fit right in with the dome project fantasy that i’ve been playing with ever since i got back from burning man last year for a long time. maybe it’s time to start actualizing some of this fantasy play… 8)
this is a really strange place in which to find myself… i’ve always had this… not fear, although it amounts to the same thing… of fantasies, because deep down, i know that they are fantasies, and fantasies don’t exist in reality. but i’ve been playing around with the philosophical idea that opposites are an illusion for a while now, so maybe it’s time to try seeing what it would be like to actually make my fantastic ideas into real things.
more buggerish, then all is well…
there was a fair amount more IPv6 furor to deal with: i got email and firefox working, but it was a temporary workaround, because akregator and amarok (and probably a bunch of other things of which i’m only vaguely aware) were acting extremely screwy. akregator was displaying all of my RSS feeds, but it couldn’t find the server for any of them, even though many of them updated repeatedly during the past 48 hours, and the updates actually showed up on the screen. also, it found the text for new articles, but for some reason it couldn’t find the graphics at all. i finally solved the problem by changing the contents of /proc/sys/net/ipv6/conf/all/disable_ipv6 from 0 to 1, and then making it permanent by adding net.ipv6.conf.all.disable_ipv6 = 1 to /etc/sysctl.conf, all of which i found out about thanks to hints given to me by a very knowledgable gentleman named francis larson, to whom i owe a great deal of gratitude. you can read the whole sordid story, except for the part with francis larson, if you’re that inspired. it was also thanks to francis larson that i found out about the medibuntu repository, which will likely make it possible for me to do awesome audio stuff on my kubuntu box really soon.
in other news, there was this post at good as you which was an article from a 1906 newspaper about a woman who had married another woman, and was probably going to avoid punishment because she had broken no laws… which makes me wonder: if there were no laws against same sex marriages, presumably until after 1906, then it was apparently not enough of an issue to “the founding fathers” to take notice of it, so why are the “christians” so upset about it now? obviously there weren’t any laws against same sex marriage because they didn’t need them, regardless of whether or not they were actually occurring, which, if this article is any indication, they were, no matter what the “christians” are trying to tell us. and if they didn’t need them then, then why the hell are they getting their panties in a twist over them now? feh!
also, Oddly Specific
bugger
host problems combined with IPv6 incompatibilities have caused my complete absence from internet for the past couple of days. despite the fact that IPv6 is the latest, hottest thing to hit the net since the ping of death, it is just about as effective at this point, so i have disabled it and am suddenly able to do things like check my email and browse the web.
the other part, of course, is that the new host provider went down two days ago, so even if i hadn’t had the problems with the new IPv6, i still wouldn’t have been able to post anything, which is really irritating.
jewelry penis
i ran out of purple beads. fortunately i know of two bead stores near where i live that are likely to have them. i really like the softflex wire that i bought recently, although the “medium” size won’t fit through a lot of the precious and semi-precious beads that i like working with. the fact that it crimps instead of me having to try to tie it tightly means that i produce jewelry that doesn’t have to stretch before i can sell it. i rebuilt my sivalingam necklace, which broke last year and i’ve been waiting until i had some more reliable way of rebuilding it before i rebuilt it. i added a gauri shankar, which makes it look even more like a penis — which, of course, is what it’s supposed to be anyway, but i find it very amusing that it would look as much like a penis as it does. i’m just waiting for some “christian” to ask me what it is.
Windoesn’t 7
so there’s a new commercial on TV, just in time for xmas, advertising the new HP laptop/netbook/desktop combination with Windows 7, which is “networked together by GeekSquad™”…
i have three computers, two laptops and a desktop, and all three of them are networked together, and we didn’t have anything like geek squad. in fact, they didn’t require any networking at all, we just started them up and they worked; two different operating systems – Mac and Kubuntu – the way that computers are supposed to work.
it’s my considered impression is that the only reason you would need GeekSquad™ is if you use Windoesn’t, and if you use Windoesn’t, ultimately, no GeekSquad™ in the world will be able to help you.
friday the 13th link dump!
friday the 13th actually comes on a friday this month! cool!
Hide My Ass dot com is a free proxy service for anonymity on the web. they also have a free disposable email address service, free file sharing, a link anonymizer and several other security related services.
i’ve subscribed to two blogs recently – People Of Walmart and Look At This Fucking Tea Bagger – it seems to me that there has to be some overlap, but it hasn’t made itself evident yet.
i’m getting all my “religion” news these days from people like P.Z. Meyers, Unreasonable Faith and Joe.My.God, the latter of which has recently been ratted out as a terrorist to the FBI for a comment that was made about the possibility of bombing churches… or something like that… one way or the other, it’s better than being catholic, especially considering how tightly their panties are being twisted in regard to a new law that would affect their ability to discriminate against gay people in washington DC.
speaking of which, after the governor of rhode island vetoed a bill that would allow same sex couples to make funeral arrangements for each other, he’s done a seeming 180 and said that he would be open to the idea of civil partnerships for same sex couples, in lieu of marriage. either that, or he’s a hypocrite. you can guess which direction i’m leaning.
snakes! eye luvvum!
i don’t understand my snake. he eats three medium adult mice about every six weeks or so, except that recently he’s been acting like he’s hungry (trying to find a way out of his enclosure, “hunting” behaviour, hissing and rattling his tail, that sort of thing), but when i put a mouse in his enclosure, he ignores it.
two cycles ago, i put a mouse in his enclosure, he ignored it, i took it out two days later and returned it to the snake-food store, returned it to him about two weeks later and it disappeared almost immediately, along with its two helpers.
yes, i name the mice i feed to my snake. is that wrong? i name them “Breakfast”, “Dinner” and “Tasty Snack”… is that wrong? and in spite of the fact that moe is responsible for us having the snake to begin with, she’s a vegetarian (as well as a veterinarian) and she doesn’t do well with the fact that the snake eats live mice. of course he eats live mice. what would you expect him to eat? those frozen things that the snake-food store sells to people who have snakes bred and raised in captivity? this is a wild-caught snake, and he doesn’t go for that sort of thing… oh well…
the last time, i gave him “Breakfast” and he ignored it for 2 days before he got around to eating it – imagine two days trapped in an enclosure with something which wants to eat you, but hasn’t decided when… yet… it made me feel a little guilty, but the snake ate the mice in the end, so i didn’t feel that guilty.
but this time, he ignored the mouse for 2 days and i finally gave up and “rescued” him. i plan on taking the mice (i bought 3 of them) back to the snake-food store this morning on my way to rehearsal – “hi, i bought three mice from you the other day and now i’d like to return them. my snake just wasn’t hungry”… 8/
we’ve had the snake – a sonoran rat snake named Agador – for 11 years, and he was anywhere from two to five years old when we obtained him. he was wild-caught by someone in eastern washington and kept as a “classroom pet” for a year before we got him, so it’s sort of a miracle that he’s even still alive at this point, but then all of our pets are geriatric, and if anybody takes good enough care of their pets to make them far outlive any of their contemporaries, monique is that person. all i can do is keep trying to feed him and hope for the best.
in other news, i had a performance in burien for the night of 1000 pumpkins last sunday, last monday and wednesday rehearsals for alad’din, a performance last thursday at the seattle art museum, a performance with the ballard sedentary sousa band on friday, 6 november, monday alad’din rehearsal, today i’ve got a snake suspenderz rehearsal in preparation for a performance on thursday, tomorrow i have a veterans day performance in bothell and an evening rehearsal for alad’din, and friday i get poked with needles by chris. on top of that, i fixed a clarinet and brought in another clarinet which i will fix tomorrow, i’ve completed two jewelry projects and prepared to tackle two or three more in the next week or so, and i’ve added a new section to my web site. i’ve been a spoon-spending bandit and i’m hoping things are going to calm down a little for a while so i can build up a new supply of spoons for the holiday.
GOOGLE UKULELE HOBBIT!
my good friend and band-mate, howlin’ hobbit, on duty as a busker at the bridge in the pike place market.
boom
Governments should get real on drugs – in england, the authority who was relieved of his position as an authority for stating fairly well known facts, and expressing his not-so-politically-correct opinions, fires a parting shot.
demons
i have probably always been a computer geek, although for a long time i resisted being labeled as such because i was too interested in music, but my father has been a professional computer geek electrical engineer for as long as i have been around. one of the first “computers” i ever played with was actually a “dumb terminal” that had a big foam recepticle on the back of it to plug the phone reciever into so that it would do stuff more than just look and act like a selectric typewriter.
i saw my father at the Seattle Art Museum the other day. i was there for a performance of La Banda Gozona – where the consul general for mexico in seattle gave a long winded speech in spanish that i couldn’t understand – and i saw my father taking pictures. i was wearing my reading glasses, so i didn’t get a good look at him, and he disappeared before i could switch to my distance glasses, but i’m sure it was him. i find it very odd that, in spite of our differences, my parents haven’t spoken to me at all since my injury, and didn’t come visit me in the hospital when there was a chance that i would die… but i digress.
anyway, when i was first actively learning about computers, back in the late ’70s, i would frequently ask questions of my mentor, jim, and every now and then i would ask him a question which doesn’t really have an answer. questions like “why is it that when i tried X process, it failed, but when you tried exactly the same X process, it worked?” or “why is it that i send an email to X address and it never gets there, you send an email to X address and it takes two weeks to get there, and someone else sends an email to X address and it gets there immediately?” obviously there is some answer to questions like that, but often they are technical enough that even the experts might have difficulty explaining it, especially to someone (like me) who doesn’t understand.
when i would ask jim a question like that, he would get all quiet, look around mysteriously, and whisper “demons”…
he could have easily said “i don’t know” or “go look it up” or any one of a number of other perfectly rational responses, but that wouldn’t have made anywhere near the impression on me that blaming all my unknown computer problems on “demons” would have.
of course, i later learned that the electronic mechanisms that make things work inside computers are called “daemons”, but my impression is, even now, when i have wholeheartedly embraced the label of “computer geek”, that it still makes a fair amount of sense.
fast forward to a few days ago. i have just completed what i hope will be my last host provider switch for a LONG time, but i still have to figure out why the control panel on the new host works slightly differently than the (exact same) control panel on the old host: i set up a subdoman – przxqgl.hybridelephant.com – which, when you hit it with a browser, loads pages found at hybridelephant.com/przxqgl. it used to be that when you looked at the browser, you saw przxqgl.hybridelephant.com, but now, when you point your browser at przxqgl.hybridelephant.com it automatically redirects to hybridelephant.com/przxqgl and when i remove the redirect in the control panel, my browser gives me a “redirect error”.
so i wrote to tech support. he wrote back to me almost instantly, saying that he had gotten it to work, and that i didn’t need the redirect in the control panel.
… wait, what?
anyway, it works… and i keep thinking about jim and his “demons”…
it keeps going…
i completed one of the jewelry projects that i was working on, except that i have to get a set of crimping pliers – you would think that i would have one already, considering the quantity of pliers that i own, but no.
i’ve decided that there are enough questions i have about the software that i am using that i am probably going to have to start reading a lot, finding a mentor and asking a lot of stupid questions, like what is a DNS zone and what is a masked nameserver, and why do i care? because i’m pretty sure that i do care. my impression is that understanding these things in a little more detail would make my job as web manager a lot easier.
anyway, la banda gozona has a performance at the seattle art museum that i’ve got to leave for soon.
whooy… 8/
the past five days have been definitly ones where i spent way too many spoons.
i began a day before halloween by deciding to switch host providers again. the new old host provider had a strong tendency to flat out lie about their service: they say they don’t delete support tickets, but i have had no fewer than three support tickets mysteriously disappear from their server. they also say that they don’t block IP addresses from their support server, but i have documented no fewer than five different occasions where my IP address was blocked from accessing their support server and had to have their support technician – Zac O. – clear the IP block so that i could access their server.
so i researched and found another host server that was willing to take all of my domains. there was a bit of controversy over at web hosting talk regarding whether or not a host provider who is using litespeed web server is prohibited from hosting “blasphemous” or “adult oriented” content, but as far as i have been able to tell, according to the email that i recieved from a litespeed sales representative ” for general shared hosting purpose, or for general user contributed content web site, it is ok.” i’m still a little confused by the guy who said why do you mention this is a porno site?, and then requested a friend connection with me, when i very clearly stated that it’s not a porno site more than once, but i guess that’s what i can expect from a relative newbie.
anyway, i got the blog and the other web sites operating again, after going back and forth with the new new host provider about shell access a couple of times. they don’t provide shell access by default, and they’re a bit less responsive than the old new host provider, but they’re more honest about what they actually provide, and they’ve added WHMCS to the mix, which will ultimately improve the likelihood that i will be a successful web host myself some day.
meanwhile, i’ve also all but completed the clarinet that i’ve been working on for thaddeus. i also got started on the jewelry project that i’m working on for xmas presents. and, finally, i’ve finished the sticker project that i’ve been working on for howlin’ hobbit.
i still have to discover why, when you enter “https://przxqgl.hybridelephant.com/” into your browser’s address field, you end up at “http://www.hybridelephant.com/przxqgl” – which is actually where you go, but the subdomain is what it has been before, and as far as i’ve been able to tell, nothing has changed except the IP address of the host server, but i know from past experience that anything that changes could mean that the whole thing suddenly and mysteriously could decide to work entirely differently, so i’m not really worried about it at this point, especially when i know that if you enter the subdomain you’ll redirect to the correct place anyway.
also, the authority in england that said that alcohol and tobacco are more dangerous than cannabis and LSD has been relieved of his position as an authority, which just goes to show that even when they do listen to reason, they don’t always hear reason. oh well, better luck next time.
england takes a stand against real “drugs”… nobody listens…
Alcohol and cigarettes are more harmful than Ecstasy and LSD, says drugs tsar – if only the united states had such perceptive people in government…
Continue reading england takes a stand against real “drugs”… nobody listens…
THEY are terrorists! 8D
Obama’s Hate Crime Laws are ‘Hate Christian’ Laws – if you want to look at it that way, that’s fine with me, but if you are saying that crimes carried out because of homophobia are “christian”, then i have two things to say: 1) your perception of what Christ says about love is perverted, and 2) stay away from me. i may not be homosexual, but i can guarantee you that i am your worst nightmare and i won’t wait until you’re asleep before i will make your life a living hell simply by existing! 😐
DAMN!
the tiger lillies are appearing at the moore on 6 november, but that’s also the day that john phillip sousa was born, and i’m playing a concert with the ballard sedentary sousa band that day! 🙁
fnrb
Snake Suspenderz is playing for the Halloween Oddville Spectacular given by Captain Trendo and The Blue Collar Cult this evening at the Jewlbox Theatre in Belltown. for those of you who are reading this, who are very far away from belltown and/or have other things to do this evening, you are welcome to head on over to hobbit’s place to download the latest of our “rehearsal tapes” and get yer snake suspenderz fix that way.
and for those of you who have no speakers, try having fun at translation party, where you can automatically translate any phrase to, and from japanese many times, until you reach equilibrium.
this is one of the greatest pieces of music ever written
but of course, it’s by beethoven, it’s for a trombone ensemble, and it’s in the public domain: Drei Equale für vier Posaunen.
pxt
the clarinet project is under way – the first instrument repaired in my new workshop – but i’ve done about as much as i can without using cork cement, and i don’t have any… and ferree’s is closed on the weekends, so i can’t order more until monday… but i found my customer number, which i haven’t used in at least 4 years. i wonder if they still have records for me?
Mrs. Awdrey Gore’s C clarinette
this is my 2009 membership card and pin for Edward Gorey House, which makes me “an integral part of building the foundation for the success and longevity of this celebration of the life and legacy of Edward Gorey”. now all i have to do is come up with some use for the “Ogdred Weary” font that is in my collection.
also, this C clarinet is going to be the first official instrument fixed in the new workshop. it’s from thaddeus and it has definitely seen better days. it needs at least new corks, some new pads, a ligature and a thumbrest, and it could also use a new case, as the one that it’s currently in was made for a metal, Bb clarinet. it shouldn’t take me more than a couple of hours to crank this out, given the rate at which i fixed clarinets when i lived in bellingham, but it may take a bit longer than that, because it has been a while since i had to crank that hard.
wait… what?
Congress passes ‘Pedophile Protection Act’ – umm.. no. this is wrong. being a homosexual is not the same as being a pedophile. not only that, but the law will not get in the way of free speech, regardless of how hateful or divisive, and illegal behaviour will still be treated as illegal behaviour, but now “we, the people” will be afforded slightly more equal protection than before.
and not only that, but i seriously question america’s “judeo-christian” heritage. my understanding is that “we the people” was specifically meant to include those for whom the “judeo-christian” part doesn’t apply.
the fact that people think this way disgusts me. this is one of the main reasons i believe that i am an alien, because this way of thinking is totally the opposite of the way i think by nature.
…
my life so far has been one which hasn’t engendered much of a sense of hope for the future, or making of long term plans, which has resulted in my being fairly "depressed" (although i would call it "realistic") most of the time. it’s strange, when i go through a period where things go "my way", because i either don’t make any plans at all and patiently wait for things to change, or i make very conservative plans that are easily realised. it’s really strange now, because things seem to be going "my way" a lot more than i am used to: i qualified for disability, i have some extra money, i’ve got my own property with a workshop and plans to put it to good (i.e. profitable) use, i’m keeping very busy with four different bands, my business is growing… slowly, but steadily, etc., etc., et cetera… (which is latin for “and others”)
which is why i tend to be a bit superstitious when (for example) moe went down to big building to meet micah and his girlfriend this afternoon. the last time anybody in this family went to big building was the day i had my brain injury. i told her that she could meet him at big building if she promised not to have a brain injury.
at the same time, it’s really difficult for me to make plans. i have all these ideas for stuff that it’s impossible for me to do, primarly due to lack of materials at this point: i have an idea for a new art car, which (naturally) requires a car, i’m on the verge of going out and buying a pen lathe because i have a couple of different ideas for stuff i could make with it (seriously, at this point i’m thinking that it’ll either be a pen lathe or a 1.5" button press, with the other one coming in 6 months or whenever i can scrape together the money), there’s the outside of the workshop that could really use some artwork, and i have a fairly good idea of what i want to do, but it requires making stencils and i don’t have the material – and the weather really isn’t particularly conducive to working on the outside of my workshop at this time of year…
it leaves me feeling like i’ve forgotten to do something important, but i can’t remember what. i’ve been doing a lot the past few days, processing and shipping out incense orders, meeting with clients, preparing files for printing and sending them off to be printed, web-related updates, preparations for adding a new product line on the web site, photography for the same, rehearsals with snake suspenderz and banda gozona – for which i copied a book of trombone music, because i’m going to be playing trombone now… but i’ve got this uneasy feeling that something important has fallen through the cracks.
the workshop works! 8)
aha!
so i was going through the oscommerce forums last night, desperately searching for the solution to yesterday’s problem, and i came across this comment on a post whose solution i have already tried (and failed) to get working – despite the fact that the installation instructions are only in german, and they produce only a marginally understandable machine translation. however, the comment mentioned that paypal wants the shipping calculations turned off on their side if i’ve got the shipping calculations already figured out on my side – which sort of makes sense in a bizarre, round-about sort of way, so i tried it.
i have since gotten 3 orders – itself a bit of an anomaly, since i haven’t gotten more than 2 orders in the past 4 months – and all of them included the shipping charge information that used to be missing from the emails i get from paypal.
riiiiiiiight… turn it on and it’s broken, turn it off and it’s fixed… that makes sense.
and it is paypal’s fault. now the only problem is that when i tell them that, there’s a strong probability that they’re going to say that i’m doing it wrong… 😐
oy…
so i have this problem: a customer makes an order from my web site. he puts products in his shopping cart and clicks checkout. he is taken to a page where he puts in his name and address, and chooses a shipping method, and clicks confirm. he is then taken to a secure paypal page, which allegedly confirms his order, and points him in the right direction for payment.
i say allegedly, because the past couple of orders i have received have had the right amount for the product that was ordered, but have had no shipping information… which means that i have had to write to my customers and convince them to send me more money before i send their order out… which is awkward, to say the least.
as far as i’ve been able to tell, after having read the oscommerce forums for a few months, i’ve got everything set up the way it’s supposed to be on my end, which makes me suspect that it’s a problem on paypal’s end. this suspicion has been strengthened by the fact that i’ve had no less than two different paypal tech support geeks confirm that they’ve been having a problem with shipping to oscommerce sites. their immediate solution is to change the way it’s integrated, which, in my case, requires a scrapping of my entire product line and starting again from scratch. obviously not an option in my case.
however, i just got off the phone with a paypal tech support geek who basically said ‘yeah, it’s our fault, but we’re not going to do anything about it, so you should really talk your oscommerce friends into changing their software to match what we’re doing now.”
<head desk><head desk><head desk><head desk><head desk><head desk><head desk>
livejournal… 8/
okay, now i’m REALLY glad i got out of there when i did. apparently 3 weeks or so ago, СУП/LJ announced “a joint program with Google AdSense that allows LiveJournal paid and permanent account holders around the world the chance to earn extra cash just by displaying ads on their journals.”
i wonder what brad would have to say about it… 8/
yah-fucking-hoo!!
the workshop is officially finished enough that i was able to take apart and diagnose my space heater, go to home depot and get the materials and fix it with tools that i haven’t used for 4 years. now i have a workshop with a space heater. all i gotta do now is get a new blade for my band saw and i’m ready to roll.
ketchup
now that i am not intensively, obsessivly scanning pretty much everything in sight i can sit back, listen to mozart and catch up on my more mundane life before i disappear into the workshop for extended periods of time in an attempt to work off some of this horny creativeness that has been plaguing me for the past 4 years.
i’ve already glued a whole bunch of stuff that has been sitting around for a few years because of this or that which prevented me from actually completing the project. i’ve located an unfinished pipe left over from just before we moved which has yet to be finished, and a couple of already finished pipes which i will probably put on the web site soon. i’ve got to get a new blade for my band saw, because the old one has no teeth left (a condition i remember it being in before we moved, but since we were moving, i did nothing to remedy the problem). i also need to see about replacing the cord – or something similar – on my portable electric radiator so that when it starts to get really cold i will be able to heat the workshop adequately. i’ve also got at least one jewelry making project that i have to finish; a new necklace for a pendant that my mother-in-law has had for the past 20 years.
now that i’ve divested myself of all but 6 milk crates full of stuff – which are things like my books of lessons, service readings and suchlike from SRF, paper and labels for the printer, books for which we (still) don’t have space, and a couple of boxes of miscellaneous decorations – i’ve discovered a bunch of things that i only vaguely remember, such as a pair of enameled chinese hand excersice balls (with bells inside that cause one of our dogs to bark insanely when she hears them, but only when both moe and i are both in the house) which have already been used for their intended purpose. there are also a couple of wooden, jointed human drawing figures, of which i only remember one (the smaller one) from before we moved.
and apparently the fremont philharmonic is not breaking up, although we still haven’t decided for sure who our new leader is going to be. at this point, the concern is more for trolloween (which i am not going to attend because of a paying gig with snake suspenderz) and Alad’din in december. at this point we’ve recruited a couple of potential new members, including clayton, who already plays in two other bands that i play in, who will be playing tuba for trolloween and potentially euphonium for the pantos, and the guy who played tenor sax at trolloween last year, who expressed extreme interest in playing with us on a more permanent basis. we’re still sort of looking for a trumpet player, and possibly a trombone as well (yes, silveradept, i have mentioned your name, but there are a couple of other possibilities as well).
finally, here is another result of my going through boxes of stuff that i haven’t looked at in years, a little piece that i call “i am afraid of being eaten” which was what was written on the other side of the paper. when i found it originally, it was folded in half three times, with the title written on the outside. it is something that i found on the ground in bellingham when i lived there (which means that it was before 1995, and i seem to recall that i’ve had this particular piece since the 1980s). i remember when i was living in bellingham and i was depressed, i would read this and think that my life could be so much worse than it was, although at times i can remember reading it and relating quite well to what was said there. i wish i had the whole story, but i’m glad i got this one page.
mozart
i got 21 CDs of mozart from somebody on freecycle. i’m in mozart heaven right now, and will be for a few days.
grmf
i finished moving the majority of the stuff out of the piles of boxes that have been stored first in the dining room, then the living room and finally the office/spare bedroom of our miniscule house and into the newly constructed workshop. i even got rid of the 2 extra 4’x8′ sheets of sheetrock (although i haven’t got rid of, and i’m not sure i want to get rid of the extra 4’x8′ sheet of peg board), as well as most of the old but still functional computer equipment.
which reminds me… i advertised the complete computer system again for $200 this time, and someone called me about it and asked if he could just take the mac. i said if he wanted the mac, he would have to take the whole system, to which he agreed. i also agreed to take $30 if he would help me move the desk from the office in the house to the workshop in back of the house and he agreed to that as well. however, from the moment he arrived he was trying in many not-so-subtle ways to get me to give him only the mac, and even moreso when he discovered that he was actually going to have to help me figure out how to get the desk out of the office, that he was going to have to lift the desk in order to move it, and that the place we were moving it to was not actually somewhere in the house. because of the fiasco that occurred when we couldn’t immediately figure out how i got the desk in to the office to begin with (it was a very tight squeeze, and it would only fit out into the corridor immediately outside the office door on it’s side with the upright supports facing in one direction, even though it would fit halfway through the office door with the upright supports facing in the other direction, and we had to try it both ways before i remembered how it actually fit), i actually agreed to give him the complete system for no money at all, despite the fact that he and i both thought better of it several times during the entire ordeal.
basically what it came down to is that he wanted to come and take only the parts of the computer system that he wanted, leave the rest for me to deal with, and he didn’t want to actually do anything for it. i came very close to just saying that i would deal with both the desk and computer system myself if he would just shut up and get out of my house. you don’t arrange to come to my house at 12:00 and then show up at 2:30 and then tell me how i’m supposed to give you the things that i’ve said i’m going to give you, especially when you have agreed to do some work with me in exchange for the things i’m giving you and then you’re so recalcitrant about doing the work. if you don’t want to do the work, that’s fine. if you don’t want the entire computer system, that’s fine. but when i’ve said that i will give you the whole computer system in exchange for some work, you don’t come to my house and then say that you only want part of what i’ve said i’m going to give you and you don’t want to do the work you’ve said you’re going to do.
anyway, i’ve still got 4 or 5 more boxes of holiday stuff, my “odd food” collection (which includes a package of ramen-like stuff labeled “mixed food flavour”, a gummy foot, “men’s pocky”, colourless M&Ms, “Nihilist” chewing gum [it has no flavour] and several other prizes), a box of bongs, and some other miscellaneous, stuff which is wholesale going in the loft of the workshop.
then i went to a banda gozona rehearsal last night, where it was decided that instead of playing sousaphone, i would be playing trombone, which is a lot smaller and easier to carry, and because of the fact that it was my original instrument, there’s a good chance that i’ll be a lot better at actually playing all of the notes, despite the fact that i’ve been learning the sousaphone parts for two and a half years and swiching to trombone will mean learning entirely new parts for all of the songs.
by the time i got home last night i was in an absolutely vile mood, and i woke up this morning in an almost equally vile mood, which wasn’t helped by the fact that when i was in the process of replacing the broken doorknob in the office, i succeeded in locking myself in the office, and i had to escape through the window. i’ve never actually been what i would call drunk in my entire life, but i’m seriously thinking about getting drunk tonight, simply because it would be something else vile that i’ve never done, and i’m not likely to want to do it once i’ve come out of the vile funk that i’m in currently.
finished!
i’ve finished scanning my sketchbooks! they’re not all posted yet, but they probably will be by this time tomorrow. you can take a look at the whole shebang (or as much as i’ve felt like posting), but i like to sift through them for the special ones… 8)
another sneak preview
this one is from 1990, and this one is a direct result of my taking huge quantities of acid.
it was fun, too… 8)
sneak preview
i’m slowly making progress scanning my sketchbooks, although i’ve slowed down considerably and still only have 16 of the 24 sketchbooks scanned, but i figured i’d offer a little sneak preview of some of the reasons why i wanted to have this stuff available on the web, rather than secreted away in a sketchbook that even i can’t access immediately. this is a tract from 1988, and contrary to what moe suggested, this was several years after i took more acid than everybody else that i know, combined… although it does seem to have had a certain effect on the outcome of my artwork.
from this point i’m a little bit less sure of the dates and the numbering of the books falls apart. i’m pretty sure that the last date in book 16 is 880601, but the next date i can find is 890512, which is almost a year later… which means one of a number of options, including that there are at least two sketchbooks that are “unaccounted for”. i recall photocopying a whole ream of stuff several years ago (before scanners became commercially available) and being frustrated because i couldn’t photocopy the coloured drawings in colour (i did actually photocopy some of the coloured drawings in greyscale, which was the exact opposite of what i wanted and only made me more frustrated), and the missing books could have been lost during that time, but i can’t be entirely sure.
of course, another possibility is that i simply couldn’t afford a new sketchbook for that year. i was astonishingly poor during that period, and it’s a distinct possibility, but again, i can’t be entirely sure.
JEEZIS IS A CUNT!
by the way, today is international blasphemy day, and the catholic church has their panties in a twist because of it. in case you didn’t know, blasphemy is “to speak irreverently of God or sacred things”. be sure to blaspheme with vigour today (and every other day if you like, it doesn’t concern me, and God’s big enough to take it), and if you’re in the washington DC area, you might want to stop by this:
break from break
so i’ve been emptying out the pile of boxes, sorting them out and putting them away in their new places – which is where the box of sketchbooks came from, and i’ve only succeeded in scanning 12 of them, so i’ve still got a lot more to go, but i came across this box of folders, and one of the folders had newspaper clippings. i’m not exactly sure when i stopped collecting newspaper clippings, but i haven’t even had a subscription to a newspaper in almost 20 years, so you can bet that there’s some stuff that has been buried and ignored for a loooooong time.
including this one, which was taken in 1981, during my 2nd year of college. i remember being out juggling and this guy skulking around surreptitiously taking pictures of us, but he wouldn’t say who he was. then, when i was taking the ferry home (i lived on lummi island at the time) one of the ferry crew, who knew me as the guy who moved out to lummi island because if i had stayed in bellingham i probably would have been arrested, made some comment about how i couldn’t keep my picture out of the newspaper, and when i didn’t know what he was talking about, he showed me the front page of the paper, with my picture on it…
the really interesting part is that i only knew one of the other guys that well. barry was a jeweler who made The Sacred Object for me, a couple of years later. our juggling thing was sort of a random thing that more or less coalesced into the monday-wednesday-friday that we told the guy with the camera, but really, apart from juggling, we were all more or less strangers.
break
i’ve finally gotten to the point where i am able to put all of my old sketchbooks into deep storage, and i decided that if i was going to put them where i can’t immediately lay hands on them any time i like without digging through the loft, that i would scan all of the actual artwork (as opposed to random scriblings, phone numbers, grocery lists, etc.) and put them somewhere i can access the whole thing easily, which at this point is on the web.
unfortunately, i’ve spent the past three days, pretty much all day, scanning stuff, i’ve only gotten to book 8 and there are 24 sketchbooks in my collection, so i may not be posting much for a few days until i get this whole thing scanned… fortunately i only have to do it once…
cholmondleighland
yesterday we played for the end of the workshop given by avner the eccentric at chumleighland. apparently cedarfest already happened this year, and the fremont phil apparently wasn’t invited this year, but the show last night made up for it. we got there around 4:00 and the show started at around 8:00 with a show by master payne – his other site is here – and then there was a long monologue by rev. chumleigh which culminated with his performing an underwater escape – being held upside down by four audience members with his head in a bucket of water while escaping from handcuffs. then avner came on and did his “Le refus de la gravité” routine, which was as awesome and as funny as ever.
i was somewhat surprised – well, i guess not that surprised really, more like caught unawares – that myron and marilyn, and macque and norma were there, along with katy and cedar who i sort of expected, and a bus load of circus folk from bellingham, who were all about ezra’s age, but didn’t know him. also, hokum w. jeebs was there, who i met at the white center jubilee days last year. we still haven’t had the band meeting to decide whether or not to break up the fremont philharmonic, but chumleighland is definitely a step in the right direction. as hobbit said, it’s all the best parts of the oregon country fair, and a big top and it’s local… 8)
the fremont suspenderz
stuart is quitting the fremont philharmonic. this could mean the end of the fremont philharmonic as we know it, and here’s why:
stuart is the leader of the band, and if he quits the band, we’re going to have to find a new leader: someone who is qualified, inspired, motivated, enthusiastic, and will be able to pick up where stuart left off with a minimum of chaos.
we just lost joseph, our sax player recently. he sent an email to the group saying that he felt it was time to move on, and suggested a couple of friends of his who had expressed interest in playing sax, but that it was time for him to do something else. that cuts the current group down to six.
pam has said repeatedly that if she’s given the choice between playing with the phil for no money, or going hiking, that she’s going to choose going hiking. she is the official keeper of the money for fremonstor theatrical, the fremont phil’s parent organisation, but apart from that, she doesn’t seem to be very motivated, although i may be wrong. whether or not i’m wrong, it seems very likely that pam wouldn’t be interested in taking over the leadership role in the band.
ted hasn’t been coming to rehearsals very consistently for about a year. he missed OCF this year, for the second year in a row, and his new wife just had a baby, so the probability that he’s going to get more consistent in the short run is not very likely. ted, as well, seems like a poor choice to be leader of the group.
kim also hasn’t been showing up very consistently, and also missed OCF this year for the second year in a row. she is very enthusiastic, but she, too, doesn’t seem to have the qualifications to step into the leadership role.
that leaves sasha, kiki, and myself. whether or not any of us are qualified to take the reins depends essentially on our being able to locate almost an entirely new group, and learning the music as a group, as well as all of the other stuff that would go along with being the leader of the group. i would try to be leader, but i know from past experience that if i’m the leader of a group, i have difficulty getting people to listen to me, and i’m not the most diplomatic person when i’m in a position of leadership and people don’t listen to me. as for sasha and kiki, i’m fairly sure that both of them are inspired, motivated and enthusiastic, but i question whether or not either of them has the tenacity to find an entirely new group of musicians and teach them the repertoire.
many people i have been talking to have said, to one degree or another, that bands break up, and if the phil breaks up then it just means that there’s another group in the future, potentially one that actually pays me something, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing.
we’re having a band meeting next wednesday to determine which direction we should head, which is good, but considering the band meetings we have had in the past, i don’t hold out much hope that we’re actually going to accomplish anything.
meanwhile, snake suspenderz has a paying gig at chumleighland today (we’re playing for a workshop given by avner the eccentric), and another paying gig on 31st october, which conflicts with trolloween. considering that it’s a choice between playing music for no money with a group of people whose motivations i’m not sure about, or playing music for money with a group of musicians whose motivations i am sure about, the meeting wednesday should be an interesting one.
dead people
Mary Travers of Peter, Paul and Mary Dies at 72 – i still think Album 1700 is one of the most underrated albums of all time…
requiescat in pacem, mary travers. 8(
it’s a workshop! it’s a workshop!!
it’s a workshop!
there are a few finishing touches i have to make: i have to put up shelves on the right and move some stuff on to them, and i have to put up the remaining peg board and some shelves over the band saw and drill press, but i made the workbench on which the band saw and drill press are sitting, in the workshop, out of bits of the old shed!
IT’S A WORKSHOP!!
gay marriage
First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win.
— Mohandas Karmachand "Mahatma" Gandhi
maybe a tiny step forward…
How marijuana became legal – before they’re going to be able to make cannabis legal, they’re going to have to seriously consider giving it a more scientific name: “pot” and “marijuana” are not going to cut it if you’re going to be able to go down to the drug store and buy it without a prescription. there’s still just too much stigma placed on those words to make it anything other than political suicide.
which is still illegal, by the way…
:|
From the Pulpit: Time for a Christian Revolutionary War – and i thought i was a terrorist… 😐
what would jesus avoid doing? (why i’m a hindu)
please keep in mind that i differentiate between “christians”, christians and Christians. i’ve known about 10 Christians in my entire life, and about half of them were not actually Christians (people like Swami Bhaskarananda, for example). most of the people i have met in my entire life that profess to be Christian are actually “christian” to one degree or another.
during my last couple of years of high school, i was really getting interested in religion, and had started reading the bible and, significantly the gospel of sri ramakrishna, on a regular basis… and already i was getting the very strong impression that what the preacher said from behind his lecturn wasn’t always the way things worked in reality.
a friend and i went to the “christian” church that met in my school’s cafetorium on sunday. i was fairly sure that i wasn’t going to like it, but i wanted to show my friend that you can’t always trust a christian, especially when they’re the ones in charge. i brought my bible, and we were sitting close to the back of the auditorium. i was finding the scriptures the preacher was reading from and noticing right away that if you continued reading, not more than two or three verses later scripture was directly contradicting what the preacher was saying. this happened at least three times, each of which i pointed out to my friend, when the preacher took notice of me, and instructed one of his parishoners to escort my friend and i outside and “explain to them why they are being asked to leave”. we spent the rest of the service sitting on a bench outside the auditorium with my friend and i listening while the guy ranted on about things that i knew were not in the bible, but because of my unfamiliarity with it at the time, i wasn’t able to point out the discrepancies to his satisfaction.
it was at that point that i decided that, if they would only listen to people who made sense when they talked, that “christians” might be able to see the light that truly is Jesus Christ. i decided that i would learn as much as i could about the bible, so that when i encountered such people in the future, i would be prepared. shortly after that, i entered a seminary, where i was a student for seven years.
several years later, i was hanging out with a bunch of people who enjoyed bible study, and we decided that we were going to a halloween party in another part of town. we put on costumes – i was wearing a devil mask, and there was another guy who was wearing a santa claus mask – and we were walking down the street, when a group of people came out of a storefront church and assulted us. they knocked me down and hit a couple of other guys. one of my friends managed to get free and called the police, who said they would be there “eventually” and we never saw them. i was on the ground, surrounded by a whole bunch of angry young men who wouldn’t let me get up, when the “preacher” appeared. i thought everything was going to be okay, but then the “preacher” started chanting what at first sounded like nonsense, but then i realised that he was saying “the only name that can save you is christ, there is no other name” – over and over, without regard to what i was saying or the fact that i was on the ground, surrounded by an angry crowd.
later, the same group of guys and i went to another, bigger storefront church (it was in a building that, appropriately enough, was a porno theater before the church moved in) with hidden tape recorders, and interviewed the people there. one interview in particular was memorable because of the fact that, when asked why the guy was carrying such a large bible, he responded by repeating, several times, “it’s my bazooka”. then he said “i take it, and i aim it at the devil, and i go ‘buhda-duhda-duhda-duhda-duhda-dow’!” needless to say, he knew a lot less about “the ammunition” for his “bazooka” than he let on.
at the same time, i was progressing fairly well in the seminary, but i was feeling more and more uneasy about my relationship with the bible. i read it, and understood what it was saying, but i felt strangely uncomfortable with the words that were being used to convey certain ideas. at one point i approached the headmistress of the seminary with my concerns, and she recommended, since i had a fairly good understanding of the bible, that i read scriptures from other religions, with a mind towards finding similarities with what the bible says. i took this task very seriously, and i read pretty much any scripture i could get my hands on, from the more esoteric teachings of Christianity contained in the Philokalia, the nag hammadi library, the forgotten books of eden, the kebra nagast and others, to the teachings of the qur’aan, the sufis, three different forms of buddhism, the tao, Georges Gurdjieff, Zarathustra, the papyrus of ani, traditional celtic witchcraft, Aleister Crowley, and even several different forms of what is called devil worship or satanism. however when i read the scriptures of hinduism for the first time, i was struck with how much they spoke to my heart, and when i read the bhaghavad gita for the first time it was like i was coming home.
it wasn’t long after that – a matter of two or three years – before i decided that regardless of whether they were making sense or not, some “christians” were simply not going to see the light, regardless of how hard someone tried to convince them. it was at that point that my conversion to hinduism commenced. when i graduated from the seminary, i received my ordination, and two days later i recieved my first diksha as a dedicated hindu.
easter egg
ooh… sneaky!
i finally got access to cshelpdesk.net (at 4:30 pm zac wrote to inform me that “Your IP was blocked by the servers firewall. This has been unblocked and you can now access the server again” – after the last time, when nathan assured me that “this happens on rare occasions”), but my roster of support tickets is mysteriously missing… there are two “presales questions” that i posted before i signed up, but 5 or 6 tickets titled “my domains are missing” are nowhere to be seen, as are the tickets titled “network timeout” and “where are my domains” and several others like that…
verrrrrrry interesting…
or very geek-like on my part… the email address i logged in with is different than the one i logged all of my support tickets with… no wonder i couldn’t find them… 😐
so…
there has been a lot of kerfuffle recently about two things that aren’t necessarily related in the obvious sense, but basically come down to the same thing, when you think about it. the first is universal health care or the lack thereof, and the other one is gay marriage.
the declaration of independance says that all <citizens of the united states> men are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, and among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
i’ve always wondered about the part that says “among these…” because usually people say that it doesn’t guarantee you anything other than life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, but that’s beside the point.
the first right mentioned is “life”, but what does that mean, really? if you’re alive, you don’t have any choice in the matter, but technically, anyway, if you try to kill yourself you can be arrested for the crime of attempted suicide, so it’s obvious that the government has an interest in keeping those people who are currently alive in a living state. but if you’re sick, that’s when the kerfuffle starts. these days, if you’re one of those many americans who don’t have health insurance, there’s the very strong possibility that you will die, and there’s nothing that the government will do to stop it. on the other hand, if you are taken to a hospital with a life-threatening illness, the probability that you’ll get emergency treatment is very high, even if you’re not a citizen.
i see a dichotomy here: the republicretins are all up in arms because obama’s public health care plan would potentially provide medical treatment for illegal aliens, and potentially determine when a critically ill patient is no longer eligible for treatment.
but currently, if a critically ill patient is taken to a hospital, they’ll get treatment whether they are a citizen or not. if one of the rights guaranteed by the declaration of independance is a right to life, then what would the government gain by having “death panels” to determine when a certain patient is no longer eligible for health care?
but the republicretins rail on as if it were the end of the world when obama suggests that providing health care for everyone is something that should be seriously considered. crazy people… malfunctioning people… 8/
and the gay marriage thing… fine. if you don’t like homosexuals getting married, then don’t marry a homosexual. by all means, don’t deny that they exist, or are immoral (that’s where “liberty” comes in to play). don’t equate them with pedophiles or other “deviants” – what does that word, “deviant” mean anyway? is the republican assemblyman from california, who is married with two children, and who was an outspoken supporter for proposition 8, but recently revealed to the world over a microphone that he didn’t know was turned on, that he was having an extramarital affair (in rather graphic terms) more or less a “deviant” than the gay couple down the street who have been together for 25 years, are good neighbours and keep to themselves? by the way, the republican assemblyman, mike duvall, has since resigned, but he is steadfastly refusing to admit that he was carrying on an extramarital affair… my guess is that he will admit it sooner or later, but claim the forgiveness of jeezis for his transgression.
it would seem to me that the declaration guarantees the right of any citizen to do whatever the hell he damn well pleases as long as it doesn’t kill someone or cause a riot. the declaration of independance guarantees the right for homosexuals to get married, regardless of what the neighbours might think. as long as they’re – what’s the right term? “monogamous” isn’t right for gay males… “monoandrous”? – faithful to each other and don’t go out and rape people, whatever it’s called, they have as much right to get married as a man and a woman.
it’s not a matter of “redefining” marriage, because, ultimately, marriage is a religious insitution before anything else, and, as we all know, mixing religion and matters of state is strictly prohibited by the same constitution that defines our rights. but if two gay people want to make a commitment to each other, there are certain rights that marriage provides, which are denied to people who are not married, which is not fair to gay people, who currently are prohibited from getting married. there has to be a way to provide those rights to all people, regardless of their sexuality.
much as i hate to use this phrase, i wish that the republicretins would simply get over it, because we are going to have public health care, and we are going to allow gay marriage…
or there will be riots…
which are what the constitution does not protect.
sigh…
my recent conversation with zac o. at cshelpdesk.net went something like this:
me: my account has been hacked
zac: it’s your fault
me: no, it’s not, see? evidence…
zac: you don’t understand. it’s still your fault
me: yes i do, and no, it’s not. see? more, different evidence…
zac: <IP block my access> (that’ll shut him up)
yeah, it will shut me up temporarily (my most recent communication with zac was yesterday at 2:00 pm, my most recent communication with nathan was at 9:57 am this morning, and now, at 3:00 pm, i still can’t access cshelpdesk.net), but in the long run, you’re going to be the one that suffers because of your interaction with me.
at least they’re not demanding more money from me… 8/
aargh…
that’s <A2RGH> for you purists out there…
but yes, aargh. i discovered that my entire site had the .php files appended with the code i discovered the other day, not just my wordpress installation.
furthermore, although tech support has no evidence of a hack and says it was that way when i uploaded it, i checked my backup from last month and there were no modifications to any of the files a month ago.
aargh… 8/
[EDIT] after having been confronted with evidence (the backup that wasn’t modified) they claim to have found evidence of an account breach on 23 august, and recommended that i change my password… duh… 8/
[FURTHER EDIT] it turns out that the “evidence” was a known (to me) IP address, logging in to check their mail. however, i did find another IP address from renton logged in as root on the 20th and 21st of august, and when i suggested that someone had the root password, suddenly all the servers wend down and just recently came back up… all of them except the tech support site… very interesting…
progress…?
i’ve accomplished about as much as is possible for me to do without help… and possibly a ladder. the insulation is left over from an igloo stage-prop that was a part of a movie that jeremy was a part of producing last year, before i went to burning man. he wrote a message to cirquechat saying that he had this “dome” that needed to be got rid of, and it sort of fit into my fantasy of what a dome should be, so i said i wanted it. but when it was delivered, i discovered that it was not very substantial, being made of quarter-inch plywood and foam insulation, so i stowed it under a huge blue tarp at the bottom of our property and used it for projects like insulation for windows, knowing that eventually i would have a project like this to use the rest of it. now i intend to cover the bottom half of the insulated wall with sheetrock (which is just out of camera range on the right side of the photo) and the top half with pegboard. i came home from home depot the other day with two 4×8 sheets of pegboard, and i realised that i have never had this much pegboard – with a purpose – in my entire life.
in other news, i installed gucharmap yesterday, and when i rebooted, apparently my operating system decided that instead of running KDE, it was really set up to run gnome by default. which, of course, meant that when i rebooted this morning, instead of loading my pretty, shiny KDE desktop, it loaded the red, drab, default gnome desktop, and gave me an error message that said “The panel encountered a problem while loading OAFIID: GNOME_FastUserSwitchApplet. Do you want to delete the applet from your configuration”. after a good deal of whinging and complaining, and a good deal of forum perusing, and a little bit of inginuity, i discovered that i could disable automatic login and change my session back to KDE, whereupon everything went back to the way i expected it to be.
also, stuart has decided that he’s not going to play with the fremont philharmonic any longer. i don’t know what that means in the short run, considering that we’ve got trolloween and december performances of alladin, but it means a substantial change in the phil, and potentially the end of the phil all together. pam has said that if she has the choice of performing with the phil for no money, or going hiking, that she’s going to choose hiking. ted hasn’t been showing up very regularly for about a year, and katharine just had a baby, so there’s no guarantee that he’s going to be any more consistent in the short run. joseph just quit the phil as well, about a month ago. that leaves myself, sasha, kiki, and possibly kim, and i don’t know how much any of those people – myself included – want to be involved with building a new fremont philharmonic, especially since we’ve got a huge repertoire, for which we would have to come up with all the parts, or start all over from scratch. it also affects my participation in things like the moisture festival, OCF and the fremont solstice parade. i’m stereotypically worried, but there isn’t much i can do about it at this point, because, although stuart says he’s discussed his decision with simon (the founding clown of the fremont players), macque isn’t even back from burning man yet, and i haven’t even talked to the other members of the band… but i’m stereotypically worried anyway. i hate to think that my ability to attend OCF (for example) could be affected by stuart’s quitting the band, but there it is, and at this point, there’s nothing i can do about it.
“christians” are no fun
something has gone awry with the CSS part of the admin section for my wordpress blog. i logged in a few days ago and was greeted by a bunch of mysql errors and the blog’s admin page made with no CSS, and, to varying degrees, it’s been that way ever since. i suppose i’m going to have to do something about it eventually, but at this point the only thing i can think of is to totally replace everything except the database.
[UPDATE] i figured it out, sort of… all of the php files in my wp-admin folder had the following code appended to the top:
eval (base64_decode ('aWYoZnVuY3Rpb2...'));
which, when decoded, lead me to a file in /wp-includes/js/tinymce/themes/advanced/skins/wp_theme/img/ which was a whole bunch of script information that was base64 encoded, and a couple of IP addresses.
i’ve got the information more or less removed from the files, and i have deleted a whole bunch of suspicious files, and i have yet to discover who the IP addresses are, but when i do…
moe and i spent all day cooking yesterday, and today we have a freezer full of lunches and dinners. if things go as we’ve been discussing, we won’t have to cook again until next month.
i’m putting insulation and wallboard in the workshop. after that, it’s just a matter of moving in and unpacking the workshop stuff that i have had in storage for the past 4½ years. woo hoo!
no words
workshop workshop workshop work!
my father in law (who is a retired electrician) came up today and got started on electrifying the workshop. he’s basically adding another 20 amp circut to our house, and then running conduit from the back of the fuse box out to the workshop. it was really strange to stand in the non-electrified workshop and say that i wanted electrical outlets here, there and there, and a 4 foot flourescent light fixture there, with a switch over there, and then have him put up boxes and wire them together, and hang a light fixture… he’s coming back tomorrow to finish the job.
while the electricity was going in, i painted the exterior of the workshop with the 5 gallons of “oops” paint i got at home depot for $15 – if i had bought 5 gallons of “exactly the right colour” paint it would have been more like $145, but the “oops” paint was exactly the right colour before i even started putting it on, because of the discounted price, and – lo-and-behold – it turns out that it’s exactly the right colour anyway, which makes it an extra bonus. i’d post a picture of it, but it’s dark outside now and the colour wouldn’t show up correctly, so that’s a job for tomorrow.
nine minute response
so at 10:28 this evening, i posted the following advertisement to craig’s list:
i have two computers, i want musical instruments
I have:
One clone PC in a beige box with Kubuntu Linux, AMD 1.5ghz processor, 800mb RAM, and 6gb hard disk.
One turquoise G3 Mac desktop with a Sonnet G4 upgrade, 800 mb RAM, 6gb hard disk and 18 gb hard disk.
Plus one Sony Trinitron P1130 19″ monitor, one KVM switch with 2 sets of cables, one PS2 keyboard and one USB mouse.You have:
Woodwind (serrusophone, bassoon, tubax, bass clarinet, alto flute, or suchlike) or brasswind (valve trombone, double-bell euphonium, helicon, fluegelhorn or suchlike) instrument or instruments that you can’t play, are unused and/or unwanted, have sat around in the attic or closet for 20 years, or that sort of thing. It doesn’t matter if it doesn’t work for some reason, because I am a musical instrument repair technician and a sculptor, so if I can’t fix it so that it will play again, I can make something else out of it.Write to me stating what you’ve got and we’ll work something out.
at 10:37 (nine minutes later) i recieved an email message from “Metallica” which said:
willing to sell just the pc? or just the processor and ram?
i wrote back to them at 10:44 (sixteen minutes after the original post was approved), saying:
i don’t want money, i want musical instruments. if you’ve got musical instruments, then we can talk.
we’ll see how this plays out. i’d be willing to bet that they don’t respond.
a sigh of nostalgia…
i backed up, reformatted and reinstalled my os9 mac, and i realised that i may have just shut down mac os9 for the last time ever this evening…
i’ve been a mac head ever since the term was coined, way back when. my first experience with a computer that wasn’t running some form of UNIX (yes indeed, i am that old) was with my father’s trash-80, the year i graduated from high school. i got pretty good at manoevering around the proto-DOS interface and programming in BASIC, but my first experience with the technology with which i actually made money for a significant portion of my life was with a Lisa – the proto-mac. the first computer job i had was typesetting for kwik-kopy printing in bellingham with a mac plus, a floppy disk drive and an 80 mb hard disk which i thought was an electronic black hole into which i could throw documents forever and not fill it up. that was back before the operating system used Hierarchical File System – HFS – it used MacFS instead, which meant that you could only have one window open at a time, and no files larger than 20mb. it was back when the mac os was free, and you could get the latest version by taking 4 floppy disks to your local mac dealer. i remember being one of the first geeks in my group to figure out that the mac was more than just a platform, and that it would be an ideal thing if you could get the mac os to run on anything. it still hasn’t happened officially, of course, but it’s closer now than it has ever been before. it wasn’t more than 5 years ago that i was working at essentially the same job, only with a much more modern computer.
so i installed os 9.2.1 on my aqua G3 desktop with a G4 upgrade, and shut it down, and i believe that it could be the last time i ever shut down a mac running os9.
the end of an era… 8)
a sigh of relief…
so i bought a new computer yesterday, and spent most of today getting it set up and running. apparently there is some specific thing that toast avoids doing, resulting in my burning no less than 3 install disks which didn’t boot correctly before i switched to disk utility and actually read the howto for burning an installation CD. i bought a bare system from a local place called InfoTech – stereotypical name, stereotypical geeks – and they didn’t have a problem building a system that was according to my specifications and not installing windoesn’t on it… of course when i had some problems with the install disk for kubuntu 9.04 they couldn’t help me, because there was nobody there that “played with linux”, but they were helpful in that they demonstrated that it was my disk and not the system itself, so everything all worked out in the end. i’ve now got a PC clone with an AMD 2.6 Ghz processor, 2 gb of RAM and a 250 gb hard disk, to which i have added my old 200 gb hard disk, my old external USB CD/DVD writer, and my colour inkjet printer. i also bought a 17″ LCD monitor with the money i saved not having windoesn’t installed, and the whole thing came in just under $500.
the strange parts are that because of the fact that i manually moved my mail information from the old disk to the new disk, kontact announces to me that it is apparently already running on fig (the name of my previous machine, the new one is ginko) and that running more than one instance of kontact may result in lost mail. i’m not sure how to convince it that it’s actually running on a new machine, but fortunately it allows me to run it anyway. also, very likely because of the fact that i didn’t restore it from a backup, all of my old mail disappeared, all of my address book entries disappeared and all of my feeds disappeared, but those are only comparaitively minor irritations. also apparently the new amarok doesn’t exactly agree with the old amarok, and i’m not exactly sure what to do about it, but that, too, is a comparatively minor irritation.
on the recommendation of st. ian, i’m going to reformat and reinstall the old computer with hardy, and i’m going to wipe and reinstall my old, os9 mac, and trade them on craigslist for a musical instrument or two. the fun part is that the advert is going to read something along the lines of “i have this computer and that computer and they’re both functional and have this software on them, you have a musical instrument or two that you don’t want or can’t play or for which you no longer have any use. email me and we’ll work something out”. basically i’ll let the customer determine what they think a PC and an old mac are worth, and then trade me for musical instrument(s) that are approximately worth the same. the bonus is that i get rid of the computers and i get a new addition to my menagerie, and i potentially get a new helpdesk customer as well… 🙂
so…
i actually was IP blocked from cshelpdesk dot net!
in spite of the fact that [email protected] (who is undoubtedly nathan oulman, or one of his minions) said “we dont block anyone from anything” (his exact words), according to tech support goon “Zac O.”, “Your IP was blocked by the servers firewall. This has been unblocked and you can now access the server again.” apparently their server is set to block the IP address of a customer attempting to log in “incorrectly” (whatever that means, nobody has told me yet). it’s very definitely not an using an incorrect username or password, because i allow the browser to remember all of that stuff because i know how clumsy my fingers are, but nobody has seen fit to tell me what it is, other than “incorrect login attempts”.
not only that, but i’ve had to reprimand the tech support goon no less than three times this morning, for closing my issue without answering my question. the little weasel is not going to get out of this without giving me some answers. 8/
at this point, it’s not anywhere near as bad as it was yesterday, but still, i’m thinking very strongly about switching host providers again when my contract expires.
OY… 8/
more computer miserableness abounds… 😛
as of yesterday, i was going back and forth with tech support about that random mysql user that i found a couple of days ago. i had just found the solution when the tech support goon abruptly terminated the email conversation, and when i tried to refresh the page, it timed out, and has been timing out when i try to access cshelpdesk dot net from my network ever since.
however, today, i discovered that not only does everybody else actually get the hybridelephant dot com site, but they can also access cshelpdesk dot net without timing out. in fact, if i try to access either site using the neighbour’s wireless network (hooray for unsecured wireless home networking!) i can get to them without difficulty, which makes me think “IP block”.
what makes me think “IP block” even more is the fact that while i was searching around for more information about cshelpdesk (which has email address contacts, but not a telephone number anywhere that i can see), i came across this blog entry from flatsurface dot com, which is a stunning review of nathan oulman, the apparent owner of anrhost.com (my host provider), dailydns.com (my host service) and cshelpdesk.com (tech support for the previous domains). the part where he says that stuff about “[t]he second time they caused a significant outage for my domains, I bitched. Their response? Block my IP from the support site, and later they simply disabled my prepaid account, in violation of our contract.” struck a very familar, and somewhat ominous chord.
and apparently it’s a very specific IP block, because it prevents me from seeing the database at Hybrid Elephant and all of cshelpdesk dot net, but it does not block me from seeing The Church of Tina Chopp or Cirque De Flambé, or any of my other domains, or even this site… this does not bode well, and i get the very distinct impression that i’m going to have to switch host providers again, as well as replacing my linux box…
which, by the way, i was out pricing computers today in order to facilitate. i discovered that if i want to buy a computer from frye’s (or just about any “computer store” like that), basically, i have to buy a computer with windoesn’t pre-installed (from the factory, so i can’t “leave it out” for a reduced price, but they’re not strictly “legal” versions of windoesn’t, because they don’t come with install disks or any way of creating them). for a windows-pre-installed complete system (CPU, monitor, keyboard, mouse) i would end up having to pay $500 to $700, which is sort of what i expected. they have “bare bones” systems that don’t come with windows, but they also don’t come with memory, or a hard disk, or KVM (keyboard, video, mouse), and they’re $200 to $500, or i can buy a “boot only” box from Re-PC for around $100 that needs a KVM and some other stuff, but because of the fact that the “boot only” box is used, there’s no guarantee that it’s going to work as long as a new box would. the final option is that i can “build your own” box that uses essentially the same components as the $500 system for about $100 to $200, but that would mean finding a system that i like, researching the components and purchasing them separately, and then putting it all together.
which i can do, but, ultimately, i would rather not do it. as i told the guy at frye’s, i’m not so much interested in building a new machine as much as i am in obtaining a new machine and using it.
every now and then i have to wonder why computers are so complicated… then i remember that at least part of the reason is that they are created by the most infuriatingly dense creatures on the planet, and they are very much like their creators – although somewhat more predictable.
which is why, i suppose, i am more at home with computers than i am with most people. 😐
picktchers
also 
err… umm… oh.
i had some sort of computer interruption last night that prevented me from figuring out this whole user 123 phenomena – apparently the server got hacked last night, but they TOSed the cracker and went to good backups within 15 minutes of my complaining, which is something… i’m not exactly sure what yet, but it’s something.
however, apparently the mysql user 123 that i deleted yesterday was important for running my oscommerce installation… which worries me enough that i’m going to figure out where it’s configured and change it to something else, because, first of all, having a default user 123 is enough of a security risk, and second, there’s a good chance that i’ll forget that user 123 is important, whereas if i see a user “ekadant” (for example) i’ll realise that it’s important and not delete it without figuring out what it is.
oy!
i was poking around (yeah, i know, bad idea… 8/ ) in the control panel for hybridelephant and i came across this thing that lists the mySQL databases and users of those databases that are on hybridelephant.com. it listed the two databases that i use, but it listed 2 users whereas i’ve set it up so that i use the same username and password for both databases… which i found a little suspicious.
furthermore, the other user was named “123” which i also found somewhat suspicious…
in any event, i was doing something else, so i deleted the user account “123” and went on with doing something else.
bad move.
now, if you go to hybridelephant dot com, instead of seeing the site, you get this error message:
Warning: mysql_connect() [function.mysql-connect]: Access denied for user ‘hybridel_123’@’localhost’ (using password: YES) in /home/hybridel/public_html/includes/functions/database.php on line 19
Unable to connect to database server!
i recreated the user. no luck.
i recreated the user with the password that was indicated on line 19 of /home/hybridel/public_html/includes/functions/database.php. no luck.
i reloaded the database from the backup i made 2 weeks ago. no luck.
it’s well and truly broke, and i done broked it. 😐
oy…
so i started up my linux box this morning and it told me that there were some system updates that i had to download, so i downloaded them and then it said that in order to use those system updates that my computer had to be restarted, so i shut everything down and rebooted…
and when it came back up, it didn’t work!
it put up the login screen, like normal, and it accepted my username and password, but then, instead of loading the desktop, it loaded what looked like a transparent graphic, only it was full screen, and a mouse cursor. no task bar, no menus… eventually a window popped up, associated with the HP printer, that said there was no systray, so whatever application it was associated with was no longer trying to start. i clicked OK – which was the only thing i could do – and it went away.
so, i hit Alt+F1 and logged in to the text interface, which it allowed me to do, and typed sudo shutdown -r now and it rebooted again. this time, instead of the transparent graphic, it stayed with the login screen, but again, didn’t get beyond allowing me to login. this time, when i hit Alt+F1 and logged in, it said that the system was using 95% of 5.9G, and the /tmp directory was using 100% of 1G, the total of which, if i’m not mistaken, is slightly more than my 6G system disk.
fortunately, my /home directory and my /music directory are on a separate, 200G disk. apparently my OS is bigger than my HD, which, technically (i suppose) means that if i got a new, bigger HD, everything would be copascetic. once again, the battle of the computer has raised its ugly head…
i was just discussing this probability with moe the other day, because of the wonkish behaviour of my monitor, and i pretty much decided that i’m going to go out and buy a new computer system at that time. it’s a good thing i decided it then, because now i’m absolutely certain that that’s what i’m going to do.
it’s going to be a desktop computer with at least a 200G hard disk, and an LCD monitor, and it will not be a computer with windoesn’t preloaded. i don’t know exactly what price i’m willing to pay, but $500 to $700 doesn’t seem too out of the question.
WOO HOO!
they’re here at this very moment, putting up my workshop! 😀
UPDATE: O. M. G. this is going to be OUTRAGEOUS!!1! i realised that it was going to be 10×14, but i didn’t realise that it was going to have 8 foot walls and a 4 foot barn ceiling…!
i mean, i knew… that’s what i ordered, i just never realised that it was actually going to happen… it’s happening! it’s happening!!
Metal Machine Music
a long time ago i heard of this album by lou reed called “Metal Machine Music” which was supposedly so horribly offensive to the ears that the company had to quit making albums because so many people had returned them. of course, being who i am, i was tremendously interested in hearing this gawd-awful piece of noise for myself, but at the time, there were no copies, nobody had it on tape or CD and mp3s hadn’t been invented yet, so i was out of luck. a good friend of mine had actually heard the album, though, and he had assured me that it wasn’t worth the time i spent trying to find out about it, because it was truly awful, and, because i had faith in this friend’s tastes in music, i took his word for it and gave up trying to find a copy.
that was until last week, when i found a bittorrent of lou reed that included the fateful album. of course i had to download it. i even wasted my good share ratio and only downloaded the albums i wanted instead of downloading the whole thing, because we were going on vacation for a week and i had to shut down my computer during that time. i just got around to listening to it today, and i have to say that, while i understand why most “normal” people wouldn’t find it appealing in the least, i find it really interesting indeed, and i am somewhat disappointed that i gave up so easily. actually, i find it compelling in the same way i find the music of john cage compelling. it’s definitely a classic, and while i can understand that it is the reason lou reed is considered to be the founder of heavy metal music, i also find that this particular piece bears a striking resemblence to karlheinz stockhausen, charles amirkhanian or luciano berio.
Metal Machine Music by Lou Reed – it’s worth a listen, regardless of what your friends who normally have excellent taste in music might say.
i just got back from vacation and already i am disgusted with society…
grf
tired. spent all day at an art car showing in everett. i got paid $100 for going to an arts festival and sitting on my ass all day. i need more days like that. before that was 5 days of no computer access (it turns out that it was on purpose, too) on orcas island. when i returned home (yesterday) it was to discover that my monitor is on the fritz (again) and is looking like it is on its last legs, which means yet another go-round with the battle of the computer. there are a whole bunch of pictures from the san juans that can be seen here, but there’s one picture that won’t upload correctly (i assume that it’s because it’s an animated .gif) which i’ve had to upload elsewhere to get it to show up correctly, which is this one:
more later.
oh, by the way…
another milestone last night, on my way back from a successful performance with snake suspenderz in issaquah.
in honour of my having received my CD of Organ2/ASLSP by John Cage
information reprinted from another of my web sites
I have been a musician for most of my life. Throughout my life, I have heard references to many famous musicians, some of whom have had a great deal of effect on my life, both as a musician and as a human being. One of the most profound effects my life has experienced is that which originated with the great artist, musician and composer, John Cage.
He was first introduced to me as a composer of “unusual” music. I have always been interested in the out-of-the-ordinary, and when I encountered a piece of music for the Prepared Piano, a John Cage invention, I knew I had found a kindered spirit. His unorthodox use of chance, creating music by rolling dice or following mathematical formulae, or even determining notes in a score by using star charts as an indicator inspired my own, interesting (many would say bizarre) unorthodox experiments. John Cage also had the honor of being able to study with the great serial composer Arnold Schönberg, who is another of my favourite composers, especially for his oratorio Pierrot Lunaire. One of my favourite characteristics of Pierrot Lunaire, outside of the music itself, of course, is the fact that when I was in high school, and I played it on my stereo, it would give my mother a headache. John Cage, himself, gave quite a bit of insight into his unorthodox way of thinking, and, by extension, his unorthodox music and artwork in his “Autobiographical Statement”, which first appeared in print in the Southwest Review in 1991.
Later in my life, I attended the Cornish School, where John Cage worked, and performed in the tiny performance hall which had been the original reason he invented the prepared piano, and it felt to me like I was following in the steps of someone I respected very much. At that time, I was also composing a lot of music using various numeric and geometric techniques. Somewhat later, during my first year at Fairhaven College, I performed Cage’s famous piano piece called 4’33” – which is, basically, four minutes and thirty-three seconds of silence, in three movements which are delineated by the performer opening and closing the cover of the piano keyboard. There is a web-based rendition of this famous piece of music, which is performed in one movement, sans piano. Oddly enough, my rendition of 4’33” was performed on an old, upright piano which, only moments before the start of my performance, I had managed to knock over on its back (I had to have about 6 other people help me lift it back upright again), and the keyboard had completely locked, so if I had had to play notes, I would not have been able to do so.
In 2001, I read of another performance of music by John Cage which I found to be particularly inspiring, which is a performance of an adaptation of Cage’s piece for piano called “As Slow As Possible”. In the small town of Halberstatd, Germany, in an old, abandoned church-turned-pig-farm-turned-performance-hall, an organ is being constructed for the performance of a piece called “Organ2 – ASLSP” (movement 5 of which can be heard here), which, when complete, will be the longest musical performance in human history, taking 639 years to finish. The performance started on 5 September, 2001, and for the first 17 months the only sound was silence, punctuated by the wheezing of the solar-powered organ bellows. The first three actual notes of the performance began on 3 February, 2003, another note was added in July of 2004 and another note was added in July of 2005. According to what I have read, an intermission is planned in 2319.
I have always had a lot of respect for people who make their living doing unconventional things. I have tried very hard to be one of those people, because it has become evident to me that the people doing unconventional things in their lives are among the only people in existence who are having even the slightest bit of fun that isn’t heavily influenced, and in most cases totally controlled by someone else. John Cage has always been a powerful influence in my life because of his ability to be unconventional and extremely successful at the same time.
finally!
Bioengineered mouse tooth – this is what we were missing out on during the bush years’ ban on stem cell research.
the pile of shed
with the help of St. Ian of The Holy Snake, we now have a quite large pile of shed in our back yard, and the place where the shed used to be is more or less clear and ready to have the new workshop(!!) built there. while i was at it, i removed the outdated and obsolete technnology otherwise known as a television antenna from the roof. i plan on re-using about 90% of the shed to make the new workshop even cooler than it will already be, and the pole from the antenna would be perfect for hanging a Hybrid Elephant banner from at the fremont sunday market… all i gotta do is actually design and produce a banner…
in other news, there’s a snake suspenderz gig at the issaquah art walk on thursday, a BSSB performance at the ballard locks on sunday, after which moe and i are leaving for a week of well deserved vacation at the doe bay resort, thanks to pliny the younger general manager.
beetlemania part deux
just like last year only this year… makes me wonder if they have some kind of metaphysical meaning. the life cycle of the ten-lined june beetle indicates that the adults are drawn to light (check) and they emerge as adults in june or july, laying eggs in august. the pupæ spend two to three years underground, near coniferous trees (check) before emerging.
1 grid unit equals approximately 1.5 mm. total length approximately 3.3 cm.
growl
i’m in the process of taking down the shed, and i’ve been taking it easy and going very slowly, because i’m not using the correct tools. i should be using my two medium pry-bars (one hexagonal and one flat). if i were using the correct tools, i probably would have completed the job by now. what i’m using instead is MJOLNIR (my 5 pound sledge hammer, named after the Hammer of Thor) and one of my claw hammers.
i HATE knowing that i have the right tools, and if i had a workshop i’d be able to put my hands on them immediately, but because of the fact that i haven’t had a workshop in 4 years, i don’t even know where i packed them, and will very likely have to go out and buy replacement tools to be able to finish the job of demolishing the old shed so that i will have the space to build a workshop!
Where’s George?
i joined Where’s George on May 17, 2002 and my state rank in washington is currently 5,399 out of 5,410. admittedly i’m not as persistent about it as some people (the ones who purchase rubber stamps that go around the US Federal Reserve logo on the obverse of bills that say “Track This Bill…” with the URI on it) but still… i’ve been a member for 8 years and i’ve only moved up 11 slots?
maybe it’s because i “deface” my bills by marking out ‘GOD WE” on the reverse, and marking in “KEEP RELIGION OFF OUR MONEY”… 😐
heat wave continued
the heat wave continues, but it was typically overcast this morning, and now, at 4:45 pm, it’s only 88 so it’s considerably cooler.
i got started taking down the existing shed today. i got it completely emptied out and all of the shelves deconstructed and then i broke myself. i was taking out the last shelf and suddenly there was a sharp pain in my lower back, and if i hadn’t stoped right then and gone inside and lay down, my guess is that it wouldn’t have been more than a couple of minutes until i had passed out from the pain. i took a couple of ibuprophen and iced it for about half an hour and it feels considerably better, but i’m going to have to take it really easy tomorrow if i want to get the shed taken down without injuring myself even further. i figure now that it’s empty, it shouldn’t be too difficult to take the walls down, take the roof off potentially in one piece, and take the framework apart in such a way that i can use most of it for other stuff later on.
i got my bottle of bakon vodka yesterday. i haven’t opened it yet, and i’m debating whether i want to open and try it, or whether i want to keep it unopened and pristine as a collector’s item. a lot of it depends on whether or not i am able to obtain another bottle of bakon vodka. i put my name on the list at the liquor store on 4th avenue in downtown seattle two months ago and they said they would call me when they got more in, but according to the person i talked to yesterday, they have had at least two previous deliveries in the past two months and they didn’t call. the guy would only allow me to buy one bottle because it sells out so quickly, despite the fact that they hadn’t called me. i plan on going back tomorrow and seeing if there’s a different guy that will sell me another bottle.
banda gozona is playing for somebody’s quinceañera (15th birthday?) in west seattle tomorrow, and i’m thinking of going to the FSM on sunday.
heat wave!!!!1
oh. my. GAWD it’s been hot the past few days!! we’ve shattered old heat records three days in a row! three nights ago the lowest the temperature got was 69, which shattered the old record (set in the 1950s, i think), and then two nights ago the lowest it got was 71, and last night the lowest was 72. yesterday it was almost 120 in olympia, and i, personally, saw a reader board in des moines that said 103. needless to say, i’ve been keeping the computers turned off most of the time, and only doing email once a day for the past few days. it’s slightly less hot today, but still, the weather report says that it’s going to hit 99 later this afternoon, so as soon as this is done, i’m turning the computer off again. it’s the end of the world or something. it’s just WAY too hot!
in other news, i paid off the roofers today to the tune of almost $9,000, i got a date set for building a workshop(!!!) on 18th august, and the guy is coming over for a site check today. also moe and i are going to doe bay, camping in one of their yurts, the 9th through the 13th, and we get to pay ½ price because we’re “friends and family” now… 8) another really good reason why, in spite of the gawdawful heat, this is a very good place to live indeed.
that must be it…
i’ve recently had some moral discussion with myself concerning my attraction to the blog pharyngula, because of the fact that, while i agree with PZM most of the time, whenever he makes broad, sweeping generalisations about acupuncture, chiropractic or religion i usually get winged in the process. basically i don’t know whether it’s actually a good thing that i’m attracted to what he writes because of the fact that there is so much disparity between the stuff that i agree with and the stuff i disagree with. i was thinking about this today when i was reading an entirely unrelated article, and he said “I know evil when I see it” and proceded to rant about a hypothetical priest raping a child. that was when i saw my dilemma in a new light. not necessarily that raping a child is evil, but that he, and people who think like him, are exactly the same as “christians” when he says that he can concretely define the difference between good and evil. raping a child is not evil, it just is, in the same way that everything else just is, including God.
for some people it may be difficult to hear and understand this, but the thing is, God is neither good nor evil. God exists in a place where the dual opposites of good and evil are meaningless. good and evil don’t matter to God, which is why they both exist in plenty on earth, and, likely, elsewhere as well.
of course, if the priest really were a “man of God”, he wouldn’t rape the child for other reasons, but this is the root of my discomfort with pharyngula. i have the same discomfort with “christians” and i have actually done my best to limit my contact with them because i don’t like the way they make me feel when they say their stubborn, stupid, ignorant lies and maintain them as fact. they “know evil when they see it” in exactly the same way PZM does, and while PZM doesn’t spout anywhere near as many stupid, ignorant lies as “truth”, he is just as stubborn about the ones he does spout as the “christians” are.
i knew if i searched long enough i would actually learn what the correct terminology for this is…
Tumblelog – it’s what you’re reading.
“cult” = “christian”
It’s easy to spot signs of a cult – okay, let’s look at this from a bigger point of view: are not “christians” characterised by claiming that they, and they alone, have the truth about “god”, and dismissing other religions as wrong or misguided? and what about “god” giving their founders a new revelation that “corrects” the “errors” of others”? what about the differences between eastern and western orthodox catholics and methodists, or presbyterians and jehovah’s witnesses? what about the war over whether to perform the sign of the cross with two or three fingers? do they not add other authorities (like billy graham) to whatever canon they work under and secretly substitute their own teachings for things with which they disagree? what is it, if not in the message that “the only way… is through faith and trust in Christ” that makes “christianity anything different than the “cults” that he is warning against?
the fact that i can easily find “christianity” in this article that is supposed to be about “cults” should be warning to any “christian” who might be reading this, that even in such notable and presumably “christian” personalities as billy graham there is enough hypocrisy and lust for money that we should all be extremely careful about what we take as “The Gospel Truth” when it comes to making a personal decision like what one’s spiritual path should be.
if you’re really concerned about whether or not a group may be a “cult”, i would recommend evaluating it with the Advanced Bonewits Cult Danger Evaluation Frame.
fezerocity
and now i am also a member of the order of the fez, with the membership number #32.
fezerocity!
okay, i have just realised one of my lifelong dreams, which is to own a fez. i’ve owned a few things that are frighteningly close to being fezzes without actually being them, including a touque which i wear as though it was a fez, minus the tassle, and a genie hat that was given to me in exchange for a bunch of mail-art a few years ago. however, as much as these hats look like they might be fezzes, they aren’t. of course, i could join some shrine-like organisation, but the fact is that, in general, i find the whole concept of fraternal organisations totally meaningless. the only fraternal organisation i have even thought about joining, which doesn’t wear fezzes, was e clampus vitus, a few years ago, but my wishes were dashed when i expressed my excitement to join by wearing a red shirt and a vest to my inquiry, which is apparently one of the few wrong things to do among clampers, and i was denied membership. i don’t think i would have gotten along too well with them anyway, as most of them were also eagles and very right-wing-nutjob types.
anyway, my old friend and band-mate howlin’ hobbit recently obtained (i don’t know whether he bought it or it was given to him) a fez from fez-o-rama and was so impressed with it that he joined the order of the fez and has been spreading fezerocity all around for a few weeks, and it was he that finally caused me to get off my duff and order my own fez, which i am currently wearing. yes, i am a geek, deal with it.
i actually wanted to receive my fez before snake suspenderz performed at renton river days, this afternoon, but the UPS delivery didn’t happen in time. i had to leave at 3:00, and the UPS delivery usually doesn’t happen until 4:00, so i wore my touque and roughed it.
HAH!
based on what i have read in a variety of places over the past 6 months or so, i have apparently been one of the few negative interactions with 1&1 which have had positive (to me) reprocussions. i just received a phone call from a very pleasant sounding lady who was a 1&1 representative, who wanted to know why i had cancelled my account. when i told her about being bait-and-switched (i only told her an abbreviated version of the entire, sordid story) she agreed that she would probably have done the same thing. then she asked if there was anything 1&1 could do to entice me back, to which i responded “absolutely not”. what i didn’t say is that i would find it rude and insulting if they offered such a deal, and the fact that they offered it made me think even less of them that i already did. i may have been sucked in by the very big stupid, but i learned something from it, which, i suppose, is the important part.
grf…
the paypal module suddenly decided not to add the shipping to the total when people use paypal to check out. it’s always been somewhat wonky, and has required two separate emails and usually a trip to the administration interface, or to my paypal account to figure out exactly what they paid at checkout, but until now it has worked more or less. now, it’s definitely headed towards the “less” side of things. oddly enough, i know practically nothing about how the customer gets from my web site to paypal’s web site and back with presumably encrypted payment information, and now it’s cropped up and is biting me on the ass. i don’t want to have to put an extra page in explaining why i am deficient, especially since every other online company seems to do it more or less seamlessly. i suspect part of it will involve buying a SSL certificate, but i want to examine all my options (of which there may actually be none) before i spend the money to do so.
okay…
so i just noticed that i haven’t posted about the result of my buying PA speakers for Ganesha The Car, so here goes…
MY CAR STEREO IS AWESOME!!
i bought two PA speakers which were installed under the bumpers in front and back. these are speakers that are used outside, for phone announcements in auto lots, or sirens, or that sort of thing. each speaker is 25w, which doesn’t sound like much, but i’ve only had it up to 30 and it’s ear splitting. the volume control goes up to 50, but i don’t think i’m ever going to have it that high. the stereo is now a JVC KD-ABT22, which, again, doesn’t sound like much, but it is much more what i wanted than the original stereo which was the manufacturer’s installation. the new stereo has a fancy removable faceplate that has an auxilliary input jack which i can run directly to my phone (or ipod, or whatever) for inside music, and i’ve got a new switch on the dashboard that lets me turn on the outside PA speakers as well.
i’ve already used the PA at SACBO, at OCF and a couple of other places. i really need to find out what it sounds like to a stationary observer, and to an observer in another car when i whiz by on the freeway, because i have been running the PA speakers on the freeway on occasion.
hee…
so i got another letter from the attorney general for the commonwealth of pennsylvania today. it contained two letters, one from the attorney general’s assistant who was assigned to work on this for me, and the other from joseph quinn of 1&1 internet inc., which is the amusing one. it says:
I am responding to complaint B09-7341 filed against 1&1 Internet Inc.
We understand that you have been unsuccessfull in attempting to cancel your 1&1 internet account.
Your customer ID 19710337 was locked onto a 1-year contract upon the account’s registration. This was a special deal that included discounts and other benefits, saddled with a contract of one (1) year.
However, we certainly do not wish to continue to bill and invoice you for a service that is no longer used or wanted.
In this, was [sic] have set customer ID 19710337 to cancel within the next two (2) weeks time. You will not be billed or invoiced any further for this service. We are currently removing all your relative information from our internal systems.
Furthermore, we can see that you have been trying to cancel for soe time.
As such, [sic] we are refunding your two (2) most recent invoices. Both refunded invoices are for the $59.97 amount. This would bring your refunded total to the $119.94 amount.
Hopefully, this will resolve any outstanding complaints that you may have.
let’s examine this a bit more closely…
i was unsuccessful in cancelling my account, because after repeated attempts to do so, your employees refused to listen or respond appropriately to my requests. despite your claims otherwise, when i signed up with 1&1, it was with the understanding that i was signing a three (3) month contract, and the first i ever heard about a 1 year contract was after i made the second payment for 3 months.
at the same time, if i had known that it was going to be this easy to break a one-year contract, i wouldn’t have rasied so much of a stink about it, and simply written to the attorney general when i first had my suspicions that i had been bait-and-switched.
i am currently under a one (1) year contract with my new host provider, which provides me with better quality, more reliable and more industry-compatible service, for around $85 a year. if i had maintained the one (1) year contract with 1&1, i would have had less reliable, less industry-compatible service with a greater possibility of being blacklisted for sharing an IP address with a spammer or a phisher, and i would have had to pay around $200. if that’s what you call “discounts and other benefits”, then i suggest you invest your money in a quality english-language dictionary. it might help with your grammar as well.
i don’t have any complaints with the resolution of my claim, however i will still recommend against using 1&1 services to my clients, because i disagree with your sales tactics and how this complaint had to be dealt with in order to reach this conclusion.
rejoice!
1&1 internet has decided that i really did have a contract that was only 3 months, because they have decided to release me from that contract, as i requested, plus refund the last two invoices (totalling about $120, hooray!) and no longer hassle me about having a contract that expires in december…
of course this happened after they were contacted by the attorney general for the commonwealth of pennsylvania (where they’re located) and by the better business bureau…
i wish it didn’t have to go this far, but at the same time, i’m really glad that they didn’t push it any further, because i was prepared to get really nasty with them, and i doubt that it would have been pleasant regardless of how it came out.
in other news, there are now pictures of the oregon country fair online. there aren’t as many pictures as last year, but that is primarily because it rained sunday and there’s only so many pictures of wet, muddy hippies that one can take before it starts to get redundant. my physical birthday was while i was at the fair. that day, i played two shows for the fremont players, plus i played an open mike at the morningwood odditorium, i played the midnight (eastern time) show on the main stage, for which i got a custom-printed bandana, and i played an 11:00 pm show at the ritz. all in all, i would say that it was one of the better birthdays i have had in quite a while.
back from OCF
i arrived on tuesday and left on monday. sunday it rained – HARD – all day, so sunday night was a little muddy and monday morning was complicated by the fact that the safety crew decided that nobody could drive past the craft lot. i was efficient and took half my load out sunday night, and so i was able to get the rest out in one load, early this morning… it was really muddy, i was being facetious before. OCF happens in what, in the wintertime, is a cross between a bog and a riverbed, and it doesn’t take much rain at all to bring things to a complete standstill. nevertheless, we were one of the few theaters that did all our shows in spite of the rain, and because we had an awning and convenient food booths handy, we had fairly large audiences for both shows in spite of the mud.
the other days were better though. saturday was my birthday. i did two shows, one at noon and one at 3:00, i did the open mic at morningwood with my long flute and digital delay at 5:30, the “midnight” show (which is actually at 9:00, midnight eastern time) and a show at the ritz at 11:00, plus i spent 2 hours in the sauna.
i’ve got a whole bunch of pictures, but i haven’t got them organised yet. more later.
whee!
i was super efficient (and had a job that i didn’t have to do) yesterday, so i’m going to the fair a day early. see you next week! 😀
bleh…
portland yesterday: we got up at some ungodly early hour and i drove to portland while moe did half of her homework. then we had breakfast at the cadillac café with moe’s friend holly, who, for one reason or another, we haven’t seen since the day we got married. after breakfast, we went to moe’s mother’s house, which is actually in milwaukie, whereupon, once the doggies were secure, i proceded to take a nap for a couple of hours – which probably made all the difference in my mood later on. i came to about the time people started arriving. apart from anne, nancy, moe’s mom, and bill, a friend of anne’s, who are there all the time, there were elena and ralph, old friends of moe’s mom, and their friend greg, who looked like he was about 15 (moe later told me that he’s probably in his early 20s), and “bert” (alberta? roberta?) and bill #2. i’m not exactly sure who they are, or were, friends of, but bill #2 was more than a little deaf, he was very opinionated to the point of racism, and he liked to tell everybody about his opinions whether they liked it or not, because he was deaf enough that he spoke very loudly and was able to be heard by the neighbours across the street. of course, because of the fact that it wasn’t my house and i wasn’t even completely sure who the guy was, i couldn’t say anything, and the primary residents of the house (anne, nancy and bill #1) were too “polite” (or too afraid) to say anything to him – he’s apparently a retired military “hero” or something like that – which meant that most of the time from then until we left was spent in avoiding conversations with him. moe later said that “bert”, his wife, apparently doesn’t even like him any longer. there was something odd about greg, too. i’m not quite able to put my finger on exactly what it was, but his behaviour in general seemed to be somewhat affected, like he wasn’t exactly sure of how to act. and, at one point, he said something along the lines of “god fucking damnit”and stormed out of the house, with no further explanation. when asked about it, ralph and elena both said that it was “probably nothing” and that apparently he did this sort of thing fairly frequently. there was a whole bunch of tobacco smoking going on, not the least of which was by anne, a retired nurse who has had at least one stroke already. it was all i could do not to say something rude about it. when i first encountered this dysfunctional family group, almost 12 years ago, i described them as a real-life situation comedy but now, 12 years later, i would describe them as barely tolerable, and that only because they are my wife’s family. if not for that, i would very likely have nothing to do with any of them, in much the same way that i currently have nothing to do with my parents… and for a lot of the same reasons.
and that’s not to mention the fact that two of our three doggies are traumatised by all of the fireworks going off everywhere. moe gave them a zanax and that quieted them down a little, and the bark collar (an ingenious little device that has an electronic sensor which senses a bark happening and sprays a little eucalyptus into the dog’s face every time they bark) helped a little as well, but yesterday was generally a stressful day for everyone. fortunately we decided to return home before dark, so that when the fireworks were the loudest at least the doggies would have a familiar bed to hide under.
the only good part about the holiday is that now it’s over there’s one fewer days until OCF. i leave on wednesday, and the only reason i can wait is because i don’t have any choice in the matter.
Confirmed: God is slightly gay
Confirmed: God is slightly gay – mark morford for god!
bleh
it’s only been less than a week, and the spam has already started regarding who killed michael jackson, or that michael jackson isn’t dead. he’s already had two autopsies and there’s already a number of tasteless jokes about him, like this one: since he was made of plastic anyway, they’ve decided to melt him down and make legos out of him, so that kids can play with him for a change. a legal battle going on over the custody of his kids between his ex-wife and his mother. if it weren’t so gawddamn predictable, it would be entirely awful for everybody. as it is, it probably is entirely awful for everybody involved, and predictably boring or sensational depending on whether you were a fan or not.
another order of business cards for NBAC is on the way, and one is in the works for MIVC. i can’t get helvetica narrow, narrow oblique, narrow bold and narrow bold oblique to load on my mac. i suspect that it is at least partially because of a font-type conflict with which i haven’t adequately dealt.
portland and in-laws saturday, OCF in a week.
so there!
Is it a miracle that Colwich man survived? – i don’t know… is it a miracle that i survived? if it was a miracle for him, then it was for me as well, and vice versa, regardless of what the religious bigwigs say.
finally…
i heard of a group of people at a local university who had devoted their lives to the academic study of ancient egyptian plumbing… they’re called pharaoh faucet majors.
farrah fawcett died today of anal cancer. she was 62.
also, michael jackson (michael jackson, michael jackson) is dead… finally! now all we have to do is hope someone doesn’t bring him back as a real zombie.
THIS…
this is why i have the opinion that, even before my injury, in general, people are just too stupid to live, and specifically, when it surrounds situations involving me, they simply don’t have a clue where i’m coming from, as if i were from another planet or something, and they simply have no frame of reference with which to relate.
i got a disk in the mail yesterday, which contains all of the material that my attorney used to get my SSDI claim approved. it contains, among (MANY) other things, a “psyciatric review technique narrative” by dr. steven t. haney, dated june 17, 2005, wherein he wrote “He would do best in settings with minimal interpersonal contact as this would be less stressful for her.”
😮 :???
i am not making this up. dr. steven t. haney wrote “He would do best in settings with minimal interpersonal contact as this would be less stressful for her” about me.
okay, this guy is presumably a doctor, which means that he actually graduated from grammar school, and thus, should know that “Each pronoun agrees with their anticedent“. furthermore, i don’t even know who he is, so i’d be willing to bet that he knows at least as much about me, which is clearly obvious since he doesn’t even know my gender – despite the fact that it is clearly printed at the top of the page, “This is a … male who sustained a left anterior parietal intraparenchymal hemorrhage secondary to an AV malformation…”. i’d be willing to bet that, even though he doesn’t appear to have a clue about my gender, he could wax poetic about the meaning of my left anterior parietal intraparenchymal hemorrhage…
and yet, this guy, who doesn’t know me from neither adam nor eve, had a say in denying my SSDI benefits for three years. and people wonder about why my opinion about life is so negative… 😐
SACBO
pictures of SACBO. nothing particularly outstanding happened, except for the fact that i ran into yet another old hippy that i knew 35 years ago, truckin’ dave… this is too much of a coincidence to be considered a coincidence any longer. now i’m absolutely convinced that God is talking to me, all i’ve got to do is figure out what He’s saying.
more later. i’ve got to do my husbandly duty and mow the lawn dandelions…
shows and anniversary
snake suspenderz today (thursday) at the queen anne farmers’ market, 3:00 pm until (potentially) 7:00 pm.
SACBO, friday, saturday and sunday. busy. not posting anything unless it’s outstanding and amazing.
we’re not sure because they’re still deciding whether or not it’s going to include us, but at this point it looks very much like the fremont philharmonic will not be playing at the solstice parade on saturday, primarily because they haven’t decided where it would happen, if it does happen (peter toms is being pushed around by whatever council subcommittee is in charge of the parade), plus our trumpet player just had a baby yesterday and our saxophonist has another gig. that means that, potentially, i’m going to have two days of vending at the solstice festival. woo… hoo?
11th wedding anniversary sunday. still don’t know whether or not we’re doing anything special, because of SACBO and an agility trial that moe has scheduled.
and they call me a terrorist…
Helios Homeopathy Plutonium (Homoeopathic Proving) – £14.00, direct from london, or over internet.
the bbb
i got a call this morning from the better business bureau. at first i thought that they were exceptionally efficient in dealing with my 1&1 complaint, but this was the better business bureau of alaska, washington and oregon, and the bbb with whom i filed my complaint was the bbb of washington DC and eastern pennsylvania. nevertheless what they had to say was exciting… at first…
the upshot of the call is that i have been invited to become accredited with the bbb, at an A+ rating, based on the extensive background check that they did of hybrid elephant and its two DBAs, Nataraja Music Service (no web site, although i still own the domain name) and Rent-A-Geek.
the difficult part is that it basically consists of “free” advertising that they provide for me, if i pay them $550 a year for accreditation. i told the guy that, up until less than a month ago, i didn’t even have $550, and regardless, $550 would be a significant portion of my yearly income.
the latest piece of the 1&1 fiasco
i figured that i would file a fraud complaint with the police concerning 1&1. my experience has been that frequently the person who goes to the authorities first is the one who gets the authorities’ sympathy, and if you don’t go to the authorities until they come looking for you, even if you’re the one who is “right”, they have a tendency to look at whatever you say with suspicion, simply because someone else complained about you.
so i called the auburn police department to file a fraud complaint. even though our address is in auburn, the auburn police department doesn’t serve our area, because it is in the “unincorporated area” of king county, and is, thus, covered by the king county sheriff’s department. the king county sheriff’s department won’t take a fraud complaint, because there’s nothing they can do about it – despite the fact that fraud is a crime, they said that it is a civil matter, not a criminal one. they recommended that i file a complaint with the better business bureau, so i did. my complaint number is 0EC37-D0640-8140C-191A4-D2E85-C1D85-E0.
they want me to wait 30 days before inquiring about my complaint, and i’d be willing to bet that, complaint or no, 1&1 is going to try to contact me prior to that 30 day period. at this point, it’s a waiting game. we’ll see what happens.
bring it ON!
i got another email from 1&1 today, which said <ominous music>
please find the attached screenshots showing the offer you acceptted & the terms of said offer INCLUDING THE 12 MONTH CONTRACT.
with three attachments.
the first attachment is a screen shot from their current web site with the “specials” that they offer, all of which include a 12 month contract – but none of which i agreed to.
the 2nd attachment is the funny one. they said that it’s a screen shot of the contract i agreed to, except for the following items: 1) i never agreed to that particular contract. 2) it says “Recurring Payments, $19.95 per month; 1 time setup fee, $9.95”, and it has verbiage about a 12 month contract. the document i agreed to said “Recurring Payments, $9.95 per month; 1 time setup fee, free” and it had verbiage about a 3 month contract. finally, the “free domain” in their screen shot is blurred out so that i shouldn’t be able to read it, but i can make out enough to be able to tell that it is not my domain.
the 3rd attachment is a screen shot that i faxed to them, that shows their offer of an unlimited account for $9.95 per month, with no setup fee and no mention of a 12 month contract, except in very tiny print at the bottom – which, on my print, is actually not there!
furthermore, none of the three attachments have anything like a date on them, whereas the 5 items i faxed to them all have very clear dates on them.
okay… bring it ON!
hah HAH!
so i called up 1&1 this morning and explained that i had cancelled my account because when i signed up for it, it was a month-to-month contract for $9.95 a month, and i DID NOT sign up for anything different (and i’ve got the prints to prove it), and that if they attempted to debit my account it would notify the authorities, because the account has been cancelled.
the lady replied “oh, in that case i’ll make a note not to debit your account any further. is there anything else i can help you with?”
i just got an email from them threatening me with an interruption in my service…8) i’ve already moved all of my domains, so an “interruption of service” from their point of view won’t make an awful lot of difference in the long run… 8)
of course they’re probably going to sic the collection agency on me next. fortunately i’ve got the prints, with dates of the web pages about the account i really signed up for, to prove that i’m right, so they won’t get too far…
HAH!
i got an email from 1&1 today, saying that my (now inactive) credit card will be debited for the next three months according to the cotnract that i DIDN’T SIGN. i look forward to calling them tomorrow, telling them that if any money is removed from that particlular accont, the authorities will be notified, and then gloating when they demand a new credit card number and i refuse to give it to them… BOY do i look forward to that situation…
Ganesha the post
i picked up my PA speakers from TC Auto today, and i made an appontment at Car Toys on friday for them to upgrade my stereo and install the PA speakers with a switch, so that i can play music either inside, or outside the car. this is an upgrade that i’ve been dreaming about almost ever since i first painted Ganesha the Car – not least because of the fact that the current stereo has sticky buttons and when i use them to switch from one radio station to another, the buttons get stuck in the “activate” position and i end up with 3 buttons that all point to the same radio station… which is quite annoying.
in preparation for SACBO, i repainted a whole bunch of the car, particularly on the front and drivers’ side door, where the paint had come off. if i were to do it all over again, i would probably do something along the lines of taking emery paper to the parts of the car that i was going to paint. but it would have been difficult, because its not as though i would be painting a big area or a solid pattern, and sanding the entire car would have made the white parts dull in comparison to the bright, shiny black and red. i still need to redo the red lines of text, but i may or may not get to that before SACBO, simply because it really is rather difficult. i may have to borrow the community paint pot again some time, because the ganesha yantra on the roof is starting to flake off, and i don’t think i have the right colours to fix it without it being painfully obvious.
also, i found that costco carries aquapel which is the one thing i really missed about going to jiffy lube. now my life without jiffy lube is complete.
today is the last day of my “contract” with 1&1, and i haven’t heard anything from them about renewing. i’ll try to log into my account tomorrow, and if i still can i’ll probably call them and remind them that i am not a customer of their any longer. i still haven’t heard anything about pipeline data yet, but with a 5-figure bank account thanks to SSDI, i’m a little less concerned about $300 as i was previously. also the bank said that they wouldn’t be getting back to me for 90 days, so they’ve still got a month to go.
too many spoons this weekend
so i went white water rafting on saturday. it started with getting up at zero dark thirty so that i could leave at 6:30 to get to st. fred’s house by 8:00. then it was breakfast at st. fred’s (bacon, eggs and hashbrowns, thanks to st. gordy) and off to cashmere, which is where the party ended. then it was getting all geared up, wet-suit, PFD (personal floatation device) and paddle, whereupon we were bussed west of leavenworth, about 14 miles up river to where we put in. it was way better than the last time i went, primarily because i didn’t actually fall in the water – although i had a hand, literally, in rescuing the guy in front of me (howard? steve?) when he fell in. once we got out, there was a barbecue, and then the ride home, which was fairly quiet because we were too tired to talk much. it was fun, but i used up way too many spoons, which meant that instead of being efficient and mowing the lawn yesterday, i slept most of the day.
moe didn’t go with us white water rafting because she had an agility trial saturday and sunday. it was cool for her, too, because in two days, two of her dogs earned their NATCH (North American Agility Trial Champion). one of the dogs, magick, had been trying for her NATCH for several months, but the other one, zorah, just breezed right through it, which was exciting, even if i wasn’t there to see it. so we went out to dinner last night to celebrate.
i got two T-shirts, on saturday, from T-shirt Hell (where the bad t-shirts go) that say “Tuba Hero”. i have a rehearsal later this evening and i intend on wearing one of them, just to see how many people notice. i’m also going to mow the lawn dandelions this morning, hopefully before it gets too hot.
um… still ergh, but not anywhere near as much.
i’m still coughing intermittently. i went to see chris a few days ago and he gave me some Clear Mountain Air Tea Pills. the recommended dose is 8 pills 3 times a day, but i found that they produce extremely bitter tasting phlegm, and i decided to reduce the dosage to 8 pills once a day because that way the bitter taste was less pronounced.
i’m still rather amused about the disparity between what i read and largely agree with at pharyngula and the stuff, which if PZ myers knew i was reading, would probably put him in a tizzy, namely my general acceptance of things like acupuncture, chiropractic, homeopathy, and hinduism. things like my ear, and my back – i know enough about chiropractic that i can instruct someone who has never done it before in the correct way to “crack” my back to make the pain disappear (and stay gone for 2-3 years) that the doctor said was “a virus” that i would simply have to put up with in my shoulder (when i was in high school) – and the fact that when i take certain homeopathic and/or herbal medicines, things go away a lot more quickly than they would if i were treating them with “conventional” medicines… or the fact that, regardless of how little evidence there is to prove the existence of God, i don’t just believe, i know that God exists, because i am in constant communication with Him (for lack of a better term). i really wonder how a guy who can be rational and reasonable – and, more importantly, correct – so much of the time, can be so pig-headed and ignorant so much of the time. and then i remember that, for all of the proof that i accept as real, i can’t actually show that proof to anyone.
oh well… 😐
i haven’t been posting as much because the weather has been ridiculously hot for the past week or so, and i’ve been keeping the computers turned off as much as possible… and there hasn’t been very much in the way of postable stuff happening anyway, apart from the usual death, destruction and politics. it’s cooler and overcast today, but it’s still pretty hot. i built a shelf for the air conditioner that we got last year – the “universal air conditioner support” that i bought at home depot wouldn’t work – so now, theoretically, all i have to do is block up the rest of the window that remains open when the air conditioner is in use – which i will probably do with styrofoam window insulation – and we’ll have a functioning air conditioner in the house.
i went to a thing that was advertised to me as an “art car” show on tuesday at roosevelt high school. it turned out that Ganesha was the only “real” art car there – there was a local amphibious car, which had an anchor labeled “emergency brake” and was made up to look like a boat, but most of them were “muscle cars”, complete with shiny, polished engine compartments, flames, and trophies. i was really surprised that a roosevelt high school student walked up and asked me if that was sanskrit, and then proceded to talk with me about a sanskrit tattoo that she wanted to get. also one of the roosevelt staff was actually able to read my car, which is unusual under normal conditions, but this lady wasn’t a hindu, and wasn’t from india. she said she was from the philippines, and her father was a pandit, though, and that made all the difference.
i’m going white water rafting in eastern washington tomorrow with st. fred and a bunch of his cronies, including st. gordy of boehnghytte, so i won’t be posting anything tomorrow. if anything outstanding happens, i’ll probably post again on sunday… or whenever i feel like it.
ergh… 8/
ergh… although not quite as much ergh as last week. it’s been really hot the past few days, to the point where i almost feel as though i’m melting, or something like that. plus i’m still getting over being sick for the past month and a half or so. i don’t feel “sick” and haven’t for the past couple of weeks, but i definitely don’t feel “healthy” either… i’ve been short of breath and coughing intermittently, and while i feel a great deal more “energetic” than i did a month ago, i still feel exhausted a lot of the time. i don’t feel like i could do as many things in the day as i “normally” can, although i have been doing a lot of “normal” stuff that i couldn’t do a month ago, anyway…
i’m upgrading the stereo and putting in a PA speaker in Ganesha the Car, which is something i’ve wanted to do for a long time (and, no, this isn’t being done with SSDI money, it’s being done with moisture festival money). now i’ll be able to play chants and suchlike at parades and shows, which is good because i’ve got a show coming up tomorrow at roosevelt high school (it’s not going to be ready for that) and SACBO is coming up in a couple of weeks.
the fremont philharmonic has a recording session this evening. we’re hoping to have a CD ready by OCF.
i cancelled my account with 1&1 (hooray) with no major problems (cirquedeflambe.com hasn’t switched DNS servers yet, but that’s because wally – who hasn’t actually been a part of the cirque for 8 years or so – is the registrant, and he can’t be bothered to change it, a situation we’re trying to change, but not until it’s running on the new host server), although i did recall their saying that my account was set to expire on 12/08/2009 and i was tempted to read it as august 12, except that i’m absolutely certain that i did not sign up for an account that ended on december 8, and i’m still mad enough about their baiting-and-switching me that i don’t want to call and tell them that i’m not paying them any more money – in fact, conveniently, my credit card which has been used to pay for the account up until now has been cancelled (because of pipeline data) and if they attempt to bill any more to it, the police will get involved. so i feel like by not calling them to confirm that my account has been cancelled, perhaps i’ve gotten a little bit of mine back for their baiting-and-switching behaviour.
ERGH!
for a holiday weekend this has been pretty much a total bust. i hope that i’ve gotten all of my hardships out of the way for this summer, otherwise i’m going to be a very unhappy camper indeed.
i had folklife gigs with banda gozona on friday and the BSSB and simon’s birthday party with the fremont phil on saturday. i went to the banda gozona gig because i had this bizarre notion that “the show must go on” (even though i was sick AS A DOG and probably should have stayed home regardless of whose “sacred tradition” i was violating). i didn’t go to the BSSB gig or the fremont phil gig, and by sunday i was feeling a lot better, although my appetite was still not what it should be and taking out the trash fatigued me to the point where i had to sit down and breathe heavily for half-an-hour afterwards (and it’s still not much better today)…
i got the web site up and running, more or less, friday or saturday, but i was sick AS A DOG those days. i had some problems figuring out the database stuff, primarily because its my impression that every host server that runs mysql does it slightly differently than every other host server that runs mysql. once i had gotten the database quirks worked out i had to upload a whole bunch of graphics because they didn’t download correctly from the old server – which doesn’t really surprise me that much except for the fact that i was sick AS A DOG and could barely sit up without going into another round of vomiting. and then, once i had the graphics uploaded i noticed that some of them still weren’t displaying correctly, so i had to deal with the new server’s tech support queue – which is quite prompt, although i really wish that there was a phone number that i could call instead of having to file a ticket and then wait for a response – to get that straightened out… and it’s still not entirely straightened out although the parts that aren’t are not visible to the outside observer (they have to do with rewrite rules in my .htaccess file which are currently commented out so that the graphics are visible).
also, one of my clients – The Cirque de Flambé – is registered with godaddy, which won’t let the registered owner of a domain change the DNS settings of the domain he owns to a new host, and requires fax confirmation, plus a week turnaround time to change the DNS settings, which is so totally ridiculous that it is beyond imagination.
not only that, but i called car toys and talked to a guy who said that he could do what i wanted to do with my car stereo, and that i should bring my car down on sunday so that he could take a look at it, but the simple act of walking down to my car exhausted me so much that i decided to put it off until today, however when i went to car toys today, the guy wasn’t there and won’t be back until thursday, and the guy that i talked to said that to do what i want to do (upgrade the stereo and put in a feature so that i can play music on the outside of the car) requires “body modification” and the only guy who could do it was the guy who won’t be back until thursday…
on the positive side of things, i got written confirmation that SSDI has approved my claim (finally) and not only that, but i got a whopping enormous check from the united states treasury (only about half of the check that i got when i quit openwave, but still, it’s not often that a person sees a check written out to them that is 5 figures). the bank is closed today, of course, but my impression is that this will pay for a workshop for me with quite a bit left over to do things like pave the driveway, replace the windows, put in new floors and generally spiff up the house a fair amount.
i’ve been sitting up too long, however, and there’s a star wars marathon that starts in a few minutes. more later
but is it music?
from kiki the hood, human theremin, comes the question “but is it music?” to which i respond with the classic john cage quote “which is more musical: the sound of a truck driving past a gravel quarry or the sound of a truck driving past a music school?”
only these guys did it with a tractor:
how _not_ to get me as a customer…
i have to find another host provider. one that isn’t sleazy and will continue to rip me off, one that will allow all of my domains and one which will give me the maximum amount of disk space, bandwidth and mySQL databases for the least amount of money. hostgator and hostmonster are out of the question, because they won’t take all of my domains – there’s this sticky phrase in both of their terms of service that says, essentially, if you post a web site that doesn’t agree with what we say about “gawd”, then we won’t allow you to host it here, which eliminates the church of tina right away. of course i could just drop the church site all together, but that is something that i simply refuse even to consider at this point.
here’s another example of dipshit tech support that doesn’t get me as a customer:
salamandir:
do you allow web sites to be hosted on your service that contain “profane” material, such as can be seen at http://www.ebeneezer.org/ ?
Scott Abrams:
i cannot find any active hosting account for the domain ebeneezer.org with us
salamandir:
i know… i’m in the process of doing my homework in preparation for switching host providers, because my current one won’t allow ebeneezer.org and didn’t tell me until after i already had the domain up and running…
Scott Abrams:
ok
salamandir:
i wantt o know if <REDACTED> will allow me to put up ebeneezer.org, or if i should look for a host somewhere else.
Scott Abrams:
for that please take an hosting account with us
Scott Abrams:
for that please contact our billing dept
Scott Abrams:
Please contact them by posting a ticket to BILLING dept by
https://<REDACTED>/Or urgent needs, you can contact them over phone on billing hours.
1-<REDACTED>
10AM – 4PM EDT Monday – Friday
salamandir:
if i “take an hosting account” with you, and you decide that i can’t put up ebeneezer.org, then i will be in the same position i am now. what i want to know is if you will allow me to put up that site before i take a hosting account with you.
Scott Abrams:
please refer for more info related to hosting
Scott Abrams:
http://<REDACTED>/web-hosting-plans.html
salamandir:
that only tells me how much it will cost, not whether or not a web site with “profane” content will be allowed.
Scott Abrams:
please select any of the mentioned hosting plans
Scott Abrams:
after taking an hosting account with us
Scott Abrams:
we will restore your account with us
Scott Abrams:
and your domain will works fine from our server
salamandir:
i don’t have an account. i am wondering if i should get an account… do you speak and read english? i’m getting the impression that i should go somewhere else… 8/
Scott Abrams:
do you have any active hosting on ebeneezer.org?
salamandir:
what do you mean? it is currently a web site that is accessible by internet, and people hit it fairly regularly…
Scott Abrams:
ok
Scott Abrams:
do you want to transfer the hosting of ebeneezer.org with us?
salamandir:
that’s what i have been talking about all along…
Scott Abrams:
ok
Scott Abrams:
please contact our billing dept for a new hosting account
Scott Abrams:
Please contact them by posting a ticket to BILLING dept by
?https://<REDACTED>/
?
?Or urgent needs, you can contact them over phone on billing hours.
?
?1-<REDACTED>
?10AM – 4PM EDT Monday – Friday
salamandir:
not until i know wnether or not that domain will be allowed!
Scott Abrams:
or can email them at billing@<REDACTED>
Scott Abrams:
for more info please contact our billing dept
they don’t have a toll free phone number, they’re on the east coast, which means that by 1:00 pm they’re already closed, and they employ pathetic geek-wannabes like scott abrams to do tech support over “live chat” for them. i guess i’m not going to be hosting with <REDACTED>…
at this point i’m consdidering ANRHost (who replied almost immediately with a message that said “yes we will host all your sites”), i haven’t gotten a reply from DH2 dot net yet, and i’m looking at others, but the whole thing is really depressing. as bfly says, “<southern drawl>that freedom yew want is gonna cost ya’, boah.</southern drawl>”
bellingham &C.
bellingham yesterday.
the banda gozona gig was cancelled, but i went through mount vernon anyway, to check up on a couple of places i used to live. the house on thillberg road has been completely replaced with a new, bigger house. from there i drove up through sedro woolley and then across to chuckanut, and then north on chuckanut to bellingham. i was alarmed to see how much development has gone on on the outskirts of mount vernon. the places that were big open fields full of cows and swans when i lived there are now seemingly endless tracts of identical, cheap-looking houses, with more on the way, almost all the way out to mud lake (which is now, ironically enough, called “clear” lake). there has also been a fair amount of development in sedro woolley. also, the building south of sedro woolley that had the “Talkie Tooter” sign that i always used to wonder about has a bright, new, spiffy sign that says Rothenbuhler Engineering, which is a lot less confusing… all thanks to internet (which didn’t exist when i actually lived in mount vernon).
so anyway, i got to bellingham about 1:00 and smoked a bowl or two with ken and kamalla, and then we went up to the college where they were having a low rider show in red square. when i wanted to have an event that involved driving on red square, the people in charge said that red square was “too unstable” to drive on, but the low rider show was a whole bunch of cars parked all around the fountain. i guess when i wanted to do it there were “political” reasons for preventing me from doing so, and that was the excuse they used. the low rider show was a bunch of people from various low rider clubs from seattle, although i did see one or two cars that said they were from bellingham, and a bunch of “cholos” (kamalla’s word for them) – hispanic/mexican culture folks – but hardly any actual WWU students, which i thought was rather unusual. there were also about half the cops in bellingham, apparently because they were worried that there might be some racially motivated violence from the large quantity of black and hispanic (read “not from around here”) people. of course there wasn’t any violence, and there were a bunch of dancers from mexico that were performing to a CD of the same music that i had originally thought i was going to perform in mount vernon.
then i went out to drive around and “reconnect” with the town that i lived in for 15 years before moving to seattle, getting married and having a brain injury. i was really surprised to discover that i remembered where things were that didn’t really make any difference (like Current Industries, one of the places i used to work), and that i remembered all of the secret ways to get various different places. i ran into darol, who was out on a bike ride towards lummi island. i saw this guy from behind who had stopped to pick up some litter by the side of the road and when i drove past him, i realised that it was darol, so i just pulled over to the side of the road and we chatted for half an hour or so. after that i drove around in the lummi reservation, past the lummi island ferry, and back through marietta.
then i went back to “the land” and went to a jam at kenyth’s. he was very surprised to see me, because nobody had told him that i was going to be there, and even more surprised when i said that i had an amp that i wanted to plug my long flute into, until he realised that it was me, who has the capability to play the trombone very quietly, playing into the amp. apparently he was worried that it was going to be some blasting noise that he was going to have to play with. silly kenyth… 8)
i got home around midnight. even despite the fact that the gig in mount vernon was cancelled, overall i would say that my visit to bellingham was a lot of fun and i had great time, and i am going to have to find an excuse to go visit again a lot sooner than i did the last time.
this morning i got verbal confirmation from the SSDI folks in baltimore that my claim for disability has been approved… finally… after 4 denials, three years of waiting, and – HELLO! I HAVE A HOLE IN MY SKULL! there’s no word on how much they’re going to give me yet, or when it’s going to start, but it’s a small step in the right direction.
a few miscellaneous items
the word “fire” is one syllable. not two syllables, not one and a half syllables (whatever that means), one syllable. people who use it as two syllables are simply stupid. it appears in my rhyming dictionary in the list of one-syllable words that includes ire, byre, dire, gyre, hire, lyre, mire, pyre, spire, quire, choir, squire, sire, shire, tire, Tyre, tyre and wire. also, my prosody dictionary (which is more concerned with form than it is with metrics) doesn’t have anything specific to the word “fire”, but what it does have (definitions of ictus, secondary accent, division, foot, iamb, trochee, dactyl, anapest, spondee, pyrrhic, amphibrach, tribrach and amphimacer) seems to indicate that if “ire” is recognisably one syllable, then “fire” is also, recognisably, only one syllable.
Alien Hand Syndrome is a video of a woman who is in recovery after having an AVM rupture, very similar to what happened to me. i am surprised by how similar her experiences are to mine, especially when she says “let go” and had to get her right hand to get her left hand to let go of the wires. this is exactly what i have experienced on a daily basis since my injury, although i have to get my left hand to get my right hand to stop doing stuff it’s not supposed to be doing.
bellingham tomorrow
grf
so the past week or so has been full of emails planning for a gig in mt. vernon for la banda gozona on sunday. there was extra planning involved because the guy who normally does the planning for the group is actually going to be skiing sunday, and was not able to attend, so someone who is not a part of the band – he’s actually one of the dancers that we perform with on occasion – was planning the gig.
except that now he’s not. he has apparently cancelled the gig at the last moment, because the organizers of the gig – the people in mount vernon who wanted to hire us – have apparently decided that they don’t have enough money. that, combined with the fact that there really weren’t enough musicians to cover all the parts (which we don’t usually let get in the way of playing) caused max, the guy who was the temporary organizer, decided to cancel the entire gig.
i had been planning on going up to bellingham after the gig, to visit friends i haven’t seen in a couple years. i’m still going to go to bellingham, but instead of bringing my sousaphone i’m thinking that i’ll bring a couple of long flutes and my delay unit… and my mac laptop that has reason on it…
what else is new?
tee hee
Strickland, Jonathan. “How to Remove a Computer Virus.” 06 April 2009. HowStuffWorks.com. <http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/how-to-tech/how-to-remove-computer-virus.htm> 11 May 2009.
it doesn’t specifically say that you are less likely to get viri if you run mac or linux, but at the same time, all of the instructions for removing computer viri from your system are specifically directed at windows users… 😉
again…
it’s coming down to the time when i should start thinking about switching host providers again. at this point it’s down to either HostGator or HostMonster each of which has their own google “complaints” page – this time i’m doing at least that much more homework… – and both of which have almost identical articles on hostings that suck which is questionable, since it also recommends 1&1… the reason for thinking of hostgator is that they have the balls to post an forum of customer reviews and apparently don’t remove the bad ones. the reason for thinking of hostmonster is that i have a very good friend who is a web designer and he uses hostmonster and speaks glowingly of them. probably going to start the process during the coming week or so, so that when i cancel with 1&1 they can’t screw things up as badly.
pipeline data apparently is apparently aware of the fact that they are running a scam, because when informed that we were going to the police with charges of fraud, they suddenly refunded the $11.95 that they had withdrawn from my bank account after i had cancelled my account with them… up until they were informed that we were going to the police, they had steadfastly refused to refund the money – which they were entitled to because of the contract i didn’t sign – under any circumstances, but when we told them we were going to the police, that is a circumstance under which they will refund it. there’s still no word on the $300 “early termination fee” – i’ve put in a dispute with the bank, and they’ve already started an investigation – but this doesn’t make it look too good for them. it may be a while, but today i’m guessing that i’ll eventually get the “early termination fee” refunded as well.
also… <tee hee> Fart Intensity Detector complete with schematics.
damn!
i have recently discovered that i have been ripped off by two different companies since december. the first one was the host servicie that i was so excited about a few months ago, 1&1 internet, who, i have since discovered, earned an "F" from the Better Business Bureau for “Number of complaints filed against business, Failure to respond to complaints filed against business, Number of complaints filed against business that were unresolved and Overall complaint history with BBB”. they “bait-and-switched” me into a contract for hosting services that ended up costing 12 times more than i would have agreed to, and then, in spite of the fact that their headquarters is in germany, they claimed to not understand when i told them that 4/10 didn’t mean the 10th of april, it meant the 4th of october…
the second company is Pipeline Data Processing, otherwise known as SecurePay, which also has an "F" from the BBB, has a reputation for holding funds, and charging you for things after you’ve already cancelled your account – like they did with me. and they said that it was all in the contract i signed, but i never signed a contract. the contract they sent me when i complained about the $300 withdrawal had a scan of my signature that could have been off a check or something… but i NEVER signed a contract. i was actually lead to believe that there wasn’t going to be any long-term contract.
the thing that pisses me off so much, though, is the fact that i would have learned about these rip-offs simply by typing the name of the company and the word “complaints” into google. instead, i figured that it was okay because the people sounded sincere, and signed up with both of them, and got ripped off. i am not immune to the very big stupid… 😡
i’m going to have to close my business account and open another one, because of pipeline data processing’s propensity for random charges well after my contract was cancelled, i’ve already got an investigation going at the bank, and the pipeline representative recommended that we file a police report for fraud, because they weren’t going to look into it otherwise.
heiney
i did something to my back within the past three days that is causing me enormous pain when i stand or sit… currently i am under the influence of ibuprophen, which diminishes it from enormous pain to a nagging reminder, but at the same time, i think that loading, unloading and re-loading hybrid elephant at the FSM yesterday, and then unloading it again at home this afternoon was no help at all. at this point, i can hope that it goes away or fixes itself soon, because any further medical intervention is more than i can afford.
i made $70 at the FSM. not my best day, but not my worst, either. the next time i know i can go will be in three weeks, because i have a banda gozona gig (in mt. vernon?) in two weeks. also, since i redesigned the site, hybrid elephant has shot to the #1 position when you search for swastika button, which is especially cool since the #2 position is currently occupied by a white supremacist… 8) furthermore, i now occupy position #2 when you search for finest incense in the world, which is exactly what i was hoping would happen!
ned had to cancel, because he’s sick, and his son goes to one of the schools shut down by swine flu H1N1 (pronounced “heiney”). he says that he and his wife and kid have been sick for about a week, and while he doesn’t think he’s got H1N1, the fact that his kid goes to stevenson means that he doesn’t want to take any chances. another school that was shut down due to the overblown H1N1 scare is woodmont, where i went to first through third grade.
The Shit Box™!!
garbage drama
back to mundane stuff…
they haven’t picked up our trash for two months, ever since we switched to once-a-month trash pickup, so i called to find out what was going on. it’s not that we haven’t paid, either, because we haven’t gotten a bill in two months as well. in fact, they sent the bill on the 14th, and it’s probably already been paid, but that’s beside the point. when i called to switch to once-a-month pickup, they told me that it would be on the first thursday of the month. so i put the trash out and they didn’t pick it up, so i called and they said that they had made a mistake, that they would pick it up on the last thursday of the month. so i waited for 3 weeks, put the trash out, and – they didn’t pick it up… 8/
so i decided on another tack, and put the trash out every week last month. they picked up our recycling (which is most of our waste these days, fortunately) on the second and fourth thursdays, just like they’re supposed to, but they didn’t pick up the trash! 8/
so i called them this morning. they told me that the pickup would be on the first thursday of the month, then they changed their minds and said that it would be on the last thursday of the month. then, realising that they had just given me conflicting information, they said that they would check it out and call me back. about a half-hour later, i talked with the dispatcher for the company that covers south king county waste management, who told me that the real pickup date was the thursday of the first full week of the month. not only that, but she said that, because of the fact that customer service was confused about our pickup dates, our address was not even included on the route list that they gave to the driver, which is why we haven’t had a pickup in two months.
that’s all very well and good, i said, but the fact is that our trash hasn’t been picked up in two months, and i’m running out of space. so the dispatcher for south king county says that she will request a “courtesy pickup” (“for no charge”), since there was a screwup on their end. a half-hour or so later, i heard the garbage truck backing up, and fifteen minutes or so after that, i get another call from the dispatcher, who says that they tried to pick up the trash, but the can was too heavy and their driver couldn’t lift it. we have our own, 33 gallon container, which has to be loaded by hand, rather than paying the county for a 35 gallon container that the truck can pick up, and the driver has a weight limit to spare him having to lift heavy trash bags into the truck, so if i wanted our trash picked up, i was going to have to go down and “portion it out” into chunks that were small enough for the driver to lift.
so i broke it down into three garbage bags and the remaining garbage in the can, and supposedly they’re supposed to come back tomorrow, and of course, now that we’re back on the route list, the next trash pickup is supposed to be next thursday… 8/
i’ll believe it when i see it. meanwhile, if i reckoned correctly, we just paid a bill for $60 for the past two months… when, because of a screwup on their part, we weren’t getting any service at all…
grumble, mutter… and they wonder why i get upset about things like this… 8/
REJOICE!
the battle of the computer is over! the linux guru (whose name is francis) and i got my computer working, after three days of mucking about in the inner (read “command-line interface”) workings of the underpinning of kubuntu. when you dig down that deep, you’re not running k/x/ed/ubuntu any longer, it’s actually debian, which is, apparently, a rock-solid piece of software capable of doing many things that k/x/ed/ubuntu screws up, or can’t do at all. it’s now running jaunty jackalope, after having the innards of hardy heron ripped out from its smouldering carcass and having kde4 and the latest linux kernel forcably overwritten. i’m not sure if i really like it yet (it looks way too much like windoesn’t XP), but i can probably get used to it, and/or configure the parts that i don’t like so that they won’t be so annoying.
progress?
i’ve discovered what the problem is with my linux box: i tried to upgrade directly from hardy to jaunty without going through intrepid first. it really wasn’t my fault, i just did what the upgrade application told me to, but that doesn’t make my box any less broken. fortunately, i appear to have found a linux guru on kubuntuforums.net who is the eternal optimist and thinks that i can probably rescue my box without having to reinstall. i’m up for it, but i would also be up for reinstalling if it doesn’t work out. meanwhile i’m learning all about aptitude -f install and dpkg --force-overwrite -i and other arcane goodies that go over the heads of about 90% of the other kubuntu users out there. and my linux box is still broken. oh well…
i got an order for 3000 postcards yesterday, which will ultimately be sent to japan, and i mowed the lawn for the first time this year as well. also i’ve got a BSSB rehearsal later this evening, so despite my broken linux box and my ongoing depression, i’m keeping busy enough that it doesn’t hurt as much.
ETA, 5:00pm: the linux guru i met turned me on to skype, which i now have installed on my mac, so if any of you are inclined to actually talk to me, i can be reached at przxqgl. we didn’t get very far, but i am more convinced than ever that we will actually be able to rescue this box instead of reinstalling it. i’m now doing a remote ssh to the linux box and running all the commands on my mac, which saves me getting confused over which keyboard i’m typing into.
HAH!… sort of… i guess… 8/
so my linux box had a bunch of package updates that it had to install, so i finally got around to installing them today, and when they were done, it told me that i had a version upgrade (jaunty jackalope) that i could install, and so i decided to install it as well. strangely enough, there was something wrong with the upgrade and the ultimate result was that it lost the mouse and keyboard, which meant that i couldn’t log in.
fortunately (sort of), i have the /home on a secondary disk, and i have my calendar backed up on google, so the only thing i can’t immediately access is my email database. i have access to my email accounts, just not the already sent and received email that i have on my computer.
so, the battle of the computer begins again, but it’s all a lot more under control, sort of, than it has been in the past. i have to figure out why the computer apparently isn’t seeing the CD-ROM drive on startup, and i have to figure out why the computer isn’t seeing the mouse and keyboard when it boots from the hard disk, but i have a computer, and a calendar, and the ability to fill orders (if i get any) without too much difficulty, so it’s not a reason to panic and run around like a chicken with it’s head cut off…
phnerb
i had decided that i was going to go to the fremont sunday market on friday, but then i took ganesha the car to a big community festival at magnusson park yesterday, and not only did it rain on and off for about half the day (and, because of an email screwup, i was the only art car there for about 4 hours), but i was so exhausted that i slept most of the day. i’m still really tired, and i think it’s a combination of the fact that i have been sick for the past 2 weeks, along with the generally depressed feeling that i usually get surrounding anything having to do with SSDI. even though the probability is good that i got approved (this time), i don’t know for sure yet, and there have been enough times in the past that haven’t gone well that being depressed after such an event is fairly common. anyway, i slept until 10:00 am (after having gone to bed at 10:30 last night, after having slept for an hour or so on the couch) and went to the FSM to pay for next week… which means that whether or not i feel like going, the fact that i’ve already paid will be an additional impetus to get me going anyway.
merphghbhdh
so “the hearing” happened today.
i got up and almost immediately i perceived that my mood was somewhat sour. it’s not too surprising, because i was up until 1:00 or so last night, playing a gig with snake suspenderz. it was also sort of expected, since, in my meeting with the attorney yesterday, he said that it would be considered “appropriate” for me to act as though i was stressed out and out of sorts, so i didn’t worry about it too much. moe and i got dressed and left for the hearing about the time that i would normally be getting up. strangely enough, the office building that the hearing happened in was a block up the street from top pot doughnuts, so i had doughnuts for breakfast, which while pleasant, gave me a massive sugar rush, followed by a crash which happened just about the time i was going in to the hearing room. moe went first, so they swore me in, and then almost immediately told me to go sit in the hall while moe testified. i’m not exactly sure why they separated us, but it seemed like they deposed moe for about 45 minutes, and then they deposed me. the testimony was more or less the same as it was in my “practice” deposition, yesterday. they discussed what “listing” i fell under and ultimately decided that it was 1202, which is “organic mental health” concerns, which include things like brain injury, with a possibility of 1210, which is “autistic spectrum” mental heath problems, which includes asperger’s syndrome. the psychological “expert” didn’t want to go with 1210 because i haven’t actually been diagnosed with asperger’s, but he agreed with me, and with ned, that i have probably had asperger’s my entire life. the psychological “expert” also asked me about my contrived (but entirely legal) name, which confused me, as it has nothing whatsoever to do with anything even remotely close to my reasons for applying for disability.
what it comes down to is that i won’t know for sure whether the judge decided in my favour or not for four to six weeks, but the attorney said that, according to his experience, there’s a 99% chance that he’ll decide in my favour.
i suppose i should be eccstatic, but in reality, i’m exhausted and depressed and my mood is still sour. i really want to get stoned out of my mind, but i’m still having major coughing spasms. i may get drunk, for the first time in my life, because i can.
update
happy 4/20. i’d be consuming more holy vegetable, but i still am terrifically short of breath and coughing a lot as a result of being sick still. i’ve been vapourising a bit and even that has been causing me to cough. i suppose i could probably make some ghee or something…
they’re putting on a new roof, so that it won’t leak any longer. it’s only about two years overdue, but there’s no point in complaining about it now. the dogs are being quiet, in spite of the roofers right over their heads, making all kinds of noises which dogs would definitely find suspicious. we’ll see how long that lasts.
the $300 withdrawal from my bank account has had a band-aid put on it, but it’s still an open and sucking chest wound. at this point i’m done talking with people until i hear from the bank concerning my contesting of the charges. moe has taken over talking with the people who actually withdrew the money, and considering that i never actually signed anything, combined with the fact that the first time i ever even heard about an “early cancellation fee” was when i checked my bank account on thursday, she seems to think that there’s a more-than-likely chance that there will be a positive (for me) outcome. we’ll see about that, as well… 8/
maybe i’ll go to the fremont sunday market on sunday. one way or the other, i could really use a day of doing nothing but making money, and there’s a good chance, since i haven’t been there in a while, that fremont will be itching for some new incense.
i got another order on the web site, but no corresponding order from paypal, which makes me seriously wonder about whether or not i’ve got it set up right. it should be that you confirm your order on my site, and then transfer to paypal’s secure server to complete your order, and of the three orders i’ve gotten since the site upgrade, two of them have confirmed the order on my site, but not completed their orders on paypal’s secure server. i wrote to one of them, but she was located in the UK and never responded. the new order came in on friday, from a guy in california, according to the site, but i never heard anything from either the customer or from paypal, so i don’t know what happened. the next step is to write to the guy and see what happened.
i’ve got to get my tabs for ganesha the car. also, i have a fremont phil rehearsal this evening.
fucking cunt-shit on a gold-plated platter!!!
i decided to check my bank account. i have only had one order since i unveiled the new site, and i had around $200 the last time i checked, but i was shocked to discover that pipeline data processing – the company i thought was going to help me process credit cards, before they charged me $45 for a month’s worth of services that i didn’t use because my site wasn’t set up for it yet, and subsequently, on april 7th, cancelled the account without ever processing even one credit card through them – had withdrawn $300 from my bank account yesterday! of course, this left me with a -$100 balance, plus a $35 fee from the bank.
naturally, i called them up to find out what was screwy. i didn’t use their services, i hadn’t incorporated their services into my web site, i had been a customer of theirs for less than a month – i originally signed up for a merchant account on march 16th, and cancelled it on april 7th – and they were withdrawing $300 that i didn’t have from an account that, presumably, they didn’t have access to any longer.
they told me that the $300 was an “early termination fee” and that it was “in the contract you signed”.
i didn’t sign any contract.
the entire transaction went on over the phone, and through email, and they have no record of anything other than a typewritten signature, which was not written by me, on a mishmash of text that they said was a contract.
as you can probably imagine, i was not very happy. unfortunately, since my injury, instead of being able to discuss the reasons for my unhappiness in rational words that actually make sense to anyone (including myself) i raged and ranted and stuttered and drooled and made a complete fool of myself to at least 4 different “customer service” representatives, before i finally got fed up with attempting to find out why a company that makes hundreds of thousands of dollars a day was, apparently, unable to waive a $300 “early termination fee” for services that had never been used, and hung up.
i called the bank and told them that $300 had been withdrawn from my account without my approval. they said that someone would be getting back to me “in writing” – read “by snailmail”. they also said that if my account remained in an overdrawn state for more than 10 days, it would be suspended.
$#%&*@$!!%&*@?##!!!%!?!!
hee…
i’m still sick. i went to see a doctor (i am uninsured, so it cost two arms and half a leg!) today. the good news is that i don’t have pneumonia, but i do have bronchitis, so now i have an inhaler (which cost the other half a leg) which is good for 20 days. the doctor said that i would probably be feeling better in a week or so, but that the inhaler would help me get through the banda gozona gig that i have on saturday, the fremont philharmonic rehearsal on monday, and the snake suspenderz gig on thursday. dr. wackaloon (no shit… okay, so he’s not really dr. wackaloon, but his real name is closer to “wackaloon” than you might think) said my blood pressure was a little high – 150/100 – my pulse was high and my oxygen level was low, so he told me to check my blood pressure again in a week, which is another reason to have a sphygmomanometer, one of which i have wanted for about 15 years. he also didn’t believe me when i said that my profession was “freak”. oh well.
plagiarism
gah… i’ve been sicker than i have been in a long time over the past few days, which has left me in a fouler mood than normal, and it hasn’t been being helped at all by the person i mentioned in my last post. i’m on the uphill swing, at this point, but i’m still pretty sick, which is going to be interesting, since i have to take a five-mile walk to pick up Ganesha The Car from the shop this morning, and later on i have a fremont philharmonic rehearsal, which is probably not going to end up happening, because i’m so sick.
i was reviewing my web statistics a few days ago, and discovered that the person, a nandita prabhu who has several other blogs as well as the one linked in my previous post (which no longer exists), posted a new entry in one of her blogs called Plagiarism, where she outlines the process by which she gets artwork to post in her various blogs. she says things like:
People allow me to use these copyright images (I take their permission)
and
I think it is “Ok” for my readers to “borrow” the content of my blog but please ask me before you decide to do so.
and
To sum up, You want to borrow something that’s fine all you have to do is “ASK”.
not only that, but all of her blogs are released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License, but the images that she hotlinked from me, and the images from other sources that i checked on his “The Broken Tusk” blog (which is now deleted) all had very clear watermarks or other indications that they were actually copyright to other places, and there’s no indication, not only that she has permission to relicence the images, but that she has permission to use the images at all.
strangely, when i received email from her on friday, she said
i had no idea of this at all. Infact I have been doing this from so long and i had no idea its wrong. Is it a problem even if i say that the pic is from this website ( like source) ?
and other things that, if i hadn’t actually read her blogs – all of them – would make me believe that she has any idea that this is the wrong way to approach “borrowing” other peoples’ artwork.
normally i don’t give much credibility to any laws governing “intellectual property”, but in this case, she’s coming across to me as one thing, and she’s posting on her blogs something entirely the opposite, which makes me very suspicious indeed. it seems to me like she is trying to come across in her email as a clueless newbie, and in her blog as a person who has her shit together, which is not a way to gain my confidence in the least.
i commented on her blog, and have received several emails from her. i guess i’m going to have to wait to see how this all works out, but at this point, i don’t hold out much hope. i’m certainly not going to prosecute myself, but considering how many other web sites she “borrowed” artwork from (several of which replace the hotlinked graphics with ones that say things like “this image stolen from…” – i’d be willing to bet that someone else will, unless she gets her shit together.
random
i took Ganesha The Car to the shop today to get the automatic lock swich replaced, because it had stopped working. fortunately i didn’t have to pay for it, because of some design and printing that i had done for the shop earlier in the week. but it turned out that it wasn’t the switch that was broken, so now i have to take it back on friday so that they can take the door panel off and investigate the wiring. also, El Elefante Híbrido is apparently an article more or less about Ganesha The Car (from what my limited spanish plus a web-translator-thing tell me), but it’s too bad he tried to hotlink my image (which is how i found out about him). if i knew enough spanish, i would comment about hotlinking graphics, but i don’t, so i probably won’t do anything except be thankful for the traffic he’s sending my direction.
snake suspenderz has a gig at the skylark cafe on the 23rd, and earlier that day i’m meeting with the lawyer, because on the 24th is my hearing to determine whether or not i’m going to get disability. according to my impression, there’s still a 50/50 chance that i’m going to be approved, and if i don’t, it will be pretty much the same as it is now, but i’m under increasing amounts of stress because of it. then, on the 25th, i’ve got an art car show at magnuson park, which is either going to be really exciting or really relieving, depending on what happens the day before.
i got Bruno Bozetto’s “Allegro Non Troppo” on DVD, and i can play it on my mac, but the “Command+Shift+3” screen-capture function is disabled, for, perhaps obvious, but not very convenient reasons, which means that i’m going to have to figure out some other way to capture the picture of the snake that’s the primary character in Stravinsky’s “The Firebird”, which i want to propose as the snake suspenderz logo. i also got the 14 Sequenzas by Luciano Berio on CD the other day. i played Sequenza V (dedicated to the memory of Grock) for a juried audition when i was in college, and i know the guy, Stewart Dempster, for whom it was written. when i played it, there were two women in the jury who were trying, in vain, to suppress their giggles, and when it was all over, i whispered to them that it was okay to laugh, because it was written for a clown, at which point they cracked up.
along with the Odd Factoids (in the place of most news reporting, which is simply too depressing to read any longer), here’s a couple of links that i read recently:
God Hates Shrimp – the logical (if there is such a thing) response to God Hates Fags.
Cybersecurity Bill Proposes Unprecedented Government Power Over the Internet – yes, i am still a terrorist. get used to it.
brain injury, paypal, credit card accepting, spam and frustration – in that order
so, now that the moisture festival is over with for another year, i decided to get to work on the “accepting credit cards using some other service than paypal” part of my web site. they have been sending me two or three messages a day concerning different aspects of getting my site set up. i had told the guy initially when i signed up that i wasn’t actually going to be able even to look at email about the web site until after the moisture festival was over, so i was somewhat surprised when i got a statement in the email this morning, saying that my checking account had been billed $33. i called them up, and the customer service lady said that she couldn’t help me, and transferred my call to a sales representative, who, after some convincing, admitted that he had the email where i said that i wasn’t going to be able to start until april, but said he couldn’t help me, and transferred me back to customer service.
this is after i got an email, last week, in my “spam” folder (in other words, it was downloaded directly from the server into my “deleted items” mailbox, which gets deleted when i shut down the computer). the email contained a “From:” address at CheckCare.com – which i seem to recall them saying something about when i signed up with the credit card accepting place – but nothing else that indicated where it was from or who i should contact if i had any questions – which was the primary reason it ended up in the spam box. the email also contained a “Merchant” identification which was “SPAY60102”, which i considered rather odd, and a list of fees, most of which were $0, except for the last one, a “Gateway fee” for $11.85. i called the credit card accepting place and went through a couple of hours of being connected to people who reputedly were going to be able to help me, but finding out that they couldn’t help me and putting me on hold while they transferred me to someone who could. at one point i ended up being put on hold, which was answered by someone who not only doesn’t work for either of the companies in question, but works for one of their competitors. needless to say, i hung up and called in again. as it is, the whole process of getting set up to accept credit cards is way more irritating than a person with a brain injury – such as myself – can handle, and i certainly don’t want to be the focus of two competing companies attempts to get me to give their company money i don’t have to begin with. eventually, after two hours and calling the main number 3 times, a guy answered who, before i had the chance to regail him with the entire sordid story, said that he “was aware of the situation” that had caused me to have to call back three times, and he would figure it out and get back to me… and i’m still waiting to find out whether or not it was spam or an actual bill.
you would think that a company which presumably does hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of business each day would be a little more lax about a $33 dollar refund, but no, the customer service rep that i was connected to said that i would have to talk with a manager if i wanted to complain about the sales representative’s misunderstanding. i said that if it was not resolved to my satisfaction, that i would gladly take my business to a service provider that cares about its customers, so she emailed me a (.doc file!!!) “Merchant Request to Cancel” – which has to be faxed or scanned and emailed back to them, but i don’t have either a fax machine or a working scanner.
they make it as difficult as possible – something which i don’t completely disagree with – to get an account in the first place, but once you have the account they start spamming you just like that was their business, and they make it even more difficult to cancel your account… it makes me wonder how any of these companies stay in business at all, especially with the economy the way it is these days.